and malignity, far exceed any thing that
our age has produced, she was not often mentioned with severity. Indeed
she sometimes expressed her surprise at finding that libellers who
respected nothing else respected her name. God, she said, knew where
her weakness lay. She was too sensitive to abuse and calumny; He had
mercifully spared her a trial which was beyond her strength; and the
best return which she could make to Him was to discountenance all
malicious reflections on the characters of others. Assured that she
possessed her husband's entire confidence and affection, she turned the
edge of his sharp speeches sometimes by soft and sometimes by playful
answers, and employed all the influence which she derived from her many
pleasing qualities to gain the hearts of the people for him. [58]

If she had long continued to assemble round her the best society of
London, it is probable that her kindness and courtesy would have done
much to efface the unfavourable impression made by his stern and frigid
demeanour. Unhappily his physical infirmities made it impossible for him
to reside at Whitehall. The air of Westminster, mingled with the fog
of the river which in spring tides overflowed the courts of his palace,
with the smoke of seacoal from two hundred thousand chimneys, and with
the fumes of all the filth which was then suffered to accumulate in
the streets, was insupportable to him; for his lungs were weak, and his
sense of smell exquisitely keen. His constitutional asthma made rapid
progress. His physicians pronounced it impossible that he could live
to the end of the year. His face was so ghastly that he could hardly be
recognised. Those who had to transact business with him were shocked to
hear him gasping for breath, and coughing till the tears ran down his
cheeks. [59] His mind, strong as it was, sympathized with his body. His
judgment was indeed as clear as ever. But there was, during some
months, a perceptible relaxation of that energy by which he had been
distinguished. Even his Dutch friends whispered that he was not the man
that he had been at the Hague. [60] It was absolutely necessary that he
should quit London. He accordingly took up his residence in the purer
air of Hampton Court. That mansion, begun by the magnificent Wolsey, was
a fine specimen of the architecture which flourished in England under
the first Tudors; but the apartments were not, according to the notions
of the seventeenth century, well fitte