Take up any ordinary history, and you are but too sure to come across examples enough and to spare, of people who did protest too much, and did not keep their word. Glance at Alison’s big book, and on one page you read, of Napper Tandy, for instance, “But the conduct of this leader was far from keeping pace with these vehement protestations; for no sooner did he hear of the reverse sustained by the French corps which had landed in Killala Bay, than he re-embarked on board the French brig _Anacreon_, and got safe across the channel.” On another we have Tippoo Saib striving to disarm the suspicions of the British Government by “professions of eternal gratitude and attachment,” and considerably overacting his part. On another we have Napoleon bidding Marmont “spare no protestations of assistance to Turkey;” and himself assuring the Turkish ambassador that, “his right hand was not more inseparable from his left, than the Sultan Selim should ever be to him;” in consequence of which protestations, Turkey threw herself into the breach against both Russia and England, only to find the imperial ultra-protester, within one little month from the protestations, arranging for the immediate partition, with the Czar, of the Turkish dominions. Look, again, at Benjamin Constant, launching his vehement philippic against Napoleon, in the _Journal des Débats_ on the eve of the Emperor’s return from Elba, and declaring, “Never will I crawl, like a base deserter from power to power. Under Louis XVIII. we enjoy a representative government. Under Bonaparte we endured a government of Mamelukes. He is an Attila, a Gengis Khan!” And then we read how, a few days after this fulmination, Constant, the _in_constant, became a councillor of state under this Attila, an active supporter of this Gengis Khan. Another ground of indictment against Napoleon is found by Alison in the eagerness of his protestations to Russia, that he had no way connived at the election of Bernadotte to the throne of Sweden, when next vacant. “The extreme anxiety which Napoleon evinced for some time afterwards to convince the court of St. Petersburg that he had taken no concern in this election, only renders it the more probable that he was in reality at the bottom of the transaction.” The asseverations commenced by the younger Pennyboy, in Jonson’s “Staple of News,” are declined and dismissed, by the elder, who knows their worth, with this summary and suggestive caution: “No vows, no promises; too much protestation Makes that suspected oft, we would persuade.” _FLEETING SHADOWS._ JOB xiv. 2.