have not now been adopted. He was wise before his age, but he was also wise with a full consideraiton of the feelings and requirements of his age. He might anticipate like a philosopher, but he acted as a practical though far-seeing statesman. At home many men might detest the foundations of his authority, but they felt confidence in the justice and wisdom of his administration, while abroad he was feared and respected by all. Had he lived a little longer, there seems every probability that the wise eclecticism which he had adopted alike in his advocacy of principles and in his choice of men, would have consolidated around his throne a party, bound together by sympathies more enduring than the transient ties of party and dogmatic antecedents, and comprising within its ranks the representative elements of what was most influential and sterling in the national character, which, under his guiding mind, would have commanded more and more entirely the national confidence. For such an administration, whatever its shortcomings might have been in practice, the animating principle laid down by their great chief must have secured a certain elevation of spirit and a certain depth of root. 'A thing I am confident our liberty and prosperity depend upon-Reformation. Make it a shame to see men bold in sin and profaneness, and God will bless you. You will be a blessing to the nation; and by

B B

this will be more repairers of breaches than by any thing in the world. Truly, these things do respect the souls of men, and the spirits—which are the men. The mind is the man. If that be kept pure, a man signifies somewhat; if not, I would very fain see what difference there is between him and a beast. He hath only some activity to do some more mischief.'

371

RICHARD, LORD PROTECTOR.

WE have had occasion to notice more than once how unfavourable to greatness, or at least the recognition of greatness, is the position of the son of a distinguished man. The continuity of genius which seems to be expected is seldom carried out, for even if the amount of ability in the second generation at all approaches that in the preceding, it is often of so different a type that public expectation is almost as much disappointed as if there had been no succession of ability at all. In the case of Richard Cromwell, however, there was an entire absence of genius in any form, and the effect of the contrast which is naturally suggested between him and his father has been such, that he has been denied the possession of even the amount of mental acquirements to which he can really lay claim. The circumstance that he was the least energetic, if not also the least able, of the sons of the Protector Oliver would not, perhaps, have been so fatal to his qualifications for retaining the supreme power in the kingdom, if he had been from the first the eldest son. But two brothers who

attained to youth and early manhood enjoyed successively this position before their death made Richard the heir of the family. Robert, the eldest son, as Mr. Forster has proved, did not die till May, 1639, when he was in his eighteenth year; Oliver, the second son, certainly survived long enough to take a commission in the Parliamentary Army when he had nearly completed his twentieth year, and not improbably lived for some years longer. Richard was nearly four years younger than this second eldest son, and at the time of the breaking out of the Civil War was only a boy who had not completed his sixteenth year. Writers have speculated very much as to the cause of his not taking a more active part in the events of the Civil War, forgetting how young he was; and unless he had exhibited a marked amount of enterprise and capacity, it is not likely that there would be any attempt made to put forward prematurely a younger son. The first Civil War, indeed, which was the one the exigencies of which might have demanded his active co-operation, ended before he was twenty. His eldest brother Robert had been the favourite and hope of his father, and the younger Oliver must then, as the soldier head of the family and the Protector's companion in his campaigns, have necessarily held the first place. Richard, naturally unaspiring, and contented with the happy life he led in the home circle and the mixed society of London, was not likely to thrust himself on the

attention of his father, wrapped up as the latter was in the absorbing affairs of public life. It seems unlikely that he was that son of Lieutenant-General Cromwell who is described as being, in October, 1647, 'Captain of the General's Life Guard,' or the other son' who is mentioned as then captain of a troop in Colonel Harrison's regiment,' for in the May of that year, when nearly twenty-one years of age, he was entered at Lincoln's Inn (Thurloe, his future Secretary of State, being one of his sureties),—and there had been no special call to active service in the meantime. His father's serious attention was probably first directed to him when negotiations for a marriage were entered into on his behalf at the beginning of the year 1648-first, with the Hungerfords, and afterwards (successfully) with the Maiiors of Hursley, in Hampshire. Till that time his character would be of secondary importance, and he would be ooked upon in his family as a mere boy. From the fact of the negotiations being in behalf of Richard, young Oliver seems to have been already dead. The attention of the father was then drawn to the fact that Richard, whatever were his merits, was wholly wanting in that weight of character which befitted, in his opinion, every Englishman, and which certainly he would wish to see in any son of his own, and particularly in the future head of the family. This made him, no doubt, especially careful as to the choice he made for his son-the offer of the Hunger