spite of itself, was with it when the bullet from an unknown hand struck down Charles the Twelfth. [Sidenote: 1715-1718--Futility of the Triple Alliance] These international arrangements have for us now very little real interest. They were entirely artificial and temporary. Nothing came of them that could long endure or make any real change in the relations of the European States. They had hardly anything to do with the interests of the various peoples over whose heads and without whose knowledge or concern they were made. It was still firmly believed that two or three diplomatists, meeting in {163} a half-clandestine way in a minister's closet or a lady's drawing-room, could come to agreements which would bind down nations and rule political movements. The first real upheaving of any genuine force, national or personal, in European life tore through all their meshes in a moment. Frederick the Great, soon after, is to compel Europe to reconstruct her scheme of political arrangements; later yet, the French Revolution is to clear the ground more thoroughly and violently still. The triple alliance, concocted by the Regent and Stanhope and Dubois, had not the slightest permanent effect on the general condition of Europe. It was a clever and an original idea of the Regent to think of bringing England and France, these old hereditary enemies, into a permanent alliance, and it was right of Stanhope to enter into the spirit of the enterprise; but the actual conditions of England and France, did not allow of an abiding friendship. The national interest, as it was then understood, of the one State was in antagonism to the national interest of the other. Nor could France and England combined have kept down the growth of other European States then rising into importance and beginning to cast their shadows far in front of them. It seems only amusing to us now to read of King George's directions to his minister--"To crush the Czar immediately, to secure his ships, and even to seize his person." The courageous and dull old King had not the faintest perception of the part which either the Czar or the Czar's country was destined to play in the history of Europe. At present we are all inclined, and with some reason, to think that French statesmen, as a rule, are wanting in a knowledge of foreign politics--in an appreciation of the relative proportions of one force and another in the affairs of Europe outside France. But in the days of George the First French statesmen were much more accomplished in the knowledge of foreign politics than the statesmen of England. There was not, probably, in George's administration any man who had anything like the knowledge of the {164} affairs of foreign countries which was possessed by Dubois. But it had not yet occurred to the mind of Dubois, or the Regent, or anybody else, that the relations of one State to another, or one people to another, are anything more than the arrangements which various sets of