FROM COPPERPLATE ENGRAVING BY CORNELIS VERMEULEN, AFTER THE PAINTING BY ADRIAAN VANDER WERFF.]
little steadfast to him, as the object of a pertinacious persecution. The princess says nothing of her sister. It is Caliban who is capable of nothing but injustice. It is he who will laugh if he gets the better of her. Anne’s style is perhaps not quite worthy of the Augustan age, but it is at least very intelligible and full of little individual turns which are more characteristic than the smoother graces. That she loved her friend with her whole heart, that she had a generous contempt for interested motives, and, humble as she was, a just sense of her own dignity, are all abundantly and very simply manifest in them. They will give to the impartial reader the impression of a natural and artless character, with much generous feeling and much tender affectionateness: tenacious of her rank and its observances, yet willing to throw all these trifles down at the feet of her friend. Poor young lady! When we recollect how constantly the princess’s “condition” had to be thought of, how her long patience and many pains ended constantly in the little waxen image of a dead baby and nothing more, who can wonder that the world seemed falling to pieces about her when she was threatened with the loss of the one strong sustaining prop upon which she had hung from her childhood--the friend who had helped her through all the first experiences of life, the companion who had amused so many weary days and made the time pass as no one else could do!
All these miserable disputes, however, were ended in a moment when brought into the cold twilight of a death-chamber, where even kings and queens are constrained to see things at their true value. Of all the royal personages in the kingdom, Mary’s would have seemed to any outside spectator the soundest and safest life. William had never been healthy, and was consumed by the responsibilities and troubles into which he had plunged. Anne had these ever-succeeding maternities to keep her at a low level; but Mary was young, vigorous, and happy--happy at least in her devotion to her husband and his love for her. It was she, however, who, to the awe and consternation of the world, was cut down in her prime after a few days’ illness, in the midst of her greatness. Such a catastrophe no one could behold without the profoundest impulse of pity. Whatever she had done a week before, there she lay now helpless, all her splendors gone from her, the promise of a long career ended, and her partner left heartbroken upon the solitary throne to which she had given him the first right.