It was at this juncture that Buckingham is said first to have proposed to Charles to evade open censure by making a journey, incognito, to Spain. Nor were such expeditions unknown in those times. Buckingham well knew, in this instance, the tone of argument most appropriate to address to a prince whose blameless career, untainted by dissipation, had not seared one of the best safeguards of youth—romance. The Prince was accessible to the influence of that which Mackenzie calls “a higher sense of virtue.” A lover of the refined and beautiful, he shrank from the notion of a mere political union; the suggestions which were thrown out from motives of Statecraft were received in a spirit of trust and hope, and sank instantly into a mind of delicacy and feeling. Buckingham drew a picture, it is stated, of a marriage contracted on public grounds alone. He pointed out the miseries of such an alliance; he referred to the indifference, if not loathing, with which a bride so selected would view the object, not of her own choice, but of that of the State, for reasons with which she had no sympathy. He portrayed the misery of one who could deem herself nothing but a victim, and who could not fail to view with disgust a bond which brought her from a beloved home to a foreign court, where every early enjoyment of her youth must be forgotten, every cherished association and remembrance abandoned. Buckingham found an attentive auditor. He represented to Charles that by accomplishing a journey to Madrid, and seeking an interview with his promised bride, he might create an interest in her affections, and, by the attentions of a lover, gain even the coldest heart. The delicacy of the compliment would be felt also in the Court of Madrid; it would resemble the fictions in which the Spaniards delighted; it would present him to the young Princess under the aspect of a devoted suitor; it would expedite the conclusion of those negotiations concerning the Palatinate which had languished so long. These representations were heightened by Murray, the Prince’s tutor, who, some insinuated, was instigated by the cunning Gondomar.[390] Murray reminded his royal pupil that his father had gone to Denmark to fetch his wife; that his grandfather, “living in the heart of England,” went into Scotland to marry: especially that his great grandfather, James V., went into France several times—first, to woo the daughter of the French King, the Lady Mary of Lorraine: that interviews between kings and princes were customary; and that no occasion could be so suitable as a negotiation of marriage. “God,” added Murray, “had blessed the Prince with an able body, fit for any exercise and recreation: with great intellectuals, fit to enter into any treaty himself; God had blessed him with a civil carriage, mild and temperate—no way passionate, as some princes were;” and thus, being fitted for the enterprise, the sagacious Scot thought that a journey