It was quite natural that such a portrait of him should be drawn by the men who unearthed his bones, and vented their rage upon a senseless corpse. We see it was quite inevitable that some such coarse caricature should be thus limned and transmitted to us. But it has lasted long enough. We believe, indeed, that by most persons it has already been dismissed and disowned. It may now be torn into shreds, and cast aside as utterly faithless.

Cromwell was a genuine Puritan. There is no doubt of that. He was no youth when the war broke out, nor a man who had yet to seek his religious party or principles. As the farmer of St Ives, we see him, as distinctly as if he still lived upon the earth, the man of fierce sectarian piety, in natural temper not unamiable, somewhat gloomy and hypochondriacal, but, above all, distinguished by whatsoever of good or ill the sort of Calvinistic divinity prevalent at the time could infuse into its professors. Such the war found him, and such he continued to be; throughout his whole career we never for a moment lose sight of "the saint," the title which, then as now, the profane world gave to this class of men.

Was Cromwell, then, always sincere in his utterances? was there no cant, no hypocrisy? Did he never conceal the ambition and domineering spirit of the soldier under the humility of the saint? Another matter quite. Because a man is religious in the main, it follows not that he is incapable of occasionally practising hypocrisy: he may lapse as well into this, as into any crime of the decalogue. Although we might find it difficult to put our finger exactly upon the spot, and say, Here speaks the hypocrite, we are not without suspicion that Cromwell was at times practising dissimulation. But if he dissembled, if he used with artifice the language of religion, it was no new and foreign disguise that he put on. He had but to draw the folds a little higher over his face of a robe that he had long worn in all times and seasons, and which was verily his own.

In common with almost all men who in times of civil broil have risen from a lowly station to great power, Cromwell had occasion, no doubt, at times for dissimulation. His religion, genuine as it was, would no more prevent him from the practice of this necessary craft than from the sanguinary deeds not more necessary to the triumph of his cause. Nay, it was precisely of that enthusiastic order which, in the most liberal manner, justifies the means for the end. Now, at a period when the saints were in the ascendant, dissimulation would unavoidably take a religious form, and when most deceiving men, or most faithfully addressing them, he would still colour all his language with the same hue of piety. As, in an age of chivalry, the dissembler would have the boast of honour and the parade of knightly courtesy for ever on his lips, so in these times of saintship he would lull the suspicions of men by a gross emblazonry of religion. It might well happen, therefore, that such a man as Cromwell, working his way upward to the highest post of authority, would deal in much insincerity of phrase, and yet have "the root of the matter" in him. Indeed, nothing is more common in the world than this combination of genuine feelings of piety with a great abundance of cant, habitual or designed. It would betray a very slender knowledge of mankind, and none at all of what is called the religious world, to conclude that a man is destitute of sincere piety because he sometimes makes use of the language of religion for ulterior purposes not peculiarly pious.

It is to be observed, moreover, that to readers unfamiliar with the peculiarities of professing Christians, whether Puritans or of other denomination, the expressions of humility and self-abasement which Cromwell frequently makes use of have appeared to be plain symptoms of hypocrisy. They are nothing but the habits of the sect. Such expressions are supposed to have been employed to blind men to his ambitious projects, to shelter him from the jealous scrutiny of rivals and superiors. Such a purpose they may have sometimes answered, and been intended to answer; but in the main they are nothing more nor less than the dialect of the tribe. Because is a Christian virtue, certain religious people have thought fit to indulge in a false vituperation of themselves. Striving avariciously after all virtues, however incompatible the one with the other, they counterfeit vice and meanness, that, good men as they are, they may have abundance of contrition. How far there can be Christianity or piety in an abuse and degradation of ourselves, when that abuse and degradation must be felt all along to be untrue—if any reflection whatever accompanies such language—we leave such people to settle amongst themselves. Certain it is that the Puritans excelled in this as in every other kindred extravagance. The elect of the Lord were fond of describing themselves as the most contemptible of sinners; the salt of the earth as being rottenness and corruption. It is to this habit of unmeaning self-disparagement that we are to attribute many of those phrases which have been thought in Cromwell to be studied artifices to cloak ambitious designs.

They are rife on all occasions, and their frequency and energy bear no relation to the supposed exigencies of his political career. Take the following instance. No man surely knew better than he, that at the conclusion of the civil war the army had become paramount. He could sometimes speak of this army with the natural pride of a soldier, with the full consciousness of the power it possessed, and had conferred on him; and yet, at other times, he would talk of this terrible force in the puling strain, in more than the drawl and drivel of the conventicle. As Lord High Protector, addressing his first parliament, he says:—"I had the approbation of the officers of the army, in the three nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland. I say of the officers: I had that by their express remonstrances, and under signature. But there went along with that express consent of theirs, an implied consent also of a body of persons who had had somewhat to do in the world; who had been instrumental, by God, to fight down the enemies of God, and his people, in the three nations. And truly, until my hands were bound, and I was limited, (to my own great satisfaction, as many can bear me witness,) while I had in my hands so great a power and arbitrariness—the soldiery were a very considerable part of these nations, especially all government being dissolved. I say, when all government was thus dissolved, and nothing to keep things in order but the sword!" There can be no doubt of it—the soldiery were a very considerable part of the nation. But the Lord High Protector, in a speech he makes to his second parliament, referring to the very same period, narrating the very same events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation, mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the one case than the other.

In his letters to the parliament, giving an account of his successes in the war, he generally concludes with some expression of this strained evangelical modesty, and seems very much afraid lest Speaker Lenthall and other honourable members should attribute the victories he announces, in any measure to the army and the general who won them. He might be very sure, however, that, notwithstanding these self-renunciations, the parliament knew very well who was fighting their battles. Such a mode of speech would not endanger his reputation, nor diminish from his claims; might perhaps—though we will not say this was present to his thoughts—induce the parliament to presume that he would not insist on any very egregious reward for services he was so anxious to disclaim.