James Stuart was at this time in his twenty-seventh year. From his very cradle he had been, as it might seem to the superstitious, marked by fate for a destiny peculiarly severe. His real birth was long disputed, without the shadow of a reason, except what was suggested by a base court intrigue. This slur upon his legitimacy, which was afterwards virtually wiped away by the British Parliament, was nevertheless the greatest obstacle to his accession, there being nothing so difficult to obliterate as a popular impression of that nature. Educated within the narrow precincts of the exiled court, James owed the good that was within him to a disposition naturally humane, placable, and just, as well as to the communion with a mother, the fidelity of whose attachment to her exiled consort bespoke a finer quality of mind than that which Nature had bestowed on the object of her devotion. By this mother James must doubtless have been embued with a desire for recovering those dominions and that power for which Mary of Modena, like Henrietta Maria, sighed in vain, as the inheritance of her son; but the stimulus was applied to a disposition with which a private life was far more consonant than the cares of sovereignty. Rising as he does to respectability, when we contrast the good nature and mild good sense of the Chevalier with the bigotry of James the Second,--or view his career, blameless with some exceptions, in contrast with the licentiousness of Charles the Second, there were still no high hopes to be entertained of the young Prince; his character had little energy, and consequently little interest: he was affable, just, free from bigotry although firm in his faith, and capable of great application to business; but he wanted ardour. From his negative qualities, the pitying world were disposed to judge him favourably. "He began the world," says Lockhart, "with the general esteem of mankind; but he sank year by year in public estimation: his Court subsequently displayed the worst features of the Stuart propensities, an intense love of prerogative; and his mind, never strong, became weaker and weaker under the dominion of favourites."