F.-You are precisely then in the same condition as the Society of Antiquaries, who once proposed a consultation on the subject of Whittington and his cat;' but the story getting wind, it was seized upon by Foote, who introduced it with laughable effect in his farce of the Nabob,' and the discussion was postponed. That the parentage of Whittington was not so humble as the story implies, may be inferred from a clause in the instrument of the endowment of his college, in which masses are ordered to be performed for the souls of his parents, Sir William Whittington, knight, and Joan, his wife." The wealth of Whittington, which was great, was nobly employed in erecting various useful works in the city of London; and in a schedule to his will, he exhibited a singular trait of kindness of heart, by directing his executors, that if they found any of his debtors not well worth three times as much as they owed him, they should cancel the engagement.

A.-Henry's ambition has been the occasion of a lasting memorial in the noble foundation of All Souls' College, Oxford, which was endowed by Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, for a warden and forty fellows, to put up incessant prayers for the souls of all those that had fallen in the French war, and indeed for the souls of all the faithful, thence called Collegium Omnium Animarum.

P.-It is surely hard upon the poor souls, that they have been so long deprived of the benefit to be reaped from such an institution.

A. In less than two months after the death of Henry, the unhappy life of King Charles the Sixth of France was terminated by the same malady which had deprived him of the use of reason, and exposed him

Walpole's Works, vol. 2, p. 251.

e Duck's Life of Archb. Chichele.

b Stow, Survey.

Juv. des Ursins.

to every injury of fortune. The disorder which afflicted Charles was however the occasion of an invention, which has produced an astonishing effect upon society throughout Europe, the game of cards, contrived, it is believed, by Jaquemin Gringonneur, a painter of Paris, for the diversion of the royal maniac in his lucid intervals. Cards were originally high in price, and they were speedily introduced into England. Though sometimes the amusement which they afford may have deserved censure, as stimulating to the excesses of gambling and as destructive of time, which indeed might, but seldom would be, better employed, yet they will ever obtain the blessings of the unoccupied, the vapoured, and the sick. In spite of the progress of refinement, during a long succession of ages, no embellishment has been added, and little change made, in the figures of these favourite instruments of universal diversion."

• Andrews' History of Great Britain.

F.-THE infant Henry the Sixth, at the age of nine months, ascended the throne of England; the youngest sovereign in our annals, but not too young to be the subject of flattery: even in his mother's lap he heard, before he understood the meaning of the words, the speaker of the House of Commons thank God for giving the realm "so toward a prince and sovereign a governor.".

A. But parliament, though thus complaisant in words, was not indisposed to show some authority in deeds; and it proceeded to exercise a power which it had not previously exhibited: it reversed some of the provisions of the late king's will, by appointing the Duke of Bedford, and in his absence the Duke of Gloucester, protector," not regent of the kingdom, a title which parliament supposed to imply less authority; and it named a council, without whose advice no important measure should be determined: the person and education of the young monarch it intrusted to the care of Henry Beaufort, afterwards cardinal, the legitimated son of John of Gaunt, by Catherine Swynford.

F. But though we assert parliament to have made these arrangements, we must restrict the term to the House of Peers, as the Commons would not have presumed, or indeed have been permitted, at this period Rymer, vol. 10. < Cotton's Abridgment.

Fabian's Chron.

to interfere in the choice of a protector, further than by a bare assent.

A.-The two broad lines in the reign of Henry the Sixth, are the gradual loss of the French provinces till the year 1450, and thence the civil wars between the rival houses of York and Lancaster, till its termination in 1461. At the death of Henry the Fifth, two-thirds of France, together with Paris, were in possession of the English; and the virtues of the Duke of Bedford, who equalled the late monarch in wisdom and valour, and surpassed him in temper and clemency, promised a long continuance of their superiority, as the indolence* of Charles the Seventh, who at the age of twenty had succeeded to the throne of France, seemed to preclude any very strenuous effort for the recovery of his kingdom: indeed the Duke of Bedford so well improved his advantages by various successful sieges, and especially by repulsing an attack of the French with great slaughter before the walls of Verneuil, (August 27th, 1424), that all the provinces north of the Loire remained in his possession.

F. The battle of Verneuil having been well contested by the French, was at least as honourable a testimony to the skill and valour of the Duke of Bedford as that of Agincourt to Henry the Fifth; yet by the caprice of fortune, it is totally forgotten by all but antiquaries.

A.-Bedford, to secure the neutrality of Scotland, the troops of which nation in the pay of France gave much annoyance to the English, negotiated with their monarch, James the First, so long unjustly detained a prisoner; and the price of his release was stipulated at forty thousand pounds." Bedford also endeavoured

to connect the interests, or at least the affections, of James with England, by giving him in marriage a daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and cousin to the king. This circumstance is scarcely memorable, except as it affords an opportunity of paying a just tribute to the fidelity with which James adhered to his engagements. This prince was one of the most illustrious and accomplished of the Scotish kings: an universal scholar, an excellent poet, and an exquisite musician; one of his works is still preserved, "The King's Quair," or book, from the French cahier; it exhibits both tenderness and elegance, but the style is too obsolete to afford much pleasure to a modern ear.

P.-Yet it would be unjust to dismiss the royal bard without a specimen of his craft.

A.-The King's Quair' is divided into six cantos, and consists of one hundred and ninety-seven stanzas of seven lines each, written in honour of his mistress, Lady Jane Beaufort. One May morning, as James was looking down from the window of his prison in Windsor Castle into the garden below, listening to the songs of nightingales, and wondering what the passion of love could be, which he had never felt, he thus relates his sensations:

And therewith kest I doun myne eye ageyne,
Quhare as I saw walkynge under the towre
Full secretlye, new cumyn her to pleyne,

The fairest or the freshest youngè floure

That ev'r I sawe, methought before that houre;
For quhich sodaine abate, anon asterte
The blude of al my body to my herte.

F.-James had a poetical companion in his captivity, the Duke of Orleans, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and who had acquired so great a proficiency in the English language by his long