ons of a people fo defirous to be pleased with their King, But this national behaviour, as a Scotsman had foretold, spoiled a good King, and made a bad King worse. It was natural for a vain man to believe what his flatterers told him, and what he, his own greatest flatterer, told himself; that these applaufes and transports of the people were due to his eminent merit, and were an homage paid for the honour he did them in accepting their crown. Therefore, instead of uniting closely with them in one common interest and love, fixing them by marks of regard, he took much state, and, in his journey, forbid, by proclamation, the concourse of the people to him: and, when they could not be kept off, would often disperse them with frowns, and sometimes curses.

Though this King neglected so much to gain the public, even at the cheap rate of affability, he funk into low familiarity with his favourites, and was profuse of riches and honours to particular men. The estates he gave impoverished the crown; and he bestowed honours in so lavish a manner, and with fo little diftinction, that they ceased, in fome sense, to be honours; as it frequently made those that poffefsed them the jeft of the nation.

Whilft he neglected the affection, and fought the reverence of the public, he loft one, and was disappointed of the other. His private and public character both fell into contempt. Learning was the part upon which he valued himself: this he affected more than became a King, and broached, on every occafion, in such a manner as would have misbecome a schoolmafter. His pedantry was too much even for the age in which he lived, and fixed on him a just ridicule; because the merit of a chief Governor is wifely to fuperintend the whole, and not to thine in any inferior class, because different, and, in some cases, perhaps, opposite talents, both natural and acquired, are necessary to move and to regulate the movements of the machine of government: in short, be

cause, as a good Adjutant may make a very bad General, so a great reader, and writer too, may be a very ignorant King.

we

There were many other circumstances, which concurred to lessen this Prince in the eyes of his subjects, and of all mankind, as we shall have occafion to observe frequently in the course of his reign. In the mean time shall remark, that the state he affected, and the pompous titles he was so fond of, served to render his pusillani mity (which, with his vanity, made up the main of his character) more conspicuous, and his person, by confequence, more contemptible. And, for the fake of gaining the name of pacific, he, within a few weeks after he came into England, revoked the letters of reprisal, by which Queen Elifabeth had put it in her subjects power to do themselves justice on the fubjects of Spain, without flaying to be follicited on that head by the enemy. He disarmed his subjects, before he had provided for their better security. He stopt them in the course of doing themselves justice, before he was sure of obtaining fatisfaction for their past losses; and facrificed the trade of the nation, the most valuable interest of his people, to a foreign and hoftile nation, to the mean arts of false policy, and even to his own fears: for it was not fo much the love of peace, as the fear of war, that made him so pacific.

King James, having thus rejected the principle of government, by which Queen Elifabeth reigned in the hearts of her subjects, and made her enemies tremble, affected to establish his authority on the exploded doctrine of hereditary right, a mere chimera, and contradicted by the general tenor of custom, from the Norman invafion to his time, by the declared sense of his immediate predecessors, by many solemn proceedings in Parliament, and by the express terms of law. Queen Elifabeth had so little concern about hereditary right, that she neither held, nor defired to hold, her crown by any other other tenure than the statute of the 35th of her father's reign. In the 13th of her own reign, she declared it, by law, high treason, during her life, and a præmunire, after her decease, to deny the power of Parliament, in limiting and binding the defcent and inheritance of the crown, or the claims to it.

This ought to have had fome weight with James. A Prince who had worn the crown of Scotland under so many reftraints, and in so great penury, might have contented himself, one would think, to hold that of England, whose penfioner he had been, by the fame tenure, and to establish his authority on the same principles as had contented the best and greatest of his predecessors: but his designs were as bad as those of the very worst of the Princes who were before him. From the principle of an absolute independent right to the crown, inherent in himself, as he vainly boasted of from the first, he introduced the notion of

independent authority; a right superior to law, not to be controuled by any human power; and consequently that an independent King is accountable to God alone. Could he have imposed this system of policy upon the generality of his fubjects, he might have basked himself in the full funshine of

arbitrary power. But, inslead of making his impositions pass on the people, it will be found he only awakened their jealousy. The spirit of liberty baffled all his designs. And the same active principle, which complied with Queen Elifabeth, vigorously refifted King James, though he scrupled not to tell his Parliament, That, as it is blafphemy to difpute what God may do, so it is sedition in subjects to difpute what a King may do in the height of his power: which at last became the intire ruin of his family, as will more plainly appear in the course of this history.

Thou dread Sovereign both of heaven and earth,

To whom alone all creatures owe their birth; On whom ten-thousand thousand worlds depend,

And whom no finite mind can comprehend;
By whose all-gracious saving providence,
I've been from num'rous ills preserv'd, e'er
fince

The moment of my birth; to whom I owe,
Each bliss and comfort I enjoy below;
To thee, O Lord, my humble thanks I give,
Since 'tis in thee I move, in thee I live.
O let me ne'er thy fierce displeasure find
For my demerits, and indue my mind
With such apt difpofitions, that I e'er
Myself may safe and innocently steer,
Thro' ev'ry future trial of my life,
Free from disturbance, danger, noise, and strife.
May I thy sacred mandates still obey,
And ne'er from reason's rightful dictates stray;
Suffer no earthly power, tho' e'er so great,
To injure me in body or estate.

May I, by no misconduct of my own,
Draw on my guilty head thy vengeance down.
Grant me perceptions quite diftinct and clear
Of things perceptible in this my sphere;
And O forgive me for thy mercy's fake,
If I (a worm) through blindness or mistake,
Leave the religion which my fires of old
Believ'd and held, but which I cannot hold,
Fearful on any being to depend,
But thee alone, my author and my end,
For my falvation and eternal bliss.
This, this my prayer, my Summum Bonum

this.

4

Portends events: As the fage matrons say, Some wretch must perish in the fated cott; Where singly the dire bird by chance should stray,

Inevitable death must be the lot. The bird of Pallas takes its fullen flight; And bats their leathern wings extended wide, That shun the day, and only fly by night, Break from the covert, where they us'd to hide.

The fish, the filent deeps, in search of prey, Skim hastily along; and, quick as thought, The pike, voracious, makes the wat'ry way, Nor refts he till the flying prey he's caught. Bright Cynthia's majefty in pomp appears,

And starry luftres make the skies more

bright:

The

Where pious Hales, where Yonge, or
dwell;
There lift'ning, turn each waving hair
That wanton flow'd to stop the comin
As midnight mute, till all their tal
told,

Then, the delicious, wholesome meal d
Dilute it in the soft Pierian spring,
And turn it to digeftion all. - Oh Hales
Thou happy author of my Being-well!
Of thee my grateful foul shall ever this
Of thee who tainted and corrupted air
Expell'd, from my foul's lungs;
And with thy ventilator of advice,
Breath'd forth fresh gales of goodness is
Still feed my panting foul with living ai
Such as my needy appetite oftimes,
When dealt from thy own store, devou
'Tis charity beyond the man, who steal
Through the dark grove unfeen, to fon
cott;

Where poverty inhabits; pale distress!
And meagre want, concomitants of wo
Where the poor widow with a ghastly f
Sadly beholds her little naked brood;
Pictures of great distress in miniature!
Of the poor mother's want, oh rich
ritors!

Crawl on the cold earth, and whining For what they cannot find a meal of Till he, the widow's husband, and the orp Guardian, came. Hail charity's soft ha Thou, never fail'ft: Give thee thy due; Take heaven for thy reward. Oh cha

kind tongue !

Which whifpers heavenly counsel to the O Hales! 'twas thine! take thy reward, The heaven of heavens is thine; the ton That saves a foul from death eternal, Shall fing Jehovah's praise, before Jeho CLERICU

T

face,

A RIDDLE,

H E brighest beauty I, yet most obsci Honour'd and courted most, yet endur'd.

Freest of things, and yet the fastest bound
Met every-where by all, yet seldom foun
The wife to me make their unwearied con
But I with fools and children freely sport.
No Stoic's life was fober e'er like mine,
And yet I mingle with full bowls of wine
Elder than time, yet a virgin young,
Who fires the heart, and charms the ear
tongue.

My name by all is every-where ador'd
In outward shew, but in effect abhorr'd.
The greatest purity, and chastest maid,
Of vulgar hands, and eyes, and tongues afr
Tho' most unmov'd, yet ranging every-wh
Am always one, and yet in all appear.
A thousand fons of mine my chambers fill,
Yet I a pure unspotted virgin still.
None can my perfon nor my ftation tell,
Tho' I in every place and being dwell.

To