shment, he
would sometimes resume it only to laugh at it, and instantly return to
his own natural demeanour. On one of these occasions, one of these
martinets observing that they could never be good soldiers unless they
always kept true order and measure in marching, "What then must they
do," cried Henry, "when they wade through a swift-running water?" In all
things freedom of action from his own native impulse he preferred to the
settled rules of his teachers; and when his physician told him that he
rode too fast, he replied, "Must I ride by rules of physic?" When he was
eating a cold capon in cold weather, the physician told him that that
was not meat for the weather. "You may see, doctor," said Henry, "that
my cook is no astronomer." And when the same physician, observing him
eat cold and hot meat together, protested against it, "I cannot mind
that now," said the royal boy, facetiously, "though they should have run
at tilt together in my belly."

His national affections were strong. When one reported to Henry that the
King of France had said that his bastard, as well as the bastard of
Normandy, might conquer England, the princely boy exclaimed, "I'll to
cuffs with him, if he go about any such means." There was a dish of
jelly before the prince, in the form of a crown, with three lilies; and
a kind of buffoon, whom the prince used to banter, said to the prince
that that dish was worth a crown. "Ay!" exclaimed the future English
hero, "I would I had that crown!"--"It would be a great dish," rejoined
the buffoon. "How can that be," rejoined the prince, "since you value it
but a crown?" When James I. asked him whether he loved Englishmen or
Frenchmen better, he replied, "Englishmen, because he was of kindred to
more noble persons of England than of France;" and when the king
inquired whether he loved the English or the Germans better, he replied
the English; on which the king observing that his mother was a German,
the prince replied, "'Sir, you have the wyte thereof;'--a northern
speech," adds the writer, "which is as much as to say,--you are the
cause thereof."

Born in Scotland, and heir to the crown of England at a time when the
mutual jealousies of the two nations were running so high, the boy often
had occasion to express the unity of affection which was really in his
heart. Being questioned by a nobleman, whether, after his father, he had
rather be king of England or Scotland, he asked, "Which of them was
best?"