Even now, after an interval of two hundred years, men still discuss the subject with something like passion, and are as strong in their sympathies toward one side or the other as in the days when their ancestors took up arms for king or Commons.
It is with the story of the war which followed the conversation of Harry Furness and Herbert Rippinghall that we have to do, not with that of the political occurrences which preceded it.

As to these, at least, no doubts or differences of opinion can arise.

The incidents of the war, its victories and defeats, its changing fortunes, and its final triumph are matters beyond the domain of politics, or of opinion; and indeed when once the war began politics ceased to have much further sway.

The original questions were lost sight of, and men fought for king or Parliament just as soldiers nowadays fight for England or Prance, without in any concerning themselves with the original grounds of quarrel..