rom
ostentatious pageants. Love, confidence, liberty, and security, seemed
to revive; malice, suspicion, and guile, vanished with the dark tyranny
they had so long supported. The aspect, manners, and dress of Englishmen
resumed their former appearance. The lengthened visage; the rayless, yet
penetrating eye; the measured smile, which expressed neither affection
nor candour, disappeared. The countenance was again permitted to be an
index to the soul, and the tongue uttered the undisguised feelings of
artless sincerity; joy, magnified to ecstasy; freedom bursting the
trammels of oppression; sorrow changed to festivity; want expatiating on
the near prospect of affluence; justice restored to the full exercise of
her balance and sword; religion separated from fanaticism, and
reinstated in decent splendor; a hereditary King, a regular government,
ancient institutions, definite laws, certain privileges, personal
safety, and the restitution of property--such were the glorious themes
which employed the thoughts of the contemplative, elevated the devotion
of the pious, and made the unreflecting multitude frantic with wild
delight. No period of English history records so great a change. The
spring of 1660 was devoted to universal jubilee; with the vulgar it was
disaffection to be sober, and among the higher classes gravity was
treason.

Though the prisons were thrown open, the Beaumont family still lingered
near the abode wherein they had been so long inhumed. A free
communication was renewed with foreign countries; private intercourse
was safe; exiles were every hour returning; but they heard nothing of
their beloved fugitives. Dr. Beaumont waited with the patience of a man,
who had endured years of sorrow. The debilitated Neville feared his last
sands would run out before he could embrace his son. Isabel and
Constantia had fears which they durst not disclose, even to each other.
Were both their lovers enamoured of the merchant's daughter, or had some
continental Circe also spread her fascinations, and made the recreants
forget their fathers and their country, as well as their mistresses?
Surely, in that case Dr. Lloyd would have sent some qualified account of
their temptation and fall. Had they all perished in some tremendous
undertaking; had a pestilence swept them away; had they fallen into the
hands of banditti, or perished silently, ensnared by the still more
merciless machinations of regicide-informers? There was no form in