In the immense multitude which crowded the beach at Dover, and bordered the road along which the King travelled to London, there was not one who was not weeping.  Bonfires blazed.  Bells jingled.  The streets were thronged at night by boon-companions, who forced all the passers-by to swallow on bended knees brimming glasses to the health of his Most Sacred Majesty, and the damnation of Red-nosed Noll.  That tenderness to the fallen which has, through many generation% been a marked feature of the national character, was for a time hardly discernible.  All London crowded to shout and laugh round the gibbet where hung the rotten remains of a prince who had made England the dread of the world, who had been the chief founder of her maritime greatness, and of her colonial empire, who had conquered Scotland and Ireland, who had humbled Holland and Spain, the terror of whose name had been as a guard round every English traveller in remote countries, and round every Protestant congregation in the heart of Catholic empires.  When some of those brave and honest though misguided men who had sate in judgment on their King were dragged on hurdles to a death of prolonged torture, their last prayers were interrupted by the hisses and execrations of thousands.

Such was England in 1660.  In 1678 the whole face of things had changed.  At the former of those epochs eighteen years of commotion had made the majority of the people ready to buy repose at any price.  At the latter epoch eighteen years of misgovernment had made the same majority desirous to obtain security for their liberties at any risk.  The fury of their returning loyalty had spent itself in its first outbreak.  In a very few months they had hanged and half-hanged, quartered and embowelled enough to satisfy them.  The Roundhead party seemed to be not merely overcome, but too much broken and scattered ever to rally again.  Then commenced the reflux of public opinion.  The nation began to find out to what a man it had intrusted, without conditions, all its dearest interests, on what a man it had lavished all its fondest affection.  On the ignoble nature of the restored exile, adversity had exhausted all her discipline in vain.  He had one immense advantage over most other princes.  Though born in the purple, he was no better acquainted with the vicissitudes of life and the diversities of character than most of his subjects.  He had known restraint, danger, penury, and dependence.  He had often suffered from ingratitude, insolence, and treachery.  He had received many signal proofs of faithful and heroic attachment.  He had seen, if ever man saw, both sides of human nature.  But only one side remained in his memory.  He had learned only to despise and to distrust his species, to consider integrity in men, and modesty in women, as mere acting; nor did he think it worth while to keep his opinion to himself.  He was incapable of friendship; yet he was perpetually led by favourites without being in the smallest degree duped by them.  He knew