[Footnote 1:  Clar. 646.  Bulstrode, 207.  Heath, 408.  Noble, i. 147, note.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1658.  Sept. 2.]

and pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are thy people too."[1]

Early in the following morning,[a] he relapsed into a state of insensibility.  It was his fortunate day, the 3rd of September, a circumstance from which his sorrowing relatives derived a new source of consolation.  It was, they observed, on the 3rd of September that he overcame the Scots at Dunbar; on that day, he also overcame the royalists at Worcester; and on the same day, he was destined to overcome his spiritual enemies, and to receive the crown of victory in heaven.  About four in the afternoon he breathed his last, amidst the tears and lamentations of his attendants.  “Cease to weep,” exclaimed the fanatical Sterry, “you have more reason to rejoice.  He was your protector here; he will prove a still more powerful protector, now that he is with Christ at the right hand of the Father.”  With a similar confidence in Cromwell’s sanctity, though in a somewhat lower tone of enthusiasm, the grave and cautious Thurloe announced the event by letter to the deputy of Ireland.  “He is gone to heaven, embalmed with the tears of his people, and upon the wings of the prayers of the saints."[2]

Till the commencement of the present century, when that wonderful man arose, who, by the splendour of his victories and the extent of his empire, cast all preceding adventurers into the shade, the name of Cromwell stood without a parallel in the history of civilized Europe.  Men looked with a feeling of awe on the

[Footnote 1:  Collection of Passages concerning his late Highness in Time of his Sickness, p. 12.  The author was Underwood, groom of the bed-chamber.  See also a letter of H. Cromwell, Thurloe, vii. 454; Ludlow, ii. 153.]

[Footnote 2:  Ludlow, ii. 153.  Thurloe, vii. 373.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1658.  Sept. 3.]

fortunate individual who, without the aid of birth, or wealth, or connections, was able to seize the government of three powerful kingdoms, and to impose the yoke of servitude on the necks of the very men who had fought in his company to emancipate themselves from the less arbitrary sway of their hereditary sovereign.  That he who accomplished this was no ordinary personage, all must admit; and yet, on close investigation, we shall discover little that was sublime or dazzling in his character.  Cromwell was not the meteor which surprises and astounds by the rapidity and brilliancy of its course.  Cool, cautious, calculating, he stole on with slow and measured pace; and, while with secret pleasure he toiled up the ascent to greatness, laboured to persuade the spectators that he was reluctantly borne forward by an exterior and resistless force, by the march of events, the necessities of the state, the will of the army, and even the decree of the Almighty.