o do
what he knew he never could have done. "The mode of those (p. 315)
enterprises was" not "past."

[Footnote 242: Raynaldus, Annales Ecclesiastici,
vol. viii. p. 556.]

[Footnote 243: It is not to be forgotten that Henry
of Monmouth had from his very childhood been
interested by accounts of the state of Palestine.
His father, as we have seen, went himself to the
Holy Sepulchre; and, even during Henry's wars in
France, his uncle, the Bishop of Winchester,
visited Constance as he was proceeding in the guise
of a pilgrim to the Holy Land.]

But Hume would have it believed that this was a late and feeble
resolve of Henry, formed on his death-bed, when he was acting the part
of a self-deceiver, forgetful of the lamentable effects of his
ambition, and seeking comfort from his self-deception in the last
moments of his life. There is strong and clear evidence that he not
only had contemplated such a measure, but had actually taken important
preliminary steps to facilitate the execution of his design, whenever
he might be happily released from his present engagements. "This
vindicatory evidence" (to use the words of Mr. Granville Penn)[244]
"of the veracity and sincerity of Henry, is a manuscript discovered at
Lille, in Flanders, in the autumn of 1819, which proves to positive
demonstration, that at the moment when Henry was suddenly arrested in
his victorious progress by the hand of death, his mind was actually,
though secretly, engaged in projecting an attack on the infidel power
in Egypt and Syria, as soon as he should have pacified the internal
agitations of France; and that a confidential military agent of high
character and distinguished rank had been despatched by him to survey
the maritime frontier of those two countries, and to procure, upon the
spot, the information necessary towards embarking in so vast an (p. 316)
enterprise.

[Footnote 244: Mr. Granville Penn's interesting
paper was read before the Royal Society of
Literature at their first meeting in the year 1825,
and is recorded in the first volume of their
Transactions.]

"The manuscript is a small quarto in vellum, in old French, finely
written in black charac