Note 1361 — Chapter XL
Reading edition
Lord Mahon thinks that Charles had contracted a disparaging opinion of the tender sex in general. Among the Stuart Papers is the following written by Charles about the time of his marriage:—“As for men, I have studied them myself, and were I to live till fourscore, I could scarcely know them better than now, but as for women, I have thought it useless, they being so much more wicked and impenetrable.” “Ungenerous and ungrateful words,” justly exclaims Lord Mahon; “surely as he wrote them, the image of Flora Macdonald should have risen in his heart and restrained his hand.”—Mahon’s England, v. iii., p. 527.