in whose favour he had felt most secure.  He found, himself, in an instant, humbled and ridiculous.  Between himself and the Queen it was, something of a lovers’ quarrel, and he soon found balsam in the hand that smote him.  But though reinstated in authority, he was never again the object of reverence in the land he was attempting to rule.  As he came to know the Netherlanders better, he recognized the great capacity which their statesmen concealed under a plain and sometimes a plebeian exterior, and the splendid grandee hated, where at first he had only despised.  The Netherlanders, too, who had been used to look up almost with worship to a plain man of kindly manners, in felt hat and bargeman’s woollen jacket, whom they called “Father William,” did not appreciate, as they ought, the magnificence of the stranger who had been sent to govern them.  The Earl was handsome, quick-witted, brave; but he was, neither wise in council nor capable in the field.  He was intolerably arrogant, passionate, and revengeful.  He hated easily, and he hated for life.  It was soon obvious that no cordiality of feeling or of action could exist between him and the plain, stubborn Hollanders.  He had the fatal characteristic of loving only the persons who flattered him.  With much perception of character, sense of humour, and appreciation of intellect, he recognized the power of the leading men in the nation, and sought to gain them.  So long as he hoped success, he was loud in their praises.  They were all wise, substantial, well-languaged, big fellows, such as were not to be found in England or anywhere else.  When they refused to be made his tools, they became tinkers, boors, devils, and atheists.  He covered them with curses and devoted them to the gibbet.  He began by warmly commending Buys and Barneveld, Hohenlo and Maurice, and endowing them with every virtue.  Before he left the country he had accused them of every crime, and would cheerfully, if he could, have taken the life of every one of them.  And it was quite the same with nearly every Englishman who served with or under him.  Wilkes and Buckhurst, however much the objects of his previous esteem; so soon as they ventured to censure or even to criticise his proceedings, were at once devoted to perdition.  Yet, after minute examination of the record, public and private, neither Wilkes nor Buckhurst can be found guilty of treachery or animosity towards him, but are proved to have been governed, in all their conduct, by a strong sense of duty to their sovereign, the Netherlands, and Leicester himself.

To Sir John Norris, it must be allowed, that he was never fickle, for he had always entertained for that distinguished general an honest, unswerving, and infinite hatred, which was not susceptible of increase or diminution by any act or word.  Pelham, too, whose days were numbered, and who was dying bankrupt and broken-hearted, at the close of the, Earl’s administration, had always been regarded by him with tenderness and