Whatever was Mary’s character and conduct as a daughter and a sister, she was certainly the most devoted and exemplary of royal wives. Though, in accordance with the atrocious practice of sovereigns, her husband kept a mistress in the palace, yet she had the good sense to submit to his commanding intellect. John Wesley says, she “was in her person tall and well-proportioned, with an oval visage, lively eyes, agreeable features, a mild aspect, and an air of dignity. Her apprehension was clear, her memory tenacious, and her judgment solid. She was a zealous Protestant, scrupulously exact in all the duties of devotion, of an even temper, and of a calm and mild conversation.” She was excellently qualified to be the head of the English court. She was English by birth, and English also in her tastes and feelings. Her face was handsome, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her manners affable and graceful. Her understanding, though very imperfectly cultivated, was quick. Feminine wit sparkled in her conversation; and her letters were so well expressed that they deserved to be well spelt. She took much pleasure in the lighter kinds of literature, and did something towards bringing books into fashion among ladies of quality. The stainless purity of her private life, and the strict attention which she paid to her religious duties, were the more respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal as much as vice. Her charities were munificent and judicious, and though she made no ostentatious display of them, it was known that she retrenched from her own state in order to relieve Protestants whom persecution had driven from France and Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets of London.[95] ----- Footnote 95: Macaulay. -----