a famous satiric significance against a class of bores of our own day and generation. It relates to the lord of a castle not far from Tarbes, and was told to Froissart by a squire, "in a corner of the chapel of Orthez," during the visit paid by the canon to Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix--who, I am sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly exalted by the great chronicler into the ranks of the most noble chivalry, in return for splendid entertainment bestowed; whereas, in fact, Gaston Phoebus was a reckless murderer, possessed of neither faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon of Chimay sometimes descended into the lowest depths of penny-a-lining, and "coloured" the cases just as a bribed police reporter does when a "respectable" gentleman gets into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death, in a dungeon; and the bold Froissart has actually the coolness to assert that the death of the heir took place, inasmuch as his father, in a rage, because he would not eat the dainties placed before him, struck him with his clenched fist, holding therein a knife with which he had been picking his nails, but the blade of which, says the lame apologist, only protruded a "groat's breadth" from his fingers,--the result being that the steel unfortunately happened to cut a vein in young Gaston's throat. The simple truth of the matter is, that the count was jealous of his son's being a favourite of the boy's mother, from whom he (the count) was separated--that he dreaded lest the wrongs of his wife might be avenged by her brother, the King of Navarre--and that he determined to starve the boy in a dungeon; but the child not dying so soon as was expected, his father went very coolly in to him, and cut his throat. "To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, "the Count de Foix was perfect in body and mind, and no contemporary prince could be compared to him for sense, honour, and liberality." "To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart," I reply, "you have written a charming and chivalrous chronicle; but you could take a bribe with any man of your time, and having done so, you could attempt to deceive posterity, and write down what you knew to be a lie, with as gallant a grace and easy swagger as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild himself."