Those graces of manner which, in Marlborough, are said to have disarmed his disappointed suitors, and to have conciliated men of all pursuits and all stations, proceeded from the kindliness of a happy temper, on which the habit and necessity of pleasing engrafted a dignified courtesy, of a higher quality than mere good breeding. His respect for himself and for others appeared alike in his conduct to his soldiers, and in his forbearance to the factious courtiers who forsook him when, on his dismissal from his employments in the reign of Anne, to know him was to know disgrace. He was, in the thorough sense of the phrase, as far as outward deportment was concerned, the kindly, high-bred English gentleman. Upon this fair picture some shadows must appear. As a man of strict principle, and as a statesman of unsullied integrity, the character of Marlborough cannot so readily be delineated, as in his domestic sphere. The principle of self-advancement grew with his growth, and soiled those beautiful attributes of a nature so brave and benignant, that we are unwilling to believe he could indulge a selfish passion, or even cherish a weakness. From the days when he was a page in the court of the second Charles, permitting, to say the least, the disgraceful mediation of the Duchess of Cleveland, to the hour when, for the last time, he carried the sword of state on New Year’s day before George the First, the ruling passion of Marlborough was gain—gain of patronage, of money, of fame, of power. For patronage he forbore to spurn the loose preference of a debased woman; for objects of less immediate acquisition he deliberately abandoned the interests of a sovereign and of a master at whose hands he had received unbounded favours. But it may be pleaded, that in deserting the cause of James the Second he adopted, in accordance with the first men of the day, the only measures by which his country could be rescued from the tyranny and bigotry of that wretched ruler. The plea may hold good, but no similar excuse can palliate his resuming a correspondence with the exiled King, whose cause he had upon such just grounds relinquished.