made. His complexion was dark, the lines of his face strong and harsh, when singly traced but when his features were comprehended in one view, they appeared dignified and even pleasing. In the motions of his person he was easy, graceful, and firm. His constitution was strong, and communicated an active vigour to all his limbs: Though a lover of ease of mind he was fond of bodily exercise. He rose early, he walked much, be mixed with the meanest of his subjects, and joined in their conversation, without diminishing his own dignity, or raising their presumption. He was acquainted with many persons in the lower stations of life. He captivated them with sprightly terms of humour, and with a kind of good-natured wit, which rendered them pleased with themselves. His guards only attended him on public occasions. He took the air frequently in company with a single friend; and though crowds followed him, it was more from a wish to attract his notice, than from an idle curiosity. When evident designs against his life were daily exhibited before the courts of justice, he changed not his manner of appearing in public. It was soon after the Rye-house plot was discovered, he is said to have been severe on his brother's character, when he exhibited a striking feature of his own. The duke returning from hunting with his guards, found the king one day in Hyde Park. He expressed his surprise how his majesty could venture his person alone at such a perilous time. "James," (replied the king) "take you care of yourself, and "I am safe. No man in England will "kill ME, to make you king.”

66

When he was opposed with most violence in parliament, he continued the most popular man in the kingdom. His good-breeding as a gentleman overcame the opinion conceived of his faults as a king. His affability, his easy address, his attention to the very prejudices of the people, rendered him independent of all the arts of his enemies to inflame the vulgar. He is said with reason to have died opportunely for his country. Had his life extended to the number of years which the strength of his constitution seemed to promise, the nation would have lost all memory of their liberties. iad his fate placed Charles the Second in these latter times, when influence supplies the place of obvious power; when the

crown has ceased to be distressed through the channel of its necessities; when the representatives of the people, in granting supplies for the public service, provide for themselves; his want of ambition would have precluded the jealousy, and his popular qualities secured the utmost admiration of his subjects. His gallantry itself would be construed into spirit, in an age where decency is only an improvement on vice. Macpherson.

116. Character of JAMES II.

In many respects it must be owned, that he was a virtuous man, as well as a good monarch. He was frugal of the public money; he encouraged commerce with great attention; he applied himself to naval affairs with success; he supported the flect as the glory and protection of England. He was also zealous for the honour of his country; he was capable of supporting its interests with a degree of dignity in the scale of Europe. In his private life he was almost irreproachable; he was an indulgent parent, a tender husband, a generous and steady friend; in his deportment he was affable, though stately; he bestowed favours with peculiar grace; he prevented solicitation by the suddenness of his disposal of places; though scarce any prince was ever so generally deserted, few ever had so many private friends; those who injured him most were the first to implore his forgiveness, and even after they had raised another prince to the throne, they respected his person, and were anxious for his safety. To these virtues he added a steadiness of counsels, a perseverance in his plans, and courage in his enterprises. He was honourable and fair in all his dealings; he was unjust to men in their principles, but never with regard to their property. Though few monarchs ever offended a people more, he yielded to none in his love of his subjects; he even affirmed that he quitted England to prevent the horrors of a civil war, as inuch as from fear of a restraint upon his person from the prince of Orange. His great virtue was a strict adherence to facts and truth in all he wrote and said, though ome parts of his conduct had rendered his sincerity in his political profession suspected by his enemies. throne 1689.

Abdicated his
Macpherson.

$117. Another Character of JAMES II

The enemies of James did not fail to make the most of the advantages they had gained by their subtle manœuvres; some said, that the king's flight was the effect of a disturbed conscience, labouring under the load of secret guilt; and those whose censures were more moderate, asserted, that his incurable bigotry had led him even to sacrifice his crown to the interests of his priests; and that he chose rather to depend on the precarious support of a French force to subdue the refractory spirit of his people, than to abide the issue of events which threatened such legal limitations as should effectually prevent any further abuse of power.

The whole tenor of the king's past conduct, undoubtedly gave a countenance to insinuations, which were in themselves sufficiently plausible to answer all the purposes for which they were industriously circulated; but when the following circumstances are taken into consideration, namely, that timidity is natural to the human mind, when oppressed with an uninterrupted series of misfortunes; that the king's life was put so entirely into the hands of a rival, whose ambitious views were altogether incompatible even with the shadow of regal power in his person; that the means taken to increase the apprehensions which reflections of this nature must necessarily occasion, were of the most mortifying kind; it must be acknowledged, that if the principles of heroic virtue might have produced conduct in some exalted individuals, yet that the generality of mankind would, in James's situation, have sought shelter in the professed generosity of a trusted friend, from personal insult, personal danger, and from all the harassing suspense under which the mind of this imprudent and unfortunate monarch had long laboured,

The opposition of James's religious principles to those of his subjects, his unpopular connexions with the court of France; but, above all, the permanent es tablishment of a rival family on the throne of England, has formed in his favour such an union of prejudice and interest, as to destroy in the minds of posterity, all that sympathy, which, on similar occasions, and in similar mis fortunes, has so wonderfully operated in favour of other princes; and whilst the tribute of unavailing

tears over the memory of Charles the First; whilst, with the church of England, we venerate him as a martyr to the power and office of prelates; whilst we see, with regret, that he was stripped of his dignity and life at the very time when the chastening hand of affliction had, in a great measure, corrected the errors of a faulty education; the irresistible power of truth must oblige us to confess, that the adherence to religious principle, which cost the father his life, deprived the son of his dominions; that the enormous abuses of power with which both sovereigns are ac cused, owed their origin to the same source; the errors arising from a bad education, aggravated and extended by the impious flattery of designing priests; we shall also be obliged to confess, that the parliament itself, by an unprecedented servility, helped to confirm James in the exalted idea he had entertained of the royal office, and that the doctrines of an absolute and unconditional submission on the part of subjects, which, in the reign of his father, was in a great measure con fined to the precepts of a Laud, a Sib. thorpe, and Maynwaring, were now taught as the avowed doctrines of the Church of England, were acknowledged by the two Universities, and implicitly avowed by a large majority of the nation; so great, indeed, was the change in the temper, manners and opinions of the people, from the commencement of the reign of Charles the First to the commencement of the reign of his son James, that at this shameful period the people gloried in having laid all their privileges at the foot of the throne, and execrated every generous principle of freedom, as arising from a spirit totally incompatible with the peace of society, and altogether repugnant to the doctrines of Christianity.

This was the situation of affairs at the accession of the unfortunate James; and had he been equally unprincipled as his brother, the deceased king; had he professed himself a Protestant, whilst he was in his heart a Papist; had he not regarded it as his duty to use his omnipotent power for the restoring to some parts of its an cient dignity a Church which he regarded as the only true Church of Christ; or bad he, instead of attacking the prerogative of the prelacy, suffered them to share the regal despotism which they had fixed on the Lasis of conscience, the most flagrant abuses of civil power would never have been called in judgment against him, and par

Pament

hament themselves would have lent their constitutional authority to have rivetted the chains of the empire in such a manner as should have put it out of the power of the most determined votaries of freedom to have re-established the government on its ancient foundation. From this immediate evil England owes its deliverance to the bigoted sincerity of James; a circumstance which ought, in some measure, to conciliate our affections to the memory of the sufferer, and induce us to treat those errors with lenity, which have led to the enjoyment of privileges which can never be entirely lost, but by a general corruption of principle and depravity of manners.

It was said by the witty duke of Buckingham, "that Charles the Second might "do well if he would, and that James "would do well if he could ;" an observation which says little for the understanding of James, but a great deal for his heart; and, with all the blemishes with which his public character is stained, he was not deficient in several qualities necessary to compose a good sovereign. His industry and business were exemplary, he was frugal of the public money, he cherished and extended the maritime power of the empire, and his encouragement of trade was attended with such success, that, according to the observation of the impartial historian Ralph, as the frugality of his administration helped to increase the number of malcontents, so his extreme attention to trade was not less alarming to the whole body of the Dutch, than his resolution not to rush into a war with France was mortifying to their stadtholder.

In domestic life, the character of James, though not irreproachable, was comparatively good. It is true, he was in a great measure tainted with that licentiousness of manners, which at this time pervaded the whole society, and which reigned triumphant within the circle of the court; but he was never carried into any excesses which trenched deeply upon the duties of social

life;
and if the qualities of his heart were
only to be judged by his different conduct
in the different characters of husband, fa-
ther, master, and friend, he might be pro-
nounced a man of very amiable disposition.
But those who know not how to forgive in-
juries, and can never pardon the errors, the
infirmities, the vices, or even the virtues of
their fellow-creatures, when in any respect
they affect personal interest, or inclination,
will aim against them the sensibility of

every humane mind, and can never expect from others that justice and commiseration which themselves have never exercised: but whilst we execrate that rancorous cruelty with which James, in the short hour of triumph, persecuted all those who endeavoured to thwart his ambitious hopes, it is but justice to observe, that the rank vices of pride, malice, and revenge, which blacken his conduct, whilst he figured in the station of presumptive heir to the crown, and afterwards in the character of sovereign, on the. successful quelling of the Monmouth rebellion, were thoroughly collected by the chastising hand of affliction: that the whole period of his life, from his return to Ireland to the day of his death, was spent in the exercise of the first Christian virtues, patience, fortitude, humility, and resignation, Bretonneau, his biographer, records, that, he always spoke with an extreme modera tion of the individuals who had acted the most successfully in his disfavour; that he reproved those who mentioned their conduct with severity; that he read, even with a stoical apathy, the bitterest writings which were published against him; that he regarded the loss of empire as a necessary correction of the misdemeanors of his life, and even rebuked those who expressed any concern for the issue of events, which he respected as ordinations of the divine will.

According to the same biographer. James was exact in his devotion, moderate even to abstinence in his life; full of sentiments of the highest contrition for past offences; and, according to the discipline of the Romish church, was very severe in the austerities which he inflicted on his person. As this prince justly regarded himself as a martyr to the Catholic faith, as his warmest friends were all of this persuasion, as his conversation in his retirement at St. Germains was entirely, in a great measure, confined to priests and devotees, it is natural that this superstition should increase with the increase of reli, gious sentiment; and as he had made use of his power and authority, whilst in England, to enlarge the number of proselytes in popery, so, in a private station, he la boured incessantly, by prayer, exhortation, and example, to confirm the piety of his Popish adherents, and to effect a reforma tion in those who still continued firm to the doctrines of the church of England. He visited the monks of La Trappe once a year, the severest order of religionists in France; and his conformity to the dis

cipline

cipline of the convent was so strict and exact, that he impressed those devotees with sentiments of admiration at his piety, humility, and constancy.

Thus having spent twelve years with a higher degree of peace and tranquillity than he had ever experienced in the most triumphant part of his life, he was seized with a palsy in September 1701, and after having languished fifteen days, died in the sixty-eighth year of his age, having filled up the interval between his first seizure and final exit with the whole train of religious exercises enjoined on similar occasions by the church of Rome, with solemn and repeated professions of his faith, and earnest exhortation to his two children, the youngest of whom was born in the second year of his exile, to keep sted fast to the religion in which they had been educated. These precepts and commands have acted with a force superior to all the temptations of a crown, and have been adhered to with a firmness which obliges an historian to acknowledge the superiority which James's descendants, in the nice points of honour and conscience, have gained over the character of Henry the Fourth, who, at the period when he was looked up to as the great hero of the Protestant cause, made no scruple to accept the crown on the disgraceful terms of abjuring the principles of the Reformation, and embracing the principles of a religion, which, from his early infancy, he had been taught to regard as idolatrous and profane.

The dominion of error over the minds of the generality of mankind is irresistible. James, to the last hour of his life, continued as great a bigot to his political as his religious errors: he could not help considering the strength and power of the crown as a circumstance necessary to the preservation and happiness of the people; and in a letter of advice which he wrote to his son, whilst he conjures him to pay a religious observance to all the duties of a good sovereign, he cautions him against suflering any entrenchment on the royal prerogative. Among several heads, containing excellent instructions on the heart of reigning happily and justly, he warns the young prince never to disquiet his subjects in their property or their religion; and, what is remarkable, to his last breath he persisted in asserting, that he never attempted to subvert the laws, or procure more than a toleration and equality of pri

vilege to his Catholic subjects. As there
is great reason to believe this assertion to
be true it shews, that the delusion was in-
curable under which the king laboured,
by the trust he had put in the knavish
doctrines of lawyers and priests: and that
neither himself, nor his Protestant aber-
tors, could fathom the consequences of
that enlarged toleration which he endea
voured to establish.
Macaulay.

118. Character of WILLIAM III.
of the

William III. was in his person middle stature, a thin body, and delicate constitution, subject to an asthma and continual cough from his infancy. He had an aquiline nose, sparkling eyes, a large forehead and grave solemn aspect. He was very sparing of speech; his conversa. tion was dry, and his manner disgusting, except in battle, when his deportment was free, spirited, and animating. In courage, fortitude, and equanimity, he rivalled the most eminent warriors of antiquity; and his natural sagacity make amends for the defects of his education, which had not been properly superintended. He was religious, temperate, generally just and sincere, a stranger to violent transports of passion, and might have passed for one of the best princes of the age in which he lived, had he never ascended the throne of Great Britain. But the distinguishing criterion of his character was ambition; to this he sacrificed the punctilios of honour and decorum, in deposing his own fatherin-law and uncle; and this he gratified at the expence of the nation that raised him to sovereign authority. He aspired to the honour of acting as umpire in all the contests of Europe; and the second object of his attention was, the prosperity of that country to which he owed his birth and extraction. Whether he really thought the interests of the Continent and Great Bri tain were inseparable, or sought only to drag England into the confederacy as a convenient ally; certain it is, he involved these kingdoms in foreign connexions, which, in all probability, will be produc tive of their ruin. In order to establish this favourite point, he scrupled not to employ all the engines of corruption, by which means the morals of the nation were totally debauched. He procured a parliamentary sanction for a standing army, which now seems to be interwoven in the constitu tion. Ile introduced the pernicious prac

cold and injudicious. In the punishment of crimes, often too easy, and sometimes too severe. He was parsimonious where he should have been liberal; where he ought to be sparing, frequently profuse. In his temper he was silent and reserved, in his address ungraceful; and though not destitute of dissimulation, and qualified for intrigue, less apt to conceal his passions than his designs: these defects rather than vices of the mind, combining with an indifference about humouring mankind through their ruling passions, rendered him extremely unfit for gaining the affections of the English nation. His reign, there fore, was crowded with mortifications of various kinds; the discontented parties

$119. Another Character of WIL- among his subjects found no difficulty in