s at last that complete Arabian Nights to which we have all so long
looked forward.

CHARLES OF ORLEANS. Perhaps I have done scanty justice to the charm of
the old Duke's verses, and certainly he is too much treated as a fool.
The period is not sufficiently remembered. What that period was, to what
a blank of imbecility the human mind had fallen, can only be known to
those who have waded in the chronicles. Excepting Comines and La Salle
and Villon, I have read no author who did not appal me by his torpor;
and even the trial of Joan of Arc, conducted as it was by chosen clerks,
bears witness to a dreary sterile folly,--a twilight of the mind peopled
with childish phantoms. In relation to his contemporaries, Charles seems
quite a lively character.

It remains for me to acknowledge the kindness of Mr. Henry Pyne, who,
immediately on the appearance of the study, sent me his edition of the
Debate between the Heralds: a courtesy from the expert to the amateur
only too uncommon in these days.

KNOX. Knox, the second in order of interest among the reformers, lies
dead and buried in the works of the learned and unreadable M'Crie. It
remains for some one to break the tomb and bring him forth, alive again
and breathing, in a human book. With the best intentions in the world, I
have only added two more flagstones, ponderous like their predecessors,
to the mass of obstruction that buries the reformer from the world; I
have touched him in my turn with that "mace of death," which Carlyle has
attributed to Dryasdust; and my two dull papers are, in the matter of
dulness, worthy additions to the labours of M'Crie. Yet I believe they
are worth reprinting in the interest of the next biographer of Knox. I
trust his book may be a masterpiece; and I indulge the hope that my two
studies may lend him a hint or perhaps spare him a delay in its
composition.

Of the PEPYS I can say nothing; for it has been too recently through my
hands; and I still retain some of the heat of composition. Yet it may
serve as a text for the last remark I have to offer. To Pepys I think I
have been amply just; to the others, to Burns, Thoreau, Whitman, Charles
of Orleans, even Villon, I have found myself in the retrospect ever too
grudging of praise, ever too disrespectful in manner. It is not easy to
see why I should have been most liberal to the man of least pretensions.
Perhaps some cowardice withheld me from the proper warmth of tone;
perhaps it is easier to