ich the generous Lewis had
assigned to his suppliants. The woods were magnificent, the air clear
and salubrious, the prospects extensive and cheerful. No charm of
rural life was wanting; and the towers of the most superb city of the
Continent were visible in the distance. The royal apartments were richly
adorned with tapestry and marquetry, vases of silver and mirrors in
gilded frames. A pension of more than forty thousand pounds sterling
was annually paid to James from the French Treasury. He had a guard of
honour composed of some of the finest soldiers in Europe. If he
wished to amuse himself with field sports, he had at his command an
establishment far more sumptuous than that which had belonged to him
when he was at the head of a great kingdom, an army of huntsmen and
fowlers, a vast arsenal of guns, spears, buglehorns and tents, miles of
network, staghounds, foxhounds, harriers, packs for the boar and packs
for the wolf, gerfalcons for the heron and haggards for the wild
duck. His presence chamber and his antechamber were in outward show as
splendid as when he was at Whitehall. He was still surrounded by blue
ribands and white staves. But over the mansion and the domain brooded
a constant gloom, the effect, partly of bitter regrets and of deferred
hopes, but chiefly of the abject superstition which had taken complete
possession of his own mind, and which was affected by almost all those
who aspired to his favour. His palace wore the aspect of a monastery.
There were three places of worship within the spacious pile. Thirty or
forty ecclesiastics were lodged in the building; and their apartments
were eyed with envy by noblemen and gentlemen who had followed the
fortunes of their Sovereign, and who thought it hard that, when there
was so much room under his roof, they should be forced to sleep in the
garrets of the neighbouring town. Among the murmurers was the brilliant
Anthony Hamilton. He has left us a sketch of the life of Saint Germains,
a slight sketch indeed, but not unworthy of the artist to whom we owe
the most highly finished and vividly coloured picture of the English
Court in the days when the English Court was gayest. He complains that
existence was one round of religious exercises; that, in order to live
in peace, it was necessary to pass half the day in devotion or in the
outward show of devotion; that, if he tried to dissipate his melancholy
by breathing the fresh air of that noble terrace which looks do