on that occasion, raised
him above himself. Scarcely any other part of his life was of a piece
with that splendid commencement. He had hardly become Secretary of State
when it appeared that his nerves were too weak for such a post. The
daily toil, the heavy responsibility, the failures, the mortifications,
the obloquy, which are inseparable from power, broke his spirit,
soured his temper, and impaired his health. To such natures as his the
sustaining power of high religious principle seems to be peculiarly
necessary; and unfortunately Shrewsbury had, in the act of shaking off
the yoke of that superstition in which he had been brought up, liberated
himself also from more salutary bands which might perhaps have braced
his too delicately constituted mind into stedfastness and uprightness.
Destitute of such support, he was, with great abilities, a weak man,
and, though endowed with many amiable and attractive qualities, could
not be called an honest man. For his own happiness, he should either
have been much better or much worse. As it was, he never knew either
that noble peace of mind which is the reward of rectitude, or that
abject peace of mind which springs from impudence and insensibility. Few
people who have had so little power to resist temptation have suffered
so cruelly from remorse and shame.

To a man of this temper the situation of a minister of state during the
year which followed the Revolution must have been constant torture.
The difficulties by which the government was beset on all sides, the
malignity of its enemies, the unreasonableness of its friends, the
virulence with which the hostile factions fell on each other and on
every mediator who attempted to part them, might indeed have discouraged
a more resolute spirit. Before Shrewsbury had been six months in office,
he had completely lost heart and head. He began to address to William
letters which it is difficult to imagine that a prince so strongminded
can have read without mingled compassion and contempt. "I am
sensible,"--such was the constant burden of these epistles,--"that I am
unfit for my place. I cannot exert myself. I am not the same man that I
was half a year ago. My health is giving way. My mind is on the rack.
My memory is failing. Nothing but quiet and retirement can restore me."
William returned friendly and soothing answers; and, for a time, these
answers calmed the troubled mind of his minister, [646] But at length
the dissolution, the ge