nuine Puritan. This must be understood, or no
intelligible view of his character can be taken. It is not only
hostility to his memory which has attributed to him a studied hypocrisy;
the love of the marvellous has lent its aid. Such a supposition was
thought to magnify his talents and his genius. It was more dramatic to
make him the "honest Iago" of the piece. A French writer, M. Villemain,
in his History of Cromwell, expresses this feeling very naively, and
speaks of an hypocrisy "que l'histoire atteste, et qu'on ne saurait
mettre en doute sans oter quelque chose a l'idee de son genie; car les
hommes verront toujours moins de grandeur dans un fanatique de bonne
foi, que dans une ambition qui fait des enthusiastes. Cromwell mena les
hommes par la prise qu'ils lui donnaient sur eux. _L'ambition seule lui
inspira des crimes, qu'il fit executer par le fanatisme des autres._"
That he thus employed the spirit of the age without sharing it, is a
theory which will not stand the light for a moment. Besides, it is not
in this manner that history is transacted: we may all be puppets, if you
will, upon the scene, but it is not in this fashion that any one man
gets hold of the wires. The supposition, whatever honour it may do the
genius of Cromwell, will do very little honour to the speculative genius
of any writer who adopts it. But this is evident, that to whatever
extent Cromwell shared the distempered feelings of a sectarian party,
nothing ever clouded his penetration upon any affair of conduct, any
question of means to an end. The hour never came that found him wanting.
At every phase of the revolution he is there to lead, or control, or
predominate over it.

Starting from this point of view--understanding him, in the first place,
as the conscientious zealous Puritan, and endeavouring to estimate, as
the history proceeds, the modifications which the soldier and the
general, and finally the Protector, would induce upon this original
substratum--the character of Cromwell becomes intelligible, and his
conduct, in a measure, consistent. Whilst yet a private man, he had
warmly espoused the extreme opinions of that religious party who looked
on Popery as antichrist, and the Church of England as little better than
Popery in disguise, as the same scarlet lady in a somewhat more modest
attire. He was one of a class occasionally met with in the most quiet
walks of life, men who torment their spirit on some public question till
it become