affectionate mynheers were of the minority in the senate belonging to the Orange party. Notwithstanding the occasional visits of the deputies of the Dutch state, the prospects of the infant William were not very brilliant in his native land, for the republican party abolished the office of stadtholder whilst he was yet rocked in his sable cradle. It is true that the stadtholdership was elective, but it had been held from father to son since William I. had broken the cruel yoke of Spain from the necks of the Hollanders. The infant representative of this hero was therefore reduced to the patrimony derived from the Dutch magnate of Nassau, who had married a former princess of Orange, expatriated from her beautiful patrimony in the south of France. A powerful party in Holland still looked with deep interest on the last scion of their great deliverer, William, but they were, like his family, forced to remain oppressed and silent under the government of the republican De Witt, while England was under the sway of his ally, Cromwell. The young prince of Orange had no guardian or protector but his mother, Mary of England, and his grandmother, the widow of Henry Frederic, prince of Orange; who resided in the Old Court, or dower-palace, about two miles from the ancient statepalace of the Hague.

When William of Orange was a boy of eight or nine years old, he still inhabited his mother's Palace of the Wood at the Hague: he passed his days in her saloons with his governess, lady Stanhope, or playing with the maids of honour in the ante-chamber. A droll scene, in which he participated, is related by Elizabeth Charlotte, princess-palatine, afterwards duchess of Orleans. The queen of Bohemia, her grandmother,' with whom she was staying at the Hague, summoned her one day to pay a state visit to the princess of Orange and her son. The princess Sophia,2 who lived then with the queen of Bohemia, her mother, (not in the most prosperous circumstances, as she had made a love-match with

1 Elizabeth Charlotte was the only daughter of Charles Louis, eldest son of the queen of Bohemia, daughter of our James I.

2 The mother of George I. elector of Hanover, afterwards (as her represen tative) George I. king of Great Britain.

a younger brother of the house of Hanover,) took upon herself to prepare her little niece for her presentation to the princess of Orange, by saying, "Lisette, [Elizabeth,] take care that you are not as giddy as usual. Follow the queen, your grandmother, step by step; and at her departure, do not let her have to wait for you." This exhortation was not needless, for, by her own account, a more uncouth little savage than the high and mighty princess Elizabeth Charlotte was never seen in a courtly drawing-room. She replied, "Oh, aunt! I mean to conduct myself very sagely." The princess of Orange was quite unknown to her, but she was on the most familiar terms with the young prince, William of Orange, with whom she had often played at the house of the queen of Bohemia. Before this pair of little cousins adjourned to renew their usual gambols, the young princess Elizabeth Charlotte did nothing but stare in the face of the princess of Orange; and as she could obtain no answer to her repeated questions of "Who is that woman?" she at last pointed to her, and bawled to the young prince of Orange, "Tell me, pray, who is that woman with the furious long nose?" William burst out laughing, and with impish glee replied, "That is my mother, the princess-royal." Anne Hyde, one of the ladies of the princess, seeing the unfortunate little guest look greatly alarmed at the blunder she had committed, very good-naturedly came forward, and led her and the young prince of Orange into the bedchamber of his mother. Here a most notable game of romps commenced between William and his cousin, who, before she began to play, entreated her kind conductress, mistress Anne Hyde,2 to call her in time, when the queen, her grandmother, was about to depart. "We played at all sorts of games,' continues Elizabeth Charlotte, " and the time flew very fast.

1 The mother of William III. chose to retain the title of her birth-rank in preference to her husband's title.

2 Elizabeth Charlotte spells the name Heyde, but it is plain that this amiable maid of honour who took pity on the gaucherie of the young princess, was the daughter of Clarendon, the future wife of James duke of York, and the mother of two queens-regnant of Great Britain; for she was at that time in the service of the princess of Orange, or, as that princess chose to be called, princess-royal of Great Britain.

William of Orange and I were rolling ourselves up in a Turkey carpet when I was summoned. Without losing an instant, up I jumped, and rushed into the saloon. The queen of Bohemia was already in the ante-chamber. I had no time to lose I twitched the princess-royal very hard by the robe to draw her attention, then sprang before her, and having made her a very odd curtsy, I darted after the queen, my grandmother, whom I followed, step by step, to her coach, leaving every one in the presence-chamber in a roar of laughter, I knew not wherefore."

The death of the princess of Orange with the smallpox, in England, has already been mentioned; her young son was left an orphan at nine years of age, with no better protector than his grandmother, the dowager of Henry Frederic. The hopes of the young prince, of any thing like restoration to rank among the sovereign-princes of Europe, were dark and distant: all rested on the good-will and affection of his uncles in England. The princess of Orange had solemnly left her orphan son to the guardianship of her brother king Charles. Several letters exist in the State-Paper office, written in a round boyish hand, from William, confirming this choice, and entreating the fatherly protection of his royal uncles. The old princess-dowager, Wilhelmina, has been praised for the tone of education she gave her grandson. He was in his youth economical, being nearly destitute of money; and he was abstinent from all expensive indulgences. He wrote an extraordinary hand of the Italian class, of enormously large dimensions; his French letters, though brief, are worded with an elegance and courtesy which formed a contrast to the rudeness of his manners. He was a daily sufferer from ill-health, having, from his infancy, struggled with a cruel asthma, yet all his thoughts were set on war, and all his exercises tended to it. Notwithstanding his diminutive and weak form, which was not free from deformity, he rode well, and looked better on horseback than in any other position. He was a linguist by nature, not by study, and spoke several languages intelligibly. His earnest desire to regain his rank prompted him to centre all his studies in

the art of war, because it was the office of the stadtholder to lead the army of Holland.

The prince of Orange spent the winter of 1670 in a friendly visit at the court of England, where he was received by his uncles with the utmost kindness; and it is said, that they then and there concerted with him some plans, which led to his subsequent restoration to the stadtholdership of Holland. William was nineteen, small and weak, and rather deformed. He seldom indulged in wine, but drank ale, or some schnaps of his native. Hollands gin: he regularly went to bed at ten o'clock. Such a course of life was viewed invidiously by the riotous courtiers of Charles II., and they wickedly conspired to entice the phlegmatic prince into drinking a quantity of champagne, which flew to his head, and made him more mad and mischievous than even Buckingham himself, who was at the head of the joke. Nothing could restrain the Orange prince from sallying out and breaking the windows of the apartments of the maids of honour, and he would have committed farther outrages, if his wicked tempters had not seized him by the wrists and ankles, and carried him struggling and raging to his apartments. They exulted much in this outbreak of a quiet and well-behaved prince, but the triumph was a sorry one at the best. Sir John Reresby, who relates the anecdote,1 declares, "that such an exertion of spirit was likely to recommend the prince to the lady Mary:" it was certainly more likely to frighten a child of her age. At that time he was considered as the future spouse of his young cousin. The prince left England in February, 1670.

The princess Elizabeth Charlotte declares, in her memoirs, "that she should not have objected to marry her cousin, William of Orange." Probably he was not so lovingly disposed towards his eccentric playfellow, for notwithstanding his own want of personal comeliness, this warlike modicum of humanity was vastly particular regarding the beauty, meekness, piety, and stately height of the lady to whom he aspired. None of these particulars were very pre-eminent in 1 Memoirs of Sir John Reresby.

his early playfellow, who had, instead, wit at will, and that species of merry mischief called espièglerie, sufficient to have governed him, and all his heavy Dutchmen to boot. She had, however, a different destiny' as the mother of the second royal line of Bourbon, and William was left to fulfil the intention of his mother's family, by reserving his hand for a daughter of England.

Previously to this event, the massacre of the De Witts occurred,—the pretence for which outrage was, that De Ruart of Putten, the elder brother, the pensionary or chief civil magistrate of the republic, had hired an apothecary to poison the prince of Orange;2 the mob, infuriated by this delusion, tore the two unfortunate brothers to pieces, with circumstances of horror not to be penned here. Such was the leading event that ushered the prince of Orange into political life. Whether William was guilty of conspiring the deaths of these his opponents, remains a mystery, but his enemies certainly invented a term of reproach derived from their murder; for whensoever he obtained the ends of his ambition by the outcry of a mob, it was said that the prince of Orange had "De Witted" his opponents.3 Be that as it may, the De Witts, the sturdy upholders of the original constitution of their country, were murdered by means of the faction-cry of his name, if not by his contrivance; their deaths inspired the awe of personal fear in many, both in Holland and England, who did not altogether approve of the principles by which the hero of Nassau obtained his ends.

Europe had been long divided with the violent contest for superiority between the French and Spanish monarchies. Since the days of the mighty accession of empire and wealth by Charles V., the kings of France had rather unequally struggled against the powers of Spain, leagued with the empire of Germany. The real points of difference between

1 She is the direct ancestress of the late king of the French, Louis Philippe. 2 By poisoning his waistcoat! See the chapter entitled "De Witt and his Faction."-Sir William Temple, vol. ii. p. 245. The reader should, however, notice that republicanism was the legitimate government in Holland, and that William of Orange, as an hereditary ruler there, was a usurper.

3 This term is even used by modern authors; see Mackintosh's History of the Revolution, p. 603.