We will give one more instance of the absurd expectations which the declamations of the Opposition had raised in the country.  Akenside was one of the fiercest and most uncompromising of the young patriots out of Parliament.  When he found that the change of administration had produced no change of system, he gave vent to his indignation in the Epistle to Curio, the best poem that he ever wrote, a poem, indeed, which seems to indicate, that, if he had left lyric composition to Gray and Collins, and had employed his powers in grave and elevated satire, he might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden.  But whatever be the literary merits of the epistle, we can say nothing in praise of the political doctrines which it inculcates.  The poet, in a rapturous apostrophe to the spirits of the great men of antiquity, tells us what he expected from Pulteney at the moment of the fall of the tyrant.

“See private life by wisest arts reclaimed,
See ardent youth to noblest manners framed,
See us achieve whate’er was sought by you,
If Curio—­only Curio—­will be true.”

It was Pulteney’s business, it seems, to abolish faro, and masquerades, to stint the young Duke of Marlborough to a bottle of brandy a day, and to prevail on Lady Vane to be content with three lovers at a time.

Whatever the people wanted, they certainly got nothing.  Walpole retired in safety; and the multitude were defrauded of the expected show on Tower Hill.  The Septennial Act was not repealed.  The placemen were not turned out of the House of Commons.  Wool, we believe, was still exported.  “Private life” afforded as much scandal as if the reign of Walpole and corruption had continued; and “ardent youth” fought with watchmen and betted with blacklegs as much as ever.

The colleagues of Walpole had, after his retreat, admitted some of the chiefs of the Opposition into the Government, and soon found themselves compelled to submit to the ascendency of one of their new allies.  This was Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville.  No public man of that age had greater courage, greater ambition, greater activity, greater talents for debate or for declamation.  No public man had such profound and extensive learning.  He was familiar with the ancient writers, and loved to sit up till midnight discussing philological and metrical questions with Bentley.  His knowledge of modern languages was prodigious.  The privy council, when he was present; needed no interpreter.  He spoke and wrote French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, even Swedish.  He had pushed his researches into the most obscure nooks of literature.  He was as familiar with Canonists and Schoolmen as with orators and poets.  He had read all that the universities of Saxony and Holland had produced on the most intricate questions of public law.  Harte, in the preface to the second edition of his History of Gustavus Adolphus, bears a remarkable testimony to the extent and accuracy