Lowell has written of what he terms verbal magic; the power of certain words and sentences, apparently simple, and without any recognizable quality, which will, nevertheless, fix themselves in our memory, or will picture a scene to us which we can never forget. This description of Cromwell has this magic. There is no apparent reason why these plain, commonplace words should fix in my mind this simple, rough-hewn form; yet I never can think of Cromwell otherwise than in this attire, and whatever portrait I see of him, I instinctively look for the spot of blood on his band. I know of his rich dress after he was in power; of that splendid purple velvet suit in which he lay majestic in death; but they never seem to me to be Cromwell—he wears forever an ill-cut, clumsy cloth suit, a close sword, and rumpled linen. The noble portraits of Cromwell by the miniaturist, Samuel Cooper, especially the one which is at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, are held to be the truest likenesses. They show a narrow band, but the hair curls softly on the shoulders. The wonderful portrait of the Puritan General Ireton, in the National Portrait Gallery, has beautiful, long hair, and a velvet suit much slashed, and with many loops and buttons at the slashes. He wears mustache and imperial. We expect we may find that friend of Puritanism, Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland, in rich dress; and we find him in the richest of dress; namely, a doublet made, as to its body and large full sleeves, wholly of bands an inch or two wide of embroidery and gold lace, opening like long slashes from throat to waist, and from arm-scye to wrist over fine white lawn, and with extra slashes at various spots, with the full white lawn of his “habit-shirt” pulled out in pretty puffs. His hair is long and curling. General Waller of Cromwell’s army, here shown, is the very figure of a Cavalier, as handsome a face, with as flowing hair and careful mustache, as the Duke of Buckingham, or Mr. Endymion Porter,—that courtier of courtiers,—gentleman of the bed-chamber to Charles I. Cornet Joyce, the sturdy personal custodian of the king in captivity, came the closest to being a Roundhead; but even his hair covers his ear and hangs over his collar—it would be deemed over-long to-day. Sir William Waller. Sir William Waller. Here is Lord Fairfax in plain buff coat slightly laced and slashed with white satin. Fanshawe dressed—so his wife tells us—in “phillamot brocade with 9 Laces every one as broad as my hand, a little gold and silver lace between and both of curious workmanship.” And his suit was gay with scarlet knots of ribbon; and his legs were cased in white silk hose over scarlet ones; and he wore black shoes with scarlet shoe strings and scarlet roses and garters; and his gloves were trimmed with scarlet ribbon—a fine “gaybeseen”—to use Chaucer’s words.