anxious about nothing but the establishment of his family. He could rarely be induced to open his lips about affairs; and when he did so it was impossible to understand what he meant. He was frequently intoxicated. He was always out of the waysometimes on the plea of ill-health, sometimes on the plea of domestic concerns, and sometimes on no plea at all. Bolingbroke was furious. He attributed to him the recent ministerial defeat, and all the perplexities which had arisen since. He saw that everything was going to pieces. He saw that the Ministry were on the brink of ruin. He saw that an awful crisis was at hand; but he could not induce his infatuated colleague to take one step, and without him he could take no decided step himself. He could only ingratiate himself with Lady Masham and the Duchess of Somerset, and that he did.

The new year found things worse than ever. The Queen was apparently on the point of death, and the question of the succession was now agitating every mind even to madness. The Whigs were in paroxysms of delight, and the Tories in a panic of perplexity. In February, however, she recovered, and on the 16th opened Parliament with an address which bore unmistakable traces of Bolingbroke's hand. The Tories were at this moment decidedly in the majority both within the Houses and without; indeed Bolingbroke assured D'Iberville that seveneighths of the people in Great Britain might be reckoned as belonging to that faction, and the Tories were, on the whole, averse to Hanover. But there was no harmony among them. Some were willing to accept the Pretender without exacting any securities from him. Others, again, insisted on such securities as the condition of their co-operation. In some of them an attachment to the principles of the Revolution struggled with an attachment to High Church doctrines, and with an antipathy to Dissenting doctrines. Many of them belonged to that large, selfish and fluctuating class who, with an eye merely to their own interests, are always ready to declare with the majority on any question. The Whigs, on the other hand, though numerically inferior, were weakened by no such divisions. Their policy was simple, their opinions never wavered, their feelings were unanimous. Their leaders were of all public men of that age the most influential, the most united, and the most capable. It may assist our knowledge of the character of this conjuncture, and of the political profligacy of those at the head of affairs, to observe that Oxford, Buckinghamshire, Leeds, Shrewsbury and Bolingbroke were publicly proclaiming their devotion to the Elector, and at the same time secretly assuring the Pretender of their allegiance. Nor can Anne her

self

self be altogether acquitted of similar duplicity. She never, it is true, gave her brother any encouragement in writing; but her aversion to the Elector was well known, and she led both Buckinghamshire and Oxford to infer that, provided James would consent to change his religion, she should not scruple to follow 'the bent of her own inclinations.' The Houses soon showed that they were in no mood for trifling, and Bolingbroke saw that the time had come for him to take, at any hazard, decisive measures. He determined to hesitate no longer, but to seize the reins of government by assuming, in opposition to Oxford, the leadership of the extreme Tories, and by undermining him not merely at Kensington, but at Bar le Duc and at Herrenhausen. He could thus, he thought, make himself master of the position without at present definitely compromising himself either with James or the Elector. He could heal the schisms which were paralysing a triumphant majority. He could supplant the Treasurer without alienating the Treasurer's adherents, and remodel the Ministry without weakening its constituent parts. He could thus, at the head of a great Tory Confederation-such was his splendid dream-dictate the terms on which the Elector should be received, or set aside the Act of Settlement and escort the Pretender to the throne. Nor were these designs altogether without plausibility. He stood well with the Queen, whose prejudices had probably not been proof against his singularly fascinating manners, with Lady Masham and with the Duchess of Somerset. He could reckon certainly on the assistance of Ormond, Buckinghamshire, Strafford, Atterbury, who had recently been raised to the see of Rochester, Harcourt, Bromley, Trevor, Wyndham, and the Earl of Mar. He had hopes of Anglesea, and Abingdon; he had hopes of Shrewsbury, and he proceeded at once to make overtures to others. He continued to assure the Elector of his fidelity, and he kept up simultaneously a regular correspondence with the Jacobite agents D'Iberville and Gaultier. When, in the House, he found it necessary to proclaim hostile measures against James, he at once privately wrote to suggest the means of evading them, or to insist that they were not to be received as indications of his own feelings. Meanwhile he did everything in his power to ruin Oxford. In the motion for the further security of the Protestant Succession he affected to misunderstand his meaning. When the Queen was insulted by the demand made by Schultz, he informed her that the demand had been suggested by the Treasurer. When Oxford had nominated Paget as envoy to Hanover, Bolingbroke sent Clarendon. In May he drew up that Bill which is one of the most infamous

that

that has ever polluted our Legislature the Schism Bill, with the double object of conciliating the extreme Tories, and of reducing his rival to a dilemma-the dilemma of breaking with the Moderate Party and the Dissenters by supporting it, or of breaking with the extreme Tories by opposing it. Oxford saw through the stratagem. Angry recriminations followed. Violent scenes occurred every day in the House, and in the Cabinet. Bolingbroke taunted Oxford with incapacity and faithlessness, and Oxford retorted by declaring that he had in his hands proofs of Bolingbroke's treachery to Herrenhausen. Swift, who had on other occasions interposed as mediator between his two friends, saw with concern the progress of these fatal dissensions. He hurried up to London, and had several interviews with the rivals. He implored them, in their own interests, in the interests of their party and in the interests of the whole Tory cause, to lay aside these internecine hostilities. He pointed out that everything depended on their mutual cooperation; that their partisans, every day becoming more scattered and perplexed, must be united; that they could only be united in the union of their leaders; that too much precious time had already been wasted; that if the death of the Queen, which might be expected at any hour, surprised them, they would be buried under the ruins of their party. All, however, was in vain, and a final interview at Lady Masham's convinced him that reconciliation was out of the question. As a parting word, he advised Oxford to resign, and then, with a heavy heart, hurried off to bury himself at Letcombe. Oxford and Bolingbroke now lost all control over themselves. Their unseemly altercations grew every day more violent, and became not only the jest and scandal of coffee-house politicians and ribald wits, but outraged in a manner gross beyond precedent the decorum of the Presence Chamber. Meanwhile everything was hurrying from anarchy into dissolution. Our situation,' wrote Swift to Peterborough, is so bad that our enemies could not without abundance of invention and ability have placed us so ill if we had left it entirely to their management.' At last these lamentable scenes drew to a close. On the 27th of July Oxford was removed, but the Queen was in a dying state.

Bolingbroke was now virtually at the head of affairs. He proceeded at once with characteristic energy to grapple with the difficulties of his position. His immediate object was, we make no doubt, to amuse the Whigs and the Hanoverians while he rallied the Tories and the Jacobites. With this view he entertained at dinner on the night succeeding Oxford's dismissal a party of the leading Whigs, solemnly assuring them of his intention

intention to promote the Protestant Succession in the House of Hanover. He instructed his friend Drummond also to send Albemarle with assurances of a similar effect to the Elector himself. On the same day he had by appointment an interview with Gaultier, informing him that his sentiments towards James had undergone no change, but observing at the same time that James should immediately take such steps as would recommend him to the favour of all good people.' It may help to throw some light on his ultimate designs, to observe that almost every member of his projected Ministry was to be chosen from the ranks of the most advanced Jacobites. Bromley was to retain the Seals as Secretary of State; Harcourt was to be Chancellor; Buckinghamshire, President of the Council; Ormond, Commander-in-Chief; and the Privy Seal was to be transferred to Atterbury. For himself he merely proposed to hold the Seals of Secretary of State, with the sole management of the foreign correspondence. He would willingly have possessed himself of the White Staff, but he feared Shrewsbury, and he had the mortification of perceiving that even his own colleagues doubted his fitness for such a post. 'His character is too bad,' wrote Lewis to Swift, to carry the great ensigns.' He thought it prudent, therefore, to keep the Treasury in commission, with his creature Sir William Wyndham at the head

of it.

In the midst of these preparations alarming intelligence arrived from Kensington. The Queen had been stricken down by apoplexy. A Council was summoned to the palace. Bolingbroke was in an agony of apprehension. He feared that the crash had come. He knew that Marlborough had arrived from Antwerp, and that in a few hours the army would be awaiting his orders. He knew that Stanhope had, in the van of a powerful confederation of Whigs, made arrangements for seizing the Tower, for obtaining possession of the outposts, and for proclaiming the Elector. He knew that Argyle and Somerset had been busy, and that the Whigs were mustering their forces in terrible strength. He saw that the Tories-torn with internal dissensions, divided in their aims, scattered, helpless, and without leaders-must go down before the storm. But he clung desperately to one hope. If Shrewsbury would declare in favour of them, all might yet be well. Shrewsbury had recently stood by him in an important debate. Shrewsbury's daughter was the wife of Wyndham. He had not, it was true, committed himself to any definite expression of his opinions, but his bias towards the House of Stuart was well known. That treacherous, fickle, and pusillanimous statesman had, however, already

already made up his mind. With every desire to serve the Tories, he had satisfied himself of the impossibility of rallying them in time, and had decided therefore to abandon them. With all his sentiments in unison with those of Bolingbroke and Ormond, he saw that Bolingbroke and Ormond were on the losing side, and he had therefore concerted measures with Argyle and Somerset. The Council met on Friday morning, July 30th. On Friday afternoon it became known that Shrewsbury had coalesced with the Whigs, and had received the White Staff from the hands of his dying mistress. On Saturday afternoon almost every arrangement had been completed for carrying out the Act of Settlement. On Sunday morning Anne was no more, and Bolingbroke was a cipher. 'The Queen died on Sunday. What a world is this, and how does Fortune banter us!' were the words in which the baffled statesman communicated the intelligence to Swift. Fortune was, however, bent on something more serious than banter.

But here for the present we must conclude. Up to this point the biography of Bolingbroke has been the parliamentary history of England during fourteen stirring and eventful years. He was now about to figure on a widely different stage, in a widely different character. It is possible that we may at no very distant time take an opportunity of returning to the subject.

THE

ART. II.—Essays on Art. By J. Comyns Carr. London, 1879. HE title of Mr. Carr's book is a misnomer. It leads us to expect technical criticism, and technical criticism implies a recognition of established principles of art. Each of the arts has its boundaries, and is governed by its proper laws, which have at different times been more or less accurately defined by its professors. The 'Discourses' of Sir Joshua Reynolds are Essays on Art, for they define the laws of painting, and illustrate by particular instances the way in which these laws have been observed or violated. The laws of poetry are much less surely established than those of painting: still, from the time of Aristotle downwards, certain cardinal principles have been recognized as regulating poetical practice. A critic therefore is naturally expected either to apply the known rules of art to the work which he is judging, or, if he tests this by some standard which has not hitherto been employed, to take the greatest pains to make his readers understand what this standard is.

Now