incident to the history thereof, we conclude, and end our present volume with this wonder of England. For the which God's name be ever honoured and praised."

And so, at last, the Goose Tree receives the highest sanction.

PHARAMOND

Pharamond

PHARAMOND; or, The History of France.

London:

A New Romance. In four
parts. Written originally in French, by the Author of Cassandra and
Cleopatra: and now elegantly rendred into English.
Printed by Ja: Cottrell, for Samuel Speed, at the Rain-Bow in
Fleetstreet, near the Inner Temple-Gate. (Folio.) 1662.

THERE is no better instance of the fact that books will not live by good works alone than is offered by the utterly neglected heroic novels of the seventeenth century. At the opening of the reign of Louis XIV. in France, several writers, in the general dearth of prose fiction, began to supply the public in Paris with a series of long romances, which for at least a generation absorbed the attention of the ladies and reigned unopposed in every boudoir.

I wonder whether

my lady readers have ever attempted to realise how their sisters of two hundred years ago spent their time? In an English country-house of

F