isagreeable
appearance when eating; while his legs were so weak, that he required
support in walking. Notwithstanding these defects, and his general
coarseness of manner, James was not without dignity, and could, when he
chose, assume a right royal air and deportment. But these occasions were
rare. As is well known, his pedantry and his pretensions to superior
wisdom and discrimination, procured him the title of the "Scottish
Solomon." His general character will be more fully developed as we
proceed; and we shall show the perfidy and dissimulation which he
practised in carrying out his schemes, and tried to soften down under
the plausible appellation of "King-craft."

James was never seen to greater advantage than on occasions like the
present. His hearty enjoyment of the sport he was engaged in; his
familiarity with all around him, even with the meanest varlets by whom
he was attended, and for whom he had generally some droll nickname; his
complete abandonment of all the etiquette which either he or his master
of the ceremonies observed elsewhere; his good-tempered vanity and
boasting about his skill as a woodsman,--all these things created an
impression in his favour, which was not diminished in those who were not
brought much into contact with him in other ways. When hunting or
hawking, James was nothing more than a hearty country gentleman engaged
in the like sports.

The cavalcade came leisurely on, for the King proceeded no faster than
would allow the falconers to keep easily up with those on horseback. He
was in high good humour, and laughed and jested sometimes with one
ambassador, sometimes with the other, and having finished a learned
discussion on the manner of fleeing a hawk at the river and on the
field, as taught by the great French authorities, Martin, Malopin, and
Aime Cassian, with the Marquis de Tremouille, had just begun a similar
conversation with Giustiniano as to the Italian mode of manning,
hooding, and reclaiming a falcon, as practised by Messer Francesco
Sforzino Vicentino, when he caught sight of the Conde de Gondomar,
standing where we left him at the side of the avenue, on which he came
to a sudden halt, and the whole cavalcade stopped at the same time.

"Salud! Conde magnifico!" exclaimed King James, as the Spaniard advanced
to make his obeisance to him; "how is it that we find you standing under
the shade of the tree friendly to the vine,--_amictoe vitibus ulmi_ as
Ovid hath it? Is it th