Full of life and spirits himself, it seemed to him nothing short of disgraceful that one, who aspired to rule, should take no pains whatever to fit himself for a throne, or to cultivate qualities that would render himself popular among a high-spirited people.

And, as he came to understand James more thoroughly, he had found his visits increasingly irksome, all the more so, as he felt their inutility.
"Thank goodness," he said, to his two friends, when he went home that day, "I have done with Saint Germain.

I am as warm an adherent as ever of the cause of the Stuarts, and should be perfectly ready, when the time comes, to fight my hardest for them; but I would vastly rather fight for the king, than converse with him." "I suppose, by what I have seen of him, that he must be somewhat wearisome," Phelim O'Sullivan said, with a laugh.

"Fortunately, wit and gaiety are not essential qualities on the part of a monarch; but I must own that, treasonable as it may sound, I fear His Majesty is lacking in other qualities, far more essential in a monarch.

I should say that he is kindly and well disposed, he wishes to be fair and just, and may turn out a wise ruler; but he is altogether deficient in energy.