"Also my father was present at the king's coronation, on the 5th of February in the following year. Our French Queen would not enter the Abbey on account of her Popish faith. When the king was presented bareheaded to the people, all were silent, none crying God save the King, until the Earl of Arundel bade them; which my father saith was a worse omen than if the clouds poured down rivers." These in large characters, each letter formed with conscientious pains. The second entry is diverse from the first. It runs thus: "_April the tenth._--The brindled cow hath died, leaving an orphan calf. Aunt Gretel saith I may bring up the calf for my own, with the help of Tib the dairy-woman." The diversity between these entries recalls many things to me. On the day before the first entry, father brought to Roger my brother, my Cousin Placidia, and me, three small books stitched neatly together, and told us these were for us to use to note down any remarkable events therein. "For," said he, "we live in strange and notable times, and you children may see things before you are grown, yea, and perchance do or suffer such things as history is made of." The stipulation was, that we were each to write independently, and not to borrow from the other; which was a hard covenant for me, who seldom then meditated or did anything without the co-operation or sanction of Roger. After much solitary pondering, therefore, I arrived at the conclusion that history especially concerns kings and queens, and lesser people only as connected with them. That is, when there are kings and queens. In the old Greek history I remembered there were heroes who were not kings, but I supposed they did instead. But the English history was all made up of what happened to the kings. One was shot while hunting; another was murdered at Berkeley Castle; the little princes were smothered in the Tower. King Edward III. gained a great victory at Creçy in France; King Henry V. gained another at Agincourt. Of course other people were concerned in these things. Sir Walter Tyrrel shot the arrow by accident that killed King William, and some wicked people must have murdered King Edward and the little princes on purpose. And, of course, there were armies who helped King Edward and King Henry to gain their victories; but none of these people would have been in history, I thought, except as connected with the kings. At the same time I thought it was of no use to relate things which no one belonging to me had had anything to do with, because any one else could have done that without my taking the trouble to write a note-book at all. Therefore it seemed to me that my father, and even my father's slashed satin doublet, fairly became historical by having been present at the King's proclamation, and Aunt Dorothy by having commented thereon.