it. It
would have been easy for the noble patrician to re-enter the
reconstituted upper house, repentance being ever well received on
restorations, and Charles II. being a kind prince enough to those who
returned to their allegiance to him; but Lord Clancharlie had failed to
understand what was due to events. While the nation overwhelmed with
acclamation the king come to retake possession of England, while
unanimity was recording its verdict, while the people were bowing their
salutation to the monarchy, while the dynasty was rising anew amidst a
glorious and triumphant recantation, at the moment when the past was
becoming the future, and the future becoming the past, that nobleman
remained refractory. He turned his head away from all that joy, and
voluntarily exiled himself. While he could have been a peer, he
preferred being an outlaw. Years had thus passed away. He had grown old
in his fidelity to the dead republic, and was therefore crowned with the
ridicule which is the natural reward of such folly.

He had retired into Switzerland, and dwelt in a sort of lofty ruin on
the banks of the Lake of Geneva. He had chosen his dwelling in the most
rugged nook of the lake, between Chillon, where is the dungeon of
Bonnivard, and Vevay, where is Ludlow's tomb. The rugged Alps, filled
with twilight, winds, and clouds, were around him; and he lived there,
hidden in the great shadows that fall from the mountains. He was rarely
met by any passer-by. The man was out of his country, almost out of his
century. At that time, to those who understood and were posted in the
affairs of the period, no resistance to established things was
justifiable. England was happy; a restoration is as the reconciliation
of husband and wife, prince and nation return to each other, no state
can be more graceful or more pleasant. Great Britain beamed with joy; to
have a king at all was a good deal--but furthermore, the king was a
charming one. Charles II. was amiable--a man of pleasure, yet able to
govern; and great, if not after the fashion of Louis XIV. He was
essentially a gentleman. Charles II. was admired by his subjects. He had
made war in Hanover for reasons best known to himself; at least, no one
else knew them. He had sold Dunkirk to France, a manoeuvre of state
policy. The Whig peers, concerning whom Chamberlain says, "The cursed
republic infected with its stinking breath several of the high
nobility," had had the good sense to bow to the inev