ernment.
In this off-hand manner of constituting a Parliament, we detect the
mingled daring of the Puritan and the Soldier. In neither of these
characters was he likely to have much respect for legal maxims, or rules
of merely human contrivance. Cromwell was educating himself for the
Statesman: at this juncture it is the Puritan General that we have
before us.

The Little Parliament having blundered on till it had got itself
entangled in the Mosaic dispensation, resigned its power into the hands
of him who had bestowed it. Thereupon a new _Instrument of Government_
is framed, with the advice of the council of officers, appointing
Cromwell Protector, and providing for the election of a Parliament.

This Parliament being elected, falls, of course, on the discussion of
this very Instrument of government. Henceforth Cromwell's great
difficulty is the management of his Parliaments. The speeches he
delivered to them at various times, and which occupy the third volume of
the work before us, are of high historical interest. They are in every
respect superior to his letters. Neither will their perusal be found to
be of that arduous and painful nature which, from the reputation they
have had, most persons will be disposed to expect. The _sermon_ may
weary, but the _speech_ is always fraught with meaning; and the mixture
of sermon and speech together, portray the man with singular
distinctness. We see the Puritan divine, the Puritan soldier, becoming
the Puritan statesman. His originally powerful mind is excited to fresh
exertion by his onerous and exalted position. But he is still constant
to himself. Very interesting is the exhibition presented to us of this
powerful intellect, breaking out in flashes of strong sense, and
relapsing again into the puerilities of the sect. But as it falls upon
the strong sense to _act_, and on the puerilities only to _preach_, the
man comes out, upon the whole, as a great and able governor.

The reputation which Oliver's speeches have borne, as being involved,
spiritless, tortuous, and even purposely confused, has resulted, we
think, from this--that an opinion of the whole has been formed from an
examination of a few, and chiefly of those which were delivered on the
occasion of his refusing the offered title of king. His conduct on this
occasion, it would be necessary for an historian particularly to
investigate, and in the discharge of this duty he would have to peruse a
series of discourses u