however blessed in its results, may be hereafter deemed dishonourable to the people of England in the mode of its achievement. But the Stuarts are only the victims of the general corruption they themselves effected. At the time of the Restoration, high-minded Puritans of the Hutchinson and Ludlow stamp were still living, men who might have strengthened the public mind by imparting to it their own morality and strict religious tone, even as the Goths, when they intermingled with the degenerate people of Italy, corroborated their bodily strength. But in the reign of Charles the Second, drunkenness, irreligion, immorality, and corruption, became tests of loyalty; and the people at large soon learned to imitate, though they could not surpass, the gross depravity of the Court. Charles and his successor were both pensioners of France; both secretly leagued with a foreign despot against their subjects; and they can have no right therefore to complain when the people turned the stream of corruption, and entered into conspiracies against themselves. It will be for your Majesty to commence a moral revo lution, still more glorious than the political one you have achieved, by making the Court a school of religion, morality, and decorum, and thus gradually reforming the people by the same high example that has so thoroughly corrupted them." "And is it for the purpose of giving me all this good advice that you have solicited a private audience ?" asked the King, not quite relishing the remarks he had heard. "Not altogether, and your Majesty will perhaps smile at my lofty professions of disinterestedness, when I confess that my main object was, after all, to solicit a favour, although for another, not myself."-Forester then briefly stated the circumstances that had occasioned Walter Colyton to be cashiered, exculpated him from all participation in, or knowledge of the double-letter scheme, which he rightly assigned to the manoeuvring mother, and detailing the generous conduct of the son in suffering him to escape at Hales Court, and thus saving his life at the risk of his own, he concluded by soliciting respectfully, but earnestly, that he might be reinstated in the rank he had lost, pledging himself for his honour and loyalty. "Enough!" said William; "the brave man who has saved your life, I shall ever hold to have been a benefactor to myself. Lord Dover's troop, as you are of course aware, I have ordered to be broken; but your friend shall have a captaincy in another regiment of cavalry, nor shall I lose sight of his future promotion." -The King, who was methodical in every thing, entered Walter's name in his pocketbook; and after telling Forester that he was glad to have had an opportunity of obliging him in this trifling matter, and would be still more so, when he should require some more important favour for himself, he bowed slightly, an understood signal that he had no more time to bestow, and the conference closed. Next day Forester received a captain's commission for his friend; and concluding that he could now be spared from the Court for a few days, he determined to gratify the wish he had been ardently cherishing, by setting off immediately for Somersetshire. CHAPTER X. Must we part then? What are those joys that flatter'd us but now! INDESCRIBABLE was the joy of the whole family at Orchard Place, when Forester presented himself, and, after many and most cordial greetings and felicitations on both sides, announced the reinstatement of Walter in the army; a piece of intelligence so much the more unexpected, as the Squire had arrived only two days before, with the mortifying tidings of his signal discomfiture at Court, and the hopelessness of all future applications to the King. While the rest of the family were elated at the new prospects of honourable distinction thus opened to Walter, Mrs. Colyton, adverting only to the immediate saving, exclaimed "Then his equipment will not be lost after all! a cavalry regiment, you said; every thing will do again, nothing need be bought afresh, we can alter what may be required-truly Providence is very good to us!" With which words she again shook Forester's hand with renewed thanks, hurried out of the room, ordered liberal additaments to the dinner, arrayed herself in her best brocade suit, with russet shoes and silver buckles, a garb which for twenty years past had been reserved for great occasions, and, returning to the parlour, began to question her visitant very minutely about the downfall of the abdicated King, recalling how the crown had tottered on his head at the time of the coronation, and how his statue at Whitehall, as she had been given to understand, stood with its back to the palace, and its face to the river, an omen which manifestly prefigured his abdica tion, and the mode of his flight. |