re is no retreat, no return. This Prime
Minister could _retire_ no-whither except into his tomb.

One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is incessant of
the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must bear
till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson,
his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable business,
much against his will--Cromwell "follows him to the door," in a most
fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs that he would be
reconciled to him, his old brother-in-arms; says how much it grieves him
to be misunderstood, deserted by true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from
of old: the rigorous Hutchinson, cased in his Republican formula,
sullenly goes his way.--And the man's head now white; his strong arm
growing weary with its long work! I think always, too, of his poor
Mother, now very old, living in that Palace of his; a right brave woman;
as indeed they lived all an honest God-fearing Household there: if she
heard a shot go-off, she thought it was her son killed. He had come to
her at least once a day, that she might see with her own eyes that he
was yet living. The poor old mother!--What had this man gained; what had
he gained? He had a life of sore strife and toil to his last day. Fame,
ambition, place in History? His dead body was hung in chains; his "place
in History"--place in History, forsooth!--has been a place of ignominy,
accusation, blackness, and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it
is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce
him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did
he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? _We_ walk smoothly over
his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there.
We need not _spurn_ it, as we step on it!--Let the Hero rest. It was not
to _men's_ judgment that he appealed: nor have men judged him very well.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Cromwell saw that Puritanism had missed its aim. He saw that the attempt
to secure spiritual results by material force had failed, as it always
fails. It had broken down before the indifference and resentment of the
great mass of the people, of men who were neither lawless nor
enthusiasts, but who clung to the older traditions of social order, and
whose humor and good-sense revolted alike from the artificial conception
of human life which Puritanism had formed, and from its effort to fo