At length, however, the arrangements were completed. It must be acknowledged they were made somewhat too soon for the benefit of the royal child. The young Prince, delicate in frame, would have been happier perhaps, and, in the event of his living, stronger in mind as well as in body, had nature, and not etiquette, been made the rule of his youthful pursuits, and if state and ceremonials, too fatiguing for his infancy, had been postponed until his childish powers could better sustain their injurious effects upon his health. But the little victim, who had struggled into boyhood, the only one of his family, and who was doomed to be the national hope, and the sole object of the monarch’s care, was to be rendered valiant, theological, wise—a hero, a wonder—in short, that miserable being, a prodigy. Marlborough was to teach him military tactics and the theory of war. The boy delighted in all that boys of simpler habits, and in a happier sphere, usually delight in. He learned with facility all the terms of fortification and of navigation; knew all the different parts of a strong ship, and of a man of war; and took pleasure in marshalling as soldiers a company of boys who had voluntarily enlisted themselves to form his troop.[313] All this the great Marlborough himself taught him. In the departments of classical literature and theology, the Duke had another preceptor, scarcely less celebrated. Dr. Gilbert Burnet, whom William now appointed governor to the Duke of Gloucester in conjunction with Marlborough, was at this time Bishop of Salisbury, a see which he wished to resign on being appointed preceptor to the young Prince; being conscientiously averse from holding any preferment, the duties of which he could not in person superintend. Dr. Burnet was the intimate friend of the Countess of Marlborough; and probably he had had some share in forming her political opinions, and in weaning her from the Tory party, in whose principles the Countess had been reared.