An endless vortex of such questioning
"corporals" rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he
did answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man that he managed
this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that
ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you say so much?--
But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to the
very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about their
"ambition," "falsity," and such like. The first is what I might call
substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and starting-point
of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had determined
on being Protector of England, at the time when he was ploughing the marsh
lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all mapped out: a program of the
whole drama; which he then step by step dramatically unfolded, with all
manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow,
scheming [Gr.
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