than the first vacant bishopric. He was brought to court, where the greatest personages anxiously sat up through the night by his bedside. They tried all the maliciousness of Puck, to pinch and to stir him: he was without hearing or feeling; but they never departed without an orderly text and sermon; at the close of which, groaning and stretching himself, he pretended to awake, declaring he was unconscious of what had passed. "The king," says Wilson, no flatterer of James," privately handled him so like a chirurgeon, that he found out the sore." The king was present at one of these sermons, and forbid them; and his reasonings on this occasion, brought the sleeping preacher on his knees. The king observed, that things studied in the day-time may be dreamed of in the night, but always irregularly, without order; not, as these sermons were, good and learned: as particularly the one preached before his Majesty in his sleep-which he first treated physically, then theologically; " and I observed," said the king, “that he always preaches best when he has the most crowded audience." "Were he allowed to proceed, all slander and treason might pass under colour of being asleep," added the king, who, notwithstanding his pretended inspiration, awoke the sleeping preacher forever afterwards.

BASILICON DORON.

THAT treatise of James I., entitled "Basilicon Doron, or, His Majesty's Instruction to his dearest son, Henry, the Prince," was composed by the king in Scotland, in the freshness of his studious days; a work, addressed to a prince by a monarch, which, in some respects, could only have come from the hand of such a workman. The morality and the politics often retain their curiosity and their value. Our royal author has drawn his principles of go

vernment from the classical volumes of antiquity; for then politicians quoted Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. His waters had, indeed, flowed over those beds of ore;* but the growth and vigour of the work comes from the mind of the king himself: he writes for the Prince of Scotland, and about the Scottish people. On its first appearance, Camden has recorded the strong sensation it excited: it was not only admired, but it entered into and won the hearts of men. Harris, forced to acknowledge, in his mean style and with his frigid temper, that "this book contains some tolerable things," omits not to hint, that " it might not be his own:" but the claims of James I. are evident from the peculiarity of the style; the period at which it was composed; and by those particular passages stamped with all the individuality of the king himself. The style is remarkable for its profuse sprinkling of Scottish and French words, where the Doric plainness of the one, and the intelligent expression of the other, offer curious instances of the influence of manners over language; the diction of the royal author is a striking evidence of the intermixture of the two nations, and of a court which had marked its divided interests by its own chequered language.

This royal manual still interests a philosophical mind ; like one of those antique and curious pictures we sometimes discover in a cabinet,-studied for the costume: yet where the touches of nature are true, although the colouring is brown and faded; but there is a force, and sometimes even a charm, in the ancient simplicity, to which even the delicacy of taste may return, not without pleasure. The king tells his son:—

"Sith all people are naturally inclined to follow their prince's example, in your own person make your wordes

*James, early in life, was a fine scholar, and a lover of the ancient historians, as appears from an accidental expression of Buchanan's in his dedication to James of his "Baptistes;" referring to Sallust, he adds, apud TUUм Salustium.

and deedes to fight together; and let your own life be a law-book, and a mirror to your people, that therein they may read the practice of their own lawes, and see by your image what life they should lead."

"But vnto one faulte is all the common people of this kingdome subject, as well burgh as land; which is, to judge and speak rashly of their prince, setting the commonweale vpon foure props, as wee call it; euer wearying of the present estate, and desirous of nouelties." The remedy the king suggests, "besides the execution of laws that are to be vsed against vnreuerent speakers," is so to rule, as that "the subjects may not only live in suretie and wealth, but be stirred vp to open their mouthes in your iust praise."

JAMES THE FIRST'S IDEA OF A TYRANT AND A KING.

THE royal author distinguishes a king from a tyrant, on their first entrance into the government.

"A tyrant will enter like a saint, till he find himself fast under foot, and then will suffer his unruly affections to burst forth." He advises the prince to act contrary to Nero, who, at first, with his tender-hearted wish, vellem nescire literas,' appeared to lament that he was to execute the laws. He, on the contrary, would have the prince early shew "the severetie of justice, which will settle the country, and make them know that ye can strike: this would be but for a time. If otherwise ye kyth (shew) your clemencie at the first the offences would soon come to such heapes, and the contempt of you grow so great, that when ye would fall to punish, the number to be punished would exceed the innocent; and ye would, against your nature, be compelled then to wracke manie, whom the chastisement of few in the beginning might have preserved. In this my own dearbought experience may serve you for a different lesson. For I confess, where I thought (by being gracious at the

beginning) to gain all men's hearts to a loving and willing obedience, I by the contrarie found the disorder of the countrie, and the loss of my thanks, to be all my reward."

James, in the course of the work, often instructs the prince by his own errors and misfortunes; and certainly one of these was an excess of the kinder impulses in granting favours; there was nothing selfish in his happiness; James seemed to wish that every one around him should participate in the fulness of his own enjoyment. His hand was always open to scatter about him honours and wealth, and not always on unworthy favourites, but often on learned men whose talents he knew well to appreciate. There was a warmth in the king's temper which once he himself well described; he did not like those who pride themselves on their tepid dispositions. "I love not one that will never

be angry, for as he that is without sorrow is without gladness, so he that is without anger is without love. Give me the heart of a man, and out of that all his actions shall be acceptable." The king thus addresses the prince :

ON THE CHOICE OF SERVANTS AND ASSOCIATES.

"Be not moved with importunities; for the which cause, as also for augmenting your Maiesty, be not so facile of of access-giving at all times, as I have been."-In his minority, the choice of his servants had been made by others, "recommending servants unto me, more for serving, in effect, their friends that put them in, than their maister that admitted them, and used them well, at the first rebellion raised against me. Chuse you your own servants for your own vse, and not for the vse of others; and, since ye must be communis parens to all your people, chuse indifferentlie out of all quarters; not respecting other men's appetites, but their own qualities. For as you must command all, so reason would ye should be served of all.—Be a daily watchman over your own servants, that they obey your laws precisely for how can your laws be kept in the country,

they be broken at your eare !—Bee homelie or strange with them as ye think their behaviour deserveth and their nature may bear ill.-Employ every man as ye think him qualified, but use not one in all things, lest he wax proud, and be envied by his fellows.-As for the other sort of your companie and servants, they ought to be of perfect age, see they be of a good fame; otherwise what can the people think but that ye have chosen a companion unto you according to your own humour, and so have preferred those men for the love of their vices and crimes, that ye knew them to be guiltie of. For the people, that see you not within, cannot judge of you but according to the outward appearance of your actions and company, which only is subject to their sight."

THE REVOLUTIONISTS OF THAT AGE.

JAMES I. has painted, with vivid touches, the Anti-Monarchists, or Revolutionists, of his time.

He describes "their imagined democracie, where they fed themselves with the hope to become tribuni plebi; and so, in a popular government, by leading the people by the nose, to bear the sway of all the rule.-Every faction," he adds, "always joined them. I was oft-times calumniated in their popular sermons, not for any evill or vice in me,* but because I was a king, which they thought the highest evill; and, because they were ashamed to professe this quarrel, they were busie to look narrowly in all my actions, pretending to distinguish the lawfulness of the office from the vice of the person: yet some of them would snapper

The conduct of James I. in Scotland has even extorted praise from one of his bitterest calumniators; for Mrs. Macaulay has said, "His conduct, when king of Scotland, was in many points unexcep. tionable."