One idiotic habit of the people is to attribute to the king what they do themselves.  They fight.  Whose the glory?  The king’s.  They pay.  Whose the generosity?  The king’s.  Then the people love him for being so rich.  The king receives a crown from the poor, and returns them a farthing.  How generous he is!  The colossus which is the pedestal contemplates the pigmy which is the statue.  How great is this myrmidon! he is on my back.  A dwarf has an excellent way of being taller than a giant:  it is to perch himself on his shoulders.  But that the giant should allow it, there is the wonder; and that he should admire the height of the dwarf, there is the folly.  Simplicity of mankind!  The equestrian statue, reserved for kings alone, is an excellent figure of royalty:  the horse is the people.  Only that the horse becomes transfigured by degrees.  It begins in an ass; it ends in a lion.  Then it throws its rider, and you have 1642 in England and 1789 in France; and sometimes it devours him, and you have in England 1649, and in France 1793.  That the lion should relapse into the donkey is astonishing; but it is so.  This was occurring in England.  It had resumed the pack-saddle, idolatry of the crown.  Queen Anne, as we have just observed, was popular.  What was she doing to be so?  Nothing.  Nothing!—­that is all that is asked of the sovereign of England.  He receives for that nothing L1,250,000 a year.  In 1705, England which had had but thirteen men of war under Elizabeth, and thirty-six under James I., counted a hundred and fifty in her fleet.  The English had three armies, 5,000 men in Catalonia; 10,000 in Portugal; 50,000 in Flanders; and besides, was paying L1,666,666 a year to monarchical and diplomatic Europe, a sort of prostitute the English people has always had in keeping.  Parliament having voted a patriotic loan of thirty-four million francs of annuities, there had been a crush at the Exchequer to subscribe it.  England was sending a squadron to the East Indies, and a squadron to the West of Spain under Admiral Leake, without mentioning the reserve of four hundred sail, under Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel.  England had lately annexed Scotland.  It was the interval between Hochstadt and Ramillies, and the first of these victories was foretelling the second.  England, in its cast of the net at Hochstadt, had made prisoners of twenty-seven battalions and four regiments of dragoons, and deprived France of one hundred leagues of country—­France drawing back dismayed from the Danube to the Rhine.  England was stretching her hand out towards Sardinia and the Balearic Islands.  She was bringing into her ports in triumph ten Spanish line-of-battle ships, and many a galleon laden with gold.  Hudson Bay and Straits were already half given over by Louis XIV.  It was felt that he was about to give up his hold over Acadia, St. Christopher, and Newfoundland, and that he would be but too happy if England would only tolerate the King of France fishing for cod at Cape Breton.  England was about to impose upon him the shame of demolishing himself the fortifications of Dunkirk.  Meanwhile, she had taken Gibraltar, and was taking Barcelona.  What great things accomplished!  How was it possible to refuse Anne admiration for taking the trouble of living at the period?