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THE THIRD WILLIAM.

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THE "fortunate escape" so strikingly sketched by the masterly pencil of Cooper, was no less fortunate for the cause of constitutional freedom in England, and, it may be said, in the world, than for the illustrious prince who reaped the benefit of it. Principles often become embodied." There are frequent junctures in the history of nations, where the success of principles which possess the eternal vitality of truth and justice, seems to depend upon the frail tenure of a single life. The deeds and the character of men acquire an importance when associated with the fate of a noble cause, altogether superior to what would attach to them by the force of their own virtues. We reverence the truth identified with their success more than the personal qualities which sustained that truth. It is peculiarly so with the hero of the great revolution of 1688. It was the fortune of the Prince of Orange to be called to the rescue of the noblest of causes, at a period of intense interest. Without the exercise of any great qualities, either of generalship or statesmanship, he succeeded in averting dangers which were probably more imminent and more threatening to the liberty and religion of England than any that ever brooded over that people. The triumph of principles so dear to humanity could not fail to reflect its lustre upon the name of the hero identified with them. William's has accordingly become one of the loftiest names in British annals-a fame cheaply won, yet not undeserved.

It was at the battle of the Boyne, the struggle which completed the overthrow of James, that William, reconnoitering his troops, became exposed to the fire of the enemy's field-pieces, which had been purposely planted against his person. The shot was sudden and fearfully well aimed, for one of his suite, together with two horses, were killed by his side. A ball rebounding, also graz. ed the shoulder of the king, very nearly deciding the destinies of England. It was this particular scene the artist attempted to reproduce.

In the resplendent page of Macaulay, William appears a far abler and better man than history has usually assigned him. With this historian he appears to be a favorite character; and it is impossible to trace in the light which Macaulay's industry has shed upon his actions, the close connection which the results of the revolution bore to

the king's foresight, prudence and energy, without feeling that his was the master-mind of the whole movement. Those of our readers who have not perused Macaulay's recent work will perceive in the following masterly sketch of the person and character of William, the splendid traits of authorship that have given such great and just popularity to that production.

"At the time of his arrival in England William was in his thirty-seventh year. But both in body and in mind he was older than other men of the same age. Indeed, it might be said that he had never been young. His external appearance is almost as well known to us as to his own captains and counselors. Sculptors, painters, and medallists exerted their utmost skill in the work of transmitting his features to posterity; and his features were such as no artist could fail to seize, and such as, once seen, could never be forgotten. His name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivaling that of an eagle in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, severe, and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or a goodhumored man. But it indicates in a manner not to be mistaken capacity equal to the most arduous enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by reverses or dangers.

"Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler, and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. With strong natural sense and rare force of will, he found himself, when first his mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party, and the heir to vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of the oligarchy, then supreme in the United Provinces. The common people, fondly attached during a century to his house, indicated whenever they saw him, in a manner not to be mistaken, that they regarded him as their rightful head. The able and experienced ministers of the Republic, mortal enemies of his name, came every day to pay their feigned civilities to him, and to observe

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THE THIRD WILLIAM.

the progress of his mind. The first movements of his ambition were carefully watched; every unguarded word uttered by him was noted down; nor had he near him any adviser on whose judgment reliance could be placed. He was scarcely fifteen years old when all the domestics who were attached to his interest, or who enjoyed any share of his confidence, were removed from under his roof by the jealous government. He remonstrated with energy beyond his years, but in vain. Vigilant observers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes of the young state prisoner. His health, naturally delicate, sank for a time under the emotions which his desolate situation had produced. Such situations bewilder and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly. Long before he reached manhood he knew how to keep secrets, how to baffle curiosity by dry and guarded answers, how to conceal all passions under the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile, he made little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of the Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found in the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an inferior degree, embellished the court of England; and his manners were altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general, he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the value of a favor and take away the sting of a refusal. He was little interested in letters or science. The discoveries of Newton and Leibnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic performances tired him; and he was glad to turn away from the stage and to talk about public affairs while Orestes was raving, or while Tartuffe was pressing Elvira's hand. He had, indeed, some talent for sarcasm, and not seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a natural rhetoric, quaint, indeed, but vigorous and original. He did not, however, in the least affect the character of a wit or of an orator. His attention had been confined to tuose studies which form strenuous and sagacious men of business. From a child he listened with interest when high questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. Of geometry he learn ed as much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or a horn-work. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to enable him to comprehend and answer without assistance

everything that was said to him, and every letter which he received. The Dutch was his own tongue. He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke and wrote French, English, and German, inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently aud intelligibly. No qualification could be more important to a man whose life was to be passed in organizing great alliances, and in commanding armies assembled from different countries.

"One class of philosophical questions had been forced on his attention by circumstances, and seems to have interested him more than might have been expected from his general character. Among the Protestants of the United Provinces, as among the Protestants of our island, there were two great religious parties which almost exactly coincided with two great political parties. The chiefs of the municipal obligarchy were Arminians, and were commonly regarded by the multitude as little better than Papists. The princes of Orange had generally been the patrons of the Calvinistic divinity, and owed no small part of their popularity to their zeal for the doctrines of election and final perseverance, a zeal not always enlightened by knowledge or tempered by humanity. William had been carefully instructed from a child in the theological system to which his family was attached, and regarded that system with even more than the partiality which men generally feel for an hereditary faith. He had ruminated on the great enigmas which had been discussed in the Synod of Dort, and had found in the austere and inflexible logic of the Genevese school something which suited his intellect and his temper. That example of intolerance, indeed, which some of his predecessors had set, he never imitated. For all persecution he felt a fixed aversion, which he avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously politic, but on occasions where it seemed that his interest would have been promoted by dissimulation or by silence. His theological opinions, however, were even more decided than those of his ancestors. The tenet of predestination was the keystone of his religion. He even declared that if he were to abandon that tenet, he must abandon with it all belief in a superintending Providence, and must become a mere epicurean. Except in this single instance, all the sap of his vigorous mind was early drawn away from the speculative to the practical. The faculties which are necessary for the conduct of great affairs ripened in him at a time of life when they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men. Since Octavius the world had seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. Skillful diplomatists were sur

THE SABBATH.

prised to hear the weighty observations which at seventeen the prince made on public affairs, and still more surprised to see the lad, in situations in which he might have been expected to betray strong passion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their own. At eighteen he sat among the fathers of the Commonwealth, grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them. At twenty-one, in a day of gloom and terror, he was placed at the head of the administration. At twenty-three he was renowned throughout Europe as a soldier and a politician. He had put domestic factions under his feet; he was the soul of a mighty coalition; and he had contended with honor in the field against some of the greatest generals of the age.

"His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a statesman; but he, like his greatgrandfather, the silent prince who founded the Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far higher place among statesmen than among warriors. The event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing test of the abilities of a commander; and it would be peculiarly unjust to apply this test to William; for it was his fortune to be almost always opposed to captains who were consummate masters of their art, and to troops far superior in discipline to his own; yet there is reason to believe that he was by no means equal, as a general in the field, to some who ranked far below him in intellectual powers. To those whom he trusted he spoke on this subject with the magnanimous frankness of a man who had done great things, and who could well afford to acknowledge some deficiencies. He had never, he said, served an apprenticeship to the military profession. He had been placed, while still a boy, at the head of an army. Among his officers there had been none competent to instruct him. His own blunders and their consequences had been his only lessons. 'I would give,' he once exclaimed, a good part of my estates to have served a few campaigns under the Prince of Condé before I had to command against him.' It is not improbable that the circumstance which prevented William from obtaining any eminent dexterity in

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strategy may have been favorable to the general vigor of his intellect. If his battles were not those of a great tactician, they entitled him to be called a great man. No disaster could for one moment deprive him of his firmness or of the entire possession of all his faculties. His defeats were repaired with such marvelous celerity that, before his enemies had sung the Te Deum, he was again ready for conflict; nor did his adverse fortune ever deprive him of the respect and confidence of his soldiers. That respect and confidence he owed in no small measure to his personal courage. Courage in the degree which is necessary to carry a soldier without disgrace through a campaign, is possessed, or might, under proper training, be acquired, by the great majority of men; but courage like that of William is rare indeed. He was proved by every test; by war, by wounds, by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the imminent and constant risk of assassination, a risk which has shaken very strong nerves, a risk which severely tried even the adamantine fortitude of Cromwell; yet none could ever discover what that thing was which the Prince of Orange feared.

"The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because his physical organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of small-pox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The physicians constantly kept up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there were anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his broken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which was one long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion, to bear up his suffering and languid body.”

THE

SABBATH.

OH! with what rapturous and deligh some charms
The Sabbath breaks upon the longing sense!
The great and good their gratulations pour,
And nature walketh to the general praise,-
The tiny songters of the ambient groves
Thrill strains of higher and sublimer note
Than is their wont: above, beneath, around,

Beam with delight unspeakable, and tell,
In accents sweet as poet's cadences,
It is the season of halcyon rest.

But oh! it breathes a grander eloquence
Than ever ministered to things of earth,
Which bids the spirit bowed with toil and care,
Seek the calm haven of eternal rest.

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This delicate and graceful composition, arranged as a sacred piece for four voices, is to be found in the "Mendels sohn Collection," under the title of Millington"-the recent admirable work of Messrs. Hastings and Bradbury, and is here inserted bv mission of the publishers, Messrs. Newman & Co.

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