With these compare a letter dated November, 1759.  ‘Indeed,’ he says to the same correspondent, ’one is forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear of missing one.’  And he wrote with reason.  India, Canada, Belleisle, the Mississippi, the Philippines, the Havanna, Martinique, Guadaloupe—­there was no end to our conquests.  Wolfe fell in the arms of victory, Clive came home the satrap of sovereigns; but day by day ships sailed in and couriers spurred abroad with the news that a new world and a nascent empire were ours.  Until men’s heads reeled and maps failed them, as they asked each morning ‘What new land, to-day?’ Until those who had despaired of England awoke and rubbed their eyes—­awoke to find three nations at her feet, and the dawn of a new and wider day breaking in the sky.

And what of the minister?  They called him the Great Commoner, the heaven-born statesman; they showered gold boxes upon him; they bore him through the city, the centre of frantic thousands, to the effacement even of the sovereign.  Where he went all heads were bared; while he walked the rooms at Bath and drank the water, all stood; his very sedan, built with a boot to accommodate his gouty foot, was a show followed and watched wherever it moved.  A man he had never seen left him a house and three thousand pounds a year; this one, that one, the other one, legacies.  In a word, for a year or two he was the idol of the nation—­the first great People’s Minister.

Then, the crisis over, the old system lifted its head again; the mediocrities returned; and, thwarted by envious rivals and a jealous king, Pitt placed the crown alike on his services and his popularity by resigning power when he could no longer dictate the policy which he knew to be right.  Nor were events slow to prove his wisdom.  The war with Spain which he would have declared, Spain declared.  The treasure fleet which he would have seized, escaped us.  Finally, the peace when it came redounded to his credit, for in the main it secured his conquests—­to the disgrace of his enemies, since more might have been obtained.

Such was the man who, restored to office and lately created an earl by the title of Chatham, lay ill at Bath in the spring of ’67.  The passage of time, the course of events, the ravages of gout, in a degree the acceptance of a title, had robbed his popularity of its first gloss.  But his name was still a name to conjure with in England.  He was still the idol of the City.  Crowds still ran to see him where he passed.  His gaunt figure racked with gout, his eagle nose, his piercing eyes, were still England’s picture of a minister.  His curricle, his troop of servants, the very state he kept, the ceremony with which he travelled, all pleased the popular fancy.  When it was known that he was well enough to leave Bath, and would lie a night at the Castle Inn at Marlborough, his suite requiring twenty rooms, even that great hostelry, then reputed one of the best, as it was certainly the most