e
any faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters,
and the age they ushered-in, had forgotten. Puritanism was hung on
gibbets--like the bones of the leading Puritans. Its work nevertheless
went on accomplishing itself. All true work of a man, hang the author of
it on what gibbet you like, must and will accomplish itself. We have our
_Habeas-Corpus_, our free Representation of the People; acknowledgment,
wide as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will
become, what we call _free_ men;--men with their life grounded on
reality and justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust and a
chimera! This in part, and much besides this, was the work of the
Puritans.

And indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the character of
the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories were, one after
another, taken _down_ from the gibbet; nay a certain portion of them are
now, in these days, as good as canonized. Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay
Ludlow, Hutchinson, Vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes;
political Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small degree we owe what
makes us a free England: it would not be safe for anybody to designate
these men as wicked now. Few Puritans of note but find their apologists
somewhere, and have a certain reverence paid them by earnest men. One
Puritan, I think, and almost he alone, our poor Cromwell, seems to hang
yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty apologist anywhere. Him neither
saint nor sinner will acquit of great wickedness. A man of ability,
infinite talent, courage, and so forth; but he betrayed the Cause.
Selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical
_Tartuffe_; turning all that noble Struggle for constitutional Liberty
into a sorry farce played for his own benefit: this and worse is the
character they give of Cromwell. And then there come contrasts with
Washington and others; above all, with these noble Pyms and Hampdens,
whose noble work he stole for himself, and ruined into a futility and
deformity.

From of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell's falsity has been
incredible to me. Nay I cannot believe the like, of any Great Man
whatever. Multitudes of Great Men figure in History as false selfish
men; but if we will consider it, they are but _figures_ for us,
unintelligible shadows; we do not see into them as men that could have
existed at all. A superficial, unbelieving generation only, with no e