Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London LifeKirwan, Daniel Joseph
History
Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life
Kirwan, Daniel Joseph
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs
And now comes up the Brewer, Oliver Cromwell, one of Carlyle's heroes,
(and by the way, all of Carlyle's heroes are dripping with blood,) a
most accomplished and unrelenting butcher, one who thanks God for his
"precious mercies" when a thousand men, women, and children are driven
over a bridge into a deep river beneath, impelled by the pikes of his
ruffianly soldiery. Then he dies, and Charles II, a dissolute royal
scamp succeeds, and he of course has to dig up the crumbling skeleton
of Cromwell to hang it on Tyburn tree, that all men may see what manner
of divinity it is that should hedge around a King.
Think of this royal vagabond, who has for his mistress a Stewart,
a Duchess of Cleveland, a Louise de Queroailles, who also becomes
a Duchess of Portsmouth, and last but not least, poor simple, soft
hearted Mistress Nelly Gwynne, who left to the nation Greenwich
Hospital to atone for her lost soul.
It might be expected that in these days of the daily newspapers and
telegraph wires, of railroads, female suffrage and personal journalism,
that royalty, and notably, English royalty, would improve, from a
slight sense of decency and a proper regard for public opinion, if for
no other cause. Let us see.
Ten years ago I vainly endeavored to penetrate the dense masses who
lined Broadway, New York, and filled the air with their shouts, as an
open barouche, containing the then Mayor of the chief city of America,
sitting on the back seat, and a fair faced youth with flabby skin and
retreating chin, clad in a scarlet uniform and having an Order of the
Garter pendant from his breast, passed up the thronged thoroughfare
between two lines of citizen soldiery, whose bayonets, bright as
silver, reflected back the many hues of the excited and surging masses.
Five hundred thousand people of both sexes had turned out in holiday
attire, that ever memorable day, to do honor to a foreign prince,
whose government, since that thoughtless hour, sought during the
terrible confusion of a civil war, by every means in its power, by
money, influence, by Alabama pirates, by unceasing and bitterly hostile
journalistic attacks, by speeches in and out of Parliament--through the
pulpit and the rostrum, to destroy the Republic of the West. In fact
that government moved Heaven and Earth to annihilate and obliterate the
liberty, union, and might of the American people.
Such a reception had not been given, twenty-five years before, to
the gallant, noble-minded, and chivalric Lafayette, the companion of
George Washington, one of the finest characters in all history, or the
unwritten records of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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