e opinions, but who, with the patience that has always
characterized them, were willing to obey any symbol of order,--may be
said, rather to have tolerated than honored his pedantry in learning,
his kingcraft in state, his petulance in authority, and his manifold
absurdities, which, while they made him tyrannical, deprived him of the
dignity that sometimes renders even a tyrant respectable.

You will readily believe that a man like George Calvert found it
sometimes difficult to serve such a sovereign, in intimate state
relations. In private life he might not have selected him for a friend
or a companion. But James was his King; the impersonation of British
Royalty and nationality. In serving him, he was but true to England;
and, even in that task, it, no doubt, often required the whole strength
of his heart's loyalty, to withstand the follies of the royal buffoon.
Calvert, I think, was not an enthusiast, but, emphatically, a man of his
time. His time was not one of Reform, and he had no brave ambition to be
a Reformer. Accustomed to the routine of an observing and technical
official life, he was, essentially a practical man, and dealt, in
politics, exclusively with the present. Endowed, probably, with but
slender imagination, he found little charm or flavor in excursive
abstractions. His maxim may perhaps have been--"_quieta ne
movete_,"--the motto of moderate or cautions men who live in disturbed
times, preceding or succeeding revolutions, and think it better--

"---- to bear those ills we have
"Than fly to others that we know not of!"

Yet, with all these characteristics, no one will hesitate to believe
that Calvert was a bold and resolute person, when it is recollected that
he visited the wilderness of the New World in the seventeenth century,
and projected therein the formation of a British Province.

But, in truth, our materials for his biography are extremely scant. He
died at the very moment when America's chief interest in him began. He
belonged to the Court Party, as distinguished from the Country Party. He
is known to have been a zealous supporter of the "supremacy of
authority." He held, that "America, having been acquired by conquest,
was subject, exclusively, to the control of royal prerogative." He was
the defender of the Court in its diplomacy; and, ultra as James was in
his monarchical doctrines, there can be little doubt that he would have
dismissed Calvert from office, had there not be