How others may feel in a matter of this kind it is not for me to say, but in me the serene air of superiority with which the ultra-learned brush away a tradition usually excites a suspicion, not wholly dissociated from a desire, that they may be wrong. "The most credible writers" of the _Quarterly_ Reviewer produce no impression on me. It is the kind of expression one would expect of a writer who did not feel inclined to be at the pains of research. Equally, when a presumably learned writer in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ says, under the heading "Constantine," "a later tradition, adopted with characteristic credulity by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that Helena was the daughter of a British king, is a pure invention," I reflect that assertion is not argument, although it often passes for such. After all, this same contemptuous writer can but tell us that Constantine was born in 274 to Constantius and Helena, "the wife of obscure origin (daughter of a _stabularia_, or innkeeper, according to St. Ambrose), whom her husband was compelled to repudiate on attaining the dignity of Cæsar." And when "Helena" is referred to, we find another learned author saying that of her nationality nothing certain is known. Again, the statement that there is no trace of Constantius ever having been in Britain before 296 (at which time, by the way, Constantine was twenty-two, not twenty-four), does not satisfy the court. In 273, the year in which the wanderings of the father of Constantine would be material, Constantius Flavius Valerius was but a young soldier, of Dalmatian origin, in whom nobody yet recognized the future Emperor. He was twenty-three years of age, or thereabouts, for so little is known of his early life that the exact year even of his birth is unknown. It was not until nearly twenty years later that, having distinguished himself in Dalmatia, he was adopted and appointed Cæsar by Maximian. There was no reason in life why he should not have gone to Britain without attracting notice at the age of twenty-three, every reason why, if he did so, he should visit the flourishing, comfortable, and very accessible colony on the banks of the Colne. There he certainly did not find Coel, or Cole, a reigning sovereign, but he might very possibly have found a "merry old soul" of an innkeeper, who vowed that he was descended from Cunobelin, and possessed a charming daughter.