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one stone. The Baron censured, by implication, both the Duke and his religion. I was reminded of him by reading a review in the "Guardian," where the same skilful method is applied to criticism. The reviewer's subject was Canon Wordsworth's volume on Chevalier Bunsen's "Hippolytus." "The canon's book," said the reviewer (I am quoting from memory), "reminds us—and it must be a humiliation and degradation to an intelligent, educated, and thoughtful man—of one of Dr. Cumming's Exeter Hall lectures." Here the ultra high church critic stunned, with one blow, the merely high-church priest and the no-church presbyterian.

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There was generosity, at least, in another knight of this order, Francis Goaffier, Lord of Crèvecœur. Catherine of Medicis announced to him the appointment of his son to the command of a regiment of foot. "Madame," said the Knight of the Holy Ghost, my son was beset, a night or two ago, by five assassins; a Captain La Vergne drew in his defence, and slew two of the assailants. The rest fled, disabled. If your majesty will confer the regiment on one who deserves it, you will give it to La Vergne.”- "Be it so," said Catherine, "and your son shall not be the less well provided for."

One, at least, of the original knights of this order was famous for his misfortunes; this was Charles de Hallewin, Lord of Piennes. He had been in six-and-twenty sieges and battles, and never came out of one unscathed. His domestic wounds were greater still. He had five sons, and one daughter who was married. The whole of them, with his son-in-law, were assassinated, or died accidentally, by violent deaths. The old chevalier went down to his tomb

heart-broken and heirless.

Le Roi, Lord of Chavigny, and who must not be mistaken for an ancestor of that Le Roi who died at the Alma under the title of Marshal St. Arnaud, is a good illustration of the blunt, honest knight. Charles IX. once remarked to him that his mother, Catherine de Medicis, boasted that there was not a man in France, with ten thousand livres a year, at whose hearth she had not a spy in her pay. "I do not know," said Le Roi, "whether tyrants make spies, or spies tyrants. For my own part, I see no use in them, except in war."

For honesty of a still higher sort, commend me to Scipio de

Fierques, Lord of Lavagne. Catherine de Medicis offered to make this, her distant relative, a marshal of France. "Good Heavens, Madame!" he exclaimed, "the world would laugh at both of us. I am simply a brave gentleman, and deserve that reputation; but I should perhaps lose it, were you to make a marshal of me." The dignity is taken with less reluctance in our days. It was this honest knight who was asked to procure the appointment of queen's chaplain for a person who, by way of bribe, presented the gallant Scipio with two documents which would enable him to win a lawsuit he was then carrying on against an obstinate adversary. Scipio perused the documents, saw that they proved his antagonist to be in the right, and immediately withdrew his opposition. He left the candidate for the queen's chaplaincy to accomplish the object he had in view, in the best way he might.

There was wit, too, as might be expected, among these knights. John Blosset, Baron de Torci, affords us an illustration. He had been accused of holding correspondence with the enemy in Spain, and report said that he was unworthy of the Order of the Holy Ghost. He proved his innocence before a chapter of the order. At the end of the investigation, he wittily applied two passages from the prayer-book of the knights, by turning to the king, and saying, "Domine ne projicias me a facie tuâ, et spiritum sanctum tnum ne auferas a me." Lord, cast me out from thy presence, and take not thy 'Holy Spirit' from me." And the king bade him keep it, while he laughed at the rather profane wit of John Blosset.

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There was wit, too, of a more practical nature, among these knights of the Holy Spirit. The royal founder used occasionally to retire with the knights to Vincennes. There they shut themselves up, as they said, to fast and repent; but, as the world said, to indulge in pleasures of a very monster-like quality. The royal dukes of a later period in France used to atone for inordinate vice by making their mistresses fast; the royal duchesses settled their little balance with Heaven, by making their servants fast. It appears that there was nothing of this vicarious penance in the case of Henri III. and his knights. Not that all the knights willingly submitted to penance which mortified their appetites. Charles de la Marck, Count of Braine, was one of those impatient penitents.

On a day on which rigid abstinence had been enjoined, the king was passing by the count's apartment, when he was struck by a savory smell. King as he was, he immediately applied his eye to the keyhole of the count's door, and beheld the knight blowing lustily at a little fire under a chafing-dish, in which there were two superb soles frying in savory sauce. "Brother knight, brother knight," exclaimed Henri, "I see all and smell much. Art thou not ashamed thus to transgress the holy rule?"—"I should be much more so," said the count, opening the door, "if I made an enemy of my stomach. I can bear this sort of abstinence no longer. Here am I, knight and gentleman, doubly famished in that double character, and I have been, in my own proper person, to buy these soles, and purchase what was necessary for the most delicious of sauces: I am cooking them myself, and they are now done to a turn. Cooked aux gratins, your majesty yourself can not surely resist tasting. Allow me”—and he pushed forward a chair, in which Henri seated himself, and to the "soles aux gratins," such as Vefour and Very never dished up, the monarch sat down, and with the hungry count, discussed the merits of fasting, while they enjoyed the fish. It was but meagre fare after all; and probably the repast did not conclude there.

Charity is illustrated in the valiant William Pot (a very ancient name of a very ancient family, of which the late archdeacon of Middlesex and vicar of Kensington was probably a descendant). He applied a legacy of sixty thousand livres to the support of wounded soldiers. Henri III., who was always intending to accomplish some good deed, resolved to erect an asylum for infirm military men; but, of course, he forgot it. Henri IV., who has received a great deal more praise than he deserves, also expressed his intention to do something for his old soldiers; but he was too much taken up with the fair Gabrielle, and she was not like Nell Gwynne, who turned her intimacy with a king to the profit of the men who poured out their blood for him. The old soldiers were again neglected; and it was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that Pot's example was again recalled to mind, and profitable action adopted in consequence. When I think of the gallant Pot's legacy, what he did therewith, and how French soldiers benefited thereby, I am inclined to believe that the German troops, less well

cared for, may thence have derived their once favorite oath, and that Potz tausend! may have some reference to the sixty thousand livres which the compassionate knight of Rhodes and the Holy Ghost devoted to the comfort and solace of the brave men who had been illustriously maimed in war.

The kings of France were accustomed to create a batch of knights of the Holy Ghost, on the day following that of the coronation, when the monarchs became sovereign heads of the order. The entire body subsequently repaired from the Cathedral to the Church of St. Remi, in grand equestrian procession, known as the "cavalcade." Nothing could well exceed the splendor of this procession, when kings were despotic in France, and funds easily provided. Cavalry and infantry in state uniforms, saucy pages in a flutter of feathers and ribands, and groups of gorgeous officials preceded the marshals of France, who were followed by the knights of the Holy Ghost, after whom rode their royal Grand Master, glittering like an Eastern king, and nodding, as he rode, like a Mandarin.

The king and the knights performed their devotions before the shrine of Saint Marcoul, which was brought expressly from the church of Corbeni, six leagues distance from Rheims. This particular ceremony was in honor of the celebrated old abbot of Nantua, who, in his lifetime, had been eminently famous for his success in curing the scrofulous disorder called "the king's evil." After this devotional service, the sovereign master of the order of the Holy Ghost was deemed qualified to cure the evil himself. Accordingly, decked with the mantle and collar of the order, and half encircled by the knights, he repaired to the Abbey Park to touch and cure those who were afflicted with the disease in question. It was no little labor. When Louis XVI. performed the ceremony, he touched two thousand four hundred persons. The form of proceeding was singular enough. The king's first physician placed his hand on the head of the patient; upon which a captain of the guard immediately seized and held the patient's hands closely joined together. The king then advanced, head uncovered, with his knights, and touched the sufferers. He passed his right hand from the forehead to the chin, and from one cheek to the other; thus making the sign of the cross, and at the same

time pronouncing the words, "May God cure thee; the king touches thee!"

In connection with this subject, I may add here that Evelyn, in his diary, records that Charles II. "began first to touch for the evil, according to custom," on the 6th of July, 1660, and after this fashion. "His Majesty sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the chirurgeons caused the sick to be brought, and led up to the throne, where they kneeling, the king strokes their faces or cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain, in his formalities, says, 'He put his hands upon them, and He healed them.' This is said to every one in particular. When they have been all touched, they come up again in the same order, and the other chaplain kneeling, and having angel-gold strung on white riband on his arm, delivers them one by one to his Majesty, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass, while the first chaplain repeats, "That is the true light who came into the world."" The French ceremonial seems to me to have been the less pretentious; for the words uttered by the royal head of the order of the Holy Ghost, simply formed a prayer, and an assertion of a fact: "May God heal thee; the king touches thee!" And yet who can doubt the efficacy of the royal hand of Charles II., seeing that, at a single touch, he not only cured a scrofulous Quaker, but converted him into a good churchman?

The history of the last individual knight given in these imperfect pages (Guy of Warwick), showed how history and romance wove themselves together in biography. Coming down to a later period, we may find another individual history, that may serve to illustrate the object I have in view. The Chevalier de Bayard stands prominently forward. But there was before his time, a knight who was saluted by nearly the same distinctive titles which were awarded to Bayard. I allude to Jacques de Lelaing, known as "the knight without fear and without doubt." His history is less familiar to us, and will, therefore, the better bear telling. Besides, Bayard was but a butcher. If he is not to be so accounted, then tell us, gentle shade of Don Alonzo di Sotomayor, why thy painful spirit perambulates the groves of Elysium, with a scented handkerchief alternately applied to the hole in thy throat and the gash in thy face? Is it not that, with cruel subtlety of fence

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