M. de St Priest does not himself narrate the oft-told tale of the Sicilian Vespers, but gives the accounts of Saba Malaspina and Bartolomeo de Neocastro, asserting that of the former writer to be the most correct, as it is certainly the most favourable to the French. He then enters into a long argument on points of no great importance; his logic being principally directed to show that if the French fell an easy prey to the infuriated Sicilians, it was through no lack of courage on their part, but because they were unarmed, surprised, and overmatched. He also takes some useless trouble to upset the story generally accredited of the immediate cause of the massacre, namely, an insult offered to a bride of high birth. The spirit of exaggerated nationality, apparent in this part of his book, stimulates his ingenuity to some curious hypotheses. It is a French failing, from which the best and wisest of that nation are rarely quite exempt, never to admit a defeat with temper and dignity. There must always have been treachery, or vastly superior numbers, or some other circumstance destructive to fair play. Not a Frenchman from Strasburg to Port Vendres, but holds, as an article of faith, that, on equal terms, the "_grande nation_" is unconquered and invincible. M. de St Priest seems to partake something of this spirit, so prevalent amongst his countrymen, and actually gets bitter and sarcastic about such a very antiquated business as the Sicilian Vespers. "Who does not recognise in this story (that of the insulted lady) an evident desire to exalt the deed of the Sicilians of the thirteenth century by assimilating it to analogous traits, borrowed from Roman history? Who does not here distinguish a Lucretia, or, better still, a Virginia; a Tarquin, or an Appius? The intention is conspicuous in the popular manifestos that succeeded the event. In these, reminiscences of antiquity abound. The heroes of the Vespers sought to make themselves Romans as quickly as possible, lest they should be taken for Africans." And so on in the same strain. "It is clearly seen," says the French historian in another place, "that the first outrage upon that day was perpetrated by the Sicilians, and not by the French; we behold brave and unsuspicious soldiers, inspired by good-humoured gaiety and deceitful security, barbarously stricken, in consequence of demonstrations, very indiscreet certainly, but whose inoffensive character is deposed to by a contemporary, hostile to the French and to their chief." The facts of the case are told in ten words. By a long course of injustice and oppression the French had dug and charged, beneath their own feet, a mine which a spark was sufficient to ignite. It is immaterial what hand applied that spark. Enough that the subsequent explosion involved the aggressors in universal destruction, and freed Sicily from its tyrants. The statement of Saba Malaspina is not, however, altogether so exculpatory of the French, on