The joy which this intelligence produced in the City was unbounded, and it comes before us with the vividness of a present event in the garrulous _Diary_ of Pepys. As merry peals rolled and fired from the London steeples, fourteen bonfires were kindled between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar; and at Strand Bridge the gossip at the same time counted thirty-one of those English demonstrations of delight. The butchers, at the Maypole in the Strand, rang a peal with their knives; and on Ludgate-hill a man occupied himself with turning a spit, on which was tied a rump of beef, whilst another man basted it. At one end of the street there seemed "a whole lane of fire," so hot that people were fain to keep on the side farthest off.[58] The excitement following the news in other parts seems to have been not less intense. At Nottingham, "as almost all the rest of the island," the town "began to grow mad." Boys marched about with drums and colours, and offered insults to Republican soldiers. One night some forty of the latter class were wounded by stones, thrown at them as they attempted to seize the obstreperous lads. Two Presbyterians were shot in the scuffle; one a zealous Royalist, master of the Magazine, at Nottingham Castle. "Upon the killing of this man," the Presbyterians "were hugely enraged, and prayed very seditiously in their pulpits, and began openly to desire the King; not for good will, neither to him, but for destruction to all the fanatics."[59] [Sidenote: 1660.] The rabble raved with joy. Milton mourned over the madness in strains of majestic sorrow. "And what will they at best say of us, and of the whole English name, but scoffingly, as of that foolish builder mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a tower, and was not able to finish it? Where is this goodly tower of a Commonwealth, which the English boasted they would build to overshadow kings, and be another Rome in the West? The foundation indeed they laid gallantly; but fell into a worse confusion, not of tongues, but of factions, than those at the tower of Babel; and have left no memorial of their work behind them remaining, but in the common laughter of Europe! Which must needs redound the more to our shame, if we but look on our neighbours, the United Provinces, to us inferior in all outward advantages; who notwithstanding, in the midst of greater difficulties, courageously, wisely, constantly went through with the same work, and are settled in all the happy enjoyments of a potent and flourishing Republic to this day."[60]