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of Edinburgh, Session 1880 - 81 . 
country in the midst of the agitation consequent on the Eeforma- 
tion of 1560. Its political aspect and prospect were troubled in 
the extreme. In no country in Europe was the jus regni more 
worthy of philosophical, patriotic, and practical thought. From the 
first of the Stuarts down to the fair and unfortunate princess whose 
reign was about to commence, misfortune, violence, and treachery 
had surrounded the Scottish throne. James the First of Scotland, 
the ablest and wisest of his race, was cut off prematurely by the 
sword of an assassin. James the Second was killed by the 
accidental bursting of a cannon. James the Third was murdered 
by his rebel subjects. James the Fourth fell at Flodden; and 
James the Fifth died of a broken heart about the time of which 
we now speak. Although Scotland had the framework — whence 
derived it is perhaps not easy to say — of constitutional government, 
it had nothing which deserved the name of constitutional liberty. 
The people had no voice whatever, and government seemed to 
consist of a perpetual struggle between the nobility and the crown. 
When Buchanan returned to Scotland, it was, however, plain 
that the waters were being stirred. The Reformation had set men 
thinking, and the free circulation of the Scriptures, and the 
preaching of the reformed clergy, had given tone and temper to the 
times. Events rapidly succeeded each other, which in the end 
threw the kingdom into the convulsions of civil war ; but it is not 
my purpose to trace in any detail that most interesting but melan- 
choly period of the history of this country. A few sentences will 
bring me abreast of the date of Buchanan’s work. I stop for a 
moment to conclude this chapter of his life by remarking on the 
singular position held by men of letters in European society in the 
sixteenth century. 
The circles in which Buchanan moved seem to have been very 
brilliant, very genial, and very poor. Their acquired learning seems 
to have been prodigious, and considering that the art of printing 
was not a century old, indicates how intense was the hunger and 
thirst after knowledge in that generation. Indeed, almost any 
celebrated work of that time so bristles with learning, culled chiefly 
from the ancients, but still so minute, and indicating so wide a 
range, as to fill the modern student’s heart with something approach- 
ing to despair. 
