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illustrative of personal character and history, which are scattered throughout our literature. Many of these are undoubtedly trifling, and in themselves unworthy of preservation, but taken as a whole, they serve an important end, combine instruction with amusement, and may perhaps dispose some volatile readers to prosecute inquiry into the more laborious and productive departments of history. The nature of the work will be best comprehended from a few extracts which we now proceed to give. The first respects the early days of James I., and furnishes a singular specimen of the times, as well as an interesting illustration of the character of the celebrated historian Buchanan, the tutor of this future Solomon. The coarseness of the anecdote must be excused, in consideration of the value of the light it throws on the character of the intrepid tutor of royalty.

'James was a pedant even when a boy. His tutor, the famous historian Buchanan, though he communicated to him a portion of his learning, imparted but little of his own elegant taste to his royal pupil. In the treatment of his charge, he appears not only to have been laudably uninfluenced by rank and circumstance, but to have behaved himself towards James as the most rigid disciplinarian. On one occasion the young King was engaged in some boisterous sport, with his playfellow the Master of Erskine, at a time when Buchanan was deeply engaged in his studies. The tutor was annoyed, and declared that he would administer a sound flogging if the interruption continued. James announced stoutly that he should like to see who would bell the cat; at which the tutor started up, threw away his book, and performed the threatened chastisement most effectually. The Countess of Mar, hearing the King's cries, rushed into the apartment, and catching the boy in her arms, inquired authoritatively of Buchanan, how he dared to touch the Lord's Anointed? Madam,' replied the imperturbable tutor, I have whipped his Majesty's breech, and you may kiss it if you please.'...

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Such an impression had Buchanan's discipline produced on the mind of James, that many years afterwards, when King of England, the miseries of his tutelage, and the austerity of his old master, continued vividly to haunt his imagination. He used to say of a certain person about his court, that he trembled at his approach, he reminded him so of his pedagogue.' And on another occasion, he is described as dreadfully agitated by the appearance of his former corrector in a dream, and as vainly endeavouring to soften the fanciful displeasure which he had incurred. These are curious illustrations of the independence of mind in the one, and the constitutional timidity of the other. It may be observed that, in his writings, James more than once speaks slighting, and even acrimoniously, of his old tutor.

The elegant Buchanan was far from satisfied with the mere progress which his pupil had made in classical and theological learning. At a certain audience, which was given by James to a foreign ambassador in his boyhood, it was found necessary that the conversation should take

place in Latin. The foreigner happened to be guilty of several grammatical errors, in every one of which James, with equal pedantry and ill-breeding, thought proper to set him right. The ambassador accidentally meeting Buchanan, after the audience was at an end, inquired of him how he came to make his illustrious pupil a pedant. 'I was 'happy,' said the historian, 'to be able to accomplish even that.' Vol. i. PP. 8-10.

The king's aversion to business is well known, and showed itself in early life. The following anecdote illustrates the mode in which Buchanan attempted to correct his indolence.

'He showed his aversion to business at a very early age; so much so, that he was in the habit of signing whatever papers were brought to him, without reading or making himself acquainted with their contents. To correct this pernicious habit, his tutor Buchanan adopted the following scheme :-One day, when the young king was preparing to set out on a hunting excursion, he placed before him a document containing a formal abdication of his kingdom. It was signed, as usual, without inquiry into its purport. On the return of James in the evening, Buchanan produced the paper, and pointed out its contents. At the sight of what he had done, the king burst into tears.. Buchanan comforted him by throwing the document into the fire; at the same time seizing the opportunity of enlarging on the injustice which he might be guilty of to others, as well as to himself, should he hereafter persist in so indolent and injurious a practice.'

-Ib. p.

12.

The character of James was singularly deficient in all qualities meriting respect. It was a compound of imbecility, affectation, and vice, only slightly glossed over by a show of learning, and the loud profession of religious zeal. The king, as is well known, esteemed himself more learned in theology than all his bishops, and was encouraged in the notion by their disgusting flatteries. His conduct at the Hampton Court Conference, to which, by the bye, Mr. Jesse does not allude, called forth their loudest plaudits. Whitgift declared that undoubtedly his majesty spake by the 'special assistance of God's Spirit,' and Bancroft, his worthy successor, protested upon his knees that his heart melted within him with joy, and made haste to acknowledge unto Almighty 'God the singular mercy we have received at his hands, in giving 'us such a king, as, since Christ's time, the like, he thought, had 'not been.' The bishops seemed much pleased,' says Sir John Harrington, a courtier, and bitter enemy of the Puritans, in writing to his wife an account of this conference, at which he had been present, and said his majesty spoke by the power of inspi'ration. I wist not what they mean, but the Spirit was rather

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'foul-mouthed.'* How much more accurately the courtier judged on this occasion than the bishops, may be inferred from the following account of the shameless immoralities practised at court, and in which his majesty heartily participated. It is contained in a letter from Sir John Harrington to Mr. Secretary Barlow, and is dated London, 1606:-the King of Denmark, brother to the queen of James, being then on a visit in England.

In compliance with your asking, now shall you accept my poor account of rich doings. I came here a day or two before the Danish King came, and from the day he had come to the present hour, I have been well nigh overwhelmed with carousal and sports of all kinds. The sports began each day in such manner and such sort, as well nigh persuaded me of Mahomet's paradise. We had women, and indeed wine too, of such plenty, as would have astonished each beholder. Our feasts were magnificent, and the two royal guests did most lovingly embrace each other at the table. I think the Dane hath strangely wrought upon our good English Nobles; for those whom I could never get to taste good English liquor, now follow the fashion, and wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication. In good sooth, the Parliament did kindly to provide his Majesty so seasonably with money; for there has been no lack of good living, shows, sights, and banqueting from morn to

eve.

"One day a great feast was held; and after dinner the representation of Solomon's temple, and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was made, or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made, before their majesties, by device of the Earl of Salisbury and others. But alas! as all earthly things do fail to poor mortals in earthly enjoyments, so did prove our presentment thereof. The lady who did play the Queen's part did carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties; but, forgetting the steps arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish Majesty's lap, and fell at his feet, though I rather think it was in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion; cloths and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. His Majesty then got up, and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber, and laid on a bed of state, which was not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen, which had been bestowed on his garments; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters. The entertainment and show went forward, and most of the presenters went backward or fell down; wine did so occupy their upper chambers.

Now did appear in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity; Hope did assay to speak, but wine rendered her endeavours so feeble that she withdrew, and hoped the King would excuse her levity. Faith was then all alone; for I am certain she was not joined to good works,

* Nugæ Antiquæ 1. 181.

and left the court in a staggering: Charity came to the King's feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of sins her sisters had committed; in some sort she made obeisance, and brought gifts, but said she would return home again, as there was no gift which Heaven had not already given his Majesty. She then returned to Faith and Hope who were both sick in the lower hall.

Next came Victory, in bright armor, and presented a rich sword to the King, who did not accept it, but put it by with his hand; and by a strange medley of versification did endeavour to make suit to the King. But Victory did not triumph long; for after much lamentable utterance, she was led away by a silly captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the ante-chamber.

Now did Peace make entry, and strive to get foremost to the King; but I grieve to tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of her attendants; and much contrary to her semblance, made rudely war with her olive-branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose her coming.

"I have much marvelled at those strange pageantries; and they do bring to my remembrance what passed of this sort in our Queen's days, of which I was sometime an humble spectator and assistant; but I never did see such lack of good order, discretion, and sobriety, as I now have done. I have passed much time in seeing the royal sports of hunting and hawking, where the manners were such as made me devise the beasts were pursuing the sober creation, and not man in quest of exercise and food. I will now, in good sooth, declare unto you, who will not blab, that the gunpowder fright is got out of all our heads, and we are going on hereabouts as if the devil was contriving every man to blow up himself, by wild riot, excess, and devastation of time and temperance. The great ladies do go well masked, and indeed it be the only show of their modesty to conceal their countenances : but alack! they meet with such countenance to uphold their strange doings, that I marvel not at aught that happens. The lord of the mansion is overwhelmed in preparations at Theobalds, and doth marvellously please both Kings with good meat, good drink, and good speeches. I do often say (but not aloud) that the Danes have again conquered the Britons, for I see no man, or woman either, that can command herself. I wish I was at home;-O rus, quando te aspiciam! and I will before Prince Vaudemont cometh,”—Ib. pp. 54-57.

So much for the first of the Stuarts who occupied the English throne. We now pass to the more stirring and tragical times of Charles, a remarkable epoch in our history under whatever aspect it be viewed. The private character of princes is a matter of secondary moment in modern days, but it was not so in the times of the Stuarts. A slight attention to the course of our history will fully establish this fact. The latter part of the reign of Elizabeth had witnessed an outbreak of popular sentiments which taxed even her masculine understanding, and laid all the resources of her government under tribute. This was mainly

attributable to the reformation, which had quickened the inert masses, and produced a rich harvest of stirring thoughts and highminded aspirations, where intellectual stagnation and religious formalism had previously existed. Men began, in consequence, to commune with the past as well as to anticipate the future. They travelled back beyond the times of the Tudors, carried their appeal to the better days of English freedom, and demanded that the outworks of popular rights, recently laid low by royalty, should be rebuilt, and their sacredness guaranteed by written laws. In such a state of the popular mind, it required only the interval which the reign of James afforded, to strike the roots of liberty deep into the soil of England. A monarch of undoubted courage, with competent sagacity, and a well ordered exchequer, might have delayed, if he had not wholly averted, the calamities which fell upon his son. But the timidity and folly, the favoritism and the vices of James, all conspired to undermine the loyalty of his people, and to prepare them for the daring speculations and chivalrous deeds which disturbed the quiet of his successor. Charles, unhappily for himself and the nation, was wedded to the worst precedents of recent times, and was utterly disqualified for guaging the stature and requirements of the popular mind. He saw men through the false medium of his father's shallow philosophy, and at once committed himself, with all the heedlessness of youth, and the falsehood of his race, to the most perilous enterprize which a monarch can attempt. There is, however, some truth in the remark of our author-who, by the bye, has endeavored to throw a halo of a morbid sentimentalism about this inheritor of his father's follies—that 'Charles became 'the sacrifice to a long established system of misrule, rather than 'to individual offence.' It must not, however, be forgotten, that the personal qualities of Charles, his repulsive manners, his thorough insincerity, his fixed and deeply-rooted love of tyranny both in church and state, contributed mainly to the calamities which befell him. Had his intellect been larger, his sagacity more clear-sighted, or had his heart been in unison with the nobler and more generous sympathies of our nature, the catastrophe might have been averted. But we are losing sight of Mr. Jesse, and of the object of this paper, and, therefore, return to our extracts.

Charles, as is well known, after a chivalrous effort to obtain in marriage a daughter of Spain, concluded an alliance with Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis the Thirteenth, the then reigning king of France. Some of the most important articles of the treaty were carefully concealed from the English people, who were strongly averse to a Popish alliance. The seeds of much future evil were thus sown, and rapidly produced a full harvest of misery. If there was one passion more prevalent

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