Flanders, and his next against the bastions of Tippoo, and the Mahratta horse, in Hindostan. Shortly after his return occurred that event which is of great importance in the lives of all men to whom it happens—marriage; but which to the young soldier was pregnant, for both good and evil, with immense influence upon the whole of his future career, and also upon his personal character. He married the beautiful lady in attendance on the Princess Anne—Miss Sarah Jennings, of spotless purity of character, and like himself, of an ancient and ruined Royalist family. He was then in his twenty-eighth, she in her eighteenth year: and, to anticipate for a moment, after a fond union of forty-four years' duration, he died in his seventy-second year; she, twenty-two years afterwards, in her eighty-fourth! Want of fortune for some time delayed their union, which, however, an enthusiastic declaration of his passion at length accelerated. She married, in the young and already celebrated general, a man of not only transcendent capacity, but gentle and generous feelings, and a magnanimity which displayed itself on a thousand trying occasions. Their hearts were passionately true to each other, through every moment of their protracted union. Her fair fame was never, even in those days of impunity, tarnished by the momentary breath of slander. She possessed great talents, but was also of a haughty ambitious temper, bent upon aggrandisement, and grievously avaricious; and to the ascendency over her husband, which she maintained unabated from first to last, may perhaps be attributed the development of those features in his character which have excited the grief of honourable posterity, and afforded scope for the foulest misrepresentations of his conduct and motives to contemporary and succeeding traducers, rabid with the virus of political hostility. Though impatient to quit the topic, but only for the present, we shall here advert to Marlborough's inexcusable conduct towards James II., for the purpose of citing a passage in the Duchess's own Vindication, on which Mr Macaulay relies, as conclusively demonstrating the mercenary motives influencing Marlborough. That passage, however, does not necessarily sustain the imputation made by Mr Macaulay, though it may justify a suspicion of the sort of motives which she might have been in the habit of urging on her confiding husband:—"It were evident to all the world that, as things were carried on by King James II., everybody, sooner or later, must be ruined who would not become a Roman Catholic. This consideration made me very well pleased at the Prince of Orange's undertaking to rescue me from such slavery."[12]

That Marlborough should be in high favour with William III. may be easily conceived; for he not only essentially facilitated the enterprise of William, but actively supported him in all those critical measures necessary to consolidate his power and strengthen his novel and splendid position. He acquitted himself so admirably in the Netherlands in 1689, in Ireland in 1690, and again in Flanders in 1691, where he served under William himself, that he was on the way to almost unbounded power with William. But behold! to the consternation of the whole country, almost immediately after his return with William, early in 1692, he was suddenly arrested and committed to the Tower, on a charge of high treason, in having entered into an association for bringing about the restoration of James II.! As the charge, however, could not be legally substantiated—and was indeed proved to have been supported by fabricated evidence[13]—he was liberated, but not restored for a considerable time to his former position, there being good reason for believing him, at all events, no stranger to a clandestine correspondence with the exiled family. Well, indeed, may Lord Mahon lament his "perseverance in these deplorable intrigues."[14] We concur with Mr Alison in his remark, that, with all the light subsequently thrown on Marlborough's history, upon this portion of it there still rests a mystery: and moreover, within five years afterwards he was completely reinstated in William's confidence; and in June 1698 the King positively intrusted his recently-discarded servant with the all-important function of tutor to the young Duke of Gloucester, William's nephew, and heir-presumptive to the throne!—saying, on apprising him of the appointment, "My lord, make my nephew to resemble yourself, and he will be everything which I can desire!" When William's stern and guarded character is borne in mind, this transaction becomes exceedingly remarkable. Marlborough continued ever after to rise higher and higher in the confidence of his sovereign, who thrice named him one of the Lords Justiciars, to whom the administration of affairs in this country was intrusted, during William's absence in Holland; and also appointed him, in 1701, ambassador-extraordinary at the Hague, and commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in Flanders. This double appointment, observes Mr Alison, in effect invested Marlborough with the entire direction of affairs civil and military, so far as England was concerned, on the Continent. And even yet further, previously to his unexpected death shortly afterwards, William enjoined on his successor, the Princess Anne, that she should intrust Marlborough with the supreme direction of the affairs of the kingdom, both civil and military! Three days after her accession, accordingly, she made him a Knight of the Garter, Captain-general of the English forces at home and abroad, Master-general of the Ordnance, and Plenipotentiary at the Hague; Lady Marlborough, Mistress of the Robes and Ranger of Windsor Forest; and her two daughters Ladies of the Bedchamber. He instantly went over to the Netherlands to assume the command of the Allied army, sixty thousand strong, then lying before Nimeguen, threatened by a superior French force; and, after displaying infinite skill, succeeded in constructing that famous Alliance which was soon to work such wonders in Europe. Here commences the lustrous decennium of which we have spoken; and, most fortunately, here also, as we have seen, commence the Despatches so recently recovered. Here he became invested with that unsullied and imperishable glory, which dazzled all eyes but those of his rancorous and inveterate detractors; who were probably influenced not only by venomous jealousy, the canker of little minds, but also, in no slight degree, by his having extinguished all their fond hopes of his co-operation in restoring the discarded Stuarts.

From this point Mr Alison starts brilliantly on his course of chequered and exciting narrative, military and political; revelling amidst marches, counter-marches, feints, surprises, stratagems, sieges, battles; intercalating vivid glimpses of domestic tenderness, grief, and joy; then the plots and counter-plots of tortuous faction and intrigue, in the senate, in the cabinet, and even in the palace. And with all this, the interest ever centres in one object—

"In shape and gesture proudly eminent,"

John Duke of Marlborough: not because the author appears to wish it, but because of his faithfulness; he has almost unconsciously exhibited his hero, equally whether off his guard or on his guard, manifesting the full power and intensity of a grand character