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religious intolerance; for however honest the puritan Clergy, and no Clergy were ever honester, it could not be said of them that "their yoke was easy, or their burthen light."

The restoration of Charles the II., took place in 1660. His favourites and trusted advisers, were profligate, lively, witty noblemen, whose talents and acquirements were sure to be misemployed, whenever an opportunity occurred of misusing them. Such were Buckingham, Rochester, Sedley, and a crowd of others. The King himself indulged in every kind of misconduct, in every kind of disgraceful frolic and debauchery: his numerous mistresses or misses, as the phrase was-Palmer, Cleaveland, Portsmouth, Nell Gwynn, Mademoiselle Querouaille, &c. &c., occupied his time, wasted his supplies, and compelled him to become, at last, almost a regular pensioner of the French King. The festivities of King Charles' Court were abandoned, gross, and in every way disgraceful for the drunkenness and obscenity that attended them, and would well have served to usher in the still grosser debaucheries of the Court of the Regent D'Orleans, some years afterwards. Soon (a day or two) after the condemnation of Algernon Sydney, even Chief Justice Jeffries, and Mr. Justice Withings, in 1683, attended as guests at a wedding, where according to Evelyn, "they spent the afternoon until 11 at night, in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity of Judges." An habitual excess in drinking became common at all social parties, and continued so till late in the reign of George III. At present it is no longer a custom. The play-house was too indecent for modest women to frequent, unless they had previously read the piece to be performed: on the announcement and performance of a new play, any woman, assuming a modest character, went to the theatre in a mask, that the indecencies of the dialogue might be heard without observation of their transient effect on her features. The amusements, however, of prize-fighting, bear-baiting, and bull-baiting, were full as much resorted to as any other; and as fashionable people might be seen at "the Bear-Garden, and at Hockley-in-the-hole," (1 Pepys, 426) as at any of the Theatres; indeed the new Theatre was a place for prize-fighters, (see Pepys, June 1, 1662-3.) No wonder that this wide extended disregard of social decency, continued long afterwards to disgrace the stage by the comedies of Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Afra Behn, and Congreve; more witty but not quite so gross as some plays of their predecessors Beaumont and Fletcher. One of the scenes in the "Custom of the Country" of these celebrated dramatists, furnishes a trait of gross and abandoned manners, that the decency of the

present day will hardly deem credible, notwithstanding the authority.

During this reign, it must be admitted, that however slowly the vices of the Court might travel into the country, they had a manifest effect and a very deleterious one, on the purity of domestic manners in London; so that the incidents of the well known comedy "The Provoked Husband, or the Journey to London," were not in the least overcharged. Hence it may not be amiss to give a specimen of some of the outrageous breaches of decorum on the part of the monarch Charles II., from a penner of memoranda, whom the author of the present work might have consulted oftener and used with good effect for his purpose, but whom he appears to have neglected. The dull diary of Evelyn furnishes a few anecdotes to the purpose, "rari nantes in gurgite vasto," but the graphic notes of Mr. Pepys, afford amusement and information, that are well worth perusing.

"October 14, 1660.-I went to White-Hall Chapel, where one Dr. Crofts made an indifferent sermon, and after it an anthem very ill sung, which made the King laugh. Here also I observed how the Duke of York and Mrs. Palmer did talk to one another very wantonly through the hangings that part the King's closet, and the closet where the ladies sit.

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September 16, 1662.-At Somersett House, the Queen in her mother's presence chamber. Here I saw Madame Castlemaine and Mr. Crofts, the King's bastard.

"December 31.-The King follows his pleasures, and is seen to all the world to do so. His dalliance with my Lady Castlemaine being public every day, to his great reproach, and his favouring none at court so much as those that are the confidants of his pleasures, such as Sir H. Bennet and Sir Ch. Barkely, which may good God put it into his heart to mend, before he makes himself too much contemned by his people for it.

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February 4, 1668.-I saw the tragedy of Horace (written by the virtuous Mrs. Phillips) acted before their majesties. The excessive gallantry of the ladies was infinite, those especially on that **** Castlemaine esteemed at £40,000 and more, far outshining the Queen.

"March 1. 1671.-I thence marched with the King through St. James' Park to the Garden, where I both saw and heard a very familiar discourse between the King and Mrs. Nellie, (Gwynn) as they called an impudent comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace on the top of the wall, and the King standing on the greene walk under it. I was heartily sorry at this scene. Thence the King walked to the Duchess of Cleaveland, another lady of pleasure, and curse of our nation.

"October 24, 1684.-I dined at Sir Stephen Fox's with the Duke of Northumberland, newly come from travel. Of all his Majesty's children, of which he had now six dukes, this seemed the most accom

plished, and worth the owning. What the Dukes of Richmond and St. Albans will prove, their youth does not yet discover.

"May, 1663.-After dinner I went up to Sir Th. Crewe, and sat talking with him all the afternoon upon the present unhappy posture of things that the King do mind nothing but pleasure, and hates the very sight and thought of business. If any of the sober counsellors give' him good advice, and move him in any thing to his good and honour, the other part, which are his counsellors of pleasure, take him when he is with my lady Castlemaine, and in a humour of delight, and persuade him that he ought not to listen to the advice of these old dotards, &c. "July 13, 1667.-My Lord Buckhurst hath got Nell away from the King's house. (Nell Gwynn.)

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“1666.— Let us then drink the Duke of York's health,' says Armerer. Why, let us,' says the King. Nay,' says Armerer, 'you must do it on your knees;' so he did, and so did all the company; and having done it, they fell a crying for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another, the King the Duke of York, and the Duke of York the King, and in such a maudlin pickle as never people were, and so passed the day.

“June 12, 1662-3.-To the Royal Theatre to see the "Committee," a merry but indifferent play. Here I saw my Lord Falconbridge and his lady, my Lady Mary Cromwell, who looks as well as I have known her, and well clad. But when the house began to fill, she put on her vizard, and so kept it on all the play, which, of late, has become a great fashion among the ladies, which hides the whole face. So to the Exchange to buy things with my wife; among others, a vizard for herself. "January 3, 1660.-To the Theatre, where was acted" Beggar's Bush," it being very well done. And here the first time I ever saw women come upon the stage. (About this time the principal female characters were played by a youth, named Edward Kynaston, patronized by Sir W. Davenant.) Pepys says, he made the loveliest lady he ever saw in his life. (Aug. 18, 1660.)

"October 11, 1664.-Luellin tells me what an obscene, loose play, this "Parson's Wedding" is, so that it is acted by nothing but women at the King's house.

"October 18, 1666.-This night was acted my Lord Broghill's tragedy, called Mustapha,' before their majesties at court, at which I was present, very seldom going to the public theatres, for many reasons now as they were abused to an atheistical liberty, (fowle and undecent women now, and never till now) permitted to appear and act; who, inflaming severall young noblemen and gallants, became their Misses, and to some, their wives. Witness the Earl of Oxford, (whom Nell Gwynn left for the King) Sir Robert Howard, P. Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another greater person than any of them, who fell into their snares, to the reproach of their noble families, and ruine both of body and soul."

Here is enough to shew the deleterious effect of the court vices on the public morals of the metropolis; to which, at that time, this effect was nearly confined, owing to the difficulty and

comparative infrequency of intercourse between the town and the country, except through members of Parliament.

In addition to this, the French games at cards, Quadrille, Ombre, Bassette and Anterloo, (Loo) were introduced among fashionable parties, and high play was common. This we find from the letters of the Countess of Sunderland to her son-inlaw, the Marquis of Halifax, from the Memoirs of Grammont, and the verses of St. Evremond. Indeed, the introduction of cards was a prodigious relief to the ennui of society, where the ladies had little or no education, no music, no drawing, no literature, no common topic of conversation, but the trifling anecdotes and scandal of the day. But cards have no zest unless you play for money, and they inevitably bring on the spirit and the custom of gambling.

In the country, where there was a still greater deficiency of education, the visits of relations among each other, the domestic employments, and the festivities of the numerous holidays, gave tolerable relief to the "tadium vita" among the females; while the men passed their time, for the most part, in superintending their estates and grounds, in rural sports of every description, and in dinner parties among neighbours, always savouring of excess both in eating and drinking. A stranger's visit was a treat, and old English hospitality had, for its basis, the same inducements that foster the exercise of hospitality in our back-country settlements. Such must, of necessity, have been the general mode of life of country gentlemen, till the improvement of roads and carriages of convenience annihilated three parts out of four of the difficulties of travelling, and of the time occupied in a journey to London. Dr. Aikin, in his history of Manchester, mentions that persons, then living, could remember when a journey to London could only be performed on horseback, when it consuumed a fortnight in performing it, and when the hardy traveller, if a prudent man, deemed it Under such cirnecessary to make his will before he set out. cumstances, the manners and customs of the metropolis, its follies and its vices, made but slow progress in the interior of the country. These difficulties continued longer than persons, not accustomed to trace the facts, would imagine. Even at the commencement of the American war, travelling was slow, difficult and disagreeable, not to say dangerous, in England. Highway robberies were not unfrequent, and seldom, indeed, was travelling undertaken, as at the present day, from motives of mere curiosity or pleasure. Hence also, in great part, the characteristic propensity of the English gentlemen to reside on VOL. VI.-No. 12.

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their estates with their families, introducing improvements and expending their incomes among their neighbours and tenants, instead of collecting round the focus of a court, and adding to the crowds of a metropolis.

The author begins his account of the French Court somewhat earlier than Louis XIV. who commenced his reign at five years old in 1643. Richelieu, the Cardinal, died in 1642. From thence to the majority of Louis XIV., in 1651, the history of France is the history of Anne of Austria, his mother, and of the Fronde. From 1651 to 1661, when Mazarin died, it is the history of Cardinal Mazarin. (Anquetil.) The author remarks that the confusion and bustle of the Fronde, introduced great license in the manners and morals of the upper classes of society in France, and in the conduct of the women and the general tone of social life. The war of the Fronde, no doubt, was ill managed on both sides, but it did good: it was, in fact, the opposition of the country party to the French Court: and if it detracted from the admiration before paid to the overstrained politeness, and shewy exterior of the old courtier, of whom the debauchee Bassompierre is produced as a specimen, it introduced a more reasonable and masculine tone of thinking, for a time at least.

The view taken by the author commences professedly with the reign of Louis XIV. Among the memoirs of the times* which the author seems to have perused, is a small volume by La Porte, a servant of Louis XIV., who gives an anecdote of Cardinal Mazarin and the young King placed under his guidance, (probably too gross for this auther's notice,) that exhibits the profligacy of this protector of youthful morals in a most disgusting light; and renders all the excesses ascribed to these days, and the vile character of Mazarin himself, quite credible. Nearly the whole of this third Chapter, from page 125 to 161 is occupied by the politics of the times, and the characters of Madame de Longueville, and some other courtiers, that have as little to do with the subject matter of the volume, as any other history of political characters and courtiers can have. We see no traces of their connection with social life, and none of their influence over the manners of the great mass of population even of the metropolis. The subject of French and English society, is taken up, with somewhat more attention to the object in view, in the next Chapter, the fourth, which, after all, is little else than a history of the intrigues and prostitutions of the females of the Court, so as to make the history of Louis XIV. and XV., so

They may be found nearly complete in the enumeration, among the authorities relied on by M. Anquetil, in his valuable series of Historical Works, not sufficiently known among us, nor cited by the author under review:

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