army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat.  England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it rose, who kissed the hand of the King in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who dined on calves’ heads or stuck-up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance.  These we leave out of the account.  We take our estimate of parties from those who really deserved to be called partisans.

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced.  The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface.  He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out.  For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision.  They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious.  They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection.  They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists.  The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers.  But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt.  And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so many excellent writers.

“Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio
Che mortali perigli in so contiene: 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio,
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene.”

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics.  Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars.  We regret that these badges were not more attractive.