To the delight of the Duke of Cumberland, and to the delight of the King, Rockingham consented to form a Ministry. With the best will in the world Rockingham could not make his Ministry very commanding. It was but a makeshift, and not a very brilliant makeshift, but at least it served to get rid of Grenville and of Grenville's harangues. So long as Grenville was unable to terrorize the royal closet with reproaches and reproofs addressed to the King, and with menaces aimed at Bute, George was quite willing to see Newcastle intrusted with the Privy Seal, and Conway made Secretary of State for one department, and the Duke of Grafton for the other. But the Ministry which the King accepted because he could get nothing better, and because he would have welcomed something much worse so long as it delivered him from {95} Grenville--the Ministry that provoked the derisive pity of most of its critics was destined to attain an honorable immortality. The heterogeneous group of men who called themselves or were called, who believed themselves or were believed to be Whigs, had obtained one recruit whose name was yet to make the cause he served illustrious. Lord Rockingham had many claims to the regard of his contemporaries; undoubtedly his greatest claim to the regard of posterity lies in the intelligence which enabled him to discern the rising genius of a young writer, and the wisdom which found a place by his side and a seat in the House of Commons for Edmund Burke. [Sidenote: 1765--The coming of Edmund Burke] The history of a nation is often largely the history of certain famous men. Great epochs, producing great leaders, make those leaders essentially the expression of certain phases of the thought of their age. The life of Walpole is the life of the England of his time because he was so intimately bound up with the great movement which ended by setting Parliamentary government free from the possible dominion of the sovereign. The life of Chatham, the life of Pitt, the life of Fox, each in its turn is a summary of the history of England during the time in which they helped to guide its destinies. But to some men, men possessing in an exceptional degree the love for humanity and the longing for progress, this power of representing in their lives the sum and purpose of their age is markedly characteristic. Just as Mirabeau, until he died, practically represented the French Revolution, so certain English statesmen have from time to time been representative of the best life, the best thought, the best purposes, desires, and ambitions of the country for whose sake they played their parts. Of no man can this theory be said to be more happily true than of Edmund Burke.