110 And near that mother is another face, Suiting the scene-the mild, yet earnest sire A daughter now, and other pledges yet- And thou, high sovereign lady-Mother now! And thou dost know this, in thy inward thought: Liege lady-Mother! yea, I judge it so, And have in this withal the better hope, The humble throng of mothers, from whose womb Through the drear nooks where abject suffering lies The poor produce in pain-and so do all ; Some neighbour grandame, kindly as she's old, Yet what can she to help the greater wo? And now, anon, the place becomes all riot- Nor is this all-nor yet the worst-for soon It were indeed most treason-like to doubt; O! woman, mortal!-weakly like us all, Be but the MOTHER and there is no dread; As thou would'st watch the time-up-growing shoot, O'twere blessed sight to see this scene reveal'd, The Queen, true mother of the millions all! OLIVER CROMWELL. EDITED BY HORACE SMITH, Esq. THERE is an order of poems of which Byron has pithily said, "bad were better;" and there is an order of romances, much more limited in number than mediocre poems, which approximate so closely to a high standard of excellence that one regrets they are not quite perfect. Of this class is Oliver Cromwell an anonymous work of mark and likelihood; but, from its very structure, wanting power to interest the reader-as the fortunes of its principal personages are already stamped by his tory, and greatly wanting in what is artistically called, relief. It has few fictitious characters, and no subordinate personages, affairs, or interests; though these are fully as necessary, in truthfully and dramatically representing the game of life, as the heroes and heroines. In Old Mortality, for instance, Jenny Dennison and Cuddie Headrigg, with their humour, truthfulness, and minor agency in forwarding the plot, are, in their own place, as important as Claverhouse or Edith Bellenden. This holds of the fictions of all the great novelists as much as of the many-coloured life represented in Shakspeare's dramas. These, indeed, comprehend universal life, throughout its entire and complicated movements, and most minute ramifications. In so far as what is called authentic history fails to display the internal movements, the impelling impulses, the checks and counter-checks of the vast machine of social life, history, like every thing human, is imperfect. Imagination and invention, claiming a wider range, step in, and by poetry, romance, and the drama, supply its deficiencies; and, by tracing what might be, with the creative and vivifying hand of genius, stamp lively fiction with a deeper impress of truth than dull history. for this species of composition has its laws; and these we consider violated when documents are produced, in which a few grains of traditionary fact are mingled up to colour a vast quantity of improbable invention. An instance of this is found in the intercepted letter of Charles to Henrietta, which is not only what the king did not write, but most unlike what he might have been presumed to have written; though there is some foundation for the fact of a letter having been intercepted in the romantic manner described. With Cromwell for his hero-to develop whose strangely-mingled and powerful character all his care and ability are given-the author is more just and discriminating than the preface of the editor led us to expect: the shades are not wholly forgotten, though the lights sometimes overpower them; and if the picture is, after all, incompleteand what picture of Cromwell can be otherwise, whether traced by the pen of sober history or of bright romance?—the reader learns something that is both new and true of that wonderful and perplexing personage, the English Napoleon, whose glories the national vanity eagerly appropriates, even while loyalty repudiates the principles and the course of conduct by which they were achieved. There is another use in this work, as in every historical romance proceeding from a man of talent and competent information ;-the perusal, in some sort, supplies the place of history to those-and they are many-to whom history, in its undisguised form, is utterly repulsive. Nor was that eminent English statesman to be called unread, who owned that he knew the history of England only from Shakspeare's plays. But this advantage holds of Cromwell, and that in no faint degree. Milton, Hampden, Fairfax, and the master-spirits of that age, figure on the page, or carry forward the action, as well as Charles, Henrietta, and Falkland; and the bold attempt of "bidding these dry bones live"-of unsphering these immortals, is, of itself, worthy of commendation; and, where successful, of high praise. But there is, besides, a rich intermixture of pure and noble romance in "Cromwell;" a young hero cast in the mould of that exalted public virtue which the world has rarely seen; though its imagined existence is proof of its possible attainment. With this hero, the romance opens in the good old and approved style: nor shall we longer detain our readers from him. The romance of Cromwell has one special claim on notice. The romance writers, like the poets, are generally Tories; and must, we fear, continue so in spirit, whatever be their name, until opinion has completed its begun work of revolutionizing the world, and by sweeping away factitious dignities and conventional distinctions, unalterably stamped what is the true, the beautiful, and the noble, as the alone worthy to be admired and followed. But historians, as well as romance writers, are also too generally Tories we use the word in a wide sense--and more especially the standard historians of England. Now, the author of Cromwell, if not a republican, is an enthusiastic liberal; and so far a partisan that he has often condescended to adopt the calumnies on royalty, as well as many questionable facts, EDGAR ARDENNE, a young Englishman of good of the age of which he writes: and this, not family and estate, who, to the pure and ardent pathrough the medium of his personages, where these triotism of Hampden, unites the intellect and miliRoundhead figments might have had propriety and tary genius of Cromwell without any of the basedramatic effect, but gravely, in his own person, as nesses by which the noble qualities of the latter were the narrator of the story. His dislike of the foully alloyed, is just returned from a long resiroyal martyr, (as Charles I. continues to be nick-dence on the Continent. In Greece and Italy he named, even by those who only condemn his execution from reasons of humanity and policy,) is only inferior to his dislike of the queen, Henrietta Marie; which is carried to an extreme that outrages the usual license of the historical romance: had enlarged his knowledge both of civil polity and the liberal arts, and gained the friendship of John Milton. Ardenne had afterwards served under the Great Gustavus. He is pushing onward to his father's seat in the north, heedless of the per suasions and alarms of mine host of the White Dragon, in Royston, who employs all a landlord's arts to induce this handsome, gallantly mounted, and most accomplished cavalier, to tarry under his roof over the night. But the noble cavalier, who is carefully elaborated at all points, from the plume dancing in his Spanish hat to the fetlocks of his Arabian courser, braves or scorns danger, and fares forth on a delicious autumnal evening to cross the bleak and barren hills which skirt the southern verge of Cambridgeshire. As the night fell into almost utter darkness the traveller was involved in the mazes of a scattered forest, in a path by the miry and entangled banks of the Cam. A violent thunderstorm succeeds the delicious evening; and Ardenne, to crown his difficulties, has a rencontre with a party of deer-stealers. He is bravely defending himself against the murderous crossbows and quarter-staves of these six or seven misbegotten knaves, when the tramp of advancing horsemen is heard. "What knaves be these ?" inquired a loud and dissonant voice, from the foremost of the new-comers, as the cavalier fell back toward his welcome rescuers,- "what knaves be these, that make this coil on the highway?" "Down with the thieving Girgashites!" shouted another of the riders, ere an answer could be rendered to the querist; and, at the word, he fired a petronel at random, its momentary flash displaying the marauders struggling as best they might, through a strong blackthorn fence, which parted the road from a wild tract of coppice, glade, and woodland. "More shame to thee, Giles Overton," cried the same voice which had first spoken, "and more sin likewise, to use the carnal weapon thus in causeless strife; setting the precious spirit of a being like to, or it may well be better than, thyself, upon the darkling venture of chance-medley; and bartering a human life against the slaughter of a valueless and soulless beast! Go to! Giles Overton, see that thou err not in the like sort again! But art thou hurt, good sir?" proceeded the speaker, turning in his saddle toward the traveller for whose safety he had come up so opportunely--" or have we, by the mercy of the Lord, who may in this if it be not presumptuous in me, considering how unprofitable I am, and the mean improvement of my talent, so to judge of his workings have vouchsafed to preserve thee for a chosen vessel, have we, I would say, come in season to protect thee from these sons of Ammon ?" "Thanks to your timely aid, fair sir," replied the cavalier, not a little astonished at the strange address of his preserver, for he had but recently returned to his native land after protracted absence, and, at the time of his departure, the language of puritanism was not yet in vogue; "I am uninjured; and now, I pray you to increase yet further this your kindness, by informing me the straightest road for Huntingdon; it cannot be, I do suppose, far distant." "Good lack- -a stranger-by your questioning," answered he who had been called Oliver. "Huntingdon do I know right well-ay! even as one knoweth the tabernacle of his abode, and the burial place of his fathers; but I profess to you that it is distant by full thirteen miles, and those of sorry road. But ride thou on with me to Bourne, some three miles further, and I will bestow thee at a house where thou mayst tarry until morn-the Fox tavern I would say-Phineas Goodenough, my glove hath fallen, I pray thee reach it to me a clean house truly, kept by a worthy manyea, verily a good man, one that dwelleth in the fear of the Lord alway." "A stranger am I, doubtless," returned the other, "else had I not inquired of thee that which then I had do aught better than to accept your proffer frankly as well known; and, of a truth, I know not now that I can it is made!" "Be it so !" was the ready answer. "Will it please you to ride somewhat briskly for myself, I am bound an hour's ride further, to worshipful master Pym's, nigh Caldecote." "Ha! Pym, the friend of Hampden and John Milton. I knew not he lived hereabout," exclaimed the cavalier. "And what knowest thou, so I may ask it," queried Oliver, "of Hampden or John Milton? Truly I took thee for a carnal-minded person, but, of a surety, it is not for a man to judge !" "For what it liketh your wisdom to mistake me, I know not; nor, to speak frankly, do I care greatly," replied the other; "but, to satisfy your question, of Hampden I know nothing, save that the mode of his reached my ears, even where the tongue of England resistance to that illegal claim of ship-money hath would have sounded strangely. John Milton, if it concerns you any thing to hear of him, was, and that too for many months, my chosen comrade of the road, and my most eloquent tutor in the classic lore of Italy!" "In Italy, saidst thou? In Italy, and with John Milton?" inquired Oliver, after a long meditative pause; and, as he continued, his voice had lost much of its harshness, and his manner not a little of its offensive peculiarity. "A better comrade couldst thou not have chosen than that pure-minded Christian-that most zealous patriot. Verily, I say to you," The result of this casual rencontre is, that Cromwell resolves to secure this brave young man to his party, and for this purpose to have him immediately returned as representative for his own native town of Huntingdon. On this subject he afterwards consults Milton, who, highly approving the design, yet counsels that Ardenne should be left unquestioned and unfettered, as the only conditions on which he was likely to accept of the invitation of the burghers of Huntingdon. On their accidental meeting, there had been something in the hard-featured and ill-dressed, ungainly stranger which fascinated Ardenne, "forcing him, as it were, despite his senses, to admit that he was in some wise remarkable, above, and at the same time, apart from ordinary mortals, and not unlike to one who might be indeed the mover of great changes in the estate of nations." But he cannot learn his name and rank from the landlord of the Fox, where Oliver bestows him for the night, holding on himself to his destination. This closes the opening chapter. And now we consult the tastes of that numerous class of readers, dear to our associations and sympathies, who care not much for history, and warmly relish a romance; and also do justice to our author by proving to every one's satisfaction that "Cromwell" is not all historical, nor yet political and "dry"— Two days had elapsed, and the third was already drawing towards its close, since the encounter of the cavalier with his saintly ally; for the sun, scarce elevated thrice the breadth of his own disk above the horizon, was now almost perceptibly declining in the west, though he still darted long pencilled rays of light athwart the landscape, from between the folds of gauzelike mist which veiled his splendours from the eye. One of the straggling beams had found its way into a nook, as sweet as ever poet sung, or fairy haunted. It was an angle in one of those broad green lanes, which form so beautiful a feature in the rural scenery of England. Carpeted with deep unfaded verdure, through which meandered a faint wheel-track; bordered by hedges so thick and tangled as to resemble natural coppices | well-nigh quenching the myriads of stars with her rather than artificial fences; embowered by the fragrant lustrous glory, that, rapt in the reflections which honeysuckle, and spangled with the dewy flowers of the such a spectacle begets in a lofty and poetical yet sweeter eglantine, that solitary nook might well have furnished forth a tiring-room for Shakspeare's wild mind, a man stood silently gazing on the night. He was Milton; and thus our author informs the dead clay Titania. Nor, though the days of Puck and Oberon were already numbered with the things that had been, did that lone bower lack its presiding genius; for on a trunk, cushioned with hoary lichens, and overlooking a crystal basin, formed by the rill which undermined its tortuous roots, and had, perchance, in bygone ages, caused its decay and ruin, there sat a female form, loveliest of the lovely. A beautiful white palfrey, with ribboned rein, and velvet housings, which stood unfettered at her side, awaiting, docile and gentle creature, the pleasure of his mistress, pawed, and tossed his head, till the silver bits rang audibly, and uttered once or twice a tremulous, impatient neigh, unheeded, at the least, if not unheard. A vagrant spaniel of the Blenheim 'breed, with soft dark eyes, and ears that almost swept the ground-one from a number that had followed the fair girl, and now dozed listlessly upon the grass around her--had been for some time rustling among the dewy bushes, and now sent forth a shrill and clamorous yelping, as pheasant after pheasant whirred up on noisy wings into the higher branches, whence they crowed, with outstretched necks, defiance to their powerless assailant. Still there was no sign in the demeanour of the lady to indicate that she had marked the sounds, harmonizing as they did with the spirit of the place and hour, and blending naturally with the low of the distant cattle, the cawing of the homeward rooks, and the continuous hum of the thousand insect tribes which were still disporting themselves in the September sunset, not the less merrily that their little glass of life had already run even to its latest sands. But anon a noise arose, which, in itself by no means inharmonious, was not so much attuned to the rural melodies around, but that it jarred discordantly on the ear. It was the clear and powerful voice of a man, venting his feelings as he rode along ;-for at times the tramp of a horse might be distinguished, when his hoof struck upon harder soil than common, mingling with the measured tones, as perhaps unconscious of his occupation, the rider recited aloud such passages from the high poets of the day, as were suggested to his memory by all that met his senses. As the words passed his lip, the horseman turned the last angle of the winding lane; and, for the first time discovering that the free outpourings of his spirit had found a listener, Edgar Ardenne-for the moralist was no other-paused in his sonnet and checked his steed, by a common impulse, and, as it seemed, a single movement. His eyes flashed joyfully, as they met the large and violet-coloured orbs which the fair girl had raised, at first in simple wonderment, but which now lightened with a gleamy radiance that he was not slow to construe into delighted recognition. "Sibyl-sweet Sibyl!""Edgar, can it indeed be you?—welcome, oh, welcome home!" We shall not tantalize the reader with this pretty scene. This accomplished pair are cousins, and need this be told?-betrothed lovers. But as to what was said and done on this joyful occasion we leave that to the young reader's leisure and curiosity. It is enough "Ardenne was for the moment happy, absolutely, and, if aught mortal may be called perfect, perfectly happy." He stood awhile in silence, though his lips moved at intervals, perusing the bright wanderers of heaven with a gaze so fixed and yearning, as though his spirit would have looked into the very tabernacle and abode of the Omnipotent. At length he spoke articulately, in a voice deep, slow, majestic, and melodious, but in the unconscious tones of one who meditates or prays aloud, without reference or respect to aught external. "Beautiful light!" he said, "beautiful lamp of heaven-what marvel, that the blinded and benighted heathen should ignorantly worship thee? What marvel, that a thousand altars, in a thousand ages, should have sent up their fumes of adoration unto thee, the mooned Ashtaroth, unto thee, the Ephesian Diana,-unto thee, the nightly visitant of the young-eyed Endymion ? What marvel, that to those who knew not, neither had they heard of the One, Uncreate, Invisible, Eternal, thou shouldst have seemed meet Deity to whom to bend the knee,-thou first-born offspring of his first-created gift? thou blessed emanation from his own ethereal glory-what wonder, when I, his humble follower, his ardent, though unworthy worshipper,-when I, an honest though an erring Christian, do strive in vain to wean my heart from love of thee; indoctrinating so my spirit, that I may kiss the rod with which, I am assured too well, HE soon will chasten me, in changing the fair light, that glorious essence in which my soul rejoiceth, for one black, everlasting, self-imparted midnight? Yet so it shall be. A few more revolutions of these puissant planets,—a few more mutations of the sweet-returning seasons-and to me there shall be no change again on earth for ever!-no choice between the fairest and the foulest!-no difference of night or day !-no charm in the rich gorgeousness of flowery summer, above the sere and mournful autumn!-no cheery aspect in the piled hearth of winter!-no sweet communion with the human eye compassionate!--no intercourse with the great intellects of old, dead, yet surviving still in their sublime and solid pages!" He paused for a space, as though he were too deeply moved to trust his thoughts to language; but, after a moment, drawing his hand across his eyes "But if it be so," he continued, "as I may not doubt it will-if his fiat be pronounced against me, of dark corporeal blindness-what duty yet remains?-what, but to labour that the blindness be not mental also ?—what, but to treasure up even now, during my brief-permitted time, such stores of hoarded wisdom, as may in part suffice, like to the summer-gathered riches of the industrious and thrifty bee, to nourish and to cheer me at the coming of my sunless season ?-what, but to profit, even as best I may, by those good opportunities which his great mercy hath vouchsafed to me; to sow the seed even now, during the fertile autumn, that by his blessing it may swell and germinate during the brumal darkness of the approaching winter, and in his good time give forth to light a crop improved and gloriously surpassing that from which it sprung ?-what, but to give thanks alway, whom it were no harder task to plunge the mind in and to praise the tender-heartedness and love of Him, to lunatic and senseless stupor, than to seal up the fount of light to the poor eye,-of Him who, giving all the thousand blessings I enjoy, judges it fitting to deprive me fructify, and bear good harvest to my use! Wherefore, but of one, haply that, from its single loss, others may oh! merciful and mighty one, be it unto me as thou willAnd now we take leave of Woodleigh, the beau-est, and thou only? And oh! above all things be it unto tiful seat of Sir Henry Ardenne, in the fair county me, as now, so alway, humbly to cry, and happily, 'Thy of Rutland, and its thrice-blest inmates, and turn will be done!"" to another scene. It was near London, where, on a lovely and tranquil evening while the hunters' moon rode brightly through a cloudless firmament, Even as the pious scholar brought his meditations to a close, the footsteps of one advancing, though still unseen, through the mazes of the shrubbery, were heard upon the crisp and crackling gravel, It was his grave-eyed servitor, Andrew, to announce Master Cromwell, Oliver St. John, and Hampden, who were ushered into "Master Milton's" library, which, among its other treasures, contained a splendid organ;" while, on a table lay scattered a violin, a guitar, a couple of foils and wire-masks, some written music, and a heavy broadsword. 66 of her monarch, already stretched beyond all limits of constitutional sway, into absolute and self-controlling tyranny. On the next, a tale was rife that Pym, the champion of the people's cause, and king of their affections, had been assailed, perhaps even murdered, by the hired emissaries of a sovereign, stern and cold by nature, and rendered merciless and cruel by the extremity of terror. Then came the one great accusation, swallowing up in its atrocity all lesser charges, all inferior crimes, as the sunshine drinks up and blots from Heaven the fainter lustre of the stars! The one great accusation at that time generally credited by men of every class, except, perhaps, a few of the most confiding and most generous cavaliers, and since those days confirmed almost beyond the possibility of doubt, that the Irish rebellion, with Each guest is minutely described. The conversation turns upon a new ally whom Cromwell sought, the Irish Rebellion, and the massacre of the Protestants, which, at that time, filled and horrified every mind in England. The "ally" sought is Edgar Ardenne, whom, as an enlight-all its horrible features of midnight massacre, and midened patriot and lover of constitutional liberty, the aspect of public affairs is grieving and perplexing more and more, and rendering unhappy, even while basking in the smiles of his beautiful betrothed, and in the enjoyment of restoration to his paternal home. His father was a devoted, nay, a fanatical royalist; and his fair cousin shared in these ancestral prejudices and feelings; while Edgar's expanded intellect, and the strong convictions of every passing day, were, with the force of reason and truth, silently drawing him over to the national party, to the assertors of constitutional freedom; the party which his father, a fiery cavalier of the Peveril type, detested and despised. While the younger Ardenne is secretly suffering under that peculiar position in which duty and affection point different ways, a grand stag-hunt takes place at Woodleigh, at which all the young royalists of the county attend, and which is painted in vivid tints, rendered the brighter from the contrast of a sentimental scene, in which Sibyl tenderly, and with womanly art, strives to learn the source of her lover's hidden dejection, and fondly seeks to share his grief. She conjures him to reveal his sorrows, to trust in her love. But they are called away to join the sportsmen; and it is soon found that Edgar had forsaken the gallant chase. He had left the field at the hottest, and, as was reported to his father, in company with a sourlooking knave with a cropped head, who had summoned him away. "St George! and with a puritan!" cried one of the young Outrams, a hare-brained, light-hearted cavalier "A rascally, starved roundhead!" "He must be strangely altered then, I trow," muttered the aged huntsman-who, perhaps, had taught him when a boy to ride so well-"an he be gone home with a musty beggar; the hounds running breast-high too, over the vale of Bardsey!" "Tush! tell me not; he is too true an Ardenne," cried his father almost angrily, "that he should e'er consort with base and brutal fanatics-Heaven's curse upon them!" day conflagration, was the premeditated, coolly-calcnlated work of Charles and Henrietta-the one great persons, with mingled sentiments of pity, horror, hatred, accusation, penetrating every breast, in every rank of and disgust; embittering still more against him the foes of the misguided sovereign, and alienating from his side many of those devoted and enthusiastic spirits, that never would have swerved from their allegiance, so long as they had sense or being, had he ever shown himself in the most trivial circumstances constant, not to his faithful servants, but to his own true interests, or even to himself. The threatening aspect of affairs in Scotland, and the insensate attempts of the king to carry matters with the high hand of prerogative, had well-nigh proceeded to the last fatal extremity, when Ardenne was about to quit Woodleigh to take his seat in the House of Commons as the independent and untrammelled member for Cromwell's borough of Huntingdon. His father had finally become reconciled to Edgar representing that puritanical town, from the idea that he was to employ the power and influence which he had, unsolicited and unpledged, obtained from the Roundheads, to serve the king; and the doughty and frank cavalier mightily enjoyed the notion of "hoisting the knave engineers with their own petard." But the kindhearted old knight was also deeply affected at witnessing the gloom and distress of his son, which he naturally imputed to leaving Sibyl; and he frankly proposed their speedy union, to which there was, as he apprehended, no obstacle whatever. He and his niece, he proposed, should follow Edgar to London as soon as a fit house had been provided for them; Sibyl would appear at the court of Henrietta Marie; and the marriage, which was to crown the happiness of the whole family, would immediately take place. So much are people in these degenerate times accustomed to see young Tories marrying into Whig families, and even more frequently young Whigs marrying the daughters of Tories, that we confess modern observers may not be able to appreciate the mighty obstacles which the royalist predilections of Sibyl opposed to her union with her betrothed cousin, although he was a "gentleman of This puritan was the messenger who brought what proved Ardenne's passport into public life. His entrance upon the political arena was criti-liberal opinions ;" but in the age of Cromwell, either cally timed All England was in confusion and dismay-and both these hourly increasing till the one half of the world was well nigh maddened by its fears, the other by the excitement of its own fierce and stormy passions. To-day a rumour was abroad of mighty armaments levied beyond the sea, and even now preparing to pollute with foreign weapons the free soil of England, and to erect the power ladies were less tolerant, or lovers that "proposed" were more plentiful; and, at all events, this political and high-minded obstruction in the course of true love could not be dispensed with by the author, as the reader's interest in the hero and heroinewho is besides the only female character in this severe romance-hinges entirely upon these scruples, |