devotion of the mug-houses could not make
George personally popular, or diminish the {154} general dislike to his
German ministers, his German mistresses, and the horde of hungry
foreigners--the Hanoverian rats, as Squire Western would have called
them--who came over with him to England, seeking for place and pension,
or pension without place.

[Sidenote: 1716--Philip of Orleans]

The Thames was frozen over in the winter of this year, 1716, and London
made very merry over the event. The ice was covered with booths for
the sale of all sorts of wares, and with small coffee-houses and
chop-houses. Wrestling-rings were formed in one part; in another, an
ox was roasted whole. People played at push-pin, skated, or drove
about on ice-boats brave with flags. Coaches moved slowly up and down
the highway of barges and wherries, and hawkers cried their wares
lustily in the new field that winter had offered them. All the banks
of the river--and especially such places as the Temple Gardens--were
crowded with curious throngs surveying the animated and unusual scene.

During George's absence from England he and his ministers had made some
new and important arrangements in the policy of Europe. From this time
forth--indeed, from the reign of Queen Anne--England was
destined--doomed, perhaps--to have a regular part in the politics of
the Continent. Before that time she had often been drawn into them, or
had plunged enterprisingly or recklessly into them, but from the date
of the accession of the House of Hanover England was as closely and
constantly mixed up in the political affairs of the Continent as
Austria or France. In the opening years of George's reign, France, the
Empire--Austria, that is to say, for the Holy Roman Empire had come to
be merely Austria--and Spain were the important Continental Powers.
Russia was only coming up; the genius of Peter the Great was beginning
to make her way for her. Italy was as yet only a geographical
expression--a place divided among minor kings and princes, who in
politics sometimes bowed to the Pope's authority, and sometimes evaded
or disregarded it. The power of Turkey was {155} broken, never to be
made strong again; the republic of Venice was already beginning to
"sink like a sea-weed into whence she rose." The position of Spain was
peculiar. Spain had for a long time been depressed and weak and
disregarded. For many years it was thought that she was going down
with Turkey and