lest of
minds, She had little of that tact which is the characteristic talent of
her sex; she was far too violent to flatter or to dissemble: but, by
a rare chance, she had fallen in with a nature on which dictation and
contradiction acted as philtres. In this grotesque friendship all
the loyalty, the patience, the selfdevotion, was on the side of the
mistress. The whims, the haughty airs, the fits of ill temper, were on
the side of the waiting woman.

Nothing is more curious than the relation in which the two ladies stood
to Mr. Freeman, as they called Marlborough. In foreign countries people
knew in general that Anne was governed by the Churchills. They knew also
that the man who appeared to enjoy so large a share of her favour was
not only a great soldier and politician, but also one of the finest
gentlemen of his time, that his face and figure were eminently handsome,
his temper at once bland and resolute, his manners at once engaging
and noble. Nothing could be more natural than that graces and
accomplishments like his should win a female heart. On the Continent
therefore many persons imagined that he was Anne's favoured lover; and
he was so described in contemporary French libels which have long been
forgotten. In England this calumny never found credit even with the
vulgar, and is nowhere to be found even in the most ribald doggrel that
was sung about our streets. In truth the Princess seems never to have
been guilty of a thought inconsistent with her conjugal vows. To her
Marlborough, with all his genius and his valour, his beauty and his
grace, was nothing but the husband of her friend. Direct power over
Her Royal Highness he had none. He could influence her only by the
instrumentality of his wife; and his wife was no passive instrument.
Though it is impossible to discover, in any thing that she ever did,
said or wrote, any indication of superior understanding, her fierce
passions and strong will enabled her often to rule a husband who was
born to rule grave senates and mighty armies. His courage, that courage
which the most perilous emergencies of war only made cooler and more
steady, failed him when he had to encounter his Sarah's ready tears
and voluble reproaches, the poutings of her lip and the tossings of her
head. History exhibits to us few spectacles more remarkable than that
of a great and wise man, who, when he had combined vast and profound
schemes of policy, could carry them into effect only by indu