bid high for the acquisition.  He left London for Dunkirk on the 1st of December, the issue between Monk and the new Government still undecided.—­While Lockhart was on the scene of the great negotiation between Mazarin and Luis de Haro on the Spanish border, there had been the surprise of the arrival there of no less a person than Charles II. himself.  In August we left him waiting anxiously at Calais, ready to embark for England on the due explosion there of the great pre-arranged insurrection of the old Royalists and new Royalists.  He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but, when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become disagreeable to him.  He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene of the great diplomatic conferences.  Might not his interests be considered in the Treaty?  Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the journey incognito, with Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two other attendants, going by a long and circuitous route, and finding much amusement by the way.  As they approached their destination, there was an unlucky separation of the party into two, Ormond going on ahead for inquiries and appointing a place for their reunion.  But for some days Charles and the Earl of Bristol were lost.  Ormond, who had missed them at the appointed place, had gone on to Fontarabia, a small frontier town of Spain, and the residence of Don Luis de Haro during the Treaty, just as St. Jean de Luz, two or three miles off, but in the French territory, was the residence of Mazarin.  Sir Henry Bennet, the Ambassador for Charles at the Spanish Court, was already there; and he, and Ormond, and Don Luis himself, were in no small anxiety.  At length it appeared that the fugitives, on false information that the Treaty was already concluded, had gone into Spain on their own account, bound for Madrid itself, and had got as far as Saragossa.  Fetched back to Fontarabia, they were received with all politeness and state by Don Luis.  But, though they remained some time, the Treaty was so far settled that Charles found that nothing could be done for his interests through that means.  Mazarin, indeed, resenting his intrusion, and his passage through France without leave, refused to see him, and gave orders also that Sir Henry Bennet should not be admitted.  With only general assurances of good wishes from the Spanish minister, a present of 7000 gold pistoles for “the expenses of his journey,” and promises of farther consideration of his case when there should be opportunity, Charles returned through France by Paris, and was back in Brussels in December, just about the time when Lockhart was back in Dunkirk.  They had been crossing each other’s paths and were again near neighbours.—­Although the late Rump Government had taken some alarm at Charles’s