It is strange how minds, under the influence of fierce religious fervour, always turn, and always have turned, to unnatural sexual offences. It is not a product of patristic Christianity, as so many have thought. On reading _The Golden Ass_, of Apuleius, one must be struck with the amazing moral filth of the Roman Empire. After wading through hundreds of pages of gay and libidinous dirt, one suddenly finds that one is assisting in religious propaganda. Apuleius paints his fellow-countrymen and women in such black colours simply because he wants them to join in the worship of the Great Mother, which was then so formidable a rival to Christianity in the Roman Empire. So, considering the known facts of religious propaganda, I do not believe a single word of the slanders upon James I. There were Puritans about. It is possible that Petronius, in his _Satyricon_—if he wrote it—drew a truthful picture of the Empire under Nero, because he does not profess to moralise or to convert anybody whatever to any supposed better religion. One is sometimes inclined to agree with Gibbon that “all (_organised_) religions are equally false and equally useful.” But it would be absurd to suppose that James the Sixth and First was merely the ridiculous creature that I have depicted here. Those who wish to prove that he was a coward have first to account for the known fact that, until his knees stiffened under the influence of his decayed teeth, he was a brave and first-class horseman. It may be true that he could never bear the sight of a drawn sword; neither could Lord Roberts bear the sight of a cat. Before he was dragged to England he did for Scotland what the heavy-handed Tudors did for South Britain. By his skill and diplomacy he welded even fierce little Scotland into an orderly country, and taught the Scots lords and the ministers of the General Assembly that the king was their master. King Charles I Doctors seldom take much interest in politics. It is their general experience that for all the tumult and the shoutings of politicians nobody ever seems one penny the better for the uproar, for vast sums are wasted which would be much better expended in a way that we really do know something about, such as the cure of disease and the public health generally. In some ways the most interesting thing about the “Martyred Monarch” is the expression of wistful melancholy which is shown on the famous portrait by Van Dyck. It is undoubtedly due to this portrait that so much sympathy has always been felt for him; and the tragedy of King Charles has always impressed thoughtful men as a tragedy from the Greek.