CROMWELL AND FAIRFAX COMPARED. FAIRFAX was an admirable officer; but it will be decided by all posterity, as it was decided by their contemporaries, that it was impossible to name a man in the island of so consummate a military genius, so thoroughly qualified to conduct the war with a victorious event, as Cromwell. He was also, whatever some historians have said on the subject, of scarcely less weight in the senate than in the field. Cromwell was besides an accomplished statesman. There was in this respect a striking contrast between him and Fairfax. Fairfax, richly endowed with those qualities which make a successful commander, was in council as innocent and unsuspecting as a child. He had great coolness of temper, an eye to take in the whole disposition of a field, and to remark all the advantages which its position afforded; and a temper happily poised between the yielding and severe, so as to command the most ready obedience, and to preserve a perfect discipline. Fairfax was formed for the executive branch of the military in the largest sense of that term. But in all that related to government and a state, he seemed intuitively to feel a desire to be guided. He was not acquainted with the innermost folds of the human character, and was therefore perpetually liable to the chance of being led and misled. He was guided by Cromwell; he was guided by his wife; and, if he had fallen into hands less qualified for the office, he would have been guided by them. But Cromwell saw

into the hearts of men: he could adapt himself, in a degree at least exceeding every character of modern times, to the persons with whom he had dealings. He was most at home perhaps with the soldiers of his army: he could pray with them; he could jest with them: in every thing by which the heart of a man could in a manner be drawn out of his bosom to devote itself to the service of another, he was a consummate master. It was not because he was susceptible only of the rugged and the coarse, that he was so eminently a favourite with the private soldier. He was the friend of the mercurial and light-hearted Henry Marten. He gained for a time the entire ascendency over the gentle, the courteous, the well bred, and the manly earl of Manchester. He was the sworn brother of Sir Henry Vane. He deceived Fairfax; he deceived Milton.

GODWIN.

CHARLES II.

He was of a vigoand in all appearHe was a prince of

THUS died King Charles II. rous and robust constitution, ance promising a long life. many virtues, and many great imperfections; debonair, easy of access, not bloody or cruel; his countenance fierce, his voice great, proper of person, every motion became him; a lover of the sea, and skilful in shipping; not affecting other studies; yet he had a laboratory, and knew of many empirical medicines, and the easier mechanical mathematics; he loved planting and buildVOL. II.

P

ing, and brought in a politer way of living, which passed to luxury and intolerable expense.

He

had a peculiar talent in telling a story and facetious passages, of which he had innumerable: this made some buffoons and vicious wretches too presumptuous and familiar, not worthy the favour they abused. He took delight in having a number of little spaniels follow him and lie in his bedchamber, where he often suffered the bitches to puppy and give suck, which rendered it very offensive, and indeed made the whole court nasty and stinking. He would doubtless have been an excellent prince had he been less addicted to women, who made him uneasy, and always in want to supply their unmeasurable profusion, to the detriment of many indigent persons, who had signally served both him and his father. He frequently and easily changed favourites, to his great prejudice. As to other public transactions and unhappy miscarriages, it is not here I intend to number them; but certainly never had king more glorious opportunities to have made himself, his people, and all Europe happy, and prevented innumerable mischiefs, had not his too easy nature resigned him to be managed by crafty men, and some abandoned and profane wretches, who corrupted his otherwise sufficient parts, disciplined as he had been by many afflictions during his banishment, which gave him much experience and knowledge of men and things; but those wicked creatures took him off from all application becoming so great a king. The history of his reign will certainly be wonderful for the variety of matter and accidents

The sad tra

above any extent in former ages. gical death of his father, his banishment and hardships, his miraculous restoration, conspiracies against him, parliaments, wars, plagues, fires, comets, revolutions abroad happening in his time, with a thousand other particulars. He was ever kind to me, and very gracious upon all occasions; and therefore I cannot, without ingratitude, but deplore his loss, which, for many respects, as well as duty, I do with all my soul.

EVELYN.

The person given to us by Monk was a man without any sense of his duty as a prince, without any regard to the dignity of his crown, and without any love to his people; dissolute, false, venal, and destitute of any positive good quality whatsoever, except a pleasant temper, and the manners of a gentleman.

BURKE.

JAMES II.

THE opposition of James's religious principles to those of his subjects, his unpopular connexions with the court of France; but, above all, the permanent establishment of a rival family on the throne of England, has formed in his disfavour such a union of prejudice and interest, as to destroy in the minds of posterity all that sympathy which, on similar occasions, and in similar misfortunes, has so wonderfully operated in favour of other princes; and whilst we pay the tribute of unavailing tears over the memory of Charles

the First; whilst, with the church of England, we venerate him as a martyr to the power and office of prelates; whilst we see, with regret, that he was stripped of his dignity and life at the very time when the chastening hand of affliction had, in a great measure, corrected the errors of a faulty education; the irresistible power of truth must oblige us to confess, that the adherence to religious principles, which cost the father his life, deprived the son of his dominions; that the enormous abuses of power with which both sovereigns are accused owed their origin to the same source; the errors arising from a bad education, aggravated and extended by the impious flattery of designing priests; we shall also be obliged to confess, that the parliament itself, by an unprecedented servility, helped to confirm James in the exalted idea he had entertained of the royal office, and that the doctrines of an absolute and unconditional submission on the part of subjects, which, in the reign of his father, was in a great measure confined to the precepts of a Laud, a Sibthorpe, and Maynwaring, were now taught as the avowed doctrines of the church of England, were acknowledged by the two Universities, and implicitly avowed by a large majority of the nation: so great, indeed, was the change in the temper, manners, and opinions of the people, from the commencement of the reign of his son James, that at this shameful period the people gloried in having laid all their privileges at the foot of the throne, and execrated every generous principle of freedom, as arising from a spirit totally incompatible with the peace of so