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[1660 A.D.]

the charm of novelty in his own age, and must be allowed to secure the name of Waller a conspicuous place in the history of English literature.

Concerning the genius of Milton, and the dignity conferred by him on his native tongue, and on the mind of his country, there is now little need to expatiate. Critics who know not how to pardon his republicanism, have in general extended their enmity to the character of the man, and the productions of the author. But when every fair concession shall have been made with regard to the imperfections of his temper and his writings, the excellence which remains will be found to place him so far above his assailants as to render their puny efforts to lower his pretensions a matter more calculated to amuse than irritate the friends of his memory. His attainments as a classical scholar were extensive and profound. In Latin composition he had scarcely a rival. Every European language possessing a literature to recommend it was known to him; and few divines possessed the same intimate acquaintance with the Hebrew scriptures and all rabbinical learning. Indications of these various acquisitions break upon us in almost every page of his works, imparting to his style a grace, a comprehensiveness, and a wonderful power, which must be perceived and felt in the greatest degree by those who have studied him the most.

But

It is true, in his prose works we are never allowed to forget that it is the prose of a poet, and some critics, whom the stars never destined to be poets, affect to regret that the author's taste with regard to the style proper to performances of that nature should have been so defective and erroneous. the man who can read the Areopagitica, or the Eikonoclastes, and not feel a strange awe produced within him by the surpassing greatness of the spirit which has been in converse with his own, so as to be charmed out of all wish that the author had spoken otherwise than he has done, must be a person incapable of sympathising with great eloquence and lofty argument. His style, indeed, in those works is not to be recommended as a model. On the contrary, an attempt to imitate it must betray a want of judgment incompatible with real excellence in anything. It is a sort of costume, which, like that assumed by Jeremy Taylor, must always be peculiar to the individual, and can never become the badge of a class. Modes of expression and illustration which with such men have all the freshness and vigour of nature, become cold and feeble, or, at best, inflated by an artificial warmth, when produced by the mechanic process of the imitator.

In his poetry, the mind of Milton is found open to all the beauties and sublimities of nature, and seems to portray with equal truth the good and evil of the rational universe- the heavens above, and hell beneath. That upon a theme so difficult and so comprehensive, and prosecuted to so great an extent, he should sometimes fail, was perhaps inevitable. But if something less than one-third of the Paradise Lost be excepted, the remainder may be safely declared to consist of such poetry as the world had never before seen. In his happier moments, his descriptions of physical existence are the most perfect supplied by human language; but it is when employed in exhibiting the moral energies of the perfect or the fallen, that he rises most above all who preceded him.

WILLIAM HARVEY

Harvey, whose discovery with respect to the circulation effected so great a revolution in medical science, died in 1657. encouraged in his experiments and studies by Charles I.

of the blood He was much But it was

[1660 A.D.] remarked that no physician in Europe, who had reached forty years of age when Harvey's discovery was made public, was known to adopt it. His maintaining it is even said to have diminished his own practice and celebrity. So general is the force of prejudice even on matters of the most practical nature, and so liable is it to become fixed beyond all hope of removal after a certain period of life!r

GUIZOT ON THE RESTORATION

On the 29th of May, 1660, the royalist party, which had not conquered, had not even fought, was nevertheless national and all-powerful. It was England. England might justly think herself entitled to trust in her hopes; she was not unreasonable in her requirements; weary of great ambitions and disgusted with innovations, she only asked for security for her religion, and for the enjoyment of her ancient rights under the rule of her old laws. This the king promised her. The advisers who then possessed his confidence -Hyde, Ormonde, Nicholas, Hertford, Southampton - were sincere Protestants and friends of legal government. They had defended the laws during the reign of the late king. They had taken no part in any excessive assumptions of power on the part of the crown. They had even co-operated in promoting the first salutary measures of reform which had been carried by the Long Parliament. They expressed themselves resolved, and so did the king, to govern in concert with the two houses of parliament. The great council of the nation would therefore be always by the side of royalty, to enlighten and, if necessary, to restrain its action. Everything seemed to promise England the future to which her desires were limited. But when great questions have strongly agitated human nature and society, it is not within the power of men to return, at their pleasure, into a state of repose; and the storm still lowers in their hearts, when the sky has again become serene over their heads. In the midst of this outburst of joy, confidence, and hope, in which England was indulging, two camps were already in process of formation, ardent in their hostility to each other, and destined ere long to renew, at first darkly, but soon openly, the war which seemed to be at an end.

During the exile of the sons of Charles I, one fear had constantly preyed upon the minds of their wisest counsellors and most faithful friends; and that was lest, led astray by example and seduced by pleasure, they might adopt a creed, ideas, and manners foreign to their country- the creed, ideas, and manners of the great courts of the Continent. This was a natural fear, and one fully justified by the events. Charles II and his brother the duke of York returned, in fact, into England, the one an infidel libertine, who falsely gave himself out to be a Protestant, and the other a blindly sincere Catholic; both imbued with the principles of absolute power; both dissolute in morals, the one with elegant and heartless cynicism, the other with shocking inconsistency; both addicted to those habits of mind and life, to those tastes and vices, which render a court a school of arrogant and frivolous corruption, which rapidly spreads its contagious influence through the higher and lower classes who hasten to the court to imitate or serve it.

Afar from the court, among the laborious citizens of the towns, and in the families of the landowners, farmers, and labourers of the country districts, the zealous and rigid Protestantism of the nation, with its severe strictness of manners, and that stern spirit of liberty which cares neither for obstacles nor consequences, hardens men towards themselves as well as towards their enemies, and leads them to disdain the evils which they suffer or inflict

[1660 A.D.] provided they can perform their duty and satisfy their passion by maintaining their right, now took refuge.

The Restoration had scarcely given any glimpse of its tendencies, and yet the Puritans were already preparing to withstand it, feeling they were despised, and expecting soon to be proscribed, but earnestly devoted no matter at what risk or with what result, to the service of their faith and of their cause; unyielding and frequently factious sectaries, but indomitable defenders, even to martyrdom, of the Protestant religion, the moral austerity, and the liberties of their country. On the very day after the restoration, the court and the Puritans were the two hostile forces which appeared at the two opposite extremities of the political arena. Entirely monopolised by its joy, the nation either did not see this, or did not care to notice it. Because it had recovered the king and the parliament, it believed that it had reached the termination of its trials, and attained the summit of its wishes. Peoples are short-sighted. But their want of foresight changes neither their inmost hearts nor the course of their destiny; the national interests and feelings which in 1640 had caused the revolution, still subsisted in 1660, in the midst of the reaction against that revolution. The period of civil war was passed; that of parliamentary conflicts and compromises was beginning. The sway of the Protestant religion, and the decisive influence of the country in its own government-these were the objects which revolutionary England had pursued. Though cursing the revolution, and calling it the rebellion, royalist England nevertheless prepared still to pursue these objects, and not to rest until she had attained them.b

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The history of the Stuart restoration is wearisome, nauseous, and disgraceful. The debauches of Commodus and of Heliogabalus were revived under the disguise of rustling silks and waving plumes. Painted harlots flaunted in the palace and squandered money for lack of which soldiers and sailors starved. By seventeen known mistresses, Charles was reputed to have had thirteen children; several of whom were created earls or dukes, with ample incomes, charged in perpetuity and still paid, where not recently commuted, on a generous scale. Defoe satirises such results of the "lazy, long, lascivious reign." - W. H. S. AUBREY..

MACAULAY'S PICTURE OF THE TIMES AND OF THE NEW KING

THE history of England, during the seventeenth century, is the history of the transformation of a limited monarchy, constituted after the fashion of the middle ages, into a limited monarchy suited to that more advanced state of society in which the public charges can no longer be borne by the estates of the crown, and in which the public defence can no longer be entrusted to a feudal militia.

It has been too much the practice of writers zealous for freedom to represent the restoration as a disastrous event, and to condemn the folly or baseness of that convention which recalled the royal family without exacting new securities against maladministration.' Those who hold this language do not

['Among those who have censured the lack of a stipulation stands Lingard d as cited in the previous chapter, but Hallam says: "It has been a frequent reproach to the conductors of this great revolution, that the king was restored without those terms and limitations which might secure the nation against his abuse of their confidence; it has become almost regular to cast on the convention parliament, and more especially on Monk, the imputation of having

[1660 A.D.]

comprehend the real nature of the crisis which followed the deposition of Richard Cromwell. England was in imminent danger of sinking under the tyranny of a succession of small men raised up and pulled down by military caprice. To deliver the country from the domination of the soldiers was the first object of every enlightened patriot: but it was an object which, while the soldiers were united, the most sanguine could scarcely expect to attain. On a sudden a gleam of hope appeared. General was opposed to general, army to army. On the use which might be made of one auspicious moment depended the future destiny of the nation. Our ancestors used that moment well. They forgot old injuries, waved petty scruples, adjourned to a more convenient season all dispute about the reforms which our institutions needed, and stood together, cavaliers and roundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, in firm union, for the old laws of the land against military despotism. The exact partition of power among king, lords, and commons, might well be postponed till it had been decided whether England should be governed by king, lords, and commons, or by cuirassiers and pikemen. Had the statesmen of the convention taken a different course, had they held long debates on the principles of government, had they drawn up a new constitution and sent it to Charles, had conferences been opened, had couriers been passing and repassing during some weeks between Westminster and the Netherlands, with projects and counterprojects, replies by Hyde and rejoinders by Prynne, the coalition on which the public safety depended would have been dissolved: the Presbyterians and royalists would certainly have quarrelled: the military factions might possibly have been reconciled: and the misjudging friends of liberty might long have regretted, under a rule worse than that of the worst Stuart, the golden opportunity which had been suffered to escape.

Abolition of Tenures by Knight Service and Disbanding of the Army

The old civil polity was, therefore, by the general consent of both the great parties, re-established. It was again exactly what it had been when Charles the First, eighteen years before, withdrew from his capital. All those acts of the Long Parliament which had received the royal assent were admitted to be still in full force. One fresh concession, a concession in which the cavaliers were even more deeply interested than the roundheads, was easily obtained from the restored king. The military tenure of land had been originally created as a means of national defence. But in the course of ages whatever was useful in the institution had disappeared; and nothing was left but ceremonies and grievances. A landed proprietor who held an estate under the crown by knight service and it was thus that most of the soil of England was held had to pay a large fine on coming to his property. He could not alienate one acre without purchasing a license. When he died, if his domains descended to an infant, the sovereign was guardian, and was not only entitled to great part of the rents during the minority, but could require the ward, under heavy penalties, to marry any person of suitable rank. The chief bait which attracted a needy sycophant to the court was the hope of obtaining as

abandoned public liberty, and brought on, by their inconsiderate loyalty, or self-interested treachery, the misgovernment of the two last Stuarts, and the necessity of their ultimate expulsion. We may remark, in the first place, that the unconditional restoration of Charles the Second is sometimes spoken of in too hyperbolical language, as if he had come in as a sort of conqueror, with the laws and liberties of the people at his discretion. Yet he was restored to nothing but the bounded prerogatives of a king of England; bounded by every ancient and modern statute, including those of the Long Parliament, which had been enacted for the subject's security."]

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