She died in an ill day, and was succeeded by one in all respects her opposite:  a coward, a pedant, a knave, a tyrant, a mean, base, beastly sensualist—­a bad man, devoid even of a bad man’s one redeeming virtue, physical courage—­a bad weak man with the heart of a worse and weaker woman—­a man with all the vices of the brute creation, without one of their virtues.  His instincts and impulses were all vile and low, crafty and cruel; his principles, if his rules of action, which were all founded on cheatery and subtle craft, can be called principles, were yet baser than his instinctive impulses.

He is the only man I know, recorded in history, who is solely odious, contemptible, and bestial, without one redeeming trait, one feature of mind or body that can preserve him from utter and absolute detestation and damnation of all honorable and manly minds.

He is the only king of whom, from his cradle to his grave, no one good deed, no generous, or bold, or holy, or ambitious, much less patriotic or aspiring, thought or action is related.

His soul was akin to the mud, of which his body was framed—­to the slime of loathsome and beastly debauchery, in which he wallowed habitually with his court and the ladies of his court, and his queen at their head, and could no more have soared heavenward than the garbage-battened vulture could have soared to the noble falcon’s pitch and pride of place.

This beast,[1] for I cannot bring myself to write him man or king, with the usual hatred and jealousy of low foul minds towards everything noble and superior, early conceived a hatred for the gallant and great Sir Walter Raleigh, whose enterprise and adventure he had just intellect enough to comprehend so far as to fear them, but of whose patriotism, chivalry, innate nobility of soul, romantic daring, splendid imagination, and vast literary conceptions—­being utterly unconscious himself of such emotions—­he was no more capable of forming a conception, than is the burrowing mole of appreciating the flight of the soaring eagle.

So early as the second year of his reign, he contrived to have this great discoverer and gallant soldier—­to whom Virginia is indebted for the honor of being the first English colony, Jamestown having been settled in 1606, whereas the Puritans landed on the rock of Plymouth no earlier than 1620, and to whom North Carolina has done honor creditable to herself in naming her capital after him, the first English colonist—­arraigned on a false charge of conspiracy in the case of Arabella Stuart, a young lady as virtuous and more unfortunate than sweet Jane Grey, whose treatment by James would alone have been enough to stamp him with eternal infamy, and for whose history we refer our readers to the fine novel by Mr. James on this subject.