ion, nauseated with cant, suspicious of all pretensions to sanctity
and still smarting from the recent tyranny of rulers austere in life and
powerful in prayer, looked for a time with complacency on the softer and
gayer vices. Still less restraint was imposed by the government.
Indeed there was no excess which was not encouraged by the ostentatious
profligacy of the King and of his favourite courtiers. A few counsellors
of Charles the First, who were now no longer young, retained the
decorous gravity which had been thirty years before in fashion at
Whitehall. Such were Clarendon himself, and his friends, Thomas
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler, Duke
of Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudes struggled gallantly
for the royal cause in Ireland, now governed that kingdom as Lord
Lieutenant. But neither the memory of the services of these men, nor
their great power in the state, could protect them from the sarcasms
which modish vice loves to dart at obsolete virtue. The praise of
politeness and vivacity could now scarcely be obtained except by some
violation of decorum. Talents great and various assisted to spread the
contagion. Ethical philosophy had recently taken a form well suited
to please a generation equally devoted to monarchy and to vice. Thomas
Hobbes had, in language more precise and luminous than has ever been
employed by any other metaphysical writer, maintained that the will of
the prince was the standard of right and wrong, and that every subject
ought to be ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism, or Paganism, at the
royal command. Thousands who were incompetent to appreciate what was
really valuable in his speculations, eagerly welcomed a theory which,
while it exalted the kingly office, relaxed the obligations of morality,
and degraded religion into a mere affair of state. Hobbism soon became
an almost essential part of the character of the fine gentleman. All
the lighter kinds of literature were deeply tainted by the prevailing
licentiousness. Poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low desire.
Ridicule, instead of putting guilt and error to the blush, turned her
formidable shafts against innocence and truth. The restored Church
contended indeed against the prevailing immorality, but contended
feebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the decorum of
her character that she should admonish her erring children: but her
admonitions were given in a somewhat perfunc