I


Nature is manifold, not infinite, though the extent of the resources of
which she can dispose almost enables her to pass for such. Her cards are so
multitudinous that the pairs are easily shuffled into ages so far asunder
that their resemblance escapes remark. But sometimes her mischievous
daughter Fortune manages to thrust these duplicates into such conspicuous
places that their similarity cannot pass unobserved, and Nature is caught
plagiarising from herself. She is thus detected dealing a king--or
knave--a second time in the person of a king who has already fallen from
her pack as an emperor. Brilliant, careless, selfish, yet good-natured
_vauriens_, the Roman Emperor Gallienus and our Charles the Second excelled
in every art save the art of reigning, and might have excelled in that also
if they would have taken the trouble. The circumstances of their reigns
were in many respects as similar as their characters. Both were the sons of
grave and strict fathers, each of whom had met with terrible misfortunes:
one deprived of his liberty by his enemies, the other of his head by his
own subjects. Each of the sons had been grievously vexed by rebels, but
Charles's troubles from this quarter had mostly ended where those of
Gallienus began. Each saw his dominions ravaged by pestilence in a manner
beyond all former experience. The Goths destroyed the temple of the
Ephesian Diana, and the Dutch burned the English fleet at Chatham. Charles
shut up the Exchequer, and Gallienus debased the coinage. Charles accepted
a pension from Louis XIV., and Gallienus devolved the burden of his Eastern
provinces on a Syrian Emir. Their tastes and pursuits were as similar as
their histories. Charles excelled as a wit and a critic; Gallienus as a
poet and a gastronomer. Charles was curious about chemistry, and founded