That the Duchess should entertain peculiar feelings towards this singular man, feelings which led her to receive meekly from him counsels which few others would have presumed to offer, is not a matter of surprise. Those who have lost a tenderly beloved child, know with what an enduring regard even the lowest menials who have shared our offices of affection, and hours of affliction, are naturally considered; how much more must the instructor who formed the mind of a promising son, be endeared to the parents from whom it had pleased the Creator to summon away those early budding virtues, the combination of mental and corporeal superiority! The Duchess, it appears, was so much affected upon her first interview with Dr. Hare, after the death of her son, that he thought it necessary to write an apology to her grace for his too early intrusion into her presence.[355] Eventually the Duchess appears to have derived considerable comfort from the frequent correspondence of Dr. Hare, who accompanied the Duke of Marlborough in several of his campaigns. After the decease of his distinguished patron, Dr. Hare performed an important and friendly duty to the widowed Duchess. He gave her sincere and disinterested counsels; and in so doing evinced his gratitude to the memory of one who loved, with all her faults, the irascible and discontented woman whom he had left to buffet with storms of her own creation. Not all her possessions, nor her rank, nor the acknowledged purity of her conduct in an immoral age, nor even the influence of her husband’s great name, could procure the Duchess mental repose, nor ensure to her good-will. She lived, to imitate her own military simile, in constant hostilities. Nor was the garrison of her home faithful and friendly. Mutinies broke out, conspiracies were hourly framed against her dominion, and foreign auxiliaries called in to quell her power and abate her pride. Dr. Hare alone, of her surviving friends, as far as her published correspondence enables us to judge, found courage to point out to his warlike friend, that the sources of these skirmishes existed in her own “ill-grounded suspicions and violent passions.” With what candour and right-minded gratitude the Duchess received these admonitions, has already been remarked.