breath was in his
nostrils. The time of his departure was at hand. He had been offered the
crown (April 9, 1656,) by a subservient parliament, and wanted it; but his
friends and family opposed his taking it; and the officers of the army,
influenced by Pride, sent such a petition against it, that he felt obliged
to refuse it. After months of mental anxiety and nervous torture--fearing
assassination, keeping arms under his pillow, never sleeping above three
nights together in the same chamber, disappointed that even after all his
achievements, and with all his cunning efforts, he had been unable to put
on the crown, and to be numbered among the English sovereigns--Cromwell
died in 1658, leaving his title as Lord Protector to his son Richard, a
weak and indolent man, who, after seven months' rule, fled the kingdom at
the Restoration, to return after a generation had passed away, a very old
man, to die in his native land. The people of Hertfordshire knew Richard
Cromwell as the excellent and benevolent Mr. Clarke.

Very soon after the death of Oliver Cromwell, Dryden, not yet foreseeing
the Restoration, presented his tribute to the Commonwealth, in the shape
of "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell; written after his
funeral." A few stanzas will show his political principles, and are in
strange contrast with what was soon to follow:

How shall I then begin, or where conclude,
To draw a fame so truly circular?
For, in a round, what order can be showed,
Where all the parts so equal perfect are?

He made us freemen of the continent,
Whom nature did like captives treat before;
To nobler preys the English lion sent,
And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar.

His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest;
His name a great example stands, to show
How strangely high endeavors may be blest,
Where piety and valor jointly go.

THE RESTORATION.--Cromwell died in September: early in the next year these
stanzas were written. One year later was the witness of a great event,
which stirred England to its very depths, because it gave vent to
sentiments for some time past cherished but concealed. The Long Parliament
was dissolved on the 10th of March, 1660. The new parliament meets April
25th; it is almost entirely of Royalist opinions; it receives Sir John
Granville, the king's messenger, with loud acclamations; the old lords
come forth once more in velvet, ermine,