Series 3 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society (Fourth volume)

18 ON THE EXPEDITION TO SCOTLAND
certain affability and charm in his expression, all the more
pleasing from its unchanging serenity and the graciousness
of his address. His abhorrence of all haughtiness and dis¬
play was as notable as his care not to degrade his rank by
any kind of levity. He never gave way to idleness or
laziness, least of all to any of the temptations of the senses
that so beset a young man and a prince in Rome. He had
a good knowledge of languages, speaking not merely
Italian, but Latin, English, and French. He also pos¬
sessed considerable familiarity for one of his years with
public affairs, and with history, which he had gained from
books.
He had an overmastering passion for the profession of
arms, looking upon it as a school of valour and glory. And
though in Rome he enjoyed all the luxury and splendour
he could desire and was treated by the Romans with the
respect due to a Prince, he thoroughly disliked living there,
because, in a city of ecclesiastics such as Rome is, the arts
of peace alone were practised and he was obliged to spend
the flower of his years in an idleness which he considered
inglorious. His only amusements were riding and hunting;
by this I do not mean that sport of "the weakling, snaring
with nets, but the toils of the chase, shooting birds and
tracking down the wildest of game ; and such was his skill
that he was never known to miss a shot.1 This sport he
would sometimes prolong for the whole day. In heat or
rain, in any weather he would make his way through or
go round the wildest heath and the densest wood, where
there was no trace of a path. At sunset he would return
delighted with the excellent bag, though utterly tired out,
scorched by the sun or frozen by the cold. This is how he
accustomed himself to the fatigues of war. He felt that
he had no lack of courage to face them, and whep he
realised that he was of an age to do so and that he possessed
1 The Prince’s skill as a game shot was well known. The Due de Liria,
son of the Duke of Berwick, writing about him at the age of six and a half,
said : * I have seen him take a cross-bow and kill birds on the roof, and split a
rolling ball with a bolt ten times in succession.’—Documentos Inedit os, vol.
xciii. p. 18. Lang: Prince Charles Edward, p. 15.