on him to be quiet. His Lordship thought fit, at the same time, to give an angry rebuke to the porter, asking him if he did not know that " this was the Czar." "Czar!" cried the porter, who had the blood in him of the future heroes of Balaclava; "We are all Czars here." Though William, however, was not very visible in the palace of Kensington, after the ordinary fashion of sovereign residents, his memory, assisted by the Dutch fashion of the house and grounds, has left a strong impression of itself upon the place. Here, meditating his campaigns against James the Second and Louis the Fourteenth, or thinking what he should do to get enough power out of his grudging English Parliament, the sickly, asthmatic, but self-willed Dutchman, was silent all day, and talkative at night, with his countrymen, over his bottle of Hollands. At Hampton Court, where he went on Saturdays, and which place he also made as Dutch as he could, he hunted, and felt more at large; but here, at Kensington, when not at St. James', or in the wars, he was generally obliged to remain, for convenience of business; here his wife Mary, who, if of an unfortunate, was of a loving race, studied his every wish in vain, in hope to make him love her as much as he did his mistress, the Countess of Orkney, who squinted, but who, in Swift's opinion, was the "wisest woman. the Dean ever knew; here Mary, however, did not waste away with her passion; for she grew fatter and fatter every day, like her sister Anne, till she became a "sight;" here she died before William died; and here the Anglo-Dutchman then discovered, or others discovered, from his sighs and faintings away, how fond he had been of her; here, lastly, he died himself, at the age of fifty-two, worn out with a life of mingled ambition, patriotism, irritability, anxiety, physical weakness, mental energy, and what, alas! was no proof of the energy, the aforesaid drink of his native country. William was a great man, in a little, crazy body, which thus conspired to level him with the least. Some historians describe him as tall, but his contemporary and courtier, Prior, who could not have been mistaken on such a point, characterizes him as Little Will, the scourge of France, He could hardly be called the scourge of France. He was more of a thorn in her side than a scourge; for he worried and obstructed, rather than beat her. But he was a great man, nevertheless, and understood and secured the interests of Europe. Party rage accused him of sensuality and coldheartedness, carried to excesses horrible to think of; one of which, the massacre at Glencoe, if he really knew the truth of the matter, which is still a question, would indeed afford damning proof of the enormities to which the doctrine of expediency could transport a man. The other charges would appear to be disproved by the affecting evidences which our latest and best historian, Mr. Macaulay, has brought of the interest which this saturnine-looking prince took in the innocent pleasures and domestic felicity of his particular friends and their families. Party fury seems to have forgotten, that a readiness to believe what is disgraceful, argues a disgraceful turn of mind in the believer. The only distinct personal anecdote recorded of William the Third, in connexion with Kensington, is of the kind just mentioned, and will remind the reader of similar paternal stories of Agesilaus and others. A tap was heard, one day, at his closet door, while his secretary was in attendance. "Who is there ?" said the king. "Lord Buck," answered the little voice of a child of four years of age. It was Lord Buckhurst, the son of his Majesty's lord high chamberlain, the Earl of Dorset. "And what does Lord Buck want?" returned William, opening the door. You to be a horse to my coach," rejoined the little magnate. "I've wanted you a long time." William smiled upon his little friend, with an amiableness which the secretary had never before thought his countenance capable of expressing, and "taking the string of the toy in his hand, dragged it up and down the |