it with the " Lord's-day."

Others were strenuous advo

cates for closely copying the austerity of the Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law; forbidding meat to be dressed, houses swept, fires kindled, &c.,—the day of rest was to be a day of mortification. But this spread an alarm, that "the old rotten ceremonial law of the Jews, which had been buried in the grave of Jesus," was about to be revived. And so prone is man to the reaction of opinion, that, from observing the Sabbath with a Judaic austerity, some were for rejecting "Lord's-days" altogether; asserting, they needed not any; because, in their elevated holiness, all days to them were Lord's-days.* A popular preacher at the Temple, who was disposed to keep alive a cheerful spirit among the people, yet desirous that the sacred day should not pass like any other, moderated between the parties. He declared it was to be observed with strictness only by "persons of quality." †

*Fuller's Church Hist., book xi. p. 149. One of the most curious books of this class is Heylin's "History of the Sabbath;" a work abounding with uncommon researches; it was written in favour of Charles's declaration for reviving lawful sports on Sundays. Warton in the first edition of Milton's Juvenile Poems, observed in a note on the Lady's speech, in Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puritans ever since Cromwell's time that Sunday has been made in England a day of gravity and severity: and many a staunch observer of the rites of the Church of England little suspects that he is conforming to the Calvanism of an English Sunday." It is probable this gave unjust offence to grave heads unfurnished with their own national history-for in the second edition Warton cancelled the note. Truth is thus violated. The Puritans, disgusted with the levities and excesses of the age of James and Charles, as is usual on these points, vehemently threw themselves into an opposite direction; but they perhaps advanced too far in converting the Sabbath-day into a sullen and gloomy reserve of pharisaical austerity. Adam Smith, and Paley, in his "Moral and Political Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 73, have taken more enlightened views on this subject.

"Let servants," he says, "whose hands are ever working, whilst their eyes are waking; let such who all the foregoing week had their cheeks moistened with sweat, and their hands hardened with labour

One of the chief causes of the civil war is traced to the revival of this "Book of Sports." Thus it happened that from the circumstance of our good-tempered monarch discovering the populace in Lancashire discontented, being debarred from their rustic sports—and, exhorting them, out of his bonhommie, and "fatherly love, which he owed to them all," (as he said) to recover their cheerful habits-he was innocently involving the country in divinity, and in civil war. James I. would have started with horror at the "Book of Sports," could he have presciently contemplated the archbishop, and the sovereign who persisted to revive it, dragged to the block. What invisible threads suspend together the most remote events!

The parliament's armies usually chose Sundays for their battles, that the profanation of the day might be expiated by a field-sacrifice, and that the Sabbath-breakers should receive a signal punishment. The opinions of the nature of the Sabbath were, even in the succeeding reign, so opposite and novel, that plays were performed before Charles on Sundays. James I. who knew nothing of such opinions, has been unjustly aspersed by those who live in more settled times, when such matters have been more wisely established than ever they were discussed.*

let such have some recreations on the Lord's-day indulged to them; whilst persons of quality, who may be said to keep Sabbath all the week long-I mean, who rest from hard labour-are concerned in conscience to observe the Lord's-day with the greater abstinence from recreations."

*It is remarkable of James 1. that he never pressed for the performance of any of his proclamations; and his facile disposition made him more tolerant than appears in our history. At this very time, the conduct of a lord-mayor of London has been preserved by Wilson, as a proof of the city magistrate's piety, and, it may be added, of his wisdom. It is here adduced as an evidence of the king's usual conduct:

The king's carriages, removing to Theobald's on the Sabbath, oc. casioned a great clatter and noise in the time of divine service. The lord-mayor commanded them to be stopped, and the officers of the

MOTIVES OF THE KING'S AVERSION TO WAR.

THE king's aversion to war has been attributed to his pusillanimity as if personal was the same thing as political courage, and as if a king placed himself in a field of battle by a proclamation for war. The idle tale that James trembled at the mere view of a naked sword, which is produced as an instance of the effects of sympathy over the infant in the womb from his mother's terror at the assassination of Rizzio, is probably not true, yet it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to indicate his excessive pusillanimity; but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which is certainly true:-In passing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the king, with his own hand," shot out of a cannon so fayre and with so great judgment" as convinced the cannoniers of the king's skill "in great artillery," as Stowe records. It is probable, after all, that James I. was not deficient in personal courage, although this is not of consequence in his literary and political character. Several instances are recorded of his intrepidity. But the absurd charge of his pusillanimity and his pedantry has been carried so far, as to suppose that it affected his character as a sovereign. The warm and hasty Burnet says at once of James I." He was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true judgment, courage, or steadiness." This "pedant," however, had" the true judgment and steadiness to obtain his favourite purpose, which was the preservation of a continued peace. If James I. was some

carriages, returning to the king, made violent complaints. The king, in a rage, swore he thought there had been no more kings in England than himself; and sent a warrant to the lord-mayor to let them

pass, which he obeyed, observing, "while it was in my power, I did my duty; but that being taken away by a higher power, it is my duty to obey." The good sense of the lord-mayor so highly gratified James, that the king complimented him, and thanked him for it. Of such gentleness was the arbitrary power of James composed!

times despised by foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will not consume the blood and treasure of his people, (and James had neither to spare,) may be little regarded on the Continent; the Machiavels of foreign cabinets will look with contempt on the domestic blessings a British sovereign would scatter among his subjects; his presence with the foreigners is only felt in his armies; and they seek to allure him to fight their battles, and to involve him in their interests.

James looked with a cold eye on the military adventurer : he said, "No man gains by war but he that hath not wherewith to live in peace." But there was also a secret motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and which he once thus confidentially opened :

"A king of England had no reason but to seek always to decline a war; for though the sword was indeed in his hand, the purse was in the people's. One could not go without the other. Suppose a supply were levied to begin the fray, what certainty could he have that he should not want sufficient to make an honourable end? If he called for subsidies, and did not obtain, he must retreat ingloriously. He must beg an alms, with such conditions as would break the heart of majesty, through capitulations that some ' members would make, who desire to improve the reputation of their wisdom, by retrenching the dignity of the crown in popular declamations, and thus he must buy the soldier's pay, or fear the danger of a mutiny."*

JAMES ACKNOWLEDGES HIS DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS.-THEIR CONDUCT.

THUS James I., perpetually accused of exercising arbitrary power, confesses a humiliating dependence on the

Hacket's Life of Lord-Keeper Williams, p. 80. The whole is distinguished by italics, as the king's own words.

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Commons; and, on the whole, at a time when prerogative and privilege were alike indefinite and obscure, the king received from them hard and rigorous usage. A king of peace claimed the indulgence, if not the gratitude, of the people; and the sovereign who was zealous to correct the abuses of his government, was not distinguished, by the Commons, from him who insolently would perpetuate them. When the Commons were not in good humour with Elizabeth, or James, they contrived three methods of inactivity, running the time to waste-nihil agendo, or aliud agendo, or malè agendo; doing nothing, doing something else, or doing evilly.* In one of these irksome moments, waiting for subsidies, Elizabeth anxiously inquired of the speaker, "What had passed in the lower house?" replied, "If it please your Majesty-seven weeks." one of those occasions, when the queen broke into a passion when they urged her to a settlement of the succession, one of the deputies of the Commons informed her Majesty, that "the Commons would never speak about a subsidy, or any other matter whatever; and that hitherto nothing but the most trivial discussions had passed in Parliament: which was, therefore, a great assembly rendered entirely useless, and all were desirous of returning home."†

He

On

But the more easy and open nature of James I. endured greater hardships: with the habit of studious men, the king had an utter carelessness of money and a generosity of temper, which Hacket, in his Life of the Lord-Keeper Williams, has described. "The king was wont to give like a king, and for the most part to keep one act of liberality warm with the covering of another." He seemed to have had no distinct notions of total amounts; he was once so shocked at the sight of the money he had granted away, lying in heaps on a table, that he instantly reduced it to

* I find this description in a MS. letter of the times.

From a MS. letter of the French ambassador, La Mothe Fenelon, to Charles IX., then at the court of London, in my possession.