Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/125

 OLIVER CROMWELL.

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��themselves over to the uncovenanted mercies of God. These are they that venerate the faithless Charles as a mar- tyr of blessed memory, and devoutly lisp the praises of the sainted Laud ! It is right to judge of men by their works. Revelation pronounces those blessed who die in the Lord: the reason, too, is an- nexed : "That they may rest from their labors ; and their works do follow them." This goodly land in which we dwell is eloquent of the works of the Puritans ; if we should altogether hold our peace concerning them, the very stones would cry aloud in their behalf. " English his- tory," says Bancroft, "must judge of Cromwell by his influence on the institu- tions of England."

If the Protector were now alive, he would assent with his whole heart to this standard. While he lived, he said fear- lessly to his Parliament: " this govern- ment [is] a thing I shall say little unto. The thing is open and visible, to be seen and read of all men ; and therefore let it speak for itself." And what does this government say for his Highness? Be- fore answering this question, let us look at Cromwell's previous history. Little is certainly known of his early life. In- deed we know little of him till he was forty years of age. Th<>. gay butterflies that swarmed about the Court of Charles II. sought for themselves an ephemeral ce- lebrity by inventing scandalous reports, not only of Cromwell's reign, but of his early life. Host of the anecdotes that have come down to us are derived from a little book called "Flagellum, or the Life and Death of Oliver Cromwell, the late Usurper," by James Heath. From this polluted source has flowed a contin- uous torrent of filthy slime and mud to bury, in ever accumulating infamy, the memory of departed greatness. When royal spite and priestly vengeance were digging the earth from mouldering corp- ses; "when St. Margaret's churchyard was polluted with the decayed bodies of a hundred patriots, torn from their last resting place to glut the malice of His Most Christian Majesty, together with his retinue of harlots and ghostly advi- sers ;" and among them the remains of

��Admiral Blake, who contributed as much as any other man that ever lived to make England mistress of the seas; " when the gallows was graced with the rattling bones and mouldering clay of the high-souled Oliver and his coadju- tors ;" when such fantastic tricks were enacted in the face of high Heaven ; what could we expect from the mean, cowardly, sycophantic Heath, who, like his prototype in the desert, sees not when good cometh, who comes like Falstaff to battle upon the slain, and flesh, his maid- en sword in the body of the dead hero? Of this man and his work, Carlyle says : "Heath's poor, little, brown, lying Fla- gellum is described, by one of the mod- erns, as ' Flagitium,' and Heath himself is called ' carion Heath,' as being an un- fortunate, blasphemous dullard, and scandal to humanity; — blasphemous; 'who when the image of God is shining through a man, reckons it, in his sordid soul to be the image* of the Devil, and acts accordingly ;" who in fact has no soul except what saves him the expense of salt : who intrinsically is carrion and not humanity; which seems hard to measure to poor James Heath."

Considering the origin of these tales of his boyish irregularities and dissipation, we may safely set them down to the cred- it of his slanderers, and at once pro- nounce them false. The stories of his profligacy while a student at law, have not the least foundation in fact ; for he never was in the Iuns of Court, as his veracious biographers pretend. The books of all the Inns have been diligent- ly searched, and the name of Oliver Cromwell no where appears. The strong- est proofs of his early impiety are the penitential confessions of Oliver himself in a private letter to a friend. Here his language is vague and general. He does indeed admit that he had been the chief of sinners, and so did Paul ; but we may not wrest this confession to the injury of either. Cromwell early became a truly religious man, and from the time of his making a public profession of religion till he became the most prominent man in the realm, by the confession of his en- emres, he Ted a consistent life. If he af-

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