ave made wager of battle with him: it is he
to die, or else you. Reconciliation is problematic; may be possible,
or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally
admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, had no
way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian
party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do
so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be.
The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotiations, shows
himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A man who,
once for all, could not and would not _understand_:--whose thought did
not in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter; nay
worse, whose _word_ did not at all represent his thought. We may say
this of him without cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and
undeniable. Forsaken there of all but the _name_ of Kingship, he
still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a King, fancied
that he might play-off party against party, and smuggle himself into
his old power by deceiving both. Alas, they both _discovered_ that he
was deceiving them. A man whose _word_ will not inform you at all what
he means or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get
out of that man's way, or put him out of yours! The Presbyterians, in
their despair, were still for believing Charles, though found false,
unbelievable again and again. Not so Cromwell: "For all our fighting,"
says he, "we are to have a little bit of paper?" No!--

In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical _eye_ of
this man; how he drives towards the practical and practicable; has a
genuine insight into what _is_ fact. Such an intellect, I maintain,
does not belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows,
plausibilities, expediences: the true man is needed to discern even
practical truth. Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, early
in the contest, How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy
riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the
work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who _saw_. Fact
answers, if you see into Fact. Cromwell's _Ironsides_ were the
embodiment of this insight of his; men fearing God; and without any
other fear. No more conclusively genuine set of fighters ever trod the
soil of England, or of any other land.

Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwel