of his affection for the English King.' This interesting anecdote seems authenticated by the circumstance that such a picture appears in the mortuary catalogue of the collection of Rubens.

This deep sympathy for arts and artists, flowed from the truest source, that of consummate knowledge. Charles the First possessed that refined discernment which is the faculty of 'the Few,' in detecting the manner, and the habitual work of any individual master. Painters call this 'a knowledge of hands.' Lord Oxford gives a remarkable story of Charles the First inspecting a collection of portraits at which were present several 'picture drawers.' The King enquired by whose hand was a particular picture? Some attempted to guess, none were positive. The King declared it to be the work of such a man's hand. I know it,' said Charles, 'as well as if I had seen him draw it; but is there but one man's hand in this picture? They did not discover this, while the King persisted in asserting that 'there were two hands in it; for I know the hand which drew the heads, but the hand which drew the rest I never saw before.' It appears afterwards that a gentleman, who had been at Rome, mentioned that he had seen this very picture with the heads, but the rest unfinished, for the painter dying, the widow procured another to complete the work for sale, the best way he could. This is but a blind story, and the gentleman was, no doubt, a good courtier, observes our polished cynic, though not unwilling to allow that Charles, at least, was an excellent judge of the style of the great masters. The story is probably true; for Charles was an admirable connoisseur, as well as an antiquary. Another incident will confirm the probability of this story. In one of his unhappy flights, when passing a night at the singular monastic institution of the family of the Ferrars at Gidding, an illustrated Bible containing a vast collection of prints, was placed before the King and the Palsgrave. The latter had more curiosity than

knowledge. Even at a moment when the mind of Charles could have little ease, and when the business of the early morning was an early flight, Charles largely descanted on the invention of the masters, and the characters of the engravers. Their works had long been lost to him; but these departed enjoyments of his cultivated tastes lingered in his fond recollections, and could steal an hour from five years of his sorrows.

Had the reign of Charles the First proved as peaceful as that of his father, this monarch, in 1640, would have anticipated those tastes, and inspired that enthusiasm for the world of art, which were so long foreign to the nation. and which have not yet reached to those ranks of society, where they ought to be familiar; however institutions have been nobly opened for the public. The mind of Charles the First was moulded by the graces. His favourite Buckingham was probably a greater favourite from cherishing those congenial tastes. He courted his monarch and his friend, by the frequent exhibitions of those splendid masques and entertainments, which delighted by all the rivalries of the most beautiful arts; combining the picture of ballet-dances with the voice of music, the most graceful poetry of Jonson, the seenic machinery of Inigo Jones, or the fanciful devices of Gerbier, the Duke's architect, the pupil and friend of Rubens, and the confidential agent of Charles the First. The costly magnificence of the fêtes at York-house, the Duke's residence, eclipsed the splendour of the French court; for Bassompiere confesses that he had never witnessed a similar magnificence. The King himself delighted in them, but this monarch was too poor to furnish those splendid entertainments. They charmed even those fiercer Republican spirits themselves in their ingenious youth. Milton owed his Arcades and his Comus to a masque at Ludloff Castle, and Whitelocke, who had been himself an actor and a manager in a splendid royal masque of the four Inns of Court joining together'

to go to court, at a later day when drawing up his 'Memorials of the English affairs,' and occupied by far graver concerns, dwelt with all the fondness of reminiscence on these stately shows and masques; and in a chronicle which contracts many an important event into a single paragraph, has poured forth six folio columns of a minute description of 'these dreams passed, and these vanished pomps.'

After reading these anecdotes of the private life of Charles the First, and recollecting the great national design which he had already commenced, we must recollect the limited means which contracted these noble efforts. The King, from the earliest period of his reign, was denied the personal enjoyments of a nobleman: and the truth is, that it was only by economical contrivances, with the aid of occasional presents, that Charles the First obtained that fine collection, which was so barbarously inventoried at his death, suffered to be pillaged by the meanest hands, and dispersed at most blundering estimates, to furnish the cabinets of France and Spain. Such often was the exhausted state of the exchequer, that it is a curious fact, that when Inigo Jones was appointed Master of the Board of Works, the funds were so low, that the great architect nobly remitted his own pay; nor is it less curious, that Charles, amidst his distress for money, condescended to enter into partnership for the small purchase of some pictures. This singular document is an evidence not only of his prudential expedients, but of his love of the arts.

But it was not for this unfortunate Prince, with all these finer tastes, to mitigate the growing barbarism of the times by one short age of taste. We had not yet emerged from our rude and neglected state of the elegant arts. Among the list of the grievances of the Commons in 1625, we find one complaint of 'the building of all houses in London in one uniform way, with a face of brick towards the streets.' To this grievance Charles replied, that

a reformation in buildings was a good reformation, and he was resolved to proceed with that work. No doubt the good citizens of London were then destitute of any architectural taste; since even the decent appearance of bricking their fronts, and improving the salubrity of the city, where wooden houses were huddled together in all inconvenient forms, nests for their Scourge the plague, which was so often breathing in their faces, was considered as a national grievance. The penurious and grave citizen, the ascetic puritan, felt no ambition to leave their city of brick, which they had found a city of timber. Palladian streets never entered in their imagination.

An affection for the fine arts was yet entirely confined to Charles's own court. Scotland, by her vulgar notions of 'superstition' and idolatry, seemed to have exiled the arts from her bleak clime. But it was now still worse at London than at Edinburgh. Among the barbarians, who, like a second irruption of the Goths and Vandals, became those of England, the avowed enemies of art and artists; the Puritans on one side, and the Levellers on the other, excite our indignation as much for their brutalising ignorance, as their calumnies. In that remarkable, yet curious libel on Charles the First, entitled 'the None-such Charles,' the writer accuses his late sovereign, among other enormities, of 'squandering away millions of pounds on braveries and vanities, on old rotten pictures and broken-nosed marbles.' Millions of pounds! Charles was never master of a quarter of one! Such was the style and grossness of the times, and of that people who were now to be the rulers of England! Even in the King's lifetime, a puritan expressed his uneasiness that Con, a Scotchman, called the Pope's Legate, was enticing Charles with many various baits, and whom he sought to delude 'with gifts of pictures, antique idols, and such like trumperies brought from Rome.'

It has been said that Charles the First was adapted to be greater as a

private gentleman than a sovereign. There may be some truth in the observation; yet it is not so evident that the domestic virtues of the man are insufficient to constitute an excellent monarch. Unquestionably, had not peculiar difficulties arisen in his reign, Charles the First would have been that monarch. Nor can we justly conclude that he was destitute of kingly qualities, who so long and so ably contended for what he deemed his kingly rights; and voluntarily perished to vindicate his sovereignty. Charles, indeed, loved the privacy of domestic life, and the quiet occupations of study and art. When his troubles began, in 1637, Garrard, the correspondent of the Earl of Strafford, kissed hands on his election to the Mastership of the Charterhouse. The King bade him be a good Governor, and impressively assured him that he considered him the happiest man in England. Charles appears to have alluded to his own situation, deeming the Government of the Charter-house, in its dominion of obedient subjects, and in its business of literature, offered a more enviable life, than the days which were clouding over his throne.

The observation of Addison, that a reader is delighted to learn whether the person whose story is engaging his attention, be either a brown or a fair man, with other personal peculiarities, was new in its day, and since the philosophy of biography has been carried to a perfection unknown to that pleasing writer, its truth has often been confirmed. Nothing is trivial in the narrative of history which assists the reality of its scene, and places its personage by our side. By these natural touches something of the charm of fiction is thrown into the historical composition.

There is a fine and large portrait of Charles the First, by his first favourite Mytens, splendidly engraved by Delphius, the King's engraver. In that portrait, as well as in a miniature which I had copied from a large picture by Vandyke, now in the Pitti

Palace of Florence, the expression is quite of another character from the portraits taken at a later period. No secret sorrows, no deepened melancholy, had yet left the traces of painful thoughts over the countenance whose peculiar expression afterwards was so faithfully, perhaps so religiously, transmitted to us. Contrast this portrait of Mytens on Charles's accession to the throne, with the one so care-worn, so haggard and lean, when the ill-fated Sovereign appeared at his trial, and you touch both the extremities of his life, the whole history of Charles seems told!

The intermediate period in this monarch's life is equally remarkable. Vandyke painted in one picture the head of Charles in three positions. This was sent by the Queen to Bernini, in order to model his celebrated bust. The well-known anecdote of the sculptor is authentic. Bernini was a great physiognomist, and after contemplating the portraits, for a while, he exclaimed that he had never seen a portrait, whose countenance showed so much greatness and such marks of sadness: the man who was so strongly charactered, and whose dejection was so visible, was doomed to be unfortunate! Had the physiognomical predicter examined the two portraits of the happier days of Charles, he might have augured a happier fate. It is therefore evident that what was peculiar in the countenance of Charles, was not discoverable till after his thirtieth year.

Charles the First was of a middle stature, his complexion brown, inclined to a paleness,' his forehead not wide, his brows large, his eyes grey, they were quick and penetrating, and their vivacious glances were remarked on the opening of his trial, for Charles, considering himself to be a skilful physiognomist, was a keen observer of persons: his nose was somewhat large and rather round at the tip. The visage on the whole was long, and the lips seem to have been thick. His stammering was a defect which he could never entirely get rid of, though at his