In the general spirit and character of his administration, we think Cromwell far superior to Napoleon.  “In the civil government,” says Mr. Hallam, “there can be no adequate parallel between one who had sucked only the dregs of a besotted fanaticism, and one to whom the stores of reason and philosophy were open.”  These expressions, it seems to us, convey the highest eulogium on our great countryman.  Reason and philosophy did not teach the conqueror of Europe to command his passions, or to pursue, as a first object, the happiness of his people.  They did not prevent him from risking his fame and his power in a frantic contest against the principles of human nature and the laws of the physical world, against the rage of the winter and the liberty of the sea.  They did not exempt him from the influence of that most pernicious of superstitions, a presumptuous fatalism.  They did not preserve hint from the inebriation of prosperity, or restrain him from indecent querulousness in adversity.  On the other hand, the fanaticism of Cromwell never urged him on impracticable undertakings, or confused his perception of the public good.  Our countryman, inferior to Bonaparte in invention, was far superior to him in wisdom.  The French Emperor is among conquerors what Voltaire is among writers, a miraculous child.  His splendid genius was frequently clouded by fits of humour as absurdly perverse as those of the pet of the nursery, who quarrels with his food, and dashes his playthings to pieces.  Cromwell was emphatically a man.  He possessed, in an eminent degree, that masculine and full-grown robustness of mind, that equally diffused intellectual health, which, if our national partiality does not mislead us, has peculiarly characterised the great men of England.  Never was any ruler so conspicuously born for sovereignty.  The cup which has intoxicated almost all others, sobered him.  His spirit, restless from its own buoyancy in a lower sphere, reposed in majestic placidity as soon as it had reached the level congenial to it.  He had nothing in common with that large class of men who distinguish themselves in subordinate posts, and whose incapacity becomes obvious as soon as the public voice summons them to take the lead.  Rapidly as his fortunes grew, his mind expanded more rapidly still.  Insignificant as a private citizen, he was a great general; he was a still greater prince.  Napoleon had a theatrical manner, in which the coarseness of a revolutionary guard-room was blended with the ceremony of the old Court of Versailles.  Cromwell, by the confession even of his enemies, exhibited in his demeanour the simple and natural nobleness of a man neither ashamed of his origin nor vain of his elevation, of a man who had found his proper place in society, and who felt secure that he was competent to fill it.  Easy, even to familiarity, where his own dignity was concerned, he was punctilious only for his country.  His own character he left to take care of itself; he left it to be defended by his victories in war, and his reforms in peace.  But he was a jealous and implacable guardian of the public honour.  He suffered a crazy Quaker to insult him in the gallery of Whitehall, and revenged himself only by liberating him and giving him a dinner.  But he was prepared to risk the chances of war to avenge the blood of a private Englishman.