With Oliver’s death his memory passed under a cloud, through which his greatness was to be but dimly seen until generations of men had lived and died. He left many descendants, and there are now in England, and also in America, and possibly Australia, very many men and women, in all ranks of life, who have his blood in their veins—though in the direct line his name has died out. Even during the present century, when among the English upper classes it was still customary to speak of him with horror, his very descendants in certain families felt keen shame for the deeds of their great forefather. With a childishness in no way above that of a Congo savage, it was actually the fashion in some of these families to make the children do penance on the anniversary of the death of Charles II., as a kind of atonement for the deeds of Cromwell. The grotesque nature of this performance is added to by the fact that in that very society a peculiarly high place of honor was accorded to the titled descendants of Charles II. and his mistresses. One hardly knows whether to be most amused or indignant at such fantastic incapacity to appreciate what was really noble and what really ignoble. The men among whom such false conventions obtained could not be expected to see in its true proportions the form of mighty Oliver, looming ever larger across the intervening centuries. Sooner or later, justice will be done him; sooner or later, he will be recognized, not only as one of the greatest of all Englishmen, and by far the greatest ruler of England itself, but as a man who, in times that tried men’s souls, dealt with vast questions and solved tremendous problems; a man who erred, who was guilty of many shortcomings, but who strove mightily toward the light as it was given him to see the light; a man who had the welfare of his countrymen and the greatness of his country very close to his heart, and who sought to make the great laws of righteousness living forces in the government of the world. [Illustration: Oliver Cromwell. From the bust by Bernini, presented to the House of Commons by Charles Wertheimer, Esq. From a photograph, by permission of the donor. ] THE END. INDEX Abolition, in United States, 193 Abolitionists, 103, 192 Adamses, the, 36 Agathokles, 210 Ale-houses, suppressed under Protectorate, 213, 214 Alva, 156 America, Protestants and Catholics in, 12; freedom from militarism in eighteenth century, 19; power of compromise after Revolution, 100; true greatness of, 179; city government in, 214; Cromwell’s descendants in, 239 American Civil War, compared with English Civil Wars, 5, 6, 61, 62; citizen soldiers in, 64; West Point in, 67; cavalry in, 70; compromises after, 102; generosity of victors, 216