hey could escape
for a summer to their native land. They had indeed their days of
reception for our nobility and gentry; but the reception was a mere
matter of form, and became at last as solemn a ceremony as a funeral.

Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall, when he dwelt
there, was the focus of political intrigue and of fashionable gaiety.
Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the metropolis went on under
his roof. Whoever could make himself agreeable to the prince, or could
secure the good offices of the mistress, might hope to rise in the world
without rendering any service to the government, without being even
known by sight to any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate,
and that a company; a third, the pardon of a rich offender; a fourth,
a lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King notified his pleasure
that a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that a libertine
baronet should be made a peer, the gravest counsellors, after a little
murmuring, submitted. [127] Interest, therefore, drew a constant press
of suitors to the gates of the palace; and those gates always stood
wide. The King kept open house every day, and all day long, for the good
society of London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman
had any difficulty in making his way to the royal presence. The levee
was exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality came every
morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his wig
was combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his early walk
through the Park. All persons who had been properly introduced might,
without any special invitation, go to see him dine, sup, dance, and
play at hazard, and might have the pleasure of hearing him tell stories,
which indeed he told remarkably well, about his flight from Worcester,
and about the misery which he had endured when he was a state prisoner
in the hands of the canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders
whom His Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This
proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father
or grandfather had practiced. It was not easy for the most austere
republican of the school of Marvel to resist the fascination of so much
good humour and affability; and many a veteran Cavalier, in whose heart
the remembrance of unrequited sacrifices and services had been festering
during twenty years, was compensated in one moment for wounds and
s