The volume however which Mrs. Pepys read to her husband is worse in every respect. There is a copy in the Guildhall Library; and I have to thank the most courteous of librarians, Mr. Allchin, for the opportunity I have enjoyed of perusing it. Perhaps the second edition, of which I have spoken above, was prepared expressly for the benefit of the youthful mind. The first is certainly bad enough to pollute the minds of all who read or listened to the reader. I will only add, that the illustrating artist has been so hard put to it, that he frequently makes one design represent two different events, the scenes of which are wide apart. He might have alleged _one_ thing in favour of his so doing; namely, that the illustration in question quite as truthfully represented one scene with the actors therein, as it did the other. Of this there can be no doubt; and I may further add, in behalf of the pictorial illustrations, that they assuredly did not offend against the second commandment, for there is nothing in them that is a likeness of anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth; and if it be an old joke to say so, it is, at all events, better than any of the jokes to be found in the volume which Mrs. Pepys read with complacency to that wicked little man, her redoubtable husband. The true story of John Hawkwood needs no romance to lend it brightness, or season it with wonders. It has marvels enough of its own; and these, redolent of romance, are, in fact, sober and incontrovertible truth. If Essex has been famous for calves, it has also had its share of heroes; heroes (if one may say so) in evil as in good; with its very villages producing them, and that in the humblest localities. If Frinton rejoices because of Cornelius and Tilbury, the poison swallowers, Sible Hedingham is glad because of John Hawkwood, the tailor and soldier. In the village last-named, and in the reign of Edward the Second, there lived a tanner called Gilbert Hawkwood. His vocation not being a profitable one, he resolved that it should not be followed by his son. The latter, instead of tanning hides of brutes, was taught the mystery of covering those of men. In simple, honest English, he was apprenticed to a tailor; and did not at all like it.