ct_ a brother-man's biography, see with the
brother-man's eyes at all points of his course what things _he_ saw;
in short, _know_ his course and him, as few 'Historians' are like to
do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort our
image of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to
represent them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as
they are thrown-down before us.

But a second error, which I think the generality commit, refers to
this same 'ambition' itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men;
we mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in
that sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the
man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who
goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and
claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody
for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the
heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen
under this sun. A _great_ man? A poor morbid prurient empty man;
fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. I
advise you to keep-out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths;
unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about
him, he cannot live. It is the _emptiness_ of the man, not his
greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts
that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no
great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real
substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in
this way.

Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be 'noticed' by noisy
crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was
already there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was.
Till his hair was grown gray; and Life from the downhill slope was all
seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable
matter _how_ it went,--he had been content to plough the ground, and
read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer,
without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt
carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers
haunting him, "Decide this, decide that," which in utmost sorrow of
heart no man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for
this man? From of old, was there not in his life a weight of meaning,
a