Sir Roger de Coverley will not be forgotten until men forget Parson Adams and Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas, and for that matter, Sir John Falstaff and Don Quixote. [Sidenote: 1720--The King and the Prince reconciled] For some time things were looking well at home and abroad. The policy of the Government appeared to have been completely successful on the Continent. The confederations that had been threatening England were dissolved or broken up; the Jacobite conspiracies seemed to have been made hopeless and powerless. The friendship established between England and the Regent of France had to all seeming robbed the Stuarts of their last chance. James the Chevalier had no longer a home on French soil. Paris could not any more be the head-quarters of his organization and the scene of his mock Court. The Regent had kept his promises to the English Government. It was well known that, so far from encouraging or permitting the designs of the exiled family against England, he would do all in his power to frustrate them; as, indeed, he had an opportunity of doing not long after. Never before, perhaps never since, was there so cordial an understanding between England and France. Never could there have been a time when such an understanding was of greater importance to England. At home the prospect seemed equally bright. Walpole had contrived to ingratiate himself more and more with the Prince of Wales, and had become his confidential adviser. Acting on his counsel, the Prince made his submission to the King; and acting on Stanhope's counsel, the King accepted it. The Sovereign and his heir had a meeting and were reconciled; for the time, at least. Walpole consented to join the administration, content for the present to fill the humble place of paymaster to the forces, without a seat in the Cabinet. He returned, in {182} fact, to the ministerial position which he had first occupied, and from which he had been promoted, and must have seemed to himself somewhat in the position of a boy who, after having got high in his class, has got down very low again, and is well content to mount up a step or two from the humblest position. Walpole knew what he was doing, and must have been quite satisfied in his own mind that he was not likely to remain very long paymaster to the forces, although he could not, by any possibility, have anticipated the strange succession of events by which he was destined soon to be left without a rival. For the present he was in the administration, but he took little part in its actual work. He did not even appear to have any real concern in it. He spent as much of his time as he could at Houghton, his pleasant country-seat in Norfolk. Townshend, too, had been induced to join the administration. To him was assigned the position of president of the council.