Taunton, and his summer retreat in that lovely nook on the south coast where Devonshire marches with · Dorsetshire.1 Hope of advantage or aggrandisement for himself he no longer entertained; "but without hope,' as he quietly said, "there is a thing called duty." The motive that brought Chatham back into public life was the highest and purest of those which impel to action; and purity of motive produced, as it ever will produce, magnanimity of conduct. He who, when engaged in fighting his own battle, had never troubled himself to propitiate a foe, or to court an ally, betook himself, now that his views were no longer personal, to the work of forming and consolidating a party with as much industry as a young politician who has just begun to see his way into the Cabinet. Determined that it should not be his fault if the nation remained in the slough where it then

1 Wilkes called Chatham the worst letter-writer of the age; which, though a terrible charge in the eyes of Gilly Williams and George Selwyn, would be regarded with indifference by one who lived a little too consciously in the spirit of Themistocles, and did not care how destitute he might be of lighter accomplishments, if only he knew how to make a small state a great empire. There is, however, something attractive in Chatham's domestic correspondence, marked, as it is, by stateliness of manner contrasting most quaintly with extreme simplicity of idea. Nothing can be prettier than his letters to his wife from Lyme Regis, where he was looking after the health of his younger, and the military studies of his elder, son. "We returned late," he writes, "from the morning's ride; as the all-exploring eye of taste, and William's ardour, led us somewhat beyond our intentions. My epistle, therefore, being after dinner, eaten with the hunger of an American ranger, will be the shorter, and I fear the duller. It is a delight to see William see nature in her free and wild compositions; and I tell myself, as we go, that the general mother is not ashamed of her child. The particular loved mother of our promising tribe has sent the sweetest and most encouraging of letters to the young Vauban. His assiduous application to his profession did not allow him to accompany us. He was generously occupied in learning to defend the happy land we were enjoying. Indeed, my life, the promise of our dear children does me more good than the purest of pure air." Lord Chatham's anticipations came true at least as often as those of most fathers; but William was destined to have as little leisure for contemplating the natural beauties of his native land as his brother was successful in fighting for it.

was struggling,-and discerning the hurricane that was brewing beyond the seas, with a glance which seldom deceived him when it swept a sufficiently wide horizon, -he girded himself to the effort of withstanding those enemies of England who called themselves her servants, but who were more dangerous to her welfare than the rulers and warriors of France whom he had so often foiled and humiliated. Conscious that his one poor chance of victory in such an unequal conflict depended upon his first having conquered himself, he laid aside the haughtiness which was his besetting fault, and the affectation that was his favourite weakness, and made it a duty to practise a consideration for others which hitherto had been sadly wanting. He sought and obtained a reconciliation in form with Lord Temple, who had deserted him, and with George Grenville, who had sold him; and, having performed the easier task of pardoning those by whom he had been injured, he turned to others who, as against himself, had not a little to forgive. Doing what he might to atone for the chief, and now irreparable, mistake in his career, he made frank and almost humble advances to a group of statesmen who held his opinions, and who were imbued with principles as elevated as his own. Those advances were accepted with a hesitation which it is impossible to blame. It was not in human nature that the Rockinghams should forget who it was that had lent the majesty of his name to excuse and dignify the conspiracy which overthrew them. So cruel a wound could not heal at the first intention. What had taken him again to Court, asked Burke, except that he might talk some " pompous, creeping, ambiguous matter, in the true Chathamic style?" But Chatham had done, then and for ever, with bombast and mystery. Plainly and shortly he told every one whom he met what his policy was to be :-tender

ness towards the American colonists; justice to the Middlesex electors. This policy he hoped to be permitted to pursue in company with those who had already made it their own, and to whom, if success crowned their common endeavours, he should cheerfully hand over the spoils of victory. "For my part," he said, “I am grown old, and unable to fill any office of business; but this I am resolved on, that I will not even sit at Council but to meet Lord Rockingham. He, and he alone, has a knot of spotless friends, such as ought to govern this kingdom." That was the spirit in which the greatest of England's statesmen went forth to the last, and the most honourable, of his labours.

CHAPTER VI.

1770.

The effect produced upon the political world by the re-appearance of Lord Chatham-His speech upon the Address-Camden and Granby separate themselves from their colleagues-Savile rebukes the House of Commons-Charles Yorke and the Great Seal-The Duke of Grafton resigns-David Hume-Lord North goes to the Treasury-George the Third, his Ministers, and his policy-George Grenville on Election Petitions and the Civil List-Chatham denounces the corruption of Parliament-Symptoms of popular discontent-The City's Remonstrance presented to the King, and condemned by Parliament-Imminent danger of a collision between the nation and its rulers-The Letter to the King-Horace Walpole on the situation-The personal character of Wilkes, and its influence upon the history of the country-Wilkes regains his liberty-His subsequent career, and the final solution of the controversy about the Middlesex Election.

EVEN Chatham's love of a stage effect must have been gratified to the full by the commotion which his political resurrection excited. Nothing resembling it can be quoted from Parliamentary history; though the theatre supplies a sufficiently close parallel in the situation where Lucio, in Measure for Measure, pulls aside the cowl of the friar, and discloses the features of the ruler who has returned, at the moment when he is least expected, to call his deputy to account for the evil deeds that had been done in his name. Grafton, the Angelo of the piece, accepted his fate as submissively, and almost as promptly, as his dramatic prototype. Still loyal at heart to the great man whose authority he had abused,—or, rather, permitted others to abuse,--he was dumbfoundered when Chatham, emerging from the Royal closet, met his greeting with the

frigid politeness of a redoubted swordsman who salutes before a mortal duel. The unfortunate Prime Minister knew that he had sinned too conspicuously to be forgiven, and envied in his heart those less prominent members of his own Government who could meet their old lord and master in the confidence that he would not be too hard on the political frailties of such humble personages as a Lord Chancellor, or a Commander-in-Chief of the Forces. Every one who had served under Chatham was as restless as an Austerlitz veteran who had just heard of the landing from Elba. Granby, the English Murat, could hardly be kept from at once resigning his immense appointments, rendered necessary to him by a profuse and ill-ordered generosity which would have been a blot on any character but that of a brave, an uncultured, and an unassuming soldier. Lord Camden, who so little approved the policy of his colleagues that he had absented himself from the Cabinet whenever the business on hand related to the coercion of America or the suppression of Wilkes, and who for two years past had never opened his mouth in the House of Peers except to put the question from the Woolsack, viewed the re-appearance of Chatham as a tacit but irresistible appeal to a friendship which, from his school-days onwards, had been the ornament and delight of his life, and the mainstay of his professional advancement.

And yet, though all that was best in the Ministry already hankered to be out of it, the Bedfords had still fair ground for hoping that a crisis might be averted. Horribly frightened, (to use Burke's energetic metaphor,) lest the table they had so well covered, and at which they had sat down with so good an appetite, should be kicked over in the scuffle, they still could not bring themselves to believe that Chatham would adopt the cause of the Middlesex electors. For when, during the first