TAM O'SHANTER AND SOUTER JOHNNY; THE SCOTTISH TOURIST and ITINERARY;

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vanity at the expense of all the best affections of our nature. In his youth he was for many years the unyielding prey of contending factions, who made the possession The Life of King James the First. By Robert Chambers, of his person an excuse for governing the kingdom preAuthor of "The History of the Rebellions in Scot- cisely in that mode which was most conducive to their land," &c. 2 vols. Constable's Miscellany, vols. LV. own individual interests. With his spirit thus broken, and LVI. Edinburgh. Constable and Co. 1830. his manhood thus cowed, his free thoughts thus oblitera ted, he at last took his seat on the Scottish throne, and THE leading characteristic of this work is, that it as he regarded this as only one step towards the more abounds in light and amusing reading. Mr Chambers, enviable throne of the whole island, he sneakingly forced yielding to the natural bent of his own mind, has not in- himself to fawn to, and temporize with, Elizabeth, on dulged in much profound thinking or comprehensive whom much of his future fortunes depended, even alviews, but is, as usual, anecdotal, chit-chatty, and plea- though that sovereign had worked his mother nearly all sant. He avowedly makes no attempt to write history, her woe, and at length sullied her high name with the and his biographical researches are as much directed to murder of that unhappy lady. On his accession, James, ward the illustration of peculiar traits of character, and fortunately for himself, found England in complete reof the antiquated manners of the times, as to the deve- pose, and having dozed away the remaining years of his lopement, upon wider and more philosophical principles, life, he died lamented, because, during the whole of his of the mental constitution of individuals, and the relative career, he had never done any thing that was either emiposition of states, parties, and opinions. Mr Chambers nently right or egregiously wrong. In short, he was a fills up a useful department in literature, and contents king without the spirit of a king. He was a douce honest himself with gaining some distinction in it, rather than man, indifferently well skilled in Greek and Latin, a aiming, perhaps unsuccessfully, at a higher rank. He faithful husband, and a true believer in witchcraft. It does not rear the solid fabric which constitutes in itself was better for his own happiness that he possessed not the memorial of past centuries, but he contrives to clear one tithe of his mother's genius or energy, for in his own away many of the defacing symptoms that have gathered country the times were stormy and troublesome, and had on its surface, and, like Old Mortality, brings out into he ventured forth into the blast, he would have been, like distincter relief the inscriptions originally written there. | her,“ a reed shaken by the wind." Being much more Mr Chambers is an indefatigable antiquarian, and de- willing to yield than to struggle, he escaped many danlighted with all the little bits of lore which antiquarian-gers, and passively filled up the purposes for which he ism affords. His chief pleasure, indeed, is to present us with little glimpses of the olden day, many of which are in themselves insignificant, but which, following each other in close succession, make the picture complete, and carry us away from the smooth-faced present to gaze upon the stern and rugged aspect of the past.

James the Sixth was a weak good-natured man. With the pardonable partiality of a biographer, our author has endeavoured to claim for him a higher character; but it won't do. From his birth James was of a rickety and ungainly person, and the awkwardness of his physical frame seems to have communicated a similar awkwardness to his mind. Not that he was deficient in the more common endowments of intellect on the contrary, we believe him to have become, at an early age, what the Scotch emphatically call an "auld-farrant" boy, and as he grew up, though his ideas came slowly, and often confusedly, and were seldom of a high and kingly cast, he nevertheless displayed sagacity, and not unfrequently, when his own time was given him, a good deal of penetration also. He was, moreover, of a docile and placable disposition: his resentments were seldom of long contivery or

was created.

There are but few important incidents in the life of James, and his biographer consequently works at considerable disadvantage. The raid of Ruthven is the first event of an interesting nature which occurs; and after the dissolution of the Earl of Arran's government, little interrupted the ordinary course of Scotch politics for several years except the king's trip to Denmark on the occasion of his marriage. Between the years 1590 and 1603, the turbulent machinations of Bothwell, and that curious affair, the Gowrie Conspiracy, were what principally interfered with the domestic happiness of the monarch. Aided by the recent publications of Mr Pitcairn, Mr Chambers has been enabled to give a full and satisfactory account of the transactions in Gowrie House, and succeeds (if we had entertained any doubts on the point before) in establishing the reality of all the details of that hasty and ill-contrived plot. In subsequently describing James's progress from Edinburgh to London, our author evidently feels himself much at home, and enters with all the minuteness of the old Chronicles into the ceremonials, feastings, and rejoicings of that occasion. existence of

energetic, so his actions were seldom liable to much cavil- the most prominent event in James's English reign, and ing or obloquy. But, from his very infancy, he was a the chapter, in the second volume, devoted to it, we conmere tool in the hands of others. During his boyhood sider one of the best in the whole work. The story is Buchanan tyrannized over him with all the stern tyran- | told simply, yet with much graphic power. In both vo ny of a cold-hearted pedagogue, who fancies that, by un- lumes there is, as we have already said, a great abunremitting severity, he will prove himself a noble instance | dance of amusing matter; but the fault of the book is unof Inflexible independence, and gratifies his own paltry | questionably the too great love which it displays of small

facts and mere gossip. Instead of presenting us with a
clear and accurate estimate of the precise state of Eng-
land, both in its domestic and foreign relations at the
time of James's accession, Mr Chambers prefers telling
us that duels were very frequent, favouring us with all
the particulars of several, or rejoices in describing at full
length the carousings which took place on the occasion of
the visit of the King of Denmark to his brother of Eng-
land. But it is needless to find fault with a man's na-
ture.
Mr Chambers is not a Hume nor a Robertson,
he is a pleasant and popular writer.

We now proceed to do our author the justice, and afford our readers the gratification, of a few interesting extracts. They are not made at random, as reviewers sometimes say their extracts are, but are selected with some care, as favourable specimens of Mr Chambers's labours. The following passage places in a strong, though almost ludicrous, point of view, the insolence of the Scottish clergy, and the inefficiency of the king, in the year 1587—the year of Mary's execution :

A SCENE IN THE HIGH CHURCH AFTER THE DEATH OF MARY.

"As soon as James learned that they had been unsuccessful, and that the death of his mother seemed to be sealed, he called back his ambassadors, and as the last resource within his power, appointed a prayer to be said for her by the clergy. The form of this prayer was the simplest possible; That it might please God to illuminate her with the light of his truth, and save her from the apparent danger wherein she was.' Yet, because she was a Catholic, and because the Scottish clergy feared every thing in the shape of a set prayer, as tending to invade their precious privilege of moralizing on the time' in their extempore effusions, they universally refused to perform this little office of humanity for a fellow-creature in unexampled distress, at once insulting their sovereign and human nature. James, touched in his innermost heart by their unkindness, appointed Patrick Adamson, archbishop of St Andrews, distinguished as one of the most learned scholars and best poets of his time, to preach on the 3d of February in the principal church of the capital, and to remember the queen in his prayers. The king probably thought that he might at least have the appointed office performed in the church where he himself usually sat; yet, even in this object, an attempt was made by the clergy to disappoint him.

with their favourite divine. James was so indignant: their conduct, as to rise up and cry, What devil aist people, that they will not tarry to hear a man preach? Ec few of the nobility and gentry. Adamson now got intetz they all went out, leaving only himself, his courtiers, and pulpit, and preached an eloquent, and, at the same tar most inoffensive discourse, from a text in Timothy, en ing Christians to pray for all men. When he was die James was under the necessity of conveying him to the lace with his own guard, to save him from the vengeance the crowd which left the church in his train, was that alte the multitude. Cowper, who had preached elsewhere! noon imprisoned, by order of the Privy Council, in Bla ness; while two other ministers of Edinburgh, for inser language used at his examination, were deposed temporar from their offices. A more unhappy instance is not up record, of the cheap boldness displayed by the early Se preachers; for here their war is not altogether against th authority of their sovereign, which forms so specious an best and most generally recognised of the natural affections, cuse for them in so many other instances, but against t

Our next extract contains an attempt, and, on the whole, a fair one, on the part of his biographer, to resu James from the charge of overweening superstition:

JAMES'S BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT.

"One of the most prominent charges brought against the intellect of King James, is his belief in witchcraft; and allusion to his famous book on Demonology, is a favourite Many who never read his book, take it upon them, frem way of pointing an epigrammatic sentence against him. the changed opinions of the age regarding witchcraft, ta = sneer at him for giving his countenance to so base a superstition. But how easy it is for a small mind, amidst the means and appliances of a late age, to assume a superiority and shadows of a former and darker time! over the picture of a great one struggling with the sloughs

"The true way of considering the case is this. There are some matters of opinion, in which no mind is in alvance of its age. Witchcraft was one of these till within the last hundred years. It is quite observable that all the best informed intellects, both in Scotland and England. sanctioned that superstition, down to the time of the Revolution. The cause is the same with that which renders a great mind equally capable of religious fervour with the meanest and most confined. Wherever it is looked upon as reasoning, then no wonder that all kinds of intellect a duty to exempt any thing from the ordinary modes of alike receive it without hesitation. Such was the case thing in the religious creeds of all orders of the people; with witchcraft about 200 years ago; it was an essential to deny it was blasphemy, or at least disrespect for the dicta of Scripture. Surely it is a very strange thing that a man, good Christian, according to the views entertained of that who fulfilled in his life and opinions the whole idea of a character in his own time, should, at the distance of 200 years, have so much discounted from his merit on one hand for superstition, so much on another for ignorance, and thus originally a very good repute! be left with a miserable fragmentary reversion of what was

cular one.

"There was something ludicrous in the scene which took place in the High Church in consequence of this insolence; at least, it appears ludicrous in the eyes of a different age. When the king entered his seat, he found the pulpit possessed, not by his complying friend the archbishop, but by a pert young coxcomb of the name of Cowper, who was not yet invested with the orders of a clergyman, but who, according to the licentious custom of the Scottish church in that age, was nevertheless permitted to exercise his functions, and even to take a part in the regular routine of du ties in the principal church of Edinburgh. Seeing that an insult was intended, but at the same time willing to avoid a collision with men whom he had so much reason to fear, James called out, Master John,' (the usual way of designating a clergyman in his time,) that place was destined for another; you must come down.' Cowper answered that he had come prepared to preach, it being his ordinary day, and, if it were his majesty's will, he would fain do God's work.' The king replied, I will not hear you this day: I command you to come down, and let Mr Patrick Adamson come up and preach.' Still Cowper parlied for permission to remain where he was, till at last the king goodnaturedly said, 'that since he was there, he might go on, provided he would obey the charge, and pray for his mother. To this Cowper replied, that he would do as the Spirit of God should direct him;' when James, well know-witchcraft, and one who does believe in it; and rather a ing what effects would result from such a pseudo inspiration, peremptorily commanded him to descend. moment, the king's guard advancing to enforce his orders, At that Cowper gave a thump on the pulpit with his fist, and told the king that that day should witness against him in the great day of the Lord." He then descended, exclaiming, in the true style of a Presbyterian seer of the time, Woe be to thee, O Edinburgh, for the last of thy plagues shall be worse than the first! The people, who were in the habit of paying a sincere and senseless regard to every thing which fell from their preachers, uttered a loud and universal howl at this denunciation, and rose up to leave the church along

But while James merits this general exculpation from the charge of undue superstition, the Dæmonologie' which he compiled on the subject is in itself a very strong parti supposed, a treatise written as a piece of special pleading, ta This work is by no means what is generally prove the existence of witchcraft, and to impress that belief more firmly on the public mind. It is a sort of jeu d'esprit, the play of a scholarly mind on a subject much beneath it; and instead of being an argument all on one side, it is a dialogue between a person who is unwilling to believe in

else. There is much piety in the book, much quotation of statement of all the reasons pro and con, than any thing the writer evidently believes in the pseudo art which forms Scripture, much acute and sensible observation; but though the subject of the treatise, and gives the last word on all that the result of the whole is to give a mean view of the occasions to the dialogist who believes in it, I cannot allow intellect of the writer, or to entitle him to the sneers which are so frequently aimed at him by modern writers, and by others who are totally unacquainted in general with the real nature of what they are professing to despise."

There is something primitive and yet affecting in the

manner in which James prepared his Scottish subjects for his departure to England:

JAMES'S FAREWELL TO SCOTLAND.

"On the succeeding Sunday, April 3, he attended public worship in the principal church of the city, for the purpose of taking a formal farewell of his people. The minister, Mr John Hall, took occasion to point out the great mercies of God towards his Majesty, among which his peaceable succession to the throne of England was none of the least conspicuous. This,' he said, was God's own proper work; for who could else have directed the hearts of so numerous a people, with such an unanimous consent, to follow the way of right?'

anecdote of James. Dr Donne was so fond of London, on account of its having been the scene of his birth and education, and from the delight he experienced in the society of an old-established circle of friends, that he refused a number of country benefices that were offered to him. At last, the Deanery of St Paul's falling vacant, James found an opportunity of giving him his heart's content. Having orhad sat down, before he had eat any meat, he said, after his dered the Doctor to attend at dinner, When his Majesty. pleasant manner, Dr Donne, I have invited you to dinner, and, though you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to you of a dish that I know you love well; for, knowing you love London, I do therefore make you Dean of St Paul's; and, when I have dined, then do you take your beloved dish home to your study, say grace there to yourself, and much good may it do to you!"

stand here chained!' Here we find the native propensity of the monarch, which was to learning, not to sovereignty, breaking resistlessly through the artificial character he wore, and affording us a delightful peep into the inner recesses of the man.

of a former state; as if he had all at once forgot that he was The saying looks like a Pythagorean recollection now a king, and, as the Samian sage remembered having been a soldier in the Trojan war, suddenly awakened to the idea that he had formerly been a doctor of divinity, accustomed, in dim college libraries, to bend daily over solemn deeply folios, ribbed in the back, and breathing the dust of ages from every moth-worn pore.

"At the end of the sermon, James rose up in his seat, and delivered the following speech to the congregation :'Because that your preacher has spoken something in the "In other of his sayings, if not wit, there is evidence of harangue and discourse to the people, that as ye have mata mind alive to observation, and capable of using it. Of ter by my presence to rejoice, sae ye have also matter by my this sort is the apophthegm which he made use of, in reabsence to be sorrowful; but I say it is a matter of rejoicing commending a country life to his gentry, in preference to not only to me, but to all them that love my standing; for dwelling at London:" 'Gentlemen,' such is said to have this cause I thocht gude to speak to all gude people of all ranks, been his address; at London you are like ships at sea, that ye may know it was never my intention to usurp your which show like nothing; but in your country villages, you crown, but being als lineally descended heir to the crown are like ships in a river, which show like great things.' of England as to the crown of Scotland, as I was born The illustration here is excellent. There was something richteous heir of the ane, sae am I richteous and mair better still in the saying he uttered, in the Bodleian Lirichteous of the other; and as my love could never be fra that country, sae now my expectations have never been brary at Oxford, where, on a visit in 1606, he took his degree as Doctor in all faculties. Remarking the little chains frustrat; and as your preachers have said baith learnedly with which all the books were bound to their shelves, he and wisely, gif now my love be less for you, my people, what micht ye think of me, but that I be ane troker of said, I would wish, if ever it be my lot to be carried capkingdoms? Ye maun put ane difference betwixt ane kingtive, to be shut up in this prison, to be bound with these lawfully callit to a kingdom and ane usurper of ane king-chains, and to spend my life with those fellow-captives which dom, as the King of France came sometime (lately) frae ane #kingdom to ane other, sometime fra France to Pow, and fra Pow to France, and could not bruik baith; as my richt is united in my person, for my marches are united by land and not by sea, sae that there is no difference betwixt them. There is nae mair difference betwixt London and Edinburgh, yea not sae meikle, than there is betwixt Inverness or Aberdeen and Edinburgh, for all our marches are dry, and there is nae ferries betwixt them. course maun be betwixt baith-to establish peace, and religion, and wealth betwixt baith the countries, and as God has joined the trust of baith the kingdoms in my person, sae ye may be joined in wealth, in religion, in hearts and affections; and as the ane country has wealth, and the other has multitude of men, sae ye may pairt the gifts, and every ane do as they may to help other. And as God has removit me to ane greater power than I had, sae I maun endeavour myself to nourish and establish religion, and to tak away the corruptions of baith countries. And, on the other part, ye mister not doubt, but as I have ane body as able as ony king in Europe, whereby I am able to travel, sae I sall vizzie you every three year at the least, or ofter, as I sall have occasion, (for sae I have written in my buke direct to my son, and it war a shame to me not to perform that thing that I have written,) that I may with my awin mouth take a compt of justice, and of them that are under me, and is that you yourselves may see and hear me, and fra the meanest to the greatest have access to my person, and pour out your complaints in my bosom. This sall ever be my course. Therefore, think not of me as of ane king going fra ane part to ane other, but of ane king, lawfully callit, going fra ane part of the isle to ane other, that sae your comfort may be the greater; and where I thocht to have employed you with your arms, I now employ only your hearts, to the gude prospering of me in my success and journey. I have nae mair to say, but pray for me.'

But my

"The effect of this harangue was such as to dissolve the assemblage in tears; for, however unpopular some of James's measures had been, especially those connected with the church, his easy and kindly manners, and his sincere attention to the public interests, had rendered him very much, and very generally, beloved in Scotland. He himself was sensibly moved, in return, by these marks of the affection of his subjects; and, when the magistrates afterwards came to receive his commands, he spoke to them in the most tender and affectionate manner, assuring them, that as his power to befriend them was now increased, so also was his inclination."

In a curious collection of jests, printed in the year 1640, and to which the name of Archy Armstrong is prefixed as a decoy, there occurs an anecdote which shows that James was not uniformly accessible to the flattery of his courtiers. Two gentlemen, noted for agility, trying to out-jump each farthest, And is this your best? Why, man, when I was other in his presence, he said to the individual who jumped a young man, I would have out-leaped this myself.' An old practised courtier, who stood by, thought this a good opportunity of ingratiating himself with his master, and struck in with, That you would, Sir; I have seen your Majesty leap much farther myself.'—' Ó' my soul!' quoth the king, as his usual phrase was, 'thou liest; I would, indeed, have leapt much farther, but I never could leap so far by two or three feet.'

King James, about to knight a Scottish gentleman, asked his name, who made answer, his name was Edward Rudry Hudrinblas Tripplin Hipplas. How, how?' quoth the king. Replies the gentleman as before, Edward Rudry Hudrinblas Tripplin Hipplas.' The king, not able to retain in memory such a long, and withal so confusedly heaped-up name, Prithee,' said he, rise up, and call thyself Sir what thou wilt ;' and so dismissed him."

To the above, we cannot help adding the following anecdote, which speaks volumes for the real goodness of

James's heart:

INSTANCE OF JAMES'S MAGNANIMITY.

"These unpleasant circumstances, joined to the pains of various acute diseases, seem to have nearly broken the formerly serene temper of the king; and he is said, by Wilson, to have given way, at this time, to the following, among other instances of ill humour. It being one day necessary to refer to some papers of importance relating to his negotiations with Spain, which had not been for some time in his hands, he set himself to recollect where, or in whose hands, he had deposited them; but, probably, from the distempered condition of his mind, was unable for a long while to come to any conclusion regarding them. At length, it struck him that he had given the papers to John "Walton, in his Life of Dr Donne, relates a delightful Gib, one of his old Scotch servants. Gib, however, denied

To these extracts, we subjoin a few miscellaneous anecdotes:

ANECDOTES OF KING JAMES.