ip as warm and pure as any that ancient
or modern history records. The descendants of Bentinck still preserve
many letters written by William to their ancestor: and it is not too
much to say that no person who has not studied those letters can form
a correct notion of the Prince's character. He whom even his admirers
generally accounted the most distant and frigid of men here forgets
all distinctions of rank, and pours out all his thoughts with the
ingenuousness of a schoolboy. He imparts without reserve secrets of
the highest moment. He explains with perfect simplicity vast designs
affecting all the governments of Europe. Mingled with his communications
on such subjects are other communications of a very different, but
perhaps not of a less interesting kind. All his adventures, all his
personal feelings, his long runs after enormous stags, his carousals
on St. Hubert's day, the growth of his plantations, the failure of his
melons, the state of his stud, his wish to procure an easy pad nag for
his wife, his vexation at learning that one of his household, after
ruining a girl of good family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea
sickness, his coughs, his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude
for the divine protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit
himself to the divine will after a disaster, are described with an
amiable garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreet
and sedate statesman of the age. Still more remarkable is the careless
effusion of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes
in his friend's domestic felicity. When an heir is born to Bentinck, "he
will live, I hope," says William, "to be as good a fellow as you are;
and, if I should have a son, our children will love each other, I hope,
as we have done." [211] Through life he continues to regard the
little Bentincks with paternal kindness. He calls them by endearing
diminutives: he takes charge of them in their father's absence, and,
though vexed at being forced to refuse them any pleasure, will not
suffer them to go on a hunting party, where there would be risk of a
push from a stag's horn, or to sit up late at a riotous supper. [212]
When their mother is taken ill during her husband's absence, William,
in the midst of business of the highest moment, finds time to send off
several expresses in one day with short notes containing intelligence of
her state. [213] On one occasion, when she is pronounced out