On his deathbed, William’s affections seemed to be restored to their wonted channel. Lord Portland, whose faithful services had been of late superseded by the attractive qualities of Keppel Lord Albemarle, stood near him. The dying King looked steadfastly at him, endeavoured to speak to him, but was unable. He placed Portland’s hands upon his heart, and in that position expired. His last words, uttered with composure, were these, “Je tire vers ma fin.” It is remarkable, that upon the post-mortem examination, when almost every important organ of the suffering monarch’s emaciated frame was found to be diseased, his head was alone exempted from any trace of disease.[347] Hence his eye, that eagle eye, which his foe, the Duke of Berwick, could not regard at the Battle of Landen without admiration, retained its brilliancy and its searching keenness of expression to the last.[348] The character of William the Third has been minutely expatiated upon by historians. In comparison with the monarchs of the Stuart line, he rose transcendent; but even without challenging such a parallel, his merits appear of the highest order. His intellectual powers were by nature capacious and sound. His acquirements were admirably adapted for the station which he held. Courageous, prompt, discerning, war was his favourite pursuit. Reserved and taciturn in private life, on public occasions his eloquence was both effective and polished. The last speech that he made in parliament, and which appears to have been impromptu, was one of the ablest harangues ever addressed by a British monarch to his subjects. The outward deportment of William, like the unsightly binding of a scarce book, concealed his merits from the vulgar eye, whilst, by the reflective, the intrinsic value was more strongly exemplified by contrast. More than irritable, passionate, or, as the language of the times expresses it, “choleric” to his attendants of the bedchamber, his benevolence, his ready forgiveness, his magnanimous appreciation of merit even in those whom he personally disliked, were shown in innumerable passages of his life. These qualities were conspicuously displayed in the restoration of Lord Marlborough to royal confidence, after a detected intercourse with the court of St. Germains. And whilst Lady Marlborough casts aspersions on the noble-minded monarch, of petty import, she is obliged, for consistency’s sake, to pass over those later days of his life, when William generously placed a man whom he disliked at the head of military affairs, for the simple, but unfashionable, and, unhappily, not often regal reason, that he thought him best adapted to fill that trust. The unreasonable jealousy which he evinced towards the Princess Anne was, in fact, the great blemish of his social character.