inning for him an
empire. Dear old William Brewster used to be a servant of Davison's in
the days of good Queen Bess. As he blows his fingers there in the
twenty-foot storehouse before it is roofed, does he tell the rest
sometimes of the old wassail at court, and the Christmas when the Earl
of Southampton brought Will. Shakespeare in? Perhaps those things are
too gay,--at all events, we have as much fuel here as they have at St.
James's.

Of this precious embassy, dear reader, there is not a word, I think, in
Hume, or Lingard, or the "Pictorial"--still less, if possible, in the
abridgments. Would you like, perhaps, after this truly elegant account
thus given by a court editor, to look behind the canvas and see the
rough ends of the worsted? I always like to. It helps me to understand
my morning "Advertiser" or my "Evening Post," as I read the editorial
history of to-day. If you please, we will begin in the Domestic State
Papers of England, which the good sense of somebody, I believe kind Sir
Francis Palgrave, has had opened for you and me and the rest of us.

Here is the first notice of the embassy:

Dec. 13. Letter from Sir Robert Naunton to Sir George Calvert.... "The
King of France is expected at Calais. The Marshal of Cadenet is to be
sent over to calumniate those of the religion (that is, the
Protestants), and to propose Madme. Henriette for the Prince."

So they knew, it seems, ten days before we started, what we were coming
for.

Dec. 22. John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton. "In spite of penury,
there is to be a masque at Court this Christmas. The King is coming in
from Theobalds to receive the French Ambassador, Marshal Cadenet, who
comes with a suite of 400 or 500."

What was this masque? Could not Mr. Payne Collier find up the libretto,
perhaps? Was it Faith, Valor, Hope, and Love, founding a kingdom,
perhaps? Faith with a broadaxe, Valor and Hope with a two-handled saw,
while Love dug post-holes and set up timbers? Or was it a less
appropriate masque of King James' devising?

Dec. 25. This is our day. Francis Willisfourd, Governor of Dover Castle
to Lord Zouch, Warden of the Cinque Ports. "A French Ambassador has
landed with a great train. I have not fired a salute, having no
instructions, and declined showing them the fortress. They are
entertained as well as the town can afford."

Observe, we are a little surly. We do not like the French King very
well, our own King's daughter being in such st