Authors and editors are very apt to take things for granted, and they thus fall into errors which might have been escaped if they had made inquiries.  Pope, in a note on Measure for Measure, informs us that the story was taken from Cinthio’s novel Dec. 8 Nov. 5, thus contracting the words decade and novel.  Warburton, in his edition of Shakespeare, was misled by these contractions, and fills them up as December 8 and November 5.  Many blunders are merely clerical errors of the authors, who are led into them by a curious association of ideas; thus, in the Lives of the Londonderrys, Sir Archibald Alison, when describing the funeral of the Duke of Wellington in St. Paul’s, speaks of one of the pall-bearers as Sir Peregrine Pickle, instead of Sir Peregrine Maitland.  Dickens, in Bleak House, calls Harold Skimpole Leonard throughout an entire number, but returns to the old name in a subsequent one.

Few authors require to be more on their guard against mistakes than historians, especially as they are peculiarly liable to fall into them.  What shall we think of p 35the authority of a school book when we find the statement that Louis Napoleon was Consul in 1853 before he became Emperor of the French?

We must now pass from a book of small value to an important work on the history of England; but it will be necessary first to make a few explanatory remarks.  Our readers know that English kings for several centuries claimed the power of curing scrofula, or king’s evil; but they may not be so well acquainted with the fact that the French sovereigns were believed to enjoy the same miraculous power.  Such, however, was the case; and tradition reported that a phial filled with holy oil was sent down from heaven to be used for the anointing of the kings at their coronation.  We can illustrate this by an anecdote of Napoleon.  Lafayette and the first Consul had a conversation one day on the government of the United States.  Bonaparte did not agree with Lafayette’s views, and the latter told him that ``he was desirous of having the little phial broke over his head.’’ This sainte ampulle, or holy vessel, was an important object in the p 36ceremony, and the virtue of the oil was to confer the power of cure upon the anointed king.  This the historian could not have known, or he would not have written:  ``The French were confident in themselves, in their fortunes; in the special gifts by which they held the stars.’’ If this were all the information that was given us, we should be left in a perfect state of bewilderment while trying to understand how the French could hold the stars, or, if they were able to hold them, what good it would do them; but the historian adds a note which, although it contains some new blunders, gives the clue to an explanation of an otherwise inexplicable passage.  It is as follows:  ``The Cardinal of Lorraine showed Sir William Pickering the precious ointment of St.