It must be admitted that the greater portion of mediaeval history, whatever its true character, is shrouded in an obscurity which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate. But the same cannot be said of the close of that period,--the transitional era that preceded what we are accustomed to consider as the dawn of modern civilization. For Continental Europe, at least, the fifteenth century is hardly less susceptible of a thorough revelation than the sixteenth. The chroniclers and memoir-writers are more communicative than those of the succeeding age. The documentary evidence, if still deficient, is rapidly accumulating. The conspicuous personages of the time are daily becoming more palpable and familiar to us. Joan of Arc has glided from the luminous haze of legend and romance into the clearer light of history. Philippe de Comines has a higher fame than any eye-witness and narrator of later events. Louis XI. discloses to posterity those features which he would fain have concealed from his contemporaries. And confronting Louis stands another figure, not less prominent in their own day, not less striking when viewed from our day,--that of Charles the Bold, of Burgundy. The career of this latter prince has generally been regarded as merely a romantic episode in European history. Scott has painted it in vivid colors in two of his most brilliant fictions,--"Quentin Durward," and "Anne of Geierstein." But, perhaps from this very notion in regard to its lack of historical importance, the reality has never been depicted in fulness or with detail, except in M. de Barante's elegant _rifacimento_ of the French chroniclers of the fifteenth century. That the subject was, however, one of a very different character has been apparent to the scholars in France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland, who during the last twenty years have made it a special object of their researches. A stronger light has been thrown upon every part of it, and an entirely new light upon many portions. Charles has assumed his rightful position, as the "Napoleon of the Middle Ages," whose ambition and whose fall exercised, a powerful influence on the destinies of the principal European states.