s race who
bestowed it. He pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged
his property for the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by
fines and sequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton,
where his brother Thomas capitulated (afterward making terms with the
Commonwealth, for which the elder brother never forgave him), and
where his second brother Edward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical
profession, was slain on Castlewood Tower, being engaged there both as
preacher and artilleryman. This resolute old loyalist, who was with the
King whilst his house was thus being battered down, escaped abroad with
his only son, then a boy, to return and take a part in Worcester fight.
On that fatal field Eustace Esmond was killed, and Castlewood fled from
it once more into exile, and henceforward, and after the Restoration,
never was away from the Court of the monarch (for whose return we offer
thanks in the Prayer-Book) who sold his country and who took bribes of
the French king.

What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who is
more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune? Mr. Addison has
painted such a figure in his noble piece of Cato. But suppose fugitive
Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen
faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out
for his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The
Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes
the door--on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up--upon him and
his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends
are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris
to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and
impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to
claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled divinity as that.

About the King's follower, the Viscount Castlewood--orphan of his son,
ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks of bravery,
old and in exile--his kinsmen I suppose should be silent; nor if this
patriarch fell down in his cups, call fie upon him, and fetch passers-by
to laugh at his red face and white hairs. What! does a stream rush out
of a mountain free and pure, to roll through fair pastures, to feed and
throw out bright tributaries, and to end in a village gutter? Lives that
have noble commencements have often no better endings; it is