s II. was more than happiness, it was enchantment. A restoration
is like an old oil painting, blackened by time, and revarnished. All the
past reappeared, good old manners returned, beautiful women reigned and
governed. Evelyn notices it. We read in his journal, "Luxury,
profaneness, contempt of God. I saw the king on Sunday evening with his
courtesans, Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, and two or three others, all
nearly naked, in the gaming-room." We feel that there is ill-nature in
this description, for Evelyn was a grumbling Puritan, tainted with
republican reveries. He did not appreciate the profitable example given
by kings in those grand Babylonian gaieties, which, after all, maintain
luxury. He did not understand the utility of vice. Here is a maxim: Do
not extirpate vice, if you want to have charming women; if you do you
are like idiots who destroy the chrysalis whilst they delight in the
butterfly.

Charles II., as we have said, scarcely remembered that a rebel called
Clancharlie existed; but James II. was more heedful. Charles II.
governed gently, it was his way; we may add, that he did not govern the
worse on that account. A sailor sometimes makes on a rope intended to
baffle the wind, a slack knot which he leaves to the wind to tighten.
Such is the stupidity of the storm and of the people.

The slack knot very soon becomes a tight one. So did the government of
Charles II.

Under James II. the throttling began; a necessary throttling of what
remained of the revolution. James II. had a laudable ambition to be an
efficient king. The reign of Charles II. was, in his opinion, but a
sketch of restoration. James wished for a still more complete return to
order. He had, in 1660, deplored that they had confined themselves to
the hanging of ten regicides. He was a more genuine reconstructor of
authority. He infused vigour into serious principles. He installed true
justice, which is superior to sentimental declamations, and attends,
above all things, to the interests of society. In his protecting
severities we recognize the father of the state. He entrusted the hand
of justice to Jeffreys, and its sword to Kirke. That useful Colonel, one
day, hung and rehung the same man, a republican, asking him each time,
"Will you renounce the republic?" The villain, having each time said
"No," was dispatched. "_I hanged him four times_," said Kirke, with
satisfaction. The renewal of executions is a great sign of power in the
exec