OF

HENRY THE FOURTH,

KING OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE.

BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

With Illustrations.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

PEARL STREET, FRANKLIN SQUARE.

HARVARD

COLLEGE

LIBRARY

043X1

Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of

New York.

PREFACE.

HISTORY is our Heaven-appointed instructor. It is the guide for the future. The calamities of yesterday are the protectors of to-day.

The sea of time we navigate is full of perils. But it is not an unknown sea. It has been traversed for ages, and there is not a sunken rock or a treacherous sand-bar which is not marked by the wreck of those who have preceded us.

There is no portion of history fraught with more valuable instruction than the period of those terribleligious wars which desolated the sixteenth century. There is no romance so wild as the veritable history of those times. The majestic outgoings of the Almighty, as developed in the onward progress of our race, infinitely transcend, in all the elements of profoundness, mystery, and grandeur, all that man's fancy can create.