Restored to the leisure which is necessary for political action, the Russells actively intrigued for the return of the Stuarts, and pointed out (when Charles II was well upon his throne) how necessary it was for the Fens that their old, if irregular, privileges should be confirmed.  It was argued for the Crown that 10,000 acres of land had been quietly absorbed by the Family while there was no king in England:  but there happened in this case what happened in every other since the upper class, the natural leaders of the people, had curbed the tyranny of the King—­Charles capitulated.  Then followed (of course) popular rising; it was quelled.  Before their long struggle for freedom against the Stuart dynasty was ended, the peasants had been taught their place, Vermuyden was out of the way, the ditches were all dug, the land acquired.

All the world knows the great part played by the House in the emancipation of England from the yoke of James II.  The martyrdom of Lord William may have cast upon the Family a passing cloud; but whatever compensation the perishable things of this world can afford, they received and accepted.  In 1694, having assisted at the destruction of yet another form of government, the Earl of Bedford was made Duke, and on 7 September, 1700, his great work now entirely accomplished, he departed this life peacefully in his eighty-seventh year.  It was once more in their cathedral that the funeral service was preached by a Dr. Freeman, chaplain of no less than the King himself.  I have read the sermon in its entirety.  It closes with the fine phrase that William the fifth Earl and the first Duke of Bedford had sought throughout the whole of a laborious and patriotic life a crown not corruptible but incorruptible.

It was precisely a century since the Family had set out in its quest for that hundred square miles of land.  Through four reigns, a bloody civil war, three revolutions and innumerable treasons, it had maintained its purpose, and at last it reached its goal.

     “Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.”

THE ELECTION

The other day as I was going out upon my travels, I came upon a plain so broad that it greatly wearied me.  This plain was grown in parts with barley, but as it stood high in foreign mountains and was arid, very little was grown.  Small runnels, long run dry under the heat, made the place look like a desert—­almost like Africa; nor was there anything to relieve my gaze except a huddle of small grey houses far away; but when I reached them I found, to my inexpressible joy, a railway running by and a station to receive me.

For those who complain of railways talk folly, and prove themselves either rich or, more probably, the hangers-on of the rich.  A railway is an excellent thing; it takes one quickly through the world for next to nothing, and if in many countries the people it takes are brutes, and disfigure all they visit, that is not the fault of the railway, but of the Government and religion of these people, which, between them, have ruined the citizens of the State.