mind would suppose the horrors of his parentage naturally gave birth. In royal chronology he stands between two axes,—the one that cleft the ivory neck of his beautiful mother—the other that severed the irresolute but refined head of his son and heir. His father, doubtless, had been deeply concerned in the shocking murder of his mother's second husband. Cradled on the throne of Scotland; educated for Kingship by strangers; the ward of a regency; the shuttle-cock of ambitious politicians; the hope and tool of two kingdoms,—James lived during an age in which the struggle of opinion and interest, of prerogative and privilege, of human right and royal power, of glimmering science and superstitious quackery, might well have bewildered an intellect, brighter and calmer than his. The English people, who were yet in the dawn of free opinions, but who, with the patience that has always characterized them, were willing to obey any symbol of order,—may be said, rather to have tolerated than honored his pedantry in learning, his kingcraft in state, his petulance in authority, and his manifold absurdities, which, while they made him tyrannical, deprived him of the dignity that sometimes renders even a tyrant respectable.

You will readily believe that a man like George Calvert found it sometimes difficult to serve such a sovereign, in intimate state relations. In private life he might not have selected him for a friend or a companion. But James was his King; the impersonation of British Royalty and nationality. In serving him, he was but true to England; and, even in that task, it, no doubt, often required the whole strength of his heart's loyalty, to withstand the follies of the royal buffoon. Calvert, I think, was not an enthusiast, but, emphatically, a man of his time. His time was not one of Reform, and he had no brave ambition to be a Reformer. Accustomed to the routine of an observing and technical official life, he was, essentially a practical man, and dealt, in politics, exclusively with the present. Endowed, probably, with but slender imagination, he found little charm or flavor in excursive abstractions. His maxim may perhaps have been—"quieta ne movete,"—the motto of moderate or cautions men who live in disturbed times, preceding or succeeding revolutions, and think it better—