of another, whom he styles "a most ingenious gentleman," "To behold this babe, heaven itself seemed to open one eye more than ordinary; such asterisks and celestial signatures attached to times," etc. These presumptuous inferences are, of course, followed by encomiums equally out of place. "He was a prince," says Fuller, "whose virtues I should injure if I endeavoured to contract them within a narrow scantling. And yet I cannot pass over that wherein he so much resembleth the King of Heaven, whose vicegerent he is. I mean his merciful disposition; doing good to those who spitefully used and persecuted him." What wretched absurdity! Could admiration of power or hope of preferment carry adulation to a more ridiculous extreme? We have the authority of Lilly, as well as Fuller, that the star which appeared at the birth of Charles was no other than the planet Venus, which not unfrequently presents itself in the open day. Certainly, the fact that Venus happened to be the particular luminary which presented itself, was a singular coincidence, and was at least typical of the subsequent libertinism of his career. Dryden, in his "Annus Mirabilis," alludes to the circumstance: "That bright companion of the sun, Whose glorious aspect sealed our new-born king." And again, in his poem on the Restoration: "That star that at your birth shone out so bright, Waller, also, has celebrated the appearance of the planet, in some heavy panegyrical verses. On the 30th of May, 1630, the Earl of Dorchester thus announces the birth of a Prince of Wales to De Vic, the English resident at Paris : Yesterday, at noon, the queen was made the happy mother of a Prince of Wales. Herself, God be thanked, is in good estate, and what a child can promise that reckons yet but two days is already visible, as a gracious pledge from Heaven of those blessings which are conveyed and assured to kingdoms in the issue of their princes. As this hath set on work here whatsoever may serve to speak the fullness of our hearts in the language of public rejoicing, so his Majesty hath thought fit to communicate his contentment to the King and Queens of France by his own letters, whereof Mr. Montague is the bearer; and hath commission to invite that king and the queen-mother to join with the King of Bohemia, in christening of the young prince. And so in haste I rest, "Yours to be commanded, "DORCHESTER." The University of Oxford, occasionally loyal even to absurdity, celebrated the birth of the |