fell to the share of the old
politician. If Pitt could appoint generals, admirals, and ambassadors,
Newcastle was welcome to the rest. "I will borrow the Duke's majorities
to carry on the government," said the new secretary; and with the
audacious self-confidence that was one of his traits, he told the Duke
of Devonshire, "I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody
else can." England hailed with one acclaim the undaunted leader who
asked for no reward but the honor of serving her. The hour had found the
man. For the next four years this imposing figure towers supreme in
British history.

He had glaring faults, some of them of a sort not to have been expected
in him. Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most
disfiguring foible of this great one. He had not the simplicity which
becomes greatness so well. He could give himself theatrical airs, strike
attitudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was
formidable even in his affectations. Behind his great intellectual
powers lay a burning enthusiasm, a force of passion and fierce intensity
of will, that gave redoubled impetus to the fiery shafts of his
eloquence; and the haughty and masterful nature of the man had its share
in the ascendency which he long held over Parliament. He would blast the
labored argument of an adversary by a look of scorn or a contemptuous
wave of the hand.

The Great Commoner was not a man of the people in the popular sense of
that hackneyed phrase. Though himself poor, being a younger son, he came
of a rich and influential family; he was patrician at heart; both his
faults and his virtues, his proud incorruptibility and passionate,
domineering patriotism, bore the patrician stamp. Yet he loved liberty
and he loved the people, because they were the English people. The
effusive humanitarianism of to-day had no part in him, and the democracy
of to-day would detest him. Yet to the middle-class England of his own
time, that unenfranchised England which had little representation in
Parliament, he was a voice, an inspiration, and a tower of strength. He
would not flatter the people; but, turning with contempt from the tricks
and devices of official politics, he threw himself with a confidence
that never wavered on their patriotism and public spirit. They answered
him with a boundless trust, asked but to follow his lead, gave him
without stint their money and their blood, loved him for his domestic
virtues and his