ter, and richly illuminated; consisting of
fifty-four pages, and comprising a succinct military survey of the
coasts and defences of Egypt and Syria, from Alexandria round to
Gallipoli, made by the command of Henry within the three last years of
his life, and completed and reported immediately after his unexpected
death, by which death it was rendered unavailing. The confidential
author of this survey was Gilbert de Lannoi, counsellor and
chamberlain to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and that Duke's
ambassador to Henry."

The same writer thus expresses himself in conclusion. "His declaration
was not the prompting of a sickly conscience striving to procure
delusive comfort from 'the late and feeble' resolves of a death-bed,
as Hume unworthily asserts; it was the composed and deliberate
communication of a dying captain and sovereign, disclosing to those
around him, under a strong sentiment of devotion, a secret of that
kingly office which he was then on the point of relinquishing for
ever. To enter upon an appreciation of the moral value of the
enterprise which Henry had then in prospect, would be as much out of
place here, as it would be absurd to estimate it by the rule of the
present age. In those ages, when all the higher orders of society
were either clerical or martial, much real piety of sentiment (p. 317)
must, in innumerable instances, have been compounded with the
widely-extended romantic spirit which was ardent to hazard life on
sacred ground of Judea, rather than to suffer the continuance of its
profanation by the avowed enemy of the Christian name.

"The establishment of this point, certifying, as it does an
interesting fact hitherto unknown, and effectually repelling and
exposing an unjustifiable sarcasm directed against one of the most
illustrious princes that have graced the English crown, may acquire in
the history of truth the importance to which it might not be able to
lay claim in the political history of a people."[245]

[Footnote 245: This same interesting subject is far
more elaborately discussed by that excellent
antiquary the Rev. John Webb; whose Introductory
Dissertation and Illustrative Notes, (in the
Archaeologia, vol. xxi. p. 281,) abound with most
valuable information. The title prefixed to
Lannoi's work is this:

"The Report ma