Stuarts

ANNE 211
and, I think, the most brilliant work of the artist with which I am acquainted.
The great Duke is in a red velvet coat, crossed by the blue sash of the
Garter, and wears a large lace cravat and a light periwig of the period. He
has reached middle life and has a double chin. His eyes are greyish, his
features regular and well modelled.
There is a personage who comes upon the stage during the reign of
Anne of whom some great historians take no notice whatsoever, yet others
find in his brief life and premature death much of pathetic interest ; " a
more heart-rending episode," says one sympathetic writer, "is not in history
than the lying-in-state of the little body of the Duke of Gloucester in West-
minster Hall. So many hopes went to the grave with him, so many more
arose and came to life again when his little life was over." For something
like twenty years did Anne bear children in quick succession, so that the
pangs and cares of maternity must have formed no small part of her life
history. Yet none of her many babies survived save one, born a year after
Mary and William came to the throne.
The little Duke of Gloucester, though sickly at first, lived to be ten years
of age. He was, as he looks in Dahl's picture of him and his mother, a
quaint, precocious child, but lovable, " perverse and delightful, not always easy
to manage, constantly asking the most awkward questions, full of ambition
and energy and spirit and foolishness." He had a little regiment of boys of
his own age whom he delighted to drill, and when he went to Windsor
(which William, preferring Hampton Court, had assigned to Anne), four boys
were fetched from Eton to be his playmates. When but seven we see him
installed a Knight of the Garter, and addressing his uncle with such
protestations of loyalty as these : "I, your Majesty's most faithful subject j
had rather lose my life in your Majesty's cause than in any man's else ; and
I hope it will not be long ere you conquer France."
Bishop Burnet, who was his tutor, has left a pleasant picture of the boy
when he was nine, and Marlborough was recalled from disgrace to be made
Governor to the young Prince. "Teach him," said William to the Duke "to
be like yourself, and he will not want accomplishments."
But illness seized the poor child amidst the rejoicings of his tenth
birthday, and in a few days the promising career was closed for ever.
His mother, Burnet says, "attended on him during his sickness with
great tenderness, but with a grave composure that amazed all who saw
it : she bore his death with a resignation and piety that were indeed