only a form lingering among the lower classes. As matters of right, however, “his honor” still sits in Chancery, and “your worship” is to be seen behind any justice’s table. We will now return to a race of kings who, whatever their defects, certainly did not lack some of the attributes of chivalry. THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS. THE STUARTS. “May’t be pleasure to a reader’s ear, That never drew save his own country’s air, To hear such things related.” HEYWOOD, _the English Traveller_ It is an incontrovertible fact, that the king of England, who least of all resembled a knight in his warlike character, was the one who surpassed all his brother sovereigns in his knightly spirit as a lover. I allude to James I. The godson of Charles IX. of France was in his childhood, what his godfather had never been, a dirty, droll boy. He is the only king who ever added an original remark to a royal speech set down for him to deliver. The remark in question was, probably, nearly as long as the speech, for James was but four years old when he gave utterance to it. He had been rolling about on the throne impishly watching, the while, the grim lords to whom he, ultimately, recited a prepared speech with great gravity and correctness. At the end of his speech, he pointed to a split in the tiled roof of the hall, or to a rent in the canopy of the throne, and announced to the lords and others present the indisputable fact, that “there was a hole in the parliament.” The precocious lad passed no very melancholy boyhood in Stirling Castle, till the Raid of Ruthven took him from his natural protectors, and placed him in the hands of Gowrie. His escape thence exhibited both boldness and judgment in a youth of sixteen; and when Frederick II., of Denmark, gave him the choice of the two Danish princesses for a wife, no one thought that so gallant a king was undeserving of the compliment. When it was, however, discovered that the royal Dane required James either to accept a daughter or surrender the Orkney and Shetland islands, as property illegally wrested from Denmark, men began to look upon the Danish king as guilty of uncommonly sharp practice toward the sovereign of the Scots. A world of trouble ensued, which it is not my business to relate, although were I inclined to be discursive--which, of course, I am _not_--I might find great temptation to indulge therein, upon this very subject. Suffice it then to say, that a world of trouble ensued before James made his selection, and agreed to take, rather than prayed to have granted to him, the hand of Elizabeth, the elder daughter of Frederick II.