of France into Italy.

He read and meditated upon it, and wrote a dissertation of ten folio pages, besides large notes, in which he examined the right of Charles VIII.

to the crown of Naples, and the rival claims of the houses of Anjou and Aragon.

In a few weeks he gives up this idea, firstly, for the rather odd reason that the subject was too remote from us; and, secondly, for the very good reason that the expedition was rather the introduction to great events than great and important in itself.

He then successively chose and rejected the Crusade of Richard the First; the Barons' War against John and Henry III.; the history of Edward the Black Prince; the lives and comparisons of Henry V.and the Emperor Titus; the life of Sir Philip Sidney, and that of the Marquis of Montrose.