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

themselves confessed that, in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver's old soldiers."

The return of the Stuarts was followed, among the gayer classes, by an outburst of the most derisive incredulity. From mocking the solemn gait and the nasal twang of the Puritans, they naturally proceeded to ridicule their doctrines. The higher intellectual influences were tending strongly in the same direction among the learned. Hobbes had created in his disciples an indisposition to believe in incorporeal substances, and a similar feeling was produced by the philosophy of Bacon, which had then acquired an immense popularity. From the endless controver sies, the social and religious anarchy, of the period; from the cynicism of writers, and the frivolity of courtiers, a new generation was drinking in the spirit of scepticism, of doubt, of free inquiry. Four or five in the House of Commons,' said Montesquieu, 'go to mass or to the parliamentary sermon. . . . If any one speaks of religion, everybody begins to laugh. A man hap pening to say, "I believe this like an article of faith," everybody burst out laughing.'

A sceptical movement shows an alteration in the character of the age, of the same nature as that which now causes the educated majority to regard with indifference disputes which, little more than a century ago, would have inflamed a kingdom. Scepticism and toleration are related as the antecedent and consequent of progress. A profound change was soon effected in the notion of witchcraft. In 1664, two witches were hung, under a sentence of Sir Mathew Hale, who justified it by the affirmations of Scripture and the wisdom of all nations'- irresistible reasoning. Three were executed in 1682. But, while in 1660 the belief was common, in 1688 the sense of its improbability was equally general. In Scotland it passed away much more slowly, and, to the last, found its most ardent supporters among the Presbyterian clergy. In 1664, nine women were burned together, and trials were frequent until the close of the century.

1 Macaulay.

Revolutions had changed completely the position of ecclesiastics. Once they formed the majority of the Upper House, and rivalled in their imperial pomp the greatest of the barons; now they were regarded, on the whole, as a plebeian class. The fact that a man could read, no longer raised a presumption that he was in orders. Laymen had risen who were able to negotiate treaties, and to administer justice. Prelates had ceased to be necessary, or even desirable, in the conduct of civil affairs; and the priestly office, in losing its worldly motives, lost its attraction for the illustrious. Many divines-especially during the domination of the Puritans- attached themselves to households in the relation of menial servants. A cook was considered the most suitable helpmate for a parson. Not one benefice in fifty enabled him to bring up a family comfortably. Often he fed swine or loaded dung-carts to obtain daily bread. Nor, at the Restoration, did the dissenters fare better. Baxter, who was one of them:

Says

'Many hundreds of these, with their wives and children, had neither house nor bread. Their congregations had enough to do, besides a small maintenance, to help them out of prison, or to maintain them there. Though they were as frugal as possible, they could hardly live; some lived on little more than brown bread and water, many had but little more than eight or ten pounds a year to maintain a family, so a piece of flesh has not come to one of their tables in six weeks' time, their allowance could scarce afford them bread and cheese. One went to plow six days and preached on the Lord's day. Another was forced to cut tobacco for a livelihood.'

When at length the Church was reinstated, she had suffered a still further loss of her ancient influence. It was observed, with sorrow, that she 'recovered much of her temporal possessions, but not her spiritual rule.' Her cause was never again to be identified with political reaction. The London clergy were always spoken of as a class apart; and it was chiefly they who upheld the fame of their profession for learning and eloquence.

In Scotland, on the contrary, the clergy were supreme. Their very names were sacred. To speak disrespectfully of them was a grievous offence; to differ from them was heresy; to pass them without saluting them was a crime. Their instructions were direct from heaven. When they died, candles were mysteriously extinguished, or stars miraculously appeared in the firmament. Fancy with what rapture each precious word was received! Yet a zealous pastor would discourse for two hours; a vigorous one, five or six. On great occasions, several would be present, in

order that, when one was exhausted, he might be succeeded by another. In 1670, from one pulpit in Edinburgh, thirty sermons were delivered weekly. When sacrament was administered, on Wednesday they fasted, with prayers and preaching for more than eight hours; on Saturday, they listened to two or three sermons; on Sunday, to so many that the congregation remained together more than twelve hours; on Monday, to three or four additional ones by way of thanksgiving. Still the people never wearied. Has history any parallel to such eagerness and such endurance?

Meanwhile, dissent had multiplied sects, and the Revolution established them,-Anabaptists, Quakers, Enthusiasts, Seekers, Arians, Socinians, Anti-Trinitarians, Deists,-the list is interminable. No danger henceforward that Protestantism would be only a new edition of Catholicism. Divisions are at once the symptoms and the agents of progress. Uniformity of opinion is the airy good of emperors and popes, whose arguments are edicts, inquisitions, and flames.

Poetry. It is true, in general, of nations as of individuals, that as the reflective faculties develop, the imaginative are enfeebled. Memory, judgment, wit, supply their place. The mind, disciplined, retraces its steps. Criticism succeeds invention. But criticism is a science, and, like every other, is constantly tending towards perfection. It was now in a very imperfect state. The age of inspired intuition had passed; the age of agreeable imitation had not arrived; and the ascendancy was left to an inferior school of poetry-a school without the powers of the earlier and without the correctness of a later a school which, blending bombasts and conceits, yet expressed a phase in the revolution of taste that was to issue in the neatness and finish of wellordered periods, in the truth of sentiment and the harmony of versification. Its absorbing care was not for the foundation, but for the outer shape. The prevailing immorality infected it. Gallantry held the chief rank. The literature and manners of polite France led the fashion. We have seen the change foreshadowed. We see it in the occasional rhymes of the palace and the college; in the lewd and lawless Earl of Rochester, who wrote a satire against Mankind, then an epistle on Nothing, and songs numberless, whose titles cannot be copied. Two or three are still to be

found in the expurgated books of extracts. A stanza or two will be a sufficient revelation of him:

When, wearied with a world of woe,

To thy safe bosom I retire,

Where love and peace and honour flow,
May I contented there expire.'

And:

'My dear mistress has a heart

Soft as those kind looks she gave me;

When, with love's resistless art,
And her eyes, she did enslave me;
But her constancy's so weak,
She's so wild and apt to wander,

That my jealous heart would break
Should we live one day asunder.'

An adept in compliments and salutations. So are the others. Sedley, a charming talker, sings thus to Chloris:

And:

My passion with your beauty grew,

And Cupid at my heart,

Still as his mother favoured you,

Threw a new flaming dart.'

'An hundred thousand oaths your fears
Perhaps would not remove,

And if I gazed a thousand years,

I could no deeper love.'

Dorset, at sea, on the eve of battle, addresses a song to the ladies:

'To all you Ladies now at land

We men at sea indite;

But first would have you understand
How hard it is to write;

The Muses now, and Neptune too,
We must implore to write to you.'

Then for the sake of speaking:

While you, regardless of our woe,
Sit careless at a play,-

Perhaps permit some happier man

To kiss your hand or flirt your fan.'

And in the conventional language of the drawing-room:

'Our tears we'll send a speedier way,

The tide shall waft them twice a day.'

There is courtesy here, but a lack of enthusiasm; elegance, but no weight; smoothness, but no depth. It is correct, or nearly so, but external and cold. It is the style, also, of Waller, a fashionable wit, in the front rank of worldlings and courtiers. His verses resemble the little events or little sentiments from which they spring: