Duke of Brunswick to Ely House on the proviso that he must not kiss her. He did not, but he kissed all her ladies [Illustration: ROSAMOND’S POND, ST. JAMES’S PARK.] twice over in a quarter of an hour. And the Constable of Castile, the day before the great banquet, kissed all the Queen’s ladies of honor. Erasmus remarks that the English have a custom “never to be sufficiently commended. Wherever you go, you are received with a kiss from all; when you take your leave, you are dismissed with kisses; you return--kisses are repeated; they come to visit you--kisses again.” Those who read--and trust--the gossiping and scandalous memoirs of the day acquire a very imperfect idea of King James’s Court. The physical defects and weaknesses of the King are exaggerated: we are told that his legs were weak, and that he rolled in his gait; the foreign ambassadors, however, speak of him as a man of great strength and strong constitution: we are told that he spoke thickly; there is nothing said of this defect in the letters written by these visitors. That he lived privately, and went not abroad, as Queen Elizabeth had done, is acknowledged; that his Court was in any way ridiculous does not appear, except in such a writer as Anthony Welldon. In this place, happily, we have not to consider his foreign or domestic policy, or his lofty ideas on Divine Right; but only his Court. In the fierce light which beats upon a throne every weakness is made visible and appears out of proportion. We must remember, however, that the blemishes are not visible to him who only occasionally visits the Court, or witnesses a Court function. We, for instance, are only outsiders: we know nothing of the whispers which run round the inner circle. Those who are about the person of the sovereign must experience, one would think, something of degradation when they make the inevitable discovery that the King’s most excellent Majesty, whom they have been wont to serve on bended [Illustration: THE WATER GATE, NEW PALACE YARD.]