THE Condition of England during the latter part of the seventeenth century has extensively and deservedly attracted the notice of many recent writers. There were, undoubtedly, more just opinions promulgated, more great principles developed, and more moral and political rights established by the Great Rebellion, as some choose to term it, than by any other event of English history. But years elapsed before the nation recovered from the effects of that tremendous explosion of popular fury. Society meanwhile was in a state of terrible commotion. The billows continued to heave and swell long after the storm had passed. During the reign of the first Charles, up to the outbreak of the Great Rebellion, the nation was in a state of the most intense mental excitement, and was daily growing wild with rage. still remained unviolated the form, at least, of a regular Establishment. The Government, venerable for its antiquity and its renowned succession of sovereigns, still maintained its place in the reverence of the people, though they detested the tyranny of its present Head. The exasperation of the public mind was indeed fearful. But it was, for a while, smothered under a decent respect for many timehonored forms, which the people were hardly yet prepared utterly to demolish in one tremendous assertion of their rights. It was the calm which precedes the storm. But still it was a calm. But there It is the opinion of some who deserve to be heard with respect, that Charles might have retraced his steps from any point in his mad career, previous to the attempted arrest of the five members of the House of Commons. But, thank Heaven, tyrants are seldom men of much judgment or discretion. Their arbitrary usurpation, which, by occasional hollow concessions and shows of respect for the public liberty, might oppress with impunity, generally works its own cure by its reckless violence. Charles, by the act to which we have referred, passed a limit which he afterwards vainly sighed, in the bitterness of his soul, to recross, and rashly exposed himself to a catastrophe * A part of this article has previously appeared elsewhere in another form. 1 VOL. XIII. as irresistible as Destiny, the vengeance of a self-delivered and determined people. From the confusion which ensued upon the death of the King, there sprang, at the touch of the Protector, a government perfectly adapted to its purpose, respected and obeyed at home, reverenced and dreaded abroad. Never had justice been so impartially administered in England: never had the terror of her name given her such a rank in the scale of nations. But, though the Protectorate was perfect in its kind, there were many interests which such a government could never control, and which were, consequently, still left in confusion. Such an administration as that of Cromwell is to a long-established government, in a quiet and peaceful community, what martial law is to the ordinary forms of justice. It is certainly much better that a province, to the control of which common judicial measures are inadequate, should be governed by martial law, than by no law at all. But martial law can do little more than suppress such outrageous crimes as would rend to fragments the very frame-work of society. It cannot enter into every private dwelling and restore tranquillity and quiet to its affrighted inmates. It cannot fill the secret abodes of vice with morality and virtue. It cannot surround with sincere worshipers the deserted altar of Religion. Cromwell did for the English people all that any government could have done. He curbed with a strong hand the spirit of lawlessness engendered by the Civil War. He made England a refuge to the Protestants who were persecuted in almost every other state in Europe. He left his countrymen to worship God after the manner prescribed by their own consciences. But he could not legislate them into personal piety. He could not, in the four years of his Protectorate, completely substitute for the moral desolation which the Civil War had spread over England, the mild and peaceful influence of a spiritual faith. The Puritans were indeed distinguished by most intensely devotional frames of mind. Beyond almost any other class of men which the world has ever seen, they were absorbed in contemplation of scenes celestial and eternal. But their peculiar faith was not adapted to influence any who were not of their austere and rigorous temperament. The religious notions of the English people were indissolubly connected with the magnificent and impressive ceremonial of the Establishment. But for imposing cathedrals, reverberating with the heavy swell of pealing organs, the Puritans were substituting comfortless and uncomely meeting-houses, squeaking with the nasal twang of their drawling psalm-tunes. For the prelates of the Establishment, learned, accomplished, refined, robed in the graceful folds of their holy vestments, and discoursing in smooth and flowing periods, the Puritans presented their blunt and boorish, strait-coat, Round-head preachers, holding forth in a strange, unearthly dialect, which eschewed all carnal gloss, mysterious tales of desperate conflicts with the arch-enemy, and rapturous visions of the New Jerusalem. Psalm-books took the |