That he who accomplished this was no
ordinary personage, all must admit; and yet, on close investigation, we
shall discover little that was sublime or dazzling in his character.
Cromwell was not the meteor which surprises and astounds by the rapidity
and brilliancy of its course. Cool, cautious, calculating, he stole on with
slow and measured pace; and, while with secret pleasure he toiled up the
ascent to greatness, laboured to persuade the spectators that he was
reluctantly borne forward by an exterior and resistless force, by the march
of events, the necessities of the state, the will of the army, and even the
decree of the Almighty. He seems to have looked upon dissimulation as the
perfection of human wisdom, and to have made it the key-stone of the arch
on which he built his fortunes.[1] The aspirations of his ambition were
concealed under the pretence of attachment to "the good old cause;" and his
secret workings to acquire the sovereignty for himself and his family were
represented as endeavours to secure for his former brethren in arms the
blessings of civil and religious freedom, the two great objects which
originally called them into the field. Thus his whole conduct was made up
of artifice and deceit. He laid his plans long beforehand; he studied the
views and dispositions of all from whose influence he had any thing to hope
or fear; and he
[Footnote 1: See proofs of his dissimulation in Harris, iii.
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