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great height, to such a height, indeed, | enjoyed the highest personal consideras seems to have excited the jealousy ation. He was surrounded by objects of his friend Arlington. While London interesting in the highest degree to a and Amsterdam resounded with accla- man of his observant turn of mind. mations of joy, the Secretary, in very He had no wearing labour, no heavy cold official language, communicated to responsibility; and, if he had no opporhis friend the approbation of the King; tunity of adding to his high reputation, and, lavish as the Government was of he ran no risk of impairing it. titles and of money, its ablest servant was neither ennobled nor enriched.

Temple's next mission was to Aixla-Chapelle, where a general congress met for the purpose of perfecting the work of the Triple Alliance. On his road he received abundant proofs of the estimation in which he was held. Salutes were fired from the walls of the towns through which he passed; the population poured forth into the streets to see him; and the magistrates entertained him with speeches and banquets. After the close of the negotiations at Aix he was appointed Ambassador at the Hague. But in both these missions he experienced much vexation from the rigid, and, indeed, unjust parsimony of the Government. Profuse to many unworthy applicants, the Ministers were niggardly to him alone. They secretly disliked his politics; and they seem to have indemnified themselves for the humiliation of adopting his measures, by cutting down his salary and delaying the settlement of his outfit.

At the Hague he was received with cordiality by De Witt, and with the most signal marks of respect by the States-General. His situation was in one point extremely delicate. The Prince of Orange, the hereditary chief of the faction opposed to the administration of De Witt, was the nephew of Charles. To preserve the confidence of the ruling party, without showing any want of respect to so near a relation of his own master, was no easy task. But Temple acquitted himself so well that he appears to have been in great favour, both with the Grand Pensionary and with the Prince. In the main, the years which he spent at the Hague seem, in spite of some pecuniary difficulties occasioned by the ill-will of the English Ministers, to have passed very agreeably. He

But evil times were at hand. Though Charles had for a moment deviated into a wise and dignified policy, his heart had always been with France; and France employed every means of seduction to lure him back. His impatience of control, his greediness for money, his passion for beauty, his family affections, all his tastes, all his feelings, were practised on with the utmost dexterity. His interior Cabinet was now composed of men such as that generation, and that generation alone, produced; of men at whose audacious profligacy the renegades and jobbers of our own time look with the same sort of admiring despair with which our sculptors contemplate the Theseus, and our painters the Cartoons. To be a real, hearty, deadly enemy of the liberties and religion of the nation was, in that dark conclave, an honourable distinction, a distinction which belonged only to the daring and impetuous Clifford. His associates were men to whom all creeds and all constitutions were alike; who were equally ready to profess the faith of Geneva, of Lambeth, and of Rome; who were equally ready to be tools of power without any sense of loyalty, and stirrers of sedition without any zeal for freedom.

It was hardly possible even for a man so penetrating as De Witt to foresee to what depths of wickedness and infamy this execrable administration would descend. Yet, many signs of the great woe which was coming on Europe, the visit of the Duchess of Orleans to her brother, the unexplained mission of Buckingham to Paris, the sudden occupation of Lorraine by the French, made the Grand Pensionary uneasy; and his alarm increased when he learned that Temple had received orders to repair instantly to London. De Witt earnestly pressed for an explanation. Temple very sincerely

replied that he hoped that the English | with great vehemence, that the States Ministers would adhere to the prin- had behaved basely, that De Witt was ciples of the Triple Alliance. "I can answer," he said, "only for myself. But that I can do. If a new system is to be adopted, I will never have any part in it. I have told the King so; and I will make my words good. If I return you will know more: and if I do not return you will guess more." De Witt smiled, and answered that he would hope the best, and would do all in his power to prevent others from forming unfavourable surmises.

a rogue and a rascal, that it was below the King of England, or any other king, to have any thing to do with such wretches; that this ought to be made known to all the world, and that it was the duty of the Minister at the Hague to declare it publicly. Temple commanded his temper as well as he could, and replied calmly and firmly, that he should make no such declaration, and that, if he were called upon to give his opinion of the States and their Ministers, he would say exactly what he thought.

In October, 1670, Temple reached London; and all his worst suspicions were immediately more than confirmed. He now saw clearly that the tempest He repaired to the Secretary's house, was gathering fast, that the great aland was kept an hour and a half wait-liance which he had formed and over ing in the ante-chamber, whilst Lord which he had watched with parental Ashley was closeted with Arlington. care was about to be dissolved, that When at length the doors were thrown times were at hand when it would be open, Arlington was dry and cold, necessary for him, if he continued in asked trifling questions about the voy-public life, either to take part decidedly age, and then, in order to escape from against the Court, or to forfeit the high the necessity of discussing business, reputation which he enjoyed at home called in his daughter, an engaging and abroad. He began to make prelittle girl of three years old, who was parations for retiring altogether from long after described by poets "as business. He enlarged a little garden dressed in all the bloom of smiling na- which he had purchased at Sheen, and ture," and whom Evelyn, one of the laid out some money in ornamenting witnesses of her inauspicious marriage, his house there. He was still nomimournfully designated as "the sweetest, nally ambassador to Holland; and the hopefullest, most beautiful child, and English Ministers continued during most virtuous too." Any particular | some months to flatter the States with conversation was impossible: and the hope that he would speedily return. Temple, who with all his constitutional or philosophical indifference, was sufficiently sensitive on the side of vanity, felt this treatment keenly. The next day he offered himself to the notice of the King, who was snuffing up the morning air and feeding his ducks in the Mall. Charles was civil, but, like Arlington, carefully avoided all conversation on politics. Temple found that all his most respectable friends were entirely excluded from the secrets of the inner council, and were awaiting in anxiety and dread for what those There he amused himself with garmysterious deliberations might produce. dening, which he practised so successAt length he obtained a glimpse of fully that the fame of his fruit-trees light. The bold spirit and fierce pas-soon spread far and wide. But letters sions of Clifford made him the most were his chief solace. He had, as we unfit of all men to be the keeper of a have mentioned, been from his youth momentous secret. He told Temple, in the habit of diverting himself with

At length, in June, 1671, the designs of the Cabal were ripe. The infamous treaty with France had been ratified. The season of deception was past, and that of insolence and violence had arrived. Temple received his formal dismission, kissed the King's hand, was repaid for his services with some of those vague compliments and promises which cost so little to the cold heart, the easy temper, and the ready tongue of Charles, and quietly withdrew to his little nest, as he called it, at Sheen.

composition. The clear and agreeable | or accurate reasoner, but was an excellanguage of his despatches had early lent observer, that he had no call to attracted the notice of his employers; philosophical speculation, but that he and, before the peace of Breda, he had, was qualified to excel as a writer of at the request of Arlington, published Memoirs and Travels. a pamphlet on the war, of which no- While Temple was engaged in these thing is now known, except that it had pursuits, the great storm which had some vogue at the time, and that long been brooding over Europe burst Charles, not a contemptible judge, pro- with such fury as for a moment seemed nounced it to be very well written. to threaten ruin to all free governments Temple had also, a short time before and all Protestant churches. France he began to reside at the Hague, and England, without seeking for any written a treatise on the state of Ire- decent pretext, declared war against land, in which he showed all the feel- Holland. The immense armies of ings of a Cromwellian. He had gra- Lewis poured across the Rhine, and dually formed a style singularly lucid invaded the territory of the United Proand melodious, superficially deformed, vinces. The Dutch seemed to be paraindeed, by Gallicisms and Hispanicisms, lysed by terror. Great towns opened picked up in travel or in negotiation, their gates to straggling parties. Rebut at the bottom pure English, which giments flung down their arms without generally flowed along with careless seeing an enemy. Guelderland, Overyssimplicity, but occasionally rose even sel, Utrecht were overrun by the coninto Ciceronian magnificence. The querors. The fires of the French camp length of his sentences has often been were seen from the walls of Amsterremarked. But in truth this length is dam. In the first madness of despair only apparent. A critic who considers the devoted people turned their rage as one sentence every thing that lies against the most illustrious of their between two full stops will undoubt- fellow-citizens. De Ruyter was saved edly call Temple's sentences long. But with difficulty from assassins. De Witt a critic who examines them carefully was torn to pieces by an infuriated will find that they are not swollen by rabble. No hope was left to the Comparenthetical matter, that their struc-monwealth, save in the dauntless, the ture is scarcely ever intricate, that they ardent, the indefatigable, the unconare formed merely by accumulation, querable spirit which glowed under the and that, by the simple process of now frigid demeanour of the young Prince and then leaving out a conjunction, of Orange. and now and then substituting a full stop for a semicolon, they might, without any alteration in the order of the words, be broken up into very short periods, with no sacrifice except that of euphony. The long sentences of Hooker and Clarendon, on the contrary, are really long sentences, and cannot be turned into short ones, without being entirely taken to pieces.

That great man rose at once to the full dignity of his part, and approved himself a worthy descendant of the line of heroes who had vindicated the liberties of Europe against the house of Austria. Nothing could shake his fidelity to his country, not his close connection with the royal family of England, not the most earnest solicitations, not the most tempting offers. The best known of the works which The spirit of the nation, that spirit Temple composed during his first re- which had maintained the great contreat from official business are an flict against the gigantic power of Essay on Government, which seems to Philip, revived in all its strength. us exceedingly childish, and an Account Counsels, such as are inspired by a of the United Provinces, which we generous despair, and are almost alvalue as a master-piece in its kind. ways followed by a speedy dawn of Whoever compares these two treatises hope, were gravely concerted by the will probably agree with us in think-statesmen of Holland. To open their ing that Temple was not a very deep dykes, to man their ships, to leave their

country, with all its miracles of art and the manner the other half. Liberal industry, its cities, its canals, its villas, men would have rejoiced to see a toleits pastures, and its tulip gardens, ration granted, at least to all Protestant buried under the waves of the German sects. Many high churchmen had no ocean, to bear to a distant climate objection to the King's dispensing power. their Calvinistic faith and their old But a tolerant act done in an unconBatavian liberties, to fix, perhaps with stitutional way excited the opposition happier auspices, the new Stadthouse of all who were zealous either for the of their Commonwealth, under other Church or for the privileges of the peostars, and amidst a strange vegetation, ple, that is to say, of ninety-nine Engin the Spice Islands of the Eastern lishmen out of a hundred. The Minisseas; such were the plans which they ters were, therefore, most unwilling to had the spirit to form; and it is seldom meet the Houses. Lawless and despethat men who have the spirit to form rate as their counsels were, the boldest such plans are reduced to the necessity of them had too much value for his of executing them. neck to think of resorting to benevolences, privy-seals, ship-money, or any of the other unlawful modes of extortion which had been familiar to the preceding age. The audacious fraud of shutting up the Exchequer furnished them with about twelve hundred thousand pounds, a sum which, even in

The Allies had, during a short period, obtained success beyond their hopes. This was their auspicious moment. They neglected to improve it. It passed away; and it returned no more. The Prince of Orange arrested the progress of the French armies. Lewis returned to be amused and flat-better hands than theirs, would not tered at Versailles. The country was under water. The winter approached. The weather became stormy. The fleets of the combined kings could no longer keep the sea. The republic had obtained a respite; and the circumstances were such that a respite was, in a military view, important, in a political view almost decisive.

The alliance against Holland, formidable as it was, was yet of such a nature that it could not succeed at all, unless it succeeded at once. The English Ministers could not carry on the war without money. They could legally obtain money only from the Parliament; and they were most unwilling to call the Parliament together. The measures which Charles had adopted at home were even more unpopular than his foreign policy. He had bound himself by a treaty with Lewis to reestablish the Catholic religion in England; and, in pursuance of this design, he had entered on the same path which his brother afterwards trod with greater obstinacy to a more fatal end. The King had annulled, by his own sole authority, the laws against Catholics and other dissenters. The matter of the Declaration of Indulgence exasperated one half of his subjects, and

have sufficed for the war-charges of a
single year. And this was a step
which could never be repeated, a step
which, like most breaches of public
faith, was speedily found to have caused
pecuniary difficulties greater than those
which it removed.
All the money
that could be raised was gone; Hol-
land was not conquered; and the
King had no resource but in a Parlia-
ment.

Had a general election taken place at this crisis, it is probable that the country would have sent up representatives as resolutely hostile to the Court as those who met in November, 1640; that the whole domestic and foreign policy of the Government would have been instantly changed; and that the members of the Cabal would have expiated their crimes on Tower Hill. But the House of Commons was still the same which had been elected twelve years before, in the midst of the transports of joy, repentance, and loyalty which followed the Restoration; and no pains had been spared to attach it to the Court by places, ponsions, and bribes. To the great mass of the people it was scarcely less odious than the Cabinet itself. Yet, though it did not immediately proceed

to those strong measures which a new policy of the Cabinet, and declared himself on the side of the House of Commons. Even that age had not witnessed so portentous a display of impudence.

House would in all probability have adopted, it was sullen and unmanageable, and undid, slowly indeed, and by degrees, but most effectually, all that the Ministers had done. In one session it annihilated their system of internal government. In a second session it gave a death-blow to their foreign policy.

He

His

The King, by the advice of the French Court, which cared much more about the war on the Continent than about the conversion of the English The dispensing power was the first heretics, determined to save his foreign object of attack. The Commons would policy at the expense of his plans in not expressly approve the war; but favour of the Catholic church. neither did they as yet expressly con- obtained a supply; and in return for demn it; and they were even willing this concession he cancelled the Declato grant the King a supply for the pur-ration of Indulgence, and made a formal pose of continuing hostilities, on con- renunciation of the dispensing power dition that he would redress internal before he prorogued the Houses. grievances, among which the Declaration But it was no more in his power to of Indulgence held the foremost place. go on with the war than to maintain Shaftesbury, who was Chancellor, his arbitrary system at home. saw that the game was up, that he had Ministry, betrayed within, and fiercely got all that was to be got by siding assailed from without, went rapidly to with despotism and Popery, and that pieces. Clifford threw down the white it was high time to think of being a staff, and retired to the woods of Ugdemagogue and a good Protestant. brook, vowing, with bitter tears, that The Lord Treasurer Clifford was he would never again see that turbumarked out by his boldness, by his lent city, and that perfidious Court. openness, by his zeal for the Catholic Shaftesbury was ordered to deliver up religion, by something which, compared the Great Seal, and instantly carried with the villany of his colleagues, might over his front of brass and his tongue almost be called honesty, to be the of poison to the ranks of the Opposiscapegoat of the whole conspiracy. tion. The remaining members of the The King came in person to the House Cabal had neither the capacity of the of Peers for the purpose of requesting late Chancellor, nor the courage and their Lordships to mediate between enthusiasm of the late Treasurer. him and the Commons touching the They were not only unable to carry Declaration of Indulgence. He reon their former projects, but began to mained in the House while his speech tremble for their own lands and heads. was taken into consideration; a com- The Parliament, as soon as it again met, mon practice with him; for the debates began to murmur against the alliance amused his sated mind, and were some- with France and the war with Holland; times, he used to say, as good as a and the murmur gradually swelled into comedy. A more sudden turn his a fierce and terrible clamour. Strong Majesty had certainly never seen in resolutions were adopted against Lauany comedy of intrigue, either at his derdale and Buckingham. Articles of own play-house, or at the Duke's, than impeachment were exhibited against that which this memorable debate pro- Arlington. The Triple Alliance was duced. The Lord Treasurer spoke mentioned with reverence in every dewith characteristic ardour and intre- bate; and the eyes of all men were pidity in defence of the Declaration. turned towards the quiet orchard, When he sat down, the Lord Chan- where the author of that great league cellor rose from the woolsack, and, to was amusing himself with reading and the amazement of the King and of the gardening. House, attacked Clifford, attacked the Declaration for which he had himself spoken in Council, gave up the whole

Temple was ordered to attend the King, and was charged with the office of negotiating a separate peace with

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