A rooted animosity to prelatical or other spiritual domination, is the key-note of this "melodious worker," as Mr Carlyle calls him. Cromwell entered the civil war provided with no theory or plan of civil government, animated with no republican zeal; it was not patriotism in any ordinary sense of the word, it was his controversy with the church of England that brought him on the field of battle. After fighting against episcopacy, he fought with equal zeal against presbyterianism; but against monarchy, or for the republic, he can hardly be said to have drawn the sword. We all applaud the sagacity which saw at once that the strongest antagonist to the honour and fidelity of the royalist, was to be found in the passion of the zealot. He enlisted his praying regiment. From that time the battle was won. But the cause was lost. What hope could there be for the cause of civil freedom, of constitutional rights, when the champion who won its victories was fanatical zeal, and the rage of theological controversy? It is the glaring defect in Cromwell--a defect which he had in common with many others of his time--that he threw himself into a revolution having for its first object to remodel the civil government, animated only with the passions of the collateral controversy upon ecclesiastical government. He fought the battle which was to destroy the monarchy, without any fixed idea or desire for the republican government which must be its substitute. This was not the subject that had engaged his thoughts or inflamed his ardour. When, therefore, the royalists had been conquered, it is not at all surprising that he should have seen nothing but the difficulties in the way of forming a republic. At this point of his history some excuse for him may be drawn from the very defect we are noticing. His mind had dwelt on no theory of civil government--to the cause of the commonwealth his heart had never been pledged--and we can hardly call him, with justice, as Godwin does, a traitor to the republic. But, on the other hand, what a gap, what a void, does this disclose in the mind of our hero? What should we say of one who had plunged heart and soul into the French Revolution, conducted only by his rage against the Roman Catholic hierarchy? Such a one, had he risen to take a leading part in that drama, might have acted with greater wisdom and moderation than ardent and patriotic men; the very absence of any political opinion or passion might have enabled him to see more clearly than others the position which they all occupied; but this would not justify or palliate the original error, the rash, exclusive, self-blinding zeal which had brought him into that position.