n the
trough of the waves, rights herself when the storm is over, repairs her
masts, re-strings her cordage, puts forth again sail after sail; and
with a sure hand at the helm and a moderate breeze in her canvas, rises
white and strong against the blueness of sea and sky, triumphant over
all the assaults of external nature, animated by human will and courage,
the most indomitable of all created things, and affording perhaps the
best example of the survival and unconquerable power of these masters of
the world: till again there arises in the heavens another hurricane,
furious, ungovernable, rousing the sea to madness, striking once more
the canvas from the yards, the masts from the deck, and leaving a mere
hulk at the mercy of the waves which rush on her and over her with the
wild rage of beasts of prey. Again and again these storms overtook the
vessel of the State in Scotland, returning after every period of calm,
after every recovery of authority, as wild, as tumultuous, as
destructive as ever. Again and again they were overcome, the power of
resistance restored, the equilibrium regained, only to fall once more
into the raging of the elements. Each successive king, with perhaps one
exception, had seized the helm as soon as his hand was fit for the
strain, or even before it was strong enough for that office, and had
gallantly brought the ship round and re-established the reign of a
rational will and a certain unity of command over all the forces of the
storms; but when he fell, left the helpless vessel again to be balloted
about by all the winds of Fate.

[Illustration: SALISBURY CRAGS]

This was the case almost more wildly than ever when the fourth James
Stewart died at Flodden. The heir, the helpless infant prince, was not
two years old, and the flower of Scotland had been slain with their
king. The mature warriors and statesmen, the wise counsellors, the men
to whom the country might have looked in such an interregnum, were all
gone. There remained only Churchmen and boys in the devastated country,
a passionate English queen of Tudor blood, and no settled centre of
government or reorganised power. Such lords as were left assembled
hastily for that pathetic oft-repeated ceremony, the crowning of the
child, taken out of his cradle to have the fatal circlet put upon his
head--and committed some sort of regency, such as it was, to the Queen.
And after a moment in which the country was paralysed with woe and every
house