e that he gives you credit for 'a deep
foresight and judgment of the times,' and for speaking in a prophetic
spirit of the evils, which soon afterwards were 'full heavily felt.'"

"There could be little need for a spirit of prophecy," Sir Thomas made
answer, to "foresee troubles which were the sure effect of the causes
then in operation, and which were actually close at hand. When the rain
is gathering from the south or west, and those flowers and herbs which
serve as natural hygrometers close their leaves, men have no occasion to
consult the stars for what the clouds and the earth are telling them. You
were thinking of Prince Arthur when I introduced myself yesterday, as if
musing upon the great events which seem to have received their bias from
the apparent accident of his premature death."

_Montesinos_.--I had fallen into one of those idle reveries in which we
speculate upon what might have been. Lord Bacon describes him as "very
studious, and learned beyond his years, and beyond the custom of great
princes." As this indicates a calm and thoughtful mind, it seems to show
that he inherited the Tudor character. His brother took after the
Plantagenets; but it was not of their nobler qualities that he partook.
He had the popular manners of his grandfather, Edward IV., and, like him,
was lustful, cruel, and unfeeling.

_Sir Thomas More_.--The blood of the Plantagenets, as your friends the
Spaniards would say, was a strong blood. That temper of mind which (in
some of his predecessors) thought so little of fratricide might perhaps
have involved him in the guilt of a parricidal war, if his father had not
been fortunate enough to escape such an affliction by a timely death. We
might otherwise be allowed to wish that the life of Henry VII. had been
prolonged to a good old age. For if ever there was a prince who could so
have directed the Reformation as to have averted the evils wherewith that
tremendous event was accompanied, and yet to have secured its advantages,
he was the man. Cool, wary, far-sighted, rapacious, politic, and
religious, or superstitious if you will (for his religion had its root
rather in fear than in hope), he was peculiarly adapted for such a crisis
both by his good and evil qualities. For the sake of increasing his
treasures and his power, he would have promoted the Reformation; but his
cautious temper, his sagacity, and his fear of Divine justice would have
taught him where to stop.

_Mont