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QUEEN ANNE 
 
THE 
 
 Days of Queen Anne 
 
 BY 
 
 EUGENE LAWRENCE 
 
 EDITED FOR USE OF 
 
 SCHOOLS AND READING CLUBS 
 
 ORVILLE BREWER PUBLISHING CO. 
 THE AUDITORIUM. CHICAGO 
 
LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 NOV 20 1905 
 
 Cooynjrht Entry 
 0^-/> i. 7. / r / 6" 
 CLASS C*_ XXc. No. 
 
 / ^ 9 4 9 / 
 COPY B. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1905 
 
 BY 
 ORVILLE BREWER 
 
 
 i. 
 
PUBLISHERS PREFACE. 
 
 To the students of history and of literature alike, the age 
 of Queen Anne is a subject of special interest and impor- 
 tance. It was the Augustan age of English literature and of 
 French as well. It was a period of great conflicts in arms, 
 of fierce controversy in the political world. It was a time 
 of marvelous advancement in science. It was a formative 
 period which influences to a notable degree the daily life of 
 the present time. We see this influence in our architecture 
 and our house furnishings; in our proverbial expressions and 
 our habits of thought; even in our dress and our manners. 
 "Robinson Crusoe" and "Gulliver's Travels" are still the 
 delight of childhood. Newton and Locke are still studied in 
 our colleges. "The Spectator" is still the model of English 
 prose. Pope's couplets are still a part of our practical 
 philosophy. All classes of people throughout the English- 
 speaking world are living in the light of that marvelous era ; 
 and wherever the French language is spoken the influence of 
 the Augustan age is felt to-day as it is among ourselves. 
 
 When Macaulay undertook to write a history of England 
 which should compete in interest with "the last novel," there 
 was the keenest anticipation of his work relating to the age 
 of Queen Anne. Unfortunately, his history stopped abruptly 
 with the death of William the Third — the very day on which 
 Queen Anne became the sovereign of the "three kingdoms." 
 The magnificent work of Macaulay, as left thus, is prac- 
 tically the history of a single reign, with a brief review of the 
 period preceding it. The world has not ceased to mourn the 
 untimely death of the man best qualified to write the history 
 of the age of Queen Anne. 
 
6 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 
 
 Such was the splendor of Macaulay's style, the univer- 
 sality of his knowledge of the subject, and the anticipation 
 raised by the volumes of his history that had appeared, that 
 no one has dared to take up the work which he left unfinished. 
 
 The history of Great Britain for the past two centuries 
 is yet to be written in the manner contemplated. It exists 
 in fragmentary form — in the essays of Macaulay and others, 
 in the official records of the realm, in individual memoirs, 
 and in the literature and art which have been developed 
 within the period. 
 
 There was one man, it would seem, upon whom might have 
 devolved the task of gathering together the materials and 
 relating the history of the age of Queen Anne. He was an 
 American. Of all the essayists who have written upon the 
 subject, Eugene Lawrence has shown himself the most mas- 
 terly in his grouping, the most philosophical in his insight, 
 the most sympathetic in his treatment. His style is by no 
 means borrowed from Lord Macaulay, being, in fact, very 
 different from it, yet is not less entertaining, perhaps not less 
 perfect in its way. 
 
 Hubert M. Skinner says of Lawrence's "Days of Queen 
 Anne :" 
 
 "As with the wand of a magician he summoned back to 
 life the great troupe of actors in one of the greatest periods 
 of history — for the days of Queen Anne were in the 'Augustan 
 Age' of English and French literature alike, the age of the 
 'Grand Monarquc,' the age which is still' copied in its archi- 
 tecture, its painting, its house furnishing, its models of liter- 
 ary style, and even its dress. Critical judgment, discriminat- 
 ing delineation of character, and philosophical suggestion 
 accompany every portraiture as the characters pass in review 
 before us while the world of Queen Anne is unveiled. There 
 are no tricks of sensation in the style of the piece. It is like 
 a fairy review by moonlight in a midsummer night's dream. 
 
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 7 
 
 It should be read in the hammock in summer afternoons, amid 
 the droning of bees, the 
 
 " 'Low stir of leaves and dip of oars, 
 And lapsing waves on quiet shores.' " 
 
 This famous essay has been reproduced in our series as 
 an English classic, in the belief that there is now a need for it 
 in the high schools of the country. The Report of the Com- 
 mittee of Seven has given a new impetus to the study of 
 history. The modern theory of correlation is applied with 
 special force to the study of the age of Queen Anne. The 
 modern plan if providing supplementary matter in a form 
 at once cheap and easily available enables the teacher and 
 pupil to procure the most desirable auxiliaries of the text- 
 books, to enhance the interest and value of the work of the 
 schoolroom. 
 
 Further, it is believed that the essay will be found espe- 
 cially desirable by literary clubs and societies, as possessing 
 the condensed and inspirational form of composition best 
 adapted to their use. It commends itself with equal interest 
 to men's clubs and to women's clubs, and may be used as a 
 nucleus for a group of club studies in history or in literature. 
 
■ * ' 
 
MOOR PARK. 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE 
 
 Moor Park, the country home of Sir William Temple, 
 stood not far from London, in a pleasant landscape, sur- 
 rounded by its trim lawns and productive gardens. (1) The 
 house was plain ; its owner was not wealthy ; but he was famous 
 for honesty in politics, for his success in cultivating fruits and 
 vegetables, and for some knowledge of the classics. He wrote 
 essays that are scarcely remembered, and produced grapes and 
 peaches that were probably much better appreciated by his 
 friends Charles II. and William III. Moor Park itself, and 
 perhaps its owner, would long since have been forgotten had 
 it not contained within its quiet shelter a dark and turbid 
 genius, slowly struggling upward to renown, and a pale and 
 thoughtful girl, studious at once and beautiful, whose name 
 and fate were never to be separated from that of her modern 
 Abelard. (2) 
 
 There had come to Moor Park a poor scholar, the son of a 
 widow, in search of some means of subsistence; and Sir Wil- 
 liam Temple, upon whom the mother had some claim, either 
 as a distant connection or an early acquaintance, touched by 
 her extreme distress, consented to receive the young man into 
 his house, and give him employment either as a reader or as 
 an amanuensis. It was the first upward step in the life of 
 the haughty Swift, who seems never to have been able to 
 remember without a burst of rage that in his infancy he had 
 nearly starved from the poverty of his mother, and that in 
 his youth he had been a servant or a dependant in the Temple 
 family. He never revisited Moor Park in his prosperity; he 
 never spoke to any of the Temples; (3) he seems to have 
 wanted wholly the sentiment of association, and was never 
 
 9 
 
10 THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 softened into tenderness by the memory of the trim gardens 
 where he had first walked with Stella, or of the real kindness 
 with which Sir William had raised him from poverty 
 and neglect. In his inordinate sense of his own merits he 
 seems to have felt himself injured by the benevolence of his 
 benefactor. 
 
 Fate had provided for the impoverished scholar a com- 
 panion and a pupil whose condition very closely resembled 
 his own. On his return to Moor Park in 1696, after a 
 serious dispute with his patron, Swift found in the house 
 a Mrs. Johnson and her young daughter, who, like himself, 
 were dependent on the generosity of the Temples. Esther, 
 or Hetty, Johnson, the famous "Stella," was now growing 
 up into that rare beauty which was to become celebrated in 
 letters, and a purity and gentleness of spirit that won the ad- 
 miration of her eminent contemporaries. Her eyes and hair 
 were dark, her complexion pale, her figure graceful, her ex- 
 pression pensive and engaging. (4) She was fond of know- 
 ledge, and glad to be instructed ; and if her taste in literature 
 was sometimes at fault, or her spelling never perfect, she was 
 at least able to feel the beauties of a "Spectator" or an "Ex- 
 aminer." Swift became her tutor, Mentor, lover. He taught 
 her his own bold handwriting, explained the allusions of the 
 poets, gave her a taste for wit and humor, and seems to 
 have communicated to her alone the secret of his anonymous 
 works. A perfect unity of feeling and of interests grew up 
 between them, and four years of tranquil happiness glided 
 away in the calm shelter of Moor Park, during which Stella 
 ripened into graceful womanhood, and seems to have been 
 treated by Sir William almost with the tenderness of a 
 parent. (5) She mingled with the best society of the 
 neighborhood, became acquainted with fashionable ladies and 
 eminent men, and in London was already known as one of the 
 most accomplished and beautiful women of the day. 
 
JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 11 
 
 More than the common sorrows of life, meantime, had fallen 
 upon the family at Moor Park. Lady Temple, that Dorothy 
 Osborne whom Sir William had courted for seven years with 
 stately assiduity, had long been dead; their children passed 
 away, one by one ; the eldest son died by his own act, the victim 
 of an extreme sensibility. The society of Swift and Stella 
 probably served to amuse the last years of the eminent states- 
 man; and when he died, in 1698, Sir William left to Swift 
 the valuable legacy of his writings, and to Esther Johnson a 
 thousand pounds. But their home was now broken up ; for a 
 time they were separated; they were to meet only in that ir- 
 revocable union which was to throw its mysterious shadow 
 over the lives of both forever. (6) 
 
 Of Swift's startling eccentricities and wild bursts of rage, 
 his cold, despotic temper, his unbending self-esteem, the 
 frequent rudeness of his manners, his violence and pride, his 
 contemporaries have recorded many examples. He was sus- 
 pended or expelled from Trinity College for insolent and 
 lawless conduct; he quarreled with Sir William Temple. 
 "God confound you both for a couple of scoundrels !" he ex- 
 claimed to Earl Berkeley and his friend when they had of- 
 fended him. His cruel duplicity to the two devoted women 
 who clung to him with confiding fondness can never be ex- 
 cused. Yet were the gentler and better elements of his char- 
 acter so eminent and remarkable that the generous Addison 
 could think of him only as endowed with every endearing 
 virtue, the most delightful of companions, the most faithful 
 of friends; and to Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, and a throng of 
 accomplished associates he was ever an object of sincere af- 
 fection and esteem. (7) He was generous often to excess; 
 he loved with an unchanging regard ; he was happy in doing 
 good; his countrymen in Ireland, who had felt his benefac- 
 tions, followed him with an almost superstitious veneration, 
 and were willing to die in his defense. 
 
12 THE DA YS OF Q VEEN ANNE. 
 
 After their brief separation Swift and Stella were once more 
 reunited, and the pleasant parsonage of Laracor, near Dublin, 
 has become renowned as the scene of their happiest hours. 
 Here Swift was made vicar, and upon a moderate salary lived 
 in retirement and ambitious discontent. At his request or 
 his command, Stella, who was now without a home, whose 
 mother seems scarcely to have deserved her regard, resolved 
 upon the dangerous plan of removing to Ireland to live near 
 her early instructor. A female friend, Mrs. Dingley, ac- 
 companied her. It is impossible to say what promises of a 
 future marriage were the inducements held out by her imperi- 
 ous master, whether he postponed their union until his income 
 had increased, or left his future plans hidden in mystery. It 
 is only certain that at eighteen years of age the beautiful 
 Esther Johnson, already one of the ornaments of London so- 
 ciety, and the reputed daughter of Sir William Temple, aban- 
 doned the gay world to hide in the obscurity of Ireland ; to 
 live in a cloud of doubt, assailed by calumny, and scarcely 
 convinced of her own prudence; to reject all other suitors, 
 and to await with patient cheerfulness the moment when it 
 should please the imperious Swift to name the hour of their 
 nuptials. (8) 
 
 The two ladies, Mrs. Dingley and Stella, occupied the par- 
 sonage at Laracor when Swift was absent; when he returned 
 they went to private lodgings ; no concealment was pretended. 
 It was well known that the two gentlewomen had followed 
 Swift to Ireland ; it was even believed that he was married to 
 one of them. The days at Laracor passed pleasantly onward. 
 Stella, secure of the attachment and attentions of him whom 
 she looked upon as her husband, lived in cheerful confidence, 
 and Swift seems to have given her no cause for alarm. She 
 was ever to him "the fairest spirit that dwelt upon the earth." 
 Her conversation was his chief delight. To her he opened 
 his secret plans, and confided his most daring hopes. They 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 13 
 
 laid out the canal at Laracor together, planted it with graceful 
 willows, filled the garden with rare fruits, or adorned with 
 simple comforts and embellishments the parsonage, whose 
 ruins still show traces of its famous occupants. (9) Society 
 gathered around them, and the eccentric union of the two 
 proteges of Sir William Temple, who had long been known 
 to the world of letters and of fashion, seems to have been 
 looked upon as in no degree improper. Stella was courted 
 by the grave and the gay; received offers of marriage, which 
 she declined; wondered, perhaps, at the ungenerous delay of 
 her suitor, but had not yet learned to reproach. 
 
 In 1704 dropped mysteriously from the London press one 
 of those books that the literary world can never let die, yet 
 one which it has tacitly agreed to hide in a decent obscurity. 
 It treated of the most sacred themes with coarse ribaldry 
 and painful familiarity. It was more shocking to a delicate 
 taste than the barbaric wit of Rabelais and the keen levity 
 of Lucian. Yet its rare originality, its biting satire, the 
 profusion of its learning, the endless variety of its wit, and 
 that clear and simple style, the result of long years of labor, 
 in which the writer's mind, with all its fertile novelty, seemed 
 to blend with that of his reader, made the "Tale of a Tub" 
 the most remarkable book of the day. Its clouded renown 
 opened the dawn of the golden age of Queen Anne. It was 
 read by pious bishops with horror and delight, by eminent 
 statesmen and ambitious lords, by the gentle Addison, by 
 Somers, Garth, and the youthful Pope. Its anonymous origin 
 was soon examined. Swift, who had already written popular 
 pieces, was believed to be its author; (10) and the renown of 
 being the greatest wit and the most original genius of his 
 day was awarded at once to the Irish vicar. Swift now made 
 yearly visits to London, and in the society of Somers, Mon- 
 tague, and Addison began to project schemes of ambition 
 that were to end in signal defeat. 
 
14 . THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 From their quiet retreat amidst the willows of Laracor, 
 Swift and Stella saw pass slowly before them the barbaric 
 glories of the reign of Queen Anne. Chivalry, unhappily, 
 still ruled in France. Louis XIV. — coward, imposter, the 
 basest of voluptuaries, the chief savage of his time — pro- 
 claimed a tournament of the nations, and drove his starving 
 and enfeebled people to fling themselves in miserable throngs 
 against the patient Hollander, the quiet German, the soft 
 Italian, and die in myriads on the field of battle. When 
 Swift retired to Laracor, Louis the Great was at the height 
 of his renown. Europe trembled before the despot of Ver- 
 sailles, the modern Dionysius. While the people starved, the 
 soldiers of France, clad in rich trappings and fed on costly 
 food, were held ready to be let loose upon the factories of 
 Flanders and the rich cities of Germany ; and in every happy 
 home or peaceful village from Strasburg to Vienna the am- 
 bition of the French Attila struck an icy dread. 
 
 To become "king of men," as his unchristian preachers 
 were accustomed to salute him, Louis had sunk into a bar- 
 barian. Yet his youth had not been without its promise. 
 He was the grandson of Henry IV., and had inherited at 
 least the memory of the austere Jeanne d'Albret, and of the 
 simple manners of Beam. His own mother had neglected 
 him. He could remember the time when his velvet suit had 
 grown threadbare from poverty, and when his scanty and 
 ill-paid allowance scarcely gave him a tolerable support. He 
 had been educated in sobriety, at a time when all France was 
 flourishing with signal vigor under the influence of Huguenot 
 ideas, when the fields were clad in wealth of food and popula- 
 tion, the factories busy, and the prosperous nation had just 
 entered upon a career of reform and culture that might have 
 saved it all its later woes. Louis, the neglected boy, grew up 
 fair, graceful, and gracious in his manners; but at twenty- 
 two, still happier auspice for his country— became king in 
 
COLBERT. 
 
THE DA YS OF Q VEEN ANNE. 15 
 
 reality, under the guidance of the hardy intellect of Colbert. 
 The Huguenot minister governed for a time the destinies of 
 France, and Louis was the champion of economy, moderation, 
 and peace. (11) Brief, however, was the period of his moral 
 vigor; he fell with a memorable lapse. The pagan influence 
 of the Catholic faith clouded his aspiring spirit. Corrupt 
 confessors and plotting Jesuits condoned his enormous vices. 
 He sank into moral and mental degradation, and Bossuet and 
 Massillon celebrated in sounding periods the mighty monarch 
 who had driven the Huguenots from his kingdom with un- 
 exampled atrocities, and whose barbarous ambition had filled 
 Europe with slaughter. 
 
 The crimes of Louis can scarcely be surpassed. Without 
 provocation he broke into Spanish Flanders, and spread deso- 
 lation over that rich territory, whose boundless productive- 
 ness has outlived the wars of centuries. Without provocation 
 he poured the finest soldiers of Europe into the busy fields of 
 Holland. City after city fell bleeding and defenseless before 
 his arms. Already the Jesuits and the Catholics believed them- 
 selves masters of that wonderful land, where the printing- 
 press and the free school had nerved the intellect of the Calvin- 
 ist in its desperate struggle for independence, and whose vig- 
 orous thought had sapped the strongest bulwarks of Rome. 
 But the Dutch had torn down their dikes. The ocean rolled 
 over the scenes of prosperous industry, and Louis retreated 
 from the land he had covered with despair. 
 
 Yet it was against divided and distracted Germany that 
 the great king perpetrated his most unpardonable crimes. 
 That hive of nations, from whence had poured forth in suc- 
 cessive streams Goth and Vandal, Frank and Saxon, to renew 
 the energies of the Latin race, was now to lie for hopeless 
 years at the feet of haughty France. Louis seems, in his 
 insane ambition, to have believed the Germans an inferior 
 race, into whose savage realm the gay and civilized legions 
 
16 . THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 of Paris might penetrate without an effort, and ravage with- 
 out remorse. To extend the frontier of France to the Rhine, 
 over blazing Alsace and the blood-tinged Moselle, Louis la- 
 bored for fifty years. (12) No such scenes of human misery 
 and national shame had been witnessed in Europe as were 
 those over which the gracious and courtly king exulted with 
 horrible joy. Twice he had sent orders to desolate the Palat- 
 inate, and reduce to a naked waste the fairest province of 
 Germany. For seventy miles along the banks of the Saar, 
 villages and fields were swept by a general conflagration, and 
 the miserable people fled to the forests, to perish by famine 
 or disease. Strasburg he had seized by an open fraud. In 
 September, 1681, when its chief citizen had gone to the 
 Frankfort fair, in the midst of a recent peace, the Frencii 
 troops surrounded the great city, the key of Germany, and 
 demanded its surrender. Its garrison trembled before the 
 heavy artillery and unexpected attack of the foe. The gates 
 were opened by treachery, and Strasburg fell into the power 
 of the French. The Protestants were driven from its re- 
 nowned cathedral, where they had worshiped for more than a 
 hundred years ; and Louis, without a blush, made a triumphal 
 entry into the city he had violated his honor to obtain, and 
 from whence he hoped to inflict new miseries upon the German 
 race. (13) 
 
 Nor did it seem possible that Germany could long survive 
 the ceaseless malignity of its French foe. In 1683 Louis had 
 called to his aid the savage Turks — the scourge of European 
 civilization. With an army of two hundred thousand men — 
 the largest that had been seen in Europe since the fall of 
 Constantinople — the grand vizier, Mustapha, a brave and skil- 
 ful soldier, broke into Germany and laid siege to Vienna. 
 The emperor and his family fled from his trembling capital; 
 its garrison was small, its fortifications imperfect; and in 
 June, when the immense Turkish host sat down before the 
 
LOUIS XIV. 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 17 
 
 city, there seemed little hope that the empire could be saved. 
 All Germany awaited with almost supine awe the fall of the 
 house of Hapsburg. 
 
 The siege was prosecuted with terrible vigor; the Viennese 
 resisted with undoubted heroism. Every day new mines were 
 sprung; the walls were shattered by huge parks of cannon. 
 The weary defenders repaired at night the ruins of the day ; 
 yet the Turks pressed on, eager for the plunder of the wealthy 
 city, and filled the trenches with the Christian dead. At 
 length, in the beginning of September, a mine was sprung 
 under the bastion of Burg; half the city shook and tottered 
 at the dreadful shock, and a wide breach was opened, suffi- 
 ciently large for a whole battalion to pass in. The garrison had 
 melted away with toil and battle, and the hopeless Viennese 
 prepared for the final assault that might deliver their proud 
 city forever into the hands of the infidel. (14) But on the 
 morning of the fatal day John Sobieski, King of Poland, 
 stood on the Kalen Hill, (15) at the head of forty thousand 
 men, surrounded by the princes of Germany. The Turks 
 were arrested in the moment of triumph; and on the 12th of 
 September, leading his brilliant cavalry, Sobieski sprang from 
 the hills into the centre of the throngs of Turkish horsemen, 
 and chased them in a wild flight along the plain. (16) 
 
 At night a panic seized the whole Turkish force, and they 
 fled silently from their countless tents. Sobieski, in the 
 morning, saw before him the rejoicing city, just delivered 
 from a horrible doom, and a boundless wealth of spoil in 
 gold, silver, and rich robes, the great standard of Turkey, 
 and the baths, fountains, and gardens of the luxurious 
 Mustapha. Germany and Europe rang with the praises of 
 the gallant Pole; and Louis alone lamented the discomfiture 
 of the Turks. 
 
 In 1688 he began a new war against the enfeebled Germans. 
 It opened with an act of singular atrocity. In the depth 
 
18 THE DA YS OF Q UEEN ANNE. 
 
 of winter, when the fields and forests lay clad in snow, the 
 French cavalry swept into the fertile provinces of the Rhine. 
 Around them were rich and famous cities, renowned as the 
 centres of early Protestantism and freedom, and countless 
 villages— the emblems of centuries of toil. All were to be 
 destroyed. The inhabitants in that cold and mournful season, 
 the period of domestic festivity, were ordered to abandon their 
 fine cities and pleasant homes, or were driven at the point of 
 the bayonet, naked and defenseless, into the snow. When 
 they asked why they were treated with such severity, they 
 were told, "It is the king's pleasure." They wandered out, 
 beggars and homeless. Behind them, over the wintry land- 
 scape, they saw the flames sweep over Worms and Spires, 
 Heidelberg or Baden. Every city was burned to the ground ; 
 the French soldiers plundered the tombs of the Salic emper- 
 ors, and robbed the churches of Spires. The hapless people 
 died by thousands, of starvation, frost, despair, and grief; 
 and the civilized world admitted that the enormities of Louis 
 had never been surpassed by Turk or Hun. (17) 
 
 Yet the great king, dead and sick at heart, scorned the 
 reproaches of civilization, and lived only for glory. Never 
 was his manner more gracious, his court more splendid, his 
 Bossuet or Massillon more enthusiastic in his praise, his gross 
 degradation more apparent, his hollow pomp more shocking 
 and disheartening, then when, in 1689, he could point to the 
 blighted waste of the Palatinate, and to his prisons and gal- 
 leys thronged with Huguenots. All Western Europe rose 
 against him. Holland, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, led 
 by William of Orange, united to crush the common foe of 
 civilization. He repelled their efforts with fearful sacrifices 
 to France. He was still "king of men." At the peace of 
 Ryswick he scornfully enforced the Catholic faith upon 
 countless German towns, and still saw Europe tremble at 
 his nod. 
 
BOSSUET. 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 19 
 
 Then, when for sixty years Louis had sat upon the throne 
 of France (1702), William III. died, and Anne, the mild, dull 
 Queen, ruled over divided England. (18) Scarcely did the 
 daughter of James II. appear likely to become the avenger 
 of Germany — to perfect the plans of William and decide the 
 fall of Louis. She was slow and cautious; neither good- 
 natured nor malicious. Of intellect she showed scarcely a 
 trace; she could not have known the difference between Pope 
 and Blackmore, or Addison and Dennis. She was never 
 sensible of the merits of Swift. Yet around the unlettered 
 queen were gathered the brilliant fruits of the second English 
 revolution ; and her authors, statesmen, and commanders, her 
 men of science (19) and of action, set bounds to the ambition 
 of Louis. 
 
 All France was now mad with vanity and misery. The 
 gentle touch of Addison has painted in his letters the boastful 
 Frenchman starving in his glory, and looking down with 
 scorn upon those inferior races who seemed to follow as cap- 
 tives the triumphal chariot of his king. In his old age Louis 
 had placed his grandson Philip on the throne of Spain. Eu- 
 rope accepted the challenge ; the war of the succession began ; 
 a French army once more broke into Germany; Bavaria 
 joined the invaders; and the divided empire seemed at last 
 destined to perish before the ceaseless malice of the Gallic 
 king. 
 
 Germany might well have sighed for a Barbarossa, and 
 waited for the rising of that mighty barbarian whose haughty 
 spirit was believed to hover still around its beloved Rhine ; but 
 the Emperor Leopold (20) had none of the talents of his 
 predecessor, and his long reign had been marked only by the 
 misfortunes of his realm. His small, distorted figure, his pro- 
 jecting under-jaw, his cold and Spanish gravity, his feeble 
 mind, made him no worthy champion against the graceful 
 and talented monarch who had sold himself to glory; and 
 
20 THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 Louis might well scoff at the dull ruler of a disunited people. 
 But far up in the north of Germany the French had found a 
 more resolute foe. Frederick William of Prussia had brought 
 his small principality into unprecedented renown. He had 
 been the first to defy the power of France. His intelligent 
 troops had become famous on many a battlefield. His vigor 
 sustained the courage of the Germans, and the Prussian sol- 
 diers and a Prussian general were the central figures of the 
 German troops. His successor assumed the royal title, (21) 
 and Prussia, in the moment of danger, stood firmly by the 
 side of the feeble Leopold. 
 
 From his stronghold at Strasburg, penetrating the natural 
 defenses of Germany, Louis supposed that lus accomplished 
 commanders would march almost without resistance to Vienna ; 
 his soldiers had never yet been beaten; he had held Alsace 
 and the Rhine against the vigor of William of Orange, the 
 power of England, and the efforts of a grand alliance; nor 
 could he have thought to encounter any braver foes than 
 those to whom he had haughtily awarded the treaty of Rys- 
 wick. The dull Anne and the feeble Leopold he had treated 
 with singular indignities. He had named a king for England, 
 and had proclaimed the Pretender James III., amidst the ac- 
 clamations of his courtiers and the joy of the Catholics of 
 the British Isles. His gold had been freely distributed among 
 English statesmen, and his emissaries were always busy in 
 the secret intrigues of the English court. Marlborough and 
 Sunderland had been his pensioners. It was believed that 
 Anne herself was not unwilling to acknowledge her unfortu- 
 nate brother. His grandson Philip had been received with 
 ready loyalty in Catholic Spain. The Archduke Charles 
 must conquer his kingdom before he could hope to reign. The 
 war of the succession opened for the great king with a 
 boundless prospect for universal dominion ; and the nobles 
 and the marshals of France crossed the Rhine, inspired by 
 
WILLIAM OF ORANGE 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 21 
 
 the memories of half a century of uninterrupted success, in 
 the proud confidence of superiority. (22) 
 
 But England was now thoroughly Protestant; its Catholic 
 faction had sunk into a feeble minority ; the intellect of the 
 nation, which had been debased and degraded under the in- 
 sincere rule of Charles or James, had begun to produce 
 examples of public virtue worthy of the days of Cromwell 
 and of Milton ; and the people of England, shocked at the 
 chivalric crimes of Louis and the corrupting vices of a Romish 
 court, had resolved, with rare unanimity, to break down the 
 haughty despotism of France forever. The money of the 
 English merchants was lavished in maintaining the unity of 
 Germany. The wealth of Dissenting tradesmen sustained 
 the house of Hapsburg on its ancient throne. The gay nobles 
 of the Parisian court, whose pedigrees had been carefully 
 marked out for eight generations, were found to have lost 
 the savage virtues of their ancestors ; the factories of England 
 and Holland repelled the fierce inroads of the feudal lords. 
 
 Anne was represented on the battlefield by Marlborough; 
 Leopold by Eugene. A friendship grew up between the 
 two great generals, as constant as it was sincere; and what- 
 ever may have been the earlier faults of Marlborough, he 
 seems to have given the best resources of his genius to the 
 aid of European freedom. If he had been in the past a 
 traitor, a perjured commander, the pensioner of Louis, he 
 grew, under the influence of a real friendship, into sincerity 
 and honor. (23) Modest, small, dark-complexioned, insig- 
 nificant, the fiery ardor and vigorous principle of the Savoy- 
 ard soldier had fixed the admiration of the eminent English- 
 man; (24) with Eugene, Marlborough ceased to be treacher- 
 ous ; together they struck down the power of Louis, and put 
 back for nearly a century the Gallic conquest of Europe. Yet 
 in tactics they represented the two opposite forms of mili- 
 tary genius. Marlborough, calm, impassive, never at fault, 
 
22 . THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 moved his squadrons with precision, and waited for the moment 
 of victory ; Eugene, sword in hand, pressed to the front, and 
 led the fury of the battle. Marlborough guided the whirl- 
 wind; his companion was ever in the van. The small and 
 insignificant figure of Eugene seemed filled with grandeur 
 as he sprang upon the French at Blenheim, or sank wounded 
 before the walls of Turin. The impassive Englishman showed 
 scarcely a trace of unusual excitement in the moment of 
 danger or success. Before their varied qualities the mighty 
 fabric of French ambition fell with a sudden shock. 
 
 The time may come when the barbarous details of warfare 
 will cease to be interesting, and when men will turn with 
 disgust from the nameless horrors of the battle-field and the 
 campaign. Yet the military glories of the reign of Queen 
 Anne have, at least, the excuse that they were necessary. 
 Tallard, at the head of eighty thousand French and Bavar- 
 ians, was pressing on to Vienna. He was met at Blenheim by 
 Marlborough and Eugene, with an inferior force. The French, 
 stretching far along a range of difficult heights, surveyed 
 their foe. The two friends resolved to storm the hills. In 
 front of tbe French lines spread bogs, rivulets, and morasses ; 
 but difficulties vanished before their resolution. Eugene was 
 opposed to the Bavarians, and among his troops was a select 
 band of Prussians, then first rising to renown. Marlborough 
 led the Hollanders and English against the best soldiers of 
 France. The roar of battle resounded through the still 
 August day, and often as their troops shrank back from 
 the rain of cannon-balls that swept over the marshes of Hoch- 
 stadt, the two friends rallied them once more to the charge. 
 Struggling in deep bogs and difficult paths, Eugene pressed 
 down upon the Bavarians, and was nearly cut down by a 
 Bavarian trooper. But a charge of the Prussians decided 
 the battle on the right wing ; on the left the famous squadrons 
 of Louis yielded to the steady courage of Marlborough, and 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 23 
 
 the night fell on the utter ruin of the army of Tallard. How 
 many perished on that dreadful day, what troops of prisoners 
 were gathered up by the weary victors, what stores of money 
 and of arms came into their hands, it is scarcely necessary to 
 remember; (25) it is sufficient to know that the pride of 
 France was broken, and that German peasants and villagers, 
 set free from their life-long terror, sang the praises of Marl- 
 borough and Eugene as they tilled the fertile pastures of the 
 Danube and the Elbe. 
 
 The two commanders now separated. Eugene, with a 
 force of twenty-four thousand Germans, among whom were 
 the famous Prussian band and their commander, the Prince 
 of Dessau, climbed over the mountains and crossed the rivers 
 that separate Italy from Germany, performing one of the 
 most romantic feats in warfare, and fell suddenly upon a 
 great force of eighty thousand French, who were besieging 
 the capital of Savoy. The city had nearly fallen, when the 
 Germans, moving swiftly along the banks of the Po, threw 
 themselves upon the hostile lines. The prince was at the 
 front; the Prussians struck a well-aimed blow; eighty 
 thousand French, dismayed and broken, fled before an in- 
 ferior force, and Italy saw, with amazement, the disastrous 
 flight of the soldiers of the great king. Meantime, in the 
 Low Countries, Marlborough, at Ramillies (1706, May 2fJ), 
 had rivaled the terrors of the battle of Turin. Louis sent 
 his best army and Villeroi to defend the territory he had 
 wrested in his prosperous youth from Spain. Not far from 
 that memorable field where France and England struggled 
 for victory at Waterloo, and Wellington and Napoleon had 
 finished, a century later, a generation of warfare, Marl- 
 borough received the attack of the brilliant and well- 
 trained squadrons; on that day he emulated the daring 
 of Eugene; he was everywhere in the heart of the battle; (26) 
 his horse fell under him, and he had nearly been captured 
 
24 ■ THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 by the enemy ; his aide was shot at his side ; but when the 
 dreadful labors of the day were ended, the throne of Anne, 
 the liberties of Holland and of Germany, were secured. 
 
 Blenheim, Turin and Ramillies were followed by the 
 union of the two chiefs ; and again, at Oudenarde, 1708, they 
 shattered, by incessant toil, the last army of France. Marl- 
 borough, eager to do honor to his friend, had placed him in 
 command of the English troop ; he kept himself the Germans. 
 The landscape of the battle was a rich and level country, sown 
 thick with towns and hamlets, with farms and valleys teeming 
 with plenty, and pleasant woodlands, above whose tree-tops 
 the turrets of peaceful abbeys and lonely castles rose over 
 the tranquil scene. All was now torn with the raging con- 
 test. (27) The French were slowly beaten. The night fell, 
 and at length the glittering fires of musketry amidst the 
 darkness revealed the converging lines of the allies. The 
 French fled to Ghent, and Marlborough and Eugene felt 
 that their labors were nearly over. Terror and gloom filled 
 the once boastful streets of Paris, and its aged king 
 might well have looked to see the Germans at Versailles. 
 Soon, too, the powers of nature lent their aid to complete 
 the miseries of France. A winter, the most severe ever 
 known in Europe, froze the Seine to its bed; the rigors 
 of Lapland were repeated in Normandy and Guienne. 
 The crops froze in the ground; the peasantry and their 
 cattle perished by the road-side; vineyards were de- 
 stroyed; the pastures were converted into icy wastes; and 
 when the summer opened, famine preyed upon the enfeebled 
 nation, and Louis saw around him a dying people and a 
 ruined realm. (28) 
 
 In England, meantime, the tumult of victory had been fol- 
 lowed by a weariness of slaughter and a longing for the calm 
 of peace. The passions of men were stilled. Even the fear- 
 ful splendors of Blenheim and Ramillies ceased to awaken ex- 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 2 5 
 
 ultation. Spain had been conquered and lost ; Gibraltar alone 
 remained; Leopold and Joseph had died, and Charles VI. as- 
 cended the imperial throne. The safety of Europe, it was 
 asserted, demanded that Philip should be permitted to rule 
 at Madrid, and that Louis, humbled and disarmed, should 
 be spared the last humiliation of utter defeat. 
 
 Thrice had England risen on the wave of advancing 
 thought to singular eminence. The Protestant reform of the 
 reign of Elizabeth had given birth to a throng of stately 
 intellects, original, vigorous, creative. A second movement 
 of the popular mind toward honesty and austerity had pro- 
 duced a Milton and a Hampden. And now, by a third im- 
 pulse, the narrow realm of the good Queen Anne was raised 
 to the first rank among European powers. Scarcely, indeed 
 had the dull prejudices of feudalism passed away, and it 
 was still the fashion with the eminent and the wise to tracp 
 their descent from Norman robbers or Saxon thanes, to in- 
 dulge in the ostentation of rank, and lay claim to a fancied 
 superiority. It was still held more honorable to have come 
 from a knightly race, whose mail-clad hands had been stained 
 with Moslem blood, who had shone in the guilty revelries of 
 barbarous courts, and had abandoned learning to clerks and 
 priests, than to possess the wit of Addison or the genius of 
 Bacon. The people were still contemned; yet from the rising 
 vigor of the people had sprung almost every one of the wits 
 the courtiers, and the statesmen who had made the dull Anno 
 the arbitress of Europe. 
 
 Anne had herself inherited her sober virtues from the 
 honest yeomanry of her mother's family; the corrupt instincts 
 of the Stuarts were tempered by the regular habits of the 
 Hydes. (29) Marlborough, the savior of Germany, had 
 risen from comparative obscurity by every unworthy artifice 
 as well as by his successful sword; Halifax, the orator and 
 wit, had come up to London with an ingenious fable (30) and 
 
26 ' THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 fifty pounds a year, and had been pampered into unhappy 
 satiety, like the city mouse of his own tale; Somers rose 
 from poverty and insignificance; St. John was married to 
 the descendant of a wealthy clothier; Harley covered his 
 obscure origin by a fancied genealogy; and the ruling caste 
 of England, in this gifted age, was formed in great part of 
 men who were prepared to recognize personal merit, since 
 they had found it the source of their own success. 
 
 The clouded fame of Marlborough has sensibly decayed; 
 few now care to pursue the devious intrigues of Bolingbroke 
 and Oxford; but from the successful reign of Queen Anne 
 still gaze down upon us a cluster of thoughtful faces whose 
 lineaments the world will never cease to trace with interest, 
 and to whom mankind must ever turn with grateful regard. 
 One fair, soft countenance alone is always serene. No lines 
 of fierce struggles or of bitter discontent, of brooding mad- 
 ness, or of envious rage, disturb that gentle aspect. A deli- 
 cate taste, a tranquil disposition, a clear sense of the vanity 
 of human passions and of all earthly aims, have softened and 
 subdued the mental supremacy of Addison. To some he 
 has seemed feeble ; for many he wants the fire of genius. But 
 multitudes in every age have been held willing captives by 
 the lively play of his unwearied fancy, his melodious periods, 
 his tenderness and truth; have yielded to a power that is 
 never asserted, and to an art that is hidden in the simplicity 
 of a master. By his side gleams out from the mists of cen- 
 turies the severe and intellectual countenance of Alexander 
 Pope. Bitter, treacherous, and cruel, magnanimous and full 
 of moral vigor, the teacher of honesty and independence, 
 the poet of Queen Anne's age still holds his high place in the 
 temple of fame. His versification, so novel and so perfect to 
 his contemporaries, has long sunk into monotony under 
 countless imitations ; his satiric vigor is no longer felt ; the 
 splendor of his artifice and the glitter cf his rhetoric amaze 
 

 J.d, 
 
 vpt> 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 27 
 
 rather than delight; yet while literature endures the wise sen- 
 tences and the keen insight of t\e philosophic poet will in- 
 struct and guide his race. 
 
 Gentle Parnell and pensive Gay, the vigorous thought and 
 powerful diction of the corrupt St. John, the honest aspira- 
 tions of a dissipated Steele toward ideal virtue, the melody of 
 Tickell, the inventive genius of Defoe, the rude criticism of 
 Dennis, the wit of Arbuthnot, and some few lines of Prior, 
 survive from the faded glories of the age; and memorable 
 above his contemporaries by his griefs^ his brooding madness, 
 his fierce and unsparing pride, the dark and troubled aspect 
 of Swift looks down over the waste of time. There was never 
 any thing of trust or joy in his solemn eyes. There is neither 
 faith nor hope in the "Tale of a Tub" or "Gulliver's Travels." 
 He came into life already weary of existence, and left it in the 
 gloom of madness. 
 
 Swift came up to London in 1710, upon some important 
 business for the Irish Church. He soon began that brilliant 
 but scarcely honorable political career which engaged for 
 several years his vigorous faculties, awoke his overbearing 
 ambition, and left him in moody misanthropy and discontent. 
 (31) Two famous women controlled successively the feeble 
 intellect of Anne. Her strongest passion was an impulsive 
 friendship, and the severe pen of Macaulay has traced with in- 
 imitable fullness the ardor of devotion with which she yielded 
 to the imperious fascinations of Sarah Jennings, Duchess of 
 Marlborough. But the reign of the bold and vindictive fav- 
 orite was now drawing toward its close, and a political revo- 
 lution that was to decide the whole policy of England was 
 brought about by the secret influence of a woman of a very 
 different character. (32) A cousin of the duchess, Abigail 
 Hill, had been admitted as an attendant upon the queen. She 
 proved crafty and subservient. She betrayed her cousin, and 
 supplanted her in Anne's feeble affections. The duchess dis- 
 
28 THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 covered her treachery. She covered Anne with reproaches, 
 she wept, she implored ; but the stubborn queen clung to her 
 new favorite, and at length the haughty duchess was driven 
 from the court; her husband, the great duke, fell with her; 
 the Whigs were deprived of the power which they had held 
 for so many years, and the Tories and the High Churchmen, 
 led by Harley and Bolingbroke, ruled over England. 
 
 The literary men had all been Whigs, and had been brought 
 into notice and covered with favors by that progressive party, 
 which was represented in the Church by Tenison and in the 
 Parliament by Montague. They remained, with but few ex- 
 ceptions, true to their principles and their benefactors. Ad- 
 dison, dignified and gentle, led his obedient followers into the 
 opposition; Steele, profligate yet honest, employed his ready 
 pen in the defense of the fallen Whigs; Congreve, Tickell, 
 Phillips, and Budgell remained unseduced by the brilliant 
 prospects of the triumphant faction. But the Tories suc- 
 ceeded in purchasing with bribes or winning by flatteries two 
 of the chiefs of that gifted band who were to complete the 
 renown of the reign of Queen Anne. No man had been more 
 lavish in his flatteries of Marlborough, or a more vigorous 
 suitor for the favors of the Whigs, than Matthew Prior. 
 He now abandoned his friends and sold himself to St. John. 
 His wit, his address, his dissolute morals, and his poetical fame 
 made Prior the chief confidant of the new ministry, the com- 
 panion of their pleasures, and their representative at the 
 court of Louis. The poet negotiated the treaty of Utrecht, 
 and saved France from a German invasion. But the chief of 
 the traitors was Jonathan Swift. It is possible that in the 
 dawn of his career, touched by the high inspiration of letters, 
 Swift had felt the charm of ideal virtue, and had lived above 
 the inferior impulses of his age. He was always fond of 
 boasting of his integrity, his independence, and his conscious 
 merit. But his feeble virtues now yielded to the shock of dis- 
 
RICHARD STEELE. 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 29 
 
 appointed ambition. He had abandoned his liberal principles, 
 separated from his early friends, and went over to the Tories. 
 He was received with singular favor. He became the constant 
 associate of the unprincipled Harley and the profligate St, 
 John, of Abigail Hill, who had become Lady Masham, and of 
 the gay circle of dissipated courtiers who controlled the policy 
 of Queen Anne. (33) Pious men were shocked to see an 
 eminent clergyman the chosen companion of the worthless 
 and the gay, and the keen wits of the fallen party pursued 
 the renegade with ingenious malice. But Swift replied to 
 their taunts with a ribald brilliancy that soon disconcerted 
 his feebler foes, and amidst the elation of a political triumph, 
 and the flatteries of ministers and lords, poured forth the 
 most wonderful of party diatribes. He seemed to live in an 
 atmosphere of exhilaration, to hold in his hands the avenue 
 of promotion. He was fond of boasting to Stella how he 
 loved Harley and St. John, and how they both treated him 
 as a favored friend. He was eager with vague hopes, but 
 often sinks into despondency; and the famous Journal, the 
 picture of an unquiet soul, shows how Swift clutched at 
 wealth and power, and lost his integrity. 
 
 Scott, a name ever memorable in letters for consistency, 
 if not for acute discernment, has labored to excuse the fatal 
 lapse of his great predecessor ; but his palliation scarcely con- 
 ceals the fault. It is not sufficient to assert that Swift's zeal 
 for the Church drew him over to the Tories, for it must also 
 have led him into a captious leaning toward the Pretender, 
 who could hardly be thought a friend of the English estab- 
 lishment. (34) In his bitter discontent Swift seems to hav~ 
 abandoned all principle, and yielded himself wholly to the 
 promptings of passion and a ceaseless thirst for vengeance 
 upon his early friends. 
 
 There had come a time in the annals of France when it 
 seemed that the Germans and the Dutch, the English and the 
 
30 THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 Prussians, might march almost unopposed to Paris ; when the 
 fountains of Versailles must play for a foreign master, and 
 the gay parterres of Marly sink beneath the tread of hostile 
 squadrons ; when Louis must flee from his luxurious chambers, 
 to hide, like James II., an exile in a distant land. Nothing 
 could resist the splendid onset of Marlborough and Eugene. 
 Lille, the capital of French Flanders, yielded to their united 
 skill. The path lay open to the heart of France; and Louis 
 trembled in the midst of those magnificent palaces which he 
 had reared to his own glory amidst the ruin of his people. 
 Huguenot riders swept from Courtray to Versailles, and cap- 
 tured an officer of the royal household on the bridge of Sevres. 
 The streets of Paris rang with the news that the enemy was 
 near. (35) No longer the magnificent, the beloved, amidst 
 starvation, death, and penury, the aged king saw insulting 
 placards hung upon his statues, and heard the murmurs of 
 dejected France. (36) 
 
 Scarcely eight years had passed since Louis, almost mon- 
 arch of Europe, issuing from his gorgeous chamber at Ver- 
 sailles, had presented to the Spanish ambassador and a splen- 
 did throng of all the chief dignitaries of his court, his grand- 
 son, Philip of Anjou, as King of Spain, and amidst the ap- 
 plause of a corrupt assembly had openly violated his plighted 
 faith; and now, on a mournful day, a council was gathered, 
 covered with humiliation and dissolved in tears. ( 37 ) There 
 was the dull, unprincipled dauphin, his son, the heir of that 
 great kingdom, which was now wasted with famine and threat- 
 ened with a sudden conquest; there was the young Duke of 
 Burgundy, the best of all the depraved grandchildren of Louis, 
 the direct heir of a tottering throne ; there were eminent states- 
 men and stately nobles — Torcy, Beauvilliers or Pontchartrain ; 
 and there, as Beauvilliers painted in vivid eloquence the woes 
 and dangers of the realm, princes and nobles wept together, 
 and Louis, with bowed head and breaking heart, consented 
 
' 
 
 THE PALACE AT VERSAILLES. 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 31 
 
 to send an agent to Holland to ask mercy and peace from the 
 Dutch. If William of Orange could have looked upon that 
 scene, and beheld the humiliation of the destroyer of his coun- 
 try, he would have remembered with renewed satisfaction the 
 time when, before the triumphant legions of France, he had 
 ordered the dikes to be cut, and amidst the roar of the North 
 Sea billows had called all Holland to the defense of its free- 
 dom and its faith ; when the Calvinistic people, roused by his 
 heroism, had defied the rage of the Jesuits, ( 38 ) and trusted 
 in an arm mightier than all earthly powers. But the Dutch 
 were now in no mood to listen complacently to the almost ab- 
 ject supplications of Louis. They had been bitterly wronged. 
 France and Louis had labored to blot them from the earth. 
 They offered only terms so severe and degrading that, even 
 in its despair, the court of Versailles preferred war to 
 submission. 
 
 Happily for Louis, a wide revolution had taken place in 
 the politics of England ; and the Tory reaction, covering the 
 intellect of the age with the dreamy dullness of medieval High 
 Churchism and the doctrines of passive obedience, had inclined 
 the nation to look with sympathy upon the fallen monarch 
 and his faded glories. The Tories stretched out a friendly 
 hand to save the centre of European despotism and of regal 
 follies and crimes. They had little in common with the Dutch 
 reformers and the rising intellect of Northern Germany. Anne 
 herself was a Stuart, remembered the close alliance of Louis 
 with her uncle and her father, and was no friend, perhaps a 
 feeble enemy, to the plans of William of Orange and the 
 rapid growth of Protestantism. Marlborough and Eugene were 
 checked in their invasion of France; yet they were permit- 
 ted to move slowly onward, and at the great battle of Mal- 
 plaquet, the most fiercely contested of all this disastrous war, 
 the new army of France was defeated with dreadful slaughter ; 
 and again the enemy were looked for in Paris. At Malpla- 
 
32 THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 quet, on French soil, the fate of Louis and his dynasty seemed 
 decided. His army, led by the brilliant Villars, had shown 
 the courage of desperation, the self-sacrifice of a spurious 
 patriotism. Thrice had Eugene led his best troops against 
 the French intrenchments, and was still beaten back. The 
 Dutch contingent, under a Prince of Orange, threw itself by 
 mistake against a line bristling with cannon and guarded by 
 a triple defense, and, with pertinacious resolution, was nearly 
 cut to pieces on the spot. The prince retreated behind his 
 heaps of dead. The Huguenot brigades, the flower of a de- 
 voted race, lay strewn upon the fatal field; and Prince Eu- 
 gene, wounded by a musket-ball, was carried fainting to the 
 rear. But while the French thus bravely held their ground, 
 their line was again shaken by the steady advance of Marlbor- 
 ough with the English and Prussians. Once more Eugene, 
 his wound bound up, sprang onward at the head of his daring 
 cavalry, and, with a despairing cry, the center of the French 
 army broke, and the great host fled before its foe. 
 
 The conquest of France seemed now no difficult task, (39) 
 and the Germans, the Prussians and the Huguenots were ready 
 to press forward to the siege of Paris. Happy would it have 
 been for Europe and for Frenchmen had they been permitted 
 to complete their victory. They might have restored tolera- 
 tion to the Church and self-respect to the people ; they might 
 have driven the Jesuits from France, the source of all its woes ; 
 they would have renewed the Huguenot colleges at Sedan or 
 Saumur, and invited from every side the elements of reform; 
 they might have scattered forever that gilded throng of poi- 
 soners, assassins, idiots, and imbeciles who had proclaimed 
 themselves the rulers of France, and who, under the despotic 
 guidance of Louis and the Jesuits, were sowing the seeds of 
 endless woes. But the Tory reaction of England checked the 
 career of reform in London as well as in Paris. The Hugue- 
 nots and the Dutch were forbidden to conquer France. Louis 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 33 
 
 and the Jesuits were left to rule over the decaying kingdom ; 
 and the bitter pen of Swift, ever malignant and destructive, 
 covered with sharp ridicule that vigorous alliance, the dying 
 legacy of William of Orange, which had alone preserved the 
 liberties of Europe. 
 
 Five years of a weary life yet remained to good Queen 
 Anne, and of ceaseless plotting to the Tories. They knew 
 that their power must cease with her reign, and that when 
 the Hanoverian king ascended the throne, the principles of 
 Protestantism and the liberal policy of William would again 
 govern England. It was believed by many that Bolingbroke, 
 and perhaps Oxford, had engaged in a plan for bringing back 
 the Stuarts ; that Popery was to be restored with the Pretend- 
 er; that a period of anarchy was approaching, when the na- 
 tion would once more be driven to contend against French 
 corruption and a Catholic king. The Tories, careless of the 
 clamor of their opponents, resolved to break up the grand al- 
 liance, to desert their allies, to save Louis. Prior went on a 
 secret embassy to Paris ; Swift wrote his "Conduct of the Al- 
 lies;" the treaty of Utrecht (1713) was slowly perfected; 
 and Louis rose from his humiliation, still the master of Alsace 
 and Strasburg, and saw his grandson Philip firmly seated on 
 the throne of Spain. 
 
 That the peace of Utrecht was unjust to Germany and Hol- 
 land, to the exiled Huguenots who had fought for the free- 
 dom of England on many a battle-field, to the Protestants of 
 Strasburg, and the friends of toleration in every land, can 
 scarcely be denied; that Bolingbroke, Swift, (40) and Ox- 
 ford were bound to the despot of Versailles by no honorable 
 ties, was openly asserted by many of their contemporaries. If 
 they were not engaged to bring back the Pretender, they at 
 least felt a lasting hostility for the Protestant king from Han- 
 over. 
 
 It was in the last years of Queen Anne's reign that, every 
 
34 THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 morning, was laid on the breakfast-tables of tasteful lords and 
 quiet citizens a small printed sheet that told the mournful story 
 of Sir Roger and his widow; (41) discussed the sources of 
 the beautiful and the sublime ; made "Paradise Lost" familiar 
 to countless readers, and unfolded to the world the graceful 
 meditations of a spotless mind on the problems of life and of 
 immortality. While party strife raged with unexampled bit- 
 terness, Addison, the tranquil "Spectator," taught all the 
 milder virtues and softened the rude manners of his age. With 
 less success, but still more general applause, he produced a. 
 tragedy in the cause of freedom, of which only a brief mono- 
 logue survives. At the same time was printing at the London 
 press a magnificent volume, ( 42 ) rich with the rarest decora- 
 tions of luxurious typography — a translation by one who 
 could scarcely read the original, with slow labor, of the ever- 
 living tales of Homer. Such unscrupulous audacity was re- 
 warded with an unbounded triumph. Golden showers rained 
 upon the poet ; he rose at once to unprecedented fame ; and if 
 a wide eminence be a proper object of congratulation, Pope 
 might be looked upon as the most successful of his contempo- 
 raries: more fortunate than Marlborough; happier than 
 Swift. Nor was his triumph undeserved ; for the rich fields 
 of English poetry have no more captivating mine of poetic 
 gems, of the touching, the graceful, and the sublime, clothed 
 in sonorous couplets, and radiant with a glittering diction, 
 than Pope has ravished from the boundless stores of Homer. 
 What he has brought with him almost compensates us for 
 all that he was incapable of bearing away. The simplicity 
 and majesty of his original he never ventured to imitate. 
 Swift, meantime, was startling the literary world with those 
 unrivaled political satires that have never ceased to find imita- 
 tors and readers, and had, perhaps, already conceived the de- 
 sign of "Gulliver's Travels ;" Defoe had not yet turned from 
 party strife to write "Robinson Crusoe ;" a throng of inferior 
 
J-. jftti/tS?^ 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 35 
 
 writers sought the public ear. In the midst of the new liter- 
 ary activity Johnson was born (1709), and Hume (1711)— 
 the most successful students of Addison and Swift. Shake- 
 speare and Milton, now rescued from neglect, rose into general 
 favor, and literature began that vigorous contest, of which 
 the victory has not yet been won, against medieval ignorance 
 and feudal follies. (43) 
 
 The dull queen cared nothing for the strains of her bards 
 or the graceful periods of Addison and Swift; she was sick, 
 unhappy, and alone. Her husband and all her children died 
 before her; fierce dissensions had broken out among her min- 
 isters. Bolingbroke and Oxford, torn by an insane emulation, 
 brought their quarrels into the council chamber, and disturbed 
 the last days of the feeble queen with their coarse recrimina- 
 tion and bitter hate. No tenderness for their dying mistress, 
 no memory of her favors, restrained the rude natures of those 
 corrupt men, to whose hands was committed the destiny of 
 a cultivated nation. Harley came intoxicated into her pres- 
 ence;^ the character of Bolingbroke was well known 
 to his mistress; yet the queen was forced to listen 
 to their counsels and submit to their advice. At 
 length that event which the Tories had long looked 
 for with natural alarm was hastened by the im- 
 prudence of their chiefs, and Anne was seized with a mortal 
 illness. One morning she rose, fixed her eyes for a long time 
 on a clock that stood near, and when a lady in waiting asked 
 her what she saw unusual, turned upon her with a vacant gaze 
 and fainted. On the 31st of July, 1714, Anne died, and with 
 her passed away forever the rule of that faction which had 
 inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience and the divine 
 authority of kings. Fugitives, exiles, impoverished, dismayed, 
 the fallen adherents of a political superstition sank before th* 
 indignation of their countrymen. Oxford, a prisoner in the 
 Tower, trembled for his life; Bolingbroke fled to France, and 
 
36 THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 openly joined the court of James III.; Ormond was a needy 
 exile; Swift, spared by the lenient Whigs, was permitted to 
 retreat to his deanery at Dublin; Prior, fallen almost to penu- 
 ry, lived upon a subscription to his poems. Never again was 
 the extravagant theory of loyalty to rule in England. A new 
 race of statesmen had sprung up, who had been educated in 
 the tolerant spirit of Addison rather than the passionate big- 
 otry of Swift. The crown had, in fact, become elective; it 
 was slowly discovered that the king, the church, and the ruling 
 caste should be the servants rather than the despots of the 
 nation. 
 
 While England, taught by the gentle genius of Addison, 
 had made some faint progress in refinement and common-sense, 
 France, shorn of its military glories by the acute diplomacy of 
 William of Orange and the successful generals of Queen Anne, 
 remained lost in a dull stupor of bigotry and despotism that 
 was to be broken only by the fierce convulsions of its revolu- 
 tion. Louis, in extreme old age, was still governed by the 
 severe guidance of the Jesuits. It was even asserted that, like 
 James II. of England, he had himself become a member of 
 their powerful society, and might claim all those immunities 
 and privileges in a future world that had been lavishly be- 
 stowed by grateful popes upon the followers of Loyola. ( 44 ) 
 His reign had, at least, been illustrative of the principles of the 
 Spanish saint. His two confessors, La Chaise and Le Tellier, 
 had condoned all his vices and instigated all his crimes. The 
 slave and tyrant of depraved women and designing men, Louis 
 had swept on through life, the chief actor in a dreadful pa- 
 geant, blind to the miseries of his people, confident only in 
 his own glory. Yet the misfortunes of his later years might 
 well have broken any heart less cold than his own. The sor- 
 rows and the humiliation he had brought upon France seem, 
 indeed, to have given him little uneasiness. His selfish vanity 
 was never touched by the woes of others; but within his own 
 
WKmm 
 
 ' I 1±Z '■■ ' V,' - ■ 
 
 v 4 
 
 ST. JOHN, 
 VISCOUNT BOLINGBPOKE. 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 37 
 
 family a series of afflictions had fallen upon him that cast a 
 dreadful gloom over the splendors of Versailles and the gar- 
 dens of Marly. 
 
 Since Louis, on a chill and snowy night, attended by the 
 Archbishop of Paris, his confessor Pere la Chaise, and a few 
 officials, had led the widow Scarron (45) to the chapel of Ver- 
 sailles, and, kneeling with her at the altar, had exchanged the 
 marriage-rings, but little peace could have remained in the 
 palace, where the new wife was eagerly plotting to be openly 
 acknowledged, and the legitimate princes refused to come into 
 her presence. An alienation had arisen between the king and 
 his son the dauphin ; and Madame de Maintenon had become 
 the patroness of the natural children of Louis, who had in- 
 herited all the evil passions of their parents. But when the 
 Duke of Burgundy, the dauphin's eldest son, and the heir to 
 the crown, had married, amidst pageants of unprecedented 
 splendor, Mary of Savoy, that amiable but heedless princess 
 had won the regard of Louis, and the good qualities of the 
 young dukes, who had been educated under Fenelon, (46) 
 seemed to promise a happier era for the suffering people. Two 
 sons were born to Mary, and the family of the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy formed a centre of promise in the corrupt atmosphere 
 of Versailles. (47) 
 
 Death now suddenly descended upon the guilty court, at- 
 tended by all the horrors of suspicion and doubt. The dau- 
 phin was seized with small-pox, and died ; Louis fainted in an 
 agony of grief, but fled hastily from the infected chamber ; 
 his courtiers followed him ; and the heir of the French throne 
 was buried in haste, with only a few strangers to attend his 
 funeral. In February, 1712, a box of Spanish snuff was pre- 
 sented to Mary. Soon after she died delirious, and with every 
 trace of poison. Her husband, the duke, not long after per- 
 ished in similar torments. Their eldest son also died. The 
 Duke de Bern", second son of the dauphin, followed next, the 
 
38 THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 victim of his own wife. The cry of poison resounded through 
 the nation. Louis trembled for his own worthless life; and 
 his great-grandson, a feeble infant, the Duke of Anjou, alone 
 remained, the last of his direct heirs. Faint with repeated 
 shocks, yet tranquil in the assurance of the protection of the 
 Jesuits, Louis at length passed away (1715) from his mag- 
 nificent palaces, haunted only by the shades of the dead, and 
 left behind him a baleful memory, which future generations 
 will rejoice to hide in a decent oblivion. 
 
 Such was the spectacle of the fall of the great, the miseries 
 of nations, the barbaric glories and disasters of French van- 
 ity and Jesuitic intolerance, upon which Stella had gazed with 
 a feeble attention, and in which Swift had played no unimport- 
 ant part during the last years of Queen Anne; but for the 
 dark-eyed, pensive maiden, now no longer in the bloom of 
 youth, yet still singularly fair, the hand of destiny was tracing 
 an intricate and touching fate that must survive in the an- 
 nals of letters, when perhaps the names of Louis and Anne 
 are remembered only to be contemned. Swift had written each 
 day to Stella a journal of the various events that had soothed 
 his ambition or satisfied his pride ; had named the great nobles 
 who were his frequent companions, the power he had won in 
 the counsels of the nation, the most minute events of his daily 
 life, his dinners, his diseases, his giddiness, the misconduct of 
 Patrick and the melancholy end of Patrick's lark, the adven- 
 tures of the box of snuff, the heat of the weather ; yet there 
 was one passage of his London career upon which he was ever 
 silent. He had found a new pupil, and Stella had learned by 
 report of that gay and graceful rival to whom all of Swift's 
 leisure was devoted, (48) Esther Vanhomrigh, the "Vanessa" 
 of the mysterious romance, was young, wealthy, beautiful, 
 a member of that glittering circle of Tory fashion in which 
 her master was now moving with singular applause. Her 
 father was dead, her mother kept a hospitable house, and here 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 39 
 
 Swift found a friendly reception, and forgot in the eager hom- 
 age of Vanessa his duty to his betrothed, the gentle pupil of 
 Moor Park. (49) 
 
 He woke suddenly from his delusion ; and when the death of 
 Anne drove him, a moody exile, to his deanery at Dublin, had 
 resolved, perhaps, to part forever from Vanessa. On his re- 
 turn he found that grief and a natural jealousy had thrown 
 Stella into a deep melancholy. Her health declined. A friend 
 in common carried her complaints to Swift ; and with strange 
 reluctance and singular precautions, he at length determined 
 to prove his constancy by going through the form of mar- 
 riage. (50) The ceremony was performed secretly in the gar- 
 den of the deanery by the Bishop of Clogher in 1716, but 
 upon the condition that it was never to be acknowledged pub- 
 licly, and Stella was still to live apart from her husband in 
 the same guarded way in which they had so long defied the 
 scrutiny of the world. Agitated and gloomy, Swift had yield- 
 ed as if to some fatal necessity in his mysterious marriage. 
 Soon after, his friend Dr. Delany met him coming from an 
 interview with the Archbishop of Dublin ; he looked like one 
 distracted, and passed Delany without speaking. Delany 
 found the archbishop in tears ; upon asking the reason, he re- 
 plied, "You have just met the most unhappy man on earth; 
 but of the cause of his wretchedness you must never ask a 
 question." Swift hid himself in seclusion for several days aft- 
 er his marriage, and then came forth to resume his usual course 
 of life, and to treat Stella only as a loved and honored friend. 
 Every year, on her birthday, he celebrated her virtues in grace- 
 ful verses, and proved the sincerity of his affection by his de- 
 votion to her while living, the anguish with which he received 
 the tidings of her death. 
 
 What fatal barrier existed to their perfect union, what 
 strange confession Swift made to the Archbishop of Dublin, 
 why he ever refused to publish his marriage with one he so 
 
40 THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 deeply loved, no research has ever unfolded, and no tongue 
 has ever told. Swift carefully preserved his secret ; and even 
 when his intellect sank into imbecility, upon one point he was 
 always prudent. In all his writings he made no confession. 
 The mystery of Swift and Stella sleeps with them where they 
 were placed side by side in the Cathedral of St. Patrick. But 
 conjecture has never ceased to explain their story. It was said 
 that after his marriage Swift discovered that Stella was his 
 sister, that they were both the children of Sir William Temple, 
 and that the secret was maliciously revealed by Mrs. Dingley, 
 Stella's companion, when the ceremony was ended. Several 
 circumstances seem to confirm the theory. They had both 
 been inmates of Sir William's house, had been treated by him 
 with constant regard, and had received considerable legacies in 
 his will. Some likeness was traced between them and their sup- 
 posed father, and it was not incredible that one might have re- 
 mained ignorant of the other's parentage; but Scott believed 
 that he had perfectly refuted the theory. (51 ) By some writers 
 it has been suggested that Swift was insane, and that his con- 
 duct toward Stella and Vanessa showed only the wild freaks of 
 a madman. Others have accused his fierce ambition and pride, 
 that led him to crush with cruel neglect his humble companion 
 and wife. Some assert that he would save the life of Vanessa ; 
 that he married Stella, but loved her rival. But for all these 
 conjectures no sufficient argument can be adduced. 
 
 Meantime the unhappy Vanessa, constant in that love which 
 she had openly declared to her master, had also followed him 
 to Ireland, and lived at Marley Abbey, a small estate which 
 she had inherited, near Celbridge, resolved not to be separated 
 from him by the treacherous seas. Here, amidst the charms 
 of a gentle landscape, the victim of a real passion saw her 
 youth and beauty fade away in monastic seclusion. Her house 
 resembled a cloister in form as well as in name. A river wan- 
 dered bright and glad amidst green fields and graceful woods 
 
THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 41 
 
 before it ; a cascade leaped and murmured in the distance ; the 
 garden was profusely planted with laurel by Vanessa's own 
 hand, in honor of her beloved ; and here, in a bower furnished 
 with two seats, and a table covered with writing materials, 
 would Swift sit with his pupil, on those rare occasions when 
 he visited her in her retirement, striving to moderate her fatal 
 passion, but never revealing that secret bond that had separat- 
 ed them forever. Here, shaded by his laurels, Vanessa wrote 
 those impassioned letters that served only to awaken alarm, 
 pity, we may trust remorse, in the agitated breast of the hus- 
 band of Stella. 
 
 Her sister, her only companion, died beneath her care, of a 
 lingering disease; and in her solitude, torn by jealousy, con- 
 scious of Swift's close intimacy with her rival, yet ignorant of 
 its cause, Vanessa, after eight years of patient expectation, 
 resolved, by a daring step, to discover the nature of the tie that 
 bound him to another. She wrote to Stella asking her to re- 
 veal the mystery. Stella, in reply, told her of her mar- 
 riage, (52) sent Vanessa's letter to Swift, and, filled with a 
 just resentment, fled from Dublin, and from a husband whose 
 cruel duplicity had well deserved her lasting scorn. 
 
 But for Esther Vanhomrigh, her bold effort to unfold the 
 dangerous mystery proved the knell of death. In one of those 
 fierce bursts of rage, the tokens of approaching madness which 
 so often came upon him, and which was now excited to unu- 
 sual intensity by the reception of Vanessa's letter from Stella, 
 Swift rode instantly to Marley Abbey. No remorse for his 
 own base conduct seemed to have checked his solfish resent- 
 ment; no pity for that fair and gifted woman, to whom he 
 should have knelt in humble self-accusation, seems to have 
 been thought of in his haughty delirum. With a terrible 
 countenance he entered Vanessa's apartment, flung her letter 
 upon the table, and when she asked him, with a trembling 
 
42 THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 voice, to sit down, turned from her sternly, and rode hastily 
 away. 
 
 A few weeks afterward Vanessa died, it was said of fever; 
 but no one has ever mistaken the cause of her rapid decline. 
 Her heart was broken. Until she received Stella's letter she 
 had lived in a perpetual delusion, ever hoping that time would 
 remove the unknown obstacle to her union with him whom she 
 thought her lover, and for whom she had cherished an un- 
 bounded veneration, a singular devotion. The discovery of his 
 faithlessness had turned her love to resentment, her respect 
 to scorn. She at once revoked her will, in which she had 
 left all her property to Swift, and gave it to strangers. She 
 died amidst her shattered hopes, indignant, silent, and alone. 
 At Marley Abbey are still shown two or three laurel-trees, 
 from whose classic leaves Vanessa had once hoped to crown 
 his immortal brow, and the garden, now tangled, and neglect- 
 ed, from whence they had looked together on the shining 
 river and the bright cascade. 
 
 At the news of her death, Swift, overpowered by remorse 
 and grief, for two months hid himself in solitude, alone in his 
 agony. He then came back to the deanery. Stella forgave 
 him, touched by his distress; and once more they lived like 
 brother and sister, careless of the opinion of the world. 
 Still the same mystery hung over them, and still Swift, un- 
 taught by the mournful fate of Vanessa, refused to publish 
 the secret marriage. But Stella's health, always delicate, sank 
 under her painful circumstances. Calumny wounded her pure 
 and gentle spirit. She in vain urged that vindication of her 
 fame which Swift alone could give. At length she fell into 
 a consumption, and was rapidly passing away. Yet still Swift 
 refused, with unaccountable cruelty, to grant her last request. 
 She was even removed from the deanery, lest, by her dying 
 there, some scandal might be excited ; and Swift was not with 
 her in her last moments. But from his chamber in the dean- 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 43 
 
 ery, agitated by no common grief, he might have seen the 
 torches gleaming through the Gothic windows of St. Pat- 
 rick's as they bore Stella, at night, to her grave in the solemn 
 cathedral (53). 
 
 The great dean, idolized by the Irish, whose interests he 
 upheld, wit, scholar, poet, and classic writer of his age, sur- 
 vived for many years his fair and gentle pupil. His fame 
 ever increased; his wit filled the world with laughter; his 
 power in Ireland was almost despotic. Yet no moment of 
 happiness or of peace ever came to his troubled spirit. He 
 always declared that he was weary of life, eager for death. 
 His common parting words to his friends were, "May we 
 never meet again.'* His mind at last was lost in silent idiocy. 
 He died in 1745, and was laid in St. Patrick's Cathedral by 
 Stella's side. (54) 
 
 Thus came and passed away the days of good Queen Anne, 
 full of their joys and their calamities, their wars and triumphs, 
 their pleasures and their pains; their heroes and statesmen, 
 who rise for a moment above the paths of history, soon, per- 
 haps to sink forever in neglect; their princely and noble 
 throngs, shining in a transient splendor; their patient multi- 
 tude, rising slowly in knowledge and power. Nor did they 
 pass wholly in vain. For still look down upon us from amidst 
 their fading glories the calm countenances of Addison, Swift, 
 and Pope, shorn of their coarser and baser elements, and liv- 
 ing only as intellectual agents, governing all future genera- 
 tions at will by the power of mental culture, softening the 
 rude, informing the dull, exciting emulation, and teaching 
 forever, with no common success, in the great university of 
 mankind. 
 
44 THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE, 
 
 NOTES 
 
 (1.) Stanhope, Reign of Queen Anne. Wilde, The Closing 
 Years of Dean Swift's Life. 
 
 (2.) The strange fate of Swift and Stella can be compared only 
 to that of Abelard and Heloise. 
 
 (3.) "I have done with that family," he says in the Journal to 
 Stella. 
 
 (4.) A portrait of Stella still exists, pensive and beautiful. 
 
 (5.) Gentleman's Magazine, 1755; and Wilde, p. 108. She was 
 reported to be Sir William's daughter; but in his will he calls her 
 his sister's servant. 
 
 (6.) The nondescript inmates of Sir William's strange house- 
 hold seem not to have known whether they were servants or mem- 
 bers of his family. 
 
 (7.) Macaulay, "Sir W. Temple," with his usual severity, sees 
 only Swift's harsher traits. 
 
 (8.) Scott, Life of Swift, p. 68. 
 
 (9.) Scott, p. 69. 
 
 (10.) Scott, p. 84. Swift borrowed his design from Rabelais, 
 and must be content with the second place in the ranks of modern 
 humorists, or perhaps the third — next to Cervantes. 
 
 (11.) Martin, Hist., France. In 1662 Louis and Colbert were 
 laboring to check pauperism and elevate the people. Vol. XIV., 615, 
 et seq. 
 
 (12.) Memoirs de Louis XIV., (written by himself), Archives 
 Curieuses, VII., 335, show his constant activity, and his ceaseless 
 ambition; p. 319. 
 
 (13.) This should be borne in mind by those who mourn over 
 the robbery of Alsace from France by the Germans in 1871. 
 
 (14.) Hormayr, Wien, etc., iv. 158 et seq. Menzel, p. 940. 
 
 (15.) As the dreadful night drew to its end, rockets appeared 
 in the northern sky, to encourage the poor Viennese to hold out a lit- 
 tle longer. Aid was coming, but from whom? Like an angel sent of 
 God in the moment of fate seemed this Savior of Europe. A con- 
 stellation in the heavens has been named for him, and his name, 
 like the stars, shall shine forever. 
 
 (16.) Hormayr, p. 205. 
 
 (17.) Kohlrausch gives the German view of these horrible 
 scenes. Hist, Ger. ch. xxviii. 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 45 
 
 (18.) By her contemporaries she, was known as "this incom- 
 parable princess." Life of Queen Anne, 1714. 
 
 (19.) It has been said that if the scientists of all ages could 
 meet in convention, they would elect Sir Isaac Newton chairman. 
 
 (20.) Kohlrausch, ch. xxviii. 
 
 (21.) Prussia became a kingdom at this time, the ambitious 
 Hohenzollern demanding the title of king when the emperor did 
 not dare to refuse it. 
 
 (22.) St. Simon. The French were amazed at their first de- 
 feats, and then grew accustomed to them. Louis hoped to become a 
 new Charlemagne. Mem., p. 159. 
 
 (23.) At least in action. He still, however, seems to have 
 kept up a correspondence with the court of St. Germain. 
 
 (24.) Prinz Eugen. Arneth gives Eugene's campaign from 
 original sources. 
 
 (25.) Life of Queen Anne, 1714, p. 95, 96. "The glorious 
 battle of Blenheim" Marlborough's Dispatches, i. 39, give that com- 
 mander's modest account of the battle. 
 
 (26.) Coxe, i. 407. 
 
 (27.) Id., ii. 249, et seq. 
 
 (28.) St. Simon paints the miseries of France; the court was 
 served with black bread. St. Simon gave reluctantly part of his 
 plate to the treasurer. 
 
 (29.) Anne was the daughter of Anne Hyde, a beautiful girl 
 whom James had secretly married when Duke of York. Her grand- 
 mother had been a tub woman in a brewery. 
 
 (31.) The Journal to Stella commences with his visit, so long 
 protracted, to London. 
 
 (32.) Correspondence of Duchess of Marlborough, ii. 105. The 
 angry duchess, after all, has little to say against her rival. 
 
 (33.) "The Rev. Mr. Swift and Mr. Prior quickly offered them- 
 selves for sale," says the Duchess of Marlborough. Corresp., ii. 
 129. 
 
 (34.) The Pretender, a strong Catholic, reared as a foreigner, 
 would not have favored the English church, which had practically 
 dethroned his father. 
 
 (35.) St. Simon, Mem., 1709. The courtiers were afraid to 
 go out of the city. 36 id. 37 Torcy. 
 
 (38.) Even the popes and Louis feared the malice of this dan- 
 gerous body. See St. Simon, Les Jesuites, vol. x; Oeuvres, p. 107. 
 
 (39.) Marlborough was removed from his command, and the 
 invasion of France abandoned. That France must have fallen, had 
 the allies pressed on either in 1709 or 1710, seems scarcely doubtful. 
 
46 THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 (40.) "I hope they can tell no ill story of you," wrote Arch- 
 bishop King to Swift, after his fall. "Had the queen lasted a 
 month longer, had the English Tories been as bold and resolute as 
 they were clever and crafty, had the prince whom the nation loved 
 and pitied been equal to his fortune, George Lewis (King George 
 the First) had never talked German in St. James's Chapel Royal." — 
 Thackeray. 
 
 (41.) "The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers" are popular to-day, 
 as the best specimens of the "Spectator." 
 
 (42.) Pope's Homer was printed 1715, after Anne's death, 
 but belongs to her period. 
 
 (43.) "The Spectator," cultivated the literary taste of the 
 nation as no other periodical ever did. 
 
 (44.) St. Simon, Oeuvers, x. p. 106 paints the dangerous 
 ambition of the Jesuits. Their threats terrified Louis. 
 
 (45.) Madame de Maintenon. 
 
 (46.) The good archbishop Fenelon, had written for his pupil 
 that great educational classic, the "Adventures of Telemaque," a 
 sort of secular "Pilgrim's Progress." The young Duke might have 
 saved France, had he lived. He was the one hope of the nation. 
 
 (47.) St. Simon gives details of the terrible corruption of the 
 court and the king. 
 
 (48.) Scott, p. 227. 
 
 (49.) Read Swift's "Cadenus and Vanessa," in which he de- 
 picts her infatuation for him. "Cadenus" is an anagram of decanus, 
 the Latin word for dean. "Vanessa" is formed from "Essa Van" 
 (Esther Van Homrigh). 
 
 (50.) The marriage of Swift and Stella is generally admitted 
 (Scott, 239), yet in her will Stella entitles herself "spinster." 
 
 (51.) Scott's argument is not conclusive. That Swift and 
 Stella were brother and sister was believed by their contemporaries. 
 See Gent. Magazine, 1755. 
 
 (52.) There is another version of the story, but it is allowed 
 that Vanessa discovered the marriage. 
 
 (53.) Wilde, p. 120. 
 
 (54.) Recently their graves were opened and their remains 
 examined. Wilde, p. 120. 
 
THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 47 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY STUDIES. 
 
 "Robinson Crusoe." 
 
 "Gulliver's Travels." 
 
 "The Tale of a Tub." 
 
 Swift's "Cadenus and Vanessa." 
 
 "The Spectator"— especially "The De Coverley Papers." 
 
 Pope's "Essay on Man." 
 
 Pope's "Greater Dunciad." 
 
 Newton's laws. 
 
 Locke's philosophy. 
 
 "The History of the Great Rebellion," by Lord Clarendon (Ed- 
 ward Hyde, Grandfather of Queen Anne). 
 
 Addison's poems. 
 
 Prior's fable of "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse." 
 
 Gay's "Beggar's Opera." 
 
 Young's "Night Thoughts." 
 
 Steele. 
 
 Budgell. 
 
 Bishop Berkeley, and modern subjective idealism. 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Madame de Sevigne; letter- 
 writing in Queen Anne's Age. 
 
 Robert South. 
 
 Thomas and Gilbert Burnet. 
 
 Boyle's Contributions to Science. 
 
 Handel, and his compositions. 
 
 Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws." 
 
 Voltaire. 
 
 Boileau. 
 
 Rollin. 
 
 Racine. 
 
 Bossuet. 
 
 Rousseau. 
 
 Fenelon and his royal pupil; his "Telemaque." 
 
 Massillon. 
 
 Le Sage and his "Gil Bias." 
 
 Buffon. 
 
48 THE DA YS OF QUEEN ANNE. 
 
 Sobieski's Shield, the Constellation named in honor of the saver 
 
 of Europe. 
 Peter the Great, and his visit to Holland and England; the 
 
 founding of St. Petersburg. 
 Charles the Twelfth, the Madman of the North. 
 Queen Anne's war in America. 
 The beginning of the Kingdom of Prussia; the first King of 
 
 Prussia. 
 The Union of England and Scotland, to form the Kingdom of 
 
 Great Britain. 
 Queen Anne architecture, as contrasted with the Tudor style. 
 Queen Anne cabinets. 
 Queen's ware. 
 Queen's metal. 
 
 Books printed in Queen Anne's day. 
 Portraits of Queen Anne and Louis XIV. 
 Watteau and his pictures. 
 Hogarth's work in art. 
 Louis Quatorze tables and chairs. 
 Beds and bed furnishings of Queen Anne's day. 
 Wigs and dress of the courts of Queen Anne and Louis XIV. 
 Queen Anne and Louis Quatorze musical instruments. 
 Glimpses of Queen Anne in fiction — Victor Hugo's "Man Who 
 
 Laughs," etc. 
 Queen Anne's domestic sorrows — the early death of her nineteen 
 
 children; the domineering of her personal attendants; the 
 
 bitter dissensions of her ministers, brought into her very 
 
 presence. 
 
 W 98 
 
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