EXILE AND DEATH OF THE KING. 269 young Duchess of Modena; by the former he had a large family, all of whom died young except the Princesses Mary and Anne, who succeeded to the throne of England. Neither his marital engagements nor his cold and formal manners had preserved him from the libertine examples of his brother, and he had several avowed mistresses; but for what order of merit they were chosen has formed a dubious point among inquirers. However, his discernment in his first choice of Arabella Churchill, the sister of Marlborough, seems to have been underrated; the testimony of De Grammont*, upon the ocular faith arising out of an equestrian accident to Arabella, shows that she was not wholly so uninteresting or plain a girl as Mr. Macaulay, from rooted dislike of a mean but not meritless family, has set forth. James survived his abdication ten years, and wrote, or caused to be written, some autobiographical memoirs. His exile was not happy. With the failure of his fortunes his heart and hopes seemed to have failed; and on one occasion he acknowledged that "Heaven fought against him."† Religious melancholy clouded his retirement, and he sought rest, but found none. He visited the rigid monks of La Trappe, conversed with the abbot, and partook of their frugal meal of roots, eggs, and vegetables. This became with him an annual pilgrimage. An anchorite who lived in the depths of a neighbouring forest, and whose life was more mortifying than that of the monks, became an object with him of curious inquisition. All was unsatisfactory; he became weary of life, wished for death, and prayed for it, and it finally came to his relief. He died at St. Germains, Sept. 16. 1791, aged sixty-eight. * Memoirs of Count Grammont, p. 282. Bohn's edition. The period from the accession of the Stuarts to the Revolution cannot be too deeply studied. It is luminous in political science, and replete with vivid practical illustrations of all the theories, all the opinions, and all the social combinations of which human nature appears capable. It is more instructive than the histories of Greece and Rome. The classic ages partook, in their political and mythological character, more of their immediate Asiatic derivation than of modern European elements; but the rapid vicissitudes of the seventeenth century were the direct effusion of the feudal age of Europe in combination with the new dispensation of Christianity. Consequently the problems worked out in the stirring era of the Stuarts, both in Church and State, are strictly relevant to existing life and practice. All systems were tried; all religious denominations and all political parties had their alternation of triumph and humiliation. Singly, none of them were found self-existent or capable of universality or permanence; neither Puritan, Presbyterian, nor Prelatist, with their respective secular adjuncts of republicanism, monarchy, or absolutism. What, then, may be the leading conclusion from this cycle of experiments? Precisely that which events themselves fashioned and forced on the acceptance of the nation. The great settlement of 1688 comprehended all pressing exigencies. It gave a rampant victory to no party, nor suffered any to be ruthlessly trampled upon, but defined and respected the rights of all; while it definitely foreclosed what the struggle of a century had proved universally hateful, popery and bondage. The period under notice had a moral as well as religious and political exemplification. Extremes in manners were proved uncongenial to the national regimen, and neither the austerities of the Commonwealth nor the licentious PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY. 271 ness imported with the Restoration were found native to the soil of England. It may be remarked, further, that all the civil and religious struggles, strife, and commotion which agitated. this country in common with the rest of Europe, had one primary source. It was the Reformation that opened for all the fountains of the great deep. In the great reservoir of Popery, morals, religion, arts, science, and politics were all enclosed. But nations were refreshed, if disturbed, by the irrigating deluge which followed the wide rent made in the papal embankment. CHAPTER XV. INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS, TO THE ORANGE REVOLUTION, IN AGRICULTURE, COMMERCE, AND MANUFACTURES. Greatness of the Country not inherited. Ancient and Modern Rural Arts. Subsistence the first Object of Industry. — Agriculture of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans. · Obstruction from the Wars of the Plantagenets. Sheep-farming under the Tudors.- Commencement of Enclosures and Hedgerows.— Privations from Scarcity of Winter Food for Cattle. - Improvements in Road-making.— Benefits derived from Flemish Husbandry. — Contemporary Progress of Commerce. — Riches of England at the Conquest. Trade with the East. Oppression from Baronial Tolls and Impolitic Laws. — Flourishing Cities of Italy and Flanders.- Staple Towns and London Steelyard. — Lombards and Germans settle in England. — Expulsion of Foreigners. · English Industry gains by Religious Persecutions abroad. · Geographical Discoveries. - Encouragement of Shipbuilding. — Woollen, Linen, and Silk Manufactures. OUR national greatness is more the result of production than of inheritance: we were not born great, like Pallas from the brain of Jove, and we did not spring perfect at birth, but have acquired eminence by gradual advances. Essentially we are a manufactured people, and our progress, like our existing superiority, is the reward of artistical adoptions and combinations. The spirit of popular liberty may have been derived from Saxon ancestors, but the framework of our polity, as of our religion, is, as before observed, mainly of Roman and Biblical paternity. The Normans, though they conquered and enslaved us, were the first to convert a federative community into an integral kingdom, and to confer those primal constituents of public happiness and power-social subordination, proprietary security, and consolidated strength. Other elements, however, beside nationality, laws, and institutions, enter into the composition of existing civilisation. The most splendid advances of the ancients savoured of the rude state from which they had more immediately emerged, were barbarous in character, and chiefly consisted in the emblazonry of the regal or sacerdotal order, or in architectural magnificence and territorial dominion. They had few triumphs of justice, morals, and industry to boast; only those of superstition, force, and pageantry. In another respect they stood in a marked position of inferiority; they knew little of domestic or personal utilities, they degraded women and made slaves of men ; affected to despise commerce, manufactures, and the useful arts. It is in these last that the chief science and glory of the moderns consist, and in this line of superiority Great Britain holds the foremost place. The story of her industrial development is diversified and interesting, and constitutes that element of her fame and power, social order and moral characteristics, which it is purposed in its earlier stages briefly to describe, reserving the more advanced epochs to a later page. ANCIENT AND MODERN RURAL ARTS. 273 There is little doubt that the earliest of human contrivances were directed to the arts by which subsistence could be best procured. But the problem still continues in course of solution, both among individuals and communities,-How the necessaries of life can be most fully made coadequate with the demands of consumption? After ages of experience there is still everywhere disparity between food and consumers. The great struggle of life is still for bread. In the infancy of nations this difficulty may be easily comprehended. A community depending on the precarious supplies of the chase may be often in want. Even the more advanced condition of the pastoral state does not afford an unfailing resource. Job abounded in flocks and herds, and was the largest grazier in the land of Uz, but he did not escape the trials of fortune: fatal diseases, unfavourable seasons, and the difficulty of finding winter food, often render supplies from live stock or raw produce uncertain or inadequate. The arts of agriculture enlarge the field of production. Industry and science may multiply to an unknown extent the products of the soil. The earth spontaneously yields little available to human sustenance. All the vegetables brought to our tables, all the crops that cover our fields in autumn, and the varied yield of our orchards and gardens, are less the free gifts of nature than the laboured results of man's skill and perseverance. Indebted, however, as we are, to the rural art, it has not been distinguished by the same brilliant career of discovery as has signalised manufacturing industry. Great changes have been made, and important improvements introduced; still a remarkable coincidence subsists between present modes and implements of husbandry, and those in use 2000 years past. At this early period the T |
