or my return."

In his progress to the capital Charles passed in review the soldiers
assembled on Blackheath. Betrayed by their general, abandoned by their
leaders, surrounded as they were by a nation in arms, the gloomy silence
of their ranks awed even the careless King with a sense of danger. But
none of the victories of the "new model" were so glorious as the victory
which it won over itself. Quietly and without a struggle, as men who
bowed to the inscrutable will of God, the farmers and traders who had
dashed Rupert's chivalry to pieces on Naseby field, who had scattered at
Worcester the "army of the aliens," and driven into helpless flight the
sovereign that now came "to enjoy his own again," who had renewed beyond
sea the glories of Cressy and Agincourt, had mastered the Parliament,
had brought a king to justice and the block, had given laws to England,
and held even Cromwell in awe, became farmers and traders again, and
were known among their fellow-men by no other sign than their greater
soberness and industry.

And, with them, Puritanism laid down the sword. It ceased from the long
attempt to build up a kingdom of God by force and violence, and fell
back on its truer work of building up a kingdom of righteousness in the
hearts and consciences of men. It was from the moment of its seeming
fall that its real victory began. As soon as the wild orgy of the
Restoration was over, men began to see that nothing that was really
worthy in the work of Puritanism had been undone. The revels of
Whitehall, the scepticism and debauchery of courtiers, the corruption of
statesmen, left the mass of Englishmen what Puritanism had made
them--serious, earnest, sober in life and conduct, firm in their love of
Protestantism and of freedom. In the Revolution of 1688 Puritanism did
the work of civil liberty which it had failed to do in that of 1642. It
wrought out, through Wesley and the revival of the eighteenth century,
the work of religious reform which its earlier efforts had only thrown
back for a hundred years. Slowly but steadily it introduced its own
seriousness and purity into English society, English literature, English
politics. The history of English progress since the Restoration, on its
moral and spiritual sides, has been the history of Puritanism.

SAMUEL PEPYS

May 22, 1660. News brought that the two dukes are coming on board which,
by and by, they did, in a Dutch boat, the Duke of York in yellow
trimmings, the Du