Without considering this impediment as having a continual influence over his deportment, King William was one of those cynical personages who adhere to silence as a type of wisdom, and despise the talkative; and who, having seen some mischiefs arise from too great fluency of speech, take refuge from indiscretion in cautious taciturnity. Like most of those who defeat the purpose of society, in thus fencing themselves from animadversion, the King was extremely prone to make severe remarks and hypercritical comments upon others. His very senses, according to Burnet, were provokingly “critical and exquisite.” Devoid of imagination, which would have stood in the way of his unnatural philosophy, he was an exact observer of men and manners. Nothing escaped his piercing eye, nor was forgotten by a mind endowed with a most extraordinary memory, which never failed him.[154] Like most reserved, phlegmatic men, he imbibed strong and lasting prejudices; and whilst he did not stoop to revenge, he was unable to shake off unfavourable impressions of others, whether founded or unfounded. When to these qualities we add the facts that he could not bear contradiction, his temper being so peevish to a degree, that he could not bring himself to love the English, and that he preferred the retirement of the closet to the brilliancy of the ball-room or banquet, it might be easily foretold, that with good intentions, possessed of sincerity, of religious belief, and of valour, William and his court would become eminently distasteful to the English people. The Queen endeavoured to the utmost of her power to dissipate the disgust which she could not but perceive to exist in the public mind, since the court was, in great measure, deserted. But as she interfered not in public concerns, and as there was, on that account, little to be gained from her influence, her vivacity, and the redundancy of her conversation, (in which she delighted,) did not attract the gay and the interested, and her efforts were fruitless. A few days after his accession, William, notwithstanding the advice of his friends, took refuge from that society which he so much despised and disliked, in the retirement of Hampton Court, which he left only to attend the Privy council on stated days; and the people soon found, to their infinite discontent, that it was the design of the sovereign to add to this old and irregular building new tenements, upon an expensive and magnificent scale, for his own and for the Queen’s apartments. Thus retired from the gaze of his metropolitan subjects, the King did little to conciliate their affections, as far as the cultivation of those arts extended, which his predecessors had patronised. For his introduction of the Dutch style of gardening into England, the nation has little cause to be grateful. Yet gardening was the only art which seemed to afford him any satisfaction.