When upon Earth no kingdom could have shown'
A happier monarch to us, than our own:
And yet his subjects by him were
(Which is a truth will hardly be
Receiv'd by any vulgar ear,

he.

Thou dost a chaos, and confusion, now,
And like a frantic person, thou dost tear [wear,
A Babel, and a Bedlam, grow,
The ornaments and clothes which thou should'st
And cut thy limbs; and, if we

(Just as thy barbarous Britons did)
Painted all o'er, thou think'st thy naked shame is
Thy body with hypocrisy
hid.

The nations, which envied thee erewhile,

therefore by no means could be omitted here) the vast multitude of spectators made up, as it uses to do, no small part of the spectacle itself. But yet, I know not how, the whole was so managed, that, methought, it somewhat represented the life of him for whom it was made; much noise, much A secret known to few) made happier ev'n than tumult, much expense, much magnificence, much vainglory; briefly, a great show, and yet, after all this, but an ill sight. At last (for it seemed long to me, and like his short reign too, very tedious) the whole scene passed by; and I retired back to my chamber, weary, and I think more melancholy than any of the mourners; where I began to reflect on the whole life ofthis prodigious man: and sometimes I was filled with horrour and detestation of his actions, and sometimes I inclined a little to reverence and admiration of his courage, conduct, and success; till, by these different motions and agitations of mind,rocked as it were asleep, I fell at last into this vision; or if you please to call it but a dream, I shall not take it ill, because the father of poets tells us, even dreams, too, are from God. But sure it was no dream; for I was suddenly transported afar off (whether in the body, or out of the body, like St. Paul, I know not) and found myself on the top of that famous hill in the island Mona, which has the prospect of three great, and not-long-since most happy, kingdoms. As soon as ever I looked on them, the "not-long-since" struck upon my memory, and called forth the sad representation of all the sins, and all the miseries, that had overwhelmed them these twenty years. And I wept bitterly for two or three hours; and, when my present stock of moisture was all wasted, I fell a sighing for an hour more; and, as soon as I recovered from my passion the use of speech and reason, I broke forth as I remember (looking upon England) into this complaint: Ah, happy Isle, how art thon chang'd and curs'd,

Since I was born and knew thee first!
When Peace, which had forsook the world around,
(Frighted with noise, and the shrill trumpet's
sound)

Thee for a private place of rest,
And a secure retirement, chose
Wherein to build her halcyon nest;

No wind durst, stir abroad, the air to discompose:
When all the riches of the globe beside

Flow'd in to thee with every tide;
When all, that Nature did thy soil deny,
The growth was of thy fruitful industry;

When all the proud and dreadful sea,
And all his tributary streams,

A constant tribute paid to thee;

They laugh, and would have pitied thee, alas!
Now laugh, (too little 'tis to smile)
But that thy faults all pity do surpass.

Less

Art thou the country, which didst hate
And mock the French inconstancy?
And have we, have we seen of late
change of habits there, than governments in
thee?

Unhappy Isle! no ship of thine at sea,

Thy naked hulk loose on the waves does beat,
Was ever tost and torn like thee.
The rocks and banks around her ruin threat;
What did thy foolish pilots ail,

To lay the compass quite aside?
And rather take the winds, than heavens, to be
Without a law or rule to sail,
their guide!

Yet, mighty God! yet, yet, we humbly crave,

And though, to wash that blood which does it
This floating isle from shipwreck save;
stain,

It well deserve to sink into the main;
Yet, for the royal martyr's prayer
(The royal martyr prays, we know)
This guilty, perishing vessel spare;
Hear but his soul above, and not his blood below!

I think I should have gone on,but that I was in terrupted by a strange and terrible apparition; for there appeared to me (arising out of the earth, as I conceived) the figure of a man, taller than a giant; or indeed than the shadow of any giant in the evening. His body was naked; but that nakedness adorned, or rather deformed, all over, with several figures, after the manner of the ancient Britons, painted upon it: and I perceived

When all the liquid world was one extended that most of them were the representation of

Thames:

When Plenty in each village did appear,

And Bounty was its steward there,
When Gold walk'd free about in open view,
Ere it one conquering party's prisoner grew;
When the Religion of our state

Had face and substance with her voice,
Ere she by her foolish loves of late,

the late battles in our civil wars, and (if I be not much mistaken) it was the battle of Naseby that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass; and there were three crowns of the same metal, (as I guessed) and that looked as red-hot too, upon his head. He held in his right-hand a sword that was yet bloody, and nevertheless the motto of it was, Pax quæri

Like Echo (once a nymph) turn'd only into tur bello; and in his left hand a thick book,

noise :

When men to men, respect and friendship bore,
And God with reverence did adore,

upon the back of which was written in letters of gold, Acts, Ordinances, Protestations, Corenants, Engagements, Declarations, Remun strances, &c.

tempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly-founded monarchies upon the Earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and to spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victoriously at last; to over-run each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the Earth; to call to

Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful obJect might have quelled a greater courage than mine; yet so it pleased God (for there is nothing bolder than a man in a vision) that I was not at all daunted, but asked him resolutely and briefly "What art thou?" And he said, "I am called the north-west principality, his highness, the protector of the commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereto; for I am that angel, to whom the Almighty has committed the government of those three kingdoms; which thou seest from this place." And I answered and said, "If it be so, sir, it seems to me that for almost these twenty years past, your highness has been absent from your charge: for not only if any angel, but if any wise and honest man, had since that time been our governor, we should not have wandered thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths of confusion, but either not have entered at all into them, or at least have returned back ere we had absolutely lost our way; but, instead of your highness, we have had since such a protector, as was his prede-gether parliaments with a word of his pen, and cessor Richard the third to the king his nephew; for he presently slew the commonwealth, which he pretended to protect, and set up himself in the place of it: a little less guilty indeed in one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this man did but murder a murderer. Such a protector we have had, as we would have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather have received a constant Turk, than this every month's apostate; such a protector, as man is to his flocks which he shears, and sells, or devours himself, and I would fain know what the wolf, which he protects him from, could do more. Such a protector" and as I was proceeding, methoughts his highness began to put on a displeased and threatening countenance, as men use to do when their dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company; which gave me the first rise of jealousy against him, for I did not believe that Cromwell among all his foreign correspondences had ever held any with angels. However I was not hardened enough yet to venture a quarrel with him then and therefore (as if I had spoken to the protector himself in Whitehall) I desired him "that his highness would please to pardon me, if I had unwittingly spoken any thing to the disparagement of a person, whose relations to his highness I had not the honour to know."

At which he told me "that he had no other concernment for his late highness, than as he took him to be the greatest man that ever was of the English nation, if not (said he) of the whole world; which gives me a just title to the defence of his reputation, since I now account myself, as it were, a naturalised English angel, by having had so long the management of the affairs of that country. And pray, countryman, (said he, very kindly and very flatteringly) for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue, What can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no emiDent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to at

scatter them again with the breath of his mouth :' to be humbly and daily petitioned that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the es tates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal, as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory) to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him, not to be extinguished, but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs?"

By this speech, I began to understand perfectly well what kind of angel his pretended highness was; and having fortified myself privately with a short mental prayer, and with the sign of the cross (not out of any superstition to the sign, but as a recognition of my baptism in Christ), I grew a little bolder, and replied in this manner: "I should not venture to oppose what you are pleased to say in commendation of the late great, and (I confess) extraordinary person, but that I remember Christ forbids us to give assent to any other doctrine but what himself has taught us, even though it should be delivered by an angel; and if such you be, sir, it may be you have spoken all this rather to try than to tempt my frailty: for sure I am, that we must renounce or forget all the laws of the New and Old Testament, and those which are the foundation of both, even the laws of moral and natural honesty, if we approve of the actions of

Mr. Hume has inserted this character of Cromwell, but altered, as he says, in soine particulars from the original, in his History of Great Britain. HURD,

that man whom I suppose you commend by
irony.

"There would be no end to instance in the par-
ticulars of all his wickedness; but, to sum up a
part of it briefly, What can be more extraordina-
rily wicked, than for a person, such as yourself,
qualify him rightly, to endeavour not only to
exalt himself above, but to trample upon, all his
equals and betters? to pretend freedom for all
men, and under the help of that pretence to make
all men his servants? to take arms against taxes as
scarce two hundred thousand pounds a year,and to
raise them himself to above two millions? to quar-
rel for the loss of three or four ears, and to strike
off three or four hundred heads? to fight against
an imaginary suspicion of I know not what? two
thousand guards to be fetched for the king, I know
not from whence,and to keep up for himself no less
than forty thousand? to pretend the defence of
parliaments, and violently to dissolve all, even of
his own calling, and almost choosing? to under-
take the reformation of religion, and to rob it even
to the very skin, and then to expose it naked to the
rage of all sects and heresies? to set up counsels
of rapine, and courts of murder? to fight against
the king under a commission for him; to take
him forcibly out of the hands of those for whom
he had conquered him; to draw him into his
net, with protestations and vows of fidelity, and
when he had caught him in it, to butcher him,
with as little shame, as conscience or humanity,
in the open face of the whole world? to receive
a commission for the king and parliament, to
murder (as I said) the one, and destroy no less
impudently the other? to fight against monar-
chy when he declared for it, and declare against
it when he contrived for it in his own person? to
abase perfidiously and supplant ingratefully his
own general' first, and afterwards most of those
officers, who, with the loss of their honour, and
hazard of their souls, had lifted him up to the top
of his unreasonable ambitions? to break his faith
with all enemies and with all friends equally; and
to make no less frequent use of the most solemn
perjuries, than the looser sort of people do of
customary oaths? to usurp three kingdoms with-
out any shadow of the least pretensions, and to
govern them as unjustly as he got them? to set
himself up as an idol (which we know, as St.
Paul says, in itself is nothing), aud make the
very streets of London like the valley of Hinnon,
by burning the bowels of men as a sacrifice to his
Molochship to seck to entail this usurpation
upon his posterity, and with it an endless war
upon the nation and lastly, by the severest
judgment of Almighty God, to die hardened, and
mad, and unrepentant, with the curses of the
present age, and the detestation of all to suc-
ceed?"

Though I had much more to say, (for the life of man is so short, that it allows not time enough to speak against a tyrant) yet, because I had a mind to hear how my strange adversary would behave himself upon this subject, and to give even the devil (as they say) his right and fair play in a disputation, I stopped here, and expected (not without the frailty of a little fear)

Sir Thomas Fairfax.

that he should have broke into a violent passion
very calmly, and with the dove-like innocency
in behalf of his favourite: but he on the contrary
sting, thus replied to me;
of a serpent that was not yet warmed enough to

"It is not so much out of my affection to that
too solid to be shaken by the breath of an oratory)
person whom we discourse of, (whose greatness is
whom I conceive to err, rather by mistake than
as for your own sake (honest countryman)
out of malice, that I shall endeavour to reform
the first place, I must needs put you in mind of
your uncharitable and unjust opinion. And, in
vines, that you men are acquainted withal,
a sentence of the most ancient of the heathen di-

Οὐχ ̓ ὅσιαν καλαμένοισιν ἐπ ̓ ἀνδράσιν εὐχελαᾶσθαι.

'Tis wicked with insulting feet to tread
Upon the monuments of the dead.

proper for this subject; for it is spoken to a perAnd the intention of the reproof there, is no less dead men, to whom he had been humble and son who was proud and insolent against those obedient whilst they lived."

"Your highness may please (said I) to add subject: the verse that follows, as no less proper for this

Whom God's just doom and their own sins have

sent

Already to their punishment.

"But I take this to be the rule in the case, that, should not be done out of hatred to the dead, but when we fix any infamy upon deceased persons, it out of love and charity to the living: that the and dare not come forth against tyrants (because curses, which only remain in men's thoughts, they are tyrants) whilst they are so, may at least be for ever settled and engraven upon their memories, to deter all others from the like wickedness; which else, in the time of their foolish prosperity, the flattery of their own hearts, and of other inea's tongues, would not suffer them to perceive. Ambition is so subtile a tempter, and the corruption of human nature so susceptible of be he never so much forewarned of the evil consethe temptation, that a man can hardly resist it, quences; much less if he find not only the conof following ages, which have the liberty to judge currence of the present, but the approbation too more freely. The mischief of tyranny is too great is endless and insupportable, if the example be even in the shortest time that it can continue; it to reign too; and if a Lambert must be invited to follow the steps of a Cromwell, as well by the riches. Though it may seem to some fantastivoice of honour, as by the sight of power and cally, yet was it wisely, done of the Syracusans, tice, to condemn and destroy, even the statues to implead with the forms of their ordinary jusof all their tyrants: if it were possible to cut them out of all history, and to extinguish their very but, since they have left behind them too deep names, I am of opinion that it ought to be done; wounds to be ever closed up without a scar, at least let us set such a mark upon their memory,

serves, no doubt, to have the command of her (even as his highness had) by the desire of the seamen and passengers themselves. And do but consider, lastly, (for I omit a multitude of weighty things, that might be spoken upon this noble ar

ful princes have been esteemed tyrants, by not containing themselves within the bounds of those laws which have been left them, as the sphere of their authority, by their fore-fathers, what shall we say of that man, who, having by right no power at all in this nation, could not content him-gument) do but consider seriously and impartiself with that which had satisfied the most ambitious of our princes? nay, not with those vastly extended limits of sovereignty, which he (disdaining all which had been prescribed and observed before) was pleased (out of great modesty) to set to himself; not abstaining from rebellion and usurpation even against his own laws, as well as those of the nation?"

ally with yourself, what admirable parts of wit and prudence, what indefatigable diligence and invincible courage, must of necessity have concurred in the person of that man, who, from so contemptible beginnings (as I observed before) and through so many thousand difficulties, was able not only to make himself the greatest and most absolute monarch of this nation, but to add to it the entire conquest of Ireland and Scotland (which the whole force of the world, joined with the Roman virtue, could never attain to); and to crown all this with illustrious and heroical undertakings and successes upon all our foreign enemies: do but (I say again) consider this, and you will confess, that his prodigious merits were a better title to imperial dignity, than the blood of an hundred royal progenitors; and will rather lament that he lived not to overcome more nations than envy him the conquest and dominion of these."

"Whoever you are," said I, (my indignation making me somewhat bolder) "your discourse, methinks, becomes as little the person of a tutelar angel, as Cromwell's actions did that of a protector. It is upon these principles, that all the great crimes of the world have been committed, and most particularly those which I have had the misfortune to see in my own time, and in my own

"Hold, friend, (said his highness, pulling me by my arm) for I see your zeal is transporting you again; whether the protector were a tyrant in the exorbitant exercise of his power, we shall Bee anon; it is requisite to examine, first, whether he were so in the usurpation of it. And I say, that not only he, but no man else, ever was, or can be so; and that for these reasons. First, because all power belongs only to God, who is the source and fountain of it, as kings are of all honours in their dominions. Princes are but his viceroys in the little provinces of this world; and to some he gives their places for a few years, to some for their lives, and to others (upon ends or deserts best known to himself, or merely for his undisputable good pleasure) he bestows, as it were, leases upon them, and their posterity, for such a date of time as is prefixed in that patent of their destiny, which is not legible to you men below. Neither is it more unlawful for Oliver to succeed Charles in the kingdom of Eng-country. If these be to be allowed, we must land, when God so disposes of it, than it had been for him to have succeeded the lord Strafford in the lieutenancy of Ireland, if he had been appointed to it by the king then reigning. Men are in both the cases obliged to obey him whom they see actually invested with the authority, by that sovereign from whom he ought to derive it, without disputing or examining the causes, either of the removal of the one, or the preferment of the other. Secondly, because all power is attained, either by the election and consent of the people (and that takes away your objection of forcible intrusion); or else by a conquest of them (and that gives such a legal authority as you mention to be wanting in the usurpation of a tyrant); so that either this title is right, and then there are no usurpers, or else it is a wrong one, and then there are none else but usurpers, if you examine the original pretences of the princes of the world. Thirdly, (which, quitting the dispute in general, is a particular justification of his highness) the government of England was totally broken and dissolved, and extinguished by the confusions of a civil war; so that his highness could not be accused to have possessed himself violently of the ancient building of the commonwealth, but to have prudently and peaceably built up a new one out of the ruins and ashes of the former; and he, who after a deplorable shipwreck, can with extraordinary industry gather together the dispersed and broken planks and pieces of it, and with no less wonderful art and felicity so rejoin them, as to make a new vessel more tight and beautiful than the old one, de

break up human society, retire into the woods, and equally there stand upon our guards against our brethren mankind, and our rebels the wild beasts. For, if there can be no usurpation upon the rights of a whole nation, there can be none most certainly upon those of a private person; and, if the robbers of countries be God's vicege-rents, there is no doubt but the thieves and banditos, and murderers, are his under-officers, It is true which you say, that God is the source and fountain of all power; and it is no less true, that he is the creator of serpents, as well as angels; nor does his goodness fail of its ends, even in the malice of his own creatures. What power he suffers the Devil to exercise in this world, is too apparent by our daily experience; and by nothing more than the late monstrous iniquities which you dispute for, and patronize in England: but would you infer from thence, that the power of the Devil is a just and lawful one; and that all men ought, as well as most men do, obey him? God is the fountain of all powers; but some flow from the right hand (as it were) of his goodness, and others from the left hand of his justice; and the world, like an island between these two rivers, is sometimes refreshed and nourished by the one and sometimes over-run and ruined by the other; and (to continue a little farther the allegory) we are never overwhelmed with the latter, till, either by our malice or negligence, we have stopped and dammed up the former.

"But to come a little closer to your argument or rather the image of an argument, your similitude. If Cromwell had come to command in Ire