This volume is elegantly printed, and contains the most characteristic portrait of Cromwell we have seen. In regard to thought and composition it is Mr. Headley's best book. Without being deficient in the energy and pictorial power which have given such popularity to his other productions, it indicates an advance in respect to artistic arrangement of matter and correctness of composition. It is needless to say that the author has not elaborated it into a finished work, or done full justice to his talents in its general treatment. We do not agree with Mr. Headley in his notion of Cromwell, and think that his marked prepossession for his hero has unconsciously led him to alter the natural relations of the facts and principles with which he deals; but still we feel bound to give him credit for an extensive study of his subject, and for bringing together numerous interesting details which can be found in no other single biography of Cromwell. Among his authorities and guides we are sorry to see that he has not included Hallam. The portion of the latter's Constitutional History of England devoted to the reign of Charles I., the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, deserves, at least, the respectful attention of every writer on those subjects. Indeed we think Hallam so much an authority that a deviation from him on a question of fact or principle should be accompanied by arguments contesting his statements. Of all the historians of the period we conceive him to be almost the only one who loses the partisan in the judge. The questions mooted in the controversy between Charles and his Parliament are still hotly contested, and are so calculated to inflame the passions, that almost every historian of the time turns advocate. Mr. Headley's passionate sensibility should have been a little cooled by "fraternizing" with Mr. Hallam's judicial understanding. The leading merit of Mr. Headley's volume is his description of Cromwell's battles; Marston Moor, Preston, Naseby, Dunbar and Worcester, are not mere names, suggesting certain mechanical military movements to the reader of the present book. The smoke and dust and blood and carnage of war--the passions it excites, and the heroism it prompts, are all brought right before the eye. Many historians have attempted to convey in general terms a notion of the kind of men that Cromwell brought into battle, but it is in Mr. Headley's volume that we really obtain a distinct conception of the renowned Ironsides. He has just enough sympathy with the soldier and the Puritan to reproduce in imagination the religious passions which animated that band of "braves." As a considerable portion of Cromwell's life relates to his military character, Mr. Headley has a wide field for the exercise of his singular power of painting battle-pieces.