66

were overblown, the intricate and civil government, and became Lord ambiguous passages of his political Protector, he has thought and learned course had been left behind ; and now, much of statemanship. But as a whatever may have been the errors statesman, he is still first of all the of the past, and however his own am- Puritan. It is worth while to observe bition or rashness may have led him how his foreign policy, which has to it, he occupied a position which he been justly admired, took its turn might say with truth he held for his and direction from his religious feelcountry's good. Forsake it he could ings. He made alliances with the not. Repose in it he could not. A Protestant powers of the north, and man of religious breeding, of strong assumed a firm attitude of hostility conscientiousness, though tainted with towards Spain-and reasons of state superstition, he could not but feel the may have had some sway in detergreat responsibility of that position. mining him to these measures ; but A vulgar usurper is found at this era his great motive for hostility with of his career to sink into the voluptu- Spain was, that she stood “at the ary, or else to vent his dissatisfied head of the antichristian interest” humour in acts of cruelty and oppres- was described in the Scriptures to sion. Cromwell must govern, and be papal and antichristian.” govern to his best. The restless and Why, truly your great enemy is ardent spirit that had ever prompted the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy. him onwards and upwards, and which He is naturally so throughout, by reahad carried him to that high place, son of that enmity that is in him was now upon the wane. It had against whatever is of God. . borne him to that giddy pinnacle, and Your enemy, as I tell you, naturally, threatened to leave him there. Men by that antipathy which is in him, were now aiming at his life; the and also providentially, (that is, by assassin was abroad; one-half the special ordering of Providence.) An world was execrating him ; we doubt enmity is put in him by God. I will not that he spoke with sincerity when put an enmity between thy seed and he said, that he would gladly live her seed,' which goes but for little under any woodside, and keep a flock among statesmen, but is more consiof sheep." He would gladly lay down derable than all things. And he that his burden, but he cannot ; can lay it considers not such natural enmity, the down only in the grave. The sere providential enmity as well as the and yellow leaf is falling on the accidental, I think he is not well acshelterless head of the royal Puritan. quainted with the Scripture, and the The asperity of his earlier character things of God,”—(Speech 5.) is gone, the acrimony of many of his In fine, we see in Cromwell, every prejudices has, in his long and wide where and throughout, the genuine, intercourse with mankind, abated; his fervid Puritan — the Puritan gegreat duties have taught him mode- neral, the Puritan statesman. He ration of many kinds; there remains

was a man, and, therefore, doubtless of the fiery sectarian, who so hastily ambitious; he rose through a scene “ turned the buckle of his girdle of civil as well as military contest, behind him," little more than his and, doubtless, was not unacquainted firmness and conscientiousness : his with dissimulation ; but if we would firmness that, as he truly said, “could describe him briefly, it is as the GREAT be bold with men ;' his conscientious- PURITAN that he must ever be rememness, which made the power he attained bered in history. by that boldness, a burden and a In parting company with the editor heavy responsibility.

of these letters and speeches, we feel " We have not been now four years that we have not done justice to the ediand upwards in this government, torial industry and research which these says the Protector, in one of his

volumes display. Our space would speeches, “to be totally ignorant of not permit it. For the same reason what things may be of the greatest we have been unable to quote several concernment to us." No; this man instances of vivid narrative, which we has not been an idle scholar. Since had hoped to transfer to our own the Lord General took the reins of pages. “And as to our main quarrel

swear.

with him—this outrageous adoption flashing heart and scimiter, is, 'Wretchof Puritanical bile and superstition,- ed moral, give up that; or by the Eterwe have been haunted all along by a nal, thy maker and mine, I will kill thee! suspicion we have occasionally ex- Thou blasphemous scandalous mispressed, that the man cannot be in birth of Nature, is not even that the earnest. He could not have been so kindest thing I can do for thee, if abandoned by his common sense. He thou repent not, and alter in the name has been so accustomed to mingle of Allah?'" sport, and buffoonery, and all sorts of To this sort of satirical humour wilful extravagance, with his most to“ the truth of a song,"—not Dryasserious mood, that he perhaps does not dust himself would call upon him to know himself when, and how far, he

And may not all his rhapis in earnest. In turning over the sodies upon his 66 sword-in-hand" leaves of his work, we light, towards Puritans be little more than an amplithe end of the second volume, upon fication of this one passage? And, the following passage, which may, if we insist upon it, that a reform by perhaps, explain the temper of the the pen, or even by speech-making, writer, when he is abetting and en- is better than one by pike and musket couraging his fanatical heroes. He if we should suggest that matters is attering some sarcasms upon the of civil government are better depoor " art of speech.”.

cided by civil and political reasoning " Is there no sacredness, then, any than by metaphorical texts of Scriplonger in the miraculous tongue of ture, interpreted by prejudice and man? Is his head become a wretched passion — if we contend for such cracked pitcher, on which you jingle truisms as these, shall we not be in to frighten crows, and makes bees danger of occupying some such posihive? He fills me with terror, this tion as the worthy prelate whose two-legged rhetorical phantasm! I sagacity led him to discover that some could long for an Oliver without rheto- facts in Gulliver's Travels had surely ric at all. I could long for a Mahomet, been overcharged ? whose persuasive eloquence, with wild

LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES.

PART III.

On passing the little village of which they had left, and that one only Erith, once one of the prettiest rustic sent by the member for the county, spots in Kent, where the parson and when he thought it desirable to awake the surgeon formed the heads of the the general gratitude on the approach community, and its only intelligence of a general election. The Thames of the living world depended on the certainly might remind the village casual arrival of a boat from the Mar- population that there were merchants gate Hoy in search of fresh eggs for and mariners among mankind; but the voyage, a small house was pointed what were those passing phantoms to out to me, embosomed in a dell, which them ? John the son of Thomas lived would have completely suited the soli- and died as Thomas the father of John tary tastes of a poet weary of the had lived and died from generation to

generation. The first news of the “Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, of the Woolwich guns for peace; and says the philosophic Cowley ; and England of all kinds of oppression to with Cowley I perfectly agree. all kinds of countries, and finished his

But Erith is this scene of philo- speech by a recapitulation of all the sophy no more. It has now shared wishes, wants, woes, and wrongs, as the march of mind : it has become he called them, of Ireland, almost a watering - place; it has a

“ First flower of the west, and first gem library, a promenade, lodgings for

of the ocean.” gouty gentlemen, a conventicle, several vigorous politicians, three doctors, Within the next twelve hours, a and, most fatal of all, four steam-boat pair of Bow Street officers were seen arrivals every day. Solitude has fled, galloping into the village in a postand meditation is no more.

chaise and four. They brought a But, to my story. In that lonely warrant from the Secretary of State house, lived for several years, in the to arrest the Irish orator, as a leader beginning of the century, a singular of the late Rebellion returned from character, of whom nothing more was transportation, on his own authority. known, than that he had come from He was captured, and conveyed to some distant place of abode ; that he the Tower. And this was the last never received a letter ; and that he intelligence of the patriot; except never hunted, shot, or fished with the that he appealed to the government squiredom of the country. He was against all repetition of his Australian of large form, loud voice, had a sullen voyage, and swore that he preferred look, and no trust in her Majesty's the speedier performance of the law ministers for the time being. At to the operations on the Coal-mine length, on some occasion of peculiar river. A remarkable tempest, which public excitement, the recluse had broke all the windows, and threw gone to Gravesend, where, tempted by down half the chimneys of the city, & the impulse of the moment, ie had few weeks after ; was supposed by the broken through his reserve, dashed imaginative to be connected with his out into a diatribe of singular fierce- disappearance. At all events, he was ness, but of remarkable power, accused heard of no more.

THE VISION.

Thunder pealed and lightning quivered,
Gusts a prison's casements shivered.
From its dungeon rose a scream,
Where, awakened by the gleam,
From his pallet rose and ran,
Wild with fear, a stalwart man.
Saw he in his tortured sleep,
Things that make the heart-veins creep?
Swept he through the world of flame,
Chased by shapes that none may name?
Still, as bars and windows clanged,
Still he roared—“I will be hanged."

Sleep had swept him o'er the seas,
To the drear antipodes;
There he saw a felon band,
Chains on neck, and spade in hand,
Orators, all sworn to die
In - Old Ireland's” cause- or fly!
Now, divorced from pike and pen,
Digging ditch, and draining fen,
Sky their ceiling, sand their bed,
Fed and flogged, and flogged and fed.
“ Operatives !” he harangued;
" Ere I'm banished—I'll be hanged."

Now, he strove to strike a light,
But, a form of giant height
Through the crashing casement sprang;
Shattered stanchions round him rang,
From his eyes a light within
Showed the blackness of his skin ;
In his lips a huge cigar
Smouldered, like a dying star ;
Holding to the culprit's eyes,
Writ in flame, a scroll of lies,
Champing jaws with iron fanged,
“Friend,” cried he, "you shall be hanged."
'Twixt the tempter and the rogue,
Then began the dialogue :

-- Master-shall I rob the state ?"
“Not, unless you'd dine off plate.'

-“Shall I try my hand at law?"
"You'll be sure to make a flaw."

5 Shall I job in Parliament ?”
"You'll be richer, cent per cent."
-“Shall I truckle, or talk big ?"
" You'll but get a judge's wig,
Blockheads may be conscience-panged,
Knaves are pensioned, but, not hanged !”

Master, must I then escape ?"
“No," exclaimed the knowing shape,
" You shall perish by Lynch-Law.”
Through his skull he struck a claw,
On the tempest burst a wail,
Through the bars a serpent-tail,
Flashing like a lightning spire,
Seemed to set the cell on fire ;
Far and wide was heard the clang,
Through the whirlwind as they sprang.
Many a year the sulphurous füme

Stung the nostril in that room. The river widens, and we sweep pays a laureate, who writes nothing along by the rich slopes and deep but the annual receipt for his pension. wooded vales of the Kentish shore. Why not transfer the office to a BosFrom time to time little pastoral well? why not establish a Cabinetvillages emerge, from plantations of dinner Boswell? a Buckingham-palace willows and poplars, and all water- Boswell? a Windsor Boswell ? with loving trees. Before coming to Pur- orders to make their weekly returns fileet , we had passed a noble hill, of gaiety and gossipry to the Home

over a vast expanse of coun- Department; to be thence issued by try, on which stands a princely man- instalments of anecdote, in volumes, sion, -- Belvedere, with its battlements like “Lord Campbell's Lives of the glittering above groves as thick as the Chancellors,” or in columns, like the depths of the Black Forest. This was protocols of the Montpensier marriage, once the mansion of Lord Eardley, one for the laughter of mankind ? of the greatest humorists of the

age, But the report of a heavy gun, and the companion of George the Fourth, all eyes turned to a huge sheil, makbefore he ceased to be a wit and be- ing its curve a mile above our heads,

reminded us that the artillery had a How many delightful things are lost field-day as we passed Woolwich, to the world, by the world's own and that there was every possibility laziness. Why have we not a Bos- that this vagrant messenger of dewell in every city?

Her majesty struction, might plump into our midVOL. LXI.-NO. CCCLXXVIII.

looking

came a king.

2 F

ships. The consternation on board been immortal in paragraphs without grew, as it descended, looking bigger number. Coroners, surgeons, poets, and blacker every instant. If it and special juries, would have made had come on board, it must have their reputation out of us; and for a torn us up like paper. The catas- month of hot weather, we should have trophe would have been invaluable to been a refreshing topic in the mouths the journals of the empire, at this of mankind. But it was otherwise moment of a dearth of news, enough decreed: the shell dropped within a to make bankrupts of all the coffee- foot of the steamer, and we were houses in London, and close every quittes pour la peur. club from Charing Cross to Hyde I fired a poetic shot at Woolwich Park Corner. We should all have in return.

THE ROYAL ARSENAL.

Woolwich — Woolwich,
The Thames is thy ditch,

And stout hearts are thy fortification.
Let come who come may,
All is open as day,

Thy gates are as free as thy nation.
Let the King of the French
Build wall, or dig trench,

Though he has no more princes to marry,
Our trench is the sea,
And our walls are the free,

And we laugh at thy " grande enceinte, Paris."
Deep and dark on their quay,
Like lions at bay,

Stand the guns that set earth at defiance ;
With mountains of ball,
Which, wherever they fall,

With their message make speedy compliance.
Along the Parade
Lies the brisk carronade,

With Wellington's joy, the twelve-pounder.
And the long sixty-eight,
Made for matters of weight,

The world has no arguments sounder.
There stands the long rocket,
That shot, from its socket,

Puts armies, pell-mell, to the rout, sir ;
At Leipsic, its tail
Made Napoleon turn pale,

And sent all his õraves right about, sir.
And there gapes the mortar,
That seldom gives quarter,

When speaking to ship or to city;
For, although deaf and dumb,
Its tongue is a bomb-

And so, there's an end of my ditty. The sun had now overcome the the Essex side. The park reached to mists of the morning, and was throw- the water's edge, in broad vistas, ing a rich lustre over the long sheets green as the emerald; deer were of foliage which screened, but without moving in groups over the lawn, or concealing, a large and classic villa on standing still to gaze on the wonder