And now to Parliament affairs again,-to the catastrophe now nigh.

On the whole, we have to say of this Little Parliament, that it sat for five months and odd days, very earnestly striving; earnestly, nobly,—and by no means unwisely, as the ignorant Histories teach. But the farther it advanced towards real Christianism in human affairs, the louder grew the shrieks of ShamChristianism everywhere profitably lodged there; and prudent persons, responsible for the issue, discovered that of a truth, for one reason or another, for reasor.s evident and for reasons not evident, there could be no success according to that method. We said, the History of this Little Parliament lay all buried very deep in the torpors of Human Stupidity, and was not likely ever to be brought into daylight in this world. In their five months time they passed various good Acts; chose, with good insight, a new Council of State; took wise charge of the needful Supplies; did all the routine business of a Parliament in a quite unexceptionable, or even in a superior manner. Concerning their Council of State, I find this Note; which, though the Council had soon to alter itself, and take new figures, may be worth appending here.*

Routine business done altogether well by this Little Parlia

this endorsement: The Generell Cromwells letter about Spelderst living;' and this Note appended: In an old Bible I had from England with other Books, March, 1726.' Some Transatlantic Puritan, to all appearance.

- Council of State elected,-Tuesday 1st November, 1653 (Commons Journals, vii., 344). The Election is by ballot, 113 Members présent; 'Colonel Montague' (Sandwich), 'Colonel Cromwell' (Henry), and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,' are three of the Four Scrutineers. Among the Names reported as chosen, here are some, with the Numbers voting for them: Lord General Cromwell (113, one and all); Sir Gilbert Pickering (Poet Dryden's Uncle,-110); Desborow (74); Harrison (58); Mayor (of Hursley,—57); Colonel Montague (59); Ashley Cooper (60); Lord Viscount Lisle (Algernon Sidney's Brother,-58); Colonel Norton, idle Dick, recovered from the Pride's Purge again, but liable to relapse again,-57). The Council is of Thirty-one; Sixteen of the Old or Interim Council (above referred to in Cromwell's Speech) are to continue; Fifteen new: these mentioned here are all among the Old, whom the Lord General and his Officers had already numinated.

ment. But, alas, they had decided on abolishing Tithes, on supporting a Christian Ministry by some other method than Tithes; -nay far worse, they had decided on abolishing the Court of Chancery! Finding grievances greater than could be borne; finding, for one thing, 'Twenty-three thousand Causes of from five to thirty years continuance' lying undetermined in Chancery, it seemed to the Little Parliament that some Court ought to be contrivea which would actually determine these and the like Causes;-and that, on the whole, Chancery would be better for abolition. Vote to that effect stands registered in the Commons Journals ;* but still, for near two hundred years now, only expects fulfilment.-So far as one can discover in the huge twilight of Dryasdust, it was mainly by this attack on the Lawyers, and attempt to abolish Chancery, that the Little Parliament perished. Tithes helped, no doubt; and the clamors of a safely settled Ministry, Presbyterian-Royalist many of them. But the Lawyers exclaimed: "Chancery? Law of the Bible? Do you mean to bring-in the Mosaic Dispensation, then; and deprive men of their properties? Deprive men of their properties; and us of our learned wigs and lucrative longwindedness,-with your search for Simple Justice,' and 'God's Law' instead of Learned-Sergeant's Law?"-There was immense 'carousing in the Temple' when this Parliament ended; as great tremors had been in the like quarters while it continued.†

6

But in brief, on Friday, the 2d of December, 1653, there came a Report from the Tithes-Committee,' recommending that Ministers of an incompetent, simoniacal, loose, or otherwise scar. dalous nature, plainly unfit to preach any Gospel to immortal creatures, should have a Travelling Commission of chosen Puritan Persons appointed, to travel into all Counties, and straightway inspect them, and eject them, and clear Christ's Church of them: -whereupon there ensued high debatings: Accept the Report, or not accept it? High debatings, for the space of ten days; with Parliamentary manoeuvrings, not necessary to specify here.

* vii., 296; 5 August, 1653.

† Exact Relation of the Transactions of the late Parliament, by a Mem. Der of the same (London, 1654): reprinted in Somers Tracts, vi., 266-84.

Which rose ever higher; and on Saturday, the 10th, had got so high that, as I am credibly informed, certain leading persons went about colleaguing and consulting, instead of attending Public Worship on the Lord's Day;-and so, on Monday morning early, while the extreme Gospel Party had not yet assembled in the House, it was surreptitiously moved and carried, old Speaker Rouse somewhat treacherously assenting to it, That the sitting of this Parliament any longer, as now constituted, will not be for the good of the Commonwealth; and that therefore it is requisite to deliver up unto the Lord General Cromwell the Powers which we received from him!' Whereupon, adds the same Rhadamantine Record,' the House rose; and the Speaker, with many of the members of the House, departed out of the House to Whitehall: where they, being the greater number of the Members sitting in Parliament, did, by a Writing,' hastily redacted in the waiting-room there, and signed on separate bits of paper hastily wafered together, 'resign unto his Excellency their said Powers. And Mr. Speaker, attended by the Members, did present the same unto his Excellency accordingly,'—and retired into private life again.*

The Lord General Cromwell testified much emotion and surprise at this result;-emotion and surprise which Dryasdust knows well how to interpret. In fact the Lord General is responsible to England and Heaven for this result; and it is one of some moment! He and the established Council of State, 'Council of Officers and' non-established 'Persons of Interest in the Nation,' must consider what they will now do!

Clearly enough to them, and to us, there can only one thing be done; search be made, Whether there is any King, Könning, Can-ning, or Supremely Able-Man that you can fall in with, to take charge of these conflicting and colliding elements, drifting towards swift wreck otherwise ;—any' Parish Constable,' as Oliver himself defines it, to bid good men keep the peace to one another. To your unspeakable good-luck, such Supremely AbleMan, King, Constable, or by whatever name you will call him, * Commons Journals, vii., 363; Exact Relation, ubi supra; Whitlocke, 5p.51, &c.

is already found,-known to all persons for years past; your Puritan Interest is not yet necessarily a wreck; but may still float, and do what farther is in it, while he can float!

From Monday onwards, the excitement of the public mind in old London and whithersoever the news went, in those winter days, must have been great. The Lord General called a Council of Officers and other Persons of Interest in the Nation,' as we said; and there was much seeking of God by prayer,' and abstruse advising of this matter,—the matter being really great and to some of us even awful! The dialogues, conferences, and abstruse advisings are all lost; the result we know for certain. Monday was 12th of December; on Friday, 16th, the result became manifest to all the world: That the ablest of Englishmen, Oliver Cromwell, was henceforth to be recognized for Supremely Able; and that the Title of him was to be LORD PROTECTOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND, with 'Instrument of Government,' 'Council of Fifteen or of Twenty-one,' and other necessary less important circumstances, of the like conceivable nature.

The Instrument of Government, a carefully constitutional piece in Forty-two Articles: the Ceremony of Installation, transacted with due simplicity and much modest dignity, 'in the Chancery Court in Westminster Hall,' that Friday afternoon ;— the chair of state, the Judges in their robes, Lord Mayors with caps of maintenance; the state-coaches, outriders, outrunners, and 'great shoutings of the people;' the procession from and to Whitehall, and Mr. Lockier the Chaplain's Exhortation' to us there these, with the inevitable adjuncts of the case, shall be conceived by ingenious readers, or read in innumerable Pamphlets and Books,* and omitted here. His Highness was in a rich but plain suit; black velvet, with cloak of the same: about his hat a broad band of gold.' Does the reader see him? A rather likely figure, I think. Stands some five feet ten or more; a man of strong solid stature, and dignified, now partly military carriage the expression of him valor and devout intelligence,-energy and delicacy on a basis of simplicity. Fifty-four years

Whitlocke, pp. 552-61; Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 131, in Par liamentary History, xx.); &c., &c

old, gone April last; brown hair and moustache are getting grey. A figure of sufficient impressiveness ;-not lovely to the man-milliner species, nor pretending to be so. Massive stature; big massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect ;-wart above the right eyebrow; nose of considerable blunt-aquiline proportions; strict yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if need were, of all fiercenesses and rigors; deep loving eyes, call them grave, call them stern, looking from under those craggy brows as if in lifelong sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, thinking it only labor and endeavor: on the whole, a right noble lion-face and hero-face; and to me royal enough.* The reader, in his mind, shall conceive this event and its figures.

Conceived too, or read elsewhere than here, shall Dryasdust's multifarious unmelodious commentaries be, and likewise AntiDryasdust's; the two together cancelling one another; and amounting, pretty well by this time, to zero for us. 'Love of power,' as flunkeys love it, remains the one credibility for Dryasdust; and will for ever remain. To the valet-soul how will you demonstrate that, in this world, there is or was anything heroic? You cannot do it; you need not try to do it.—I cite with some reluctance from a Manuscript Author, often enough referred to here, the following detached sentences, and so close this Seventh Part.

'Dryasdust knows not the value of a King,' exclaims he; 'the bewildered mortal has forgotten it. Finding King's-cloaks so cheap, hung out on every hedge, and paltry as beggars' gabardines, he says, "What use is in a King? This King's-cloak,

if this be your King, is naught!"—

'Power? Love of power? Does "power mean the faculty of giving places, of having newspaper paragraphs, of being waited on by sycophants? To ride in gilt coaches, escorted by the flunkeyisms and most sweet voices, I assure thee, it is *not the Heaven of all, but only of many! Some born Kings J myself have known, of stout natural limbs, who, in shoes of moderately good fit, found quiet walking handier; and crowned

* Maidston's Letter to Winthrop, in Thurloe, i., 763-8; Cooper's Partraits; Mask of Cromwell's Face (in the Statuaries' Shops).