Gibraltar, the imperturbable Minister refused to be goaded into a war. It was only under extreme pressure that he gave way some ten years later, in the matter of the right of search and Jenkins's ear.

Naturally, the Opposition made it their cue to represent such conduct as shameful and unpatriotic. This explains the cynical tone in which Walpole was accustomed to speak of patriotism. "A patriot, sir," he cried, "why, patriots spring up like mushrooms! I could raise fifty of them within four and twenty hours. I have raised many of them in one night. It is but refusing to grant an unreasonable or insolent demand, and up starts a patriot." He divided his opponents into Spartans, Patriots and Boys. But he did not mean to imply any contempt for patriotism itself; he expressly states in one of his later speeches, that it is the abuse of an honoured and venerable idea, against which his sarcasm is directed. It was easy enough for him and his friends to retaliate on such men as Bolingbroke, and the authors of the Peace of Utrecht. There is a very lucid and well-written pamphlet in 1733, defending the policy of the Ministry, and carrying the war into the enemy's country. Of course, the blessings of peace and amity are brought prominently forward, and much is made of the good terms on which England stood with foreign powers, but there are some scathing things said about the men, who bartered away the advantages won by Marlborough's victories. There is another pamphlet, written in the very last days of Walpole's Ministry, addressed to the "pretended patriots," and being "an impartial inquiry into the general conduct of the administration; and compared with that of their enemies, whereby it will appear who merits impeachments." It discourses of the "patriot iniquity" of those who deliberately seek to embarrass the Ministry in its negotiations with our rivals and allies.

This pamphlet has much praise for the way in which

the Ministry have upheld the Balance of Power. This idea is particularly prominent in the eighteenth century, though, for all practical purposes, it is the keynote of present European politics as much as ever. It is by a law of nature, that in any community the weaker members should unite against one that seems to aim at supreme power. A Louis XIV, be his diplomacy never so subtle, finds a William III to oppose him, and William III finds allies ready to his hand; just as victorious Sparta provokes a league of Corinth, or Napoleon a coalition of Europe. But there is a more specialized sense, in which the term Balance of Power is distinctive of eighteenthcentury politics. The diplomacy of the Courts was getting out of touch with the real needs of the nations. Even a despot of the type of Xerxes, or of Peter the Great, is capable of being the embodiment of national sentiment and aspirations. But in France and Germany, in Spain and Italy, diplomacy was getting to be, in fact as well as in name, a game of cards between crowned sharpers. This discordance between rulers and people was pregnant with Revolution in France, and collapse all over the Continent. It was the burden of a Prose Age.

England, we know, was able to weather the storm, and to oppose to the vanquisher of the Continent the resistance of a united people. This leads us naturally to conjecture, that the blight of a Prose Age must have been less severe in England than elsewhere. There is, in our history, something more fascinating and more baffling than in that of France, the difference being parallel to that which obtains between their respective literatures. In French life as in French poetry there is an element of almost mathematical precision, the moving forces are clear-cut, and easy to distinguish; but about that of England there is all the compromise of Walpole's diplomacy, all the shadowy indefiniteness of Shelley's lyrics. Here sweeping generalizations are sure to want qualification, and it is only

by infinite patience that we can hope to thread the maze that leads to the central truth.

Thus we shall find an essential difference between the diplomacy of Sir Robert and that of Elizabeth Farnese, of almost any German potentate, of most of the Ministers of Louis XV. Corrupt and ambitious for power he may have been, but his policy answered to real necessities felt by the nation, and expressed in all kinds of literature, permanent and ephemeral.

The mere desire to avoid fighting is, perhaps, not a very noble one, but it was necessary to keep the Stuarts out of England, and to give our commerce a chance to expand. For all the talk about Balance of Power, Walpole was determined not to go to war if he could possibly help it. We see this particularly as regards the war of the Polish Succession, which started as a dynastic struggle, and ended in Lorraine going to France, and Naples and Sicily to a Bourbon. This was weighting the balance with a vengeance, and would have been a casus belli with William III, and probably with the Whig Ministers of Anne; but Walpole sat still, and the pamphlet just mentioned, written six years after, justifies him on the ground that the French could and did occupy Lorraine whenever they liked, and that its reversion to France was purely nominal. Even Bolingbroke said of the peace: "If the English Ministers had any hand in it, they are wiser than I thought them; if not, they are luckier than they deserve to be." However, there were many who agreed with Lord Harrington, the Secretary of State, in regretting what they considered to be our desertion of our old ally, the Emperor. But Sir Robert was satisfied to think that through his means a war, which had cost fifty thousand lives, had not proved fatal to a single Englishman. But he would, characteristically, have been willing to go to war a few years earlier, to stop the trade rivalry of the Ostend Company.

The Muse is naturally forced to sing strange songs. Peace and Commerce became leading motives in the poetry of the time, and Peace, except as the end of a long and glorious war, is not inspiring, and Commerce needs the genius of a Whitman or a Kipling to turn it into art. Such a genius did not appear. Thus we have a poem, by a certain Pitt, upon the Congress of Cambray, one of the most tedious and futile episodes of this epoch of diplomatic swindling, which begins :

"Ye patriots of the world, whose cares combined
Consult the public welfare of mankind,"

and these lines, which are as exquisite a satire as anything penned by Pope himself, are intended to be taken seriously!

The poem goes on to bid us behold

"The proud merchant seek the precious store,
And trace the winding veins of glittering ore!"

Even George I comes in, with Peace, for the following amazing apostrophe :

"

Fair Concord, hail! thy wings o'er Brunswick spread,
And with thine olives crown his laurelled head.'

In 1729, Young, the author of the "Night Thoughts," wrote a poem on " The Merchant," dealing with "British Trade and Navigation," the nature and inspiration of which may be judged by some of the descriptive headings affixed by the poet :

"

Trade natural to Britain-Trade invoked-Described-The praise of Wealth-its use, abuse, endBritain's naval stores-why Britons should pursue it (commerce)-some despise trade as mean-censured for it-Britain should decline war but boldly assert her trade

To such depths can poetry, even that of great men, sink in a Prose Age! However, for all his advocacy of

peace, Young ends up with the following cheerful chorus, which, with a sufficiently abominable tune, might even have graced the revels of Mafeking night:

"Ye syrens sing; ye Tritons blow;

Ye Nereids dance; ye billows flow;
Roll to my measures, O ye starry throng!
Ye winds, in concert breathe around,
Ye navies, to the concert bound,
From pole to pole, to Britain all belong!

"

Patriotism was in every man's mouth, but in very few instances does it glow like that of the later Elizabethans, or of the men of the Commonwealth. Peace and materialism were fast making people forget what it meant to feel anything deeply. Faith of any kind was losing its hold over men's souls. The prevailing tendency among educated men was politely to bid good-bye to God, for the vague rationalism that passed under the name of Deism. Toleration naturally made great strides, when men had ceased to care very much what they believed. Enthusiasm. came to be despised, and with enthusiasm went fanaticism. Pope exclaims:

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right,"

and this sentiment came more and more to represent the opinion of the day, if for life we might substitute "brain." The Whig Government naturally tended to select, for high appointments, ecclesiastics as different as possible from their Tory opponents; men of the world, Broad Churchmen, tolerant and unenthusiastic. Dogma declined and scepticism flourished; it became the fashion for wits to sneer at religion; the parson thought nothing of hurrying through the prayers in hunting costume; even that typically Puritan homage to Heaven, the prescribed misery of Sunday, fell into neglect.

The decay of religion, and of the more spiritual forms of emotion, was fraught with little good for the mass of the