After some desultory conversation Sully took leave, and asked his Grace's commands for his master Henry IV.

"Tell your king," said the Prince of Wales," in what occupation you left me engaged."

Sully bowed, more struck with the reply than with any thing he had met with during his residence in England. And upon the mind of Overbury the answer of the Prince made a powerful impression; for Henry was now in his eighteenth year, and though it was well known that business and ambition alone

1

engaged his heart, the speech he had just made showed his disposition would lead him to promote the glory more than the happiness of his people.

CHAP. V.

-I beseech you

Wrest once the laws to your authority;

To do a great right, do a little

wrong, And curb this cruel devil of his will.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

ROCHESTER, on quitting his friend Overbury, tripped lightly along the Mall to St. James's. This public and royal promenade obtained its name from Palle Maille, a game which was wont to be played there by the courtiers of other times. But the Mall itself was a mere alley, at either end of which stood a high arch of iron, through which a round bowl was struck with a mallet.

St. James's palace was at the period of which we write a place of great im

portance, from the circumstance of the reigning monarch not holding his court where his predecessor died; and till this time the royal residence at the end of the Mall was called simply the "hospital." Though now greatly dilapidated, and partly destroyed by fire, St. James's consisted in days of yore of a stately pile of red brick buildings; but its altitude is now much diminished by the erection of a tavern that disfigures the royal residence. Still the "hospital” is a stately pile of buildings, though in the front next to St. James's-street little more than an old gate house appears. Within, however, a spacious court is seen, flanked on the western side by a piazza leading to the grand stair-case ; on the eastern side a range of buildings appear which were formerly entered by a tower or well-staircase. These apartments were allotted to Prince Henry; the front range lords of the court occu

pied; the southern quadrangle containing the state apartments, which King James considered his own, but Whitehall was his favourite palace, and it continued a royal residence till it was consumed in 1695.

The gardens in the rear were fresh from the hands of Le Notre, who had laid them out, and also Greenwich Park for Elizabeth. But these gardens have always been destitute of picturesque beauty, and exist to our own times as vegetating monuments of the bad taste of the age that could dispense with the romantic views of pleasure gardens which Monsieur Le Notre might have derived from nature.

The King was engaged in debate when the Favourite entered, with some Scottish clergymen, on the subject of establishing bishops among the pastors of the Presbyterian church. But this is a topic with which it would be out of

place to enter upon here, especially since the publication of the Rev. Dr. M'Crie's meritorious" Biography of Andrew Melville." The patience of Rochester was nearly exhausted, when the King broke up the conference by commanding the Scottish delegates, and Andrew Melville in particular, to attend the Chapel Royal on Michaelmas Day, when they would see how far the magnificence of the real Episcopal worship excelled the Presbyterian-The delegates, of course made no reply to this order, and the Favourite was compelled to use all his address to bring the King into good humour before he could touch upon his own particular case. At length, however, the Viscount found he had cozened his Majesty into a fit humour for introducing the subject on which he purposed to speak. The King listened with deep attention to Rochester's discourse, and during its delivery several