the arts and equipment of the parliamentary army, heedless of the fact that parliamentary support is the vital necessity of a British minister. Disdainful of public opinion or party connections, he attempted to play the great game in Europe with no resource but his own abilities and the confidence of his sovereign, whose antipathy to France he shared, and whose policy and prejudices he could discuss in the King's native language. And yet over the bottle, which he loved at least as much as literature or politics, he would laugh at the whole business and the men with whom he was engaged. 'What is it to me,' he would say, 'who is a judge or who is a bishop? It is my business to make Kings and Emperors'; and he would have to be reminded that those who wanted offices or honours would follow and support those who did deal in those commodities. One can hear his jolly laugh. His policy he embodied in one striking sentence: 'I want to instil a nobler ambition into you, to make you knock the heads of the Kings of Europe together, and jumble something out of it which may be of service to this country.' As a matter of fact though he did undoubtedly knock together the heads of some kings, no material advantage resulted to the country. He was, however, a patriot, a single-minded, able, jovial, reckless patriot, but out of touch with the politicians, unsuited to parliamentary government, and so almost ineffectual. And thus we see him at his best on his deathbed, where he quotes to the under-secretary who brought him the Treaty of Paris for approval the speech of Sarpedon with melancholy emphasis. 'Friend of my soul, were we to escape from this war, and then live for ever without old age or death, I should not fight myself among the foremost, nor would I send thee into the glorifying battle; but a thousand fates of death stand over us, which mortal man may not flee from and avoid; then let us on.' These last words he repeated with calm and determined resignation, and after a pause of some minutes desired the preliminary articles of the Peace of Paris to be read to him. After hearing these at length he desired that, to use own words, the approbation of a dying statesman might be declared to the most glorious war and the most honourable peace that this nation ever saw.[134] The news of his extremity had reached Chesterfield. 'When he dies,' wrote this shrewdest judge and observer of mankind in England, who had in his factious days called Carteret 'a wild and drunken minister,'[135] 'the ablest head in England dies too, take it for all in all.'[136]