When the long-expected day arrived (30 August, 1594) the child lay ‘on a bed of estate richly decored ... with the story of HERCULES.’ The old Countess of MAR lifted him into the arms of LENNOX, and by him the babe was transferred to those of the English ambassador who held him during baptism. Then Patrick GALLOWAY, we are told, learnedly entreated upon a text from the 21st chapter of Genesis. The Bishop of ABERDEEN taught, in his turn, upon the Sacrament of Baptism—first in the vulgar tongue and then in Latin—and his discourse was followed by the twenty-first Psalm, ‘sung to the great delectation of the noble auditory,’ and also by a panegyric upon the Prince, delivered in Latin verse, from the pulpit. Then came a banquet, at which ‘six gallant dames’ had the cruel task assigned them of performing ‘a silent comedy.’ To the banquet succeeded a ‘desart of sugar,’ drawn in upon a triumphal chariot. The original programme had provided that this richly-laden chariot should be drawn by a lion, for whose due tameness the projector had pledged himself. But to King JAMES a lion, like a sword, was at all times an unpleasant object. He said that it would affright the ladies, and that ‘a black-moore’ would be a more safe propeller. Banquet and dessert together lasted from eight o’clock in the evening until three of the following morning. At intervals, the cannon of Stirling Castle roared, until, says our chronicler, ‘the earth trembled therewith.’ Thus was ushered in a brief but remarkable life. It lasted less than nineteen years. [Sidenote: _Ibid._, pp. 6–17, verso.] Then to the cradle which had been so richly emblazoned with the labours of HERCULES, in all the colours of embroidery, there succeeded the hearse of black velvet thickly set with its plumes of sombre feathers. One half, however, of those nineteen years that stood between cradle and hearse were years passed upon an arena to which the course of events had given almost world-wide importance and conspicuousness. The Prince’s career was, by the necessity of his position still more than by reason of his youth, a career of promise, not of performance. But every year which passed after the removal from Scotland seems to have intensified the promise in the eyes of those who watched it, as well as to have deepened a conviction in the minds of nearly all thoughtful bystanders that to a grand ambition there were about to be proffered, in GOD’S due time, means and appliances more than usually large, and a grand field of action. So it seemed to human expectation. And because, in those long-past years, it reasonably seemed so, there is still somewhat of a real human interest attaching to incidents which, otherwise, would be trivial and barren. EARLY DISSENTIONS AT COURT.