UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

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and it soon appeared that even a defensive war was a task chap.too hard for that administration. The Dutch fleet sailed upthe Thames, and burned the ships of war which lay atChatham. It was said that, on the very day of that great humi-liation, the King feasted with the ladies of his seraglio, andamused himself with hunting a moth about the supper room.

Then, at length, tardy justice was done to the memory ofOliver. Everywhere men magnified his valour, genius, and ♦patriotism. Everywhere it was remembered how, when heruled, all foreign powers had trembled at the name of Eng-land, how the States General, now so haughty, had crouchedat his feet, and how, when it was known that he was nomore, Amsterdam was lighted up as for a groat deliverance,and children ran along the canals, shouting for joy that thedevil was dead. Even Royalists exclaimed that the Statecould be saved only by calling the old soldiers of the Com-monwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to feel themiseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be procured.Tilbury Fort, the place where Elizabeth had, with manlyspirit, hurled foul scorn at Parma and Spain, was insultedby the invaders. The roar of foreign guns was heard, forthe first and last time, by the citizens of London. In theCouncil it was seriously proposed that, if the enemy ad-vanced, the Tower should be abandoned. Great multitudesof people assembled in the streets crying out that Englandwas bought and sold. The houses and carriages of the mi-nisters were attacked by the populace; and it seemed likelythat the government would have to deal at once with an in-vasion and with an insurrection. The extreme danger, it istrue, soon passed by. A treaty was concluded, very differentfrom those which Oliver had been in the habit of signing; andthe nation was once more at peace, but was in a moodscarcely less fierce and sullen than in the days of ship-money.

The discontent engendered by maladministration was