by Clarendon to Charles II., to beguile the tedium of Council. They look, for all the world, like the notes which school-girls are wont to scribble to one another, to beguile the tedium of study. On one page, Charles in a little careless hand, not unlike a school-girl's, writes that he wants to go to Tunbridge, to see his sister. Clarendon in larger, firmer characters writes back that there is no reason why he should not, if he can return in a few days, and adds tentatively, "I suppose you will go with a light train." Charles, as though glowing with conscious rectitude, responds, "I intend to take nothing but my night-bag." Clarendon, who knows his master's luxurious habits, is startled out of all propriety. "Gods!" he writes: "you will not go without forty or fifty horse." Then Charles, who seems to have been waiting for this point in the dialogue, tranquilly replies in one straggling line at the bottom of the page. "I count that part of my night-bag." How plainly we can hear the royal chuckle which accompanied this gracious explanation! How really valuable is this scrap of correspondence which shows us for a moment Charles Stuart; not the Charles
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