1856.] made it cheerfully, and suffered its cost patiently. Suffered! Was suffering rather. It is a slow fire, from which woman-martyrs step forth pure and white-robed-a fire that oftentimes burns life-long. When all was done, Hildred went away. She breathed more freely the further behind her she left the scene of her fiery ordeal. She thought the new air would at once give her strength. But she fell ill among strangers: sick unto death, but Her strength, and with it the conscious- No matter what that life was. Hildred Grey lived it out nobly. She was known as a good, by many who could not recognize in her a great and gifted, woman. From the Edinburgh Review. CROMWELL AND THE CIVIL WARS OF ENGLAND.* the opening of the present century to our own day. Under three divisions, we think, all may be sufficiently included. Up to the time when Mr. Macaulay, | ued to prevail, where even the desire to exsome seven and twenty years ago, re- alt his intellectual abilities was most marked marked in this journal of the character of and prominent. We shall best perhaps exCromwell, that though constantly attacked hibit this, and with it the authorities on and scarcely ever defended, it had yet which M. Guizot has had mainly to rely, if always continued popular with the great we briefly sketch Cromwell under the leadbody of his countrymen, it is unquestion- ing general aspects in which he has appearable that the memory of the great Pro-ed to the readers of English history, from tector, assiduously blackened as it has been in almost every generation since his death, had failed to find a writer in any The first would run somewhat thus. party entirely prepared to act as its champion. Down to the days of Mr. That when the struggle had passed from Hume, Cromwell remained for the most the parliament house into the field of part what that philosophical historian very battle, there somewhat suddenly arose into unphilosophically called him, "a fanatical the first place amid the popular ranks, a hypocrite" and though there was after-man not more remarkable for his apparent wards a great change, though to praise him was no longer punishable, though to revile him became almost unfashionable, and at last the champion ready on every point to defend and uphold him was found in Mr. Carlyle, it is yet remarkable what differences as to his moral qualities contin * 1. Historie de la République d'Angleterre et de Cromwell (1649-1658). Par M. GUIZOT. 2 Tomes. Paris: 1854. 2. Richard Cromwell. Par M. GUIZOT. Paris: 1856. 3. History of Oliver Cromwell and the English Commonwealth. By M. GUIZOT. Translated from the French by A. SCOBLE, Esq. 2 vols. London: 1854. VOL. XXXVII.-NO. IV. religious fanaticism than for the sagacity of his practical outlook on affairs. So far indeed had the latter quality in him a tendency, as events moved on, to correct the former, that even what was sincere in his religious views soon yieided to the teachings and temptations ofworldly experience, and religion itself became with him but the cloak to a calculating policy. His principal associates were bigots in republicanism; but he had himself too much intellect to remain long under a delusion so preposterous as that monarchy, aristocracy, and episcopacy were not essential to England. As the opponent of all three, 33 nevertheless, he was pledged too deeply to recede, and such was the false position in which his very genius and successes placed him, that with no love for hypocrisy, he became of necessity a hypocrite. To cant in his talk, to grimace in his gestures, on his very knees in prayer to know no humility, were the crooked ways by which alone he could hope to reach the glittering prize that tempted him. When at last it fell within his grasp, therefore, when he had struck aside the last life that intercepted his path to sovereignty, and all he sought was won, there came with it all the inseparable attendants of discontent and remorse. "What would not Cromwell have given," exclaims Mr. Southey, "whether he looked to this world or the next, if his hands had been clear of the king's blood!" The height to which he afterwards rose never lifted him above that stain. It darkened the remainder of his life with sorrow. "Fain would he have restored the monarchy," pursues Mr. Southey, "created a house of peers, and reëstablished the episcopal church." But his guilt to royalty was not to be cleansed, or his crime to society redeemed, by setting up mere inadequate forms of the valuable institutions he had overthrown. He lived only long enough to convince himself of this; and at the close would have made himself the instrument for even a restoration of the Stuarts, if Charles could have forgiven the execution of his father. But this was not thought possible, and he died a defeated and disappointed man. The second view of the character would arrive, by a very different reasoning, at something like the same conclusion of grief and disappointment. Within somewhat similar toils of ambition, however, it exhibits a far greater and purer soul. It would seem to be founded on the belief that a man must have thoroughly deceived himself before he succeeds on any great or extended scale in deceiving others; and here the final remorse is made to arise, not from treason to royalty, but from treason to liberty. In this Cromwell, we have have a man never wholly without a deep and sincere religion, however often able to wrest it to worldly purposes; and, if never altogether without ambition, yet with the highest feelings and principles intermingling with the earlier promptings of it. There is presented to us a man not always loving liberty, but always restless and insubordinate against tyranny; and at the last, even with his hand upon the crown, driven back from it by the influence still possessed over him by old republican associates. His nature, in this view of it, is of that complicated kind, that without being false to itself, it has yet not been true to others; and it is even more the consciousness of what might have been his success, than the sense of what had been his failure, which makes the grief of his closing years. While he has grasped at a shadow of personal authority, the means of government have broken from him; and failing as a sovereign, he can not further succeed as a ruler. Difficulties without have accumulated, as perplexities within increased; and his once lofty thoughts and aspirations have sunk into restless provisions for personal safety. The day which released his great spirit, therefore, the anniversary of his victories of Worcester and Dunbar, was to be held still his "Fortunate Day" for the sake of the death it brought, not less than it was so held of old for the triumphs it associated with his name. The third stands apart from both of these, and may be taken as the expression of certain absolute results, to which a study of the entire of Cromwell's letters and speeches, brought into succinct arrangement and connection, has been able to bring an earnest inquirer. We may thus describe them. That in the harsh untunable voice which rose in protest against Popery in the third parliament, was heard at once the complete type and the noblest development of what was meant by the Puritan Rebellion. That there then broke forth the utterance of a true man, of a consistency of character perfect to a heroic degree, and whose figure has heretofore been completely distorted by the mists of time and prepossession through which we have looked back at it into the past. That this Cromwell was no hypocrite or actor of plays, had no vanity or pride in the prodigious intellect he possessed, was no theorist in politics or government, was no victim of ambition, was no seeker after sovereignty or temporal power. That he was a man whose every thought was with the Eternal-a man of a great, robust, massive mind, and of an honest, stout, English heart; subject to melancholy for the most part, because of the deep yearnings of his soul for the sense of divine forgiveness, but inflexible and resolute always, because in all things governed 1856.] by the supreme law. That in him was And now, with these three aspects of Free and unhesitating, nevertheless, is its A great man, then, but enamored of he ing to the wind that blew; and however the prow might point at one time and another, it was enough for him if he could ride the stormy waters of the revolution, and make quick voyage without shipwreck to the harbor beyond. The oneness of his aim was the consistency that covered any incoherence in the conduct of his enterprise. His work was good if it attained its crown. His seamanship was creditable if it took him safely across to the desired port-port royal. Not that this expressed in him any mean or low desire for a merely selfish aggrandisement. It is a main point in M. Guizot's judgment of the character of Cromwell, that he holds him to have been a man who felt, quite as distinctly as M. Guizot himself feels, an absence of practical sense in even the noblest system that is revolutionary. He was thoroughly aware that a people like the English, reverent of law, though they might crush a king by whom the law had been defied, would nevertheless remain true in their hearts to the principle of monarchy. When he proposed, therefore, finally to stand before the English as their sovereign, the Cromwell of M. Guizot was but shaping his ambition by the spirit of the nation he sought to rule. His soul was too great to be satisfied with a mere personal success. To become a constitutional king was only his last aim but one. His last, and the dearest object of his life, was to transmit a crown and sceptre, as their birthright, to succeeding members of his family. He was a man, however, who could conquer but not found. He conquered much more than the power of the king of England, but also much less. than the name; and while his own wish, and the genius of the nation, were begetting parliaments, and not an effort was left unattempted by him to put off his absolutist habits, and to live within the means of a ruler accountable to Lords and Commons, these were the only labors of his life in which he failed. To substitute for a weak house of Stuart a strong house of Cromwell, at the gate of the great temple of the constitution, was, if M. Guizot be right in his view, the noblest aim of the Protectorate. But herein the Protector failed; and the historian to whom disorder is the synonym for revolution, closes with this sentence the "Histoire de la République d'Angleterre et de Cromwell :" "God does not grant to the great men who have set on disorder the foundations of their greatness, the power to regulate at their pleasure and for centuries, even according to their better desires, the government of nations."* That is the moral of the book, and it may be well that the reader should see, before we proceed further, how the few simple and pregnant words composing it are given in the English version. For M. Guizot has found an authorized translator whose endeavor has been "to make as literal a translation as was compatible with our English idiom ;" and the sentence, which translates literally as above, is accommodated in manner following to the English idiom: "God does not grant to those great men who have laid the foundation of their greatness amidst disorder and revolution, the power of regulating at their pleasure, and for succeeding ages, the government of nations." Of which sentence the accommodation to English idiom will be seen mainly to consist in the addition of "and revolution" to "disorder," whereby it is implied in the English that the two things are different, whereas it is in the spirit of the French to assume that they are like; and in the entire omission of the very pregnant clause by which both the summary of Cromwell's ambition is qualified to his credit, and the moral the historian would draw from it is pointedly enforced, namely, that in the opinion of M. Guizot, even designs that might seem well worthy of completion are frustrated by the divine wisdom, when disorder is used as a step to their accomplishment. As it is in this opening sentence, however, so is it, we regret to say, through almost every part of the work of the translator; and since we have interrupted ourselves to say so much, we may as well delay the reader a little longer to prove it. For it is surely to be regretted that a history like this by M. Guizot, a book so especially interesting to Englishmen, that a place was at once ready in our permanent literature for a good translation of it, should have failed to find the proper care and attention in this respect. If books were to be swallowed like water, "Dieu n'accorde pas aux grands hommes qui ont posé dans le desordre les fondements de leur siècles, même selon leurs meilleurs désirs, le gougrandeur, le pouvoir de reglér, à leur gré et pour des vernement des nations." 1856.] with no regard to the mere pleasure of So strong generally in M. The history begins with a picture of the Long Parliament under its republican chiefs, reduced in number by secessions following the execution of the king and regarded without sympathy by the main body of the people. In the February following the execution, there were not more than seventy-seven members who recorded votes at any of the divisions, and Without any special search for glaring of these divisions M. Guizot counts eight. instances, we will begin at the beginning. The translator alters this into ten, without We will take the first dozen pages (written a note to indicate the change. The parliawhen the translator, fresh to his work, mentary leaders, M. Guizot continues, set could hardly have begun to slip through to work, "avec une ardeur pleine en même weariness), and see what has been made temps de foi et d'inquiètude:" a hint at of them. Why the very title has been the secret disquiet at the heart of theorists altered in significance. M. Guizot wrote committed to action, which in the transHistory of the Commonwealth of Eng-lation loses both subtlety and sense by land and of Cromwell, and this the translator brings into compatibility with English idiom by writing History of Oliver Cromwell and the English Commonwealth. It does not occur to him that there may be sense no less than sound, in the order of the words placed upon his title-page by the historian. His problem is to impart what he conceives to be an easy flow to a given number of vocables; and if for him they flow better upside down than straight forward, they are, as in this title, inverted accordingly. It is a noticeable peculiarity of M. Guizot, that in characterizing historical persons he shows himself prone to dwell on the contradictory appearances assumed Whenever by the same nature of a man. it is possible, he marks the two sides which belong to human character, and the ease with which opposite opinions may with no dishonesty be formed. Of this there is of course no example in his book, or in the whole range of human history, so prominent as Cromwell himself; and as all opposite qualities maintain the balance of an active mind, the temptation is great to the historian to bring out the expression of such contrast sin a strong the exaggeration of disquiet into anxiety, and by the yoking of an adjective to each noun for the more dignified and sonorous roll of the period. They set to work, says the translator, with an ardor full, "at once of strong faith and deep anxiety." Enter thus upon the sentence the words strong and deep, and exeunt from the sense of it the things strength and depth. Forty-one councillors of state were presently appointed, and among those chosen, says M. Guizot, there were five superior magistrates, and twenty-eight country gentlemen and citizens: but these numbers, again without a note to say that he is not translating, the translator alters, one into three, the other into thirty. When these councillors met, continues the historian, they were required to sign an engagement approving of all that had been done "in the king's trial, and in the abolition of monarchy and of the House of Lords:" but this expression is too simple for the translator, who words it and double words it, "in the king's trial, in the overthrow of kingship, and in the abolition of the House of Lords." Twentytwo, proceeds M. Guizot, persisted "à le repousser;" but this word of spirit van |