had destroyed. Foreign nations did ample justice to his great
qualities. In every Continental country where Protestant
congregations met, fervent thanks were offered to God, who, from
among the progeny of His servants, Maurice, the deliverer of
Germany, and William, the deliverer of Holland, had raised up a
third deliverer, the wisest and mightiest of all. At Vienna, at
Madrid, nay, at Rome, the valiant and sagacious heretic was held
in honour as the chief of the great confederacy against the House
of Bourbon; and even at Versailles the hatred which he inspired
was largely mingled with admiration.

Here he was less favourably judged. In truth, our ancestors saw
him in the worst of all lights. By the French, the Germans, and
the Italians, he was contemplated at such a distance that only
what was great could be discerned, and that small blemishes were
invisible. To the Dutch he was brought close: but he was himself
a Dutchman. In his intercourse with them he was seen to the best
advantage, he was perfectly at his ease with them; and from among them he had
chosen his earliest and dearest friends. But to the English he appeared in a
most unfortunate point of view. He was at once too near to them and too far from
them. He lived among them, so
that the smallest peculiarity of temper or manner could not
escape their notice. Yet he lived apart from them, and was to the
last a foreigner in speech, tastes, and habits.

One of the chief functions of our Sovereigns had long been to
preside over the society of the capital. That function Charles
the Second had performed with immense success. His easy bow, his
good stories, his style of dancing and playing tennis, the sound
of his cordial laugh, were familiar to all London. One day he was