pages of history, but that even Washington himself might not have been able to act his most glorious of all parts without the existence of circumstances uncommonly favourable, and almost peculiar to the country which was to be the theatre of it.  Virtue like his depends not indeed upon time or place; but although in no country or time would he have degraded himself into a Pisistratus, or a Caesar, or a Cromwell, he might have shared the fate of a Cato, or a De Witt; or, like Ludlow and Sidney, have mourned in exile the lost liberties of his country.

With the life of the protector almost immediately ended the government which he had established.  The great talents of this extraordinary person had supported during his life a system condemned equally by reason and by prejudice:  by reason, as wanting freedom; by prejudice, as a usurpation; and it must be confessed to be no mean testimony to his genius, that notwithstanding the radical defects of such a system, the splendour of his character and exploits render the era of the protectorship one of the most brilliant in English history.  It is true his conduct in foreign concerns is set off to advantage by a comparison of it with that of those who preceded and who followed him.  If he made a mistake in espousing the French interest instead of the Spanish, we should recollect that in examining this question we must divest our minds entirely of all the considerations which the subsequent relative state of those two empires suggest to us before we can become impartial judges in it; and at any rate we must allow his reign, in regard to European concerns, to have been most glorious when contrasted with the pusillanimity of James I., with the levity of Charles I., and the mercenary meanness of the two last princes of the house of Stuart.  Upon the whole, the character of Cromwell must ever stand high in the list of those who raised themselves to supreme power by the force of their genius; and among such, even in respect of moral virtue, it would be found to be one of the least exceptionable if it had not been tainted with that most odious and degrading of all human vices, hypocrisy.

The short interval between Cromwell’s death and the restoration exhibits the picture of a nation either so wearied with changes as not to feel, or so subdued by military power as not to dare to show, any care or even preference with regard to the form of their government.  All was in the army; and that army, by such a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances as history teaches us not to be surprised at, had fallen into the hands of a man than whom a baser could not be found in its lowest ranks.  Personal courage appears to have been Monk’s only virtue; reserve and dissimulation made up the whole stock of his wisdom.  But to this man did the nation look up, ready to receive from his orders the form of government he should choose to prescribe.  There is reason to believe that, from the general bias of the Presbyterians,