In the queer little weekly paper “The Commonwealth Mercury,” of the issue “From Thursday September 2d to Thursday September 9th, 1658,” which contains an account of Cromwell’s death and of his son’s installation, it happens that there is also an advertisement of a pamphlet: “A few sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a damned Soul: By that poor servant of Jesus Christ, John Bunyan.” Cromwell, Milton, Bunyan—what can non-Puritan England, of their day, show to match these three names? With his death came the chaos he had foreseen, though he had not foreseen that it could be averted only by the substitution of some form of self-government by the people, for the arbitrary rule of one man—however great and good that man might be. For a few months his son, Richard, ruled as Protector in his stead, but, the Protectorate having become in effect a despotism, it was sure to slip from any but Oliver’s iron grasp. Richard called a Parliament, but Parliaments had been hopelessly discredited by Oliver’s method of dealing with them. The army revolted, forced the dismissal of the Parliament, and then the abdication of Richard. Richard’s abler brother, Henry, who was governing Ireland as deputy, resigned also, and the Cromwells passed out of history. [Illustration: Richard Cromwell. Painter unknown. By permission of Sir Charles Hartopp, Bart. ] For some months there was confusion worse confounded, and the whole nation turned toward Charles II., and the re-establishment of the Stuart kingship. Monk, the ablest of Cromwell’s generals, a soldier who cared little for forms of civil government, who had already fought for the Stuarts against the Parliament, and who would have stood by Richard had Richard possessed the strength to stand by himself, threw his weight in favor of the exiled king, and thereby prevented the slightest chance of opposition. Charles II. returned, greeted with transports of frantic delight by seemingly almost the whole people. The King and his followers then took revenge on the dead body of the man whose living eyes they had never dared to face. The bones of Cromwell, of his mother, and of Ireton, were disinterred and thrown into a lime-pit; and the head of the great Protector was placed on a pole over Westminster Hall, there to stand for twenty years.