Stuarts

JAMES II 197
his subjects to his perfidy as a king, and his dissoluteness as an individual.
When we look upon the features of James II., as here rendered, we can
realise the cruelty of disposition which made all the abject entreaties of the
unfortunate Monmouth unavailing. The cold glance of those eyes does but
reflect the icy heart.
According to Macaulay, there is a name which, wherever the Scottish
race is settled on the face of the globe, is mentioned with a peculiar energy
of hatred. The name is John Graham of Claverhouse.
He was, according to the Whig historian, "rapacious and profane, of
violent temper and of obdurate heart," characteristics which the almost
feminine beauty of his face in the fine picture included in this work would
seem to belie. The original was shown at the Stuart Exhibition at the
New Gallery ; it is by an unknown artist, and represents him in armour.
It belongs to Miss Leslie-Melville. The face is that of a strikingly hand-
some young man. There is a small drawing of him in Indian ink in the
Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It is somewhat remarkable that the man
who raised the Highland clans for James, and whose death at Killiecrankie is
so dramatically described in the pages of Macaulay, saved the life of William
of Orange at Seneff.
Relative to portraits of James II. and his consorts, that of Anne Hyde
at Hampton Court, to which reference has been already made, does not
represent her the homely featured woman one might expect to find. Although
her dignity is evident, she has not the air of being happy, nor can she be
called beautiful ; but Mary Beatrice Eleanor d'Este, daughter of the Duke
of Modena, and the second wife of James, was undoubtedly a handsome
creature, even at the age of fourteen, when she became Duchess of York.
Her marriage with him was much against her inclination, for James was
more than old enough to be her father, and "it was not," we read, "with-
out floods of tears that she yielded herself to her mother's commands, which
she had never before ventured to dispute." Lord Peterborough, who was
the Duke's envoy, thus describes his future mistress and the unwilling object
of his mission to Italy : " She was tall and admirably shaped ; her com-
plexion was of the last degree of fairness, her hair black as jet, so were her
eye-brows and her eyes, but the latter so full of light and sweetness as that
they did dazzle and charm too . . . her face was of the most graceful oval."
Her finely chiselled features may be seen in the miniature by an unknown
artist now preserved in the Windsor Library. She ascended the throne