Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: they must have seen what kind of man he was, let him be called what you like! No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three-andtwenty years of rough actual trial. I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself. -H. II.

CROMWELL, HAMPDEN, ELIOT, PYM.

FOR my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate a word of disparagement against such characters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym; whom I believe to have been right worthy and useful men. I have read diligently what books and documents about them I could come at;-with the honestest wish to admire, to love and worship them like Heroes; but I am sorry to say, if the real truth must be told, with very indifferent success! At bottom I found that it would not do. They are very noble men these; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphuisms, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys, Monarchies of Man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the heart remains cold before them; the fancy alone endeavours to get-up some worship of them. What man's heart does, in reality, break-forth into any fire of brotherly love for these men? They are become dreadfully dull men! One breaks-down often enough in the constitutional eloquence of the admirable Pym, with his 'seventhly and lastly.' You find that it may be the admirablest thing in the world, but that it is heavy,-heavy as lead, barren as brick clay; that, in a word, for you there is little or nothing now surviving there! One leaves all these Nobilities standing in their niches of honour: the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man of them all in whom one still finds

human stuff. The great savage Baresark: he could write no euphuistic Monarchy of Man; did not speak, did not work with glib regularity; had no straight story to tell for himself anywhere. But he stood bare, not cased in euphuistic coat-of-mail; he grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth. of things! That, after all, is the sort of man for one. I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work but with gloves on. -H. VI. OLIVER CROMWELL IN 1653.

'HIS highness,' says Whitlocke, was in a rich but plain suit-black velvet, with cloak of the same; about his hat a broad band of gold.' Does the reader see him? A rather likely figure, I think. Stands some

five feet ten or more; a man of strong, solid stature, and dignified, now partly military carriage: the expression of him valour and devout intelligence-energy and delicacy on a basis of simplicity. Fifty-four years old, gone April last; brown hair and moustache are getting gray. A figure of sufficient impressivenessnot lovely to the man-milliner species, nor pretending to be so. Massive stature; big, massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect; wart above the right eyebrow; nose of considerable blunt-aquiline proportions; strict yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if need were, of all fiercenesses and rigours; deep, loving eyes—call them grave, call them stern-looking from under those craggy brows as if in lifelong sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, thinking it only labour and endeavour: on the whole, a right noble lion-face and hero-face; and to me royal enough. -C. Part VII.

191.

CHARLES I.

IT is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotiations, shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A man who, once for all, could not and would not understand:-whose thought did not in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter; nay worse, whose word did not at all represent his thought. We may say this of him without cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and undeniable. Forsaken there of all but the name of Kingship, he still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a King, fancied that he might play off party against party, and smuggle himself into his old power of deceiving both. Alas, they both discovered that he was deceiving them. A man whose word will not inform you at all what he means or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get out of that man's way, or put him out of yours! The Presbyterians, in their despair, were still for believing Charles, though found false, unbelievable again and again. Not so Cromwell: "For all our fighting," says he, "we are to have a little bit of paper?" No! −H. VI.

LAUD.

POOR Laud seems to me to have been weak and illstarred, not dishonest; an unfortunate Pedant rather than anything worse. His Dreams' and superstitions, at which they laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is like a College-Tutor whose whole world is forms, College-rules; whose notion is that these are the life and safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless

notion of his, at the head not of a College but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex deep-reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought to go by the old decent regulations; nay that their salvation will lie in extending and improving these. Like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic vehemence towards his purpose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity: He will have his College-rules obeyed by his Collegians; that first; and till that, nothing. He is an ill-starred Pedant, as I said. He would have it the world was a College of that kind, and the world was not that. Alas, was not his doom stern enough? Whatever wrongs he did, were they not all frightfully avenged on him? -H. VI.

FRIEDRICH WILHELM, FATHER OF Frederick THE GREAT.

He was not tall of stature, this arbitrary King: a floridcomplexioned, stout-built man; of serious, sincere, authoritative face; his attitudes and equipments very Spartan in type. Man of short firm stature; stands (in Pesne's best Portraits of him) at his ease, and yet like a tower. Most solid; "plumb and rather more;" eyes steadfastly awake; checks slightly compressed, too, which fling the mouth rather forward; as if asking silently, "Anything astir, then? All right here?" Face, figure and bearing, all in him is expressive of robust insight, and direct determination; of healthy energy, practicality, unquestioned authority,-a certain air of royalty reduced to its simplest form. The face, in Pictures by Pesne and others, is not beautiful or agreeable; healthy, genuine, authoritative, is the best you can say

Yet it may have been, what it is described as being, originally handsome. High-enough arched brow, rather copious cheeks and jaws; nose smallish, inclining to be stumpy; large gray eyes, bright with steady fire and life, often enough gloomy and severe,

but capable of jolly laughter too. Eyes "naturally with a kind of laugh in them," says Pöllnitz;—which laugh can blaze-out into fearful thunderous rage, if you give him provocation. Especially if you lie to him; for that he hates above all things. Look him straight in the face he fancies he can see in your eyes, if there is an internal mendacity in you: wherefore you must look at him in speaking; such is his standing order.

His hair is flaxen, falling into the ashgray or darker; fine copious flowing hair, while he wore it natural. But it soon got tied into clubs, in the military style; and at length it was altogether cropped away, and replaced by brown, and at last by white, round wigs. Which latter also, though bad wigs, became him not amiss, under his cocked-hat and cockade, says Pöllnitz. The voice, I guess, even when not loud, was of clangorous and penetrating, quasi-metallic nature; and I learn expressly once, that it had a nasal quality in it. His Majesty spoke through the nose; snuffled his speech, in an earnest ominously plangent manner. In angry moments, which were frequent, it must have been-unpleasant to listen to. For the rest, a handsome man of his inches; conspicuously well-built in limbs and body, and delicately finished-off to the very extremities. His feet and legs, says Pöllnitz, were very fine. The hands, if he would have taken care of them, were beautifully white; fingers long and thin; a hand at once nimble to grasp, delicate to feel, and strong to clutch and hold: what may be called a beautiful hand, because it is the usefullest.

Nothing could exceed his Majesty's simplicity of habitudes. But one loves especially in him his scrupulous. attention to cleanliness of person and of environment. He washed like a very Mussulman, five times a day; loved cleanliness in all things, to a superstitious extent; which trait is pleasant in the rugged man, and indeed of a piece with the rest of his character. He is gradu