The Argosy — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

130 SECRET AS THE ‘GRA 2. A BIOGRAPHY. A.D. 1665—1723. By C. J. LANGSTON. I, HE times were out of joint. ‘If one look unto the land behold darkness and sorrow.” <A treacherous debauchee sat on the throne, “ false, fleeting, perjured ;” leering with bleared eyes at everything pureand good. ‘That leer was taken up by the courtiers and passed on to the commonalty of the realm. Perish all virtue, freedom of thought, and worship; but, God save the King. ‘The nation was drunk, but not with wine; drunk with excess of liberty to work its own sweet will, and with the licence to do everything save establish a conventicle, or contravene the Thirty-nine Articles. One prophet there was—a Samson who shook the temple of Mammon, and the light of whose eyes had been quenched in manhood, but whose fiery soul burned in the dark. He lifted his still beautiful orbs to heaven and uttered a parable against the backsliding of the age; then dying, poured out his soul in undying song. Another yoice was at hand to cry aloud and spare not, even with the trumpet of the Archangel. It needed not the despairing shriek of the fanatic along her streets, ‘‘ There is wrath gone out from the Lord, the plague is begun.” For, in the modern Babylon people were hurrying to and fro, silent and far apart; and at intervals there appeared written on the wall, like the ‘‘ Mene mene” of old, the awful sentence, ‘“ Lord, have mercy upon us,” encircling the image of the cross. Truly the times were out of joint in 1665. There was brought to a quiet country church for baptism “* Edward, infant son of Thomas and Margaret B——, of Mersham, Gent.” No venerable font lent its hoary sanction to the sacred rite, for two years afterwards occurs the entry in the Parish Book, ‘‘ Payd Master Gower and Mason Epps ye sum of one shilling and ninepence for bringing ye auld font from the Lodge forstall. Repayring ye same at ye base, eightpence.” The parents of Edward were fairly well to do, having an estate of seven hundred acres or more, and living in a picturesque manor house, now divided into cottages, but little altered during the last two hundred years. It is a high-roofed, half-timbered dwelling of a style frequently seen in Kent, the first floor projecting on stout oak joists, and having odd corners covered with ivy, with broad-based chimneys, suggestive of secret chambers, and an old-fashioned garden, overrun with simple flowers and herbs, such as Shakespeare speaks of, and where many a Puritan posy has been gathered. Even now the sweet Gomicbooks (E(@)