A BRIEF DISCOURSE 



OF 



THE HAPPY UNION 



OF THE KINGDOMS OF 



ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 



Dedicated in private to his Majesty.* 



I DO not find it strange, excellent king, that when 

 Heraclitus, he that was surnamed the obscure, had 

 set forth a certain book which is not now extant, 

 many men took it for a discourse of nature, and many 

 others took it for a treatise of policy. For there is a 

 great affinity and consent between the rules of na 

 ture, and the true rules of policy : the one being 

 nothing else but an order in the government of the 

 world ; and the other an order in the government of 

 an estate. And therefore the education and erudi 

 tion of the kings of Persia was in a science which 

 was termed by a name then of great reverence, but 

 now degenerate and taken in the ill part. For the 

 Persian magic, which was the secret literature of 

 their kings, was an application of the contemplations 

 and observations of nature unto a sense politic ; 

 taking the fundamental laws of nature, and the 



* Printed in 1603, in 12mo. 



