s far better. I know the abilities and
accomplishments of both. You know that the King of Sicily was my pupil
for a year; you yourself taught him the element of verse-making and
literary composition; from me he had further and deeper lessons, but as
soon as I left the kingdom he threw away his books, and took to the
easy-going ways of the court. But with the King of England there is
school every day, constant conversation of the best scholars and
discussion of questions."

Behind all this amazing activity, however, lay the dark and terrible
side of Henry's character. All the violent contrasts and contradictions
of the age, which make it so hard to grasp, were gathered up in his
varied heritage; the half-savage nature which at that time we meet with
again and again united with first-class intellectual gifts; the fierce
defiance born of a time when every man had to look solely to his own
right hand for security of life and limb and earthly regard--a defiance
caught now and again in the grip of an overwhelming awe before the
portents of the invisible world; the sudden mad outbreaks of irresponsible
passion which still mark certain classes in our own day, but which then
swept over a violent and undisciplined society. Even to his own time, used
as it was to such strange contrasts, Henry was a puzzle. Men saw him
diligently attend mass every day, and restlessly busy himself during the
most solemn moments in scribbling, in drawing pictures, in talking to his
courtiers, in settling the affairs of State; or heard how he refused
confession till forced to it by terror in the last extremity of
sickness, and then turned it into a surprising ceremony of apology and
self-justification. At one time they saw him, conscience-smitten at the
warning of some seer of visions, sitting up through the night amid a
tumultuous crowd to avert the wrath of Heaven by hastily restoring rights
and dues which he was said to have unjustly taken, and when the dawning
light of day brought cooler counsel, swift to send the rest of his
murmuring suitors empty away; at another bowing panic-stricken in his
chapel before some sudden word of ominous prophecy; or as a pilgrim,
barefoot, with staff in hand; or kneeling through the night before a
shrine, with scourgings and fastings and tears. His steady sense of order,
justice, and government, broken as it was by fits of violent passion,
resumed its sway as soon as the storm was over; but the awful wrath which
wo