cynically at defiance, and distressed throughout his life by bodily ailments which never troubled the Corsican's iron frame. Nor in what has been written in criticism of the Whig legend would I for a moment be suspected of undervaluing the debt which Englishmen owe to William of Orange. It is not necessary to exalt him into a divinely inspired progenitor of the British Constitution in order to recognise fully the greatness of the services which he rendered to it. He was not "Father of the Constitution" in the sense in which the poet is the father of his poem, or the philosopher of his theory; but assuredly he was so in the sense in which we say that a child has found a "second father" in an upright guardian, who, while not, it may be, comprehending his character, or in sympathy with his spirit, or foreseeing his future, has yet been his vigilant protector through the perils of childhood, and has accounted for his patrimony to the uttermost farthing. That William stood in this relation to our modern English polity throughout his too short reign, and that he loyally discharged its obligations, is indisputable. The virtues which enabled him to do so were mainly three, which are essential to all good and faithful guardianship, whether of children or constitutions--the virtues of good sense, self-restraint, and honesty. And the greatest of these three is honesty. William's practical wisdom always told him the moment when to yield in a struggle with his Parliament; and when that moment arrived his naturally passionate temper never failed to answer to the rein. But even at those moments there would often have been an evil alternative open to him, from which the fundamental integrity of his nature always turned aside. He scrupled not to use all the arts of political "management" which were sanctioned by the lax morality of his day; he exerted his prerogative freely to gain his ends; but he knew that the compact between him and his people was that in the last resort the will of the people should prevail, and this compact he never attempted either to violate or to evade. Here he was as emphatically a _Rè Galantuomo_, a "King Honest-man," as was Victor Emmanuel himself. "Hos ante effigies majorum pone tuorum, Præcedant ipsas illi, te consule, virgas." Rulers who have earned this name may justly rank it, if only for its rarity, above every other title of honour--even though, themselves the creators or regenerators of nations, they can look back upon the splendid achievements of the Counts of Nassau, or the long ancestral glories of the House of Savoy. FOOTNOTES: [23] That Louis intended it to mean this is pretty obvious from his remark about the effacement of the Pyrenees. [24] The nature of the impediment lives for history in the Jacobite toast which so grimly reflects the brutal passions of the time--"To the little gentleman in black velvet that works underground." THE END