Col.-O, what a sacred name dost thou pronounce ! Bru.-Ah! then resolve to live; coöperate With me in this attempt. A god inspires me ; Who thus exhorts me: "It belongs to thee, Col.-Worthy of Brutus is thy lofty hope: Or from the impious Tarquins wholly rescued, Bau.-Whether enslaved or free, we now shall fall Illustrious and revenged. My horrible oath The dagger I dislodged which still I grasp. Deaf from thy mighty grief, thou, in thy house, Scarce heardest it; here once more wilt thou hear it, By my own lips, upon the inanimate corse Of thy unhappy immolated wife, And in the presence of assembled Rome, Of the impious catastrophe; the effect Will be far stronger on their heated hearts, When they behold the chaste and beauteous lady With her own hands destroyed. In their disdain, As much as in my own, shall I confide. But, more than every man, thou shouldst be present: Thou mayst avert: to thy affliction this May be allowed; yet here shouldst thou remain; E'en more than my impassioned words, thy mute And boundless grief is fitted to excite The oppressed spectators to indignant pity. Col.-O Brutus! the divinity which speaks In thee to lofty and ferocious rage Hath changed my grief already. The last words Bru.-Ah! I, too, spring From their impure and arbitrary blood: Numbers advance; now it is time to speak. The reader has doubtless seen in this passage one of the secrets of Alfieri's success-namely, his skill in arresting the attention of the audience at the opening of his dramas; it may be added that he also does his best to secure that attention to the last, and that he generally succeeds in doing so. Yet, no one uses a simpler groundwork or fewer in cidents. He introduces no characters but those that are essential to the development of his plot. The confidants of other Italian dramatists he entirely discards; and for the purpose of explaining the nature of his fable he substitutes soliloquies for under-plots. Thus we see how closely he approached the form of the Greek drama without knowing anything about it except what he learned unconsciously through the French; but he omitted one great attraction of the Greek drama, namely, its delightful choral songs. In this. too, he imitated the French; for one of the most serious faults which they find with Shakespeare is that he introduces songs and amusing scenes into the middle of his most bloody tragedies. It is worthy of remark that in nothing does Alfieri succeed better than in the horrible and repulsive. This is well exemplified in his tragedy of Myrrha, whose hideous story forms the subject of one of Ovid's Metamorphoses, but which is so objectionable, although not at all exaggerated by the Roman poet, that it is omitted in almost every edition intended for schools.* Myrrha was the daughter of Cinyras, King of Cyprus; she had a son by her own father, called Adonis. When the king became aware of the crime he had unknowingly committed, he attempted to stab Even the amorous and somewaat licentious Ovid was rather afraid of the subject. In order to disarm the abhorrence of the reader, he introduces the loathsome story as a fable, one in which he has no faith in himself, and expresses the hope that the melody of his verses will remove any disagreeable impressions which so repulsive a tale is so well calculated to make : "Dira canam; procul hinc natæ, procul este parentes; lessons which they teach more indelibly on the mind. Perversely erratic as the author was as a man, much injury as he did to society in his time, yet it cannot be denied that his works entitle him to be ranked among the benefactors of mankind. ART. II.-1. Review of the Memoirs of the Protectorae House of Cromwell. By WILLIAM RICHARDS. London. 2. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. THOMAS CARLYLE. London. 3. History of the Puritans. NEAL. 4. State Papers. CLARENDON. 5. History of the Long Parliament. MAY. In general, the character of Oliver Cromwell has been greatly maligned. Indeed, it has only been within the last fifty years that anything approaching to justice has been done him. It is true that at periods during his protectorate he disturbed what we should now call the constitutional system of the State. With an inflexible and iron hand he bent and modelled it to his own will. But by this very fault, as a constitutional ruler, he saved his country from falling into many of those errors which might have proved fatal to its newly-acquired freedom. Moreover, it must be remembered that after the brief interval of the protectorate of his son, Richard Cromwell, Charles II succeeded him in the government of England. Under the new reign the courtiers of this monarch, who had been so unexpectedly restored to the kingdom forfeited by his father, united in blackening his memory. When he was in his grave, impotent and silent, unable to defend his memory or justify his actions-for who was there that would have dared to cast such a reproach upon the living lion ?-he was both branded as a traitor and condemned as a hypocrite. Until the progress of time and enlightenment had partially impaired and chastened its influence, this censure had We do not agree with the author of this paper in his estimate of Cromwell, but as it is well written and we wish to allow our contributors full liberty of thought and expression, as long as they avoid giving offence to religion or morality, we do not hesitate to give it a place -ED. in a great measure proved fatal to that calm study and earnest research which alone would prove capable of forming a correct estimate of Cromwell's character. Some authors there have been who have cast an unqualified degree of blame, not alone upon his actions, but as unreservedly upon the motives which swayed the man towards them. By these history has been tampered with, or rather perverted. Its facts have been distorted or counted as nothing. Others are there who, not content with justifying his principles, have applauded even those faults of temper and errors of judgment which may be traced in him as they are to be detected in the careers of all men. Those actions which have been condemned by the former as criminal have found in the latter, not merely pitiful apologists, but conscientious defenders. While, perhaps, these may have gone too far in attempting to absolve his memory from every censure, the others have certainly been more than guilty in treating the character of one who stood in all respects so infinitely in advance of his own times with a gross and palpable injustice. Amongst others of his relatives he had a nephew who was called Richard Cromwell; and Richard Cromwell was at this time by no means greatly overburdened with the possession of worldly goods. In most respects he might, indeed, be regarded in the light of a family retainer by his illustrious relative. This nephew was an active and energetic individual. He was possessed of fine talents, and was far from being too scrupulous as to the use he might be required to put them to. Consequently, he was employed by the Earl, under himself, in the task which he had undertaken. For this he proved himself most eminently fitted, and displayed an abundant and not altogether disinterested zeal in the work which was demanded of him. Neither was this zeal inadequately rewarded by the rapid increase of his fortune. The unreserved sale of the church property and the division of the ecclesiastical benefices were among the causes which led to the formation of, and gradually enriched, the middle classes of England. They could not, therefore, fail of enriching those who were charged with the superintendence of their sale and distribution. Knighted by Henry VIII for his services, Richard Cromwell shortly after died, leaving a son named Henry, who-probably on account of his wealth, which, for a commoner, was very great-received the name of the "Golden Knight" from his contemporaries. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, five sons of Henry Cromwell were living. These were Oliver, Henry, Richard, Philip, and Robert. Robert Cromwell had married Elizabeth Steward, descended from a distant branch of the royal family of Scotland, who had settled in England during the reign of one of the Edwards. His son was Oliver Cromwell. We have been thus particular in recording the circumstances of his birth and family for the purpose of bestowing no factitious importance upon a name which does not demand it. Our object has simply been to corroborate that which we have already said touching the aspersions made against his character. He himself, in a speech made in Parliament on the 12th of September, 1654, said: "I was by birth a gentleman, neither living in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity." If, after this avowal and with the knowledge of the facts previously stated, the defeated Cavaliers and the historians of their defeat could call him the "son of a brewer," it is obvious that but little reliance can be placed upon anything they say, either of his mental or moral nature. Related by personal descent to the powerful Minister of Henry VIII, there are indeed still two letters extant, from Oliver's great-grandfather to the Earl, in which he signs himself as "Your most bounden nephew, Richard Cromwell." This fact would alone, as it appears to us, be sufficient to prove the paucity of materials to be advanced against him. Lies are rarely employed when the truth is found sufficient to justify an aspersion. Besides this, it is known that his father's property lay in the immediate neighborhood of Huntingdon, while the revenue accruing from it amounted to £300 a year. This, which is equivalent to at least £1,000 or £1,100 of the money of the present day, must have placed him beyond the necessity of following a trade; and this it must more especially have done, when it is remembered that in those days it would have been considered a degradation to his family. Of the early years of the child who was afterwards to exert so vast an influence over the internal condition and external politics of England, but little, with any certainty, is known. It is indeed stated that when no more than four years of age, at the period when the old Queen died and James I was called to the inheritance of the English crown, he was staying with his uncle, Sir Oliver, at Hinchinbrook, on the banks of the Ouse, when a royal train |