centuries of chaos and misgovernment, and it was not to be expected
that they could carry out the necessary reforms without making the
authors of such an intolerable state of things angry and resentful at
their iron methods of discipline. Napoleon and Cromwell possessed the
combined arts of war and statesmanship to a higher degree than any of
their contemporaries. Cromwell excelled Napoleon in professional
Christianity. The latter never paraded his ideas of religion, though
he acted on them silently and gave occasional expression to the
thoughts of his soul. Indeed, he was too much given to publicly
disavowing the very principles he believed in privately. This plan or
habit was said to be for the purpose of creating controversy. Be that
as it may, when the natural spirit moved him he would declare his
views in the most robust way. On one of many occasions he startled the
Council of State by reminding them that a man did not risk being
killed for a few pence a day or for a paltry distinction. "You must
speak to the soul," he declared, "to electrify the man." Another very
notable expression is here worth referring to, as it instances how
practical and human were his views. "The heart," said he, "warms the
genius, but in Pitt the genius withers the heart, which is a very
different thing"; and so it is that Cromwell and he were not
dissimilar in many of their attributes. Indeed, it is said that
Napoleon never tired of quoting or having quoted to him some striking
characteristic of Cromwell. We could hardly, with any degree of good
judgment, put Leslie the Covenanter or Sir Jacob Astley the Royalist,
or Nelson the matchless naval strategist and national hero, on a par
with either Cromwell or Napoleon. They are only here referred to in
connection with the two unequalled constructive statesmen and military
generals as representing a type of peculiarly religious men who have
occupied high military and naval positions in the service of the
State.