It was certain that, on the day on which she began to reign, he would be in her Court all that Buckingham had been in the Court of James the First.

Marlborough too must have been conscious of powers of a very different order from those which Buckingham had possessed, of a genius for politics not inferior to that of Richelieu, of a genius for war not inferior to that of Turenne.

Perhaps the disgraced General, in obscurity and inaction, anticipated the day when his power to help and hurt in Europe would be equal to that of her mightiest princes, when he would be servilely flattered and courted by Caesar on one side and by Lewis the Great on the other, and when every year would add another hundred thousand pounds to the largest fortune that had ever been accumulated by any English subject.

All this might be if Mrs.Morley were Queen.

But that Mr.Freeman should ever see Mrs.Morley Queen had till lately been not very probable.