hand, conveys a notion of
that precocity of intellect, in that early educated prince, which would
not suffer his infirm health to relax in his royal duties. This prince
was solemnly struck with the feeling that he was not seated on a throne
to be a trifler or a sensualist: and this simplicity of mind is very
remarkable in the entries of his diary; where, on one occasion, to
remind himself of the causes of his secret proffer of friendship to aid
the Emperor of Germany with men against the Turk, and to keep it at
present secret from the French court, the young monarch inserts, "This
was done on intent to get some friends. The reasonings be in my desk."
So zealous was he to have before him a state of public affairs, that
often in the middle of the month he recalls to mind passages which he
had omitted in the beginning: what was done every day of moment, he
retired into his study to set down.--Even James the Second wrote with
his own hand the daily occurrences of his times, his reflections and
conjectures. Adversity had schooled him into reflection, and softened
into humanity a spirit of bigotry; and it is something in his favour,
that after his abdication he collected his thoughts, and mortified
himself by the penance of a diary.--Could a Clive or a Cromwell have
composed one? Neither of these men could suffer solitude and darkness;
they started at their casual recollections:--what would they have done,
had memory marshalled their crimes, and arranged them in the terrors of
chronology?

When the national character retained more originality and individuality
than our monotonous habits now admit, our later ancestors displayed a
love of application, which was a source of happiness, quite lost to us.
Till the middle of the last century they were as great economists of
their time as of their estates; and life with them was not one hurried
yet tedious festival. Living more within themselves, more separated,
they were therefore more original in their prejudices, their principles,
and in the constitution of their minds. They resided more on their
estates, and the metropolis was usually resigned to the men of trade in
their Royal Exchange, and the preferment-hunters among the backstairs at
Whitehall. Lord Clarendon tells us, in his "Life," that his grandfather,
in James the First's time, had never been in London after the death of
Elizabeth, though he lived thirty years afterwards; and his wife, to
whom he had been married forty y