shadowes sometimes with the darkest touches, and approaching to horrour
it self, thereby to render his lights the more refulgent, and striking in
the eyes of the Spectator.

Let us then call to mind (and yet for ever cursed be the memory of it)
those dismal clouds, which lately orespread us, when we served the lusts
of those immane Usurpers, greedy of power, that themselves might be under
none; Cruel, that they might murther the Innocent without cause; Rich,
with the publick poverty; strong, by putting the sword into the hands of
furies, and prosperous by unheard of perfidie. Armies, Battails,
Impeaching, Imprisonment, Arraining, Condemning, Proscribing, Plundring,
Gibbets and Executions were the eloquent expressions of our miseries:
There was no language then heard but of Perjury, Delusion, Hypocrisie{7},
Heresie, Taxes, Excises, Sequestration, Decimation, and a thousand like
barbarities: In summe, the solitudes were filled with noble Exiles, the
Cities with rapacious Theives, the Temples with Sacrilegious Villains;
They had the spoiles of Provinces, the robbing of Churches, the goods of
the slain, the Stock of Pupils, the plunder of Loyal Subjects; no
Testament, no State secure, and nothing escaped their cruelty and
insatiable avarice. For if it be sweet in prosperity, to consider of the
past adventures, if tempests commend the Haven; War, Peace; and our last
sharp sickness, our present Health and Vigour; why should it not delight
your Majesty to hear of the miseries we have suffered; since they
re-inforce your own felicity, and the benefits which we receive by it?
where then should I begin but with thy Calamities, O unfortunate
_England_! who hadst only the priviledge of being miserable, when all the
World were happy: But I will not go too for in repeating the sorrowes
which are vanish't, or uncover the buried memory of the evils past; least
whilst we strive to represent the vices of others, we seem to contaminate
your Sacred purple, or alloy our present rejoycing; since that only is