As a wife and as a mother, the Duchess stands not pre-eminently high. She was born for the public, and to the public she was devoted. Her sentiments of patriotism, however commendable, would have been well exchanged for duty to her husband, and patient affection for her children. Her gross partiality to some of her grandchildren, in preference to others, revealed the source of her misfortunes as a mother. Wherever such a noxious fungus as injustice grows within the domestic sphere, peace and affection take their leave. Hence those divisions which the possession of a large fortune in the hands of a family entails upon the junior branches, among whom there is not the foundation of a happy confidence. The precise sources of those irritating bickerings does not appear in the published correspondence relating to the domestic concerns of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough; but it is too probable that the miserable dissensions between his wife and daughters, which embittered the Duke’s life, originated in jealousies on pecuniary matters. In what is commonly termed purity of morals, the character of the Duchess of Marlborough has descended to posterity without a stain. Whatever direction the calumnies of the day may have taken in that respect, their influence was ephemeral. No historian of respectability has dared to attach a blemish to the purity of her lofty deportment. She esteemed the probity, and she was powerfully influenced by the sterling sense, of Lord Godolphin; but her attachment was in no degree greater than that of the Lord Treasurer’s affectionate friend, her husband. No similar aspersion with respect to any other individual appears in the lampoons of the day. In a moral sense, in so far as it comprises the purity of a woman’s conduct, the Duchess is therefore unimpeached. She was in that respect worthy of being the wife of the great hero who worshipped her image in absence, with the romantic devotion of love, unabated even by indifference. But when we speak of female excellence, to that one all-important ingredient must be added others, without which a mother, a wife, and a friend, cannot be said to fulfil her vocation. Sweetness, forbearance, humanity, must grace that deportment, in the absence of which virtue extorts with difficulty her need of praise. The lofty temper which could scarcely be restrained in the presence of the staid and decorous Queen Mary, expanded into acts of fury, when time and unlimited dominion over her sovereign and her husband had soured that impetuous spirit into arrogance.