of his brother with becoming spirit and decision. On that occasion he gave evident proof that his own principles had not, at that time, been perverted; but his after conduct exemplified the unhappy consequences of having been bred up in a family divided against itself. With whatever care Charles I., truly pious as he was, endeavoured to have his children trained up in the way that they should go, it was not possible that they should receive the Protestant religion with that implicit faith, which, as Mr. Miller has convincingly shown, is the most reasonable, because it is among the most indispensable of all things. There is a beautiful passage in the Icon Basilike wherein Charles laments the outrageous proceedings of the puritans, as tending to confirm his queen in her attachment to the Romish church. 'I fear (he says) such motions (so little to the advancing of the Protestant profession!) may occasion a further alienation of mind and divorce of affections in her from that religion, which is the only thing wherein we differ.' And he calls this difference his greatest temporal infelicity. A difference of this kind could not be concealed from the children when they were capable of observation. It was no light misfortune, had the evil ended there, to lose the advantages of maternal instruction in this most momentous concern; that earliest and natural instruction which of all others strikes root the deepest. But they suffered more than the loss of this; the principle of belief was unsettled; that difference between their parents which excited curiosity and wonder first, then uneasiness, led to indifference or doubt; and this consequence would have been inevitable, even if Henrietta, under a sense of obedience and duty to her husband, had refrained from those indirect means of influencing her children, from which no Catholic mother who truly believes the tenets of her own church can, will, or ought to refrain. How many calamities might have been averted from this -kingdom, if, after the death of Mary, queen of Scots, an act had been past declaring that no Roman Catholic should succeed to the throne, and restricting the royal family from intermarrying with Catholics! A writer in the first unquiet years of William and Mary's reign says, with some feeling and beauty of expression, Tis easy to trace even our present as well as past misfortunes to this original, could we do it without disturbing the ashes of the dead, and, we had almost added,-the reliques of the martyrs.'

It was not in Charles II.'s nature to think or perplex himself much about any thing. Without examining, or caring for the points in controversy between the Protestants and the Papists, he was inclined to think favourably of the Roman Catholic church because he believed its principles were favourable to monarchy, and knew that its practices were convenient for one who having M 4

the

the means of gratifying all his inclinatious, did not wish to be withheld by any sense of duty, or scruples of conscience. Both he and his brother were disgusted at the foreign: Protestants for their attachment to Cromwell, who (to his honour be it always remembered) had taken upon himself the protection of the Protestant cause with a spirit worthy of the nation over which, had his title been legitimate, assuredly he was worthy to have reigned. During their exile they had received more kindness from the Romish than from the reformed powers; perhaps also their minds were biassed against Protestantism, because zeal against papistry had been the main pretext by which the nation was engaged in rebellion. Their father had apprehended this effect, and cautioned them against it. The scandal of the late troubles (said he) which some may object and urge to you against the Protestant religion established in England, is easily answered to them, or your own thoughts, in this; that scarce any one who hath been a beginner, or an active prosecutor of this late war against the church, the laws and me, either was or is a true lover, embracer, or practiser of the Protestant religion established in England, which neither gives such rules, nor ever before set such examples. 'Tis true some heretofore had the boldness to present threatening petitions to their princes and parliaments, which others of the same faction, but of worse spirits, have now put in execution. But let not counterfeit and disorderly zeal abate your value and esteem of true piety; both of them are to be known by their fruits, The sweetness of the vine and fig-tree is not to be despised, though the brambles and thorns should pretend to bear figs and grapes, thereby to rule over the trees. Happy times, I hope, attend you, wherein your subjects by their miseries will have learned that religion to their God, and loyalty to their king cannot be parted without both their ruin and their infelicity. I pray God bless you, and establish your kingdoms in righteousness, your soul in true religion, and your honour in the love of God and of your people.'

Ως ἔφατ ̓ εὐχόμενος τε δ' ἔκλυε μητίετα Ζευς.

Τῷ δ ̓ ἕτερον μὲν ἔδωκε πατὴρ, ἕτερον δ ̓ ἀνένευσε.

The restoration was brought about by the spontaneous and general movement of a repentant nation, even in the manner which the royal martyr himself would most have desired; but his prayer for the righteousness of the kingdom, and for the religion and honour of his sons, was offered up in vain. Both had been corrupted, and that corruption was both a consequence and a punishment of the national crimes. Even the personal vices and the political faults of Charles II. and his successor were, in no small degree, produced by the unhappy circumstances into which the rebellion

threw

threw them. Had they grown up in peace at their father's court, even though the temptations to which their rank is exposed should have counteracted the influence of his moral example, ey would at least have been trained in old English feelings, and in a right old English taste. Their father was the liberal patron* of Ben Jonson, and appreciated Shakspeare more truly, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries, Milton alone excepted. Had they grown up at his court, it is hardly possible that they should ever have been Frenchified in mind and heart. The true lovers of their country, who in that age lamented the irreparable evils which the civil war had caused, esteemed it not among the least of those evils that the royal family should have had their taste vitiated, their manners debauched, and their religion shaken or corrupted during the long exile into which they had been driven.

But the higher ranks were prepared for the contagion of those: manners which Charles and his brother imported. Whether the well known Memoirs of Count Grammont are to be trusted or not in all their scandalous details, the general view there given of the English court is undoubtedly faithful. It is not possible to imagine a greater contrast than that between the women whose characters are there pourtrayed, and those-we will not say of Elizabeth's, or of her father's, but of the last reign-such, for example, as the Countess of Pembroke, Lady Fanshaw, and Mrs. Hutchinson, who were still living to lament and wonder at the shameless profligacy of their countrywomen. Sir John Reresby tells us Charles had this for his excuse, the women seemed to be the aggressors; and he adds, I have since heard the King say they would sometimes offer themselves to his embraces. This too was an effect of those civil wars which, like a moral earthquake, had unsettled the foundations of society. Cromwell had repressed the levellers with his characteristic decision, but it was beyond his power to check the levelling consequences of revolution. The minds of men too often sink with their fortunes, weak' hearts yield to degradation when noble ones break, and this is the worst evil that adversity brings in its train. The number of loyal families, whose estates were such as enabled them to support

* Pope should have remembered this when he sneered at the taste of this moșt accomplished monarch, in a couplet which has often been quoted to his own dishonour." The hero William, and the martyr Charles,

One knighted Blackmore, and one pensioned Quarles. With respect to Sir Richard, his poems are so utterly worthless in conception, structure, and execution, that unless Mr. Locke had written a panegyric upon them, it would be difficult to believe they could ever have found an admirer. But Quarles, with all his oddities and extravagancies, is a poet, in whom much may be found to delight the ear, and not a little that may move the affections and satisfy the judgement. Whenever a new collection of the British poets shall be published, or a supplement to the existing ones (such a work is greatly desired) it is to be hoped that Quarles will not be omitted.

their station, after all the exactions to which they had been subjected, were few in comparison with those who were ruined, either during the war, or under the rapacious oligarchy which ensued, or during Oliver's usurpation, who, because he was an usurper, was by his insecurity and fears compelled to be a tyrant. A circumstance which Thoresby mentions as an instance of the mutability of fortune may show how widely this ruin extended; he had two servants, the mother of one of whom and the grandmother of the other were knights' daughters. The degradation in some respects was voluntary. The young women,' says Lord Clarendon, conversed without any circumspection or modesty, and frequently met at taverns and common eating-houses; they who were stricter and more severe in their comportment became the wives of the seditious preachers, or of officers of the army. The daughters of noble and illustrious families bestowed themselves upon the divines of the time, or other low and unequal matches. Parents had no manner of authority over their children, nor children any obedience or submission to their parents, but every one did that which was good in his own eyes.' The character of our women was so much altered during the progress of the troubles, that men who had formerly wondered at the bold and forward manners of our mercurial neighbours, found their own countrywomen in need of an excuse which they had not allowed to the French. With this feeling, Peter Heylyn qualifies the strong censure which in his Travels he had passed upon them. Our English women,' he says, "at that time were of a more retired behaviour than they have been since, which made the confident carriage of the French damsels seem more strange unto me; whereas of late the garb of our women is so altered, and they have so much in them of the mode of France, as easily might take off those misapprehensions with which I was possessed at my first coming thither.'

Till those calamitous years began it had been customary for English women to receive a learned education; Henry VIII. made it so by setting an example with his own daughters; it is among the redeeming parts of his character, and everlastingly will England be indebted to it, for by that education the mind of Elizabeth was formed. It ceased suddenly and totally; the families who sunk in the world were unable to continue it, while those which rose pretended to undervalue accomplishments that they did not possess. Some of the puritanical ladies indeed affected to study Hebrew, as a knowledge almost necessary to salvation; this absurd and offensive pedantry contributed to cast a ridicule upon the better studies which were now generally disused; and when the men dispensed with learning in themselves, it was not likely that they should tolerate it in the other sex. Here in England,' says an

author

author of the ensuing age, the women are kept from all learning, as the profane vulgar were of old from the mysteries of the ancient religions.' Preposterous reasons are never wanting for preposterous practices. It was asserted and believed that they were too delicate to bear the fatigues of acquiring knowledge;' and were moreover by nature incapable of it, because the moisture of their brain rendered it impossible for them to possess a solid judgement, that faculty of the mind depending upon a dry temperature." If this physical cause of inferiority were not sufficient, there was the theological one that Eve, by the bare desire of knowledge, had brought sin and death into the world; and, to crown all, an argument was drawn from the practical evils which would be felt if women were puffed up with their acquirements; a good opinion of themselves being inconsistent with the obedience for which they are designed! At the time when these notions began to prevail, and when women were thought sufficiently accomplished if they were versed in those domestic arts which had never been neglected by their predecessors, during the best ages of female education, the progress of fanaticism interfered with religious instruction, and even suspended its public use. Evelyn observes in his Journal that during the tyranny of the Commonwealth he used, on Sunday afternoons, to catechise and instruct his family; 'these exercises,' he says, 'universally ceasing in the parish churches, so as people had no principles, and grew very ignorant of even the common points of Christianity, all devotion being now placed in hearing sermons and discourses of speculative and notional things.'

It was one of the fantastic opinions of former times that poison never insinuates itself so quickly, nor operates so strongly, as when it is administered in human milk. Had it been customary in those times to convey moral truths in the garb of physical allegory, this would bear a valid interpretation, for woe be to that country where the manners of the women are generally corrupted! The story of the Fall then becomes typical; there is an end of manly honour; and where the household virtues have no longer a resting place, farewell to domestic peace and to national prosperity! Sir William Temple said he had seen no country so generally corrupted as his own by a common pride and affectation of despising and laughing at all face of order and virtue and conformity to laws,-which after all,' he says,' are qualities that most conduce both to the happiness of a public state, and the ease of a private life.' What the Satanic school of the present age is labouring to effect, their predecessors, the Liberals of that, or the wits, as they then called themselves, had accomplished; they had debauched the public mind. The consequences were less fatal than would now result from a like success,

because