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Rh trouble of learning his letters in order to doubt what he read. Merlin was as real to him as Robin Hood. He believed Sir John Mandeville, when that accomplished traveler told him of a race of men who had eyes in the middle of their foreheads. It was a curious fact, but the unknown world was full of greater mysteries than this. He believed in Prester John, with his red and white lions, his giants and pigmies, his salamanders that built cocoons like silk-worms, his river of stones that rolled perpetually with a mighty reverberation into a sandy sea. Why, indeed, should these wonders be doubted; for in that thrice famous letter sent by Prester John to Manuel Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople, did he not distinctly say, "No vice is tolerated in our land, and, with us, no one lies."

This broad-minded, liberal credulity made smooth the novelist's path. He always located his romances in far and unknown countries, where anything or everything might reasonably be expected to happen. Scythia, Parthia, Abyssinia, were favorite latitudes; Bohemia could always serve at a pinch; and Arcadia, that blessed haven of romance, remained for