was not without
foundation." Thus in describing that wisest act of a sovereign, the
art of humanising his ruder subjects by colonisation, so unfortunate is
James, that even his most skilful apologist, influenced by popular
prepossessions, employs a degrading epithet--and yet he, who had indulged
a sarcasm on the _vanity_ of James, in closing his general view of his
wise administration in Ireland, is carried away by his nobler feelings.
--"Such were the arts," exclaims the historian, "by which James introduced
humanity and justice among a people who had ever been buried in the most
profound barbarism. Noble cares! much superior to the vain and criminal
glory of conquests." Let us add, that had the genius of James the First
been warlike, had he commanded a battle to be fought and a victory to be
celebrated, popular historians, the panders of ambition, had adorned their
pages with bloody trophies; but the peace the monarch cultivated; the
wisdom which dictated the plan of civilisation; and the persevering arts
which put it into practice--these are the still virtues which give no
motion to the _spectacle_ of the historian, and are even forgotten in his
pages.

What were the painful feelings of Catharine Macaulay, in summing up the
character of James the First. The king has even extorted from her a
confession, that "his conduct in Scotland was unexceptionable," but
"despicable in his Britannic government." To account for this seeming
change in a man who, from his first to his last day, was always the same,
required a more sober historian. She tells us also, he affected "a
sententious wit;" but she adds, that it consisted "only of quaint and
stale conceits." We need not take the word of Mrs. Macaulay, since we have
so much of this "sententious wit" recorded, of which probably she knew
little. Forced to confess that James's education had been "a more learned
one than is usually bestowed on princes," we find how useless it is to
educate princes at all; for this "more learned education" made this prince
"more than commonly deficient in all the points he pretended to have any
knowledge of." This incredible result gives no encouragement for a prince;
having a Buchanan for his tutor. Smollett, having compiled the popular
accusations of the "vanity, the prejudices, the littleness of soul," of
this abused monarch, surprises one in the same page by discovering enough
good qualities to make something more than a tolerable king. "His rei