ters--who had compelled him to
call, and to dissolve Parliaments, and to impose on England those
military despots.

Carlyle has endowed his ideal Protector 'with the virtue to create
belief,' by the force of self-assertion, which still finds its
imitators, by pouring out contempt on all who differ from him, and by
implying that, as all other Cromwellian authorities are 'stupidities and
falsities,' he alone was wise and true. This was but a risky basis on
which to exhibit 'this Oliver' to the world, as the noblest Hero 'among
the noblest of Human Heroisms, this English Puritanism of ours,' and as
'not a Man of falsehoods, but a Man of truths.' But reading over these
words, and calling to mind the confidence with which Carlyle compels all
to join with him in his Cromwell-worship, it is impossible to resist the
conviction, that it was with good faith that he could see in Cromwell
'the glimpses,' even the revelation 'of the god-like,' and that he would
not attend to aught that disclosed Cromwell 'not' as 'august and divine,
but hypocritical, pitiable, detestable.' Even though he claimed a
familiar acquaintance with the 'Thurloe Papers,' he must have been
ignorant, it is impossible to think otherwise, of the black stories
which Cromwell's 'expertest of secretaries' could publish against his
master.

And passing from the worshipper to the Idol; surely it is but in
accordance with common sense and common charity to hope that, as with
Carlyle, so also with his Oliver, the real Cromwell was wholly shrouded
from Cromwell's sight. That hope might, indeed, be forbidden by some. It
might be argued that, although many a wrong-doing, such as bloodshed,
oppression, or even treachery, has been committed by men in the sincere
belief that they were doing God service, Cromwell cannot be placed among
that group of self-deceivers: that he stands by himself, and on a lower
level. It was to save himself, to propitiate a gang of mutinous
servants, that Cromwell contrived and wrought out the deception of
March, 1655, and obtained in the bloodshed that it produced, the
essential result that he desired. And then, to give validity to his
imposture, to grace it with the Divine sanction, he ascribed his course
of acted and uttered lies, and the cruelty and misery they had
engendered, to God himself.

Undoubtedly that statement is true. But yet on the other hand it may be
pleaded, that nothing but an intense living conviction, that God was
with hi