Principles terminate in a precipice.

He was walking, his hands behind him, along the shores of the Lake of
Geneva.  A fine way of getting on!

In London they sometimes spoke of the exile.  He was accused before the tribunal of public opinion.  They pleaded for and against him.  The cause having been heard, he was acquitted on the ground of stupidity.

Many zealous friends of the former republic had given their adherence to the Stuarts.  For this they deserve praise.  They naturally calumniated him a little.  The obstinate are repulsive to the compliant.  Men of sense, in favour and good places at Court, weary of his disagreeable attitude, took pleasure in saying, “If he has not rallied to the throne, it is because he has not been sufficiently paid,” etc. “He wanted the chancellorship which the king has given to Hyde.”  One of his old friends went so far as to whisper, “He told me so himself.”  Remote as was the solitude of Linnaeus Clancharlie, something of this talk would reach him through the outlaws he met, such as old regicides like Andrew Broughton, who lived at Lausanne.  Clancharlie confined himself to an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, a sign of profound deterioration.  On one occasion he added to the shrug these few words, murmured in a low voice, “I pity those who believe such things.”

IV.

Charles II., good man! despised him.  The happiness of England under Charles II. was more than happiness, it was enchantment.  A restoration is like an old oil painting, blackened by time, and revarnished.  All the past reappeared, good old manners returned, beautiful women reigned and governed.  Evelyn notices it.  We read in his journal, “Luxury, profaneness, contempt of God.  I saw the king on Sunday evening with his courtesans, Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, and two or three others, all nearly naked, in the gaming-room.”  We feel that there is ill-nature in this description, for Evelyn was a grumbling Puritan, tainted with republican reveries.  He did not appreciate the profitable example given by kings in those grand Babylonian gaieties, which, after all, maintain luxury.  He did not understand the utility of vice.  Here is a maxim:  Do not extirpate vice, if you want to have charming women; if you do you are like idiots who destroy the chrysalis whilst they delight in the butterfly.

Charles II., as we have said, scarcely remembered that a rebel called Clancharlie existed; but James II. was more heedful.  Charles II. governed gently, it was his way; we may add, that he did not govern the worse on that account.  A sailor sometimes makes on a rope intended to baffle the wind, a slack knot which he leaves to the wind to tighten.  Such is the stupidity of the storm and of the people.

The slack knot very soon becomes a tight one.  So did the government of Charles II.