nate an accomplished statesman, who lives in close intimacy with the greatest poets and wits of his time, and heaps benefits on them with the most delicate generosity. But it may well be suspected that, if the verses of Alpinus and Fannius, of Bavius and Mævius, had come down to us, we might see Mæcenas represented as the most niggardly and tasteless of human beings, nay, as a man who, on system, neglected and persecuted all intellectual superiority. It is certain that Montague was thus represented by contemporary scribblers. They told the world in essays, in letters, in dialogues, in ballads, that he would do nothing for anybody without being paid either in money or in some vile services; that he not only never rewarded merit, but hated it whenever he saw it; that he practised the meanest arts for the purpose of depressing it; that those whom he protected and enriched were not men of ability and virtue, but wretches distinguished only by their sycophancy and their low debaucheries. And this was said of the man who made the fortune of Joseph Addison, and of Isaac Newton.

The faults of Montague were great; but his punishment was cruel. It was indeed a punishment which must have been more bitter than the bitterness of death to a man whose vanity was exquisitely sensitive, and who had been spoiled by early and rapid success and by constant prosperity. Before the new Parliament had been a month sitting it was plain that his empire was at an end. He spoke with the old eloquence; but his speeches no longer called forth the old response. Whatever he proposed was maliciously scrutinised.

In a despatch from the Dutch Embassy the States General were informed that many of the votes of that session which had caused astonishment out of doors were to be ascribed to nothing but to the bitter envy which the ability and fame of Montague had excited. It was not without a hard struggle and a sharp pang that the first Englishman who has held that high position which has now been long called the Leadership of the House of Commons submitted to be deposed. But he was set upon with cowardly malignity by whole rows of small men none

of whom singly would have dared to look him in the face A contemporary pamphleteer compared him to an owl in the sunshine pursued and pecked to death by flights of tiny birds. On one occasion he was irritated into uttering an oath. Then there was a cry of order; and he was threatened with the Serjeant and the Tower. On another occasion he was moved even to shedding tears of rage and vexation, tears which only moved the mockery of his low minded and bad hearted foes.

If a minister were now to find himself thus situated in a House of Commons which had just been elected, and from which it would therefore be idle to appeal to the electors, he would instantly resign his office, and his adversaries would take his place. The change would be most advantageous to the public, even if we suppose his successor to be both less virtuous and less able than himself. For it is much better for the country to have a bad ministry, than to have no ministry at all; and there would be no ministry at all if the executive departments were filled by men whom the representatives of the people took every opportunity of thwarting and insulting. That an unprincipled man should be followed by a majority of the House of Commons is no doubt an evil. But, when this is the case, he will nowhere be so harmless as at the head of affairs. As he already possesses the power to do boundless mischief, it is desirable to give him a strong motive to abstain from doing mischief; and such a motive he has from the moment that he is entrusted with the administration. Office of itself does much to equalise politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level : but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard. In power the most patriotic and most enlightened statesman finds that he must disappoint the expectations of his admirers: that, if he effects any good, he must effect it by a compromise; that he must relinquish many favourite schemes; that he must bear with many abuses. On the other hand, power turns the very vices of the most worthless adventurer, his selfish ambition, his sordid cupidity, his vanity, his cowardice, into a sort of public

spirit. The most greedy and cruel wrecker that ever put up false lights to lure mariners to their destruction will do his best to preserve a ship from going to pieces on the rocks, if he is taken on board of her and made pilot and so the most profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer must wish that trade may flourish, that the revenue may come in well, and that he may be able to take taxes off instead of putting them on. The most profligate First Lord of the Admiralty must wish to receive news of a victory like that of the Nile rather than of a mutiny like that at the Nore. There is, therefore, a limit to the evil which is to be apprehended from the worst ministry that is likely ever to exist in England. But to the evil of having no ministry, to the evil of having a House of Commons permanently at war with the executive government, there is absolutely no limit. This was signally proved in 1699 and 1700. Had the statesmen of the Junto, as soon as they had ascertained the temper of the new parliament, acted as statesmen similarly situated would now act, great calamities would have been averted. The chiefs of the opposition must then have been called upon to form a government. With the power of the late ministry the responsibility of the late ministry would have been transferred to them; and that responsibility would at once have sobered them. The orator whose eloquence had been the delight of the Country party would have had to exert his ingenuity on a new set of topics. There would have been an end of his invectives against courtiers and placemen, of piteous moanings about the intolerable weight of the land tax, of his boasts that the militia of Kent and Sussex, without the help of a single regular soldier, would turn the conquerors of Landen to the right about. He would himself have been a courtier : he would himself have been a placeman: he would have known that he should be held accountable for all the misery which a national bankruptcy or a French invasion might produce: and, instead of labouring to get up a clamour for the reduction of imposts, and the disbanding of regiments, he would have employed all his talents and influence for the purpose of obtaining from Parliament the means of supporting public credit, and of

putting the country in a good posture of defence. Meanwhile the statesmen who were out might have watched the new men, might have checked them when they were wrong, might have come to their help when, by doing right, they had raised a mutiny in their own absurd and perverse faction. In this way Montague and Somers might, in opposition, have been really far more powerful than they could be while they filled the highest posts in the executive government and were outvoted every day in the House of Commons. Their retirement would have mitigated envy; their abilities would have been missed and regretted; their unpopularity would have passed to their successors, who would have grievously disappointed vulgar expectation, and would have been under the necessity of eating their own words in every debate. The league between the Tories and the discontented Whigs would have been dissolved; and it is probable that, in a session or two, the public voice would have loudly demanded the recall of the best Keeper of the Great Seal, and of the best First Lord of the Treasury, the Doldest man living could remember.

(This passage

DEATH OF WILLIAM III. 1702.

is taken from that portion of the History of England which was left unrevised at Macaulay's death.)

REPORTS about the state of the King's health were constantly becoming more and more alarming. His medical advisers, both English and Dutch, were at the end of their resources. He had consulted by letter all the most eminent physicians of Europe; and, as he was apprehensive that they might return flattering answers if they knew who he was, he had written under feigned names. To Fagon he had described himself as a parish priest. Fagon replied, somewhat bluntly,

'Macaulay elsewhere describes Fagon as "the first physician of the French Court, and, on medical questions, the oracle of all Europe."

that such symptoms could have only one meaning, and that the only advice which he had to give to the sick man was to prepare himself for death. Having obtained this plain answer, William consulted Fagon again without disguise, and obtained some prescriptions which were thought to have a little retarded the approach of the inevitable hour. But the great King's days were numbered. Headaches and shivering fits returned on him almost daily. He still rode and even hunted; but he had no longer that firm seat or that perfect command of the bridle for which he had once been renowned. Still all his care was for the future. The filial respect and tenderness of Albemarle had been almost a necessary of life to him.' But it was of importance that Heinsius should be fully informed. both as to the whole plan of the next campaign and as to the state of the preparations.2 Albemarle was in full possession of the King's views on these subjects. He was therefore sent to the Hague. Heinsius was at that time suffering from indisposition, which was indeed a trifle when compared with the maladies under which William was sinking. But in the nature of William there was none of that selfishness which is the too common vice of invalids. On the twentieth of February he sent to Heinsius a letter in which he did not even allude to his own sufferings and infirmities. "I am," he said, "infinitely concerned to learn that your health is not yet quite reestablished. May God be pleased to grant you a speedy recovery. I am unalterably your good friend, William." Those were the last lines of that long correspondence.

On the twentieth of February William was ambling on a favourite horse, named Sorrel, through the park of Hampton Court. He urged his horse to strike into a gallop just at the

'Arnold Von Keppel, an amiable and attractive friend and servant of William, was made by him Earl of Albemarle and Master of the Robes.

2 Heinsius was Grand Pensionary of Holland. He acted cordially and Loyally in conjunction with William, whose foreign policy he heartily approved. "After the death of the master," wrote Macaulay, "the servart proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability the master's place, and was renowned throughout Europe as one of the great Trium. virate which humbled the pride of Lewis the Fourteenth."