seems much more adapted for service than show, despite its variety of colours; and perhaps the animal may have been seized, as was not uncommon, by some messenger of State making the best of his way from one part of the kingdom to another. Before the year 1636 there was no such thing as a postal service for the use of the people. The Court had, it is true, an establishment for the forwarding of despatches, and in Cromwell's time much attention was paid to it; but it was, after all, often in not much better form than when Bryan Tuke wrote as follows during the sixteenth century: "The Kinges Grace hath no mor ordinary postes, ne of many days hathe had, but betweene London and Calais. . . . For, sir, ye knowe well that, except the hackney-horses betweene Gravesende and Dovour, there is no suche usual conveyance in post for men in this realme, as in the accustomed places of France and other partes; ne men can keepe horses in redynes withoute som way to bere the charges; but when placardes be sent for suche cause [to order the immediate forwarding of some State packet], the constables many tymes be fayne to take horses out of ploues and cartes, wherein can be no extreme diligence." In Elizabeth's reign a horse-post was established on each of the great roads for the transmission of the letters for the Court; but the Civil Wars considerably interfered with this, and though in the time of Cromwell public posts and conveyances were arranged, matters were in a generally loose state after his death, and during the reign of his sovereign majesty Charles II. Truly travelling was then a venture

some matter.

In 1659, also, we come upon an advertisement having reference to a work of the great blind bard John Milton. It appears in the Mercurius Politicus of September, and is as follows:

CONS

'ONSIDERATIONS touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church; wherein is also discours'd of Tithes, Church Fees, Church Revenues, and whether any maintenance of

1

Ministers can be settled by Law. The author, J. M. Sold by Livewel Chapman, at the Crown in Pope's Head Alley.

Here we are, then, brought as it were face to face with one of the brightest names in the brightest list of England's poets. This work is almost swamped amid a host of quaintly. and sometimes fiercely titled controversial works, with which the press at that time teemed. The poet seems to have known what was impending, and to have conscientiously put forth his protest. We can guess what weight it had with the hungering crowds anxiously awaiting the coming change, and ready to be or do anything so long as place was provided for them. In something like contrast with the foregoing is this we now select from a number of the same paper in December of the same year:—

Geor

eorge Weale, a Cornish youth, about 18 or 19 years of age, serving as an Apprentice at Kingston, with one Mr Weale, an Apothecary, and his Uncle, about the time of the rising of the Counties Kent and Surrey, went secretly from his said Uncle, and is conceived to have engaged in the same, and to be either dead or slain in some of those fights, having never since been heard of, either by his said Uncle or any of his Friends. If any person can give notice of the certainty of the death of the said George Weale, let him repair to the said Mr Graunt his House in Drum-alley in Drury Lane, London; he shall have twenty shillings for his pains.

This speaks volumes for the peculiarities of the times. Nowadays, in the event of war, anxious relatives are soon put out of their suspense by means of careful bulletins and regular returns of killed and wounded; but who can tell the amount of heart-sickness and hope deferred engendered by the "troubles" of the seventeenth century, or of anxious thought turned towards corpses mouldering far away, among whom was most likely George Weale, perhaps the only one of the obscure men slain in "some of those fights," whose name has been rescued from oblivion.

In 1660 we find Milton again in the hands of his pubconsidered lisher, just at the time when the Restoration was complete, alone amid the pack that were ready to fall down

before the young King, who was to do so much to prove the value of monarchy as compared with the Commonwealth. "The advertisements," says a writer, referring to this period, “which appeared during the time that Monk was temporising and sounding his way to the Restoration, form a capital barometer of the state of feeling among political men at that critical juncture. We see no more of the old Fifth-Monarchy spirit abroad. Ministers of the steeplehouses evidently see the storm coming, and cease their long-winded warnings to a backsliding generation. Every one is either panting to take advantage of the first sunshine of royal favour, or to deprecate its wrath, the coming shadow of which is clearly seen. Meetings are advertised of those persons who have purchased sequestered estates, in order that they may address the King to secure them in possession; Parliamentary aldermen repudiate by the same means charges in the papers that their names are to be found in the list of those persons who 'sat upon the tryal of the late King;' the works of 'late' bishops begin again to air themselves in the Episcopal wind that is clearly setting in; and 'The Tears, Sighs, Complaints, and Prayers of the Church of England' appear in the advertising columns, in place of the sonorous titles of sturdy old Baxter's works. It is clear there is a great commotion at hand; the leaves are rustling, and the dust is moving." In the midst of this, however, there was one still faithful to the "old cause," as Commonwealth matters had got to be called by the Puritans; and on the 8th of March, just when the shadow of the sceptre was once again thrown upon Great Britain, we find the following in the Mercurius Politicus:

TH

HE ready and easie way to establish a free Commonwealth, and the excellence thereof compared with the inconveniences and dangers of readmitting Kingship in this Nation. The Author, J. M. Wherein, by reason of the Printer's haste, the Errata not coming in time, it is desired that the following faults may be amended. Page 9, line 32, for the Areopagus read of Areopagus. P. 10, 1. 3, for full

Senate, true Senate; 1. 4, for fits, is the whole Aristocracy; 1. 7, for Provincial States, States of every City. P. 17, 1. 29, for cite, citie; 1. 30, for left, felt. Sold by Livewel Chapman, at the Crown, in Pope's-head Alley.

Who would think, while reading these calm corrections, that the poet knew he was in imminent danger, and that in a couple of months he was to be a proscribed fugitive, hiding in the purlieus of Westminster from Royalty's myrmidons? Yet it was so, and the degradation to which literature may be submitted is proved by the fact that within the same space of time his works were, in accordance with an order of the House of Commons, burned by the hang

man.

The excessive loyalty exhibited about this time by the lawyers, who were then, as now, quite able to look after their own interests, shows in rather a ludicrous light, viewed through the zealous officiousness of Mr Nicholas Bacon, who must have been the fountspring of the following effusion, which appears in a June, 1660, number of the Mercurius Politicus:

WE

HEREAS one Capt. Gouge, a witness examined against the late King's Majesty, in those Records stiled himself of the Honorable Society of Gray's Inne. These are to give notice that the said Gouge, being long sought for, was providentially discovered in a disguise, seized in that Society, and now in custody, being apprehended by the help of some spectators that knew him, viewing of a banner with His Majesties arms, set up just at the same time of His Majesties landing, on an high tower in the same Society, by Nicholas Bacon, Esq., a member thereof, as a memorial of so great a deliverance, and testimony of his constant loyalty to His Majesty, and that the said Gouge upon examination confessed, That he was never admitted not so much as a Clerk of that Society.

The King does not seem to have enjoyed his own very long before he was subjected to loss by the dog-stealers, who, less ready to revere royalty than the lawyers, led to the publication of the following in the Mercurius Publicus of June 28, 1660:

A Smooth Black DOG, less than a Grey-hound, with white under his breast, belonging to the Kings Majesty, was taken from Whitehall, the eighteenth day of this instant June, or thereabouts. If any one can give notice to John Ellis, one of his Majesties servants, or to his Majesties Back-Stairs, shall be well rewarded for their labour.

And one who could very probably afford to be despoiled still less-one of the poor Cavaliers who expected so much from the representative of Divine right, and who were to be so terribly disappointed--is also victimised, his whole stock of bag and baggage being annexed by some of those vagabonds who only see in any public excitement a means to their own enrichment at the expense of others. Fancy the state of mind of the elderly gentleman who is so anxious to present himself at Court, while waiting the return of the articles thus advertised in the Mercurius Publicus of July 5, 1660:

A

LEATHERN Portmantle lost at Sittingburn or Rochester, when his Majesty came thither, wherein was a suit of Camolet Holland, with two little laces in a seam, eight pair of white Gloves, and a pair of Does leather; about twenty yards of skie-colourd Ribbon twelvepenny broad, and a whole piece of black Ribbon tenpenny broad, a cloath lead-coloured cloak, with store of linnen; a pair of shooes, slippers, a Montero, and other things; all which belong to a gentleman (a near servant to His Majesty) who hath been too long imprisoned and sequestered to be now robbed, when all men hope to enjoy their own. If any can give notice, they may leave word with Mr Samuel Merne, His Majesties Book-binder, at his house in Little Britain, and they shall be thankfully rewarded.

This Mercurius Publicus from which we have just quoted is said to be the Politicus we have mentioned in reference to earlier advertisements, which turned courtier in imitation of the general example, and changed its name also in emulation of popular practice. All England seemed then to have gone mad with excessive loyalty, and it is no wonder that Charles was surprised that he could have been persuaded to stop away so long. The columns of the Mercurius Publicus were placed entirely under the direction of the King, and instead of the slashing articles against malig