of York from the throne.
compromise were rejected. It must
not be forgotten, however, that, in the
midst of the confusion, one inestimable
law, the only benefit which England
has derived from the troubles of that
period, but a benefit which may well be
set off against a great mass of evil, the
Habeas Corpus Act, was pushed through
the Houses and received the royal

assent.

All offers of The King, however, had made up his mind, and ordered the Parliament to be instantly dissolved. Temple's council was now nothing more than an ordinary privy council, if indeed it were not something less; and, though Temple threw the blame of this on the King, on Lord Shaftesbury, on every body but himself, it is evident that the failure of his plan is to be chiefly asIcribed to its own inherent defects. His The King, finding the Parliament as council was too large to transact busitroublesome as ever, determined to ness which required expedition, secrecy, prorogue it; and he did so, without and cordial co-operation. A Cabinet even mentioning his intention to the was therefore formed within the CounCouncil by whose advice he had cil. The Cabinet and the majority of pledged himself, only a month before, the Council differed; and, as was to be to conduct the Government. The coun- expected, the Cabinet carried their sellors were generally dissatisfied; and point. Four votes outweighed sixShaftesbury swore, with great vehe-and-twenty. This being the case, the mence, that if he could find out who meetings of the thirty were not only the secret advisers were, he would have useless, but positively noxious. their heads.

At the ensuing election, Temple was chosen for the university of Cambridge. The only objection that was made to him by the members of that learned body was that, in his little work on Holland, he had expressed great approbation of the tolerant policy of the States; and this blemish, however serious, was overlooked, in consideration of his high reputation, and of the strong recommendations with which he

The Parliament rose; London was deserted; and Temple retired to his villa, whence, on council days, he went to Hampton Court. The post of Secretary was again and again pressed on him by his master and by his three colleagues of the inner Cabinet. Halifax, in particular, threatened laughingly to burn down the house at Sheen. But Temple was immovable. His short experience of English politics had dis-was furnished by the Court. gusted him; and he felt himself so much oppressed by the responsibility under which he at present lay that he had no inclination to add to the load.

During the summer he remained at Sheen, and amused himself with rearing melons, leaving to the three other members of the inner Cabinet the whole When the term fixed for the proro- direction of public affairs. Some ungation had nearly expired, it became explained cause began, about this time, necessary to consider what course to alienate them from him. They do should be taken. The King and his not appear to have been made angry four confidential advisers thought that by any part of his conduct, or to have a new Parliament might possibly be disliked him personally. But they had, more manageable, and could not pos- we suspect, taken the measure of his sibly be more refractory, than that mind, and satisfied themselves that he which they now had, and they there- was not a man for that troubled time, fore determined on a dissolution. But and that he would be a mere incumwhen the question was proposed at brance to them. Living themselves for council, the majority, jealous, it should ambition, they despised his love of ease. seem, of the small directing knot, and Accustomed to deep stakes in the game unwilling to bear the unpopularity of of political hazard, they despised his the measures of Government, while piddling play. They looked on his excluded from all power, joined cautious measures with the sort of Shaftesbury, and the members of the scorn with which the gamblers at the Cabinet were left alone in the minority. | ordinary, in Sir Walter Scott's novel,

regarded Nigel's practice of never said, disobey the King by objecting to touching a card but when he was cer- a measure on which his Majesty was tain to win. He soon found that he determined to hear no argument; but was left out of their secrets. The he would most earnestly entreat his King had, about this time, a dangerous Majesty, if the present Council was inattack of illness. The Duke of York, competent to give advice, to dissolve it on receiving the news, returned from and select another; for it was absurd Holland. The sudden appearance of to have counsellors who did not counsel, the detested Popish successor excited and who were summoned only to be anxiety throughout the country. Tem- silent witnesses of the acts of others. ple was greatly amazed and disturbed. The King listened courteously. But He hastened up to London and visited the members of the Cabinet resented Essex, who professed to be astonished this reproof highly; and from that day and mortified, but could not disguise a Temple was almost as much estranged sneering smile. Temple then saw Ha- from them as from Shaftesbury. lifax, who talked to him much about the pleasures of the country, the anxieties of office, and the vanity of all human things, but carefully avoided politics, and when the Duke's return was mentioned, only sighed, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted up his eyes and hands. In a short time Temple found that his two friends had been laughing at him, and that they had themselves sent for the Duke, in order that his Royal Highness might, if the King should die, be on the spot to frustrate the designs of Monmouth.

He wished to retire altogether from business. But just at this time Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, and some other counsellors of the popular party, waited on the King in a body, declared their strong disapprobation of his measures, and requested to be excused from attending any more at council. Temple feared that if, at this moment, he also were to withdraw, he might be supposed to act in concert with those decided opponents of the Court, and to have determined on taking a course hostile to the Government. He, therefore, continued to go occasionally to the board; but he had no longer any real share in the direction of public affairs.

At length the long term of the pro

He was soon convinced, by a still stronger proof, that, though he had not exactly offended his master or his colleagues in the Cabinet, he had ceased to enjoy their confidence. The result of the general election had been de-rogation expired. In October, 1680, cidedly unfavourable to the Government; and Shaftesbury impatiently expected the day when the Houses were to meet. The King, guided by the advice of the inner Cabinet, determined on a step of the highest importance. He told the Council that he had resolved to prorogue the new Parliament for a year, and requested them not to object; for he had, he said, considered the subject fully, and had made up his mind. All who were not in the secret were thunderstruck. Temple as much as any. Several members rose, and entreated to be heard against the prorogation. But the King silenced them, and declared that his resolution was unalterable. Temple, much hurt at the manner in which both himself and the Council had been treated, spoke with great spirit. He would not, he

the Houses met; and the great question of the Exclusion was revived. Few parliamentary contests in our history appear to have called forth a greater display of talent; none certainly ever called forth more violent passions. The whole nation was convulsed by party spirit. The gentlemen of every county, the traders of every town, the boys of every public school, were divided into exclusionists and abhorrers. The book-stalls were covered with tracts on the sacredness of hereditary right, on the omnipotence of Parliament, on the dangers of a disputed succession, on the dangers of a Popish reign. It was in the midst of this ferment that Temple took his seat, for the first time, in the House of Commons.

The occasion was a very great one. His talents, his long experience of

affairs, his unspotted public character, and extensive converse with the world

to teach him that there are conjunctures when men think that all who are not with them are against them, that there are conjunctures when a lukewarm friend, who will not put himself the least out of his way, who will make no exertion, who will run no risk, is more

hoped that the fair character of Temple would add credit to an unpopular and suspected Government. But his Majesty soon found that this fair character resembled pieces of furniture which we have seen in the drawing-rooms of very precise old ladies, and which are a great deal too white to be used. This exceed

the high posts which he had filled, seemed to mark him out as a man on whom much would depend. He acted like himself. He saw that, if he supported the Exclusion, he made the King and the heir presumptive his enemies, and that, if he opposed it, he made himself an object of hatred to the un-distasteful than an enemy. Charles had scrupulous and turbulent Shaftesbury. He neither supported nor opposed it. He quietly absented himself from the House. Nay, he took care, he tells us, never to discuss the question in any society whatever. Lawrence Hyde, afterwards Earl of Rochester, asked him why he did not attend in his place. Temple replied that he acted accord-ing niceness was altogether out of seaing to Solomon's advice, neither to oppose the mighty, nor to go about to stop the current of a river. Hyde answered, "You are a wise and a quiet man." And this might be true. But surely such wise and quiet men have no call to be members of Parliament in critical times.

son. Neither party wanted a man who was afraid of taking a part, of incurring abuse, of making enemies. There were probably many good and moderate men who would have hailed the appearance of a respectable mediator. But Temple was not a mediator. He was merely a neutral.

His

A single session was quite enough At last, however, he had escaped from for Temple. When the Parliament public life, and found himself at liberty was dissolved, and another summoned to follow his favourite pursuits. at Oxford, he obtained an audience of fortune was easy. He had about fifteen the King, and begged to know whether | hundred a year, besides the Mastership his Majesty wished him to continue in of the Rolls in Ireland, an office in Parliament. Charles, who had a sin- which he had succeeded his father, and gularly quick eye for the weaknesses which was then a mere sinecure for life, of all who came near him, had no doubt requiring no residence. His reputation seen through Temple, and rated the both as a negotiator and a writer stood Parliamentary support of so cool and high. He resolved to be safe, to enjoy guarded a friend at its proper value. himself, and to let the world take its He answered good-naturedly, but we course; and he kept his resolution. suspect a little contemptuously, "I Darker times followed. The Oxford doubt, as things stand, your coming into Parliament was dissolved. The Tories the House will not do much good. I were triumphant. A terrible vengeance think you may as well let it alone." was inflicted on the chiefs of the OpSir William accordingly informed his position. Temple learned in his reconstituents that he should not again treat the disastrous fate of several of apply for their suffrages, and set off for his old colleagues in council. ShaftesSheen, resolving never again to meddle bury fled to Holland. Russell died on with public affairs. He soon found that the scaffold. Essex added a yet sadder the King was displeased with him. and more fearful story to the bloody Charles, indeed, in his usual easy way, chronicles of the Tower. Monmouth protested that he was not angry, not at clung in agonies of supplication round all. But in a few days he struck Tem- the knees of the stern uncle whom he ple's name out of the list of Privy Coun- | had wronged, and tasted a bitterness sellors. Why this was done Temple worse than that of death, the bitterness declares himself unable to comprehend. of knowing that he had humbled himBut surely it hardly required his long self in vain. A tyrant trampled on

the liberties and religion of the realm. | secluded, Temple passed the remainder The national spirit swelled high under of his life. The air agreed with him. the oppression. Disaffection spread The soil was fruitful, and well suited even to the strongholds of loyalty, to the cloisters of Westminster, to the schools of Oxford, to the guard-room of the household troops, to the very hearth and bed-chamber of the Sovereign. But the troubles which agitated the whole country did not reach the quiet orangery in which Temple loitered away several years without once seeing the smoke of London. He now and then appeared in the circle at Richmond or Windsor. But the only expressions which he is recorded to have used during these perilous times were, that he would be a good subject, but that he had done with politics.

to an experimental farmer and gardener. The grounds were laid out with the angular regularity which Sir William had admired in the flowerbeds of Haarlem and the Hague. A beautiful rivulet, flowing from the bills of Surrey, bounded the domain. But a straight canal which, bordered by a terrace, intersected the garden, was probably more admired by the lovers of the picturesque in that age. The house was small, but neat and wellfurnished; the neighbourhood very thinly peopled. Temple had no visiters, except a few friends who were willing to travel twenty or thirty miles in order to see him, and now and then a foreigner whom curiosity brought to have a look at the author of the Triple Alliance.

The Revolution came: he remained strictly neutral during the short struggle; and he then transferred to the new settlement the same languid sort of loyalty which he had felt for his Here, in May, 1694, died Lady Temformer masters. He paid court to Wil-ple. From the time of her marriage liam at Windsor, and William dined we know little of her, except that her with him at Sheen. But, in spite of letters were always greatly admired, the most pressing solicitations. Temple and that she had the honour to correrefused to become Secretary of State. spond constantly with Queen Mary. The refusal evidently proceeded only Lady Giffard, who, as far as appears, from his dislike of trouble and danger; had always been on the best terms and not, as some of his admirers would with her sister-in-law, still continued have us believe, from any scruple of to live with Sir William. conscience or honour. For he consented that his son should take the office of Secretary at War under the new Sovereign. This unfortunate young man destroyed himself within a week after his appointment, from vexation at find-attended Sir William as an amanuensis, ing that his advice had led the King into some improper steps with regard to Ireland. He seems to have inherited his father's extreme sensibility to failure, without that singular prudence which kept his father out of all situations in which any serious failure was to be apprehended. The blow fell heavily on the family. They retired in deep dejection to Moor Park, which they now preferred to Sheen, on account of the greater distance from London. In that spot*, then very

But there were other inmates of Moor Park to whom a far higher interest belongs. An eccentric, uncouth, disagreeable young Irishman, who had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin,

for board and twenty pounds a year, dined at the second table, wrote bad verses in praise of his employer, and made love to a very pretty, dark-eyed young girl, who waited on Lady Giffard. Little did Temple imagine that the coarse exterior of his dependent concealed a genius equally suited to politics and to letters, a genius destined to shake great kingdoms, to stir the laughter and the rage of millions, and to leave to posterity memorials which can perish only with the English language. Little did he think that the flirtation in his servants' hall, which he perhaps scarcely deigned to make the subject of a jest, was the beginning of

a long unprosperous love, which was to be as widely famed as the passion of Petrarch or of Abelard. Sir William's secretary was Jonathan Swift. Lady Giffard's waiting maid was poor Stella. Swift retained no pleasing recollection of Moor Park. And we may easily suppose a situation like his to have been intolerably painful to a mind haughty, irascible, and conscious of pre-eminent ability. Long after, when he stood in the Court of Requests with a circle of gartered peers round him, or punned and rhymed with Cabinet Ministers over Secretary St. John's Monte-Pulciano, he remembered, with deep and sore feeling, how miserable he used to be for days together when he suspected that Sir William had taken something ill. He could hardly believe that he, the Swift who chid the Lord Treasurer, rallied the Captain General, and confronted the pride of the Duke of Buckinghamshire with pride still more inflexible, could be the same being who had passed nights of sleepless anxiety, in musing over a cross look or a testy word of a patron. Faith," he wrote to Stella, with bitter levity, "Sir William spoiled a fine gentleman." Yet, in justice to Temple, we must say that there is no reason to think that Swift was more unhappy at Moor Park than he would have been in a similar situation under any roof in England. We think also that the obligations which the mind of Swift owed to that of Temple were not inconsiderable. Every judicious reader must be struck by the peculiarities which distinguish Swift's political tracts from all similar works produced by mere men of letters. Let any person compare, for example, the Conduct of the Allies, or the Letter to the October Club, with Johnson's False Alarm, or Taxation no Tyranny, and he will be at once struck by the difference of which we speak. He may possibly think Johnson a greater man than Swift. He may possibly prefer Johnson's style to Swift's. But he will at once acknowledge that Johnson writes like a man who has never been out of his study. Swift writes like a man who has passed his whole life in the

66

midst of public business, and to whom
the most important affairs of state are
as familiar as his weekly bills.

"Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter."

The difference, in short, between a
political pamphlet by Johnson, and a
political pamphlet by Swift, is as great
as the difference between an account
of a battle by Mr. Southey, and the
account of the same battle by Colonel
Napier. It is impossible to doubt that
the superiority of Swift is to be, in a
great measure, attributed to his long
and close connection with Temple.

Indeed, remote as were the alleys and flower-pots of Moor Park from the haunts of the busy and the ambitious, Swift had ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with the hidden causes of many great events. William was in the habit of consulting Temple, and occasionally visited him. Of what passed between them very little is known. It is certain, however, that when the Triennial Bill had been carried through the two Houses, his Majesty, who was exceedingly unwilling to pass it, sent the Earl of Portland to learn Temple's opinion. Whether Temple thought the bill in itself a good one does not appear; but he clearly saw how imprudent it must be in a prince, situated as William was, to engage in an altercation with his Parliament, and directed Swift to draw up a paper on the subject, which, however, did not convince the King.

The chief amusement of Temple's declining years was literature. After his final retreat from business, he wrote his very agreeable Memoirs, corrected and transcribed many of his letters, and published several miscellaneous treatises, the best of which, we think, is that on Gardening. The style of his essays is, on the whole, excellent, almost always pleasing, and now and then stately and splendid. The matter is generally of much less value; as our readers will readily believe when we inform them that Mr. Courtenay, a biographer, that is to say, a literary vassal, bound by the immemorial law of his tenure to 1