RICHARD PREFERRED HUNTING TO POLITICS.
Whenever he could, Richard Cromwell would slip away from the work his father wished him to do and go out hunting, or have a good time with other rich do-nothings at his Hampshire farm. He disliked the almost kingly court of his father at Whitehall Palace, and though sent to Parliament, he did little and said less. And when he was made one of his father's chief advisers—a privy councillor—his counsels amounted to nothing, and his position was simply what politicians call a sinecure.
When, at last, his great father's life went out, and England was left without a head, Richard Cromwell was named as his successor, and made Lord Protector. Lazy Dick became King of England, without the title, but with more of power than many a King before and after him possessed.
But he had neither the skill nor the sense to hold what the people had given him. I doubt if he cared either for the place or the power. And they were his but a short time. Dissatisfaction broke into revolt. The nation was divided. The King came to his own again. Charles the Second was placed upon the throne from which his father had been hurled, and Richard Cromwell, without a word of protest, without striking a blow for his power, stepped quietly down from the Lord Protector's chair his father had set up, and slipped back into private life, too weak to be defended by his friends, too insignificant to be persecuted by his foes.
He lived to be an old, old man, and died at eighty-six amid his rose-gardens at Cheshunt, near London, unhonored and disregarded by the England his father had liberated, but which the son was too weak to uphold as a free commonwealth.
We must not be too bard on "lazy Dick." He had not a spark of greatness in him, and should not be blamed for failing to maintain his father's glory. It is a hard thing for a small son to live up to the fame of a great father. And yet the world does not take lack of ability into account. Richard Cromwell to-day has no place in the world's esteem. His name lives because he was his father's son; because he was a failure where his father had been a success; and because his life was so sad and stupid a sequel to the people's stand for liberty in the days made glorious in English history by the might and power, the grandeur and manliness, the strength and patriotism of England's greatest man—Oliver Cromwell, great father of a small son.
ITS MEANING.
(Tommy loq.)
Upon the quiet river,
Enamelled and serene,
Great flakes of oil are floating
In blue and pink and green.
"They look like maps all colored
In my geography,
Blue China, and green Ireland,
And pink Algiers I see.
"And still I think the meaning
Of all this oil I've found;
It's this—a school of sardines
Right here is swimming round."
R. K. M.