essions the Queen was induced to make.

At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of parties bore a close
analogy to the state of parties in 1826. In 1826, as in 1704, there was
a Tory ministry divided into two hostile sections. The position of Mr.
Canning and his friends in 1826 corresponded to that which Marlborough
and Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham and Jersey were, in 1704,
what Lord Eldon and Lord Westmoreland were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704
were in a situation resembling that in which the Whigs of 1826 stood. In
1704 Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, Cowper, were not in office. There was
no avowed coalition between them and the moderate Tories. It is probable
that no direct communication tending to such a coalition had yet taken
place; yet all men saw that such a coalition was inevitable, nay, that
it was already half formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state of
things when tidings arrived of the great battle fought at Blenheim on
the thirteenth of August, 1704. By the Whigs the news was hailed with
transports of joy and pride. No fault, no cause of quarrel, could be
remembered by them against the Commander whose genius had, in one day,
changed the face of Europe, saved the Imperial throne, humbled the House
of Bourbon, and secured the Act of Settlement against foreign hostility.
The feeling of the Tories was very different. They could not indeed,
without imprudence, openly express regret at an event so glorious to
their country; but their congratulations were so cold and sullen as to
give deep disgust to the victorious general and his friends.

Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time he could spare from
business he was in the habit of spending at Newmarket or at the
card-table. But he was not absolutely indifferent to poetry; and he was
too intelligent an observer not to perceive that literature was a
formidable engine of political warfare, and that the great Whig leaders
had strengthened their party, and raised their character, by extending a
liberal and judicious patronage to good writers. He was mortified, and
not without reason, by the exceeding badness of the poems which appeared
in honor of the battle of Blenheim. One of those poems has been rescued
from oblivion by the exquisite absurdity of three lines:--

"Think of two thousand gentlemen at least,
And each man mounted on his capering beast;
Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals."

Where to procure better verses the Trea