"Rarely even in joking a word escapes him which is not the truth. He prides himself much upon it, and says it does not seem to him well for kings to swear their treaties as they do now. The oath of a king should be his royal word as was the case in bygone ages. He is courageous even more than a king should be. I have seen him even undertake most dangerous things in the late wars. I sometimes clung to his skirts and succeeded in keeping him back. On such occasions he does not take the least care of himself. He is not a good captain, because he begins to fight before he has given his orders. He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just or unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes; and that therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself the first in danger. His deeds are as good as his words. For this reason, and because he is a very humane prince, he is much loved." [Illustration: BAKEHOUSE CLOSE] The perfect reason yet profound unreasonableness of this quality in James, so fatally proved in his after history, is very finely discriminated by the writer, who evidently had come under the spell of a most attractive personality in this young sovereign, so natural and manful, so generous and true. That James should acknowledge the penalty of the fatal power he had to draw a whole nation into his quarrel, just or unjust, by risking himself the first, is so entirely just according to every rule of personal honour, yet so wildly foolish according to all higher policy; exposing that very nation to evils so much greater than the worst battle. Flodden was still far off in the darkness of the unknown, but had this description been written after that catastrophe, it could not more clearly have disclosed the motives and magnanimity but tragic unwisdom of this prince of romance.