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Indeed, in such times,

nest people had, within the space of a few months, supported the government of the Protector, that of the Rump, and that of the King, a man was not likely to be ashamed of abandoning his party for a place, or of voting for a bill which he had opposed.

plation of immemorial antiquity and to the Humble Petition and Advice, by immovable stability. Accustomed, on the Long Parliament again, by a third the other hand, to see change after Council of Officers, by the Long Parchange welcomed with eager hope and liament a third time, by the Convenending in disappointment, to see shame tion, and by the King. In such times, and confusion of face follow the ex- consistency is so inconvenient to a man travagant hopes and predictions of who affects it, and to all who are conrash and fanatical innovators, they had nected with him, that it ceases to be learned to look on professions of public regarded as a virtue, and is considered spirit, and on schemes of reform, with as impracticable obstinacy and idle distrust and contempt. They some- scrupulosity. times talked the language of devoted a good citizen may be bound in duty subjects, sometimes that of ardent to serve a succession of Governments. lovers of their country. But their Blake did so in one profession, and secret creed seems to have been, that Hale in another; and the conduct of loyalty was one great delusion and pa- both has been approved by posterity. triotism another. If they really enter- But it is clear that when inconsistency tained any predilection for the mo- with respect to the most important narchical or for the popular part of the public questions has ceased to be a reconstitution, for episcopacy or for pres-proach, inconsistency with respect to byterianism, that predilection was fee- questions of minor importance is not ble and languid, and instead of over-likely to be regarded as dishonourable. coming, as in the times of their fathers, In a country in which many very hothe dread of exile, confiscation, and death, was rarely of power to resist the slightest impulse of selfish ambition or of selfish fear. Such was the texture of the presbyterianism of Lauderdale, and of the speculative republicanism of Halifax. The sense of political honour seemed to be extinct. With the great mass of mankind, the test of integrity in a public man is consistency. This test, though very defective, is perhaps the best that any, except very acute or very near observers are capable of applying; and does undoubtedly enable the people to form an estimate of the characters of the great, which on the whole approximates to correctness. But during the latter part of the seventeenth century, inconsistency had necessarily ceased to be a disgrace; and a man was no more taunted with it, than he is taunted with being black at Timbuctoo. Nobody was ashamed of avowing what was common between him and the whole nation. In the short space of about seven years, the This character is susceptible of insupreme power had been held by the numerable modifications, according to Long Parliament, by a Council of the innumerable varieties of intellect Officers, by Barebones' Parliament, by and temper in which it may be found. a Council of Officers again, by a Pro- Men of unquiet minds and violent amtector according to the Instrument of bition followed a fearfully eccentric Government, by a Protector according | course, darted wildly from one extreme

The public men of the times which followed the Restoration were by no means deficient in courage or ability; and some kinds of talent appear to have been developed amongst them to a remarkable, we might almost say, to a morbid and unnatural degree. Neither Theramenes in ancient, nor Talleyrand in modern times, had a finer perception of all the peculiarities of character, and of all the indications of coming change, than some of our countrymen in that age. Their power of reading things of high import, in signs which to others were invisible or unintelligible, resembled magic. But the curse of Reuben was upon them all: "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel."

house of Neville attained in England, and that of Douglas in Scotland. During the latter years of George the Second, and through the whole reign of George the Third, members of that widely spread and powerful connection were almost constantly at the head either of the Government or of the Opposition. There were times when the cousinhood, as it was once nicknamed, would of itself have furnished almost all the materials necessary for the construction of an efficient Cabinet. Within the space of fifty years, three First Lords of the Treasury, three Secretaries of State, two Keepers of the Privy Seal, and four First Lords of the Admiralty were appointed from among the sons and grandsons of the Countess Temple.

to another, served and betrayed all an influence in the state scarcely inparties in turn, showed their unblush-ferior to that which, in widely different ing foreheads alternately in the van of times, and by widely different arts, the the most corrupt administrations and of the most factious oppositions, were privy to the most guilty mysteries, first of the Cabal, and then of the RyeHouse Plot, abjured their religion to win their sovereign's favour while they were secretly planning his overthrow, shrived themselves to Jesuits, with letters in cypher from the Prince of Orange in their pockets, corresponded with the Hague whilst in office under James, and began to correspond with St. Germain's as soon as they had kissed hands for office under William. But Temple was not one of these. He was not destitute of ambition. But his was not one of those souls in which unsatisfied ambition anticipates the tortures of hell, gnaws like the worm which dieth not, and burns like the fire which is not quenched. His prin- So splendid have been the fortunes ciple was to make sure of safety and of the main stock of the Temple comfort, and to let greatness come if family, continued by female succession. it would. It came: he enjoyed it: and, William Temple, the first of the line in the very first moment in which it who attained to any great historical could no longer be enjoyed without eminence, was of a younger branch. danger and vexation, he contentedly His father, Sir John Temple, was let it go. He was not exempt, we Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and think, from the prevailing political im- distinguished himself among the Privy morality. His mind took the conta- Councillors of that kingdom by the gion, but took it ad modum recipientis, zeal with which, at the commencement in a form so mild that an undiscerning of the struggle between the Crown judge might doubt whether it were in- and the Long Parliament, he supdeed the same fierce pestilence that ported the popular cause. He was arwas raging all around. The malady rested by order of the Duke of Orpartook of the constitutional languor mond, but regained his liberty by an of the patient. The general corruption, exchange, repaired to England, and mitigated by his calm and unadven- there sate in the House of Commons turous temperament, showed itself in as burgess for Chichester. He attached omissions and desertions, not in posi-himself to the Presbyterian party, and tive crimes; and his inactivity, though was one of those moderate members sometimes timorous and selfish, be- who, at the close of the year 1648, comes respectable when compared with voted for treating with Charles on the the malevolent and perfidious restless-basis to which that Prince had himself ness of Shaftesbury and Sunderland.

Temple sprang from a family which, though ancient and honourable, had, before his time, been scarcely mentioned in our history, but which, long after his death, produced so many eminent men, and formed such distinguished alliances, that it exercised, in a regular and constitutional manner,

agreed, and who were, in consequence, turned out of the House, with small ceremony, by Colonel Pride. Sir John seems, however, to have made his peace with the victorious Independents; for, in 1653, he resumed his office in Ireland.

Sir John Temple was married to a sister of the celebrated Henry Ham

mond, a learned and pious divine, who on religious subjects seem to have been took the side of the King with very such as might be expected from a young conspicuous zeal during the civil war, man of quick parts, who had received and was deprived of his preferment in a rambling education, who had not the church after the victory of the Par- thought deeply, who had been disliament. On account of the loss which gusted by the morose austerity of the Hammond sustained on this occasion, Puritans, and who, surrounded from he has the honour of being designated, childhood by the hubbub of conflicting in the cant of that new brood of Oxo- sects, might easily learn to feel an imnian sectaries who unite the worst parts partial contempt for them all. of the Jesuit to the worst parts of the Orangeman, as Hammond, Presbyter, Doctor, and Confessor.

On his road to France he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people were, like their father, warm for the royal cause. At an inn where they stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with inscribing on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this instance of malignancy the whole party were arrested, and brought before

the tenderness which, even in those troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to show where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.

William Temple, Sir John's eldest son, was born in London in the year 1628. He received his early education under his maternal uncle, was subsequently sent to school at Bishop-Stortford, and, at seventeen, began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favour- the governor. The sister, trusting to able to study. The Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling-greens of Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and discipline of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from Bishop-Stortford, and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance which would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact that, fifty years later, he was so absurd as to set up his own authority against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He made no proficiency either in the old philosophy which still lingered in the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord Bacon was the founder. But to the end of his life he continued to speak of the former with ignorant admiration, and of the latter with equally ignorant contempt.

After residing at Cambridge two years, he departed without taking a degree, and set out upon his travels. He seems to have been then a lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not by any means deeply read, but versed in all the superficial accomplishments of a gentleman, and acceptable in all polite societies. In politics he professed himself a Royalist. His opinions

This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties, as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King Charles. Even when the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in the mean time besieged by as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Destitute of the

very tender and anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances of her confidence in his honour and virtue. On one occasion she was most highly provoked by the way in which one of her brothers spoke of Temple. "We talked ourselves weary," she says; "he renounced me, and I defied him."

capacity, the energy, the magnanimity | an old and experienced statesman, has of his illustrious father, destitute also a somewhat ungraceful appearance in of the meek and placid virtues of his youth, might easily appear shocking to elder brother, this young man was a family who were ready to fight or to perhaps a more formidable rival in love suffer martyrdom for their exiled King than either of them would have been. and their persecuted church. The poor Mrs. Hutchinson, speaking the senti- girl was exceedingly hurt and irritated ments of the grave and aged, describes by these imputations on her lover, him as an "insolent foole," and a "de- defended him warmly behind his bauched ungodly cavalier." These ex-back, and addressed to himself some pressions probably mean that he was one who, among young and dissipated people, would pass for a fine gentleman. Dorothy was fond of dogs of larger and more formidable breed than those which lie on modern hearth-rugs; and Henry Cromwell promised that the highest functionaries at Dublin should be set to work to procure her a fine Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his attentions as very flattering, though his father was then only LordGeneral, and not yet Protector. Love, however, triumphed over ambition, and the young lady appears never to have regretted her decision; though, in a letter written just at the time when all England was ringing with the news of the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament, she could not refrain from reminding Temple, with pardonable vanity, "how great she might have been, if she had been so wise as to have taken hold of the offer of H. C."

Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, and spoke of him as an unprincipled adventurer, without honour or religion, ready to render service to any party for the sake of preferment. This is, indeed, a very distorted view of Temple's character. Yet a character, even in the most distorted view taken of it by the most angry and prejudiced minds, generally retains something of its outline. No caricaturist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or profusion to Marlborough. It must be allowed that the turn of mind which the eulogists of Temple have dignified with the appellation of philosophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in

Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue. We are not accurately informed respecting Temple's movements during that time. But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in London. He made himself master of the French and Spanish languages, and amused himself by writing essays and romances, an employment which at least served the purpose of forming his style. The specimen which Mr. Courtenay has preserved of these early compositions is by no means contemptible: indeed, there is one passage on Like and Dislike which could have been produced only by a mind habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us of the best things in Montaigne.

Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his mistress. His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many of them appear in these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt whether his readers will think him justified in inserting so large a number of these epistles. We only wish that there were twice as many. Very little indeed of the diplomatic correspondence of that generation is so well worth reading. There is a vile phrase of which bad historians are exceedingly fond, "the dignity of history." One writer is in possession of some anecdotes which would illustrate most strikingly the operation of

of a rat may be an era in chemistry; and an emperor may be poisoned by such ordinary means, and with such ordinary symptoms, that no scientific journal would notice the occurrence. An action for a hundred thousand pounds is in one sense a more momentous affair than an action for fifty pounds. But it by no means follows that the learned gentlemen who report. the proceedings of the courts of law ought to give a fuller account of an action for a hundred thousand pounds, than of an action for fifty pounds. For a cause in which a large sum is at stake may be important only to the particular plaintiff and the particular defendant. A cause, on the other hand, in which a small sum is at stake, may establish some great principle interesting to half the families in the kingdom. The case is exactly the same with that class of subjects of which historians

the Mississippi scheme on the manners
and morals of the Parisians. But he
suppresses those anecdotes, because they
are too low for the dignity of history.
Another is strongly tempted to mention
some facts indicating the horrible state
of the prisons of England two hundred
years ago. But he hardly thinks that
the sufferings of a dozen felons, pigging
together on bare bricks in a hole fifteen
feet square, would form a subject suited
to the dignity of history. Another,
from respect for the dignity of history,
publishes an account of the reign of
George the Second, without ever men-
tioning Whitefield's preaching in Moor-
fields. How should a writer, who can
talk about senates, and congresses of
sovereigns, and pragmatic sanctions,
and ravelines, and counterscarps, and
battles where ten thousand men are
killed, and six thousand men with fifty
stand of colours and eighty guns taken,
stoop to the Stock-Exchange, to New-treat.
gate, to the theatre, to the tabernacle?
Tragedy has its dignity as well as
history; and how much the tragic art
has owed to that dignity any man may
judge who will compare the majestic
Alexandrines in which the Seigneur
Oreste and Madame Andromaque utter
their complaints, with the chattering of
the fool in Lear and of the nurse in
Romeo and Juliet.

That a historian should not record trifles, that he should confine himself to what is important, is perfectly true. But many writers seem never to have considered on what the historical importance of an event depends. They seem not to be aware that the importance of a fact, when that fact is considered with reference to its immediate effects, and the importance of the same fact, when that fact is considered as part of the materials for the construction of a science, are two very different things. The quantity of good or evil which a transaction produces is by no means necessarily proportioned to the quantity of light which that transaction affords, as to the way in which good or evil may hereafter be produced. The poisoning of an emperor is in one sense a far more serious matter than the poisoning of a rat. But the poisoning

To an Athenian, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the result of the battle of Delium was far more important than the fate of the comedy of The Knights. But to us the fact that the comedy of The Knights was brought on the Athenian stage with success is far more important than the fact that the Athenian phalanx gave way at Delium. Neither the one event nor the other has now any intrinsic importance. We are in no danger of being speared by the Thebans. We are not quizzed in The Knights. To us the importance of both events consists in the value of the general truth which is to be learned from them. What general truth do we learn from the accounts which have come down to us of the battle of Delium? Very little more than this, that when two armies fight, it is not improbable that one of them will be very soundly beaten, a truth which it would not, we apprehend, be difficult to establish, even if all memory of the battle of Delium were lost among men. But a man who becomes acquainted with the comedy of The Knights, and with the history of that comedy, at once feels his mind enlarged. Society is presented to him under a new aspect. He may have read and travelled much. He may have

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