In private life, William was distinguished by the same qualities which marked his public career. He had not the chivalrous ardour which bespoke the nobles of France, nor the stately magnificence of their haughty sovereign. His manners and habits were such as arose from, and suited, the austere and laborious people among whom his life was passed. Without being insensible to the softer passions, he never permitted them to influence his conduct, or incroach upon his time. He was patient, laborious, and indefatigable. To courtiers accustomed to the polished elegance of Paris, or the profligate gallantry of St James's, his manners appeared cold and unbending. It was easy to see he had not been bred in the saloons of Versailles or the _soirées_ of Charles II. But he was steady and unwavering in his resolutions; his desires were set on great objects; and his external demeanour was correct, and often dignified. He was reproached by the English, not without reason, with being unduly partial, after his accession to the British throne, to his Dutch subjects; and he was influenced through life by a love of money, which, though at first arising from a bitter sense of its necessity in his long and arduous conflicts, degenerated in his older years into an avaricious turn. The national debt of England has been improperly ascribed to his policy. It arose unavoidably from the Revolution, and is the price which every nation pays for a lasting change, how necessary soever, in its ruling dynasty. When the sovereign can no longer depend on the unbought loyalty of his subjects, he has no resource but in their interested attachment. Louis Philippe's government has done the same, under the influence of the same necessity. Yet William was not a perfect character; more than one dark transaction has left a lasting stain on his memory; and the massacre of Glencoe, in particular, if it did not equal the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the wide-spread misery with which it was attended, rivalled it in the perfidy in which it was conceived, and the cruelty with which it was executed.