years old, and he was crowned with a golden circlet, and a little sword was buckled to his side; as he was beginning to gain strength now, he may have been boyish enough to enjoy its possession. But his love for manly sport, in his early years at least, was less for its own sake than through his affection for his sturdier brother, to whom he writes again :

"SWEET, SWEET BROTHER,-I thank you for your letter. I will keep it better than all my graith; and I will send my pistols by Master Newton" (Prince Henry's tutor). "I will give anything that I have to you; both my horses, and my books, and my pieces, and my cross-bows, or anything that you would have. Good brother, love me, and I shall ever love and serve you.-Your loving brother to be commanded, YORK."

And another letter runs :

"GOOD BROTHER,—I hope you are in good health and merry, as I am, God be thanked. In your absence I visit sometimes your stable and ride your great horses, that at your return I may wait on you in that noble exercise. So committing you to God, I rest, Your loving and dutiful brother,

"YORK."

Of his more serious pursuits he writes to his father in early days :

"SWEET, SWEET FATHER,-i learn to decline substantives and adjectives. Give me your blessing. "i thank you for my best man.-Your loving son, YORK,"

And in an early letter to his mother, Queen Anne, we find one of the few allusions this ascetic prince ever made to "creature comforts." He deplores her sufferings from the gout, "the which," he writes, "I must bear the more patiently, because it is the sign of a long life." And he goes on to say that he must bewail her illness for many causes; "and specially because it is troublesome to you, and has deprived me of your most comfortable sight, and of many good dinners, the which I hope, by God's grace, shortly to enjoy."

Childhood at that time, and especially royal childhood, was soon over; and Prince Charles' ended prematurely just before his twelfth birthday, when his position was changed to one of heavy responsibility by the death of his elder brother. Henceforth he became heir to the kingdoms of England and Scotland.

His was a nature peculiarly ill-fitted to rule.

Grave, reserved, and dignified, with a patient sweetness of disposition which no ill-treatment could sour, and a lofty purity of life which not even the lax morality of his time could affect; he yet lacked most of the qualities which go to make a leader among men. He had narrow sympathies, and an inherent love of crooked ways, and his belief in the Divine Right of Kings was the source of all his troubles. England had passed beyond the day when "the King could do no wrong," and Charles I. was the last man to bring back such a state of things. We need only study the condition, at the time of his accession, of the two kingdoms over which he was called to reign, to see that he needed most that which he most fatally lacked, the qualities of uprightness and strength.

His understanding was narrow, and he had rendered his sympathies still narrower by the style of his reading and his friends. What he needed to learn, and what he never learned to the day of his death, was the power of the English people; that which Queen Elizabeth had understood always, and in which her strength had lain, and that in which lay the strength too of England's latest Queen, Victoria.

A curious foretaste of Charles' attitude towards

the Commons is found in a letter to Buckingham, before he was twenty-one, in which he writes :— "The Lower House this day has been a little unruly; but I hope it will turn to the best; for, before they rose, they began to be ashamed of it. Yet I could wish that the King would send down a commission here, that (if need were) such seditious fellows might be made an example to others, by Monday next, and till then I would let them alone. It will be seen whether they mean to do good, or to persist in their follies; so that the King needs to be patient but a little while. I have spoken with so many of the council, as the King trusts most, and they are all of his mind, only the sending of authority to set seditious fellows fast is of my adding."

The last sentence is significant of the prince's future attitude towards his own Parliament !

As has so often been the case, Charles' natural defects as a ruler were further aggravated by his choice of a bride.

In February, 1623, he had with difficulty obtained his father's leave to go incognito to the court of Spain, accompanied by the King's favourite, Buckingham, for the purpose of negotiating a marriage with the Infanta of Spain.

The expedition was one of continual trials, be

ginning with that of a bad sea-passage, of which Buckingham writes to King James, "The first that fell sick was your son, and he that continued it longest was myself."

For a time the Spanish marriage seemed likely to be arranged. Of course, the difference of religion between the two was a matter of difficulty, but Charles received a friendly letter from the Pope himself, which he answered at great length: the last sentence reads almost as a prophecy. "Be your holiness persuaded that I am and ever shall be of such moderation as to keep aloof, as far as possible, from every undertaking which may testify any hatred towards the Roman Catholic religion; nay, rather I will seize all opportunities by a gentle and generous mode of conduct to remove all sinister suspicions entirely; so that, as we all confess one undivided Trinity and one Christ crucified, we may be banded together unanimously into one faith. That I may accomplish this, I will reckon as trifling all my labours and vigilance, and even the hazards of kingdoms, and life itself."

But the marriage did not take place. The Spanish princess had contemplated the conversion of Charles, and consequent privileges for the English Roman Catholics; she did not allow her