spread to the palace, and reached the young and blooming Queen.  She received the intimation of her danger with true greatness of soul.  She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber, every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the small pox, should instantly leave Kensington House.  She locked herself up during a short time in her closet, burned some papers, arranged others, and then calmly awaited her fate.

During two or three days there were many alternations of hope and fear.  The physicians contradicted each other and themselves in a way which sufficiently indicates the state of medical science in that age.  The disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was spotted fever; it was erysipelas.  At one moment some symptoms, which in truth showed that the case was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returning health.  At length all doubt was over.  Radcliffe’s opinion proved to be right.  It was plain that the Queen was sinking under small pox of the most malignant type.

All this time William remained night and day near her bedside.  The little couch on which he slept when he was in camp was spread for him in the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it.  The sight of his misery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart.  Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose serene fortitude had been the wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of old sailors on that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks of sand on the coast of Goree.  The very domestics saw the tears running unchecked down that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been disturbed by any triumph or by any defeat.  Several of the prelates were in attendance.  The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of grief.  “There is no hope,” he cried.  “I was the happiest man on earth; and I am the most miserable.  She had no fault; none; you knew her well; but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness.”  Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying.  He was afraid that such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, and began with much management.  But she soon caught his meaning, and, with that gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame, submitted herself to the will of God.  She called for a small cabinet in which her most important papers were locked up, gave orders that, as soon as she was no more, it should be delivered to the King, and then dismissed worldly cares from her mind.  She received the Eucharist, and repeated her part of the office with unimpaired memory and intelligence, though in a feeble voice.  She observed that Tenison had been long standing at her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which was habitual to her, faltered out her commands that he would sit down, and repeated them till he obeyed.  After she had received the sacrament she sank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken words.  Twice she tried to take a last