have never recovered from the self-inflicted wounds of the sixteenth century; and if France has suffered in a less degree, it is because persecution did not so completely succeed in destroying freedom of thought and liberty of conscience. The author has tried to write impartially: he has weighed conflicting evidence carefully, and has never willingly allowed prejudices to direct his judgment. That he has succeeded in holding the balance even, is more than he can venture to hope; but in such a cause there is consolation even in failure. If he has not painted the unscrupulous Catherine de Medicis and the half-insane Charles in such dark colors as preceding writers, he has carefully abstained from whitewashing them. He has shown that they both possessed many estimable qualities, and has carefully marked the steps by which they attained such an eminence in evil.[1] In the earlier pages of this history the followers of the new creed in France are called indifferently Protestants or Huguenots. The use of the former word is not strictly correct; but it is preferable to the awkward term “Reformed,” by which the French Dissenters designate themselves. By their enemies they were usually denominated Calvinists--a term which I have generally avoided on account of the erroneous ideas connected with it among ordinary readers. In the present day it is seldom used without a sneer. With all the complacency of ignorance, men write of “grim Calvinists who justify the burning of Servetus.” Calvinists, grim or otherwise, do not justify persecution; and as regards Servetus, his execution was approved of by all the Protestant divines of Germany and Switzerland, and Calvin was perhaps the only man who tried to save the arch-heretic’s life. Whatever may have been the errors of the Reformer of Geneva, he was one of the greatest men of his day, and as an author he stands in the first rank of early French prose-writers. Englishmen who owe so many of their liberties to the influence of his opinions during the counter-reformation of the seventeenth century, should be the last people to look unkindly upon his failings.