1. THE history of a nation, to be really instructive, should contain nothing but the truth. We are naturally inclined to believe what we read in books without questioning its accuracy; and historians, taking advantage of this disposition, have sought to gratify their own prejudices and the national vanity by misrepresenting facts, or by exaggerating the antiquity and warlike achievements of their ancestors. Thus succeeding writers, adopting without examination the tales recorded by their predecessors, and even adding to them, have in many cases either entirely obscured the truth, or supplied its place by fable and falsehood. As very little is known of the early inhabitants of this island for nearly a thousand years after the birth of Christ, most readers, and the young especially, take little interest in a narrative which does not enlist their sympathies by the heroic exploits of great men and the triumphs or reverses of the nation. Encouraged by this feeling, our earlier historians have sought to relieve the dryness of a general account by the invention of particulars that have little or no foundation in fact; and although this volume will contain nothing but what the author has good grounds for believing to be true, it may afford the learner some amusement as well as instruction, to be shown the kind

of fables which were once current about the early history of England, Scotland, and Ireland. And it must be remembered that a belief in these fables was not confined to the ignorant only, but was entertained by every class of educated men.

2. ENGLAND.-A monk, named Geoffrey of Monmouth, about the middle of the twelfth century wrote a Latin history of Britain, in which he gives a list of seventy kings who flourished before the landing of Julius Cæsar,-the earliest fact concerning Britain which we know on good authority. Our readers who are familiar with the history of Greece will remember that the siege of Troy took place in the early infancy of the Greek nation, and on the lowest computation ten centuries before the birth of Christ. This siege they would hardly expect to find connected with the history of England; and yet, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, it had nearly as much to do with this country as the battle of Bannockburn or of Waterloo. He tells us, that young Ascanius, who fled with his father Æneas from Troy, had a son named Brute, from whom this island was called Brutain or Britain. After having wandered over the world with an army of Trojans, it seems that he came to an island beyond Gaul, inhabited by giants, where Brute and his army performed great feats of valour; and one of his followers had the credit of slaying a hundred men with his own hand in one battle. They killed all the giants in the island, and built London, which they called Troy Novant, or New Troy, after their native city. The chroniclers tell us that Brute had three sons, called Locrinus, Albanactus, and Kamber. To the first he left the kingdom of England, to the second that of Scotland, and to the third that of Wales.

In Geoffrey's narrative, which has had many copyists, we find a long succession of kings from Brute downwards; and to show the preposterously fictitious nature of the whole account, it may be sufficient to state that he gives a minute history of King Lear as the contemporary of Solomon, king of Israel. Of this King Lear a pleasant and instructive story is told. It is said, that having three daughters, he desired in his old age to divide his kingdom among them, but first wished to know in what degree each loved him, that he might reward them accordingly. One of them said, "She loved him above all creatures; another said, " She loved him above her own soul;" but the third would only say, "My love towards you is as my duty bids ;-what should a father seek-what can a