without any
trial, and yet not restored to his places.'

We next find the duke intrusted with a mission to France, in concert
with Halifax and Arlington. In the year 1680, he was threatened with an
impeachment, in which, with his usual skill, he managed to exculpate
himself by blaming Lord Arlington. The House of Commons passed a vote
for his removal; and he entered the ranks of the opposition.

But this career of public meanness and private profligacy was drawing to
a close. Alcibiades no longer--his frame wasted by vice--his spirits
broken by pecuniary difficulties--Buckingham's importance visibly sank
away. 'He remained, at last,' to borrow the words of Hume, 'as incapable
of doing hurt as he had ever been little desirous of doing good to
mankind.' His fortune had now dwindled down to L300 a year in land; he
sold Wallingford House, and removed into the City.

And now the fruits of his adversity, not, we hope, too late, began to
appear. Like Lord Rochester, who had ordered all his immoral works to be
burnt, Buckingham now wished to retrieve the past. In 1685 he wrote the
religious works which form so striking a contrast with his other
productions.

That he had been up to the very time of his ruin perfectly impervious to
remorse, dead also to shame, is amply manifested by his conduct soon
after his duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury.

Sir George Etherege had brought out a new play at the Duke of York's
Theatre. It was called, 'She Would if she Could.' Plays in those days
began at what we now consider our luncheon hour. Though Pepys arrived at
the theatre on this occasion at two o'clock--his wife having gone
before--about a thousand people had then been put back from the pit. At
last, seeing his wife in the eighteen-penny-box, Samuel 'made shift' to
get there and there saw, 'but lord!' (his own words are inimitable) 'how
dull, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in
it, and few people pleased in it. The king was there; but I sat mightily
behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all. The play being
done, I went into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and
raining, but could not find her; and so staid, going between the two
doors and through the pit an hour and a half, I think, after the play
was done; the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk
to one another. And among the rest, here was the Duke of Buckingham
to-day openly in the pit; and there I found him w