So he went within and shut the door.
VIII
CHARLES THE SECOND
It is not proposed here to swell with any new groans the general chorus of lamentation over the deplorable morals of King Charles's court. Let us acknowledge that we want all the available groans for the deplorable morals of our own time. Let us leave severely on one side Whitehall, with the indolent king: his mistresses, his singing boys, his gaming tables, his tinkling guitars, his feasting and his dancing. We will have nothing whatever to do with Chiffinch and his friends, nor with Rochester, nor with Nell Gwynne, nor with Old Rowley himself. Therefore, of course, we can have nothing to do with Messrs. Wycherley, Congreve, and company. It is, I know, the accepted excuse for these dramatists that their characters are not men and women, but puppets. To my humble thinking they are not puppets at all, but living and actual human creatures—portraits of real men and women who haunted Whitehall. Let us keep to the east of Temple Bar: hither come whispers, murmurs, rumors, of sad doings at court: sober and grim citizens, still touched with the Puritan spirit, speak of these rumors with sorrow and disappointment; they had hoped better things after the ten years' exile, yet they knew so little and were always ready to believe so well of the King—and his Majesty was always so friendly to the City—that the reports remained mere reports. It is really no use to keep a king unless you are able to persuade yourself that he is wiser, nobler, more virtuous, braver, and greater than ordinary mortals. Indeed, as the head and leader of the nation, he is officially the wisest, noblest, bravest, best, and greatest among us, and is so recognized in the Prayer-book. Even those who are about the court, and therefore are so unhappy as to be convinced of the exact contrary, do their best to keep up the illusion. The great mass of mankind still continue to believe that moral and intellectual superiority goes with the crown and belongs to the reigning sovereign. The only change that has come over nations living under the monarchic form of government as regards their view of kings is that they no longer believe all this of the reigning sovereign's predecessor; as regards the present occupant of the throne, of course. Are the citizens of a republic similarly convinced as regards their President?
PALACE OF WHITEHALL IN THE REIGN OF JAMES II
The evil example of the court, therefore, produced very little effect upon the morals of the City. At first, indeed, the whole nation, tired to death of grave faces, sober clothes, Puritanic austerity, godly talk, downcast eyes, and the intolerable nuisance of talking and thinking perpetually about the very slender chance of getting into heaven, rushed into a reckless extreme of brave and even gaudy attire and generous feasting, the twang of the guitar no longer prohibited, nor the singing of love ditties, nor the dancing of the youths and maids forbidden. Even this natural reaction affected only the young. The heart of the City was, and remained for a hundred and fifty years afterwards, deeply affected with the Puritanic spirit. It has been of late years the fashion of the day—led by those who wish to saddle us again with sacerdotalism—to scoff and laugh at this spirit. It has nearly disappeared now, even in America; but we may see in it far more than what has been called the selfish desire of each man to save his own soul. We may see in it, especially, the spirit of personal responsibility, the loss of which—if we ever do lose it, should authority be able to reassert her old power—will be fatal to intellectual or moral advance. Personal responsibility brings with it personal dignity, enterprise, courage, patience, all the virtues. Only that man who stands face to face with his Maker, with no authority intervening, can be called free. But when the young men of the City had had their fling, in the first rush and whirlpool of the Restoration, they settled down soberly to business again. The foundation of the Hudson's Bay Company proves that the Elizabethan spirit of enterprise was by no means dead. The Institution of the Royal Society, which had its first home in Gresham College, proves that the City thought of other useful things besides money-getting. The last forty years of the seventeenth century, however, might have been passed over as presenting no special points of change, except in the gradual introduction of tea and coffee. As London was in the time of Elizabeth, so it was, with a few changes, in the time of Charles the Second. A little variation in the costumes; a little alteration in the hour of dinner; a greatly extended trade over a much wider world; and, in all other respects, the same city.
Two events—two disasters—give special importance to this period. I mean the Plague and the Fire.
The Plague was the twelfth of its kind which visited the City during a period of seven hundred years. The twelfth and the last. Yet not the worst. That of the year 1407 is said to have killed half the population: that of 1517, if historians are to be believed in the matter of numbers, which is seldom the case, killed more than half. Of all these plagues we hear no more than the bare, dreadful fact, "Plague—so many thousands killed." That is all that the chronicles tell us. Since there was no contemporary historian we know nothing more. How many plagues have fallen upon poor humanity, with countless tragedies and appalling miseries, but with no historian? We know all about the Plague of Athens, the Plague of Florence, the Plague of London—the words require no dates—but what of the many other plagues?