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Daniel De Foe and Charles Churchill (1855)
Daniel De Foe and Charles Churchill - 1855 Author:John Forster Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in. WILLIAM THE THIHD. 1639—1702. Heee, then, in the prince who now ruled over England, was a man who also could stand Alone. Here was a king for such a s... more »ubject as De Foe. We may not wonder that the admiration conceived of him by the citizen merchant deepened into passion. He reverenced him, loved, and honoured him ; and kept as a festive day in his house, even to the close of his life, that great day in the month of November which is so remarkably associated with his name. On that day, exclaimed De Foe with enthusiasm, he was born; on that day he married the daughter of England; on that day he rescued the nation from a bondage worse than that of Egypt, a bondage of soul as well as bodily servitude! Its first celebration was held at a country house in Tooting, which it would seem De Foe now occupied; and the manner of it afforded, in itself, some proof of what we hardly need to be told, that the resolute, practical habits of this earnest, busy man, were not unattended by that genial 1702.] MARRIAGE AND ILL-FORTUNE. 27 warmth of nature which alone gives strength of character such as his, and without which never public virtue, and rarely private, comes quite to its maturity. In this village, too, in this year of the Revolution, we find him occupied in erecting a meeting-house; in drawing together a Nonconformist congregation; and in providing a man of learning for their minister. It was an object always near his heart. For every new foundation of that kind went some way towards the rendering Dissent a permanent separate interest, and an independent political body, in the State; and the Church's reviving heats made the task at once imperative and easy. Wherever intemperate language, and overbearing arrogant persecution, are characteristics of the highest churchmen, shoul...« less