JAMES THE SECOND.
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government; but be spoke -with sharpness and scorn of the chap.bigotry of those who thought episcopal ordination essential to 168T ’_ 1 ■a Christian society. He had no scruple about the vestmentsand gestures prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer.
But he avowed that he should like the rites of the Churchof England better if they reminded him less of the rites of theChurch of Rome. He had been heard to utter an ominousgrowl when first he saw, in his wife’s private chapel, an altardecked after the Anglican fashion, and had not seemed wellpleased at finding her with Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity inher hands. *
He therefore long observed the contest between the ? ia [ eel ~English factions attentively, but without feeling a strong wardspredilection for either side. Nor in truth did he ever, to the E “ sland ‘end of his life, become either a Whig or a Tory. He wantedthat which is the common groundwork of both characters;for he never became an Englishman. He saved England, itis true; but he never loved her, and he never obtained herlove. To him she was always a land of exile, visited withreluctance and quitted with delight. Even when he renderedto her those services of which, at this day, we feel the happyeffects, her welfare was not his chief object. Whatever ? is feel *patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. There was the wards *stately tomb where slept the great politician whose blood, ® n j landwhose name, whose temperament, and whose genius he had France,inherited. There the very sound of his title was a spell whichhad, through three generations, called forth the affectionateenthusiasm of boors and artisans. The Dutch language wasthe language of his nursery. Among the Dutch gentry he hadchosen his early friends. The amusements, the architecture,the landscape of his native country, had taken hold on hisheart. To her he turned with constant fondness from aprouder and fairer rival. In the gallery of Whitehall he pinedfor the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and neverwas so happy as when he could quit the magnificence ofWindsor for his far humbler seat at Loo. During his splendid
* Dr. Hooper’s MS. narrative, published in the Appendix to LordDungannon’s Life of William.
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