Page:The Semi-attached Couple.djvu/211



had been absent nearly five weeks, which had passed smoothly and pleasantly away at Eskdale Castle, when a sudden change of affairs took place; not only there, but all over England, to say nothing of Scotland and Ireland. The hapless individual who filled the office of Prime Minister under the gracious King of the above-named countries, having borne the fatigues of the situation for five years, long enough to have become unpopular with the people, wearisome to the King, and odious to all his own private friends, took one decided step to regain all he had lost with others, and to obtain a little rest for himself—he took to his bed and died.

His Cabinet was broken up. It had been, after the usage of all Cabinets, divided into two factions, opposed on all important points to each other, but forming what is by courtesy called a united Cabinet, under the gentle sway of the worn-out nonentity at their head. He was gone. Six or seven newspapers, with broad black borders, announced the death of one of the greatest men of the age,—recommended Westminster Abbey,—a subscription for a monument,—and one of his colleagues for a successor. An equal number of papers, after professing, with becoming candour and humanity, that they warred not with the dead, raked up all the old scandal they could collect against the deceased, denied him any talent whatever, and explained away all his virtues; they prophesied the utter annihilation of the ministerial party, and announced that in twenty-four hours they should be able to give a correct list of the