THE ARMY LISTS OF THE ROUNDHEADS AND CAVALIERS, CONTAINING THE NAMES OF THE OFFICERS IN THE ROYAL AND PARLIAMENTARY ARMIES OF 1642. EDITED BY EDWARD PEACOCK, F. S. A. "An epoch rich alike in thought, action, and paffion, MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. LONDON: JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. 1863. 200. e. 26. HOSE who have studied that period of our annals which is occupied by the reign of Charles the First and the Commonwealth, not only in the pages of modern hiftorians and contemporaries who wrote consciously for pofterity, but also in the immense masses of unclassified and often uncatalogued documents, journals, state papers, letters, treatises, ballads, and fermons, in which the hopes, fears, and defires of the people expressed themselves from day to day, may probably have remarked, if their pursuits have led them to contraft our Civil War with other portions of British or European history, that then, for the first time in the modern world, individual perfonality began to exercise a marked effect upon contemporary politics. In the preceding ages, from the time indeed when freedom funk under the organized imperialism of the Cæfars, until the outburst of modern thought in the fixteenth century, human progrefs had been but little accelerated by perfonal qualities. The ignorance of external nature was too dense, the allpervading influence of the dominant theology too ftrong, the terrors it wielded and the punishments it threatened too frightful for the energy of any one person to become confpicuous in directing public b events or moulding the thoughts of others, except in those rare cases where the minds of men had already been prepared by the Church's teaching, or by their inherent or inherited superstitions. In the career of Saint Bernard indeed, and the few others of his stamp, who shed fuch luftre over the dark times in which they were placed, we see the religious instinct of Western Christendom stirred to a higher pitch of devotion by the labours of a single man; but where the lessons of the reformer took a direction contrary to ecclefiaftical teaching, (and then theology feemed to embrace the whole area of human thought,) one result only was possible. The fate of those who struggled to win freedom for themselves and their kind is a sufficient proof that it was neither the want of intellect, energy, nor highfouled devotion, that rendered their lives and labours unfruitful. Even the passionate prophecy and withering scorn of the great Florentine could do nothing towards rousing mankind from its lethargy. The first defire of his heart was indeed accomplished; Dante won for his Beatrice the highest place in the ideal world of love and beauty, but against the "fhe-wolf" even the invectives of the "Inferno" were powerless. The education of the European mind has progressed flowly; it was not until the Tudor period of our history that society could have existed without the protection of a powerful religious caste. A universal theocracy was the only inftitution strong and free enough to curb the oppressor, and with a sufficiently extended-mental vision to attempt the work of legislation: by its means the brutal tyranny of the feudal lord was fomewhat kept in check; and his fiercer paffions, at least, did not pass entirely without rebuke. Laws were made for the protection of flaves, infants, and women, fuch as even a Norman baron or an Italian count feared to disobey. It does not feem poffible that moral truths could have been brought home to the hearts of the people by any other means. If fo great a misfor |