of nature as is required by the Shakespearean theorists. For, as we have said, the evidence is cumulative, and, therefore, no more to be waived or disposed of by doubts as to, or even the dispelment of, this or that or the other item--or disintegration of this or that or the other block--of evidence than the Coliseum has been wiped away and disposed of because its coping has crumbled, or because, for some centuries, the petty Roman princes built their palaces from its debris. And we may as well remark that, just here, it is always in order to mention Archbishop Whately's "Historic Doubts." We wish some of the gentlemen who cite it so glibly, would take the trouble to read that clever little book. It is a logical, not a whimsical effort. It was intended by its author as an answer to "Hume's Essay on Miracles." Hume's argument being, in the opinion of the Archbishop, reducible to the proposition that miracles were impossible because they were improbable, his lordship wrote his little work to show that the history of Napoleon was actually most improbable, and, written of feigned characters, would read like the most extravagant fable. Surely it can not be necessary to reiterate the difference between the Archbishop's brochure and the proposition of "The Shakspearean Myth!" The one was the argument from improbability, applied to facts in order to show its dangerous and altogether vicious character. The other is the demonstration {067}that history--that the record--when consulted, is directly fatal to a popular impression, and directly contradictory of a presumption, born of mere carelessness and accident, and allowed to gather weight by mere years and lapse of time.