ament, one day mounting his horse,
which, though usually sober and quiet, began to bound and
prance,--"Sirrah!" exclaimed the king, who seemed to fancy that his
favourite prerogative was somewhat resisted on this occasion, "if you be
not quiet, I'll send you to the five hundred kings in the lower house:
they'll quickly tame you." When one of the Lumleys was pushing on his
lineal ascent beyond the patience of the hearers, the king, to cut short
the tedious descendant of the Lumleys, cried out, "Stop mon! thou needst
no more: now I learn that Adam's surname was Lumley!" When Colonel Gray,
a military adventurer of that day, just returned from Germany, seemed
vain of his accoutrements, on which he had spent his all,--the king,
staring at this buckled, belted, sworded, and pistolled, but ruined,
martinet, observed, that "this town was so well fortified, that, were it
victualled, it might be impregnable."

* * * * *

EVIDENCES OF HIS SAGACITY IN THE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH.

Possessing the talent of eloquence, the quickness of wit, and the
diversified knowledge which produced his "Table-talk," we find also many
evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth, with that patient
zeal so honourable to a monarch. When the shipwrights, jealous of Pett,
our great naval architect, formed a party against him, the king would
judge with his own eyes. Having examined the materials depreciated by
Pett's accusers, he declared that "the cross-grain was in the men, not in
the timber." The king, on historical evidence, and by what he said
in his own works, claims the honour of discovering the gunpowder plot, by
the sagacity and reflection with which he solved the enigmatical and
ungrammatical letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts has
even been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private
letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the
same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs.
Macaulay acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery to the
king's sagacity. Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the
detection of imposture might be adduced; and the reader may, perhaps, be
amused at these.

There existed a conspiracy against the Countess of Exeter by Lady Lake,
and her daughter, Lady Ross. They had contrived to forge a letter in the
Countess's name, in which she confessed all the heavy crimes they accused
her of,