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perate years, they mainly owed, seven years later, that many most atrocious iniquities prevailing in the bankrupt refuges of Whitefriars and the Mint were repressed by statute; and that the small relief of William's act was at least reluctantly vouchsafed.

life. While the convention debates were But in the midst of his labors and enjoyin progress, the calmly resolute Stadthold-ments, there came a stroke of evil fortune. er had staid, secluded, at St. James's. Sy- He had married some little time before cophants sought access to him, counsellors this, (nothing further is known on that would have advised with him in vain. He head, but that in the course of his life he invited no popularity; he courted no par- had two wives, the first named Mary, and ty. The only Tory chief who spoke with the second Susannah;) and, with the proshim, came back to tell his friends that he pect of a family growing up around him, little value on a crown.' The strife, he saw his fortune swept suddenly away the heat, the violent animosity, the doubt- by a large, unsuccessful adventure. One ful success-all which in these celebrated angry creditor took out a Commission of debates seemed to affect his life and for- Bankruptcy; and De Foe, submitting tune-moved him not. He desired nothing meanwhile to the rest a proposition for to be concealed from him; he said noth- amicable settlement, fled from London. ing to his informants. This only was A prison paid no debts, he said. The known-he would not hold his Crown by cruelty of your laws against debtors, withthe apron-strings of his wife. He would out distinction of honest or dishonest, is not reign but as an independent sove- the shame of your nation. He who is unareign. They are an inconstant people, ble to pay his debts at once, may be able Marshal,' he quietly observed to Schom- to pay them at leisure; and you should berg. not meanwhile murder him by law.' So, Here, then, was a man who could also from himself to his fellow men, he reasonstand alone. Here was a King for such a ed always. No wrong or wretchedness subject as De Foe. And the admiration ever befel De Foe, which he did not turn conceived of him by the citizen merchant to the use and profit of his kind. To what deepened into passion. He reverenced he now struggled with, through two deshim, loved, and honored him; and kept as a festive day in his house, even to the close of his life, the day on which he was born and landed. Its first celebration was held at a country house in Tooting, which it would seem De Foe now occupied; and the manner of it was in itself some proof He had pressed the subject with all his of what we do not need to be told, that the resolute, practical habits of this earnest, busy man, were not unattended by that genial warmth of nature which alone gives His place of retreat appears to have been strength of character such as his, and with-in Bristol. Doubtless he had merchant out which never public virtue, and rarely pri- friends there. An acquaintance of his last vate, comes quite to its maturity. In this vil- excellent biographer, (Walter Wilson,) lage, too, in this year of the Revolution, we mentions it as an honorable tradition in find him occupied in erecting a meeting- his family, that at this time one of his Brishouse; in drawing together a Nonconformist tol ancestors had often seen and spoken congregation; and in providing a man of with the great De Foe.' They called learning for their minister. It was an object him the Sunday Gentleman, he said; bealways near his heart. For every new found- cause, through fear of the bailiffs, he did ation of that kind went some way toward the not dare to appear in public upon any othrendering Dissent a permanent separate er day; while on that day he was sure to interest, and an independent political be seen, with a fine flowing wig, lace rufbody, in the State; and the Church's reviv- fles, and a sword by his side, passing through ing heats made the task at once imperative the Bristol streets. But no time was lost and easy. Wherever intemperate language, with De Foe: whether watched by bailiffs, and overbearing arrogant persecution, are or laid hold of by their betters. He wrote, characteristics of the highest churchmen in his present retirement, that famous Es-should we marvel that sincere church- say, which went far to form the intellect goers turn frighted from the flame inces- and direct the pursuits of the most clear santly flickering about those elevated rods, and practical genius of the succeeding cenwhich they had innocently looked to for tury. 'There was also,' says Benjamin safe conductors? Franklin, describing the little library in

power of plain strong sense; and with a kind of rugged impressiveness, as of the cry of a sufferer.

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his uncle's house, a book of De Foe's, | rival statesmen; opposition and office but called an Essay on Projects, which per- varying the sides of treason, from William haps gave me a turn of thinking that had to James. There would be the versatile an influence on some of the principal fu- Halifax, receiving a Jacobite agent with ture events of my life.' open arms.' There would be the dry, reserved Godolphin, engaged in double service, though without a single bribe, to his actual and to his lawful sovereign. There would be the soldier Churchill, paid by William, taking secret gold from James,

He composed the Essay here; though it was not published until two years later. What the tendency of the age would be (partly by the influence of the Revolution, for commerce and religious freedom have ever prospered together; partly by the fi-and tarnishing his imperishable name with nancial necessities of the war, and the im- an infamous treachery to England. pulse thereby given to projects and adven- And all this, wholly unredeemed by the ture) he promptly discerned, and would wit and literature which graced the years have turned to profitable uses in this most of noisy_faction to which it was the prelude. shrewd, wise, and memorable piece of writ- As yet Pope was an infant in the cradle; ing. It suggested reforms in the system Addison and Steele were boys at school; of banking, and a plan for central country Bolingbroke was reading Greek at Christ banks; it pointed out the enormous advan- Church; and Swift was amanuensis in Sir tages of an efficient improvement of the William Temple's house, for his board and public roads, as a source of public benefit twenty pounds a-year. The laureatship and revenue; it recommended, for the safe- of Dryden has fallen on Shadwell; even ty of trade, a mitigation of the law against Garth's Dispensary has not yet been writ; the honest bankrupt, and a more effectual Mr. Tate and Mr. Brady are dividing the law against practised knavery; it proposed town; the noble accents of Locke on bethe general establishment of offices for insur- half of toleration are inaudible in the press; ance, in every case of risk;' it impressively-but Sir Richard Blackmore prepares his enforced the expediency of Friendly Socie- Epics; and Bishop Burnet sits down in ties, and of a kind of Savings Bank, among some terrible passion, to write a character the poor; and, with eloquence and clear- in his History. We are well content to sightedness far in advance of the time, it urg-return to Bristol, and take humbler part ed the solemn necessity of a greater care of with the fortunes of Daniel De Foe. lunatics, which it described as 'a particu- We have not recounted all the projects lar rent-charge on the great family of man- of his Essay The great design of Educa kind.' tion was embraced in it, and a furtherance A man may, afford to live alone who can of the interests of Letters. It proposed an make solitude eloquent with such designs Academy, on the plan of that founded in as these. What life there is in them! in France by Richelieu, to encourage powhat a pregnant power and wisdom, thrown lite learning, establish purity of style, and broad-cast over the fields of the future! advance the so much neglected faculty of It might not be ill, it seems to us, to trans- correct language;'-urging upon William, fer to this bankrupt fugitive, this Sunday how worthy of his high destiny it would be Gentleman, and every day earnest Work- to eclipse Louis Quatorze in the peaceful man, with no better prospect than a bailiff arts, as much as he had eclipsed him in visible from his guarded window, some part the field of battle. Nor let us omit recital of that honor and glory we too freely as- of the military college he would have raissign to more prosperous actors in the busy ed; of his project for abolition of impressperiod of the Revolution. Could we movement; and of his college for the education by the four days' Bristol coach to London, of women. His rare and high opinion of from the side of our hero, it would be but women had given him a just contempt for a paltry scene that awaited us there. We the female training of his time. He could should find the great sovereign obliged to not think, he said, that God ever made repose his trust where no man could trust them so delicate, so glorious creatures, to with safety. There would the first rank be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and growth of the new-gotten Liberty greet us slaves. 'A woman, well-bred and well in its most repulsive forms. There we taught, furnished with the additional acshould see the double game of treachery to complishments of knowledge and behaviour, the reigning and to the banished sovereign, is a creature without comparison. Her soplayed out with unscrupulous perfidy byciety is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments;

she is all softness and sweetness, love, wit, | been the office he held for four years, (till and delight.' The passage reminds us of the determination of the commission,) of the best writings of Steele.

His Bristol exile was now closed, by the desired arrangement with his creditors. They consented to compound his liabilities for five thousand pounds, and to take his personal security for the payment. In what way he discharged this claim, and what reward they had who trusted him, an anecdote of thirteen years later date (set down in the book of an enemy) will tell. While the coffee houses raged against him at the opening of the reign of Anne, a knot of intemperate assailants in one of them were suddenly interrupted by a person who sat at a table apart from theirs. Come, gentlemen,' he said, 'let us do justice. I know this De Foe as well as any of you. I was one of his creditors; compounded with him, and discharged him fully. Years afterward he sent for me; and though he was clearly discharged, he paid me all the remainder of his debt voluntarily, and of his own accord; and told me, that, so far as God should enable him, he meant to do so with every body.' The man added, that he had placed his signature to a paper of acknowledgement, after a long list of other names. Of many witnesses to the same effect, only one other need be cited. Four years later, when the House of Lords was the scene of a libel worse than that of the coffee house disputants, but with no one to interrupt it, De Foe himself made an unpretending public statement, to the effect that the sums he had at that time discharged of his own mere motion, without obligation, with a numerous family, and no help but his own industry,' amounted to upwards of twelve thousand pounds. Not as a matter of pride did he state this, but to intimate that he had not failed in duty. The discharge of law could not discharge the conscience. "The obligation of an honest mind can never die.'

He did not return to Freeman's Court. He had other views. Some foreign merchants, by whom he was held in high esteem, desired to settle him as a large factor in Cadiz; but he could not be induced to leave England. It was his secret hope to be able to serve the King. Nor had many months passed before we find him concerned with some eminent persons at home,' in proposing ways and means to the government for raising money to supply the occasions of the war. Resulting in some sort from this employment, seems to have

Accountant to the Commissioners of the glass duty. And without violence, one may suppose it to be not distantly a part of the same desire to draw round him a certain association with the interests and fortunes of his sovereign, that he also at this time undertook a large adventure in the making of what were called Dutch pantiles. He established extensive tile-kiln and brick-kiln works at Tilbury, on the Thames; where it was his boast, for several years, to have given employment to more than a hundred poor workmen.' He took a house, too, by the side of the river, and amused himself with a sailing boat he kept there.

We fancy him now, not seldom, among the rude, daring men, who made the shore of the great London river, in those days, a place of danger and romance :- Friends of the sea, and foes of all that live on it.' He knew, it is certain, the Kyds as well as the Dampiers, of that adventurous, bucaniering, Ocean breed. With no violent effort, we now imagine him fortifying his own resolution and contempt of danger by theirs; looking, through their rough and reckless souls, face to face, with that appalling courage they inherited from the vikings and sea-conquerors of old; listening their risks and wanderings for a theme of robust example, some day, to reading landsmen; and already, it may be, throwing forward his pleased and stirred imagination into solitary wildernesses and desert islands, placed far amid the melancholy main.'

But for the present, he turns back with a more practical and earnest interest to the solitary resident at St. James's. It will not be too much to say, that the most unpopular man in England now, was the man who had saved England. The pensioner of France, the murderer of Vane and Sydney, had more popularity for lounging about with his spaniels, and feeding the ducks in St. James's Park, than was ever attained by him who had rescued and exalted two great countries; to whom the depressed Protestant interest throughout the world owed its renovated hope and strength; and who had gloriously disputed Europe with Louis XIV.

We are far from thinking William a faultless Prince; but what to princes who have since reigned has been a plain and beaten path, was rendered so by his experience and example; and our wonder is, not that he stumbled, but that he was able to walk at

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all in the dark and thorny road he trav- when he opposed the King himself in his elled. He undertook the vexed, and till Reasons against a war with France, it was then unsolved, problem of Constitutional on a ground which enabled the Whigs, soon Government; but he came to rule us as a after, to prosecute and direct the mighty monarch, and not as a party chief. He, struggle which for ever broke the tyranny whom foolish bigots libel with their admira- and supremacy of France. He that detion, came to unite, and not to separate; to sires we should end the war honorably, tolerate, and not to persecute; to govern ought to desire also that we begin it fairly. one people, and not to raise and depress al- Natural antipathies are no just ground of a ternate classes. Of the many thousand war against nations; neither popular opinChurchmen who had been preaching pas- ions; nor is every invasion of a right a sive obedience before his arrival, only four good reason for war, until redress has first hundred refused to acknowledge his gov- been peaceably demanded.' ernment of resistance; but he lived to find those four hundred his most honorable foes. He was overthrown by his Church in his first attempt to legislate in a spirit of equal religious justice. His Whig ministers withdrew from him what they thought an unjust prerogative, because they had given him what they thought a just title; his Tory opposition refused him what they counted a just prerogative, on the ground of what they held to be an unjust title. Tories joined with Whigs against a standing army; Whigs joined with Tories against a larger toleration. 'I can see no difference between them,' said William to the elder Halifax, but that the Tories would cut my throat in the morning, and the Whigs in the after

noon.'

If William was to find himself again reconciled to the Whigs, it would be by the influence of such Whiggery as this. Indeed it soon became apparent to him, even in the midst of general treachery, by which of the traitors he could most efficiently be served; and when, aware of the Jacobite correspondence of the Whig Duke of Shrewsbury, he sent him a colonel of Guards with the seals of office in one hand and a warrant of treason in the other, to give him choice of the Cabinet or the Tower, he but translated, in his decisive fearless way, the shrewd practical counsel of Daniel De Foe.

That this merchant financier and speculator, this wary advocate, this sagacious politician, this homely earnest man of business, should soon have made his value known to And yet there was a difference. The such a sovereign, we cannot doubt. It was Whigs would have given him more than not till a later service, indeed, that the prithat longer day.' In the Tory ranks there vate cabinet of William was open to him; was no public character so pure as that of but, before the Queen's death, it is certain Somers; in the High-Church Bishops there he had access to the palace, and that she had was no intellect equal to Burnet's; among consulted him in her favorite task of laythe Tory financiers, there was no such clearing out Hampton Court Gardens. It is, to accomplishment and wit as those of Charles us, very pleasing to contemplate the meetMontagu, the later Halifax. When De ing of such a sovereign and such a subject, Foe flung himself into the struggle on the as William and De Foe. There was someKing's behalf, he was careful to remember thing not dissimilar in their physical and this. In all his writings he failed not to moral aspect. The King was the elder by enforce it. When he most grieved that ten years; but the middle size, the spare there should be union to exact from the figure, the hooked nose, the sharp chin, the Deliverer of England what none had ever keen gray eye, the large forehead, and grave thought of exacting from her Enslavers, it appearance, were common to both. Wilwas that men so different should compose liam's manner was cold, except in battle; it. When he supported a moderate stand- De Foe's, unless he spoke of civil liberty. ing army against the Whigs, it was with a There would be little recognition of LiteWhig reason; that not the King, but the rature on either hand; and less expected.sword of England in the hand of the King, When the Stadtholder, in his practical way, should secure peace and religious freedom.' complimented St. Evremont on having been When he opposed a narrow civil-list against a major-general in France, the dandy man the Whigs, it was with no Tory reason; but of letters took offence; but if the King because William's perils have been our merely spoke to De Foe as one who had safety, his labors our ease, his cares our borne arms with Monmouth, we would ancomfort, his continued harassing and fatigue swer for it there was no disappointed vaniour continued calm and tranquillity.' Nay, ty. Here, in a word, was profound good

sense on both sides; substantial scorn of the fine and the romantic; impassive firmness; a good, broad, buffeting style of procedure; and dauntless force of character: -A King who ruled by popular choice: and a Subject who represented that choice without a tinge of faction.

censorship of the press expired in 1694; no man in the state was found to suggest its renewal; and it passed away for ever.What, before, it had been the interest of government to impeach, it was now its interest to maintain; what the Tories formerly would have checked in the power of the House of Coinmons, their interest now compelled them to extend. All became committed to the principle of resistance, and, whether for party or for patriotism, liberty was the cry of all. De Foe turned aside from politics, when their aspect seemed for a time less virulent; and applied himself to what is always of intimate connexion with them, and of import yet more momentous-the moral aspects of the time.

Of how few then living, but De Foe, might that last remark be made! Of how few even of the best Whigs, that their Whiggism found no support in personal spite! At this very time, old Dryden could but weep when he thought of Prior and Charles Montagu, (' for two young fellows I have always been civil to, to use an old man in so cruel a manner :') but De Foe, even while assailing the license of the stage, spoke respectfully of Dryden, and when We do not, however, think he always pencondemning his changes in later years, etrated with success to the heart of a moral made admission of his extraordinary ge- question. He was somewhat obstructed, at nius.' At this time, Prior, so soon to be- the threshold, by the more formal and limitcome a Jacobite, was writing to Montagu ed points of Presbyterian breeding; and that he had faced old James and all his there were depths in morals and in moral court, the other day, at St. Cloud; vive causes, which undoubtedly he never soundGuillaume! You never saw such a strange ed. The more practical and earnest feafigure as the old bully is; lean, worn, and tures of his character, had in this respect riv'led' but De Foe, in the publication wherein he most had exalted William, had described with his most manly pathos James's personal mal-treatment and desertion.

brought their disadvantages; and on some points stopped him short of that highest reach and grace of intellect, which in a consummate sense constitute the ideal, and take leave of the merely shrewd, solid, acute, We repeat that the great sovereign would and palpable. The god of matter-of-fact find, in such a spirit as this, the nearest re- and reality, is not always in these things a semblance to his own; and, it may be, the divine god. But there was a manliness and best ultimate corrective of that weary im- courage well worthy of him, in the general patience of the Factions, which made his tone he took, and the game at which he English sovereignty so hard a burden. It flew. He represented in his essay, the was better discipline, on the whole, than he Poor Man; his object was to show that had from his old friend, Sir William Tem- Acts of Parliament were useless, which enple, whom, on his difficulty with the ultra- abled those who administered them to pass factious Triennial bill, he went to Moor over in their own class what they punished Park to consult. The wary diplomatist in classes below them; he arraigned that could but set his Irish amanuensis to draw tendency of our laws, which has since up wise precedents for the monarch's quiet passed into a proverb, to punish men for digestion of the bill, Whigs, Tories, and being poor;' and he set forth a petition, all; and the monarch could but drily ex- pregnant with sense and wit, that the stocks press his thanks to Mr. Jonathan Swift, by and house of correction should be straightteaching him to digest asparagus, against way abolished, 'till the nobility, gentry, all precedent, by swallowing stalks and all. justices of the peace, and clergy, will be These great questions of Triennial bill, pleased to reform their own manners.' He of Treason bill, of Settlement Securities lived in an age of Justice Midases and Parbill, whether dictated by wisdom or by fac- son Trullibers, and assails both with sintion, we need touch but lightly here. All gular bitterness. The parson preaches a worked wisely. Urged by various motives, thundering sermon against drunkenness, they tended to a common end. Silently, and the justice sets my poor neighbor in steadily, securely, while the roar of dispute and discontent raged and swelled above, the solid principles of the Revolution were rooting themselves deep in the soil below. The

the stocks; and I am like to be much the better for either, when I know that this same parson and this same justice were both drunk together but the night before.'