long gallery till his playfellow was satis

fied.

The Court and Gardens of Kensington were not livelier in Queen Anne's time than in that of King William. Anne, as we have seen at Campden House, was a dull woman with a dull husband. They had little to say for themselves; their greatest pleasures were in eating and drinking; the Queen was absurdly fond of etiquette; and as there was nothing to startle decorum in the court morals, the mistress in King William's time had given something of a livelier stir to the gossip. Swift describes Anne in a circle of twenty visitors as sitting with her fan in her mouth, saying about three words once a minute to some that were near her, and then upon hearing that dinner was ready, going out. In the evening she played at cards; which, long before, and after

wards, was the usual court pastime at that hour.

She does not appear to have been fond of music, or pictures, or books, or anything but what administered to the commonest animal satisfactions, or which delivered her mind at all other times from its tendency to irresolution and tedium.

Addison and Steele might have been occasionally seen at her Kensington levees among the Whigs; and Swift, Prior, and Bolingbroke among the Tories. Marlborough would be there also; ever courtly and smiling, whether he was victorious as general and as the favourite Duchess's husband, or only bowing the more obsequiously alas! for fear of losing his place and his perquisites. But the liveliest of all the royal scenes at this Palace, though confined to two persons, must have been that (had there been anybody to

witness it) which closed the Duchess's

reign.

The reader may imagine it as he goes along the Gardens, and looks up at its now tranquil apartments.

Sarah Jennings, afterwards Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who was the daughter of respectable but not rich parents, had entered upon a court life at an early age as one of the companions of Anne during the Princess's girlhood. The young lady who, like Anne herself, was what is called a fine girl, but handsomer, an advantage which a flattered, self-complacent princess was less likely to regard in that point of view, than as an ornament to her establishment, possessed a flow of spirits, which her young mistress was equally glad to welcome, as a relief to her dullness.

The companion being politic and ambitious,

and not yet having had the worst points of her character brought out by worldly greatness, filled the vacancy of the royal mind with amusement, saved it trouble by deciding for it in emergencies, and, in short, rendered herself so useful and delightful, that Anne, with the usual propensity of the Stuarts to favourites, conceived a sort of passionate friendship for her, as for a livelier self. She retained the fondness long after they were both married; was not content till difference

of

rank was abolished between them in private by the names of "Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman;" and did not perceive all this while that she was converting subservient playmate into a dictatorial

scorner.

For years Anne laboured under a yoke which at length a new and humbler favourite, after many struggles, helped her to throw off;

and what completed the amazement and fury of the Duchess at an event so unlooked for, was that the supplanter, Abigail Hill (the very name was that of servitude), had been a creature of her own, and even a poor relation, that wretchedest of all creatures in the eyes of pride. of pride. The catastrophe, too, had been brought about by one of the Duchess's own mistakes; by a proposal emanating from herself; and which was precisely the kind of turning-point that suited the Queen's nature.

The Duchess had requested an interviewa proposition the most alarming conceivable to the poor Queen, on account of the advantage which her antagonist possessed in powers of tongue. She, therefore, parried it as long as possible, and would evidently have not assented at all, had not the Duchess extorted the permission by stratagem. Unfortunately, however, for her success, she had