There are historical personages, whose letters and manuscripts generally we should expect would have disappeared altogether; voluntary destruction having been applied to them. On the other hand, there are personages whose manuscripts and whose letters, we should suppose, would have been preserved with a reverential affection. In each case the expectation is contrary to fact. We will instance Margaret of Anjou and William Shakespeare. When Edward IV. was on the throne he was so desirous to secure every letter or despatch written by that heroic wife of an unheroic king, that the penalty of death was awarded against any person who, receiving a letter, or being in possession of a letter from Queen Margaret, delayed in surrendering the same to the government. One would suppose that such a penalty would lead every individual holding such documents, if not to surrender at least to destroy them. But human nature is perverse, as well as bold, courageous and defiant. Many of Margaret’s correspondents hid the letters she had written to them; some of these have lately been published by the Camden Society. The volume is one of the most interesting of the series published by that Society, and the letters themselves are creditable to the writer. They show her less as a fiercely struggling, deeply sorrowing, terribly avenging queen, than as a sympathising woman, not so busy in her own affairs as to lack time for being interested in the affairs of others. She is ever ready to say a good word for a worthy man seeking advancement, and her heart responds to appeals from young maidens with whom the course of true love does not run smooth. For them, Queen Margaret writes with affectionate urgency to that sort of sire who is apt to say of a suitor to his daughter, who is unwelcome to himself, ‘I can’t imagine what the girl can see in such a fellow, to like him!’ To such stern fathers Margaret of Anjou writes like a wise and affectionate woman. She may be called a ‘matchmaker,’ for she seems to have gone to the work of coupling with great alacrity, but we are sure that many a young couple, in those turbulent times, owed to her a happiness and a harmony in their married life which poor Margaret never enjoyed in her own.