SECOND AGE.
It was not Sunday morning, yet the bells of every steeple in London had been tolling since sunrise; the shops were all shut; and there was such an entire absence of singers and jugglers, of dancing bears and frolicking monkeys in the streets, that it might seem as if the late Protector had risen from his grave, and stalked abroad to frown over the kingdom once more. Nothing this morning betokened the reign of a merry monarch. No savour of meats issued from any house; no echo of music was heard; the streets were as yet empty, the hour of meeting for worship not having arrived, and there being no other cause for coming abroad. There was more than a sabbath purity in the summer sky, unstained by smoke as it could never be but on the day of a general fast in summer. The few boats on the river which brought worshippers from a distance to observe the solemn ordinance in the city, glided along without noise or display. There was no exhibition of flags; no shouting to rival barks; no matching against time. The shipping itself seemed to have a mournful and penitential air, crowded together in silence and stillness. The present had been an untoward season, as regarded the nation’s prosperity, in many respects; and when the court and the people were heartily tired of the festivities which had followed the King’s marriage, they bethought themselves of taking the advice of many of their divines, and deprecating the wrath of Heaven in a solemn day of entreaty for rain, and for vengeance on their enemies.
The deepest gloom was not where, perhaps, it would have been looked for by the light-minded who regarded such observances as very wholesome for the common people, but extremely tiresome for themselves. Dr. Reede, a young Presbyterian clergyman, the beloved pastor of a large congregation in London, came forth from his study an hour before the time of service, with a countenance anything but gloomy, though its mild seriousness befitted the occasion. Having fully prepared himself for the pulpit, he sought his wife. He found her with her two little children, the elder of whom was standing at a chair, turning over the gilt leaves of a new book; while the younger, a tender infant, nestled on its mother’s bosom as she walked, in a rather hurried manner, from end to end of the apartment.
“What hath fallen out, Esther? Is the babe ill-disposed?” asked the husband, stooping to look into the tiny face that peeped over Esther’s shoulder.
“The child is well, my love; and the greater is my sin in being disturbed. I will be so no more,” she continued, returning to the seat where the child was playing with the book; “I will fret myself no more on account of evildoers, as the word of God gives commandment.”
“Is it this which hath troubled you?” asked her husband, taking up the volume,—the new Book of Common Prayer,—of which every clergyman must shortly swear that he believed the whole, or lose his living. “We knew, Esther, what must be in this book. We knew that it must contain that which would make it to us as the false gospel of the infidels; and, thus knowing, there is no danger in the book.”
And he took it up, and turned over its pages, presently observing, with a smile,—
“Truly, it is a small instrument wherewith to be turned out of so large a living. I could lay my finger over the parts which make a gulf between my church and me which I may not pass. The leaven is but little; but since there it must lie, it leavens the whole lump.”
“Do you think?” inquired Esther, hesitatingly; "is it supposed that many will——that your brethren regard the matter as you do?"