JAMES TITE SECOND. '

was a skeleton; and his meagre and wrinkled, though hand-some and noble, face strongly expressed both the keenness of'his parts and the restlessness of his ambition. Already he hadonce risen from obscurity to the height of power. He had thenfallen headlong from his elevation. His life had been indanger. He had passed years in a prison. He was now free:but this did not content him: he wished to be again great-Attached as he was to the Anglican Church, hostile as he wasto the French ascendency, he could not hope to be great in acourt swarming with Jesuits and obsequious to the House ofBourbon. But, if he bore a chief part in a revolution whichshould confound all the schemes of the Papists, which shouldput an end to the long vasalage of England, and which shouldtransfer the regal power to an illustrious pair whom he hadunited, he might emerge from his eclipse with new splendour.The Whigs, whose animosity had nine years before drivenhim from office, would, on his auspicious reappearance, jointheir acclamations to the acclamations of his old friends theCavaliers. Already there had been a complete reconciliationbetween him and one of the most distinguished of those whohad formerly been managers of his impeachment, the Earlof Devonshire. The two noblemen had met at a village in thePeak, and had exchanged assurances of good will. Devon-shire had frankly owned that the Whigs had been guilty of agreat injustice, and had declared that they were now con-vinced of their error. Danby, on his side, had also recanta-tions to make. He had once held, or pretended to hold, thedoctrine of passive obedience in the largest sense. Under hisadministration and with his sanction, a law had been proposedwhich, if it had been passed, would have excluded from Par-liament and office all who refused to declare on oath that theythought resistance in every case unlawful. But his vigorousunderstanding, now thoroughly awakened by anxiety for thepublic interests and for his own, was no longer to be duped, ifindeedit ever liadbeen duped, by such childish fallacies. He at

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16SS.

that the head of Halifax in Westminster Abbey does not give a morelively notion of him than any painting or engraving that I have seen.