events which occurred after his death.  When Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, whom James considered a useful servant, Buckingham sacrificed, as it would appear, to the clamours of a party, James said, “You are making a rod for your own back;” and when Prince Charles was encouraging the frequent petitions of the Commons, James told him, “You will live to have your bellyful of petitions.”  The following anecdote may serve to prove his political sagacity:—­When the Emperor of Germany, instigated by the Pope and his own state-interests, projected a crusade against the Turks, he solicited from James the aid of three thousand Englishmen; the wise and pacific monarch, in return, advised the emperor’s ambassador to apply to France and Spain, as being more nearly concerned in this project:  but the ambassador very ingeniously argued, that, James being a more remote prince, would more effectually alarm the Turks, from a notion of a general armament of the Christian princes against them.  James got rid of the importunate ambassador by observing, that “three thousand Englishmen would do no more hurt to the Turks than fleas to their skins:  great attempts may do good by a destruction, but little ones only stir up anger to hurt themselves.”

His vein of familiar humour flowed at all times, and his facetiousness was sometimes indulged at the cost of his royalty.  In those unhappy differences between him and his parliament, one day mounting his horse, which, though usually sober and quiet, began to bound and prance,—­“Sirrah!” exclaimed the king, who seemed to fancy that his favourite prerogative was somewhat resisted on this occasion, “if you be not quiet, I’ll send you to the five hundred kings in the lower house:  they’ll quickly tame you.”  When one of the Lumleys was pushing on his lineal ascent beyond the patience of the hearers, the king, to cut short the tedious descendant of the Lumleys, cried out, “Stop mon! thou needst no more:  now I learn that Adam’s surname was Lumley!” When Colonel Gray, a military adventurer of that day, just returned from Germany, seemed vain of his accoutrements, on which he had spent his all,—­the king, staring at this buckled, belted, sworded, and pistolled, but ruined, martinet, observed, that “this town was so well fortified, that, were it victualled, it might be impregnable.”

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EVIDENCES OF HIS SAGACITY IN THE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH.

Possessing the talent of eloquence, the quickness of wit, and the diversified knowledge which produced his “Table-talk,” we find also many evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth, with that patient zeal so honourable to a monarch.  When the shipwrights, jealous of Pett, our great naval architect, formed a party against him, the king would judge with his own eyes.  Having examined the materials depreciated by Pett’s accusers, he declared that “the cross-grain was in the men, not in the timber.”  The king, on historical evidence,