430 CUEE BY Y 15 TOUCH. 



( In short, the revelations of spirit-land proved that king- 

 killing was looked upon as no small matter up yonder. On 

 one point of testimony black spirits and white were unani- 

 mous, and it was this: Britons would never prosper again 

 until they had atoned for beheading the father by long years 

 of worship to the son. The tendency of the age was to esta- 

 blish the restored king as demigod. If Charles II. had hap- 

 pened to be cast in a religious mould, whereby the pretensions 

 of his adulators could have been seconded, then, like to Japan, 

 we might have had a Mikado. The spirit moved our restored 

 sovereign otherwise : he worshipped fervently indeed, but at 

 another shrine/ 



In this strain does an evil-disposed writer proceed to 

 lengths whither I scorn to follow him. The tendency of his 

 reasonings is only too plain : let every good subject beware ! 



With Charles II. the majestic days of regal cure by 

 stroking of hands departed ; not that any abatement of the 

 divine gift had followed, so far as I can learn, but for the 

 reason that a certain perverse hardness of heart had afflicted 

 the multitude. The good gifts of Heaven cannot with im- 

 punity be spurned. That his gracious Majesty George III. 

 abandoned the practice of stroking for the evil, is already 

 recorded. Had he wisely kept to the ways of his forefathers, 

 need for tall neckcloths in the succeeding reign there perhaps 

 might not have been ; George IV. might then perhaps have 

 inaugurated the epoch of neck-ribbons and paper turn-downs; 

 Beau Brummel might have left the study of starch to washer- 

 women, devoting himself to higher aims and nobler occu- 

 pations. 



