BOOK I, LIFE OF PRINCE OF THE PRO JECTS FOR RIAGES. received of the course of public events in Europe, he had occasional presentiments that a crisis was drawing near which would make the adoption of a warlike policy to be alike the duty of the King, and the recognized interest of the nation. Be that as it may, the broad contrasts of character which existed between the wearer of the crown and its heir apparent became increasingly obvious during the long negotiations and correspondence about the projects of marriage ROYAL MAR for the prince himself and for his sister. Something, indeed, of the difference in character between JAMES and 1611-1612. HENRY was indicated when, in 1611, the prince directed RALEGH to draw up, in his prison, a paper of advice on the scheme of a double marriage with Savoy and on the relations between Savoy and Spain. It came out more forcibly when, on occasion of the proposal from France for his own marriage with CHRISTINA (the elder sister of HENRIETTA MARIA), he wrote to his father in these words: The cause which first induced your Majesty to proceed in this proposition by your Ambassador was the hope which the Duke of BOUILLON gave your Majesty of breaking their other match with Spain. If the continuance of this treaty hold only upon that hope, and not upon any desire to effect a match with the second daughter, in my weak opinion I hold that it stands more with your Majesty's honour to stay your Ambassador from moving it any more than to go on with it. Because no great negotiation should be grounded upon a ground that is very unsure and uncertain, and depends upon their wills who were the first causers of the contrary. For this letter the Prince was rebuked. Two months afterwards, it was found indispensable to desire him to express again his opinion upon a new stage of the negotiation. He did so in words to which the events of the next few years were destined to give significance. I quote from the original letter, preserved (with a large mass of other letters from the same hand) amongst the Harleian MSS.* 'As for the exercise of the princess' religion,' wrote HENRY, on the 5th of October, 1612, your Majesty may be pleased to make your Ambassador give a peremptory answer that you will never agree to give her greater liberty in the exercise of it than that which is agreed with the Savoyeard, which is—to use his own word-privatemente; or, as Sir Henry WOTTON did expound it, "in her most private and secret chamber." Then he touches on the delicate question of dowry, and the relative preferability of the alliance proffered by France and that proffered by Savoy; adding,—with an obvious mental reference, I think, to the advice given him by RALEGH in the preceding year, these pregnant words: 'If your Majesty will respect rather which of these two will give the greatest contentment to the general body of the Protestants abroad, then I am of opinion that you will sooner incline to France than to Savoy.' BOOK I, Chap. III. HENRY, WALES. 1612. Oct. 5. Henry to James; 6986, f. 10. The writer then hints a fear that he may, unwittingly, have incurred a renewal of the paternal displeasure which some expressions of opinion in his former letter on the same MS. HARL, subject had excited. Let his father kindly remember, he entreats, that his own special part in the business,—— which is to be in love with any of them, is not yet at hand.' Death, not love-making, was at hand. One month after * In dealing with royal letters it is, of course, necessary to keep in mind how largely the vicarious element is apt to enter into their composition. Those, however, that are quoted in the text seem to have a plain stamp of individuality upon them. Book I, LIFE OF PRINCE OF DEATH. 1612. November. wards, the arm that penned this letter was stretched out,— still and rigid. The Prince was seized with sudden illness on the 10th of October, five days after its date. The first appearances were such as are wont to follow upon a great chill, after excessive exercise-to which HENRY was always prone. In spite of much pain and some alarming symptoms, he persisted in removing from Richmond to St. James' on the 16th, in order to receive the Elector Palatine, soon to become the husband of his sister. Within very few days it was apparent that his illness was of the most serious nature. He left his apartment at St. James' on the morning of the 25th, to hear a sermon at the Chapel Royal. The text was from the fourteenth of Job, 'Man, that is born of a woman, is of short continuance.' Afterwards he dined with the King, but was obliged to take his leave, being seized with faintness and shivering fits. These continued to recur, at brief intervals, until his death, on the evening of the sixth of November. Almost the only snatch of quiet sleep which he could obtain followed upon the administration of a cordial, prepared for him in the Tower by RALEGH, at the Queen's earnest request. It was not given until the morning of the last day. HENRY died calmly, but under total exhaustion. For many hours before his death he was unconscious, as well as speechless. The last words to which he responded were those of Archbishop ABBOT: In sign of your faith and hope in the blessed Resurrection, give us, for our comfort, a sign by the lifting up of your hands.' HENRY raised both hands, clasped together. It was his last conscious act. Here, to human ken, was a life all seed-time. The Chap. III. HENRY, PRINCE OF harvest belonged to the things unseen. Contemporaries BOOK I, who had treasured up, in memory, many of those small LIFE OF matters which serve to mark character, were wont sometimes to draw contrasts between the prince and his brother. WALES. And many have been the speculations-natural though unfruitful-as to the altered course of English history, had HENRY lived to ascend the throne. One fact, observable in the correspondence and documentary history of the times, will always retain a certain interest. Some of those who were to rank among the staunchest opponents of CHARLES were men who thought highly of HENRY's abilities to rule, and who held his memory in affectionate reverence. OF THE LIBRARY. HENRY had died intestate. The library which he had DISPOSAL purchased from the Executors of Lord LUMLEY fell to the PRINCE'S disposal of the King. The greater part of it went to augment the remains of the old royal library of England, portions of which had been scattered during JAMES' reign, as well as before it. By that disposal of a collection, in which the prince had taken not a little delight during his brief possession, he became virtually, and in the event, a co-founder of the British Museum. The library remained at St. James' under the charge, for a time, of the prince's librarian, Edward WRIGHT. The relics of the royal collection at Whitehall were then in the keeping of the eminent scholar and theologian, Patrick YOUNG. Eventually they too were brought to St. James', and YOUNG took the entire charge. It was by his exertions that the combined collection was augmented by a valuable part of the library of Isaac CASAUBON. It was to his hands that Sir Thomas ROE delivered the Alexandrian Manuscript' of the Greek Bible, the precious gift to King CHARLES of Cyril LUCAR, Patriarch of Constantinople. YOUNG survived until 1652, but he was deprived of his UNION OF THE ST. WHITEHALL LIBRARIES. Roe, Nego tiations, pp. 335; 618. Воок 1, LIFE OF PRINCE OF WALES, office in 1648. In that turbulent time the library narrowly escaped two perils. Some of the soldiers of the triumphant party sought to disperse it, piecemeal, for their individual profit. Some of the leaders of that party formed a scheme to export it to the Continent for a like purpose. It stands to the credit of a somewhat fanatical partisan-Hugh PETERS, one of the many men who are doomed to play in history the part of scapegoats, whatever their own sins may have really been-that his hasty assumption of librarianship Comp. Order (1648) saved the library from the first danger. A like act on the part of Bulstrode WHITELOCKE, in the following year (July, 1649), saved it from the second. Probably, it was at his instance that the Council of State made or designed to make it a Public Library. Four years afterwards, WHITELOCKE held at Stockholm a curious conversation with Queen ChrisSweden, vol. i, tina about its manuscript treasures, of some of which, he tells us, she was anxious to possess transcripts. Book of State, vol. v, p. 604. (R. H.) WHITELOCKE'S Embassy to p. 273. edit.) OF THE THEYER LIBRARY. Under the Commonwealth, the librarianship had been combined, first with the keepership of the Great Seal, and then with an Embassy to Sweden. Under the Restoration, it was held in plurality with an active commission in the Royal Navy. CHARLES II, however, caused some valuable ACQUISITION additions to be made to the library. Of these the most important was the manuscript collection which had belonged, successively, to John and Charles THEYER. The sum given was £560. The collection came to St. James' Palace in 1678. It was rich in historical manuscripts and in the curiosities of medieval science. It embraced many of the treasured book-possessions of a long line of Abbots and Priors of Llanthony,* and the common-place-books of Archbishop CRANMER. *That Llanthony, in Monmouthshire, the purchase of which in the |