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the calm voice of the unmoved and sustained soul rises above the tumult of the elements and the storms of fortune.

tion of our 'own' ships and men ;-which indeed was very wonderful; and according to the goodness and lovingkindness of the Lord, wherewith His good people hath been followed

"To Sir Arthur Heselrig, Governor of New-in all these late revolutions; and doth call on

castle: These.

our part, that we should fear before Him, and still hope in his mercy.

ment's good acceptance of your carriage in this action. We are are also informed that the officers of the fleet, and the seamen, carried themselves with much honesty and courage; and we are considering of a way to show our acceptance thereof. In the meantime, we desire you to return our hearty thanks and acknowledgments to them.

Dunbar, 2d September, 1650. "DEAR SIR, We are upon an Engage"We cannot but take notice also how emiment very difficult. The enemy hath blocked nently it hath pleased God to make use of you up our way at the Pass at Copperspath, in this service; assisting you with wisdom in through which we cannot get without almost the conduct, and courage in the execution a miracle. He lieth so upon the Hills that we' thereof;'-and have sent you a small jewel, know not how to come that way without great as a testimony of our own and the Parliadifficulty; and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination. "I perceive, your forces are not in a capacity for present release. Wherefore, whatever becomes of us, it will be well for you to get what forces you can get together; and the South to help what they can. The business nearly concerneth all Good People. If your forces had been in a readiness to have fallen upon the back of Copperspath, it might have occasioned supplies to have come to us. But the only wise | God knows what is best. All shall work for Good. Our Spirits are comfortable, praised be the Lord-though our present condition be as it is. And indeed we have much hope in the Lord; of whose mercy we have had large experience.

"Indeed do you get together what forces you can against them. Send to friends in the South to help with more. Let H. Vane know what I write. I would not make it public lest danger should accrue thereby. You know what use to make hereof. Let me hear from you. I rest, your servant,

"OLIVER CROMWELL."

So he wrote, in the full expectation that the morrow might terminate his victories and his life. It was the next morning, at the first charge of the cavalry, that as the clouds rolled away, and the sun shone out, "I heard Noll say, says Hodgson, Let God arise,-let his enemies be scattered!" A more sublime and yet more simple warcry than even the celebrated watchword of Napoleon from the foot of the Pyramids.

Our last instance finds him a mighty po tentate, and a heart-broken, care-destroyed It is addressed to General Blake, at sea, and not much more than a year before the hero closed his course.

man.

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"Thus, beseeching the Lord to continue His presence with you, I remain your very affectionate friend,

"OLIVER P."

We know not what effect these quotations ourselves, we think it might be well if all may have upon our readers; but for in power, in the camp or the Cabinet, both wrote and acted under similar impressions.

The conclusion, therefore, that we draw is, that Cromwell's religious feelings were not only sincere, but formed the great prevailing motive of his conduct in life. It was for this at the first that he took up arms; and in this feeling, under different modifications, the secret will be found of all the great passages in his life. Thus his assumption of the power of the Protectorate, is not, as we think, to be explained on the mere hypothesis of personal ambi tion. We think that at that period he believed himself called to be the instrument of a great work. He saw, the Parliament wasting their strength, and endangering the security of the nation, in vain disputations, mining their stability. while royalist intrigue was rapidly underother part, that he had the power in his mining their stability. He saw, on the own hand, and perhaps the sole power, of averting these calamities; and therefore seeing no other deliverance, he seems to have felt impelled not to cast away the opportunity which Providence seemed to have put within his grasp. There may have been in this a greater or less degree of enthusiasm, or self-delusion; nor, perhaps, was he unwilling to regard that as a duty to which his ambition or inclination prompted. But even in his most private letters, written during the period of the Protectorate,

there is a deep cast of pain and care, as if he would fain throw off his harness, and be free and at rest once more, if his duty to the State did not require his continued exertions; and we find nothing in any of his correspondence like complacency or even comfort in his wonderful elevation.

though it might not be unnatural that he should resort to a course so unencumbered, such a plea is only that which might be raised for the destruction of the liberties of man by any tyrant who ever ruled.

In short, Cromwell's original desire was evidently to frame what Carlyle calls a theocracy-to establish a Government in which the fear of God should be openly acknowledged as a paramount rule of action. He either felt, or persuaded himself that he felt, this prevalent motive throughout. He cashiered the Rump Parliament, avowedly on the ground of their irreligious and dissolute lives. He assumed the Protectorate because he found, that amid the vain harangues of Parliament, the reign of the

In this book of Carlyle's, however, Cromwell is of course a hero, in whom his very faults are merits, and only thought to be faults, because the dull world and he are at issue on the subject. The worst feature in the work is, that he not only passes over, without a word of disapprobation, but rather seems to extol and admire the radical defect in Cromwell's character, namely, his disregard of the principles of liberty: which comes out quite as clearly in this" malignant" Stuarts would recommence, correspondence, as does his religious sin- and even his coquettings with the name of cerity. It was zeal for Protestant truth, King, may have been justified to his own and not for constitutional right, which im- mind, by the more sacred nature of the pelled him to join in the wars of the com- office. monwealth; and never, throughout his Of Cromwell's Speeches we have no whole career, does he seem to have had space or leisure to speak. Independently any sound appreciation of the principles of of any intention to mystify, he was plainly popular government. Thus the Protectorate, a man whose words did not come readily commenced in military usurpation, contin- in public, and who laboured painfully to ed a system of unmingled arbitrary power, express even the simplest sentiment. He swayed, indeed, by a strong hand, with possessed the peculiarity, not uncommon, justice and clemency, but still owing what liberty it possessed only to the good pleasure of the ruler. Undoubtedly it is a singular proof of the vigor and clear sight of the man, that though his power was usurped and arbitrary, his rule in all the three kingdoms was beneficent and salutary. Even in Scotland, we appear to have been surprised with the spectacle of impartial justice in the administration of the law, and to have set it down, in those days of clanship, to the circumstance that the judges of the usurper were a set of "kinless loons."

of writing with great rve and precision, while his public speaking was singularly confused and unintelligible-acharacteristic which is, to a certain extent, shared by the great General of our own times, whose oratory is far from equalling the lucid distinctness of his military dispatches. We must here take occasion to remark, that nothing could possibly be in worse taste than the interjectional ejaculations of Mr. Carlyle, which he throws in to assist the sturdy confusion of Oliver himself. If he had any regard for the unity of the picture, he would hardly have introduced such a dance of All this, however, did not atone in the satyrs in a grave historical painting. The eyes of the lovers of liberty in those days, reader might have derived some advantage who had spent blood and treasure for its in following the meaning of the speaker preservation, for the utter subversion of from Mr. Carlyle's editorial assistance, if constitutional government which accom- he had conveyed it in intelligible language panied the power of the Protector; and it in the form of notes, but as it is, the conis not without a feeling approaching to in-trast between his hero and himself is too dignation, that we find Mr. Carlyle deliber- great, either for gravity or temper. ately treating those who would blame the despotism of his reign as "hide-bound pedants," still enveloped in the mists of prejudice, and unable to discern that all the hero did was, and must have been, rightly done. No doubt Oliver had ticklish materials to deal with, and he cut the knot with his sword, as a soldier might be expected to do; but al

The blackest portion of Cromwell's life, and the deepest stain upon his character, is treated by Mr. Carlyle in a strain of unbecoming levity and indifference. Cromwell was a merciful, rather than a cruel man. He had no delight in bloodshed; and there are many traits of considerate humanity which occur in the history of his campaigns.

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But the story of the massacres of Drogheda | policy of peace. If he swayed an arbitraand Wexford is one over which no sophistry ry, it was a brilliant sceptre, under which or hero-idolatry can throw a veil. The Royalists and Fifth Monarchy men quailed indiscriminate slaughter which, by com- alike, and to which all Europe, even the mand of Cromwell, took place at the storm- haughty Mazarin, did homage. It matters ing of these towns, is enough, even in the little to his countrymen whether his memaccount which he himself gives of it, to ory be honored by monumental marble, or make the blood run cold. Yet Mr. Car- even that the poet's promise, that "his lyle not only palliates, but defends the pro- ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest," should ceeding, and calls those who would have have remained unfulfilled. The record of the victorious General listen to the voice of his fame is engraven in our history, and all humanity, rose-water surgeons." Per- our subsequent glory does it involuntary haps in some respects religious bigotry jus- homage. The annals of legitimate monartified to Cromwell himself the wanton chy show few who so well deserved to be slaughter of the monks. But his main and remembered; and beside the imbecile real object manifestly was to strike terror James, the perfidy of the first, and the prointo the country, by a spectacle of fearful fligacy of the second Charles, he shines like " retribution, and thus not only to save years the orb of day among the lesser fires. of bloodshed, but to finish the campaign, Peace, we say, to his memory! The conand enable him to return to scenes in which cluding lines of Dryden's funeral stanzas, his presence was required. Nor was his already alluded to, were not altogether cold-blooded policy ineffectual. The aw- empty panygeric. ful example paralyzed the heart of the nation, and one citadel after the other yielded to the arms of the Commonwealth. But the cry of vengeance for her murdered sons has resounded from Ireland from that day to this, and its memory still lives in the emphatic "Curse of Cromwell."

Our limits compel us to close this hasty sketch. We honestly commend the book to our readers, as one they cannot read without amusement and instruction. And for the hero of the tale, whatever were the faults which clouded his greatness, and how bitter soever the upbraidings over his cold ashes, he was a man such as seldom has appeared on the page of history. Unused to arms-bred neither in court nor in camp-he started on his military career, and first wooed Fortune at that age

When she her best-loved Pompey did discard ;''

and unlike most conquerors or usurpers, he not only won, but wore her favors to the last. His skill as a General was evinced by his unbroken success-and that success not the result of happy circumstances, but of sagacious, unceasing energy, equally undaunted by reverses, and unelated by victory. But he possessed also the rare gift of preserving in peace what he won at the point of the sword; and though the stage on which he played his part was more limited than that of the mighty Corsican, he shines out to our eyes a hero of truer lustre, as of equal genius in action, and far calmer and more truly great in the

"His name a great example stands, to show How strangely high endeavors may be blest Where piety and valor jointly go."

From the North British Review.
ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.

An Essay on the Miracles recorded in the
Ecclesiastical History of the Early
Ages. By John Henry Newman, B.D.,
Fellow of Oriel College. Oxford, 1843.
1 vol. 8vo.

Lives of the English Saints. London,
1844-45. 14 Nos. 18mno.

We do not envy the feelings with which a sincere and intelligent Roman Catholic enters upon an explanation of the miracles recorded and believed in his Church. Every thing human has its weak points; and the Christian beholds with sorrow the strifes and divisions, and other cankering sores, which mar even the fair face of the religion of love. In his contest with external enemies, he naturally seeks to avoid a theme so ungrateful; and he must be weak indeed, or nobly strong, who would set them in the first front of battle. But a harder task awaits the champion of the "Legends of the Saints." It is his, not to palliate, defend, or explain, but to glorify corruptions; to treat them, not as abuses, or excrescences, but as the characteristics of his Church; and to appeal to them in the most solemn

manner as direct interpositions of the Al-j overcome the difficulties of the fourth and mighty hand of God, in proof of his pre-fifth centuries, the rest of his path is comsence and favor. It must be the very gall paratively easy. These difficulties, howof bitterness for a noble and devout nature ever, are so formidable, that according to to be driven to such necessity. We need Mr. Newman's own showing, it is inconsidnot wonder, therefore, that the more en-erate, and even wanton, to venture amongst lightened in the Church of Rome either al- them without a guide. together avoid, or, when that is impossible, hesitate, qualify, and, with some sweeping commendation of faith, turn shrinkingly away from the bare enunciation of her miracles. Even the least scrupulous controversialists appeal to them for the most part generally, and in the gross; and the image bows its head, and the relic works its charm only to the eyes of the faithful.

"It will naturally suggest itself to him to plexity, perhaps a painful perplexity, may enform some judgment upon them, and a perthe case, it is inconsiderate and almost wanton sue from the difficulty of doing so. This being to bring such subjects before him, without making at least the attempt to assist him in disposing of them."-P. 12.

ingeniously altered from their original and authentic form, yet still perplexing enough to the modern reader.

In their case there is much to mourn over, The attempt is accordingly made in his and something to pardon. The credulous, Essay on Miracles, prefixed to the first volthe timid, and the ignorant, almost uncon- ume of Fleury's Ecclesiastical History, sciously acquiesce in practices and opinions where such supernatural narratives abound; familiar to them from infancy, recommend--in many cases judiciously improved, and ed by general consent, hallowed by religion, and enforced and protected by penalties the most severe. The more reflecting "wink hard," or take refuge in infidelity, or make what shift they can with the arrow in their sides. The Essay of Mr. Newman is an attempt to induce Protestants voluntarily to place themselves in this most painful and unhappy condition; and by way of encouragement, he has put the yoke on his own neck.

It is a grave question whether the power of working miracles extended beyond the Apostolic age; or rather whether the evidence for any miracle, not recorded in Scripture, has sufficient weight to enforce from the Christian a complete and reasonable belief. All that is most precious to him -his consolations in time, his hopes for eternity, depend for their existence on the Scripture miracles. "If," says the Apostle, "Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."

There is perhaps nothing in profane antiquity which lays such strong hold on the higher sympathies of our nature, as the story of the Roman wife, who drew the dagger reeking from her own bosom, and-1 Cor. xv. 14. The evidence for their gave it to her husband, saying, "It is not truth, therefore, must needs be powerful: painful, Pætus!" Overpowered by the and, as derived from the origin, increase, evidence of such surpassing affection, it re- and reception of Christianity, and the lives, quires a painful effort to pass judgment on deaths, characters, and writings of the first her splendid crime. Yet though it may disciples and their followers, it is most cerseem a harder thing for a sincere Protest-tainly powerful and overwhelming. It is ant minister to believe in the miracles of needless to state that there is no such eviBenedict of Nursia, or St. Simeon of the dence for the miracles which are said to Pillar, than to lay down his life for a dear have followed them, and which Mr. Newfriend, the effect on the world is altogether man happily terms "the Ecclesiastical Mirdifferent and ere men listen to the assur-acles." There is indeed a heaven-wide ance, and follow the example of Mr. New-distinction between the two, in their nature, man, he must not be surprised should they in their objects, and in the evidence by look into the matter for themselves, and re- which they are respectively supported; and solve thereupon to throw the dagger away; this is so admirably illustrated by Mr. New-nay, should even tell him, that the only man, that we shall quote his account of it danger lay in using it. at length.

:

Nor is Mr. Newman so borne away by his own enthusiasm as to be unprepared for such an emergency. The traveller on his way to Rome cannot avoid the supernatural narratives of the early ages; and if he can

"The miracles wrought in times subsequent to the Apostles are of a very different charac ter, viewed as a whole, from those of Scripture viewed as a whole; so much so, that some writers have not scrupled to say, that if

they really took place, they must be considered survived, or which in the course of years obas forming another dispensation;* and, at tained a permanent place in local usages or in least, they are in some sense supplementary particular rites or in certain spots, recorded at to the Apostolic. This will be evident both on a distance from the time and country when a survey of some of them, and by referring to and where they profess to have occurred, and the language used by the Fathers of the brought into shape only by the juxtaposition Church concerning them. of distinct informants. Moreover, in Ecclesiastical history true and false miracles are mixed: whereas in Scripture, inspiration has selected the true to the exclusion of all others." | -Pp. 24, 25.

In connection with this statement, he adds, (p. 62.)—

"The Scripture miracles are for the most part evidence of a Divine revelation, and that for the sake of those who have not yet been instructed in it, and in order to the instruction of multitudes; but the miracles which follow have sometimes no discoverable or direct object, or but a slight object; they happen for the sake of individuals, and of those who are already Christians, or for purposes already Should any one urge, as was stated in a effected, as far as we can judge, by the miracles of Scripture. The Scripture miracles are former place, that the Ecclesiastical miracles wrought by persons consciously exercising virtually form a new dispensation, we need under Divine guidance a power committed to not deny it in the sense in which the Prophetthem for definite ends, professing to be imme-ical miracles are distinct from the Mosaic." diate messengers from heaven, and to be evidencing their mission by their miracles: And, to make the matter perfectly clear, whereas Ecclesiastical miracles are not so he goes on to assert that the Ecclesiastical much wrought as displayed, being effected by miracles " seem but parallel, as they are Divine power without any visible media of contemporaneous, to the development, adoperation at all, or by inanimate or material media, as relics and shrines, or by instruments who did not know at the time what they were effecting, or, if they were hoping and praying for such supernatural blessing, at least did not know when they were to be used as instruments, when not. We find the gift often committed, in the words of Middleton, not to the successors of the Apostles, to the Bishops, the Martyrs, or the principal champions of the Christian cause, but to boys, to women, and above all to private and obscure laymen, not only of an inferior, but sometimes also of a bad character.' The miracles of Scripture are, as a whole, grave, simple, and majestic: those of Ecclesiastical history often partake of what may not unfitly be called a romantic character, and of that wildness and inequality which enters into the notion of romance. The miracles of Scripture are undeniably of a supernatural character: those of Ecclesiastical history are often scarcely more than extraordinary accidents or coincidences, or events which seem to betray exaggerations or errors in the statement. The miracles of Scripture

are definite and whole transactions, drawn out and carried through from first to last, with beginning and ending, clear, complete, and compact in the narrative, separated from extraneous matter, and consigned to authentic statements: whereas the Ecclesiastical for the most part are not contained in any authoritative form or original document; at best they need to be extracted from merely historical works, and often are only floating rumors, popular traditions, vague, various, inconsistent in detail, tales which only happen to have

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ditions, and changes in dogmatic statements, which have occurred between the apostolic and the present age." Now, there is in these two statements a very material apparent discrepancy between the nature of these miracles, and the agency assigned to them; but there is something far more remarkable than any discrepancy, in the deliberate assertion, that a new dispensation, with a change of dogmatic statements, has been introduced by Ecclesiastical miracles since the apostolic age. Can Mr. Newman have forgotten the solemn and emphatic language of St. Paul? "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." If there be those who have really committed this sin,-if there be any Church, which has brought in, or received the " new disrecorded against her in the archives of pensation," assuredly such is the sentence

beaven.

Proceeding to examine the internal character of the Ecclesiastical miracles, we find the whole of them, as a class, inferior to the Scripture miracles; some dissimilar in object; some directly contrary; and some having no assignable object whatever (p.46). Such a state of things is no doubt painfully perplexing;" and, so far as we are aware, Mr. Newman is the first who has endeavored to fling a bridge over this chaos -that is, to promulgate a theory which shall bring the whole into harmony and order. He is a grave man, and writes on

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