QUEEN MARY THE SECOND.*

THE portraits of Queen Mary II. hardly seem to justify Lord Melbourne's description of her—given to Queen -Victoria and noted more than once in her diary—as " the most beautiful woman in Europe." It is true that she was a good deal .admired in her Sown day. A mere child when Charles for political reasons, decided on marrying her to William of Orange, and when, after a fortnight's engagement, she was carried off an unwilling bride to Holland, she soon developed into a handsome and graceful young woman, with the Stuart features and something, perhaps, of the Stuart attractiveness..

• Princess and. Queen of Lb:gland: Life of Mary II. By Mary F. Bambara: With photogravure plate and 28 other illustrations in bal.-tone. London: Stanley-Paul grad, Co. [Ns. sec:]

'This at least was felt by her near friends and attendants, who knew her as an affectionate, lively, talkative girl, full of enthusiasms frankly expressed, both on paper and in daily intercourse. But it was not long before William's sulky tyranny crushed her high spirits and the independent originality of mind and heart natural to a Stuart princess. Heaviness descended on the Princess of Orange ; her opinions stiffened, her early affections cooled ; and though her sour 2nd ill-tempered taskmaster was not even faithful to his wife, she became the devoted slave of his person and his interests. She also grew fat, more than one of her portraits showing a pronounced double chin. All this was un-Stuart-like, but not at all unnatural in a descendant from the solid stock of the Hydes—" some clodhopping squire or good but stupid house- wife," to quote from Miss Sandars, who allows that inheritance to Anne, but claims more royal attributes for Mary. And we .do not at all mean to suggest that she did not to a large extent possess them. When she returned to England at the age of twenty-seven and was crowned in Westminster Abbey, the chief figure in William's triumph, spectators were very favourably struck by her appearance. " It would be impos- -Bible," they said, "to see an uglier king or a more beautiful -queen." . . . " She is really altogether very handsome," wrote Lady Cavendish ; " her face is very agreeable, and her shape and motions extremely graceful and fine." But all this, the best that was said of her in her own day, scarcely proves Mary IL to have been, at any time in her short life, "the most beautiful woman in Europe."

The mention of the Coronation reminds us of one of the points—they are not many, but they exist, and they interfere with the confidence that an important book like this should inspire—which seem to need some careful revision. Miss Sandars writes :-

" On April 11th, 1689, William and Mary were crowned in Westminster Abbey. The day chosen was Ash Wednesday, a fact which, we are told, displeased many good Churchmen."

Surely there is a strange confusion here. The least educated reader would, of course, be aware that Ash Wednesday could not fall on April 11th. The key to the riddle which the writer appears to set is the fact that the proclamation of William and Mary, with the consequent rejoicings and the grand reception at Whitehall, took place on Ash Wednesday. Miss Sandars must know this, and we hope that a new edition of her book may make the succession of events a little clearer.

Miss Sandars's admiration for the talents and character of Mary II. seems to us rather excessive, though in this she is by no means alone. Lord Melbourne, for instance, did not con- fine his compliments to Mary's beauty. "I consider her the first of the Stuarts," he said to Queen 'Victoria, and spoke with high appreciation of her power of managing affairs, and of the "perfect confidence" William had in her. The Whig statesman and man of the world viewed the Revolution's Queen from his own political standpoint, and was justified. A personal judgment of character, such as a biographer must attempt, is not so easy. No doubt Mary was naturally a clear- headed, clever, capable woman ; her letters and journals would prove this, apart from her keen practical instinct in politics, though her spelling was quite amazingly bad, even for that day. Her controversial letter to James II. in 1687, on the differences of the Roman and Anglican communions, shows, as Miss Sandars rightly says, " reasoning power and intellect of an unusually high order." She was by conviction a sincere .and consistent Protestant, and it might be said of her, more truly than of the man on whom she modelled herself, that her deep religious principles were a matter of practice as well as of profession. These principles were her support throughout a married life which was generally unhappy—a life which no biographer, even at the risk of offending " the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King William," can honestly represent as anything else.

English writers have been little attracted till now by the life and character of Queen Mary II. Miss Strickland naturally took a severe view, the view of Bishop Ken. Mary's politics were opposed to hers, and she was impressed by her hardness of heart and want of filial affection. Miss Sandars attempts, not very successfully, to clear Mary from this charge ; but after all, even if James had had any special personal claim on the devotion of his elder daughter, her position as William's loyal wife would have been from the first incompatible with the earlier duty to James. It was the same with the unkind coldness she showed her sister. There was jealousy in it, for Anne was far more popular with the English than Mary, who never loved or was loved by them; but there was also a reasonable fear of the conspiracies into which that foolish, soft-hearted woman might be drawn

by favourites much cleverer than herself, and by which William's rule at home, as well as his victories abroad, might be troubled or endangered. And Mary was strong in her honest, patriotic belief that these things were necessary to England.

As a matter of justice, it is difficult to agree that William's commands were entirely responsible for Mary's singular con- duct on her arrival in England—conduct which shocked not only moderate men such as Evelyn, who had acquiesced in the necessity of the Revolution, but even partisans like Burnet. To him Mary acknowledged that she "was possibly going too

far, . . . acting a part which was not very natural to her." This part was that of William's triumphant wife, and she acted it so well and with such apparent ease as to persuade the public that she at least had totally forgotten that she was

James's daughter. Evelyn writes that she was expected to show

" Some (seeming) reluctance at least of assuming her father's Crown . . . which would have showed very handsomely to the world, and according to the character given of her piety ; ... but nothing of all this appeared; she came into Whitehall laughing and jolly, as to a wedding, so as to seem quite transported. She rose early the next morning, and in her undress, as it was reported, before her women were up, went about from room to room to see the convenience of Whitehall. • . . She smiled upon and talked to everybody, so that no change seemed to have taken place at Court since her last going away, save that infinite crowds of people thronged to see her, and that she went to our prayers. This carriage was censured by many. She seems to be of a good

nature, and that she takes nothing to heart." • Such behaviour was impolitic, if nothing worse, and brought no advantage to William or to his obedient wife. The public, whatever its opinions, has a heart, and Mary would have done better had she shown something of the mixed feelings which she confided to her journal. As it was, the English nation agreed with Lady Marlborough that her behaviour was " very strange and unbecoming." Few women, indeed, have been placed in a more difficult position ; but a woman of finer make might have found the happy mean between subservience towards her husband and heartlessness towards her father.

If we cannot quite follow Miss Sandars in her admiration for Mary II. as a woman, it is a different matter when we look

at her as a queen. It must be remembered that, during a large part of her five years' reign with William, she ruled in England practically alone. In 1690 the King was fighting

in Ireland, and the next three years were chiefly spent by him in command of the allied forces in Flanders, carrying on the campaign against Louis XIV. Never was a strong hand more needed in England ; for although the country

as a whole had transferred its allegiance, James had still many adherents, and conspiracy was rife. Mary's position did not become easier, nor her personal popularity greater, as the years advanced. But the more adverse circumstances became, the higher rose the courage of the Queen. Her management of the affairs of the kingdom, left by William in her hands, was both politic and bold : here, if nowhere else,

the descendant of Henry IV. showed entirely royal attributes, and may with some justice be described as " the first of the

Stuarts."

When the fatal scourge of smallpox took Mary IL, still a

young woman, from her many public duties, private griefs, and the occupations quaintly catalogued by Bishop Burnet in his funeral sermon—architecture, "gardenage," and needle- work—it is satisfactory to know that William not only grieved inconsolably for the most loyal of wives, but reformed his life as she would have desired. The wits, indeed, found occasion for irreverent scoffing :— " So greatly Mary died and William grieves, You'd think the hero gone, the woman lives."