mitigating circumstance, or qualifying abatement.
At the moment of inflicting the censure, some recollection in opposition
to what is asserted passes in the mind, and to approximate to Truth, they
offer a discrepancy, a self-contradiction. James must always be condemned
on a system, while his apology is only allowed the benefit of a
parenthesis.

How it has happened that our luckless crowned philosopher has been the
common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite
obvious when so many causes were operating against him. The shifting
positions into which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will
unriddle the enigma of his life. Contrarieties cease to be contradictions
when operated on by external causes.

James was two persons in one, frequently opposed to each other. He was an
antithesis in human nature--or even a solecism. We possess ample evidence
of his shrewdness and of his simplicity; we find the lofty regal style
mingled with his familiar bonhommie. Warm, hasty, and volatile, yet with
the most patient zeal to disentangle involved deception; such gravity in
sense, such levity in humour; such wariness and such indiscretion; such
mystery and such openness--all these must have often thrown his Majesty
into some awkward dilemmas. He was a man of abstract speculation in the
theory of human affairs; too witty or too aphoristic, he never seemed at a
loss to decide, but too careless, perhaps too infirm, ever to come to a
decision, he leaned on others. He shrunk from the council-table; he had
that distaste for the routine of business which studious sedentary men are
too apt to indulge; and imagined that his health, which he said was the
health of the kingdom, depended on the alternate days which he devoted to
the chase; Royston and Theobalds were more delectable than a deputation
from the Commons, or the Court at Whitehall.

It has not always been arbitrary power which has forced the people into
the dread circle of their fate, seditions, rebellions, and civil wars; nor
always oppressive taxation which has given rise to public grievances. Such
were not the crimes of James the First. Amid the full blessings of peace,
we find how the people are prone to corrupt themselves, and how a
philosopher on the throne, the father of his people, may live without
exciting gratitude, and die without inspiring regret--unregarded,
unremembered!

INDEX.

ABERNETHY'S opinion of enthusiasm, 145.