I have worked in all through nine hundred volumes of letters, notes, and other papers, private and official, in five languages and in difficult handwritings.

I am not rash enough to say that I have never misread a word, or overlooked a passage of importance.

I profess only to have dealt with my materials honestly to the best of my ability.

I submit myself to a formal trial, of which I am willing to bear the entire expense, on one condition-that the report, whatever it be, shall be published word for word in The Saturday Review." The proposal was certainly a novel one, and could not in ordinary circumstances have been accepted.

But it is also novel to charge an historian of the highest character and repute with inability to speak the truth, or to distinguish between truth and falsehood.