These loyal sentiments being embodied in print within our _Choyce Drollery_, suitable to sustain the fealty of the defeated Cavaliers to the successor of the “Royal Martyr,” it was evident that the Restoration must be merely a question of time. “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, _yet it will come: the readiness is all_!” To more than one of those who had sat in the ill-constituted and miscalled High Court of Justice, during the closing days of 1648-9, there must have been, ever and anon, as the years rolled by, a shuddering recollection of the words written anew upon the wall in characters of living fire. They had shown themselves familiar, in one sense much too familiar, with the phraseology but not the teaching of Scripture. To them the _Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin_ needed no Daniel come to judgment for interpretation. The Banquet was not yet over; the subjugated people, whom they had seduced from their allegiance by a dream of winning freedom from exactions, were still sullenly submissive; the desecrated cups and challices of the Church they had despoiled, believing it overthrown for ever, had been, in many cases, melted down for plunder,—in others, sold as common merchandize: and yet no thunder heard. But, however defiantly they might bear themselves, however resolute to crush down every attempt at revolt against their own authority, the men in power could not disguise from one another that there were heavings of the earth on which they trod, coming from no reverberations of their footsteps, but telling of hollowness and insecurity below. They were already suspicious among themselves, no longer hiding personal spites and jealousies, the separate ambition of uncongenial factions, which had only united for a season against the monarchy and hierarchy, but now began to fall asunder, mutually envenomed and intolerant. Presbyterian, Independent, and Nondescript-Enthusiast, while combined together of late, had been acknowledged as a power invincible, a Three-fold Cord that bound the helpless Victim to an already bloody altar. The strands of it were now unwinding, and there scarcely needed much prophetic wisdom to discern that one by one they could soon be broken. To us, from these considerations, there is intense attraction in the _Choyce Drollery_, since it so narrowly escaped from flames to which it had been judicially condemned. § 2.—THE TWO COURTS, IN 1656. At this date many a banished or self-exiled Royalist, dwelling in the Low Countries, but whose heart remained in England, drew a melancholy contrast between the remembered past of Whitehall and the gloomy present. With honest Touchstone, he could say, “Now am I in Arden! the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.”