undone! It does not
grow wiser, it does not grow more prosperous! ... How do you behave on
these lamentable occasions? Oh, believe me, it is comfortable to have an
island to hide one's head in! ...' Again he writes in the same month,'
'It is time for England to slip her own cables, and float away into some
unknown ocean.'

With these compare a letter dated November, 1759. 'Indeed,' he says to
the same correspondent, 'one is forced to ask every morning what victory
there is, for fear of missing one.' And he wrote with reason. India,
Canada, Belleisle, the Mississippi, the Philippines, the Havanna,
Martinique, Guadaloupe--there was no end to our conquests. Wolfe fell in
the arms of victory, Clive came home the satrap of sovereigns; but day
by day ships sailed in and couriers spurred abroad with the news that a
new world and a nascent empire were ours. Until men's heads reeled and
maps failed them, as they asked each morning 'What new land, to-day?'
Until those who had despaired of England awoke and rubbed their
eyes--awoke to find three nations at her feet, and the dawn of a new and
wider day breaking in the sky.

And what of the minister? They called him the Great Commoner, the
heaven-born statesman; they showered gold boxes upon him; they bore him
through the city, the centre of frantic thousands, to the effacement
even of the sovereign. Where he went all heads were bared; while he
walked the rooms at Bath and drank the water, all stood; his very sedan,
built with a boot to accommodate his gouty foot, was a show followed and
watched wherever it moved. A man he had never seen left him a house and
three thousand pounds a year; this one, that one, the other one,
legacies. In a word, for a year or two he was the idol of the
nation--the first great People's Minister.

Then, the crisis over, the old system lifted its head again; the
mediocrities returned; and, thwarted by envious rivals and a jealous
king, Pitt placed the crown alike on his services and his popularity by
resigning power when he could no longer dictate the policy which he
knew to be right. Nor were events slow to prove his wisdom. The war with
Spain which he would have declared, Spain declared. The treasure fleet
which he would have seized, escaped us. Finally, the peace when it came
redounded to his credit, for in the main it secured his conquests--to
the disgrace of his enemies, since more might have been obtained.

Such was the man who, restored to off