, in spite of his failings, had many fine
qualities. Clarendon, who was fully conscious of them, who does not
venture to call him a good king, and allows that "his kingly virtues had
some mixture and alloy that hindered them from shining in full lustre,"
declares that "he was if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an
Honest Man, so great a lover of justice that no temptation could dispose
him to a wrongful action except that it was disguised to him that he
believed it just," "the worthiest of gentlemen, the best master, the
best friend, the best husband, the best father and the best Christian
that the age in which he lived produced." With all its deplorable
mistakes and failings Charles I.'s reign belongs to a sphere infinitely
superior to that of his unscrupulous, corrupt, selfish but more
successful son. His private life was without a blemish. Immediately on
his accession he had suppressed the disorder which had existed in the
household of James I., and let it be known that whoever had business
with him "must never approach him by backstairs or private doors."[8] He
maintained a strict sobriety in food and dress. He had a fine artistic
sense, and Milton reprehends him for having made Shakespeare "the
closest companion of his solitudes." "Monsieur le Prince de Galles,"
wrote Rubens in 1625, "est le prince le plus amateur de la peinture qui
soit au monde." He succeeded in bringing together during twenty years an
unrivalled collection, of which a great part was dispersed at his death.
He showed a noble insensibility to flattery. He was deeply and sincerely
religious. He wished to do right, and was conscious of the purity of his
motives. Those who came into contact with him, even the most bitter of
his opponents, were impressed with his goodness. The great tragedy of
his life, to be read in his well-known, dignified, but weak and unhappy
features, and to be followed in his inexplicable and mysterious choice
of baneful instruments, such as Rupert, Laud, Hamilton, Glamorgan,
Henrietta Maria--all in their several ways working out his
destruction--seems to have been inspired by a fateful insanity or
infirmity of mind or will, recalling the great Greek dramas in which the
poets depicted frenzied mortals rushing into their own destruction,
impelled by the unseen and superior powers.

The king's body, after being embalmed, was buried by the few followers
who remained with him to the last, hastily and without any funeral
se