consigned, a hopeless captive, to the dungeons of Pevensey, for no greater offence than the inditing a not very brilliant copy of verses to her Breton and Britannic Majesty? Had not the bilious monarch, moreover, shown his mistrust of all persons favoured by his attractive (but supposed demon-leagued) consort--by the wholesale exile of “all French persons, Bretons, Lombards, Italians and Navarrese, whatsoever” * attached to the Queen’s establishment, with the exception of a cook, a few chambermaids, two knights, and their esquires (doubtless elderly and ill-favoured), and a strong body of Breton washerwomen? Is it improbable that the presence, about the court, of a personable and renowned warrior like Sir John Falstaff,--one who, even to the limits of maturity, retained so many of the graces of his youth,--should have been looked upon by the suspicious king as perilous to his conjugal felicity? At any rate, is it improbable that Sir John Falstaff should have thought so--or, whether he thought so or not, that he should have striven to impress his Coventry audience with a conviction that such was the case? Sir John may or may not have submitted such probabilities as these to the consideration of his hearers. Be this as it may, there is one topic he could not possibly, being situated as I have imagined him, have failed to enlarge upon. Depend upon it, the recent conduct of the Lord Chief Justice would be held up to such public scorn and indignation as to render that official’s next assize-visit to Warwickshire a somewhat perilous excursion! * Parliamentary Rolls, 5 Henry IV., p. 572. Let me consider what kind of an adventure would have been likely to happen to Sir John Falstaff at such a time. I have one. I can imagine a quiet, cheery-looking old man, in a long, sober-coloured gown, of comfortable well-to-do aspect, with a shrewd wrinkled face, elbowing his way imperceptibly to a place at the table near Sir John (the guests making room for him with some respect), and taking advantage of a lull in the conversation to say, with a twinkling eye and a somewhat admiring smile,-- “We should know each other, Sir John--we have been friends ere now.” “Aye, aye, sir? ‘Tis possible. There are more men see Paul’s church than the Beadle wots of. But you have the best of me.” “Will you share my tankard while I make myself known. Nay!--‘tis a choice Rochelle that mine host broaches only for me on my monthly visits to Coventry. You will not match it in the town vintry. “Now you speak, sir, I should know your voice. Save you, sir. Nectar, by all the Pagans!” “It is long since we met, Sir John.” “Do you tell me that, sir? Twenty years at the least; if not nigher thirty. In Brittany, was it not?” “Not so--not so.” “In Flanders then, or Spain? * I have seen both countries.”