thoughtful--not conscientious; he lacked the two things which alone could enable him to turn his abilities and experience to good account. The crown was to him a toy; the throne a chair of pleasure, at best, of pompous state. The heedless, folly-loving prince takes himself quite out of the range of our sympathies, and leaves us to condemn the breach of his plighted faith, and all the intolerance incident to his return. A useless controversy was once carried on as to whether he was really a Papist at the time of the Restoration. It is idle to dispute respecting the theological opinions of a man so utterly destitute of religious feeling and thoughtfulness. That he was _not_ a Protestant at the time--meaning by the word a person attached to the Reformed faith--is plain enough from what is said by those who knew him best. Probably Buckingham, who calls him a Deist, is nearest the truth.[89] But that he had sympathies with the Roman Catholic party, and considered their Church as the most convenient for an easy-living gentleman like himself, there can be no doubt. Had death stared him in the face just after his return, he would probably have sought refuge in confession and priestly absolution, as he did twenty-five years later. Yet he professed to be a Protestant by solemn kingly acts, and in other ways when he thought it politic. Charles was a dissembler.[90] He had, with all his occasional rollicking frankness, an almost equal mastery over his conversation and his countenance. His face, encompassed by flowing black locks, illuminated by lustrous eyes, was said to be as little a blab as most men's: it might tell tales to a good physiognomist, but it was no prattler to people in general. If he had a wish to conceal his purpose, he could do it effectually. Lord Halifax apologized for him by saying, that if he dissembled it is to be remembered "that dissimulation is a jewel of the crown," and that "it is very hard for a man not to do sometimes too much of that which he concludeth necessary for him to practise."[91] Monk proceeded to Dover May the 22nd.[92] Numbers of the nobility and gentry wished to follow him, and he arranged that they should march in companies, in differently-coloured uniforms, under certain noblemen, who were to act as captains of these loyal bands. They had not fought any of Monk's battles; they came in now to swell Monk's triumph. As the General was standing at a window in the City of Canterbury, while they marched by gaily with green scarfs and feathers, a friend observed: "You had none of these at Coldstream, General; but grasshoppers and butterflies never come abroad in frosty weather, and, at the best, never abound in Scotland." [Sidenote: THE KING'S RETURN.]