rince of Conde. Now, though he
is very unlike Shakespeare's Coriolanus, yet there is resemblance
enough between them to make the comparison very amusing. There was much
of Coriolanus' indomitable pride and horror of mob popularity when he
offended Beaufort and his kingdom in the halles, when, though as 'Louis
de Bourbon' he refused to do anything to shake the power of the throne,
he would not submit to be patronized by the mean fawning Mazarin. Not
that the hard-hearted Conde would have listened to his wife and mother,
even if he had loved them as Coriolanus did, or that his arrogance did
not degenerate into wonderful meanness at last, such as Coriolanus
would have scorned; but the parallel was very amusing, and gave me a
great interest in Conde. And did you ever observe what a great
likeness there is in the characters of the two apostates, Julian and
Frederick the Great?'

'Then you like history for the sake of comparing the characters
mentioned in it?' said Anne.

'I think so,' said Elizabeth; 'and that is the reason I hate
abridgements, the mere bare bones of history. I cannot bear dry facts,
such as that Charles the Fifth beat Francis the First, at Pavia, in a
war for the duchy of Milan, and nothing more told about them. I am
always ready to say, as the Grand Seignior did about some such great
battle among the Christians, that I do not care whether the dog bites
the hog, or the hog bites the dog.'

'What a kind interest in your fellow-creatures you display!' said Anne.
'I think one reason why I like history is because I am searching out
all the characters who come up to my notion of perfect chivalry, or
rather of Christian perfection. I am making a book of true knights. I
copy their portraits when I can find them, and write the names of those
whose likenesses I cannot get. I paint their armorial bearings over
them when I can find out what they are, and I have a great red cross in
the first page.'

'And I will tell you of something else to put at the beginning,' said
Elizabeth, 'a branch of laurel entwined with the beautiful white
bind-weed. One of our laurels was covered with wreaths of it last
year, and I thought it was a beautiful emblem of a pure-hearted hero.
The glaring sun, which withers the fair white spotless flower, is like
worldly prosperity spoiling the pure simple mind; and you know how
often it is despised and torn away from the laurel to which it is so
bright an ornament.'

'Yes,' said A