Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/269

 OLIVER CROMWELL 185 but which was forced, in its own despite, to respect the capacity and resolution of the general, looked on with patience, if not with complacency. King, Lords, and Commons had now, in turn, been vanquished and destroyed, and Cromwell seemed to be left the sole heir of the powers of all three. Yet were certain limitations still imposed on him by the very army to which he owed his immense authority. That singular body of men was, for the most part, com- posed of zealous republicans. In the act of enslaving their country, they had de- ceived themselves into the belief that they were emancipating her. The book which they most 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 breth- ren in spite of themselves ; nor had he shrunk from making terrible examples of those who contemned the proffered freedom, and pined for the flesh-pots, the task-masters, 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to establish by their aid a monarchy absolute in effect ; but it was probable that their aid would be at once withdrawn from a ruler who, even under strict constitutional restraints, should venture to assume the regal name and dignity.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. When he came up to the Long Parliament, he 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 noth- ing before him but constant troubles, which must be suppressed by the constant use of the sword. He therefore wished to restore, in all essentials, that ancient constitution which the majority of the people had always loved, and for which they now pined. The course afterward taken by Monk was not taken by Crom- well. The memory of one terrible day separated the great regicide forever from the house of Stuart. What remained was that he should mount the ancient