als,
and the piteousness of domestic tragedies. The stormy feudal time out of
which they arose crumbled by process of gradual decay, but they remained,
made brighter by each succeeding summer, like the wildflowers that blow
in the chinks of ruins. And when English poetry had become artificial
and cold, the lucubrations of forgotten Scottish minstrels, full of the
touches that make the whole world kin, brought new life with them.
Scotland had invaded England more than once, but the blue bonnets never
went over the border so triumphantly as when they did so in the shape of
songs and ballads.

James IV., if not the wisest, was certainly the most brilliant monarch of
his name; and he was fortunate beyond the later Stuarts in this, that
during his lifetime no new popular tide had set in which it behooved him
to oppose or to float upon. For him in all its essentials to-day had
flowed quietly out of yesterday, and he lived unperplexed by fear of
change. With something of a Southern gaiety of spirit, he was a merrier
monarch than his dark-featured and saturnine descendant who bore the
appellation. He was fond of martial sports, he loved to glitter at
tournaments, his court was crowded with singing men and singing women.
Yet he had his gloomy moods and superstitious despondencies. He could
not forget that he had appeared in arms against his father; even while he
whispered in the ear of beauty the iron belt of penance was fretting his
side, and he alternated the splendid revel with the cell of the monk. In
these days, and for long after, the Borders were disturbed, and the
Highland clans, setting royal authority at defiance, were throttling each
other in their mists. The Catholic religion was yet unsapped, and the
wealth of the country resided in the hands of the nobles and the
churchmen. Edinburgh towered high on the ridge between Holyrood and the
Castle, its streets reddened with feud at intervals, and its merchants
clustering round the Cathedral of St. Giles like bees in a honeycomb; and
the king, when he looked across the faint azure of the Forth, beheld the
long coast of Fife dotted with little towns, where ships were moored that
traded with France and Holland, and brought with them cargoes of silk and
wines. James was a popular monarch; he was beloved by the nobles and by
the people. He loved justice, he cultivated his marine, and he built the
_Great Michael_--the _Great Eastern_ of that day. He had valiant seame