“In the commencement of the reign of Anne, the Earl of Marlborough was a Tory; but his wife became a Whig, and, as a natural consequence, Marlborough was soon drawn over to that party. Admiral Churchill, his brother, was a violent Tory; Lord Sunderland, his son-in-law, was a violent Whig; Lady Tyrconnel, the sister of Lady Marlborough, was an enthusiastic Jacobite, and was at this time one of the court of the exiled king. This one instance will give some idea of the manner in which not only the nation but private families were divided by the spirit of faction. “A continued series of disputes and intrigues agitated the country; and among several minor events was the trial of Dr. Sacheverel for preaching a seditious sermon, a circumstance unimportant in itself, but which was made to serve the purposes of a faction, and to inflame the populace almost to frenzy. Never, perhaps, did party spirit rage in a manner at once so disgraceful, so vicious, and so ludicrous. It was not the strife of principles; it was not, like the civil wars of the preceding century, a grand struggle between liberty and despotism,—it was a vile spirit of faction, which had filled the nation with spleen and rancor, and extinguished the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity; which had affected at once the morals and the common sense of the people; and even interfered with the administration of justice. “The women, instead of tempering the animosities of the time, blew up the flame of discord. Addison, in some of the most elegant papers of the ‘Spectator,’ attempted to mitigate this evil spirit. He attacked the men with grave humor and graver argument; he endeavored to bring back the women to the decorum and reserve of their sex by the most exquisite raillery, that delicate mixture of satire and compliment in which he excelled; he reminded these petticoat politicians and viragoes of the tea-table that party spirit was in its nature a male vice, made up of many angry passions, which were altogether repugnant to the softness, modesty, and other endearing qualities proper to their sex. “He assured them there was nothing so injurious to a pretty face as party zeal; that he had never known a party woman who kept her beauty for a twelve-month; and he conjured them, as they valued their complexions, to abstain from all disputes of this nature. Every one will recollect the admirable description of the Whig ladies and the Tory ladies drawn up in battle array at the opera, and _patched_, by way of distinction, on opposite sides of the face; the perplexity of the Whig beauty, who had a mole on the Tory side of her forehead, which exposed her to the imputation of having gone over to the enemy; and the despair of the Tory partisan, whom an unlucky pimple had reduced to the necessity of applying a patch to the wrong side of her face.