CHAPTER THE SECOND. JAMES THE FIRST (CONTINUED).

HE Parliament that was to have been dissolved in thin air on the 5th of November, leaving nothing behind but a report in several volumes of smoke, met for the despatch of business on the 21st of January, 1606. Laws were passed against the Papists in a most vexatious spirit, and by one enactment they were positively prohibited from removing more than five miles from home without an order signed by four magistrates. If a Catholic had got into a cab, and the horse had run away, without the driver being able to pull up within the fifth mile, the fare would have been most unfairly sacrificed.

James, who saw the advantage Scotland would derive from an alliance with England, began to urge the Union, but the English naturally objected to such a very unprofitable match; for Scotland had nothing to lose, nothing to give, nothing to lend, and nothing to teach, except the art of making bread without flour, joke-books without wit, reputation without ability, and a living without anything. James felt that the sarcasms on the Scotch were personal to himself, and he told the Parliament they ought not to talk on matters they did not understand; but it was thought that to restrict them to subjects which they did understand would be equivalent to depriving them of liberty of speech on nearly every occasion.

James had become somewhat popular on account of the attempt to blow him up sky-high with all his ministers, and a rumour of his having been assassinated, sent him up a shade or two higher in the affections of his people. It is a feature in the character of the English that they always take into their favour any one who seems to be an object of persecution; and there is no doubt that if in a crowd there is any one desirous of rising in public esteem, he has only to ask a friend to give him a severe and apparently unmerited blow on the head, in order to render him the idol of the surrounding multitude. If there had been no Gunpowder Plot, it would have been worth the while of James to have got one up, for the express purpose of increasing his popularity. His qualities, as shown in his way of life at this time, do not warrant the esteem in which he was held; for he divided his time between the pleasures of the table, the excitements of the chase, and the blackguardism of the cock-pit. When remonstrated with on the lowness of his pursuits, he declared that his health required relaxation; and he would declare that he would rather see one of his Dorking chickens win his spurs, than witness the grandest tournament. These pursuits, which were expensive, caused him to do many acts of meanness to obtain the necessary supplies: and among other things he went to dine with the Clothworkers as well as with the Merchant Tailors, among both of whom the royal hat was sent round at the close of the banquet.

At the second of these entertainments his own beaver had just made the circuit of the table with considerable effect, when, encouraged by the liberality of the company, he shoved on to the social board a cap, in the name of his son, Prince Henry. The collection for the child was not very ample, for many of the guests objected to being called upon for a trifle towards lining the pockets of the young gentleman's new frock, more especially when it was obvious that James fully intended to clutch the whole of the additional assets.

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Among other disreputable methods he took of procuring money, was the institution of the order of Baronets, whose titles he sold at a thousand pounds each, without regard to the merit of the purchasers. The antiquity of a baronetcy is therefore not much in its favour, and those who can trace the possession of such a distinction in their family down to the first establishment of the rank, do nothing more than prove the possession, either honestly or dishonestly, of a thousand pounds by one of his ancestors. Seventy-five families took advantage of this traffic in dignities to obtain a sort of spurious nobility, founded on the necessities of the sovereign. The only qualifications required of candidates wishing to be elected to the order were "cash down," to pay the fees, and an ability to trace a descent from at least a grandfather on the father's side; so that semble, as the lawyers say, the maternal ancestors might have been utterly hypothetical and purely anonymous. The arms of the baronets have always included those of Ulster, because the money they contributed was designed for the relief of that province—a proof that Ireland has been a drain upon England for a long series of centuries. The emblem of Ulster is a bloody hand, which was only too appropriate to the place; and the symbol being called in the language of heraldry a hand gules—or gold—in a field argent—or silver—was also characteristic of the metallic source from which the baronets derived their titles.

Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, had long been looked upon as a pleasing contrast to his odious father, and the people were anticipating the former's reign with an assurance that the amiable and accomplished son would compensate for the infliction they had endured in the ignorance, pride, and selfishness of the parent. Death, however, that sometimes seizes first on the best, and leaves the worst till the last—on the principle of the boy who began by picking all the plums out of the pudding—took the youthful prince before appropriating his papa, and caused the latter sinfully to exult in being the survivor of his own offspring. He forgot the maxim that "Whom the gods love, die young," and the remarks he made upon his own comparative longevity proved that he at least was one of those whom the gods had not been anxious to adopt at the earliest opportunity. The young prince died of a malignant fever, on the 5th of November, 1612, and his father, whose harsh conduct—especially to Sir Walter Raleigh and other great men—had been criticised by his heir, allowed no mourning to take place, but made the unnatural and blasphemous boast that "he should outlive all who opposed him."

Though having little or no affection for his own children, James delighted in having about him some low and sneaking favourite who would flatter his ridiculous vanity, and help to cheat him into the belief that he was a good and amiable character. As no one of spirit and honesty would consent to become the despicable parasite that James required, some mean and unprincipled vagabond was of necessity selected as the depositary of that confidence which a son, with the feelings of a gentleman, could not of course participate. Henry had therefore been excluded from that free communication which should exist between child and parent in every station, and an uneducated humbug named Robert Carr had wormed his way into the heart, or rather into the favour of James, who was drawn toward the other by a sympathy with congenial littleness. Carr was such a wretched ignoramus as to be unable to speak ten consecutive words of grammar, and it flattered the egregious vanity of James to be able to impart some of that education of which he had just about enough to enable him to show his superiority over his most unlettered pupil. Carr played his cards so successfully that he was soon not only knighted but created Viscount Rochester; and though his future career proved him worthier of the rope, he actually obtained the Garter.

It was to be presumed that this disreputable scapegrace would soon do something or other to prove how far James had been right or wrong in the selection of a friend, adviser, companion, and favourite. The necessities of Carr were so well supplied by sponging on his royal patron that it was not necessary for the former to commit any pecuniary swindle; but he very rapidly got into a most disgraceful connection with the Countess of Essex, a vile person who obtained a divorce from her own husband, to enable her to marry Rochester. The latter had a friend named Sir Thomas Overbury, who advised him to have nothing to do with the profligate woman in question. This so irritated the countess that she persuaded her paramour to join her in poisoning the party who had given the advice, and after trying the homoeopathic principle for some weeks without effect, they at length gave him one tremendous dose which did the atrocious business. Carr had received the title of Earl of Somerset on his infamous marriage, but the favourite was getting already a little out of favour when the affair of the murder happened. James being one of those who promptly turned his back on those who were "down in the world," and had smiles for those only who were prosperous, began to estrange himself from Somerset, and to transfer his worthless friendship to George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.

The king first saw this young scamp at the Theatre Royal, Cambridge, where a five-act farce called Ignoramus was being represented by a party of distinguished amateurs, with the applause that usually attends these interesting performances. Villiers was appointed cupbearer—a grade immediately under that of bottle-holder—to the king, and the influence of the new favourite was soon felt by the old, who found himself arrested one fine morning on the charge of having been concerned in Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. The steps taken for the punishment of this atrocity were perfectly characteristic of the period. By way of a preliminary offering to Justice, some half dozen of the minor and subordinate parties to the crime were executed off-hand, while the two principal delinquents, Somerset and his countess, having been tardily condemned, were immediately afterwards pardoned. The infamous couple subsequently received a pension of £4000 a year from the king, who no doubt felt that Somerset could show him up, and was just the sort of scoundrel to do so unless he could be well paid for his silence. The annuity allowed to the ex-favourite must be looked upon as hush-money, rendered necessary by the mutual rascalities of the donor and the recipient, who, being in each other's power, were under the necessity of effecting a compromise. The fall of Somerset was followed by the rise of Villiers, who rushed through the entire peerage with railroad rapidity, passing the intermediate stations of Viscount, Earl, and Marquis, till he reached the terminus as Duke of Buckingham.

Poor Raleigh, who had been thirteen years in the Tower, where he was writing the History of the World, began to feel a very natural anxiety to get out of his prison, and describe, from ocular demonstration, the subject of his gigantic labours. He accordingly spread a report that he knew of a gold mine in Guiana where the stuff for making guineas could be had only for the trouble of picking it up, and the king was persuaded to let him go and try his luck in America. Raleigh had no sooner got free than he published a prospectus and got up a company with a preliminary deposit sufficient to start him off well on his new enterprise. He proved with all the clearness of figures—which the reader must not think of confounding with facts—that a hundred per cent, must be realised; and the shares in Raleigh's gold mine rose to such a height that he was enabled to rig a ship after having rigged the market. Plans were published, with great streaks of gamboge painted all over, to represent the supposed veins of gold that were waiting only to be worked; and through the medium of these veins the British public bled very rapidly.

The extent of the mining mania got up by Sir Walter may be imagined when we state that he arrived with twelve vessels at Guiana, a portion of which had already been taken possession of by Spain; and the English speculators declared with disgust, that they had come for the gold, and had not expected to meet the Spanish. The town of St. Thomas being already in the possession of the latter, was boldly attacked and ultimately taken, but instead of finding a mine there were only two ingots of gold in the whole place, which Raleigh clutched, exclaiming "These are mine," immediately on landing. It was evident to the whole party that Raleigh's story of the gold mine was a mere "dodge" to get himself released from the Tower; and when they came to look for the boasted vein, they found it was literally in vain that they searched for the precious metal. A mutiny at once broke out, and as Raleigh deceived them in his promise of introducing them to abundance of gold, they made him form a very close connection with a large quantity of iron. They in fact threw him into fetters, a species of treatment that, had it been applied to every projector of a bubble company during the railway mania of 1846, would have hung half the aldermen of London in chains, and linked society together by a general concatenation of nearly every rank as well as every profession. Poor Raleigh arrived safe in Plymouth Sound, but he found a proclamation out against him, accusing him of a long catalogue of crimes, and inviting all the world to take him into custody.

The Spanish ambassador was at the bottom of this affair, for the Spaniards had a score of old scores against Sir Walter, who had no sooner landed at Plymouth than he was made a prisoner. With considerable ingenuity he pretended to be very ill, and even feigned insanity; but the latter was a plea that could not so easily be established in the time of Raleigh as it has been in our own days, when it has been found a convenient and effective excuse for those who, having committed murder, escape on the ground of their being given to eccentricity. Raleigh tried it on very hard, by talking incoherently, playing the fool, dancing fandangos in his prison, sending a potato to his tailor to be measured for a new jacket, and feigning other acts of madness, but to the writ de lunatico inquirendo, there was no other return than nullum iter, or no go, when the investigation into his state of mind was concluded. In order to save the trouble and expense of a fresh conviction, the old outstanding judgment was again brought up, and it was determined to kill him by a bill of reviver—if such an anomaly could be permitted. He grew ponderously facetious as his end drew nigh, and made one or two jokes that might have saved him had they been heard in time, for they gave evidence of an amount of mental imbecility that should have released him from all responsibility on account of his actions. Among other lugubrious levities of Raleigh before his death, was the well-known but generally-execrated remark in reference to a cup of sack which was brought to him: "Ha!" said he, "I shall soon have the sack without the cup;" an observation that elicited, as soon as it was known, an immediate order for his execution. "That head of Raleigh's must come off," cried the king, "for it is evident the poor fellow has lost the use of it." On the 29th of October, 1618, poor Raleigh joked his last, upon the scaffold, where he stood shivering with cold, when the sheriff asked him to step aside for a few minutes and warm himself. "No," said Sir Walter, "my wish is to take it cool;" and then looking at the axe, he balanced it on the top of his little finger—some say his chin—and observed, "This is a great medicine, rather sharp, but it cures all diseases." At this the headsman, no doubt irritated by the maddening mediocrity of the intended witticism, let fall the fatal blade, and Raleigh, with his head cut off, never came to—or rather never came one—again.

We ought, perhaps to shed a tear over the fate of this great, though unprincipled man; but it is not so easy to turn on the main of sentiment to the fountains of pity, after the water has been cut off during more than two centuries by Time, in the capacity of turncock. Besides, in going through the history of our native land there are so many victims, all more or less worthy of a gush of sympathy, that we should literally dissolve ourselves in tears before we had got half through our labours, if we began giving way to what old King Lear has ungallantly termed a woman's weakness.

On the 16th of June, 1621, James, being "hard up," and finding that the circulation of the begging-box produced no effect, was compelled to summon a Parliament. Some cash to go on with was voted to the king, but the Commons then proceeded to investigate some cases of gross corruption that had been discovered among the Ministers. The Testes, the Cubieres, and other official swindlers of modern France, who, in the midst of meanness, deception, and theft, were still blatant about their "honour," might have found, in the England of 1621, a precedent for their venal rascality. Sir John Bennet, Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and Field, Bishop of Llandaff, were convicted of bribery. Yelverton, the Attorney-General, was found guilty of having aided in an extensive swindle in the Patent Office, and Bacon, the great "moral philosopher," was found to have been fleecing the public in the Court of Chancery, to such a degree, that he might have stuffed the woolsack over and over again from the produce of the shearing to which he submitted the flocks of suitors who appealed to him. He would take bribes in open court, and he would pretend to consider, that as all men should be equal in the eye of the law, the equality could only be achieved by emptying the pockets of every party that came into court, as a preliminary to giving him a hearing. It has been said by his apologists, that though he took bribes, his decisions were just, for he would often give judgment against those who had paid him for a decree in their favour. The excuse merely proves that he was sufficiently unscrupulous to follow up one fraud by another, and to cheat his suitors out of the consideration upon which they had parted with their money. Bacon endeavoured to effect a compromise with his accusers by a confession of about one per cent, of his crimes, but the Peers insisted on making him answerable in full for all his delinquencies. He then acknowledged twenty-eight articles, which seemed to satisfy the most ravenous of his enemies, who were hungering to see his reputation torn to pieces by the million mouths of rumour. The great seal was taken away from a man of such a degraded stamp, he was flned £40,000—a mere bagatelle out of what he had bagged—was declared incapable of holding office or sitting in Parliament, and was sent off to the Tower.

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There were thoughts of beheading him, but happily for England, her Bacon was saved to devote the remainder of his life to literary compositions, which have greatly redeemed his name from obloquy. We must regard the character of our Bacon as streaky, for the dark is intermingled with the fair in the most wonderful manner. "Bacon was undoubtedly rash, but he might have been rasher," says the incorrigible Strype, whose name is continually suggestive of the lashing he merited.

The Commons having been instrumental in bringing to light a considerable quantity of corruption, seemed determined to continue on the same scent, and every one who had a grievance was invited to lay it at once before Parliament. The waste-paper baskets of the House were of course soon overflowing with popular complaints, for there is scarcely a man, woman or child that cannot rake up a grievance of some kind, upon the invitation of persons professing to be able and willing to supply a remedy. James, fearful that his prerogative would be entrenched upon, wrote a letter to the Speaker, advising the Commons not to form themselves into an assembly of gossips, to listen to all the tittle-tattle that an entire nation of scandal-mongers would be ready to collect; but the House would not be diverted from its honest purpose by the sneers or threats of the sovereign. A good deal of polite and other letter-writing ensued between the king and the Parliament, until the latter entered on its journals a protestation, claiming the freedom of speech and the right of giving advice as the undoubted "inheritance of the subjects of England."

James was furious at what had occurred, and ordering the Journals of the Commons to be brought to him, he contemptuously tore out the page; and then, sending back the book, advised the House to turn over a new leaf as soon as possible. "Tell your master," said Coke, in a whisper that nobody heard, "tell him he will do well to take a leaf out of our book, but not in the style in which this leaf has been taken." Parliament was first prorogued, and then dissolved by the king, who declared it would do no good as long as it lasted, and Coke, who was charged with adding fuel to the Parliamentary fire, was sent to the Tower with several others. On the day of the dissolution James nearly met with his own dissolution, for while taking a ride on a spirited horse, who had perhaps a certain instinctive sympathy with the popular cause, he was thrown into the New River.

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This was on the 6th of January, 1622, when the water was frozen; and James had just been saying to himself, "I'm glad I have made the plunge, and broken the ice with these turbulent Commons," when he found himself plunging and breaking the ice after another fashion. Fortunately his boots were buoyant—perhaps they had cork soles—and Sir Richard Young, seizing a boat-hook, which he converted for the moment into a boot-hook, drew the sovereign by the heels from what he afterwards declared was decidedly not his proper element.

Buckingham, as we have already seen, was the sole successor to Somerset in the office of royal favourite; but Charles, the Prince of Wales, had taken rather an aversion than otherwise to the person whom his father patronised. The friends of the latter were generally so disreputable, that his son could not go wrong in avoiding them; but Buckingham beginning to look upon Charles as the better speculation of the two, resolved on making himself as agreeable as possible to the more faithful and therefore more promising branch of royalty. The duke being fond of scampish adventure, proposed a plan better suited to be made the incident of a farce, than to be ranked as an event in history. He suggested that Charles and himself should travel to Spain under the assumed names of Jack Smith and Tom Smith, in order that the prince might introduce himself to the Infanta of Spain, whom it had been proposed he should marry. For such a wild-goose scheme to succeed, an Infanta of Spain must have been much more accessible in those days than in ours; for though Jack Smith and Tom Smith might find their way into a public-house parlour, and make love to the landlord's daughter, they would assuredly never be allowed to carry their gallantries into any European palace, or even to obtain admittance into any respectable private family. James, when the scheme was proposed to him, discouraged it at first, but being taken by the scapegrace couple in "a jovial humour," which means when the trio happened to be disgracefully drunk, the consent of the king was given to the farcical enterprise.

Having arrived at Madrid, the two hopeful youths rode up on mules to the door of Sir Thomas Digby, the British ambassador, and sent in the names of John and Thomas Smith; but Digby, knowing no less than half a hundred Smiths, declined seeing the "party" unless a more special description was sent up to him. Without waiting for further formality, Buckingham—alias Tom Smith—walked with his portmanteau straight into the ambassador's presence, after a series of scuffles on the staircase and in the passages, accompanied by shouts of "Keep back, fellow!"

"You can't come up!" and other exclamations that had prepared Digby to give Tom Smith a reception by no means encouraging. When tne ambassador recognised his visitor, his manner completely changed, and his politeness knew no bounds, when in Jack Smith, who entered next, Digby saw no less a person than the heir to the throne of England. The incognito was of course at an end in an instant, and the next day Buckingham and the prince were presented to the royal family of Spain, though the farce of the disguise was still kept up to a certain extent; and the Infanta was sent out in her father's carriage, "sitting in the boot," says Howell, "that Charles might get a sight of her." The position of a young lady looking from the boot of a carriage could not have been very becoming, and she does not seem to have made a particularly favourable impression on her intended suitor. He nevertheless expressed his readiness to have another look at her, and he played the part of lover at Buckingham's instigation, for the purpose of getting a variety of presents from the young lady's family.

Her brother Philip was anxious for the match, and did everything to encourage it, by giving some valuable article to Charles whenever he evinced anything like affection for the young Infanta. One day he pretended to be in a particularly tender mood, and at every piece of gallantry he displayed Philip gave him something costly to take away with him. By a series of smirks, leers, and pretty speeches, he secured some original pictures by Titian and Correggio, but when he rushed up to the Infanta with amorous playfulness, pinking her in the side with his cane, and giving the Spanish version of "Whew, you little baggage!" the queen of Spain was so delighted that she emptied her reticule, which was full of amber, into the pocket of the Prince, while the word "Halves" was whispered in a sepulchral tone into his ear by the crafty and avaricious Buckingham.

When they had got all they could out of the Spanish royal family, the English prince and his companion made up their minds that the Infanta was a failure, and that they had better get home with all possible celerity. Buckingham began treating Philip with the most disrespectful familiarity, slapping him boisterously on the back, alluding to him curtly, but not courteously, as Phil., ana otherwise offending the royal dignity. At length Prince Charles and his companion called to take leave, when the former played his old part of a devoted lover, beating in the crown of his hat, stamping on the floor, and giving the numerous signs of devotion that a practice of several weeks under a popular actor had made him completely master of. He had no sooner turned his back upon Madrid, and commenced moving towards home, than he made up his mind to cut the matrimonial connection; and he announced his determination by a messenger, who was instructed to say to Philip, that, for the good of both parties, and decidedly for the happiness of one, the abandonment of the marriage was much to be desired. Philip, upon whom the Infanta was a drag he would have been glad to get off his hands, became angry at the tampering that had taken place with the young lady's affections; but as these were no doubt pretty tough, the damage was not material.

A proxy had been left in the hands of Digby, Earl of Bristol, the British Ambassador at Madrid, and the royal family sent nearly every day, with their compliments, begging to know when the proxy was to be acted upon; but finding at last, that, notwithstanding the proxy, there was no approximation to a satisfactory result, a most unpleasant feeling was created. Bristol, who was a man of honour, felt very uncomfortable at the evasive replies he was compelled to give, and was not sorry to return to England; though he had, as he naturally observed, "not bargained for the warrant which, in the most unwarrantable manner, awaited his arrival, and sent him straight to the Tower." He was soon afterwards released, but was not allowed by Buckingham, the favourite, to approach the king, and a recommendation to Bristol to go to Bath, or to retire to his country seat, was the only reply the ex-ambassador could obtain to his solicitations to be allowed to offer explanations to his sovereign.

Charles had given the Infanta scarcely time to recover from the jilting she had just undergone, when, with a cruel disregard of that young person's feelings, he made up to Mademoiselle Henrietta of France, and a marriage with the latter was speedily concluded. The dowry, amounting to about £100,000, was paid partly down, but the nuptial ceremony was performed by proxy; and the English Government wrote over to say that there was no hurry about the bride, provided some of the cash was transmitted to England as speedily as possible.

With some of the cash thus obtained, and with money squeezed out of the people, an expensive engagement was formed with Count Mans-feldt, an adventurer from the Low Countries, who undertook to recover the Palatinate, if an English army of twelve thousand men were placed under him. The troops were put at his disposal, and embarked at Dover; but on reaching Calais the governor had no orders to let them pass, and in consequence of the loss of the city in Mary's time, the free list, of which the English had been in the habit of taking advantage, was of course suspended. In vain did Mansfeldt inform the door-keeper that it was all right, and insist that the name of Mansfeldt and party should have been left with the authorities; for the man resolutely declared he had a duty to perform, which prevented him from admitting the earl and his followers. While they were waiting outside the bar of Calais, several of the troops suffered severely from sea-sickness, and being obliged to go round by the back way, they had become so attenuated, that instead of being fit for marching into the Palatinate, they were much better adapted for marching into Guy's Hospital.

The failure of this expedition was the last event of importance in the reign of James, who was fast sinking under gout and tertian ague, produced by a long indulgence in rums, gins, brandies, and other compounds. He died, at the age of fifty-nine, on the 27th of March, 1625, having reigned upwards of two-and-twenty years, during which he showed himself fully deserving of the title bestowed on him by Sully, who said of James the First that he was the "wisest fool in Europe." He was learned, it is true, but his acquirements, such as they were, became a bore, from his disagreeable habit of thrusting them at most inappropriate times upon all who approached him. He was weak, mean, and pusillanimous, while his excessive vanity caused him to select for his companions those pitiful sycophants who would affect admiration for those miserable qualities, which, had he cultivated the friendship of honest and intelligent men, he might have been eventually broken of. He lost, and indeed he did not desire the society of his children, because they could not sympathise with those littlenesses of character which, the older they grew, their judgment caused them more and more to despise and deplore in their unfortunate parent.

Happily only two out of seven survived to endure that alienation which must have been painful while it would have been unavoidable; and they were thus spared the humiliation of seeing a father vain, selfish, and unrepentant to the last, while their deaths in rapid succession gave him happily no uneasiness. For his eldest son he had, as we have already seen, prohibited the wearing of mourning, thus giving a proof of combined malice and stupidity, since his insults to the dead were of course as impotent as they were wicked and infamous. He was suspicious in the extreme, and always fancied he was going to be done or done for. To guard against the latter contingency he wore a quilted doublet that was proof against a stiletto, and under the apprehension of being taken advantage of, he obstinately excluded every one from his confidence. The result was that he never had a friend, through his constant dread of an imaginary enemy. It has been said of him by one of his historians, that he was fond of laughing at his own conceits; but the wretch who can even smile at a joke of his own must be such a libel upon human nature that not even Hume-an(d) Smollett (ha! ha! mark the pun) shall make us believe that an individual so abject could ever have existed.

Though the sovereign himself was not calculated to inspire respect, there were many events in his reign which rendered it useful if not glorious. Sir Hugh Middleton commenced at Amwell that now venerable New River, by dabbling in which he swamped himself and secured a stream of health and prosperity to those who came after him. The immortal Hicks finished his memorable Hall; Lord Napier invented logarithms, to the extreme disgust of the school-boys of every generation; and Dr. Harvey made the magnificent discovery that the blood is a periodical enjoying the most unlimited circulation. Two Dutch navigators contrived to double Cape Horn; which the reader must not imagine was twice its present size before that operation was performed, for Cape Horn, like any other cape, is not larger when doubled. Bill Baffin, an Englishman (you all know Bill Baffin) discovered Baffin's Bay in the year 1616, and a patent for the fire engine, granted two years afterwards, has been stated as a proof that steam power was first known in England in 1618, though upon inquiry we are inclined to think there was more of smoke than steam in the invention spoken of.

The wealth and extravagance of the nobles, among whom corruption and bribery were practised "wholesale, retail, and for exportation," may be imagined from the statement, that on the marriage of the French king, the horse of the English ambassador wore silver shoes so loosely fastened on, that they fell off, and were instantly replaced, for distribution among the populace. We can scarcely believe that any English horse could have walked in these silver shoes or slippers in the time of James, however skilfully they could have substituted sliding for walking, since the Wood Demon, coming to London, caused the introduction of wooden pavements.

The luxury and display that stand prominently forward among the characteristics of the period, were discountenanced by James when seen in others, though he would have spared nothing tor the selfish gratification of his own extravagance. Bacon, whose tendency to flattery justifies the popular analogy between butter and bacon, remarked of the king that he would recommend the country gentlemen to remain at their seats, by saying to them, "In London you are like ships in a sea, which show like nothing; but in your country villages you are like ships in a river, which look like great things." * This, after all, was a funny idea, but a bad argument; for a ship in a river, like a storm in a puddle, is somewhat out of its element. Many would prefer being wrecked in the ocean of a busy but tempestuous life, to remaining aground in the dismal swamp of rural obscurity. The thing to be desired, is the art of keeping a steady course, and steering in the right direction; but it is mere pusillanimity to accept a recommendation to shirk the voyage. Among the inventions of the reign of James, we must not omit to mention the sedan, a contrivance of the lazy and luxurious Buckingham. On its first appearance in public, the mob hooted the machine as it passed, declaring that their fellow-creatures should not do the service of beasts; but the "fellow-creatures," being paid for and liking the job, were the first to beat off their friends, the people. The friends of humanity were, however, not content till they had broken in the top and knocked out the bottom of the machine, leaving Buckingham to walk home in a most uncomfortable case, with his head peering out at the top, and his feet appearing at the bottom of his novel equipage.

The literary characters who flourished in the reign of James were very numerous; and we must, of course, place at the head of them our old acquaintance the "Swan of Avon," as some goose has most irreverently christened him. Shakespeare adorned the time of James by dying in it, as, by living in it, he shed a lustre on that of Elizabeth. One of our predecessors * in the gigantic task we have undertaken—and, by the way, it is said that Mr. Macaulay, fired by our shining example, is preparing himself to follow it by a retirement from public life—one of our predecessors, we repeat, has thrown cold water upon the warm admiration which is felt for Shakespeare to this day, and which at this very moment is urging the whole nation to buy his house at Stratford, though the town was burnt, great at first for the possession of this relic, has, we confess, a little abated since our research put us in possession of the unpleasant fact, that the bard must have been burnt out, notwithstanding the assurance of the auctioneer, who acts, of course, on what he considers the best policy. Whatever we may think of the house the poet left or did not leave behind him, the houses he still draws by the magic of his genius are sufficient to refute the argument of the hypercritical Hume, that Shakespeare appeared greater than he really was, because he happened to be irregular. We are not aware that irregularity and grandeur must necessarily seem to be combined, and indeed, irregularity in payment, which considerably aggrandises an account, is the only instance we can call to mind in which we see some ground for our fellow-historian's strange hypothesis, ** down at about the time when the poet lived in it. Our own enthusiasm, which was Fletcher, the dramatist, and his partner Beaumont, belonged to the reign of James; but when the latter died, in 1616, the firm was broken up; and as each had been nothing by himself, Fletcher fell into wretched insignificance. His name had only been known in connection with that of Beaumont, and if he attempted to play the lion afterwards at an evening party, a cool inquiry of "Fletcher! Fletcher! who's Fletcher?" was the only sensation the announcement of his name elicited. Some say he died of the plague in 1625, but it is more probable that the plaguy indifference shown towards him everywhere, after he lost poor Beaumont, was in reality the death of him.

* Home.
** Stratford-upon-Avon was all destroyed by fire in
September, 1614, two years before Shakespeare's death.

Honest Jack Stowe, the antiquarian, ought not to be overlooked, though time has long since stowed away his works among the lumber of our libraries. His Survey of London was his greatest literary labour, and he was preparing a new edition in 1605, when he was obliged to "Stow it" by an attack of illness that unhappily proved fatal.

Donne, the poet, can hardly be mentioned among the literary dons of the age; but Bacon is a luminary that must not be snuffed out in a single sentence. It has been said that his wit was far-fetched, but a thing is certainly not the less valuable for having been brought from a long way off; for if it were so, the diamond would lose much of its value in the London market. If Bacon's wit was far fetched, it was not only worth the carriage, but it has been found sufficiently valuable to warrant its being forwarded on from generation to generation: and it will, we suspect, find its way to a still remote posterity, before it arrives at the terminus of its journey.

James himself was but a contemptible writer, and would have been scarcely worth his five pounds a week in these days, as the London correspondent of a country newspaper. His imagination would not have been vigorous enough to supply him with the "latest intelligence," which must always be in type at least two days before the date on which the facts it professes to impart are stated to have happened. As an industrious chronicler of early gooseberries, new carrots, gigantic cabbages, irruptions of lady-birds, and showers of frogs, he would have been useful in his way, or he might have undertaken that branch of periodical literature which embraces the interesting recollections—or non-recollections rather—of the oldest inhabitant.