"God, whom the wisest men acknowledge to be a Power uneffable and vertue infinite, a Light by abundant charitie invisible; an Understanding which itself can only comprehend, an essence eternal and spiritual, of absolute purenesse and simplicitie; was and is pleased to make himself knowne by the work of the World: in the wonderful magnitude whereof (all which Hee imbraceth, filleth, and sustayneth) we behold the Image of that glorie which cannot be measured, and withall that one and yet universal Nature, which cannot be defined. In the glorious Lights of Heaven, we perceive a shadow of his divine Countenance; in his mercifull provision for all that live, his manifold goodness, and lastly in creating and making existent the World universall, by the absolute Arte of his owne Word, his Power and Almightinesse; which Power Light Vertue Wisdome and Goodnesse, being all but attributes of one simple Essence and one God, we in all admire, and in part discern, per speculam creaturaram, that is in the disposition, order, and varietie of Celestiall and Terrestriall bodies: Terrestriall, in their strange and manifold diversities: Celestiall in their beautie and magnitude; which in their continuall and contrary motions are neither repugnant, intermixt nor confounded. By these potent effects we approch to the knowledge of the Omnipotent cause, and by these motions, their Almightie mover." The History is based upon a fallacy; but the History is written in great prose--the prose of Ralegh. Even when the subject comes from remote authorities on antedeluvian epochs, it is shaped and filled with perpetual life by contact with the great living personality of Ralegh. Error in life or art matters little. It is vitality that matters. Mr. Edmund Gosse remarks that "the entire absence of humour is characteristic.... The story of Periander's burning the clothes of the women closes with a jest; there is, perhaps, no other occasion on which the solemn historian is detected with a smile upon his lips." The remark is almost as astounding as that of Mr. Edwards, who, after a careful summary of the History, is obliged to say, "The three or four thousand pages of the _History of the World_ contain, I believe, no line or word within which there lies the tiniest spark of prurient suggestion." Mr. Edwards is, of course, pleased at this; but there is no reason for Mr. Gosse's lament. Ralegh did not write with the continual bubble of humour which makes the Church History of Great Britain (of all impossible subjects) endeavoured by that inimitable old Thomas Fuller, one of the wittiest and most readable books in the language. Humour constantly occurs. Two instances in one paragraph are quite unforgetable. It is the fourth paragraph of the twenty-third chapter of the second book of the first part of the History (what portentous dimensions the book has!).