invariably indulgent to the Stuarts, represents him as good-natured, playful, and forgiving; and has produced a partial, though striking, miniature of the sovereign; but it is creditable to him as a draughtsman, (though not complimentary to his secret favourable lenity towards jacobitism,) to perceive, that, with every desire to make James respectable, the rigid adherence to his originals, which he observes in all his portraits, has interfered with his wish; and his Majesty stands before us, not as the author designed him to appear, but as he actually was,-both contemptible and ridiculous. It is James in his holiday suit, but with no becoming article in his attire, unless it be a childish and complexional goodnature. We do not wonder at the excellence of the limning in Richie Moniplies, for here the painter is again at home, and the colouring of a faithful Scotchman was familiar to his pencil; but in the lively, witty, and profligate Delgarno; in the high-principled but rugged Martha Trapbois, and the exquisitely avaricious father of this lofty dame; in the bully Captain Colepepper, and the brutal sensualist Duke

Hildebrod; he has ventured on a new class of subjects, and invested them with such an appearance of actuality, as compels the confession, that if they be ideal creations, they wear at least all the resemblance of real flesh and blood.

The coarseness of the scenes in Alsatia may, perhaps, be objected to, and by those who, possibly, are not too fastidious; but if they be expunged, we must consent to sacrifice the curious manners of a place, whose character is now extinct; and one of the finest descriptions of the terrible kind in this or any other novel, -the midnight murder of old Trapbois, and the heart-stirring grief of his extraordinary daughter.

Biographical Illustrations.

JAMES THE FIRST.

In looking back to the dynasties which have, at different times, filled the English throne, we find no one of them that asserts less claim to the affection of the subject, or the respect of posterity, than the Stuart race; nor any line of consecutive princes, (whatever the dynasty may have been,) who have reigned less to their own credit, or the advantage of their country, than James the First, his son, and two grandsons. They have, indeed, been termed an unfortunate race; but, as it should seem, not with sufficient accuracy; for, however we may deplore the catastrophe of one, or sympathize with the fate of another, of this

family, yet it is to be recollected that their calamities were attributable to themselves alone; and necessarily resulted from the irritation produced by their high, arbitrary, and unconstitutional conduct, upon the spirit of a people, who were beginning to see and appreciate their liberties as Englishmen ; who had learned to distinguish between prerogative and tyranny; and who were goaded on to acts, terrible in one instance, and bold in the other, by a succession of oppressions, deceptions, and disappointments, which left them no alternative, but that of resorting, in their own persons, to the vindication of their natural and political rights:

Then, like a lion from his den,

Arose the multitude of men,

The injur'd people rose.

Akenside's Ode on 30th January.

Of James the First it might be said, had there not been darker points in his character, that the ridiculous formed its chief feature; for he was ridiculous as a king, as a theologian, as an author, and as a man. But how can we dismiss him with the imputation of folly

or absurdity merely, when he openly gloried in craft and dissimulation; when his motto was qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare; when he was heartless, as the father of the finest youth of his age; and when his gross attachment to a succession of worthless minions, furnished the strongest grounds of suspicion and assertion against his moral virtue.*

* In the third edition of Sir Anthony Welldon's "Court and Character of King James," &c. is the following preface by the "publisher to the reader."

"Amongst the many remarkable passages in this short relation, the reader may take notice chiefly of five things here discovered.

"First, How Almighty God was mocked, and the world-abused, by the Tuesday sermons at Court, and the anniversary festivals upon the fifth of August, in commemoration of King James's deliverance from the Gowries' conspiracy; whereas, indeed, there was no such matter, but a mere feigned thing, as appears by the story.

"Secondly, How this kingdom was gulled in the supposed treason of Sir Walter Rawley and others, who suffered as traitors; whereas to this day it could never be known that there was any such treason, but a mere trick of state to remove some blocks out of the way.

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Thirdly, The fearful imprecation made by King James against himself and his posterity, in the pre