rous, 'and beneficent, in all his views; at once, the most learned prince and the most accomplished cavalier of his day; no man was ever better entitled to take the lead of an infant people in the path to glory and prosperity. Yet with all these blossoms of a high and happy destiny, the story of James's life is but one chapter of misfortunes, so severe and so unmerited, that they might fill with tears the sternest eye that ever scanned the ways of heaven to man.

James the First was born in 1393. He was the second son of Robert the Third of Scotland, and the fourth monarch in descent from the renowned Robert Bruce, the restorer of the Scottish monarchy.

James had an elder brother, David, who fell a victim in the dawn of life to the murderous ambition of his uncle, the Duke of Albany, who wished to secure the throne for himself and family. Some emissaries of the duke waylaid the young prince in the neighbourhood of St. Andrew's, and seizing forcibly on his person, conducted him to the Palace of Falkland, where he was shut up in a strong tower and starved to death.

The melancholy fate of his first born filled the Scottish monarch with dismay for the safety of his only remaining boy, James; and, in order to place him beyond the reach of a faithless kindred, until he should attain to the vigour of manhood, he resolved to send him, for the completion of his education, to the court of France, the most antient and devoted ally of the Kings of Scotland. The young prince, now in his eleventh year, was accordingly embarked, with all possible secrecy, on board of a vessel under the care of the Earl of Orkney; and as a truce sub

sisted at this time between England and Scotland, which wanted some weeks of its stipulated termination, they left the Scottish shore with the full assu rance of crossing the seas, secure from all dangers but those of the winds and waves. When off Flamborough Head, however, they were intercepted by an English squadron, and, in violation of all the laws and usages of nations, carried prisoners to England. The tidings of this disaster are said, by Buchanan, to have sunk his father with sorrow to the grave. "The news," he says, "was brought to him while at supper, and did so overwhelm him with grief, that he was almost ready to give up the ghost unto the hands of the servants that attended him. But being carried to his bed-chamber, he abstained from all food, and in three days died of hunger and grief at Rothsay."

On the death of Robert, James was proclaimed king; but, on account of his minority and absence, the regency of the kingdom devolved on his uncle, the perfidious Albany, who, intoxicated by the sweets of power, instead of making any serious effort for the redemption of his royal nephew, contributed all in his power, by evasive and heartless negociations, to protract the period of his exile.

The first two years of the young prince's captivity were passed in the Tower of London. In 1407, he was removed to Nottingham Castle. In 1413, he was brought back to the Tower, but, in the course of the same year, was transferred to Windsor Castle. In 1414, the English king, Henry IV. took James along with him in his second expedition to France, but, on his return, committed him anew to Windsor Castle, where he remained till his final liberation.

In all these fortresses, his confinement was of the closest description; even at Windsor, though there was a garden faire fast by the tower's wall," he appears only to have been allowed the scanty pleasure of gazing on its verdant luxuriance from his chamber window.

Although his body was, in the very spring of its growth, thus cruelly shut up from those grand fountains of life and strength, air and exercise, it is singular enough, that the attention paid to the cultivation of his mind was quite in an inverse degree. Hector Boece tells us, that Henry IV. and V. furnished him with the best of teachers in all the arts and sciences; and all historians are agreed in recording, as the fruit of their united efforts, that James became a perfect prodigy of talents and accomplishments. Boece says, "he was a proficient in every branch of polite literature, in grammar, oratory, Latin and English poetry, music, jurisprudence, and the philosophy of the times;" that" in all athletic exercises, particularly in the use of the sword and spear, he was eminently expert;" and that "his dexterity in tilts and tournaments, in wrestling, in archery, and in the sports of the field, was perfectly unrivalled." Bellenden adds, that he was moreover an "expert mediciner;" Pinkerton speaks of his skill in " miniature painting and horticulture;" and Drummond, more comprehensive than all the rest, says, that" there was nothing wherein the commendation of wit consisted, or any shadow of the liberal arts did appear, that he had not applied his mind to, seeming rather born to letters than instructed."

It is very probable, that this ample catalogue of

perfections may admit of some abatement. A person who possesses unquestionably many excellencies, is always sure to have some few added at a venture, less from any amiable partiality for his fame, than from that common vice of biography, a weak desire of telling something new. The historians of Scotland, not satisfied with proving James to be the first of Scotsmen, have been ambitious to make him out to be the first of men; and, in doing so, nothing is more likely than that they should, in some degree, have overstepped the modesty of truth. It is certain, at least, that if James really possessed all the perfections which are thus ascribed to him, a considerable proportion of them must have been the attainment of years subsequent to his captivity. Expertness "in all athletic exercises," "dexterity unrivalled in tilts and tournaments, in archery, and in the sports of the field," were graces not to be acquired within the narrow walls of a prison; and granting even that they may have belonged to a later and happier period of his life, it is allowing much for zeal in new pursuits to imagine, that such heyday accomplishments could be the ready acquisition of a prince who had been immured in a prison from boyhood till nearly middle age, whom sedentary and secluded habits must have deprived of much of the natural elasticity of youth, and who, on his restoration to the world, had all the cares of a distracted kingdom to occupy his attention.

Whatever deduction a regard to probability may incline us to make from the reputed attainments of James, on account of his long captivity, it will only bring us nearer to a correct estimate of the obligation he was under to the English sovereigns, for the pecu

liar and somewhat inconsistent degree of attention which they bestowed on his education. The terms in which some writers have expressed themselves on this point are abundantly extravagant. James, we are told, was, on the score of mental improvement, rather a gainer than a loser by his captivity; the English monarchs are even said to have accomplished, in this respect, what went nigh to a full atonement for their unjust and lawless detention of this unfortunate prince. Vain apology! In his infant years, James had for his preceptor one of the brighest ornaments of the Scottish hierarchy of that period, Walter Wardlaw, Archbishop of St. Andrew's; and the youth, who might have continued to enjoy the tuition of a Wardlaw, and such as Wardlaw, could have nothing to gain by being transferred to the care of all the doctors in England. At all events, no service on earth could atone for eighteen years of close and unremitted captivity; years too of youth and of manhood; the whole spring and summer time of a man's brief existence. A regard to appearances; the desire of having, and the vanity of filling up, appointments; may jointly or separately have led to that profusion of instruction with which James was provided; but it would be too much to suppose, that the heart which cared nothing for the life of its victim, could care about any thing else that concerned him.

It is pleasing to find, that those attainments which were most likely to be pursued in the loneliness of captivity are those, of James's excellence in which, there is the least, or rather I should say, no doubt whatever. Philosophy and poetry were the grand sources from which he drew the consolation he so