XIV. He there found the power which said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." The manifest danger to Europe caused the triple league to be formed; even Charles II. became alarmed at the fearful progress of his great rival. The German armies threatened the communications of the French in Holland with their own country. Louis XIV. was obliged to give orders to retreat; his conquests in the Low Countries were lost as fast as they had been won. But the snake was scotched, not killed: its strength and daring were unabated. Long, and often doubtful, was the contest; it was bequeathed to a succeeding generation and another reign. But from the time of the invasion of Holland, the French arms and Romish domination permanently receded; and but for the desertion of the alliance by England at the peace of Utrecht, the allies would have given law in the palace of the Grand Monarque, bridled the tyranny of Bossuet and Tellier, and permanently established the Protestant faith in nearly the half of Europe. Like many other men who are called on to play an important part in the affairs of the world, William seemed formed by nature for the duties he was destined to perform. Had his mind been stamped by a different die, his character cast in a different mold, he would have failed in his mission. He was not a monarch of the most brilliant, nor a general of the most daring kind. Had he been either the one or the other, he would have been shattered against the colossal strength of Louis XIV., and crushed in the very outset of his career. But he possessed in the highest perfection that great quality without which, in the hour of trial, all others prove of no avail—moral courage and invincible determination. His enterprises, often designed with ability and executed with daring, were yet all based, like those of Wellington afterward in Portugal, on a just sense of the necessity of husbanding his resources, arising from the constant inferiority of his forces and means to those of the enemy. He was perseverance itself. Nothing could shake his

16.

Adaptation of

the character

of William to

his destiny in life.

resolution, nothing divert his purpose. With equal energy he labored in the cabinet to construct and keep together the vast alliance necessary to restrain the ambition of the French monarch, and toiled in the field to baffle the enterprises of his able generals.

victorious.

With a force generally inferior in number, always less pow17. erful than that of his adversaries in its discipline, His policy in war, which at composition, and resources, he nevertheless conlength proved trived to sustain the contest, and gradually wrested from his powerful enemy the more important fortresses, which, in the first tumult of invasion, had submitted to his arms. He was frequently worsted, but scarcely ever entirely defeated in pitched battles, for his troops were for the most part inferior in composition to those of the French, while his tenacity and skill never failed to interpose so as to avert a total disaster. But he generally contrived to inflict on them a loss equal to his own, and the barren honors of a well-contested field were all that remained to the victors. Like Washington, he made great use of the mattock and the spade, and often, though in the end victorious, the gallant chivalry of France were decimated before his well-constructed intrenchments. At length he worked his way up to a superiority, when the capture of Namur, in 1695, in the face of the French army, and the garrison commanded by Marshal Boufflers, proved that the armies of the Grand Monarque had by great exertions been overmatched. If the treaty of Nimeguen was less detrimental to the French power than that of Utrecht afterward proved, it was more glorious to the arms of the Dutch commonwealth and the guidance of William, for it was the result of efforts in which the weight of the conflict generally fell on Holland alone; and its honors were not to be shared with those won by the wisdom of a Marlborough or the daring of a Eugene. And at length the treaty of Ryswick put a bridle in the mouth of Louis, and France openly receded before her once-despised foe.

In private life William was distinguished by the same

qualities which marked his public career.

He had 18.

His character

not the chivalrous ardor which bespoke the nobles in private. of France, nor the stately magnificence of their haughty sovereign. His manners and habits were such as arose from, and suited, the austere and laborious people among whom his life was passed. Without being insensible to the softer passions, he never permitted them to influence his conduct or encroach upon his time. He was patient, laborious, and indefatigable. To courtiers accustomed to the polished elegance of Paris, or the profligate gallantry of St. James's, his manners appeared cold and unbending. It was easy to see he had not been bred in the saloons of Versailles or the soirées of Charles II. But he was steady and unwavering in his resolutions; his desires were set on great objects; and his external demeanor was correct, and often dignified. He was reproached by the English, not without reason, with being unduly partial, after his accession to the British throne, to his Dutch subjects; and he was influenced through life by a love of money, which, though at first arising from a bitter sense of its necessity in his long and arduous conflicts, degenerated in his older years into an avaricious turn. The national debt of England has been improperly ascribed to his policy. It arose unavoidably from the Revolution, and is the price which every nation pays for a lasting change, how necessary soever, in its ruling dynasty. When the sovereign can no longer depend on the unbought loyalty of his subjects, he has no resource but in their interested attachment. The selfish desires of the holders of stock must come in place of the disinterested attachment of nations. Louis Philippe's government has done the same, under the influence of the same necessity. Yet William was not a perfect character. More than one dark transaction has left a stain on his memory; his accession to the treaties with France for the partition of Spain proved that his ambition could at times render him insensible to all the dictates of public morality; and the massacre of Glencoe, if it did not equal the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the wide-spread misery with

19. Character of James II. of

which it was attended, rivaled it in the perfidy in which it was conceived, and the cruelty with which it was executed Less distinguished than either of his great regal cotemporaries by genius or success, JAMES II. of England was yet a sovereign of no ordinary character, and England. the important events of his reign have impressed his name in an indelible manner on the records of history. In his person a dynasty was overturned, a form of government changed, a race of sovereigns sent into exile, and a new impulse communicated to the Reformed religion. He consummated the Waterloo of the royal dynasty of the Stuarts; he established, without intending it, the Protestant faith in the British empire on an imperishable foundation. Such deeds for good or for evil necessarily give immortality to their authors; for they lift them from the common herd of men, the effect of whose actions perish with themselves, to the rank of those who have made durable and indelible changes in human affairs. James did this, like Charles X. in after times, from the force of his will, and the absence of corresponding strength of understanding; from the sincerity of his conscientious opinions, and the want of that intermixture of worldly prudence which was necessary to give his measures lasting success. less honest man would never have thought of hazarding the name of royalty for that of religion—a more able one would probably have succeeded in rendering his religion victorious. It is the mixture of zeal with rashness, sincerity with imprudence, courage with incapacity, which has generally induced royal martyrdom.

His good and heroic qualities.

ness of

A

Yet James II. was not destitute of abilities, and he was ac20. tuated by that sincerity of intention and earnestpurpose which is so important an element in every elevated character. He had none of the levity or insouciance of his brother Charles. That lighthearted monarch was his superior in penetration, and greatly his superior in prudence, but had less of the hero, and incomparably less of the martyr in his composition. Charles was

at heart a Catholic, but he would never have sacrificed three crowns for a mass. In the arms of the Duchess of Portsmouth he forgot alike the cares and the duties of royalty. James was not without his personal frailties as well as Charles, but they did not form a ruling part of his character. Cast in a ruder mold, moved by more serious feelings, he was actuated in every period of life by lofty and respectable, because generous and disinterested, passions. Patriotism at first was his ruling motive: England had not a more gallant admiral; and in his combats with De Ruyter and Van Tromp, he exhibited a degree of nautical skill rarely witnessed in those who have been bred in palaces. Nelson or Collingwood did not more gallantly steer into the midst of the enemy's fleet, or engage with more dogged resolution, yard-arm to yard-arm, with a powerful and redoubtable foe. When he ascended the throne, this daring and obstinate disposition was entirely directed toward religion. A sincere, even a bigoted Catholic, he deemed his duty to his faith far superior to all worldly considerations. From the moment of his accession, he labored assiduously to effect, if not the re-establishment of Romish supremacy, at least such an equal partition of power with the Church of England as was probably, in the case of so ambitious a body as the Romish ecclesiastics, the same thing.

21. The rashness and impru dence which cost him his

throne.

In the prosecution of this object he was rash, vehement, and inconsiderate; deterred by no consideration of prudence, influenced by no calculation of his means to his end, he permitted, if he did not actually sanction, atrocious cruelty and oppression toward his unhappy Protestant subjects; and drove on his own objects without the slightest regard to the means of effecting them which he possessed, or the chances of success which they presented. He uniformly maintained, to the last hour of his life, that it was perfect liberty of conscience, and not any exclusive supremacy, which he intended to establish for his Roman Catholic subjects; and several acts of his reign unquestionably favor this opinion. If so, it is a curious historical fact, illus