2-766

ESSAYS

ON

HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, AND THEOLOGY.

BY

ROBERT VAUGHAN, D.D.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

JACKSON AND WALFORD,

ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.

OLIVER CROMWELL.*

(February, 1846.)

MR. CARLYLE has no wish to be numbered with the LittleFaiths of his generation. Self-distrust is not his besetting infirmity. He believes religiously in his power to do the thing he wills to do. He would not be understood as giving ready harbour-room to fear about anything relating to the guidance of his own ways. Nor would he have you suppose that the fears of others on his account are at all a matter in his thoughts. His eyes are open, his path is before him, and no man's foresight can serve him in so good a stead as his own. There is something imposing about a man who takes this attitude, or who even seems to take it—provided always that the absence of ability be not such as to identify such out-spoken self-reliance with the ridiculous. Unhappily, in this disjointed world, the selfreliant are not always the self-sustained, and the absence of fear is not always the same thing with the absence of danger. Hence, we must confess, that when we saw it announced that Mr. Carlyle was about to publish a Life of Cromwell, or something to that effect, we could not suppress our misgiving. We could imagine, indeed, the wonder, or the contempt with which all such want of confidence on our part would be regarded. Nevertheless -there it was, a feeling of that sort would obtrude itself.

* Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches; with Elucidations. By THOMAS CARLYLE. In two volumes 8vo, pp. 522, 692. Chapman and Hall. 1845.