Another debt which the nation owed to George Monk, whether for good or ill it is hard to say, was entirely due to the confidence his unblemished career had inspired. The Revolution had taken fire in the heat of a quarrel as to which estate of the realm was to control the army. That that dispute did not recur to mar the harmony of the Restoration, and even to render it impossible, was due to the simple fact that the nation trusted "honest George." As soon as it was known that he held the royal commission of Captain-General not a word was uttered on the question. In his hands the country knew that it was safe. Thus it was that he became the Father of the British Army. It was he who, in the few regiments that were kept on foot to overawe the Sectaries, started its glorious traditions. It was he who gave it its unequalled note of duty and devotion. It was he who once and for ever pronounced that it must be a thing apart from politics, and taught it that a soldier's greatest glory is to obey. In every characteristic of which it is proudest, or for which we love it best, glitters the stamp of its first commander's personality. Whether we see its officers rising in the hour of peril above the personal jealousies which have ruined so many of our neighbours' enterprises, or admire its dogged obstinacy, its cheerful discipline, and its chivalrous impatience of party strife; or whether we glory in the strange contempt it has ever shown for its enemies, making a pastime of war,--we have but to turn to see each finest trait reflected as in a mirror in the life of the man who gave it breath. Strange, indeed, it is that a body in which _esprit de corps_ has reached its noblest development should have forgotten as it has the hero who begot it, and guided its first halting steps along the splendid path it was to tread. And yet the cause is plain enough. Like the rest of the great characters of the English Revolution, Monk has till recently been only visible through the literature of the Restoration. The navy was then the fashion, and Monk was only known to the historians of the time as an admiral. That aspect of him obscured every other. Society patronised the navy; it even divided itself into two cliques on the subject, the partisans of the general and the partisans of Lord Sandwich. Montague's party included nearly all the Court, and unfortunately his two talented placemen Pepys and Evelyn, whose testimony wherever their patron's rival is concerned is so tainted with gratitude as to be almost worthless. Yet from them he is chiefly judged, though they manifestly will never say a good word for him if they can help it; and the Clerk of the Check at least is never more happy than when he is pouring lively contempt upon his seamanship, his duchess, and his dinners.