As we turn over some of the hymns of Watts, and some pages of his and other writings of the day, it seems as if the denunciations of Rome were wanting in good taste, and tender charitableness of feeling. The sentiments Watts expressed and indulged in never appear to go beyond the bounds of propriety; his sentiments towards Rome are shared by John Milton, who wrote while the valleys of Piedmont were flaming with burning villages, and covered with the bodies of the slaughtered saints of God. In those years Rome had the power to get up every now and then some such startling _spectacle_ to astonish Europe and mankind. Papists are still surprised that such entertainments were not taken in good part, and that, on the contrary, fervid expressions of indignation were uttered, and loud prayers put up that God would save England from the dominancy of Rome again in the politics of our nation. Men like Watts judged such expressions to be neither unnatural, unholy, nor unwise: they had not reached that stoical calm which contemplates either the insolent outrage and persecution of a hierarchy trampling under foot the holiest rights of men, or the groans of protracted suffering, with indifference; they lived in the neighbourhood of danger, and did not affect a calmness of feeling as they beheld, even in their own neighbourhood, infidelity and priestism working together, as they so often work, forging fetters for a nation. In several pages of this volume glances have been given at the aspects of the age and its manners, so far as they affected, or were affected by, the subject of this memoir. A large portion of that time may be spoken of as the most dissolute age of England, and even in the later period it was a rude, rough time. In those regions in which vice did not abound, a thick, dark night of ignorance “covered the people.” However we may boast of a few splendid names in literature, and however some character or incident gives effect and pomp to the scenery, still it is only worthy of the apt description of John Foster[37] that “we are only gazing with delight at a fine public bonfire, while in all the cottages round the people are shivering for want of fuel.” It was a time along whose way romance loves to loiter; when the lanthorn lighted the sedan on the neighbourly visit in town as well as country; when, also, no home was exempted from the housebreaker, and every suburb was haunted by highwaymen.