a rash vow, for when in the Low Countries he swore an oath that he would not play above a certain sum. If he did, might he be hanged! and hanged he was, surely enough. In chronicling a crime let us, when we can, append a virtue to it—that, for instance, of Lord William Pembrook, to whom the King gave all Sir Gervas Elway's estate (above a thousand per annum), and who at once bestowed it on the widow and her children. In a letter to Sir James Crofts, Howell tells us of the probable fate of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had just returned from "his myne in Guiana, which at first promised to be a hopeful boon voyage" (it is worth while remarking that we now use the last adjective with only one noun, i.e., companion), "but,” adds the writer, "it seems that that golden myne is proved a meer chymæra, an imaginary airy myne; indeed, His Majesty had never any other conceit of it." Howell wonders why Sir Walter ever came back to the clutches of his enemy, and tells an à propos story of a king and his jester. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, is introduced in a wonderfully characteristic huffling, braggadocio way:

"Count Gondamar desired audience with His Majesty -he had but one word to tell him. His Majesty wondering what might be delivered in one word, when he came before him, he said only Pyrats, Pyrats, Pyrats, and so departed."

This Gondomar seems, like the Count von Bismarck, to have been a man of some humour. There is in Kirby Street, Hatton Garden, a public-house which retains the name of the "Hole in the Wall;" and to antiquaries the

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memory of Lady Hatton is preserved in the street called Hatton Garden, close by. This proud lady, the wife of Sir Edward Coke, had thereat a wicket gate, which led from the garden into the fields beyond, leading to the village of Clerkenwell, its green and may-pole. Count Gondomar, who lived next door to Lady Hatton at Ely House, begged for a key to this private door, which the lady refused. 'She," says Howell, "put him off with a compliment;" whereupon Gondomar, in a private audience with the King, exposed the whole affair, and more than hinted at the tyranny exercised by Lady Hatton on her cringing husband. "Lady Hatton," says he, "is a strange lady, for she will not suffer her husband, Sir Edward Coke, to come into her house at her front door, nor him, Gondomar, to go out in the fields at her back door; and so related the whole business." The smoke and dinginess of London, and the sickly glare of the sun therein as compared to Spain, are well hit off in a sentence by the witty Spaniard:

"He was despatching a Post lately to Spain, and the Post having received his packet, and kiss'd his hands, he call'd him back and told him he had forgot one thing, which was, that when he came to Spain, he should commend him to the sun, for he had not seen him a great while, and in Spain he should be sure to find him.”

Travelling to the Hague, Amsterdam, and Paris, Howell draws a picture of the latter which shows how little removed it was from a city of the middle ages. Its streets were close, mean, and dirty, except some few

new houses built of stone, and the Louvre, with its great gallery, wherein "the king might place 3,000 men in the very heart of this great mutinous city." The streets stank like those of Cologne, in Coleridge's epigram, and were so narrow that two coaches or carts passing would create a block. The mud was so black and greasy (filled with oyl, says Howell) that no washing could cleanse it from some colours; so that an ill name, he says, is like the crot of Paris, indelible. The stench of Paris might be perceived with the wind in one's face many miles off. At night-time the city was full of thieves; by which the lives of night travellers were constantly endangered:

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Coming late to our lodgings (near the Bastille) a crew of Filous or night rogues surpriz'd and drew on us, and we exchanged some blows. It pleased God that the Chevalier du Guet (a night patrol) came by and so rescued us; but Jack White was hurt, and I had two thrusts in my cloake. There's never a night passes by but some robbery or murder is committed in this town."

In a subsequent letter Howell relates the assassination of King Henry IV. by Ravaillac, and the horrid tortures. to which that wretch was put.

It is Henry, says Howell, who amassed a heap of gold as high as a lance, and who levied a huge army of 40,000 men, "whence comes the saying, the King of France with forty thousand men." Of course, Howell did not see the murder of the king, but he relates it circumstantially and minutely, as from the lips of an eye-witness, a French friend of his.

"Going to the Bastile to see his treasure and ammunition, his coach stopped suddenly, by reason of some colliers and other carts that were in that street; whereupon one Ravillac, a lay Jesuit (who had a whole twelvemonth watched an opportunity to do the act), put his foot boldly upon one of the wheels of the coach, and with a long knife stretched himself over their shoulders who were in the boot of the coach, and reached the king at the end, and stabb'd him right in the left side to the heart, and, pulling out the fatal steel, he doubl'd his thrust. The king, with a ruthful voice, cri'd ‘Je suis blessé' (I am hurt), and suddenly the Blood issued out of his mouth: the Regicide villain was apprehended, and command given that no violence should be offered him, that he might be reserved for the Law and some exquisite Torture. The Queen grew half distracted here upon, who had been crown'd Queen of France the day before in great triumph; but a few days after she had something to countervail, if not overmatch, her sorrow; for, according to St. Lewis's law, she was made Queen Regent of France during the king's minority, who was then but about ten years of age. Many consultations were held how to punish Ravillac, and there were some Italian physicians that undertook to prescribe a torment that should last a constant torment for three days; but he 'scaped only with this. His body was pull'd between four horses, that one might hear his bones crack, and after dislocation they were set again, and so he was carried in a cart half naked, with a torch in that hand which had committed the murder, and in the place where

In all the extremity of this

the act was done it was cut off, and a Gauntlet of hot Oyl was clapped on the place to staunch the blood, whereat he gave a doleful shriek; then was he brought upon a stage, when a new pair of boots was provided for him, half filled with boyling Oyl, then his Body was pincered, and hot Oyl poured into the holes. torture he scarce shewed any sense of pain but when the gauntlet was clap'd upon his arm to staunch the flux, at which time of reaking blood he gave a shrike only. He bore up against all these Torments for about three hours before he died. All the confession that could be drawn from him was, That he thought to have done God good Service, to take away that king which would have embroiled all Chrestendom in an endless War."

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Arrived at Venice, he found there "the best gentlemen workmen that ever blew crystal," and was aided, in his attempt to get some of these gentlemen workmen to England, by Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador and the author of two famous mots. The first was a retort to a Venetian nobleman, who had asked him "where the Protestant religion was before the Reformation." Signor," said he, "where was your face this morning before it was washed ?" The second is the celebrated definition of an ambassador-" A gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." Howell praises Venice glass exceedingly. The makers thereof were gentlemen ipso facto, and, after their work, dressed in silks and buckled on their swords like the gallants painted by Vandyke; but the lasses and glasses of Venice,