With one blot, for which neither the justice of history, nor the partiality of biography either can or should attempt to make any apology, Marlborough's private character seems to have been unexceptionable, and was evidently distinguished by several noble and amiable qualities. That he was bred a courtier, and owed his first elevation to the favour with which he was regarded by one of the King's mistresses, was not his fault:--It arose, perhaps, necessarily from his situation, and the graces and beauty with which he had been so prodigally endowed by nature. The young officer of the Guards, who in the army of Louis XIV. passed by the name of the "handsome Englishman," could hardly be expected to be free from the consequences of female partiality at the court of Charles II. But in maturer years, his conduct in public, after William had been seated on the throne, was uniformly consistent, straightforward, and honourable. He was a sincere patriot, and ardently attached both to his country and the principles of freedom, at a time when both were wellnigh forgotten in the struggles of party, and the fierce contests for royal or popular favour. Though bred up in a licentious court, and early exposed to the most entrancing of its seductions, he was in mature life strictly correct, both in his conduct and conversation. He resisted every temptation to which his undiminished beauty exposed him after his marriage, and was never known either to utter, or permit to be uttered in his presence, a light or indecent expression. He discouraged to the utmost degree any instances of intemperance or licentiousness in his soldiers, and constantly laboured to impress upon his men a sense of moral duty and Supreme superintendence. Divine service was regularly performed in all his camps, both morning and evening; previous to a battle, prayers were read at the head of every regiment, and the first act, after a victory, was a solemn thanksgiving. "By those means," says a contemporary biographer, who served in his army, "his camp resembled a quiet, well-governed city. Cursing and swearing were seldom heard among the officers; a drunkard was the object of scorn: and even the soldiers, many of them the refuse and dregs of the nation, became, at the close of one or two campaigns, tractable, civil, sensible, and clean, and had an air and spirit above the vulgar."