too stinging flavour; but taken together, sandwich-fashion, as they are
here, the consumption may go on rapidly enough.

But, whether dry or not, the letters and speeches of Cromwell should be
read by every one desirous of obtaining an insight into the character of
not the least extraordinary, nor the least misrepresented personage in
history. If there is any one who still believes that Cromwell was a
thorough hypocrite, that his religion was a systematic feint to cover
his ambitious designs, the perusal of these volumes will entirely
undeceive him. We look upon this hypothesis, this Machiavelian
explanation of Cromwell's character, as henceforth entirely dismissed
from all candid and intelligent minds. It was quite natural that such a
view should be taken of their terrible enemy by the royalists of the
Restoration, hating his memory with a most cordial hatred, and
accustomed, in their blinding licentiousness, to look upon _all_
religion as little better than cant and hypocrisy. It was quite natural
that such a portrait of him should be drawn by the men who unearthed his
bones, and vented their rage upon a senseless corpse. We see it was
quite inevitable that some such coarse caricature should be thus limned
and transmitted to us. But it has lasted long enough. We believe,
indeed, that by most persons it has already been dismissed and disowned.
It may now be torn into shreds, and cast aside as utterly faithless.

Cromwell was a _genuine Puritan_. There is no doubt of that. He was no
youth when the war broke out, nor a man who had yet to seek his
religious party or principles. As the farmer of St Ives, we see him, as
distinctly as if he still lived upon the earth, the man of fierce
sectarian piety, in natural temper not unamiable, somewhat gloomy and
hypochondriacal, but, above all, distinguished by whatsoever of good or
ill the sort of Calvinistic divinity prevalent at the time could infuse
into its professors. Such the war found him, and such he continued to
be; throughout his whole career we never for a moment lose sight of "the
saint," the title which, then as now, the profane world gave to this
class of men.

Was Cromwell, then, always sincere in his utterances? was there no cant,
_no_ hypocrisy? Did he never conceal the ambition and domineering spirit
of the soldier under the humility of the saint? Another matter quite.
Because a man is religious in the main, it follows not that he is
incapable of occasionally p