Chapter XXXV: Under the White Stars (6)

One other reason besides the object of directing the attention of the lovers of art to the works of a real and genuine artist has led me to think it desirable to make Signor Moretti and his workshop known to American and English readers. The custom, an excellent one, of putting up in churches or other public buildings painted windows as memorials of those lost to their country or to those dear to them has become common on both sides of the Atlantic; and I am sure that I am giving good counsel to any persons contemplating such an undertaking in recommending them to pay a visit to Signor Moretti's studio at Perugia before finally deciding on giving their commissions.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

A STORY OF AMERICAN CHIVALRY.

"America is the paradise of women," is a foreign proverb that must frequently recur to every American woman who travels or resides in the Old World. Whenever in my Transatlantic journeyings I witness, or hear of, or experience any flagrant act of discourtesy, or injustice arising from contempt of the weaker sex, I am reminded by contrast of an incident which occurred to me in early youth, and which I have often related to astonished, almost incredulous, hearers in Europe, as a specimen of the truly chivalrous sentiments and behavior commonly exhibited by men toward women in every part of our great republic.

Once, when I was a very young girl, it became necessary for me to take a journey of several hundred miles to visit a near relative who lived in the State of Pennsylvania, a little over the New York border. It happened that I was obliged to go alone and in an inclement season of the year, but the circumstances were imperative, and my love of traveling prevented any anticipation of fear or danger.

The morning of the third day after my departure from home found me seated at breakfast in the large hotel at Corning, N. Y., which stands within a few steps of the Corning and Blossburg railway-station. From the conversation going on around me, I inferred that several of the guests besides myself were going by the Blossburg train, but I could not see the point of the landlord's jokes on the subject, which, however, appeared to be fully understood and heartily appreciated by my neighbors. He laughed and chuckled, and repeatedly wished us all patience and perseverance to carry us safely through the trials in store for us; and when we started in a body for the station, he followed us to the door and called out that he would be sure to have a nice hot supper of beefsteak and fried potatoes awaiting us on our return.

The train comprised only the engine and a few coal-cars, one passenger-car, and two smaller cars for luggage. Altogether, it looked very shabby and old-fashioned in comparison with the luxurious appointments of the trains upon the more important lines; but the way was short and the passengers were few, so that the accommodations were as good as we had a right to expect.

The travelers consisted of eight or ten sportsmen equipped with rifles and other accoutrements; two young men, one of them a lawyer, the other a merchant (as I discovered from their conversation); an elderly gentleman, evidently of wealth and position, whom the young lawyer addressed as "Judge;" a middle-aged widow from Chicago; a brisk little milliner on her way back to some Pennsylvania village with the latest fashions from New York; and myself, a lively girl just out of school. There was also a negro huddled up in the farthest corner of the car, whose business it was to attend to the fire.

At eleven o'clock the train started with a great jerk, and crept slowly out of the town. The motion was very disagreeable; the seats were hard; the air was stuffy, and became after a while almost unbearable from the accumulated breaths and the dry heat of the stove, into which the negro was continually thrusting more coal. The hunters, in the forward part of the car, exchanged remarks now and then: the rest of us read newspapers and looked out of the windows at the monotonous winter landscape. Wondering at the snail's pace at which we moved, I recalled the landlord's mysterious jokes, and at last ventured to ask the little milliner, who sat in the next seat to mine, what he meant by his allusions. "Oh, it was nothing," she replied; "only this is an old road, and there have been so many break-downs on it that Mr. Smith likes to make fun of all the Blossburg passengers."

"But is anything the matter now?" I asked.

"No: we always creep along this way. You see, the distance is only eighteen miles, or nobody could stand it. I always feel as though I should fly out of my skin the whole way; but, after all, it is better than a stage in cold weather. They are going to build a new road soon."

She had scarcely finished speaking when the train, which had been moving more and more slowly, came to a dead stop. There was no station in sight, nor any house or other sign of human occupation. We were in the woods: a high hill was close against us on one side, and on the other a steep embankment went down to the shore of a rapid stream that ran through the valley. After waiting several minutes in vain for the train to move on, one of the hunters went out to see what was the matter, and came back laughing with the news that a piece had fallen out of the bottom of the boiler, so that the water had put out the fire, and there was no chance of our getting any farther until the boiler was mended. Whereupon all the men rushed out to watch the progress of affairs, and remained away for a time that seemed to us an age. At last they came dropping back, one after another, each later arrival bringing more encouraging news of the prospect of a speedy start, until finally the same hunter who had announced the disaster appeared, saying that it was all right and we should now go ahead. In the profound stillness of the forest we could hear the hissing of the steam, and presently came the welcome whistle; then two or three pantings of the engine and that preparatory jarring of the whole train which precedes its regular motion, and then all was still again. The same impatient hunter went out again, and returned--this time not laughing--to inform us that as soon as the water had begun to boil the hole had broken open again, and put out the fire as before. Again all the men rushed out: even the half-torpid negro in the corner became excited and followed the procession of males, while we "womanites" waited in patience for the sequel of the calamity.

It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and the short winter day was drawing near its close. The frequent opening and shutting of the door had replaced the heavy atmosphere with a stream of cold air, at first very refreshing, but soon uncomfortably cool, especially as the stove had for some time ceased to give out heat, the negro, with the improvidence that characterizes his race, having burned up the fuel as fast as possible, without taking into account the probability of detention. We began, too, to be dreadfully hungry, and not one of us had brought any lunch, as we had fully expected to arrive at the end of the railway-journey by dinner-time. To crown our miseries, the sky, which had lowered above us gray and heavy all day, began to relieve itself in a thick fall of snow.

The widow vented her discomfort in a monotonous grumble; the cheery little milliner, who knew the road of old, kept up a hopeful prophesying that we should come out all right; as for myself, I was young enough to enjoy anything in the shape of an adventure, although this part of our experience began after a time to seem rather tedious.

At last we heard our fellow-passengers approaching, all talking together and apparently much excited. They brought bad news. The old engine could not be properly mended, and it was useless to try to fire up again; we had come only six miles, and it was twelve miles farther to the nearest station; the conductor and engineer had decided to go on, to prevent the evening train from starting, and to obtain another engine to remove our train; but considering the distance they must go, and the heavy storm that was coming on, they could not probably get back before morning. So there we were, on a high ridge of road just wide enough to hold the track; a mountain on one side of us and a deep river on the other; no house in sight, and no way of getting at it if there had been one; our fire gone out; nothing to eat or drink; night coming on, and the snow falling as it seems to me I never saw it fall before or since.

The hunters made short work of the problem. They decided to follow the train-hands to the next village, twelve miles off; so they picked up their guns and knapsacks, and sprang over the ditch that lay on the mountain side of the track and wound along the base of the hill to the level beyond where the train had stopped. After they were gone the three remaining men proceeded to discuss the situation. The old gentleman mentioned that he was one of the directors of the road, and therefore felt a degree of responsibility in our unfortunate circumstances; moreover, as a man, he could not think of leaving three helpless women to take care of themselves in such a dilemma, and he was sure the young men must share this feeling; to which appeal they gave a hearty assent. As neither of my companions seemed ready to speak, I ventured to thank the gentlemen for their kindness, and to ask what we could do to lighten their task--whether we could not go to some house near by, or even walk back to Corning. But the brisk little milliner exclaimed, "I know the whole road, and there isn't a house anywhere in this neighborhood. About a mile back there is one in sight, but it is away over marshes and fields, and the road is built so high up that we can't possibly get down the bank; besides, it's a poor little hut when you get there, and I don't believe the people could take us in."

Here the widow burst out crying, and the gentlemen, taking up the parable, said that we could not walk to Corning. A good part of the way the road was built over marshes and laid only upon timbers, so that we might easily meet with some accident; besides, six miles in such a snowstorm, and with empty stomachs! No, it was not to be thought of.

They went out to see what could be done, and we awaited their decision in great anxiety, the widow bemoaning her fate and wishing she had never begun the journey, and the milliner rehearsing numerous other misfortunes which had befallen the Blossburg train when she had been a passenger; not one of which, however, had proved such a "fix" as we were in now.

Before long the Judge returned, calling out in a cheerful voice, "We have it! We are going to put you into the hinder baggage-car, and give you a ride back to Corning. So pick up your traps and follow me: it is only a few steps through the snow, and then you will be as snug as possible."

We gladly followed our leader out of the cold, dismal car, and he helped us, one after another, over the narrow passage separating the track from the ditch, until we came to the open space between the train and the baggage-car, which the young men had detached and pushed a few steps back. It was a queer little car--like an enormous goods-box set upon end--and the interior was nearly filled with trunks, barrels and freight of various kinds. But by pushing about and piling up the things room was made for us, and two of the smaller boxes were left near the door to serve as seats, which the two elder women were invited to occupy, while I, as the youngest and smallest of the company, was assisted by the director to climb up into a rocking-chair that stood on the top of a hogshead in the corner, where I had an excellent seat, except that I was obliged to crouch a little in order not to hit my head against the ceiling.

Having disposed of us, the three gentlemen set themselves to the work of pushing the car back toward Corning. They could only move it by resting their hands against the sill of the open door and then pressing forward with all their might, their feet being braced against the earth, so that their bodies seemed almost in a horizontal position. After once starting it, they were in hopes to be able to keep it in motion without much difficulty. But the task proved to be a harder one than they had anticipated. The car was strongly built and cumbrous in itself, and the freight it carried was heavy, to say nothing of our additional weight. Then, too, the snow had fallen to the depth of several inches, clogging the wheels and encumbering the footsteps of the men and darkness added to the difficulty.

After struggling along for a considerable time there was a pause for rest and consultation. Just then a light twinkled far over the meadows, probably in the little hut which the milliner had described; and it was decided that the two young men should go there and try to borrow a horse. Accordingly, they scrambled down the steep bank, while the director shook the snow off his clothes and came into the car to rest until their return. We did our best to be hospitable. The milliner wanted him to take her seat on the box, and I offered to descend from my perch and let him have the rocking-chair; but he refused both proposals, and, finding a small barrel in an opposite corner, seated himself upon it and declared that he was quite comfortable. He seemed to look upon the whole adventure as a good joke, and we thought we could do no less than be merry also; so we chatted and laughed and told stories, and at last, discovering that he was very fond of music, I sang several songs, with which he expressed himself highly pleased. When I say _we_, I mean the little milliner and myself, for I am ashamed to say that the widow was all the while discontented and cross, maintaining a sullen silence, excepting when she broke it to grumble over our misfortunes, and appearing totally insensible to the generous kindness of our protectors, who could so easily have taken care of themselves if we had not been in their way.

By and by we heard footsteps and voices, and the two young men reappeared with a farmer's boy leading a horse. But, oh, misery! the lad had forgotten the rope which he was told to bring, and there was no other way but for him to go back to the farm for it. Reproaches were useless, and so the lad was despatched for the missing rope, with a warning that he was to come back "in less than no time;" and the young men joined us in the car, glad to find shelter from the snow, although there was scarcely any room for them to stand, and none at all for them to sit down. The horse, too, seemed inclined to join our group, as one of the young men held him by the bridle so that his head was inside the door.

The director gave such brilliant accounts of the entertainment he had enjoyed during the absence of his companions that they bewailed their deprivation most bitterly, nor would they be comforted until the milliner had repeated her story of "Mrs. Perkins's Tea-party" and I had sung over again all my songs. As soon as the boy reported himself the three gentlemen hurried out to superintend the hitching up. We could see nothing of what was going on, excepting now and then a bright gleam cast by the lantern across the snow opposite our open door, but we could hear all that was said, and we soon learned that there was more trouble in store for us. The horse would not go. It was not that the load was too much for him, for when all was ready the three men came back to their old place and started the car, with the intention of helping the horse all the way. But it was of no use: he would not stir a step. Perhaps he disliked the look of the wagon; more likely, he was afraid to walk upon the timbers; at all events, he refused to budge an inch. The boy chirruped and hallooed and swore; the men pushed the car until it came up to the horse's heels; but he only kicked and baulked, and would not draw. There was nothing to be done but to dismiss the beast and his driver, and try again. So the three gallant knights went bravely to work, and we watched them, ashamed of our helplessness, and yet feeling that it was out of our power to prevent their self-sacrifice. The most that we could do was to keep up their spirits by cheerful talk and merry songs; and I must say that when not contrasted with their greater merit our courage in keeping up the semblance of gayety is not to be despised, considering that we had been sitting still for hours in cold and darkness, and had had nothing to eat or drink since our early breakfast. Even the one disconsolate member of our company was perhaps really incapable of exerting herself so much as we younger and naturally gayer women succeeded in doing.

For myself, wretch that I was, I enjoyed, away up in my rocking-chair, many a stolen moment of pure fun during the intervals my forced jollity for the benefit of others. There was a comical side to the adventure which made me shake with suppressed laughter even more than with cold. The whole affair of the horse was so ridiculous! The long journey in search of him, the forgetting of the rope, and finally the utter failure of the plan through the obstinacy of the sagacious beast! I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks while listening to the discussions going on outside. And then to see those long-suffering men pushing our lumbering old car, with their six hands in a row on the doorsill, and their feet stretched so far out behind as to look almost as though not belonging to their bodies, the more so because their clothing was entirely white with snow! Once, one of them slipped and fell down flat, and I only laughed the harder, though feeling all the while that I could have beaten myself for my want of gratitude. The sighings of the patient little milliner, who sat near the door with her precious bandboxes around her, and the occasional moans and groans of the fretful widow in her dark corner, only ministered to my mirth, which was probably the more irresistible because I was obliged to smother it with the greatest care lest my companions should become aware of my inexcusable levity.

In one of the pauses for rest the young lawyer gave a shout on discovering an apple in his coat-pocket. But instead of eating it himself or sharing it with his fellow-laborers, he cut it into three pieces and handed it to us, together with a snowball to quench our thirst; and then they all set to work again as bravely as though they themselves had just been refreshed with food and drink.

But good-will was not all that was necessary to make their enterprise successful. Their strength was giving out, and on seeing the gleam of another light at a distance it was thought best to try to procure another horse. Again the two young men set off across the meadows, and again the good old Judge came into the car and took his seat on top of the barrel. But the sequel of the second endeavor was more satisfactory than the first had been. The young men returned with a lively young horse, which, after being duly fastened with the rope that this boy had not forgotten, started off at a good pace as soon as the car had been got underway. He seemed to draw the load so easily that the three exhausted men thought they might rest a while, and so they all piled into the car and drew the door partly to, in order to keep out the cold wind, which had begun to blow quite hard. They, poor souls! rejoiced greatly over their change of base, and imagined themselves in wonderful luck; while we, the former occupants, realized that our misery had a lower depth than we had yet experienced, since we were nearly stifled by the confined air, and at the same time chilled to the very marrow of our bones by the close proximity of those animated bundles of melting snow. But an unexpected piece of good-fortune fell to us all just then. The Judge, while swinging his foot over the side of his barrel, happened to strike one of them against a small object that tumbled over and rolled away between the boxes. He sprang down to the floor in a moment. "Hurrah!" he cried: "I believe I have run down a keg of oysters." A match was lighted and the precious freight hunted for. It turned out to be not oysters, but a tin box of oyster-crackers. "Never mind," said the Judge: "it is something to eat, at any rate, and the owner will never need it as much as we do. What's the use of being a director of the road if one cannot help himself to the property once in a while?" So saying, he pried open the box, the young lawyer keeping the matches going in order to give him light, and soon the contents were distributed among the company. While we were munching away at our dry food, now and then varying the fare by a pull at a snowball, the driver gave a shout and the car suddenly stopped.

On going out the men were told that we had come to a culvert, over which the horse could not go, and so one of the party unhitched the horse and led him carefully down the steep bank and up the other side on to the track again, while the others pushed the car across the partially-open space. Then the horse was hitched up anew, the car started, and our guests again darkened the doorway. But the culverts multiplied, and as the same process must be gone through with each one, the gentlemen gave up trying to come under shelter between-times, and patiently plodded along in the deep snow behind the car.

By and by the horse began to show signs of giving out, and the old mode of pushing was resorted to in order to help him. But he was young and easily tired, and finally the driver said he must not draw any more; so he was unhitched, the boy was paid and dismissed, the men bent their weary backs again to grasp the low doorsill, and we creaked along more slowly than ever.

At last the lights of Corning became visible, and the work immediately stopped. We were within about a mile of the town, and the director now proposed that his two companions should go on and return with a conveyance, while he remained in charge of us. This was done, and in less time than it had taken to procure a steed for our railway vehicle our deliverers appeared in the road below us, looking very grand in a large sleigh carrying lamps, filled with fur robes, and drawn by two fiery black horses that promised to bring our prolonged discomforts to a speedy close. But how to reach this tantalizing object? The railway was on an embankment, and between us and the road was another ridge, a deep ditch filled with half-frozen water lying between. The young men debated for a few moments, and at last went to a neighboring fence and broke off a long board, which they brought and laid across from the track to the ridge; and then one of them stood nearly knee-deep in the ditch and supported the board on his shoulder, while the other climbed up the ridge and told the director to hand us over, one at a time, as far as his arm would extend, and he would reach out to us from the other side. In this way we all passed over safely, and had no further mishap, excepting that once the horses became unmanageable, and we came very near being run away with on our way to the hotel.

As we drove up to the door the landlord appeared, rubbing his hands and chuckling, just as he had done on our departure, and crying out, "Didn't I tell you I should see you again to-day? and it hasn't struck twelve yet! And I told you, too, that I would have a good supper of beefsteak and fried potatoes ready: there they are smoking hot in the dining-room this blessed minute; so come and eat."

The deliciousness of that meal I will not attempt to describe, nor the comfort of the night's rest that followed it. Before separating from our generous companions we three women (for even the widow came out strong after the trouble was over) tried to express in some degree our gratitude for their extreme kindness, but they laughed at the very idea of any obligation on our side, and declared that the pleasure of our society had far outweighed the hardships of the journey.

As a fitting sequel to this story I will add that the next morning the two young gentlemen (one of whom resided in the town which I was intending to visit, and knew my relations well) hired a sleigh and invited me to drive across the country to my destination with them. And about a week after my arrival I was surprised by a visit from the director, who said that, having business in the county, he had come twenty miles out of his way to see the little girl who had been so cheerful and good-humored under so severe a trial of fortitude as was our railroad disaster among the Pennsylvania hills. I believe that the noble old gentleman really thought me more deserving of praise than himself; and I am certain that not one of the three ever considered that there was anything wonderful in having thus sacrificed their comfort and risked their health in behalf of three women, insignificant in themselves and having no claim, not even that of previous acquaintance, upon their attention and care.

E.

WILLIAM, EARL OF SHELBURNE.

Among the English statesmen of a century ago, William, earl of Shelburne, seems to us to have a peculiar claim upon the recollection of citizens of the United States--one, too, that involves none of those offensive associations that cluster round the names of, let us say, Grenville and North. For in looking at Lord Shelburne's career we see a man whose clear-sighted judgment from the first, and consistently, protested against that system of high-handed imperialism which drove thirteen reluctant colonies into a war of independence; who both in office and out of office did his utmost, first to avert, by a policy never of cowardly concession, but of just expediency, the impending storm, and then, when it had burst, to withstand and counteract its fury; and the last great act of whose public life was to conclude the struggle which he had always deprecated and deplored.

It is therefore with no ordinary interest that we welcome the first installment of a work[C] whose promise--and, we at once cordially add, performance--heralds a really satisfactory account, a realizable flesh-and-blood portraiture, of the English prime minister under whose administration the peace preliminaries of 1782 were signed. The present biographer comes before us with advantages for the treatment of his subject never before possessed. He has enjoyed access not only to his great-grandfather's papers at Lansdowne House, but to those of two other most important actors in the British drama of a century ago--Lord Bute, "the favorite," and Henry Fox; and these documents, pieced together and set side by side, throw upon the events to which they relate, and the motives and objects of their authors, that light, unquestionable and convincing, which is the peculiar and happy characteristic of this kind of evidence. It is all very well for an acrid Walpole, or in our own day a scandal-mongering Greville, to draw, with plausibly life-like touches, his version of this or that historical transaction--to tell us, with the authority of one seemingly in the secret, that in such and such a matter Lord A. was scheming for this, and that we are to find the key to Mr. B.'s conduct in the knowledge that he was all along intriguing for that; but how often it happens that when, by good luck, the contemporaneous documentary evidence of correspondence, private memoranda and the like is forthcoming, the off-hand allegations of the memoir-writer are in infinite particulars tried and found wanting in correctness, and sometimes fall refuted altogether! More than one notable instance of this will strike the historical student in reading this first volume of Lord Shelburne's _Life_; and in the eventful and disputed years which Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice has yet to chronicle it may safely be assumed that he will have plenty to say in the way of correction and explanation of previous histories of the time.

An autobiographical fragment, composed by Lord Shelburne in his closing years, and found among the Shelburne papers at Lansdowne House, presents with a vividness of detail and verisimilitude that leaves nothing to be desired the outlines of the first twenty years of his life. The Second George had been ten years on the throne, the Young Pretender, alike the bugbear and the consolidator of the House of Hanover, was a stripling of seventeen, when, in the summer of 1737, William Fitzmaurice, afterward earl of Shelburne (the name by which history best knows him) and marquis of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin. "I spent the four first years, of my life" (he tells us) "in the remotest part of the south of Ireland, under the government of an old grandfather [Thomas Fitzmaurice, earl of Kerry], who reigned, or rather tyrannized, equally over his own family, and the neighboring country as if it was his family, in the same manner as I suppose his ancestors, lords of Kerry, had done for generations since the time of Henry II., who granted to our family one hundred thousand acres in those remote parts in consideration of their services against the Irish, with the title of barons of Kerry.... My grandfather did not want the manners of the country nor the habits of his family to make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character which can be imagined--obstinate and inflexible: he had not much understanding, but strong nerves and great perseverance, and no education except what he had in the army, where he served in his youth, with a good degree of reputation for personal bravery and activity. He was a handsome man, and, luckily for me and mine, married a very ugly woman, who brought into his family whatever degree of sense may have appeared in it, and whatever wealth is likely to remain in it." In 1741 the stern grandfather died, and in the course of the next ten years the grandson picked up such bits of education as an Irish public school of the period, supplemented by a clerical private tutor, might afford. At sixteen he went to Christ Church, Oxford (in those days boys were commonly taking their degrees at the universities at an age when they would now be well content to have won their way into a school sixth form), and there read law, history, Demosthenes, and "by myself a great deal of religion."

And here our autobiographer abruptly turns aside from the incidents of his own story to sketch the antecedents, existing condition and character of the politics and politicians of the time of his first entry into public life. No one, we take it, will be disposed to quarrel with the interruption, for it gives us, in the space of a few pages, a picture of men and manners which, painted as it is by the mature hand of a shrewd contemporary observer, cannot but form a most important addition to our stock of knowledge of those times. The literary style of this piece of writing shows Lord Shelburne to have had in him the making of a successful memoirist. Gossip, anecdote, passages of sarcasm and epigram are mingled in skillful proportions; and there is certainly no waste of the milk of human kindness. Pitt (Lord Chatham) is dissected with ruthless elaboration: half a dozen minor statesmen are scarified with a single sentence apiece. Horace Walpole himself, with all his sinister acidity, nowhere hits harder--we had almost said more bitterly--than does Lord Shelburne in this short sketch of his. But just as an English House of Commons loves nothing so well as a "personal explanation," so the personalities of literature have a way of attracting us in the direct ratio of their piquancy and severity. Lord Shelburne has quite a gift of killing two birds with one stone in his trenchant criticisms. He cannot crush George III.'s father without demolishing poor Lord Melcombe _en passant_. "The prince's life (he says) may be judged in some degree from the account given of it in Lord Melcombe's diary--a man who passed his life with great men whom he did not know, and in the midst of affairs which he never comprehended, but recites facts from which others may draw deductions which he never could. The prince's activity could only be equaled by his childishness and his falsehood. His life was such a tissue of both as could only serve to show that there is nothing which mankind will not put up with where power is lodged."

The elder Pitt--with whom, it will be remembered, Lord Shelburne acted in the memorable events that immediately preceded and accompanied the beginning of the war of independence--comes in for his full share of severe animadversion, but the portrait is undeniably vigorous and alive. Here is a specimen: "It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was insolent, impetuous, romantic, a despiser of money, intrigue and patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which may be judged by the leading features of his life, without relying on any private testimony. He certainly was above avarice, but as to anything else, he only repressed his desires and acted; he was naturally ostentatious to a degree of ridicule; profuse in his house and family beyond what any degree of prudence could warrant. His marriage certainly had no sentiment in it. The transaction at the time of his resignation does not carry with it an absolute indifference as to money or other advantages, nor did there appear in any of his subsequent negotiations, in or out of power, that he went beyond what was necessary to satisfy the people at the time or to secure his wished-for situation. In truth, it was his favorite maxim that a little new went a great way.... I was in the most intimate political habits with him for ten years, the time that I was secretary of state included, he minister, and necessarily was with him at all hours in town and country, without drinking a glass of water in his house or company, or five minutes' conversation out of the way of business. I went to see him afterward in Somersetshire, where I fell into more familiar habits with him, which continued and confirmed me in all that I have said. He was tall in his person, and as genteel as a martyr to the gout could be, with the eye of a hawk, a little head, thin face, long aquiline nose, and perfectly erect. He was very well bred, and preserved all the manners of the _vieille cour_, with a degree of pedantry, however, in his conversation, especially when he affected levity, I never found him when I have gone to him--which was always by appointment--with so much as a book before him, but always sitting alone in a drawing-room waiting the hour of appointment, and in the country with his hat and stick in his hand."

All this, it must not be forgotten, was written in the year 1801, long after the writer had finally retired from the battlefield of politics, upon which, at the period when his own account of his youth breaks off, he had not yet made his first essay. Some practical experience of actual battlefields was to be gained by the future statesman before his appearance in the parliamentary arena. Just before the time when, between nineteen and twenty years of age, he was leaving Oxford, the Seven Years' War broke out, and finding "home detestable, no prospect of a decent allowance to go abroad [he had a trifling six hundred pounds a year from his father, though], neither happiness nor quiet," he joined the army and went on foreign service. Here he had the good-fortune to come under the chivalrous General Wolfe, whom he eulogizes in terms the genuine warmth and heartiness of which is all the more striking from the contrast with his generally severe judgments upon his contemporaries. At the battle of Minden in 1759, and again at Kloster Kampen in the following year, he displayed conspicuous personal courage, which was rewarded, on his return to England, with the rank of colonel and the court appointment of _aide-de-camp_ to the new king, George III.

Hardly had camp been exchanged for court when circumstances offered the young Lord Fitzmaurice his first introduction to a kind of political employ which was to be thenceforward, through a series of years, his frequent and peculiar function. Lord Bute, the favorite, had begun to climb the ladder of ministerial office, and had cast his eyes upon that unscrupulous and greedy but undeniably able politician, Henry Fox, as the man most desirable for his purpose by way of a House-of-Commons ally. Owing, very possibly, to the fact that there existed some connection between Fox and Fitzmaurice's father, Lord Fitzmaurice fell into the place of intermediary between the parties to this negotiation, which had hardly passed out of its first stage when the death of his father removed him, now Lord Shelburne, to the House of Lords before he had ever taken the family seat, into which he had been elected at the last general election, in the lower House. The negotiation was successfully carried through. Fox named his price--a peerage for his wife--and after considerable haggling got it, and in return undertook a position which Shelburne announced to Bute in a letter dated October 31, 1761, as follows: "Mr. Fox will attend [the House of Commons] every day, and will, either by silence or by speaking, as he finds it prudent according to the occasion, do his best to forward what your lordship wishes, and will enter into no sort of engagement with any one else whatever." But before the year was out Bute found himself in want of a closer and more positive support on the part of Fox than he had in the first instance contracted for. The peace party, which he (Bute) headed, had at last the close of the continental war full in sight, peace preliminaries were about to be laid before Parliament, but there was a prospect of the war party fighting over the terms proposed by ministers, and Bute felt that he must have a strong leader to champion his treaty in the House of Commons. Fox was his man for the place, and Shelburne was again commissioned to treat with him. The details of a negotiation of this kind are not of a character to call for very particular attention a century afterward, but the letters between the parties--many of them now for the first time published--are not without considerable interest from the light they throw upon the characters and motives of their writers. The position of a go-between is always more or less perilous; his task, however well performed, is generally a thankless one; nor in such matters can the adeptest diplomacy, joined to the most thorough _bona fides_, always ensure the conduct of the common agent against misapprehension and sore feelings. Of this the particular negotiation of which we are now speaking is a typical instance. Bute's offer (through Shelburne) to Fox was the leadership of the Commons, with a peerage for himself to follow. Fox at the time held the very lucrative post of paymaster-general--lucrative, because in those days it was deemed a perfectly legitimate practice for the paymaster to make a private profit out of the investment of the public moneys for the time being under his control. Shelburne appears to have assumed--and so, indeed, it was only natural to assume--that Fox would not dream of accepting high office in the ministry without at the same time resigning his extra-ministerial berth at the Pay Office; and there is evidence that such--at first, at any rate--was Fox's own intention. The king was given to understand that Fox's resignation of the Pay Office would be a term of the proposed arrangements, and consented to them on that footing; and then all at once Fox came out in the character of Injured Innocent, protested that he had never meant to resign, that he had all along intended to have his cake as well as eat it, and that Shelburne had entrapped and betrayed him. The story goes, but on what authority history saith not, that Bute afterward owned to Fox that Shelburne's conduct in this transaction had been a "pious fraud," and that Fox retorted, "I can see the fraud plainly enough, but where is the piety?" The correspondence and the other evidence which, with a pardonable jealousy for his ancestor's fair fame, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice sets out with much detail in his biography, requires, we think, at the very least, that a verdict of "Not proven" should be entered in Shelburne's favor; but a man who chooses to make personal negotiation his specialty must not be surprised to find his tact sometimes called trickery, and his double agency set down as double dealing. It is certain that the part he played in the Bute-Fox negotiations entailed upon Shelburne imputations of duplicity which he never succeeded in entirely dissipating. The king himself wrote of him as "the Jesuit of Berkeley Square," alluding, no doubt, to the nickname "Malagrida" (the name of a prominent Italian Jesuit of the day) which somebody had fastened upon him, and which served Goldsmith as the text of that deliciously maladroit remark of his to the earl: "Do you know, I never could conceive the reason why they call your lordship Malagrida, _for Malagrida was a very good sort of man_."

Bute, however, obviously retained undiminished confidence in his favorite agent, for in his arrangements for the formation of a new ministry under the ostensible headship of George Grenville in the spring of 1763, he not only employed Shelburne in negotiations with no less than seven politically important personages, but he even wished to get him the seals of secretary of state. This, however, was more than Grenville would consent to. He objected that the old peers would be jealous of the elevation of the representative of a family which, however great its note in Ireland, was a comparatively recent addition to the peerage of Great Britain; and also--reasonably enough, one is inclined to say--that Shelburne's youth and total inexperience of office rendered it advisable that he should at least try his 'prentice hand in one of the lower administrative offices. Shelburne was at this time, it must be remembered, only five-and-twenty years of age. A man of his parts and rank and opportunities might rise rapidly in those days, but he had hitherto had absolutely no official training; and the English Parliament had not yet seen, what it was soon to see in the younger Pitt, a chancellor of the exchequer of the almost undergraduate age of three-and-twenty. However, Bute persisted in forcing upon his friend--who appears to have been not unwilling to stand for the time aside--a place in the new ministry, and he accordingly accepted the presidency of the Board of Trade, was sworn a privy councillor, and entered the cabinet of the so-called "Triumvirate" administration. Immediately he found himself called upon to face American questions in which he was destined to play so important a part. Some time before he took office, Fox, in one of his shrewd letters to Bute, had marked out Shelburne as a man pre-eminently fitted to effect "that greatest and most necessary of all schemes, the settlement of America;" and he had hardly been a month at the Board of Trade when a communication from Lord Egremont, the "Southern" secretary of state, directed his particular attention to this subject.

The North American colonies--or, as they were commonly called, plantations--labored in those days, in their relation with the home-country, under the inconveniences of a system of dual government. The Board of Trade was the working colonial office, framed instructions to the governors, gave information and advice, and carried on the every-day colonial business generally; but the secretary of state for the southern department, whose sphere of supervision embraced all the colonies wherever situate, had always a permanent right to interfere in and control the conduct of colonial affairs. It was in virtue of this right that in May, 1763, Secretary Lord Egremont took the initiative in setting the Board of Trade to work to solve the problem of how best to arrange for the administration of the wide area of North American territory that the peace had transferred from French to British rule. His instructions were short and pointed. "The questions (he wrote) which relate to North America in general are--1st, What new governments should be established there? what form should be adopted for such a government? and where the capital or residence of each governor should be fixed? 2dly, What military establishment will be sufficient? what new forts should be erected? and which, if any, may it be expedient to demolish? 3dly, In what way, least burdensome and most palatable to the colonies, can they contribute toward the support of the additional expense which must attend their civil and military establishments upon the arrangement which your lordships shall propose?" Mark the "3dly." It is interesting, as illustrating the ideas and circumstances which led to the famous Stamp Act, to see how completely Lord Egremont's question assumes not only the right of the mother-country to tax her colonies, but the probable expediency of her actually exercising that right. In his reply, Shelburne, while admitting the revenue question to be a "point of the highest importance," practically evaded it on the plea of the inability of the board to form a satisfactory opinion without further materials. With regard to the new territory, his advice, which was followed, was, in effect, not to attempt to annex the whole of the north-western acquisitions, but to form a new colony of Canada, limited by definite geographical boundaries.

"American historians," remarks Lord Shelburne's biographer, "have seen in the policy thus pursued a deliberate intention of closing the West against further emigration, from the fear that remote colonies would claim the independence which their position would favor. The statesmen of the eighteenth century have follies enough to answer for without charging them with this in addition. However impossible it was in practice to dam up the ever-advancing tide of the English race, it was equally impossible in theory openly to avow the intention of dispossessing the still powerful savage nations, which were bound to England by numerous conventions, and were regarded for the most part as subjects of George III., equally entitled with the inhabitants of Boston, or even of London, to the protection of his government. To adjust the relations between savage and civilized man during the period of the struggle which can have but one result is a task as difficult as it is thankless, but American Presidents have not been accused of attempting to prevent further colonization of their continent because they have from time to time issued proclamations ascertaining and attempting to protect the ever-retiring bounds of the Indian reservations."

But the march of events was soon to take the responsibility of the "settlement" (save the mark!) of American affairs out of the hands of Shelburne. He had joined the ministry more because of the insistance of his friend, Bute, the potent cabinet-maker, than from any general sympathy with the views of the men with whom he had to act; and every week put him more and more out of touch with them. He protested formally to Egremont against the dual government of the colonies, and when the latter tried to shelve the question by professing fatigue, curtly told him--what was true enough--that he must expect more if the affairs of America were to be put in order. He questioned the legality of the action of his colleagues, the Triumvirate (Grenville, Halifax and Egremont), in ordering the arrest of Wilkes of _North Briton_ fame. But, oddly enough, considerations of a wholly different character appear to have influenced his actual resignation of office. Bute, nominally in retirement, but really playing the _rôle_ of ministerial wirepuller-in-ordinary, had a surprising fancy for devising unlikely combinations; and now he was minded to conjure with the still potent name of Pitt. Once more, and, as it happened, for the last time, he sought the service of Shelburne as negotiator, and once more Shelburne, undeterred by past experiences, undertook the difficult position. Pitt nibbled, and for a time seemed about to bite, but in the end he drew off unhooked; whereupon (at the beginning of September, 1763) Shelburne immediately resigned the Board of Trade. What his real motive in taking this step was, his own letters do not at all clearly show. Doubtless he felt his uncordial relations with his colleagues irksome, but we can also hardly doubt that the attraction Pitt was beginning to exercise over him formed a material factor in his resolve. Freed from the trammels of office, Shelburne boldly stood forward as an opponent of the arbitrary and fatuous course which the Grenville ministry, all subservience to the king's wishes, adopted in the miserable business of Wilkes. Jeremy Bentham has said of Shelburne that he was the only statesman he ever heard of who did not fear the people. Certainly, Shelburne on this occasion showed, with an unmistakableness that simply infuriated George III., that he did not fear the court. The king made no secret of his displeasure. He dismissed the ex-minister even from his post of royal _aide-de-camp_, and when he appeared at court snubbed him pointedly by pretending not to notice his presence. Bute followed suit, and from this time all intercourse between him and Shelburne ceased.

For upward of a year after these events Shelburne kept entirely aloof from the world of politics, busying himself with the management of his estates in the country, collecting a vast number of historical documents (which are now in the British Museum), and every now and then coming up to London to enjoy the society of the "young orators" (as Walpole calls them) who frequented his house in Hill street, and the non-political clubs of _littérateurs_. Benjamin Franklin was among his visitors at this time, and the two, as Shelburne in a letter to Franklin nineteen years afterward reminds him, "talked upon the means of promoting the happiness of mankind."