them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; twothirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows, so at nightfall the Nan tucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales. If there is not high imagination and true literature in this, we know not where to find it. CROMWELL I ENGLISHMEN are admittedly ignorant of and careless about history. There is, however, one historical character in which they are universally interested, either on the side of praise or blame-Oliver Cromwell. You may find hundreds, nay thousands, of fairly educated men who have no opinion, good or bad, of even such great figures as William III. or the Earl of Chatham, but it is hard to discover one who has not a definite feeling in regard to the Protector, who does not love or hate the man, and to whom his story is not profoundly interesting. And what a story is that of the Huntingdonshire farmer-squire. First he inspired a troop of horse with a spirit that enabled them to encounter and overthrow 'gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them,' and 'as one man to stand firmly and charge desperately,' making always, in their Captain's phrase, 'some conscience of what they did.' Next he so leavened a whole army with the same courage and the same enthusiasm that, looking back on the past, he could say of them, 'Truly, they were never beaten, and wherever they were engaged against the enemy they beat continually.' Lastly, and having subdued the foes of the Houses and the Word, he was raised, half by his own intention, half in his own despite, to be the greatest of European Sovereigns. Never in history has there been a General or a ruler more successful than The Protector of the liberties of England.' From the moment that he took in hand the sword to the day on which he breathed his last it is one continuous record of achievement in the field or in the council. In every action which he fought, great or small, he was victorious. He never led a charge but he routed the enemy, nor stood to receive an attack but he drove back his assailants. Every town that he besieged fell into his hands, every house he assaulted he stormed and captured. There was not an undertaking of his in dealing with troops in mutiny, with recalcitrant Parliaments, or with secret conspiracies in which he was not as completely triumphant. No less successful was his diplomatic action. The foreign Powers with whom he made treaties and alliances sought him as the arbiter of the fate of Europe, and the balance at once inclined to the scale in which he had thrown his sword. II IT is not, however, Cromwell's success that makes him so interesting to those who love him-and I cannot profess to be able to discuss him from any other standpoint. Cromwell, as I see him, is first of all the ideal Englishman, the man who represents, and in whom were incarnate all the strongest and most notable characteristics of the English race. If not in him, I know not where to find personified the Englishman's ideal of strength and moderation, courage and religious |