deceive; it was the flight of beauty alone, not that of
honesty or honour, that he lamented in his song; and the
nameless mediaeval vagabond has the best of the comparison.

There is now a Villon Society in England; and Mr. John Payne
has translated him entirely into English, a task of unusual
difficulty. I regret to find that Mr. Payne and I are not
always at one as to the author's meaning; in such cases I am
bound to suppose that he is in the right, although the
weakness of the flesh withholds me from anything beyond a
formal submission. He is now upon a larger venture,
promising us 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