CONTENTS OF THE EIGHTH VOLUME. LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. ANNE, QUEEN-REGNANT OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. CHAPTER I. Life, as princess, under the reign of William III.-Retrospect of her proceedings immediately before her sister queen Mary's death-Princess Anne fears infection for her son-Removes him from the vicinity of Kensington-Influx of courtiers to visit her on Christmas-day, 1694-Emotion at hearing of her sister's death-Seeks reconciliation with her brother-in-law, William III.Her letter of condolence to him-Interview at Kensington-palace—Alliance between the princess Anne and the king-Anecdote of her levees-Court honours permitted to her-Alteration of her correspondence with her fatherDeparture of William III.-Princess Anne recovers her health-Her huntingEmbarrassments regarding etiquette-Her domestic life and the education of her son the duke of Gloucester-Her maternal anxieties-Residence at Twickenham-Returns with him to Campden-house-Goes to an oculist in Bloomsbury— Morning interviews with her son at her toilet-Forbids his Welch usher to give him instruction-The princess writes a congratulatory letter to king WilliamHis contemptuous neglect of it-Princess receives studied marks of disrespect from the king-She instigates parliamentary inquiry on his granting away the appanages of the princes of Wales-Disregard shown by the king to her rank -Princess is neglected in his drawing-room-Her part taken by the people. THE contest between good and evil does not affect the human mind so powerfully as the struggle between rights. The lives of the daughters of James II., placed in contradistinction to the Jacobite cause, present strong illustrations of this axiom of ethics. On either side, right has been loudly pleaded. In behalf of the daughters may be urged, that they found it requisite to support the interests of Protestantism against their father and his religion. Many who believed in the actual danger of the church of England have sympathized with them, and will continue so to do; others will judge them according to the standard of common humanity and moral duty. It is this contest which invests the Jacobite cause with its undying interest. Wheresoever the influence of royal personages has effected great changes in national property, the light of truth, respecting their private characters and motives, is prevented from dawning on historical biography for centuries after such persons have passed onward to eternity. The testimony of either losers or winners becomes suspicious, vested interests bias the recording pen; for which causes certain characters have remained enveloped like veiled idols, to which were offered clouds of incense in the semblance of baseless panegyric, or they were hooted at through countless pages of vituperation, in which facts are concealed with sedulous care. Slowly and surely, however, time does its appointed work. Royal personages, in stirring epochs, cannot always give their orders vivá voce; letters and autographs are kept in self-defence by their agents, and these, given to the public long after the persons they would compromise-nay, even after their great-grandchildren-have passed away, cast the required light on characters purposely concealed. Lo! the veiled idols cast aside their mysterious shrouds, and assume the semblance of humanity-erring and perverse humanity, perchance, but yet more attractive and interesting than the mere abstract idea the political historian has given. They are thus seen, not as expediency has painted them, but as they were in life, subject to the same passions and infirmities as ourselves, and acting according to the impulses of anger, generosity, ambition, grief, tenderness, disappointment, revenge, and avarice. These impulses, of course, produced varied and even contradictory actions, which, however, when related according to the testimony of eye-witnesses, as much as possible in their very words, are found to blend together into a course of narrative by no means outraging probability, when one fact is viewed according to its connexion with another. Yet there are two adverse parties in this country, each imagining that the continuous narrative of facts must be prejudicial to their present interests; each have chosen their political idols, or their reprobated characters, from the royal personages that have existed from the days of Henry VIII. It is most curious to watch the attempts of these parties to force the inexorable past to comply with fancied expediency, conduct which has had the natural effect of hitherto exiling many important characters from their proper stations on the pages of historical biography, one party wholly refusing to listen to any wrong of its idol, and the other to any right of its victim. Now if the one faction insists upon snatching all the black, and the other all the white, which, classical metaphor affirms, make the blended thread of human life, where is an honest narrator, willing to present that mingled twine, to look for any material? Away with these childish wranglings with the unalterable past! Facts regarding the queenly sisters, both of Tudor and of Stuart, remain extant, defying all attempts to stifle them, guarded in manuscript among our archives, or those of France. Incidents may be told maliciously or apologetically; in both cases the author's comment may stand in absurd contradiction to quoted authority, but these deviations from the majestic simplicity of rectitude will have the consequence of disgusting the public, and will ever render a narrative unreadable. Can a more absurd spectacle exist, than when the comments of writers appear at open war with the facts they have just cited from documents? Although the parliamentary change in the law of the succession to the crowns of Great Britain did not permit the princess Anne to occupy her place for years as the natural heiress of her childless sister, Mary II., still the death of that queen drew the princess insensibly into a more ostensible position, and rendered her public life more important, notwithstanding her habitual feebleness of purpose, arising from infirm health and bad education. It has been shown, in the preceding biography, that the establishment of the princess Anne was merely like that of a private person, her sole distinction being |