Scotland to his parliaments.  He adopted a generous policy with the colonies in North America, and freed them from rapacious governors.  His war policy was not for mere aggrandizement.  He succeeded Gustavus Adolphus as the protector of Protestantism on the Continent.  He sought to make England respected among all the nations; and, as righteousness exalts a nation, he sought to maintain public morality.  His court was simple and decorous; he gave no countenance to levities and follies, and his own private life was pure and religious,—­so that there was general admiration of his conduct as well as of his government.

Cromwell was certainly very fortunate in his regime.  The army and navy did wonders; Blake and Monk gained great victories; Gibraltar was taken,—­one of the richest prizes that England ever gained in war.  The fleets of Spain were destroyed; the trade of the Indies was opened to his ships.  He maintained the “balance of power.”  He punished the African pirates of the Mediterranean.  His glory reached Asia, and extended to America.  So great was his renown that the descendants of Abraham, even on the distant plains of Asia, inquired of one another if he were not the servant of the King of Kings, whom they were looking for.  A learned Rabbi even came from Asia to London for the purpose of investigating his pedigree, thinking to discover in him the “Lion of the tribe of Judah.”  If his policy had been followed out by his successors, Louis XIV. would not have dared to revoke the Edict of Nantes; if he had reigned ten years longer, there would have been no revival of Romanism.  I suppose England never had so enlightened a monarch.  He was more like Charlemagne than Richelieu.  Contrast him with Louis XIV., a contemporaneous despot:  Cromwell devoted all his energies to develop the resources of his country, while Louis did what he could to waste them; Cromwell’s reign was favorable to the development of individual genius, but Louis was such an intolerable egotist that at the close of his reign all the great lights had disappeared; Cromwell was tolerant, Louis was persecuting; Cromwell laid the foundation of an indefinite expansion, Louis sowed the seeds of discontent and revolution.  Both indeed took the sword,—­the one to dethrone the Stuarts, the other to exterminate the Protestants.  Cromwell bequeathed to successors the moral force of personal virtue, Louis paved the way for the most disgraceful excesses; Cromwell spent his leisure hours with his family and with divines, Louis with his favorites and mistresses; Cromwell would listen to expostulations, Louis crushed all who differed from him.  The career of the former was a progressive rise, that of the latter a progressive fall.  The ultimate influence of Cromwell’s policy was to develop the greatness of England; that of Louis, to cut the sinews of national wealth, and poison those sources of renovation which still remained.  The memory of Cromwell is dear to good men in spite of his defects;