Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

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HAMPTON COURT
The " Deliverer," William of Orange, was for so
long, andinsome quarters still is, so popular a hero,that
any consideration of his greatness may claim interest.
That he was placed in a position which caused him
to represent a great epoch of advance in the progress
of the English nation — that the important movement
with which his name is associated,if not " glorious,"
was certainly beneficial, no one will deny. Whether
circumstances have not given him a place in English
histories and a fame among English writers of which
he himself was hardly worthy, may be a question at
least worthy of discussion. Nor is the discussion
irrelevant here. Hampton Court is so thoroughly,
as we see it now, the great English memorial of the
Dutch king, that we may well pause to consider, as we
walk through its rooms, or as we stop before thebombastic
allegory of Kneller in the " Presence Chamber,"
what manner of man he was. What did his greatness
consist in ? Was he a hero ?
It is difficult to disentangle the man from his
surroundings. The greatnessof the men with whom he
was brought into contact, the importance of the crisis
in European history in which he mingled, would themselves
invest with interest the biography of a prince
opposed to Louis XIV. But it would be difficult for
the most bigoted Jacobite to have denied that William
of Orange had much more than this borrowed greatness.
The romantic history of his early life, the
difficulties with which he had to contend, the position
to which he raised himself, and the actual success