can show? As for his colloquial epigrams, there is the famous account of David I. as a “sair sanct” for the Crown; his humorous and not altogether false statement, when the Presbyterian ministers came to interview him, “Set twal chairs, there be twal kings coming”; his description—at an earlier date, of course—of the service of the Episcopal Church as “an evil said mass in English wanting nothing but the liftings”; his happy simile apropos of his visit to Scotland in 1617 of his “salmon-lyke” instinct—a great and natural longing to see “our native soil and place of our birth and breeding.” No wonder he got a reputation for wisdom! A quaint anecdote dates his renown in that regard from a very early period indeed. On the day after his birth the General Assembly met, and were much concerned as to the religious education of the infant. They sent Spottiswoode, “Superintendant of Lothian,” to interview the Queen on the subject. He urged a Protestant baptism and upbringing for the child. Mary gave no certain answer, but brought in her son to show to the churchmen, and probably also as the means of ending an embarrassing interview. Spottiswoode, however, repeated his demand, and with pedantic humour asked the infant to signify his consent. The child babbled something, which one of the hearers at least took for “Amen,” and “Master Amen” was the Court-name for Spottiswoode ever after. James deserved to be called the British Solomon, but then how did it happen that the man had such a knack of making himself ridiculous? On the night of the 23rd July 1593 the madcap Francis Earl of Bothwell made one of his wild raids on Holyrood. James came out of his chamber in terror and disorder, “with his breeks in his hand”; trembling, he implored the invaders to do him no harm. “No, my good bairn,” said Bothwell with insolence (the King was twenty-seven at the time); and as a matter of fact no harm was done him. Fate tried the mother of James and the son of James far more severely than it ever tried James himself, and Mary Stuart and Charles the First managed things so ill that each in the end had to lay the head on the block, but no one ever spoke to them like that, and they never made themselves ridiculous. Mary was never less than Queen and Charles was never less than King, and each played the last scene so superbly as to turn defeat and ruin into victory and honour, and if you say it was birth and breeding and the heritage of their race how are you to account for the odd figure in between? Here is another trivial anecdote. On Tuesday, 5th April 1603 James set forth southward to take possession of his English throne. As Robert Chambers points out, here was the most remarkable illustration of Dr. Johnson’s remark that the best prospect a Scotsman ever saw was the high road to England. Not very far from Holyrood stood splendid Seton Palace, and as James and his folk drew near they crossed another procession. It was the