s applause on his arrival,
with reverential salutations on his departure. In 1818 the health
which he had preserved so well till then broke, and he died after some
severe suffering on August 22 in that year, and was laid in the earth
that he had always loved so well.

One of the latest acts of his life was to appeal to the Court of
Directors to make some provision for his wife, by extending to her the
annuity that had been accorded to him. They gave, says his most
devoted biographer, no more heed to his dying entreaties than they
would have given to the whine of a self-convicted beggar. Yet surely
Hastings had deserved well of the East India Company. His faults had
been committed in their service and had given them, not himself, wealth
and power. But England is not always grateful to her servants. It is
not wonderful, says Sir Alfred Lyall, that Hastings's application
failed entirely, "remembering that even Lord Nelson's last testamentary
appeal on behalf of a woman--'the only favor I ask of my King and my
country at the moment when I am going to fight their battle'--had been
rejected and utterly disregarded." Mrs. Hastings survived her husband
for some years, and was over ninety years of age when she died.

{290}

CHAPTER LX.

THE CHANGE OF THINGS.

[Sidenote: 1789--The political condition of France]

The establishment of the American republic meant something more for
England than the loss of her fairest colonies, and meant much more for
Europe than the establishment of a new form of government in the New
World. While the United States were acclaiming Washington as their first
President and rejoicing over the excellence of their carefully framed
Constitution, the principles which had elected the one and had created
the other were working elsewhere to unexpected and mighty issues. French
gentlemen of rank and fortune, fired by a philosophic admiration for
liberty, had fought and fought well for the American colonists. When the
revolt had become a revolution, and the revolution a triumph, the French
gentlemen went back to France with their hearts full of love and their
lips loud in praise for the young republic and its simple, splendid
citizens. The doctrines of liberty and equality, which had been so dear
to the Philosophers and the Encyclopaedists, were now being practically
applied across the Atlantic, and the growth of their success was watched
by the eager eyes of the wisest and the unwisest