Not thus!--For even now, The blaze is on thy brow Scored by the shadowy hand of him whose wing Knows neither haste nor rest; Who from the board each guest In season calling,--knight and kerne and king,-- Where Arthur lies, and Alfred, signs the way;-- --We know him, and obey. Lord Macaulay's lively description of this scene (_Hist_. Ch iv) should be referred to. 'Even then,' he says, 'the King had complained that he did not feel well.' _Tudor-Stuart_; This famous Gallery was of sixteenth-century date. _When the heart_; The weariness of England under the triple yoke of Puritanism, the Independents, and the Protector, has been already noticed: (Note on p. 125). 'The Restoration,' says Professor Seeley, in an able essay on current perversions of seventeenth-century-history, 'was not a return to servitude, but the precise contrary. It was a great emancipation, an exodus out of servitude into liberty . . . As to the later Stuarts, I regard them as pupils of Cromwell: . . . it was their great ambition to appropriate his methods,' (and, we may add, to follow his foreign policy in regard to France and Holland), for the benefit of the old monarchy. They failed where their model had succeeded, and the distinction of having enslaved England remained peculiar to Cromwell.' THE BALLAD OF KING MONMOUTH 1685 _Fear not_, _my child, though the days be dark_, _Never fear_, _he will come again_, _With the long brown hair_, _and the banner blue_, _King Monmouth and all his men_! The summer-smiling bay Has doff'd its vernal gray; A peacock breast of emerald shot with blue: Is it peace or war that lands On these pale quiet sands, As round the pier the boats run-in their silent crew? Bent knee, and forehead bare; That moment was for prayer! Then swords flash out, and--Monmouth!--is the cry: The crumbling cliff o'erpast, The hazard-die is cast, 'Tis James 'gainst James in arms! Soho! and Liberty! --_Fear not, my child, though he come with few_; _Alone will he come again_; _God with him, and his right hand more strong_ _Than a thousand thousand men_! They file by Colway now; They rise o'er Uplyme brow; And faithful Taunton hails her hero-knight: And girlhood's agile hand Weaves for the patriot band The crown-emblazon'd flag, their gathering star of fight. --Ah flag of shame and woe! For not by these who go, Scythe-men and club-men, foot and hunger-worn, These levies raw and rude, Can England be subdued, Or that ancestral throne from its foundations torn! Yet by the dour deep trench Their mettle did not blench, When mist and midnight closed o'er sad Sedgemoor; Though on those hearts of oak The tall cuirassiers broke, And Afric's tiger-bands sprang forth with sullen roar: