Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 4.djvu/21

 cherries of the year was accepted from him by the King, and the sprightliness with which His Majesty conversed at supper with those who stood round the table.

On the twenty-fourth of June, the tenth day after William's landing, he marched southward from Loughbrickland with all his forces. He was fully determined to take the first opportunity of fighting. Schomberg and some other officers recommended caution and delay. But the King answered that he had not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. The event seems to prove that he judged rightly as a general. That he judged rightly as a statesman cannot be doubted. He knew that the English nation was discontented with the way in which the war had hitherto been conducted; that nothing but rapid and splendid success could revive the enthusiasm of his friends and quell the spirit of his enemies; and that a defeat could scarcely be more injurious to his fame and to his interests than a languid and indecisive campaign.

The country through which he advanced had, during eighteen months, been fearfully wasted both by soldiers and by Rapparees. The cattle had been slaughtered: the plantations had been cut down: the fences and houses were in ruins. Not a human being was to be found near the road, except a few naked and meagre wretches who had no food but the husks of oats, and who were seen picking those husks, like chickens, from amidst dust and cinders. Yet, even under such disadvantages, the natural fertility of the country, the rich green of the earth, the bays and rivers so admirably fitted for trade, could not but strike the King's observant eye. Perhaps he thought how different an aspect that unhappy region would have presented if it had been blessed with such a government and such a religion as had made his native Holland the wonder of the world; how endless a succession of pleasure houses, tulip gardens and dairy farms would have lined the road from Lisburn to Belfast; how many hundreds of barges would have been