Stuarts

WILLIAM AND MARY 205
on the surface easily pleased, excited by novelty, and delighted to come
back as mistress to the high places which, in her youth, had embodied all
ideas of splendour and greatness to her mind. Both friends and foes have
remarked upon her pleasure in taking possession of Whitehall, her eager
rush, on the morning after her arrival, to examine everything, and delighted
appropriation of the apartments which her father and his family had so
recently left."
Although Mary lived but thirty-two years, Mrs. Jameson mentions one
hundred and fifty distinct engravings of her. At Welbeck is preserved an
interesting relic, a ring, which she herself thus describes, "given me by the
Prince three days after we wear married, which, being the first thing he
gave me, I have ever had a perticular esteem for it, for when I was to be
crowned I had it made big enough for ye finger for ye occasion, but by
mistake it was put on ye King's finger and I had to put on (his)." This
account is in Mary's handwriting. The ring is a narrow gold hoop set with
a ruby and a diamond. Macaulay concludes his History by a passage in
which he relates that when the remains of William III. were laid out, a
small piece of black silk ribbon was found next to his skin. It contained a
gold ring and a lock of the hair of Mary.
William's features in later life, his broken nose, dark eyes, and black
eyebrows, his brown skin, and his huge wig are all familiar, and numerous
paintings of him exist in our public galleries. Mrs. Morrison's fine picture
of him at Fonthill makes him really handsome.