s they had done in the
days of Oliver Cromwell. The Whig balladists retorted by describing
the Tories as men who were engaged in trying to bring in "Perkin" from
France, and prophesied the halter as a reward of their leading
statesmen. In truth, the bitterness of that hour was very earnest;
most of the men on both sides meant what they said. Either side, if it
had been in complete preponderance, would probably have had very little
scruple in disposing of its leading enemies by means of the halter or
the prison. It was for the time not so much a struggle of political
parties as a {22} struggle of hostile armies. The men were serious and
savage, because the crisis was serious and portentous. The chances of
an hour might make a man a prime-minister or a prisoner. Bolingbroke
soon after was in exile, and Walpole at the head of the administration.
The slightest chance, the merest accident, might have sent Walpole into
exile, and put Bolingbroke at the head of the State.

[Sidenote: 1714--John Churchill]

The eyes of the English public were at this moment turned in especial
to watch the movements of two men--the Duke of Marlborough and Lord
Bolingbroke. Marlborough was beyond question the greatest soldier of
his time. He had gone into exile when Queen Anne consented to degrade
him and to persecute him, and now he was on his way home, at the urgent
entreaty of the Whig leaders, in order to lend his powerful influence
to the Hanoverian cause.

The character of the Duke of Marlborough is one which ought to be
especially attractive to the authors of romance and the lovers of
strong, bold portrait-painting. One peculiar difficulty, however, a
romancist would have in dealing with Marlborough--he could hardly
venture to paint Marlborough as nature and fortune made him. The
romancist would find himself compelled to soften and to modify many of
the distinctive traits of Marlborough's character, in order that he
might not seem the mere inventor of a human paradox, in order that he
might not appear to be indulging in the fantastic and the impossible.
Pope has called Bacon "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind," but
Bacon was not greater in his own path than Marlborough in his, and
Bacon's worst meannesses were nobility itself compared with some of
Marlborough's political offences. Marlborough started in life with
almost every advantage that man could have--with genius, with boundless
courage, with personal beauty, wi