to the neighbourhood with peculiar knowledge on this subject. He makes haste to approach the wise man, who, feigning no great interest in the business, admits that treasure may sometimes be discovered, By and by he is prevailed on to visit the rich man at his house, when he says that treasure of enormous value has undoubtedly been buried within a very short distance. The two sally forth, and after a walk of a mile or two the magician indicates a certain spot, and bids his companion dig there. He does so, and comes upon some venerable pot or casket, which the wise man's accomplice has buried the night before. The treasure seeker is dumbfounded, and ready to prostrate himself at the magician's feet. But the latter is not yet satisfied. The rites have not been performed. All the gold and silver and precious stones that can be got together must be brought, and piled upon the casket, which must then be buried again for a space of days. The rich man, in great excitement, brings all his portable wealth to the place, and with his own eyes beholds the wise man bury it. But he never beholds it again. SURMISES ON THE "IRON MASK "1 ONE of the minor puzzles of modern history (never very widely considered) is this: What became of Prince James Stuart? James Stuart, alias James de la Cloche, alias Henry de Rohan, was a natural son of Charles II, and the eldest of that promiscuous monarch's children. At the end of 1668 he suddenly disappeared from Europe and no real trace of him has been found. Monsignor Barnes, a Chamberlain of Honour to the Pope, has had the courage to transform the missing prince into the Man of the Iron Mask. The story seeks its motive in Charles's scheme of corporate reunion with Rome. That scheme, as we know, had perforce to be abandoned. England had no mind to be Catholicised again; Charles had no mind, as he very candidly confessed, to set forth again upon his travels. Not nntil he lay a-dying was he formally received into the Catholic Church. In so far, however, as he could be said to hold any religion, Charles was almost certainly a Catholic. We may fail to perceive 1 The Man of the Mask: A Study in the By-ways of History. By Arthur Stapylton Barnes, M.A. London, 1908. in him those marks of sincerity and deep earnestness which Monsignor Barnes recognises; but we need not proclaim him, with Lingard, a mere cynical dissembler. Secret negotiations with the Pope, secret negotiations with Louis XIV-begun, discontinued, renewed-were part of the policy whereby he sought to make himself independent of Parliament, and govern as a Papist an England reconverted to Rome. This seems to be the one policy of Charles II which deserves the name of genuine ; and to carry it he relied in some measure on the counsel and help of the son, James Stuart, whose very existence he kept hidden from the world. Still more, as appears, did he rely on this son to prepare the way for his own reception into the Church. Who, then, was this son? What is our know. ledge of him? Many readers, I doubt not, are acquainted with Lord Acton's essay, "The Secret History of Charles II." Published as far back as 1862 in the Home and Foreign Review, it was recently included in the volume of Essays on Modern History. It is, in some forty judicial pages, an excellent example of Lord Acton's method-of the way he estimates authorities, weighs up testimony, and arrives at last at the judgment which his editors so happily describe as sword-like. I have compared this study very carefully with Monsignor Barnes's account of James Stuart, or James de la Cloche, and am |