beyond the sphere of the Estates of the realm,
and which were subject to the authority of the crown alone. The country,
he maintained, would never be well governed till the knights of shires
and the burgesses were content to be what their predecessors had been
in the days of Elizabeth. All the plans which men more observant
than himself of the signs of that time proposed, for the purpose of
maintaining a good understanding between the Court and the Commons,
he disdainfully rejected as crude projects, inconsistent with the
old polity of England. Towards the young orators, who were rising
to distinction and authority in the Lower House, his deportment was
ungracious: and he succeeded in making them, with scarcely an exception,
his deadly enemies. Indeed one of his most serious faults was
an inordinate contempt for youth: and this contempt was the more
unjustifiable, because his own experience in English politics was by no
means proportioned to his age. For so great a part of his life had been
passed abroad that he knew less of that world in which he found himself
on his return than many who might have been his sons.

For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. For very different
reasons he was equally disliked by the Court. His morals as well as his
polities were those of an earlier generation. Even when he was a young
law student, living much with men of wit and pleasure, his natural
gravity and his religious principles had to a great extent preserved
him from the contagion of fashionable debauchery; and he was by no means
likely, in advanced years and in declining health, to turn libertine.
On the vices of the young and gay he looked with an aversion almost as
bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt for the theological errors
of the sectaries. He missed no opportunity of showing his scorn of
the mimics, revellers, and courtesans who crowded the palace; and the
admonitions which he addressed to the King himself were very sharp,
and, what Charles disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any voice was
raised in favour of a minister loaded with the double odium of faults
which roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed and
importuned the sovereign. Southampton was no more. Ormond performed
the duties of friendship manfully and faithfully, but in vain. The
Chancellor fell with a great ruin. The seal was taken from him: the
Commons impeached him: his head was not safe: he fled from the country:
an