assuredly not easy to imagine, either upon what, principle of international law the King of England demanded the person of Cornet Joyce, or on what motive of policy the demand was made.

When we treat of Temple's publications, we shall have to notice a specific for the gout. That which he now prescribed to his patron would be certainly more acceptable, but probably not more effectual, than his favourite Moxa.

"I hear that your Lordship is not at all content that your indisposition should pass for the gout; yet you will, I hope, allow your friends to be less unsatisfied, because it will help to accuse you of what they should not otherwise have laid to your charge, and because 'tis usually held that gout, which begins about your Lordship's age, is seldom violent, and a great mark of long life. After all this, I shall not be content unless your Lordship will send me word that you are well; though if it should prove that illness, I shall be glad to be your physician, and prescribe you no other remedies but some sweating exercises; or, if it continues then, to use the milken diet, at least, as far as morning and night: let the noon meal take its usual course; for of these two I have known of very great effects among my acquaintance both in Flanders and here, which are the regions of that disease."* Many a gouty gourmandwould undergo a milk diet at breakfast and teatime if he might freely enjoy his turtle and entries at dinner; though he might in these days petition for a few hours' postponement after the noon, which appears to have been, in Temple's time, the hour of the principal meal.

Among the acquaintances which Temple had made when abroad, was Wicquefort, the author of "The Ambassador and his Functions." To him the ex-ambassador thus describes his situation in the autumn of 1672 : — " Since his majesty has thought fit to change the course of his counsels, in the pursuit of which 1 was so long and so sincerely engaged, as ever believing them equally necessary to the repose of Christendom and the good of both our nations, I have had no share at all in public affairs, but, on the contrary, am wholly sunk in my gardening, and the quiet of a private

life I will not tell you that I have succeeded

so well in my small country designs as I have sometimes done in great ones; but, if ever any favourable accident (and this age produces strange ones enough) should bring you hither, I would let you see that our buildings are not altogether without pleasantness; at least, I would make you confess that the fruits of my garden have another taste than those of my closet, and will preserve better than those of my embassies." *

For those who are versed in chymical enquiries, it is added, that Temple, in the year 1670, submitted to the King a project of a new method of making salt, which, it was hoped, "would have supplied the occasion of the foreign bay salt." Like other projects submitted to the government, this turned out to be nothing new. "It is the same as commonly made and used in England; it can only render our home salt more cheap, which, you know, is not very dear; and yet those who have tried it say, they are not sure it is so good for all

purposes." *

CHAPTER XVI.

Temple's Works.— On Ireland. — On Political Interests Of Europe On The United Provinces On GovernMent On The Trade Of Ireland. On Public Affairs

In 1673 Letter To Lady Essex.

1668—1673.

During his temporarary retirement, Temple com. posed many of the treatises which are included in the collection of his works. We will endeavour to notice these in the order of composition rather than according to the priority of publication.

A tract must, in the first place, be noticed, which was written previously to Temple's embassy to the Hague. "Before I go," he writes to Lord Arlington, "I take the liberty to trouble you with a succession of my follies, since you have so long been contented to bear them, and send you that discourse upon the Irish business which I spoke of before you left town, but could never see you at leisure enough for such an amusement; and therefore I adventured to show it to my Lord Keeper first, at my going to Tunbridge, who professed to be pleased with many hints it gave him."*

This pamphlet, which was published together with the select letters in 1701, but has not been included in Temple's works, is entitled "An Essay upon the present State and Settlement of Ireland."*

The first position put forward in this essay is, that the late settlement of Ireland was managed without skill, judgment, or equity. It was "a mere scramble." "The golden shower fell without any well-directed order or design, and was gathered up in greatest measures by the strongest or the nearest hands...." "The whole business was laid by the King upon one of his ministers, who, consulting sometimes, perhaps, with his advantages, and often with his ease, received information and proposals from such persons of all parties in that kingdom as were most presuming and forward to advise him, or most concerned to abuse him, or most artificial to cover their own or their party's interests with those of the crown, or to join them with those of the ministers themselves...." "The chief directors ... not being resolute enough from their own good consciences or good conduct (which can make the bold and happy counsels, they durst not shake the hopes or pretensions of any of the parties, but rather offered at expedients, or at least appearances of pleasing all, and in some seeming equal degree; and not only those that had pretensions in that kingdom, but many in this who had no other besides the plea of some merit, the want of reward, or the particular grace of his Majesty, or some persons near him; and, following