solute,
because he had no army, and was personally unpopular; but Henry would
have had an army, and one, too, that would have stood high in English
estimation, because of what it had done for the English name and the
Protestant religion in Germany,--and Henry himself would have been
popular, as a successful military man is sure to be in any country.
Pym and Hampden would have found him a very different man to deal with
from his foolish brother, who had all the love of despotism that man
can have, but little of that kind of ability which enables a sovereign
to reign despotically. Charles I. had no military capacity or taste,
or he would have taken part in the Thirty Years' War, and in that way,
and through the assistance of his army, have accomplished his domestic
purpose. His tyranny was of a hard, iron character, unrelieved by
a single ray of glory, but aggravated by much disgrace from the ill
working of his foreign policy; so that it was well calculated to
create the resistance which it encountered, and by which it was
shivered to pieces. Henry would have gone to work in a different way,
and, like Cromwell, would have given England glory, while taking from
her freedom. There is nothing that the wearer of a crown cannot do,
provided that crown is encircled with laurel. But the Stuarts seldom
produced a man of military talent, which was a fortunate thing for
their subjects, who would have lost their right to boast of their
Constitutional polity, had Charles I. or James II. been a good
soldier. We Americans, too, would have had a very different sort
of annals to write, if the Stuarts, who have given so many names to
American places, had known how to use that sword which they were so
fond of handling.

The royal families of England did by no means monopolize the share of
domestic dissensions set apart for kings. The House of Stuart, even
before it ascended the English throne, and when it reigned over only
poor, but stout Scotland, was anything but famous for the love of its
fathers for their sons, or for its sons' love for their fathers; and
dissensions were common in the royal family. Robert III., second king
of the line, had great grief with his eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay;
and the King's brother, the Duke of Albany, did much to increase the
evil that had been caused by the loose life of the heir-apparent. The
end was, that Rothsay was imprisoned, and then murdered by his uncle.
Scott has used the details of this