The victory at Worcester was of that decided nature, which enabled Cromwell to throw off the mask, to dissolve that pantomime of a Parliament in whose name he had hitherto governed, and to assume the title of "Protector of the liberties of England." He now exercised a more despotic tyranny than this nation suffered either from her Danish or Norman conquerors. He confined the elective franchise to himself, creating what he called Parliaments for the sole purpose of making them ridiculous, and then turning out his mock-legislators with contempt. He alternately punished and provoked every party; even his own agents and creatures could not escape his apprehensive suspicions, which, by indulgence, engendered an insatiable thirst of blood. Yet, combining great qualities with the meanest vices--the policy of an Augustus and the enterprize of a Trajan with the dissimulation of Tiberius and the cruelty of Domitian, he at once awed and dazzled surrounding nations, and while he subjugated, exalted his own. Never was England more respected than when unlimited power, undaunted courage, and persevering activity placed all her resources in the hands of a man who, scarcely ranked by birth in the patrician order, could make every European sovereign tremble on his throne. Yet still, like the mystical sun in the Apocalypse, tormenting others while he was himself tormented, the era of his assuming power was the consummation of his extreme misery. He waded through seas of blood; he broke every divine and human obligation; he made the name of liberty a terror, and that of religion contemptible, to become himself a more pitiable object than the veriest wretches whom he inhumed in his prisons. They had some who sympathized in their sufferings, some who wished them God speed; but though the civilized world trembled at the name of Cromwell, he knew he had spies, creatures, and parasites, but not one friend.