the sway exercised by the next possessor of the royal favour was speedily cut short by her mistress s death. The course of English history might have flowed less smoothly if the Duchess of Marlborough and her husband had not become convinced that their own interest lay in supporting the principles of the Revolution ; and those principles might have sustained a rude shock, if Mrs Masham and her Jacobite allies had been allowed a few months longer to mature the queen s plans and their own.
The reign of Queen Anne, lasting for twelve years, falls naturally into two unequal periods.
During the first of these, the Duke of Marlborough was paramount in the houses of parliament, and his wife in the royal closet. A ministry of Tories was formed on the queen s accession ; but the leaders of it were Marlborough and Godolphin, who immediately began to edge off from their party. The principal measures were, from the begin ning, in substantial conformity to the policy of King William : the war with France, hardly resisted then by any part of the nation, was prosecuted with ardour and success ; and the victories of Oudenarde, Eamillies, and Blenheim, gained by the consummate generalship of Marlborough, made England formidable and illustrious throughout Europe. In the internal affairs of the kingdom, Whig principles for a time prevailed more and more ; the party acquired a decided majority in the House of Commons; and the ministry came to be composed almost entirely of Whigs, some of the Tories being dismissed, and others, like the two leaders, showing the accommodating flexibility of opinion which was so rife among the statesmen of that slippery age. The union of England and Scotland was carried through in the face of many difficulties ; and, while the proceedings of the ministry in the matter were by no means perfectly pure, the measure owed its success mainly to the independent and honourable assistance of the best man among the Whigs, the accomplished and patriotic Lord Somers. During several years, in short, barriers were gradually and firmly built up against the old system and the old parties. But other days were at hand. The domineering favourite of the queen presumed rashly on her power, and offended the self-esteem of her mistress. Mrs Masham, a poor relation of the duchess, whom she had introduced into the royal household, soothed Anne s fretful temper, gratified her vanity, and quickly, though secretly, acquired her confidence and affection ; and, under the guidance of the new favourite, and her prompter Harley, the queen was encouraged to hope for the attainment of all her most cherished aims. The state of public opinion underwent a corresponding change. Even under the masterly government of William, disappointments had been felt by those who expected impossibilities from the Revolu tion ; discontent now diffused itself very widely, the main cause being the increase of taxation which had been rendered necessary by the Continental war. The Tories and Jacobites, led by some of the ablest of the statesmen, and assisted by some of the most skilful and energetic of the political writers, dexterously used the combustible materials that were accumulating, and made the church also an active engine of mischief. The ministry saw their parliamentary majorities wasting away ; they were personally treated at court with open contumely ; and their ruin was completed when, still relying too boldly on their supposed strength, they impeached Sacheverell for publicly preaching in favour of^ Jacobitism and the divine right of kings. In August 1710 the Whig administration was ignominiously discarded.
The second period of the queen s reign began at this point. She was thenceforth governed by Mrs Masham; Mrs Masham was governed by Harley and St John, the chiefs of the new ministry ; and these able and unscrupulous men exerted themselves to the utmost of their power in undoing all that had been done by their predecessors. The fruits of the war were immediately abandoned, and the allies of England shamefully betrayed, by the treaty of Utrecht. If open attacks were not made on the con stitution, it was only because the Parliament could not be trusted in such a case, and because, also, the two ministerial leaders became jea!ous of each other, and formed separate intrigues. Harley, the Sinon of the time, corresponded both with St Germains and with Hanover ; St John, more decidedly Jacobite, plotted with Mrs Masham and the queen to procure the crown for the Pretender, on the ostensible condition of his professing Protestantism. But these cabals oozed out sufficiently to alarm the honourable Tories, and to array them and the bishops against the ministry in Parliament. The time, likewise, during which the danger was growing, proved too short to allow it to become ripe. Harley and Mrs Masham came to an open quarrel one evening in Anne s presence ; after they had squabbled for hours, the poor queen just retained strength enough to insist that the minister should resign on the spot ; she then retired at two in the morning, and lay down on her deathbed. She was seized with apoplexy, and died on the 1st of August 1714. St John s schemes were not ready for execution ; and, by the prompt activity of a few patriotic statesmen, the accession of George I. was immediately and peaceably secured.
(See Earl Stanhope s History of England, comprising the Reign of Queen Anne until the Peace of Utrecht, Lond. 1870.)
ANNEALING is the process of removing the brittleness peculiar to glass vessels and metal castings immediately after manufacture. Newly-blown glass is so fragile as to be altogether unfit for use; and the common occurrence of the breaking of a lamp-glass on lighting the lamp, or of a tumbler on pouring in hot water, shows the want of proper annealing.
The process consists generally in heating the vessels up to a red or white heat in a close oven, and allowing them to cool gradually over a space of several hours or even days. The brittleness of rapidly-cooled glass is exhi bited by the philosophical toy known as Rupert s drops or glass tears, said to have been first brought over to England by Prince Rupert and exhibited at the court of Charles I. They are small tadpole-shaped pieces of glass, which have been formed by allowing fused glass to drop into water. A pretty hard blow may be given with impunity to the thick part or head of the glass tadpole; but the mere breaking off of the tail causes the whole to fly to pieces, or rather to dust, with a sharp explosion. An illustration of the same kind is given by what are known as Bologna phials. These are vessels of thickish glass about half the size of a common Florence oil-flask, with no apparent flaw or cause of weakness. Though they will stand the shaking of a small bullet within them, yet the shaking of a few particles of sharp sand hardly visible will cause the bottom to fly to pieces. It is the mere scratch ing of the skin that is fatal; and the explanation is easily found. The particles of the glass have a cohesive polarity which dictates a certain regularity in their arrangement, but which requires some time for its development. When the vessels are suddenly cooled, the surface molecules only can have had time to dispose themselves duly, while those within are kept by this properly formed skin in a highly constrained situation; and it is only so long as the surface film keeps sound that this constraint can be resisted. In the Rupert s drops it is plainly visible that the interior substance is cracked in every direction, and ready to fly to pieces.
