character and corroded the moral fibre of every successive Stuart
prince, the devotees of personal loyalty still clung with sentiment and
with passion to the surviving representatives of the fallen dynasty.
Poets and balladists, singers in the streets and singers on the
mountain-side, were, even in these early days of George the First,
inspired with songs of loyal homage in favor of the son of James the
Second. Men {61} and women in thousands, not only among the wild
romantic hills of Scotland, but in prosaic North of England towns, and
yet more prosaic London streets and alleys, were ready, if the occasion
offered, to die for the Stuart cause. Despite the evidence of their
own senses, men and women would still endow any representative of the
Stuarts with all the virtues and talents and graces that might become
an ideal prince of romance. No one thought in this way of the
successors of William the Third. No one had had any particular
admiration for Queen Anne, either as a sovereign or as a woman; nobody
pretended to feel any thrill of sentimental emotion towards portly,
stolid, sensual George the First. About the King, personally, hardly
anybody cared anything. The mass of the English people who accepted
him and adhered to him did so because they understood that he
represented a certain quiet homely principle in politics which would
secure tranquillity and stability to the country. They did not ask of
him that he should be noble or gifted or dignified, or even virtuous.
They asked of him two things in especial: first, that he would maintain
a steady system of government; and next, that he would in general let
the country alone. This is the feeling which must be taken into
account if we would understand how it came to pass that the English
people so contentedly accepted a sovereign like George the First. The
explanation is not to be found merely in the fact that the Stuarts, as
a race, had discredited themselves hopelessly with the moral sentiment
of the people of England. The very worst of the Stuarts, Charles the
Second, was not any worse as regards moral character than George the
First, or than some of the Georges who followed him. In education and
in mental capacity he was far superior to any of the Georges. There
were many qualities in Charles the Second which, if his fatal love of
ease and of amusement could have been kept under control, might have
made him a successful sovereign, and which, were he in p