Parliaments, under James, sat neither often nor long: but such was the diffusion of education prompted by the learning of the Prince, that some of our greatest senators, thunderbolts of eloquence as well as torch-bearers to liberty, flourished then;- Sir Thomas Crew, Sir Edward Coke, Selden, and Pym. The active armies of James consisted only in a volunteer-corps of two hundred and fifty persons, raised in 1620 for the service of the Elector Palatine: but in that corps were formed Essex, Fairfax, and Hutchinson, worthy pupils of Gustavus Adolphus, and the purest heroes of the ensuing revolution. Whither, indeed, can we turn without finding excellence? Shakspeare was the Choryphæus of a band of dramatists, in which the minor names of Massinger, Jonson, Fletcher, Marlow, and Ford, can still assert popularity. Fairfax, the best translator of the best epopea of the modern world, was teaching the art of versification to Harrington, Drayton, Wither, Waller, Daniel, Sylvester, and innumerable translators of the classics. From the Italian, from the Spanish, and from the French, the novelists Green, Fenton, Fortescue, Whetstone, and Linch, were importing the more popular continental story-books. In philosophy, Bacon and Cudworth were educating by their writings the undisplayed mind of Hobbes; and such a triumvirate of cotemporary philosophers, no age but that of James the First can marshal, in the whole history of human literature: they were each all that men so busied can become. Among the historians of the time, Spelman, Knolles, Raleigh, and Osborn, still have readers: among the philologers, Gataker and Wallis; and among the prose-writers, the melancholy Burton and the angler Walton. The sea was explored by Drake and Raleigh, and the interior of Asia by Sir Robert Shirley. That vast aqueduct which supplies the metropolis was then channeled by Sir Hugh Middleton; and, so regularly was some mark of royal favour attached to individual excellence, that almost all the merit, for which the church did not provide, appears decorated with the knighthood of personal nobility.

The public are obliged to Mr. D'Israeli for endeavouring to reverse the harsh verdict of prejudice against this mild monarch, and for invoking once more towards his name the fickle gratitude of posterity. He begins by criticizing the modern assailants of the character of James, such as Burnett, Harris, Macaulay, and Walpole; and he bears hard on Pope, who in the Dunciad writes thus:

"O," cried the Goddess, "for some pedant reign;

Some gentle James to bless the land again !”

James

James was indeed gentle to pusillanimity, and pedantic to tediousness; so that the satirist has not fixed on unreal features, or even exaggerated them. - Mr. D'Israeli then proceeds to analyze his polemical and political studies, his theological conferences, and several of his writings. The King's habits of life are stated to have been literary; his facility and copiousness of composition are praised; and his eloquence, his wit, his humour, his acute observation of human life, and his sagacity in weighing moral evidence, are curiously exemplified. For instance:

Early in life, James I. had displayed the talent of apt allusion, and his classical wit on the Spaniards, that "He expected no other favour from them than the courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses-to be the last devoured," delighted Elizabeth, and has even entered into our history. Arthur Wilson, at the close of his Life of James I. has preserved one of his apophthegms, while he censures him for not making timely use of it. "Let that prince, who would beware of conspiracies, be rather jealous of such whom his extraordinary favours have advanced, than of those whom his displeasure hath discontented. These want means to execute their pleasures, but those have means at pleasure to execute their desires." Wilson himself ably developes this important state-observation, by adding, that "Ambition to rule is more vehement than malice to revenge.' A pointed reflection, which rivals a maxim of Rochefoucault.

The King observed, that "Very wise men and very fools do little harm; it is the mediocrity of wisdom that troubleth all the world." He described, by a lively image, the differences which rise in argument: "Men, in arguing, are often carried by the force of words farther asunder than their question was at first; like two ships going out of the same haven, their landing is many times whole countries distant."-One of the great national grievances, as it appeared both to the government and the people, in James's reign, was the perpetual growth of the metropolis, and the nation, like an hypochondriac, was ludicrously terrified that their head was too monstrous for their body, and drew all the moisture of life from the remoter parts. It is amusing to observe the endless and vain precautions employed to stop all new buildings, and to force persons out of town to reside at their country mansions. Proclamations warned and exhorted, but the very interference of prohibition rendered the crowded town more delightful. One of its attendant calamities was the prevalent one of that day, the plague; and one of those state libels, which were early suppressed, or never printed, entitled "Balaam's Ass," has this passage: "In this deluge of new buildings, we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another's faces; and your Majesty hath most truly said, "England will shortly be London, and London, England." It was the popular wish, that country gentlemen should reside more on their estates, and it was on this occasion the King made that admirable allusion, which has been recently repeated in the House of Commons: "Gentlemen resident on their estates were like ships

R 4

ships in port-their value and magnitude were felt and acknow ledged; but, when at a distance, as their size seemed insignificant, so their worth and importance were not duly estimated." The King abounded with similar observations; for he drew from life more than even from books.

James is reproached for being deficient in political sagacity; notwithstanding, that, he somewhat prided himself on what he denominatedKing's-craft." This is the fate of a pacific and domestic prince!

"A king," said James, " ought to be a preserver of his people, as well of their fortunes as lives, aud not a destroyer of his subjects. Were I to make such a war as the King of France doth, with such tyranny on his own subjects-with Protestants on one side, and his soldiers drawn to slaughter on the other, I would put myself in a monastery all my days after, and repent me that I had brought my subjects to such misery."

The author next treats of the Basilicon Doron, a work somewhat resembling the Royal Politician of Saavedra; which gives advice to Prince Henry on the choice of his servants and associates, describes the revolutionists of his time, and carries high the assertion of the prerogative of the crown. The Book of Sports is then analyzed; and Mr. D'Israeli's observations on the subject deserve consideration.

The King, returning from Scotland, found the people in Lancashire discontented from the unusual deprivation of their popular recreations, on Sundays and holidays, after the church. service, "With our own ears we heard the general complaint of our people." The Catholic priests were busily insinuating among the lower orders, that the reformed religion was a sullen deprivation of all mirth and social amusements, and thus" turning the people's hearts." But, while they were denied what the King terms "lawful recreations," they had substituted more vicious ones: alehouses were more frequented-drunkenness more general--tale-mongery and sedition, the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed; while a fanatical gloom was spreading over the country.

The King, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised with the multitude, and perhaps alarmed at this new shape which puritanism was assuming, published what is called "The Book of Sports," and which soon obtained the contemptuous term of "The Dancing Book."

On this subject our recent principles have hitherto governed our decisions: with our habits formed, and our notions finally adjusted, this singular state-paper has been reprobated by piety; whose zeal, however, is not sufficiently historical. It was one of the state-maxims of this philosophic monarch, in his advice to his són,

"To allure the common people to a common amitie among themselves; and that certain daies in the yeere should be appointed for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games, and

and exercise of arms; making playes and lawful games in Maie, and good cheare at Christmas; as also for convening of neighbours, for entertaining friendship and heartliness, by honest feasting and merriness so that the Sabbothes be kept holie, and no unlawful pastime be used. This form of contenting the people's minds hath been used in all well-governed republics."

James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy among the people. In Europe, even among the reformed themselves, the Sabbath, after church-service, was a festival-day; and the wise monarch could discover no reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of penance and self-denial: but, when once this unlucky" Book of Sports" was thrown among the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, that every thing concerning the nature of the Sabbath was uncertain.'

Mr. D'Israeli then considers the King's aversion to war, and his conscious dependence on the Commons; and he endeavours to weaken the evidence of Osborne's Memoirs, which ascribes to James some of the tastes of Heliogabalus, and represent his favourites as persons recommended by their physical virtues. A picture of the age is given from a manuscript of the times; and additional light is thrown on the King's private life in many particulars. The work concludes with a detection of the discrepancies of opinion prevalent among the decriers of James; and with a cotemporary Epitaph on his death, which (says Mr. D'I.) has great poetical merit, and may with some propriety close this Inquiry; another evidence of the feelings of his contemporaries.

Those that have eyes, awake and weep,
For He, whose waking wrought our sleep,
Is fallen asleep, and shall never
Awake again, till waked for ever.

'Death's iron hand hath closed those eyes
Which were at once three kingdomes spies;
Both to foresee, and to prevent

Dangers so soon as they are meant.

That Head whose working brain alone
Wrought all men's quiet, but his own,
Now lies at rest; oh let him have
The peace he purchased in his grave.

If that no Naboth all his reign
Was for his fruitful vineyard slain;
If no Uriah lost his life

For having had so fair a wife,

Then let no Shemei's curses wound
His honour, or prophane his ground;

Let no black-mouth, no rank-breathed cur
Peaceful James his ashes stir.

• For

For his day's toil and his night's watches,
For the crazed sleep he stole by snatches;
For two fair kingdoms, joined in one;
For all he did, or meant to have done;
Do this for Him; write on his dust,-

King James the Peaceful and the Just.'

While this Inquiry is written with Mr. D'Israeli's usual vivacity and bibliographic research, it is more free from affectation of style than some of his former publications: it deserves to be enlarged into a formal picture of the age: an appropriate welcome of returning peace is to rehearse the praises of pacific sovereigns.

ART. IV. The Life and Studies of Benjamin West, Esq. President of the Royal Academy of London, prior to his Arrival in England; compiled from Materials furnished by himself. By John Galt. 8vo. pp. 160. 7s. 6d. Boards. Cadell and

Davies. 1816.

THI THIS small volume may be considered as the first part of an extensive biography of our celebrated painter, which it is the intention of the author hereafter to complete. In the present sketch, he has been assisted with private communications from that eminent artist himself, and has thus been enabled to state on the best authority many particulars not otherwise ascertainable, which confer rather a singular attraction on the detail in general. The work consists of eight chapters, of the nature of which an idea may be formed from the prefixed syllabus of their principal contents, which supplies (but inadequately) the place of an index.

Mr. W. was the youngest son of John and Sarah West, and was born at Springfield in Chester county, in the state of Pennsylvania, 10th October 1738: the eloquence of a popular preacher having accelerated the delivery of Mrs. West, who was seized with the pains of labour in a Quaker meeting-house, and speedily gave birth to the infant-painter. *

The branch of the West family, to which he belongs, has been traced in an unbroken series to the Lord Delawarre, who distinguished himself in the great wars of King Edward the Third, and particularly at the battle of Cressy, under the immediate command of the Black Prince. In the reign of Richard the Second, the ancestors of Mr. West settled at Long Crandon in Buckinghamshire. About the year 1667, they embraced the tenets of the

*We do not perceive from the narrative whether the child was actually born in the meeting-house.

Quakers;