Engraved by HAdlard from an original Painting in the Authors Possession. OCromwell (Fac-simile of his Signature and Seal to the Warrant for Beheading Charles 1: Published by John Warren Old Bond Street. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.. To complete a dispassionate review of the Character and Actions of Cromwell, and the more striking features of his Times, and that in a form neither too bulky nor expensive for general use, was the Author's aim in the following sheets. He judged the period arrived, at which his views, as the Biographer of "our Chief of Men"* in the seventeenth century, might be supposed divested of the partialities incident to a too close inspection of his subjectmatter;—that the moment was fully come, at which the Historian might avail him * Cromwell so styled by Milton. self of the valuable labours of writers contemporary with the events he describes, without imbibing their party feelings, or sympathising with their interested or vindictive passions. An English life of the Protector preceded this in the present century. It was that by his late lineal descendant; which, however praiseworthy as an industriouslycollected mass of materials from older writers, gave (from the prevalence of an amiable family feeling) too striking evidences of near relationship to the celebrated personage it depicted, to gain largely the confidence of the Public.-Of those older writers, the contemporaries chiefly, or nearly such, with Cromwell, the limits of a Preface render it impossible adequately to speak. Neither, in the progress of our volume, it may be proper here to notice, are those writers more than very briefly, if at all, cited: the Author judging, that, to readers not conversant with their works, |