noble structure, the suggestion, though not the gift, of a nation's gratitude; or in the small, the very small gratification of saving a sixpence, imputed to him by his contemporary; though it is possible, and to the good-natured it may appear probable, that to the humbled invalid, conscious of decay, the satisfaction of being able to resume old habits of activity, the habits of military life, may have been one source of the pleasure.

During November, however, in the same year of his first attack, the Duke was threatened with immediate death. The remaining members of his family hastened to bid him what they expected would prove a last farewell. Their parent, however, was for the time spared to them. Again he recovered his health sufficiently to remove to Marlborough house. His reason was happily restored to him, but the use of speech for some time greatly impaired. He recovered it, however, and conversed, though he could not articulate some words. His memory, and the general powers of his mind, were also spared. The popular notion of his sinking into imbecility is, therefore, unfounded, and in this respect it is unfair, and erroneous, to couple him with Swift.

"From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show,"

are lines so familiar, that it is difficult to dis

possess the imagination of the ideas which they have lodged there. Both of these celebrated men, indeed, suffered from the same mortal and humiliating disease; and the dire malady, which is no respecter of persons, afflicted the kindly, the humane, the pure, the religious Marlborough, and abased also the vigorous intellect of the coarse, selfish, and profane Swift. Both suffered from the same oppressing consciousness of diminished mental energy. The lucid intervals of Swift were darkened by a cruel sense of present powerlessness, and of past aberrations; and Marlborough is said, when gazing upon a portrait of himself, painted in his days of vigour, to have uttered the affecting exclamation, "That But here the similitude of the two cases ends. Marlborough was never reduced to that last degree of human distress, insanity; it appears by the journals of the House of Lords that he attended the debates frequently for several years after the commencement of his illness, and he performed the functions of his public offices. with regularity. Marlborough was permitted by his Creator the use of reason, the power of reflection,-time, therefore, to arrange complicated worldly concerns, and to prepare for a happier sphere. Venerated by his friends, domestics,

was a man !"*

*Scott's Life of Swift.

and relatives, Marlborough was permitted to his latest hour to share in the hallowed domestic enjoyments which by no immoral courses he had forfeited, by no disregard of others destroyed.

The different termination of Swift's career very -the retributive justice which, if we believed in spirits, poor Stella's ghost might have witnessed -the joyless close of an existence which no affectionate cares sought to cheer; the consignment of the wretched and violent lunatic to servants and keepers; the moody silence of the once eloquent and witty ornament of courtly saloons; the deep despair to which medicine could not minister, but which a moral influence might have alleviated, but which no son nor daughter's tender perseverance, with untaught, but often, perhaps, effectual skill, sought to solace ;-these, with all other gloomy particulars of Swift's awful aberrations and death, on which not one light of consciousness was shown, must be by all remembered. Unloved he died; the affection which could, for the gentle Cowper, brave the desolating sight and company of hopeless insanity, was not the portion of one who, in this world of great moral lessons, had ever sacrificed others to his own gratification.

It was one of Marlborough's first acts, after his partial recovery, to tender to the King, through

Lord Sunderland, then in power, the resignation of his employments; but George the First, with a delicacy of feeling which could scarcely have been expected from his rugged nature, declined receiving it, declaring that "the Duke's retirement from office would excite as much pain as if a dagger should be plunged in his bosom." Marlborough, therefore, reluctantly, and certainly to the injury of his health, remained in office; and that accordance with his Majesty's wishes was attributed by the Duchess to Lord Sunderland, who stood in need of his father-in-law's assistance, in the administration which he had lately formed to the exclusion of Walpole and Townshend.

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CHAPTER XII.

Third Marriage of Lord Sunderland-Calumnies against the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough-Interview between the Duchess and George the First-The result-Her differences with Lord Sunderland-Illness, death, and character of the Duke of Marlborough.—1721-22.

THE Duchess of Marlborough tasted at this time sufficient of the real troubles of life to chasten a spirit less elastic than that which she possessed. Amongst various mortifications, Lord Sunderland inflicted a bitter pang, by marrying for the third time. His last wife, Judith, the daughter of Benjamin Tichborne, Esq., was not only of an unsuitable age, but inferior in rank, property, and connexions, to the Earl's station and circumstances. He aggravated this affront to the family of his former wife, by settling on her successor a portion of his property, to the injury of his children. No remonstrances on the part of the Duchess could prevent this annoying union, and