nominal head of the Western Association. Charles II. had no legitimate
children, and so he could not have any quarrels with a Prince of
Wales. He was fond of his numerous bastards, and, like an affectionate
royal father, provided handsomely for them at the public-expense. What
more could a father do, situated as that father was, and always in
want of his people's money? Some of them were not his sons,--Monmouth,
the best beloved of them all, being the son of Robert Sidney, a
brother of the renowned Algernon, a fact that partially excuses the
harsh conduct of James II. toward his nominal nephew. James II. had
no legitimate son until the last year of his reign; but his two eldest
daughters treated him far worse than any sovereign of the Hanoverian
line was ever used by a son. They were most respectable women, and
their deficiency in piety has worked well for the world; but it must
ever be repugnant to humanity to regard the conduct of Mary and Anne
with respect. No wonder that people called Mary the modern Tullia.
Mary II. died young, and childless; and Queen Anne, though a most
prolific wife, and but fifty-one at her death, survived all her
children. Anne believed that her children's deaths were sent in
punishment of her unfilial conduct; and she would have restored her
nephew, the Pretender, to the British throne, but that the Jacobites
were the silliest political creatures that ever triumphed in the
how-not-to-do-it business, and could not even hold their mouths open
for the rich and ripened fruit to drop into them.

The first of the English Stuarts, James I., is suspected of having
allowed his jealousy of his eldest son, the renowned Prince Henry, to
carry him to the extent of child-murder. The Stuarts are called the
Fated Line, and it is certain that none of their number, from Robert
II.--who got the Scottish throne in virtue of his veins containing a
portion of the blood of the Bruce, and so regalized the family, which,