No More Learning

They came
to the court balls dropping pearls and vermin. It was said that one
envoy cudgelled the lords of his train whenever they soiled or lost
any part of their finery, and that another had with difficulty been
prevented from putting his son to death for the crime of shaving and
dressing after the French fashion.

Our ancestors therefore were not a little surprised to learn that a
young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the autocrat
of the immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those
of China, and whose education had been inferior to that of an English
farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic improvements, had learned enough
of some languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with
civilised men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from
various parts of the world, had sent many of his young subjects to
study languages, arts and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had
determined to travel as a private man, and to discover, by personal
observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by
some communities whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth
part of his dominions.

It might have been expected that France would have been the first object
of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French King, the
splendour of the French Court, the discipline of the French armies, and
the genius and learning of the French writers, were then renowned all
over the world. But the Czar's mind had early taken a strange ply which
it retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least capable
of being made a great naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his
States and the Baltic. The Bosporus and the Dardanelles lay between
his States and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in
a latitude in which navigation is, during a great part of every
year, perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port,
Archangel; and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did
not exist a Russian vessel larger than a fishing-boat. Yet, from some
cause which cannot now be traced, he had a taste for maritime pursuits
which amounted to a passion, indeed almost to a monomania. His
imagination was full of sails, yardarms, and rudders. That large mind,
equal to the highest duties of the general and the statesman, contracted
itself to the most minute details of naval architecture and naval
discipline. The chief ambition of the great conqueror and legislator was
to be a good boatswain and a good ship's carpenter. Holland and England
therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the galleries
and terraces of Versailles. He repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in
the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on the list
of workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and the mallet,
fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes. Ambassadors who came to pay
their respects to him were forced, much against their will, to clamber
up the rigging of a man of war, and found him enthroned on the cross
trees.

Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to behold.
His stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing black eyes,
his Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown black with all
the stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange
nervous convulsion which sometimes transformed his countenance during a
few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to look without
terror, the immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints
of brandy which he swallowed, and which, it was said, he had carefully
distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet, the
monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks,
popular topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public gaze
with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but,
as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes and galleries were staring,
not at the stage, but at him, he retired to a back bench where he was
screened from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a
sitting of the House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen,
he was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small
window. He heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill
for raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land tax, and learned
with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half than the whole
revenue which he could wring from the population of the immense empire
of which he was absolute master, was but a small part of what
the Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to their
constitutional King.

William judiciously humoured the whims of his illustrious guest, and
stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the neighbourhood
recognised His Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the modest
looking coach at the Czar's lodgings. The Czar returned the visit with
the same precautions, and was admitted into Kensington House by a
back door. It was afterwards known that he took no notice of the fine
pictures with which the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of
the royal sitting room was a plate which, by an ingenious machinery,
indicated the direction of the wind; and with this plate he was in
raptures.

He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too far from
the objects of his curiosity, and too near to the crowds to which he was
himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly removed to Deptford, and
was there lodged in the house of John Evelyn, a house which had long
been a favourite resort of men of letters, men of taste and men of
science. Here Peter gave himself up to his favourite pursuits. He
navigated a yacht every day up and down the river. His apartment was
crowded with models of three deckers and two deckers, frigates, sloops
and fireships. The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to
take much pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for the
sea bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very competent to
give an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern.
Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favourite that he prevailed on
the Czar to consent to the admission of a limited quantity of tobacco
into Russia. There was reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy
would cry out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would
strenuously maintain that the practice of smoking was condemned by that
text which declares that man is defiled, not by those things which enter
in at the mouth, but by those which proceed out of it. This apprehension
was expressed by a deputation of merchants who were admitted to an
audience of the Czar; but they were reassured by the air with which he
told them that he knew how to keep priests in order.

He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in
which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped
at different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his
brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and
love of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honoured with several
audiences. The Czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at Saint
Paul's; but he was induced to visit Lambeth palace. There he saw the
ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed warm approbation of
the Anglican ritual. Nothing in England astonished him so much as the
Archiepiscopal library. It was the first good collection of books that
he had seen; and he declared that he had never imagined that there were
so many printed volumes in the world.

The impression which he made on Burnet was not favourable. The good
bishop could not understand that a mind which seemed to be chiefly
occupied with questions about the best place for a capstan and the best
way of rigging a jury mast might be capable, not merely of ruling an
empire, but of creating a nation. He complained that he had gone to see
a great prince, and had found only an industrious shipwright. Nor does
Evelyn seem to have formed a much more favourable opinion of his august
tenant. It was, indeed, not in the character of tenant that the Czar
was likely to gain the good word of civilised men. With all the high
qualities which were peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits
which were then common among his countrymen. To the end of his life,
while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing codes, organising
tribunals, building cities in deserts, joining distant seas by
artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a hog in a sty; and, when
he was entertained by other sovereigns, never failed to leave on their
tapestried walls and velvet state beds unequivocal proof that a savage
had been there. Evelyn's house was left in such a state that the
Treasury quieted his complaints with a considerable sum of money.

Towards the close of March the Czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham
seafight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending fleets
with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the
hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for
his amusement and instruction. After passing more than three months in
England, he departed in high good humour. [10]

His visit, his singular character, and what was rumoured of his great
designs, excited much curiosity here, but nothing more than curiosity.
England had as yet nothing to hope or to fear from his vast empire. All
her serious apprehensions were directed towards a different quarter.
None could say how soon France, so lately an enemy, might be an enemy
again.

The new diplomatic relations between the two great western powers were
widely different from those which had existed before the war. During the
eighteen years which had elapsed between the signing of the Treaty
of Dover and the Revolution, all the envoys who had been sent from
Whitehall to Versailles had been mere sycophants of the great King.
In England the French ambassador had been the object of a degrading
worship. The chiefs of both the great parties had been his pensioners
and his tools. The ministers of the Crown had paid him open homage. The
leaders of the opposition had stolen into his house by the back door.
Kings had stooped to implore his good offices, had persecuted him
for money with the importunity of street beggars; and, when they
had succeeded in obtaining from him a box of doubloons or a bill of
exchange, had embraced him with tears of gratitude and joy. But those
days were past. England would never again send a Preston or a Skelton to
bow down before the majesty of France. France would never again send
a Barillon to dictate to the cabinet of England. Henceforth the
intercourse between the two states would be on terms of perfect
equality.

William thought it necessary that the minister who was to represent him
at the French Court should be a man of the first consideration, and one
on whom entire reliance could be reposed. Portland was chosen for this
important and delicate mission; and the choice was eminently judicious.
He had, in the negotiations of the preceding year, shown more ability
than was to be found in the whole crowd of formalists who had been
exchanging notes and drawing up protocols at Ryswick. Things which had
been kept secret from the plenipotentiaries who had signed the treaty
were well known to him. The clue of the whole foreign policy of England
and Holland was in his possession. His fidelity and diligence were
beyond all praise. These were strong recommendations. Yet it seemed
strange to many that William should have been willing to part, for a
considerable time, from a companion with whom he had during a quarter of
a century lived on terms of entire confidence and affection. The truth
was that the confidence was still what it had long been, but that the
affection, though it was not yet extinct, though it had not even cooled,
had become a cause of uneasiness to both parties. Till very recently,
the little knot of personal friends who had followed William from his
native land to his place of splendid banishment had been firmly united.
The aversion which the English nation felt for them had given him much
pain; but he had not been annoyed by any quarrel among themselves.
Zulestein and Auverquerque had, without a murmur, yielded to Portland
the first place in the royal favour; nor had Portland grudged to
Zulestein and Auverquerque very solid and very signal proofs of their
master's kindness. But a younger rival had lately obtained an influence
which created much jealousy. Among the Dutch gentlemen who had sailed
with the Prince of Orange from Helvoetsluys to Torbay was one named
Arnold Van Keppel. Keppel had a sweet and obliging temper, winning
manners, and a quick, though not a profound, understanding. Courage,
loyalty and secresy were common between him and Portland. In other
points they differed widely. Portland was naturally the very opposite
of a flatterer, and, having been the intimate friend of the Prince of
Orange at a time when the interval between the House of Orange and the
House of Bentinck was not so wide as it afterwards became, had acquired
a habit of plain speaking which he could not unlearn when the comrade
of his youth had become the sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most
trusty, but not a very respectful, subject. There was nothing which he
was not ready to do or suffer for William. But in his intercourse with
William he was blunt and sometimes surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had
a great desire to please, and looked up with unfeigned admiration to
a master whom he had been accustomed, ever since he could remember,
to consider as the first of living men. Arts, therefore, which were
neglected by the elder courtier were assiduously practised by the
younger. So early as the spring of 1691 shrewd observers were struck
by the manner in which Keppel watched every turn of the King's eye, and
anticipated the King's unuttered wishes. Gradually the new servant rose
into favour. He was at length made Earl of Albemarle and Master of the
Robes. But his elevation, though it furnished the Jacobites with a fresh
topic for calumny and ribaldry, was not so offensive to the nation as
the elevation of Portland had been. Portland's manners were thought
dry and haughty; but envy was disarmed by the blandness of Albemarle's
temper and by the affability of his deportment.

Portland, though strictly honest, was covetous; Albemarle was generous.
Portland had been naturalised here only in name and form; but Albemarle
affected to have forgotten his own country, and to have become an
Englishman in feelings and manners. The palace was soon disturbed by
quarrels in which Portland seems to have been always the aggressor, and
in which he found little support either among the English or among
his own countrymen. William, indeed, was not the man to discard an old
friend for a new one. He steadily gave, on all occasions, the preference
to the companion of his youthful days. Portland had the first place
in the bed-chamber. He held high command in the army. On all great
occasions he was trusted and consulted. He was far more powerful in
Scotland than the Lord High Commissioner, and far deeper in the secret
of foreign affairs than the Secretary of State. He wore the Garter,
which sovereign princes coveted. Lands and money had been bestowed on
him so liberally that he was one of the richest subjects in Europe.
Albemarle had as yet not even a regiment; he had not been sworn of the
Council; and the wealth which he owed to the royal bounty was a pittance
when compared with the domains and the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland
thought himself aggrieved. He could not bear to see any other person
near him, though below him, in the royal favour. In his fits of
resentful sullenness, he hinted an intention of retiring from the Court.
William omitted nothing that a brother could have done to soothe and
conciliate a brother. Letters are still extant in which he, with the
utmost solemnity, calls God to witness that his affection for Bentinck
still is what it was in their early days. At length a compromise was
made. Portland, disgusted with Kensington, was not sorry to go to France
as ambassador; and William with deep emotion consented to a separation
longer than had ever taken place during an intimacy of twenty-five
years. A day or two after the new plenipotentiary had set out on his
mission, he received a touching letter from his master. "The loss
of your society," the King wrote, "has affected me more than you can
imagine. I should be very glad if I could believe that you felt as much
pain at quitting me as I felt at seeing you depart; for then I might
hope that you had ceased to doubt the truth of what I so solemnly
declared to you on my oath. Assure yourself that I never was more
sincere. My feeling towards you is one which nothing but death can
alter. " It should seem that the answer returned to these affectionate
assurances was not perfectly gracious; for, when the King next wrote, he
gently complained of an expression which had wounded him severely.

But, though Portland was an unreasonable and querulous friend, he was
a most faithful and zealous minister. His despatches show how
indefatigably he toiled for the interests, and how punctiliously he
guarded the dignity, of the prince by whom he imagined that he had been
unjustly and unkindly treated.

The embassy was the most magnificent that England had ever sent to any
foreign court. Twelve men of honourable birth and ample fortune, some of
whom afterwards filled high offices in the State, attended the mission
at their own charge. Each of them had his own carriage, his own horses,
and his own train of servants. Two less wealthy persons, who, in
different ways, attained great note in literature, were of the company.
Rapin, whose history of England might have been found, a century ago,
in every library, was the preceptor of the ambassador's eldest son,
Lord Woodstock. Prior was Secretary of Legation. His quick parts,
his industry, his politeness, and his perfect knowledge of the French
language, marked him out as eminently fitted for diplomatic employment.
He had, however, found much difficulty in overcoming an odd prejudice
which his chief had conceived against him. Portland, with good natural
abilities and great expertness in business, was no scholar. He had
probably never read an English book; but he had a general notion,
unhappily but too well founded, that the wits and poets who congregated
at Will's were a most profane and licentious set; and, being himself a
man of orthodox opinions and regular life, he was not disposed to give
his confidence to one whom he supposed to be a ribald scoffer. Prior,
with much address, and perhaps with the help of a little hypocrisy,
completely removed this unfavourable impression. He talked on serious
subjects seriously, quoted the New Testament appositely, vindicated
Hammond from the charge of popery, and, by way of a decisive blow, gave
the definition of a true Church from the nineteenth Article. Portland
stared at him. "I am glad, Mr. Prior, to find you so good a Christian. I
was afraid that you were an atheist. " "An atheist, my good lord! " cried
Prior. "What could lead your Lordship to entertain such a suspicion? "
"Why," said Portland, "I knew that you were a poet; and I took it for
granted that you did not believe in God. " "My lord," said the wit, "you
do us poets the greatest injustice. Of all people we are the farthest
from atheism. For the atheists do not even worship the true God, whom
the rest of mankind acknowledge; and we are always invoking and hymning
false gods whom everybody else has renounced. " This jest will be
perfectly intelligible to all who remember the eternally recurring
allusions to Venus and Minerva, Mars, Cupid and Apollo, which were meant
to be the ornaments, and are the blemishers, of Prior's compositions.
But Portland was much puzzled. However, he declared himself satisfied;
and the young diplomatist withdrew, laughing to think with how little
learning a man might shine in courts, lead armies, negotiate treaties,
obtain a coronet and a garter, and leave a fortune of half a million.

The citizens of Paris and the courtiers of Versailles, though more
accustomed than the Londoners to magnificent pageantry, allowed that no
minister from any foreign state had ever made so superb an appearance
as Portland. His horses, his liveries, his plate, were unrivalled. His
state carriage, drawn by eight fine Neapolitan greys decorated with
orange ribands, was specially admired. On the day of his public entry
the streets, the balconies, and the windows were crowded with spectators
along a line of three miles. As he passed over the bridge on which the
statue of Henry IV. stands, he was much amused by hearing one of the
crowd exclaim: "Was it not this gentleman's master that we burned on
this very bridge eight years ago? " The Ambassador's hotel was constantly
thronged from morning to night by visitors in plumes and embroidery.
Several tables were sumptuously spread every day under his roof; and
every English traveller of decent station and character was welcome
to dine there. The board at which the master of the house presided in
person, and at which he entertained his most distinguished guests,
was said to be more luxurious than that of any prince of the House of
Bourbon. For there the most exquisite cookery of France was set off by a
certain neatness and comfort which then, as now, peculiarly belonged to
England. During the banquet the room was filled with people of fashion,
who went to see the grandees eat and drink. The expense of all this
splendour and hospitality was enormous, and was exaggerated by report.
The cost to the English government really was fifty thousand pounds in
five months. It is probable that the opulent gentlemen who accompanied
the mission as volunteers laid out nearly as much more from their
private resources.

The malecontents at the coffeehouses of London murmured at this
profusion, and accused William of ostentation. But, as this fault was
never, on any other occasion, imputed to him even by his detractors,
we may not unreasonably attribute to policy what to superficial
or malicious observers seemed to be vanity. He probably thought it
important, at the commencement of a new era in the relations between the
two great kingdoms of the West, to hold high the dignity of the Crown
which he wore. He well knew, indeed, that the greatness of a prince
does not depend on piles of silver bowls and chargers, trains of gilded
coaches, and multitudes of running footmen in brocade, and led horses in
velvet housings. But he knew also that the subjects of Lewis had, during
the long reign of their magnificent sovereign, been accustomed to see
power constantly associated with pomp, and would hardly believe that the
substance existed unless they were dazzled by the trappings.

If the object of William was to strike the imagination of the French
people, he completely succeeded. The stately and gorgeous appearance
which the English embassy made on public occasions was, during some
time, the general topic of conversation at Paris. Portland enjoyed a
popularity which contrasts strangely with the extreme unpopularity which
he had incurred in England. The contrast will perhaps seem less strange
when we consider what immense sums he had accumulated at the expense of
the English, and what immense sums he was laying out for the benefit
of the French. It must also be remembered that he could not confer or
correspond with Englishmen in their own language, and that the French
tongue was at least as familiar to him, as that of his native Holland.
He, therefore, who here was called greedy, niggardly, dull, brutal, whom
one English nobleman had described as a block of wood, and another as
just capable of carrying a message right, was in the brilliant circles
of France considered as a model of grace, of dignity and of munificence,
as a dexterous negotiator and a finished gentleman. He was the better
liked because he was a Dutchman. For, though fortune had favoured
William, though considerations of policy had induced the Court of
Versailles to acknowledge him, he was still, in the estimation of
that Court, an usurper; and his English councillors and captains were
perjured traitors who richly deserved axes and halters, and might,
perhaps, get what they deserved. But Bentinck was not to be confounded
with Leeds and Marlborough, Orford and Godolphin. He had broken no oath,
had violated no law. He owed no allegiance to the House of Stuart; and
the fidelity and zeal with which he had discharged his duties to his
own country and his own master entitled him to respect. The noble and
powerful vied with each other in paying honour to the stranger.

The Ambassador was splendidly entertained by the Duke of Orleans at St.
Cloud, and by the Dauphin at Meudon. A Marshal of France was charged to
do the honours of Marli; and Lewis graciously expressed his concern that
the frosts of an ungenial spring prevented the fountains and flower beds
from appearing to advantage. On one occasion Portland was distinguished,
not only by being selected to hold the waxlight in the royal bedroom,
but by being invited to go within the balustrade which surrounded the
couch, a magic circle which the most illustrious foreigners had hitherto
found impassable. The Secretary shared largely in the attentions which
were paid to his chief. The Prince of Conde took pleasure in talking
with him on literary subjects. The courtesy of the aged Bossuet, the
glory of the Church of Rome, was long gratefully remembered by the
young heretic. Boileau had the good sense and good feeling to exchange a
friendly greeting with the aspiring novice who had administered to him a
discipline as severe as he had administered to Quinault. The great King
himself warmly praised Prior's manners and conversation, a circumstance
which will be thought remarkable when it is remembered that His
Majesty was an excellent model and an excellent judge of gentlemanlike
deportment, and that Prior had passed his boyhood in drawing corks at
a tavern, and his early manhood in the seclusion of a college. The
Secretary did not however carry his politeness so far as to refrain from
asserting, on proper occasions, the dignity of his country and of his
master. He looked coldly on the twenty-one celebrated pictures in which
Le Brun had represented on the coifing of the gallery of Versailles
the exploits of Lewis. When he was sneeringly asked whether Kensington
Palace could boast of such decorations, he answered, with spirit and
propriety: "No, Sir. The memorials of the great things which my master
has done are to be seen in many places; but not in his own house. "

Great as was the success of the embassy, there was one drawback. James
was still at Saint Germains; and round the mock King were gathered
a mock Court and Council, a Great Seal and a Privy Seal, a crowd of
garters and collars, white staves and gold keys. Against the pleasure
which the marked attentions of the French princes and grandees gave to
Portland, was to be set off the vexation which he felt when Middleton
crossed his path with the busy look of a real Secretary of State. But it
was with emotions far deeper that the Ambassador saw on the terraces and
in the antechambers of Versailles men who had been deeply implicated
in plots against the life of his master. He expressed his indignation
loudly and vehemently.
"I hope," he said, "that there is no design in
this; that these wretches are not purposely thrust in my way. When
they come near me all my blood runs back in my veins. " His words were
reported to Lewis. Lewis employed Boufflers to smooth matters; and
Boufflers took occasion to say something on the subject as if from
himself. Portland easily divined that in talking with Boufflers he
was really talking with Lewis, and eagerly seized the opportunity of
representing the expediency, the absolute necessity, of removing James
to a greater distance from England. "It was not contemplated, Marshal,"
he said, "when we arranged the terms of peace in Brabant, that a palace
in the suburbs of Paris was to continue to be an asylum for outlaws and
murderers. " "Nay, my Lord," said Boufflers, uneasy doubtless on his own
account, "you will not; I am sure, assert that I gave you any pledge
that King James would be required to leave France. You are too
honourable a man, you are too much my friend, to say any such thing. "
"It is true," answered Portland, "that I did not insist on a positive
promise from you; but remember what passed. I proposed that King James
should retire to Rome or Modena. Then you suggested Avignon; and I
assented. Certainly my regard for you makes me very unwilling to do
anything that would give you pain. But my master's interests are dearer
to me than all the friends that I have in the world put together. I must
tell His Most Christian Majesty all that passed between us; and I hope
that, when I tell him, you will be present, and that you will be able to
bear witness that I have not put a single word of mine into your mouth. "

When Boufflers had argued and expostulated in vain, Villeroy was sent
on the same errand, but had no better success. A few days later Portland
had a long private audience of Lewis. Lewis declared that he was
determined to keep his word, to preserve the peace of Europe, to abstain
from everything which could give just cause of offence to England, but
that, as a man of honour, as a man of humanity, he could not refuse
shelter to an unfortunate King, his own first cousin. Portland replied
that nobody questioned His Majesty's good faith; but that while Saint
Germains was occupied by its present inmates it would be beyond even
His Majesty's power to prevent eternal plotting between them and the
malecontents on the other side of the Straits of Dover, and that, while
such plotting went on, the peace must necessarily be insecure. The
question was really not one of humanity. It was not asked, it was not
wished, that James should be left destitute. Nay, the English government
was willing to allow him an income larger than that which he derived
from the munificence of France. Fifty thousand pounds a year, to which
in strictness of law he had no right, awaited his acceptance, if he
would only move to a greater distance from the country which, while
he was near it, could never be at rest. If, in such circumstances, he
refused to move, this was the strongest reason for believing that he
could not safely be suffered to stay. The fact that he thought the
difference between residing at Saint Germains and residing at Avignon
worth more than fifty thousand a year sufficiently proved that he had
not relinquished the hope of being restored to his throne by means of a
rebellion or of something worse. Lewis answered that on that point his
resolution was unalterable. He never would compel his guest and kinsman
to depart. "There is another matter," said Portland, "about which I have
felt it my duty to make representations. I mean the countenance given
to the assassins. " "I know nothing about assassins," said Lewis. "Of
course," answered the Ambassador, "your Majesty knows nothing about such
men. At least your Majesty does not know them for what they are. But
I can point them out, and can furnish ample proofs of their guilt. " He
then named Berwick. For the English Government, which had been willing
to make large allowances for Berwick's peculiar position as long as he
confined himself to acts of open and manly hostility, conceived that
he had forfeited all claim to indulgence by becoming privy to the
Assassination Plot. This man, Portland said, constantly haunted
Versailles. Barclay, whose guilt was of a still deeper dye,--Barclay,
the chief contriver of the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green,--had
found in France, not only an asylum, but an honourable military
position. The monk who was sometimes called Harrison and sometimes went
by the alias of Johnson, but who, whether Harrison or Johnson, had
been one of the earliest and one of the most bloodthirsty of Barclays
accomplices, was now comfortably settled as prior of a religious house
in France. Lewis denied or evaded all these charges. "I never," he said,
"heard of your Harrison. As to Barclay, he certainly once had a company;
but it has been disbanded; and what has become of him I do not know. It
is true that Berwick was in London towards the close of 1695; but he was
there only for the purpose of ascertaining whether a descent on England
was practicable; and I am confident that he was no party to any cruel
and dishonourable design. " In truth Lewis had a strong personal
motive for defending Berwick. The guilt of Berwick as respected the
Assassination Plot does not appear to have extended beyond connivance;
and to the extent of connivance Lewis himself was guilty.

Thus the audience terminated. All that was left to Portland was to
announce that the exiles must make their choice between Saint Germains
and fifty thousand a year; that the protocol of Ryswick bound the
English government to pay to Mary of Modena only what the law gave her;
that the law gave her nothing; that consequently the English government
was bound to nothing; and that, while she, her husband and her child
remained where they were, she should have nothing. It was hoped that
this announcement would produce a considerable effect even in James's
household; and indeed some of his hungry courtiers and priests seem
to have thought the chance of a restoration so small that it would be
absurd to refuse a splendid income, though coupled with a condition
which might make that small chance somewhat smaller. But it is certain
that, if there was murmuring among the Jacobites, it was disregarded by
James. He was fully resolved not to move, and was only confirmed in
his resolution by learning that he was regarded by the usurper as a
dangerous neighbour. Lewis paid so much regard to Portland's complaints
as to intimate to Middleton a request, equivalent to a command, that
the Lords and gentlemen who formed the retinue of the banished King of
England would not come to Versailles on days on which the representative
of the actual King was expected there. But at other places there was
constant risk of an encounter which might have produced several duels,
if not an European war. James indeed, far from shunning such encounters,
seems to have taken a perverse pleasure in thwarting his benefactor's
wish to keep the peace, and in placing the Ambassador in embarrassing
situations. One day his Excellency, while drawing on his boots for a run
with the Dauphin's celebrated wolf pack, was informed that King James
meant to be of the party, and was forced to stay at home. Another day,
when his Excellency had set his heart on having some sport with the
royal staghounds, he was informed by the Grand Huntsman that King James
might probably come to the rendezvous without any notice. Melfort was
particularly active in laying traps for the young noblemen and gentlemen
of the Legation. The Prince of Wales was more than once placed in such a
situation that they could scarcely avoid passing close to him. Were they
to salute him? Were they to stand erect and covered while every body
else saluted him? No Englishman zealous for the Bill of Rights and
the Protestant religion would willingly do any thing which could
be construed into an act of homage to a Popish pretender. Yet no
goodnatured and generous man, however firm in his Whig principles,
would willingly offer any thing which could look like an affront to an
innocent and a most unfortunate child.

Meanwhile other matters of grave importance claimed Portland's
attention. There was one matter in particular about which the French
ministers anxiously expected him to say something, but about which he
observed strict silence. How to interpret that silence they scarcely
knew. They were certain only that it could not be the effect of
unconcern. They were well assured that the subject which he so carefully
avoided was never, during two waking hours together, out of his
thoughts or out of the thoughts of his master. Nay, there was not in all
Christendom a single politician, from the greatest ministers of state
down to the silliest newsmongers of coffeehouses, who really felt
that indifference which the prudent Ambassador of England affected. A
momentous event, which had during many years been constantly becoming
more and more probable, was now certain and near. Charles the Second of
Spain, the last descendant in the male line of the Emperor Charles the
Fifth, would soon die without posterity. Who would then be the heir to
his many kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, lordships, acquired in different
ways, held by different titles and subject to different laws? That was a
question about which jurists differed, and which it was not likely that
jurists would, even if they were unanimous, be suffered to decide. Among
the claimants were the mightiest sovereigns of the continent; there was
little chance that they would submit to any arbitration but that of the
sword; and it could not be hoped that, if they appealed to the sword,
other potentates who had no pretension to any part of the disputed
inheritance would long remain neutral. For there was in Western Europe
no government which did not feel that its own prosperity, dignity and
security might depend on the event of the contest.

It is true that the empire, which had, in the preceding century,
threatened both France and England with subjugation, had of late been
of hardly so much account as the Duchy of Savoy or the Electorate of
Brandenburg. But it by no means followed that the fate of that empire
was matter of indifference to the rest of the world. The paralytic
helplessness and drowsiness of the body once so formidable could not
be imputed to any deficiency of the natural elements of power. The
dominions of the Catholic King were in extent and in population superior
to those of Lewis and of William united. Spain alone, without a single
dependency, ought to have been a kingdom of the first rank; and Spain
was but the nucleus of the Spanish monarchy. The outlying provinces
of that monarchy in Europe would have sufficed to make three highly
respectable states of the second order. One such state might have
been formed in the Netherlands. It would have been a wide expanse of
cornfield, orchard and meadow, intersected by navigable rivers and
canals. At short intervals, in that thickly peopled and carefully tilled
region, rose stately old towns, encircled by strong fortifications,
embellished by fine cathedrals and senate-houses, and renowned either
as seats of learning or as seats of mechanical industry. A second
flourishing principality might have been created between the Alps and
the Po, out of that well watered garden of olives and mulberry trees
which spreads many miles on every side of the great white temple of
Milan. Yet neither the Netherlands nor the Milanese could, in physical
advantages, vie with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a land which
nature had taken pleasure in enriching and adorning, a land which would
have been paradise, if tyranny and superstition had not, during many
ages, lavished all their noxious influences on the bay of Campania, the
plain of Enna, and the sunny banks of Galesus.

In America the Spanish territories spread from the Equator northward
and southward through all the signs of the Zodiac far into the temperate
zone. Thence came gold and silver to be coined in all the mints, and
curiously wrought in all the jewellers' shops, of Europe and Asia.
Thence came the finest tobacco, the finest chocolate, the finest indigo,
the finest cochineal, the hides of innumerable wild oxen, quinquina,
coffee, sugar. Either the viceroyalty of Mexico or the viceroyalty of
Peru would, as an independent state with ports open to all the world,
have been an important member of the great community of nations.

And yet the aggregate, made up of so many parts, each of which
separately might have been powerful and highly considered, was impotent
to a degree which moved at once pity and laughter. Already one most
remarkable experiment had been tried on this strange empire. A small
fragment, hardly a three hundredth part of the whole in extent, hardly
a thirtieth part of the whole in population, had been detached from the
rest, had from that moment begun to display a new energy and to enjoy
a new prosperity, and was now, after the lapse of a hundred and twenty
years, far more feared and reverenced than the huge mass of which it had
once been an obscure corner. What a contrast between the Holland which
Alva had oppressed and plundered, and the Holland from which William
had sailed to deliver England! And who, with such an example before him,
would venture to foretell what changes might be at hand, if the most
languid and torpid of monarchies should be dissolved, and if every one
of the members which had composed it should enter on an independent
existence?

To such a dissolution that monarchy was peculiarly liable. The King, and
the King alone, held it together. The populations which acknowledged him
as their chief either knew nothing of each other, or regarded each other
with positive aversion. The Biscayan was in no sense the countryman of
the Valencian, nor the Lombard of the Biscayan, nor the Fleeting of
the Lombard, nor the Sicilian of the Fleeting. The Arragonese had never
ceased to pine for their lost independence. Within the memory of many
persons still living the Catalans had risen in rebellion, had entreated
Lewis the Thirteenth of France to become their ruler with the old title
of Count of Barcelona, and had actually sworn fealty to him. Before the
Catalans had been quieted, the Neapolitans had taken arms, had abjured
their foreign master, had proclaimed their city a republic, and had
elected a Loge. In the New World the small caste of born Spaniards which
had the exclusive enjoyment of power and dignity was hated by Creoles
and Indians, Mestizos and Quadroons. The Mexicans especially had turned
their eyes on a chief who bore the name and had inherited the blood
of the unhappy Montezuma. Thus it seemed that the empire against which
Elizabeth and Henry the Fourth had been scarcely able to contend would
not improbably fall to pieces of itself, and that the first violent
shock from without would scatter the ill-cemented parts of the huge
fabric in all directions.

But, though such a dissolution had no terrors for the Catalonian or
the Fleming, for the Lombard or the Calabrian, for the Mexican or the
Peruvian, the thought of it was torture and madness to the Castilian.
Castile enjoyed the supremacy in that great assemblage of races and
languages. Castile sent out governors to Brussels, Milan, Naples,
Mexico, Lima. To Castile came the annual galleons laden with the
treasures of America. In Castile was ostentatiously displayed and
lavishly spent great fortunes made in remote provinces by oppression
and corruption. In Castile were the King and his Court. There stood
the stately Escurial, once the centre of the politics of the world, the
place to which distant potentates looked, some with hope and gratitude,
some with dread and hatred, but none without anxiety and awe. The glory
of the house had indeed departed. It was long since couriers bearing
orders big with the fate of kings and commonwealths had ridden forth
from those gloomy portals. Military renown, maritime ascendency, the
policy once reputed so profound, the wealth once deemed inexhaustible,
had passed away. An undisciplined army, a rotting fleet, an incapable
council, an empty treasury, were all that remained of that which had
been so great. Yet the proudest of nations could not bear to part even
with the name and the shadow of a supremacy which was no more. All, from
the grandee of the first class to the peasant, looked forward with dread
to the day when God should be pleased to take their king to himself.
Some of them might have a predilection for Germany; but such
predilections were subordinate to a stronger feeling. The paramount
object was the integrity of the empire of which Castile was the head;
and the prince who should appear to be most likely to preserve that
integrity unviolated would have the best right to the allegiance of
every true Castilian.

No man of sense, however, out of Castile, when he considered the nature
of the inheritance and the situation of the claimants, could doubt
that a partition was inevitable. Among those claimants three stood
preeminent, the Dauphin, the Emperor Leopold, and the Electoral Prince
of Bavaria.

If the question had been simply one of pedigree, the right of the
Dauphin would have been incontestable. Lewis the Fourteeenth had married
the Infanta Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip the Fourth and
sister of Charles the Second. Her eldest son, the Dauphin, would
therefore, in the regular course of things, have been her brother's
successor. But she had, at the time of her marriage, renounced, for
herself and her posterity, all pretensions to the Spanish crown.

To that renunciation her husband had assented. It had been made an
article of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The Pope had been requested to
give his apostolical sanction to an arrangement so important to the
peace of Europe; and Lewis had sworn, by every thing that could bind a
gentleman, a king, and a Christian, by his honour, by his royal word, by
the canon of the Mass, by the Holy Gospels, by the Cross of Christ, that
he would hold the renunciation sacred. [11]

The claim of the Emperor was derived from his mother Mary Anne, daughter
of Philip the Third, and aunt of Charles the Second, and could not
therefore, if nearness of blood alone were to be regarded, come into
competition with the claim of the Dauphin. But the claim of the Emperor
was barred by no renunciation. The rival pretensions of the great Houses
of Bourbon and Habsburg furnished all Europe with an inexhaustible
subject of discussion. Plausible topics were not wanting to the
supporters of either cause. The partisans of the House of Austria dwelt
on the sacredness of treaties; the partisans of France on the sacredness
of birthright. How, it was asked on one side, can a Christian king have
the effrontery, the impiety, to insist on a claim which he has with such
solemnity renounced in the face of heaven and earth? How, it was asked
on the other side, can the fundamental laws of a monarchy be annulled by
any authority but that of the supreme legislature? The only body which
was competent to take away from the children of Maria Theresa their
hereditary rights was the Comes. The Comes had not ratified her
renunciation. That renunciation was therefore a nullity; and no
swearing, no signing, no sealing, could turn that nullity into a
reality.

Which of these two mighty competitors had the better case may perhaps
be doubted. What could not be doubted was that neither would obtain the
prize without a struggle which would shake the world. Nor can we
justly blame either for refusing to give way to the other. For, on this
occasion, the chief motive which actuated them was, not greediness, but
the fear of degradation and ruin. Lewis, in resolving to put every thing
to hazard rather than suffer the power of the House of Austria to be
doubled; Leopold, in determining to put every thing to hazard rather
than suffer the power of the House of Bourbon to be doubled; merely
obeyed the law of self preservation. There was therefore one way, and
one alone, by which the great woe which seemed to be coming on Europe
could be averted. Was it possible that the dispute might be compromised?
Might not the two great rivals be induced to make to a third party
concessions such as neither could reasonably be expected to make to the
other?

The third party, to whom all who were anxious for the peace of
Christendom looked as their best hope, was a child of tender age,
Joseph, son of the Elector of Bavaria. His mother, the Electress Mary
Antoinette, was the only child of the Emperor Leopold by his first wife
Margaret, a younger sister of the Queen of Lewis the Fourteenth. Prince
Joseph was, therefore, nearer in blood to the Spanish throne than his
grandfather the Emperor, or than the sons whom the Emperor had by
his second wife. The Infanta Margaret had indeed, at the time of her
marriage, renounced her rights to the kingdom of her forefathers. But
the renunciation wanted many formalities which had been observed in
her sister's case, and might be considered as cancelled by the will
of Philip the Fourth, which had declared that, failing his issue male,
Margaret and her posterity would be entitled to inherit his Crown. The
partisans of France held that the Bavarian claim was better than the
Austrian claim; the partisans of Austria held that the Bavarian claim
was better than the French claim. But that which really constituted
the strength of the Bavarian claim was the weakness of the Bavarian
government. The Electoral Prince was the only candidate whose success
would alarm nobody; would not make it necessary for any power to raise
another regiment, to man another frigate, to have in store another
barrel of gunpowder. He was therefore the favourite candidate of prudent
and peaceable men in every country.

Thus all Europe was divided into the French, the Austrian, and the
Bavarian factions. The contests of these factions were daily renewed
in every place where men congregated, from Stockholm to Malta, and from
Lisbon to Smyrna. But the fiercest and most obstinate conflict was that
which raged in the palace of the Catholic King. Much depended on him.
For, though it was not pretended that he was competent to alter by his
sole authority the law which regulated the descent of the Crown, yet, in
a case in which the law was doubtful, it was probable that his subjects
might be disposed to accept the construction which he might put upon it,
and to support the claimant whom he might, either by a solemn adoption
or by will, designate as the rightful heir. It was also in the power of
the reigning sovereign to entrust all the most important offices in his
kingdom, the government of all the provinces subject to him in the Old
and in the New World, and the keys of all his fortresses and arsenals,
to persons zealous for the family which he was inclined to favour. It
was difficult to say to what extent the fate of whole nations might be
affected by the conduct of the officers who, at the time of his decease,
might command the garrisons of Barcelona, of Mons, and of Namur.

The prince on whom so much depended was the most miserable of human
beings. In old times he would have been exposed as soon as he came into
the world; and to expose him would have been a kindness. From his birth
a blight was on his body and on his mind. With difficulty his almost
imperceptible spark of life had been screened and fanned into a dim and
flickering flame. His childhood, except when he could be rocked and sung
into sickly sleep, was one long piteous wail. Until he was ten years
old his days were passed on the laps of women; and he has never once
suffered to stand on his ricketty legs. None of those tawny little
urchins, clad in rags stolen from scarecrows, whom Murillo loved to
paint begging or rolling in the sand, owed less to education than this
despotic ruler of thirty millions of subjects, The most important events
in the history of his own kingdom, the very names of provinces and
cities which were among his most valuable possessions, were unknown
to him. It may well be doubted whether he was aware that Sicily was an
island, that Christopher Columbus had discovered America, or that the
English were not Mahometans. In his youth, however, though too imbecile
for study or for business, he was not incapable of being amused. He
shot, hawked and hunted. He enjoyed with the delight of a true Spaniard
two delightful spectacles, a horse with its bowels gored out, and a
Jew writhing in the fire. The time came when the mightiest of instincts
ordinarily wakens from its repose. It was hoped that the young King
would not prove invincible to female attractions, and that he would
leave a Prince of Asturias to succeed him. A consort was found for
him in the royal family of France; and her beauty and grace gave him a
languid pleasure. He liked to adorn her with jewels, to see her dance,
and to tell her what sport he had had with his dogs and his falcons. But
it was soon whispered that she was a wife only in name. She died;
and her place was supplied by a German princess nearly allied to the
Imperial House. But the second marriage, like the first, proved
barren; and, long before the King had passed the prime of life, all
the politicians of Europe had begun to take it for granted in all their
calculations that he would be the last descendant, in the male line,
of Charles the Fifth. Meanwhile a sullen and abject melancholy took
possession of his soul. The diversions which had been the serious
employment of his youth became distasteful to him. He ceased to find
pleasure in his nets and boar spears, in the fandango and the bullfight.
Sometimes he shut himself up in an inner chamber from the eyes of his
courtiers. Sometimes he loitered alone, from sunrise to sunset, in the
dreary and rugged wilderness which surrounds the Escurial. The hours
which he did not waste in listless indolence were divided between
childish sports and childish devotions. He delighted in rare animals,
and still more in dwarfs. When neither strange beasts nor little men
could dispel the black thoughts which gathered in his mind, he repeated
Aves and Credos; he walked in processions; sometimes he starved himself;
sometimes he whipped himself. At length a complication of maladies
completed the ruin of all his faculties. His stomach failed; nor was
this strange; for in him the malformation of the jaw, characteristic of
his family, was so serious that he could not masticate his food; and
he was in the habit of swallowing ollas and sweetmeats in the state in
which they were set before him. While suffering from indigestion he
was attacked by ague. Every third day his convulsive tremblings, his
dejection, his fits of wandering, seemed to indicate the approach of
dissolution. His misery was increased by the knowledge that every body
was calculating how long he had to live, and wondering what would become
of his kingdoms when he should be dead. The stately dignitaries of
his household, the physicians who ministered to his diseased body, the
divines whose business was to soothe his not less diseased mind, the
very wife who should have been intent on those gentle offices by which
female tenderness can alleviate even the misery of hopeless decay, were
all thinking of the new world which was to commence with his death,
and would have been perfectly willing to see him in the hands of the
embalmer if they could have been certain that his successor would be
the prince whose interest they espoused. As yet the party of the Emperor
seemed to predominate. Charles had a faint sort of preference for the
House of Austria, which was his own house, and a faint sort of antipathy
to the House of Bourbon, with which he had been quarrelling, he did not
well know why, ever since he could remember. His Queen, whom he did not
love, but of whom he stood greatly in awe, was devoted to the interests
of her kinsman the Emperor; and with her was closely leagued the Count
of Melgar, Hereditary Admiral of Castile and Prime Minister.

Such was the state of the question of the Spanish succession at the time
when Portland had his first public audience at Versailles. The French
ministers were certain that he must be constantly thinking about that
question, and were therefore perplexed by his evident determination to
say nothing about it. They watched his lips in the hope that he would
at least let fall some unguarded word indicating the hopes or fears
entertained by the English and Dutch Governments. But Portland was not
a man out of whom much was to be got in that way. Nature and habit
cooperating had made him the best keeper of secrets in Europe. Lewis
therefore directed Pomponne and Torcy, two ministers of eminent ability,
who had, under himself, the chief direction of foreign affairs, to
introduce the subject which the discreet confidant of William seemed
studiously to avoid. Pomponne and Torcy accordingly repaired to
the English embassy; and there opened one of the most remarkable
negotiations recorded in the annals of European diplomacy.