much heart for pageantry. I looked in at Vienna, where
they had all been terribly frightened by Bethlem Gabor, who was a great
Transylvanian prince of those days, a sort of successful Kossuth, giving
much hope to beleaguered Protestants farther west, who, I believe,
thought for a time that he was some sort of seal or trumpet, which,
however, he did not prove to be. At this moment of time he was
retreating I am afraid, and at all events did not set his
historiographer to work describing his Christmas festivities.

Passing by Bethlem Gabor then, and the rest, from mere failure of their
chronicles to make note of this Christmas as it passed, I returned to
France in my quest. Louis XIII. was at this time reigning with the
assistance of Luynes, the short-lived favorite who preceded Richelieu.
Or it would, perhaps, be more proper to say that Luynes was reigning
under the name of Louis XIII. Louis XIII. had been spending the year in
great activity, deceiving, thwarting, and undoing the Protestants of
France. He had made a rapid march into their country, and had spread
terror before him. He had had mass celebrated in Navarreux, where it had
not been seen or heard in fifty years. With Bethlem Gabor in the
ablative,--with the Palatinate quite in the vocative,--these poor
Huguenots here outwitted and outgeneralled, and Brewster and Carver
freezing out there in America, the Reformed Religion seems in a bad way
to one looking at that Christmas. From his triumphal and almost
bloodless campaign, King Louis returns to Paris, "and there," says
Bassompierre, "he celebrated the _fetes_ this Christmas." So I thought I
was going to find in the memoirs of some gentleman at court, or
unoccupied mistress of the robes, an account of what the most Christian
King was doing, while the blisters were forming on John Carver's hands,
and while John Billington was, or was not, shooting wild turkeys on that
eventful Christmas day.

But I reckoned without my king. For this is all a mistake, and
whatever else is certain, it seems to be certain that King Louis
XIII. did not keep either Christmas in Paris, either the Christmas
of the Old Style, or that of the New. Such, alas, is history, dear
friend! When you read in to-night's "Evening Post" that your friend
Dalrymple is appointed Minister to Russia, where he has been so
anxious to go, do not suppose he will make you his Secretary of
Legation. Alas! no; for you will read in to-morrow's "Times" that it
w