of opening a negotiation, which led to a final adjustment of the differences between the two courts, and the recovery by the elector of Bavaria of his original position in the empire. Now, as Mindelheim formed part of the electoral states, and no exemption in Marlborough's favour would be admitted, he found himself all at once stripped of a territory from which he derived a yearly revenue of 20001. sterling; at first under assurances that a compensation would be afforded elsewhere; but finally with the empty declaration that the rights and honours attaching to him as a prince of the empire should be faithfully guarded. It was to no purpose that Marlborough protested against an arrangement, as discreditable to the cabinet of Vienna as it was injurious to himself. For a while he was met by evasions and promises, which became every day more and more vague, and in the end not even a subterfuge was employed to cloak over the act of injustice which robbed him of his German dominions.

The above occurrence took place in the spring of 1714, when Marlborough, residing at Antwerp, watched with no common anxiety over the destinies of his native country. The increasing infirmities of the queen, the divided state of her councils, and the extraordinary disruption of parties perceptible in the new parliament, all seemed to portend that a mighty crisis was at hand. On the one hand, Oxford, though holding aloof from a junction with the jacobites, appeared reluctant to take any step which might render the succession of the electoral family secure; Bolingbroke, on the contrary, made no secret of his design to bring back the exiled prince; and he found both in Mrs. Masham and his royal mistress ready if not able supporters. Both parties made haste to open negotiations with Marlborough and his friends; and they vied with one another in the extent of offers made, for the purpose each of gaining him over to his party. We cannot pause to describe in detail the intrigues and counter-movements which followed: with the results which flowed out of them, in the resignation of Oxford, just before the queen expired, every reader of English history is acquainted.

Whatever disposition Marlborough might have formerly entertained to reinstate the house of Stuart on the throne, from which he had been mainly instrumental in expelling them, we find no trace even of wavering during the progress of events to which allusion is made in the preceding paragraph. He had suffered too much wrong at the hands of the tories to experience any personal leaning towards them; and he was too profound a judge of the aspect of the political horizon, not to see that the cause of the Stuarts, despite of Bolingbroke's zeal, was desperate. He gave in, therefore, without reserve, his adherence to the court of Hanover, and he received from the electress a blank commission as general in chief of all her forces, so soon as her accession should occur. Thus assured

of the favour of his future sovereign, he exerted himself strenuously in paving the way for the quiet transfer of the British crown from the head of one queen to that of another. The garrison of Dunkirk was prepared, immediately on receiv ing intelligence of Anne's decease, to pass over, under his own guidance; while Cadogan and Stanhope were both instructed to act with similar decision at home. But for the employment of such means all necessity was obviated, by the unexpected and unusual promptitude of the duke of Shrewsbury; aided as it was by delays in the management of his cabal by Bolingbroke, for which it is not easy to account.

Such was the train into which affairs were brought, the partisans of the electress being ready to act at a moment's notice, when the sudden death of that venerable princess gave a somewhat new turn to Marlborough's fortunes. The elector had never forgiven the fancied slight which the duke and Eugene put upon him, by concealing from him the plan of the campaign in 1708; and hence, though he did not refuse to keep up a good understanding with the former, now that a crisis was approaching, he was far from treating him with the boundless confidence which his mother had displayed. Oxford, too, who as yet held the reins of government, was not backward in working upon the prejudices of the Hanoverian prince, by bringing before him the correspondence which Marlborough had formerly held with the members of the rival house. But the elector, though he received such communications freely, was too cautious to suffer any public manifestation of his prejudices to escape; and the stream was already setting so strongly in his favour, that he needed only to lie still, while events worked for him, as it were, of their own accord. Finally, the dismissal of Oxford taking place, Bolingbroke made haste to arrange a new administration friendly to his own designs and those of his party. But even his preparations were as yet incomplete, when the queen was seized with that violent paroxysm from which she never recovered. It was then that Shrewsbury, who was present at the meeting of the privy council which determined that a new treasurer should be appointed without delay, consented, at the suggestion of the whig members, to accept the staff of office; and the queen, during a lucid interval, confirming the choice of her advisers, all Bolingbroke's schemes became in an instant defeated. Troops were ordered to march on the metropolis; an embargo was laid on all the ports; a fleet was sent to sea under the earl of Berke ley; and a messenger despatched to Hanover, with an urgent request to the elector that he would proceed without delay to Holland, whence an English frigate could, at an hour's notice, transport him to England. In a word, every airangement was made with such diligence and effect, that when, on the 1st of August, the queen expired, George I. was proclaimed king without opposition.

Marlborough, warned of coming events, had moved his residence to Ostend, where, on the evening of the very day on which the new sovereign was proclaimed, intelligence of all that had happened, reached him. He put to sea on the following morning, the duchess and all his household attending him; and he landed at Dover amid every demonstration of public rejoicing which could be exhibited. Next night he slept at Sittingbourne, where he learned, to his excessive chagrin, that his name was not included in the list of lords justices; nevertheless, he preserved his composure, and pursued his journey on the morrow, with the intention of entering London in privacy. But his friends were not disposed to omit a public display of their sentiments on an occasion so propitious. A numerous cortège of carriages and horsemen met him, by whom he was conducted in a sort of triumphal progress across London bridge, and the city volunteers falling in, the whole moved through the great thoroughfares, amid loud shouts from the populace of "Long live king George! long live the duke of Marlborough!"

Marlborough delayed but a few days in London, that he might be sworn in as member of the privy council, and take the oaths and his seat in parliament; after which, in a frame of mind not far removed from disgust, he retired to Holywell. Here the high-spirited duchess besought him, as she herself tells us, on her knees, never to hold office under a sovereign who could thus neglect him at the outset; and, according to the same authority, he formed a determination to live on civil terms, indeed, with the court, but neither to solicit nor accept any employment. But the resolution of Marlborough was not proof against the allurements of that ambition which, whether it be or be not "the last infirmity of noble minds," unquestionably adhered to his. He consented to assume, soon after the king's arrival, his insignia of commander in chief and master-general of the ordnance; and though admitted to little share in the management of state affairs, he continued to the day of his death to discharge the duties of routine attached to these offices.

The great tale of Marlborough's public life is told; for though he continued to exhibit himself on the stage for some years longer, he took no very prominent part in the piece which was acted there. When the adherents of the exiled prince raised the standard of revolt in 1715, he adopted, as commander in chief, all the precautions which the exigencies of the moment seemed to require. He placed ample means at the disposal of the officers employed to quell the rising, and assisted them in their campaign with his advice; but he was not required to take the field in person, and felt no inclination to volunteer in the service. In like manner, when the guards broke out into complaints, because their clothing accorded not with the taste of the wearers, Marlborough promptly interfered to pacify them; and by a happy union

of decision and kindness, brought them back from a state bordering on mutiny, to perfect order and submission. But these were the only transactions worthy of a place in the page of history, in which he again appeared. In other respects his duties required no more than that he should, from time to time, issue orders, inspect accounts, and pass a regiment or brigade under review; and to these, dull and uninteresting as they must have been, he confined himself. Even his attendance in parliament was given rather as a matter of course than of choice; and if he aided in conducting the prosecution against Oxford, he was likewise, according to Macpherson, at least a main instrument of its abandonment. How far the charges brought against him by the compiler of the Stuart Papers be or be not well founded, we leave to others to determine. Dr. Coxe has, with great energy, declared them to be groundless; and though the doctor has furnished us with but doubtful evidence in support of his assertion, we are very willing to give to it all the credence which it seems to merit.

The stream of public events has hurried us on so rapidly, that we have found little leisure to record those domestic trials, to which, in common with the rest of his species, the great Marlborough was subject. One of these has indeed been noticed, the death of the young and promising marquess of Blandford; a blow which the duke felt severely when it overtook him, and which to the last he ceased not to deplore. Another bereavement he suffered on the 22d of March, 1714, by the premature decease of his daughter, lady Bridgewater, in the twenty-sixth year of her age. Lady Bridgewater was an amiable and an accomplished woman, imbued with a profound sense of religion, and beloved both by her parents and her husband. But she possessed not the same influence over the former, which her sister Anne, countess of Sunderland, exercised, on no occasion for evil, on every occasion for a good purpose. Of the society of this excellent woman, who had devoted herself since his return to dull the edge of political asperity, and to control the capricious temper of her mother, Marlborough was likewise deprived. After bearing with christian fortitude a painful and lingering illness, she was attacked, in the beginning of April, 1716, with a pleurisy, against which her enfeebled constitution proved unable to oppose itself, and on the 15th she died, at the early age of twenty-eight. Like Rachel weeping for her children, Marlborough refused to be comforted. He withdrew to the retirement of Holywell, that he might indulge his sorrow unseen; and there became first afflicted by that melancholy distemper, un der which first his mind and eventually his body

sunk.

To what proximate cause this attack is to be attributed,-whether to excess of sorrow, or, which is more probable, to an accumulation of predis

posing occurrences,

we possess no means of ascertaining; but on the 28th of May he was smitten with paralysis, and became deprived on the instant both of sense and of speech. The best medical aid being at hand, he was speedily relieved from the fit, and under the skilful management of sir Samuel Garth, gradually regained his strength; but from the usual effects of such a stroke he never wholly recovered, neither his articulation nor his memory being restored to their original tone. He was able to proceed, it is true, so early as the 7th of July, to Bath, where he drank the waters with benefit, and he returned in a certain degree into society, resuming with apparent ease the ordinary course of his employment. That his faculties were not absolutely impaired, moreover, is demonstrated by the fact, that it was subsequently to this his first seizure that he played his part on the trial of lord Oxford; while his successful speculation in South Sea stock, by which, contrary to the custom of the adventure, he realised 100,000l., proves that the talent of making money, at least, had not deserted him. But it seems an idle as well as an uncalled for perversion of truth to contend, that from the date of his first attack he ever was the man he had been previously. If "the tears of dotage" did not flow from his eyes, it is certain that much of the vigour of mind which once belonged to him was lost, and even his speech continued embarrassed in the pronunciation of certain words, as his features were slightly distorted. Nor did the events which accumulated upon him, both at home and abroad, by abstracting him from painful subjects, tend to facilitate his recovery. The duchess, not less the slave of caprice now than formerly, managed to involve herself in a serious misunderstanding with the king, and withdrew, in consequence, her attendance on a court where her presence ceased to be agreeable. This was preceded by quarrels with almost all the oldest and steadiest friends of her husband, such as Cadogan, Stanhope, Sunderland, and secretary Scraggs, which were not composed till after the growing infirmities of the duke had taught them to think of what he once had been, and what he was likely soon to become. Nor was the death of Sunderland, which took place in April, 1722, without its effect in harassing the duke of Marlborough. That nobleman not only died in his father-in-law's debt, to the amount of 10,000Z.; but the sealing up of his papers by government occasioned a tedious suit, Marlborough being naturally anxious to secure them to himself; a measure which the government, on public grounds, resisted.

Besides being involved in these vexatious disputes, Marlborough was again harassed by the workmen employed at Blenheim, who in 1718 renewed their actions against him for arrears of wages due since 1715. He resisted the demand; but a decree issued against him, from which he appealed, though without effect, to the house of

lords.

No doubt there was excessive meanness here on the part of government, of which Marlborough had just cause to complain. Yet was it beneath the dignity of the greatest man of his age to dispute with his ungrateful country about 9000%. Better would it have been had he paid the debt at once; for the sum was not such as to put him to the smallest inconvenience, and posterity would have more than recompensed the loss by the judgment which it would have passed on the entire transaction. In spite, however, of these multiplied sources of disturbance, it does not appear that the latter years of this great man's life were spent unhappily. Frequent returns of illness he doubtless had, each of which left him more and more enfeebled in mind and body; but his intervals of ease seem to have been passed in the society of those who were well disposed to cheat him, as far as they could, into a forgetfulness of his fallen condition. He played much at chess, whist, piquet, and ombre; he took exercise for a while on horseback, latterly, on account of weakness, in his carriage; he even walked, when at Blenheim, unattended about his own grounds, and took great delight in the performance of private theatricals. We have the best authority for asserting, likewise, that he was never, till within a short time of his death, either indisposed or incapable of conversing freely with his friends. Whether in London, at Blenheim, Holywell, or Windsor Lodge (and he latterly moved from place to place with a sort of restless frequency,) his door was always open to the visits of his numerous and sincere admirers; all of whom he received without ceremony, and treated with peculiar kindness.

In this manner Marlborough continued to drag on an existence, which, when contrasted with the tenour of years gone by, scarcely deserves to be accounted other than vegetation. In 1720, he added several codicils to his will, and "put his house in order;" and in November, 1721, he made his appearance in the house of lords, where, however, he took no prominent part in the business under discussion. He had spent the winter too in London, according to his usual habits, and was recently returned to Windsor Lodge, when his paralytic complaint again attacked him, with a degree of violence which resisted all efforts at removal. On this occasion, it does not appear that the faculties of his mind failed him. He lay, indeed, for the better part of a week, incapable of the slightest bodily exertion, being lifted from his couch to his bed, and from his bed to his couch, according as he indicated a wish to that effect; but he retained his senses so perfectly as to listen with manifest gratification to the prayers of his chaplain, and to join in them, as he himself stated, on the evening preceding his death. The latter event befell at four o'clock in the morning of the 16th of June, 1722, "when his strength," says Dr.Coxe, "suddenly failed him, and he rendered up his spirit to his Maker, in the 72d year of his age."

The most bitter political adversary to whom Marlborough ever stood opposed, and the individual at whose hands he suffered the deepest wrong, has not scrupled to leave on record this testimony to his character, that he was "the greatest general and the greatest minister whom our country or any other has produced." "* Higher praise than this, the involuntary tribute of an enemy, no man need desire; yet it can scarcely be accounted as extravagant. When Bolingbroke wrote, England, at least, had produced no military commander, whose exploits would bear one moment's comparison with those of the duke of Marlborough; while, as a minister or a diplo matist, it may admit of a question whether even yet any superior to him has arisen. It may not be out of place if we endeavour to ascertain the true causes of effects so remarkable; in other words, if we strive to point out, as far as our ability extends, those peculiar qualities of mind, a happy combination of which raised him, and will at all times raise others, above their competitors in the great games of politics and war.

It is admitted on all bands that to the care and diligence of tutors the duke of Marlborough owed nothing. He entered upon public life at an age when it was next to impossible that he could have acquired more than the first rudiments of education; and his studies were in consequence either totally neglected, or carried on without order, almost without an aim. But Marlborough had received from nature gifts infinitely superior, for the purposes of action, to any which mere learning can bestow. To an intuitive quickness, which enabled him to see into and understand the characters of others, he united an extraordinary share of circumspection in the developement of his own; a circumspection which was the more available, that it lay hidden under the guise of perfect openness and candour. Frank in his general deportment, and apparently without the wish or the power to hold back from others the absolute confidence which they bestowed upon him, he nevertheless contrived to communicate to each only so much of information as the peculiar disposition of the party consulted seemed to warrant. Discretion, therefore, may be said to have formed one very prominent feature in his mental portrait; that kind of discretion which, equally removed from timidity and rashness, directs a man as well when to exhibit reserve as when to display its opposite; as well how to meet an exigency as to avoid it; as well when to take the lead, as to be guided by the advice of others, the occurrence of circumstances, or the movements of an adverse party. We do not pretend to affirm that Marlborough was never deceived, that he never committed himself, with men who eventually betrayed him. This were to attribute to him such a de

Lord Bolingbroke, in his Letters on the Study of History.

gree of foresight as belongs to no finite mind: but the narrative of his life forms one continued exemplification of prudence, to which there is not a parallel in history. Had he been able to control the wayward temper of his wife, the close of his public career would have offered no contrast to its commencement. That, however, he found it impracticable to accomplish; and hence a fabric of power, built up by the exercise of more than man's discretion, a woman's violence, the offspring of wounded vanity, threw to the ground.

Another important quality conspicuous in the character of this illustrious man, was that power of calculation which enabled him to examine before-hand, with surprising accuracy, all the chances, if we may so speak, of any undertaking in which he proposed to embark. Shutting his eyes to none of the dangers that might, by possi bility, attend it, he brought these into immediate contrast with their opposites, and he came to his conclusion according as the weight of probabilities appeared to incline to the one side or the other. If it be said that this, at least, is no unusual faculty, for that all men, when placed in situations of responsibility, exercise it: we answer, that the very reverse is the fact. Not one man in a million is gifted with sufficient clearness of perception to embrace all, and no more than all, the chances for and against an enterprise still in the future: the sanguine naturally overlook the obstacles which may stand in the way of success; the desponding are equally fertile in magnifying the risks of failure. It is only such a mind as that of Marlborough which can take in all the bearings of the question fairly and honestly, and decide upon it according to its merits. What but a military genius of the highest order would have dictated the march upon Vienna in 1704? yet how could the empire have been saved had no such march been accomplished?

In addition to this rare faculty of calculation, Marlborough possessed a third quality, without which hours of the most patient inquiry will prove useless; a firmness of purpose, which, when a resolution was once taken, hindered him from being diverted from it either by the remonstrances or the apprehensions of others. Entering upon no enterprise till after it had been examined in all its bearings, he ceased, so soon as the movement began, to deliberate; and considering the difficulties by which it was beset only so far as might be necessary to overcome them, he pressed steadily forward towards the end which it was sought to attain. There are a thousand proofs in every one of his campaigns, both of the truth of this observation, and of the benefits attending the habit of mind described; but in none was the unbending resolution of the great commander more prominently exhibited than during the prolonged and harassing siege of Lille. The obstacles opposed to him there were not only gigantic in themselves, but rendered doubly perplexing by the opinion

which the allies entertained of them; yet Marlborough met them one after another, and by patience and perseverance overcame them.

With three principal points of character, then, which seem equally requisite for the great general and the great politician, which, and as they are bestowed by nature alone, all the instruction in the world will not create, Marlborough was preeminently gifted. He was discreet in communicating with others, sagacious in deliberation, and prompt and decisive in execution. As a military man, on the other hand, he possessed little science; that is to say, he could not boast of any intimate acquaintance with the theories of professed tacticians; nor was his knowledge of engineering, in any of its departments, more than superficial. But these defects, and such they doubtless were, only served to bring more prominently into view excellences far more rare as well as more important. Marlborough has never been surpassed in the perfect knowledge to which he attained as to what men can really perform in the dexterity which he displayed in making the most of his instruments, we doubt whether he has ever been equalled. Long and painful marches he doubtless executed, when the exigencies of the moment seemed to require; but he who examines with a critical eye the operations of the whole war, will find that not a single instance occurs in which the allied troops were harassed beyond their strength, or deprived, even during the busiest times, of a just proportion of rest. It was this wise consideration for the health of his troops, which enabled him to bring them into the field, at all seasons, fit for their work; and we have said enough to show that his movements were, after all, both more rapid and better combined than those of his opponents. We dwell the more strongly upon this fact, because there are men who, in the excess of zeal, look upon an officer as wanting in activity, who is not prepared to move, both by night and day, as well in advance as in retreat. No really great general ever indulged wantonly in night marches. Rouse your soldiers as early in the morning as you please; but unless all be at stake, bring them to their ground, and let them sleep for three hours at least before midnight.

Again, though little read in strategy, Marlborough had obtained from nature an aptitude in the examination of ground for military purposes, such as she bestows only on the most gifted of mankind. Whether the matter under consideration were the choice of a position for his own army, or the detection of some weak point in that of the enemy, the eagle eye of Marlborough was equally keen; and of the advantages which either held out, he invariably took advantage with as much promptitude as effect. The battle of Blenheim affords one out of numerous instances of his extraordinary quickness in observing the errors committed by his opponents; the disposition of the corps which covered the sieges of Lille and

Douay shows how correct were his own views of the military strength of a country.

Of bravery, if by the term be meant the animal courage which prompts men to face danger, the great Marlborough could boast only in common with the meanest of his followers; but he possessed also that kind of courage which is found to co-exist only with talent of the first order. Neither perils nor difficulties, however unlooked for, deprived him for one moment of the most perfect self-command. In the heat of battle, he was as cool and collected as when deliberating with his staff in his tent; nor was his attention ever so completely engrossed with affairs in one quarter, as to render him careless or inattentive to what might be doing elsewhere. At the battle of Blenheim, it is true that he led a charge of cavalry in person, and became for a brief space so mingled in the throng that it was impossible to look around; yet even here all his dispositions were made; and the smoke had no sooner cleared away than the effects of these dispositions became apparent. Reserves arrived exactly when they were needed; and Marlborough flew to some other point, where he saw that his presence appeared more likely to be useful. In like manner, neither the frustration of one part of his plan, nor the necessity thence arising to change it, in any degree discomposed the temper of his mind. At Malplaquet the rashness of the young prince of Orange had wellnigh proved fatal, by deranging the whole order of attack, and costing a prodigious loss of life; yet Marlborough treated it as an accident not uncontemplated, and modified at once his own dispositions, to meet the exigency. His campaign of 1711, again, not only displays the same indomitable self-command, but places him in the foremost rank among the masters of manœuvre. The passage of the lines has not been cast into the shade by any subsequent operation in presence of an enemy.

It has been said of Marlborough, by one of his most elaborate biographers, that "his genius was of English mould, vast, comprehensive, and daring; attaining its purposes by great and decided efforts, simple in design, and majestic in execution."* We must be pardoned if we venture to say, that we do not exactly comprehend the object of this commendatory sentence. Between English genius and genius as it appears elsewhere, we know not how a diversity of character is to be detected; and as to the remainder of the eulogium, we must confess, that to us it is wholly unintelligible. As little are we able to comprehend what the learned author means, when he asserts that his hero, "averse by character as well as principle from defensive warfare, was always the assailant, and invariably pursued one grand object, regardless of minor consequences." The leader of an army, if he possess the talents which

* Dr. Coxe.