"
The history itself properly commences at the close of this chapter.
Opening with the deathscene of the dissolute Charles II., it presents a
series of brilliant pictures of the events succeeding: The miserable fate
of Oates and Dangerfield, the perjured inventors of the Popish Plot; the
trial of Baxter by the infamous Jeffreys; the ill-starred attempt of the
Duke of Monmouth; the battle of Sedgemoor, and the dreadful atrocities of
the king's soldiers, and the horrible perversion of justice by the king's
chief judge in the "Bloody Assizes;" the barbarous hunting of the Scotch
Dissenters by Claverbouse; the melancholy fate of the brave and noble
Duke of Argyle,--are described with graphic power unknown to Smollett or
Hume. Personal portraits are sketched with a bold freedom which at times
startles us. The "old familiar faces," as we have seen them through the
dust of a century and a half, start before us with lifelike distinctness
of outline and coloring. Some of them disappoint us; like the ghost of
Hamlet's father, they come in a "questionable shape.
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