down to posterity as "avaricious." I was also sorry to find the padre,
usually so broad-minded, in a nasty temper about the character given
to his batman, who was, he assured me, the only pious man in the
squadron and in private life a dissenting minister. "Dissolute"
certainly was on the face of things inappropriate, but then it was
no fault of mine that the merriest of English monarchs should have
appeared at the moment when I was filling up the papers of a minister
of religion.

The light that my wooden monarchs throw on history is both interesting
and, to a modern, precious. For instance, the designation of the first
Angevin king as "patriotic" will surprise many readers of the late
Bishop STUBBS. "Patriotic" is a wide term and may be applied to almost
anything from after-dinner flag-wagging to successful juggling with
Colonial stocks and shares; yet there are few who would have described
it as the besetting virtue of HENRY I. But it was; his little block
says so.

JOHN, again, was "mean." I am sorry, for, though in some respects
blameworthy, he had many agreeable traits. His views on the honesty of
his baronage are most entertaining. He was something of a wit, a good
judge of food and wine, and would have made an excellent Fellow of an
Oxford college. It is much to be regretted that he was mean.

Poor HENRY VI. is "silly." This is a hard judgment on the pioneer of
the movement against low backs in evening frocks, but doubtless he was
silly in other things.

Some of my monarchs had the most excellent characters. EDWARD I. was
"just," GEORGE IV. "courteous," OLIVER CROMWELL "noble"--a sad blow