His ambition was to enter upon a military career, such as those in which so many of his predecessors had distinguished themselves. In this he received more encouragement from the people than from his own timid father, who told him his brother Charles would make a better king than he, unless Henry spent more time at his books and less at his pike and his bow. The people, on the other hand, were constantly comparing their young prince with the great Henry the Fifth, the hero of Agincourt, and predicting of him as famous deeds as those recorded of his illustrious namesake. However, as it happened, there was no war into which the young soldier could enter at that time, so that he had to content himself with martial exercises and contests at home, which, though not so much to his own taste, made him no less popular with his father's subjects. In Henry Stuart the old school of chivalry had nearly its last representative. The knightly Kings of England had given place, after the Wars of the Roses, to sovereigns whose strength lay more in the council chamber than on the field of battle; but now, after a long interval, the old dying spirit flickered up once more in the person of this boy. Once again, after many, many years, the court went to witness a tournament, when in the tiltyard of Whitehall, before king and queen, and lords and ladies, and ambassadors, the Prince of Wales at the head of six young nobles defended the lists against all comers. There is something melancholy about the record--the day for such scenes had gone by, and its spirit had departed from the nation. The boy had his sport and his honestly earned applause; but when it was all over the old chivalry returned to the grave, never to appear again. Henry himself only too soon, alas! sunk into that grave also. The closing years of his life leave many a pleasing trace of kindness, and justice, and earnestness. The boy was no mere boisterous schoolboy. He pondered and prepared himself for what he thought was his path in life; he foresaw its responsibilities, and he faced its duties, and set himself like a man to bear his part as a true king should. It was not to be. Suddenly his health failed him--the tall boy had overgrown his strength before he knew it. Heedless of fatigue and exposure, he pursued his vigorous exercises, and what had been his life became his death. A cold taken during a game of tennis, when he was in his eighteenth year, developed into a fever, and for days he lay between life and death. The nation waited with strange anxiety for the issue, and a cloud seemed to fall over the length and breadth of the land. Then he became worse. "My sword and armour!" he cried; "I must be gone!" and after that the brave boy died. The people mourned him as their own son; and years after, when England was plunged deep in the miseries and horrors of civil war, many there were who cried in their distress,-- "If but our Henry had lived, all this had not been!"