measures of revenge. He had with difficulty
procured this man's condemnation; but the night previous to his intended
execution he escaped, by suicide, the Protector's power; and so
prejudiced were the populace against their Ruler, that they accused him
of having poisoned the victim he feared to bring to a public death. If
the prosecution of a notorious and avowed ruffian brought him into this
dilemma, what odium would the death of two respectable and aged
Loyalists excite, especially as their story was become public, and the
wrongs of Neville, and the generous friendship of Beaumont, had awakened
a powerful sympathy. Yet his narrow soul could not accede to the
generous alternative of giving them freedom. Pretending that the state
had a claim to the Bellingham-property, he prevented Monthault from
taking any measures to establish the will of the guilty Countess, and
contented himself with keeping the lawful claimant in prison, hoping
that confinement would accelerate the decays of nature, and thus give a
safe quietus to his own fears.

But ere that event happened the Usurper was called to the dreadful
tribunal for which few among the descendants of Adam were apparently
less prepared. His restless, intriguing ambition; the dissimulation and
hypocrisy by which he rose to supreme power; the ability with which he
wielded it; his splendid wretchedness; the terror he excited and felt;
his cruelty and fanaticism, his determined spirit, and occasionally
timid vacillation, read a most impressive lesson to aspiring minds
infatuated by success, and regardless of moral or religious restraints.
O that, in this age of insubordination, selfishness, and enterprise, a
poet would arise, animated with Shakespeare's "Muse of fire," embody the
events of those seventeen years of wo, and invest the detestable
Regicide with the same terrible immortality which marks the murderous
Thane in his progress from obedience and honour to supreme power and
consummate misery!

Nor does the death-bed of Cromwell afford a less useful warning to the
pen of instruction, when she aims at distinguishing true piety from
hypocrisy or fanaticism. It is still doubtful under which of those
counterfeits of religion we must rank this great but wicked man. Yet,
whether he deceived his own soul, or attempted to deceive others;
whether he really believed himself an elected instrument of Providence;
or, having long worn devotion as the mask of ambition, retained it to
t