severe. The relinquishment of the treaty of Northampton, founded on an alliance invalid and unconsummated, could not diminish tin; liberty or security of Scotland, which had then acknowledged itself a fief of England; nor did the memorable appearance of its king before the English parliament produce any national or unreasonable concession. We may be both just and generous in ascribing that appearance, wherein he deferred his royal dignity to what appeared a religious obligation, from a desire to conciliate and temporise, when he too well knew that treason would be in his camp, as interest was in his council. He might indeed lack that brutal spirit that impelled Bruce to imbrue his hands in his kinsman's blood before the altar of his God; and that regal magnanimity that condemned Wallace to his doom: yet, courage was never wanting when its presence would have been successful; nor ceased he to resist until all resistance was unavailing. The appellation, too, from whence his cowardice has been imputed, or more probably, suspected, was, with an unamiable feeling easy to understand, applied to him only after the adornments of royalty were removed from him; and at best can be deemed but of doubtful interpretation. But, whatever was his capability or his disposition, it will tax our credulity but little to believe that, in an age when the effusion of human blood was but lightly regarded, he was guiltless of the foul crimes that stain so many of his contemporaries. That, from malice to his king, and by treason to his country, he never sought, like Bruce, to wade through slaughter to a throne, nor like Edward, in the exercise of his sovereign authority, to shut the gates of mercy on mankind.
"When the imagination would invest with its airy forms the heroic characters of the past, it may not inaptly linger long on the last days of this 'dim, discrowned king.' Divested of the emblems of the sovereignty he had enjoyed; defeated in his expectation of transferring his sceptre to a posterity that should maintain his name among the potentates of the earth; separated by distance and by death from the associates of his youth, and the partners of his expectations; oppressed by bodily suffering, and unsoothed by domestic attention—how often, in that solitary and benighted gloom, as the old man sat in the chateau of his humbler, but happier forefathers, how often must
"Memories of power and pride, which long ago,
Like dim processions of a dream, had sunk
In twilight depths away'—
memories of ingratitude, or contumely, or treachery, have compassed him round about; and mingled emotions of discontent, and disappointment, and despair, have bounded painfully and bitterly through his heart—a heart, that gladdened only by the light of day, might have found—in the mighty magnificence of nature—in the lone path of the hoary forest—in the impetuosity of the mountain torrent—in the declining sun, that lingered like itself o'er his far-off realm—a dignifying solace and a joy. which neither the worm within, nor the foe without, could alike diminish or destroy. It was the last scene of a sad drama, that needed but the pen of Drayton, or Marlowe, or Shakespeare; and now lacks but the pencil of one master hand, to excite that immortal interest and sympathy they have won for more trifling scenes, and more unworthy men."
