Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that Duchess Sarah represented a nobler idea and grander national policy than that into which her mistress was betrayed. Her later intercourse with Anne was little more than a persecution; and yet what she aimed at was better than the dishonoring and selfish policy by which she was finally conquered. The Marlboroughs were not of those who pressed the German heir upon the queen, or would have compelled her to receive his visit, which she passionately declared she could not bear; but they were determined, all treasonable correspondence notwithstanding, upon the maintenance of the Protestant succession, upon the firm establishment of English independence and greatness,--those objects which alone had justified the Revolution and made the stern chapter of William’s life and reign anything better than an incidental episode. Though he had been false to William, as everybody was false in those days, and had lain so long in the cold shade of his displeasure, Marlborough had, in his whole magnificent career, been little more than the executor of William’s plans, the fulfiller of his policy. The duchess, on her side, with much love of power and of gain, with all the drawbacks of her temper and pertinacity, still bent every faculty to the work of backing up that policy, as embodied in her husband, keeping his friends in power, neutralizing the efforts of his enemies, and bringing the war to an entirely successful conclusion. A certain enlightenment was in all her passionate interferences with the course of public affairs. The men whom she labored to thrust into office were the best men of the time; the ascendency she endeavored so violently to retain was one under which England had been elevated in the scale of nations and all her liberties confirmed. Such persecuting and intolerant acts as the bill against occasional conformity, which was a test of exceptional severity, had her strenuous opposition. In short, had there been no Marlborough to carry on the half-begun war at William’s death, and no Sarah at Anne’s ear to inspire the queen’s sluggish nature with spirit and to keep her up to the mark of the large plans of her predecessor, England might have fallen into another driveling period of foreign subserviency, into a new and meaner Restoration.