mother; but the hand of Death was then already laid upon him, and mind and body were alike giving

way.

As men, there is probably little to choose between Richard the Third and Henry the Seventh in point of morality. If Richard destroyed, or intended to destroy, his nephews, Henry (we can scarcely doubt) murdered the young Earl of Warwick under the forms of law, in order to satisfy the demands of Ferdinand of Aragon for greater security in the throne with which he was about to ally himself by marriage. Perkin Warbeck-whether he was an impostor or the real Duke of York-would, it seems, never have suffered death but for the significant silence which Ferdinand preserved on an appeal from Henry as to what should be his fate; but he was executed, after an escape which seems to have been contrived by the King himself, for the purpose of supplying a new motive for the severity. If Henry did not commit all the acts of violence which are attributed to Richard, his hand was stayed by policy and temperament, rather than by principle. Neither was naturally cruel or bloodthirsty, but neither had much moral scruple when passion or policy seemed to incite to a crime. Henry was by far the cleverer and probably much the more frequent dissembler. Reserve and early circumstances had made him such. But Henry gave to even his crimes the colour and form of law, while Richard gave to even his justifiable

acts the appearance of irregularity and violence. Between them as Kings there can be no comparison. Richard was one of the most unsatisfactory, and Henry one of the most skilful and far-sighted of our rulers. Richard reduced the Government and the Nation to the proportions of parties in a personal quarrel; Henry substituted for personal pretensions and a protracted civil crisis a national sentiment, a renovated people, and an assured state of tranquility. Richard lost his crown and his life in a vain attempt to stem a feudal anarchy; Henry laid the foundations of the modern state of English society.

251

HENRY THE EIGHTH.

No English King has experienced greater vicissitudes in popular reputation than Henry the Eighth. Idolised during a large part of his reign, and retaining to its close a considerable share of popularity with the mass of the population, the character thus bequeathed remained almost a sacred article of faith with the next generation. Under the Stuarts, however, it became fashionable to disparage the Tudors and their policy, and the memory of Henry, as the supposed embodiment of the Tudor characteristics, became an especial object of hostility. Still the national tradition did not entirely succumb to this new Court theory, and the misconduct and miscarriage of the Stuart Princes produced a revulsion in feeling which found vent in such expressions as that of Andrew Marvell:

Ah, Tudor! ah, Tudor! of Stuarts enough,

It was only after the fear of a second Stuart restoration had completely subsided, and when Jacobitism from a political and religious creed became a senti

mental romance of the drawing-room, that the disparagement of the Tudors again became fashionable, and that the character of Henry the Eighth especially became a subject of unrestrained obloquy. Elizabeth alone escaped for a time from the effects of this reaction, in consequence of the glories attaching to the themory of the overthrow of the Spanish Armada, and the attractive idea of a magnanimous maiden Queen. But the Royal Bluebeard' met with small mercy, and all the romance of his reign attached itself to the memories of Catharine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn, each of whom had a band of enthusiastic admirers and sympathisers, who were united only on the common ground of abusing the man who divorced the one and sent the other to the scaffold. Mr. Sharon Turner was the first to stem this tide of popular obloquy, and to endeavour to revive the fading tradition of 'Bluff King Hal;' but it was reserved for an abler writer to force the question on public attention, and to divide thoughtful opinion somewhat more evenly as to Henry's real character. Mr. Froude has, perhaps, injured to some extent the cause for which he pleads by too unqualified an advocacy, and by a theory which is too artificial to meet the misgivings of broad common sense and of instinctive morality, and the majority of Englishmen will probably rest with greater satisfaction in the more sober and modified conclusions of Mr. Brewer; but it would be doing great injustice to Mr. Froude to

deny to him the merit of having by confronting modern opinion with earlier and contemporary judgments, by an appeal to facts against prejudiced and modern perversions of facts, and by his power of literary exposition swept away a mass of misleading errors, and cleared the ground for the reception of a more faithful portraiture of his hero-king.

The basis of the character of Henry the Eighth is his physical constitution, and in no sovereign is a personal description more essential to a proper understanding of the man himself. Fortunately, we are not without the materials for such a portrait, as the Venetian Envoys at the English Court have in their communications to their own Government drawn more than one sketch of his personal appearance in the earlier part of his reign. His Majesty,' says Giustinian, is twenty-nine years old, and extremely handsome. Nature could not have done more for him. He is much handsomer than any other sovereign in Christendom, a great deal handsomer than the King of France; very fair, and his whole frame admirably proportioned. On hearing that Francis the First wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow; and as it is reddish, he has now got a beard that looks like gold. He is very accomplished; a good musician; composes well; is a most capital horseman; a fine jouster; speaks good French, Latin, and Spanish; is very religious; hears three masses daily when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days. He hears