would hold power only from her bounty and during her pleasure. It is not strange that a man so fond of authority as William, and so conscious of a genius for command, should have strongly felt that jealousy which, during a few hours of royalty, put dissension between Guilford Dudley and the Lady Jane, and which produced a rupture still more tragical between Darnley and the Queen of Scots. The Princess of Orange had not the faintest suspicion of her husband's feelings. Her preceptor, Bishop Compton, had instructed her carefully in religion, and had especially guarded her mind against the arts of Roman Catholic divines, but had left her profoundly ignorant of the English Constitution and of her own position. She knew that her marriage vow bound her to obey her husband; and it had never occurred to her that the relation in which they stood to each other might one day be inverted. She had been nine years married before she discovered the cause of William's discontent; nor would she ever have learned it from himself. In general, his temper inclined him rather to brood over his griefs than to give utterance to them; and in this particular case his lips were sealed by a very natural delicacy. At length, a complete explanation and reconciliation were brought about by the agency of Gilbert Burnet.

The fame of Burnet has been attacked with singular malice and pertinacity. The attack began early in his life, and is still carried on with undiminished vigor, though he has now been more than a century and a quarter in his grave. He is, indeed, as fair a mark as factious animosity and petulant wit could desire. The faults of his understanding and temper lie on the surface, and can not be missed. They were not the faults which are ordinarily considered as belonging to his country. Alone among the many Scotchmen who have raised themselves to distinction and prosperity in England, he had that character which satirists, novelists, and dramatists have agreed to ascribe to Irish adventurers. His high animal spirits, his boastfulness, his undissembled vanity, his propensity to

blunder, his provoking indiscretion, his unabashed audacity, afforded inexhaustible subjects of ridicule to the Tories. Nor did his enemies omit to compliment him, sometimes with more pleasantry than delicacy, on the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his calves, and his success in matrimonial projects on amorous and opulent widows. Yet Burnet, though open in many respects to ridicule, and even to serious censure, was no contemptible man. His parts were quick, his industry unwearied, his reading various and most extensive. He was at once a historian, an antiquary, a theologian, a preacher, a pamphleteer, a debater, and an active political leader; and in every one of those characters made himself conspicuous among able competitors. The many spirited tracts which he wrote on passing events are now known only to the curious; but his History of his Own Times, his History of the Reformation, his Exposition of the Articles, his Discourse of Pastoral Care, his Life of Hale, his Life of Wilmot, are still reprinted, nor is any good private library without them. Against such a fact as this all the efforts of detractors are vain. A writer, whose voluminous works, in several branches of literature, find numerous readers a hundred and thirty years after his death, may have had great faults, but must also have had great merits; and Burnet had great merits, a fertile and vigorous mind, and a style far indeed removed from faultless purity, but always clear, often lively, and sometimes rising to solemn and fervid eloquence. In the pulpit, the effect of his discourses, which were delivered without any note, was heightened by a noble figure and by pathetic action. He was often interrupted by the deep hum of his audience; and when, after preaching out the hour-glass, which in those days was part of the furniture of the pulpit, he held it up in his hand, the congregation clamorously encouraged him to go on till the sand had run off once more.* In his moral character, as in his intellect, great blemishes were more than compensated by great exSpeaker Onslow's note on Burnet, i., 596; Johnson's Life of Sprat.

cellence. Though often misled by prejudice and passion, he was emphatically an honest man. Though he was not secure from the seductions of vanity, his spirit was raised high above the influence either of cupidity or of fear. His nature was kind, generous, grateful, forgiving.* His religious zeal, though steady and ardent, was in general restrained by humanity, and by a respect for the rights of conscience. Strongly attached to what he regarded as the spirit of Christianity, he looked with indifference on rites, names, and forms of ecclesiastical polity, and was by no means disposed to be severe even on infidels and heretics whose lives were pure, and whose errors appeared to be the effect rather of some perversion of the understanding than of the depravity of the heart. But, like many other good men of that age, he regarded the case of the Church of Rome as an exception to all ordinary rules.

Burnet, during some years, had had a European reputation. His history of the Reformation had been received with loud applause by all Protestants, and had been felt by the Roman Catholics as a severe blow. The greatest doctor that the Church of Rome has produced since the schism of the sixteenth century, Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, was engaged in framing an elaborate reply. Burnet had been honored by a vote of thanks from one of the zealous Parliaments which had sat during the excitement of the Popish Plot, and had been exhorted, in the name of the Commons of England, to continue his historical researches. No person has contradicted Burnet more frequently or with more asperity than Dartmouth; yet Dartmouth says, "I do not think he designedly published any thing he believed to be false." Even Swift has the justice to say, “After all, he was a man of generosity and good nature.”—Short Remarks on Bishop Burnet's History.

It is usual to censure Burnet as a singularly inaccurate historian, but I believe the charge to be altogether unjust. He appears to be singularly inaccurate only because his narrative has been subjected to a scrutiny singularly severe and unfriendly. If any Whig thought it worth while to subject Reresby's Memoirs, North's Examen, Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution, or the Life of James the Second, edited by Clarke, to a similar scrutiny, it would soon appear that Burnet was far indeed from being the most inexact writer of his time.

He had been admitted to familiar conversation both with Charles and James, had lived on terms of close intimacy with several distinguished statesmen, particularly with Halifax, and had been the spiritual director of some persons of the highest note. He had reclaimed from atheism and from licentiousness one of the most brilliant libertines of the age, John Wilmot, earl of Rochester. Lord Stafford, the victim of Oates, had, though a Roman Catholic, been edified in his last hours by Burnet's exhortations touching those points on which all Christians agree. A few years later, a more illustrious sufferer, Lord Russell, had been accompanied by Burnet from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The court had neglected no means of gaining so active and able a divine. Neither royal blandishments nor promises of valuable preferment had been spared. But Burnet, though infected in early youth by those servile doctrines which were commonly held by the clergy of that age, had become, on conviction, a Whig, and firmly adhered, through all vicissitudes, to his principles. He had, however, no part in that conspiracy which brought so much disgrace and calamity on the Whig party, and not only abhorred the murderous designs of Goodenough and Ferguson, but was of opinion that even his beloved and honored friend Russell had gone to unjustifiable lengths against the government. A time at length arrived when innocence was not a sufficient protection. Burnet, though not guilty of any legal offense, was pursued by the vengeance of the court. He retired to the Continent, and, after passing about a year in those wanderings through Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, of which he has left us an agreeable narrative, reached the Hague in the summer of 1686, and was received there with kindness and respect. He had many free conversations with the princess on politics and religion, and soon became her spiritual director and confidential adviser. William proved a much more gracious host than could have been expected; for, of all faults, officiousness and indiscretion were the most offensive to him, and Burnet

was allowed even by friends and admirers to be the most officious and indiscreet of mankind; but the sagacious prince perceived that this pushing, talkative divine, who was always blabbing secrets, asking impertinent questions, obtruding unasked advice, was nevertheless an upright, courageous, and able man, well acquainted with the temper and the views of British sects and factions. The fame of Burnet's eloquence and erudition was also widely spread. William was not himself a reading man. But he had now been many years at the head of the Dutch administration, in an age when the Dutch press was one of the most formidable engines by which the public mind of Europe was moved, and, though he had no taste for literary pleasures, was far too wise and too observant to be ignorant of the value of literary assistance. He was aware that a popular pamphlet might sometimes be of as much service as a victory in the field. He also felt the importance of having always near him some person well informed as to the civil and ecclesiastical polity of our island; and Burnet was eminently qualified to be of use as a living dictionary of British affairs; for his knowledge, though not always accurate, was of immense extent, and there were in England and Scotland few eminent men of any political or religious party with whom he had not conversed. He was therefore admitted to as large a share of favor and confidence as was granted to any but those who composed the very small inmost knot of the prince's private friends. When the doctor took liberties, which was not seldom the case, his patron became more than usually cold and sullen, and sometimes uttered a short, dry sarcasm, which would have struck dumb any person of ordinary assurance. In spite of such occurrences, however, the amity between this singular pair continued, with some temporary interruptions, till it was dissolved by death. Indeed, it was not easy to wound Burnet's feelings. His self-complacency, his animal spirits, and his want of tact were such that, though he frequently gave offense, he never took it.