n of James, which doubts are probably unfounded, the grand
proof of his legitimacy being the thorough baseness of his character. It
was said of his father that he could speak well, and it may be said of
him that he could write well, the only thing he could do which was worth
doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write.
He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a
degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity
discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the
year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by
Mar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized with
panic, retreated to France, leaving his friends to shift for themselves
as they best could. He died a pensioner of the Pope.

The son of this man, Charles Edward, of whom so much in latter years has
been said and written, was a worthless, ignorant youth, and a profligate
and illiterate old man. When young, the best that can be said of him is,
that he had occasionally springs of courage, invariably at the wrong time
and place, which merely served to lead his friends into inextricable
difficulties. When old, he was loathsome and contemptible to both friend
and foe. His wife loathed him, and for the most terrible of reasons; she
did not pollute his couch, for to do that was impossible--he had made it
so vile; but she betrayed it, inviting to it not only Alfieri the Filthy,
but the coarsest grooms. Dr. King, the warmest and almost last adherent
of his family, said that there was not a vice or crime of which he was
not guilty; as for his foes, they scorned to harm him even when in their
power. In the year 1745 he came down from the Highlands of Scotland,
which had long been a focus of rebellion. He was attended by certain
clans of the Highlands, desperadoes used to freebootery from their
infancy, and consequently to the use of arms, and possessed of a certain
species of discipline; with these he defeated at Prestonpans a body of
men called soldiers, but who were in reality peasants and artisans,
levied about a month before, without discipline or confidence in each
other, and who were miserably massacred by the Highland army; he
subsequently invaded England, nearly destitute of regular soldiers, and
penetrated as far as Derby, from which place he retreated on learning
that regular forces which had been hastily recalled from Fland