THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN
motives and conduct to a scrutiny that made self-deception hardly possible. He was neither so certain that God was on the side of the North as Cromwell was that God was on the side of the Parliament[1] nor so sure that he could interpret the meaning of events. One of the "plain physical facts of the case " was the opinion of the people; he could interpret that, he was careful to keep in touch with it, and not to advance too fast for it.
Lincoln died at the moment when his cause had triumphed. The captain fell, as a poet said, when the voyage was over and the ship was anchored safe and sound. It was as if Cromwell had fallen when the crowning mercy of Worcester closed the book of war.
If he had died then, Cromwell's fame, though not as spotless as Washington's or Lincoln's, would have been purer than it is. The next seven years gave occasion to half his party to denounce him as an apostate, and to the next generation to regard him as
- ↑ Cf. Nicolay and Hay, vi. 154, 343; Carlyle's Cromwell, ed. Lomas, Letter 148.
38
