Some have
dated the ruin of his cause to the failure of that impolitic step, which
alarmed every one zealous for that spirit of political freedom which had
now grown up in the Commons. Incidents like these mark the feminine
dispositions of Henrietta. But when at sea, in danger of being taken by
a parliamentarian, the queen commanded the captain not to strike, but to
prepare at the extremity to blow up the ship, resisting the shrieks of
her females and domestics. We perceive how, on every trying occasion,
Henrietta never forgot that she was the daughter of Henry the Fourth;
that glorious affinity was inherited by her with all the sexual pride;
and hence, at times, that energy in her actions which was so far above
her intellectual capacity.
And, indeed, when the awful events she had witnessed were one by one
registered in her melancholy mind, the sensibility of the woman subdued
the natural haughtiness of her character; but, true woman! the feeling
creature of circumstances, at the Restoration she resumed it, and when
the new court of Charles the Second would not endure her obsolete
haughtiness, the dowager-queen left it in all the full bitterness of her
spirit. An habitual gloom, and the meagreness of grief, during the
commonwealth, had changed a countenance once the most lively; and her
eyes, whose dark and dazzling lustre was ever celebrated, then only
shone in tears.
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