the public acts of the Diets and Assemblies, and of the writings authorized by the princes. And if there remained the least scruple regarding it, it has just been removed by the excellent history of my distinguished friend, the late Mr. Von Seckendorf (in which I cannot, however, refrain from disapproving the term "Lutheranism" on the title-page, which a bad custom has authorized in Saxony), wherein the majority of the statements are justified by extracts from an immense number of pieces, drawn from the Saxon archives which he had at his disposal, although the Bishop of Meaux, who contested their validity, and to whom I sent it, merely replied to me that this book is horribly prolix; but I could wish that it were twice as large on the same scale. The more ample it is, the more hold it must give, since one has only to choose his passages; besides, there are some esteemed historical works which are much greater. For the rest, we do not always despise authors posterior to times of which they speak when what they relate is apparently otherwise. Sometimes, also, it happens that they preserve some most ancient pieces. For example, there has been doubt as to what family Suibert, Bishop of Bamberg, since Pope under the name of Clement II., belonged. An anonymous author of the history of Brunswick, who lived in the fourteenth century, named his family, and some persons learned in our history desired to pay no regard whatever to it; but I have had a chronicle much more ancient, not yet printed, in which the same statement is made with more details, from which it appears that he belonged to the family of the ancient allodial seigniors of Hornbourg (not far from Wolfenbuttel), the territory of which was given by the last owner to the cathedral church of Halberstadt. . Ph. I do not wish you to think that I desired to lessen the authority and use of history by my remark. It is from this source that we receive with a convincing evidence a large part of our useful truths. I see nothing more valuable than the records of antiquity remaining to us, and I wish we had more of them, and less corrupted. But it is always true that no copy raises itself higher than the certainty of its first original. Th. It is certain, that when we have a single ancient author as the authority for a fact, all those who have copied him add no weight thereto, or rather should be reckoned as nothing. It should be wholly as if what they said belonged to