It has been the fashion to celebrate Mary as a sort of paragon of perfection, on the sole and very doubtful testimony of Bishop Burnet. It is difficult now to explain the grounds on which she was so elevated. It could not be in contrast to her immediate predecessor; for Mary of Modena was a most exemplary wife to a bad husband, whom she could not be induced to forsake, even temporarily; in evil desert or good desert, whom she tended faithfully, unweariedly, and affectionately, through a chequered life to a foreign grave. To her children, her disinherited son, and a lovely daughter, born during exile but lost in early life, she was a most affectionate mother. Her sole crime here was her religion: she was a Roman Catholic, and injudiciously, however conscientiously, strengthened the king her husband's predilection for that faith. Still, this stigma might have been spared her, for James was a devoted Papist before he knew her.

She was very beautiful, but still more, indeed exquisitely beautiful, was her step-daughter and successor Mary; but alas, this lovely casket wanted a gem-heart. She was an undutiful and ungrateful daughter-most ungrateful; for her father had been most fond and indulgent to her; and that she was an unkind and ungenerous sister, the records of Anne's life bear witness. Even William himself, hard as he was, loosened after her death the trammels in which she had bound her sister Anne.

William was deeply attached to his Queen, and felt her loss acutely. Indeed, her conduct to him had been faultless. It may easily be imagined that, after this event, his manners became still more gloomy and morose. There is an anecdote extant of his being found at play with a little child; and there are other incidents on record, of kindly feeling and generosity, which redeem him from the character of having no heart, and almost lead us to lament that a concatenation of circumstances, such as those which influenced his whole early life, should have laid so thick a crust of moroseness on a disposition originally so kind. We must not forget to name that this so-called, immaculate prince, left an acknowledged mistressthe Countess of Orkney-a pensioner on the public.

To us, fashionists, William was ever clad in his coat of mail, impenetrable, unapproachable.

CHAPTER III.

STARS OF FASHION.

DE GRAMMONT.

Ayant couru toute la terre

Dans le jeu, l'amour, et la guerre ;

Insolent en prospérité,

Fort courtois en nécessité,

L'ame en fortune libérale,

Aux créanciers pas trop loyale.-St. Evremond.

PHILIBERT DE GRAMMONT was a younger son of a noble family in France and Navarre, and was first known to fame as a volunteer in the army of Condé.

His character was not an estimable one; he had faults which cannot be palliated: but it is only as a bright star and the most approved exemplar of fashion in the gay Court of Charles the Second that we refer to him here.

He was educated at the College of Pau, with a view to the Church, but he soon shewed that he had no vocation thereto; and on his first presentation to Cardinal Richelieu, he could not be prevailed upon to adopt, even for the nonce, the