They have, moreover, the violent instincts of barbarians. The republicans were tried with a shamelessness of cruelty. By the side of one was stationed a hangman, in a black dress, with a rope in his hand. While one was being quartered, another was brought up and asked if the work pleased him. Hearts, still beating, were torn out and shown to the people. A speaker in the Commons gives offence to the court, is waylaid by a gang of bullies, and his nose slit to the bone. Bunyan has satirized the mode of conducting state trials-mere forms preliminary to hanging and drawing. Hategood is counsel for the prisoner:

'Judge. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee?

Faithful. May I speak a few words in my own defence?

Judge. Sirrah, Sirrah! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say.'

After the rising of Monmouth, gentlemen were admonished to be careful of their ways, by hanging to their park gate the corpse of a rebel. Dynasties of gentry, known by the dreaded names of Hectors, Scourers, Mohawks, were the terror of peaceable citizens. The moral condition at large is fearfully expressed in the fact that in guide-books of the period gibbets and gallows are referred to as road-marks. For example:

'By the gallows and three wind-mills enter the suburbs of York.'

Leaving the forementioned suburbs (Durham), a small ascent, passing between the gallows and Crokehill.'

'You pass through Hare street . . . with a gallows to the left.'

'You pass by Pen-menis Hall, ... and ascend a small hill with a gibbet on the right.' 'At the end of the city (Wells) you cross a brook, and pass by the gallows.'

'At 2.3, leaving the acute way on the right to Towling, Ewel, etc., just at the gallows, or place of execution of malefactors, convicted at Southwark. At 8.5 you pass by a gallows on the left.'

A small rill with a bridge over it called Felbridge, separating it from Surrey, whence by the gallows you are conveyed to East Grinsted.'

'Leaving Petersborough you pass the gallows on the left.'

You leave Frampton, Wilberton, and Sherbeck, all on the right, and by a gibbet on the left, over a stone bridge.'

'Leaving Nottingham you ascend an hill, and pass by a gallows.'

'From Bristol you go up a steep ascent, leaving the gallows on your right.'

'You cross the River Saint, leaving the gallows on your left.'1

We must not, however, exaggerate the extent of this reaction.

Its more violent forms appear to have been confined to the capi

tal and the Court. When the frenzy of the Restoration had passed, it was seen that the best portions of the Puritan spirit were never extinguished. The mass of Englishmen, satisfied with getting back their May-poles and mince pies, were essentially unchanged.

Perhaps nothing shows the social state more strikingly than the provisions for locomotion. Often the highway was but a narrow track rising above the quagmire, and that not infrequently blocked up by carriers, neither of whom would yield. In the dusk, it was hardly distinguishable from the open heath and fen on either side. Wheeled carriages were in some districts generally pulled by oxen. On main roads, heavy articles were commonly conveyed, at enormous expense, by stage-wagons, in the straw of which nestled a crowd of passengers who could not afford to travel by coach; on by-roads, by long trains of pack horses. The rich travelled in their own carriages, with from four to six horses. Nor could even six always save the vehicle from being imbedded. Towards the close of the century, 'Flying Coaches' were established-a great and daring innovation. Moving at the rate of thirty to fifty miles a day, many thought it a tempting of Providence to go in them. This spirited undertaking was vehemently applauded—and as vehemently decried. About 1676, a few railways, made of timber, began to appear in the northern coal districts. Wagons were the cars, and horses the engines. But however a journey might be performed, travellers, unless numerous and well-armed, were liable to be stopped and plundered by marauders, many of whom had the manners and appearance of aristocrats. Innumerable inns-for which, since the days of famous Tabard, England had been renownedgave the wanderer a cheering welcome from the fatigues of travel and the dangers of darkness.

Houses were not numbered. Shops were distinguished by pictorial signs, for the direction of the common people who were unable to read. The streets of the metropolis are thus described:

"The particular style of building in old London was for one story to project over another, with heavy beams and cornices, the streets being paved with pebble stones, and no path for foot passengers but what was common for carriages, scarce a lamp to be seen, and except a few principal streets, they were in general very narrow, and those encumbered with heavy projecting signs, and barber's poles. London must have had a

very gloomy appearance when neighbors in a narrow street might shake hands from the opposite garrets. No wonder the plague was so dreadful in 1665!'1

After the great fire, which desolated almost a square mile of the city, the streets were widened, and the architecture was improved. Steps were taken to turn its nocturnal shades into noonday. On moonless nights, lanterns glimmered feebly before one house in ten, from six o'clock till twelve. While the ingenious projector was extolled by some as the greatest of benefactors, by others he was furiously attacked. The most fashionable localities bore what would now be considered a squalid appearance. The finest houses in Bath, a celebrated watering-place, would seem to have resembled the lowest of rag-shops. Visitors slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which in the next century were occupied by footmen. We may easily imagine what must have been the homes of the rural population.

Hospitality displayed itself in immoderate eating and drinking. The guest had failed in justice to the occasion unless he had gone under the table. Receptions were no solemn ceremonies. King Charles kept open house daily and all day long, for London society, the extreme Whigs excepted. All who had been properly introduced might go to see him dine, sup, dance.

Rural gentry derived their chief pleasures from field sports and coarse sensuality. Their taste in decoration seldom rose above the litter of a farm-yard; and their opinions were imbibed from current tradition. The yeomanry, a manly and true-hearted race, were an important element of the nation. Not less than a hundred and sixty thousand proprietors, comprising, with their families, more than a seventh of the inhabitants, derived their subsistence from small freehold estates. Four-fifths of the peasants were employed in agriculture. Their ordinary wages without board did not exceed four shillings per week, about one-third what they now are. Their chief food was rye, barley, or oats. No journal pleaded their cause. Only in rude rhymes did their distress find utterance.

When authors lay it down as a rule that virtue is only a pretence, the standard of female excellence will be low. At an earlier period, ladies of rank had studied the masterpieces of Greece and Rome; now they were unable to write an English sentence without errors of orthography and grammar. To libertines,

1 Smith's Antiquities of London.

moral and intellectual attainments were far less attractive than ignorance and frivolity.

The post-office might have moved the admiration of Spenser and his contemporaries, but it was a very imperfect institution. Under the Commonwealth, posts were established for the conveyance of letters weekly to all parts of the Kingdom. The bags were carried on horseback, day and night, at the rate of about five miles per hour. In the reign of Charles, a penny-post was set up in the capital for the delivery of letters and parcels from four to eight times a day; but the improvement was strenuously resisted by the long-headed and knowing ones, who denounced it as an insidious 'Popish contrivance.' No part of the mail was more important than the Newsletters,-weekly epistles of information and gossip, gathered in the coffee-rooms, and anxiously awaited by the rustic magistrate or the man of fortune in the country. Already, in 1662, a new style of chronicle had appeared, the Newspaper. The Civil War was fruitful in bitter and malicious sheets,- Scotch Doves, Parliament Kites, Secret Owls, the Weekly Discoverer, quickly rivalled by the Weekly Discoverer Stripped Naked. They multiplied greatly in the succeeding reigns, growing less political and more varied. In 1665 appeared the London Gazette, a bi-weekly of meagre contents. None was published oftener, and the largest contained less than is now comprised in a single column of a large daily. It had long ago been discovered that the press was dangerous to monopolists and tyrants; and in the arbitrary days of Charles II it was assumed that printing was not a free trade, but always to remain under regulation,— wholly at the disposal of the sovereign. But from 1649, when restrictions on its freedom were removed, the progress of the press as a reflector of public opinion has been steady and sure. Yet the words of Dr. Johnson are as true at this day as at any former period: "The danger of unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government, which human understanding seems unable to solve.'

Religion. The old ecclesiastical polity and the old liturgy were revived. Episcopal ordination became the indispensable condition of preferment. Two thousand ministers, rather than conform, resigned their cures in a single day, though they and

their families had all but to starve.

Then came a series of odious

statutes against non-conformists. It was criminal to attend a dissenting place of worship. A magistrate might convict without a jury; and for a third offence might pass sentence of transportation beyond the sea. If the offender returned before the expiration of his term of exile, he was liable to be executed. A test was imposed on the ejected divines; and all who refused to take it were prohibited from coming within five miles of any borough, or of any town where they had been wont to preach. In twelve years, twelve thousand Quakers—one of the smallest of the separatist bodies-had found their way to the jails. Many of the expelled clergy preached in fields and private houses, till they were seized and cast into prison, where a great number perished. In Scotland, the prisons were soon filled to overflowing, and when they could hold no more, the victims were transported. The savage mountaineers were let loose upon the people, and spared neither age nor sex. Children were torn from their parents, and threatened to be shot. Adults were banished by wholesale, some of the men first losing their ears, and the women being branded on the hand or cheek. The government, in its arbitrary attempt to enforce a religious system, had not profited by the disastrous experiments of preceding reigns.

The tide of intolerance, however, was slowly ebbing. In the struggle against Romanism, Churchmen and Non-conformists rallied together, and made common cause against the common enemy. The danger over, the union of the two abruptly ceased, it is true; but active persecution was no longer possible, and in 1689 the Toleration Act established forever complete freedom of worship.

A large part of the people remained Puritan in life, though they threw aside many of the outer characteristics of that belief. Purged by oppression, purified by patience, Puritanism ended by winning the public esteem. Gradually it approached the world, and the world it. After all, its essential ideal was what the race demanded. Prosperity had developed pride, and power corruption; but in the moment of its defeat, its real victory began. Its fruits compelled admiration. Cromwell's fifty thousand veterans, suddenly disbanded and without resources, brought not a single recruit to the vagabonds and bandits. The Royalists