You see him now an even more absolute ruler than “martyred Charles:” he is a despot, but with a difference. Whatever his detractors may say of him, this cannot be disputed, that never was the sceptre of England wielded by a more vigorous or sagacious hand. His protectorship, compared with any preceding age, or with several ages succeeding it, was an era of toleration, justice, and law. Weakened though she was by the Civil Wars, England rose to respect and greatness abroad, and foreign tyrants and persecutors trembled at her name. “We always reckon,” said a Royalist bishop, “those eight years of the usurpation as a time of great peace and prosperity.” Trade and commerce increased, and the land grew wealthy and great; yet all the while Cromwell was bitterly hated, and his life was always in peril. He wore mail beneath his clothes, and slept in a different room almost every night. Despite his ever-present danger, he went his way fearlessly, though expecting a pistol-shot from every dark corner. Now let us witness a scene which shows Cromwell at his best. You see before you the interior of a room in the palace of Whitehall. Seated carelessly on a table is the Lord Protector. He is a man of massive build, with a “figure of sufficient impressiveness: not lovely to the man-milliner species, nor pretending to be so.” A massive “head so shaped as you might see in it a storehouse and shop of a vast treasury of natural parts. . . . On the whole, a right noble lion-face and hero-face; and to me royal enough.” He is careless in his dress, utterly indifferent to externals, and wholly without affectation. He is the man who warned Lely, when painting his picture, to put in all the roughnesses, pimples, and warts of his countenance, or he would not pay a farthing for the work. Hard, stern, implacable in warfare, he is nevertheless simple, loving, and pure in his private life, sincerely and ardently religious, and convinced to the bottom of his soul that he is a chosen instrument “to do God’s people some good.” True, he owes his power to the sword; but he wields that power so well, and stoops to so little that is mean or base, that future generations will have good cause to rejoice that the guidance of the state was for a brief space of years entrusted to him. At the other end of the table sits John Milton, that inspired poet of whom Wordsworth wrote:—— “His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; So didst thou travel on life’s common way In cheerful godliness.” Look at his noble face, which reflects in its every expression the splendid mind with which he is gifted and the noble thoughts which flit through it. No man ever served the Muses with such exquisite devotion. He comes to his desk as a knight to his vigil, believing that no man can worthily write of great things unless his life is worthily lived. He loves virtue with all the passion of his nature——