ancy of her husband, to gain his love.

The maids of honor at the court of Charles, who were for the most part
mistresses of the king and of the courtiers, and the male sycophants,
whose only pursuit in life was intrigue, made a choice group of
profligate spirits, who, without any restraint, but with every
encouragement from their royal master, assiduously furthered the chief
interest of their existence.

There are not wanting those who utterly disparage the morals of
the Commonwealth, and affirm that both Cromwell and his followers
generally were guilty of as base conduct as King Charles and his
courtiers, and that the only difference was that which exists between
covert and open practices of an evil nature. The fact remains,
however, that even down to the present day the English people, and the
American as well, are inheritors of the spirit of the Puritans, to the
great good of society. It was the Puritans who taught reverence for
the Sabbath and made the Bible a common textbook of life; and although
they were strict and narrow in their views, earnestness always is
straitened in its bounds until it bursts them and floods society with
the power of the principles it advocates.

The apologists for King Charles, who hold to the ancient formula of
the faith of the Fathers and of the Puritans,--that woman from the
days of Eden unto the present time has stood for the downfall of
man,--seek to enlist sympathy for him by saying that in his various
peccadilloes the women seemed to be the aggressors. This plea, which
was advanced by his friendly contemporaries, who sought to whitewash
the outside of the sepulchre of the king's character while leaving
undisturbed the inward corruption, is still gravely repeated by
partisan historians to-day. Sir John Reresby said: "I have since heard
the King say they would sometimes offer themselves to his embrace." It
is unfortunate that the integrity of the chivalrous king should have
suffered such assaults; but as no other English monarch seems to have
been so desperately set upon to his destruction by the women of his
times, it may not be too great a piece of temerity to put in a plea
for the women of the reign of the glorious Charles II. by suggesting
the bare possibility that all the moral probity was not possessed
alone by him who reigned King of England!

We can much better accept the description of society given by
Clarendon. It is not, however, to be taken as an index to the innate