disinterestedness, believed him even in his
self-contradiction, and idolized him even in his bursts of arrogant
passion. It was he who waked England from her lethargy, shook off the
spell that Newcastle and his fellow-enchanters had cast over her, and
taught her to know herself again. A heart that beat in unison with all
that was British found responsive throbs in every corner of the vast
empire that through him was to become more vast. With the instinct of
his fervid patriotism he would join all its far-extended members into
one, not by vain assertions of parliamentary supremacy, but by bonds of
sympathy and ties of a common freedom and a common cause.

The passion for power and glory subdued in him all the sordid parts of
humanity, and he made the power and glory of England one with his own.
He could change front through resentment or through policy; but in
whatever path he moved, his objects were the same: not to curb the power
of France in America, but to annihilate it; crush her navy, cripple her
foreign trade, ruin her in India, in Africa, and wherever else, east or
west, she had found foothold; gain for England the mastery of the seas,
open to her the great highways of the globe, make her supreme in
commerce and colonization; and while limiting the activities of her
rival to the European continent, give to her the whole world for a
sphere.

To this British Roman was opposed the pampered Sardanapalus of
Versailles, with the silken favorite who by calculated adultery had
bought the power to ruin France. The Marquise de Pompadour, who began
life as Jeanne Poisson,--Jane Fish,--daughter of the head clerk of a
banking house, who then became wife of a rich financier, and then, as
mistress of the King, rose to a pinnacle of gilded ignominy, chose this
time to turn out of office the two ministers who had shown most ability
and force,--Argenson, head of the department of war, and Machault, head
of the marine and colonies; the one because he was not subservient to
her will, and the other because he had unwittingly touched the self-love
of her royal paramour. She aspired to a share in the conduct of the war,
and not only made and unmade ministers and generals, but discussed
campaigns and battles with them, while they listened to her prating with
a show of obsequious respect, since to lose her favor was to risk losing
all. A few months later, when blows fell heavy and fast, she turned a
deaf ear to representations of financ