recruit to his faith, and in his words there is high nature-poetry:

Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself;

A madman so long, now a fool. What, think'st
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain
Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these mossed trees
That have outlived the Eagle, page thy heels

And skip when thou point'st out? Will the cold brook
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste

To cure thy o'er night's surfeit? Call the creatures
Whose naked natures live in all the spite

Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements exposed,

Answer mere nature; bid them flatter thee.'

When Apemantus admits that he himself would remain a beast with the beasts,' Timon retaliates with a terrible prose-picture of the conflict of fierce, preying animals in which he would find himself involved. But when, in Act IV., Sc. 3., he is talking with the banditti who come to rob him of his gold, he becomes a nature-lover once more, depreciating by comparison with the earth's harmless produce, the gold he has found:

Behold, the earth hath roots;

Within this mile break forth a hundred springs ;
The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips;
The bounteous housewife nature, on each bush
Lays her full mess before you.*

When he relapses into cynical despair he finds confirmation in nature:

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears.3

But this is rhetoric, not poetry.

Perhaps the truest touches of scenery in Timon are the reference to his grave.

Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave;
Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat
Thy grave-stone daily.1

Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Whom once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover.
Finally, the soldier's words:

Timon is dead;

Entombed upon the very hem o' the sea.

Though thou abhorred'st in us our human griefs

Scorned'st our brain's flow and those our droplets which

From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit

Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye

On thy low grave, on faults forgiven.3

Timon of Athens, Act IV. Sc. 3.

2 Ibid. Act V. Sc. I.

3 Ibid. Act V. Sc. 4.

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CROMWELL'S MAJOR-GENERALS.

MONG the experiments of the Commonwealth and Protectorate the rule of the major-generals in 1655-7 possesses a threefold interest and importance. First, it throws much light on Cromwell's general methods, both of regular government and of meeting emergencies. Secondly, though an exceptional and temporary expedient, it teaches us something about the working of normal and permanent local institutions in England during the Commonwealth. Thirdly, it illustrates vividly that conflict between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary government which was so prominent a feature of the period, and which, in popular estimation, is its leading feature.

In considering the pretexts for instituting the major-generals it is necessary to recall the state of public affairs in the early part of 1655. On 19 Jan. 1654-5 Cromwell dissolved the first Protectorate parliament, because it persisted in regarding itself as a constituent assembly, with a right to amend the Instrument of Government of December 1653, while the Lord Protector maintained that such a claim was barred by the Instrument itself, to which parliament was subordinate. Between January 1654-5 and September 1656 no parliament was called together, and England was ruled strictly in accordance with the Instrument of Government as it stood. This interval was a time of serious unrest, which made itself felt both in constitutional opposition and armed insurrection. The constitutional opposition turned on the legality of such extra-parliamentary taxation, as, by the Instrument, the Lord Protector was en

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titled to impose1 and it gathered chiefly round what students of the time know as ' Cony's case,' which ended in a victory for Cromwell. The armed insurrection was more formidable. It was not the orthodox republican, such as Ludlow, whom Cromwell had most to fear. The government was attacked on two sides by forces ready to meet sword with sword. On the one hand were the fanatical republicans, or Levellers, led by such men as Wildman and Sexby, who hated Cromwell for his exalted position and conservative ways; on the other were the royalists ever on the watch, keeping their champion in readiness on the nearest continental shores. These two forces, so dissimilar in antecedents and principles, were ready to combine against the king-like' usurper. In his speech before the dissolution in January 1654-5 Cromwell asserted that the government had in their hands a treasonable correspondence between the Cavaliers and the Levellers. At the same time he referred ominously to the rapid generation of discontent, which he attributed to the malign influence of the parliament. While parliament was weakening authority by fruitless debates the Cavaliers had been collecting arms, and Charles Stewart had been issuing military commissions and giving the command of castles to his followers. The widespread unrest had more than one centre. Early in February 1654–5 Wildman was arrested by Major Butler near Marlborough in the act of dictating an insurrectionary manifesto, and imprisoned in Chepstow Castle. March a threatening royalist outbreak in Yorkshire under Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Mauleverer was suppressed, and the two chief insurgents were arrested. Above all, on 11 March 1655, 200 Cavaliers under Wagstaff and Penruddocke entered Salisbury during the assizes, and seized the judges

In

E.g., in accordance with the 27th clause of the Instrument, the Protector and council on 8 Feb. 1654-5 fixed the assessment for the army and navy at £60,000 per month, to be continued until 24 June.

2 Carlyle's Cromwell, speech v.