Then left to lie amid decay, To tear another palm from fame; May crush a lonely desert horde." P. 28. From this we will turn to the terrific description of battle, where our young author seems as much at home, as if he had himself witnessed a campaign among the irregular warriors of the East. "Up, up!' said Sadi, and we rose One fearful blaze from rock to rock, While earth seemed quivering with the shock; And deafening cry, and horrid shriek, And thunders volleying from the peak, That shewed beneath their crimson light, To Nadir and his turbaned ranks, P. 38. We will extract but one passage more, where Mandano, after the rescue and death of his beloved Zuleyda, returns to his mountain home, Daghistan. "I sought my native land again; The mountain snow, the desert plain Were passed with scarcely wearying speed, He bore me many a hundred league, At last, exhausted by fatigue, Whose love on earth to me would cling, P.90. We are sorry that our space will not admit of our dwelling further upon the merits of this sweetly told poem. There is a spirit about it that reminds us of our own early career, when, in the fresh green morning of our days, we sung, in ecstacy, "our native wood notes wild," and when every enjoyment of life fell, grateful as the mountain dew, upon our delighted senses; when we awoke, but in delight, and lay down in peace and happiness. If envy formed a part of our souls, which, thank heaven, it doth not, we could grudge to this young and gifted minstrel the fervid feelings he doubtless enjoys. We have been told that he is, at present, employed upon a poem on a highly interesting and popular subject, the scenes of which are more familiar to European ideas and tastes; and which, if we are not misinformed, will be found to contain bolder and loftier flights of his muse, than are presented in the pages before us. Go on and prosper is our sincere hope and counsel: let him but study earnestly and deeply the great models of verse, Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Shakspeare, (especially the two latter, whom every British poet should read a portion of daily,) and we have no doubt that, when Frederic Henningsen shall have reached the age of five and twenty, the world will have hailed him as the regenerator of a school of poetry, amongst us, which has too long been a desideratum rather wished than hoped for, and that he will have become, alike the pride of his family and friends, and an honour to the literature of his country. Proud, indeed, shall we be at such a result; when the idea that we may have been the humble means of stimulating his exertions, will be, to us, one of the proudest reflections we can enjoy. Eminent British Military Commanders. Life of Oliver Cromwell. Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia. London: Longman and Co. 1831. LET the traveller, in passing through the wild and picturesque scenery of Wales, reflect that the mouldering ruins, which frequently meet his eye, are many of them the sad memorials of civil war and bloodshed; that the object of his research is often the tomb of the warrior; and that the peaceful vale, upon which he casts a contemplative glance, has been the awful scene of murder; and when the reader thus feels that the bosom of our Principality contains these mournful relics of civil war, he will know why we possess a more than ordinary interest in the subject of this memoir. Our country, to our mind, is as a picture upon which we discern the tints of darkness and of misery, or the pleasing hues of cheerfulness and of comfort; and we are sure we need not say that we have so warm an interest in its welfare, that, when far distant from the blissful scenes of our nativity, imagination and recollection afford us our happiest hours in the contemplation of whatever tends to affect the welfare of fair Cambria. It is with these feelings, in all their grateful freshness, that we enter upon a brief review of the life of one, the roar of whose artillery echoed long and fearfully around our mountain homes. The pages before us inform us that the renowned Oliver Cromwell (as our readers well know) was lineally descended from Sir Oliver Cromwell, a Welsh gentleman, of ancient stock, who exchanged the name of Williams for that of Cromwell, on his marriage with a sister of Thomas, earl of Essex. Our readers will need, therefore, no apology for our notice of the military life of this most extraordinary character, whose important career must retain its place as an immortal feature in the history of Great Britain. We should have preferred the more usual course of connecting the distinct qualities of a statesman and warrior under one notice; but following the plan which the author of the book before us has thought it proper to pursue, and for which he gives a reason, in the first page of the work, we shall confine our remarks to the latter, not less brilliant, characteristic of this prodigy of the past. Oliver Cromwell lived in an age when the military power of England was vested in that class of persons, whose services were required only when the immediate exigences of the state called them into exercise; the era of standing armies had not then commenced, and the troubles of that period brought into existence a new, and perhaps, as this country has long been and is now situated with regard to her foreign policy, a more suitable arrangement. We are quite certain, that dependent as England, at this time, was upon the nerve and honesty of its yeomen, the groundwork of the protector's power was framed, and his primary successes may be attributed to the zeal and firmness of his ironsided troops, as well as in their unbounded confidence in the talent of their leader, and their belief in the righteousness of their cause, added to his promptitude in raising troops for the service of the parliament. There appears to have been a judgment in the selection of his recruits, which, at all times, gave him a decided superiority over his enemies in the field; while Cook says, that "most of Cromwell's men were freeholders and freeholders' sons, who, upon matter of conscience, engaged in the quarrel, and being well armed within by the satisfaction of their own consciences, and without by good iron arms, they would, as one man, stand firmly, and charge desperately." Cromwell's genius, thus supported, had ample opportunity of proving itself, and, accordingly, we find him, after raising the standard of revolt, by suddenly surprising and taking the castle of Cambridge, in 1642, with his usual boldness of character, acting a prominent part in the first attitude of defiance assumed between the parliament and the king. The following extract conveys a very clear idea of this important and disastrous alternative. "Though there were still an apparent reluctance on both sides to make the final appeal to the sword, the king on the one hand, and the parliament on the other, began, as soon as Cromwell's proceedings obtained publicity, to assume an attitude of defiance. Charles, without assigning any specific reason for the act, issued an order of array, which was conveyed to the sheriffs of the several counties, and, in part, at least, carried into effect. The parliament, again, passed an act, by which it was declared high treason to take up arms, except by virtue of a warrant signed by the speaker. This was followed by a commission, authorising the earl of Essex and others to raise men for the service of the state; and hence almost every town, village, and hamlet, throughout England, exhibited the melancholy spectacle of a place of military muster. Cromwell did not wait for any definite instructions touching the mode of procedure necessary in such a case. With the indifference to responsibility which is not often acquired, except by a lengthened exercise of delegated power, he moved rapidly into Hertfordshire, where he seized the high sheriff when in the act of reading a proclamation in which lord Essex, with his abettors and adherents, were pronounced traitors. He then passed into Suffolk, where the friends of the king were exerting themselves to enrol troops for the service of their master; and made prisoners, at Lowestoffe, of Sir Thomas Barber, Sir John Peters, and twenty other gentlemen of distinction. His activity and zeal were not slow in attracting the notice of the parliament. A colonel's commission was granted to him, and, besides being authorised to increase his troop to a regiment of horse, he was joined with lord Manchester in the chief command of the six associated counties; Essex, Hertford, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdon." P. 224. The army of Charles, after the failure of an attempt to surprise Hull, proceeded to Nottingham, and from thence, marching westward, and skirting the borders of Wales, arrived, in October, at Shrewsbury, where his numbers were augmented to about 10,000. This oblique movement having turned the position of Essex's army, at Northampton, which amounted to 15,000 men, obliged him to take up a new line at Worcester, parallel with the royal army; but the latter, by a masked and rapid movement, passed Essex before he was aware of their leaving Shrewsbury, and halted, for the night, at Edgecoat. On the 23d of October the battle of Edgehill was fought, which was not decisive to either party, but gives rise to doubt and conjecture, and serves, as one of those circumstances in history, to probe into, and investigate the secret principles of men's actions. The cause of Cromwell's absence from the field has never been satisfactorily accounted for. Party feelings have given a prejudicial interpretation, when, perhaps, the real circumstances which have given rise to a stigma, on one side, of cowardice, and on the other of political jealousy, have been obscured by the conflicting statements which have been made. We should be much more ready to ascribe the latter cause, than to assign the former; the intrepidity of Cromwell's character resting upon too firm a foundation to be shaken by the mere possibility of such being the case; nor do we think it fair to presume on such a feeble supposition, against such a host of opposite proofs. We will, however, allow the writer to give his own opinion. "In the battle of Edgehill, which, as our readers cannot be ignorant, ended without awarding a decisive victory to either party, Oliver Cromwell took no share. According to some accounts his absence from the field was inevitable, and proved a source of deep mortification to himself; according to others, he purposely kept aloof, from motives either of personal fear or political jealousy. He, with his troop of horse,' says Lord Holles, came not in; impudently and ridiculously affirming, the day after, that he had been all that day seeking the army and place of fight, though his quarters were but at a village near hand, whence he could not find his way, nor be directed by his ear, when the ordnance was heard, as I have been credibly informed, twenty or thirty miles off.' How far this statement may be credited, coming as it does from an avowed enemy, we are not called upon to decide; but if the future protector did absent himself from the battle, when he might have done otherwise, it were worse than childish to attribute the circumstance to personal fear. It may be, however, that here, as well as elsewhere, Cromwell permitted affairs to take their course, because he saw that the whole merit of a victory which it rested with him to secure, would be awarded to another; and if so, then |