At the period of which we are now treating, Marlborough was the most powerful personage in England: by his wife, the Queen's favourite, he ruled the household; by the Whigs, become his friends, parliament and the ministry; by his rank and his military popularity, the army; by Prince Eugene, his comrade in arms, the councils of Austria; by his old friend Heinsius, the States-General; by the weight of his name, his conduct and address, the suppleness of his character, Prussia and the princes of the Empire. It was he who raised their regiments, who regulated their subventions, who appeased their quarrels. He was the head and arm of the coalition. As potent as Cromwell, more of a king than William III.; without affection or hatred, he justified the saying of Machiavelli: "The universe belongs to the phlegmatic." We will now revert to his no less celebrated wife, who, as Lady Churchill and Duchess of Marlborough, so long and wholly swayed the mind and ruled the court of Queen Anne. Brought up in such close intimacy with the Princess, Lady Churchill had assumed from childhood an absolute ascendancy over her mind. Anne was indolent and taciturn; she delighted in the lively talk of her companion and bosom friend, and loved her in spite of her haughty temperament, to which her own easy disposition yielded without offering the slightest resistance. Married to a sullen and insignificant husband, whose sole delight was centred in a crapulous love of the bottle; she had lost her only son during his minority--had seen her father, James II. dethroned, her brother, the Chevalier St. George, proscribed, and, to the exclusion of that well-beloved brother, she was compelled to leave her crown to a stranger--the Elector George of Hanover, for whom she felt an invincible aversion. Anne confided all her griefs to her favourite Mistress of the Robes, and by degrees an ardent affection for her inseparable companion, which had in it all the delicate tenderness of feminine friendship, sprung up in the Princess's bosom. Such was the strength of the attachment that it was the desire of the Princess that all distinction prescribed by etiquette should be waived. She required that in their epistolary correspondence they should treat each other as equals, under the assumed names of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman. Lady Churchill chose the latter, which would be, she said, the emblem of her "frank, open temper." Under these assumed names they wrote frequently to each other to communicate their sentiments of joy, anguish, hope or fear, according to the events of the day, and gave themselves up unrestrictedly to the momentary impulse of their hearts.