heroic life was directed with undeviating, undisheartened firmness. He had in view no distant prospect, when the entire succession of the Spanish monarchy would be claimed by that insatiable prince, whose renunciation at the treaty of the Pyrenees was already maintained to be invalid. Against the present aggressions and future schemes of this neighbour the league of Augsburg had just been concluded. England, a free, a protestant, a maritime kingdom, would, in her natural position, as a rival of France, and deeply concerned in the independence of the Netherlands, become a leading member of this confederacy. But the sinister attachments of the house of Stuarts had long diverted her from her true interests, and rendered her councils disgracefully and treacherously subservient to those of Louis. It was therefore the main object of the Prince of Orange to strengthen the alliance by the vigorous co-operation of this kingdom; and with no other view, the emperor, and even the pope, had abetted his undertaking. But it was impossible to imagine that James would have come with sincerity into measures so repugnant to his predilections and interests. What better could be expected than a recurrence of that false and hollow system which had betrayed Europe and dishonoured England under Charles II.; or rather, would not the sense of injury and thraldom have inspired still more deadly aversion to the cause of those to whom he must have ascribed his humiliation? There was as little reason to hope that he would abandon the long-cherished schemes of arbitrary power, and the sacred interests of his own faith. We must remember that, when the adherents or apologists of James II. have spoken of him as an unfortunately misguided prince, they have insinuated what neither the notorious history of those times, nor the more secret information since brought to light, will in any degree confirm. It was indeed a strange excuse for a king of such mature years, and so trained in the most diligent attention to business. That in some particular instances he acted under the influence of his confessor, Petre, is not unlikely; but the general temper of his administration, his notions of government, the objects he had in view, were perfectly his own, and were pursued rather in spite of much dissuasion and many warnings, than through the suggestions of any treacherous counsellors.