or a spy, no matter how previously obscure, he sent for him forthwith, and employed him in the way in which he could be made most useful, and answer best the purpose of his employer.  Upon this most admirable system (a system in which, unhappily, he has had but few imitators among modern statesmen,) depended in a great degree his success.  His devotion has been sneered at; but it has never been proved to have been insincere.  With how much more show of justice may we consider it to have been founded upon a solid and upright basis, when we recollect that his whole outward deportment spoke its truth!  Those who decry him as a fanatic, ought to bethink themselves that religion was the chivalry of the age in which he lived.  Had Cromwell been born a few centuries earlier, he would have headed the crusades, with as much bravery, and far better results than our noble-hearted, but wrong-headed Coeur de Lion.  It was no great compliment that was passed on him by the French minister, when he called the protector “the first captain of the age.”  His courage and conduct in the field were undoubtedly admirable:  he had a dignity of soul which the greatest dangers and difficulties rather animated than discouraged, and his discipline and government of the army, in all respects, was the wonder of the world.  It was no diminution of this part of his character, that he was wary in his conduct, and that, after he was declared protector, he wore a coat of mail concealed beneath his dress.  Less caution than he made use of, in the place he held, and surrounded as he was by secret and open enemies, would have deserved the name of negligence.  As to his political sincerity, which many think had nothing to do with his religious opinions, he was, to the full, as honest as the first or second Charles.  Of a truth, that same sincerity, it would appear, is no kingly virtue!  Cromwell loved justice as he loved his own life, and wherever he was compelled to be arbitrary, it was only where his authority was controverted, which, as things then were, it was not only right to establish for his own sake, but for the peace and security of the country over whose proud destinies he had been called to govern.  “The dignity of the crown,” to quote his own words, “was upon the account of the nation, of which the king was only the representative head, and therefore, the nation being still the same, he would have the same respect paid to his ministers as if he had been a king.”  England ought to write the name of Cromwell in letters of gold, when she remembers that, within a space of four or five years, he avenged all the insults that had been lavishly flung upon her by every country in Europe throughout a long, disastrous, and most perplexing civil war.  Gloriously did he retrieve the credit that had been mouldering and decaying during two weak and discreditable reigns of nearly fifty years’ continuance—­gloriously did he establish and extend his country’s authority and influence in remote nations—­gloriously