secure the concurrence of the General. Cromwell, Ludlow affirms, did not arrive in town till the night after; which is confirmed by the date of the transaction as given by Rushworth. He had been absent ever since May; and no ground whatever exists for calling in question bis solemn protestation, that he was unacquainted with the design, except those vague and sweeping charges of dissimulation which have been repeated till they have passed for a medium of proof, instead of mere assumptions that require themselves to be substantiated. Had Cromwell been disposed at this crisis to serve the King, it was no longer in his power. Bishop Burnet says, that Cromwell hesitated respecting the propriety of bringing him to trial, but that Ireton, to whom we may add Harrison and Ludlow, drove it on. Cromwell had for five months laboured to effect a treaty with the King: he did not abandon it till his own influence over the army became endangered, nor till he had had ample proofs of the King's duplicity. Yet, after this, he had afforded him an opportunity of consulting his personal safety by leaving the kingdom. What finally induced him to concur in the destruction of the King,-whether, as Mr. Cromwell suggests, 'his conviction of the necessity of the measure, aided by, perhaps, some degree of personal apprehension from the army,' or whether a persuasion that the last rising of the royalists and the Scots, had been the fruit of a secret understanding with the King, by which he had really fallen under the charge of treason, does not appear.' It ought not, however, to be deemed altogether incredible, that the same views of the supposed justice or necessity of the measure, which reconciled it to the mind of the pious, upright, and noble-minded Hutchinson, should have had some influence in overruling the indecision of Oliver Cromwell. Here we must close our review of the transactions of this memorable period. Cromwell's bloodless usurpation of the supreme power, if it can be called a usurpation, raised as he was already by the resignation of Fairfax, to the head of the army, in which the whole of the executive power virtually resided,—was the only measure that could rescue the exhausted nation from anarchy, or secure it from a fresh invasion. There can be no question, that, if it was expedient that any individual should be invested with the high powers which Cromwell exercised, he was pre-eminently the fittest man on whom they could be devolved; and so, probably, the royalists themselves deemed Among these is said to have been an intercepted letter from the King to the Queen, in which he expresses his resolution to break his engagements with the rebels as soon as he should be restored to his authority. This is said to have caused the King's death. him, next to the legitimate heir to the monarchy.' His subsequent usurpation,' says Hume, was the effect of necessity as well as of ambition.' He alone could have quelled the rival factions of the Parliament and the army, and over-awed the Scotch, upholding by his single strength the whole fabric of the State, and displaying in the possession of absolute power, moderation and an impartiality which none of the contending parties had hitherto exhibited. The short reign of this 'most? blameless of usurpers,' this most patriotic of tyrants, was marked by so much ability and energy, combined, as even Hume allows, with so much regard to justice and humanity,—it rendered England so illustrious and formidable in the eyes of foreign nations, and so secure at home,-that it has extorted unwilling admiration from his enemies and caluinniators. He came short of the greatest of English monarchs only in the legitimacy of his title. Had he but lived to realize his supposed design of establishing a mild episcopacy in the Church, and of gradually restoring to the free exercise of their functions thie two constituent branches of the Legislature, and could he but have secured an undisputed title to his successor, the crimes, the follies, and the miseries attendant on the succeeding two reigns' would have been averted, and the constitutional liberties of England might have been established without another revolution. The clergy, in that event, would have been his panegyrists, and he would have been justly celebrated by all parties as the Protector of his country. 1 There is a speech of Cromwell's given by Whitelock, which shews how just were the ideas he had formed of a limited constitutional monarchy, and how little he affected to discriminate bétween the powers of a Protector and a King. When the Republicans in the House of Commons began to agitate the question, whether the government should be in one single person and a parliament, which was, in fact, whether the new government to which they owed their existence as a parliament, should or should not be suffered to exist,-Cromwell sent for the members to meet him in the painted chamber; he there told them, that in informing them, as he had done at the opening of the session, that they were a free parliament, he considered there was a reciprocation :' for that the same government that made them a Parliament, made him Protector, and that, as they were entrusted with some things,, so was he with other things: that there were some things in the government fundamental, and could not be altered; viz. that the government should be in one person and a parliament; that parliament should not be made perpetual, which would deprive the people of their successive elections; nor that the parliament should be always sitting, that is, as soon as one parliament was up, another should come and sit in their places the very next day; that this could not be, without subjecting the nation to an arbitrary power in governing, because parliaments, when they sit, are absolute and unlimited: that the militia was not to be entrusted in any one hand or power, but to be su disposed, that, as the Parliament ought to have a check upon the Protector to prevent excesses in him, so, on the other hand, the Protector ought to have a check upon the Parliament in the business of the militia, to prevent excesses in them; because if it were wholly in the Parliament, they might, when they would, perpetuate themselves; but that the militia being disposed of as it was, the one stood as a counterpoise to the other, and rendered the balance of government the more just and even, and the government itself the more firm and stable: a due liberty of conscience in matters of religion, wherein bounds and limits ought to be set, so as to prevent persecution: and that the rest of the things in the government were examinable and alterable, as the occasion and the state of affairs should require: that, as for a negative voice, he claimed it not, save only in the foresaid particulars. pp. 509, 10. Under Cromwell's celebrated Instrument of Government, the parliaments were declared triennial, the protectorship was made elective, and the free and unrestricted profession of religion was secured. The parliament which commenced its discussions with calling in question the Protector's title, proceeded, in the same spirit, to withhold a provision for the army, and to betray a disposition to religious intolerance. "Nothing will satisfy them,' indignantly remarked Cromwell, unless they can put "their finger upon their brethren's consciences, and pinch them there. For this, they amply deserved to be dissolved. The restlessness and intolerance of the Presbyterians, probably inclined Cromwell to think that an established episcopacy could alone secure his government against their secret influence. As a state expedient, he seems to have deemed it advisable, not as required by the interests of religion, but by the exigencies of the political condition of the country; in order to create an influence that should in some degree modify or balance the power of the Legislature, by uniting the people with the Crown. He found himself scarcely equal, with all his vast personal resources, to combat an opposition Church, a royalist faction, and a republican Legislature. If to Cromwell's scheme of government be superadded, an hereditary legislature to balance that of the democracy, a moderate extension of the prerogative to soften the collision between the popular interests and those of the State, responsible advisers to protect the King from personal accountability without releasing him from legislative control, and a sufficient security against the infinite evils attendant on a disputed title to the supremacy on the demise of the sovereign, we shall have as perfect an outline of a constitutional monarchy as can well be imagined. But while, on the one hand, the history of that period forcibly illustrates the necessity of these provisions, it proves, on the other hand, how perilous is the infatuation which would induce a government arbitrarily to dispose of the property, or to invade the religious rights, of the subject. So strong is the beneficial prejudice in favour of an established government, that the people have never been known to rise against it as a body, till maddened with the one or the other of these two species of oppression. The quarrel once begun, a retreat on either side becomes next to impracticable: the army becomes the arbiter, and the sword drawn against the people, will inevitably revert at last to their hands. Every revolution cannot be expected to be so bloodless as that which seated on the throne our third William; nor has the fearful reign of anarchy been often so fortunately terminated as was that of the civil wars by the gentle and magnanimous despotism of Oliver Cromwell. Art. II. 1. Desultory Thoughts in London, Titus and Gisippus, with other Poems. By Charles Lloyd, Author of Nugæ Canora. 12mo. pp. 252. Price 7s. 6d. London. 1821. 2. Nuga Canora. Poems by Charles Lloyd. Third Edition with Additions. 12mo. pp. 332. London, 1819. A generation has sprung up since the Author of these volumes first challenged the plaudits of the public. He then appeared as one of a seeming literary pleiades that shone the brighter from consociation, but which have since diverged into widely different orbits. The elliptical course which has been described by Mr. Lloyd, has withdrawn him longer from public observation thanTM his early compeers, so that he may almost say with Young, with a slight variation of the passage, I've been so long remember'd, I'm forgot.- To push me from the scene, or'— Not to hiss him there.' Of this alternative, Mr. Lloyd has a right to feel himself in no danger. Those of his readers who may the least sympathise with the sentiments and feelings imbodied in his poems, cannot fail to receive from the perusal an impression of his estimable character, which must entirely preclude any feelings but those of personal respect. We should even think that an interest would be created towards the Author as an individual, much stronger than is often attendant upon the warmer feelings of admiration which are excited by the productions of more splendid genius. That Mr. Lloyd is a man of real genius, will scarcely be ques- } tioned. In discussing that point, we seem, indeed, to be almost ~ trenching on the sphere of a 'retrospective review.' As, however, we occasionally presume to be retrospective reviewers, we shall not consider ourselves as discharged from the necessity of delivering our judgement to that effect. Mr. Lloyd is a man of genius, possessed, moreover, of a richly furnished and highly cultivated mind; a man who has made poetry bis study, and has clearer notions of what it ought to be, perhaps, than most of his critics; who has thought deeply, and has felt-too keenly, as it should seem, for his own happiness. This excess (a morbid excess it must be admitted) of sensibility, has not wasted itself on donkeys, and daffodils, and pedlars; nor is it of that kind which retreats from contact with the realities of life. Mr. Lloyd is the poet of sentiment;-a term which has fallen into some disgrace from abuse, but we know not what poetry is worth without sentiment. Sentiment, however, is, in the Author's view, only another name for right feeling; and to feel rightly,' he affirms to be of more importance than to think wisely, since we more ⚫ often act from impulse than from thought. With too many persons, poets and no poets, sentiment, which is in other words thinking about feeling, is the substitute for feeling itself; and the rough cordiality of an unsentimental shake of the hand, has more of heart in it than is often diffused through a centenary of sonnets. The impression we have received from Mr. Lloyd's poems leads us to believe that it is far otherwise with him; that he really feels till he thinks, as well as, sometimes, thinks till he feels; and that what may appear excessive or remote from ordinary sympathy in his poems, is the result of that peculiarity of temperament which is generally found in connexion with the true poetical character. The very deficiency of art, the occasional want of successful elaboration, that renders the execution of his poems frequently-perhaps we may say generally-inferior to the conception, indicates the intense excitement of feeling under which they have been written. On this account, his poetry will seem the most instinct with genius, will speak the loudest and the sweetest, to men of the same turn of mind and habits as himself, who will be able to catch the full meaning where it is not sufficiently brought out, and to perceive in the rude etching, the marks of design, the glowing and essential thought. The true pleasure of composition, artists well know, is confined to the first stage of expression-the sketch; and there have been men of real genius who could never summon patience enough, some who had not the requisite skill, to fill up their own design: they have not attained a mastery in the management of colours. Mr. Lloyd is a better draftsman than he is a colourist. In no respect is a writer more liable to be misled by strong feelings, than as to the effect of his expressions upon the reader. To his own mind, they represent certain images and certain emotions, |