‘You are an instance to the contrary,’ said Anne; ’no one loves stories so well, and no one loves history better.’

’I believe such stories as Ivanhoe were what taught me to like history,’ said Elizabeth.

‘In order to find out the anachronisms in them?’ said Anne; ’I think it is very ungrateful of you.’

‘No indeed,’ said Elizabeth; ’why, they used to be the only history I knew, and almost the only geography.  Do not you remember Aunt Anne’s laughing at me for arguing that Bohemia was on the Baltic, because Perdita was left on its coast?  And now, I believe that Coeur de Lion feasted with Robin Hood and his merry men, although history tells me that he disliked and despised the English, and the only sentence of their language history records of his uttering was, “He speaks like a fool Briton.”  I believe that Queen Margaret of Anjou haunted the scenes of grandeur that once were hers, and that she lived to see the fall of Charles of Burgundy, and die when her last hope failed her, though I know that it was not so.’

’Then I do not quite see how such stories have taught you to like history,’ said Anne.

’They teach us to realize and understand the people whom we find in history,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Oh yes,’ said Anne; ’who would care for Louis the eleventh if it was not for Quentin Durward? and Shakespeare makes us feel as if we had been at the battle of Shrewsbury.’

‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth; ’and they have done even more for history.  They have taught us to imagine other heroes whom they have not mentioned.  Cannot you see the Black Prince, his slight graceful figure, his fair delicate face full of gentleness and kindness—­ fierce warrior as he is—­his black steel helmet, and tippet of chain-mail, his clustering white plume, his surcoat with England’s leopards and France’s lilies?  Cannot you make a story of his long constant attachment to his beautiful cousin, the Fair Maid of Kent?  Cannot you imagine his courteous conference with Bertrand du Guesclin, the brave ugly Breton?—­Edward lying almost helpless on his couch, broken down with suffering and disappointment, and the noble affectionate Captal de Buch, who died of grief for him, thinking whether he will ever be able to wear his black armour again, and carry terror and dismay to the stoutest hearts of France.’

‘Give Froissart some of the credit of your picture,’ said Anne.

‘Froissart is in some places like Sir Walter himself,’ said Elizabeth; ’but now I will tell you of a person who lived in no days of romance, and has not had the advantage of a poetical historian to light him up in our imagination.  I mean the great Prince of Conde.  Now, though he is very unlike Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, yet there is resemblance enough between them to make the comparison very amusing.  There was much of Coriolanus’ indomitable pride and horror of mob popularity when he offended Beaufort and his kingdom in the halles,