Anne was a personage altogether of an inferior stamp. In many points she resembled strongly the other members of her family who have figured in history. Like Charles the First, she was pious, generous, and affectionate, but obstinate, and not devoid of duplicity when it suited her purpose. Her religion had not, however, the sublimated character of that which consoled the unhappy Charles in adversity; but became, like all her other dispositions, a habit, an implicit faith, a formal observance, rather than a sentiment. Her nature was a strange compound of warm affections and of repelling coldness. As in all weak minds, her friendships were called into being by the gratification of her selfish inclinations; and hence, as the Duchess of Marlborough well describes them, “they were flames of extravagant passion, ending in indifference or aversion.”[63] With those defects which proceeded from deficient cultivation, Anne, however, as a lady of elevated rank, and afterwards as a ruler, possessed some admirable qualities. Her sense of duty supplied the place of strong sensibility. She was a kind mistress; as a wife, incomparable; though lavish to her favourites, (an hereditary trait,) not to be led by them into what she disapproved; just and economical, gracious in her manners, and desirous of popularity. Her nature was placid, her temperament phlegmatic; great designs and lofty sentiments were not to be expected from one of so gentle and easy a temper; but in propriety she equalled, if she could not excel, her reflective and discreet sister. In the early part of her life she was, like the Stuarts generally, extremely well-bred, until unnecessary and indecorous familiarity with her inferiors broke down the effects of early habit. In person Anne was comely, and of that ample conformation and stature well adapted for royalty. Her love of etiquette, and her exactness in trifles, were convenient and commendable qualities in the rules of a court, in the days of the good old school; and an attention to those forms which are much observed in the monarch of a people prone to free discussion, rendered her a favourite with the public. Her figure, before it became matronly, or in the words of the Duchess, (after their quarrel,) “exceeding gross and corpulent,” was esteemed graceful; her face was agreeable, though, from a weakness in her eyes, her countenance had contracted somewhat of a scowl, described by the Duchess, whilst she admits that “there was something of majesty” in the Queen’s look, “as mixed with a sullen and constant frown, that plainly betrayed a gloominess of soul and a cloudiness of disposition within.”[64] But this may have been the effect of years and of care, when the complexion also participated in the coarseness of the person, induced, as it was said, by the use of cordials, to which the Prince her husband incessantly invited his consort.[65]