Anonymous

PROGRESS OF THE NATION FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE GREAT REVOLUTION.

Religion: Nonconformist Sects—Imprisonment of Bunyan—Fox and the Society of Friends—The Punishment of James Naylor—Expulsion of Roger Williams—Other Religious Sects—Literature: Milton—His Works—Cowley—Butler—Dryden—Minor Poets—Dramatists of the Restoration—Prose Writers: Milton and Dryden—Hobbes—Clarendon—Baxter—Bunyan—Walton—Evelyn and Pepys—Founding of the Royal Society—Physical Science—Discoveries of Napier, Newton, and Flamsteed—Mathematicians and Chemists—Harvey and Worcester—Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving—Coinage—Music—Furniture—Costume—Manners and Customs—State of London—Sports and Amusements—Country Life—Travelling—The Clergy—Yeomen—Village Sports—Growth of the Revenue and Commerce—Growing prosperity of the North of England—The Navigation Act—Norwich and Bristol—Postal Arrangements—Advantages Derived from the Industries of the Foreign Refugees—The East India Company—Condition of the People: Wages—The Poor Law—Efforts of Philanthropists.

The struggles of the Church we have sufficiently traced in our recent chapters. With the Restoration it came back to full power and possession of its revenues and honours, and held them firmly against all rivals till James menaced them with the recall of the Roman hierarchy, when, joining with the alarmed public, it compelled the monarch himself to fly, and continued on its own vantage-ground. The only notice of religious phenomena at this period demanded of us is rather what regards the sects which now became conspicuous.

The leading sects, the Presbyterians, the Independents, and the Baptists—then called Anabaptists—differed little in their faith. They were all of the Calvinistic school, whilst the Episcopal Church was already divided by the contending parties of Calvinists and Arminians. We have related the struggles of the Presbyterians, English and Scottish, for the possession of the Establishment in England to the exclusion of all other faiths; the triumph of the Independents, with more liberal views, through Cromwell and the army, and the expulsion of both these parties from the national pulpits following on the Restoration. The Baptists, though many of them were high in the army and the State during the Commonwealth, never displayed the political ambition of the other two great denominations. They cut, indeed, no figure in the secular affairs of the nation, but they were most honourably distinguished by their assertion of the right of private opinion. They were as tolerant of religious liberty as the Independents, or more so, from whom they differed only in their views of the rite of Baptism. Their early history in England was adorned by the appearance in their pulpits of one of the most extraordinary men of modern times—John Bunyan, whose "Pilgrim's Progress" continues to delight all classes of men, and will continue to do so as long as the English language is read. Bunyan, a tinker by trade, was serving in the Parliamentary army at Leicester, at the time of the battle of Naseby; and when Charles I. fled to that town John was ordered out as a sentinel, and his life was saved by another soldier volunteering to take his duty, who was shot at his post. Bunyan was thrown into prison for daring to preach under Charles II., and lay in gaol twelve years and a half, solely because he had a conscience of his own; and was only liberated on the Declaration of Indulgence by James II. A Mr. Smyth, a clergyman of the Church of England, who adopted their faith, was the first to open a chapel for the Baptists in London, and, encouraged by his example, others were soon opened, and the views of the denomination soon spread over England and Wales, in later times to be eloquently expounded by Robert Robinson and Robert Hall.

But the most remarkable organisation of a religious body was that of the Society of Friends, or, as they soon came to be nicknamed, Quakers, whose founder, George Fox, was born at Drayton, in Leicestershire, in 1624. His father was a weaver, and George was apprenticed to a shoemaker, who also had a little farm. He informs us in his own journal that he preferred the farming, and chiefly devoted himself to it. When he was about nineteen he became deeply impressed with a religious feeling. It was a time when religious discussion was making rapid progress amongst the people from the more general access to the Bible, and many were dissatisfied with the different churches, which seemed too much engaged in attempts at worldly aggrandisement, and at achieving a dominance over each other. George was one of these. In seeking for clear views of religious faith, such as could set his mind at rest, he went to various clergymen of the Established Church first, but he found no light. One of them bade him take tobacco and sing psalms; and another, Cradock of Coventry, was beginning to speak comfortably to George as they walked in the garden, when the embryo reformer unluckily happened to set his foot on a flower-border, which threw the clergyman into such a rage that the discourse was abruptly brought to an end.

ROGER WILLIAMS LEAVING HIS HOME IN MASSACHUSETTS. (See p. 354.)

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Finding no relief or illumination from professors, as he called them, Fox wisely took his Bible, and used to retire into a hollow tree in the fields, where he read and prayed earnestly to God to enlighten his understanding to comprehend the sacred volume, and the genuine will of the Lord. The result was that he came to a clear and steadfast conviction that Christianity was strictly a spiritual thing, having nothing specifically to do with States and Governments, with worldly pomp and power, and strivings after mortal honours and high places; that Christ simply and strictly defined it when He said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He saw that it was the grand principle by which the soul of man is intended to be regenerated—born again, in fact, and made fitting to enter into the kingdom of disembodied souls, in the presence of God and His angels. He found himself, in a word, called back from the conflicting views and empty ceremonies of the time to Christianity as it existed among the Apostles—a perfectly spiritual, and holy, and disinterested thing, embodying the wisdom and the truth of God, and inhabiting, not formal creeds and outward ceremonies, but the heart of man, and thence influencing all his thoughts and actions for good. George perceived that all fixed creeds, all rites and ceremonies, all investments in State power, were but as cobwebs and old rags with which the self-interest and self-love of men had enveloped, encumbered, and degraded it; and he felt himself called to go forth and proclaim this, which he emphatically styled "the truth."

Fox carried his great Christian text into every act and department of life. He was the first to elevate woman to her true place—an intellectual, moral, and political equality with man; basing his principle on the apostolic declaration that male and female are all one in Christ Jesus. Acting on this principle, the women of his Society became preachers, and transacted their own affairs of association in their own meetings. He refused to take an oath before a magistrate, because Christ expressly forbade His disciples to swear at all under any circumstances; he refused to say "Thou" to a poor man, and "You" to a rich one, as was then the odious practice; he refused to take off his hat as a mark of homage to the wealthy and great, on the same principle that it was a custom of pride and invidious distinction; and he addressed prince or magistrate with the respectful boldness which became a man sensible that the only true dignity was the dignity of truth. The sufferings which were brought upon him and his followers by these novel doctrines and practices from all parties were terrible. About three thousand of them were imprisoned, even under the more liberal rule of the Commonwealth, and as many under Charles II. Their property was spoliated, their meeting-houses were pulled down, and their families grossly insulted in their absence. Yet the doctrine spread rapidly, and many eminent men embraced it; amongst others, William Penn, the son of Admiral Penn, and the learned Robert Barclay, who wrote the celebrated vindication of their faith.

At the same time the violent agitation of the period, and the enthusiasm of this new doctrine, led some of Fox's followers into considerable extravagances. The most prominent case was that of James Naylor, who for a time was undoubtedly led into insanity by the effervescence of his mind under his religious zeal; and allowed women to lead his horse into Exeter, crying "Holy! holy! holy!" and spreading their scarves and handkerchiefs in the way before him, as if he had been the Saviour come again. Naylor professed that this homage was not offered to him personally, but to Christ within him. His case occupied the House of Commons for nearly two months altogether. There were violent debates on it from morning till night; but at length, on the 17th of December, 1656, it was voted that he should be set in the pillory in Palace Yard for two hours; then be whipped from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, twice, wearing a paper containing a description of his crimes; should have his tongue bored through with a hot iron by the hangman for his blasphemy; be branded on the forehead with the letter B; that he should be sent to Bristol, and there whipped through the city on a market-day, paraded face backwards on a saddleless horse, and then sent back to Bridewell, in London, where he should be kept to hard labour, and debarred from the visits of his friends, and from access to pens, ink, and paper.

All this was rigidly inflicted upon him, and borne heroically. After two years' confinement in Bridewell he was dismissed, thoroughly cured of his hallucination, ready to admit it, but as firm in his adhesion to the principles of Quakerism as ever; and the Society, pitying his fall, never withdrew from him their sympathy or the enjoyment of his membership. He died soon after his release.

In America, in New England, the Quakers were more fiercely persecuted than in England by the Puritans, who had themselves fled from persecution. In Massachusetts and Connecticut they were ordered to have their ears cut off if men, to be publicly whipped if women; and for a second offence to have their tongues bored through if they dared to come into these colonies; and this not deterring them, they hanged several men and women. Endicott, the Governor of Connecticut, when one of them quoted the words of St. Paul, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being," irreverently replied, "And so does every cat and dog."

This intolerance of the Puritans was equally exerted against one of their own members, the venerable Roger Williams, who was driven from Massachusetts for courageously advocating the doctrine of perfect freedom of conscience. In fact, Roger Williams was one of the very first, if not the first man, who proclaimed this great doctrine; and therefore deserves to be held in eternal remembrance. The honour of being the earliest publisher of the right of spiritual freedom must, perhaps, be awarded to Leonard Busher, who published a work on the subject in 1614, and dedicated it to King James. Roger Williams, expelled from Massachusetts, proceeded to Narraganset Bay, and became the founder of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, where the most perfect freedom of religious faith was allowed.

Besides the sects in England already enumerated, there were many minor ones. The "Millenarians," or "Fifth Monarchy Men," whose views we have already explained. To this sect Major-General Harrison belonged; and they created a riot under Venner, the wine-cooper. There was a sect called "The Seekers," amongst whom Fox once fell, and many of them joined him, believing they had found what they sought. There were the "Ranters," a body noted for their noise and vociferation; "Behmenists," or disciples of the German mystic, Jacob Behmen; "Vanists," followers of the religious views of Sir Harry Vane; and lastly, "Muggletonians," the disciples of one Ludovick Muggleton and John Reeve.

Muggleton was a journeyman tailor, and he and Reeve pretended to be the two witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of "The Revelation." They were fanatics of the wildest and most furious character, and professed to have power to save or damn all whom they pleased, and they "dealt damnation round the land" with the utmost freedom. The Quakers and Behmenists were the objects of their most violent denunciations, probably because Fox and Penn protested against their wild and fanatic doctrines, which were the antipodes of those of Fox; for, instead of representing God as a pure spirit, they asserted that He had a corporeal body, and came down to earth in it as Christ, leaving the prophet Elias in heaven to rule in His absence. They contended that man's soul is inseparably united to his body, dies and rises again with it. They professed to have an especial knowledge of "the place and nature of heaven, and the place and nature of hell;" with the persons and natures of devils and angels. The truculent ravings of these fanatics may be seen in the works and letters of Muggleton, still extant. In one letter he delivers sentence of damnation on six-and-twenty Quakers at once. "Inasmuch," he says, "as God hath chosen me on earth to be the judge of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, therefore, in obedience to my commission from the true God, I do pronounce all these twenty-six persons whose names are above written, cursed and damned in their souls and bodies from the presence of God, elect men, and angels in eternity." But this was little: he declared all Quakers, and Behmenists, and numbers of other people damned and cursed for ever.

This repulsive apostle of perdition was tried at the Old Bailey, and convicted of blasphemy in 1676, and died in 1697, at the age of eighty-eight.

We have seen with what a desolating sweep the bloody conflicts of the Parliament against the encroachments of kingship prostrated the pursuits of literature and art. We might have expected that the return to established tranquillity under restored monarchy would have caused a new spring of genius. But in no reign in England, and in no country except France, have debauchery and the most hideous grossness so defiled the productions of poetry and the drama.

Amid the satyr crew of degraded men and women who then represented the literary world of England, some few, however, maintained a pure and dignified career. At the head of these, equally exalted above the rest by genius and purity of life and morals, stood John Milton (b. 1608; d. 1674), one of the greatest epic poets, if not the greatest, that the world has produced. Milton had saturated himself with the poetic spirit, imagery, and expression of the Prophetic bards, as well as with knowledge of those of Greece and Rome; and he brought to bear an immense mass of varied learning on his subject with a power of appropriation that gave to it a new and wonderful life instead of the aspect of pedantry. The names of people and places which he moulds into his diction seem to open up to the imagination regions of unimagined grandeur and beauty amid strains of solemnest music; and the descriptions of scenery, such as abound in "Comus," "Lycidas," and "Arcades," as well as those diffused through "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," are like the most exquisite glimpses into the most fair and solitary landscapes, breathing every rural fragrance, and alive with all rural sounds and harmonies.

But it was when he was old, and poor, and blind, and living among the hatred and the ribald obscenity of the Restoration, that he had scaled those sublime altitudes of genius, and seemed to walk on the celestial hills amid their pure and glorious inhabitants, rather than on earth surrounded by rankest impurities and basest natures. It was when

"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,"

when he had fallen on evil days, that he had alone allowed himself leisure to work out these the earliest of his aspirations. Long before—when he had returned from his pleasant sojourn in Italy, where he saw Galileo in his prison, and was himself received and honoured by the greatest men of the land, as in anticipation of his after glory, and was now engaged in defending the sternest measures of the Republicans—in his "Reasons of Church Government urged against Prelacy" he unfolded the grand design of his master work, but kept it self-denyingly in his soul till he had done his duty to his country. The views which he cherished in his literary ambition are as exalted in their moral grandeur as his genius was in its native character. These were, he said, "That what the greatest and choicest arts of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian, might do for mine, not caring to be named once abroad, though perhaps I could attain unto that, but content me with these British islands as my world." At this period, it seems, he had not made up his mind whether he should adopt "the epic form, as exemplified by Homer, Virgil, and Tasso, or the dramatic, wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign; or in the style of those magnificent odes and hymns of Pindarus and Callimachus, not forgetting that of all those kinds of writing the highest models are to be found in the Holy Scriptures in the Book of Job, in the Song of Solomon, and the Apocalypse of St. John, in the grand songs interspersed throughout the Law and the Prophets." But in one thing he was fixed—that the work should be one "not raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of some rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases."

"So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the bard,

Holiest of men."

So he waited, fighting the battles of his country side by side with Cromwell and Hampden, Pym and Marvell; and when at length he found leisure to achieve his last great triumph, he was left alone in the field. He had outlived the long battle of king and people, in which extraordinary men and as extraordinary events had arisen, and shaken the whole civilised world. Blind, poor, and old, as if some special guardianship of Providence had shielded him, or as if the very foes who had dragged the dreaded Cromwell from his grave feared the imprecations of posterity, and shrank from touching that sacred head—there sat the sublime old man at his door, feeling, with grateful enjoyment, the genial sunshine falling upon him; or dictating immortal verses to his daughters, as the divine afflatus seized him.

Much has been said of the small sum received for his "Paradise Lost," and the slow recognition which it met with. But it is not a fact that "Paradise Lost" was coolly greeted. Long before Addison gave his laudatory critique in the Spectator, the glory of Milton's great poem had been attested by Barrow, Andrew Marvell, Lord Anglesea, who used often to visit him in Bunhill Fields, by the Duke of Buckingham, and by many other celebrated men. Sir John Denham appeared in the House of Commons with a proof-sheet of "Paradise Lost" in his hand, wet from the press, and, being asked what it was, replied, "part of the noblest poem that ever was written in any language or age." The poem went into two editions during the author's life, and he corrected it for a third, which was published soon after his death. In fact, Milton's fame had to rise from under piled heaps of hatred and ignominy on account of his politics and religion, for he had attacked the Church as formidably as the State in his treatise on "The Best Mode of Removing Hirelings" out of it, as well as in his book against prelacy; but it flung off all that load of prejudice, and rose to universal acknowledgment.

We need not detain ourselves with much detail of his other poetical works, which are now familiar to all readers. They consist of his early poems, including the exquisite "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," his "Comus" and "Lycidas," a mask and an elegy: his magnificent sonnets, his "Samson Agonistes," a sacred drama, but constructed strictly on the Grecian model. It has been often said that Milton had no genius for the drama; the "Samson" is a sufficient refutation of that opinion. It is full of dramatic power and interest; it is like some ancient piece of sculpture, unique, grand, massive, and solemn; and, indeed, had Milton devoted himself to the drama, it would have been rather in the style of Sophocles than of Shakespeare, for he was too lofty and earnest in his whole nature for real humour, or for much variation in mood and manner. He could never have been a comic poet, but, had he willed it, would undoubtedly have been a great tragic one. The epic character, however, prevailed in him, and decided his career.

MILTON DICTATING "PARADISE LOST" TO HIS DAUGHTERS. (See p. 356.)

(After the Picture by Munkacsy.)

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Besides these poetical works, were his odes, including the splendid ones of the "Nativity" and the "Passion," and a great number of translations from the chief poets of Greece, Rome, and Italy, original poems written in Latin and Italian, portion of the Psalms "done into metre," and "Paradise Regained." This last poem, though bearing no degree of equality to the "Paradise Lost," is yet a noble poem, and would have made a great reputation for any other man. It is clearly not so well thought out and elaborated as the "Paradise Lost," which was the dream of his youth, the love and the labour of his prime. "Paradise Regained," on the other hand, was the chance suggestion of Thomas Elwood, his Latin reader, and closed with the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, instead of including the Crucifixion and Ascension, which might have given the poet a scope equal in magnificence to that of his former great epic. Of his prose works we shall speak presently.

The most popular of all poets of this period was Abraham Cowley (b. 1618; d. 1667). He is a striking example of those authors whom the critics of the time cry to the skies, and whom more discriminating posterity are willing to forget. Cowley, in his lifetime, had ten times the fame of Milton. Johnson, so unjust to many of our poets, can hardly be said to be so to Cowley. He says—"Though in his own time considered of unrivalled excellence, and as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him, Cowley's reputation could not last. His character of writing was not his own; he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel."

He, in fact, for popularity's sake, preferred art, or rather artifice, to nature. Yet there are many beautiful thoughts, much real fancy and wit scattered through his poems; but they are too often buried in outrageous conceits and distorted metre. He never seems really in earnest, but always playing with his subject, and constructing gewgaws instead of raising immortal structures.

Cowley was a zealous Royalist; he went over to France when the queen of Charles I. retired thither, and became her secretary for her private correspondence with Charles. Afterwards he was sent over in the character of a spy on the Republican party and its proceedings. "Under pretence of privacy and retirement, he was to take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this nation;" but became suspected, and was arrested. He then fawned on Cromwell, wrote verses in his honour, which, however, were only shown in private; and, when the Commonwealth began to exhibit signs of dissolution, he again hastened to the exiled Court in France, and came back in the crowd of Royalists eager for promotion. But his flattering of Cromwell had been reported, and he was treated with coldness. Yet after some time, through Buckingham and the Earl of St. Albans, he obtained a lease of some lands, and, after the ill reception of his play of "The Cutter of Colman Street," he retired into the country, first to Barn Elms, and next to Chertsey, in Surrey, where he died in his forty-ninth year.

The great satirist of the age was Samuel Butler (b. 1600; d. 1680), who in his "Hudibras" introduced a new kind of poetry—a comic doggerel, now styled, as sui generis, Hudibrastic. Butler was the son of a yeoman, and had been educated for the Church without those connections which lead to promotion. With an immense accumulation of learning, and talent enough to have made half a dozen bishops, he became at one time a clerk to one Jeffreys, a justice of the peace at Earl's Coomb, in Worcestershire, and afterwards to Sir Samuel Luke, at Woodend, in Bedfordshire. In these situations he gleaned the characters and materials for his "Hudibras," a burlesque on the Puritans. Sir Samuel Luke was the actual Hudibras. The poem ridicules the Puritans in every way, but especially for attempting to put down bear-baiting; and accordingly the first canto—

"The adventure of the bear and fiddle

Is sung, but breaks off in the middle."

Hudibras and his man Ralpho attack the bear, but are defeated, and then Hudibras retires and makes love to a rich widow. He is a Presbyterian, and Ralpho an Independent; and in the course of the story all the leading characters of the Commonwealth, Cromwell, Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert, are ridiculed by name, as are Pym, Calamy, Case, Byfield, Lentham, and the rest under more or less transparent nicknames, as Ashley Cooper, under the name of the "politician," and John Lilburne, under that of "brother haberdasher." The first part was published in 1663, the second in 1664, and the third in 1678, fourteen years later. Still the poem remained unfinished. It did not require, however, even the second part to make it famous. It was received with one universal burst of laughter and applause by the Royalists. Charles II. and his courtiers were merrier over it than all, and Charles quoted it continually with unfailing gusto. The Earl of Dorset resolved to seize the opportunity, and introduce the author, through Buckingham, to Charles. Buckingham gave him an audience, but just as they were entering on conversation, Buckingham saw some ladies of loose character going past, ran out after them, and the poet was not only forgotten, but could never get a second interview. Clarendon, however, promised to see him duly rewarded, but never kept his word, and Butler lived poor and died neglected, at the age of eighty. This shameful neglect has been much commented on; but no one seems to have reflected that there may have been more in this than mere neglect. Butler, in his double-edged satire, made some very hard hits at the Church, and, while ridiculing the Puritans, gave some not very light back-strokes to the licentiousness of the Royalists. He wrote an avowed "Satire on the Licentiousness of the Age;" and in his third part so far vented his resentment at his neglect as to satirise Charles himself for being led by the apronstrings of his numerous mistresses. He laughed at the sages of the newly established Royal Society in his "Elephant in the Moon;" and such a man is more frequently kicked than rewarded. The Church did not forget his sallies against it, and refused him burial in Westminster Abbey. When he wrote the questions and answers between the man disguised as a devil and Hudibras—

"What makes a church a den of thieves?—

A dean, a chapter, and white sleeves.

What makes all points of doctrine clear?—

About two hundred pounds a year.

And that which was proved true before,

Prove false again?—Two hundred more"—

though the sting was intended for the Puritans, the Puritans laid hold on the passage, and quoted it against the Church, and this and like blows rebounded, no doubt, on the poets head.

The most illustrious name of this period next to that of Milton is that of John Dryden (b. 1631; d. 1701). He wrote almost every kind of poetry—satires, odes, plays, romantic stories—and translated Juvenal, Persius, the epistles of Ovid, and Virgil. It was unfortunate for the genius of Dryden that he was generally struggling with poverty, and by marrying an aristocratic and uncongenial wife, the sister of Sir Robert Howard, he was all the more compelled to exert his powers to live in the style which their circumstances demanded. Hence he produced an immense mass of writings which added little to his fame. Foremost amongst these are his plays, nearly thirty in number, which were mostly unsuccessful, and which abound with such gross indecencies that, had they even high merit otherwise, they would be found to be unperusable. He had the presumption to new-model Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and the "Tempest"—two of the most poetical compositions in existence—and blurred them with the foul leprosy of obscenity. He treated the "Paradise Lost" in the same way; nor did his necessities lead him to these enormities only; but there is little doubt they drove him to apostatise from his religion, and from his original political faith. His first poem of any note was a most eulogistic elegy on the death of Cromwell, in which, amongst many other such things, he said—

"Heav'n in his portrait showed a workman's hand,

And drew it perfect, yet without a shade."

His very next poem, and that of some length, was "AstrÆa Redux; a Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred Majesty Charles II.," immediately followed by "A Panegyric on his Coronation," in which he heaps still more glowing praise on the young royal libertine, and flings dust as liberally at his late idol:—

"While our cross stars denied us Charles's bed,

Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed,

For his long absence Church and State did groan,

Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne;

Experienced age in deep despair was lost,

To see the rebel thrive, the loyal crossed."

The accomplished sycophant received as his reward the office of Poet Laureate, with three hundred pounds a year; and he paid officiously more than his peppercorn of praise in the "Annus Mirabilis, or Year of Wonders, 1666," in which the sea fights with the Dutch and the Fire of London were commemorated in elegiac stanzas, and the most fulsome and almost impious adulation was poured in showers on both the king and his heir apparent, the Duke of York—not forgetting an especial poetical address to the duchess on her husband's victories over the Hollanders. No doubt Dryden made himself sure that his Laureate salary was safe, but he was mistaken. James, though "the best who ever bore the name," could forget benefits, and even flatteries; but he never forgot an ill turn, or anything that endangered his great design of restoring Popery; and Dryden, to please the Church and the late king, whom he did not know to be at heart a Papist, had written his "Religio Laici," in which he had pulled the Catholic Church to pieces, and lauded superlatively the Anglican hierarchy. James first took away his butt of sack, and then his salary; whereupon Dryden directly turned Catholic, and wrote "The Hind and the Panther," to beslaver Popery, kick down Protestantism, and reconcile the public to James's invidious scheme of abolishing the Test Act for his own purposes. This succeeded, and Dryden continued to receive his pay, and do his dirty work during James's reign. It was expected that he would wheel round again on William and Mary's success; but he lived and died Catholic.

With all respect for the genius of Dryden, it is thus impossible for a truthful historian to take any but a melancholy view of his personal character, and of the mass of his writings. They are, in fact, mostly on subjects that do not fall within the legitimate province of true poetry. His "Absalom and Achitophel"—written to ridicule Monmouth and Shaftesbury, with their accomplice, Buckingham, under the name of "Zimri," and to damage the Whig party generally—is transcendently clever; but even the highest satirical and political verse is not poetry—it is only cleverness in verse; and this is the grand characteristic of Dryden's poetry—it is masterly verse. There is no creative faculty in it; it is a matter of style rather than of soul and sentiment; and in style he is a great master. This made Milton say that Dryden was a good rhymester, but no poet; and in Milton's conception of poetry, and in that which has taught us to venerate Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, and others, Dryden was not a poet of the highest rank. A modern critic has given him great credit for "creative power and genius" in his adaptations of some of Chaucer's tales; but this is a mistake. The creative genius is Chaucer's; Dryden has only remodelled the tales in modern language; the ideas, the invention, are all Chaucer's; Dryden's share consists in his wonderful, elastic, musical diction, in which he undoubtedly excels every English author in the heroic measure. Pope's is more artificial, but is far behind in musical rhythm and elastic vigour. Dryden's heroic verse is music itself, and music full of its highest elements. In it the trumpet sings, the drum beats, the organ blows in solemn thunder, the flute and fife shrill forth eloquence, and all mingled instruments seem to chorus in a combination of blissful sounds and feelings. In the latter part of his life Dryden, standing independent of all Government drudgery, shows more worthily both in life and verse. His translation of Virgil yet remains the best in our language. He had done with his contemptible squabbles with Elkanah Settle and Shadwell, who won from him the honours and profits of the theatre; and his "Fables," as he called them—tales from Chaucer—seemed to inspire him with a more really poetic feeling. In them he seemed to grow purer, and to open his soul to the influences of classical and natural beauty, to the charms of nature, and of old romance. These tales will always remain the truest monuments of Dryden's fame. His odes, much as they have been praised, are rather feats of art than outpourings of poetic inspiration. His "Alexander's Feast" is but a description of the effects of music on a drunken conqueror and a courtesan. Who now would dream of placing it by the side of Coleridge's "Ode to France," or Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood"? But any one turning to "Palamon and Arcite" will find himself in a real fairyland of poetry, and perceive how much Keats, Leigh Hunt, and other modern poets have formed themselves on his style, and have even adopted his triplets.

We have given so much space to these the greatest poets of this period, that we have little for the rest. We have mentioned Andrew Marvell's beautiful ballad, "The Emigrants" (p. 180), and Wither's poems (p. 178), in our previous review. Sir John Denham's descriptive poem, "Cooper's Hill," had great popularity, and is a good specimen of that class of verse. Waller was a reigning favourite for his lyrics, which are elegant, but destitute of any high principle or emotion, as the man was, who wrote a panegyric on Cromwell and another on Charles II.; and when Charles told him he thought that on Cromwell the better, replied, "Sir, we poets never excel so well in writing truth as in writing fiction." Amongst the courtiers of Charles, Buckingham and Rochester were poets. Buckingham's comedy, "The Rehearsal," which was written to ridicule the heroic drama copied by Dryden from the French, still finds admirers; and the genius of Rochester was unquestionable, but still inferior to his obscenity. Sir Charles Sedley, another courtier, wrote comedies and songs almost equally famous for their dissoluteness. Charles Cotton, the author of "Virgil Travestied," was a writer of much wit, but nearly equal grossness, though he was the intimate friend of Izaak Walton, who was also no mean poet. The Earls of Roscommon and Dorset were popular, the first for his "Essay on Translated Verse," written in verse, and the other for his splendid ballad written at sea, commencing "To all you ladies now on land." Pomfret, a clergyman, wrote a didactic poem called "The Choice," which Dr. Johnson declared to be more frequently read than almost any poem in the language, and which Southey believed to be the most popular poem in the language. It is, in reality, one of the common-places gone by. Sir William Davenant, a reputed son of Shakespeare, wrote "Gondibert," a heroic poem in elegiac stanzas, which has good parts, but, as a whole, is intolerably dull. Sir Richard Fanshawe was celebrated as a translator, especially of Guarini's "Pastor Fido." Another translator from Greek and Spanish was Thomas Stanley, the learned editor of Æschylus, and the author of "The History of Philosophy." Besides these may be mentioned Bulteel, a popular songwriter; Philip Ayres, a lyrical poet; Dr. Henry More, author of a poem, "The Life of the Soul," in Spenserian stanzas; and Flatman, an imitator of Cowley.

SAMUEL BUTLER.

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The dramatic writing of the period was rather voluminous than first-rate. Davenant wrote above twenty plays, masks, etc.; but the most eminent dramatists were the unfortunate Otway, Nathaniel Lee, Sir George Etherege, Wycherley, Crowne, Southern, and Jasper Mayne. Otway's "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" still maintain their fame; he wrote altogether ten plays. Nathaniel Lee wrote ten tragedies, a great mixture of talent and bombast. The most celebrated of them are his "Theodosius" and his "Rival Queens." Crowne wrote seventeen plays, in which the selections made by Charles Lamb in his "Dramatic Specimens" show that there exists perhaps the most pre-eminent dramatic genius of the age. Etherege is the author of three comedies of great polish and brilliancy, and set the pattern for Wycherley, and for Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh in the next period. Wycherley wrote four comedies equally remarkable for vigour and indecency. In fact, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that the whole of the dramatic literature of this period is thoroughly disfigured with the coarsest and most revolting sensuality and obscenity. Southern belongs properly to the next era, as he produced only two of his plays during this period—his tragedy of "The Loyal Brother," and his comedy of "The Disappointment." Shadwell and Settle inundated the stage with worthless plays; and Mrs. Aphra Behn, a courtesan as well as writer, was the author of a whole host of comedies, novels, and poems. Of the two comedies by Jasper Mayne—who, by-the-by, was a clergyman—"The City Match" is the better. Perhaps we ought not to close this review of the poets without a mention of the most successful poetaster of the age, Nahum Tate, who was in such estimation as to be allowed to supply our churches with his most wretched version of the Psalms, and to be employed by Dryden to continue his satire of "Absalom and Achitophel."

At the head of the prose writers of this period, as of the poets, we must place Milton. Though his writings are for the most part on controversial subjects, they were subjects of such immense importance that they acquired a lasting value. They bear a certain relation to his poetry. This in its highest exhibition celebrated the triumph of the Deity over the powers of evil. His prose writings were employed to support the struggle of liberty against the advocates of all political evil—absolutism. Poetry seemed to have become the habitual expression of his mind, and, therefore, there is in his prose style a certain awkwardness and stiffness. He moves like David in armour that he had not well proved; and his utterance, solemn and full of deep thought and erudition, is, as it were, forced and formal. But when he warms up with the greatness of his subject, he runs into a strain of grave eloquence which has scarcely an equal in the language.

The great prose works of Milton comprise his "History of England" from the earliest times to the Conquest, including all the old legends of the chroniclers, the arrival of Brute from Rome, the story of King Lear, and those fine fables which have been the storehouses of poets and dramatists; his "Tractate on Education;" his magnificent "Areopagitica;" his "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates;" the "Eikonoklastes;" the "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" and "Defensio Secunda"—vindicating the conduct of England in deposing impracticable kings; his "Treatise on the Best Manner of Removing Hirelings out of the Church;" his essay on "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes;" his "State Letters," written at the command of Cromwell; an "Art of Logic;" a "Treaty of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what Best Means may be used against the Growth of Popery;" and his "Familiar Letters," in Latin. Besides these he left in manuscript a "Brief History of Muscovy," and a "System of Theology"—both since published. It may be safely said that scarcely any other writer has left such a sound and profound body of knowledge of all that is necessary for the maintenance of freedom, civil and religious, in the State.

Dryden is also a vigorous prose writer; but nothing can be more characteristic of the two men than the prose of Milton and Dryden. The one is grave, solemn, independent, upholding the sacred interests of religion and liberty; the other, that of Dryden—besides short lives of Polybius, Lucian, and Plutarch, and an "Essay on Dramatic Literature"—consists chiefly of a mass of his dramatic writings, couched in the most extravagant and unmanly terms of flattery. It is in vain to say that this was the spirit of the time; we have only to turn to Milton and behold that a great soul despised such sycophancy as much then as now.

Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion" and Memoirs of his own life assume a permanent importance from the position which he occupied in the struggles of those times; as literary compositions they are unique in style, but as historical authority, it is necessary to read them with caution.

Hobbes (b. 1588; d. 1679), the celebrated philosopher of Malmesbury, was one of the most powerful minds of the age. By his works, called the "Leviathan," his treatise on "Human Nature," on "Liberty and Necessity," and his "Decameron Physiologicum," with others of the like kind, he became the head of a great school of writers, which found wide acceptance in France, Germany, and England. Mr. Mill says—"Hobbes is a great name in philosophy, on account both of what he taught, and the extraordinary impulse which he communicated to the spirit of free inquiry in Europe." But, on the other hand, it has been well observed by a modern writer that, "as for what is properly to be called his system of philosophy—and it is to be observed that in his own writings his views in metaphysics, in morals, in politics, are all bound and built up together into one consistent whole—the question of the truth or falsehood of that seems to be completely settled. Nobody now professes more than a partial Hobbism. If so much of the creed of the philosopher of Malmesbury as affirms the non-existence of any essential distinction between right and wrong, the non-existence of conscience or the moral sense, the non-existence of anything beyond mere sensation in either emotion or intelligence, and other similar negatives of his moral and metaphysical doctrine, has still its satisfied disciples, who is now a Hobbist either in politics or mathematics? Yet certainly it is in these latter departments that we must look for the greater part of what is absolutely original in the notions of this teacher. Hobbes's philosophy of human nature is not amiss as a philosophy of Hobbes's own human nature. Without passions or imagination himself, and steering his own course through life by the mere calculations of an enlightened selfishness, one half of the broad mass of Humanity was to him nothing better than a blank."

Hobbes was a thorough advocate of personal monarchy, as is testified by his "De Corpore Politico," his "Leviathan," and "Behemoth," the last being a history of the Civil War from 1640 to 1660. Hobbes lived to a great age, praised by his admirers as an example of independence. His arguments were ably answered by Cudworth, by Clarendon, Bishops Cumberland, Bramhall, and Tenison, by Dr. Henry More in his "History of Philosophy;" by Eachard, and others.

A writer who has had a different influence was Richard Baxter (b. 1615; d. 1691). Baxter held the same position in the religious world as Halifax in the political one. Halifax gloried in the name of a "Trimmer." He was constantly occupying the middle post in the world of party. Sometimes one party congratulated itself that it had him, but presently it found him defending measures of its opponents. In fact, he was an independent thinker, and, extending his hand to either party as he thought it right at the moment, he turned the balance of conflicting opinions. Exactly so with Baxter; a clergyman of the Church of England, he was yet a decided Nonconformist. He was a Monarchist in theory, but was so disgusted with the Royalists for their licentiousness and notions of absolutism, that he went over to the camp of Cromwell and preached in it. But when Cromwell assumed the supreme power, again Baxter was on the other side, condemning to his face his usurpation. Baxter's mediating views led him to hope, on the return of Charles II., that Nonconformity and the Church might shake hands. He believed in Charles's "Healing Declaration," and drew up an accommodating Liturgy, but found himself deceived; the Hierarchy rejected such compromises. He became a sufferer from Nonconformity, and yet remained an advocate of Conformity to a certain extent. So was it in his theological views; with one hand he embraced Calvin, with the other Arminius. He rejected Calvin's doctrine of Reprobation, yet accepted his theory of Election—that is, that certain persons are pre-ordained from all eternity as instruments for certain work by God; but he agreed with Arminius's assertion that all men whatever are capable of salvation, for that Christ distinctly declared that He died for all, and that whoever believed should be saved. The views of Baxter were adopted by large numbers, who became a sect under the name of "Baxterians;" but they were gradually absorbed into the different denominations of the Independents, Baptists, etc., who may now be considered as generally holding Baxter's mild and amiable opinions. Watts and Doddridge were eminent professors of Baxter's creed. The chief works of Baxter are his "Methodus TheologiÆ," his "Catholic Theology," and his "Saints' Everlasting Rest." The last is by far the most popular. It has been circulated by tens of thousands into all quarters where the English language reaches, and, like the "Pilgrim" of Bunyan, is to be found on the shelves of the cottage and the farm in the remotest nooks. Perhaps no book ever gave so much consolation to the spirits of so many simple and earnest seekers after religious rest as this work of the venerable Richard Baxter.

Bunyan (b. 1628; d. 1688) was a contemporary of Baxter, but a man of a more robust and sturdy temper. Lying twelve years in Bedford gaol for his religious faith, he there produced his immortal "Pilgrim's Progress," a work which, as the production of an illiterate tinker, was contemptuously ignored by the critics and the learned of the time, till it had spread like a flood over the whole land and was become the delight of the nation. The "Pilgrim" is a wonderful work for any man, and Bunyan was undoubtedly a genius of the very first class.

With Baxter and Bunyan, the gentle angler, Izaak Walton (b. 1593; d. 1683), claims a place for his "Lives of Religious Worthies," and not less for his "Complete Angler," one of the first works, along with "Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," which awoke the love of nature.

Side by side with these worthies stands John Evelyn (b. 1620; d. 1706), a man who mixed with the Court in Charles II.'s reign without defiling himself. He was the model of a true English gentleman—pious, honourable, and exerting himself at once to maintain sound morals and to promote science. His Memoirs present a lively picture of the dissolute age in which he lived; and he sought to draw men away from the sink of corruption by encouraging them to plant and cultivate their estates. For this he wrote his "Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees," still a standard and most delightful work. He was one of the first members and promoters of the Royal Society, and wrote "Numismata, a Discourse of Medals;" a "Parallel of Ancient and Modern Architecture;" a work on Theology; and the first "Gardener's Almanac."

JOHN BUNYAN.

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As a memoir-writer of the same period Samuel Pepys (b. 1632; d. 1703) is more popular than Evelyn. Pepys was Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; and his inimitably-gossiping volumes of whatever he saw during those times have been often reprinted and read everywhere with great unction. Pepys, besides this, continued a most invaluable collection of old ballads begun by Selden, from which Bishop Percy amply helped himself in collecting his "Reliques;" so that to Pepys and John Selden we really owe much of that great revolution in taste and poetry which we ascribe almost exclusively to Percy. Another Memorialist of this period was Sir William Temple, a man who, like Evelyn, maintained a high moral status, and was held in great esteem for his philosophical essays. In Scotland Sir George Mackenzie stood conspicuous for his "Institution of the Laws of Scotland," and not less for various works of taste, as his "Aretina; or, The Serious Romance," and his "Religio Stoici; or, The Virtuoso." Burnet, the author of "The Sacred Theory of the Earth," also belongs to this period. In his work the Biblical account of the origin of the earth is made the foundation of a scientific treatise.

The Church at this period possessed great and eloquent men—Tillotson, Sherlock, Barrow, South, Stillingfleet, and others. Their sermons remain as storehouses of religious argument. They were nearly all of the Arminian school. Barrow was, besides, one of the ablest geometricians that have appeared.

GRESHAM COLLEGE, WHERE THE ROYAL SOCIETY WAS FIRST HOUSED.

During the period now under review a great step in the progress of science was made by the foundation of the Royal Society. The honour of originating this famous society belongs to Mr. Theodore Haak, a German, who was resident in London. At his suggestion a number of scientific gentlemen, including Dr. Goddard, a physician in Wood Street, but also a preparer of lenses for telescopes; Dr. Wallis, the mathematician; Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Bishop of Chester; Drs. Ent, Gisson, and Merrit, and Mr. Samuel Foster, professor of astronomy in Gresham College. These meetings began in 1645, and were held at one of their houses, or in Gresham College, or at apartments in Cheapside. Though some of these gentlemen were removed by promotion, others continued to join it, as Boyle, Evelyn, Wren—afterwards Sir Christopher. In 1662 a royal charter was obtained, and in the following year additional privileges were granted under a second charter. The first President was Lord Brouncker, and the first council consisted of Mr.—afterwards Lord—Brereton, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Robert Moray, Sir William Petty, Sir Paul Neile, Messrs. Boyle, Slingsbey, Christopher and Matthew Wren, Balle, Areskine, Oldenburg, Henshaw, and Dudley Palmer, and Drs. Wilkins, Wallis, Timothy Clarke, and Ent. Balle was the first treasurer, and Wilkins and Oldenburg the first secretaries. The Society was pledged not to meddle with questions of theology or State, and their chief subjects of notice were the physical sciences, anatomy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, statistics, chemistry, magnetism, mechanics, and kindred topics. In the spring of the second year the Society numbered a hundred and fifteen members; amongst them, besides many noblemen and gentlemen of distinction, we find the names of Aubrey, Dr. Barrow, Dryden, Cowley, Waller, and Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. The Society commenced the publication of its Transactions in 1665, which became a record of the progress of physical and mathematical science for a long series of years.

During the short period over which the present review ranges—that is, from the Restoration in 1660 to the Revolution in 1688, that is, only twenty-eight years—some of the greatest discoveries in science were made which have occurred in the history of the world; namely, the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Dr. William Harvey; the improvement of the tables of logarithms constructed by Napier; the invention of fluxions by Newton, and the calculus of fluxions, or the differential calculus, by Leibnitz; the discovery of the perfected theory of gravitation, by Newton; the foundation of modern astronomy, by Flamsteed; and the construction of a steam-engine by the Marquis of Worcester, originally suggested by Solomon de Caus, a Frenchman.

Napier (b. 1550; d. 1617) published his tables of Logarithms in 1614, under the title of "Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio," and in the same or the next year he and his friend, Henry Briggs, gave them their improved and perfect form, for from that time to the present they have admitted of no further improvement. They came from the hands of their author and his assisting friend perfect. The principle of their construction Napier did not declare; but this important revelation was made by Briggs and Napier's son in 1619. By these tables Napier superseded the long and laborious arithmetical operations which great calculators had previously to undergo, and which the most simple trigonometrical operations demanded. Without this wonderful aid even Newton could not have lived to formulate the principles that he drew from, and established for ever upon, the material accumulated by prior mathematicians. Napier in fact furnished by these tables a scale by which not only the advantages which he proposed of shortening arithmetical and trigonometrical labour were effected, but which enabled his successors to weigh the atmosphere and take the altitudes of mountains, compute the lengths and areas of all curves, and to introduce a calculus by which the most unexpected results should be reached. "By reducing to a few days the labour of many months," says Laplace, "it doubles, as it were, the life of an astronomer, besides freeing him from the errors and disgust inseparable from long calculations."

We are not, however, to suppose that Napier was the first who had a perception of the nature of logarithms. In almost all grand discoveries the man of genius stands upon the shoulders of preceding geniuses to reach that culminating point which brings out the full discovery. In very early ages it was known that if the terms of an arithmetical and geometrical series were placed in juxtaposition, the multiplication, division, involution, and evolution of the latter would answer to and might actually be effected by a corresponding addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of the former. Archimedes employed this principle in his "Arenarius," a treatise on the number of the sands. Stifel, in his "Arithmetica Integra," published at NÜrnberg in 1644, exhibits a still clearer notion of the use of this principle; but the merit of Napier was this—that whilst those who preceded him could only apply the principle to certain numbers, he discovered the means of applying it to all, and thus was enabled to construct and bring to perfection at once his admirable tables. There was an attempt to show that he had stolen the idea from Longomontanus, but that great mathematician settles this matter by himself attributing the whole invention to Napier.

Besides the Logarithms, Napier—or, to give him his full title, Lord Napier of Merchiston—is also noted for his elegant theorems, called his "Analogies," and his theorem of "the five circular parts," which furnishes a ready solution of all the cases of right-angled spherical triangles. He also invented what are called "Napier's Bones," to facilitate the performance of multiplication and division; instruments of such value, that had he not discovered the logarithms, they would have, to a certain extent, supplied their place.

The discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (b. 1642; d. 1727), however, put the crown to the glories of this period. Their extent can only be learnt by a perusal of his "Principia; or, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," containing his complete theory of the laws of the universe, based on the grand doctrine of Gravitation, of which he published afterwards a popular view under the title of "De Mundi Systemate," enunciating the truths contained in the third book of the "Principia;" his "Optics," containing his theories of light and colour, founded on a host of curious experiments; his "De Quadratura Curvarum," containing an exposition of his method of fluxions; his "Method of Fluxions and Analysis by Infinite Series." A great many of those discoveries were made known to the public through his communications to the Royal Society. The announcement of his binomial theorem, by which he was able to determine the area and rectification of curves, the surface and contacts of the solids formed by their revolution and the position of their centre of gravity—a theory of infinite avail in his determination of the laws of the planetary bodies—is dated 1664, that of his "Method of Fluxions," 1665; but he did not claim this till 1669. He professed to have written a tract on the subject in 1664, but he did not produce this tract till he had seen some of the same results published in Mercator's "Logarithmotechnia," four years afterwards. In 1666 he demonstrated the great law of gravitation, and applied it to the planets, but was baffled in his attempts to apply it to the moon through a false estimate of the earth's diameter. This was corrected by Picard's measurement of an arc of the meridian, with which Newton became acquainted in 1682, and then after sixteen years' delay he completed his system. But his "Principia" was not published collectively till 1687; his "Optics" till 1704, with his "De Quadratura Curvarum."

Unparalleled as were the achievements of Newton, these were not accomplished, any more than any other great performances, without substantial hints and assistance from preceding or contemporary genius. The very principle of gravitation had been pointed out by Robert Hooke, and Newton was compelled to admit, and offered to publish a scholium acknowledging the fact, that Hooke, Wren, and Halley had already deduced this law—that the gravitation of the planets was as the curvic square of the distance—from Kepler's second law of analogy between the periodic times and the mean distances of the planets. Newton's defenders say that he probably made this concession for the sake of peace; but was Newton likely to surrender a great truth, vitally affecting his fame for science and discovery, if there were not solid grounds for it?

Still less to the credit of Newton was his conduct towards Leibnitz in the dispute regarding the Differential Calculus. Leibnitz having heard through Oldenburg that Newton had made discoveries as to the measurement of tangents, in fact, as to his binomial theorem, and as to fluxions, desired to have some account of them, and Newton, through Oldenburg, communicated to Leibnitz his binomial theorem, but concealed his knowledge of fluxions under a most abstruse anagram, which was formed from the words, "Data Equatione quotcunque fluentes quantitates envolvente fluxiones invenire, et vice versÂ." It has been well observed that if Leibnitz could draw any light from that anagram, he must have possessed superhuman sagacity. Leibnitz, however, having himself made most important discoveries in fluxions, at once and candidly communicated the theory of what he called, and what is still called, the differential calculus, to Newton. This, Newton, in a scholium included in his "Principia," admitted to be a method hardly differing from his own except in the form of words and symbols. Yet in the third edition of the "Principia" he omitted this confession, claimed the exclusive invention of the differential calculus for himself, and branded Leibnitz as a plagiarist. The fact was, that Leibnitz had gone a step beyond Newton. Newton had discovered fluxions, but Leibnitz had discovered the fluxionary calculus, or, as he termed it, the differential calculus.

Still more discreditable was the conduct of Newton to Flamsteed (b. 1646; d. 1719). Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal. Charles II. established an observatory at Greenwich, one of the best things he ever did. The observatory was, in fact, the queen's house in Greenwich Park, and Flamsteed was appointed Astronomical Observator, with the magnificent salary of a hundred pounds a year, and not a single instrument, not even a telescope. It was in vain that he applied for instruments; and his appointment might have been a sinecure had he not procured instruments at his own expense, and taught pupils to maintain himself. But through all these difficulties he went on making observations, and in time not only made a mass of the most valuable lunar observations, but had made a map and catalogue of the stars, such as there had never been before for completeness and accuracy. His catalogue included three thousand three hundred stars, "whose places were more accurate than any determined in the next fifty years, and whose selection and nomenclature has served as a basis to every catalogue since that time." Bailey, Flamsteed's biographer, claims—and very justly claims—that the commencement of modern astronomy dates from his observations, for no one would care to go beyond them to compare any made in our day.

Newton was very intimate with Flamsteed, and with good cause, for he depended on his supplying him with the necessary observations to enable him to establish his lunar theory, and it is on evidence that Flamsteed furnished him with every lunar observation that he made. When Flamsteed had completed his catalogue, he proposed to publish it, and Prince George of Denmark, knowing that Flamsteed had expended on his instruments two thousand pounds more than his salary, offered to pay for the printing. A committee, consisting of Newton, Sir Christopher Wren, Dr. Arbuthnot, Dr. Gregory, and Mr. Roberts, was appointed to superintend this publication. The whole story, based on letters and documents of the time found at Greenwich observatory, is too long to be detailed here; but the upshot of it is, that the catalogue and observations of Flamsteed were printed and published, not as his own, but as those of Halley. In vain did Flamsteed protest against this most scandalous deed. Newton and his associates were strong in the favour of the queen and Halifax, and Newton used the most opprobrious language to the man by whose labours he had so greatly benefited, and whom he had now helped to rob of his dearest possession—his fame. The softest name that he gave him was that of "puppy." Flamsteed could obtain no redress—though they had broken his seal to come at his catalogue—till after the death of Queen Anne and Halifax, when he was enabled to get possession of the remainder of the books called Halley's, styled, "Historia Celestis libri duo." He immediately began preparations for publishing them himself, and demanded his MSS. from Newton, who refused, and was sued for them by Flamsteed. In the meantime, to avoid being compelled to give up the MSS. to the rightful owner, Newton handed them over to Halley! Every insult was offered to Flamsteed. He was summoned before the Royal Society to answer whether he had his instruments in order, a matter in which the Society had no authority, and what made the matter more atrocious, the instruments were Flamsteed's own. Newton even twitted Flamsteed with his one hundred pounds a year salary, at which Flamsteed indignantly reminded him that he had been receiving three hundred pounds a year himself ever since he came to London. Flamsteed's work was not completed till after his death, when it appeared under the name of "Historia Coelestis Britannica."

It is difficult to conceive more overbearing, unjust, and unworthy proceedings than those of Newton against Flamsteed. Sir David Brewster, in his "Life of Newton," endeavoured to defend him by asserting that Flamsteed did not appreciate Newton's theory; as if Flamsteed was not quite at liberty to have his own opinion, an opinion shared by many at the time, and which theory, in the first edition of the "Principia," the only one then out, was in some respects grossly incorrect—"rejected," as Flamsteed remarked, "by the heavens." Brewster also urged that Flamsteed showed unwillingness to furnish Newton with the requisite lunar observations. He was under no obligation whatever to do so; yet, as proved, he furnished him with all he had made. It is contended also that the committee had a right to break the seal of Flamsteed to get at his catalogue—an assertion than which nothing can be more immoral.

On the whole view of this case, as it rests on broad facts, we are compelled, in justice between man and man, to declare our opinion that Flamsteed was not only one of the most illustrious astronomers which England has ever produced, but also one of the most ill-used of men; and without derogating an iota from the scientific merits of Sir Isaac Newton, it is clear, from his conduct to both Leibnitz and Flamsteed, that he adds another proof to that of Bacon, that intellectual greatness and moral greatness do not necessarily reside in the same mind.

Amongst the other men of mathematical note in this period we may mention Henry Briggs, the coadjutor of Napier. His "Trigonometrica Britannica" showed that he had had a near view of the binomial theorem afterwards discovered by Newton. This work was published after his death by his friend, Henry Gellibrand, also an able mathematician. Thomas Harriott, author of a work on algebra—"Artis AnalyticÆ Praxis"—is said to have discovered the solar spots before Galileo, and the satellites of Jupiter only a few days after Galileo. Jeremiah Horrocks was beforehand with Newton in the theory of the lunar motions, which Newton afterwards demonstrated to be the necessary consequence of gravitation. Dr. Wallis, Crabtree, Gascoigne, Milbourn, Shakerley, and Gunter—the author of Gunter's Scale—were all men of high merit in those branches of science. Barrow we have already mentioned as a distinguished geometrician as well as a theologian. He was only excelled in optics by Newton himself; and in his "Sectiones GeometricÆ" he nearly anticipated Newton's principle of fluxions. James Gregory, professor of mathematics at Edinburgh, the first constructor of a reflecting telescope; and his nephew, David Gregory, of Oxford; John Collins, author of various philosophical works and papers; Roger Cotes, author of "Harmonia Mensurarum," etc.; and Dr. Brook Taylor, author of "Methodus Incrementorum," were all substantial contributors to the higher sciences at this era. Halley, whose name occurs so unfavourably in the affair with Flamsteed, succeeded him as Astronomer Royal, and is noted as being the first to find out the exact return of a comet which bears his name, and for his catalogue of the southern stars, published in 1679. Besides his profound astronomical talents, he added in various ways to the knowledge of the time. He was the first to construct tables of mortality; introduced improvements in the diving-bell; and wrote treatises on the variations of the compass, on the trade winds, and other subjects.

In pneumatics and chemistry the Honourable Robert Boyle made some discoveries, and considerably improved the air-pump; and Robert Hooke, already mentioned as one of the earliest theorists of gravitation, also had a pretty clear notion of the gas now termed oxygen. Thomas Sydenham is a great name in medicine of this time; and the department of natural history took a new start under the hands of Ray, Willoughby, Lester, and others. Ray published his "Historia Plantarum," and edited Willoughby's works on birds and fishes. Conchology was advanced by Martin Lester, and Woodward opened up the new region of mineralogy. The two most extraordinary discoveries, however, next to those of Newton, were those of the circulation of the blood by Harvey (b. 1578; d. 1657), and of the steam-engine by Solomon de Caus, introduced into England by the Marquis of Worcester (b. 1601; d. 1667).

The theory of the circulation of the blood, like almost every other great theory founded on fact, was not left for Harvey to think out ab origine. That the blood flowed from the heart to the extremities was known to the ancients, and stated by Aristotle. Galen even had argued, from the discovery of valves in the pulmonary artery, that the blood was also returned to the heart. Servetus, of Geneva, the same who was put to death for heresy, had demonstrated the circulation through the lungs, and again this theory had been propounded by Rualdus Columbus in 1559. In 1571 CÆsalpinus of Arezzo came still nearer to the true theory, from observing the swelling of veins below a ligature—thence inferring that the blood flowed from the extremities as well as to them. It is clear, therefore, that all but positive demonstration was arrived at when Harvey appeared. But though this demonstration was all that was now needed, it was a work of no ordinary courage and genius. The few facts known were overlaid by such a mass of absurd and contradictory notions amongst medical men, that nothing but the nicest and completest experiments could establish the truth. This Harvey undertook to do, and accomplished it. He informed Boyle, as we learn from that philosopher's "Treatise on Final Causes," that the idea of the true circulation was first suggested to him when studying under Fabricius Aquapendente, at Padua, by noticing the valves in the veins—the same that had attracted the attention of Galen. To ascertain the fact, he made numerous accurate experiments on both dead and living animals, and the result was the clearest proof of the fact that the blood is propelled from the heart through the arteries, and returned to it through the veins. Besides this, his experiments threw a flood of light on the action of the heart, on its diastolic and systolic functions, as observed both in adult subjects and in the foetus; on the true action of the lungs on the blood, and other important points. His completed views were so opposed to the notions of the Faculty at the time, that a stupendous prejudice was raised against him, and his practice fell off greatly from the clamour which was raised against what his fellow-practitioners called his wild speculations. It is a well-known fact that not one medical man who had passed his fortieth year ever admitted the discovery of Harvey. The most famous anatomists abroad joined in the outcry against his theory. Primrosius, Parisanus, Riolanus, professors of anatomy at Paris, and Plempius, professor at Louvain, were violent against it. Harvey very modestly permitted the storm to blow, certain that a truth built on positive facts would in the end prevail. He refused to answer the attacks of any one but Riolanus; but his friend, Dr. Ent, ably wielded the pen in his defence, and Harvey had the pleasure to see Plempius before long confess himself a convert, and many others then followed.

Besides Harvey's great discovery, he made many other anatomical investigations with great care and ability, and especially on a vital subject, detailed in his treatise "De Generatione." His merits became so fully acknowledged that he was elected President of the College of Physicians.

But the gifted men of this age who could determine the laws of worlds, and systems of worlds, and the vital principles of the living body, failed to perceive the wondrous capabilities of another invention destined to revolutionise society at a later day. The Marquis of Worcester, whom we have seen figuring conspicuously as the Earl of Glamorgan, in the civil strife of Charles I.'s reign, constructed a steam-engine—a very rude one, of course—which Sorbiere, a Frenchman, saw at work at his lordship's house at Vauxhall in 1663. It was capable of throwing up water to a great height. This engine is described by the marquis in his "Century of Inventions," published this same year, 1663. It is the sixty-eighth in the catalogue, and entitled "An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire." He used a cannon for his boiler, and says he has seen "water run like a constant fountain-stream forty feet high. One vessel of water rarefied by fire driveth up forty of cold water."

The marquis had learned this invention from the work of a Frenchman, Solomon de Caus, entitled "Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes." This De Caus had travelled in England, and had importuned his own countrymen to examine what he deemed a wonderful discovery—the power of steam; but, like Thomas Gray, when urging on England a system of railroads, he was treated as a bore and a maniac. The marquis found De Caus actually confined in the BicÊtre in Paris as a madman, for wanting to convince his countrymen of the marvellous powers of steam. The marquis's own notion appeared to be that the engine might be employed chiefly for the raising of water—a trait attributed to him by Stuart, in his "Anecdotes of Steam-Engines," published in 1651, in which the writer mentions a little engine at work at his house in Lambeth, which "might be applied to draw or hale ships, boates, etc., up rivers against the stream; to draw carts, wagons, etc., as fast without cattel; to draw the plough without cattel, to the same dispatch, if need be."

The views of the marquis were thus rapidly expanding on the subject; and it is wonderful that the invention should have been suffered to sleep a century and a half longer. Still more wonderful is it that the powers of steam slept so long, when, according to Gibbon, the architect of St. Sophia, Constantinople, centuries ago, was so well aware of it that he used to shake the house of his neighbour, an enemy of his, with steam machinery.

Of architecture there was none belonging to this period. The glorious old Gothic had closed for the time its career, and even the most eminent architects despised it. Inigo Jones introduced an Italian style, and committed the atrocity of erecting Grecian screens in Gothic cathedrals; and we shall find Wren, the architect of the noble classical fabric of St. Paul's, equally incapable of perceiving the beauty of Gothic. To him it was barbarian.

With Charles II. came in French taste, and almost all the professors of painting, sculpture, and engraving were foreigners. The whole art of painting was expended in portraiture and on the decorations of walls and ceilings after the fashion of Le Brun, but not with his genius. Verrio and Sir Peter Lely engrossed the patronage of the Court, and the admiration of the public.

Antonio Verrio, a Neapolitan painter, who transferred himself to France and then to England, covered immense spaces of wall and ceiling at Windsor Castle and other places with his gods, goddesses, and similar figures, pouring them out, as Walpole observes, without much invention and as little taste, but certainly with a great show of colour. He painted most of the ceilings at Windsor, one side of the Hall of St. George and the chapel, most of which works are now destroyed. On the ceiling of St. George's Hall he drew Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, as Faction dispersing libels; and the housekeeper, Mrs. Marriott, as Fury, because she had offended him. He was paid an enormous sum for these works, and spent it in ostentation. He had a house in St. James's Park, and was also master gardener to the king. Walpole gives an extraordinary example of his freedom in demanding money of the king. He had just received a thousand pounds when he appeared at Court, and found Charles in such a circle that he could not approach him; but, nothing daunted, he called out to him that he desired to speak to him. Being asked what he wanted, he replied, "Money." The king smiled, and reminded him of the thousand pounds just had. "Yes," said he, "but pedlars and painters cannot give long credit; that was soon paid away, and I have no gold left." "At that rate," said Charles, "you would spend more than I do." "True," replied the impudent foreigner; "but does your majesty keep an open table as I do?"

Being a Tory, at the Revolution he refused to paint for King William; but was employed by the Earl of Exeter at Burleigh House, and the Earl of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, where plenty of his works remain. Dr. Waagen says he received more from Lord Exeter alone than Raphael or Michael Angelo received for all their immortal works. The earl paid him for twelve years one thousand five hundred pounds a year—that is, eighteen thousand pounds, besides his keep and equipage at his disposal. At length the earl persuaded him to work for King William at Hampton Court, where, besides other things, he painted the staircase so badly that he was suspected to have done it on purpose.

In the wake of Verrio came Jacques Rousseau and Charles de la Fosse, the painters of the dome of the Invalides in Paris. Some few Englishmen, too, were employed in fresco-painting. Among them were Isaac Fuller, remains of whose performance may be seen in the dome of St. Mary Abchurch, in London; John Freeman, a scene painter; and Robert Streater, a man of superior skill, who painted the ceiling of the theatre at Oxford, and many other ceilings, besides historical subjects, and even still life.

Lely, the painter of Charles's beauties, now at Hampton Court, was a native of Germany, but had studied chiefly in Holland, where Charles is supposed to have met with him. His ladies are endowed with remarkable beauty and grace, but there is a certain likeness running through them all, especially in the complexion, the tone and tint of the flesh, as well as the disposal of the drapery, which gives one the inevitable impression that they are to a great degree got up, and made rather after his peculiar model than their own real appearance. However, whether they are striking likenesses or not, they are beautiful pictures. His draperies are arranged in broad folds, and he relieves his figures by a landscape background, which made Walpole say, "His nymphs trail fringes and embroidery through meadows and purling streams." The essence of Lely's painting is Court artifice. It is showy, affected, and meretricious. Besides his Court portraits he occasionally attempted the historic, one of the best of this kind which he executed being "Susannah and the Elders," at Burleigh House. Amongst a crowd of foreigners who sought to share Sir Peter Lely's popularity were Henry Gascar, James Huysman, and Sunman, from the Netherlands—all excellent portrait painters. Netscher also came to England for a time; and William Wissing, of Amsterdam, an admirable artist, succeeded Lely at his death, and was only eclipsed by the rising fame of Kneller, a German, who afterwards became King William's Court painter. Of the French school was Philip Duval, a pupil of the celebrated Le Brun.

Amongst native portrait painters may be mentioned Michael Wright, a Scotsman, who painted the judges for the Guildhall of London; though he is more noted for his portrait of Lacy, the actor, in three characters; of Henry Anderton, a pupil of Streater's, who became very popular; of John Greenhill, and Thomas Flatman, the last being also a poet of some note.

A number of Dutch and Flemish painters of still life were also employed in England at this period, of whom the most celebrated were Vansoon, Hoogstraten, Roestraten, and Varelst, who also attempted portraiture. There were also Abraham Hondius, animal painter, and Danker, Vosterman, Griffier, Lancrinck, and the two Vanderveldes, landscape painters. The Vanderveldes were justly in high esteem; Lancrinck was the painter of Lely's backgrounds.

The two great sculptors were Caius Gabriel Cibber, a native of Holstein, and Grinling Gibbons, whom Macaulay calls a Dutchman, but who, though supposed to be of Dutch extraction, was an Englishman, born in Spur Alley, London. Cibber—who was the father of Colley Cibber, afterwards Poet Laureate, and immortalised by Pope in the "Dunciad"—is now chiefly known by his two figures of "Raging" and "Melancholy Madness," which adorned the principal gate of old Bethlehem Hospital, and were afterwards removed to South Kensington—works of real genius. He also erected the bas-reliefs on the pedestal of the London Monument, and did much work at Chatsworth.

Grinling Gibbons was found by John Evelyn in a cottage at Deptford, carving his celebrated "Stoning of St. Stephen," after Tintoretto, and by him introduced at Court. He executed a marble statue of Charles II. for the area of the Royal Exchange, and another in bronze of James II. for the garden at the back of Whitehall, which fixed his high merit as a sculptor; but his unrivalled genius in carving soon drew him from sculpture, and he became extensively employed at Windsor, Chatsworth, Petworth, and other great houses, carving flowers, feathers, foliage, and like ornaments, which rival in wood the lightness and accuracy of nature. In the chapel at Windsor he executed abundance of carving of doves, pelicans, palm-branches, etc. At St. Paul's he did much of the foliage and festoons of the stalls and the side aisles of the choir. At Chatsworth there are feathers in lime-wood that rival those of the living goose; and he there executed in wood a point-lace cravat of marvellous delicacy. At Southwick, in Hants, he embellished an entire gallery, and a room at Petworth, which is generally regarded as amongst his very finest performances.

Engraving at this era fell also greatly into the hands of foreigners. Loggan, Booteling, Valet, Hollar, and Vanderbank were amongst the chief; but there were two Englishmen who were not less patronised by their countrymen. Robert White was a pupil of Loggan's, and, like his master, excelled in portraits. Walpole enumerates two hundred and fifty-five works of this artist, many of them heads drawn by himself, and striking likenesses. But William Faithorne was unquestionably at the head of his profession. Faithorne in his youth fought on the royal side, and was taken by Cromwell at the siege of Basing House along with Hollar. Hollar left England during the Commonwealth, and resided at Antwerp, where he executed his fine portraits from Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, and other great masters. On the Restoration he returned to England, and did the plates in Dugdale's "Monasticon," "History of St. Paul's," and "Antiquities of Warwickshire," and in Thoroton's "Nottinghamshire;" and he made drawings of the town and fortress of Tangier for Charles, which he engraved, some of these drawings still remaining in the British Museum. Faithorne took refuge in France, and there studied under Nanteuil, and acquired a force, freedom, richness, and delicacy in portrait engraving which were unequalled in his own time, and have scarcely been surpassed in ours. He drew also in crayons.

The art of mezzotint was introduced at this period by Prince Rupert, who was long supposed to have invented it; this, however, has since then been doubted; but its introduction by him is certain; and it became so much cultivated as to become almost exclusively an English art.

The coins of this period were the work of the Roteri family. Of these there were John and Norbert (his son), Joseph and Philip. Their father was a Dutch banker, who had obliged Charles during his exile by the loan of money, on condition that, in case of restoration, he should employ his sons. They were men of much taste and skill, as their coins show, though by no means equal to Simon, the coiner of Cromwell. They, however, introduced some decided improvements into our coin, particularly that of graining or letters on the rims of the coin. Charles called in all the Commonwealth money, and coined fresh. In 1662 the gold coin called a guinea was first invented, from gold brought from the coast of Guinea, and bore the stamp of an elephant under the king's head, in honour of the African company which imported it. In the last year of Charles's reign he coined farthings of tin, with only a bit of copper in the middle. The figure of Britannia still retained on our copper coinage was first introduced in the copper coinage of Charles (see p. 205), and was modelled by Philip Roteri from Miss Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, of whom Charles was deeply enamoured, much to the scandal of all decent subjects.

James II. followed the fashion of Charles in coining tin halfpence and farthings with copper centres. After his abdication he was reduced in Ireland to the necessity of coining money out of old brass cannon, and pots and pans, and, when these failed, out of pewter.

With the Restoration came back mirth and music, which had been banished by the Puritans from both churches and private houses. However, it is but just to except Cromwell and Milton from censure. Cromwell was especially fond of the organ, and gave concerts in his own house when at the head of the Government. Milton, as might be supposed from his poetical nature, and the solemn music of his verse, was equally attached to harmony of sounds. He was the friend of Henry Lawes, one of the greatest composers of the time, and addressed to him the well-known sonnet on the publication of his airs, beginning

But perhaps the Royalists were all the more musical on their return to power to mark their contempt of the gloomy Puritans, and music burst forth in church and chapel, in concert, and theatre, and private house with redoubled energy. The theatres and operas did not delay to draw the public by the charms of music as well as of representation. Even during the latter years of the Commonwealth Sir William Davenant opened a kind of theatre under the name of masque and concert, and enlivened it by music. The Royalists at Oxford during the time Charles I.'s Court was there, held weekly musical parties with the members of the University; and no sooner was the Commonwealth at an end than the heads of houses, fellows, and other gentlemen renewed these parties, and furnished themselves with all necessary instruments, and the compositions of the best masters. But what marks the musical furore of this period more than all was the flocking of the aristocracy and the finest musical performers to the miserable house of a dealer in coal-dust in Clerkenwell, where musical parties were held. "It was," says Dr. John Hawkins, "in Aylesbury Street, Clerkenwell. The room of the performance was over the coal-shop; and, strange to tell, Tom Britton's concert was the weekly resort of the old, the young, the gay, the fair of all ranks, including the highest order of nobility." Dr. Pepusch and frequently Handel played the harpsichord there—though this must have been at a later period, for he did not arrive in England till 1710. Mr. Needler, Accountant-General of the Excise; Hughes the poet, Wollaston the painter, and many other amateurs were among the performers. Walpole says Britton took money from his visitors, but Hawkins entirely denies it.

The example of Tom Britton was contagious, and similar places of musical entertainment, but on the principle of professional emolument, were soon opened east and west. Amongst the first of these was Sadler's Wells.

One of the finest composers for the theatre and opera was Matthew Lock. He was appointed Composer in Ordinary to Charles II., and composed a church service and some anthems; but he was much more famous for his setting of songs, and the music to plays. He wrote that to Davenant's alteration of "Macbeth," to Shadwell's opera, "Psyche," and various other dramas. He received a salary of two hundred pounds a year as Director of the King's Music. He became a convert to Catholicism, and was made Organist to Catherine, the queen of Charles. But the rage for everything French was growing, and Lock was succeeded in his office by a Frenchman, Cambert, who produced an English opera; and he by Louis Grabut, another Frenchman, who set Dryden's "Albion and Albanius," a satire on Shaftesbury—a poor performance. After Charles quarrelled with Louis XIV., Italian taste superseded the French, and Italian music and musicians were patronised. Amongst the latter Nicola Matteis was a popular violinist.

But that which possessed the most decided merit was the church music of this period. It was not that which one would have expected in the reign of Charles II., but we must do him the justice to say that he seems to have encouraged greatly the musical services of the Church. He united all the distinguished composers and performers, to assist in restoring this service to its former glory; and, amongst the survivors of his father's reign, reappeared Dr. Child, Dr. Christopher Gibbons, Dr. Rogers, Dr. Wilson, Henry Lawes, Milton's friend, Byrne, Lowe, and Cook, commonly called Captain Cook, from his having borne a commission in the Royalist army. Cook was made Master of the Children of the Choir, in the Royal Chapel; Child, Gibbons, and Lowe, Organists; Lawes, Clerk of the Cheque; Rogers, Organist at Eton; Byrne, Organist at St. Paul's; and Wilson was attached to the service in Westminster Abbey.

By these means the church musical service was soon raised to a high pitch of excellence; a spirit was diffused through the whole kingdom from the king's chapel, and the cathedral services became as fine as ever. Captain Cook trained his boy-choristers to admiration, and out of them arose some of the best composers of sacred music that England possesses. Amongst them are Pelham Humphrey, Michael Wise, John Blow, and, superior to them all, Henry Purcell. Some of these produced anthems whilst mere striplings, which still remain in use. Amongst these Pelham Humphrey greatly distinguished himself; and was, therefore, sent by Charles to Paris, to study under the famous Lulli, and then made gentleman of his chapel. At the death of Cook, his master, he succeeded to his office. Michael Wise became for a time, Organist of Salisbury Cathedral, but returned to the Royal Chapel as one of the gentlemen. His anthems are still greatly admired. Blow succeeded Humphrey as Master of the Children, and was Organist of Westminster Abbey. He published various compositions, both sacred and secular, some of which are yet in much esteem, while others have fallen into neglect.

But the musical master of the age was Henry Purcell (b. 1658; d. 1695), organist of Westminster Abbey, and afterwards of the king's chapel. His sacred music, especially his "Te Deum" and "Jubilate," has never been surpassed. Dr. Burney declared him superior to all the foreign composers of the day—Carissimi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Keiser, Lulli, and Rameau; but others do not except any composers of any previous age. In his secular music he again surpassed himself. His music of the drama is voluminous. He set the songs in Nahum Tate's "Dido;" the music for Lee's "Theodosius;" that for the "Tempest," as altered by Dryden, which is still heard with delight; that for the "Prophetess," altered by Dryden and Betterton, from Beaumont and Fletcher; the songs of Dryden's "King Arthur," in which are the lovely air "Fairest Isle," the charming duet "Two Daughters of this Aged Stream are We," and the inimitable frost-scene. He furnished the music for Howard's and Dryden's "Indian Queen." In Dryden's altered "Boadicea," the duet and chorus "To Arms," and the air "Britons, strike home," are still heard with acclamations on all occasions of patriotic excitement. Besides these he wrote airs, overtures, and set tunes for numerous other dramas, as Dryden's and Lee's "Timon of Athens," "Œdipus," "The Fairy Queen," altered from the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and Dryden's "Tyrannic Love." He wrote many odes, glees, catches, rounds, many single songs and duets, twelve sonatas for two violins and a bass, etc. The air of "Lillibullero" is attributed to him. His widow published many of these after his death, in two folio volumes called "Orpheus Britannicus." The music of Purcell is national property, and, in spite of more recent genius, will long continue to be heard with rapture.

Notwithstanding Charles II.'s restoration of church music, he endeavoured to degrade it by the introduction of French customs, and at one time introduced a band of twenty-four fiddlers into his chapel, in imitation of Louis XIV. Tom D'Urfey ridiculed it in the song, "Four-and-twenty Fiddlers all in a Row;" and Evelyn describes his disgust at witnessing this strange sight, "more fit for a tavern or playhouse than a church." The public feeling, indeed, soon caused the king to withdraw the Gallic innovation.

Amongst the musical productions of this time we may note Blow's "Amphion Anglicus," Roger North's "Memoir of Music," still in manuscript; Sir Francis North's "Philosophical Essay on Music," Lord Brouncker's translation of Descartes' "MusicÆ Compendium." Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh, was the first to treat acoustics methodically, in a paper in the "Philosophical Transactions." Dr. Wallis, one of the founders of the Royal Society, and an eminent mathematician, wrote much in the "Philosophical Transactions" on musical subjects, and published an edition of "Ptolemy's Harmonies." Thomas Mace, John Birchensha, Christopher Simpson, and John Playford are musical authors of that age.

The furniture of this period had the general characteristics of the last age. Cane backs and seats began to be used in chairs, and the beautiful marqueterie work adorned tables, cabinets, clock-cases, wardrobes, and other rich pieces of furniture. The Louis Quatorze style, with its rich sweeps and abundance of carving and gilding, began to appear in England, but did not attain to general use till a later period. The floors began to be covered with gay-coloured mats and carpets, but the richest pieces of Turkey carpet were still more frequently used for table-covers. Oil-cloth was now introduced from Germany, and manufactured in London. The Gobelins tapestry manufactory was established in France in 1677, and towards the end of this period the walls of the great mansions of England were covered with the products of its looms.

The costume of gentlemen underwent rapid and various metamorphoses in Charles II.'s time. From the rich and elegant costume of Charles I. it degenerated first into one with an exceedingly short doublet, without any under waistcoat, loose petticoat breeches, with long drooping lace ruffles at the knee. This costume, however, still retained much of the Vandyke style. It had the high-crowned hat and plume of feathers, the falling lace collar, and the natural hair. But soon came the monstrous peruke, or periwig, as the word was corrupted to in England, copied from the fashion of the Court of Louis XIV., which superseded the natural hair in both men and women, the women appearing to have adopted it first. Then followed the square, long coat, and huge jack-boots, and cocked hat, which became the general dress of the next century. False hair had been worn by both sexes in the times of Elizabeth and James I., but never to the same preposterous extent as now. Charles II., though adopting the periwig fashion himself, and thus confirming it, yet refused to allow the clergy to use it. He wrote a letter to the University of Cambridge, ordering the clergy neither to wear periwigs, nor smoke tobacco, nor read their sermons; and, on a fellow of Clare Hall venturing to preach before him in a wig and holland sleeves, he ordered the statutes concerning decency of apparel to be put in force against him and similar offenders.

The high-crowned hat or broad-leaved sombrero of Spain not harmonising well with the periwig, the crown was suddenly lowered, the brim turned up, and a drooping feather thrown backwards over it. The petticoat breeches came in as early as 1658; and, in the following year, Randal Holmes thus describes a gentleman's dress:—"A short-waisted doublet and petticoat breeches, the lining being lower than the breeches, is tied above the knees; the breeches are ornamented with ribands up to the pocket, and half their breadth upon the thigh. The waistband is set round with ribands, and the shirt hanging out over them." These petticoat breeches soon grew into actual skirts, and the doublet or jacket, which at the beginning of the reign scarcely came below the breast, towards the end of it was so elongated that it was an actual coat, and had buttons and buttonholes all down the front.

Along with a particular costume described by Evelyn, which Charles adopted in 1666, consisting of a long close vest of black cloth or velvet pinked with white satin; a loose surcoat over it of an Oriental character, and instead of shoes and stockings, buskins or brodequins; he also wore small buckles instead of shoestrings. Charles was so proud of this dress that he vowed he would never wear any other; but it did not last long, and buckles did not become the general fashion till the reign of Queen Anne.

Long and short kersey stockings were an article of export in this period, as well as stockings of leather, silk, or woollen, and worsted for men and children. Socks also occur under the name of "the lower end of stockings." Amongst the imports were hose of crewel, called Mantua hose, and stockings of wadmal. Neckcloths or cravats of Brussels and Flanders lace were worn towards the end of the "Merry Monarch's" reign, and tied in a knot under the chin, the ends hanging down square.

The costume of Knights of the Garter assumed its present shape, the cap of estate, with its ostrich and heron plume, and the broad blue ribbon worn over the left shoulder and brought under the right arm, where the jewel or lesser George hangs, being introduced just before the publication of Ashmole's "History of the Order." The baron's coronet dates from this reign.

The costume of James II.'s reign varied little from that of Charles. The hats indeed assumed various cocks, according to the fancy of some leader or party. One cock was called the Monmouth cock.

The ladies in the voluptuous reign of Charles II. abandoned the straight-laced dresses with the straight-laced manners of their Puritan predecessors. Bare bosoms and bare arms to the elbows were displayed, and the hair, confined only by a single bandeau of pearls, or adorned by a single rose, fell in graceful profusion upon their snowy necks. The rounded arm reclined on the rich satin petticoat; whilst the gown of the same rich material extended its voluminous train behind. Lely's portraits are not to be regarded as representing the strict costume of the age, but they give us its spirit—a studied negligence, an elegant dÉshabillÉ. The starched ruff, the steeple-crowned hat, the rigid stomacher, and the stately farthingale were, however, long retained by less fashionable dames of the country; and when the ruff was discarded, a rich lace tippet veiled the breast. The women of ordinary rank also still retained much of this costume, with the hood and tippet.

In their riding habits the ladies imitated the costume of the men as nearly as they could. Evelyn says that he saw the queen in September, 1666, going to take the air "in her cavalier riding-habit, hat, and feathers, and horseman's coat." This seems to be a very rational dress for the occasion, yet the sight did not please Mr. Pepys, for he remarks about the same time—"Walking in the galleries at Whitehall, I find the ladies of honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets, with deep skirts—just for all the world like men, and buttoned in their doublets up to the breast, with periwigs and with hats. So that only for a long petticoat dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever, which was an odd sight, and a sight that did not please me."

Yet Mrs. Stuart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, did please him:—"But, above all, Mrs. Stuart, in her dress, with her hat cocked and a rich plume, with her sweet eye, and little Roman nose, and excellent taille, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life."

The military costume of the period remained much the same as during the civil wars and Commonwealth; but vambraces were abandoned by the arquebusiers, and defensive armour was gradually falling into disuse. The helmet and corset, or cuirass, or the gorget alone, worn over a buff coat, formed all the defence of steel worn by the officers at this period. "The arms, offensive and defensive," says the statute of the 13th and 14th of Charles II., "are to be as follows:—The defensive armour of the Cavalry to consist of a back, breast, and pot, and the breast and pot to be pistol-proof. The offensive arms a sword, and case of pistols, the barrels whereof are not to be under fourteen inches in length. For the Foot, a musketeer is ordered to have a musket, the barrel not under three feet in length; a collar of bandeliers, with a sword. Pikemen to be armed with a pike of ash, sixteen feet long, with a back, breast, head-piece, and sword."

COSTUMES OF THE TIME OF CHARLES II.

The familiar names of several of the regiments of the British army commence from Charles II.'s reign. The Life Guards were raised in 1661—composed and treated, however, like the Gardes du Corps of the French,—being principally gentlemen of families of distinction, who themselves, or their fathers, had fought in the Civil War. In the same year the Blues were embodied, and called the Oxford Blues, from their first commander, Aubrey, Earl of Oxford. The Coldstream Guards date their formation from 1660, and two regiments were added to the one raised about ten years previously by General Monk at Coldstream, on the borders of Scotland. To these were added the 1st Royal Scots, brought over from France at the Restoration; the 2nd, or Queen's, raised in 1661; the 3rd, or Old Buffs, so named from their accoutrements being composed of buffalo leather, embodied in 1665; the Scottish Fusiliers, afterwards the 21st, raised in 1678, and so called from their carrying the fusil, invented in France in 1630—being a firelock lighter than the musket, but about the same length; and the 4th, or King's Own, raised in 1680.

During this reign the bayonet—so called from Bayonne, where it was invented—was sometimes three-edged, sometimes flat, with a wooden hilt like a dagger, and was screwed or merely stuck into the muzzle of the gun. The bayonet superseded the rapier attached to the musket-rest in James's reign. Even then the bayonet was a far inferior weapon to what it subsequently became, as it had to be removed to fire and charge again. The Grenadiers were introduced in 1678, and were so called from being practised to fling hand grenades, each man having a pouch full. To these James added, in 1685, the 1st, or King's regiment of Dragoon Guards, the 2nd, or Queen's Dragoon Guards, and the 5th and 7th regiments, called the Royal Fusiliers; and in 1688, the year of the Revolution, the 23rd, or Welsh Fusiliers, were raised.

We need not repeat what has been so frequently stated in these pages about the profligacy of the Court and aristocracy in Charles II.'s reign, which soon polluted the spirit of the greater part of the country. However harsh and repulsive were the manners and social maxims of the Puritans, they were infinitely preferable to the licentiousness and blasphemy of the Cavaliers, who mistook vulgarity and obscenity for gentility. Notwithstanding the traditionary feeling left by the Royalist writers of these times, and too faithfully taken up by such writers as Sir Walter Scott, it is now beginning to be perceived that the Cavaliers were, in reality, the vulgar of the age. If to swear, gamble, bully, murder, and use the most indecent language, and lead the most indecent lives, be marks of vulgarity, these were the distinctive marks of too many of the Cavaliers. The Puritans, with all their acerbity and intolerance, had a reverence for sound and Christian principles at the core of their system. Virtue and moral piety were their admiration, however rudely they demonstrated it. But the Cavaliers gloried in every opposite vice the more, because the Puritans, whom they despised, denounced them. We have seen the spirit of private assassination which animated them, and led them to the murder of Dorislaus, the Commonwealth ambassador in Holland; of Ascam, its minister at Madrid; of Colonel Lisle, at Lausanne; and their repeated attempts on the life of Cromwell, in pursuance of their avowed doctrine of assassination shown in the tract called "Killing no Murder." This does anything but justify their high claim to the title of men of honour, and finds no parallel in the principles or practices of the Puritans of England, though the Scottish Covenanters stooped to this base practice in the murder of Archbishop Sharp.

Then as to profane swearing, their conversation, larded with oaths, would have disgraced the most uncouth trooper of to-day. "The new band of wits and fine gentlemen," says Macaulay, "never opened their mouths without uttering a ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them." "No man," says Lord Somers, "was accounted a gentleman, or person of any honour, that had not in two hours' sitting invented some new modish oath, or found out the late intrigue between the Lord B. and the Lady P., laughed at the fopperies of priests, and made lampoons and drollery on the sacred Scriptures themselves." As to drinking and gambling, these vices were beyond conception; and the plunder of the people by the Cavalier troopers was carried on as if they had been in an enemy's country.

We have only to refer to the abandoned character of the women of Charles's Court, and amongst the aristocracy, who imitated the monarch in selecting mistresses and even wives from the stage, to remind the reader of the immoral character of the age. As we have already said, any one who would convince himself of the sink of infamy and obscenity which society was then, has only to look at the plays which were acted; at their language, declaimed by women without a blush or any evidence of disgust; plays written even by such men as Dryden. "Whatever our dramatists touched," says Macaulay, "they tainted. In their imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and high-spirited Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakespeare's 'Viola' a procuress, MoliÈre's 'Misanthrope' a ravisher, MoliÈre's 'Agnes' an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic, but that it became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and ignoble minds." The same writer, making a few exceptions—and a noble one in the case of Milton—says of the poets of that age that "from Dryden to D'Urfey the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman."

Whilst such was the condition of the Court, the aristocracy, the theatre, and the literature of the country, we may imagine what was the condition of the lower orders. The state of London was little, if anything, improved in civilisation—by no means improved in its moral tone—since the days of James I. The city was rising in a more healthy and substantial form from the fire, with wider streets, and better drainage; but it was still badly lighted, and disgraced by filthy kennels.

At the close of Charles II.'s reign London was lighted, by contract, by one Herring, who engaged to place a lamp at every tenth door, when there was no moon, from six to twelve o'clock at night, from Michaelmas to Lady-Day; and this was thought to be a wonderful advance. To us it would appear just darkness visible; and vast tracts of population were destitute of even this feeble glimmer. Whitefriars still continued the haunt of thieves, bullies, desperate debtors, and abandoned women, who rushed out and defended themselves from any visitations of duns or constables. The neighbourhood of Whitehall itself was little better, from the resort of the bully-mob of those who called themselves gentlemen. These young men, often belonging to good families, or the sons of wealthy citizens, assembled for noise and mischief in theatres and in the streets. They had been successively known as the "Darr Hearts," "the Heroics," "the Muns," "Tityre Tu's," "the Hectors," "the Roaring Boys," and "Bonaventors," so continually figuring in the comedies of the time. They now bore the name of "the Scourers," and frequented the theatres to damn plays, and the coffee-houses to pick up the last sayings of the wits, which were commonly not very cleanly, when such men as Rochester, Sedley, Dryden, and Wycherley were the stars there. They then sallied into the streets in bands, breaking windows, tearing off knockers, defacing signs, upsetting stalls, fish- or fruit-sellers, storming taverns, beating quiet passengers, and rudely insulting respectable women. Frequently they came to a regular fight with some other mob of "Scourers," and then rushed headlong, knocking down all whom they met. The watchmen carefully kept out of their way, and the military had to disperse them when they became particularly riotous. One great delight of these genteel ruffians was to hustle passengers into the kennel, or into Fleet Ditch and its tributaries, which ran then in open Styx-like blackness along the streets. To add to these dangers of walking the City in the evening thieves and pickpockets assaulted the passers by from dark entries below; and it was the common practice to empty all sorts of filth out of chamber windows. The City apprentices still kept up their riotous character. On one occasion, having attacked and beaten their masters, they were some of them put into the pillory; whereupon they tore down the pillory, and when set up again they again pulled it down. There were feuds and street encounters everywhere. The weavers and butchers, the frequenters of bear-gardens and theatres, or sword-players, were continually falling into parties and ending the dispute by a general mÊlÉe.

The aristocracy had evacuated the City-especially since the fire—and had located themselves along the Strand, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Bloomsbury, Soho, and all quarters tending towards Whitehall; others located themselves in Covent Garden; and in the fields now covered by the piles of Bedford Square and the British Museum stood the magnificent mansions of Bedford House and Montague House. But most of the sites of the splendid squares and streets of our now West End were open country, or the rubbish-heaps of the neighbourhood. Club-life was just beginning. There were numbers of political clubs, the most famous of which was the King's Head, or Green Ribbon Club, from the members wearing a green ribbon in their hats, to distinguish them from their opponents. There was the club of Shaftesbury and the Whig party, which was engaged in the design of excluding the Duke of York from the succession, and which raised all the Titus Oates plots to accomplish their object. It met at the King's Head Tavern opposite to the Temple Gate. But coffee-houses, now become general, were in reality clubs; and every class and party had its coffee-house, where its members met. There was the literary coffee-house, called Will's, situate between Covent Garden and Bow Street, where Dryden was the great man, and where literary lords, literary lawyers, dramatists, players, and wits of all sorts met to settle the merits of literature and the stage. There were lawyers' coffee-houses, citizens' coffee-houses, doctors' coffee-houses, the chief of them Garraway's; Jesuits' coffee-houses, Puritans' coffee-houses, and Popish coffee-houses, where every man found his fellows, and partisans met and learned the news; and in these haunts the spirit of party and of religious antagonism was carried to its fiercest height. The chief place of public lounging was the New Exchange in the City, and Spring Gardens, Hyde Park, and the Mulberry Garden, which were continually occurring in the comedies of the day as the places of assignation, as well as the fashionable masquerades.

But whilst such were the most marked features of life in London at that day, we are not to suppose that there was not a large number of the population who retained a love of virtue, purity, and domestic life. The religious were a numerous class; and the stern morality of the Nonconformists beheld with pity and indignation the dissipated flutterings of the corrupt world around them. Besides these there was a numerous population of sober citizens, who, though they did not go with the Puritans in religion, were disgusted with the French manners, maxims, houses, and cookery, and stood by their native modes and ideas with sturdy John Bullism. The musical taste of the age tended to draw them together to more rational enjoyments than debauchery and the tainted stage, and the increasing use of coffee and tea gave to musical and social parties a more homelike and refined character.

The popular sports and amusements still, however, were of the usual description. All the old cruel sports of bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and cock-fights, which the Puritans had suppressed, came back with royalty. Horse-racing was in vogue; and gambling was such a fever amongst the wealthy, that many great estates were squandered at cards; and the Duke of St. Albans, when more than eighty years of age, and quite blind, used to sit at the gaming-table from day to day, with a man beside him to tell him the cards. Billiards, chess, backgammon, and cribbage were in great request; and bowls, ninepins, boat-racing, yacht-racing, running at the ring, were sports both with the people and the gentry. Ladies joined in playing at bowls; skating was introduced by the courtiers, who had spent much time in Holland. Swimming and foot-races were fashionable. Colonel Blood planned to shoot Charles once when he went to swim in the Thames near Chelsea, and the Duke of Monmouth, as we have seen, in his popular tour ran races against all comers, first without boots, and then beat them running in his boots whilst the others ran without.

Charles prided himself on his pedestrian feats. The common people were as much delighted as their ancestors with all the exhibitions of Bartholomew Fair and Smithfield, of fire-eaters, jugglers, rope-dancers, dancing dogs and monkeys, Punch, feats of strength, and travelling theatres, where some Scripture story was represented, as is yet the case on the Continent.

In the country, life continued to move on at its usual rate. Land had not approached to anything like its present value, and education was an immense way farther behind, so that a large number of the aristocracy, including nearly the whole of the squirearchy, continued to live on their estates, and rarely made a visit to London. The ravages which the Civil War had made in all parts of the country had left traces on many a rental which were yet far from being obliterated; and the contempt into which the clerical office had fallen since the Reformation, and absorption of the Church lands, left one outlet for the sons of the squirearchy at this time little available. The landed gentry, therefore, for the most part continued to occupy a position of much local importance, but, with few exceptions, did not mingle with the great world of London, or aspire to lead in social or political rivalry on the national arena. The squire was on the bench and at the quarter sessions; he was often colonel of the militia, and knew his importance in the country; but beyond that he was little heard of except when civil strife called him out to defend the altar and the throne. But within his own little world he was all in all, proud of his power, and prouder of his pedigree; but if the Squire Westerns of Fielding's time are faithfully portrayed, how much more rustic, Toryfied, and confined in the range of their ideas and experience must they have been nearly two hundred years before. Few of them had the ambition to distinguish themselves by literary attainments—such accomplishments they left to the Drydens and Danbys of the metropolis. Many heirs of estates, therefore, at this era never went to a university, or, if they did, made but a brief abode there, and returned little better for the sojourn, depending on their property to give them all the Éclat they aspired to. To enjoy the sports of the field, attend the county race meeting and county ball, to live surrounded by huntsmen and gamekeepers, to keep a coarse but exuberant table, and to terminate the day's sport by a drunken carouse, included the pursuits and habits of three-fourths of this class.

As these gentry went little to town, their manners were proportionally rustic, and their circle of ideas confined, but from their confinement the more sturdy. Toryism of the extremest type was rampant amongst them. Church and State, and the most hearty contempt of everything like Dissent and of foreigners, were regarded as the only maxims for Englishmen; and the most absolute submission of the peasantry to the despotic squirearchy was exacted. In a justice-room if a man was poor it was taken for granted that he was wrong. Justice Shallows and Dogberrys were not the originals of the pages of Shakespeare, but of the country bench of magistrates and its constabulary. Ideas travelled slowly, for books were few. A Bible, a Common Prayer-book, and a "Guillim's Heraldry" were the extent of many a gentleman's library. Newspapers were suppressed by the restrictions on the press during the latter part of Charles's reign; and the news-letters which supplied the country contained a very meagre amount of facts, but no discussion.

There were few coaches, except in the districts immediately round London, or to the distance of twenty or thirty miles, and the roads were in general impassable in winter. On all but the main lines of highway, pack-horses carried the necessary merchandise from place to place through deep narrow tracks, some of which remain to our time. It took four or five days to reach London by coach from Chester, York, or Bristol, and this was attended by perils and discomforts that made travellers loth to encounter such a journey, and often to make their wills before starting. Macaulay has summed up the terrors of the road, as given by our Diarists, in the following passage:—"On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the ways often such that it was hardly possible to distinguish them in the dusk from the unenclosed heath and fen on both sides. Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the Great North Road between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between Doncaster and York; Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. At such times obstructions and quarrels were common, and the pass was frequently blocked up during a long time by carriers neither of whom would give way. It happened almost every day that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the travellers had to encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his Diary such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean, or to the desert of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out between Ware and London, that passengers had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross. In consequence of these tidings he turned out of the high road, and was conducted across some meadows, when it was necessary for him to ride to the skirts in water. In the course of another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of Commons, who were going up in a body to Parliament, with guides and numerous attendants, took him into their company. On the roads of Derbyshire travellers were in constant fear for their necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead their beasts. The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five hours travelling fourteen miles—from St. Asaph to Conway. Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part of the way, and his lady was carried in a litter. His coach was, with much difficulty, and by the help of many hands, brought after him entire. In general, carriages were taken to pieces at Conway and borne on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants to the Menai Straits. In some parts of Kent and Sussex none but the strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in which at every step they sank deep. The markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is said the fruits of the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell short of the demand. The wheeled carriages in this district were generally pulled by oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather he was six hours going nine miles; and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach was overturned or stuck fast in the mud."

To avoid the nuisance of carriages on such roads the habit prevailed of travelling on horseback; but then it was necessary to go well armed, and, if possible, in company, for the country was infested with highwaymen. The adventures of horsemen were commonly as numerous and exciting as those of the folk who used carriages, though mails and carriages were also frequently stopped by the highwaymen of the day. To abate the difficulties of the road, on the Restoration the turnpike system was adopted—a new era in road-making—and what were called flying coaches were put on the amended ways, which conveyed passengers at a better rate.

During the Commonwealth, travellers met equally provoking impediments in passing through towns, if they dared to travel on Sundays. There was a fine for such a breach of the Sabbath; and Elwood describes his ludicrous dilemma when riding to a Friends' Meeting on Sunday, on a borrowed horse, with a borrowed hat and great-coat; for his father had locked up his own horse, hat, and coat to keep him from the conventicle. Being stopped and brought before a magistrate, he was ordered to pay the fine; but he replied that he had no money. "You have a good horse, however," observed the magistrate. "That is borrowed," said Elwood. "Well, you have a good great-coat." "That is borrowed, too," added Elwood. "Nay, then, we must have your hat, it is a good one." "That also is borrowed," continued the young Quaker. At which the magistrate, declaring that he never saw such a traveller in his life, who had nothing but what was borrowed, ordered him to be detained till the morrow, and then sent back again.

In the times we are now reviewing the tables were turned, and the Royalist churchmen and squirearchy were employing their country leisure in breaking up the conventicles of all sorts of Dissenters, pulling down the meeting-houses of the obstinate Quakers, and sending them to prison by shoals. Sir Christopher Wren, by order of the king, tried his hand at pulling down Quakers' meeting-houses, before he built St. Paul's. The spirit of political and ecclesiastical party violence raged through the country, and formed a strange contrast, in the cruelties and oppression practised on the truly religious portion of the community, to the profligacy of the gentry and, above all, of the Court. What rendered this condition of things more gloomy was the low position which the country clergy then occupied. The property of the Church having fallen into the hands of the aristocracy, the generality of country livings were poor, and depended chiefly on the small tithes and a miserable glebe of a few acres. Whilst some few men of distinguished abilities, like Burnet, Tillotson, Barrow, and Stillingfleet, rose to distinction and occupied the few wealthy dignities and livings, the parish clergymen were too commonly men of low origin and little education. Men of family disdained the office, and the chaplain of a great house was looked on as little better than a servant; he married the cook or the housekeeper, and became the hanger-on of some country hall, joining in the rude riot and the ruder jests of his patron. Even so late as Fielding's time, the relative position of the squire and the parson were those of Western and parson Adams.

Perhaps the most pleasing feature of country life was that of the position of the yeoman, or man of small independent property. This class had been increased by the various distributions of great estates; and it is calculated that at this time one-seventh at least of the population consisted of men with their families who lived on their own little demesnes producing from fifty to a hundred pounds a year. The number of men who farmed the lands of the aristocracy at that time is affirmed to have been much fewer than those who farmed their own. This independence of condition gave them independence of mind, and it was amongst this class that the strongest resistance to the dominance and intolerance of the squirearchy was found. Many of them during the Civil War and the Commonwealth adopted the Puritan faith, and continued to maintain it in defiance of Five-Mile Acts, Conventicle Acts, and Acts of Uniformity. From them descended the sturdy spirit which, uniting with a kindred spirit in towns, continued to vindicate the liberties and manly bearing of the British population.

Nor amid the corruptions and bitternesses of the times had all the ancient poetical customs of the people disappeared. Neither the asceticism of the Puritan nor the profligacy of the Cavalier had been able to utterly extinguish such customs as had a touch of nature in them. The Londoners made their swarming excursions to Greenwich, and Richmond, and Epping Forest, where they gave way to all their pent-up fun and frolic, and enlivened the banks of the Thames with their songs as they rowed to and fro. The old holidays of the departed church still survived. Valentine's Day was still a day of love missives, and of presents of gloves, jewellery, silk stockings, and ornamental garters from gentlemen to their valentines. Mayday reassumed its jollity; may-poles, put down by the Commonwealth, again lifted their heads; and Herrick's beautiful verses resumed their reality:—

The Puritans beheld the return of the custom with horror. In 1660, the year that Charles II. and may-poles came back again, a Puritan, writing from Newcastle, says:—"Sir,—The country as well as the town abounds with vanities, now the reins of liberty and licentiousness are let loose. Maypoles, and players, and jugglers, and all things else now pass current. Sin now appears with a brazen face." Just as Charles and James were landing in the merry month of May, at Dover, Thomas Hall published his "Funebria FlorÆ, the Downfall of May Games"—a most inopportune moment. With equal horror, the Puritans beheld the old sports at village wakes and Whitsuntide, the jollity of harvest homes, and the mirthful uproar of Christmas, come back. New Year's Day, with its gifts—a Roman custom as old as Romulus—not only reappeared as a means of expressing affection amongst friends, but as a source of great profit to the king and nobility. For as Numa ordered gifts to be given to the gods on that day, so gifts were now presented by the nobility to the king, and long after his time by the dependents of the nobility, and those who sought favour from them, to the nobles. Pepys says that the whole fortunes of some courtiers consisted in these gifts. But Christmas boxes, which originated in New Year's gifts, and have become confounded with them in England, have survived the New Year's gifts of the time we are reviewing.

The great evidences of the growth of a nation are the increase of its trade, its population, and its governmental revenue. When these three things continue to augment, pari passu, there can be no question of the substantial progress of a nation. All these had been steadily on the increase during this period, and the advocates of royalty point to these circumstances to prove the mischiefs of the Civil War and the Commonwealth. It would be enough in reply, even did we admit the reality of the alleged facts, to observe that the mischief, whatever it was, was necessitated by the crimes and tyrannies of royalty. But we have only to look carefully at the whole case to see that the prosperity following the Restoration had its source in the Commonwealth. In spite of the violent changes and dislocations of society during the period of the conflict with Charles I., these upheavings and tempests threw down and swept away a host of things which cramped and smothered the free action of commerce and internal industry. The lava which burst in fiery streams from the volcano of revolution, though it might for a time destroy life and property, only required a little more time to moulder and fertilise the earth. A host of mischievous monopolies were annihilated in this convulsion. The foreign commerce was carefully extended. Not only at home were Englishmen relieved from the incubus of Government absolutism, and interference with private speculation, but the haughty fleets of Dutch, and French, and Spaniards were swept from the ocean, and English merchants were encouraged to extend their enterprises, not only by the greater security at sea, but by the act of the Long Parliament allowing the import of commodities from its colonies and possessions in America, Asia, and Africa, only in English bottoms. This, it has been contended, did us no good, because it compelled the Dutch to turn their attention to the Baltic trade, and enabled them to get the precedence of us there. But this is a mistake; for the removal of the overbearing fleets of the Dutch, and the stimulus given to our commerce by this privilege, led to a far greater amount of mercantile activity in England, and helped us to assume a position in which at a later date we could safely introduce the principles of free navigation.

Cromwell fostered British commerce by all the means in his power, and most successfully; and the commercial activity thus excited acquired power, and continued to increase ever afterwards. He encouraged and extended the colonies, especially by the acquisition of Jamaica, and the trade with the West Indies and American colonies added increasingly, during the period now under review, to our commercial wealth and navy. The writer of "The World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell," published in the "Harleian Miscellany," says:—"When this tyrant, or Protector, as some call him, turned out the Long Parliament in April, 1653, the kingdom had arrived at the highest pitch of trade it ever knew. The riches of the nation showed itself in the high value of land and of all our native commodities, which are the certain marks of opulence." Besides this, the great quantity of land thrown into the hands of small proprietors, from time to time, and from a succession of causes, ever since the breaking up of the Roman Church, and all its monasteries and convents by Henry VIII., was every day telling more markedly on the wealth and spirit of the people. We have just seen what a powerful body the yeomanry had grown; and, from the same causes, a large accession of capital had flowed into trade. The culture of these divided lands was enormously increased; instead of lying as vast deserts and hunting grounds, they now were become fertile farms. The internal resources of the country were rapidly and constantly developing themselves; and from the cool transfer of the taxation from the aristocracy to the people at large, it had become the interest of the monarchs, if they did little positively to accelerate the growth of national wealth, at least to leave in freedom the capital-increasing exertions of the population. The more the people traded abroad, the greater were the proceeds of the customs; the more they consumed, the greater the proceeds of the excise; now the chief items of the royal revenue. All the sources of national wealth originated in the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth, for the transfers of the customs and excise were first made then, and only resumed after the Restoration.

We may now notice the rapid growth of these items of revenue. In the first year of Charles II.'s reign—namely, 1660—the proceeds of the customs were £361,356; in the last year of James's reign, 1688, they were £781,987. Thus, in twenty-eight years the customs had more than doubled themselves. We have not the same complete accounts of the excise, imports and exports, for the same period; but those which we have show the same progressive ratio. In 1663, the imports and exports together amounted to £6,038,831; in 1669, or only six years afterwards, they were £6,259,413; and, since 1613, they had risen up to this amount from £4,628,586. This showed a steady increase of consumption in the nation. During this time the imports exceeded the exports considerably, demonstrating the fact that the internal wealth was greater than the export of goods; but the balance of trade gradually adjusted itself, and, in 1699, the excess of exports over imports was £1,147,660; showing that even exportable articles of manufacture, of raw produce, or of commodities the growth of our colonies and settlements, had continued to increase. The proceeds of the excise in 1660, when Charles became possessed of it, amounted only to about one million; but increased so rapidly that in little more than a century it reached ten millions.

The value of land, and of all kinds of property, rose in proportion. Davenant, in his "Discourses on Trade," shows that the value of the whole rental of England in 1660 was but £6,000,000; in 1688 it was £14,000,000. So that, in 1660, the whole land of England, at twelve years' purchase, was worth only £72,000,000; but, in 1688, at fourteen years' purchase, its then estimated value, it was worth £254,000,000.

As to the mercantile shipping of the country, its tonnage in 1688 was nearly double what it was in 1666. Sir William Petty, in his "Political Arithmetic," published in 1676, states that, within the previous forty years, the houses in London had doubled themselves: the coal trade from Newcastle had quadrupled itself, being then 80,000 tons yearly; the Guinea and American trades had grown up from next to nothing to 40,000 tons of shipping; the customs were trebled; the postage of letters increased from one to twenty; the whole income of Government, in short, was trebled; and the number and splendour of coaches, equipages, and household furniture were wonderfully increased.

These effects were surely no results of the wise measures of such monarchs as Charles and James; they were traceable, as clearly as light to the sun, to the bold and able heads of the Long Parliament and Commonwealth, to their victories over the enemies and rivals of the nation, and to the able regulations which they had made in all quarters for the honourable maintenance of our name and the prosperity of our commerce. What such men as Charles and James did may be seen by examining the condition of what fell under their own management. What the nation at large did by its native energy we have just seen; what these monarchs did let us now see. The royal navy, in 1666, amounted only to 62,594 tons; but in 1685, the last year of Charles, it amounted to 103,558 tons; and, though it fell off a little under James, in 1688, the last year of James, it still reached 101,892 tons. This looks admirable on the surface; but it is necessary to look under the surface, and then we perceive a marvellous difference. The nation had become justly proud of its navy, which had destroyed the great Armada, and, under Blake, had put down the supremacy of Holland and Spain at sea; and though the Commons were averse from trusting Charles II. with money, after they saw that it all went to concubines and parasites, they were never appealed to on the subject of the navy in vain. When Danby was minister, they voted at once £600,000 for the building of thirty new men-of-war. On the evidence of Pepys, the Secretary of the Admiralty, we have it, that scarcely any of this magnificent array of ships were fit for use. The very thirty new vessels for which the £600,000 had been voted had been built of such villainous timber that they were absolutely unseaworthy; and the rest were so rotten and worm-eaten that they would have sunk if they were carried out of port. The same testimony was borne by the French ambassador, Bonrepaux, who, when Charles made a bluster as if he would go to sea, in 1686, examined our fleet, and reported to his Government that it need not trouble itself about the English navy, for that both ships and men were merely nominal. In fact, the money which should have repaired the ships and paid the officers and men had gone the way of all Charles's money. Pepys was pursued in the streets by starving sailors, who demanded the redemption of their tickets; shoals of them lay in the streets, without food or means of procuring shelter; many of them perished of hunger, and some officers are said to have shared the same fate. The whole was the most shameful scene of waste of the public money, neglect of vessels and of men, of utter indolence on the part of the Crown, and consequent negligence on the part of the authorities; of scandalous corruption in many of them, and knavery and peculation in contractors. Such was the state of things that, in 1667, or seven years after the Commonwealth, the Dutch, under De Ruyter, entered the Thames, destroyed the fortifications at Sheerness, took and burned some of our largest ships, and threw the capital into paroxysms of terror. "Many English sailors," says Pepys, "were heard on board the Dutch ships, crying, 'We did heretofore fight for tickets—now we fight for dollars!'"

Besides the causes already enumerated for the rapid progress of England in wealth and prosperity at this period, the persecutions of Protestants abroad, which drove hither their weavers and artisans, and the union with Scotland, giving internal peace and security, had a wonderful influence. De Witt, the celebrated Dutch minister, refers to these causes in a remarkable passage of his work called "The Interest of Holland," published in 1669. "When," he says, "the compulsive laws of the Netherland Halls had first driven the cloth-weaving from the cities into our villages, and, by the cruelty of the Duke of Alva, the say-weaving went also after it, the English by degrees began to send their manufactures throughout Europe; they became potent at sea, and no longer to depend on the Netherlands. Also by that discovery of the inexpressibly rich cod-bank of Newfoundland, those of Bristol in particular made use of that advantage. Moreover, the long persecution of Puritans in England has occasioned the planting of many English colonies in America, by which they derive a very considerable foreign trade thither; so that this mighty island, united with Ireland under one king, seated in the midst of Europe, having a clear, deep coast, with good havens and bays, in so narrow a sea that all foreign ships that sail either to the eastward or the westward are necessitated, even in fair weather, to shun the dangerous French coast, and sail along that of England, and in stormy weather to run in and preserve their lives, ships, and merchandise in the bays—so that England now, by its conjunction with Scotland, being much increased in strength, as well as by manufactures as by a great navigation, will in all respects be formidable to all Europe."

The clear-sighted Dutch diplomatist has summed up the grand points of England's advantages at that and succeeding periods, and some of these deserve our particular attention. The union with Scotland, though yet dependent only on the Crown of the two countries resting on the same head, was a circumstance of infinite advantage. It gave a settlement and security to all the northern portions of the island which they had never enjoyed before. Till James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England, not only agriculture but all kinds of manufacturing and commercial enterprise were kept in check by the frequent hostile inroads of the Scots. Even when there was peace between the Crowns, the fierce people inhabiting both sides of the Border were in continual bickerings with each other; and a numerous body of mosstroopers, whose only profession was plunder, harassed the rich plains of England by their predatory raids. The state of things described by Sir Walter Scott as existing in these regions only about a century ago, gives us a lively idea of what must have been the savagery of the Borderers at the time we are describing. If he himself, as he tells us, was probably the first who drove a gig into Liddesdale, and if at that time the wilds and moorlands of the Border were peopled by tribes of freebooters as lawless as savages, what must have been the state of the northern counties whilst the two countries were at feud? We are told that even the judges and king's officers could not reach the towns on the Border without a strong military guard.

But as the union of the Crowns became settled and consolidated, a new era commenced north of the Trent. These counties, full of coal and ironstone, abounding with streams and all the materials for manufacture, began to develop their resources, and to advance in population and activity at an unexampled rate. Birmingham and Sheffield extended their hardware trade; Leeds and its neighbouring villages, its cloth manufactures; Manchester, its cotton-spinning, though yet little aided by machinery; and Liverpool was rapidly rising as a port by its trade with Ireland. The union of the Crowns was, in fact, the beginning of that marvellous impetus which has at this day covered all the north with coal-works, iron-works, potteries, spinning and weaving factories, and towns, which have grown up around them with their 530,000 people, like Birmingham; their 425,000, like Sheffield; their 445,000, like Leeds; their 780,000, like Manchester (with Salford); and 716,000, like Liverpool. It was the same security amid attendant advantages which raised the immense commercial and manufacturing population of Glasgow, Paisley, Greenock, and neighbouring towns on the other side of the Border—Glasgow alone now numbering its 787,000 people.

In the south and west Norwich and Bristol were most flourishing towns. Norwich owed its growth and prosperity to the establishment of the worsted manufacture, brought thither by the Flemings as early as the reign of Henry I., in the thirteenth century, and to the influence of four thousand other Flemings, who fled from the cruelty of the Duke of Alva in Elizabeth's time, bringing their manufacture of bombazines, which has now expanded itself into a great trade in bombazines, shawls, crapes, damasks, camlets, and imitations of Irish and French stuffs. Norwich had its fine old cathedral, its bishop's palace, its palace of the Duke of Norfolk, adorned with the paintings of Italy, and where the duke used at this time to live with a state little less than royal. It had also a greater number of old churches than any town in England, except London: old hospitals and grammar schools, and the finest market-place in the kingdom.

Bristol, next to London, was the great trading port, and the commerce with America and the West Indies was fast swelling its importance. One of its most lucrative and, at the same time, most infamous sources of commerce was the conveyance of convicts to the Plantations of America and Jamaica. We have seen the eagerness of the courtiers of James II., and even the queen and ladies, for a share of this traffic, and the numbers of the unfortunate men implicated in the insurrection of Monmouth who were sent off thither and sold. Jeffreys himself condemned eight hundred and forty of them to this slavery, and calculated that they were worth ten pounds apiece to those who had to sell them to the British merchants, who probably made much more of them. That the profits were enormous is evident by the avidity with which victims were sought after, and with which innocent persons were kidnapped for the purpose. Bristol, indeed, at that time was engaged in a veritable white slave-trade, and the magistrates were deep in it, which fact coming to Jeffreys' knowledge, he made it a plea for extorting money from them.

To understand, however, the immense difference between the England of that day and of the present, we have only to state that the population of none of these pre-eminent towns amounted to 30,000, few county towns exceeded 4,000 or 5,000, and the whole population of England was, according to various calculations, at the most five millions and a half, nor was it increasing at all rapidly.

To protect the trade of England, Charles II. passed an Act (statute 12 Car. II., c. 18), commonly called the Navigation Act, carrying out the principle of the Act of the Commonwealth already referred to, confining the import of all commodities from Asia, Africa, or America to English bottoms, and also all goods from Europe to English ships, or the ships of the particular country exporting them. The next year a similar Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament. The Act of the Commonwealth had effected its purpose—the depression of the Dutch carrying trade—and it was now time to relax these restrictions, but we shall see that even at a later day it required a struggle to repeal these laws, and to convince people, by the subsequent immense increase of foreign commerce, of the impolicy of them. Charles's Government went further, and, in 1662, forbade any wine but Rhenish, or any spirits, grocery, tobacco, potashes, pitch, tar, salt, resin, deals, firs, timber, or olive oil, to be imported from Germany or the Netherlands. In 1677, alarmed at the vast importation of French goods and produce, his Government prohibited every French article for three years; but the Act remained unrepealed till the 1st of James II., by which our merchants and shopkeepers were deprived of great profits on these silks, wines, fruits, and manufactured articles, and the public of the comfort of them.

Another evidence of the growth of the country was the increase of the business of the post-office. The origin of the English post-office is due to Charles I., who, at the commencement of his disputes with the Parliament, established a system of posts and relays. This the Civil War put an end to; but the Commonwealth, in 1656, established the post-office, with several improvements. At the accession of Charles, a new Act was passed (12 Car. II., c. 25); and three years afterwards the proceeds of this office and of the wine duties were settled on the Duke of York and his heirs male. The duke farmed it out at £21,500, but on his accession the revenue amounted to £65,000. By this post a single letter was carried eighty miles for twopence; beyond eighty miles threepence was charged, and there was an advance according to the weight of packets. The privilege of franking was allowed, though not expressly granted in the Act, to peers and members of Parliament. There were mails, however, only on alternate days, and in distant and difficult parts of the country, as on the borders of Cornwall and the fens of Lincolnshire, only once a week. Wherever the Court went mails were sent daily; this was the case, also, to the Downs, and, in the season, to Bath and Tunbridge Wells. Where coaches did not run, men on horseback carried the bags. The increasing business of London soon demanded a more frequent delivery, and the penny post was first started by William Dockwray, which delivered letters six times a day in the City, and four times in the outskirts. At this time the post-office business included the furnishing of all post-horses—whence the name; and the Governments on the Continent generally retain more or less of this practice. The growth of England from the time of the Stuarts till now receives a significant proof in the present gross revenue for letters, stamps, telegrams, and other post office business being upwards of £16,000,000 a year.

The transmission of the mails made it necessary to improve the roads, and hence arose the toll-bar system, by an Act of 15 Car. II., which ordered the repairing of highways and the erection of bars or gates upon them, in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, owing to the Great North Road being so much cut up by the heavy malt and barley waggons going to Ware, whence their contents were forwarded by water to London and other towns. The system was found so advantageous that it gradually became general.

THE OLD EAST INDIA HOUSE IN 1630.

The extension and improvement of our manufactures was greatly promoted by the persecution of the Protestants in France and the Spanish Netherlands. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, compelled thousands of citizens to seek refuge in England, who, as we have seen, were at first warmly patronised by James II., but afterwards as much discouraged. Their value to the country was, however, too obvious for the community to sanction this neglect. They settled in Spitalfields, and introduced the weaving of silks, brocades, and lutestrings; and the trade and the descendants of these refugees until lately distinguished the same quarter of London. It is supposed that they also brought with them the art of making the finest kinds of writing paper, which was previously imported from France.

Before this, and from the very beginning of this period, other foreigners—refugees tempted by liberal offers—had introduced other manufactures. In the year of Charles's accession, the Anglo-French population of Jersey and Guernsey were allowed to import wool from England duty free, and pushed their manufacture—worsted hosiery—to great perfection. In 1660 some Flemings introduced the improved arts of dyeing and dressing woollen cloths, by which they raised our cloths to an equality with the Continental ones. Other foreigners in the same year were encouraged to commence the manufacture of linen and tapestry. Some others settled at Ipswich, in 1669, and the Scots, who had carried the linen-weaving to Ireland, were at this time making great progress with it there. In 1670 the Duke of Buckingham brought from Venice men skilled in the manufacturing of glass; the Dutch loom was brought over, and, in 1676, the printing of calicoes, now so vast a trade at Manchester, was commenced in London, in imitation of those brought from India. In 1680 machines for ribbon-weaving were introduced, to which Coventry owed so much of her trade. The art of tinning sheet-iron was brought over from Germany by natives of that country, at the instigation of Andrew Yarranton, the agent of an English company. A Dutchman erected the first wire-mill in England at Sheen, near Richmond; and pinchbeck was introduced by its inventor under the patronage of Prince Rupert. In fact, the seeds of many of the greatest branches of English manufactures were sown during this period.

One of our largest trading companies also was fast growing, and was destined to lay the foundation of the grandest colonial territory which the world ever saw. Most of the companies which had previously existed were now gone down, or were broken up by the increasing aversion of the nation to monopolies; but the East India Company were every day acquiring fresh life and power. The scene of their operations lay so distant from public observation, particularly at that day when the means of communication were so tardy and partial, and the Press did not maintain an instant and perpetual attention upon everything concerning the realm, that the Government were only too glad to leave with the Company the whole management of those remote affairs, especially as they poured so much profit into the country, of which the Government had their share. Accordingly, Charles had scarcely seated himself on his throne than he renewed the charter of the Company granted by Cromwell in 1657, with augmented powers. This charter, dated the 3rd of April, 1661, gave the Company the most absolute and unconditional power. They were authorised to seize and send home any Englishman presuming to trade in the East, and found so trading either in India or the Indian seas. They were empowered to appoint their own judges, and conduct the whole civil and military establishment; to make war or peace with any of the native powers, or any powers not Christian; to build any ports they pleased there or in St. Helena for their accommodation and defence. In short, the most complete absolutism was conferred on them in their territories, or such as they should gain, and the most entire secrecy of transactions, by shutting out every individual who might be disposed to pry into or criticise their proceedings.

Bombay, which Charles had received with Catherine from Portugal, as part of her marriage portion, was, in 1667, handed over to the Company, and the effect of this addition of territory and of power was soon seen. In 1676 their accumulated profits had doubled their capital, and the price of their stock rose to 245 per cent. The following facts, drawn from a publication supposed to be written by Sir Josiah Child, entitled "The East India Trade a most Profitable Trade to this Kingdom," which appeared in 1667, will show the extraordinary traffic of the Company at that early period. They employed, the writer said, from thirty to thirty-five ships of from three hundred to six hundred tons burden. Their annual exports amounted to £430,000, and their imports to £860,000; consisting of silks, raw and wrought, calico, drugs, pepper, indigo, saltpetre, etc. They, moreover, licensed other traders, who brought from India diamonds, pearls, musk, ambergris, etc., to the amount of £150,000, and took out goods from England to double that amount.

The writer proceeds to show how profitable this trade was to the public as well as to the Company:—"The pepper I reckon at eightpence a pound weight; so necessary a spice for all people, which formerly cost us three shillings and fourpence a pound, being nowhere to be had but in India; and were we obliged to have it from the Dutch, they would probably raise it as high as they do their other spices; yet, supposing it so low as one shilling and fourpence a pound, it would be a further expense of £6,000 to the nation. Saltpetre is of that absolute necessity that, without it, we should be like the Israelites under the bondage of the Philistines—without the means of defending ourselves. Possibly, if we had no Indian trade, we might, in time of peace, purchase it, though it would cost us double what it does now. But, in case of war, where could we have sufficient? Not surely from our enemies. Or would our gentlemen, citizens, and farmers be willing to have their cellars and rooms dug up, as in Charles I.'s reign, and be deprived of freedom in their own houses, exposed and laid open to saltpetre-men? Which method would be, besides, by no means equal to the affording us the necessary supplies. Raw silk we might possibly be supplied with from other parts, though not so cheap as from India; and Indian wrought silks serve us instead of so much Italian or French silks, which would cost us almost treble the price of Indian silks, to the kingdom's loss of about £20,000 a year. Calicoes serve instead of the like quantity of French, Dutch, and Flemish linen, which would cost us thrice as much; hereby £200,000 or £300,000 is saved to the nation."

Amongst the articles of the greatest luxury which the Company imported was tea. So long as we procured tea from the Dutch merchants it was too dear for general use. So late as 1666—that is, six years after the Restoration—it cost fifty shillings a pound from the Dutch East India Company; but the English Company soon afterwards made their way to China, in 1678, and imported four thousand seven hundred pounds of it; and from this period we may date the more frequent use of tea. It was long, however, before it became the formidable rival of beef and beer at breakfast, or superseded these articles at the afternoon meal. It was at first sold in the liquid state in London, and it was many years before it made its way through the country; many ladies, in ignorance of its true use, committing the mistake of boiling the leaves, and serving them up as greens, throwing away the liquid!

In 1677, under the privilege of a new charter from Charles, the Company began to earn money in their Indian territories. These privileges were again extended by a fresh charter from Charles in 1683, and by James in 1686. In 1687 the Company laid the foundations of Calcutta, and went on rapidly acquiring trade and territory, to be noticed at a later period.

Meanwhile, the trade with our American and West Indian colonies was becoming valuable. During the latter years of the Stuart dynasty, the exports to these colonies had risen to the amount of about £400,000 per annum, in different manufactures, provisions, household furniture, etc.; and the imports thence in tobacco, sugar, ginger, cotton wool, fustic, indigo, cocoa, fish, furs, and timber to nearly a million. Thus the trade and wealth of England at the close of this period were in a condition of healthy and rapid development, and our colonial system was beginning to attract the "envy and admiration of the world." What this has grown to by a steady progression in our time may be seen by comparing the revenue of the country now with what it was then. Then it amounted to about £1,500,000; now it amounts from all sources to over £141,000,000.

Notwithstanding the rapid growth of the country in commerce and internal wealth, it would be a false indication that the working classes were well off. They were a body without education, without political rights, and, consequently, without that intelligence and union which can alone insure the fair reward of their labour; nor was the humanity of the most civilised portion of the community at that period of a degree which regarded the sufferings of others with much feeling. All accounts of it leave the impression that it was a hard and cruel age; as is usually the case, when sensuality and barbarity go hand in hand. The sanguinary vengeance which Charles took on the leaders of the Commonwealth immediately on his restoration; the savage persecutions for religion in England and Scotland; the terrible use of the iron boot and the thumbscrew in the latter country; the bloody campaign of Jeffreys in England; the sale of convicts, and the kidnapping of innocent people for the Plantations; public whippings, pilloryings, brandings, and tongue-borings, as in the case of James Naylor—all indicate a brutal and unfeeling tone of society. Macaulay quotes from writers of the age many other revolting traits of this stamp. "Whigs were disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. As little mercy was shown by the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life, from the shower of brickbats and paving-stones. If he were tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl. Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell, on court days, for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there whipped. A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, or burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a galled horse or an overdriven ox. Fights, compared with which a boxing-match is a refined and humane spectacle, were the favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth—seminaries of every crime and every disease. At the assizes, the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on the bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society looked with profound indifference."

But we shall soon find that this conclusion is, on the whole, too sweeping. Even that age had its philanthropists, and we may name the crowds who flocked to witness the agonies of a hanging man to point in some degree the wide distance between the mobs of this age and that. But, as concerns the condition of the people, the important difference is that the humanity which now pervades the community was scarcely to be recognised then. The poor were treated with little tenderness. Though four-fifths of the working people were engaged in agriculture, agriculture was then extended over a very small portion of the country. There was a surplus of hands, and these, therefore, were poorly paid, whilst their clothing and provisions were comparatively high. Not more than half the area of the island was then, it is supposed, in cultivation, and the tillage was rude and slovenly. The rate of wages for agricultural labourers, wood-cutters, shepherds, and the like, differed in different parts of England, but in the best it did not average more than four shillings a week with food, or six shillings without. In 1661, the magistrates of Essex fixed the rate of wages from March to September at eightpence a day with food, and one shilling and twopence without; and for the other months, sixpence with food, and a shilling without. Women had, of course, less. In most counties a similar scale was fixed by the magistrates; and an Act of Elizabeth empowered them to punish whoever gave more or less, and the labourer who received more or less. Wheat at that time was seventy shillings a quarter—a price enormously in excess of current prices. All kinds of clothing that they could make themselves were much higher than with us, because manufacturing was not so extensive.

The wages of artisans were but little better, except in London, where first-rate bricklayers and carpenters could earn two shillings or two-and-sixpence a day. In many counties, indeed, they were restricted to the same rate as that of the labourers. In 1685 this was the case in Warwickshire, where the daily wages of masons, bricklayers, carpenters, shinglers, and other handicraftsmen, were fixed with those of ploughmen, miners, ditchers, etc., at only sixpence a day. A shilling a day is quoted as extravagant wages. The consequence was that children were compelled to work as early as six years of age. This was very much the case at Norwich; and writers of the time refer with pride to the fact that before nine years of age children earned more than was necessary for their own support by twelve thousand pounds a year! The consequence of the miserable pay and the dearness of food and clothing was an amount of pauperism scarcely less than in the reign of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth. The poor rates amounted at that period to from seven to nine hundred thousand pounds a year.

The condition of the poor was rendered infinitely worse two years after the restoration of Charles II. than it had been, by an Act which was passed to prevent them from settling in any other place than the one where they had previously resided. This was the origin of the law of settlement, which continued down to 1834 to harass the poor, and to waste the parochial funds in litigation. In fact, Sir Frederick Eden, in his work on "The State of the Poor," asserts that it caused more litigation, and was more profitable to the lawyers, than any other Act ever passed.

The preamble of the Act of 1662 recounts the prevalence of pauperism, and at the same time professes that this enactment "is for the good of the poor"! "The necessity," it says, "number, and continued increase of the poor, not only within the circles of London and Westminster, with the liberties of each of them, but also through the whole kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, is very great and exceeding burdensome, being occasioned by reason of some defects in the law concerning the settlement of the poor, and for want of due provision of the regulations of relief and employment in such parishes or places where they are legally settled, which doth enforce many to turn incorrigible rogues, and others to perish for want, together with the neglect of the faithful execution of such laws and statutes as have formerly been made for the apprehension of rogues and vagabonds, and for the good of the poor."

It was therefore provided that any two justices of the peace should, on complaint made by the churchwardens and overseers of the poor, within forty days after the arrival of any new comer in the parish, proceed to remove him by force to the parish where he had last a legal settlement, either as native, householder, sojourner, apprentice or servant, unless he either rented a house of ten pounds a year, or could give such security against becoming chargeable as the judges should deem sufficient. This was made more stringent by a subsequent Act, 1 James II. c. 17, which, to prevent any one from getting a settlement by the neglect or oversight of the parish authorities, dated the day of his entrance into the parish only from the time that he gave a written notice of his new abode and the number of his family.

These enactments, in fact, converted the free labourers of England into serfs. They were bound to the soil, and could not move from the spot unless by the will of the overseers and justices. It was not necessary that a man should become chargeable to the parish in order to effect his removal; it was enough that the authorities could assume that he might become so; and it was not till 1795—in fact, till the reign of George III.—that this oppressive law was ameliorated, allowing working people to change their abode as they saw a better chance of employment elsewhere, so long as they did not come upon the parish.

The unsatisfactory state of pauperism to which the law of settlement brought the kingdom set numbers of heads at work to plan schemes of employing the destitute poor; and Sir Josiah Child proposed that persons should be appointed for this purpose, to be called "the fathers of the poor." This seems to be the origin of the modern guardians of the poor. It was too early in the history of endeavour to educate and employ the poor, for these recommendations to receive much general attention; but there were some individuals who set themselves zealously to work to convert the swarming paupers into profitable workers and respectable members of society. The most eminent of these were two shopkeepers of London, Andrew Yarranton and Thomas Firmin. Yarranton was a linendraper; and, being employed by "twelve gentlemen of England" to bring over men from Saxony and Bohemia who understood the art of tinning sheet-iron, he there made close observation of the manufacture of linen, and conceived the idea of introducing the linen manufacture, and employing the unemployed poor upon it and the manufacture of iron. He went to Ipswich, to see whether the linen manufacture could not be established there; but he found the poor already so well employed in the stuff and say and Colchester trade, that he did not think it a suitable place. He calculated the paupers at that time at a hundred thousand, and reckoned that by employing this number at fourpence a day each would occasion a profitable outlay amongst them of upwards of six hundred thousand pounds, by which means almost the whole of the poor-rates would be saved. In 1677 he published a book containing his views called "England's Improvement by Sea and Land," showing how to set at work all the poor of England, with the growth of our own lands; to prevent unnecessary suits at law, with the benefits of a voluntary register; where to procure vast quantities of timber for the building of ships, with the advantage of making the great rivers of England navigable. He gave rules for the prevention of fires in London and other cities, and informed the several companies of handicraftsmen how they might always have cheap bread and drink. In short, Mr. Yarranton was a regularly speculative man, but one who had a good share of calculating common sense in the midst of his manufacturing and philanthropic schemes. Apparently he travelled the kingdom well, and made careful observations as to the best localities for carrying on his proposed trades; and he seems to have come to the conclusion that the midland counties would be the best for the linen manufacture, and that most people might be employed on it. The midland counties he regarded as admirably adapted for the growth of flax, from the fertility of the land, and for the trade, because of the easy conveyance of goods by water on the rivers Trent, Soar, Avon, and Thames, from the counties of Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, Northampton, and Oxford. He found many parts of England already so well supplied with manufactures, that he did not think the poor required more work there; and his descriptions of the manufactures going on in different parts of the island give a lively view of the manufacturing industry of the time. "In the West of England," he says, "clothing of all sorts, as in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and a small portion of Warwickshire; in Derby, Nottingham, and Yorkshire, the iron and woollen manufactures; in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex, the woollen manufacture; in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, some cloth, iron, and materials for shipping. Then the counties to raise provisions and to vend them at London, to feed that great mouth, are Cambridge, Huntingdon, Buckingham, Hertford, Middlesex, and Berks."

A publication like this of Andrew Yarranton was calculated to produce the most beneficial change in the condition of the people. It pointed out the true resources and wealth of the nation, and showed a way to get rid of pauperism, and at the same time to raise and enrich the whole realm. It made landowners aware of the extent to which their estates would be augmented in value by the introduction of popular industries; and one of its most immediate effects seems to have been its influence on Yarranton's fellow London shopkeeper, Mr. Thomas Firmin.

In "The Life of Mr. Thomas Firmin, late citizen of London, written by one of his most intimate acquaintance," 1698, we learn that he was a shopkeeper of Leadenhall Street. We learn, moreover, that he was born at Ipswich in 1632, and began the world as a tradesman with a hundred pounds. His character for probity and ability was already such that he flourished, married a citizen's daughter with five hundred pounds, and in process of time occupied superior premises in Lombard Street. Here, though a confirmed Unitarian, and entertaining the celebrated Unitarian leader, Mr. Biddle, and procuring him an allowance of one hundred crowns from Cromwell whilst he was kept prisoner in Scilly, yet he was on intimate terms with Dr. Tillotson, and many other eminent Churchmen. Though not bearing on our main subject, the following extract is worth diffusing amongst the religious of to-day:—"During the imprisonment of Mr. Biddle at Scilly, Mr. Firmin was settled in Lombard Street, where first Mr. Jacomb, then Dr. Outram, was minister. With these two, being excellent preachers and learned men, he maintained a respectful and kind friendship. Now also he grew into intimacy with Dr. Whichcot, Dr. Worthington, Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Bishop of Chester; Mr. Tillotson (for he was not yet doctor), Archbishop of Canterbury; but in their dignity, and to their very last, Mr. Firmin had the same place and degree in their friendship and esteem that at any time formerly he had. While Dr. Tillotson preached the Tuesday's lecture at St. Lawrence, so much frequented by all the divines of the town, and by a great many persons of quality and distinction, when the doctor was obliged to be at Canterbury, where he was dean, or was out of town, either for diversion or health, he generally left it to Mr. Firmin to provide preachers for his lecture; and Mr. Firmin never failed to supply his place with some very eminent preacher, so that there never was a complaint on the account of Dr. Tillotson's absence; and this Mr. Firmin could easily do, for now there was hardly a divine of note, whether in London or in the country, that frequented London, but Mr. Firmin was become acquainted with him; which thing helped him much to serve the interests of many hopeful young preachers and scholars, candidates for lectures, schools, cures, or rectories, for whom he would solicit with as much affection and diligence as other men do for their sons or other near relations. See here a trader, who knew no Latin or Greek, no logic or philosophy, compassed about by an incredible number of learned friends who differed so widely in opinion from him."

The secret of it was Firmin's freedom from bigotry, and his perfectly benevolent character. When the Plague broke out in 1665, which carried off nearly a hundred thousand people, and left vast numbers destitute from the flight of the employers, Firmin seized on the plan of manufacturing linen, so earnestly recommended by Yarranton, and this upon a method first set on foot by Thomas Gouge, the clergyman of St. Sepulchre's. This was to buy up both flax and hemp rudely dressed, and give it out to the poor to spin at their own homes. He built a house in Aldersgate, which he called his great work-house, or spinning-house, and there he gave out the flax and hemp, and took in the yarn. The object of Firmin was not to make money by the speculation, but to allow the poor people all the profit; and, indeed, he allowed them more, for he sank a considerable sum of money in it. But he was fast growing rich, and he was too wise to allow himself to become the slave of riches; and though from six hundred pounds his capital had grown to twenty thousand pounds, he determined not to leave more than five thousand pounds behind him. His object was to employ the people instead of giving them money as a charity; and he observed that he found it greatly to the relief of the poor; for that they could earn threepence or fourpence a day, working only such times as they could spare from any other occupations, "who, being at work in their own homes, and where they could with convenience attend it, many of them became so much pleased with it, that so much money given them for doing nothing would not have done them half so much good as that which they got by their own labour in this employment."

But Firmin had not studied the dry rules of political economy, and had, therefore, no objection to give money too where he saw it was needed. He had studied in the school of Christ, who said, "The poor ye have always with you"; and "What you do to one of these little ones you do also unto me." He was not opposed to all almshouses and hospitals, lest people should calculate on them and grow lazy. Concerning this work-house and the spinners, he would often say that "to pay the spinners, to relieve 'em with money begged for 'em, with coals and sheeting, was to him such a pleasure as magnificent buildings, pleasant walks, well-cultivated orchards and gardens, the jollity of music and wine, or the charms of love or study, are to others."

The East India and Guinea Companies, as well as many private persons, took his goods; and the Fire of London, following the Plague, gave him plenty of work to do in the way of assisting the destitute. Firmin added woollen spinning and weaving to the spinning of flax and hemp; but, after all, he considered the making of linens the most adapted to employ the people in such circumstances. "I know of no commodity of the like value," he says, "that can be set up with less stock. Three parts of four, even of that cloth which comes not to above two shillings an ell, will be paid for work to the spinner and weaver; and many times a woman will spin a pound of flax that cost but sixpence or sevenpence to that fineness, that she will receive twelvepence or fourteenpence for her pains, which will make an ell of cloth worth three shillings; at which rate five parts of six will be paid for labour: nay, sometimes I have seen a pound of flax, not worth above one and sixpence at most, spun to that fineness that it hath been worth ten shillings; and in other parts I have seen a pound of flax of not much higher value spun to that fineness that it hath been worth three or four pounds sterling."

Firmin next set children to work in schools of industry—a plan again introduced as new in our own day. The idea, he confesses, came from abroad, but he had the honour of introducing it in England. "I have," he says, "at this time some children working for me, not above seven or eight years old, who are able to earn twopence a day, and some, that are a little older, two shillings a week; and I doubt not to bring any child about that age to do the like; and still, as they grow up and become proficients, even in this poor trade of spinning, they will be able to get more and spin better than older people. Neither would I have those schools confined only to spinning, but to take in knitting, and make lace or plain work, or any other work which children shall be thought most fit for." He then refers to the foreign practice, and to the fact of children being employed at Norwich, where it was computed that they had earned twelve thousand pounds more than they had spent in knitting fine Jersey stockings.

This was a plan admirable for teaching children all kinds of businesses and household work, but liable to enormous abuses; and the trading community seized on it and carried it into coal mines, and cotton and other factories, to that fearful extent of cruelty that compelled the Legislature of our time to step in and protect the unhappy children. Firmin's honest and benevolent mind did not foresee this evil use of the idea; yet he was by no means incautious. He used to beg often as much as five hundred pounds a year, and distribute it amongst the poor; but he always took pains to inquire into cases of real necessity, and visited the sufferers in their own houses to convince himself of their actual distress.

In Yarranton, Gouge, and Firmin we see the pioneers of that great host of philanthropists who have from time to time followed in their steps, till now the whole country is alive with schools, ragged schools, reformatories, schemes of industry, and the numerous institutions which are on foot to improve the condition of the poor. In that age we see the germs of the vast manufacturing system which has made one great workshop of Britain, and caused its redundant population to overflow to the amount of nearly a quarter of a million a year into other countries and hemispheres, carrying their industrious habits and skill to found new nations. Indeed, taking altogether the age under review, notwithstanding the dissoluteness of the Government and the selfishness of the upper and middle classes, and the roughness of the lower, it was an epoch in which the elements of future greatness were rife. The rigour and independence which punished the tyranny of Charles I., and created the Commonwealth, though they seemed to recede in Charles II.'s reign, again displayed themselves under James II., and driving away the impracticable Stuarts, established an elective monarchy, the Bill of Rights, and religious freedom. In that period philanthropy became united with manufacturing and commercial enterprise, whence have sprung the glory and greatness of England; and then, too, in the writings of Child, Davenant, Petty, and others, dawned the first principles of political economy, afterwards elaborated into a system by Adam Smith, and still perfecting itself as a science by the correction of its errors, and the blending of a spirit of humanity with its original exactness of deduction. The great principles of the Commonwealth moulding the monarchy at the Revolution to its demands, settled permanently the liberties and the ascendency of the English race.