But
Cromwell, though in the height of his fame when beheld by De
Grammont--though feared at home and abroad--was little calculated to win
suffrages from a mere man of pleasure like De Grammont. The court, the
city, the country, were in his days gloomy, discontented, joyless: a
proscribed nobility was the sure cause of the thin though few
festivities of the now lugubrious gallery of Whitehall. Puritanism drove
the old jovial churchmen into retreat, and dispelled every lingering
vestige of ancient hospitality: long graces and long sermons,
sanctimonious manners, and grim, sad faces, and sad-coloured dresses
were not much to De Grammont's taste; he returned to France, and
declared that he had gained no advantage from his travels. Nevertheless,
either from choice or necessity, he made another trial of the damps and
fogs of England.[8]
When he again visited our country, Charles II. had been two years seated
on the throne of his father. Everything was changed, and the British
court was in its fullest splendour; whilst the rejoicings of the people
of England at the Restoration were still resounding through the land.
If one could include royal personages in the rather gay than worthy
category of the 'wits and beaux of society,' Charles II.
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