with her husband, King William, yet the administration of the government was left entirely to him. This arrangement cost Mary no sacrifice; indeed she desired it should he made, that all rule and authority should be vested in him, remarking—"There is but one command which I wish him to obey, and that is, 'Husbands love your wives.' For myself, I shall follow the injunction, 'Wives be obedient to your husbands in all things.'" She kept the promise thus voluntarily made; and all her efforts were directed to promote her husband's happiness, and make him beloved by the English people. He had great confidence in her abilities; and when, during his absence in Ireland and on the continent, she was left regent of the kingdom, she managed parties at home with much prudence, and governed with a discretion not inferior to his own.
Mary was strongly attached to the Protestant religion and the Church of England, and was evidently led to consider its preservation a paramount duty, even when opposed to the claims of filial obedience. The unfriendly terms on which she lived with her sister, afterwards Queen Anne, have been alluded to as a blemish in the character of Mary; but political jealousies, and the foolish attachment of Anne to overbearing favourites, may sufficiently account for this coolness. Mary was, in truth, an amiable and excellent queen, and by her example made industry and domestic virtue fashionable. Her letter to Lady Russell, in which she deplores the bustle and pomp of royalty, because it separated her so much from her husband, is a beautiful proof how the best feelings of the woman were always prominent in her heart.
Mary died of the small-pox, at Kensington, in the year 1675, being in her thirty-third year. The people were sincere mourners; but to her husband the blow was almost overwhelming. For several weeks he was incapable of attending to business. To Archbishop Tennison, who was striving to console him, William said—"I cannot do otherwise than grieve, since I have lost a wife who, during the seventeen years that I have lived with her, never committed an indiscretion."
MARY LECZINSKA,
Daughter of Stanislaus, of Poland, married Louis the Fifteenth of France, in 1725. She was an amiable and virtuous princess. She bore to Louis the Fifteenth two sons and eight daughters; and died, universally regretted, in 1768, aged sixty-five.
MARY MAGDALENE
Seems to have been an inhabitant of Magdala, otherwise called Dalmanutha. The city is supposed to have been situated somewhere on the eastern coast of the sea of Galilee. Wherever it was, it probably gave the surname of Magdalene to this Mary. It has been asserted by some writers, that she was a plaiter of hair to the women of the city, but all we certainly know of her is contained in the New Testament. We are there taught she had been a great sinner, that she repented, came to the feet of Jesus, while he "sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with precious ointment." Her penitence and humility are graphically portrayed; and she has ever since that time been as a star of hope to the fallen sisterhood, proving.
