The World's Greatest Books - Volume 12 Part 6

James had persuaded himself that, even if the English fleet should fall in with him, it would not oppose him. Indeed, he was too ready to believe anything written to him by his English correspondents.

No mightier armament had ever appeared in the English Channel than the fleet of allied British and Dutch s.h.i.+ps, under the command of Admiral Russell. On May 19 it encountered the French fleet under the Count of Tourville, and a running fight took place which lasted during five fearful days, ending in the complete destruction of the French force off La Hogue. The news of this great victory was received in England with boundless joy. One of its happiest effects was the effectual calming of the public mind.

_Creation of the Bank of England_

In this reign, in 1694, was established the Bank of England. It was the result of a great change that had developed in a few years, for old men in William's reign could remember the days when there was not a single banking house in London. Goldsmiths had strong vaults in which ma.s.ses of bullion could lie secure from fire and robbers, and at their shops in Lombard Street all payments in coin were made. William Paterson, an ingenious speculator, submitted to the government a plan for a national bank, which after long debate pa.s.sed both Houses of Parliament.

In 1694 the king and the nation mourned the death from small-pox, a disease always working havoc, of Queen Mary. During her illness William remained day and night at her bedside. The Dutch Envoy wrote that the sight of his misery was enough to melt the hardest heart. When all hope was over, he said to Bishop Burnet, "There is no hope. I was the happiest man on earth; and I am the most miserable. She had no faults; none; you knew her well; but you could not know, none but myself could know, her goodness." The funeral was remembered as the saddest and most august that Westminister had ever seen. While the queen's remains lay in state at Whitehall, the neighbouring streets were filled every day, from sunrise to sunset, by crowds that made all traffic impossible. The two Houses with their maces followed the hea.r.s.e, the Lords robed in scarlet and ermine, the Commons in long black mantles. No preceding sovereign had ever been attended to the grave by a Parliament: for till then the Parliament had always expired with the sovereign. The gentle queen sleeps among her ill.u.s.trious kindred in the southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh.

The affection of her husband was soon attested by a monument the most superb that was ever erected to any sovereign. No scheme had been so much her own, and none so dear to her heart, as that of converting the palace at Greenwich into a retreat for seamen. As soon as he had lost her, her husband began to reproach himself for neglecting her wishes. No time was lost. A plan was furnished by Wren; and soon an edifice, surpa.s.sing that asylum which the magnificent Louis had provided for his soldiers, rose on the margin of the Thames. The inscription on the frieze ascribes praise to Mary alone. Few who now gaze on the n.o.ble double edifice, crowned by twin domes, are aware that it is a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow of William, and of the greater victory of La Hogue.

On the Continent the death of Mary excited various emotions. The Huguenots, in every part of Europe to which they had wandered, bewailed the Elect Lady, who had retrenched her own royal state in order to furnish bread and shelter to the persecuted people of G.o.d. But the hopes of James and his companions in exile were now higher than they had been since the day of La Hogue. Indeed, the general opinion of politicians, both here and on the Continent, was that William would find it impossible to sustain himself much longer on the throne. He would not, it was said, have sustained himself so long but for the help of his wife, whose affability had conciliated many that were disgusted by his Dutch accent and habits. But all the statesmen of Europe were deceived: and, strange to say, his reign was decidedly more prosperous after the decease of Mary than during her life.

During the month which followed her death the king was incapable of exertion. His first letter was that of a brokenhearted man. Even his martial ardour had been tamed by misery. "I tell you in confidence," he wrote to Heincius, "that I feel myself to be no longer fit for military command. Yet I will try to do my duty: and I hope that G.o.d will strengthen me." So despondingly did he look forward to the most brilliant and successful of his many campaigns.

All Europe was looking anxiously towards the Low Countries. A great French army, commanded by Villeroy, was collected in Flanders. William crossed to the Continent to take command of the Dutch and British troops, who mustered at Ghent. The Elector of Bavaria, at the head of a great force, lay near Brussels. William had set his heart on capturing Namur. After a siege hard pressed, that fortress, esteemed the strongest in Europe, splendidly fortified by Vauban, surrendered to the allies on August 26, 1695.

_The Treaty of Ryswick_

The war was ended by the signing of the treaty of Ryswick by the amba.s.sadors of France, England, Spain, and the United Provinces on September 10, 1697. King William was received in London with great popular rejoicing. The second of December was appointed a day of thanksgiving for peace, and the Chapter of St. Paul's resolved that on that day their new Cathedral, which had long been slowly rising on the ruins of a succession of pagan and Christian temples, should be opened for public wors.h.i.+p. There was indeed reason for joy and thankfulness.

England had pa.s.sed through severe trials, and had come forth renewed in health and vigour.

Ten years before it had seemed that both her liberty and her independence were no more. Her liberty she had vindicated by a just and necessary revolution. Her independence she had reconquered by a not less just and necessary war. All dangers were over. There was peace abroad and at home. The kingdom, after many years of ignominious va.s.salage, had resumed its ancient place in the first rank of European powers. Many signs justified the hope that the Revolution of 1688 would be our last Revolution. Public credit had been re-established; trade had revived; the Exchequer was overflowing; and there was a sense of relief everywhere, from the Royal Exchange to the most secluded hamlets among the mountains of Wales and the fens of Lincolns.h.i.+re.

Early in 1702 alarming reports were rife concerning William's state of health. Headaches and s.h.i.+vering fits returned on him almost daily, and it soon became evident that the great king's days were numbered. On February 20 William was ambling on a favourite horse, named Sorrel, through the park of Hampton Court. The horse stumbling on a mole-hill went down on his knees. The king fell off and broke his collar-bone. The bone was set, and to a young and vigorous man such an accident would have been a trifle. But the frame of William was not in a condition to bear even the slightest shock. He felt that his time was short, and grieved, with such a grief as only n.o.ble spirits feel, to think that he must leave his work but half finished. On March 4 he was attacked by fever, and he was soon sinking fast. He was under no delusion as to his danger. "I am fast drawing to my end," said he. His end was worthy of his life. His intellect was not for a moment clouded. His fort.i.tude was the more admirable because he was not willing to die. From the words which escaped him he seemed to be frequently engaged in mental prayer.

The end came between seven and eight in the morning. When his remains were laid out, it was found that he wore next to his skin a small piece of black silk riband. The lords in waiting ordered it to be taken off.

It contained a gold ring and a lock of the hair of Mary.

HENRY BUCKLE

History of Civilisation in England

Henry Thomas Buckle was born at Lee, in Kent, England, Nov.

24, 1821. Delicate health prevented him from following the ordinary school course. His father's death in 1840 left him independent, and the boy who was brought up in Toryism and Calvinism, became a philosophic radical and free-thinker. He travelled, he read, he acquired facility in nineteen languages and fluency in seven. Gradually he conceived the idea of a great work which should place history on an entirely new footing; it should concern itself not with the unimportant and the personal, but with the advance of civilisation, the intellectual progress of man. As the idea developed, he perceived that the task was greater than could be accomplished in the lifetime of one man. What he actually accomplished--the volumes which bear the t.i.tle "The History of Civilisation in England"--was intended to be no more than an introduction to the subject; and even that introduction, which was meant to cover, on a corresponding scale, the civilisation of several other countries, was never finished. The first volume was published in 1857, the second in 1861; only the studies of England, France, Spain, and Scotland were completed. Buckle died at Damascus, on May 29, 1862.

_I.---General Principles_

The believer in the possibility of a science of history is not called upon to hold either the doctrine of predestination or that of freedom of the will. The only positions which at the outset need to be conceded are that when we perform an action we perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that those motives are the result of some antecedents; and that, therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole of the precedents and with all the laws of their movements we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results.

History is the modification of man by nature and of nature by man. We shall find a regularity in the variations of virtuous and vicious actions that proves them to be the result of large and general causes which, working upon the aggregate of society, must produce certain consequences without regard to the decision of particular individuals.

Man is affected by purely physical agents--climate, food, soil, geographical conditions, and active physical phenomena. In the earliest civilisations nature is more prominent than man, and the imagination is more stimulated than the understanding. In the European civilisations man is the more prominent, and the understanding is more stimulated than the imagination. Hence the advance of European civilisation is characterised by a diminis.h.i.+ng influence of physical laws and an increasing influence of mental laws. Clearly, then, of the two cla.s.ses of laws which regulate the progress of mankind the mental cla.s.s is more important than the physical. The laws of the human mind will prove to be the ultimate basis of the history of Europe. These are not to be ascertained by the metaphysical method of studying the inquirer's own mind alone, but by the historical method of studying many minds. And this whether the metaphysician belongs to the school which starts by examining the sensations, or to that which starts with the examination of ideas.

Dismissing the metaphysical method, therefore, we must turn to the historical, and study mental phenomena as they appear in the actions of mankind at large. Mental progress is twofold, moral and intellectual, the first having relation to our duties, the second to our knowledge. It is a progress not of capacity, but in the circ.u.mstances under which capacity comes into play; not of internal power, but of external advantage. Now, whereas moral truths do not change, intellectual truths are constantly changing, from which we may infer that the progress of society is due, not to the moral knowledge, which is stationary, but to the intellectual knowledge, which is constantly advancing.

The history of any people will become more valuable for ascertaining the laws by which past events were governed in proportion as their movements have been least disturbed by external agencies. During the last three centuries these conditions have applied to England more than to any other country; since the action of the people has there been the least restricted by government, and has been allowed the greatest freedom of play. Government intervention is habitually restrictive, and the best legislation has been that which abrogated former restrictive legislation.

Government, religion, and literature are not the causes of civilisation, but its effects. The higher religion enters only where the mind is intellectually prepared for its acceptance; elsewhere the forms may be adopted, but not the essence, as mediaeval Christianity was merely an adapted paganism. Similarly, a religion imposed by authority is accepted in its form, but not necessarily in its essence.

In the same way literature is valuable to a country in proportion as the population is capable of criticising and discriminating; that is, as it is intellectually prepared to select and sift the good from the bad.

_II.---Civilisation in England_

It was the revival of the critical or sceptical spirit which remedied the three fundamental errors of the olden time. Where the spirit of doubt was quenched civilisation continued to be stationary. Where it was allowed comparatively free play, as in England and France, there has arisen that constantly progressive knowledge to which these two great nations owe their prosperity.

In England its primary and most important consequence is the growth of religious toleration. From the time of Elizabeth it became impossible to profess religion as the avowed warrant for persecution. Hooker, at the end of her reign, rests the argument of his "Ecclesiastical Polit" on reason; and this is still more decisively the case with Chillingworth's "Religion of Protestants" not fifty years later. The double movement of scepticism had overthrown its controlling authority.

In precisely the same way Boyle--perhaps the greatest of our men of science between Bacon and Newton--perpetually insists on the importance of individual experiments and the comparative unimportance of what we have received from antiquity.

The clergy had lost ground; their temporary alliance with James II. was ended by the Declaration of Indulgence. But they were half-hearted in their support of the Revolution, and scepticism received a fresh encouragement from the hostility between them and the new government; and the brief rally under Queen Anne was overwhelmed by the rise of Wesleyanism. Theology was finally severed from the department both of ethics and of government.

The eighteenth century is characterised by a craving after knowledge on the part of those cla.s.ses from whom knowledge had hitherto been shut out. With the demand for knowledge came an increased simplicity in the literary form under which it was diffused. With the spirit of inquiry the desire for reform constantly increased, but the movement was checked by a series of political combinations which demand some attention.

The accession of George III. changed the conditions which had persisted since the accession of George I. The new king was able to head reaction.

The only minister of ability he admitted to his counsels was Pitt, and Pitt retained power only by abandoning his principles. Nevertheless, a counter-reaction was created, to which England owes her great reforms of the nineteenth century.

_III.--Development of France_

In France at the time of the Reformation the clergy were far more powerful than in England, and the theological contest was much more severe. Toleration began with Henry IV. at the moment when Montaigne appeared as the prophet of scepticism. The death of King Henry was not followed by the reaction which might have been expected, and the rule of Richelieu was emphatically political in its motives and secular in its effects. It is curious to see that the Protestants were the illiberal party, while the cardinal remained resolutely liberal.

The difference between the development in France and England is due primarily to the recognition in England of the fact that no country can long remain prosperous or safe in which the people are not gradually extending their power, enlarging their privileges, and, so to say, incorporating themselves with the functions of the state. France, on the other hand, suffered far more from the spirit of protection, which is so dangerous, and yet so plausible, that it forms the most serious obstacle with which advancing civilisation has to contend.

The great rebellion in England was a war of cla.s.ses as well as of factions; on the one side the yeomanry and traders, on the other the n.o.bles and the clergy. The corresponding war of the Fronde in France was not a cla.s.s war at all; it was purely political, and in no way social.

At bottom the English rebellion was democratic; the leaders of the Fronde were aristocrats, without any democratic leanings.

Thus in France the protective spirit maintained its ascendancy intensified. Literature and science, allied to and patronised by government, suffered demoralisation, and the age of Louis XIV. was one of intellectual decay. After the death of Louis XIV. the French discovered England and English literature. Our island, regarded hitherto as barbarous, was visited by nearly every Frenchman of note for the two succeeding generations. Voltaire, in particular, a.s.similated and disseminated English doctrines.

The consequent development of the liberal spirit brought literature into collision with the government. Inquiry was opposed to the interests of both n.o.bles and clergy. Nearly every great man of letters in France was a victim of persecution. It might be said that the government deliberately made a personal enemy of every man of intellect in the country. We can only wonder, not that the revolution came, but that it was still so long delayed; but ingrained prejudices prevented the crown from being the first object of attack. The hostility of the men of letters was directed first against the Church and Christianity.

Religious scepticism and political emanc.i.p.ation did not advance hand in hand; much that was worst in the actual revolution was due to the fact that the latter lagged behind.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries some progress had been made in the principles of writing history. Like everything else, history suffered from the rule of Louis XIV. Again the advance was inaugurated by Voltaire. His principle is to concentrate on important movements, not on idle details. This was not characteristic of the individual author only, but of the spirit of the age. It is equally present in the works of Montesquieu and Turgot. The defects of Montesquieu are chiefly due to the fact that his materials were intractable, because science had not yet reduced them to order by generalising the laws of their phenomena.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the intellectual movement began to be turned directly against the state. Economical and financial inquiries began to absorb popular attention. Rousseau headed the political movement, whereas the government in its financial straits turned against the clergy, whose position was already undermined, and against whom Voltaire continued to direct his batteries.