The country through which they passed in their journey toward London, afforded them a full view of the miseries and crimes incident to civil war. The fields, in many places, were without any trace of culture; in others, the harvest had been prematurely seized or purposely wasted, to cut off the enemy's resources. They saw beautiful woods wantonly felled; towns and villages partially burnt; the youthful part of the population either enrolled in one or other of the hostile armies, or secreting themselves to avoid being pressed into military service. The few labourers to be seen in the fields consisted of the aged, the sick, or those who were disabled; and these no longer exhibited the cheerful aspect of happy industry, but shewed sorrow in their faces, and wretchedness in their garb. In towns, the more respectable inhabitants were dressed in mourning, thus announcing, that the death of some relation gave them a deep private interest in the public sorrow. The unemployed manufacturers crowded the streets, eagerly perusing libellous pamphlets, or diurnal chronicles, disputing furiously on points which none could clearly explain or indeed comprehend, asking for news as if it were bread, and shewing by the lean ferocity of their faces, and the squalid negligence of their attire, that from unpitied poverty sprung all the virulent passions of rage, envy, revenge, and disobedience. By such as these, the detachment that escorted the prisoners were received with transport as friends and deliverers, who, when their glorious toils were completed, would transform the present season of woe into a golden age of luxurious enjoyment and unvaried ease; and as the rebel troops were well furnished with money, and supplied with every necessary out of the royal magazines, which were seized in the beginning of the contest, they were enabled to pay for all the articles of subsistence, and thus acquired a popularity which the strict discipline preserved by their officers tended to increase. Hence at every town they passed through, they were not only hailed with acclamations, but received an augmentation of force by the recruits who joined them, under a certainty of receiving pay and cloathing.