England-Bunyan and Milton 1655, became a member of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. 1073 Soon after, he was chosen its pastor. He was highly popular, and crowds flocked to hear him preach. The act against conventicles stopped his labors, and he was convicted and sentenced to perpetual banishment. In the mean time, he was sent to Bedford jail, were he supported his wife and children by making tagged laces. It was there he "dreamed a dream," which took form as "Pilgrim's Progress," and is one of the most remarkable religious books ever written. John Bunyan, the author, was finally released, and resumed his work as a preacher, wandering through the country. After the issuing of James II.'s declaration for liberty of conscience, Bunyan again settled at Bedford and ministered to the Baptist congregation in Mill-lane till his death at London of fever, in 1688. No book except the Bible has gone through so many editions as "Pilgrim's Progress." In 1667, three years before the publication of this work, John Milton, pardoned for his part in the Commonwealth, but living in obscure poverty, gave his "Paradise Lost" to the world. This grand epic was as sublime in treatment as in conception, and will always hold a lofty position in the world's literature. Its theme, like that of "Pilgrim's Progress," was the momentous problem of sin and redemption. One of the shameful acts of Charles II. was the seizure of New Amsterdam -the present city of New York-in 1664. The infamy of the proceeding lay in the fact that England and Holland were at peace, and the former in a treaty had recognized the justice of Holland's claim to the territory through the discovery of Henry Hudson. The marriage of the King in 1662 to the Infanta of Portugal, Catharine of Braganza, brought him the fortress of Tangier in Africa and the island of Bombay in India. The latter was soon made over to the East India Company, and Tangier was abandoned as worthless. In the year mentioned Charles, in order to procure funds with which to keep up his debauchery, sold Dunkirk to the King of France, much to the displeasure of England. Naturally King Charles surrounded himself with men like himself. They were his rivals in debauchery, and were fond of perpetrating coarse jests upon one another. One of them, the Earl of Rochester, wrote on the door of the King's bed-chamber these lines: "Here lies our sovereign lord, the King, Whose word no man relies on; He never says a foolish thing, Nor ever does a wise one." There was wit in the King's retort when he read the squib. "It is true, my words are my own, my acts are my ministers'." for, while While the reign had begun with the Earl of Clarendon as chief minister, authority soon sank into the hands of a disreputable administration, called the Cabal, the members of which were a dissipated party of scamps who cared for nothing but their own interests. Curiously enough the word cabal has come down to modern times because it was spelled by the initial letters of the five members composing this cabinet, as it would be termed in these days—thus: (C)lifford, (A)shley-Cooper Lord Shaftesbury, (B)uckingham, (A)rlington, and (L)auderdale. Meanwhile an even greater disaster fell upon the unhappy land. The filth in most of those early English homes was unspeakable. Sometimes when a family could stand it no longer, instead of cleaning up, they moved out and left. the building alone to "sweeten" itself. London was a city of alleys and narrow streets, crowded with tumble-down buildings, veneered with the dirt of centuries, and permeated by an atmosphere of poison. The summer of 1665 was one of the hottest ever known, and need you be told what followed? An appalling plague broke out and ran riot in the city. To call it a visitation of God, as many did, seems almost blasphemy, for in truth the plague was only a tardy acceptance of the invitation which the inhabitants had been holding out for years. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then the London of 1665: was very far away from it. The pestilence carried off a hundred thousand people within a few months. Thousands of terror-stricken people ran out into the country and huddled along the highways. The rumble of the death carts. was never still. You might have picked your way for block after block and seen on nearly every door a cross made with red chalk and the lines scrawled beneath, "Lord have mercy on us." Then when exhausted London was reeling under this stroke, a fire fortunately broke out and burned up all the city except a fringe of houses on the northeast. Overwhelming as the calamity seemed, in no other way could the horrible pestilence have been driven out and the air purified so that one could inhale it without having his lungs poisoned. The spot where the flames first burst out is still marked by a monument near London Bridge. The city was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, the greatest architect of the period. He replaced the wooden buildings with those of brick and stone. The present cathedral of St. Paul was reared on the foundations of the old structure. Under the grand dome of this, his most magnificent work, the ashes of the famous master-builder are laid. On a tablet near the tomb is this inscription in Latin: "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around." London had hardly been rebuilt when Holland, which was at war with England on account of a rivalry in trade, sent a fleet up the Medway. Charles |