James, the successor, was not loved--scarce by anyone; bigoted, obstinate, selfish, he ran quickly through the short race of which the histories will tell you. Only three years of it, or thereabout, and then--_presto!_ like the changing of the scenes at Drury Lane Theatre in one of the splendid spectacles of the day--James scuds away, and Cousin William (with his wife Mary, both of the blood royal of England) comes in, and sets up a fashion of rule, and an assured Protestant succession of regal names which is not ended yet. And now, in closing this talk, I will summon into presence once again some of the notable personages who have given intellectual flavor to the years we have gone over, and will call the roll of a few new names among those actors who are to take in swift succession the places of those who disappear. At the date where we now are--1688--the date of the last English Revolution (who, pray, can predict the next?), the date of John Bunyan’s death, the date of Alexander Pope’s birth--excellent remembrancers, these!--at this epoch, I say, of the incoming of William and Mary, all those dramatic writers--of whom we made mention as having put a little tangled fringe of splendor about the great broidery of Shakespeare’s work--were gone. So was Herrick, with his sweet poems, and his pigs and tankards; and Howell, and Wotton, and the saintly George Herbert, and dear, good, old Izaak Walton--all comfortably dead and buried. So were Andrew Marvell, and the author of _Hudibras_. Archbishop Laud was gone long since to the scaffold, with the fullest acquiescence of all New Englanders; Jeremy Taylor gone--if ever man had right of way there--to heaven; Milton dead; Cowley dead; Waller dead. Old, ear-cropped Prynne, of the _Histriomastix_, was still living--close upon seventy--grim and gray, and as pugnacious as a bull-terrier. Among others lingering upon the downhill side of life were Robert Boyle and that John Evelyn, whose love of the fields and gardens and trees had put long life in his blood and brain. Sir William Temple, too, had still some years of elegant distinction to coquet with; our old friend of the Pepysian journal was yet alert--his political ambitions active, his eye-sight failing--never thinking, we may be sure, that his pot-luck of a _Diary_ would keep him more savory with us to-day than all his wigs and his coaches, and his fine acquaintance, and his great store of bric-à-brac. Isaac Newton was not fifty yet, but had somehow lost that elasticity and searchingness of brain which had untwisted the sunbeams, and solved the riddle of gravitation. Bishop Burnet, and that William Penn whose name ought to hold place on any American file of England’s worthies, were in the full vigor of middle age. Daniel De Foe was some eight and twenty, and known only as a sharp trader, who had written a few pamphlets, and who was enrolled in those soldier ranks which went to greet William III. on his arrival at Torbay.