d deceived themselves into the belief that they
were emancipating her. The book which they venerated furnished them with
a precedent which was frequently in their mouths. It was true that the
ignorant and ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers. Even so
had another chosen nation murmured against the leader who brought it, by
painful and dreary paths, from the house of bondage to the land flowing
with milk and honey. Yet had that leader rescued his brethren in spite
of themselves; nor had he shrunk from making terrible examples of those
who contemned the proffered freedom, and pined for the fleshpots, the
taskmasters, and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of the warlike
saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of a free and pious
commonwealth. For that end they were ready to employ, without scruple,
any means, however violent and lawless. It was not impossible,
therefore, to establish by their aid a dictatorship such as no King
had ever exercised: but it was probable that their aid would be at once
withdrawn from a ruler who, even under strict constitutional restraints,
should venture to assume the kingly name and dignity.

The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He was not what he had
been; nor would it be just to consider the change which his views had
undergone as the effect merely of selfish ambition. He had, when he
came up to the Long Parliament, brought with him from his rural retreat
little knowledge of books, no experience of great affairs, and a temper
galled by the long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy. He
had, during the thirteen years which followed, gone through a political
education of no common kind. He had been a chief actor in a succession
of revolutions. He had been long the soul, and at last the head, of
a party. He had commanded armies, won battles, negotiated treaties,
subdued, pacified, and regulated kingdoms. It would have been strange
indeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when his
mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion, and when
the greatest events which diversified the course of his life were a
cattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemes
of innovation for which he had once been zealous, whether good or bad
in themselves, were opposed to the general feeling of the country, and
that, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him but
constant troubles, which must be su