The Marlboroughs, who had been living on the Continent since their disgrace, came back after this new change. The duke’s entry into London “in great state, attended by hundreds of gentlemen on horseback and some of the nobility in their coaches” a few days after, is reported by one of the chroniclers of the time. The duchess followed him soon after, and whether her temper and disposition had so far mended as to allow him to enjoy the peace he had so often longed for by the side of her he loved, he had at least a tranquil evening-time among his friends and dependents, and the grandchildren who were to be his heirs--for only one of his own children survived at his death. Duchess Sarah lived long after him. [Illustration: BISHOP GILBERT BURNET. ENGRAVED BY R. A. MULLER, FROM MEZZOTINT IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN SMITH, AFTER THE PAINTING BY JOHN RILEY.] She was sixty-two when he died, but, nevertheless, in spite of temper and every other failing, was still charming enough to be sought in marriage by two distinguished suitors--one of them that proud Duke of Somerset whose first wife had supplanted her at court. She answered this potentate in the only way consistent with the dignity of a woman of her age and circumstances; but added, with a noble pride which sat well upon her, that had she been but half her age, not the emperor of the world should ever have filled the place sacred to great Marlborough. It is a pity we could not leave her here in the glow of this proud tenderness and constancy. She was capable of that and many other noble things, but not of holding her tongue, of withdrawing into the background, or accepting in other ways the natural change from maturity to age. Her restless energies, however, had some legitimate outlet. She finished Blenheim, and she wrote innumerable explanations and memoranda, which finally shaped themselves into that “Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough from her first Coming to Court,” which is one of the most interesting of all _mémoires pour servir_. This was published in her eighty-second year, and it is curious to think of the vivacious and unsubdued spirit which could throw itself back so completely out of the calm of age into the conflicts and the very atmosphere of what had passed thirty years before. And she did her best to prepare for a great life of Marlborough which should set him right with the world. But her time was not always so innocently employed, and it is to be feared that she wrangled to the end of her life. The “Characters” of her contemporaries which she left behind are full of spite and malice. There was no peace in her soul. A characteristic little story is told of her in an illness. “Last year she had lain a great while ill without speaking; her physicians said she must be blistered or she would die. She called out, ‘I won’t be blistered and I won’t die!’ and apparently for the moment kept her word.” She lived long enough to be impaled by