No More Learning

Rupert has the
credit of having invented mezzotinto; from him is named that curious
bubble of glass which has long amused children and puzzled philosophers.
Charles himself had a laboratory at Whitehall, and was far more active
and attentive there than at the council board. It was almost necessary
to the character of a fine gentleman to have something to say about air
pumps and telescopes; and even fine ladies, now and then, thought it
becoming to affect a taste for science, went in coaches and six to
visit the Gresham curiosities, and broke forth into cries of delight at
finding that a magnet really attracted a needle, and that a microscope
really made a fly loom as large as a sparrow. [186]

In this, as in every great stir of the human mind, there was doubtless
something which might well move a smile. It is the universal law that
whatever pursuit, whatever doctrine, becomes fashionable, shall lose a
portion of that dignity which it had possessed while it was confined to
a small but earnest minority, and was loved for its own sake alone. It
is true that the follies of some persons who, without any real
aptitude for science, professed a passion for it, furnished matter of
contemptuous mirth to a few malignant satirists who belonged to the
preceding generation, and were not disposed to unlearn the lore of their
youth. [187] But it is not less true that the great work of interpreting
nature was performed by the English of that age as it had never before
been performed in any age by any nation. The spirit of Francis Bacon was
abroad, a spirit admirably compounded of audacity and sobriety. There
was a strong persuasion that the whole world was full of secrets of high
moment to the happiness of man, and that man had, by his Maker, been
entrusted with the key which, rightly used, would give access to
them. There was at the same time a conviction that in physics it was
impossible to arrive at the knowledge of general laws except by the
careful observation of particular facts. Deeply impressed with these
great truths, the professors of the new philosophy applied themselves
to their task, and, before a quarter of a century had expired, they had
given ample earnest of what has since been achieved. Already a reform
of agriculture had been commenced. New vegetables were cultivated. New
implements of husbandry were employed. New manures were applied to the
soil. [188] Evelyn had, under the formal sanction of the Royal Society,
given instruction to his countrymen in planting. Temple, in his
intervals of leisure, had tried many experiments in horticulture, and
had proved that many delicate fruits, the natives of more favoured
climates, might, with the help of art, be grown on English ground.
Medicine, which in France was still in abject bondage, and afforded an
inexhaustible subject of just ridicule to Moliere, had in England become
an experimental and progressive science, and every day made some
new advance in defiance of Hippocrates and Galen. The attention of
speculative men had been, for the first time, directed to the important
subject of sanitary police. The great plague of 1665 induced them to
consider with care the defective architecture, draining, and ventilation
of the capital. The great fire of 1666 afforded an opportunity for
effecting extensive improvements. The whole matter was diligently
examined by the Royal Society; and to the suggestions of that body must
be partly attributed the changes which, though far short of what the
public welfare required, yet made a wide difference between the new
and the old London, and probably put a final close to the ravages of
pestilence in our country. [189] At the same time one of the founders
of the Society, Sir William Petty, created the science of political
arithmetic, the humble but indispensable handmaid of political
philosophy. No kingdom of nature was left unexplored. To that period
belong the chemical discoveries of Boyle, and the earliest botanical
researches of Sloane. It was then that Ray made a new classification
of birds and fishes, and that the attention of Woodward was first drawn
towards fossils and shells. One after another phantoms which had haunted
the world through ages of darkness fled before the light. Astrology and
alchymy became jests. Soon there was scarcely a county in which some of
the Quorum did not smile contemptuously when an old woman was brought
before them for riding on broomsticks or giving cattle the murrain. But
it was in those noblest and most arduous departments of knowledge
in which induction and mathematical demonstration cooperate for the
discovery of truth, that the English genius won in that age the most
memorable triumphs. John Wallis placed the whole system of statics on
a new foundation. Edmund Halley investigated the properties of the
atmosphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, the laws of magnetism, and the
course of the comets; nor did he shrink from toil, peril and exile in
the cause of science. While he, on the rock of Saint Helena, mapped the
constellations of the southern hemisphere, our national observatory was
rising at Greenwich: and John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal,
was commencing that long series of observations which is never mentioned
without respect and gratitude in any part of the globe. But the glory
of these men, eminent as they were, is cast into the shade by the
transcendent lustre of one immortal name. In Isaac Newton two kinds of
intellectual power, which have little in common, and which are not often
found together in a very high degree of vigour, but which nevertheless
are equally necessary in the most sublime departments of physics, were
united as they have never been united before or since. There may have
been minds as happily constituted as his for the cultivation of pure
mathematical science: there may have been minds as happily constituted
for the cultivation of science purely experimental; but in no other mind
have the demonstrative faculty and the inductive faculty coexisted in
such supreme excellence and perfect harmony. Perhaps in the days of
Scotists and Thomists even his intellect might have run to waste, as
many intellects ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily
the spirit of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right
direction to his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the
spirit of the age. In the year 1685 his fame, though splendid, was only
dawning; but his genius was in the meridian. His great work, that work
which effected a revolution in the most important provinces of natural
philosophy, had been completed, but was not yet published, and was just
about to be submitted to the consideration of the Royal Society.

It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so far before
its neighbours in science should in art have been far behind them. Yet
such was the fact. It is true that in architecture, an art which is half
a science, an art in which none but a geometrician can excel, an art
which has no standard of grace but what is directly or indirectly
dependent on utility, an art of which the creations derive a part, at
least, of their majesty from mere bulk, our country could boast of one
truly great man, Christopher Wren; and the fire which laid London in
ruins had given him an opportunity, unprecedented in modern history, of
displaying his powers. The austere beauty of the Athenian portico,
the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he was like almost all
his contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and perhaps incapable of
appreciating; but no man born on our side of the Alps, has imitated with
so much success the magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy.
Even the superb Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear a
comparison with Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charles
the Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose name
is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious; for painters
and statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill paid class. Their
social position was at least as high as at present. Their gains, when
compared with the wealth of the nation and with the remuneration of
other descriptions of intellectual labour, were even larger than at
present. Indeed the munificent patronage which was extended to artists
drew them to our shores in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to us
the rich curls, the full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail
beauties celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had died in 1680,
having long lived splendidly, having received the honour of knighthood,
and having accumulated a good estate out of the fruits of his skill.
His noble collection of drawings and pictures was, after his decease,
exhibited by the royal permission in the Banqueting House at Whitehall,
and was sold by auction for the almost incredible sum of twenty-six
thousand pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes
of the rich men of that day than a hundred thousand pounds would bear
to the fortunes of the rich men of our time. [190] Lely was succeeded by
his countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was made first a knight and then a
baronet, and who, after keeping up a sumptuous establishment, and after
losing much money by unlucky speculations, was still able to bequeath
a large fortune to his family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland,
had been tempted by English liberality to settle here, and had produced
for the King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces in the world.
Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted glorious sunflowers and tulips
for prices such as had never before been known. Verrio, a Neapolitan,
covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and Muses, Nymphs and
Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing nectar, and laurelled princes
riding in triumph. The income which he derived from his performances
enabled him to keep one of the most expensive tables in England. For his
pieces at Windsor alone he received seven thousand pounds, a sum then
sufficient to make a gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy for
life, a sum greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of
forty years, obtained from the booksellers. [191] Verrio's assistant
and successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most celebrated
sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber, whose pathetic
emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam, was a Dane. Gibbons,
to whose graceful fancy and delicate touch many of our palaces,
colleges, and churches owe their finest decorations, was a Dutchman.
Even the designs for the coin were made by French artists. Indeed, it
was not till the reign of George the Second that our country could glory
in a great painter; and George the Third was on the throne before she
had reason to be proud of any of her sculptors.

It is time that this description of the England which Charles the Second
governed should draw to a close. Yet one subject of the highest moment
still remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said of the great body
of the people, of those who held the ploughs, who tended the oxen, who
toiled at the looms of Norwich, and squared the Portland stone for Saint
Paul's. Nor can very much be said. The most numerous class is precisely
the class respecting which we have the most meagre information. In those
times philanthropists did not yet regard it as a sacred duty, nor had
demagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and write about the
distress of the labourer. History was too much occupied with courts and
camps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant or the garret of the
mechanic. The press now often sends forth in a day a greater quantity of
discussion and declamation about the condition of the working man than
was published during the twenty-eight years which elapsed between the
Restoration and the Revolution. But it would be a great error to infer
from the increase of complaint that there has been any increase of
misery.

The great criterion of the state of the common people is the amount
of their wages; and as four-fifths of the common people were, in the
seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is especially important
to ascertain what were then the wages of agricultural industry. On this
subject we have the means of arriving at conclusions sufficiently exact
for our purpose.

Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight, informs us
that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state who received for
a day's work fourpence with food, or eightpence without food. Four
shillings a week therefore were, according to Petty's calculation, fair
agricultural wages. [192]

That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have
abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices of
Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by an Act of
Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of wages for
the county, and notified that every employer who gave more than the
authorised sum, and every working man who received more, would be liable
to punishment. The wages of the common agricultural labourer, from
March to September, were fixed at the precise amount mentioned by Petty,
namely four shillings a week without food. From September to March the
wages were to be only three and sixpence a week. [193]

But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were very
different in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of Warwickshire
were probably about the average, and those of the counties near the
Scottish border below it: but there were more favoured districts. In
the same year, 1685, a gentleman of Devonshire, named Richard Dunning,
published a small tract, in which he described the condition of the poor
of that county. That he understood his subject well it is impossible to
doubt; for a few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by
the magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly
recommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According to
him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food, about five
shillings a week. [194]

Still better was the condition of the labourer in the neighbourhood of
Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk met there in the spring
of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and resolved that, where the labourer
was not boarded, he should have five shillings a week in winter, and six
in summer. [195]

In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of the Essex
labourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings in winter and seven in
summer. This seems to have been the highest remuneration given in
the kingdom for agricultural labour between the Restoration and the
Revolution; and it is to be observed that, in the year in which this
order was made, the necessaries of life were immoderately dear. Wheat
was at seventy shillings the quarter, which would even now be considered
as almost a famine price. [196]

These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which seems to
deserve consideration. It is evident that, in a country where no man can
be compelled to become a soldier, the ranks of an army cannot be filled
if the government offers much less than the wages of common rustic
labour. At present the pay and beer money of a private in a regiment of
the line amount to seven shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend,
coupled with the hope of a pension, does not attract the English
youth in sufficient numbers; and it is found necessary to supply the
deficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer population of
Munster and Connaught. The pay of the private foot soldier in 1685 was
only four shillings and eightpence a week; yet it is certain that the
government in that year found no difficulty in obtaining many thousands
of English recruits at very short notice. The pay of the private foot
soldier in the army of the Commonwealth had been seven shillings a
week, that is to say, as much as a corporal received under Charles the
Second; [197] and seven shillings a week had been found sufficient to fill
the ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of the people.
On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that, in the
reign of Charles the Second, the ordinary wages of the peasant did not
exceed four shillings a week; but that, in some parts of the kingdom,
five shillings, six shillings, and, during the summer months, even seven
shillings were paid. At present a district where a labouring man earns
only seven shillings a week is thought to be in a state shocking to
humanity. The average is very much higher; and in prosperous counties,
the weekly wages of husbandmen amount to twelve, fourteen, and even
sixteen shillings. The remuneration of workmen employed in manufactures
has always been higher than that of the tillers of the soil. In the year
1680, a member of the House of Commons remarked that the high wages
paid in this country made it impossible for our textures to maintain a
competition with the produce of the Indian looms. An English mechanic,
he said, instead of slaving like a native of Bengal for a piece of
copper, exacted a shilling a day. [198] Other evidence is extant,
which proves that a shilling a day was the pay to which the English
manufacturer then thought himself entitled, but that he was often forced
to work for less. The common people of that age were not in the habit
of meeting for public discussion, of haranguing, or of petitioning
Parliament. No newspaper pleaded their cause. It was in rude rhyme
that their love and hatred, their exultation and their distress, found
utterance. A great part of their history is to be learned only from
their ballads. One of the most remarkable of the popular lays chaunted
about the streets of Norwich and Leeds in the time of Charles the Second
may still be read on the original broadside. It is the vehement and
bitter cry of labour against capital. It describes the good old times
when every artisan employed in the woollen manufacture lived as well
as a farmer. But those times were past. Sixpence a day was now all that
could be earned by hard labour at the loom. If the poor complained that
they could not live on such a pittance, they were told that they were
free to take it or leave it. For so miserable a recompense were the
producers of wealth compelled to toil rising early and lying down late,
while the master clothier, eating, sleeping, and idling, became rich by
their exertions. A shilling a day, the poet declares, is what the weaver
would have if justice were done. [199] We may therefore conclude that,
in the generation which preceded the Revolution, a workman employed in
the great staple manufacture of England thought himself fairly paid if
he gained six shillings a week.

It may here be noticed that the practice of setting children prematurely
to work, a practice which the state, the legitimate protector of those
who cannot protect themselves, has, in our time, wisely and humanely
interdicted, prevailed in the seventeenth century to an extent which,
when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost
incredible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little
creature of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers
of that time, and among them some who were considered as eminently
benevolent, mention, with exultation, the fact that, in that single
city, boys and girls of very tender age created wealth exceeding what
was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve thousand pounds a
year. [200] The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the
more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age
has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are,
with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence
which discerns and the humanity which remedies them.

When we pass from the weavers of cloth to a different class of artisans,
our enquiries will still lead us to nearly the same conclusions. During
several generations, the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital have kept a
register of the wages paid to different classes of workmen who have been
employed in the repairs of the building. From this valuable record it
appears that, in the course of a hundred and twenty years, the daily
earnings of the bricklayer have risen from half a crown to four and
tenpence, those of the mason from half a crown to five and threepence,
those of the carpenter from half a crown to five and fivepence, and
those of the plumber from three shillings to five and sixpence.

It seems clear, therefore, that the wages of labour, estimated in money,
were, in 1685, not more than half of what they now are; and there were
few articles important to the working man of which the price was not,
in 1685, more than half of what it now is. Beer was undoubtedly much
cheaper in that age than at present. Meat was also cheaper, but was
still so dear that hundreds of thousands of families scarcely knew
the taste of it. [201] In the cost of wheat there has been very little
change. The average price of the quarter, during the last twelve years
of Charles the Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as is
now given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then seldom seen, even on
the trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great majority of the
nation lived almost entirely on rye, barley, and oats.

The produce of tropical countries, the produce of the mines, the
produce of machinery, was positively dearer than at present. Among the
commodities for which the labourer would have had to pay higher in
1685 than his posterity now pay were sugar, salt, coals, candles,
soap, shoes, stockings, and generally all articles of clothing and all
articles of bedding. It may be added, that the old coats and blankets
would have been, not only more costly, but less serviceable than the
modern fabrics.

It must be remembered that those labourers who were able to maintain
themselves and their families by means of wages were not the most
necessitous members of the community. Beneath them lay a large class
which could not subsist without some aid from the parish. There can
hardly be a more important test of the condition of the common people
than the ratio which this class bears to the whole society. At present,
the men, women, and children who receive relief appear from the official
returns to be, in bad years, one tenth of the inhabitants of England,
and, in good years, one thirteenth. Gregory King estimated them in his
time at about a fourth; and this estimate, which all our respect for
his authority will scarcely prevent us from calling extravagant, was
pronounced by Davenant eminently judicious.

We are not quite without the means of forming an estimate for ourselves.
The poor rate was undoubtedly the heaviest tax borne by our ancestors in
those days. It was computed, in the reign of Charles the Second, at near
seven hundred thousand pounds a year, much more than the produce either
of the excise or of the customs, and little less than half the entire
revenue of the crown. The poor rate went on increasing rapidly, and
appears to have risen in a short time to between eight and nine hundred
thousand a year, that is to say, to one sixth of what it now is. The
population was then less than a third of what it now is. The minimum
of wages, estimated in money, was half of what it now is; and we can
therefore hardly suppose that the average allowance made to a pauper can
have been more than half of what it now is. It seems to follow that the
proportion of the English people which received parochial relief then
must have been larger than the proportion which receives relief now. It
is good to speak on such questions with diffidence: but it has certainly
never yet been proved that pauperism was a less heavy burden or a less
serious social evil during the last quarter of the seventeenth century
than it is in our own time. [202]

In one respect it must be admitted that the progress of civilization has
diminished the physical comforts of a portion of the poorest class. It
has already been mentioned that, before the Revolution, many thousands
of square miles, now enclosed and cultivated, were marsh, forest, and
heath. Of this wild land much was, by law, common, and much of what was
not common by law was worth so little that the proprietors suffered it
to be common in fact. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers were
tolerated to an extent now unknown. The peasant who dwelt there could,
at little or no charge, procure occasionally some palatable addition to
his hard fare, and provide himself with fuel for the winter. He kept a
flock of geese on what is now an orchard rich with apple blossoms.
He snared wild fowl on the fell which has long since been drained and
divided into corn-fields and turnip fields. He cut turf among the furze
bushes on the moor which is now a meadow bright with clover and renowned
for butter and cheese. The progress of agriculture and the increase of
population necessarily deprived him of these privileges. But against
this disadvantage a long list of advantages is to be set off. Of the
blessings which civilisation and philosophy bring with them a large
proportion is common to all ranks, and would, if withdrawn, be missed
as painfully by the labourer as by the peer. The market-place which the
rustic can now reach with his cart in an hour was, a hundred and sixty
years ago, a day's journey from him. The street which now affords to
the artisan, during the whole night, a secure, a convenient, and a
brilliantly lighted walk was, a hundred and sixty years ago, so dark
after sunset that he would not have been able to see his hand, so ill
paved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck, and so
ill watched that he would have been in imminent danger of being knocked
down and plundered of his small earnings. Every bricklayer who falls
from a scaffold, every sweeper of a crossing who is run over by a
carriage, may now have his wounds dressed and his limbs set with a skill
such as, a hundred and sixty years ago, all the wealth of a great
lord like Ormond, or of a merchant prince like Clayton, could not have
purchased. Some frightful diseases have been extirpated by science;
and some have been banished by police. The term of human life has been
lengthened over the whole kingdom, and especially in the towns. The year
1685 was not accounted sickly; yet in the year 1685 more than one in
twenty-three of the inhabitants of the capital died. [203] At present
only one inhabitant of the capital in forty dies annually. The
difference in salubrity between the London of the nineteenth century
and the London of the seventeenth century is very far greater than the
difference between London in an ordinary year and London in a year of
cholera.

Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society, and
especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying influence
of civilisation on the national character. The groundwork of that
character has indeed been the same through many generations, in the
sense in which the groundwork of the character of an individual may be
said to be the same when he is a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when
he is a refined and accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the
public mind of England has softened while it has ripened, and that we
have, in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a kinder
people. There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter literature
of the seventeenth century which does not contain some proof that our
ancestors were less humane than their posterity. The discipline of
workshops, of schools, of private families, though not more efficient
than at present, was infinitely harsher. Masters, well born and bred,
were in the habit of beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of
imparting knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent
station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability of
hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs were
disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die without seeing
his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled and insulted Russell
as his coach passed from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. [204] As little mercy was shown by the populace to sufferers of
a humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well
if he escaped with life from the shower of brickbats and paving stones.
[205] If he was tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him,
imploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl.
[206] Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell on court
days for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there
whipped. [207] A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a woman
burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a galled
horse or an overdriven ox. Fights compared with which a boxing match is
a refined and humane spectacle were among the favourite diversions of a
large part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack each
other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when one
of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on
earth, seminaries of every crime and of every disease. At the assizes
the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the
dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them
signally on bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society looked
with profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that sensitive
and restless compassion which has, in our time, extended a powerful
protection to the factory child, to the Hindoo widow, to the negro
slave, which pries into the stores and watercasks of every emigrant
ship, which winces at every lash laid on the back of a drunken
soldier, which will not suffer the thief in the hulks to be ill fed or
overworked, and which has repeatedly endeavoured to save the life
even of the murderer. It is true that compassion ought, like all other
feelings, to be under the government of reason, and has, for want of
such government, produced some ridiculous and some deplorable effects.
But the more we study the annals of the past, the more shall we rejoice
that we live in a merciful age, in an age in which cruelty is abhorred,
and in which pain, even when deserved, is inflicted reluctantly and from
a sense of duty. Every class doubtless has gained largely by this great
moral change: but the class which has gained most is the poorest, the
most dependent, and the most defenceless.

The general effect of the evidence which has been submitted to the
reader seems hardly to admit of doubt. Yet, in spite of evidence, many
will still image to themselves the England of the Stuarts as a more
pleasant country than the England in which we live. It may at first
sight seem strange that society, while constantly moving forward with
eager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret.
But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily
be resolved into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience of
the state in which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates
us to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their
happiness.
It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in us to be
constantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving.
But, in truth, there is constant improvement precisely because there is
constant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present,
we should cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the
future. And it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we
should form a too favourable estimate of the past.

In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads the
traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry and
bare: but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance of
refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and find nothing but sand
where an hour before they had seen a lake. They turn their eyes and see
a lake where, an hour before, they were toiling through sand. A similar
illusion seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long progress
from poverty and barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and
civilisation. But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall
find it recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It
is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times
when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would
be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers
breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a
modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilege
reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men died faster in the
purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of
our towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than
they now die on the coast of Guiana. We too shall, in our turn, be
outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth
century, that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably
paid with twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may
receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little used to
dine without meat as they now are to eat rye bread; that sanitary police
and medical discoveries may have added several more years to the average
length of human life; that numerous comforts and luxuries which are now
unknown, or confined to a few, may be within the reach of every diligent
and thrifty working man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert that
the increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited
the few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen
Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when all
classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did
not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy the
splendour of the rich.




CHAPTER IV.

THE death of King Charles the Second took the nation by surprise. His
frame was naturally strong, and did not appear to have suffered from
excess. He had always been mindful of his health even in his pleasures;
and his habits were such as promise a long life and a robust old age.
Indolent as he was on all occasions which required tension of the mind,
he was active and persevering in bodily exercise. He had, when young,
been renowned as a tennis player, [208] and was, even in the decline of
life, an indefatigable walker. His ordinary pace was such that those who
were admitted to the honour of his society found it difficult to keep up
with him. He rose early, and generally passed three or four hours a day
in the open air. He might be seen, before the dew was off the grass in
St. James's Park, striding among the trees, playing with his spaniels,
and flinging corn to his ducks; and these exhibitions endeared him to
the common people, who always love to See the great unbend. [209]

At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was prevented, by a
slight attack of what was supposed to be gout, from rambling as usual.
He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he amused himself
with experiments on the properties of mercury. His temper seemed to have
suffered from confinement. He had no apparent cause for disquiet. His
kingdom was tranquil: he was not in pressing want of money: his power
was greater than it had ever been: the party which had long thwarted
him had been beaten down; but the cheerfulness which had supported him
against adverse fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. A
trifle now sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borne
up against defeat, exile, and penury. His irritation frequently showed
itself by looks and words such as could hardly have been expected from a
man so eminently distinguished by good humour and good breeding. It was
not supposed however that his constitution was seriously impaired. [210]

His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous appearance
than on the evening of Sunday the first of February 1685. [211] Some
grave persons who had gone thither, after the fashion of that age, to
pay their duty to their sovereign, and who had expected that, on such a
day, his court would wear a decent aspect, were struck with astonishment
and horror. The great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the
magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and gamblers. The
king sate there chatting and toying with three women, whose charms were
the boast, and whose vices were the disgrace, of three nations. Barbara
Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, was there, no longer young, but still
retaining some traces of that superb and voluptuous loveliness which
twenty years before overcame the hearts of all men. There too was the
Duchess of Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up
with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, and
niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group. She had been early
removed from her native Italy to the court where her uncle was supreme.
His power and her own attractions had drawn a crowd of illustrious
suitors round her. Charles himself, during his exile, had sought her
hand in vain. No gift of nature or of fortune seemed to be wanting
to her. Her face was beautiful with the rich beauty of the South,
her understanding quick, her manners graceful, her rank exalted, her
possessions immense; but her ungovernable passions had turned all these
blessings into curses. She had found the misery of an ill assorted
marriage intolerable, had fled from her husband, had abandoned her
vast wealth, and, after having astonished Rome and Piedmont by her
adventures, had fixed her abode in England. Her house was the favourite
resort of men of wit and pleasure, who, for the sake of her smiles
and her table, endured her frequent fits of insolence and ill humour.
Rochester and Godolphin sometimes forgot the cares of state in
her company. Barillon and Saint Evremond found in her drawing room
consolation for their long banishment from Paris. The learning of
Vossius, the wit of Waller, were daily employed to flatter and amuse
her. But her diseased mind required stronger stimulants, and sought them
in gallantry, in basset, and in usquebaugh. [212] While Charles. flirted
with his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a handsome boy, whose
vocal performances were the delight of Whitehall, and were rewarded by
numerous presents of rich clothes, ponies, and guineas, warbled some
amorous verses. [213] A party of twenty courtiers was seated at cards
round a large table on which gold was heaped in mountains. [214] Even
then the King had complained that he did not feel quite well. He had
no appetite for his supper: his rest that night was broken; but on the
following morning he rose, as usual, early.

To that morning the contending factions in his council had, during some
days, looked forward with anxiety. The struggle between Halifax and
Rochester seemed to be approaching a decisive crisis. Halifax, not
content with having already driven his rival from the Board of Treasury,
had undertaken to prove him guilty of such dishonesty or neglect in the
conduct of the finances as ought to be punished by dismission from the
public service. It was even whispered that the Lord President would
probably be sent to the Tower. The King had promised to enquire into the
matter. The second of February had been fixed for the investigation; and
several officers of the revenue had been ordered to attend with their
books on that day. [215] But a great turn of fortune was at hand.

Scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when his attendants perceived
that his utterance was indistinct, and that his thoughts seemed to be
wandering. Several men of rank had, as usual, assembled to see their
sovereign shaved and dressed. He made an effort to converse with them
in his usual gay style; but his ghastly look surprised and alarmed them.
Soon his face grew black; his eyes turned in his head; he uttered a cry,
staggered, and fell into the arms of one of his lords. A physician who
had charge of the royal retorts and crucibles happened to be present.
He had no lances; but he opened a vein with a penknife. The blood flowed
freely; but the King was still insensible.

He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess of
Portsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But the alarm
had been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were hastening to
the room. The favourite concubine was forced to retire to her own
apartments. Those apartments had been thrice pulled down and thrice
rebuilt by her lover to gratify her caprice. The very furniture of
the chimney was massy silver. Several fine paintings, which properly
belonged to the Queen, had been transferred to the dwelling of the
mistress. The sideboards were piled with richly wrought plate. In
the niches stood cabinets, the masterpieces of Japanese art. On the
hangings, fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints which
no English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage, landscapes,
hunting matches, the lordly terrace of Saint Germains, the statues and
fountains of Versailles. [216] In the midst of this splendour, purchased
by guilt and shame, the unhappy woman gave herself up to an agony of
grief, which, to do her justice, was not wholly selfish.

And now the gates of Whitehall, which ordinarily stood open to all
comers, were closed. But persons whose faces were known were still
permitted to enter. The antechambers and galleries were soon filled
to overflowing; and even the sick room was crowded with peers, privy
councillors, and foreign ministers. All the medical men of note in
London were summoned. So high did political animosities run that the
presence of some Whig physicians was regarded as an extraordinary
circumstance. [217] One Roman Catholic, whose skill was then widely
renowned, Doctor Thomas Short, was in attendance. Several of the
prescriptions have been preserved. One of them is signed by fourteen
Doctors. The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied to his head.
A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into
his mouth. He recovered his senses; but he was evidently in a situation
of extreme danger.

The Queen was for a time assiduous in her attendance. The Duke of York
scarcely left his brother's bedside. The Primate and four other bishops
were then in London. They remained at Whitehall all day, and took it
by turns to sit up at night in the King's room. The news of his illness
filled the capital with sorrow and dismay. For his easy temper and
affable manners had won the affection of a large part of the nation;
and those who most disliked him preferred his unprincipled levity to the
stern and earnest bigotry of his brother.

On the morning of Thursday the fifth of February, the London Gazette
announced that His Majesty was going on well, and was thought by the
physicians to be out of danger. The bells of all the churches rang
merrily; and preparations for bonfires were made in the streets. But in
the evening it was known that a relapse had taken place, and that the
medical attendants had given up all hope. The public mind was greatly
disturbed; but there was no disposition to tumult. The Duke of York, who
had already taken on himself to give orders, ascertained that the City
was perfectly quiet, and that he might without difficulty be proclaimed
as soon as his brother should expire.

The King was in great pain, and complained that he felt as if a fire
was burning within him. Yet he bore up against his sufferings with a
fortitude which did not seem to belong to his soft and luxurious nature.
The sight of his misery affected his wife so much that she fainted, and
was carried senseless to her chamber. The prelates who were in waiting
had from the first exhorted him to prepare for his end. They now thought
it their duty to address him in a still more urgent manner. William
Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an honest and pious, though
narrowminded, man, used great freedom. "It is time," he said, "to
speak out; for, Sir, you are about to appear before a Judge who is no
respecter of persons. " The King answered not a word.

Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, then tried his powers of
persuasion. He was a man of parts and learning, of quick sensibility and
stainless virtue. His elaborate works have long been forgotten; but
his morning and evening hymns are still repeated daily in thousands of
dwellings. Though, like most of his order, zealous for monarchy, he was
no sycophant. Before he became a Bishop, he had maintained the honour of
his gown by refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let Eleanor
Gwynn lodge in the house which he occupied there as a prebendary. [218]
The King had sense enough to respect so manly a spirit. Of all the
prelates he liked Ken the best. It was to no purpose, however, that the
good Bishop now put forth all his eloquence. His solemn and pathetic
exhortation awed and melted the bystanders to such a degree that some
among them believed him to be filled with the same spirit which, in the
old time, had, by the mouths of Nathan and Elias, called sinful princes
to repentance. Charles however was unmoved. He made no objection indeed
when the service for the visitation of the sick was read. In reply to
the pressing questions of the divines, he said that he was sorry for
what he had done amiss; and he suffered the absolution to be pronounced
over him according to the forms of the Church of England: but, when he
was urged to declare that he died in the communion of that Church, he
seemed not to hear what was said; and nothing could induce him to take
the Eucharist from the hands of the Bishops. A table with bread and wine
was brought to his bedside, but in vain. Sometimes he said that there
was no hurry, and sometimes that he was too weak.

Many attributed this apathy to contempt for divine things, and many to
the stupor which often precedes death. But there were in the palace a
few persons who knew better. Charles had never been a sincere member of
the Established Church. His mind had long oscillated between Hobbism and
Popery. When his health was good and his spirits high he was a scoffer.
In his few serious moments he was a Roman Catholic. The Duke of York
was aware of this, but was entirely occupied with the care of his own
interests. He had ordered the outports to be closed. He had posted
detachments of the Guards in different parts of the city. He had also
procured the feeble signature of the dying King to an instrument by
which some duties, granted only till the demise of the Crown, were let
to farm for a term of three years. These things occupied the attention
of James to such a degree that, though, on ordinary occasions, he was
indiscreetly and unseasonably eager to bring over proselytes to his
Church, he never reflected that his brother was in danger of dying
without the last sacraments. This neglect was the more extraordinary
because the Duchess of York had, at the request of the Queen, suggested,
on the morning on which the King was taken ill, the propriety of
procuring spiritual assistance. For such assistance Charles was at last
indebted to an agency very different from that of his pious wife and
sister-in-law. A life of frivolty and vice had not extinguished in the
Duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of religion, or all that kindness
which is the glory of her sex. The French ambassador Barillon, who had
come to the palace to enquire after the King, paid her a visit. He found
her in an agony of sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and poured
out her whole heart to him. "I have," she said, "a thing of great moment
to tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King is
really and truly a Catholic; but he will die without being reconciled
to the Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant clergymen. I cannot
enter it without giving scandal. The Duke is thinking only of himself.
Speak to him. Remind him that there is a soul at stake. He is master
now. He can clear the room. Go this instant, or it will be too late. "

Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the Duke aside, and delivered
the message of the mistress. The conscience of James smote him. He
started as if roused from sleep, and declared that nothing should
prevent him from discharging the sacred duty which had been too long
delayed. Several schemes were discussed and rejected. At last the Duke
commanded the crowd to stand aloof, went to the bed, stooped down, and
whispered something which none of the spectators could hear, but which
they supposed to be some question about affairs of state. Charles
answered in an audible voice, "Yes, yes, with all my heart. " None of
the bystanders, except the French Ambassador, guessed that the King was
declaring his wish to be admitted into the bosom of the Church of Rome.

"Shall I bring a priest? " said the Duke. "Do, brother," replied the Sick
man. "For God's sake do, and lose no time. But no; you will get into
trouble. " "If it costs me my life," said the Duke, "I will fetch a
priest. "

To find a priest, however, for such a purpose, at a moment's notice,
was not easy. For, as the law then stood, the person who admitted a
proselyte into the Roman Catholic Church was guilty of a capital crime.
The Count of Castel Melhor, a Portuguese nobleman, who, driven by
political troubles from his native land, had been hospitably received at
the English court, undertook to procure a confessor. He had recourse to
his countrymen who belonged to the Queen's household; but he found that
none of her chaplains knew English or French enough to shrive the King.
The Duke and Barillon were about to send to the Venetian Minister for
a clergyman when they heard that a Benedictine monk, named John
Huddleston, happened to be at Whitehall. This man had, with great risk
to himself, saved the King's life after the battle of Worcester, and
had, on that account, been, ever since the Restoration, a privileged
person. In the sharpest proclamations which had been put forth against
Popish priests, when false witnesses had inflamed the nation to fury,
Huddleston had been excepted by name. [219] He readily consented to put
his life a second time in peril for his prince; but there was still a
difficulty. The honest monk was so illiterate that he did not know what
he ought to say on an occasion of such importance. He however obtained
some hints, through the intervention of Castel Melhor, from a Portuguese
ecclesiastic, and, thus instructed, was brought up the back stairs by
Chiffinch, a confidential servant, who, if the satires of that age
are to be credited, had often introduced visitors of a very different
description by the same entrance. The Duke then, in the King's name,
commanded all who were present to quit the room, except Lewis Duras,
Earl of Feversham, and John Granville, Earl of Bath. Both these Lords
professed the Protestant religion; but James conceived that he could
count on their fidelity. Feversham, a Frenchman of noble birth, and
nephew of the great Turenne, held high rank in the English army, and was
Chamberlain to the Queen. Bath was Groom of the Stole.

The Duke's orders were obeyed; and even the physicians withdrew. The
back door was then opened; and Father Huddleston entered. A cloak
had been thrown over his sacred vestments; and his shaven crown was
concealed by a flowing wig. "Sir," said the Duke, "this good man once
saved your life. He now comes to save your soul. " Charles faintly
answered, "He is welcome. " Huddleston went through his part better than
had been expected. He knelt by the bed, listened to the confession,
pronounced the absolution, and administered extreme unction. He asked
if the King wished to receive the Lord's supper. "Surely," said Charles,
"if I am not unworthy. " The host was brought in. Charles feebly strove
to rise and kneel before it. The priest made him lie still, and assured
him that God would accept the humiliation of the soul, and would not
require the humiliation of the body. The King found so much difficulty
in swallowing the bread that it was necessary to open the door and
procure a glass of water. This rite ended, the monk held up a crucifix
before the penitent, charged him to fix his last thoughts on the
sufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew. The whole ceremony had
occupied about three quarters of an hour; and, during that time, the
courtiers who filled the outer room had communicated their suspicions to
each other by whispers and significant glances. The door was at length
thrown open, and the crowd again filled the chamber of death.

It was now late in the evening. The King seemed much relieved by what
had passed. His natural children were brought to his bedside, the Dukes
of Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland, sons of the Duchess of
Cleveland, the Duke of Saint Albans, son of Eleanor Gwynn, and the Duke
of Richmond, son of the Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all,
but spoke with peculiar tenderness to Richmond.