jury, but prompt to forgive;
Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing
was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the
dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always
croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an
overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, compared him, in a
time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom Ovid described looking
down on the stately temples and wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able
to refrain from weeping because she could find nothing at which to weep.
Such a man was not likely to be popular. But to unpopularity Grenville
opposed a dogged determination, which sometimes forced even those who
hated him to respect him.

It was natural that Pitt and Grenville, being such as they were, should
take very different views of the situation of affairs. Pitt could see
nothing but the trophies; Grenville could see nothing but the bill. Pitt
boasted that England was victorious at once in America, in India, and in
Germany, the umpire of the Continent, the mistress of the sea. Grenville
cast up the subsidies, sighed over the army extraordinaries, and groaned
in spirit to think that the nation had borrowed eight millions in one
year.

With a ministry thus divided it was not difficult for Bute to deal.
Legge was the first who fell. He had given offence to the young King in
the late reign, by refusing to support a creature of Bute at a Hampshire
election. He was now not only turned out, but in the closet, when he
delivered up his seal of office, was treated with gross incivility.

Pitt, who did not love Legge, saw this event with indifference. But the
danger was now fast approaching himself. Charles the Third of Spain had
early conceived a deadly hatred of England. Twenty years before, when he
was King of the Two Sicilies, he had been eager to join the coalition
against Maria Theresa. But an English fleet had suddenly appeared in the
Bay of Naples. An English captain had landed, had proceeded to the
palace, had laid a watch on the table, and had told his majesty that,
within an hour, a treaty of neutrality must be signed, or a bombardment
would commence. The treaty was signed; the squadron sailed out of the
bay twenty-four hours after it had sailed in; and from that day the
ruling passion of the humbled Prince was aversion to the English name.
He was at length in a situation in which he might hope to