L'homme qui rit. English

  II.

  In Anne's time no meeting was allowed without the permission of twojustices of the peace. The assembly of twelve persons, were it only toeat oysters and drink porter, was a felony. Under her reign, otherwiserelatively mild, pressing for the fleet was carried on with extremeviolence--a gloomy evidence that the Englishman is a subject rather thana citizen. For centuries England suffered under that process of tyrannywhich gave the lie to all the old charters of freedom, and out of whichFrance especially gathered a cause of triumph and indignation. What insome degree diminishes the triumph is, that while sailors were pressedin England, soldiers were pressed in France. In every great town ofFrance, any able-bodied man, going through the streets on his business,was liable to be shoved by the crimps into a house called the oven.There he was shut up with others in the same plight; those fit forservice were picked out, and the recruiters sold them to the officers.In 1695 there were thirty of these ovens in Paris.

  The laws against Ireland, emanating from Queen Anne, were atrocious.Anne was born in 1664, two years before the great fire of London, onwhich the astrologers (there were some left, and Louis XIV. was bornwith the assistance of an astrologer, and swaddled in a horoscope)predicted that, being the elder sister of fire, she would be queen. Andso she was, thanks to astrology and the revolution of 1688. She had thehumiliation of having only Gilbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, forgodfather. To be godchild of the Pope was no longer possible in England.A mere primate is but a poor sort of godfather. Anne had to put up withone, however. It was her own fault. Why was she a Protestant?

  Denmark had paid for her virginity (_virginitas empta_, as the oldcharters expressed it) by a dowry of L6,250 a year, secured on thebailiwick of Wardinburg and the island of Fehmarn. Anne followed,without conviction, and by routine, the traditions of William. TheEnglish under that royalty born of a revolution possessed as muchliberty as they could lay hands on between the Tower of London, intowhich they put orators, and the pillory, into which they put writers.Anne spoke a little Danish in her private chats with her husband, and alittle French in her private chats with Bolingbroke. Wretched gibberish;but the height of English fashion, especially at court, was to talkFrench. There was never a _bon mot_ but in French. Anne paid a deal ofattention to her coins, especially to copper coins, which are the lowand popular ones; she wanted to cut a great figure on them. Sixfarthings were struck during her reign. On the back of the first threeshe had merely a throne struck, on the back of the fourth she ordered atriumphal chariot, and on the back of the sixth a goddess holding asword in one hand and an olive branch in the other, with the scroll,_Bello et pace_. Her father, James II., was candid and cruel; she wasbrutal.

  At the same time she was mild at bottom. A contradiction which onlyappears such. A fit of anger metamorphosed her. Heat sugar and it willboil.

  Anne was popular. England liked feminine rulers. Why? France excludesthem. There is a reason at once. Perhaps there is no other. With Englishhistorians Elizabeth embodies grandeur, Anne good-nature. As they will.Be it so. But there is nothing delicate in the reigns of these women.The lines are heavy. It is gross grandeur and gross good-nature. As totheir immaculate virtue, England is tenacious of it, and we are notgoing to oppose the idea. Elizabeth was a virgin tempered by Essex;Anne, a wife complicated by Bolingbroke.