have now brought the reader upon the very borders of the period when Charles, with his hungry followers, landed in triumph at Dover. The advertisements which appeared during the time that Monk was temporizing and sounding his way to the Restoration, form a capital barometer of the state of feeling among political men at that critical juncture. We see no more of the old Fifth-Monarchy spirit abroad. Ministers of the steeple-houses evidently note the storm coming, and cease their long-winded warnings to a backsliding generation. Every one is either panting to take advantage of the first sunshine of royal favour, or to deprecate its wrath, the coming shadow of which is clearly seen. Meetings are advertised of those persons who have purchased sequestered estates, in order that they may address the King to secure them in possession; parliamentary aldermen repudiate by the same means, charges in the papers that their names are to be found in the list of those persons who “sat upon the tryal of the late King;” the works of “late” bishops begin again to air themselves in the Episcopal wind that is clearly setting in; and “The Tears, Sighs, Complaints, and Prayers of the Church of England” appear in the advertising columns in place of the sonorous titles of sturdy old Baxter’s works. It is clear there is a great commotion at hand; the leaves are rustling, and the dust is moving. In the very midst of it, however, we find one name still faithful to the “old cause,” as the Puritans call it: on the 8th of March, 1660—that is, while the sway of Charles’s sceptre had already cast its shadow from Breda—we find the following advertisement in the Mercurius Politicus:—

The calmness of the blind bard in thus issuing corrections to his hastily-printed pamphlet on behalf of a falling cause, excites our admiration, and gives us an exalted idea of his moral courage. In two months, as might have been expected, he was a proscribed fugitive, sheltering his honoured head from the pursuit of Charles’s myrmidons in some secret hiding-place in Westminster, whilst his works, by order of the House, were being burned by the common hangman.

The lawyers were not slow in perceiving the way the wind was blowing, and set their sails accordingly—if we may take the action of one Mr. Nicholas Bacon, as shown in the following advertisement, as any index of the feelings of his fellows:—

Whilst all London was throwing up caps for the restored monarch, and England seemed so glad that he himself wondered how he could have been persuaded to stop away so long, let us catch the lost luggage of a poor cavalier, who has just followed his royal master from his long banishment, and turn out its contents for our reader, in order to show that even ruined old courtiers carried more impedimenta than the famous “shirt, towel, and piece of soap” of our renowned Napier. The Mercurius Publicus is now our mine, in which we sink a shaft, and come up with this fossil advertisement, which bears date July 5th, 1660:—

The king had not been “in” a month ere his habits appear through the public papers. The Mercurius Politicus is now turned courtier, and has changed its name to the Mercurius Publicus. Its columns, indeed, are entirely under the direction of the king, and, instead of slashing articles against malignants, degenerates into a virulent oppressor of the Puritans, and a vehicle for inquiries after his majesty’s favourite dogs that have been stolen. In the number for June 28th, 1660, for instance, we find the following advertisement:—

It is evident that “the smooth black dog” was a very great favourite, for the next publication of the journal contains another advertisement with respect to him, printed in larger Italic type, the diction of which, from its pleasant raillery, looks as though it had come from the king’s own hand:—

Pepys, about this time, describes the king with a train of spaniels and other dogs at his heels, lounging along and feeding the ducks in St. James’s Park; and on occasions still later he was often seen talking to Nelly, as she leaned from her garden-wall that abutted upon the Pall-Mall, whilst his canine favourites grouped around him. On these occasions perhaps the representatives of those gentlemen to be seen in