orts; the deepest dispositions of the mind seeming to require the
lightest and most frivolous recreations.

These worthy purveyors to the king's pleasure were of a temper and
capacity widely different. Sir George Goring was caustic and severe; Sir
John Finett pleasant and social, delighting in nothing so much as in the
happiness and gratification of his friends. But the natural disposition
of his thoughts was wild and melancholic, taking its hue from some early
impression, that was now fading in doubt and disappointment.

The full burst of his hilarity floated joyously on the surface, and his
loud mirth, blunting the keen edge of his own feelings, became the more
exhilarating in proportion to their acuteness. He had the warm blood of
the Italian in his veins, being descended from an ancient family of
Sienna; and his rich brown cheek and darkly-speaking eye belied not the
land of his origin. Goring was fat and swarthy: his nose small and
supercilious, and his eye grey and piercing. He cared not whom he
wounded, provided the shafts he drew were well pointed; and his wit
quick and well-aimed, causing the king to laugh, and his victim to
writhe during their operation.

As the monarch sate discoursing with the Duke of Buckingham, being sore
heated, he threw open the windows of his coach, from whence he
occasionally obtruded his wise head for a survey, and a visit from some
vagrant and silly breeze, if any were abroad. The roads admitted not of
aught but the gentlest paces, and the great clamour and cloud about the
procession made the dust and heat excessively annoying; whereupon the
king, it is said, did apply a very uncourteous epithet to some of his
loving subjects, who came too close upon his person, which, though not
generally averse to being gazed at, was in too warm an atmosphere at
present for enjoying these kingly exhibitions.

"O' my saul, that meikle stane would build a bra' chappin-block for my
Lord Provost," said royalty, its head again stationed at the window,
surveying with solemn curiosity an egg-shaped stone of the boulder sort,
which, sure enough, was of a remarkable bigness, though not of that
rarity or infrequence that should have drawn forth the wonder of a king.
His native dialect he generally employed on jocose and familiar
subjects. In affairs of importance he affected the use of the English
tongue, which he spoke with great formality and pomp.

"Stop," said he. "There be _literae_ or letters there