least
was the impression which he left upon the mind of his time. Thus
deprived of all the guides who had power over him, and of the only
parent whom he could respect, the young Duke of Rothesay, only
twenty-three at most, plunged into all those indulgences which are so
fatally easy to a prince. It is supposed that the marriage into which a
false policy had driven him was not the marriage he desired. But this
was a small particular in those days, as it has proved even in other
times less rude. He ran into every kind of riot and dissipation, which
the councillors appointed to aid him could not check. After no doubt
many remonstrances and appeals this band of serious men relinquished the
attempt, declaring themselves unable to persuade the Prince even to any
regard for decency: and the ill-advised and feeble King committed to
Albany, who had been standing by waiting for some such piece of good
fortune, the reformation of his son. The catastrophe was not slow to
follow. Rothesay was seized near St. Andrews on the pretence of stopping
a mad enterprise in which he was engaged, and conveyed to Falkland,
where he died in strict confinement, "of dysentery or others say of
hunger" is the brief and terrible record--blaming no one--of the
chroniclers, on Easter Eve 1401. It would be vain to attempt to add
anything to the picture of the young unfortunate and his end which Sir
Walter Scott has given. We can but rescue out of obscurity the brief
moment in which that young life was at the turning-point and might have
changed into something noble. Had his challenge been accepted, and had
he died sword in hand outside the castle gates for Scotland and her
independence, how touching and inspiring would have been the story! But
fortune never favoured the Stewarts; they have had no luck, to use a
more homely expression, such as falls to the lot of other races, and
what might have been a legend of chivalry, the record of a young hero,
drops to the horror of a miserable murder done upon a victim who foils
even the pity he excites--a young debauchee almost as miserable and
wretched as the means by which he died.

There was this relic of generosity and honour about the unfortunate
Prince, even in his fallen state, that he refused to consent to the
assassination of the uncle, who found no difficulty, it would appear, in
assassinating him; thus showing that wayward strain of nobleness among
many defects and miseries which through all their trag