one in which a prevailing skepticism or indifference paid to dead but not yet dethroned creeds its light homage of affected “adoration.”  Mr. Besant informs us that “to the men of culture the rival parties were but two political sides.”  How many men of culture could be cited in support of this assertion?  We grant him Montaigne, but it was precisely because the case of Montaigne was an exceptional one in the age of Erasmus and More, of Calvin and Coligny, that the question in regard to him has not seemed altogether idle.

It appears from another passage that Mr. Besant has an easy method of arriving at a judgment in regard to the character or general aspect of an historical epoch.  From the details in regard to food, dress and furniture which he finds in the works of Eustache Deschamps, a satirical poet of the fourteenth century, he infers that the bourgeois life of that period was “comfortable, abundant and cheery.”  “History,” he says, “paints this as the worst and most disastrous period that Europe had ever seen; yet here, in the most real poet of the century, we see how life, as a whole, went on in the usual way.  For when a great pestilence strikes a country, it slays its thousands and goes away.  Time quickly heals the wounds of grief, and the world goes on as before.  Then come the English to sack and destroy.  Nature heals their wounds, too, by the recurring seasons, and the world goes on as before.  I am inclined to think that life, on the whole, was generally pleasant for a well-to-do Frenchman of the period.”  Mr. Besant, it will be seen, concedes that evils are evils while they last, that war and pestilence are not pleasant things to the victims, and that the comfortable and cheery life of the fourteenth century suffered some interruptions from these causes.  But then it was still, he insists, an agreeable life “on the whole,” since “the recurring seasons” healed the wounds and the grief, and left the survivors to enjoy existence “in the usual way.”  This, it must be owned, is a very comfortable and cheery philosophy—­for those who preach it.  We do not see that they need ever complain of “bad times,” since they can always be sure that the recurring seasons will bring alleviation to the survivors.  It may also be admitted that, as there is no age in which the recurring seasons do not bring relief, so there has been none when war and pestilence and similar evils did not interrupt the usual course of life.  There is, however, this difference, that in some ages these evils last longer than in others, the wounds are deeper, the victims more numerous, the intermissions less frequent, the relief tardier, the survivors fewer.  Such an age in France was the period of the English invasions, comprising a great portion of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  That life was then, “on the whole,” anything but comfortable and cheery is attested by records and evidence of all kinds, against which the mention of weddings and christenings, of gold-embroidered