This negotiation raised the fame of Temple both at home and abroad to a great height, to such a height, indeed, as seems to have excited the jealousy of his friend Arlington.  While London and Amsterdam resounded with acclamations of joy, the Secretary, in very cold official language, communicated to his friend the approbation of the King; and, lavish as the Government was of titles and of money, its ablest servant was neither ennobled nor enriched.

Temple’s next mission was to Aix-la-Chapelle, where a general congress met for the purpose of perfecting the work of the Triple Alliance.  On his road he received abundant proofs of the estimation in which he was held.  Salutes were fired from the walls of the towns through which lie passed; the population poured forth into the streets to see him; and the magistrates entertained him with speeches and banquets.  After the close of the negotiations at Aix he was appointed Ambassador at the Hague.  But in both these missions he experienced much vexation from the rigid, and, indeed, unjust parsimony of the Government.  Profuse to many unworthy applicants, the Ministers were niggardly to him alone.  They secretly disliked his politics; and they seem to have indemnified themselves for the humiliation of adopting his measures, by cutting down his salary and delaying the settlement of his outfit.

At the Hague he was received with cordiality by De Witt, and with the most signal marks of respect by the States-General.  His situation was in one point extremely delicate, The Prince of Orange, the hereditary chief of the faction opposed to the administration of De Witt, was the nephew of Charles.  To preserve the confidence of the ruling party, without showing any want of respect to so near a relation of his own master, was no easy task, But Temple acquitted himself so well that he appears to have been in great favour, both with the Grand Pensionary and with the Prince.

In the main, the years which he spent at the Hague seem, in spite of some pecuniary difficulties occasioned by the ill-will of the English Ministers, to have passed very agreeably.  He enjoyed the highest personal consideration.  He was surrounded by objects interesting in the highest degree to a man of his observant turn of mind.  He had no wearing labour, no heavy responsibility; and, if he had no opportunity of adding to his high reputation, he ran no risk of impairing it.

But evil times were at hand.  Though Charles had for a moment deviated into a wise and dignified policy, his heart had always been with France; and France employed every means of seduction to lure him back.  His impatience of control, his greediness for money, his passion for beauty, his family affections, all his tastes, all his feelings, were practised on with the utmost dexterity.  His interior Cabinet was now composed of men such as that generation, and that generation alone, produced; of men at whose audacious profligacy the renegades and jobbers of our own time