truly, were they wanting to their duty; but, as was their custom in other things, in this matter also they displayed prudence and diligence.  But we have been so exercised at home by the perfidy of wicked citizens, who, though several times received back into trust, do not yet cease to form new conspiracies, and to repeat their already often shattered and routed plots with the exiles, and even with the Spanish enemy, that, occupied in beating off our own dangers, we have not hitherto been able, as was our wish, to turn our whole attention and entire strength to the guardianship of the common cause of Religion.  What was possible, however, to the full extent of our power, we have already studiously performed; and, whatever for the future in this direction shall seem to conduce to your Majesty’s interests, we shall not desist not only to desire, but also to co-operate with you with all our strength in accomplishing where they may be opportunity.  Meanwhile we congratulate, and heartily rejoice in, your Majesty’s most prudent and most valiant actions, and desire with assiduous prayers that God may will, for the glory of his own Deity, that the same course of prosperity and victory may be a very long one.”—­So far as Milton’s state-letters show, this is the last of the relations between Oliver Cromwell and Karl-Gustav of Sweden.  But, in Thurloe and elsewhere, there are farther traces of the great Swede in connexion with Cromwell, and of the interest which the two kindred souls felt in each other.  Passing over some weeks of still uncertain movement of the Swede hither and thither in his complications with Austria, Poland, Denmark, Muscovy, Brandenburg, and the Dutch, we may note the sudden surprise of all Europe when, early in August, he tore up his brief Peace with Denmark, re-invaded Zealand, and marched straight upon Copenhagen.  His reasons for this extraordinary act he thought it right to explain to Cromwell in a long letter dated from his quarters near Copenhagen, August 18, 1658.  The letter can have reached Cromwell only on his death-bed; and, on the whole, Cromwell had to leave the world with the consciousness that the League of Protestant Powers for which he had prayed and struggled was apparently as far off as ever.  The election to the vacant Emperorship had already taken place at last, July 8, 1658, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and it was the Austrian Leopold, King of Hungary, and not the French Louis XIV., after all, that had been proclaimed and saluted Imperator Romanorum.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Thurloe, VII., at various points from the beginning, but especially pp. 338, 342, and 257.  Foreign dates in Thurloe have to be rectified.]