made accessible, of the foreign ambassadors resident at Henry's court we have the invaluable, if not impartial, comments of trained and responsible politicians who related from day to day the events which were passing under their eyes. Being Catholics, and representatives of Catholic powers, they were bitterly hostile to the Reformation--hostile alike on political grounds and religious--and therefore inclined to believe and report the worst that could be said both of it and of its authors. But they wrote before the traditions had become stereotyped; their accounts are fresh and original; and, being men of the world, and writing in confidence to their own masters, they were as veracious as their prejudices would allow them to be. Unconsciously, too, they render another service of infinite importance. Being in close communication with the disaffected English peers and clergy, and engaged with them secretly in promoting rebellion, the ministers of Charles V. reveal with extraordinary clearness the dangers with which the Government had to deal. They make it perfectly plain that the Act of Supremacy, with its stern and peremptory demands, was no more than a legitimate and necessary defence against organised treason. It was thus inevitable that much would have to be added to what I had already published. When a microscope is applied to the petal of a flower or the wing of an insect, simple outlines and simple surfaces are resolved into complex organisms with curious and beautiful details. The effect of these despatches is precisely the same--we see with the eyes, we hear with the ears, of men who were living parts of the scenes which they describe. Stories afterwards elaborated into established facts we trace to their origin in rumours of the hour; we read innumerable anecdotes, some with the clear stamp of truth on them, many mere creations of passing wit or malice, no more authentic than the thousands like them which circulate in modern society, guaranteed by the positive assertions of personal witnesses, yet visibly recognisable as lies. Through all this the reader must pick his way and use his own judgment. He knows that many things are false which are reported about his own eminent contemporaries. He may be equally certain that lies were told as freely then as now. He will probably allow his sympathies to guide him. He will accept as fact what fits in with his creed or his theory. He will share the general disposition to believe evil, especially about kings and great men. The exaggerated homage paid to princes, when they are alive, has to be compensated by suspecting the worst of them as soon as they are gone. But the perusal of all these documents leaves the broad aspect of the story, in my opinion, precisely where it was. It is made more interesting by the greater fulness of particulars; it is made more vivid by the clear view which they afford of individual persons who before were no more than names.