Common sense, however, had much more to do with prompting their action, and common sense plainly informed them that they had no choice between a restored king and a military despot.

They would not have had even that if the leading military chief had not been a man of homely sense and vulgar aims; such an one as Milton afterwards drew in-- "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold." In the field, or on the quarter-deck, George Monk was the stout soldier, acquitting himself of his military duty most punctually.

In his political conduct he laid himself out for titles and money, as little of the ambitious usurper as of the self-denying patriot.

Such are they for whom more generous spirits, imprudently forward in revolutions, usually find that they have laboured.

"Great things," said Edward Gibbon Wakefield, "are begun by men with great souls and little breeches-pockets, and ended by men with great breeches-pockets and little souls." Milton would not have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart.