Page:The Queens of England.djvu/545

MARY THE SECOND. 495 crown as the hereditary right of his wife, but as the gift of the nation. Thus, by a daughter of the most bigoted and despotic prince who ever sat on the throne of these realms, the mischievous sophism of the divine right of kings was at once and forever annihilated, and the "Bill of Rights" estab- lished on the grand truth that "all power proceeds from the people." To this quiet and yet complete revolution, so far, both in theory and in time, in advance of all other revolutions, England owes its long course of unexampled power and glory. To the regret of her subjects, this amiable queen expired December 28th, 1695, at Kensington, of the smallpox, being at the - time of her death in the thirty-third year of her age. King William was so deeply affected by her loss that for many weeks after he could neither attend to affairs of state nor receive the visits of his nobility ; and in answer to Tenni- son, who sought to console him under his affliction, he remarked that 'iie could not but grieve, since he had lost a wife who for seventeen years had never been guilty of an indiscretion."