The statesman uses his imagination to predict the result of changes to be produced in the actually existing state of society, either by the natural f… - Samuel Rawson Gardiner

Ranke is cold and unenthusiastic; and, in judging individuals, it is well to be cold and unenthusiastic. But is there no room for warmth of feeling in recounting the efforts and the struggles of the race? Is it not possible to do for history what Darwin has done for science? Ranke, at all events, did not do it. He knew of the influence upon individuals of great waves of feeling and opinion; but he does not seek for the law of human progress which underlies them. He does not rejoice in that progress, or grieve at failure. Hence, perhaps, in part his preference for writing the history of many nations during the same period, rather than the history of one nation consecutively. To say this, however, is only to say that there is no finality in scientific progress. Whatever shape the histories of the future may take, they will assuredly be built on the foundations which Ranke has laid down with unerring hand.

It has not, I hope, been for nothing that many years ago, as a young and unknown writer, I deliberately refrained from selecting a subject more attractive in its own nature than the reign of James I. could possibly be. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that it was the duty of a serious inquirer to search into the original causes of great events rather than, for the sake of catching at an audience, to rush unprepared upon the great events themselves. My reward has been that, whether the present work is well or ill done, it is at all events far better done than it could have been if I had commenced with the tale of the Puritan Revolution itself.

What may be fairly demanded alike of Cromwell's admirers and of his critics is that they shall fix their eyes upon him as a whole. To one of them he is the champion of liberty and peaceful progress, to another the forcible crusher of free institutions, to a third the defender of oppressed peoples, to a fourth the asserter of his country's right to dominion. Every one of the interpreters has something on which to base his conclusions. All the incongruities of human nature are to be traced somewhere or other in Cromwell's career. What is more remarkable is that this union of apparently contradictory forces is precisely that which is to be found in the English people, and which has made England what she is at the present day.