There are men who, when they shift their place and function, can assimilate themselves to the changed conditions around them—who can find themselves surrounded by unwonted customs and ways, and yet accept the condition that the men who follow these are pursuing the normal condition of their being, and must be left to do so in peace, otherwise harm will come of it; and in this faculty consists the instinct which enables men to govern races alien to their own. Albany did not possess it. He appears to have been ignorant of the language of Scotland, and to have thought or rather felt that, wherever he was, all should be the same as in the midst of Italian and French courtiers; and if it were not so, something was wrong, and should be put right. It was then the commencement of a very luxurious age in France—an age of rich and showy costumes, of curls, perfumes, cosmetics, and pet spaniels—and Albany was the leader of fashion in all such things. It is needless to say how powerfully all this contrasted with rough Scotland—what a shocking set of barbarians he found himself thrown among—how contemptible to the rugged Scots nobles was the effeminate Oriental luxury of the little court he imported from Paris, shifted northwards as some wealthy luxurious sportsman takes a detachment from his stable, kennel, and servants’ hall, to a bothy in the Highlands. He arrived, however, in a sort of sunshine. At that calamitous moment the nearest relation of the infant king, a practised statesman, was heartily welcome. He brought a small rather brilliant fleet with him, which was dignified by his high office as Admiral of France; he brought also some money and valuable trifles, which were not inacceptable. Wood, in his ‘Peerage,’ tells us that “The peers and chiefs crowded to his presence: his exotic elegance of manners, his condescension, affability, and courtesy of demeanour, won all hearts.” If so, these were not long retained. He came, indeed, just before some tangible object was wanted against which to direct the first sulky feelings of the country towards France; and he served the purpose exactly, for his own handiwork was the cause of that feeling. In a new treaty between France and England, in which he bore a great if not the chief part, Scotland was for the first time treated as a needy and troublesome hanger-on of France. Instead of the old courtesy, which made Scotland, nominally at least, an independent party to the treaty, it was made directly by France, but Scotland was comprehended in it, with a warning that if there were any of the old raids across the Border, giving trouble as they had so often done, the Scots should forfeit their part in the treaty. This patronage during good behaviour roused the old pride, and was one of many symptoms that Albany had come to them less as the representative of their own independent line of kings, than as the administrator of a distant province of the French empire. The humiliation was all the more bitter