In private life, he was amiable and kind; was patient under contradiction, and placid in manners; had great self-possession, and extraordinary dignity. His person was beautiful, and his address commanding. He was feared as a general, but loved as a man. He never lost his affections for his home, and loved to idolatry his imperious wife, his equal, if not superior, in the knowledge of human nature. These qualities as a man, a general, and a statesman, in spite of his defects, have immortalized his name, and he will, for a long time to come, be called, and called with justice, the _great_ Duke of Marlborough. Scarcely less than he, was Lord Godolphin, the able prime minister of Anne, with whom Marlborough was united by family ties, by friendship, by official relations, and by interest. He was a Tory by profession, but a Whig in his policy. He rose with Marlborough, and fell with him, being an unflinching advocate for the prosecution of the war to the utmost limits, for which his government was distasteful to the Tories. His life was not stainless; but, in an age of corruption, he ably administered the treasury department, and had control of unbounded wealth, without becoming rich--the highest praise which can ever be awarded to a minister of finance. It was only through the cooeperation of this sagacious and far-sighted statesman that Marlborough himself was enabled to prosecute his brilliant military career. [Sidenote: Whigs and Tories.] It was during his administration that party animosity was at its height--the great struggle which has been going on, in England, for nearly two hundred years, between the Whigs and Tories. These names originated in the reign of Charles II., and were terms of reproach. The court party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the name of the _Whigs_; and the country party pretended to find a resemblance between the courtiers and the Popish banditti of Ireland, to whom the appellation of _Tory_ was affixed. The High Church party and the advocates of absolutism belonged to the Tories; the more liberal party and the advocates of constitutional reform, to the Whigs. The former were conservative, the latter professed a sympathy with improvements. But the leaders of both parties were among the greatest nobles in the realm, and probably cared less for any great innovation than they did for themselves. These two great parties, in the progress of society, have changed their views, and the opinions once held by the Whigs were afterwards adopted by the Tories. On the whole, the Whigs were in advance in liberality of mind, and in enlightened plans of government. But both parties, in England, have ever been aristocratic, and both have felt nearly an equal disgust of popular influences. Charles and James sympathized with the Tories more than with the Whigs; but William III. was supported by the Whigs, who had the ascendency in his reign.