service they were not delighted in. The
_old soldiers_ had little regard for their _new officers_; and it
quickly appeared, by the select and affected mixtures of sullen and
melancholic parties of officers and soldiers."--And then the chancellor
of human nature adds, "And in this _melancholic and perplexed condition_
the king and all his hopes stood, _when he appeared most gay and
exalted, and wore a pleasantness in his face_ that became him, and
looked like as full an assurance of his security as was possible to put
on." It is imagined that Louis the Eighteenth would be the ablest
commentator on this piece of secret history, and add another _twin_ to
Pierre de Saint Julien's "Gemelles ou Pareiles," an old French treatise
of histories which resemble one another: a volume so scarce, that I have
never met with it.

Burnet informs us, that when Queen Mary held the administration of
government during the absence of William, it was imagined by some, that
as "every woman of sense loved to be meddling, they concluded that she
had but a small portion of it, because she lived so abstracted from all
affairs." He praises her exemplary behaviour; "regular in her devotions,
much in her closet, read a great deal, was often busy at work, and
seemed to employ her time and thoughts in anything rather than matters
of state. Her conversation was lively and obliging; everything in her
was easy and natural. The king told the Earl of Shrewsbury, that though
he could not hit on the right way of pleasing England, he was confident
she would, and that we should all be very happy under her." Such is the
miniature of the queen which Burnet offers; we see nothing but her
tranquillity, her simplicity, and her carelessness, amidst the important
transactions passing under her eye; but I lift the curtain from a larger
picture. The distracted state amidst which the queen lived, the
vexations, the secret sorrows, the agonies and the despair of Mary in
the absence of William, nowhere appear in history! and as we see,
escaped the ken of the Scotch bishop! They were reserved for the
curiosity and instruction of posterity; and were found by Dalrymple, in
the letters of Mary to her husband, in King William's cabinet. It will
be well to place under the eye of the reader the suppressed cries of
this afflicted queen at the time when "everything in her was so easy and
natural, employing her time and thoughts in anything rather than matters
of state--often busy at