cloth of gold and silk; the floor was spread with green frieze, a rarity in those times, when the apartments were generally strewed with rushes; the beds glittered with curtains of cloth of gold; and, when the king sat at meat, a circlet of gold, studded with precious stones, was suspended from the ceiling immediately above his head; the halls and chambers were perfumed with sweet odours; and, in short, the noble Vendosme exhausted his exchequer and his imagination in providing every species of pleasure for the youthful monarch. James was now in his twenty-fourth year, and, from Ronsard's description, who was intimately acquainted with him, must have been a very handsome prince :

"Ce Roi d'Escosse estoit en la fleur de ses ans
Ses cheveux non tondus comme fin or linsans,
Cordonnez et crespez, flottans dessus sa face,
Et sur son col de lait lui donnoit bon grace.
Son port estoit royal, son regard vigoureux,
De vertu, et d'honneur, et de guerre amoureux.
La douceur, et la force illustroient son visage,
Si que Venus et Mars en avoient fait partage."

A prince in the flower of his years, his long golden ringlets floating, in the style of the times, down his shoulders, or gracefully curling on his white neck; a countenance in which manliness, energy, and beauty, were blended; a kingly manner, and a mind devoted to virtue, honour, and war; such a suitor was well calculated to engage the affections of the daughter of Vendosme; but from some reason, not now discoverable, the king seems to have been disappointed in the choice of his ambassadors. He left the palace abruptly,

and hearing that Francis the First was about to set out for Provence, with the design of attacking the imperial forces, he resolved to join him. On the road between Tarray and St. Saphorin, the Scottish monarch was met by the French dauphin, with a message from the king, informing him, that the emperor having been obliged to quit the kingdom, he had delayed his military preparations, and had sent the dauphin to conduct him to Paris. In Francis, James, on his arrival at the capital, found the affectionate tenderness of a parent, who omitted no endearment that could Ishow the satisfaction he received in the attachment he had manifested to France. It was in vain, however, that he urged him to marry Marie de Bourbon. The young sovereign was now bent on uniting himself to the Princess Magdalen, the daughter of the French king. When he first saw her, she was in a chariot, on account of her ill health, but the delicacy of her constitution did not discourage him; the tender passion seemed to have mutually seized them, and they declared they would never consent to any other marriage. The danger of exposing so tender a frame to an inhospitable climate was strongly urged, and the royal lover was even warned that he must not look for an heir to his throne from such a union; but all was unavailing, and Francis at last reluctantly consented.

James instantly sent the news to Scotland, ordering an addition to his attendants of six earls, six lords, six bishops, and twenty great barons, who were directed not to leave their best garments behind them. They complied with their sove

reign's desire, and the marriage was performed January 1, 1537, in the church of Notre Dame, in the presence of the Kings of France and Navarre, the queen, dauphin, and other members of the royal family, seven cardinals, and a numerous and splendid assemblage of French and Scottish nobility, with many illustrious strangers. Ronsard, in a kind of epithalamium, not inelegantly, and very minutely, describes the persons of the royal bride and bridegroom. The poet was then a page in the suite of the Duke of Orleans, who presented him to the queen, and she afterwards carried him into Scotland. To honour the wedding, France displayed all her riches and gallantry; so that it was said nothing had ever before equalled its splendour. Nor was the bridegroom behindhand in magnificence: amongst other noble presents he ordered a number of covered cups or macers, filled with coined gold, and standing on frames of the same metal, to be presented to the guests as the produce of the mines of Scotland. He was the most brilliant and conspicuous figure in all the martial games; and, as he had won the princess, so did he every prize that was contended for at the ring.* All this must have been a gratifying sight to what Chalmers calls "the heraldic eyes of Lindsay." "For," says the garrulous and pleasant Pitscottie, "there" was such jousting and tournament, both on horse and foot, in burgh and land, and also upon the sea with ships, and so much artillerye shot in all parts of France, that no man might hear for the reard thereof, and also the riotous banquetings, delicate

* Mitchell's Scotsman's Library, pp. 518, 519.

and costly clothings, triumphant plays and feasts, pleasant sounds of instruments of all kinds, and cunning carvers having the art of necromancy, to cause things appear that were not-as flying dragons in the air, shots of fire at other's heads, great rivers of water running through the town, and ships fighting thereupon, as it had been in bullering streams of the sea, shooting of guns like cracks of thunder; and these wonders were seen by the nobility and common people. All this was made by men of ingyne, for outsetting of the triumph, to do the King of Scotland and the Queen of France their master's pleasure.'

It formed part of Lindsay's duties, as Lord Lion, to marshal processions on occasions of state and rejoicing-to invent and superintend the execution of pageants, plays, moralities, or interludes; and, for all this, his genius appears to have been cast in a happy mould. He possessed ingenuity, wit, and that playful satirical turn which, under the license permitted by the manners of the age to such performances, could lash the vices and laugh at the follies of the times, with far greater effect, than if the lesson had been conveyed through a graver medium. Of his pageants, one of the most brilliant appears to have been intended for exhibition on the coronation of Magdalen, the youthful queen of James the Fifth. This beautiful princess, after her marriage, attended by her royal husband, and accompanied by the Bishop of Limoges, had sailed from France, and landed in Scotland in May, 1537. On stepping from the ships upon

*Pitscottie's History of Scotland, pp. 249, 251.

the strand, she lifted a handful of sand to her mouth, and, thanking God for her safety, prayed with emphatic sensibility for prosperity to the land and its people. Her countenance and manners were impressed with the most winning sweetness, but her charms were already touched by the paleness of disease, and, only forty days after she had entered her capital, amid shouts of joy and applause, the voice of universal gratulation was changed into lamentation for her death.

It was on this occasion that Lindsay composed his pathetic "Deploratioun for the Death of Quene Magdalen:"

"Oh, traitor Death! whom none may countermand,
Thou might have sene the preparatioun

Maid be the thre estaittis 1 of Scotland
With great comfort and consolatioun

In every city, castell, toure, and town,
And how each noble set his whole intent
To be excelling in habiliment.

"Theif! saw thou not the great preparatives
Of Edinburgh, the noble, famous town?
Thou saw the people labouring for their lives
To mak triumph, with trump and clarioun;
Sic pleasure never was in this regioun,

As should have been the day of her entrace,
With richest presents given to her Grace."

It has been well observed by Warton, that the verses which immediately follow, exclusive of this artificial and very poetical mode of introducing a description of those splendid spectacles, instead of saying plainly and prosaically that the queen's death interrupted the superb ceremonies which would have attended her coronation, possess the

1 estates.