, their desperate hardihood elicits a
more fitting tribute. "Hunted down," he says, "like wild beasts,
tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds,
hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from
England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of bands of marauders
from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the
boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of
their despair."

But the man who, in modern times, stands out most prominently as the
representative of this tough physical and moral fibre is Oliver
Cromwell, the greatest of that class of Puritans who combined the
intensest religious passions with the powers of the soldier and the
statesman, and who, in some wild way, reconciled their austere piety
with remorseless efficiency in the world of facts. After all the
materials for an accurate judgment of Cromwell which have been collected
by the malice of his libellers and the veneration of his partisans, he
is still a puzzle to psychologists; for no one, so far, has bridged the
space which separates the seeming anarchy of his mind from the executive
decision of his conduct. A coarse, strong, massive English
nature, thoroughly impregnated with Hebrew thought and Hebrew
passion,--democratic in his sympathy with the rudest political and
religious feelings of his party, autocratic in the consciousness of
superior abilities and tyrannic will,--emancipated from the illusions of
vanity, but not from those of ambition and pride,--shrinking from no
duty and no policy from the fear of obloquy or the fear of death,--a
fanatic and a politician,--a demagogue and a dictator,--seeking the
kingdom of heaven, but determined to take the kingdom of England by the
way,--believing in God, believing in himself, and believing in his
Ironsides,--clothing spiritual faith in physical force, and backing
dogmas and prayers with pikes and cannon,--anxious at once that his
troops should trust in God and keep their powder dry,--with a mind deep
indeed, but distracted by internal conflicts, and prolific only in
enormous, half-shaped ideas, which stammer into expression at once
obscure and ominous, the language a strange compound of the slang of the
camp and the mystic phrases of inspired prophets and apostles,--we still
feel throughout, that, whatever may be the contradictions of his
character, they are not such as to impair the ruthless energy of his
will. W