830, that the Netherlands have ceased to be effected by
the union of Charles the Bold's daughter with Maximilian of
Austria"--P. 148.

Again, in order to understand the contest which Philip de Comines
records between a Frenchman and a Spaniard for the crown of Naples, we
must go back to the dark and bloody page in the annals of the thirteenth
century, which relates the extinction of the last heir of the great
Swabian race of Hohenstauffen by Charles of Anjou, the fit and
unrelenting instrument of Papal hatred--the dreadful expiation of that
great crime by the Sicilian Vespers, the establishment of the House of
Anjou in Sicily, the crimes and misfortunes of Queen Joanna, the new
contest occasioned by her adoption--all these events must be known to
him who would understand the expedition of Charles VIII. The following
passage is an admirable description of the reasons which lend to the
pages of Philip de Comines a deep and melancholy interest:--

"The Memoirs of Philip de Comines terminate about twenty years
before the Reformation, six years after the first voyage of
Columbus. They relate, then, to a tranquil period immediately
preceding a period of extraordinary movement; to the last stage
of an old state of things, now on the point of passing away.
Such periods, the lull before the burst of the hurricane, the
almost oppressive stillness which announces the eruption, or,
to use Campbell's beautiful image--

'The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,'--

are always, I think, full of a very deep interest. But it is
not from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow,
nor yet from the solemnity which all things wear when their
dissolution is fast approaching--the interest has yet another
source; our knowledge, namely, that in that tranquil period lay
the germs of the great changes following, taking their shape
for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly, while all
wore an outside of unconsciousness. We, enlightened by
experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber; we wish in
vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its
condition, and taught the infinite preciousness of the passing
hour. And as, when a man has been cut off by sudden death, we
are curious to know whether his previous words or behaviour
indicated any sense of his coming fate, so we examine the