treasures of loyalty they diffipated, and how fatally they were bent on confummating their own ruin. If ever men had fidelity, 'twas they; if ever men fquandered opportunity, 'twas they; and of all the enemies they had, they themselves were the most fatal.* When the Princess Anne fucceeded, the wearied nation was glad enough to cry a truce from all these wars, controverfies, and confpiracies, and to accept in the person of a Princess of the blood royal a compromise between the parties into which the country was divided. The Tories could ferve under her with easy consciences; though a Tory herself, fhe represented the triumph of the Whig opinion. The people of England, always liking that their Princes fhould be attached to their own families, were pleased to think the Princefs was faithful to hers; and up to the very last day and hour of her reign, and but for that fatality which he inherited from his fathers along with their claims to the English crown, King James the Third might have * Ω πόποι, διον δη νυ θεους βροτοι αιτιοώνται worn it. But he neither knew how to wait an opportunity, nor to use it when he had it; he was venturesome when he ought to have been cautious, and cautious when he ought to have dared everything. 'Tis with a fort of rage at his inaptitude that one thinks of his melancholy ftory. Do the Fates deal more fpecially with Kings than with common men? One is apt to imagine fo, in confidering the history of that royal race, in whose behalf fo much fidelity, so much valour, fo much blood were defperately and bootleffly expended. The King dead then, the Princess Anne (ugly Anne Hyde's daughter, our dowager at Chelsea called her) was proclaimed by trumpeting heralds all over the town from Westminster to Ludgate Hill, amidst immense jubilations of the people. Next week my Lord Marlborough was promoted to the Garter and to be Captain-General of Her Majefty's forces at home and abroad. This appointment only inflamed the Dowager's rage, or, as the thought it, her fidelity to her rightful fovereign. "The Princefs is but a puppet in the hands of that fury of a woman, who comes into my drawing-room and infults. me to my face. What can come to a country that is given over to such a woman?" fays the Dowager: "As for that double-faced traitor, my Lord Marlborough, he has betrayed every man and every woman with whom he has had to deal, except his horrid wife who makes him tremble. 'Tis all over with the country when it has got into the clutches of fuch wretches as thefe." Efmond's old kinfwoman faluted the new powers in this way; but fome good fortune at least occurred to a family which stood in great need of it, by the advancement of these famous perfonages who benefited humbler people that had the luck of being in their favour. Before Mr. Efmond left England in the month of Auguft and being then at Portsmouth where he had joined his regiment, and was busy at drill, learning the practice and mysteries of the musket and pike, he heard that a penfion on the Stamp Office had been got for his late beloved mistress, and that the young Mistress Beatrix was also to be taken into court. So much good, at least, had come of the poor widow's vifit to London, not revenge upon her husband's enemies, but recon We are all fet free. 61 cilement to old friends, who pitied, and feemed inclined to ferve her. As for the comrades in prifon and the late misfortune: Colonel Weftbury was with the Captain-General gone to Holland; Captain Macartney was now at Portfmouth, with his regiment of Fusileers and the force under command of his Grace the Duke of Ormond, bound for Spain it was faid; my Lord Warwick was returned home; and Lord Mohun, fo far from being punished for the homicide which had brought so much grief and change into the Efmond family, was gone in company of my Lord Macclesfield's fplendid embassy to the Elector of Hanover, carrying the Garter to his Highness and a complimentary letter from the Queen. CHAPTER IV. F RECAPITULATIONS. 'ROM fuch fitful lights as could be cast upon his dark history by the broken narrative of his poor patron, torn by remorse and ftruggling in the laft pangs of diffolution, Mr. Efmond had been made to understand fo far, that his mother was long fince dead; and so there could be no question as regarded her or her honour, tarnished by her husband's defertion and injury, to influence her fon in any steps which he might take either for profecuting or relinquishing his own juft claims. It appeared from my poor lord's hurried confeffion, that he had been made acquainted with the real facts of the cafe only two years fince, when Mr. Holt vifited him, and would have implicated him in one of thofe many confpiracies by which the |