He was the guardian of Charles II. in exile and in 1661, after the Restoration, was made Lord Chancellor and chief minister. Lord Macaulay says of him:--"He was well fitted for his great place. No man wrote abler state papers. No man spoke with more weight and dignity in council and Parliament. No man was better acquainted with general maxims of statecraft. No man observed the varieties of character with a more discriminating eye. It must be added that he had a strong sense of moral and religious obligation, a sincere reverence for the laws of his country, and a conscientious regard for the honor and interest of the Crown." But his faults were conspicuous. One of his critics insists that "his temper was arbitrary and vehement. His arrogance was immeasurable. His gravity assumed the character of censoriousness." He took part in important and dangerous negotiations, and eventually alienated four parties at once: the royalists by his Bill of Indemnity; the low-churchmen and dissenters by his Uniformity act; the many who suffered the legal fine for private assemblages for religious worship; and the whole nation by selling Dunkirk to France. By the court he was hated because he censured the extravagance and looseness of the life led there; and finally Charles, who had long resented his sermons, deprived him of the great seal, accused him of high treason, and doomed him to perpetual banishment. Thus, after being the confidential friend of two kings (and the future grandfather of two sovereigns, Mary and Anne), he was driven out of England, to die in poverty and neglect at Rouen in 1674. But these last days were perhaps the happiest and most useful of his life. He now indulged his master passion for literature, and revised his 'History of the Rebellion,' which he had begun while a fugitive from the rebels in the Isle of Jersey. In this masterpiece, "one of the greatest ornaments of the historical literature of England," he has described not only the events in which he participated, but noted people of the time whom he had personally known. The book is written in a style of sober and stately dignity, with great acuteness of insight and weightiness of comment; it incorporates part of an autobiography afterwards published separately, and is rather out of proportion. His other works are 'The Essay on an Active and Contemplative Life'; 'The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon'; 'Dialogues on Education and the Want of Respect Paid to Age'; 'Miscellaneous Essays' and 'Contemplation of the Psalms of David.' THE CHARACTER OF LORD FALKLAND