heart a royalist; Desborough, who had married his sister, and Fleetwood who was his son-in-law (having married Ireton's widow) with a stupid obstinacy objected to his assuming the name of king, though they had no objection to his exercising a more absolute authority than any king of England had ever possessed. Colonel Pride, who had purged the parliament to make him what he was, procured a petition from the majority of the officers then about London, against his taking the title; and information, to which he gave full credit, was conveyed to him, that a number of men had bound themselves by oath, to kill him, within so many hours after he should accept it. Under these disheartening circumstances, after a long and painful struggle with himself, and some curious discussions with the deputation of members, who were sent to urge his acceptance, he concluded by refusing it upon the plea of

conscience.

In thus yielding to men of weaker minds than his own, Cromwell committed the same error which had been fatal to Charles. The boldest course would have been the safest; the wisest friends of the royal family were of opinion, that if he had made himself king de facto, and restored all things in other respects to the former order, no other measure would have been so injurious to the royal cause. Every thing except the name was given him; the power of appointing his successor in the protectorship was now conferred upon him by parliament, and the ceremony of investiture was performed for the second time, and with a pomp which no coronation had exceeded. The Speaker presented him with a robe of purple velvet, a mixed colour, to show the mixture of justice and mercy, which he was to observe in his administration; the bible, 'the book of books, in which the orator told him he had the happiness to be well versed, and which contained both precepts and examples for good government;' a sceptre, not unlike a staff, for he was to be a staff to the weak and poor; and lastly, a sword, not to defend himself alone, but his people also: if, said the speaker, I might presume to fix a motto upon this sword, as the valiant Lord Talbot had upon his, it should be this: Ego sum Domini Protectoris, ad protegendum populum meum, I am the Lord Protector's, to protect my people.

So great was the reputation which Cromwell obtained abroad by his prodigious elevation, the lofty tone of his government, and the vigour of his arms, that an Asiatic Jew is said to have come to England for the purpose of investigating his pedigree, thinking to discover in him the Lion of the tribe of Judah! Some of his own most faithful adherents regarded him with little less veneration. Their warm attachment, and the more doubtful devotion of a set of enthusiastic preachers, drugged the atmosphere in which he breathed;

breathed; and yet while his bodily health continued, the natural strength of his understanding prevailed over this deleterious influence, and he saw things calmly, clearly, and sorrowfully as they were. Shakspeare himself has not imagined a more dramatic situation than that in which Cromwell stood. He had attained to the possession of sovereign power, by means little less guilty than Macbeth, but the process had neither hardened his heart, nor made him desperate in guilt. His mind had expanded with his fortune. As he advanced in his career, he gradually discovered how mistaken he had been in the principles upon which he had set out; and, after having effected the overthrow of the church, the nobles and the throne, he became convinced, by what experience (the surest of all teachers) had shown him, that episcopacy, nobility, and monarchy, were institutions good in themselves, and necessary for this nation in which they had so long been established. Fain would he have repaired the evil which he had done; fain would he have restored the monarchy, created a house of Peers, and reestablished the Episcopal church. But he was thwarted and overruled by the very instruments which he had hitherto used; men whom he had formerly possessed with his own passionate errors, and whom he was not able to dispossess: persons incapable of deriving wisdom from experience, and so short-sighted as not to see that their own lives and fortunes depended upon the establishment of his power by the only means which could render it stable and secure. Standing in fear of them, he dared not take the crown himself; and he could not confer it upon the rightful heir :-by the murder of Charles, he had incapacitated himself from making that reparation which would otherwise have been in his power. His wife, who was not elated with prosperity, advised him to make terms with the exiled king, and restore him to the throne; his melancholy answer was, Charles Stuart can never forgive me his father's death, and if he could, he is unworthy of the crown. He answered to the same effect, when the same thing was twice proposed to him, with the condition, that Charles should marry one of his daughters. What would not Cromwell have given, whether he looked to this world or the next, if his hands had been clear of the king's blood!

Such was the state of Cromwell's mind, during the latter years of his life, when he was lord of these three kingdoms, and indisputably the most powerful potentate in Europe, and as certainly the greatest man of an age in which the race of great men was not extinct in any country, No man was so worthy of the station which he filled, had it not been for the means by which he reached it. He would have governed constitutionally, mildly, mercifully, liberally, if he could have followed the impulses of his own heart, and the wishes

of his better mind; self-preservation compelled him to a severe and suspicious system: he was reduced at last to govern without a Parliament, because, pack them and purge them as he might, all that he summoned proved unmanageable; and because he was an usurper, he became of necessity a despot. The very saints, in whose eyes he had been so precious, now called him an 'ugly tyrant,' and engaged against him in more desperate plots than were formed by the royalists. He lived in perpetual danger and in perpetual fear. When he went abroad he was surrounded by his guards. It was never known which way he was going till he was in the coach; he seldom returned by the same way he went; he wore armour under his clothes, and hardly ever slept two nights successively in one chamber. The latter days of Charles, while he looked on to the scaffold, and endured the insolence of Bradshaw and the inhuman aspersions of Cook, were enviable when compared to the close of Cromwell's life. Charles had that peace within which passeth all understanding; the one great sin which he had committed in sacrificing Strafford, had been to him a perpetual cause of sorrow and shame and repentance; he received his own death as a just punishment for that sin under the dispensations of a righteous and unerring Providence; and feeling that it had been expiated, when he bowed his head upon the block, it was in full reliance upon the justice of posterity, and with a sure and certain trust in the mercy of his God. Cromwell had doubts of both. Ludlow tells us, that at his death he seemed, above all, concerned for the reproaches, he said, men would cast upon his name, in trampling on his ashes when dead! And the last sane feeling of religion which he expressed, implied a like misgiving, concerning his condition in the world on which he was about to enter—it was a question to one of his fanatical preachers, if the doctrine were true, that the elect could never finally fall?' Upon receiving a reply, that nothing could be more certain, Then am I safe,' he said, 'for I am sure that once I was in a state of grace.' The spiritual drams which were then administered to him in strong doses, acted powerfully upon a mind debilitated by long disease, and disposed by the nature of that disease to delirium. He assured his physicians, as the presumptuous fanatics by whom he was surrounded assured him, that he should not die, whatever they might think from the symptoms of his disorder, for God was far above nature, and God had promised his recovery. Thanks were publicly given for the undoubted pledges of his recovery, which God had vouchsafed! and some of his last words were those of a mediator rather than a sinner, praying for the people, as if his own merits entitled him to be an intercessor. Even his death did not dissipate the delusion. When that news was brought to those who were met together to pray for him, 'Mr.

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Sterry stood up and desired them not to be troubled: for,' said he, this is good news! because, if he was of great use to the people of God when he was amongst us, now he will be much more so, being ascended to Heaven to sit at the right hand of Jesus Christ, there to intercede for us, and to be mindful of us on all occasions!'

The life of this most fortunate and least flagitious of usurpers might hold out a salutary lesson for men possessed with a like ambition, if such men were capable of learning good as well as evil lessons from the experience of others. He gained three kingdoms; the price which he paid for them was innocence and peace of mind. He left an imperishable name, so stained with reproach, that notwithstanding the redeeming virtues which adorned him, it were better for him to be forgotten than to be so remembered. And in the world to come,- -but it is not for us to anticipate the judgements, still less to limit the mercy of the All-merciful.

Let us repeat, that there is no portion of history in which it so much behoves an Englishman to be thoroughly versed as in that of Cromwell's age. There it may be seen to what desperate lengths men of good hearts and laudable intentions may be drawn by faction. There may be seen the rise, and the progress, and the consequences of rebellion. There are to be found the highest examples of true patriotism, sound principles, and heroic virtue, with some alloy of haughtiness in Strafford, of human infirmities in Laud, pure and unsullied in Falkland, and Capel, and Newcastle, and in Clarendon, the wisest and the best of English statesmen, the most authentic, the most candid, the most instructive of English historians. From the history of that age, and more especially from that excellent writer, the young and ingenuous may derive and confirm a just, and generous, and ennobling love for the institutions of their country, founded upon the best feelings and surest principles; and the good and the thoughtful of all ages will feel in the perusal, with what reason that petition is inserted in the Litany, wherein we pray the Lord to deliver us from all sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism from hardness of heart and contempt of his word and commandments,-sins which draw after them, in certain and inevitable consequence, the heaviest of all chastisements upon a guilty nation.

ART. II.-The Apocryphal New Testament, being all the Gospels, Epistles, and other Pieces now extant, attributed in the first four Centuries to Jesus Christ, his Apostles, and their Companions, and not included in the New Testament by its

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Compilers.

Compilers. Translated from the original Tongues, and now first collected into one Volume. Printed for William Hone.

IT will be in the recollection of most of our readers that, on the trial of Hone for the publication of some scandalous parodies on the Liturgy, one principal point in his defence was that his objects were wholly political, and that the moment he entertained a persuasion that his parodies could be considered as injurious to the cause of religion, (for which he professed the highest respect,) he withdrew them from circulation at a great pecuniary loss. As we should not be justified in expressing a suspicion that the jury had previously resolved to acquit this man, we must presume that he owed his escape to the credit which they attached to the sincerity of this declaration. He has now afforded ample means of judging how far such confidence was wisely reposed, by publishing a work of which the sole aim is to destroy the credit of the New Testament, and to show that the most silly and driveling forgeries can be supported by the same evidence which we use to establish the authority of our Scripture.

Nothing but the execution of a public duty would have tempted us to defile one line of our Journal with the notice of a wretch as contemptible as he is wicked. It is indeed a source of real gratification to us, that in proceeding to give our readers some account of the book before us, we may at once dismiss Mr. Hone from our consideration. He is described to us as a poor illiterate creature, far too ignorant to have any share in the composition either of this, or of his seditious pamphlets. He only supplies the evil will and the audacity: the venom is furnished by the dastard behind. Our future observations will, therefore, be confined to the real editor of this nefarious publication.

Ever since the revival of infidelity, its attacks have been directed against no point more frequently than the Canon of the New Testament. This selection has evinced perhaps a somewhat greater degree of policy than has usually fallen to the share of the infidel party not that we have any fears lest, after due examination, the slightest suspicion should be entertained of the correctness of the Canon-but it must be avowed that an original inquiry into its constitution in its full extent, calls for a combination of diligence and acuteness of rare occurrence. The works of the Fathers are of course the great sources of information, and enormous as they are in extent, no common industry must be exercised in their perusal. The Fathers too were themselves frequently mistaken; and no doubt can be entertained that some gross interpolations of their works have been effected, and many writings ascribed to

them