should have chosen to send them there, instead of to his own
smaller and poorer University, we have nothing to show. It is thus
apparent that in his active public work Buchanan's chief attention was
given to his own proper subjects. There is no evidence that he did more
than was indispensable to his official character in matters more
exclusively political.

His old age thus passed, in a certain learned leisure which it is very
difficult to imagine as existing in so tumultuous a period and amid so
many violent changes and vicissitudes. He had many learned
correspondents throughout the world, almost all the great scholars of
the time being numbered among his friends; and the letters which he
received from all quarters implied a considerable amount of
letter-writing on his side. He sent copies of his books to his friends
as if he had been the most modern of novelists, and it is curious to
think of the big laborious volume of solemn Latin dramas, or that thin
but weighty tome, instinct with another and more living kind of
interest, which set forth the rights of nations--sent by some trusty
messenger, a young scholar finding in the packet entrusted to his charge
the best introduction to one of the lights of learning on the Continent,
or some adventurer making his way to a commission in the Scottish
Archers or other service of arms more profitable for a younger son than
the frays and feuds of Scotland. The learned doctors of the Sorbonne,
the scholars of Geneva, and the printers of Holland, replied on their
side not only with elaborate thanks and eulogies, but with responsive
presents, treatises or translations of their own, some of them dedicated
to the royal boy who was the pupil of their friend, and of whom he gave
so wonderful a description. "I have been guilty of trifling with a
sacred subject," wrote Berger with his volume of poems, "and I have
dedicated my trifles to a king." Another learned correspondent sends a
Plato which he has edited, one volume of which he had also inscribed to
James, begging that his friend would present it to his Majesty. They
would seem to have shared Buchanan's satisfaction in his princely pupil,
and it is chiefly by way of reflection, through these responses, that we
perceive what his opinion of the young King was, and how much proud
delight, expressed no doubt in the most classical language, he took in
the boy's aptitude and promise. The following letter, however, which is
not classical at