Incomparably more brilliant, more splendid, eloquent, accomplished than his rival, the great St. John could be as selfish as Oxford was, and could act the double part as skilfully as ambidextrous Churchill.  He whose talk was always of liberty, no more shrunk from using persecution and the pillory against his opponents than if he had been at Lisbon and Grand Inquisitor.  This lofty patriot was on his knees at Hanover and St. Germains too; notoriously of no religion, he toasted Church and Queen as boldly as the stupid Sacheverel, whom he used and laughed at; and to serve his turn, and to overthrow his enemy, he could intrigue, coax, bully, wheedle, fawn on the Court favorite and creep up the back-stair as silently as Oxford, who supplanted Marlborough, and whom he himself supplanted.  The crash of my Lord Oxford happened at this very time whereat my history is now arrived.  He was come to the very last days of his power, and the agent whom he employed to overthrow the conqueror of Blenheim, was now engaged to upset the conqueror’s conqueror, and hand over the staff of government to Bolingbroke, who had been panting to hold it.

In expectation of the stroke that was now preparing, the Irish regiments in the French service were all brought round about Boulogne in Picardy, to pass over if need were with the Duke of Berwick; the soldiers of France no longer, but subjects of James the Third of England and Ireland King.  The fidelity of the great mass of the Scots (though a most active, resolute, and gallant Whig party, admirably and energetically ordered and disciplined, was known to be in Scotland too) was notoriously unshaken in their King.  A very great body of Tory clergy, nobility, and gentry, were public partisans of the exiled Prince; and the indifferents might be counted on to cry King George or King James, according as either should prevail.  The Queen, especially in her latter days, inclined towards her own family.  The Prince was lying actually in London, within a stone’s cast of his sister’s palace; the first Minister toppling to his fall, and so tottering that the weakest push of a woman’s finger would send him down; and as for Bolingbroke, his successor, we know on whose side his power and his splendid eloquence would be on the day when the Queen should appear openly before her Council and say:—­“This, my lords, is my brother; here is my father’s heir, and mine after me.”

During the whole of the previous year the Queen had had many and repeated fits of sickness, fever, and lethargy, and her death had been constantly looked for by all her attendants.  The Elector of Hanover had wished to send his son, the Duke of Cambridge—­to pay his court to his cousin the Queen, the Elector said;—­in truth, to be on the spot when death should close her career.  Frightened perhaps to have such a memento mori under her royal eyes, her Majesty had angrily forbidden the young Prince’s coming into England.  Either she desired to keep