reason to believe that a few months would dissolve the fragile
tie which bound up that feeble body with that ardent and
unconquerable soul. If Lewis could succeed in preserving peace
for a short time, it was probable that all his vast designs would
be securely accomplished. Just at this crisis, the most important
crisis of his life, his pride and his passions hurried him into
an error, which undid all that forty years of victory and
intrigue had done, which produced the dismemberment of the
kingdom of his grandson, and brought invasion, bankruptcy, and
famine on his own.

James the Second died at St. Germains. Lewis paid him a farewell
visit, and was so much moved by the solemn parting, and by the
grief of the exiled queen, that, losing sight of all
considerations of policy, and actuated, as it should seem, merely
by compassion and by a not ungenerous vanity, he acknowledged the
Prince of Wales as King of England.

The indignation which the Castilians had felt when they heard
that three foreign powers had undertaken to regulate the Spanish
succession was nothing to the rage with which the English learned
that their good neighbour had taken the trouble to provide them
with a king. Whigs and Tories joined in condemning the
proceedings of the French Court. The cry for war was raised by
the city of London, and echoed and re-echoed from every corner of
the realm. William saw that his time was come. Though his wasted
and suffering body could hardly move without support, his spirit
was as energetic and resolute as when, at twenty-three, he bade
defiance to the combined forces of England and France. He left
the Hague, where he had been engaged in negotiating with the