It will be seen from his Preface that the author of this volume is very modest in estimating the value of his work, but it is safe to venture the prophecy that the reader will often be impressed by a firm grasp of historic facts and of their wider relations, and will find genuine pleasure in the quaint originality of the author's point of view. It will not be too much to say of him, as was said of another: Everything he touched he brightened, as after a month of dry weather the Shower brightens the dusty shrubbery of a sub urban villa.