the report would be confirmed. He
therefore intreated her to make her first appearance with an air of
cheerfulness. Her heart, she said, was far indeed from cheerful; but she
had done her best; and, as she was afraid of not sustaining well a
part which was uncongenial to her feelings, she had overacted it. Her
deportment was the subject of reams of scurrility in prose and verse: it
lowered her in the opinion of some whose esteem she valued; nor did the
world know, till she was beyond the reach of praise and censure,
that the conduct which had brought on her the reproach of levity
and insensibility was really a signal instance of that perfect
disinterestedness and selfdevotion of which man seems to be incapable,
but which is sometimes found in woman. [673]

On the morning of Wednesday, the thirteenth of February, the court of
Whitehall and all the neighbouring streets were filled with gazers. The
magnificent Banqueting House, the masterpiece of Inigo, embellished
by masterpieces of Rubens, had been prepared for a great ceremony. The
walls were lined by the yeomen of the guard. Near the northern door, on
the right hand, a large number of Peers had assembled. On the left were
the Commons with their Speaker, attended by the mace. The southern door
opened: and the Prince and Princess of Orange, side by side, entered,
and took their place under the canopy of state.

Both Houses approached bowing low. William and Mary advanced a few
steps. Halifax on the right, and Powle on the left, stood forth; and
Halifax spoke. The Convention, he said, had agreed to a resolution which
he prayed Their Highnesses to hear. They signified their assent; and the
clerk of the House of Lords read, in a loud voice, the Declaration of
Right. When he had concluded, Halifax, in the name of all the Estates of
the Realm, requested the Prince and Princess to accept the crown.

William, in his own name and in that of his wife, answered that the
crown was, in their estimation, the more valuable because it was
presented to them as a token of the confidence of the nation. "We
thankfully accept," he said, "what you have offered us." Then, for
himself, he assured them that the laws of England, which he had once
already vindicated, should be the rules of his conduct, that it should
be his study to promote the welfare of the kingdom, and that, as to
the means of doing so, he should constantly recur to the advice of the
Houses, and should be disposed to trust t