initial commit of ebook 12572HEADmain

11 files changed, 58921 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/12572-0.txt b/12572-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..853ce02
--- /dev/null
+++ b/12572-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11611 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12572 ***
+
+THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS
+
+JOINT EDITORS
+
+ARTHUR MEE Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge
+
+J.A. HAMMERTON Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
+
+VOL. X LIVES AND LETTERS
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Table of Contents
+
+    HUGO, VICTOR
+     Deeds and Words
+
+    HUME, MARTIN
+     Courtships of Elizabeth
+     Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots
+
+    IRVING, WASHINGTON
+     Life of Christopher Columbus
+     Life of George Washington
+
+    JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS
+     Autobiography
+
+    LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: See ROCHEFOUCAULD
+
+    LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON
+     Life of Sir Walter Scott
+     Life of Robert Burns
+
+    LUTHER, MARTIN
+     Table Talk
+
+    MIRABEAU, COMTE DE
+     Memoirs
+
+    MOORE, THOMAS
+     Life of Byron
+
+    MORISON, J.A.C.
+     Life of St. Bernard
+
+    MORLEY, JOHN
+     Life of Cobden
+
+    PEPYS, SAMUEL
+     Diary
+
+    PLINY THE YOUNGER
+      Letters
+
+    RICHELIEU, CARDINAL
+      Political Testament
+
+    ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES
+      Confessions
+
+    ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRANÇOIS DUC de LA
+       Memoirs
+
+    SÉVIGNÉ, Mme. de
+      Letters
+
+    SOUTHEY, ROBERT
+      Life of Nelson
+
+    STAAL, Mme. de
+      Memoirs
+
+    STANHOPE, EARL
+      Life of Pitt
+
+    STANLEY, A.P.
+      Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D.
+
+    STRICKLAND, AGNES
+      Life of Queen Elizabeth
+
+    SWIFT, JONATHAN
+      Journal to Stella
+
+    TOLSTOY, COUNT LYOF N.
+      Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
+      My Confession
+
+    VILLARI, PASQUALE
+      Life of Girolamo Savanarola
+
+    WESLEY, JOHN
+      Journal
+
+    WOOLMAN, JOHN
+      Journal
+
+A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
+of Volume XX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_Acknowledgement_
+
+     Acknowledgement and thanks for permitting the use of the
+     following selections in this volume, viz., "The Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," and "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of
+     Scots," by Major Martin Hume, are herewith tendered to
+     Everleigh Nash, of London, England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+VICTOR HUGO
+
+
+Deeds and Words
+
+
+     "Deeds and Words" ("Actes et Paroles"), which is dated June,
+     1875, is the record of Victor Hugo's public life, speeches and
+     letters, down to the year of his death, which occurred on May
+     32, 1885; but it is most important as a defence of his
+     political career from 1848 onwards. It does not, however, tell
+     us how changeable his opinions had actually been. His
+     inconstant attachments are thus summed up by Dr. Brandes: "He
+     warmly supports the candidacy of Louis Napoleon for the post
+     of President of the Republic ... lends him his support when he
+     occupies that post, and is even favourable to the idea of an
+     empire, until the feeling that he is despised as a politician
+     estranges him from the Prince-President, and resentment at the
+     coup d'etat drives him into the camp of the extreme
+     Republicans. His life may be said to mirror the political
+     movements of France during the first half of the century."
+     (See FICTION.)
+
+
+_I.--Right and Law_
+
+
+All human eloquence, among all peoples and in all times, may be summed
+up as the quarrel of Right against Law.
+
+But this quarrel tends ever to decrease, and therein lies the whole of
+progress. On the day when it has disappeared, civilisation will have
+attained its highest point; that which ought to be will have become one
+with that which is; there will be an end of catastrophes, and even, so
+to speak, of events; and society will develop majestically according to
+nature. There will be no more disputes nor factions; no longer will laws
+be made, they will only be discovered. Education will have taken the
+place of war, and by means of universal suffrage there will be chosen a
+parliament of intellect.
+
+In that serene and glorious age there will be no more warriors, but
+workers only; creators in the place of exterminators. The civilisation
+of action will have passed away, and that of thought will have
+succeeded. The masterpieces of art and of literature will be the great
+events.
+
+Frontiers will disappear; and France, which is destined to die as the
+gods die, by transfiguration, will become Europe. For the Revolution of
+France will be known as the evolution of the peoples. France has
+laboured not for herself alone, but has aroused world-wide hopes, and is
+herself the representative of all human good-will.
+
+Right and Law are the two great forces whose harmony gives birth to
+order, but their antagonism is the source of all catastrophe. Right is
+the divine truth, and Law is the earthly reality; liberty is Right and
+society is Law. Wherefore there are two tribunes, one of the men of
+ideas, the other of the men of facts; and between these two the
+consciences of most still vacillate. Not yet is there harmony between
+the immutable and the variable power; Right and Law are in ceaseless
+conflict.
+
+To Right belong the inviolability of human life, liberty, peace; and
+nothing that is indissoluble, irrevocable, or irreparable. To Law belong
+the scaffold, sword, and sceptre; war itself; and every kind of yoke,
+from divorceless marriage in the family to the state of siege in the
+city. Right is to come and go, buy, sell, exchange; Law has its
+frontiers and its custom-houses. Right would have free and compulsory
+education, without encroaching on young consciences; that is to say, lay
+instruction; Law would have the teaching of ignorant friars. Right
+demands liberty of belief, but Law establishes the state religions.
+Universal suffrage and universal jury belong to Right, but restricted
+franchise and packed juries are creatures of the Law.
+
+What a difference there is! And let it be understood that all social
+agitation arises from the persistence of Right against the obstinacy of
+Law. The keynote of the present writer's public life has been "_Pro jure
+contra legem"_--for the Right which makes men, against the Law which men
+have made. He believes that liberty is the highest expression of Right,
+and that the republican formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,"
+leaves nothing to be added or to be taken away. For Liberty is Right,
+Equality is Fact, and Fraternity is Duty. The whole of man is there. We
+are brothers in our life, equal in birth and death, free in soul.
+
+
+_II.--Days of Childhood_
+
+
+At the beginning of this nineteenth century there was a child who lived
+in a great house, surrounded by a large garden, in the most deserted
+part of Paris. He lived with his mother, two brothers, and a venerable
+and worthy priest, who was his only tutor, and taught him much Latin, a
+little Greek, and no history at all. Here, at the time of the First
+Empire, the three boys played and worked, watched the clouds and trees
+and listened to the birds, under the sweet influence of their mother's
+smile.
+
+It was the child's misfortune, though no one's fault, that he was taught
+by a priest. What can be more terrible than a system of untruth,
+sincerely believed? For a priest teaches falsehoods, ignorant of the
+truth, and thinks he does well; everything he does for the child is done
+against the child, making crooked that which nature has made straight;
+his teaching poisons the young mind with aged prejudices, drawing
+evening twilight, like a curtain, over the dawn.
+
+That ancient, solitary house and garden, formerly a convent and then the
+home of his childhood, is still in his old age a dear and religious
+memory, though its site is now profaned by a modern street He sees it in
+a romantic atmosphere, in which, amid sunbeams and roses, his spirit
+opened into flower. What a stillness was in its vast rooms and
+cloisters. Only at long intervals was the silence broken by the return
+of a plumed and sabred general, his father, from the wars. That child,
+already thoughtful, was myself.
+
+One night--it was some great festival of the empire, and all Paris was
+illumined--my mother was walking in the garden with three of my father's
+comrades, and I was following them, when we saw a tall figure in the
+gloom of the trees. It was the proscribed Victor du Lahorie, my
+godfather. He was even then conspiring against Bonaparte in the cause of
+liberty, and was shortly after executed. I remember his saying, "If Rome
+had kept her kings, she had not been Rome," and then, looking on me,
+"Child, put liberty first of all!" That one word outweighed my whole
+education.
+
+
+_III.--Before the Exile_
+
+
+It was not until the writer saw, in 1848, the triumph of all the enemies
+of progress that he knew in the depths of his heart that he belonged,
+not to the conquerors, but to the vanquished. The Republic lay
+inanimate; but, gazing on her form, he saw that she was liberty, and not
+even the sure fore-knowledge of the ruin and exile that must follow
+could prevent his espousal with the dead. On June 15 he made his protest
+from the tribune, and from that day he fought relentless battle for
+liberty and the republic. And on December 2, 1851, he received what he
+had expected--twenty years of exile. That is the history of what has
+been called his apostasy.
+
+Throughout that strange period before his exile, the frightful phantom
+of the past was all-powerful with men. Every kind of question was
+debated--national independence, individual liberty, liberty of
+conscience, of thought, of speech, and of the Press; questions of
+marriage, of education, of the right to work, of the right to one's
+fatherland as against exile, of the right to life as against penal law,
+of the separation of Church and state, of the federation of Europe, of
+frontiers to be wiped out, and of custom-houses to be done away--all
+these questions were proposed, debated, and sometimes settled.
+
+In these debates the author of this memoir took his part and did his
+duty, and was repaid with insults. He remembers interjecting, when they
+were insisting on parental rights, that the children had rights, too. He
+astounded the assembly by asserting that it was possible to do away with
+misery. On July 17, 1851, he denounced the conspiracy of Louis
+Bonaparte, unveiling the project of the president to become emperor. On
+another day he pronounced from the tribune a phrase which had never yet
+been uttered--"The United States of Europe." Contempt and calumny were
+poured upon him, but what of that? They called George Washington a
+pickpocket.
+
+These men of the old majority, who were doing all the evil that they
+could--did they mean to do evil? Not a bit of it. They deceived
+themselves, thinking that they had the truth, and they lied in the
+service of the truth. Their pity for society was pitiless for the
+people, whence arose so many laws, so many actions, that were blindly
+ferocious. They were rather a mob than a senate, and were led by the
+worst of their number. Let us be indulgent, and let night hide the men
+of night.
+
+What do our labours and our troubles and our exiles matter if they have
+been for the general good; if the human race be indeed passing from
+December to its April; if the winter of tyrannies and of wars indeed be
+finished; if superstitions and prejudices no longer fall on our heads
+like snow; and if, after so many clouds of empire and of carnage have
+rolled away, we at last descry upon the horizon the rosy dawn of
+universal peace?
+
+O my brothers, let us be reconciled! Let us set out on the immense
+highway of peace. Surely there has been enough of hatred. When will you
+understand that we are all together on the same ship, and that the
+immense menace of the sea is for all of us together? Our solidarity is
+terrible, but brotherhood is sweet.
+
+
+_IV.--Republican Principles_
+
+
+The sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, and the liberty of
+the Press are all the same thing under three different names. The three
+together constitute the whole of our public right; the first is its
+principle, the second its manner, and the third its expression. The
+three principles are indissoluble from one another. The sovereignty of
+the people is the life-giving soul of the nation, universal suffrage its
+government, the Press its illumination; but they are all really one, and
+that unity is the republic. It is curious to notice how these principles
+appear again in the watchword of the republic; for the sovereignty of
+the people creates liberty, universal suffrage creates equality, and the
+Press, which enlightens the general mind, creates fraternity.
+
+Wherever these three great principles exist in their powers and
+plenitude there is the republic, even though it be known as monarchy.
+Wherever, on the other hand, they are betrayed, hindered, or oppressed,
+the actual state is a monarchy or an oligarchy, even though it goes
+under the name of a republic. In the latter case we see the monstrous
+phenomenon of a government betrayed by its proper guardians, and it is
+this phenomenon that makes the stoutest hearts begin to be doubtful of
+revolutions. For revolutions are vast, ill-guided movements, which bring
+forth out of the darkness at one and the same time the greatest of ideas
+and the smallest of men; they are movements which we welcome as salutary
+when we look at their principles, but which we can only call
+catastrophes when he consider the character of their leaders.
+
+Let us never forget that our three first principles live with a common
+life, and mutually defend one another. If the Liberty of the Press is in
+danger, the suffrages of the people arise and protect it; and, again, if
+the franchise is threatened, it is safeguarded by the freedom of the
+Press. Any attempt against either of them is a treachery to the
+sovereignty of the people.
+
+The movement of this great nineteenth century is the movement not of one
+people only, but of all. France leads, and the nations follow. We are
+passing from the old world to the new, and our governors attempt in vain
+to arrest ideas by laws. There is in France and in Europe a party
+inspired by fear, which is not to be accounted the party of order; and
+its incessant question is: Who is to blame?
+
+In the crisis through which we are passing, though it is a salutary
+crisis which will lead only to good, everyone exclaims at the dreadful
+moral disorder and the imminent social danger. Who, then, is guilty of
+these ravages? Whom shall we punish? Throughout Europe, the party of
+fear answers "France." Throughout France, it answers "Paris." In Paris,
+it blames the Press. But every thoughtful man must see that it is none
+of these, but is the human spirit.
+
+It is the human spirit that has made the nations what they are. From the
+beginning, through infinite debate and contradiction, it has sought,
+unresting, to solve the problem eternally placed before the creature by
+his Creator. It is the human spirit which takes from age to age the form
+of the great revolts of history; it has been in turn, and sometimes
+altogether, error, illusion, heresy, schism, protest, and the truth. The
+human spirit is ever the great shepherd of the generations, proceeding
+always towards the just, the beautiful, and the true, enlightening the
+multitude, ennobling souls, directing the mind of man towards God.
+
+Let the party of fear throughout Europe consider the magnitude of the
+task which they have undertaken. When they have destroyed the Press,
+they have yet to destroy Paris. When Paris is fallen, there remains
+France. Let France be annihilated, there still remains the human
+spirit--a thing intangible as the light, inaccessible as the sun.
+
+
+_V.--In Exile_
+
+
+Nothing is more terrible than exile. I do not say for him who suffers,
+but for the tyrant who inflicts it. A solitary figure paces a distant
+shore, or rises in the morning to his philosophic labours, or calls on
+God among the rocks and trees; his hairs become grey, and then white, in
+the slow passing of the years and in his longing for home; his lot is a
+sorrowful one; but his innocence is terrible to the crowned miscreant
+who sent him there. From 1852 to 1870 I was in exile.
+
+How pleasant are those islands of the Channel, and how like France!
+Jersey, perhaps, more charming than Guernsey, prettier if less imposing;
+in Jersey the forest has become a garden; the island is like a bouquet
+of flowers, of the size of London, a smiling land, an idyll set in the
+midst of the sea.
+
+The exile soon learns that, though the tyrant has placed him afar, he
+does not release his hold. Many and ingenious are the snares laid for
+the banished. A prince calls on you, but though he is of royal blood, he
+is also a detective of police. A grave professor stays at your house,
+and you surprise him searching your papers. Everything is permitted
+against you; you are outside the law, outside of common justice, outside
+of respect. They will say that they have your authority to publish your
+conversations, and will attribute to you words that you have never
+spoken and actions that you have never done. Never write to your
+friends--your letters are opened on the way. Beware of all who are
+kindly to you in exile; they are ruining you in Paris. You are isolated
+as a leper. A mysterious stranger whispers in your ear that he can
+procure the assassination of Bonaparte; it is Bonaparte offering to kill
+himself. Every day of your life is a new outrage. Only one thing is open
+to the exile; it is to turn his thought to other subjects.
+
+He is at least beside the sea; let its infinity bring him wisdom. The
+eternal rioting of the surges against the rocks is as the agitation of
+impostures against the truth. It is a vain convulsion; the foam gains
+nothing by it, the granite loses nothing, and only sparkles the more
+bravely in the sun.
+
+But exile has this great advantage--one is free to contemplate, to
+think, to suffer. To be alone, and yet to feel that one is with all
+humanity; to consolidate oneself as a citizen, and to purify oneself as
+a philosopher; to be poor, and begin again to work for one's living, to
+meditate on what is good and to contrive for what is better; to be angry
+in the public cause, but to crush all personal enmity; to breathe the
+vast, living winds of the solitudes; to compose a deeper indignation
+with a profounder peace--these are the opportunities of exile. I
+accustomed myself to say, "If, after a revolution, Bonaparte should
+knock at my door and ask shelter, let never a hair of his head be
+injured."
+
+Yes, an exile becomes a well-wisher. He loves the roses, and the birds'
+nests, and the flitting hither and thither of the butterflies. He
+mingles with the sweet joys of the creatures, and learns a changeless
+faith in some secret and infinite goodness. The green glades are his
+chosen dwelling and his life is April; he reclines amazed at the
+mysteries of a tuft of grass; he studies the ant-hills of tiny
+republicans; he learns to know the birds by their songs; he watches the
+children playing barefoot in the edge of the sea.
+
+Against this dangerous man governments are taking the most strenuous
+precautions. Victoria offers to hand over the exiles to Napoleon, and
+messages of compliment are passed from one throne to the other. But that
+gift did not take place. The English royalist Press applauded, but the
+people of London would have none of it. The great city muttered thunder.
+Majesty clothed in probity--that is the character of the English nation.
+That good and proud people showed their indignation, and Palmerston and
+Bonaparte had to be content with the expulsion of the exiles.
+
+During the whole long night of my exile I never lost Paris from my view.
+When Europe and even France were in darkness, Paris was never hidden.
+That is because Paris is the frontier of the future, the visible
+frontier of the unknown. All of to-morrow that can be seen to-day is in
+Paris. The eyes that are searching for progress come to rest on Paris,
+for Paris is the city of light.
+
+
+_VI.--After the Exile_
+
+
+This triology, "Before, During, and After the Exile," is no work of
+mine, it is the doing of Napoleon III. He it is who has divided my life
+in this way, observing, as one might say, the rules of art. Returning to
+my country on September 5, 1870, I found the sky more gloomy and my duty
+more clamant than ever.
+
+Though it is sad to leave the fatherland, to return to it is sometimes
+sadder still; and there is no Frenchman who would not have preferred a
+life-long banishment, to seeing France ground beneath the Prussian heel,
+and the loss of Metz and Strasburg. This was an invasion of barbarians;
+but there is another menace that is not less formidable. I mean the
+invasion of our land by darkness, an invasion of the nineteenth century
+by the middle ages. After the emperor, the pope; after Berlin, Rome;
+after the triumph of the sword, the triumph of night. For the light of
+civilisation may be extinguished in either of two ways, by a military or
+by a clerical invasion. The former threatens our mother, France; the
+latter our child, the future.
+
+A double inviolability is the most precious possession of a civilised
+people--the inviolability of territory and the inviolability of
+conscience; and as the soldier violates the first, so does the priest
+violate the other. Yet the soldier does but obey his orders and the
+priest his dogmas, so that there are only two who are ultimately
+culpable--Caesar, who slays, and Peter, who lies. There is no religion
+which has not as its aim to seize forcibly the human soul, and it is to
+attempts of this kind that France is given up to-day.
+
+One may say, indeed, that in our age there are two schools, and that
+these two schools sum up in themselves the two opposed currents which
+draw civilisation, the one towards the future and the other towards the
+past. One of these schools is called Paris and the other Rome. Each of
+them has its book; the one has the "Declaration of the Rights of Man,"
+the other has the "Syllabus"; and the first of these books says "Yes" to
+progress, but the second of them says "No." Yet progress is the footstep
+of God.
+
+Paris means Montaigne, Rabelais, Pascal, Corneille, Molière,
+Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Danton. Rome, on the
+other hand, means Innocent III., Pius V., Alexander VI., Urban VIII.,
+Arbuez, Cisneros, Lainez, Guillandus, Ignatius.
+
+To educate is nothing less than to govern; and clerical education means
+a clerical government, with a despotism as its summit and ignorance as
+its foundation.
+
+Rome already holds Belgium, and would now seize Paris. We are witnesses
+of a struggle to the death. Against us is all that manifold power which
+emerges from the past, the spirit of monarchy, of superstition, of the
+barrack and of the convent; we have against us temerity, effrontery,
+audacity, and fear. On our side there is nothing but the light. That is
+why the victory will be with us. For to enlighten is to deliver. Every
+increase in liberty involves increased responsibility. Nothing is graver
+than freedom; liberty has burdens of her own, and lays on the conscience
+all the chains which she unshackles from the limbs. We find rights
+transforming themselves into duties. Let us therefore take heed to what
+we are doing; we live in a difficult time and are answerable at once to
+the past and to the future. The time has come, in this year 1876, to
+replace commotions by concessions. That is how civilisation advances.
+For progress is nothing other than revolution effected amicably.
+
+Therefore, legislators and citizens, let us redouble our good-will. Let
+all wounds be healed, all animosities extinguished; by overcoming hatred
+we shall overcome war; let no disturbance that may come be due to our
+fault. Our task of entering into the unknown is difficult enough without
+angers and bitterness. I am one of those who hope from that unknown
+future, but only on condition that we make use from the first of every
+means of pacification that is in our power. Let us act with the virile
+kindness of the strong.
+
+Let us then calm the nations by peace, and the hearts of men by
+brotherhood, and let us never forget that we are ourselves responsible
+for this last half of the nineteenth century, and that we are placed
+between a great past, the Revolution of France, and a great future, the
+Revolution of Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MARTIN HUME
+
+
+The Courtships of Elizabeth
+
+
+     Major Martin Andrew Hume, born in London on December 8, 1847,
+     and educated at Madrid, comes of an English family, the
+     members of which have resided in Spain for a hundred years. He
+     began life in the British Army, from which he retired with the
+     rank of major. Major Hume was appointed editor of the Spanish
+     state papers published by the Record Office; he is also
+     lecturer in Spanish History and Literature at Cambridge, and
+     examiner and lecturer in Spanish at the Birmingham University.
+     He has written numerous works on the history of Spain; but
+     perhaps he is best known for his historical studies of the
+     Tudor period, of which may be mentioned "The Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots,"
+     and "The Wives of Henry VIII." In the first-named work,
+     published in 1896, Major Hume has presented an exceedingly
+     interesting human document, and classified a tangled mass of
+     material. The epitome here presented has been prepared for THE
+     WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS by the author himself.
+
+
+_I.--Foreign Philandering_
+
+
+The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world's chessboard was
+that consummate succession of intrigues which, for nearly half a
+century, was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the
+object of playing off one great Continental power against another for
+the benefit of England and Protestantism, with which the interests of
+the queen were inextricably involved. Those in the midst of the strife
+worked mostly for immediate aims, and neither saw, nor cared, for the
+ultimate results; but we, looking back, see that out of that tangle of
+duplicity there emerged a new era of civilisation and a host of vigorous
+impulses which move us to this hour.
+
+The victory of England in that struggle meant the dominance of modern
+ideas of liberty and of the imperial destiny of our race, and it seems
+as if the result could only have been attained in the peculiar
+combination of circumstances and persons then existing. Elizabeth
+triumphed as much by her weakness as by her strength. Honest Cecil kept
+his hand upon the helm so long because the only alternative to him was
+the greedy crew of councillors eager for foreign bribes. Without
+Leicester as a permanent matrimonial possibility, the queen could never
+have held the balance between her foreign suitors; and, but for the
+follies of Mary Stuart, the English Catholics would not have been
+subjected so easily, whilst the religious dissensions in France and the
+character of Philip II. aided Elizabeth's diplomacy. Elizabeth was more
+than once betrothed in her childhood to aid her father's policy, but
+when Henry died, in 1547, his younger daughter was unbetrothed.
+
+During her residence with the Queen-Dowager, Catharine Parr, who soon
+married Thomas, Lord Seymour, the fourteen-year-old girl was exposed to
+peril from the designs of the ambitious Seymour. The indecorous romping,
+perhaps innocent at first, that took place between her and her married
+host provided grave scandal which touched even the honour of the girl,
+and her keen wits alone saved her on this occasion from disgrace. Her
+crafty reticence served her well, when the intrigues of Wyat, Courtenay,
+and the French party threatened Mary's throne; but when Mary was
+married, the Spanish party at once became interested in securing
+Elizabeth to their side by her marriage. Mary's jealousy, and
+Elizabeth's own determination not to be made a tool, frustrated Philip's
+attempt to marry the princess to his cousin, the Duke of Savoy; and when
+the Protestant Swedes clandestinely offered her the hand of Prince Eric,
+her discreet wariness again protected her from the dangerous proposal.
+
+When Mary lay dying, Feria, the Spanish ambassador, hurried to Hatfield
+to salute the rising sun, and hinted even thus early that Elizabeth
+might marry her powerful Spanish brother-in-law. But she resented his
+patronage, and though she coquetted, as usual, with the proposal of
+marriage, she took care not to pledge herself or submit England to
+foreign dictation. To Spain it was vital that England should be at her
+bidding. If the queen could not marry Philip, surely she could only wed
+one of his Austrian cousins; or, if not, then England must be conquered
+by the sword. All that Elizabeth wanted was time, and tardy Philip
+played into her hands. One English noble after the other was taken up
+and dropped, in the intervals of foreign philandering. Lord Arundel,
+foolish, old, and vain, had high hopes; Sir William Pickering's chances
+looked bright, and France and Spain sought to patronise each English
+candidate in his turn, especially Lord Robert Dudley, the queen's friend
+from childhood, though he was already married to Amy Robsart.
+
+At length, after many days of dallying, great Philip decided to
+sacrifice himself for Spain and marry his enigmatical sister-in-law. She
+must, of course, renounce Protestantism and all the laws that made her
+legally a queen; which was absurd, as Feria soon saw, and frankly told
+his master. So then Philip half-heartedly patronised the suit of his
+Austrian cousin, the Archduke Charles. If the latter would be an
+obedient Spanish instrument he could have Philip's support; but German
+Lutherans and English Protestants had also to be considered, and
+Elizabeth's court was divided into those who feared any consort not
+wholly Protestant and those who were eager for any marriage that
+shielded England from Spanish attack.
+
+Elizabeth thought she could avoid the latter danger without marriage at
+all, so she dexterously played with all her suitors, English and
+foreign, while strengthening her position and gaining popularity.
+Sometimes she swore she would never marry, and the next day would grow
+sentimental over the archduke, or flirted with Dudley--keeping them all
+in suspense and afraid of offending her. The French, having no
+marriageable prince of their own, supported Dudley, or any other English
+candidate whom they could use against Spain; whilst Dudley himself
+pretended to favour the archduke, till matters looked serious, and then
+found means of frustrating him, often to Elizabeth's rage, for she
+wished to play her own deep game unhampered. She knew she could always
+choke off the Austrian when she wished by making fresh religious
+demands. The English nobles were furious at Dudley's selfish manoeuvres
+to keep the queen unwed till he was free, and they planned to marry the
+queen to Arran, the next heir of Scotland. This looked promising for
+months, but Dudley and his sister, Lady Sidney, checked the plan.
+
+
+_II.--The Nine Years' Comedy_
+
+
+In September, 1559, Dudley and his sister warmly took up the archduke's
+cause, and assured Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, that if the suitor
+would flatter the queen by coming to England on chance, she would marry
+him. But Elizabeth and Cecil, though they hinted much, would not clearly
+confirm Dudley's promise, and Philip and the emperor dared not expose
+the archduke to the risk of being repulsed. The English nobles, in good
+faith, urged the archduke's suit, and said that Dudley was plotting to
+kill his wife and marry the queen; but they and the Spanish ambassador
+were outwitted at every point by Elizabeth's diplomacy, and through 1559
+and 1560 all the rivals were kept between hope and fear.
+
+Then, in September 1560, the long-predicted murder of Amy Robsart set
+Dudley free, and made the nobles and Cecil more anxious than ever that
+the archduke should be bold, take the risk, and come to England. The
+queen, to weaken the new friendship between France and Spain, herself
+again pretended eagerness for the Austrian's coming; but the trick was
+stale now, and neither Philip nor the emperor believed her. To checkmate
+Dudley the Protestants were actively urging the suit of Eric of Sweden,
+when, in January 1561, the former made a bold bid for Spanish support.
+He was, he said, quite innocent of his wife's death, and he promised
+Quadra that if the King of Spain would urge his (Dudley's) suit upon the
+queen, England should send envoys to the Council of Trent, receive a
+papal legate, and become practically Catholic. He might promise, but
+such a thing was impossible, and Cecil, when he learnt of the intrigue,
+promptly embroiled matters and spoilt the plan.
+
+Elizabeth, too, saw whither she was drifting, and by pretended levity
+turned it into a joke. At one time she invited the old Spanish bishop to
+marry her to Dudley, and next day said she would never marry at all. But
+she never ceased to flirt with Dudley, who, when his intrigue with Spain
+fell through, cynically appealed to the French Protestants for support.
+They were in no position to help him, and by January 1562, he was
+cringing to Spain, and pretending to be Catholic. But English Catholics
+hated him, and he was now no fit instrument for Philip.
+
+In her own court it was firmly believed that Elizabeth was secretly
+married to Dudley--it was high time, said the gossips; but in truth the
+international importance of her marriage was now (1562-63) partially
+obscured by that of the widowed Mary Queen of Scots. Before the latter
+were dangled Eric of Sweden, the Archduke Charles, the Earl of Arran,
+and Darnley; but the match which Mary most wished for, and the most
+threatening to Elizabeth, was that with the vicious young lunatic, Don
+Carlos, the heir of Philip of Spain. The match with Darnley, too, as he
+was in the English succession, was distasteful to Elizabeth; but in
+order to divert the Spanish match--which, really, though she knew it
+not, was out of the question--she pretended to favour Darnley's suit at
+first.
+
+In order still more to avert the Catholic alliance, Elizabeth sent
+active help to the French Huguenots, and drew closer to the Protestants
+of Germany and Holland, where distrust of their Spanish sovereign was
+already brewing. In these circumstances, Elizabeth for the first time
+could defy Spain, and Quadra, accused of conspiring against the queen,
+was expelled the country. When the Darnley match for Mary Stuart looked
+too serious, Elizabeth diverted it for a time by proposing that
+Dudley--now Earl of Leicester--should marry Mary. It was, of course, but
+a trick, through which the Scottish queen saw, with the object of
+preventing the Darnley marriage and discrediting Mary in the eyes of
+foreign princes; but it served its turn for a time.
+
+In July 1564, when the league of France and Spain again menaced her,
+Elizabeth set her cap at the boy Don Carlos, and even swore to the
+Spanish ambassador that she was really a Catholic.
+
+The further to alienate the Catholic powers from each other, she
+simultaneously approached the emperor to revive the proposal of marriage
+with the Archduke Charles, and to Catherine de Medici to drop a hint
+that she--Elizabeth--might marry the young King of France, Charles IX.,
+a youth barely half her age--anything to prevent a combination against
+her and the marriage of Don Carlos with Mary Stuart. Catherine de Medici
+had her own reasons at the time for smiling upon Elizabeth's suggestion.
+She did not wish to be bound too tightly to Spain and the Catholics, for
+fear of the Huguenots; and in February 1565, she wrote to Elizabeth,
+saying that she would be the happiest of mothers if she could see her
+dearly beloved sister of England married to her son, Charles IX.
+
+Elizabeth was full of maidenly hesitation. She was too old for him;
+perhaps he would not think her beautiful, and so on; but she took care
+to say that there was no one else she could marry, as she would not wed
+a subject. The Huguenots actively pushed the proposal, and Leicester
+pretended to favour it, though Cecil was against it on many grounds. But
+it was never seriously meant. It brought the Huguenots to Catherine's
+side on the eve of her voyage to renew the Catholic league with Philip,
+and it brought the Archduke Charles once more forward as a suitor for
+Elizabeth's hand. When it had thus served its purpose, the idea of the
+mature English queen marrying the boy Charles IX. was dropped.
+
+The Austrian's new advances were looked upon somewhat askance by Spain,
+until his attitude towards religion was assured, and, to have a second
+string, the Spanish ambassador, Guzman, affected to favour Leicester's
+suit. Cecil and the conservative nobles were sincere now in their
+advocacy of the archduke, and between the two parties Elizabeth steered
+coquettishly and diplomatically, modestly urging the archduke's coming,
+and yet flirting desperately with Leicester. The breach between the
+English nobles was profound, as all but Leicester wished the question of
+the queen's marriage and succession to be settled; and Leicester's
+chances were stronger than ever when it became clear, late in 1565, that
+the archduke would not come to England without a firm pledge. The French
+played off Leicester, too, against the archduke; sometimes even again
+suggesting their own king when Leicester's star waxed pale.
+
+Later, in 1566, the Lords and Commons urged the queen to marry, even
+Leicester joining in the remonstrance. But Elizabeth wished to play the
+game in her own way, and soundly scolded them. She did not mean to marry
+the archduke, or perhaps anyone, but whilst she kept him dangling, she
+knew she need not fear the Catholic combination. Soon all danger from
+that quarter disappeared for a time. Philip was in death struggle with
+his Protestant subjects in Holland; civil war was again raging in
+France, and Mary Stuart was a disgraced prisoner in the hands of her
+enemies. In the nine years that Elizabeth had carried on the marriage
+comedy she had kept the balance whilst England was growing stronger.
+Now, in 1568, she could afford to rest from her labours until danger
+from abroad again loomed.
+
+
+_III.--Catholics and Heretics_
+
+
+The peace of St. Germain in 1570 ended the long religious war in France,
+and the Guises and Catholics there, free from the strife, planned the
+rescue of the imprisoned Mary Stuart by force, and her marriage with the
+Duke of Anjou, the heir and brother of Charles IX. This was a danger
+both to Elizabeth and to the Huguenots, and was at once counteracted by
+their bringing forward the suggestion that the Queen of England might
+marry Anjou. He was, it is true, a fanatical Catholic, but the Huguenots
+thought that with England as a bait, and the powerful mind of Elizabeth
+to guide him, the youth might change his views. Leicester offered his
+help--for he knew the match was unlikely--and soon Catherine de Medici's
+agents were busy by Elizabeth's side. Elizabeth, as usual, was coy and
+maidenly. She was too old, she said, the thought of marriage was
+shocking to her; but, withal, the courtship went on actively. Anjou's
+charms and rumoured gallantries were the staple gossip at her court, and
+Elizabeth never tired of hearing praises of her young suitor.
+
+But soon the Guises and the Catholic League took fright, and urged Anjou
+not to be drawn into a match with a heretic too old for him. Better,
+said they, win England by force and marry Mary. To England the marriage,
+or a similar one, seemed really necessary. The Catholics at home and
+abroad were busily plotting against Elizabeth. Philip and Alba were
+ready to connive at her murder; the Protestants in Holland and France
+were powerless, and this match with Anjou seemed the only way to meet
+the danger. Anjou, under Catholic influence, was scornful, whilst
+Catherine, anxious for the greatness of her favourite son, was in
+despair at his "assottedness."
+
+Lord Buckhurst went, as ambassador to Paris, to forward the match in
+March 1571; but it soon became evident that Elizabeth could never
+concede the terms demanded by the French on religion. For many months
+the Huguenots, and Walsingham, as Elizabeth's ambassador, tried to
+reconcile the differences; and Catherine's agents in England laboured
+hard in the same cause. Elizabeth herself was ambiguous, though loving,
+and sometimes even Anjou was almost persuaded by his mother to accept
+the English crown matrimonial at the price demanded. For Elizabeth it
+was necessary to keep up the pretence at all costs, for the Spaniards
+were plotting her murder; and to split the Catholic party whilst
+secretly aiding the rebel Netherlanders seemed her only chance of
+safety. On one occasion, when Spain and France drew together, Elizabeth
+professed to be willing to marry Anjou on his own terms; but the prince
+grew ever more opposed to the match, and in January 1572, Catherine
+suddenly suggested that, as Anjou was so bigoted on religion, her
+youngest son, Alençon, might marry Elizabeth on any conditions she
+liked.
+
+The lad was but seventeen--a swarthy, pock-marked youth--and Elizabeth
+was inclined at first to resent the way in which Anjou had flouted her.
+She was thirty-nine, and her vanity was wounded; but yet the friendship
+or neutrality of France was vital to her. "How tall is he?" she asked
+Cecil. "About as tall as I am," replied the elderly minister. "As tall
+as your grandson, you mean!" snapped the queen. But Walsingham, Smith,
+and the French envoys plied her busily with descriptions of Alençon's
+manly charms, and a treaty between France and England was settled by
+which the Huguenots for a time became paramount in France conjointly
+with the marriage of the Huguenot Henry of Navarre with Margaret, the
+king's sister. Feasts and cordiality were the rules on both sides of the
+Channel now, and the Huguenot leaders urged the Alençon match with
+Elizabeth with all their force. In reply to all these offers, Elizabeth
+replied that, though the discrepancy of age was a great drawback, yet
+the pock-marks on the suitor's face were a greater objection still; yet
+if he would let her see him, without a pledge, she might like him. She
+would never, she said, marry a man she had not seen.
+
+But already Charles IX. and his mother were chafing under the Huguenot
+yoke and cooling towards England. They were determined not to be drawn
+by their new treaty with England into war with Spain; so, under the
+pretence of keeping up the negotiations for the Alençon match, they sent
+the youth La Mole to England in the autumn of 1572, really for the
+purpose of dissociating France from the Huguenot-English aid to the
+Protestant Netherlanders. La Mole was a gallant young lover, with whom
+Elizabeth was charmed, and when he played the vicarious wooer for
+Alençon, she could not make enough of him. But whilst he was
+philandering with her at Kenilworth, and she was losing patience at his
+political mission, there fell like a thunderbolt the awful news of the
+massacre of St. Bartholomew at Navarre's fatal wedding. At once the
+scene changed. La Mole and the French envoy hurried away amidst curses
+upon all false Frenchmen. Elizabeth, in a panic, smiled upon Spaniards
+again, and, for a time, the project of a French consort for her slept.
+
+But not for long. Alençon had no part in the massacre, and was known to
+favour Huguenots. He wrote a fervent love-letter to Elizabeth, and
+proposed to escape to England; whilst his agent Maisonfleur joined with
+Mauvissière, the official French ambassador, in wooing Elizabeth anew
+for Alençon and for France. Gradually the parties drew together again,
+for Catherine was already alarmed at the effect of St. Bartholomew. All
+the Protestant world was arming, the English ports were full of
+privateers to attack Catholic shipping, and aid in plenty was being sent
+from England to the Huguenots of Rochelle and the rebel Dutchmen.
+
+France could therefore not afford to quarrel with England, but Anjou and
+Charles IX. took care to hold Alençon tight, that he might not escape
+and strengthen the Protestant cause in union with Elizabeth, whilst they
+still kept up the appearance of marriage negotiations. Elizabeth was
+ever on the alert to serve her cause, and in March 1573, said she would
+go no further in the Alençon match unless the Protestants in Rochelle
+were allowed fair terms and the siege raised. Anjou, already tired of
+the war, consented, and soon afterwards Catherine asked whether
+Elizabeth would now proceed with the Alençon plan. The lad had grown
+much, she said, and his budding beard covered some of his facial
+imperfections. It was settled that the prince should make a flying visit
+to Dover, but soon Catherine began to make fresh conditions. It would be
+such a shame to them, she said, if her son went and returned unmarried.
+
+
+_IV.--The Lovelorn Alençon_
+
+
+In the meanwhile, Alençon's love-letters to his mature flame grew
+warmer; but much as Elizabeth liked such attentions, she dreaded to go
+too far. Charles IX. was sinking fast, and the next heir was Anjou. With
+Alençon for heir-presumptive of France, the position would be changed;
+and once more the queen began to get doubtful about those unfortunate
+pock-marks on her lover's face. Once Alençon planned with Henry of
+Navarre to escape from his mother's custody and make a dash for England
+on his own account, but Catherine held him firmly.
+
+Both the Huguenots and the French king wished for the marriage, but each
+party frustrated the other because their objects were different. When
+the French ambassador, therefore, asked Elizabeth when Alençon might
+come to see her, she refused to name a time, because she knew secretly
+that a great Huguenot movement in France was pending, and she wished
+Alençon to be there as figurehead at the time--the very thing that the
+official French Government wished to avoid. The projected movement was
+betrayed and suppressed, and Alençon's life was for a time in danger;
+but when Henry III. (Anjou) was seated on the throne, Alençon kept
+openly a rival court to that of his brother, and the Huguenots around
+the prince were at deadly feud with the minions of the king.
+
+At last the crisis came. Alençon escaped from Paris in disguise, pursued
+by his mother, and, joining the Huguenots in arms, defied the king and
+the Guises. France was not big enough to hold both brothers in peace,
+and Catherine told Alençon that as Elizabeth seemed so ready to help him
+and his Huguenots, he ought to reopen the marriage negotiations. But
+Alençon was useless to England as a counterbalance to Spain unless
+France herself could be pledged as well, and Elizabeth considered it
+safest for the time, since that could not be done, to feign a new
+cordiality with Philip.
+
+The Catholic party in France was again paramount, and by bribery and
+Catherine's diplomacy, Alençon and his friends were bought over. For the
+next three years the young prince held aloof from affairs, but in 1578
+the hollow truce ended; he was suspected and placed under arrest, all
+his friends being cast into the Bastille. In February, 1578, Alençon
+broke his prison and fled, and all France was plunged into turmoil.
+Elizabeth was profoundly moved. The keynote of English policy was the
+exclusion of France from Flanders, and if Alençon was secretly supported
+in his action by his brother, then Elizabeth must oppose to the death
+any interference in Flanders.
+
+And so began the long and clever juggle by which she used Alençon's
+ambition to wed her as a means to compass her ends without marrying him.
+Huguenots flocked to Alençon's standard, whilst he sent by every post
+love-lorn epistles to Elizabeth, praying her to aid him to free Flanders
+from the bloodthirsty Spaniards. On July 7, 1578, Alençon entered
+Flanders with his army, and Elizabeth, still full of distrust of
+Frenchmen, feigned to Spaniards her deep disapproval, whilst she took
+care that many English and Germans in her pay slipped into Flanders at
+the same time, to prevent any French national domination. Presently,
+persuaded that Alençon had no secret pact with his brother, Elizabeth
+took Alençon and the Flemish revolt into her own hands, and effusively
+welcomed Alençon's envoys who came to promote his love suit.
+
+He chose for his emissary one Jehan Simier, an experienced gallant, who
+soon wooed Elizabeth to such good purpose that she fell violently in
+love with the messenger, as well as with his absent master. Protestant
+England took fright at the pending marriage of the queen with a papist
+of half her age. Simier, whom she called her "monkey," had bewitched
+her, said the courtiers, and remonstrances from all sides came to the
+queen.
+
+
+_V.--The Battle of Wits_
+
+
+Alençon's demands were high, but Elizabeth seems really for once to have
+lost her head, and but for the strong opposition of her Council, might
+have been drawn into the marriage. Simier, seeing the deadlock, decided
+to bring Alençon over at all risks. Leicester, deadly jealous, tried to
+assassinate Simier, who revenged himself by divulging to the queen
+Leicester's secret marriage. Elizabeth was beside herself with rage, and
+more in love than ever with Alençon and his envoy. At length, in August
+1579, the young French prince, in disguise, suddenly appeared at
+Greenwich. The queen's vanity was flattered, and though the visit was
+supposed to be secret, she hardly left her young lover, whilst he, to
+judge by his letters, was as badly smitten as she. But though she
+promised him marriage, he had to return with little else, and as soon as
+he had gone she found many good reasons for delay and hesitation.
+
+In October 1580, a new Catholic combination forced Elizabeth's hands,
+and she promised greater help to Alençon's project, whilst trying to
+draw France also into open war with Spain. The combat of wits was keen
+and cynical, each party trying to pledge the other and to keep free
+himself. A great French embassy came to England in April 1581, to
+negotiate an alliance and the queen's marriage with Alençon, who had now
+re-entered Flanders and was immersed in the struggle against the
+Spaniards. The discussions in England were becoming interminable, for
+the French ambassadors asked hard terms, when Alençon, in June 1581,
+losing patience, suddenly rushed over to England to plead his own cause
+independently of his brother's envoys, whom he distrusted with good
+reason. This suited Elizabeth, for it made Alençon more dependent upon
+her, and again she sent her lover back full of great promises to help
+him.
+
+In August Alençon again entered Flanders, depending entirely upon
+Elizabeth for support, and thenceforward he looked alone to his marriage
+with her for his salvation. She was sparing, and the poor prince retired
+to France in September. In desperation he came to England again to press
+for money and marriage in November 1581; and for months the love-making
+was fast and furious. Frantic prayers, sighs, and tears on his part were
+answered by kisses and promises on hers, but she gave as little money as
+would serve to get rid of him. On February 1, 1582, Alençon sailed for
+Holland to Elizabeth's professed grief and real joy; and thenceforward
+the prince, first in Flanders as sovereign, and afterwards in France a
+fugitive, supplicated and threatened his betrothed for money, and ever
+more money. But Elizabeth had now taken the Netherlands revolt into her
+own hands, and thenceforward her French lover was useless to her there.
+So, though she still kept up the pretence of her willingness to marry
+him on impossible conditions, and drove the poor creature to love-lorn
+despair, Alençon had served his matrimonial purpose before he died, in
+1584, and Elizabeth's courtships with a political object came to an end.
+She and England were strong enough now to face her possible foes without
+fear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots
+
+
+     Mary Queen of Scots was one of the most remarkable women who
+     ever presided over the destinies of a nation. She was born at
+     Linlithgow on December 8, 1542, a few days before the death of
+     her father, James V., thus becoming a queen before she was a
+     week old. Her complex personality and varied accomplishments
+     have inspired many and various historians, but it has remained
+     for Major Martin Hume to demonstrate the historical fatality
+     of Mary's love affairs. In "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of
+     Scots," published in 1903, Major Hume gives a convincing and
+     logical reason for Mary's political failure, inasmuch as it
+     did not spring from her goodness or badness as a woman, but
+     from a certain weakness of character. This epitome has been
+     prepared by Major Hume himself.
+
+
+_I.--Betrothed in her Cradle_
+
+
+When in the great hall at Worms, on that ever-memorable April day in
+1521, before the panic-stricken princes, Luther insolently flung at the
+emperor his defiance of the mediaeval church, the crash, though all
+unheard by the ears of men, shook to their base the crumbling
+foundations upon which, for hundreds of years, the institutions of
+Europe had rested. The sixteenth century thenceforward was a period of
+disintegration and reconstruction, in which fresh lines of cleavage
+between old political associates were opened, new affinities were
+formed, and the international balance re-adjusted.
+
+In the long struggle of the house of Aragon, and its successor, Charles
+V., with France for the domination of Italy, the only effectual
+guarantee against England's actively aiding its traditional ally, the
+ruler of Spain and Flanders, against its traditional enemy, France, was
+for the latter country to keep a tight hold of its alliance with
+Scotland, by means of which English force might be diverted at any time.
+The existence of the Scottish "back door" to England, with the ever
+probable enemy behind it, had long been a check upon English power, and
+a humiliation to English kings in their efforts to hold the balance
+between the Continental rivals. But with the spread of Lutheranism in
+Germany and Henry VIII.'s defiance of the Papacy, the Catholic powers,
+drawn together in the face of common danger, found a fresh bond of union
+in their orthodoxy which partially superseded old rivalries.
+
+In these circumstances the English policy, which had aimed at the
+control of Scottish foreign relations to the exclusion of French
+influence, became not only desirable as it always had been, but vitally
+necessary to preserve England's independence.
+
+Henry VIII.'s policy towards Scotland had been that of _divide et
+impera_, and a series of royal minorities and the greed and poverty of
+the semi-independent Scottish nobles had aided him. The rout of the
+Scots at Solway Moss, and the pathetic passing of the gallant James V.,
+leaving his new-born daughter, Mary, as queen (December 1542), seemed at
+length to place Scotland in England's power. The murder of Cardinal
+Beaton, the bribery of the Douglases, and the marriage of Lennox with
+Henry's sister were all subsequent moves in the same game. Mary was
+betrothed in her cradle to the heir of England, and France, whose sheet
+anchor for centuries had been the "auld alliance" with the Scots,
+appeared to be helpless against a coalition of England and the emperor.
+
+Thenceforward, England's main object was to keep a tight grip upon
+Scotland by religion or otherwise, while at first France, and
+subsequently the Catholic league, strove ceaselessly, with the help of
+Mary Stuart, to free Scotland from English influence. The marriage
+juggle of Elizabeth was largely inspired by her Scottish aims, and if
+the fortuitous adjustment of her qualities kept England Protestant, and
+France wavering for all those critical years, if she secured the
+inactivity of Spain, the resistance of Protestant Holland, and the
+freedom of navigation by her skilful statecraft, her rival Mary Stuart
+was a hardly less powerful factor in the final triumph of England by
+reason of certain defects in her character, the consequences of which
+are dealt with in this book.
+
+Mary possessed a finer and nobler nature than Elizabeth; she was a woman
+of higher courage and greater conviction, more generous, magnanimous,
+and confiding, and, apart from her incomparably greater beauty and
+fascination, she possessed mental endowments fully equal to those of the
+English queen. But, whilst caution and love of mastery in Elizabeth
+always saved her from her weakness at the critical moment, Mary Stuart
+possessed no such safeguards, and was periodically swept along
+helplessly by the irresistible rush of her amorous passion.
+
+French intrigue and money, aided by the queen-regent of Scotland, Mary
+of Guise, succeeded, after Henry's death and Somerset's invasion of
+Scotland, in gaining firm hold upon Scotland, and Mary, as the betrothed
+wife of the dauphin Francis, was carried to France in 1548, at the age
+of six, to be reared by her cunning kinsmen of Lorraine, and made, as it
+was hoped, a future powerful instrument to aid Catholic French objects
+against England, and the reformation in France and elsewhere. As she
+grew towards womanhood in the bravest and most amorous court in Europe,
+the queen-dauphiness became a paragon of beauty, charm, accomplishments,
+the theme of poets, the despair of lovers innumerable worshipping her
+from afar.
+
+The boy Francis de Valois, to whom she was affianced, was a poor,
+bilious, degenerate weakling, stunted in figure, uncomely of face. He
+was shy and timid, shunning active exercises, and though at the time of
+his marriage (1558) he was too young to have been actively engaged in
+the vices of the outwardly devout court, he appears to have been fully
+alive to the desirability of his bride. Mary was precocious and
+ambitious; she was surrounded by profligates, male and female, and,
+though she can hardly have been in love with her young husband, she
+appears to have been fully reconciled to the union.
+
+With unsurpassed magnificence the wedding of Mary and Francis took place
+in Paris, but it signified to the world much more than the wedding of a
+boy and girl. So far as men could see, it meant the triumph of the papal
+Guises in France, and a death-blow to Protestant hopes of ranging
+Scotland on the side of the reformation.
+
+
+_II.--Intrigue, Plot, and Intrigue_
+
+
+Francis died after sixteen months reign, and Mary Stuart and her Guisan
+uncles, hated jealously by the queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, and by
+the reforming Bourbons, fell, for a time, into the background. Mary can
+hardly have loved her puny boy husband, but she nursed him night and day
+in his long sickness and his death so affected her that "she would not
+receive any consolation, but, brooding over her disasters with constant
+tears and passionate, doleful lamentations, she universally inspired
+deep pity." She had, indeed, lost much besides her royal husband; and in
+a poem written by her afterwards, the waste of her youth in widowhood,
+the loss of her great position as Queen of France, and her powerlessness
+any longer to enforce her rule in Scotland by French power, are the main
+burden of her complaints against Providence, not pity for the husband
+she had lost.
+
+The Guises were loath to surrender power without a struggle, and as soon
+as Francis died they sought to sell their niece in marriage again. Their
+first idea was for her to marry her child-brother-in-law, the new King
+Charles IX., but Catharine de Medici at once stopped that plan, though
+the boy himself was anxious for it and Mary was not averse. That
+failing, Cardinal Lorraine turned to the heir of Spain, Don Carlos, as a
+husband for her. This would have been a death-blow to Elizabeth, and
+Philip feigned to listen to it; but all the strength and cunning of
+Huguenots and Protestants, joined by those of Catharine and Elizabeth,
+were brought into play against this threatening move, and Mary went to
+Scotland with a sinking, sad, and angry heart in 1561, fearing her
+uncouth subjects, foreign to her now, vexed with the Protestant party
+for standing in the way of her ambitious marriage, and determined to
+oppose Elizabeth to the utmost in her designs against the independence
+of Scotland.
+
+With these views, gay and winsome though she was, it was not long before
+Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman,
+John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and
+Secretary Lethington that a _modus vivendi_ might be found by persuading
+Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she herself
+died childless, on the undertaking of Mary that her marriage and policy
+should be dictated by England; but it was not Elizabeth's plan to pledge
+the future of England, and her nimble evasiveness drove the Scottish
+statesmen to despair.
+
+Brawls and bitterness grew in Mary's court around the Catholicism of the
+queen, and English money and intrigue were freely lavished to set
+Scotland by the ears. Half the nobles were disaffected, and Murray and
+Lethington, having failed to secure Scottish interests by moderate
+counsels and the conciliation of Elizabeth, were forced to take a strong
+course. Of foreign suitors Mary had many, some promoted by the
+Protestants, some by the Pope and the Guises, while the Catholics of
+England were secretly intriguing to force Elizabeth's hand by arranging
+Mary's marriage with young Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, eldest son of
+Margaret, Countess of Lennox, niece of Henry VIII., who lived at
+Elizabeth's court. Cecil's spies were everywhere, and the plot was soon
+known and stopped by Elizabeth, violently angry with her kinswoman for
+listening to such a scheme.
+
+But Murray and Lethington, in desperation, were aiming at higher game
+even than this. They were Protestant, they had tried their best to win
+Elizabeth's recognition; but they were Scotsmen first, and if their
+country was to be independent it must have a great ally behind it.
+France was out of the question while the Guises were in the shade and
+Catharine was queen-mother. So the ministers of Mary turned their eyes
+to the Protestant heir of the Catholic king. Elizabeth soon heard of
+this, too, and suddenly pretended to be in favour of the Darnley match
+for Mary, while she developed the most cordial friendship for Mary
+herself; for the Guises had again become paramount in France, and
+Elizabeth could not afford to flout all the Catholic interests at once.
+
+That danger soon passed, for the Huguenots flew to arms, and Guise was
+murdered, Mary losing thus her principal prop abroad. And Lethington now
+pushed vigorously what seemed to be Scotland's only chance of
+safety--the marriage of Mary with the semi-idiot heir of Spain.
+
+The English Catholics were drawn into the plot. "Only let Mary marry the
+heir of Spain, and we will salute her as our leader," said they. But
+Elizabeth soon gained wind of it, as usual, and was ready with her
+antidote--a most extraordinary one--the proposal that Mary should wed
+her own lover, Lord Robert Dudley, with the assurance of the English
+succession after Elizabeth's death without issue. It was a mere feint,
+of course, but it divided Scotland, and unsettled Mary herself.
+
+Meanwhile, Philip, with his leaden methods, was pondering and seeking
+fresh pledges and guarantees from the English Catholics. Before his
+temporising answer came Elizabeth had frightened Mary's advisers into
+doubt, while she was holding the English Catholics in check by dangling
+Darnley and Dudley before Mary's eyes, and swearing deadly vengeance if
+she married the Spaniard.
+
+Elizabeth's first aim was to embroil Mary's prospects by discrediting
+her in the eyes of foreign powers. To this end was directed the offer
+alternately of Dudley and Darnley as a husband, and Elizabeth's pretence
+of shocked reprobation of Mary in connection with Chastelard's escapade.
+It must be confessed that Mary's imprudence aided Elizabeth's object,
+and the sour bigotry of Knox, which looked upon all gaiety as a sin,
+served the same purpose. All this drove the unhappy queen more and more
+into the arms of the Catholic party as her only means of defence.
+
+
+_III.--Prudence Overcome by Passion_
+
+
+The intrigue to wed Mary to the Spanish prince was met by Elizabeth
+cordially taking up Lady Lennox, and her son, Darnley, who by many was
+now regarded as the intended heir of England, and was held out to Mary
+as an ideal husband for her. So long as she had hopes of the Spanish
+prince she gave but evasive answers; but late in 1564 the cunning
+diplomacy of Catharine and the falseness of Cardinal Lorraine had
+diverted that danger; and Philip gave Mary to understand that the match
+with his son was impossible, Mary's great hope had been founded upon
+this marriage. Unless she could have a foreign Catholic husband strong
+enough to defy Elizabeth she knew that she must make terms with
+Elizabeth's enemies, the English Catholics, and thus bring pressure to
+bear upon her by internal dissensions.
+
+It was a dangerous game to play, for it meant conspiracy; and so long as
+the Lennoxes and their effeminate, lanky son were basking in Elizabeth's
+favour, the English queen held her trump card. But Lady Lennox was
+intriguing and ambitious, the head of English Catholic disaffection, and
+could only be held to Elizabeth's side by delusive hopes of the English
+succession for her son. Lennox himself, with some misgiving, was allowed
+to go to Scotland to claim his forfeited estates, and there, to
+Elizabeth's anger, was received with marked respect, which made the
+English queen hold Darnley and his mother more firmly than ever, and
+again push forward Dudley as a suitor for Mary's hand. Anxious to get
+Darnley to Scotland, not necessarily to marry him, but as a useful
+instrument, Mary feigned willingness to accept Dudley; and, in face of
+this, Elizabeth was induced to allow young Darnley to go to Scotland for
+a short time, ostensibly on business of the family estates.
+
+In February 1565, Darnley, aged nineteen, crossed the border, to the
+dismay of the English agents in Scotland. It was soon after Mary had
+received news that the Spanish match was at an end, and she was ready
+for a new plan to circumvent Elizabeth. Darnley as a husband would bring
+to her the support of English Catholics, and a new claim to the English
+crown. So when her eyes first lit upon the fair stripling at Wemyss
+Castle, she looked upon him with favour as "the properest tall man she
+ever saw." He was on his best behaviour, and danced delightfully with
+the queen. Up to this time Mary had played her game with self-command
+and policy, but now for the first time her heart ran away with her, and
+she took a false step.
+
+To have married Darnley as part of a transaction with Elizabeth, and
+with the approval of her own Protestant subjects, would have been a
+master-stroke. But she fell in love with the "long lad," and could not
+wait for negotiation; so she at once sent off to pray King Philip to
+support her with money and men against England and the Protestants if
+she married Darnley and became the tool of Spain. Philip, nothing loth,
+consented, and welcomed the coming union as a Catholic alliance and a
+powerful weapon against Elizabeth. Mary thus made herself the head of a
+vast Catholic conspiracy looking to Spain for support, and Elizabeth was
+furious both with Mary and Darnley for having apparently beaten her at
+her own cunning game.
+
+How Elizabeth sought a diversion, at first by new matrimonial schemes of
+her own, has been told elsewhere, but her more effectual weapon was to
+arouse the fears of Scottish Protestants, and breed dissension in Mary's
+realm. "The young fool," Darnley, insolent and proud of his new
+greatness, offended all the nobles, whilst Mary grew daily more
+infatuated with him. They were married in July 1565, and the great
+conspiracy against Elizabeth and Protestantism was complete. Already the
+Scottish Protestant lords were in a panic, and after an abortive rising,
+they fled before Mary's bold attack, taking refuge in England.
+
+The queen herself led her forces, armed and mounted, with her stripling
+husband by her side; but she was followed close by the shaggy, stern,
+martial figure of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, just returned from
+exile to serve her; and upon him she looked with kindling eyes as a
+stouter man than the fribble she had wed. Mary had now apparently
+triumphed by her Darnley marriage, but the avalanche was gathering to
+crush her. She looked mainly to Spain and the Pope for help, and had all
+Protestantism against her, led by Elizabeth, whose hate and fury knew no
+bounds. It was a duel now of life or death between two systems and two
+women, one with a heart and the other without; and, as usual, the
+heartless won.
+
+English money and skill honeycombed Scottish loyalty. Darnley, vicious,
+vain, and passionate, was an easy prey to intrigue. The tools of England
+whispered in his ear that his wife was too intimate with the Italian
+secretary Rizzio, who had conducted the correspondence with the Catholic
+powers. Darnley, who had earned his wife's contempt already, was beside
+himself with jealousy, and himself led the Protestant conspirators and
+friends of England, who murdered Rizzio in the queen's presence at
+Holyrood (March 1566). From that hour Darnley's doom was sealed.
+
+He had thought to be king indeed now, but Mary outwitted him; for she
+recalled her exiled lords, welcomed her brother Murray, and threw
+herself into the arms of Darnley's Protestant foes, the very men who had
+risen in arms against the marriage. As she fled by night with Darnley
+after Rizzio's murder, to betray him, she swore over Rizzio's new-made
+grave that a "fatter one" than he should lie there ere long. Whether she
+knew of the plot of his foes to murder her husband is not proved, but
+she almost certainly did so, and welcomed the deed when it was done. She
+made no pretence of love for him after Rizzio's death, and her husband
+repaid her coldness by sulky loutishness and bursts of drunken violence.
+Mary's conduct toward Bothwell, too, began to arouse scandal. By
+November 1566, matters had reached a crisis, and Mary, at Kelso, said
+that unless she was freed from Darnley she would put an end to herself.
+She spoke not to deaf ears. Morton, and the rest of Rizzio's slayers and
+bitter enemies, were pardoned, and the deadly bond was signed.
+
+
+_IV.--Dire Infatuation_
+
+
+On February 9, 1567, as the doomed consort lay sick and sorry outside
+Edinburgh at the lone house of Kirk o' Field, he was, done to death by
+Bothwell and the foes of the Lennoxes; and Mary Stuart's first true love
+affair was ended in tragedy. But already the second was in full blast.
+Bothwell had recently married; he was disliked by the Scottish nobles,
+and the queen's constant association with him had already brought
+discredit upon her. There had been a good political excuse for her union
+with Darnley, but Bothwell could bring no support to her cause; for his
+creed was doubtful, and he had no friends. Nothing, indeed, but the
+infatuation of an amorous woman for a brutally strong man could have so
+blinded her to her own great aims as to make her take Bothwell, the
+prime mover of Darnley's murder, for her husband.
+
+As soon as the crime was known, all fingers were pointed to Bothwell and
+the queen as the murderers, and Protestants everywhere hastened to cast
+obloquy upon Mary for it. But for the nobles' jealousy of Bothwell, and
+the religious animus, probably Darnley's death would soon have been
+forgotten or condoned; but as it was, Scotland blazed out in
+denunciation of it, and though Bothwell was put upon a mock trial and
+acquitted, the hate against him grew, especially when he arranged to
+divorce his wife in April 1567, and, ostensibly by force, but clearly by
+Mary's connivance, abducted the queen and bore her off to his castle of
+Dunbar.
+
+On her return to Edinburgh a few weeks later Mary publicly married
+Bothwell--she swore afterwards against her will, but, in any case, to
+the anger and disgust of her subjects. She found her new husband an
+arrogant tyrant rather than her slave, and he watched her closely. The
+dire infatuation of the lovelorn woman soon wore off, and again she
+sighed to be free; but it was too late, for the Catholic powers stood
+aloof from her now that she had married a divorced man, and all her
+nobles had abandoned her. So Mary clung to Bothwell still, for he was
+strong, and all Scotland cried shame upon her.
+
+In June, Mary and her husband, fearing attack or treachery, fled from
+Edinburgh Castle, which at once opened its gates to Morton and the rebel
+lords. A parley was sent to Mary offering submission if she would leave
+Bothwell to his fate. She indignantly refused, for she feared the lords
+and hated Morton. Bothwell was strong, she thought, and he was the
+father of her unborn child; be might protect her. So by Bothwell's side
+she rode out at the head of the border clansmen, and met the rebel army
+at Carberry Hill, hard by Edinburgh.
+
+It was agreed that the dispute should be decided by the single combat
+between Bothwell and Lindsay, but before the duel began Mary's bordermen
+became disordered, and then she knew that all was lost. Kirkaldy of
+Grange came from her opponents to parley with her and offer safety for
+her, but not for Bothwell. Whilst they were speaking, Bothwell attempted
+to murder Grange; and when Mary forbade such treachery, he lost his
+nerve and began to whimper. In a moment the scales fell from Mary's
+eyes. This man was but a lath painted like steel. His strength was but a
+lie, and he was unworthy of her. She turned from him in contempt, and
+surrendered to the lords; while Bothwell fled, and unhappy Mary saw him
+no more.
+
+
+_V.--Langside and After_
+
+
+Cursed by crowds, who reviled her as a murderess and adulteress, Mary
+was led, a captive, to her capital. By night, to save her from the fury
+of the mob, she was smuggled out of Edinburgh and lodged, a prisoner, in
+the island fortress of Lochleven. During her long incarceration there
+the story of her wrongs and sufferings stirred the Catholics at home and
+abroad in her favour, and her friends and foes were again sharply
+divided according to their religious creeds. The rulers of Scotland,
+too, headed by her brother Murray, were far from easy; for the Catholics
+were strong, and foreign crowned heads looked black at those who kept a
+sovereign in durance. So attempts were made to conciliate her by
+proposing marriage with some harmless Scottish noble, conjoined with her
+abdication. But her heart was high still, and she would bate no jot of
+her queenship; rather would she exercise her glamour upon her gaolers
+and escape to power and sovereignty again. Her fascination was
+irresistible, and Murray's half-brother, young George Douglas, a mere
+lad, fell a victim to her smiles. Once more Mary fell in love, and
+proposed to marry the youth who had endeavoured to aid her escape.
+
+Murray was shocked, and had his brother expelled the castle; but in
+April 1568 the faithful George planned her evasion of the guard and
+joyfully welcomed her on the shore of the lake. To her standard flocked
+the Catholic lords, and, safe at Hamilton, Mary, again a queen, swore
+vengeance upon her foes. On her way with her army to Dumbarton she met
+Murray's force at Langside, near Glasgow. She had been strong at
+Carberry Hill with Bothwell at her side. Here she was weak, for no man
+of weight or character was with her, and as her men wavered she turned
+rein and fled.
+
+For sixty miles on bad roads she struggled on, almost without sleep, and
+living on beggar's fare. With no adviser or woman near her, in her panic
+and despair she took the fatal resolve and crossed the Solway into
+Elizabeth's realm, trusting to the magnanimity of the woman whom she had
+tried to ruin and supplant. Again her heart had deceived her. Elizabeth
+had no pity for a vanquished foe, and for the rest of her miserable
+life, well nigh a score of years, Mary Stuart was a prisoner. But in all
+those years she never ceased to plot and plan for the overthrow of
+Elizabeth and her own elevation to the Catholic throne of all Britain.
+
+Amidst her many weapons, that of marriage and her personal fascination
+were not forgotten. Twice, at least, she tried to make her love affairs
+serve her political ambition. Poor, feckless Norfolk was drawn by his
+vanity and ambition into her net. Love epistles, breathing eternal
+devotion, passed between them, but murder was behind it all--the murder
+of Elizabeth, and the subjection of England to Spain to work Mary's
+vengeance on her foes, and Norfolk lost his head deservedly.
+
+Again she dreamed of marrying the Christian champion, Don Juan of
+Austria, and conquering and ruling over a Catholic England. But this
+plot, too, was discovered, and Don Juan, like all the rest of Mary's
+lovers, died miserably. Mary thenceforward was the centre of Spain's
+great conspiracy against England's queen, but she sought the end no more
+by love; for that had failed her every time she tried. She and her cause
+were beaten because her heart of fire was pitted against a heart of ice,
+and she lost all because she loved too much.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+Life of Christopher Columbus
+
+
+     Washington Irving, American historian and essayist, was born
+     on April 3, 1783, in New York, of a family which came
+     originally from Scotland. He knew Europe well, and was equally
+     at home in London, Paris, and Madrid; he held the offices, in
+     1829, of Secretary to the American Embassy in London, and, in
+     1842, of American Minister in Spain. He was deeply interested
+     in Spanish history, and besides the "Life and Voyages of
+     Christopher Columbus," he wrote "The Voyages of the Companions
+     of Columbus," "The Conquest of Granada," "The Alhambra," and
+     "Legends of the Conquest of Spain." He was an industrious man
+     of letters, having an excellent style, wide knowledge, and
+     pleasant humour. His chief work was the "Life of George
+     Washington," of which we give an epitome elsewhere. Other
+     writings include "A History of New York, by Diedrich
+     Knickerbocker," the celebrated "Sketch Book," "Bracebridge
+     Hall," "Tales of a Traveller," and a "Life of Goldsmith."
+     Irving did not marry, and died on November 28, 1859, in his
+     home at Sunnyside on the Hudson River, and is buried at
+     Tarrytown. The "Life of Columbus" was published in 1828 and is
+     now obtainable in a number of popular editions.
+
+
+_The Years of Waiting_
+
+
+Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa about 1435, of poor but reputable
+parents. He soon evinced a passion for geographical knowledge, and an
+irresistible inclination for the sea. We have but shadowy traces of his
+life till he took up his abode in Lisbon about 1470. His contemporaries
+describe him as tall and muscular; he was moderate and simple in diet
+and apparel, eloquent, engaging, and affable. At Lisbon he married a
+lady of rank, Doña Felipa. He supported his family by making maps and
+charts.
+
+Portugal was prosecuting modern discovery with great enthusiasm, seeking
+a route to India by the coast of Africa; Columbus's genius conceived the
+bold idea of seeking India across the Atlantic. He set it down that the
+earth was a terraqueous globe, which might be travelled round. The
+circumference he divided into twenty-four hours. Of these he imagined
+that fifteen hours had been known to the ancients; the Portguese had
+advanced the western frontier one hour more by the discovery of the
+Azores and the Cape de Verde Islands; still, about eight hours remained
+to be explored. This space he imagined to be occupied in great measure
+by the eastern regions of Asia. A navigator, therefore, pursuing a
+direct course from east to west, must arrive at Asia or discover
+intervening land.
+
+The work of Marco Polo is the key to many of the ideas of Columbus. The
+territories of the Great Khan were the object of his search in all his
+voyages. Much of the success of his enterprise rested on two happy
+errors; the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed
+smallness of the earth. Without these errors he would hardly have
+ventured into the immeasurable waste of waters of the Atlantic.
+
+A deep religious sentiment mingled with his thoughts; he looked upon
+himself as chosen from among men, and he read of his discovery as
+foretold in Holy Writ. Navigation was still too imperfect for such an
+undertaking; mariners rarely ventured far out of sight of land. But
+knowledge was advancing, and the astrolabe, which has been modified into
+the modern quadrant, was being applied to navigation. This was the one
+thing wanting to free the mariner from his long bondage to the land.
+
+Columbus now laid his great project before the King of Portugal, but
+without success. Greatly disappointed, he sailed to Spain, hoping to
+receive the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was many months
+before he could even obtain a hearing; his means were exhausted, and he
+had to contend against ridicule and scorn, but the royal audience was at
+length obtained. Ferdinand assembled learned astronomers and
+cosmographers to hold a conference with Columbus. They assailed him with
+citations from the Bible. One objection advanced was, that should a ship
+ever succeed in reaching India, she could never come back, for the
+rotundity of the globe would present a mountain, up which it would be
+impossible to sail. Finally, after five years, the junta condemned the
+scheme as vain and impossible.
+
+Columbus was on the point of leaving Spain, when the real grandeur of
+the subject broke at last on Isabella's mind, and she resolved to
+undertake the enterprise. Articles of agreement were drawn up and signed
+by Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus and his heirs were to have the
+office of High Admiral in all the seas, lands, and continents he might
+discover, and he was to be viceroy over the said lands and continents.
+He was to have one-tenth of all profits, and contribute an eighth of the
+expense of expeditions. Columbus proposed that the profits from his
+discoveries should be consecrated to a crusade.
+
+
+_The First Voyage_
+
+(August, 1492--March, 1493)
+
+
+Columbus set out joyfully for Palos, where the expedition was to be
+fitted out. He had spent eighteen years in hopeless solicitation, amidst
+poverty, neglect, and ridicule. When the nature of the expedition was
+heard, the boldest seamen shrank from such a chimerical cruise, but at
+last every difficulty was vanquished, and the vessels were ready for
+sea. Two of them were light, half-decked caravels; the Santa Maria, on
+which Columbus hoisted his flag, was completely decked. The whole number
+of persons was one hundred and twenty.
+
+Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492, steering for the Canary Islands.
+From there they were wafted gently over a tranquil sea by the trade
+wind, and for many days did not change a sail. The poor mariners
+gradually became uneasy at the length of the voyage. The sight of small
+birds, too feeble to fly far, cheered their hearts for a time, but again
+their impatience rose to absolute mutiny. Then new hopes diverted them.
+There was an appearance of land, and the ships altered their course and
+stood all night to the south-west, but the morning light put an end to
+their hopes; the fancied land proved to be an evening cloud.
+
+Again the seamen broke forth into loud clamours, and insisted on
+abandoning the voyage. Fortunately, the following day a branch with
+berries on it floated by; they picked up also a small board and a carved
+staff, and all murmuring was now at an end. Not an eye was closed that
+night. Columbus took his station on the top of the cabin. Suddenly,
+about ten o'clock, he beheld a light. At two in the morning the land was
+clearly seen, and they took in sail, waiting for the dawn. The great
+mystery of the ocean was revealed.
+
+When the day dawned, Columbus landed, threw himself upon his knees,
+kissed the earth, and returned thanks to God. Rising, he drew his sword,
+displayed the royal standard, and took possession in the names of the
+Castillian sovereigns, naming the island San Salvador. It is one of the
+Bahama Islands, and still retains that name, though also called Cat
+Island.
+
+The natives thought that the ships had descended from above on their
+ample wings, and that these marvellous beings were inhabitants of the
+skies. They appeared to be simple and artless people, and of gentle and
+friendly dispositions. As Columbus supposed that the island was at the
+extremity of India, he called them Indians. He understood them to say
+that a king of great wealth resided in the south. This, he concluded,
+could be no other than Cipango, or Japan. He now beheld a number of
+beautiful islands, green, level, and fertile; and supposed them to be
+the archipelago described by Marco Polo. He was enchanted by the lovely
+scenery, the singing of the birds, and the brilliantly colored fish,
+though disappointed in his hopes of finding gold or spice; but the
+natives continued to point to the south as the region of wealth, and
+spoke of an Island called Cuba.
+
+He set sail in search of it, and was struck with its magnitude, the
+grandeur of its mountains, its fertile valleys, sweeping plains, stately
+forests, and noble rivers. He explored the coast to the east end of
+Cuba, supposing it the extreme point of Asia, and then descried the
+mountains of Hayti to the south-east. In coasting along this island,
+which he named Hispaniola, his ship was carried by a current on a
+sandbank and lost. The admiral and crew took refuge in one of the
+caravels. The natives, especially the cacique Guacanagari, offered him
+every assistance. The Spanish mariners regarded with a wistful eye the
+easy and idle existence of these Indians, who seemed to live in a golden
+world without toil, and they entreated permission to remain.
+
+This suggested to Columbus the idea of forming the germ of a future
+colony. The cacique was overjoyed, and the natives helped to build a
+fort, thus assisting to place on their necks the yoke of slavery. The
+fortress and harbour were named La Navidad.
+
+Columbus chose thirty-nine of those who volunteered to remain, charged
+them to be circumspect and friendly with the natives, and set sail for
+Spain. He encountered violent tempests, his small and crazy vessels were
+little fitted for the wild storms of the Atlantic; the oldest mariners
+had never known so tempestuous a winter, and their preservation seemed
+miraculous. They were forced to run into Tagus for shelter. The King of
+Portugal treated Columbus with the most honourable attentions. When the
+weather had moderated he put to sea again, and arrived safely at Palos
+on March 15, having taken not quite seven months and a half to
+accomplish this most momentous of all maritime enterprises.
+
+Columbus landed and walked in procession to the church to return thanks
+to God. Bells were rung, the shops shut, and all business suspended. The
+sovereigns were dazzled by this easy acquisition of a new empire. They
+addressed Columbus as admiral and viceroy, and urged him to repair
+immediately to court to concert plans for a second expedition. His
+journey to Barcelona was like the progress of a sovereign, and his
+entrance into that city has been compared to a Roman triumph. On his
+approach the sovereigns rose and ordered him to seat himself in their
+presence. When Columbus had given an account of his voyage, the king and
+queen sank on their knees, and a _Te Deum_ was chanted by the choir of
+the royal chapel. Such was the manner in which the brilliant court of
+Spain celebrated this sublime event.
+
+The whole civilised world was filled with wonder and delight, but no one
+had an idea of the real importance of the discovery. The opinion of
+Columbus was universally adopted that Cuba was the end of Asia; the
+islands were named the West Indies, and the vast region was called the
+New World.
+
+
+_The Second Voyage_
+
+(September, 1493--June, 1496)
+
+
+Extraordinary excitement prevailed about the second expedition, and many
+hidalgos of high rank pressed into it. They sailed from Cadiz in
+September 1493; all were full of animation, anticipating a triumphant
+return. When they reached La Navidad they found the fortress burnt. At
+length, from some natives they heard the story of the brawls of the
+colonists between themselves, and their surprise and destruction by
+unfriendly Indians. Columbus fixed upon a new site for his colony, which
+he named Isabella. Two small expeditions were sent inland to explore,
+and returned with enthusiastic accounts of the promise of the mountains,
+and Columbus sent to Spain a glowing report of the prospects of the
+colony.
+
+Soon, however, maladies made their appearance, provisions began to fail,
+and murmuring prevailed among the colonists. In truth, the fate of many
+of the young cavaliers, who had come out deluded by romantic dreams, was
+lamentable in the extreme. Columbus arranged for the government of the
+island, and set sail to explore the southern coast of Cuba, supposing it
+to be the extreme end of Asia. He had to contend with almost incredible
+perils, and was obliged to return. Had he continued for two or three
+days longer he would have passed round the extremity of Cuba; his
+illusion would have been dispelled, and a different course given to his
+subsequent discoveries.
+
+During his absence from Isabella the whole island had become a scene of
+violence and discord. Margarite, the general left in charge of the
+soldiers, and Friar Boyle, the apostolical vicar, formed a cabal of the
+discontented, took possession of certain ships, and set sail for Spain,
+to represent the disastrous state of the country, and to complain of the
+tyranny of Columbus. The soldiers indulged in all kinds of excesses, and
+the Indians were converted from gentle hosts into vindictive enemies.
+
+Meanwhile, a commissioner was sent out to inquire into the distress of
+the colony and the conduct of Columbus. He collected all complaints, and
+returned to Spain, Columbus sailing at the same time. Never did a more
+miserable crew return from a land of promise.
+
+The vessels anchored at Cadiz, and a feeble train of wretched men
+crawled forth, emaciated by diseases. Contrary to his anticipation,
+Columbus was received with distinguished favour. Thus encouraged, he
+proposed a further enterprise, and asked for eight ships, which were
+readily promised; but it was not until May 1498, that he again set sail.
+
+
+_The Third Voyage_
+
+(May, 1498--October, 1500)
+
+
+From the Cape de Verde Islands, Columbus steered to the south-west,
+until he arrived at the fifth degree of north latitude. The air was like
+a furnace, the mariners lost all strength and spirit, and Columbus was
+induced to alter his course to the northwest. After sailing some
+distance they reached a genial region with a cooling breeze and serene
+and clear sky. They descried three mountains above the horizon; as they
+drew nearer, they proved to be united at the base, and Columbus,
+therefore, named this island La Trinidad. He coasted round Trinidad, and
+landed on the mainland, but mistook it for an island. He was astonished
+at the body of fresh water flowing into the Gulf of Paria, and came to
+the conclusion that it must be the outpouring of a great unknown
+continent stretching to the south, far beyond the equator. His supplies
+were now almost exhausted, and he determined to return to Hispaniola.
+
+He found the island in a lamentable situation. A conspiracy had been
+formed against his viceroy, and the Indians, perceiving the dissensions
+among the Spaniards, threw off their allegiance. After long negotiations
+Columbus was forced to sign a humiliating capitulation with the rebels.
+Meanwhile, every vessel that returned from the New World came freighted
+with complaints against Columbus. The support of the colony was an
+incessant drain upon the mother country. Was this compatible, it was
+asked, with the pictures he had drawn of the wealth of the island?
+
+Isabella herself at last began to entertain doubts about Columbus, and
+the sovereigns decided to send out Don Francisco del Bobadilla to
+investigate his conduct. This officer appears to have been needy,
+passionate, and ambitious. He acted as if he had been sent out to
+degrade the admiral, not to inquire into his conduct. He threw Columbus
+into irons, and seized his arms, gold, jewels, books, and most secret
+manuscripts. Columbus conducted himself with characteristic magnanimity,
+and bore all indignities in silence. Bobadilla collected testimony
+sufficient, as he thought, to ensure the condemnation of Columbus, and
+sent him a prisoner to Spain.
+
+The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, in chains, produced almost as great a
+sensation as his first triumphant return. A general burst of indignation
+arose. The sovereigns sent orders that he should be instantly set at
+liberty, and promised that Columbus should be reinstated in all his
+dignities. But Ferdinand repented having invested such great powers in
+any subject, and especially in a foreigner. Plausible reasons were given
+for delaying his reappointment, and meanwhile Don Nicholas de Ovando was
+sent out to supersede Bobadilla.
+
+
+_The Fourth Voyage_
+
+(May, 1502--November, 1504)
+
+
+Columbus's thoughts were suddenly turned to a new enterprise. Vasco da
+Gama had recently reached India round the Cape of Good Hope, and immense
+wealth was poured by this route into Portugal. Columbus was persuaded
+that the currents of the Caribbean Sea must pass between Cuba and the
+land which he had discovered to the south, and that this route to India
+would be more easy and direct than that of Vasco da Gama. His plan was
+promptly adopted by the sovereigns, and he sailed in May 1502, on his
+last and most disastrous voyage. He steered to Hispaniola, but was not
+permitted to land, and then coasted along Honduras and down the Mosquito
+Coast to Costa Rica. Here he found gold among the natives, and heard
+rumours of Mexico. He continued beyond Cape Nombre de Dios in search for
+the imaginary strait, and then gave up all attempt to find it.
+
+Possibly he knew that another voyager, coasting from the eastward, had
+reached this point. He turned westward to search for the gold-mines of
+Veragua, and attempted unsuccessfully to found a settlement there. As
+his vessels were no longer capable of standing the sea, he ran them
+aground on Jamaica, fastened them together, and put the wreck in a state
+of defence. He dispatched canoes to Hispaniola, asking Ovando to send a
+ship to relieve him, but many months of suffering and difficulty elapsed
+before it came.
+
+Columbus returned to Spain in November 1504. Care and sorrow were
+destined to follow him; his finances were exhausted, and he was unable,
+from his infirmities, to go to court. The death of Isabella was a fatal
+blow to his fortunes. Many months were passed by him in painful and
+humiliating solicitation for the restitution of his high offices. At
+length he saw that further hope of redress from Ferdinand was vain. His
+illness increased, and he expired, with great resignation, on May 20,
+1506.
+
+Columbus was a man of great and inventive genius, and his ambition was
+noble and lofty. Instead of ravaging the newly-found countries, he
+sought to found regular and prosperous enterprises. He was naturally
+irritable and impetuous, but, though continually outraged in his
+dignity, and foiled in his plans by turbulent and worthless men, he
+restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, and brought himself to
+forbear and reason, and even to supplicate. His piety was genuine and
+fervent, and diffused a sober dignity over his whole deportment.
+
+He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discovery. What visions
+of glory would have broken upon his mind could he have known that he had
+indeed discovered a new continent! And how would his spirit have been
+consoled, amidst the afflictions of age and the injustice of an
+ungrateful king, could he have anticipated the empires which would arise
+in the world he had discovered; and the nations, towns, and languages,
+which were to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Life of George Washington
+
+
+     This great historical biography was Washington Irving's
+     principal work. It was founded chiefly upon George
+     Washington's correspondence, which is preserved in manuscript
+     in the archives of the United States Government. Irving worked
+     at it intermittently for many years; and it was published in
+     successive sections during the last years of his life, 1855 to
+     1859, while he was living in retirement with his nieces at
+     Sunnyside, on the Hudson River.
+
+
+The De Wessyngton family, of the county of Durham, in feudal times,
+produced many men of mark in the field and in the cloister, and at a
+later period the Washingtons were intrepid supporters of the unfortunate
+House of Stuart. Compromised by this allegiance, two brothers, John and
+Andrew, uncles of Sir Henry Washington, the gallant defender of
+Worcester, emigrated to Virginia in 1657, and purchased lands in
+Westmoreland County, by the River Potomac. John, who became military
+leader of the Virginians against the Indians, was great-grandfather of
+the illustrious George Washington.
+
+George, born February 22, 1732, in a homestead on Bridges Creek, was the
+eldest son of Mary Ball, second wife of Augustine Washington. Two
+half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, survived from the first marriage;
+and Mary had three other sons and two daughters. George received his
+first education in an "old field school-house," taught by the parish
+sexton; but the chief influences of his boyhood were the morality of his
+home and the military ardour of the colonists against the Spanish and
+the French. Lawrence, his eldest brother, had a captaincy in the
+colonial regiment which fought for England in the West Indies, in 1740,
+and the boy's whole mind was turned to war.
+
+His father died when he was eleven years old, and George was sent to
+live with his married brother Augustine. Here he attended school, was
+eager in the acquirement of knowledge, and became expert in all athletic
+exercises. He very nearly entered on a naval career, but at his mother's
+earnest entreaty renounced the project, and returning to school, studied
+land-surveying.
+
+Lawrence, his brother, having married into the Fairfax family, George
+came under the notice of Lord Fairfax, owner of immense tracts of
+country, who was so pleased with the lad's character and accomplishments
+that he entrusted him with the task of surveying his possessions. At the
+age of sixteen George Washington set out into the wilderness, and
+acquitted himself so well that he was appointed public surveyor. He thus
+gained an intimate knowledge, and of the ways of the Indians.
+
+The English and French governments were at this time making conflicting
+claims to the Ohio valley, and their agents were treating with the
+various Indian tribes. At length the French prepared to enforce their
+claim by arms, and Washington received, in 1751, a commission as
+adjutant-general over a military district of Virginia. In October, 1753,
+he was sent by Governor Dinwiddie on a mission to the French commander,
+from which he returned in the following January; and his conduct on this
+occasion, when he had to traverse great distances of unknown forest at
+midwinter, and to cope with the craft of white men and savages alike,
+marked him out as a youth fitted for the most important civil and
+military trusts.
+
+
+_Conflicts with the French_
+
+
+Washington was for the first time under fire in April, 1754, when he had
+been sent, as second in command of the colonial forces, to take charge
+of a fort on the Ohio. He fell in with a French party of spies, whom his
+small force, with Indian assistance, put to flight. His fort, named Fort
+Necessity, was defended by three hundred men, but was attacked in July
+by a greatly superior force of French and Indians, and Washington had to
+capitulate, marching out with the honours of war.
+
+When it was determined, the same autumn, by the Governor and the British
+Secretary of State, that the colonial troops should be reduced to
+independent companies, so that there should no longer be colonial
+officers above the rank of captain, Washington, in accordance with the
+dawning republicism of America, resigned his commission, and settling at
+Mount Vernon, prepared to devote himself to agriculture. But in 1755,
+General Braddock was sent out to undertake energetic operations against
+the French, and Washington accepted the General's offer of a position
+on his staff.
+
+It was now that the eminent Benjamin Franklin did such great service to
+the British arms by organizing transport, and listened with astonishment
+to Braddock's anticipations of easy victory. The young aide-de-camp also
+warned the English soldier in vain. On July 9 Braddock's force was
+utterly routed by the French and Indians, and the general himself was
+slain. This reverse did away with all belief, throughout the colonies,
+in the power of British arms, and prepared the way for the independence
+that was to follow.
+
+On August 14 George Washington was appointed to the supreme command of
+the Virginian forces, with his headquarters at Winchester, and was
+occupied in the defence of a wide frontier with an insufficient force,
+until the expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1758, when he planted the
+British flag on its smoking ruins, and put an end to the French
+domination of the Ohio.
+
+His marriage to Mrs. Martha Custis, a young and wealthy widow, was
+celebrated on January 6, 1759; he took his seat in the House of
+Burgesses at Williamsburg, and established himself at Mount Vernon to
+develop his estates. A large Virginia estate, in those days, was a
+little empire.
+
+
+_The Dawn of Independence_
+
+
+The definitive treaty of peace between France and England was signed at
+Fontainebleau in 1763; but the tranquility of the colonies was again
+broken by an Indian insurrection, known as Pontiac's war. Washington had
+no part in its suppression, but he was soon to be called again to the
+defence of his country.
+
+He was in his place in the House of Burgesses on May 29, 1765, when the
+claims of Britain to tax the colony were first repudiated, and it was
+declared that the General Assembly of Virginia had the exclusive right
+to tax the inhabitants, and that whoever maintained the contrary should
+be deemed an enemy to the colony. These resolutions were the signal for
+general applause throughout the continent.
+
+The repeal, in 1766, of the objectionable Stamp Act only postponed the
+crisis, which became acute when the port of Boston was closed by
+Parliament, because of the resistance of that city to the importation of
+East Indian tea. A General Congress of deputies from the several
+colonies was convened for September 5, 1773, at Philadelphia, in which
+Washington took part, and a Federal Union of the colonies was then
+established. The English commander, General Gage, struck the first blow
+against popular liberties, in the engagement at Lexington, April 18,
+1775, and on June 15 Washington was unanimously elected
+commander-in-chief of the American forces.
+
+Two days later was fought, outside Boston, the heroic battle of Bunker's
+Hill, and on the 21st Washington set out from Philadelphia to the seat
+of war, where he laid a strict siege about Boston, with a view to
+forcing the British to come out. An English ship having bombarded the
+American port of Falmouth, an act was passed by the General Court of
+Massachusetts, encouraging the fitting out of armed vessels to defend
+the coast of America, and granting letters of marque and reprisal. In
+October a conference of delegates was held, under Washington's
+presidency, of which Benjamin Franklin was a member, with regard to a
+new organisation of the army; and a new force of twenty-two thousand was
+formed, every soldier being enlisted for one year only.
+
+Montreal had been captured by an American expedition, and Washington was
+now looking forward to equal success in an expedition against Quebec. He
+was further encouraged by the capture, by one of his cruisers, of a
+brigantine laden with munitions of war, including a huge brass mortar.
+His wife joined the camp before Boston, and the eventful year was closed
+with festivities.
+
+But the gallant attempt on Quebec, in which Montgomery fell, was
+frustrated, and the siege of Boston dragged on uneventfully, until the
+Americans, in March, seized Dorchester Heights, and made the town no
+longer tenable. On the 17th there were in Boston Harbor seventy-eight
+ships and transports casting loose for sea, and twelve thousand
+soldiers, sailors and refugees, hurrying to embark. The flag of thirteen
+stripes, the standard of the Union, floated above the Boston forts,
+after ten tedious months of siege.
+
+The eminent services of Washington throughout this arduous period, his
+admirable management by which, in the course of a few months, an
+undisciplined band of husbandmen became soldiers, and were able to expel
+a brave army of veterans, commanded by the most experienced generals,
+won the enthusiastic applause of the nation. A unanimous vote of thanks
+was passed to him in Congress.
+
+
+_Declaration of Independence_
+
+
+Despatches from Canada continued to be disastrous, and the evacuation of
+that country was determined on in June, 1776. The great aim of the
+British was now to get possession of New York and the Hudson, and to
+make them the basis of military operations. While danger was gathering
+round New York, and its inhabitants were in mute suspense and fearful
+anticipations, the General Congress at Philadelphia was discussing with
+closed doors the greatest question ever debated in America. A resolution
+was passed unanimously, on July 2, "that these United Colonies are, of
+right ought to be, free and independent States."
+
+The fourth of July is the day of national rejoicing, for on that day the
+"Declaration of Independence," that solemn and sublime document, was
+adopted. Tradition gives a dramatic effect to its announcement. It was
+known to be under discussion, but the closed doors of Congress excluded
+the populace. They awaited, in throngs, an appointed signal. In the
+steeple of the state-house was a bell, bearing the portentous text from
+Scripture, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the
+inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the
+bill had been passed. It was the knell of British domination.
+
+Washington hailed the Declaration with joy. It was but a formal
+recognition of a state of things which had long existed, but it put an
+end to all those temporizing hopes of reconciliation which had clogged
+the military action of the country. On July 9, he caused it to be read
+at the head of each brigade of the army. "The general hopes," said he,
+"that this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every
+officer and soldier, to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that
+now the peace and safety of his country depend, under God, solely on the
+success of our arms; and that he is now in the service of a state
+possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to
+the highest honours of a free country." and again: "The general hopes
+and trusts that every officer and man will endeavour so to live and act
+as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and
+liberties of his country."
+
+
+_The Winning of Independence_
+
+
+But the exultation of the patriots of New York was soon overclouded.
+British warships, under Admiral Lord Howe, were in the harbour on July
+12, and affairs now approached a crisis. Lord Howe came "as a mediator,
+not as a destroyer," and had prepared a declaration inviting communities
+as well as individuals to merit and receive pardon by a prompt return to
+their duty; it was a matter of sore regret to him that his call to
+loyalty had been forestalled by the Declaration of Independence.
+
+The British force in the neighbourhood of New York, under General Howe,
+brother of the Admiral, was about thirty thousand men; the Americans
+were only about twenty thousand, for the most part raw and
+undisciplined, and the sectional jealousies prevalent among them were
+more and more a subject of uneasiness to Washington. On August 27 the
+American force was defeated with great loss in the battle of Long
+Island, and was withdrawn from the island by a masterly night retreat;
+this led to the loss of New York and the Hudson River to the British.
+Reverse followed reverse; Washington was driven by the British arms from
+one point after another; many of the chief American cities were taken;
+and on September 26, 1777, General Sir William Howe marched into
+Philadelphia and thus occupied the capital of the confederacy. But
+Washington still maintained his characteristic equanimity. "I hope," he
+said, "that a little time will put our affairs in a more flourishing
+condition."
+
+This anticipation was soon to be fulfilled. General Burgoyne had been
+advancing from the north with a large force of British and Hessian
+troops, but was compelled by General Gates, with a superior American
+force, to capitulate on October 17,1777. By this capitulation the
+Americans gained a fine train of artillery, seven thousand stand of
+arms, and a great quantity of clothing, tents, and military stores of
+all kinds; and the surrender of Burgoyne struck dismay into the British
+army on the Hudson River.
+
+But the struggle for independence was still to continue for four years
+of incessant military operations, and it was not until the surrender of
+Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, by Lord Cornwallis, that Britain gave up
+hope of reducing her rebel colonies. When the redoubts of Yorktown were
+taken, Washington exclaimed, "The work is done, and well done!"
+
+A general treaty of peace was signed in Paris on January 20, 1783; and
+in March of that year Sir Guy Carleton informed Washington that he was
+ordered to proclaim a cessation of hostilities by sea and land. On April
+19, the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, thus completing the
+eighth year of the war, Washington issued a general order to the army in
+these terms--"The generous task for which we first flew to arms being
+accomplished, the liberties of our country being fully acknowledged and
+firmly secured, and the characters of those who have persevered through
+every extremity of hardship, suffering, and danger, being immortalised
+by the illustrious appellation of 'the patriot army,' nothing now
+remains but for the actors of this mighty scene to preserve a perfect,
+unvarying consistency of character through the very last act, to close
+the drama with applause, and to retire from the military theatre with
+the same approbation of angels and men which has crowned all their
+former virtuous actions."
+
+Writing, on June 8, to the Governors of the several States, he
+said--"The great object for which I had the honour to hold an
+appointment in the service of my country being accomplished, I am now
+preparing to return to that domestic retirement which, it is well known,
+I left with the greatest reluctance; a retirement for which I have never
+ceased to sigh, through a long and painful absence, and in which, remote
+from the noise and trouble of the world, I meditate to pass the
+remainder of life in a state of undisturbed repose."
+
+
+_The Years of Peace_
+
+
+Washington returned to Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve, 1783, and busied
+himself with the care of his estates. He had never ceased to be the
+agriculturist; through all his campaigns he had kept himself informed of
+the course of rural affairs at Mount Vernon. By means of maps on which
+every field was laid down and numbered, he was enabled to give
+directions for their several cultivation, and to receive accounts of
+their several crops. No hurry of affairs prevented a correspondence with
+his agent, and he exacted weekly reports. He now read much on
+agriculture and gardening, and corresponded with the celebrated Arthur
+Young, from whom he obtained seeds of all kinds, improved ploughs, plans
+for laying out farmyards, and advice on various parts of rural economy.
+
+His active day at Mount Vernon began some time before dawn. Much of his
+correspondence was despatched before breakfast, which took place at
+half-past seven. After breakfast he mounted his horse and rode off to
+various parts of his estate; dined at half-past two; if there was no
+company he would write until dark; and in the evening he read, or amused
+himself with a game of whist.
+
+The adoption of the Federal Constitution opened another epoch in the
+life of Washington. Before the official forms of an election could be
+carried into operation, a unanimous sentiment throughout the Union
+pronounced him the nation's choice to fill the presidential chair. The
+election took place, and Washington was chosen President for a term of
+four years from March 4, 1788. An entry in his diary, on March 16,
+says--"I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic
+felicity; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful
+sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York with the
+best disposition to render service to my country in obedience to its
+call, but with less hope of answering its expectations."
+
+The weight and influence of his name and character were deemed all
+essential to complete his work; to set the new government in motion, and
+conduct it through its first perils and trials. He undertook the task,
+firm in the resolve in all things to act as his conscience told him was
+"right as it respected his God, his country, and himself." For he knew
+no divided fidelity, no separate obligation; his most sacred duty to
+himself was his highest duty to his country and his God.
+
+His death took place on December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon.
+
+The character of Washington may want some of the poetical elements which
+dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities
+and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one
+man. Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgement,
+an immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never
+wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOSEPHUS
+
+
+Autobiography
+
+
+     Flavius Josephus was born in Jerusalem in 37 A.D. His father,
+     Matthias, was a priest, and his mother belonged to the
+     Asmonean princely family. So distinguished was he as a student
+     that, at the age of twenty-six, he was chosen delegate to
+     Nero. When the critical juncture arose for his nation, through
+     the rebellion excited by the cruelties of Gessius Florus, the
+     Roman procurator, Josephus was appointed governor of Galilee
+     The insurrection proved fatal, for Vespasian by his invasion
+     rendered resistance hopeless. Subsequently he lived in Rome,
+     and the date of his death is unknown. The works of this writer
+     are monumental. He wrote his vivid "Wars of the Jews" in both
+     Hebrew and Greek. His "Antiquities of the Jews" traces the
+     whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the great
+     war. Scaliger, one of the acutest of mediaeval critics,
+     declares that in his writings on the affairs of the Jews, and
+     even on those of foreign nations, Josephus deserves more
+     credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put together. His
+     fidelity and veracity are as universally admitted as his
+     direct and lucid style is generally admired. His account of
+     his own life and career is a masterpiece in this category of
+     literature, for it is written with blended modesty and
+     naïveté. In many passages of this "Autobiography" he does not
+     hesitate to assume great credit for his own courage, probity,
+     and skill, but in each case the justification is manifest, for
+     he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous
+     machinations of his virulent enemies. The "Autobiography" is
+     from beginning to end a thrilling and wonderful romance of
+     real life, for the hairbreadth escapes of this extraordinary
+     man are among the most singular recitals in the whole world of
+     adventure. The whole story is unique, as was the noble
+     individuality of the man himself.
+
+
+_I.--Priest of the Blood-Royal_
+
+
+The family from which I, Flavius Josephus, am derived is not an ignoble
+one, but hath descended all along from the priests. I am not only sprung
+from a sacerdotal family in general, but from the first of the
+twenty-four courses of the Jewish priests, and I am of the chief family
+of that course also. With us, to be of the sacerdotal dignity is an
+indication of the splendour of a family. But, further, by my mother I am
+of the royal blood; for the children of Asmonaeus, from whom that family
+was derived, had both the office of the high-priesthood and the dignity
+of a king for a long time together.
+
+My father Matthias, to whom I was born in the first year of the reign of
+Gaius Caesar, was not only eminent in Jerusalem, our greatest city, on
+account of his nobility, but had a higher commendation on account of his
+righteousness. I was brought up with my brother Matthias. As a child I
+gained a great reputation through my love for learning, and, when I was
+about fourteen years of age, was frequently asked by the high-priests
+and chief men of the city my opinion about the accurate understanding of
+points of the law.
+
+In my twenty-sixth year I took a voyage to Rome. My object was to plead
+before Caesar the cause of certain excellent priests whom Felix, then
+procurator of Judaea, had put in bonds on a trivial pretext. I was
+desirous to procure deliverance for them, not only because they were of
+my own friends, but because I heard that they sustained their piety
+towards God under their afflictions, and that they simply subsisted on
+figs and nuts.
+
+Our voyage was an adventurous one, for the ship was wrecked in the
+Adriatic Sea, and we that were in it, being about six hundred in number,
+swam all night for our lives. I and about eighty others were saved by a
+ship of Cyrene. When I had thus escaped, and was come to Puteoli, I
+became acquainted with an actor named Alityrus, much beloved by Nero,
+but a Jew by birth. Through his interest I became known to Poppaea,
+Caesar's wife, and having, through her, procured the liberty of the
+priests, besides receiving from her many presents, I returned to
+Jerusalem.
+
+Now I perceived that many innovations were begun, and that many were
+cherishing hopes of a revolt from the Romans.
+
+
+_II.--The Prelude to the Great Crisis_
+
+
+So I retired to the inner court of the Temple. Yet I went out of the
+Temple again, after Menahem and the chief members of the band of robbers
+were put to death, and abode among the high-priests and the chief of the
+Pharisees. But no small fear seized upon us when we saw the people in
+arms, while we were not able to restrain the seditious. We hoped that
+Gessius Floras would speedily arrive with great forces. But on his
+arrival he was defeated with great loss.
+
+The disgrace that fell upon him became the calamity of our whole nation,
+for it elevated the hopes of conquering the Romans on the part of those
+who desired war. But another cause of the revolt arose in Syria from the
+cruel treatment of the Jews in many cities, where they showed not the
+least disposition towards rebellion. About 13,000 were treacherously
+slain in Scythopolis, and the Jews in Damascus underwent many miseries;
+but of these events accounts are given in the books of the Jewish War.
+
+I was now sent, together with two other priests, Joazar and Judas, by
+the principal men of Jerusalem, to Galilee, to persuade the ill men
+there to lay down their arms, and to teach them that it were better for
+us all to wait to see what the Romans would do. I came into Galilee, and
+found the people of Sepphoris in no small agony about their country, by
+reason that the Galileans had resolved to plunder it, because of their
+friendship with the Romans, and because they had made a league with
+Cestius Gallus, the president of Syria. But I quieted their fears. Yet I
+found the people of Tiberias ready to take arms, for there were three
+factions in that city.
+
+The first faction, with Julius Capellus for the head, was composed of
+men of worth and gravity, and advised the city to continue in allegiance
+to the Romans; the second faction, consisting of the most ignoble
+persons, was determined for war. But as for Justus, the head of the
+third faction, though he pretended to be doubtful about war, yet he was
+really desirous of innovation, as supposing that he should gain power by
+the change of affairs.
+
+By his harangues Justus inflamed the minds of many of the people,
+persuading them to take arms, and then he went out and set fire to the
+villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos, on the border of Tiberias,
+and of the region of Scythopolis.
+
+Gamala persevered in its allegiance to the Romans, under the persuasion
+of Philip, the son of Jacimus, who was governor of the city under King
+Agrippa. He reminded the people of the benefits the king had bestowed on
+them, and pointed out how powerful the Romans were, and thus he
+restrained the zeal of the citizens.
+
+Now, as soon as I was come into Galilee, and had ascertained the state
+of affairs, I wrote to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem asking for their
+direction. They replied that I should remain there; and that, if my
+fellow-delegates were willing, I should join with them in the care of
+Galilee. But these my colleagues, having gotten great riches from those
+tithes which as priests were their dues, and were given to them,
+determined to return to their own country. Yet when I desired them to
+stay to settle public affairs, they complied, and we removed from
+Sepphoris to Bethmanus, a village four furlongs from Tiberias, whence I
+sent messengers to the senate of that city, asking that the principal
+men should come to me.
+
+
+_III.--Governor of Galilee_
+
+
+When the chief men of Tiberias were come, I told them I was sent as a
+legate from the people at Jerusalem, in order to persuade them to
+destroy that house which Herod the tetrarch had built in Tiberias, and
+which, contrary to our laws, contained the figures of living creatures.
+I desired that they would give us leave to do so; but for a good while
+they were unwilling, only being overcome by long persuasion. Then Jesus,
+son of Sapphias, one of the leaders of sedition, anticipated us and set
+the palace on fire, thinking that as some of the roofs were covered with
+gold, he should gain much money thereby. These incendiaries also
+plundered much furniture; then they slew all the Greeks who dwelt in
+Tiberias, and as many others as were their enemies.
+
+When I understood this state of things, I was greatly provoked, and went
+down to Tiberias and took care of all the royal furniture that could be
+recovered from such as had plundered it. Next I committed it to ten of
+the chief senators. From thence I and my fellow-delegates went to
+Gischala to John, to learn his designs, and soon discovered that he was
+for innovations, for he wished me to give him authority to carry off the
+corn that belonged to Caesar, and to lay it in the villages of Upper
+Galilee. Though I refused, he corrupted my colleagues with money, and so
+I, being out-voted, held my tongue. By various other cunning
+contrivances which I could not prevent, John gained vast sums of money.
+But when I had dismissed my fellow-delegates I took care to have arms
+provided and the cities fortified. My first care was to keep Galilee in
+peace, so I made friends of seventy of the principal men, and took them
+on my journeys as companions, and set them to judge causes.
+
+I was now about thirty years of age, in which time of life it is
+difficult to escape from the calumnies of the envious. Yet did I
+preserve every woman free from injury; I despised and refused presents;
+nor would I take the tithes due to me as a priest. When I twice took
+Sepphoris by force, and Tiberias four times, and Gadara once, and when I
+had subdued and captured John, who had laid treacherous snares for me, I
+did not punish with death either him or others. And on this account I
+suppose it was that God, Who is never unacquainted with those that do as
+they ought to do, delivered me still out of the hands of my enemies, and
+afterwards preserved me when I fell into many perils.
+
+At this time, when my abode was at Cana, a village of Galilee, John came
+to Tiberias and stirred a revolt against me, so that my life was in
+danger. I escaped only by fleeing down the lake in a ship to Taricheae,
+whence I proceeded to Sepphoris. John returned to Gischala, where he
+continued to cultivate bitter hatred against me. Through the
+machinations of himself and Simon, a chief man in Gadara, all Galilee
+was filled with rumours that their country was about to be betrayed by
+me to the Romans.
+
+Hereby I again incurred extreme peril, but I took a bold course. Dressed
+in a black garment, with my sword hung at my neck, I went to face, in
+the hippodrome, a multitude of the citizens of Taricheae, and addressed
+them in such terms that, though some wished to kill me, these were
+overcome by the rest.
+
+Although the multitude returned to their homes, yet the robbers and
+other authors of the tumult, afraid lest I might punish them, took six
+hundred armed men and came to burn the house where I abode. Thinking it
+ignoble to run away, I resolved to expose myself to danger; so I shut
+myself up in an upper room, and asked that one of them should be sent up
+to me, by whom I would send out to them money from the spoils I had
+taken.
+
+When they had sent in one of their boldest, I had him whipped severely,
+and commanded one of his hands to be cut off and hung about his neck. In
+this case he was put out, and those who had sent him, affrighted at the
+supposition that I had more armed men about me than they had,
+immediately fled.
+
+I dealt in like manner with Clitus, a young man of Tiberias, who was the
+author of a fresh sedition in that city. Since I thought it not
+agreeable to piety to put one of my own people to death, I called to
+Clitus himself, and said to him, "Since thou deservest to lose both thy
+hands for thine ingratitude to me, be thou thine own executioner, lest
+by refusal to do so thou undergo a worse punishment."
+
+When he earnestly begged me to spare one of his hands, it was with
+difficulty that I granted it. So, in order to prevent the loss of both
+his hands, he willingly took his sword and cut off his own left hand;
+and this put an end to the sedition.
+
+
+_IV.--The Failure of His Foes_
+
+
+The people of Gamala wrote to me, asking that I would send them an armed
+force, and also workmen to raise up the walls of their city, and I
+acceded to each of their requests. I also built walls about many
+villages and cities in Upper and Lower Galilee, besides laying up in
+them much corn. But the hatred of John of Gischala grew more violent by
+reason of my prosperity. He sent his brother Simon to Jerusalem with a
+hundred armed men to induce the Sanhedrin to deprive me of my
+commission; but this was not an easy thing to do, for Ananus, one of the
+chief priests, demonstrated that many of the people bore witness that I
+had acted like an excellent general.
+
+Yet Ananus and some of his friends, corrupted by bribes, secretly agreed
+to expel me out of Galilee, without making the rest of the citizens
+acquainted with what they were doing. Accordingly they sent four men of
+distinction down to Galilee to seek to supersede me in ruling the
+province.
+
+These were to ask the people of Galilee what was their reason of their
+love to me. If the people alleged that it was because I was born at
+Jerusalem, that I was versed in the law, and that I was a priest, then
+they were to reply that they also were natives of Jerusalem, that they
+understood the law, and that two of them were priests. To Jonathan and
+his companion were given 40,000 drachmae out of the public money, and a
+large band of men was equipped with arms and money to accompany them.
+
+But wonderful was what I saw in a dream that very night. It seemed to me
+that a certain person stood by me, and said, "O Josephus, put away all
+fear, for what now afflicts thee will render thee most happy, and thou
+shalt overcome all difficulties! Be not cast down, but remember that
+thou art to fight the Romans."
+
+When I had seen this vision I arose, intending to go down to the plain
+to meet a great multitude who, I knew, would be assembled, for my
+friends, on my refusal had dispatched messengers all around to inform
+the people of Galilee of my purpose to depart. And when the great
+assembly of men, with their wives and children, saw me, they fell on
+their faces weeping, and besought me not to leave them to be exposed to
+their enemies.
+
+When I heard this, and saw what sorrow affected the people, I was moved
+with compassion, and promised that I would stay with them, thinking it
+became me to undergo manifold hazards for the sake of so great a
+multitude. So I ordered that five thousand of them should come to me
+armed, and that the rest should depart to their own homes.
+
+It was not long before Vespasian landed at Tyre, and King Agrippa with
+him. How he then came into Galilee, and how he fought his first battle
+with me near Taricheae, and how, after the capture of Jotapata, I was
+taken alive and bound, and how I was afterward loosed, with all that was
+done by me in the Jewish war, and during the siege of Jerusalem, I have
+accurately related in the books concerning the "Wars of the Jews."
+
+When the siege of Jotapata was over, and I was among the Romans, I was
+kept with much care, by means of the great respect that Vespasian showed
+me. After being freed from my bonds I went to Alexandria, where I
+married. From thence I was sent, together with Titus, to the siege of
+Jerusalem, and was frequently in danger of being put to death. For the
+Jews desired to get me into their power to have me punished, and the
+Romans, whenever they were beaten, thought it was through my treachery.
+But Titus Caesar was well acquainted with the uncertain fortune of war,
+and returned no answer to the soldiers' solicitation against me.
+
+When Titus was going away to Rome he made choice of me to sail along
+with him, and paid me great respect And when we were come to Rome I had
+great care taken of me by Vespasian, for he gave me an apartment in his
+own house.
+
+When Vespasian was dead, Titus kept up the same kindness which his
+father had shown me, and Domitian, who succeeded, still augmented his
+respects to me; nay, Domitia, the wife of Caesar, continued to show me
+many kindnesses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
+
+
+Life of Sir Walter Scott
+
+
+     John Gibson Lockhart was born in Scotland in 1794. He received
+     part of his education at Glasgow, part at Oxford, and in 1816
+     he became an advocate at the Scotch bar. As one of the chief
+     supporters of Blackwood's Magazine, he began to exhibit that
+     sharp, bitter wit which was his most salient characteristic.
+     In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott,
+     and for this reason, perhaps no one has been better qualified
+     to write the biography of the great novelist. Lockhart's "Life
+     of Sir Walter Scott" is a biography in the best sense of the
+     word--one which has been ranked even with Boswell's "Johnson."
+     It reveals to the reader the inmost personality of the man
+     himself, and no life from first to last could better afford
+     such complete revelation. Moreover, the "Life" was a labour of
+     love, Lockhart himself receiving not a fraction of its very
+     considerable proceeds, but resigning them absolutely to
+     Scott's creditors. Published in seven volumes in 1838, in
+     every respect it is the greatest of all Lockhart's books.
+     Lockhart died in 1854.
+
+
+_Early Years_
+
+
+Sir Walter Scott was distantly connected with ancient families both on
+his father's and his mother's side. His father, Walter Scott, a Writer
+to the Signet in Edinburgh, was a handsome, hospitable, shrewd and
+religious man, who married, in 1758, Anne, eldest daughter of Dr. John
+Rutherford, professor of medicine in Edinburgh University. The Scotts
+had twelve children, of whom only five survived early youth.
+
+The subject of this biography was born on August 15, 1771, in a house at
+the head of the College Wynd. He was a healthy child, but when eighteen
+months old was affected with a fever which left a permanent lameness in
+the right leg. With a view to curing this weakness he was sent to live
+with his paternal grandfather, at the farm house of Sandy-Knowe near
+Dryburgh Abbey, in the extreme south of Berwickshire.
+
+Here, in the country air, he became a sturdy boy, and his mind was
+stored with the old Broder tales and songs. In his fourth year he was
+taken to London by sea, and thence to Bath, where he remained about a
+year for the sake of the waters, became acquainted with the venerable
+John Home, author of "Douglas," and was introduced by his uncle, Capt.
+Robert Scott, to the delights of the theatre and "As You Like It."
+
+From his eighth year Scott lived at his father's house in George Square,
+Edinburgh. His lameness and solitary habits had made him a good reader,
+and he used to read aloud to his mother, Pope's translation of Homer and
+Allan Ramsay's "Evergreen;" his mother had the happiest of tempers and a
+good love of poetry. In the same year he was sent to the High School,
+Edinburgh, under the celebrated Dr. Adam, who made him sensible of the
+beauties of the Latin poets.
+
+After his school years, the lad, who had become delicate from rapid
+growth, spent half a year with an aunt, Miss Janet Scott, at Kelso. He
+had now awaked to the poetry of Shakespeare and of Spenser, and had
+acquired an ample and indiscriminate appetite for reading of all kinds.
+To this time at Kelso he also traced his earliest feeling for the
+beauties of natural objects. The love of Nature, especially when
+combined with ancient ruins, or remains of our forefathers' piety or
+splendour, became his insatiable passion.
+
+He was then sent to classes in the Faculty of Arts in Edinburgh
+University; and in 1785 was articled to his father and entered upon the
+wilderness of law. Though he disliked the drudgery of the office, he
+loved his father and was ambitious, and the allowance which he received
+afforded the pleasures of the circulating library and the theatre. His
+reading had now extended to the great writers in French, Spanish and
+Italian literature. Distant excursions on foot or on horseback formed
+his favorite amusement, undertaken for the pleasure of seeing romantic
+scenery and places distinguished by historic events.
+
+In 1790, Scott determined, in accordance with his father's wishes, to
+become an advocate, and assumed the gown on July 11, 1792. His personal
+appearance at this time was engaging. He had a fresh, brilliant
+complexion, his eyes were clear and radiant, and the noble expanse of
+his brow gave dignity to his whole aspect. His smile was always
+delightful, and there was a playful intermixture of tenderness and
+gravity well calculated to fix a lady's eye. His figure, except for the
+blemish in one limb, was eminently handsome, and much above the usual
+stature; and the whole outline was that of extraordinary vigour, without
+a touch of clumsiness.
+
+
+_The Poet's Education_
+
+
+I do not know when his first attachment began; its object was Margaret,
+daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belcher, of Invermay. But
+after Scott had for several years nourished the dream of union with this
+lady, his hopes terminated in her being married to the late Sir William
+Forbes, of Pitsligo, a gentleman of the highest character, who lived to
+act the part of a generous friend to his rival throughout the distresses
+of 1826 and 1827.
+
+After being admitted an advocate, Scott undertook many excursions to
+various parts of Scotland, gaining that intimate knowledge of the
+country, and its people and traditions, which appears in his poems and
+novels. Thus, he visited Northumberland, and made a close inspection of
+the battle-field of Flodden, and on another journey studied the Saxon
+cathedral of Hexam. During seven successive years he made raids, as he
+called them, into the wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale,
+picking up the ancient "riding ballads" preserved among the descendants
+of the moss-troopers. To these rambles he owed much of the materials of
+his "Minstrelsy of the Border," and here he came to know Willie Elliot,
+the original of Dandie Dinmont. Another expedition, into Galloway,
+carried him into the scenery of Guy Mannering. Stirlingshire, Perthshire
+and Forfarshire became familiar ground to him, and the scenery of Loch
+Katrine especially was associated with many a merry expedition. His
+first appearance as counsel in a criminal court was at the Jedburgh
+assizes, where he helped a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape
+through the meshes of the law.
+
+In June, 1795, Scott was appointed one of the curators of the Advocate's
+Library and became an adept in the deciphering of old manuscript. His
+highlands and border raids were constantly suggesting inquiries as to
+ancient local history and legend, which could nowhere else have been
+pursued with equal advantage.
+
+In the same year, a rhymed translation of Burger's "Lenore," from his
+pen, was shown by him to Miss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of
+Purgstall, who was delighted and astonished at it. "Upon my word," she
+wrote in a letter to a friend, "Walter Scott is going to turn out a
+poet--something of a cross I think between Burns and Gray." This lady
+had the ballad elegantly printed in April, 1796, and Scott thus made his
+first appearance as an author. In October, this translation, together
+with that of the "Wild Huntsman," also from Burger, was published
+anonymously in a thin quarto by Manners and Miller, of Edinburgh. The
+little volume found warm favour: its free, masculine and lively style
+revealing the hand of a poet.
+
+
+_Marriage_
+
+
+In July, 1797, Scott set out on a tour to the English lakes, accompanied
+by his brother John and Adam Fergusson, visiting Tweeddale, Carlisle,
+Penrith, Ullswater and Windermere, and at length fixing their
+headquarters at Gilsland, a peaceful and sequestered little watering
+place.
+
+He was riding one day with Fergusson when they met, some miles away from
+home, a young lady on horseback, whose appearance instantly struck both
+of them so much, that they kept her in view until they had satisfied
+themselves that she was staying in Gilsland. The same evening there was
+a ball, at which Scott was introduced to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter.
+
+Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal
+attractions; a fairy-like form; a clear olive complexion; large, deep
+eyes of Italian brown; a profusion of silken tresses, raven-black; her
+address mingling the reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman with a
+certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well her French accent.
+A lovelier vision, as all who remember her youth have assured me, could
+hardly be imagined, and from that hour the fate of the poet was fixed.
+
+She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a devoted royalist,
+who died in the beginning of the Revolution; Madame Charpentier had died
+soon after bringing her children to London; and the Marquis of Downshire
+had become their guardian. Miss Charpentier was now making a summer
+excursion under the care of the lady who had superintended her
+education.
+
+In an affectionate and dutiful letter Scott acquainted his mother with
+his purpose of marriage, and Miss Carpenter remained at Carlisle until
+her destiny was settled. The lady had a considerable private income,
+amounting to about £500 a year; the difficulties presented by the
+prudence and prejudices of family connections were soon overcome; and
+the marriage took place in St. Mary's, Carlisle, on December 24, 1797.
+Scott took his bride to a lodging in George Street, Edinburgh, the house
+which he had taken not being quite ready, and the first fortnight
+convinced her husband's family that she had the sterling qualities of a
+wife.
+
+Their house in South Castle Street, soon after exchanged for one in
+North Castle Street, which he inhabited down to 1826, became the centre
+of a highly agreeable circle; the evenings passed in a round of innocent
+gaiety; and they and their friends were passionately fond of the
+theatre. Perhaps nowhere else could have been formed a society on so
+small a scale as that of Edinburgh at this time, including more of
+vigorous intellect, varied information, elegant tastes, and real virtue,
+affection and mutual confidence.
+
+In the summer of 1798, Scott hired a cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk,
+about six miles from Edinburgh, having a garden with a most beautiful
+view. In this retreat they spent several happy summers, receiving the
+visits of their chosen friends from the neighbouring city, and wandering
+amidst some of the most romantic scenery of Scotland.
+
+
+_Early Poems_
+
+
+In February, 1799, a London Bookseller named Bell, brought out Scott's
+version of Goethe's tragedy, "Goetz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand,"
+having purchased the copyright for twenty-five guineas. This was the
+first publication that bore Scott's name. In March of that year he took
+his wife to London, and met with some literary and fashionable society;
+but his chief object was to examine the antiquities of the Tower and
+Westminster, and to make researches among the manuscripts of the British
+Museum. He found his "Goetz" favourably spoken of by the critics, but it
+had not attracted general attention.
+
+About this time Scott wrote a play entitled "House of Aspen" which,
+having been read and commended by the celebrated actress, Mrs. Esten,
+was put in rehearsal by Kemble for the stage. But the notion was
+abandoned; and discovering the play thirty years after among his papers,
+Scott sent it to the "Keepsake" of 1829.
+
+His return to Scotland was hastened by the news of his father's death,
+and his mother and sister spent the following summer and autumn in his
+cottage at Lasswade. This summer produced his first serious attempt in
+verse, "Glenfinlas," which was followed by the noble ballads, "Eve of
+St. John," "The Grey Brother" and "Fire-King"; and it was in the course
+of this autumn that he first visited Bothwell Castle, the seat of
+Archibald, Lord Douglas, whose wife, and her companion, Lady Louisa
+Stuart, were among his dearest friends through life.
+
+During a visit to Kelso, before returning to Edinburgh for the winter,
+Scott renewed an acquaintance with a classfellow of his boyhood, Mr.
+James Ballantyne, who was now printer and editor of a weekly paper in
+his native town. Scott showed him some of his poems, expressed his
+wonder that his old friend did not try to get some bookseller's printing
+and suggested a collection of old Border ballads. Ballantyne printed for
+him a few specimens to show to the booksellers; and thus began an
+experiment which changed the fortunes of both Scott and Ballantyne.
+
+Soon after the commencement of the Winter Session, the office of
+Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant, and the Duke of Buccleuch
+used his influence with Mr. Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville,
+to procure it for Scott. The appointment to the Sheriff ship was made on
+December 16, 1799. It brought him an annual salary of £300; the duties
+of the office were far from heavy; the small pastoral territory was
+largely the property of the Duke of Buccleuch; and Scott turned with
+redoubled zeal to his project of editing the ballads, many of which
+belong to this district. In this design he found able assistants in
+Richard Heber and John Leyden. During the years 1800 and 1801, the
+"Minstrelsy" formed his chief occupation.
+
+The duties of the Sheriffship took him frequently to Ettrick Forest, and
+on such occasions he took up his lodging at the little inn at
+Clovenford, a favourite fishing station on the road from Edinburgh to
+Selkirk. Here he was within a few miles of the values of Yarrow and
+Ettrick. On one of his excursions here, penetrating beyond St Mary's
+Lake, he found hospitality at the farmhouse of William Laidlaw, through
+whom he came to know James Hogg, a brother poet hardly conscious of his
+powers.
+
+The first and second volumes of the "Minstrelsy" appeared in January,
+1802, from the house of Cadell and Davies in the Strand, and formed
+Scott's first introduction as an original writer to the English public.
+Their reception greatly elated Ballantyne, the printer, who looked on
+his connection with them as the most fortunate event in his life. The
+great bookseller, Longman, repaired to Scotland soon after this, and
+purchased the copyright of the "Minstrelsy," including the third volume;
+and not long afterwards James Ballantyne set up as a printer in
+Edinburgh, assisted by a liberal loan from Scott.
+
+
+_Scott's Chief Poems_
+
+
+The "Edinburgh Review" was begun in 1802, and Scott soon became a
+contributor of critical articles for his friend Mr. Jeffrey, the elder.
+His chief work was now on "Sir Tristram," a romance ascribed to Thomas
+of Ercildoune; but "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was making progress in
+1803, when Scott made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and his sister,
+under circumstances described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal. In
+the following May, he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel, with an
+adjoining farm, on the southern bank of the Tweed, a few miles from
+Selkirk; and in the same month "Sir Tristram" was published by Constable
+of Edinburgh. Captain Robert Scott, his uncle, died in June, leaving him
+the house of Rosebank near Kelso, which Scott sold for £5000.
+
+"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published in the first week of 1805,
+and its success at once decided that literature should form the main
+business of Scott's life. Its design arose originally from the
+suggestion of the lovely Countess of Dalkeith, who had heard a wild,
+rude legend of Border _diablerie_, and sportively asked him to make it
+the subject of a ballad. He cast about for a new variety of diction and
+rhyme, and having happened to hear a recitation of Coleridge's
+unpublished "Christabel" determined to adopt a similar cadence. The
+division into cantos was suggested by one of his friends, after the
+example of Spenser's "Faery Queen." The creation of the framework, the
+conception of the ancient harper, came last of all. Thus did "The Lay of
+the Last Minstrel" grow out of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border."
+The publishers were Longman of London, and Constable of Edinburgh, and
+the author's share of profits came to £769.
+
+It was at this time that Scott took over a third share in Ballantyne's
+business, a commercial tie which bound him for twenty years. Its
+influence on his literary work and his fortunes was productive of much
+good and not a little evil. Meanwhile, he entered with the zest of an
+active partner into many publishing schemes, and exerted himself in the
+interests of many authors less fortunate than himself.
+
+With the desire of placing his financial position on a more substantial
+basis, Scott had solicited the office of Clerk of Session; and after
+some difficulties, during which he visited London and was received by
+the Princess of Wales, he was installed in that position on March 8,
+1806, and continued to discharge its duties with exemplary regularity
+for twenty-five years.
+
+The progress of "Marmion" was further interrupted by Scott's appointment
+as secretary to a Commission for the improvement of Scottish
+Jurisprudence, but the poems appeared at last in February, 1808. It
+received only very qualified praise from Jeffrey, but I think it may be
+considered on the whole Scott's greatest poem, and its popularity was
+from the very first extraordinary.
+
+In April of the same year William Miller of Albemarle Street published
+Scott's great edition of Dryden, with a biography, in eighteen volumes;
+and the editor's industry and critical judgement were the subject of a
+laudatory article by Hallam in the "Edinburgh Review."
+
+Scott was now engaged in a vast multiplicity of business. He was
+preparing an edition of Swift for Constable, establishing his own
+partner as a publisher in Edinburgh under the title of "John Ballantyne
+and Co., Booksellers," and was projecting a new periodical of sound
+constitutional principles, to be known as the "Quarterly Review,"
+published by Murray in London and by Ballantyne in Edinburgh. In
+connection with the latter enterprise Scott and Mrs. Scott went up to
+London for two months in the Spring of 1809, and enjoyed the society of
+Coleridge, Canning, Croker, and Ellis. The first "Quarterly" appeared
+while he was in London, and contained three articles from his pen. At
+this time also he prevailed on Henry Siddons, the nephew of Kemble, to
+undertake the lease and management of the Edinburgh Theatre; and
+purchasing a share himself, became an acting trustee, and for many years
+took a lively concern in the Edinburgh company.
+
+Early in May, 1810, "The Lady of the Lake" came out, like her two elder
+sisters, in all the majesty of quarto, at the price of two guineas, the
+author receiving two thousand guineas for the copyright. The whole
+country rang with the praises of the poet, and crowds set off to view
+the scenery of Loch Katrine. The critics were in full harmony with one
+another and with the popular voice.
+
+
+_The Waverley Novels_
+
+
+On returning, in 1810, from an excursion to the Islands of the western
+Scottish coast, where he had been collecting impressions for "The Lord
+of the Isles," Scott was searching one morning for fishing-flies in an
+old desk at Ashestiel, when he came across a forgotten manuscript,
+written and abandoned five years before. It contained the first two
+chapters of "Waverley." He submitted it to Ballantyne, whose opinion was
+on the whole against completion of the novel, and it was again laid
+aside.
+
+Although his publishing venture had begun to wear a bad aspect, Scott
+was now in receipt of £1300 a year as Clerk of Session, and when the
+lease of Ashestiel ran out in May, 1811, he felt justified in
+purchasing, for £4000, a farm on the banks of the Tweed above Galafoot.
+This farm, then known as "Garty Holes," became "Abbotsford," so called
+because these lands had belonged of old to the great Abbey of Melrose;
+and in his own mind Scott became henceforth the "Laird of Abbotsford."
+
+The last days at Ashestiel were marked by a friendly interchange of
+letters with Lord Byron, whose "Childe Harold" had just come out, and
+with correspondence with Johanna Baillie and with Crabbe. At Whitsuntide
+the family, which included two boys and two girls, moved to their new
+possession, and structural alterations on the farmhouse began.
+
+The poem "Rokeby" appeared in January, 1813. A month or two later the
+crisis in the war affected credit aniversally, and many publishing
+firms, including that of the Ballantynes, were brought to extremity. The
+difficulty was relieved for a time by the sale of copyrights and much of
+the stock to Constable, on the understanding that the publishing concern
+should be wound up as soon as possible. But Scott was preparing fresh
+embarrassments for himself by the purchase of another parcel of land; a
+yet more acute crisis in the Ballantyne firm forced him to borrow from
+the Duke of Buccleuch; and when planning out his work for the purpose of
+retrieving his position he determined to complete the fragment of
+"Waverley."
+
+The offer of the post of poet-laureate was made to Scott at this time,
+but holding already two lucrative offices in the gift of the Crown, he
+declined the honour and suggested that it should be given to Southey,
+which was accordingly done. The "Swift" in nineteen volumes, appeared in
+July, 1814, and had a moderate success.
+
+"Waverley," of which Scott was to receive half the profits, was
+published by Constable in July, 1814, without the author's name, and its
+great success with the public was assured from the first. None of
+Scott's intimate friends ever had, or could have, the slightest doubt as
+to its parentage, and when Mr. Jeffrey reviewed the book, doing justice
+to its substantial merits, he was at no pains to conceal his conviction
+of the authorship. With the single exception of the "Quarterly," the
+critics hailed it as a work of original creative genius, one of the
+masterpieces of prose fiction.
+
+From a voyage to the Hebrides with the Commissioners of the Northern
+Lighthouses, Scott returned in vigour to his desk at Abbotsford, where
+he worked at "The Lord of the Isles" and "Guy Mannering." The poem
+appeared in January and the novel in February, 1815. "The Lord of the
+Isles" never reached the same popularity as the earlier poems had
+enjoyed, but "Guy Mannering" was pronounced by acclamation to be fully
+worthy of the honours of "Waverley." In March, Scott went to London with
+his wife and daughter, met Byron almost daily in Murray's house, and was
+presented to the Prince Regent, who was enchanted with Scott, as Scott
+with him. A visit to Paris in July of the same year is commemorated in
+"Paul's Letters to His Kinsfolk." Scott's reputation had as yet made
+little way among the French, but the Duke of Wellington, then in Paris,
+treated him with kindness and confidence, and a few eminent Frenchmen
+vied with the enthusiastic Germans in their attentions to him.
+
+"The Antiquary" came out early in 1816, and was its author's favourite
+among all his novels. The "Tales of my Landlord," published by Murray
+and Blackwood, appeared in December, and though anonymous was at once
+recognized as Scott's. The four volumes included the "Black Dwarf" and
+"Old Mortality." A month later followed a poem, "Harold the Dauntless."
+The title of "Rob Roy" was suggested by Constable; and the novel was
+published on the last day of 1817.
+
+During this year the existing house of Abbotsford had been building, and
+Scott had added to his estate the lands of Toftfield, at a price of
+£10,000. He was then thought to be consolidating a large fortune, for
+the annual profits of his novels alone had, for several years, been not
+less than the cost of Toftfield.
+
+Having been asked by the Ballantynes to contribute to the historical
+department of the "Annual Register," I often had occasion now to visit
+Scott in his house in Castle Street, where I usually found him working
+in his "den," a small room behind the dining parlour, in company with
+his dog, Maida. Besides his own huge elbow-chair, there were but two
+others in the room, and one of these was reserved for his amanuensis, a
+portrait of Claverhouse, over the chimneypiece, with a Highland target
+on either side and broadswords and dirks disposed star-fashion round
+them. A venerable cat, fat and sleek, watched the proceedings of his
+toaster AND Maids with dignified equanimity.
+
+
+_Abbotsford_
+
+
+The house of Abbotsford was not completed, and finally rid of carpenters
+and upholsterers, until Christmas, 1824; but the first time I saw it was
+in 1818, and from that time onwards Scott's hospitality was extended
+freely not only to the proprietors and tenants of the surrounding
+district, but to a never-ending succession of visitors who came to
+Abbotsford as pilgrims. In the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his
+prosperity was at its height, he entertained under his roof as many
+persons of distinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and
+in science, as the most princely nobleman of his age ever did in the
+like space of time. It is not beyond the mark to add that of the eminent
+foreigners who visited our Island within this period, a moiety crossed
+the Channel mainly in consequence of the interest in which his writings
+had invested Scotland, and that the hope of beholding the man under his
+own roof was the crowning motive with half that moiety. His rural
+neighbours were assembled principally at two annual festivals of sport;
+one was a solemn bout of salmon fishing for the neighbouring gentry,
+presided over by the Sheriff; and the other was the "Abbotsford Hunt," a
+coursing field on a large scale, including, with many of the young
+gentry, all Scott's personal favourites among the yeomen and farmers of
+the surrounding country.
+
+Notwithstanding all his prodigious hospitality, his double official
+duties as Sheriff and Clerk of Session, the labours and anxieties in
+which the ill-directed and tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him,
+the keen interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the
+house and estate of Abbotsford, and finally, notwithstanding obstinate
+and agonizing attacks of internal cramp which were undermining his
+constitution, Scott continued to produce rapidly the wonderful series of
+the Waverley Novels. "The Bride of Lammermoor," "Legend of Montrose" and
+"Ivanhoe" appeared in 1819, "The Monastery," "The Abbot" and
+"Kenilworth" in 1820, "The Pirate" in 1821, "The Fortunes of Nigel" in
+1822, "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward" and "St. Ronan's Well" in
+1823, and "Redgauntlet" in 1824. His great literary reputation was
+acknowledged by a baronetcy conferred in 1820, and by the most
+flattering condescensions on the part of King George IV on his visit to
+Edinburgh in 1822.
+
+
+_The End of All_
+
+
+Scott's Diary from November, 1825, shows dear forebodings of the
+collapse of the houses of Constable and Ballantyne. In a time of
+universal confidence and prosperity, the banks had supported them to an
+extent quite unwarranted by their assets or their trade, and as soon as
+the banks began to doubt and to enquire, their fall was a foregone
+conclusion. In December, Scott borrowed £10,000 on the lands of
+Abbotsford, and advanced that sum to the struggling houses; on January
+16, 1826, their ruin, and Scott's with them, were complete. Scott
+immediately placed his whole affairs in the hands of three trustees, and
+by the 26th all his creditors had agreed to a private trust to which he
+mortgaged all his future literary labours.
+
+On March 15, he left for the last time his house in Castle Street; on
+April 3; "Woodstock" was sold for the creditors' behoof, realising
+£8228; on May 15, Lady Scott died, after a short illness, at Abbotsford.
+"I think," writes Scott in his Diary, "my heart will break. Lonely,
+aged, deprived of all my family--all but poor Anne; an impoverished,
+embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who
+could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which
+break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of
+service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my weary
+self-reflections."
+
+An expedition to Paris, in October, to gather materials for his "Life of
+Napoleon." was a seasonable relief. On his return through London, the
+King undertook that his son, Charles Scott, then at Oxford, should be
+launched in the diplomatic service. The elder son, heir to the
+baronetcy, was now with his regiment in Ireland.
+
+The "Life of Buonaparte" was published in June, 1827, and secured high
+praise from many, among whom was Goethe. It realised £18,000 for the
+creditors, and had health been spared him, Scott must soon have freed
+himself from all encumbrances. Before the close of 1829 he had published
+also the "Chronicles of the Canongate," "Tales of a Grandfather," "The
+Fair Maid of Perth" and "Anne of Geirstein," but he had been visited
+also by several threatenings of apoplexy, and on February 15, 1830, was
+prostrated by a serious attack. Recovering from this illness, Scott
+resigned his office as Clerk of Session, and during the rest of the year
+produced a great quantity of manuscript, including the "Letters on
+Demonology and Witchcraft," and the series of "Tales of a Grandfather"
+dealing with French history. April, 1831, brought with it a distinct
+stroke of paralysis, yet both "Castle Dangerous" and "Count Robert of
+Paris" were finished in the course of the year.
+
+Sailing in October, in the "Barham," Sir Walter Scott visited Malta and
+Naples, and came to Rome in April, 1832. In May he set out for home by
+Venice, Munich and the Rhine, but his companions could hardly prevail on
+him to look at the interesting objects by the way, and another serious
+attack fell upon him at Nimeguen. He reached London on June 13, and on
+July 7 was carried on board the steamer for Leith, and was at Abbotsford
+by the 11th. Here the remains of his strength gradually declined, and
+his mind was hopelessly obscured.
+
+As I was dressing on the morning of September 17, a servant came to tell
+me that his master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness,
+and wished to see me immediately. I found him entirely himself, though
+in the last extreme of feebleness. "Lockhart," he said "I may have no
+more than a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man--be
+virtuous--be religious--be a good man. Nothing else will give you any
+comfort when you come to lie here." He scarcely afterwards gave any sign
+of consciousness, and breathed his last on September 21, in the presence
+of all his children.
+
+His funeral was unostentatious but the attendance was very great. He was
+laid in the Abbey of Dryburgh, by the side of his wife, in the sepulchre
+of his ancestors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Life of Robert Burns
+
+
+     John Gibson Lockhart was born, a son of the manse, at
+     Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, on July 14, 1794. Receiving his
+     early education in Glasgow, he went, at sixteen, with a
+     scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1816 he was called
+     to the Scottish Bar; but literature occupied him more than
+     law, and as early as 1819 he wrote the once popular "Peter's
+     Letters to his Kinsfolk." Next year he married Scott's eldest
+     daughter, Sophia. Lockhart was a leading contributor to the
+     early "Blackwood," where his fine translations of Spanish
+     ballads first appeared, and he edited the "Quarterly Review"
+     from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25, 1854,
+     and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's
+     forte was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside
+     Boswell's "Johnson." The "Life of Burns" was published first
+     in Constable's "Miscellany" in 1828, when the whole impression
+     was exhausted in six weeks. It passed through five editions
+     before the author's death. Though many lives of Burns have
+     appeared since, with details unknown to Lockhart, his
+     biography is in many respects the best we possess, and is
+     never likely to be superseded. Even Mr. Henley is "glad to
+     agree with Lockhart." It is this book that is the subject of
+     Carlyle's famous essay on Burns.
+
+
+_I.--The Poet in the Making_
+
+
+Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage at Alloway,
+two miles south of Ayr, and near the "auld brig o' Doon." His father,
+William Burnes, or Burness--for so he spelt his name--was from
+Kincardineshire. When Robert was born he had the lease of a seven-acre
+croft, and had intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He was a
+man of notable character and individuality, immortalised by his son as
+"the saint, the father, and the husband" of "The Cottar's Saturday
+Night." "I have met with few," said Burns, "who understood men, their
+manners, and their ways, equal to my father." Agnes Brown, the poet's
+mother, is described as a very sagacious woman, with an inexhaustible
+store of ballads and traditionary tales, upon which she nourished
+Robert's infant imagination, while her husband attended to "the
+weightier matters of the law."
+
+When Burns was between six and seven, his father removed to the farm of
+Mount Oliphant, two miles from the Brig o' Doon. But the soil was poor,
+and the factor--afterwards pictured in "The Twa Dogs"--so harsh and
+unreasonable, that the tenant was glad to quit. In 1777 he removed about
+ten miles to the larger and better farm of Lochlea, in the parish of
+Tarbolton. Here, after a short interval of prosperity, some trouble
+arose about the conditions of the lease. The dispute involved William
+Burnes in ruin, and he died broken-hearted in February, 1784.
+
+Meanwhile, at the age of six, Robert, with his brother Gilbert, was
+learning to read, write, and sum under the direction of John Murdoch, an
+itinerant teacher, who has left an interesting description of his pupil.
+
+"Gilbert always appeared to me to possess a more lively imagination,"
+says Murdoch, "and to be more of the wit, than Robert. I attempted to
+teach them a little church-music. Here they were left far behind by all
+the rest of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably
+dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to
+distinguish one tune from another. Robert's countenance was generally
+grave and expressive of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind.
+Gilbert's face said, 'Mirth, with thee I mean to live;' and, certainly,
+if any person who knew the two boys had been asked which of them was the
+more likely to court the muses, he would never have guessed that Robert
+had a propensity of that kind."
+
+When Murdoch left the district, the father himself continued to instruct
+the boys; but when Robert was about thirteen he and Gilbert were sent,
+"week about, during a summer quarter," to the parish school of
+Dalrymple. The good man could not pay two fees, or his two boys could
+not be spared at the same time from the farm!
+
+"We lived very poorly," says the poet. "I was a dexterous ploughman for
+my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother [Gilbert], who could
+drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A
+novel-writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some
+satisfaction, but so did not I." Burns's person, inured to daily toil,
+and continually exposed to every variety of weather, presented, before
+the usual time, every characteristic of robust and vigorous manhood. He
+says himself that he never feared a competitor in any species of rural
+exertion; and Gilbert, a man of uncommon bodily strength, adds that
+neither he, nor any labourer he ever saw at work, was equal to him,
+either in the cornfield or on the thrashing-floor.
+
+Before his sixteenth year Burns had read a large amount of literature.
+But a collection of songs, he says significantly, "was my _vade mecum_.
+I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song,
+verse by verse; carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime from
+affectation or fustian." It was about this date that he "first committed
+the sin of rhyme." The subject was a "bewitching creature," a partner in
+the harvest field, and the song was that beginning "Once I loved a
+bonnie lass."
+
+After this, though much occupied with labour and love, he found leisure
+occasionally to clothe the various moods of his mind in verse. It was as
+early as seventeen that he wrote the stanzas which open beautifully, "I
+dream'd I lay where flowers were springing," and also the ballad, "My
+father was a farmer upon the Carrick border," which, years afterwards,
+he used to con over with delight, because of the faithfulness with which
+it recalled to him the circumstances and feelings of his opening
+manhood. These are the only two of his very early productions in which
+there is nothing expressly about love. The rest were composed to
+celebrate the charms of those rustic beauties who followed each other in
+the domain of his fancy, or shared the capacious throne between them.
+The excursions of the rural lover form the theme of almost all the songs
+which Burns is known to have produced about this period; and such of
+these juvenile performances as have been preserved are beautiful. They
+show how powerfully his boyish fancy had been affected by the old rural
+minstrelsy of his own country, and how easily his native taste caught
+the secret of its charm.
+
+In 1781, despairing of farming, he went to Irvine to learn flax-dressing
+with a relative. He was diligent at first, but misfortune soon overtook
+him. The shop where he was engaged caught fire, and he "was left, like a
+true poet, not worth a sixpence." Gilbert Burns dates a serious change
+in his character and conduct from this six months' residence in the
+seaport town. "He contracted," he says, "some acquaintance of a freer
+manner of thinking than he had been accustomed to, whose society
+prepared him for overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue which had
+hitherto restrained him."
+
+He had certainly not come unscathed out of the society of those persons
+of "liberal opinions" with whom he consorted in Irvine; and he expressly
+attributes to their lessons the scrape into which he fell soon after "he
+put his hand to plough again." He was compelled, according to the then
+all but universal custom of rural parishes in Scotland, to do penance in
+church, before the congregation, in consequence of the birth of an
+illegitimate child. But not the amours, or the tavern, or drudging
+manual labour could keep him long from his true calling. "Rhyme," he
+says, "I had given up [on going to Irvine], but meeting with Fergusson's
+'Scottish Poems,' I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating
+vigour." It was probably this accidental meeting with Fergusson that in
+a great measure finally determined the Scottish character of his poetry.
+
+
+_II.--The Loves of a Peasant Poet_
+
+
+Just before their father's death, Robert and Gilbert took the cold and
+ungrateful farm of Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline, to which the
+family now removed. The four years of Burns's connection with this place
+were the most important of his life. It was then that his genius
+developed its highest energies; on the works produced in these years his
+fame was first established, and must ever continue mainly to rest; it
+was then also that his personal character came out in all its brightest
+lights, and in all but its darkest shadows; and indeed from the
+commencement of this period the history of the man may be traced, step
+by step, in his own immortal writings.
+
+Burns now began to know that Nature had meant him for a poet; and
+diligently, though as yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be
+his destined vocation. He was never more productive than at this time,
+when he wrote such skits on the kirk and its associates as "The Twa
+Herds" (pastors), "Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Holy Fair," and "The
+Ordination." "Hallowe'en," a descriptive poem, perhaps even more
+exquisitely wrought than "The Holy Fair," also belongs to the Mossgiel
+period, as does an even more notable effort.
+
+Burns had often remarked to his brother that there was something
+peculiarly venerable in the phrase, "Let us worship God," used by a
+decent, sober head of a family introducing family worship. To this
+sentiment we are indebted for "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the hint of
+the plan and title of which were taken from Fergusson's "Farmer's
+Ingle." It is, perhaps, of all Burns's pieces, the one whose exclusion
+from the collection, were such a thing possible nowadays, would be the
+most injurious, if not to the genius, at least to the character of the
+man. In spite of many feeble lines and some heavy stanzas, it appears to
+me that even his genius would suffer more in estimation by being
+contemplated in the absence of this poem than of any other single
+performance he has left us. Loftier flights he certainly has made, but
+in these he remained but a short while on the wing, and effort is too
+often perceptible; here the motion is easy, gentle, placidly undulating.
+
+Burns's art had now reached its climax; but it is time to revert more
+particularly to his personal history. In this his loves very nearly
+occupy the chief place. That they were many, his songs prove; for in
+those days he wrote no love-songs on imaginary heroines. "Mary Morison,"
+"Behind yon hills where Lugar flows," and "On Cessnock banks there lives
+a lass," belong to this date; and there are three or four inspired by
+Mary Campbell--"Highland Mary"--the object of by far the deepest passion
+Burns ever knew, a passion which he has immortalised in the noblest of
+his elegiacs, "To Mary in Heaven."
+
+Farming had, of course, to engage his attention as well as love-making,
+but he was less successful in the one than in the other. The first year
+of Mossgiel, from buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, he
+lost half his crops. In these circumstances, he thought of proceeding to
+the West Indies. Presently he had further cause for contemplating an
+escape from his native land. Among his "flames" was one Jean Armour, the
+daughter of a mason in Mauchline, where she was the reigning toast. Jean
+found herself "as ladies wish to be that love their lords." Burns's
+worldly circumstances were in a most miserable state when he was
+informed of her condition, and he was staggered. He saw nothing for it
+but to fly the country at once.
+
+Meanwhile, meeting Jean, he yielded to her tears, and gave her a written
+acknowledgment of marriage, valid according to Scottish law. Her
+father's wrath was not appeased thereby. Burns, confessing himself
+unequal to the support of a family, proposed to go immediately to
+Jamaica in search of better fortunes. He offered, if this were rejected,
+to abandon his farm, already a hopeless concern, and earn at least bread
+for his wife and children as a day labourer at home. But nothing would
+satisfy Armour, who, in his indignation, made his daughter destroy the
+written evidence of her "marriage."
+
+
+_III.--Burns at His Zenith_
+
+
+Such was his poverty that he could not satisfy the parish officers; and
+the only alternative that presented itself to him was America or a gaol.
+A situation was obtained for him in Jamaica, but he had no money to pay
+his passage. It occurred to him that the money might be raised by
+publishing his poems; and a first edition, printed at Kilmarnock in
+1786, brought him nearly £20, out of which he paid for a steerage
+passage from the Clyde. "My chest was on the road to Greenock," he
+tells; "I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia,
+'The gloomy night is gathering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock
+to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects
+to my poetic ambition."
+
+Blacklock, the blind divine upon whom Johnson "looked with reverence,"
+had read the newly published poems, and it was his praise of them that
+directly prevented Burns from expatriating himself. "His opinion that I
+would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh fired me so much that away I
+posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter
+of introduction. The baneful star that had so long shed its blasting
+influence in my zenith for once made a revolution to the nadir." In
+Edinburgh, which Burns reached in November, 1786, he was introduced by
+Blacklock to all the _literati_, and within a fortnight he was writing
+to a friend: "I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à
+Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect to see my birthday inscribed
+among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks,
+along with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge."
+
+But he bore his honours in a manner worthy of himself. "The attentions
+he received," says Dugald Stewart, "from all ranks and descriptions of
+persons were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot
+say that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his
+mind." Scott, then a lad of fifteen, met him, and wrote a vivid
+description of his appearance:
+
+"His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a
+sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its
+effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His
+features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys
+the idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective. I think his
+countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I
+would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very
+sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school--_i.e._, none of your
+modern agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the
+_douce gudeman_ who held his own plough. There was a strong expression
+of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think,
+indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a
+dark cast, which glowed (I say literally _glowed_) when he spoke with
+feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head,
+though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His
+conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest
+presumption. He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the
+laird. I do not speak in _malam partem_ when I say I never saw a man in
+company with his superiors in station and information more perfectly
+free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was
+told that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always
+with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their
+attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark
+this."
+
+It needs no effort of imagination to conceive what the sensations of an
+isolated set of scholars, almost all either clergymen or professors,
+must have been in the presence of this big-boned, brawny stranger, with
+his great flashing eyes, who had forced his way among them from the
+plough-tail at a single stride; and it will always be a reflection in
+their honour that they suffered no pedantic prejudices to interfere with
+their reception of the poet.
+
+Shortly after his arrival he arranged with Creech, the chief bookseller
+in Edinburgh, to undertake a second edition of his poems. This was
+published in March, 1787, the subscribers numbering over 1,500. Out of
+money thus derived, he provided a tombstone for the neglected grave of
+Robert Fergusson, his "elder brother in the muses," in the Canongate
+churchyard. Then he decided to visit some of the classic scenes of
+Scottish history and romance. He had as yet seen but a small part of his
+own country, and this by no means among the most interesting, until,
+indeed, his own poetry made it equal, on that score, to any other.
+Various tours were, in fact, undertaken, the chief being, however, in
+the Border district and in the Highlands. Usually he returned to
+Edinburgh, partly to be near his jovial intimates, and partly because,
+after the excitement attending his first appearance in the capital, he
+found himself incapable of settling down contentedly in the humble
+circle at Mossgiel.
+
+
+_IV.--The Clarinda Romance_
+
+
+During the winter of 1787--1788, he had a little romance with Mrs.
+McLehose, the beautiful widow to whom he addressed the song, "Clarinda,
+mistress of my soul," and a series of letters which present more
+instances of bad taste, bombastic language, and fulsome sentiment than
+could be produced from all his writings besides. It was the same lady
+who inspired the lines which furnished Byron with a motto, and Scott
+declared to be "worth a thousand romances ":
+
+    Had we never loved so kindly
+    Had we never loved sae blindly,
+    Never met--or never parted,
+    We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
+
+At this time the publication of Johnson's "Scots Musical Museum" was
+going on in Edinburgh; and Burns, being enlisted as a contributor,
+furnished many of his best songs to that work. From his youth upwards he
+had been an enthusiastic lover of the old minstrelsy and music of his
+country; but he now studied both subjects with better opportunities and
+appliances than he could have commanded previously; and it is from this
+time that we must date his ambition to transmit his own poetry to
+posterity, in eternal association with those exquisite airs which had
+hitherto, in far too many instances, been married to verses that did not
+deserve to be immortal. Later, beginning in 1792, he wrote about sixty
+songs for George Thomson's collection, many of which, like "Auld Lang
+Syne" and "Scots Wha Hae," are in the front rank of popularity. The
+letters he addressed to Thomson are full of interesting detail of
+various kinds. In one he writes:
+
+"Until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing, such as it is,
+I can never compose for it. My way is this. I consider the poetic
+sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression--then
+choose my theme--compose one stanza. When that is composed, which is
+generally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down
+now and then, look out for objects in Nature round me that are in unison
+or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom,
+humming every now and then the air, with the verses I have framed. When
+I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of
+my study, and there commit my effusions to paper; swinging at intervals
+on the hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own
+critical strictures, as my pen goes. Seriously this, at home, is almost
+invariably my way."
+
+But to return. During his second winter in Edinburgh, Burns met with a
+hackney coach accident which kept him to the house for six weeks. While
+in this state he learned from Mauchline that his intimacy with Jean
+Armour had again exposed her to the reproaches of her family. The father
+sternly turned her out of doors, and Burns had to arrange about a
+shelter for her and his children in a friend's house. In the meantime,
+through the influence of some sympathisers, he had been appointed an
+officer of excise. "I have chosen this," he wrote, "after mature
+deliberation. It is immediate bread, and, though poor in comparison of
+the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison of
+all my preceding life." However, when he settled finally with Creech
+about his poems, he found himself with between £500 and £600; and he
+retained his excise commission as a _dernier ressort_, to be used only
+if a reverse of fortune rendered it necessary.
+
+He decided now to exchange Mossgiel for Ellisland farm, about six miles
+from Dumfries. As soon as he was able to leave Edinburgh, he had hurried
+to Mossgiel and gone through a justice-of-peace marriage with Jean
+Armour. Burns, with all his faults, was an honest and a high-spirited
+man, and he loved the mother of his children. Had he hesitated to make
+her his wife, he must have sunk into the callousness of a ruffian, or
+that misery of miseries, the remorse of a poet.
+
+Some months later he writes that his marriage "was not, perhaps, in
+consequence of the attachment of romance, but I have no cause to repent
+it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable
+dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of
+boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the
+sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the
+country." It was during the honeymoon, as he calls it, that he wrote the
+beautiful "O a' the airts the wind can blaw." He used to say that the
+happiest period of his life was the first winter at Ellisland, with wife
+and children around him. It was then that he wrote, among other songs,
+"John Anderson, my Jo," "Tarn Glen," "My heart's in the Highlands," "Go
+fetch to me a pint of wine," and "Willie brewed a peck o' maut."
+
+But the "golden days" of Ellisland were short. Burns's farming
+speculations once more failed, and he had to take up his excise
+commission. "I am now," says he, "a poor rascally gauger, condemned to
+gallop two hundred miles every week to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty
+barrels." Both in prose and verse he has recorded the feelings with
+which he first followed his new vocation, and his jests on the subject
+are uniformly bitter. It was a vocation which exposed him to temptations
+of the kind he was least likely to resist. His extraordinary
+conversational powers led him into peril wherever he went. If he entered
+an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his
+arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes
+had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were assembled round the
+ingle; the largest punch-bowl was produced; and "Be ours this night--who
+knows what comes to-morrow?" was the language of every eye in the circle
+that welcomed him.
+
+At home, too, lion-gazers from all quarters beset him; they ate and
+drank at his cost, and often went away to criticise him and his fare, as
+if they had done Burns and his black bowl great honour in condescending
+to be entertained for a single evening with such company. Among others
+who called on him was Captain Grose, the antiquary, and it is to this
+acquaintance that we owe "Tam o' Shanter," which Burns believed to be
+the best of all his productions.
+
+
+_V.--Closing Years of the Poet's Life_
+
+
+Towards the close of 1791 he gave up his farm, and procuring an excise
+appointment to the Dumfries division, removed to the county town. His
+moral course from this time was downwards. "In Dumfries," says Heron,
+speaking from personal knowledge, "his dissipation became still more
+deeply habitual. He was here exposed more than in the country to be
+solicited to share the riot of the dissolute and idle." His intemperance
+was, as Heron says, in fits; his aberrations were occasional, not
+systematic; they were all to himself the sources of exquisite misery in
+the retrospect; they were the aberrations of a man whose moral sense was
+never deadened, of one who encountered more temptations from without and
+from within than the immense majority of mankind, far from having to
+contend against, are even able to imagine; of one, finally, who prayed
+for pardon, where alone effectual pardon could be found.
+
+In how far the "thoughtless follies" of the poet did actually hasten his
+end, it is needless to conjecture. They had their share, unquestionably,
+along with other influences which it would be inhuman to characterise as
+mere follies. In these closing years of his life he had to struggle
+constantly with pecuniary difficulties, than which nothing could have
+been more likely to pour bitterness intolerable into the cup of his
+existence. His lively imagination exaggerated to itself every real evil;
+and this among, and perhaps above, all the rest; at least, in many of
+his letters we find him alluding to the probability of his being
+arrested for debts, which we now know to have been of very trivial
+amount.
+
+In 1795 he was greatly upset by the death, in his absence, of his
+youngest child. Writing in January, 1796, he says: "I had scarcely begun
+to recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most
+severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful, until, after
+many weeks of a sick-bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am
+beginning to crawl across my room, and once indeed have been before my
+own door in the street."
+
+But a few days after this Burns was so imprudent as to join a festive
+circle at a tavern dinner, where he remained till about three in the
+morning. The weather was severe, and he, being too much intoxicated,
+took no precaution in thus exposing his debilitated frame to its
+influence. It has been said that he fell asleep upon the snow on his way
+home. The result was an acute return of his rheumatism, and his health
+gradually got worse. He went to the Solway for sea-bathing, but came
+back to Dumfries "visibly changed in his looks, being with difficulty
+able to stand upright and reach his own door."
+
+It soon became known that he was dying, and the anxiety, not of the rich
+and the learned only, but of the mechanics and peasants, exceeded all
+belief. Wherever two or three people stood together their talk was
+solely of Burns. His good humour was unruffled, and his wit never
+forsook him; but he repressed with a smile the hopes of his friends, and
+told them he had lived long enough. The fever increased, and his
+strength diminished, and he died on July 21, 1796. His funeral, attended
+by ten or twelve thousand people, was an impressive and mournful sight.
+The grave was at first covered by a plain tombstone; but a costly
+mausoleum was subsequently erected on the most elevated site which the
+churchyard presented. Thither the remains of the poet were solemnly
+transferred on June 5, 1815.
+
+It requires a graver audacity of hypocrisy than falls to the share of
+most men to declaim against Burns's sensibility to the tangible cares
+and toils of his earthly condition; there are more who venture on broad
+denunciations of his sympathy with the joys of sense and passion.
+
+That some men in every age will comfort themselves in the practice of
+certain vices, by reference to particular passages both in the history
+and in the poetry of Burns, there is all reason to fear; but surely the
+general influence of both is calculated, and has been found, to produce
+far different effects. The universal popularity which his writings have
+all along enjoyed among one of the most virtuous of nations is of itself
+a decisive circumstance.
+
+On one point there can be no controversy; the poetry of Burns has had
+most powerful influence in reviving and strengthening the national
+feelings of his countrymen. Amidst penury and labour his youth fed on
+the old minstrelsy and traditional glories of his nation, and his genius
+divined that what he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might
+lie smothered around him, but could not be extinguished. Burns "knew his
+own worth, and reverenced the lyre." But he ever announced himself, as a
+peasant, the representative of his class, the painter of their manners,
+inspired by the same influences which ruled their bosoms; and whosoever
+sympathised with his verse had his soul opened for the moment to the
+whole family of man.
+
+Short and painful as were his years, Burns has left behind him a volume
+in which there is inspiration for every fancy and music for every mood;
+which lives, and will live in strength and vigour, "to soothe," as a
+generous lover of genius has said, "the sorrows of how many a lover, to
+inflame the patriotism of how many a soldier, to fan the fires of how
+many a genius, to disperse the gloom of solitude, appease the agonies of
+pain, encourage virtue, and show vice its ugliness." In this volume,
+centuries hence as now, wherever a Scotsman may wander he will find the
+dearest consolation of his exile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MARTIN LUTHER
+
+
+Table Talk
+
+
+     Martin Luther, "the monk who shook the world," was born Nov.
+     10, 1483, at Eisleben, in Germany. In 1507 he was ordained a
+     priest, and became popular almost immediately as a preacher. A
+     visit to Rome shocked him, and in revolt against the practice
+     of raising money by the sale of indulgences, he began his
+     career as a reformer. In 1518 he was summoned to Rome to
+     answer for his opinions, which now included a total denial of
+     the right of the Pope to forgive sins. He proceeded to attack
+     the whole doctrinal system of the Roman Catholic Church. For
+     this he was denounced in a papal bull and his writings were
+     condemned to be burned. In 1525 he married an escaped nun.
+     That Luther was a true child of his age may be seen in the
+     selections made from his "Table Talk." His shrewdness, humour,
+     plain bold speech, and his change of belief from an infallible
+     Church to an infallible Bible there appear, as also do his
+     narrowness of knowledge, asperity of temper, and
+     susceptibility to superstition. He must be judged by the mind
+     of his times, not by modern standards. We give some of his
+     strong opinions that have not borne the wear and tear of later
+     ages; but they are more than balanced by teaching what is
+     beautiful, as well as true. Luther died on February 18, 1546.
+
+
+_God's Word and Book_
+
+
+That the Bible is God's word and book I prove thus. Infinite potentates
+have raged against it, and sought to destroy and uproot it--King
+Alexander the Great, the princes of Egypt and Babylon, the monarchs of
+Persia, of Greece, and of Rome, the Emperors Julius and Augustus--but
+they nothing prevailed; they are all gone and vanished, while the book
+remains and will remain. Who has thus helped it? Who has thus protected
+it against such mighty forces? No one, surely, but God Himself, who is
+the Master of all things.
+
+The Holy Scriptures are full of divine gifts and virtues. The books of
+the heathen taught nothing of faith, hope, or charity; they present no
+idea of these things; they contemplate only the present, and that which
+man, with the use of his material reason, can grasp and comprehend. Look
+not therein for aught of hope and trust in God. But see how the Psalms
+and the Book of Job treat of faith, hope, resignation, and prayer; in a
+word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in
+comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel,
+to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity far otherwise than
+mere human reason can, and when evil oppresses us it teaches how these
+virtues throw light upon the darkness.
+
+The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure or limit to
+the fever for writing. The Bible is now buried under so many
+commentaries that the text is nothing regarded. I could wish all my
+books were buried nine ells deep in the ground by reason of the ill
+example they will give. I would not have those who read my books, in
+these stormy times, devote one moment to them that they would otherwise
+have consecrated to the Bible itself.
+
+
+_God's Dealing with Us_
+
+
+How should God deal with us? Good days we cannot bear, evil we cannot
+endure. Gives He riches unto us--then we are proud, so that no man can
+live by us in peace; nay, we will be carried on heads and shoulders, and
+will be adored as gods. Gives He poverty to us--then are we dismayed,
+impatient, and murmur against Him.
+
+God only, and not wealth, maintains the world; riches merely make people
+proud and lazy. Great wealth cannot still hunger, but rather occasions
+more dearth, for where rich people are there things are always dear.
+Moreover, money makes no man right merry, but much rather pensive and
+full of sorrow; for riches, says Christ, are thorns that prick people.
+Yet is the world so made that it sets therein all its joy and felicity,
+and we are such unthankful slovens that we give God not so much as a
+_Deo Gratias_, though we receive of Him overflowing benefits, merely out
+of His goodness and mercy. No man can estimate the great charge God is
+at only in maintaining birds and such creatures, comparatively nothing
+worth. I am persuaded that it costs Him yearly more to maintain only the
+sparrows than the revenue of the French king amounts to.
+
+
+_Points from "Popedom"_
+
+
+I much marvel that the pope extols his church at Rome as the chief,
+whereas the church at Jerusalem is the mother; for there Christian
+doctrine was first revealed. Next was the church at Antioch, whence the
+Christians have their name. Thirdly, was the church at Alexandria; and
+still before the Romish were the churches of the Galatians, of the
+Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians. Is it so great a matter that St.
+Peter was at Rome? Which, however, has never yet been proved, nor ever
+will be, whereas our blessed Saviour Christ Himself was at Jerusalem,
+where all the articles of our Christian faith were made.
+
+Prayer in popedom is mere tongue-threshing; not prayer but a work of
+obedience. Hence the confused sea of howling and babbling in cells and
+monasteries, where they read and sing the psalms and collects without
+any spiritual devotion. Though I had done no more but only freed people
+from that torment, they might well give me thanks for it.
+
+Kings and princes coin money only out of metals, but the pope coins
+money out of everything--indulgences, ceremonials, dispensations,
+pardons; 'tis all fish comes to his net. 'Tis only baptism escapes him,
+for children come into the world without clothes to be stolen or teeth
+to be drawn.
+
+
+_Patristic Literature_
+
+
+I will not presume to criticise too closely the writings of the fathers,
+seeing they are received of the church and have great applause, but
+whoso reads Chrysostom will find he digresses from the chief points, and
+proceeds on other matters, saying nothing, or very little, of that which
+pertains to the business. St. Jerome wrote upon Matthew, upon the
+Epistles to the Galatians, and Titus, but, alas, very coldly. Ambrose
+wrote six books upon the first book of Moses, but they are very poor.
+
+We must read the fathers cautiously, and lay them in the gold balance,
+for they often stumbled and went astray. Gregory expounds the five
+pounds mentioned in the Gospel, which the husbandman gave to his servant
+to put to use, to be the five senses, which the beasts also possess. The
+two pounds he construes to be the reason and understanding. Faithful
+Christians should heed only the embassy of our blessed Saviour Christ,
+and what He says.
+
+None of the fathers of the church made mention of original sin until
+Augustine came, who made a difference between original and actual sin,
+namely, that original sin is to covet, to lust, and to desire, which is
+the root and cause of actual sin.
+
+
+_Hints for Preachers_
+
+
+The good preacher should know when to make an end. A preacher that will
+speak everything that comes into his mind is like a maid that goes to
+market, and, meeting another maid, makes a stand, and they hold together
+a goose-market.
+
+I would not have preachers in their sermons use Hebrew, Greek, or
+foreign languages, for in the church we ought to speak as we use to do
+at home, the plain mother tongue, which everyone is acquainted with. It
+may be allowed in courtiers, lawyers, advocates, etc., to use quaint,
+curious words. St. Paul never used such high and stately words as
+Demosthenes and Cicero used.
+
+Ambition is the rankest poison to the church when it possesses
+preachers. It is a consuming fire.
+
+When I preach I sink myself deep down. I regard neither doctors nor
+magistrates, of whom are here in this church above forty; but I have an
+eye to the multitude of young people, children, and servants, of whom
+are more than two thousand. I preach to those. Will not the rest hear
+me?
+
+
+_Time's Forelock_
+
+
+It is said Occasion has a forelock, but it is bald behind. Our Lord has
+taught this by the course of nature. A farmer must sow his barley and
+oats about Easter; if he defer it till Michaelmas it were too late. When
+apples are ripe they must be plucked from the tree or they are spoiled.
+Procrastination is as bad as over-hastiness. There is my servant Wolf,
+when four or five birds fall upon the bird-net he will not draw it; but
+says, "Oh, I will stay until more come." Then they all fly away, and he
+gets none.
+
+Occasion is a great matter. Terence says well, "I came in time, which is
+the chief thing of all." Julius Caesar understood Occasion; Pompey and
+Hannibal did not. Boys at school understand it not, therefore they must
+have fathers and masters, with the rod, to hold them thereto, that they
+neglect not time and lose it. Many a young fellow has a school stipend
+for six or seven years, during which he ought diligently to study, but
+he thinks, "Oh, I have time enough yet." But I say, "No, fellow; what
+little Jack learns not great John learns not." Occasion salutes thee,
+and reaches out her forelock to thee, saying, "Here I am, take hold of
+me." Thou thinkest she will come again. Then says she, "Well, seeing
+thou wilt not take hold of my top, take hold of my tail," and therewith
+she flings away.
+
+
+_Modern Luxury_
+
+
+Whereto serve or profit such superfluity, such show, such ostentation,
+such extraordinary luxurious kind of life as is now come upon us? If
+Adam were to return to earth, and see our mode of living, our food,
+drink, and dress, how would he marvel. He would say: "Surely this is not
+the world I was in?" For Adam drank water, ate fruit from the trees,
+and, if he had any house at all, 'twas a hut supported by four wooden
+forks; he had no knife or iron, and he wore simply a coat of skin. Now
+we spend immense sums in eating and drinking, now we raise sumptuous
+palaces, and decorate them with a luxury beyond all comparison. The
+ancient Israelites lived in great moderation and quiet. Boaz says: "Dip
+thy bread in vinegar and refresh thyself therewith."
+
+
+_Ministers and Matrimony_
+
+
+I advise in everything that ministers interfere not in matrimonial
+questions. First, because we have enough to do in our own office;
+secondly, because these affairs concern not the church, but are temporal
+things, pertaining to temporal magistrates; thirdly, because such cases
+are in a manner innumerable; they are very high, broad, and deep, and
+produce many offences, which may tend to the shame and dishonour of the
+Gospel. Moreover, we are therein ill dealt with--they draw us into the
+business, and then, if the issue is evil, the blame is laid altogether
+upon us. Therefore, we will leave them to the lawyers and magistrates.
+
+
+_Miscellaneous Topics_
+
+
+Philip Melancthon showing Luther a letter from Augsburg wherein he was
+informed that a very learned divine, a papist of that city, was
+converted, and had received the Gospel, Luther said, "I like best those
+that do not fall off suddenly, but ponder the case with considerate
+discretion, compare together the writing and arguments of both parties,
+and lay them on the gold balance, and in God's fear search after the
+upright truth; and of such fit people are made, able to stand in
+controversy. Such a man was St. Paul, who at first was a strict Pharisee
+and man of works, who stiffly and earnestly defended the law; but
+afterwards preached Christ in the best and purest manner against the
+whole nation of the Jews."
+
+As all people feel they must die, each seeks immortality here on earth,
+that he may be had in everlasting remembrance. Some great princes and
+kings seek it by raising great columns of stone and high pyramids, great
+churches, costly and glorious palaces and castles. Soldiers hunt after
+praise and honour by obtaining famous victories. The learned seek an
+everlasting name by writing books. With these and such like things
+people think to be immortal. But as to the true everlasting and
+incorruptible honour and eternity of God, no man thinks or looks after
+these things.
+
+When two goats meet on a narrow bridge over deep waters how do they
+behave? Neither of them can turn back again, and neither can pass the
+other because the bridge is too narrow. If they should thrust one
+another they might both fall into the water and be drowned. Nature,
+then, has taught them that if one lays himself down and permits the
+other to go over him both remain without hurt. Even so, people should
+endure to be trod upon rather than to fall into discord with one
+another.
+
+
+_Strong Opinions Outworn by Time_
+
+
+I should have no compassion on witches; I would burn all of them. We
+read in the old law that the priests threw the first stone at such
+malefactors. Our ordinary sins offend and anger God. What then must be
+His wrath against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high treason
+against divine majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God. The
+maladies I suffer are not natural but devils' spells.
+
+Luther, taking up a caterpillar, said: "'Tis an emblem of the devil in
+its crawling, and bears his colours in its changing hue."
+
+The devil plagues and torments us in the place where we are most tender
+and weak. In Paradise he fell not upon Adam, but upon Eve. It commonly
+rains where it was wet enough before.
+
+The anabaptists pretend that children, not as yet having reason, ought
+not to receive baptism. I answer: That reason in no way contributes to
+faith. Nay, in that children are destitute of reason they are all the
+more fit and proper recipients of baptism. For reason is the greatest
+enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.
+
+I always loved music. A schoolmaster ought to have skill in music, or I
+would not regard him; neither should we ordain young men as preachers
+unless they have been well exercised in music.
+
+Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the
+earth. He made several attempts to draw me into his snares, and I should
+have been in danger but that God lent me special aid. Erasmus was
+poisoned at Rome and at Venice with epicurean doctrines. His chief
+doctrine is that we must carry ourselves according to the time, or, as
+the proverb goes, hang the cloak according to the wind. I hold Erasmus
+to be Christ's most bitter enemy.
+
+I never work better than when I am inspired by anger. When I am angry I
+can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is
+quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and
+temptations depart.
+
+
+_Characteristic Sayings_
+
+
+When the abbot throws the dice, the whole convent will play.
+
+When men blaspheme we should pray and be silent, and not carry wood to
+the fire.
+
+When Jesus Christ utters a word, He opens His mouth so wide that it
+embraces all heaven and earth, even though that word be but in a
+whisper.
+
+When I lay sucking at my mother's breast I had no notion how I should
+afterwards eat, drink, and live. Even so we on the earth have no idea
+what the life to come will be.
+
+The two sins, hatred and pride, deck and trim themselves out as the
+devil clothed himself in the Godhead. Hatred will be godlike; pride will
+be truth. These two are right deadly sins; hatred is killing, pride is
+lying.
+
+A scorpion thinks that when his head lies hid under a leaf he cannot be
+seen; even so the hypocrites and false saints think, when they have
+hoisted up one or two good works, all their sins therewith are covered
+and hid.
+
+Luther, holding a rose in his hand, said, "'Tis a magnificent work of
+God. Could a man make but one such rose as this he would be thought
+worthy of all honour, but the manifold gifts of God lose their value in
+our eyes from their very infinity."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MIRABEAU
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, was born at Bignon,
+     near Nemours, on March 9, 1749, and died at Paris on April 2,
+     1791. His father was a most eccentric and tyrannical
+     representative of the French aristocracy, and Honoré, a
+     younger son, inherited something of his violent temperament,
+     but was endowed with real genius. Entering the army, young
+     Mirabeau soon displayed an erratic disposition by eloping with
+     the young wife of an aged nobleman. He fled to Holland, but
+     was captured and imprisoned. Being at length liberated, he
+     turned to literature and politics, and soon gained celebrity
+     in both. His magnificent oratorical powers brought him rapidly
+     to the front in the period immediately anterior to the
+     outbreak of the Revolution. Mirabeau's "Memoirs, by Himself,
+     his Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son," published in
+     eight volumes in 1834, contain no original writings by
+     Mirabeau himself, except in the shape of extracts from his
+     speeches, letters, and pamphlets. The following epitome has
+     been prepared from the French text.
+
+
+_I.--"The Hurricane"_
+
+
+The Marquis of Mirabeau, father of Honoré Gabriel, the subject of these
+memoirs, was endowed with a mind of great power, rendered fruitful by
+the best education. He had, however, become independent at too early an
+age, and this had brought into play his natural inordinate vanity.
+
+Honoré Gabriel, since so famous under the name of the Count of Mirabeau,
+was the fifth child of the marquis. Destined to be the most turbulent
+and active of youths, as well as the most eloquent of men and the
+greatest orator of his day, Gabriel was born with one foot twisted and
+his tongue tied, in addition to which his size and strength were
+extraordinary, and already two molars were formed in his jaw. At the age
+of three the boy nearly lost his life from small-pox, and was thus
+disfigured greatly for life; while the other children were, like the
+parents, gifted with wonderful beauty.
+
+Young Gabriel was a most precocious child, and he received an excellent
+education. At the age of seven he was confirmed by a cardinal, but his
+childhood was difficult of control, and chastisement from his father and
+tutor was continual. His inquisitiveness was irrepressible. He relates
+that at the family supper after his confirmation, "they explained to me
+that God could not make contradictions--for instance, a stick with only
+one end. I asked whether a stick which had but one end was not a
+miracle. My grandmother never forgave me."
+
+Placed under the kindly teaching of the Abbé Choquart in a military
+school of high repute in Paris, Gabriel made marvellously rapid
+progress, assiduously exercising his memory, which afterwards became a
+prodigious repository of the most diversified knowledge.
+
+On July 10, 1767, Gabriel entered the army, joining the Marquis of
+Lambert's regiment. The young volunteer, who was now eighteen, behaved
+well, and speedily gave evidence of the military talents he afterwards
+displayed. But a quarrel arose over a love affair, which led to harsh
+punishment by his colonel. The incident was bitterly resented by his
+father, who condemned him without hearing his side of the matter, and
+actually procured his imprisonment in the fortress of the Isle of Rhé.
+
+When the young soldier came out of prison he unwittingly offended an
+officer at Rochelle, who had been dismissed the service. The result was
+a duel, in which the aggressor was wounded. Gabriel was appointed to
+service in Corsica, with the rank of second-lieutenant, and here he
+distinguished himself by his zeal, his military talents, and his
+constant application.
+
+Young Mirabeau was, in September, 1770, transferred to Limousin, in west
+Central France. Such was his energy that he was called "the hurricane."
+Now began a series of troubles caused by bitter quarrels between his
+parents, who were openly at variance. Each sought to gain an adherent in
+their son, who was condemned to witness the wickedness and folly of both
+in their ungovernable passion. The effect on the character of the young
+count was deplorable.
+
+Then ensued a singular episode. The marquis had determined that Gabriel
+should marry before the age of twenty-three, and had fixed on Mary Emily
+de Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, eighteen years of
+age, for his son's bride. She was plain, yet attractive, with a sweet
+smile, fine eyes, and beautiful hair, and was gay, lively, sensible,
+mild, and very amiable. Having been neglected by her father and
+ill-treated by her mother, she showed no disinclination to marriage, and
+in 1772 young Mirabeau obtained the hand of the wealthy heiress.
+
+No sooner was the young count married than every attempt was made to
+ruin him. He received no property with his bride, and his avaricious
+father refused to advance him any money for necessary expenses. His
+father-in-law offered to lend him 60,000 livres, but his father's
+consent was indispensable, and this was sternly refused. Mirabeau,
+harassed by creditors, was dragged into lawsuits, and his embarrassments
+only set his father entirely against him. The marquis actually procured
+a _lettre de cachet_, obliging his son to leave the home he had set up,
+and to confine himself to the little town of Manosque.
+
+Here domestic sorrow and the most painful circumstances assailed the
+young exile. But these did not prevent him from pursuing serious studies
+and composing his first work, the "Essay on Despotism." Misfortunes
+accumulated. Chastising with a horsewhip a baron who grossly insulted
+him, the count was again imprisoned, this time in the Château d'If, a
+gloomy citadel on a barren rock near Marseilles.
+
+On May 25, 1770, Mirabeau was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near
+Pontarlier, where, on June 11, 1775, festivities were held, as at other
+places, to honour the coronation of Louis XVI. Here Mirabeau enjoyed a
+sort of half freedom, being allowed to visit in Pontarlier, and the
+event ensued which, it must sorrowfully be owned, tarnished his name. In
+a word, we see Mirabeau "ruin himself," by a fatal intimacy with the
+young wife of the aged Marquis of Monnier. The two fled to Dijon, where
+Mirabeau surrendered himself at the castle.
+
+He was released after a short time and went on to Geneva, nearly
+perishing in a storm on the lake. Returning to Pontarlier, he was joined
+by Sophie Monnier, and the two left for Holland, and arrived at
+Amsterdam on October 7, 1776. Mirabeau was naturally obliged to draw his
+principal means of subsistence from his literary labours, and this,
+perhaps, had been his motive for choosing Holland as his residence, for
+at that period the Dutch booksellers entered largely into literary
+speculations.
+
+Mirabeau and Sophie Monnier were arrested at Amsterdam on May 14, 1777.
+Both were brought to France. She was placed in a convent at
+Monilmontant, and Mirabeau was deposited on June 7 in the donjon of
+Vincennes, and was subjected to every sort of privation, remaining in
+confinement for forty-two months. His release marked the end of his
+private life; his public and political life was about to begin.
+
+
+_II.--Into Political Life_
+
+
+The "Essay on Despotism" had been the first sign of Mirabeau's political
+vocation, and the most singular instance, perhaps, of a war audaciously
+declared against despotism by a young man bearing its yoke. The keynote
+is that though the _natural_ man may not be inclined to despotism, the
+_social_ man assuredly is disposed to be a despot. This spirit,
+maintains Mirabeau, exists even in republics.
+
+In 1784 Mirabeau visited England. One of his motives was to collect
+materials for his "Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus," a
+treatise dealing with Washington and American independence. He was
+greatly delighted with English scenery. "It is here," he says, "that
+nature is improved, not forced. All tells me that here the people are
+something; that every man enjoys the development and free exercise of
+his faculties, and that I am in another order of things."
+
+But he proceeds: "I am not an enthusiast in favour of England, and I now
+know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution is
+the best known, the application of this constitution is the worst
+possible; and that if the Englishman is as a social man the most free in
+the world, the English people are the least free of any."
+
+He resided in England from August to February, 1785. During that brief
+period he began to write his "History of Geneva," and he showed his
+versatility by composing for a young refugee clergyman a sermon on the
+immortality of the soul. By the gift of this sermon he drew the exiled
+preacher from poverty, for it was the means of obtaining for him a
+lucrative appointment.
+
+Mirabeau sent forth from Paris several most able pamphlets on banking
+and on share companies. These were written with energy and often with
+violence. As they attacked many private interests they aroused against
+their author much hatred, insult, and calumny. He was accused of
+venality, though he was attacking and driving to despair powerful
+stock-jobbers, who would have paid him magnificently for silence, could
+he have been bought.
+
+In July, 1785, Mirabeau went to Berlin. It is a singular fact that in
+his various journeys some accident always befel him. On the way to
+Berlin an attempt was made to assassinate him by some unknown enemies,
+but he safely reached the German capital. King Frederick the Great, now
+very aged, no longer received foreigners, yet he replied to a letter
+from Mirabeau and fixed a day for seeing him at Potsdam.
+
+Mirabeau informed the king that he had come to seek permission to study
+the great military manoeuvres, and that he hoped to push on to Russia.
+During this period he worked like a labourer all day at his writings.
+Part of his time he spent at supper parties of the most tiresome
+etiquette. The same laborious habits attended him everywhere, in prison
+and in freedom, in his own country and in other lands. It was in Germany
+that he conceived the idea of his treatise on "The Reform of the Jews,"
+which is acknowledged to be one of his best works.
+
+Frederick the Great died on August 17, 1786. Feeling that he could do
+nothing useful, Mirabeau resolved at the close of 1786 to quit Berlin.
+He was urged also by a special motive in which he took pride, and which
+he thus described in a letter: "My heart has not grown old, and if my
+enthusiasm is damped, it is not extinguished. I have fully experienced
+this to-day. I consider one of the best days of my life that on which I
+received an account of the convocation of the notables, which no doubt
+will not long precede that of the National Assembly. In this I see a new
+order of things which may regenerate the monarchy. I should deem myself
+a thousand times honoured in being even the junior secretary of this
+assembly, of which I had the happiness of giving the first idea."
+
+Mirabeau was prodigiously occupied at Berlin. He often did not retire to
+rest till one in the morning, but regularly rose at five, even in the
+midst of severe winter. Without anything on but a simple quilted
+dressing-gown, without stockings or waistcoat, he worked away without
+even calling up his servant to light a fire. Besides his correspondence
+in cypher, which occupied him much, he worked assiduously at his
+"Prussian Monarchy," which was published in 1788.
+
+On departing from Berlin the count wrote a most eloquent letter of
+counsel to King Frederick William, appealing to him to cultivate peace,
+reminding him that his illustrious predecessor had conquered the
+admiration of mankind but never won their love, commending him not to
+extend the direct action of the royal power to matters which did not
+require it, advising him not to govern too much, and exhorting him to
+abolish military slavery; that is to say, the obligation then imposed on
+every Prussian to serve as a soldier from the age of eighteen to sixty
+or more, which forced men to go to the battle-field like cattle to the
+slaughterhouse.
+
+In the same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the
+harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the
+country. The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement
+protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of
+seizing the property of deceased foreigners, and demanded for burghers
+the freedom of purchasing the estates of nobles. He urged Frederick
+William to abolish the prerogatives claimed by nobles and the helotism
+of all who were not noble, and suggested that judges should be appointed
+for life and justice rendered free of expense.
+
+
+_III.--For King and People_
+
+
+It was chiefly the meeting of the notables which had hastened Mirabeau's
+return to Paris. He felt that his proper place was in the centre of the
+great events announced and begun by this convocation. After the
+undignified and inglorious prodigality of the previous reign, which had
+laid the foundation of serious financial vicissitudes, the young King
+Louis XVI. had brought with him to the throne the private virtues of a
+good and honest man, but not the qualities of a sovereign.
+
+Though economic to excess himself, he nevertheless suffered to exist and
+even to increase around him those dilapidations which at last ruined the
+resources of the state. He had no confidence in himself, and Mirabeau
+respectfully reproached him with his fatal timidity. Nothing was done
+either to increase revenue or diminish expenditure.
+
+The possessors of privilege and representatives of personal interest,
+the courtiers, the great lords, and the parliaments strenuously resisted
+all reforms and then drove from office the best intentioned, the most
+virtuous, and the ablest ministers whom the young king, in the sincerity
+of his patriotism, had chosen on his accession, in deference to public
+feeling. Among these ministers were Malesherbes, Turgot, Necker, and
+Calonne.
+
+Mirabeau returned to Paris on January 27, 1787. He at once published
+that famous "Address to the Notables," in which he denounced the whole
+corrupt system of finance and in which he demanded local provincial
+administrations. This and his "Denunciation of Stock-jobbing" made great
+impression on the public mind.
+
+Nevertheless, the "Denunciation" displeased the government, and the
+author was much persecuted. He learned that he was to be arrested and
+sent, not to the Bastille, but to a remote provincial fortress, where he
+would have been lost to public notice. So he escaped from Paris to
+Liège, whence he again attacked the administration of Calonne and the
+policy of Necker, declaring that loans should have been effected on
+methods less onerous for the state.
+
+His exile from Paris was of brief duration, for friends intervened. But
+Mirabeau returned only to renew and intensify his attacks. He remained,
+however, only for a short time, for on May 24, 1787, he set out on a
+third journey to Prussia, in order to complete his great work on the
+"Prussian Monarchy." Returning to France, he reached Paris in September.
+Five months had elapsed since the assembling of the notables. The
+eloquent Leominie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, had been the most
+brilliant figure in the conclave. The first assembly broke up on July
+27, 1787. Though gathered by the privileged orders, patriotism had
+raised its voice within it, and the archbishop, as prime minister, had
+failed to direct the new current aright.
+
+Mirabeau disapproved of what had taken place in his absence, and
+declined to be employed by the administration, but he offered to
+undertake any foreign mission in the exercise of the king to which he
+might be appointed. The application was unsuccessful. The crisis
+approached nearer and nearer. Archbishop Brienne passed rapidly from
+violence to weakness. Mirabeau refused to countenance his plans for
+contracting a new loan of 420 millions. The king was resisted by an
+almost unanimous opposition, headed by the Duke of Orleans, and the loan
+was refused at a memorable sitting.
+
+Mirabeau exhorted the government to announce in precise and solemn terms
+the convocation of the States-General in 1789, that bankruptcy might be
+averted and the national honour saved. Said he: "The year in which the
+king assembles the nation will be the finest in his life. Everybody
+knows that he has been deceived, and could not help being so, and
+everybody will do justice to his intentions. The assembled nation has a
+right to vote a tax. In future the nation alone will raise up its
+political fortunes."
+
+Mirabeau saw that the nation ought to be trusted. He strenuously
+contended for a policy in accordance with this conviction. But he
+indefatigably continued his literary labours, sending forth pamphlet
+after pamphlet, one against the prison system in vogue, another
+demanding the liberty of the Press, in which he extolled the example of
+England. He became increasingly impatient with the ineptitude of the
+government, for the affairs of the state were lapsing into desperate
+disorder, and the public discontent was being steadily aggravated.
+
+The aim of Mirabeau was at one and the same time to support the monarchy
+and to subvert the influences by which the throne was environed. He was
+solicitous of securing popular freedom, but regarded the monarchy as the
+only form of rule suitable for France in that age, and was led to adopt
+that peculiar statesmanship identifying the royal interest with the
+popular cause. Though ready to give his life for the people, he did not
+hesitate to risk his popularity by his fidelity to the throne.
+
+
+_IV.--President of the National Assembly_
+
+
+The immediate causes of the Revolution were now in full operation.
+Mirabeau, attempting to practise his own doctrine of the freedom of the
+Press, turned journalist and brought out a gazette. The famous National
+Assembly opened on May 5, 1789. He then entered on a career of immense
+political energy, beginning by issuing a stirring and eloquent "Address
+to the French People." This was especially a reply to a reactionary
+protest on the part of the clergy.
+
+Soon there were disturbances everywhere. The Bastille was stormed by the
+furious Parisians and demolished. Just at this time Mirabeau lost his
+father, and the event overwhelmed him with grief. He refused to stand
+for election as mayor of Paris. But he brought about a constitutional
+organisation of the municipality, and delivered a splendid series of
+orations on various abuses, such as plural voting, iniquitous
+monopolies, etc. Yet he proved his studious moderation by strenuously
+declaiming against the famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man,"
+pronouncing it inopportune and perilous. His heroic harangues provoked
+disorder in his audience dangerous to himself. But his courage was
+dauntless, for even when the king and his chief minister abandoned the
+royal prerogative, Mirabeau defended it.
+
+Throughout the terrible events of 1789 Mirabeau was consistent as a
+loyalist and as a patriot. But disappointment awaited his generous
+illusions, for the vacillation of the king rendered the outlook
+hopeless.
+
+At the end of January, 1791, he was appointed president of the National
+Assembly, which, during the stormy period of its existence during
+twenty-one months, had already had forty-two presidents.
+
+He exercised his functions with consummate skill, but the end of his
+wonderful life was at hand. He had been in weak health from the very
+first sittings of the Assembly, his condition causing constant anxiety
+to his intimate friends and his admirers. He was depressed by sad
+presentiments, and was in constant apprehension of assassination, for it
+was well-known that there were plots against his life. After a brilliant
+oration, the great tribune went home exhausted, and, indeed, dying.
+
+One of his last experiences was a pathetic interview with Talleyrand,
+with whom he had often crossed swords in debate. His weakness dated from
+February, 1788, when he was attacked with violent internal pains, and
+was bled to such an extent by a surgeon that he never recovered his
+wonderful natural vitality. After much suffering, endured with the most
+heroic fortitude, he passed away as if in sleep, with a sweet smile on
+his features. France mourned the loss of the greatest orator that had
+ever graced her tribune. His funeral was celebrated at St. Genevieve
+with splendid ceremonial. The verdict of those best qualified to judge
+was that Mirabeau was the most remarkable man of the eighteenth century,
+and that his premature death, soon after the outbreak of the Revolution,
+led to the overthrow of a monarchy which he alone could have saved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THOMAS MOORE
+
+
+Life of Byron
+
+
+     Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, was born in Dublin on May 28,
+     1779, was educated at Trinity College, and studied for the Bar
+     at the Middle Temple. At twenty-one years of age he published
+     a translation of Anacreon, and his reputation was further
+     established by his love-poems, under the pseudonym of Thomas
+     Little, in 1801. He received in 1803 an official post in
+     Bermuda, but entrusted his duties there to a substitute, by
+     whose defalcations he was later embarrassed. He was married at
+     thirty-one to a beautiful and amiable actress, Bessy Dyke, and
+     lived very happily for most of his life in Wiltshire, but with
+     an interval of a few years in Paris. In 1835 he received a
+     literary pension of £300, to which a Civil List pension of
+     £100 was added in 1850. He died on February 25, 1852.
+     Undoubtedly, Moore's most important contribution to prose
+     literature was his "Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,"
+     published in 1830, six years after the poet's death; as
+     payment he received £4,200. Although the work was frankly and
+     even severely criticised in many quarters, it did a great deal
+     to put Byron right with public opinion. Certainly no literary
+     contemporary was better fitted to write the biography of his
+     friend than Moore, who, moreover, had been marked for this
+     work by a free gift of Byron's own memoirs.
+
+
+_I.--Ancestors and Early Days_
+
+
+It has been said of Lord Byron that he was prouder of being a descendant
+of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into
+England, than of having been the author of "Childe Harold." The remark
+is not altogether unfounded, for the pride of ancestry was a feature of
+his character; and justly so, for his line was honourably known on the
+fields of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor; and in the faithful
+royalist, Sir John Biron, afterwards Lord Biron, throughout the Civil
+Wars.
+
+In 1784, the father of the poet, Captain John Byron, nephew of the fifth
+Lord Byron, with the sole object of relieving his debts, married, as his
+second wife, Miss Catherine Gordon, a wealthy lady of illustrious
+Scottish ancestry. Her fortune was swallowed up, and she was reduced to
+£150 a year, before she gave birth, on January 22, 1788, in Holles
+Street, London, to her first and only child, George Gordon Byron. The
+boy was somewhat deformed, one of his feet being twisted.
+
+In 1790, we find the unhappy parents living in separate lodgings in
+Aberdeen; and this estrangement was followed by complete separation, the
+worthless Captain Byron proceeding to France, where he died in the
+following year. The mother, a woman of the most passionate extremes,
+sent the boy to day school and grammar school. His schoolmates remember
+him as lively, warm-hearted, and more ready to give a blow than to take
+one. To summer excursions with his mother in the Highlands the poet
+traces his love of scenery and especially of mountainous countries; and
+he refers many years after, still with keen feeling, to a little girl,
+Mary Duff, for whom, in his eighth year, he cherished a consuming
+attachment. So early were his sensibilities dominant.
+
+On the death, in 1794, of the grandson of the old lord, little George
+stood in immediate succession to the peerage; in May, 1798, the fifth
+Lord Byron died at Newstead Abbey, and the boy's name was called in
+school with the title "Dominus." The Earl of Carlisle was appointed his
+guardian in chancery, and in the same summer, Lord Byron, in his
+eleventh year, took possession, with his mother, of the seat of his
+ancestors. The next year Mrs. Byron was placed on the Civil List for a
+pension of £300 a year. Removing to London, she placed George at school
+with Dr. Glennie at Dulwich, but thwarted the progress of his education
+with her fondness and self-will, until Lord Carlisle gave up all hope of
+ruling her. It was at this period that a boyish love for Margaret
+Parker, his cousin, who died shortly after, led Byron into the practice
+of verse.
+
+From 1801 to 1805, from thirteen years of age to seventeen, George was
+at Harrow, where he sat beside Peel, the future statesman. This period
+of ardent friendship with his fellows includes also the romantic
+affection, in 1803, for Miss Chaworth, heiress of Annesley, near
+Newstead, who looked on her admirer as the mere schoolboy that he was.
+Leaving Harrow with the reputation of an idler who would never learn,
+Byron was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October, 1805. His
+vacations were spent with his mother at Southwell, and her explosions of
+temper, in which she would throw poker and tongs, alienated him
+increasingly. In vacation and in term alike he read with extraordinary
+avidity and variety, wrote a great deal of verse, and in November, 1806,
+printed a small volume of poems for private circulation.
+
+He was a frank and vivid correspondent; his letters to Miss Pigot, of
+Southwell, and others, are full of the liveliest descriptions of the
+Cambridge days. At this time Byron was painfully shy of new faces, and
+perpetually mortified on account of his poverty. He rose, and retired to
+rest, very late. He was very fond of the exercises of swimming, riding,
+shooting, fencing, and sparring; greatly devoted to his dogs, delighted
+in music, and was known as remarkably superstitious. Of his charity and
+kindheartedness there was no end. Always conscious of his deformity, and
+terribly afraid of becoming corpulent, he was sedulously careful of his
+person and dress.
+
+"Hours of Idleness," Byron's first published volume, came out while he
+was at the university, and was received by the "Edinburgh Review" with a
+contempt which stung him to the quick. With intervals of dissipation in
+London and at Brighton, Byron threw himself, at Newstead, into the
+preparation of a satirical revenge, training himself for it by a deep
+study of the writings of Pope. After his coming of age, in 1809, he went
+up to London with his satire, and on March 13 took his seat in the House
+of Lords. A few days later "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" was the
+talk of the town. Wild festivities at Newstead followed its publication,
+and on July 2 Byron sailed from Falmouth in the Lisbon packet.
+
+
+_II.--The Poet Finds Himself_
+
+
+Lord Byron was absent from England for two years, and in the solitude of
+his nights at sea and in his lone wanderings through Greece he had
+leisure and seclusion to look within himself, and there catch the first
+glimpses of his glorious mind. His deep passion for solitude grew to
+full power; the varied excitement of his travels invigorated his
+character and stored his imagination with impressions, and his inborn
+sadness rose from a querulous bitterness to the grandeur of his later
+melancholy.
+
+His letters show him on Parnassus, where a flight of eagles seemed an
+omen of his destiny; at Athens, where he lodged with the mother of the
+"Maid of Athens"; standing among the ruins of Ephesus and the mounds of
+Troy; swimming the Hellespont in honour of Leander; at Constantinople,
+where the prospect of the Golden Horn seemed the fairest of all; at
+Patras, in the woeful debility of fever; and again at Athens, making
+acquaintance with Lady Hester Stanhope and "Abyssinian" Bruce. Through
+all these varied scenes his mind was brooding on the verses of the
+"Childe Harold."
+
+On Byron's return to England, in July, 1811, that poem was placed in Mr.
+Murray's hands, and thus was laid the foundation of a long connection
+between author and publisher. Mrs. Byron died on August 1. With all her
+faults she had loved her son deeply, and he could at least look back
+upon dutiful and kindly behaviour to her. It was in November that I
+first had the pleasure of meeting the poet at dinner, and what I chiefly
+remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his
+voice and manner, and his marked kindness. From our first meeting our
+acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship.
+
+On February 27, 1812, a day or two before the appearance of "Childe
+Harold," Byron made the first trial of his eloquence in the House of
+Lords, and it was on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Lord
+Holland. The subject of debate was the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill.
+Workmen were rioting and wrecking because their labour had been
+displaced by the introduction of machinery, and Byron's view was that
+"we must not allow mankind to be sacrificed to improvements in
+mechanism"--"the maintenance of the industrious poor is of greater
+consequence than the enrichment of monopolists"--"I have seen the state
+of these miserable men, and it is a disgrace to a civilised country."
+The speech was well received. The impression produced two days later by
+Byron's "Childe Harold" was as instantaneous as it has proved deep and
+lasting. Even the dashes of scepticism, with which he darkened his
+strain, served only to heighten its success. The Prince Regent had the
+poet presented to him, and the author of "Marmion" offered his praise.
+In the following May appeared the wild and beautiful fragment, "The
+Giaour." This new offspring of his genius was hailed with wonder and
+delight, and on my rejoining him in town this spring, I found an intense
+enthusiasm for Byron throughout the literary and social world. But his
+mind was already turning to freedom and solitude, and his third and last
+speech in the House of Lords was made in June.
+
+
+_III.--Byron's Unfortunate Marriage_
+
+
+Byron's restlessness is reflected throughout his "Journal," which he
+began at this time. He had dreams of living in the Grecian Islands and
+of adopting an Eastern manner of life; but in December, 1813, when "The
+Bride of Abydos" was published, he was still feverishly dissipating
+himself in England.
+
+A significant entry in the "Journal" says: "A wife would be the
+salvation of me," and Lord Byron became a suitor for the hand of Miss
+Milbanke, a relative of Lady Melbourne. His proposal was not at first
+accepted, but a correspondence ensued between them, and in September,
+1814, after the appearance of "The Corsair" and "Lara," they became
+formally affianced. I was much in his society at this time, and was
+filled with foreboding anxieties, which the unfortunate events that
+followed only too fully justified. At the end of December he set out for
+Seaham, the seat of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the lady's father, and on
+January 2, 1815, was married. On March 8, he wrote to me from Seaham:
+"Bell is in health, and unvaried good-humour and behaviour."
+
+Lord Byron's pecuniary embarrassments now accumulated upon him, and just
+a year after his marriage, and shortly after the birth of their
+daughter, I received a letter which breathed a profound melancholy, due
+partly to his difficulties, but more, I thought, to a return of the
+restless and roving spirit. I replied: "Do tell me you are happier than
+that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied." It was only a
+few weeks later that Lady Byron adopted the resolution of parting from
+him. She had left London in January on a visit to her father, and Byron
+was to follow her. They had parted in the utmost kindness; she wrote him
+a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; but
+immediately on her arrival her father wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that
+she would return to him no more. At the time when he had to stand this
+unexpected shock, his financial troubles, which had led to eight or nine
+executions in his house within the year, had arrived at their utmost;
+and at a moment when, to use his own expression, he was "standing alone
+on his hearth, with his household gods shivered around him," he was also
+doomed to receive the startling intelligence that the wife who had just
+parted with him in kindness, had parted with him for ever.
+
+I must quote from a letter he wrote me in March: "The fault was not in
+my choice, unless in choosing at all; for I do not believe--and I must
+say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business--that there ever
+was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and
+agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had any reproach to make her
+while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself, and if I
+cannot redeem, I must bear it."
+
+
+_IV.--Wanderings and Work_
+
+
+On April 25, 1816, being now twenty-eight years of age, Byron took final
+leave of England, and sailed with two servants for Ostend. His route, by
+Flanders and the Rhine, may be traced in his matchless verses. He
+settled in Geneva, where he met Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; they boated on
+the lake and walked together, and Byron's susceptible mind was deeply
+influenced by his mystical companion. We may discover traces of that
+vague sublimity in the third canto of "Childe Harold," and traces also
+of Mr. Wordsworth's mood which Byron absorbed from Shelley's favourite
+author.
+
+From November, 1816, his letters are dated from Venice. "This has always
+been, next to the East, the greenest island of my imagination, and it
+has not disappointed me." They are considerably taken up with love
+affairs of an irregular kind, and contain also many vivid pictures of
+Venetian society and manners. "Manfred" was completed in 1817, and was
+followed by the fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Margarita Cogni was the
+reigning favourite of Byron's unworthy harem at this time; and his poem
+of "Don Juan," now begun, most faithfully and lamentably reflects every
+whim and passion that, like the rack of autumn, swept across his mind.
+
+But April, 1819, brought a revulsion against all this libertine way of
+living, and brought also the dawn of the only real love of his whole
+life. Lord Byron had first met the Countess Guiccioli in the autumn of
+1818, when she made her appearance, three days after her marriage, at
+the house of the Countess Albrizzi, in all the gaiety of bridal array,
+and the first delight of exchanging a convent for the world. She has
+given her impressions of their meeting: "His noble and exquisitely
+beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice, his manners, the thousand
+enchantments that surrounded him, rendered him so superior a being to
+any whom I had hitherto seen, that it was impossible he should not have
+left the most profound impression upon me."
+
+In June, Byron joined her at Ravenna, and for the next three years
+remained devotedly attached to her. She struck me, during our first
+interview, when I visited them at La Mira, as a lady not only of a style
+of beauty singular in an Italian, as being fair-complexioned and
+delicate, but also as being highly intelligent and amiable.
+
+A letter to me from Pisa, dated August 27, 1822, has a mournful
+interest: "We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on
+the seashore. You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a
+funeral pile has, with mountains in the background and the sea before."
+Another, of November 17, to Lady Byron, shows that if the author of it
+had not right on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings
+which generally accompany it. "I have to acknowledge the receipt of
+Ada's [their daughter's] hair; this note will reach you about her
+birthday.... We both made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and
+better so.... I assure you that I bear you now no resentment
+whatever.... Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or
+reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect on any but two
+things--that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never
+meet again."
+
+Byron was thirty-five years old when from his exile at Genoa he turned
+his eyes to Greece, where a spirit was now rising such as he had imaged
+forth in dreams of song, but hardly could have dreamed that he should
+have lived to see it realised. He longed to witness, and very probably
+to share in, the present triumphs of liberty on those very fields where
+he had gathered for immortality such memorials of the liberty of the
+past. Lord Byron was in touch with the committee concerned with Grecian
+liberty in May, 1823, and two months later sailed with his party on July
+14.
+
+Arriving at Cephalonia he made a journey to Ithaca for a few days. His
+confidence in the Greek cause was soon clouded; the people were grossly
+degenerate, and he saw that the work of regeneration must be slow. To
+convince the government and the chiefs of the paralysing effect of their
+dissensions, to inculcate the spirit of union, to endeavour to humanise
+the feelings of the belligerents on both sides, so as to take from the
+war the character of barbarism--these, with the generous aid of his
+money, were the objects of his interference.
+
+At length the time for action arrived, and, leaving Cephalonia, Byron
+landed at Missolonghi on January 4, 1824. He was welcomed with all
+honour, and at the end of the month received a formal commission from
+the government as commander of the expedition against Lepanto, a
+fortified town. This design was a failure, and Byron occupied himself
+with the fortification of Missolonghi, and with the formation of a
+brigade for the next campaign.
+
+But his health had lately been giving way; he was living in little
+better than a swamp; and one day, after exposure to a heavy shower, he
+was seized with acute pains. On April 11, the illness, now recognised as
+rheumatic fever, increased, and on the 19th he was no more. The funeral
+took place in the Church of St. Nicholas, Missolonghi, on April 22, and
+the remains were carried to England on the brig Florida, and buried,
+close to those of his mother, in the village church of Hucknall.
+
+
+_V.--A Bewildering Personality_
+
+
+Can I clear away some of the mists that hang round my friend, and show
+him as worthy of love as he was of admiration? The task is not an easy
+one. In most minds some one influence governs, from which all secondary
+impulses are found to radiate, but this pivot of character was wanting
+to Lord Byron. Governed at different moments by totally different
+passions, and impelled sometimes, as in his excess of parsimony in
+Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, he
+presents the strangest contradictions and inconsistencies, a bewildering
+complication of qualities.
+
+So various, indeed, were his moral and intellectual attributes, that he
+may be pronounced to have been not one, but many. It was this multiform
+aspect that led the world to compare him with a medley host of
+personages: "within nine years," as he playfully records, "to Rousseau,
+Goethe, Young, Aretino, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, Satan,
+Shakespeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
+Harlequin, Henry VIII., Mirabeau, Michael Angelo, Diogenes, Milton,
+Alfieri, and many others."
+
+But this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix the
+fairy fabric of his character, is itself the clue to whatever was most
+dazzling in his might, or startling in his levity, or most attractive or
+most repellent in his life and genius. A variety of powers almost
+boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them; an unusual
+susceptibility and an uncontrolled impetuosity--such were the two great
+sources of all that varied spectacle of his life--unchecked feeling and
+dominant self-will.
+
+Great versatility of power will hardly be found without a tendency to
+versatility of principle. Byron was fully aware, not only of this
+characteristic quality of his nature, but also of its danger to
+singleness of character; and this consciousness had the effect of
+keeping him in a general line of consistency, throughout life, on
+certain great subjects, and helped him to preserve unbroken the greater
+number of his personal attachments. But, except in some few respects, he
+gave way to his versatile humour without scruple or check; and it was
+impossible but that such a range of will and power should be abused. Is
+it to be wondered at that in the works of one thus gifted and carried
+away we should find, without any design of corrupting on his side, evil
+too often invested with a grandeur which belongs intrinsically but to
+good?
+
+Nay, it will be found that even the strength and impressiveness of
+Byron's poetry is sometimes injured by a capricious and desultory
+quality due to this very pliancy of mind. It may be questioned whether a
+concentration of his powers would not have afforded a grander result. It
+may be that, if Lord Byron had not been so actively versatile, he would
+have been, not less wonderful, but more great.
+
+Again, this love of variety was one of the most pervading weaknesses,
+not only to his poetry, but of his life. The pride of personating every
+kind of character, evil as well as good, influenced his ambition and his
+conduct; and to such a perverse length did he carry this fancy for
+self-defamation that, if there was any tendency to mental derangement,
+it was in this point that it manifested itself. I have known him more
+than once, as we have sat together, to throw out dark hints of his past
+life with an air of gloom and mystery designed to awaken interest; and I
+have little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly
+any crime so dark or so desperate of which, in the excitement of acting
+upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had
+been guilty. It has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of
+his lady's separation from him may have been nothing more, after all,
+than some imposture of this kind, some dim confession of undefined
+horror.
+
+But the over-frankness with which he uttered every chance impression of
+the moment was by itself enough to bring his character unfavourably
+before the world. Which of us could bear to be judged by the unnumbered
+thoughts that course like waves of the sea through our minds and pass
+away unuttered and even unowned by ourselves? To such a test was Byron's
+character, throughout his life, exposed.
+
+Yet, to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or
+lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed his personal
+fascination. His social intercourse was perfectly charming, because
+whoever was with him occupied for the moment all his thoughts and
+feelings. Even with the casual acquaintance of the hour his heart was on
+his lips, ready to give away every secret of his life.
+
+To my assertion that "at no time of his life was Lord Byron a confirmed
+unbeliever" it has been objected that his writings prove the direct
+contrary. But this is to confuse the words "unbeliever" and "sceptic,"
+the former of which implies decision of opinion, and the latter only
+doubt. Many passages in his "Journal" show doubt strongly inclined to
+belief. "Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me there can be
+little doubt." "I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy,
+but could never bear its introduction into Christianity, which appears
+to me essentially founded upon the soul." Here are doubt and unrest, but
+not unbelief.
+
+And so I conclude my labours, undertaken at the wish of my friend, and
+leave his character to the judgement of the world. Let it be remembered
+that through life, with all his faults, he never lost a friend; that
+those about him in his youth, whether as companions, teachers, or
+servants, remained attached to him to the last; that the woman to whom
+he gave the love of his maturer years idolises his name; and that, with
+a single unhappy exception, those who were brought into relations of
+amity with him have felt towards him a kind regard in life, and retain a
+fondness for his memory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JAMES COTTER MORISON
+
+
+Life and Times of St. Bernard
+
+
+     James Augustus Cotter Morison, English essayist and historian,
+     was born in London on April 20, 1832, and was the son of the
+     inventor and proprietor of "Morison's Pills." His first years
+     were spent in Paris, where he laid the foundation of his
+     intimate knowledge of the French people. After graduating at
+     Oxford, he wrote for the "Saturday Review" and other papers,
+     and in 1863 brought out his "Life and Times of Saint Bernard."
+     His other chief work is entitled "The Service of Man: an Essay
+     towards the Religion of the Future," published in 1886. He had
+     projected an historical study of France under Louis XIV., but
+     never completed it. He died on February 26, 1888. Morison was
+     a Positivist, and had many friends in that group, and his rich
+     mind and genial temper endeared him to several of the leading
+     literary men of his time, such as George Meredith, Mark
+     Pattison and Matthew Arnold.
+
+
+_I.--The Early Days of a Useful Life_
+
+
+Saint Bernard was born in 1091, and died in 1153. His life thus almost
+coincides with the central portion of the Middle Ages. He saw the First
+and Second Crusades, the rising liberties of the communes, and the
+beginnings of scholasticism under Abelard. A large Church reformation
+and the noblest period of monasticism occurred in his day, and received
+deep marks of his genius.
+
+He was the son of Tesselin, a wealthy feudal baron of Burgundy,
+remarkable for his courage, piety, justice and modesty. Alith, his
+mother, was earnest, loving and devout, and full of humility and
+charity. His earliest years were passed amid the European fervour of the
+First Crusade; and as he grew from boyhood into youth--at which time his
+mother died--he made choice of the monastic profession. His friends
+vainly tried to tempt him aside into the pursuit of philosophy; but his
+commanding personal ascendancy brought his brothers and friends to
+follow him instead into the religious life. Having assembled a company
+of about thirty chosen spirits, he retired into seclusion with them for
+six months, and then, in 1113, at the age of twenty-two, led them within
+the gates of Citeaux.
+
+This community, founded fifteen years before, and now ruled by Stephen
+Harding, an Englishman from Dorsetshire, was exceedingly austere,
+keeping Saint Benedict's rule literally. Here Bernard's uncompromising
+self-mortification, and his love of, and communion with, Nature, showed
+themselves as the chief characteristics of his noble spirit. "Believe
+me," he said to a pupil, "you will find something far greater in the
+woods than you will in books; stones and trees will teach you that which
+you will never learn from masters." The arrival of Bernard and his
+companions was a turning-point in the history of Citeaux; and the
+monastery had to send out two colonies, to La Ferté and Pontigny, and in
+1115 a third, under Bernard himself, to Clairvaux. Here, in a deep
+umbrageous valley, traversed by a limpid stream, the thirteen pioneers
+built a house little better than a barn. Their privations were great.
+Beech-nuts and roots were at first their main support; but soon the
+sympathy of the surrounding country brought sufficiency for their frugal
+needs. Bernard was consecrated Abbot of Clairvaux by the Bishop of
+Chalons, the renowned William of Champeaux, with whom he established a
+deep friendship.
+
+His labours, anxieties and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to
+the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to
+Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and
+obtained leave to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young
+abbot obeyed his new director absolutely, and lived in a cottage apart
+from the monastery "at leisure for himself and God, and exulting, as it
+were, in the delights of Paradise."
+
+William of St. Thierry and other chroniclers, telling of Clairvaux at
+this time, are fervid in their reverence and praise. "Methought I saw a
+new heaven and a new earth" ... "the golden age seemed to have revisited
+the world" ... "as you descended the hill you could see it was a temple
+of God; the still, silent valley bespoke the unfeigned humility of
+Christ's poor. In this valley full of men, where one and all were
+occupied with their allotted tasks, a silence, deep as that of night,
+prevailed. The sounds of labour, or the chants of the brethren in the
+choral service, were the only exceptions. The order of this silence
+struck such a reverence even into secular persons that they dreaded
+breaking it even by pertinent remarks."
+
+Saint Benedict's rule had reference only to a single religious house;
+but Abbot Stephen of Citeaux united in one compact whole all the
+monasteries which sprang from the parent stock of Citeaux, and
+established an organised system of mutual supervision and control. A
+general chapter was held annually in September, and every Cistercian
+abbot whose monastery was in France, Italy or Germany was bound to
+attend every year; those from Spain, every two years; those from
+Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Portugal, every four years; those from
+Norway, every five years; and those from Syria and Palestine, every
+seven years. The "Charter of Charity," promulgated by this chapter for
+the guidance of the Cistercian Order, is a brief but pregnant document,
+which quite explains its success.
+
+
+_II.--A Great Preacher and Essayist_
+
+
+About 1119, Bernard, who had resumed the duties of abbot, began the
+career of literary and ecclesiastical activity--the wide and impassioned
+correspondence, the series of marvellous sermons--which have won for him
+the title of the Last of the Fathers. His early essays are vigorous, but
+lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed
+from the tender poetry of his later writings. Three years later we find
+Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry,
+who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his
+record of the saint. It was then regarded as natural that a man of
+eminent piety should work miracles; and we ought to accept these
+stories, in their native crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as
+significant. Belonging to the time, as much as feudal castles and mail
+armour do, they form part of a picture of it.
+
+With the exception of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse, and of another to
+Paris, where he preached the "true philosophy" of poverty and contempt
+of the world to the schools distracted by scholastic puzzles, Bernard
+remained a secluded monk of a new and humble Order. But already, in his
+thirty-fifth year, the foundations had been laid of that authority which
+enabled him to quell a widespread schism, to oppose a formidable
+heretic, and to give the strongest impulse to the Second Crusade. His
+power was growing, chiefly by his voluminous correspondence. He wrote to
+persons of all classes on all subjects; his letters afford to the
+historian a wide repertory of indubitable facts, and show what was the
+part played at that time by the spiritual power--that of a divine
+morality and superior culture coming into conflict with, and strong
+enough to withstand, a vigorous barbarism. These epistles are full of
+commonsense and clear, practical advice, and often give us a glimpse of
+the human, as distinct from the ascetic, element in monastic life. They
+show how men could pass pleasant and thoughtful days amid the barbarism
+of the time.
+
+The feudal fighting, plundering and slaying seemed to spectators of that
+time, and doubtless to Bernard also, as fixed and unalterable, part of
+the nature of things. Louis VI., King of France, had spent his life in a
+succession of sieges, forays and devastations, as one feudal lord among
+others often more powerful than he. But generally he was in the right,
+and his enemies in the wrong; he generally fought for justice and mercy,
+and they for power and for plunder. The feudal aristocracy was now at
+the zenith of its power, and the peasant was oppressed by injustice,
+taxation and forced labour. Only the Church, and she only on grand
+occasions, could stand up for the poor; but now the royal power made
+common cause with Church and poor, and was rewarded by a gain in extent
+and in influence. Yet even Louis, whose whole life showed respect for
+the spiritual power, had some disagreement with the Bishop of Paris and
+with the Archbishop of Sens, so that the two ecclesiastics placed the
+kingdom under interdict, and fled to Citeaux. Thence Bernard, with an
+astonishing tone of authority, called upon his king to do justice; and
+Louis was on the point of restoring the stolen property. Pope Honorius,
+however, sent letters to the king, raising the interdict, and thereupon
+Bernard turned his fearless indignation upon the supreme pontiff
+himself. "We speak with sadness; the honour of the Church has been not a
+little blemished in the time of Honorius."
+
+The same intrepidity is shown in Bernard's controversy with the monks of
+Cluny, an abbey of pre-eminent power and moral authority, so that Louis
+had called it the "noblest member of his kingdom." Pontius, its abbot,
+having fallen into ways of pride and extortion, had been induced from
+Rome to resign his abbacy, and to promise a pilgrimage to the Holy Land;
+but soon afterwards he fell upon the monastery with an armed force, and
+ruled there like a robber chieftain. This scandalous outrage was soon
+reported at Rome, and the sacrilegious usurper was excommunicated and
+banished. Bernard seized the moment when laxity of observance of the
+rule had produced its bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and
+warnings, as well to his own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the
+decline of the genuine monastic spirit. The invective of what he calls
+his "Apology" spares neither the softness, nor the ostentation, nor the
+avarice, of religious houses. It condemns even their stately
+sanctuaries. "The walls of your church are resplendent, but the poor are
+not there." It recalls the erring monasteries to real mortification. In
+another early treatise, "The Degrees of Humility and of Pride," the
+modes of pride are exhibited forcibly, and with not a little humour.
+Curiosity, thoughtless mirth, mock humility, and other symptoms of the
+protean vice are painted by a master.
+
+But Bernard's period of retirement was drawing to a close; he was
+becoming indispensable to his contemporaries. In 1128 he was called to
+the Council of Troyes, at which the Order of Knights Templars was
+founded, and wrote a treatise in praise of the "new warfare," called the
+"Exhortation to the Knights of the Temple." He was brought, again, to
+the council convened by Louis VI. at Étampes to decide between the
+claims of the rival Popes in the Papal schism. The council opened by
+unanimous consent that Bernard's judgement should decide their views;
+and without hesitation he pronounced Innocent II. the lawful Pope, and
+Peter Leonis, or Anacletus II., a vain pretender. He bore the same
+testimony, in the presence of Innocent, before Henry I. of England, at
+Chartres, and before Lotharius, the German Emperor, at Liège. The Pope
+visited Clairvaux, where he was moved to tears at the sight of the
+tattered flock of "Christ's poor," then presided at the Council of
+Rheims, 1131, and continued his journey into Italy, still accompanied by
+the Abbot of Clairvaux. Bernard, convinced that the cause of Innocent
+was the cause of justice and religion, set no bounds to his advocacy of
+it in letters to kings, bishops and cities. Such was now the fame of his
+sanctity that on his approach to Milan the whole population came out to
+meet him.
+
+He returned to Clairvaux in 1135, where he found the community all
+living in Christian amity, and again retired to a cottage in the
+neighbourhood for rest and reflection. "Bernard was in the heavens,"
+says Arnold of Bonnevaux; "but they compelled him to come down and
+listen to their sublunary business." The buildings were too small for
+their constantly growing numbers, and a convenient site had been found
+in an open plain farther down the valley. Bishops, barons and merchants
+came to the help of the good work; and the new abbey and church rose
+quickly.
+
+To Bernard's forty-fifth year belong the "Sermons on the Canticles." In
+the auditorium, or talking-room of the monastery, the abbot, surrounded
+by his white-cowled monks, delivered his spiritual discourses. A strange
+company it was: the old, stooping monk and the young beginner, the lord
+and the peasant, listening together to the man whose message they
+believed came from another world.
+
+
+_III.--St. Bernard and the Second Crusade_
+
+
+In the meanwhile, the affairs of the Papacy had not improved--Innocent
+was still an exile from his see. Worst of all, the monastery of Monte
+Casino, the head and type of Western monarchism, had declared for
+Anacletus, the anti-Pope; and in 1137 Bernard set out for Italy, visited
+Innocent at Viterbo, and proceeded to Rome. As he advanced, Anacletus
+was rapidly deserted by his supporters, and shortly afterwards solved
+the difficulty by his death. So ended the schism; and Bernard left Rome
+within five days after finishing his work. With broken health and
+depressed spirits he returned to Clairvaux. His brother Gerard, who had
+shared his journey, died soon after they reached home; and Bernard's
+discourse on that event is one of the most remarkable funeral sermons on
+record. The monk had not ceased to be a loving and impassioned man.
+
+Towards the end of 1139, the heresies of Peter Abelard, brought to his
+notice by William of St. Thierry, called the Abbot of Clairvaux again
+into public controversy. He implored Pope and cardinals to stay the
+progress of a second Arius. Abelard was at this time sixty-one years
+old, Bernard's senior by twelve years, and was without a rival in the
+schools. The two men were such that they could not but oppose one
+another; they looked at the shield from opposite sides; reconciliation,
+however desirable, could be only superficial. Bernard met Abelard, and
+"admonished him secretly." He well knew to what epoch this subtle mind,
+with its "human and philosophic reasons," was about to lead; his quick
+ear caught the distant thunder-roll of free inquiry. The heresies of
+Peter de Bruis and the rebellion of Arnold of Brescia had already marked
+the beginning of the great change. At last Bernard unwillingly yielded
+to Abelard's challenge to a public dispute at Sens; but his speech had
+hardly begun when Abelard rose in his place, refused to hear more, and
+appealed to Rome. He never reached Rome, but remained a penitent monk at
+Cluny, reconciled to his great antagonist.
+
+Bernard was fifty-five years of age, and old for his years, when the
+Pope delegated to him the office of preaching the Second Crusade. Pale
+and attenuated to a degree which seemed almost supernatural, his
+contemporaries discovered something in the mere glance of his eyes which
+filled them with wonder and awe. When his words of love, aspiration and
+sublime self-sacrifice reached their ears, they were no longer masters
+of themselves or of their feelings. A great meeting had been convened by
+Pope and king at Vézelay, on Easter, 1146. Bernard, attended by the
+king, spoke from a platform erected on a hill; there was a shout of
+"Crosses! Crosses!" and the preacher scattered a sheaf of these badges
+among the people. The spiritual mind of Europe had spoken through
+Bernard, and now the military mind spoke through Louis VII. He called
+upon France to destroy the enemies of God. Then Bernard preached the
+Crusade through France and Germany, welcomed everywhere by almost
+unparalleled enthusiasm and attended by miraculous signs.
+
+Bernard was shortly to die; but he had first to bear the trial of being
+reviled as the author of the calamities which had overtaken the Crusade.
+Why had he preached it and prophesied success if this was to be the
+event? A murmur of wrath against him was heard from the broad population
+of Europe. It was during this dark time that he began his largest
+literary work, the five books "De Consideratione," addressed to his
+disciple, Eugenius III., a powerful and elaborate plea against the
+excessive centralization of all administration and decisions into the
+hands of the Papal Court. Bernard called this period "the season of
+calamities." He discovered that his secretary had been forging his name
+and used his authority to recommend men and causes most unworthy of his
+patronage. His health was such that he could take no solid food; sleep
+had left him; his debility was extreme. Pope Eugenius died in July,
+1153; and Bernard had no wish to stay behind. "I am no longer of this
+world," he said; and on August 20 he passed away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN MORLEY
+
+
+Life of Richard Cobden
+
+
+     In an age when many have gained the double distinction of
+     eminence in statesmanship and in letters, the name of Lord
+     Morley stands out as that of a man so illustrious in both
+     provinces that it is hard to decide in which he has earned the
+     greater fame. We are here concerned with him as a brilliant
+     English man of letters. The "Life of Cobden" was published in
+     1881, when John Morley was in the height of his literary
+     activity. Born at Blackburn on December 24, 1838, and educated
+     at Cheltenham and Oxford, he had entered journalism, had
+     edited the "Pall Mall Gazette" and the "Fortnightly Review,"
+     and had followed up his first book--a monograph on Burke--by a
+     remarkable study of Voltaire, and by his work entitled "On
+     Compromise." Political preoccupations drew him somewhat away
+     from literature after 1881; but in 1901 he published his book
+     on Cromwell, which was followed two years later by the
+     monumental "Life of Gladstone."
+
+
+_I.--On the Road_
+
+
+Heyshott is a hamlet in a sequestered corner of West Sussex, not many
+miles from the Hampshire border. Here, in an old farmhouse, known as
+Dunford, Richard Cobden was born on June 3, 1804. His ancestors were
+yeomen of the soil, and, it is said, with every appearance of truth,
+that the name can be traced in the annals of the district as far back as
+the fourteenth century.
+
+Cobden's father, a man of soft and affectionate disposition, but wholly
+without the energy of affairs, met with financial disaster in 1814, and
+relatives charged themselves with the maintenance of his dozen children.
+Richard was sent by his mother's brother-in-law, a merchant in London,
+to a school in Yorkshire. Here he remained for five years, a grim and
+desolate time, of which he could never afterwards endure to speak. In
+1819 he was received as a clerk in his uncle's warehouse in Old Change;
+and at the age of twenty-one he was advanced from the drudgery of the
+warehouse to the glories of the road. What made the life of a traveller
+specially welcome to Cobden was the gratification that it offered to the
+master-passion of his life, an insatiable desire to know the affairs of
+the world.
+
+In 1826, his employer failed, and for some months Cobden had to take
+unwelcome holiday. In September he found a situation, and again set out
+on the road with his samples of muslin and calico prints. Two years
+afterwards, in 1828, he and two friends determined to begin business on
+their own account. They arranged with a firm of Manchester
+calico-printers to sell goods on commission; and so profitable was the
+enterprise that in 1831 the partners determined to print their own
+goods, and took an old factory at Sabden in Lancashire.
+
+Cobden's imagination was struck by the busy life of the county with
+which his name was destined to be so closely bound up. "Manchester," he
+writes with enthusiasm, "is the place for all men of bargain and
+business." His pen acquires a curiously exulting animation as he
+describes the bustle of its streets, the quaintness of its dialect, the
+abundance of its capital, and the sturdy veterans with a hundred
+thousand pounds in each pocket, who might be seen in the evening smoking
+clay pipes and calling for brandy-and-water in the bar-parlours of
+homely taverns. He prospered rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but
+it is at Sabden, not at Manchester, that we see the first monument of
+his public spirit--a little stone school-house, built as the result of
+an agitation led by him with as much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw
+afterwards into great affairs of state.
+
+Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with
+surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and
+wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide
+interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. His first
+motion was towards his own intellectual improvement, and early in life
+he perceived that for his purposes no preparation could be so effective
+as that of travel. In 1833 and 1834 he visited the Continent; in 1835,
+the United States; and in 1836 and 1837 he travelled to Egypt, the
+Levant, and Turkey.
+
+In the interval between the two latter journeys he made what was
+probably his first public speech, at a meeting to further the demand of
+a corporation for Manchester. The speech is described as a signal
+failure. "He was nervous," says the chronicler, "confused, and in fact
+practically broke down, and the chairman had to apologise for him."
+
+He was much more successful in two pamphlets he published at this time,
+"England, Ireland, and America," and "Russia," in which he opened the
+long struggle he was to wage against the restriction of commerce, and
+the policy of intervention in European feuds. It is no strained
+pretension to say that already Richard Cobden, the Manchester
+manufacturer, was fully possessed of the philosophic gift of feeling
+about society as a whole, and thinking about the problems of society in
+an ordered connection.
+
+
+_II.--The Corn Laws_
+
+
+In 1837, Cobden was invited to become candidate for the borough of
+Stockport. Although he threw himself into the struggle with all his
+energy, on the day of election he was found to be at the bottom of the
+poll. Four years later he was returned for Stockport by a triumphant
+majority. But in 1841 he was no longer a rising young politician; he had
+become the leading spirit of a national agitation.
+
+In October, 1838, a band of seven men met at an hotel in Manchester, and
+formed a new Anti-Corn-Law Association. They were speedily joined by
+others, including Cobden, who from this moment began to take a prominent
+part in all counsel and action. The abolition of the duties on corn was
+the single object of Cobden's political energy during the seven years
+that followed, and their destruction was the one finished triumph with
+which his name is associated.
+
+After the rejection in the following year by a large majority of Mr.
+Villiers' motion that the House of Commons should consider the act
+regulating the importation of corn, the association developed into a
+League of Federated Anti-Corn-Law Associations in different towns and
+districts. The repealers began the work of propagandism by sending out a
+band of economic missionaries, who were not long in discovering how
+hardly an old class interest dies. In many districts neither law nor
+equity gave them protection. The members of the league were described in
+the London Press as unprincipled schemers, as commercial and political
+swindlers, and as revolutionary emissaries, whom all well-disposed
+persons ought to assist the authorities in putting down.
+
+Before he entered Parliament, Cobden re-settled his business by entering
+into partnership with his brother Frederick, and married (May, 1840) a
+young Welsh lady, Miss Catherine Ann Williams. In Parliament Cobden was
+instantly successful. His early speeches produced that singular and
+profound effect which is perceived in English deliberative assemblies
+when a speaker leaves party recriminations, abstract argument, and
+commonplaces of sentiment, in order to inform his hearers of telling
+facts in the condition of the nation.
+
+But Cobden's parliamentary work was at this time less important than his
+work as an agitator. If in one sense the Corn Laws did not seem a
+promising theme for a popular agitation, they were excellently fitted to
+bring out Cobden's peculiar strength. It was not passion, but
+persuasiveness, to which we must look for the secret of his oratorical
+success. Cobden made his way to men's hearts by the union which they saw
+in him of simplicity, earnestness, and conviction, with a singular
+facility of exposition. Then men were attracted by his mental alacrity,
+by the instant readiness with which he turned round to grapple with a
+new objection.
+
+His patience in acquiring and shaping matter for argument was surpassed
+by his inexhaustible patience in dealing with the mental infirmities of
+those whom it was his business to persuade. He was wholly free from the
+unmeasured anger against human stupidity which is itself one of the most
+provoking forms of that stupidity.
+
+
+_III.--Cobden and Bright_
+
+
+In the autumn of 1841, Cobden and Bright made that solemn compact which
+was the beginning of an affectionate and noble friendship that lasted
+without a cloud or a jar until Cobden's death.
+
+"On the day when Mr. Cobden called upon me," said Bright, "I was in the
+depths of grief, I might almost say of despair; for the light and
+sunshine of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth
+of my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too brief
+happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden
+called upon me as a friend, and addressed me, as you might suppose, with
+words of condolence. After a time he looked up, and said, 'There are
+thousands of houses in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and
+children are dying of hunger. Now,' he said, 'when the first paroxysm of
+your grief is past, I would advise you to come with me, and we will
+never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.' I accepted his invitation."
+
+Although the agitation for repeal was in Cobden's mind only a part of
+the broad aims of peace and social and moral progress for which he
+strove, he was too practical to put forth his thoughts on too many
+subjects at once. He confined his enthusiasm to repeal until repeal was
+accomplished. But his efforts left him no time to attend to his own
+business, which was falling to pieces under the management of his
+brother Frederick. In the autumn of 1845 he felt compelled to give up
+his work as an agitator on account of his private affairs, but Bright
+and one or two friends procured the money that sufficed to tide over the
+emergency.
+
+The cause was now on the eve of victory. The autumn of 1845 was the
+wettest in the memory of man. For long the downpour never ceased by
+night or by day; it was the rain that rained away the Corn Laws. The bad
+harvest and the Irish potato famine brought the long hesitation of Sir
+Robert Peel to an end. Soon after the opening of the session of 1846, he
+announced his proposals.
+
+The repeal of the Corn Laws was to be total, but not immediate. For
+three years there was to be a lowered duty on a sliding scale, and then
+the ports were to be opened entirely. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" wrote Cobden to
+his wife on June 26, "the Corn Bill is law, and now my work is done!"
+
+
+_IV.--In the Cause of Peace_
+
+
+Cobden was now absent from England for fourteen months, travelling on
+the Continent. His reception was everywhere that of a great discoverer
+in a science which interests the bulk of mankind much more keenly than
+any other, the science of wealth. People looked on him as a man who had
+found out a momentous secret. He had interviews with the Pope, with
+three or four kings, with ambassadors, and with all the prominent
+statesmen. He never lost an opportunity of speaking a word in season.
+They were not all converted, but they all listened to him; and they all
+taught him something, whether they chose to learn anything from him in
+return or not.
+
+On his return he joined with Bright in an agitation for financial and
+parliamentary reform. While he believed in an extension of the franchise
+as a means of attaining the objects he had in view, he was essentially
+an economical, a moral, and a social reformer. He was never an
+enthusiast for mere reform in the machinery. He made it his special
+mission to advocate financial reform, and left the advocacy for
+franchise extension very largely to his colleague.
+
+Retrenchment was the keynote of the financial reform urged by Cobden;
+and retrenchment involved the furtherance of international peace and the
+reduction of British armaments by means of the abandonment of the policy
+of intervention in European disputes and the policy of "clinging to
+colonies," with the consequent expenditure upon colonial defence. From
+1846 to 1851 Lord Palmerston was at the Foreign Office, and was
+incessantly active in the affairs of half the countries of Europe. To
+this policy of interference Cobden offered resolute opposition. He was
+especially energetic in protesting against the lending to Austria and
+Russia of money that was in effect borrowed to repay the cost of the
+oppressive war against Hungary. It is impossible not to admire the
+courage, the sound sense, and the elevation with which Cobden thus
+strove to diffuse the doctrine of moral responsibility in connection
+with the use of capital.
+
+In 1852, a Protectionist Ministry under Lord Derby came into power, and
+the Anti-Corn Law League was revived. The danger, however, soon passed
+away; the Derby Ministry made no attempt to interfere with freedom of
+trade, and ere the year ended gave place to the Aberdeen Ministry.
+Cobden's policy of peace and retrenchment, however, became more and more
+unpopular. Cobden's urgent feeling about war was not in any degree
+sentimental. He opposed war because war and the preparation for it
+consumed the resources which were required for the improvement of the
+temporal condition of the population. But in the inflamed condition of
+public opinion his arguments were powerless.
+
+The invasion panic of 1853 was followed in 1854 by the Crimean War, and
+in opposing that war Cobden and Bright found themselves absolutely
+alone.
+
+"The British nation," said Lord Palmerston, "is unanimous in this
+matter. I say unanimous, for I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright, and Co. for
+anything." His estimate was perfectly correct; Cobden and Bright had the
+whole world against them. The moral fortitude, like the political
+wisdom, of these two strong men, stands out with a splendour that
+already recalls the great historic types of statesmanship and
+patriotism.
+
+
+_V.--Cobden as Treaty-Maker_
+
+
+In 1857, Cobden was compelled to retire for a time from politics. He
+vigorously opposed the Chinese War, and succeeded in defeating Lord
+Palmerston's Government in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, with
+his usual acuteness and courage, at once dissolved parliament, and in
+the General Election his victory was complete. The Manchester School was
+routed. Cobden, who contested Huddersfield, was heavily beaten; and at
+Manchester itself Bright was at the bottom of the poll. Cobden went to
+his home at Dunford, in Sussex, and remained there nearly two years.
+Once more he was afflicted with financial trouble. An unfortunate land
+speculation at Manchester, and certain investments in American
+railroads, had again brought him into difficulties, from which he was
+ultimately rescued by a munificent gift of £40,000 from subscribers
+whose names he never knew.
+
+The General Election of 1859 was held while Cobden was absent in the
+United States, and on his return he found that he had been chosen member
+for Rochdale. To his surprise, he also received from his old enemy,
+Palmerston, an offer of the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Cobden,
+who had consistently refrained from accepting any office, courteously
+declined.
+
+But he was none the less able to render a great service to the new
+Government. Mr. Bright, in a parliamentary speech, incidentally asked
+why, instead of lavishing the national substance in armaments, they did
+not go to the French Emperor and attempt to persuade him to allow his
+people to trade freely with ours. The idea of a commercial treaty
+occurred to M. Chevalier on reading the speech, and he wrote in this
+sense to Cobden, who was strongly impressed by the notion. He opened his
+mind to Gladstone, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, as the
+outcome, Cobden went to Paris in the autumn of 1859 as unofficial
+negotiator of a treaty.
+
+The negotiation was long and tedious. Cobden had to convert the emperor
+to his views, and to await the reconciliation of the various French
+interests that were opposed to freedom of trade. It was not until
+November, 1860, that Cobden's labours were concluded. England cleared
+her tariff of protection, and reduced the duties which were retained for
+revenue on the two French staples of wine and brandy. France, on her
+part, replaced prohibition by a series of moderate duties.
+
+Palmerston offered Cobden a choice between a baronetcy and a Privy
+Councillorship as a reward for his services. He replied begging
+permission most respectfully to deny himself the honour. "An
+indisposition to accept a title," he wrote, "being in my case rather an
+affair of feeling than of reason, I will not dwell further on the
+subject."
+
+
+_VI.--The Last Days of Cobden_
+
+
+When Cobden returned to England his public position had more than
+recovered the authority and renown which had been seriously impaired by
+his unpopular attitude on the Russian war. But he and Bright were soon
+involved in an almost angrier conflict than before with the upper and
+middle classes, on account of their championship of the North in the
+American Civil War.
+
+The remaining years of his life were largely spent in systematic
+onslaughts upon the policy of Lord Palmerston, and in opposition to
+military expenditure. It was with the purpose of resisting a Canadian
+fortification scheme that he made his last journey to London in March,
+1865. On his arrival he was seized by a sharp attack of asthma;
+bronchitis supervened, and it became evident that he would not recover.
+On the morning of Sunday, April 2, Bright took his place by the side of
+the dying man. As the bells were ringing for the morning service the
+mists of death began to settle heavily on his brow, and his ardent,
+courageous, and brotherly spirit soon passed tranquilly away.
+
+He was buried by the side of his son in the little churchyard at
+Lavington, on the slope of the hill among the pine-woods. "Before we
+left the house," Bright has told us, "standing by me, and leaning on the
+coffin, was his sorrowing daughter, one whose attachment to her father
+seems to have been a passion scarcely equalled among daughters. She
+said, 'My father used to like me very much to read to him the Sermon on
+the Mount. His own life was, to a large, extent, a sermon based upon
+that best, that greatest of all sermons. His was a life of perpetual
+self-sacrifice.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+SAMUEL PEPYS
+
+
+Diary
+
+
+     Samuel Pepys, author of the incomparable "Diary," was born
+     either in London or at Brampton, Huntingdonshire, on February
+     23, 1632-3, son of John Pepys, a London tailor. By the
+     influence of the Earl of Sandwich, he was entered in the
+     public service. Beginning as a clerk in the Exchequer, he was
+     soon transferred to the Naval Department, and rose to the high
+     office of secretary to the Admiralty. His services were
+     interrupted for a time, on the baseless suspicion that he was
+     a Catholic, during the panic about the supposed "Popish Plot,"
+     but he was returned to his charge, and held it until the
+     accession of William and Mary. Pepys was a man of very wide
+     interests. He was a member of parliament, and became president
+     of the Royal Society. He was an accomplished musician and a
+     keen critic of painting, architecture, and the drama. But it
+     is as a connoisseur of human nature that Pepys is known
+     to-day. The "Diary" extended over the ten years, January,
+     1659-60, to May, 1669; it closed when he was thirty-seven
+     years old, and he lived thirty-four years afterwards. The
+     manuscript, written in shorthand, fills six volumes, which
+     repose at Magdalene College, Cambridge. It was deciphered in
+     1825, when it was published as "Memoirs of Samuel Pepys,
+     comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev.
+     J. Smith, and a Selection of his Private Correspondence,
+     edited by Lord Braybrooke." Pepys died on May 26, 1703.
+
+
+_I.--"God Bless King Charles"_
+
+
+_January_ 1, 1659-60. Blessed be God, at the end of last year I was in
+very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of
+cold. I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife and servant, Jane, and no
+other in family than us three.
+
+The condition of the state was thus: the Rump, after being disturbed by
+my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again. The officers of the
+army all forced to yield. Lawson still lies in the river, and Monk is
+with his army in Scotland. The New Common Council of the City do speak
+very high; and had sent to Monk their sword-bearer, to acquaint him with
+their desires for a free and full parliament, which is at present the
+desires, and the hopes, and the expectations of all. My own private
+condition very handsome, and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor;
+besides my goods of my house, and my office, which at present is
+somewhat certain.
+
+_March 9, 1660._ To my lord at his lodging, and came to Westminster with
+him in the coach; and I telling him that I was willing and ready to go
+with him to sea, he agreed that I should. I hear that it is resolved
+privately that a treaty be offered with the king.
+
+_May 1._ To-day I hear they were very merry at Deal, setting up the
+king's flag upon one of their maypoles, and drinking his health upon
+their knees in the streets, and firing the guns, which the soldiers of
+the castle threatened, but durst not oppose.
+
+_May 2._ Welcome news of the parliament's votes yesterday, which will be
+remembered for the happiest May-day that hath been many a year to
+England. The king's letter was read in the house, wherein he submits
+himself and all things to them. The house, upon reading the letter,
+ordered £50,000 to be forthwith provided to send to his majesty for his
+present supply. The City of London have put out a declaration, wherein
+they do disclaim their owning any other government but that of a king,
+lords, and commons.
+
+_May 3._ This morning my lord showed me the king's declaration to be
+communicated to the fleet. I went up to the quarter-deck with my lord
+and the commanders, and there read the papers; which done, the seamen
+did all of them cry out, "God bless King Charles!" with the greatest joy
+imaginable. After dinner to the rest of the ships quite through the
+fleet.
+
+_May 11._ This morning we began to pull down all the state's arms in the
+fleet, having first sent to Dover for painters to come and set up the
+king's. After dinner we set sail from the Downs, but dropped anchor
+again over against Dover Castle.
+
+_May 12._ My lord gave order for weighing anchor, which we did, and
+sailed all day.
+
+_May 14._ In the morning the Hague was clearly to be seen by us. The
+weather bad; we were sadly washed when we come near the shore, it being
+very hard to land there.
+
+_May 23._ Come infinity of people on board from the king to go along
+with him. The king, with the two dukes and Queen of Bohemia, Princess
+Royal, and Prince of Orange, come on board, where I, in their coming in,
+kissed the king's, queen's, and princess's hands, having done the other
+before. Infinite shooting of the runs, and that in a disorder on
+purpose, which was better than if it had been otherwise. We weighed
+anchor, and with a fresh gale and most happy weather we set sail for
+England.
+
+_May 24._ Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the stockings on
+and wide canons that I bought at Hague. Extraordinary press of noble
+company, and great mirth all day.
+
+_May 25._ By the morning we were come close to the land, and everybody
+made ready to get on shore. I spoke to the Duke of York about business,
+who called me Pepys by name, and upon my desire did promise me his
+future favour. The king went in my lord's barge with the two dukes, and
+was received by General Monk with all love and respect at his entrance
+upon the land of Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past
+imagination.
+
+1660-1661. At the end of the last and the beginning of this year, I do
+live in one of the houses belonging to the Navy Office, as one of the
+principal officers; my family being myself, my wife, Jane, Will Hewer,
+and Wayneman, my girl's brother. Myself in constant good health, and in
+a most handsome and thriving condition. Blessed be God for it. The king
+settled, and loved of all.
+
+
+_II.--The Plague_
+
+
+_July 31, 1665._ I ended this month with the greatest joy that I ever
+did any in my life, because I have spent the greatest part of it with
+abundance of joy, and honour, and pleasant journeys, and brave
+entertainments, and without cost of money. We end this month after the
+greatest glut of content that ever I had, only under some difficulty
+because of the plague, which grows mightily upon us, the last week being
+about 1,700 or 1,800 of the plague. My Lord Sandwich at sea with a fleet
+of about one hundred sail, to the northward, expecting De Ruyter, or the
+Dutch East India fleet.
+
+_August 8._ To my office a little, and then to the Duke of Albemarle's
+about some business. The streets empty all the way now, even in London,
+which is a sad sight. To Westminster Hall, where talking, hearing very
+sad stories. So home through the City again, wishing I may have taken no
+ill in going; but I will go, I think, no more thither. The news of De
+Ruyter's coming home is certain, and told to the great disadvantage of
+our fleet; but it cannot be helped.
+
+_August 10._ To the office, where we sat all morning; in great trouble
+to see the bill this week rise so high, to above 4,000 in all, and of
+them above 3,000 of the plague. Home to draw over anew my will, which I
+had bound myself by oath to dispatch by to-morrow night; the town
+growing so unhealthy that a man cannot depend upon living two days.
+
+_August 12._ The people die so that now it seems they are fain to carry
+the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in.
+And my lord mayor commands people to be within at nine at night, that
+the sick may have liberty to go abroad for air. There is one also dead
+out of one of our ships at Deptford, which troubles us mightily. I am
+told, too, that a wife of one of the grooms at court is dead at
+Salisbury, so that the king and queen are speedily to be all gone to
+Milton. So God preserve us!
+
+_August 16._ To the Exchange, where I have not been in a great while.
+But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people, and
+very few upon the 'Change. Jealous of every door that one sees shut up
+lest it should be the plague; and about two shops in three, if not more,
+generally shut up.
+
+_August 22._ I walked to Greenwich, in my way seeing a coffin with a
+dead body therein, dead of the plague, which was carried out last night,
+and the parish have not appointed anybody to bury it; but only set a
+watch there all day and night, that nobody should go thither or come
+thence, this disease making us more cruel to one another than we are to
+dogs.
+
+_August 25._ This day I am told that Dr. Burnett, my physician, is this
+morning dead of the plague, which is strange, his man dying so long ago,
+and his house this month open again. Now himself dead. Poor, unfortunate
+man!
+
+_August 30._ I went forth and walked towards Moorfields to see (God
+forgive my presumption!) whether I could see any dead corpse going to
+the grave. But, Lord! how everybody looks, and discourse in the street
+is of death and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the
+town is like a place distressed and forsaken.
+
+_September 3 (Lord's Day)._ Up; and put on my coloured silk suit very
+fine, and my new periwig, bought a good while since, but durst not wear,
+because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a
+wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwigs,
+for nobody will dare to buy any hair, for fear of the infection, that it
+has been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague. My Lord
+Brouncker, Sir J. Minnes, and I up to the vestry at the desire of the
+justices of the peace, in order to the doing something for the keeping
+of the plague from growing; but, Lord! to consider the madness of the
+people of the town, who will, because they are forbid, come in crowds
+along with the dead corpses to see them buried.
+
+_September 6._ To London, to pack up more things; and there I saw fires
+burning in the streets, as it is through the whole city, by the lord
+mayor's order.
+
+_September 14._ To the Duke of Albemarle, where I find a letter from my
+Lord Sandwich, of the fleet's meeting with about eighteen more of the
+Dutch fleet, and his taking of most of them; and the messenger says they
+had taken three after the letter was sealed, which being twenty-one, and
+those took the other day, is forty-five sail, some of which are good,
+and others rich ships. Having taken a copy of my lord's letter, I away
+toward the 'Change, the plague being all thereabouts. Here my news was
+highly welcome, and I did wonder to see the 'Change so full--I believe
+two hundred people. And, Lord! to see how I did endeavour to talk with
+as few as I could, there being now no shutting up of houses infected,
+that to be sure we do converse and meet with people that have the plague
+upon them. I spent some thought on the occurrences of this day, giving
+matter for as much content on one hand and melancholy on another, as any
+day in all my life. For the first, the finding of my money and plate all
+safe at London; the hearing of this good news after so great a despair
+of my lord's doing anything this year; and the decrease of 500 and more,
+which is the first decrease we have yet had in the sickness since it
+begun. Then, on the other side, my finding that though the bill in
+general is abated, yet in the City within the walls it is increased; my
+meeting dead corpses, carried close to me at noonday in Fenchurch
+Street.
+
+One of my own watermen, that carried me daily, fell sick as soon as he
+had landed me on Friday last, when I had been all night upon the water,
+and is now dead of the plague. And, lastly, that both my servants, W.
+Hewer and Tom Edwards, have lost their fathers of the plague this week,
+do put me into great apprehension of melancholy, and with good reason.
+
+_November 15._ The plague, blessed be God! is decreased 400, making the
+whole this week but 1,300 and odd, for which the Lord be praised!
+
+_December 25 (Christmas Day)._ To church in the morning, and there saw a
+wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day, and the young
+people so merry with one another, and strange to see what delight we
+married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition,
+every man and woman gazing and smiling at them.
+
+_December 31._ Thus ends this year, to my great joy, in this manner. I
+have raised my estate from £1,300 in this year to £4,400. I have got
+myself greater interest, I think, by my diligence, and my employments
+increased by that of treasurer for Tangier and surveyor of the victuals.
+It is true we have gone through great melancholy because of the plague,
+and I put to great charges by it, by keeping my family long at Woolwich,
+and myself and my clerks at Greenwich, and a maid at London; but I hope
+the king will give us some satisfaction for that. But now the plague is
+abated almost to nothing, and I intending to get to London as fast as I
+can. To our great joy the town fills apace, and shops begin to be open
+again.
+
+
+_III.--The Great Fire_
+
+
+_September 2, 1666._ Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get
+things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three in
+the morning to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose,
+and slipped on my nightgown, and went to her window, and thought it to
+be on the back side of Mark Lane at the farthest, and so went to bed
+again. About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at
+the window, and saw the fire not so much as it was, and further off.
+By-and-by Jane comes and tells me that above 300 houses have been burned
+down, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge.
+So I made myself ready, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon
+one of the high places; and there I did see the houses at that end of
+the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other
+side of the bridge. So down with my heart full of trouble to the
+lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the
+king's baker's house in Pudding Lane.
+
+So I down to the waterside, and there got a boat, and through bridge,
+and there saw a lamentable fire. Everybody endeavouring to remove their
+goods, and flinging into the river, or bringing them into lighters that
+lay off; poor people staying in their houses till the very fire touched
+them, and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stairs
+by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I
+perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows
+and balconies till they burned their wings and fell down. Having staid,
+and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my
+sight, endeavouring to quench it, I to White Hall, and there up to the
+king's closet in the chapel, where people come about me, and I did give
+them an account which dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the
+king.
+
+So I was called for, and did tell the king and Duke of York what I saw,
+and that unless his majesty did command houses to be pulled down,
+nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the king
+commanded me to go to my lord mayor from him and command him to spare no
+houses, but to pull down before the fire every way. Meeting with Captain
+Cocke, I in his coach, which he lent me, to Paul's, and there walked
+along Watling Street, as well as I could, every creature coming away
+loaded with goods to save, and here and there sick people carried away
+in beds. At last met my lord mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent.
+To the king's message, he cried, like a fainting woman, "Lord! what can
+I do? I am spent; people will not obey me. I have been pulling down
+houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." So I walked
+home, seeing people almost all distracted, and no manner of means used
+to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full
+of matter for burning, as pitch and tar in Thames Street, and warehouses
+of oil and wines and brandy.
+
+Soon as I dined, I away, and walked through the City, the streets full
+of people, and horses and carts loaden with goods. To Paul's Wharf,
+where I took boat, and saw the fire was now got further, both below and
+above bridge, and no likelihood of stopping it. Met with the king and
+Duke of York in their barge. Their order was only to pull down houses
+apace; but little was or could be done, the fire coming so fast. Having
+seen as much as I could, I away to White Hall by appointment, and there
+walked to St. James's Park, and there met my wife, and Creed and Wood
+and his wife, and walked to my boat; and upon the water again, and to
+the fire, still increasing, and the wind great. So near the fire as we
+could for smoke, and all over the Thames you were almost burned with a
+shower of fire-drops.
+
+When you could endure no more upon the water, we to a little ale-house
+on the Bankside, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the
+fire grow; and as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners
+and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could
+see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame,
+not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. We stayed till, it being
+darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to
+the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of
+above a mile long; it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and
+all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and
+the cracking of houses at their ruin. So home with a sad heart.
+
+
+_IV.--Of the Badness of the Government_
+
+
+_April 26, 1667._ To White Hall, and there saw the Duke of Albemarle,
+who is not well, and do grow crazy. Then I took a turn with Mr. Evelyn,
+with whom I walked two hours; talking of the badness of the government,
+where nothing but wickedness, and wicked men and women command the king;
+that it is not in his nature to gainsay anything that relates to his
+pleasures; that much of it arises from the sickliness of our ministers
+of state, who cannot be about him as the idle companions are, and
+therefore he gives way to the young rogues; and then from the negligence
+of the clergy, that a bishop shall never be seen about him, as the King
+of France hath always; that the king would fain have some of the same
+gang to be lord treasurer, which would be yet worse.
+
+And Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the court
+lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's
+coming in. He tells me that now the Countess Castlemaine do carry all
+before her. He did tell me of the ridiculous humour of our king and
+knights of the Garter the other day, who, whereas heretofore their robes
+were only to be worn during their ceremonies, these, as proud of their
+coats, did wear them all day till night, and then rode in the park with
+them on. Nay, he tells me he did see my Lord Oxford and Duke of Monmouth
+in a hackney coach with two footmen in the park, with their robes on,
+which is a most scandalous thing, so as all gravity may be said to be
+lost among us.
+
+
+_V.--The End of the Diary_
+
+
+_November 30, 1668._ My wife after dinner went the first time abroad in
+her coach, calling on Roger Pepys, and visiting Mrs. Creed and my cousin
+Turner. Thus endeth this month with very good content, but most
+expenseful to my purse on things of pleasure, having furnished my wife's
+closet and the best chamber, and a coach and horses that ever I knew in
+the world; and I am put into the greatest condition of outward state
+that ever I was in, or hoped ever to be. But my eyes are come to that
+condition that I am not able to work. God do His will in it!
+
+_December 2._ Abroad with my wife, the first time that ever I rode in my
+own coach, which do make my heart rejoice and praise God. So she and I
+to the king's playhouse, and there saw "The Usurper," a pretty good
+play. Then we to White Hall; where my wife stayed while I up to the
+duchess, to speak with the Duke of York; and here saw all the ladies,
+and heard the silly discourse of the king with his people about him.
+
+_December 21._ To the Duke's playhouse, and saw "Macbeth." The king and
+court there, and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine. And my
+wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never
+thought so much before, and so did Talbot and W. Hewer. The king and
+Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me; but it vexed me to see Moll
+Davis in the box over the king and my Lady Castlemaine, look down upon
+the king, and he up to her. And so did my Lady Castlemaine once; but
+when she saw Moll Davis she looked like fire, which troubled me.
+
+_May 31, 1669._ Up very betimes, and continued all the morning examining
+my accounts, in order to the fitting myself to go abroad beyond sea,
+which the ill-condition of my eyes and my neglect hath kept me
+behindhand in. Had another meeting with the Duke of York at White Hall
+on yesterday's work, and made a good advance; and so being called by my
+wife, we to the park, Mary Batelier and a Dutch gentleman, a friend of
+hers, being with us. Thence to "The World's End," a drinking house by
+the park; and there merry, and so home late.
+
+And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own
+eyes in the keeping of my journal, having done now so long as to undo my
+eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore
+resolve, from this time forward to have it kept by my people in
+longhand, and must be contented to set down no more than is fit for them
+and all the world to know. And so I betake myself to that course, which
+is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all
+the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare
+me! S.P.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PLINY THE YOUNGER
+
+
+Letters
+
+
+     Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, or Pliny the Younger, was
+     born in 62 A.D. at Novum Comum, in the neighbourhood of Lake
+     Como, in the north of Italy. His family was honourable,
+     wealthy, and able, and his uncle, Pliny the Elder, was the
+     encyclopaedic student and author of the famous "Natural
+     History." On his father's death, young Pliny, a boy of nine,
+     was adopted by the elder Pliny, educated in literary studies
+     and as an advocate, and was a notable pleader before his
+     twentieth year. Through a succession of offices he rose to the
+     consulship in the year 100, and afterwards continued to hold
+     important appointments. He was twice married, but left no
+     children. The date of his death is unknown. The "Letters of
+     Pliny the Younger" are valuable as throwing light upon the
+     life of the Roman people; but they are also models of Latin
+     style, and have all the charm of their author's upright,
+     urbane, and tolerant character. His epistle to the Emperor
+     Trajan with regard to the Christians is of peculiar interest.
+
+
+_To Cornelius Tacitus_
+
+
+You will certainly laugh, and well may you laugh, when I tell you that
+your old friend has turned sportsman, and has captured three magnificent
+boars. "What," you say, "Pliny?" Yes, I myself, though without giving up
+my much loved inactivity. While I sat at the nets, you might have found
+me holding, not a spear, but my pen. I was resolved, if I returned with
+my hands empty, at least to bring home my tablets full. This open-air
+way of studying is not at all to be despised. The activity and the scene
+stimulate the imagination; and there is something in the solemnity and
+solitude of the woods, and in the expectant silence of the chase, that
+greatly promotes meditation. I advise you whenever you hunt in future to
+take your tablets with you as well as your basket and flask. You will
+find that Minerva, as well as Diana, haunts these hills.
+
+
+_To Minucius Fundanus_
+
+
+When I consider how the days pass with us at Rome, I am surprised to
+find that any single day taken by itself is spent reasonably enough, or
+at least seems to be so, and yet when I add up many days together the
+impression is quite otherwise. If you ask anyone what he has been doing
+to-day, he will tell you perhaps that he has been attending the ceremony
+of a youth's coming of age; he has assisted at a wedding, been present
+at the hearing of a lawsuit, witnessed a will, or taken part in a
+consultation. These occupations seem very necessary while one is engaged
+in them; and yet, looking back at leisure upon the many hours we have
+thus employed, we cannot but consider them mere frivolities. Looking
+back especially on town life from a country retreat, one is inclined to
+regret how much of life has been spent in these wretched trifles.
+
+This reflection is one which often occurs to me at my place at
+Laurentum, when I am immersed in studies or invigorating my bodily
+health. In that peaceful home I neither hear nor say anything which
+needs to be repented of. There is no one there who speaks evil of
+anyone; and I have not to complain of any man, except sometimes of
+myself when I am dissatisfied with my work. There I live undisturbed by
+rumours, free from the vicissitudes of hope and fear, conversing only
+with myself and my books. What a true and genuine life it is; what a
+delightful and honest repose--surely more to be desired than the highest
+employments. O sea and solitary shore, secret haunt of the Muses, with
+how many noble thoughts have you inspired me! Do you then, my friend,
+take the first opportunity of leaving the noisy town with all its empty
+pursuits, and devote your days to study or leisure. For, as Attilius
+well says, it is better to have nothing to do than to be doing of
+nothing.
+
+
+_To Septicius Clarus_
+
+
+How did it happen, my friend, that you failed to keep your engagement to
+dine with me? I shall expect you to repay me what I spent on the
+festival--no small sum, I can assure you. I had prepared for each of us,
+you must know, a lettuce, three snails, two eggs, and a barley cake
+served with sweet wine and snow; the snow most certainly I shall charge
+to your account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots,
+gourds, onions, and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard
+a comedian, or the reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you
+had liked, all three, such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies
+and Spanish dancing girls at some other house were more to your taste. I
+shall have my revenge of you, depend upon it, but I won't say how.
+Indeed, it was not kind thus to mortify your friend--I had almost said
+yourself; for how delightfully we should have passed the evening in
+jests and laughter, and in deeper talk! It is true you may dine at many
+houses more sumptuously than at mine but nowhere will you find more
+unconstrained gaiety, simplicity and freedom. Only make the experiment,
+and if you do not ever afterwards prefer my table to any other, never
+favour me with your company again.
+
+
+_To Avitus_
+
+
+It would be a long story, and of no great importance, if I were to tell
+you by what accident I dined lately with a man who, in his own opinion,
+entertained us with great splendour and economy, but in my opinion with
+meanness combined with extravagance. He and a few of his guests enjoyed
+some very excellent dishes indeed, but the fare placed before the rest
+of the company was of the most inferior kind. There were three kinds of
+wine in small bottles, but it was not intended that the guests should
+take their choice at all. The best was for himself and for us; another
+vintage was for his friends of a lower order--for you must know he
+divides his friends into classes--and the third kind was for his own and
+his guests freed-men. My neighbor noticed this, and asked me if I
+approved of it. "Not at all," I said.
+
+"What then," said he, "is your custom in entertaining?"
+
+"Mine," said I, "is to offer the same fare to everybody. I invite my
+friends to dinner without separating them into classes. Everyone who
+comes to my table is equal, and even my freed-men are then my guests
+just as much as anyone else."
+
+He asked me if I did not find this very expensive. I assured him that it
+was not so at all, and that the whole secret lay in drinking no better
+wine myself that I gave to others. If a man is wise enough to moderate
+his own luxury, he will not find it very expensive to entertain all his
+visitors on equal terms. Restrain your own tastes if you would really
+economise. This is a better way of saving expense than making these
+insulting distinctions between guests.
+
+It would be a pity if a man of your excellent disposition should be
+imposed upon by the immoderate ostentation which prevails at some tables
+under the guise of frugality. I tell you of this as an example of what
+you ought to shun. Nothing is to be more avoided than this preposterous
+association of extravagance and meanness--defects which are unpleasant
+enough when found separately, but are particularly detestable when
+combined.
+
+
+_To Baebius Macer_
+
+
+I am glad to hear that you are so great an admirer of my Uncle Pliny's
+works as to wish to have a complete collection of them. You will wonder
+how a man so much occupied as he was could find time to write so many
+books, some of them upon very difficult subjects. You will be still more
+surprised when you hear that for a considerable time he practised at the
+bar, that he died in his fifty-sixth year, and that from the time of his
+retirement from the bar to his death he was employed in some of the
+highest offices of state, and in the immediate service of the emperors.
+But he had a very quick intelligence, an incredible power of
+application, and an unusual faculty of doing without sleep. In summer he
+used to begin to work at midnight; in winter, generally at one in the
+morning, or two at the latest, and often at midnight. But he would
+often, without leaving his studies, refresh himself by a short sleep.
+Before daybreak he used to wait upon the Emperor Vespasian, who also was
+a night worker, and after that attended to his official duties. Having
+taken a light meal at noon, after the custom of our ancestors, he would
+in summer, if unoccupied, lie down in the sun, while a book was read to
+him from which he made extracts and notes. Indeed he never read without
+making extracts; he used to say that no book was so bad as not to teach
+one at least something. After this reading he usually took a cold bath,
+then a light refreshment, and went to sleep for a little while. Then, as
+if beginning a new day, he resumed his studies until dinner, when a book
+was again read to him, upon which he would make passing comments. I
+remember once, when his reader had pronounced a word wrongly, someone at
+the table made him repeat it again; upon which my uncle asked his friend
+if he had not understood it. He admitted that the word was clear enough.
+"Why did you stop him then?" asked my uncle; "we have lost more than ten
+lines by this interruption of yours." Even so parsimonious was he of
+every moment of time! In summer he always rose from dinner by daylight,
+and in winter as soon as it was dark; this was an invariable law with
+him.
+
+Such was his life amidst the noise and bustle of the city; but when he
+was in the country his whole time, without exception, was given to study
+except when he bathed. And by this exception I mean only the time when
+he was actually in the bath, for all the time when he was being rubbed
+and dried he was read to, or was himself dictating. Again, when
+travelling he gave his whole time to study; a secretary constantly
+attended him with books and tablets, and in winter wore very warm gloves
+so that the cold weather might not interrupt my uncle's work; and, for
+the same reason, when in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I
+remember he once reproved me for going for a walk, saying that I might
+have used the hours to greater advantage; for he thought all time was
+lost which was not given to study. It was by this extraordinary
+application that he found time to write so many volumes, besides a
+hundred and sixty books of extracts which he left me, written on both
+sides in an extremely small hand, so that their number might be reckoned
+considerably greater.
+
+
+_To Cornelius Tacitus_
+
+
+I understand you wish to hear about the earthquake at Misenum. After my
+uncle had left us on that day, I went on with my studies until it was
+time to bathe; then I had supper and went to bed. But my sleep was
+broken and disturbed. There had been many slight shocks, which were very
+frequent in Campania, but on this night they were so violent that it
+seemed as though everything must be overthrown. My mother ran into my
+room, and we went out into a small court which separated our house from
+the sea. I do not know whether to call it courage or rashness on my
+part, as I was only eighteen years old; but I took up Livy and read and
+made extracts from him. When morning came the light was faint and
+sickly; the buildings around us were tottering to their fall, and there
+was great and unavoidable danger in remaining where we were. We resolved
+to leave the town. The people followed us in consternation, and pressed
+in great crowds about us on our way out. Having gone a good distance
+from the house, we stood still in the midst of a dreadful scene. The
+carriages for which we had sent, though standing upon level ground, were
+being thrown from side to side, and could not be kept still even when
+supported by large stones. The sea appeared to roll back upon itself,
+driven from its shores by the convulsive movements of the earth; a large
+portion of the sea-bottom was uncovered, and many marine animals were
+left exposed. Landward, a black and dreadful cloud was rolling down,
+broken by great flashes of forked lightning, and divided by long trains
+of flame which resembled lightning but were much larger.
+
+Soon afterwards the clouds seemed to descend and cover the whole surface
+of the ocean, hiding the island of Capri altogether and blotting out the
+promontory of Misenum. My mother implored me earnestly to make my
+escape, saying that her age and frame made it impossible for her to get
+away, but that she would willingly meet her death if she could know that
+she had not been the cause of mine. But I absolutely refused to forsake
+her, and seizing her hand I led her on. The ashes now began to fall upon
+us, though as yet in no great quantity. I looked back and saw behind us
+a dense cloud which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed
+that while we still had life we should turn out of the high road, lest
+she should be trampled to death in the dark by the crowd.
+
+We had scarcely sat down when darkness closed in upon us, not like the
+darkness of a moonless night, or of a night obscured by clouds, but the
+darkness of a closed room where all the lights have been put out. We
+heard the shrieks of women, the cries of children, and the shouts of
+men; some were calling for their children, others for their parents,
+others for their husbands or wives, and recognising one another through
+the darkness by their voices. Some were calling for death through very
+fear of death; others raised their hands to the gods; but most imagined
+that the last eternal night had come, and that the gods and the world
+were being destroyed together. Among these were some who added imaginary
+terrors to the real danger, and persuaded the terror-stricken multitude
+that Misenum was in flames. At last a glimmer of light appeared which we
+imagined to be a sign of approaching flames, as in truth it was; but the
+fire fell at a considerable distance from us, and again we were immersed
+in darkness. A heavy shower of ashes now rained upon us, so that we were
+obliged from time to time to shake them off, or we should have been
+crushed and buried in the heap. I might congratulate myself that during
+all this horror not a sigh or expression of fear escaped me, if it had
+not been that I then believed myself to be perishing with the world
+itself, and that all mankind were involved in the same calamity--a
+miserable consolation indeed, but a powerful one.
+
+At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees like a cloud of
+smoke; real day returned, and even the sun appeared, though very faintly
+as he appears during an eclipse. Everything before our trembling eyes
+was changed, being covered over with white ashes as with deep snow. We
+returned to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could
+and passed an anxious night between hope and fear. There was more fear
+than hope, however; for the earthquake still continued and many crazy
+people were running about predicting awful horrors.
+
+You must read my story without any view of writing about it in your
+history, of which it is quite unworthy; indeed, my only excuse for
+writing it in a letter is that you have asked for it.
+
+
+_To Calpurnia, His Wife_
+
+
+It is incredible how impatiently I wish for your return, such is the
+tenderness of my love for you, and so unaccustomed are we to separation.
+I lie awake great part of the nights thinking of you; and in the day my
+feet carry me of their own accord to your room at the hours when I used
+to see you, but not finding you there I go away as sorrowful and
+disappointed as an excluded lover. The only time when I am free from
+this distress is when I am in the forum busy with the lawsuits of my
+friends. You may judge how wretched my life is when I find my repose
+only in labour and my consolation in miseries and cares.
+
+
+_To Germinius_
+
+
+You must very well know the kind of people who, though themselves slaves
+to every passion, are mightily indignant at the vices of others, and
+most severe against those whom they most closely resemble. Surely
+leniency is the most becoming of all virtues, even in persons who have
+least need of anyone's indulgence. The highest of all characters, in my
+estimation, is that of a man who is as ready to pardon human errors as
+though he were every day himself guilty of them, and who yet abstains
+from faults as though he never forgave them. Let us observe this rule,
+both in our public and in our private relations--to be inexorable to
+ourselves, but to treat the rest of the world with tenderness, including
+even those who forgive only themselves. Let us always remember the
+saying of that most humane and therefore very great Thrasea: "He who
+hates vices, hates mankind."
+
+Perhaps you will ask who it is that has moved me to these reflections?
+There was a certain person lately--But I will tell you of that when we
+meet. No; on second thoughts I will not tell you even then, lest by
+condemning him and exposing his conduct I should be violating the
+principle which I have just condemned. So, whoever he is, and whatever
+he may be, the matter shall remain unspoken; since to expose him would
+be of no advantage for the purpose of example; but to hide his fault
+will be of great advantage to good nature.
+
+
+_To the Emperor Trajan_
+
+
+It is my rule, to refer to you all matters about which I have any doubt.
+For who can be more capable of removing my scruples or of instructing my
+ignorance?
+
+I have never been present at any trials of Christians, and am,
+therefore, ignorant of the reasons for which punishment is inflicted, as
+well as of the examinations which it is proper to make of their guilt.
+As to whether any difference is usually made with respect to the ages of
+the guilty, or whether no distinction is to be observed between the
+young and the old; whether repentance entitles them to a pardon, or
+whether it is of no advantage to a man who has once been a Christian
+that he has ceased to be one; whether the very profession of
+Christianity unattended by any criminal act, or only the crimes that are
+inherent in the profession are punishable--in all these points I am very
+doubtful.
+
+In the meantime, the method which I have observed towards those who have
+been brought before me as Christians is this. I have interrogated them
+as to whether they were Christians; if they confessed I repeated the
+question twice again, adding threats at the same time; and if they still
+persevered I ordered them to execution. For I was persuaded that
+whatever the nature of their opinions might be, their pertinacity and
+inflexible obstinacy ought certainly to be punished. Others also were
+brought before me possessed by the same madness, but as they were Roman
+citizens I ordered them to be sent to Rome. As this crime spread while
+it was actually under prosecution, many fresh cases were brought up. An
+anonymous paper was given me containing a charge against many persons.
+Those who denied that they were Christians, or that they had ever been
+so, repeated after me an invocation to the gods, offered wine and
+incense before your statue, which for this purpose I had ordered to be
+placed among the statues of the gods, and even reviled the name of
+Christ; and so, as it is impossible to force those who are really
+Christians to do any of these things, I thought it proper to dismiss
+them. Others who had been accused confessed themselves at first to be
+Christians, but immediately afterwards denied it; and others owned that
+they had formerly been of that number, but had now forsaken their error.
+All these worshipped your statue and the images of the gods, at the same
+time reviling the name of Christ.
+
+They affirmed that the whole of their guilt, or their error, had been as
+follows. They met on a stated day before sunrise and addressed a form of
+invocation to Christ as to a God; they also bound themselves by an oath,
+not for any wicked purpose but never to commit thefts, robberies, or
+adulteries, never to break their word, nor to deny a trust when they
+should be called upon to deliver it up. After this had been done they
+used to separate, and then reassemble to partake in common of an
+innocent meal. They had desisted, however, from this custom, after the
+publication of my edict, by which, in accordance with your orders, I had
+forbidden fraternities to exist. Having received this account I thought
+it all the more necessary to make sure of the real truth by putting two
+slave-girls, who were said to have taken part in their religious
+functions, to the torture; but I could discover nothing more than an
+absurd and extravagant superstition.
+
+I have, therefore, adjourned all further proceedings in the affair in
+order to consult with you. It appears to be a matter highly deserving
+your consideration, especially as very many persons are involved in the
+danger of these prosecutions; for the inquiry has already extended and
+is likely further to extend to persons of all ranks and ages, and of
+both sexes. This contagious superstition is not confined to the cities
+only, but has spread its infection among the villages and country
+districts as well; and it seems impossible to cure this evil or to
+restrain its progress. It is true that the temples which were once
+almost deserted have lately been frequented, and that the religious
+rites which had been interrupted are again revived; and there is a
+general demand for animals for sacrificial victims, which for some time
+past have met with few purchasers. From all this it is easy to imagine
+what numbers might be reclaimed from this error if pardon were granted
+to those who may repent of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CARDINAL RICHELIEU
+
+
+Political Testament
+
+
+     Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the great French
+     cardinal-statesman, was born in Paris on September 5, 1585, of
+     a noble family, and was at first educated for the profession
+     of arms, but entered the Church in order to become Bishop of
+     Luçon in 1606. Having come up to Paris to make his way in the
+     world, he was appointed almoner to the young queen Anne of
+     Austria, and rose in 1616 to be Secretary of State for War and
+     for Foreign Affairs. He received the cardinal's hat in 1622,
+     and for a period of eighteen years, from 1624 to 1642, he was,
+     in everything but name, the Majesty of France. His mind was
+     bold, unscrupulous, remorseless, and inscrutable. Yet it was
+     always noble--the minister who sent so many to the scaffold
+     could truly say that in his vast labours he had but one
+     pleasure, to know that so many honest folk slept in security
+     while he watched night after night. He was a friend to
+     literature, was founder of the Academy, and was himself a
+     considerable author in history and theology. His greatest
+     work, "Testament Politique du Cardinal de Richelieu," which
+     was published in 1764, and in which is embodied his counsel in
+     statecraft, is a literary achievement of no small importance,
+     exhibiting as it does not only a political acumen of a very
+     high order but an acute faculty for literary expression.
+     Richelieu died on December 4, 1642.
+
+
+_Retrospect_
+
+
+At the time when your majesty admitted me to your counsels and confided
+to me the direction of public affairs I may say with truth that the
+Huguenots divided the state with your majesty, the great families
+behaved as though they had no sovereign, and the governor of provinces
+as if they had been sovereigns themselves. Every man took his own
+audacity to be the measure of his merit, so that the most presumptious
+were considered the wisest, and proved often the most fortunate. Abroad
+the friendship of France was despised. At home private interests were
+preferred to the general advantage. The dignity of the throne had so far
+declined, through the fault of my predecessors in office, that it was
+almost unrecognisable. To have continued to entrust to their hands the
+helm of the state would have led to irremediable disaster; yet, on the
+other hand, too swift and too great a change would have been fraught
+with dangers of its own. In that emergency the wisest considered that it
+was hardly possible to pass without shipwreck through the reefs and
+shoals, and there were many who had foretold my fall even before your
+majesty had raised me to power.
+
+Yet, knowing what kings may do when they make good use of their power, I
+was able to promise your majesty that your prudence and firmness, with
+the blessing of God, would give new health to this kingdom. I promised
+to devote all my labours, and all the authority with which I might be
+clothed, to procuring the ruin of the Huguenot party, to humbling the
+pride of the great, to reducing all your subjects to their duty, and to
+elevating your majesty's name among foreign nations to its rightful
+reputation.
+
+I asked, to that end, your majesty's entire confidence, and assured you
+that my policy would be the direct contrary of that of my predecessors,
+inasmuch as, instead of removing the queen, your mother, from your
+majesty's counsels, I would leave nothing undone to promote the closest
+union between you, to the great advantage and honour of the kingdom.
+
+The success which has followed the good intentions which it has pleased
+God to give me for the administration of this state will justify, to the
+ages to come, the constancy with which I have pursued this design--that
+the union which exists between your majesties in nature, may be
+completed also between you in grace. And if, after many years, this
+purpose by the malice of your enemies, has been defeated, it is my
+consolation to remember how often your majesty has been heard to say
+that when I was working most for the honour of the queen, your mother,
+she was conspiring for my ruin.
+
+
+_Of Education_
+
+
+Letters are one of the greatest ornaments of states, and their
+cultivation is necessary to the commonwealth. Yet it is certain that
+they should not be taught indiscriminately to every one. A nation whose
+every subject should be educated would be as monstrous as a body having
+eyes in every part; pride and presumption would be general, and
+obedience almost disappear.
+
+Unrestrained trade in knowledge must banish that trade in merchandise to
+which states owe their wealth; ruin husbandry, the true mother and nurse
+of peoples; and destroy our source of soldiery, which springs up in
+rustic ignorance rather than from the forcing-ground of culture and the
+sciences. It would fill France with half-taught fellows, minds formed
+only to _chicane_, men who might ruin families and trouble public peace,
+but could not be of any service to the state. There would be more people
+capable of doubts than capable of resolving them; more intelligences
+fitted to oppose than to defend the truth.
+
+Indeed, when I consider the great number who make a profession of
+teaching, and the crowds of children who are taught, I seem to see an
+infinite multitude of weaklings and diseased, who, having no other
+desire than to drink pure water for their healing, are urged by an
+inordinate thirst to drink all that is offered them, though it is mostly
+impure and often poisoned, whereby their thirst and their malady are
+equally aggravated.
+
+Two principal evils arise from the great number of colleges established
+in every district: there are not sufficient worthy teachers to supply
+them; and many children of little aptitude are compelled by their
+parents to study. In the result, almost all the pupils leave with but a
+smattering of learning, some because they have been badly taught, others
+because they have been incapable of more. The remedy that I propose is
+this. Let the colleges in all towns which are not of metropolitan rank
+be reduced to two or three classes, sufficient to raise the young out of
+gross ignorance, such as is harmful even to those who are destined for
+military service or for trade. Then, before the children are determined
+to any special line of life, two are three years will reveal their
+dispositions and their capacities; and the more promising children, who
+will then be sent on to the metropolitan colleges, will succeed far
+better; for they will have minds suited for education and will be placed
+in the hands of the best teachers.
+
+Finally, let care be taken that the colleges shall not all come under
+the same hands. The universities, on the one hand, the Jesuits on the
+other, tend towards a monopoly of education. Let their emulation
+increase their virtues and efficiency; but let neither party be deprived
+of the instruction of youth; let neither secure a monopoly.
+
+
+_Of the Nobility_
+
+
+The nobility, which is one of the principal nerves of the state, may
+contribute much to its consolidation and power, but it has been for some
+time past greatly depreciated by the large number of officials whom the
+misfortunes of our age have raised up to its prejudice. It must be
+supported against the enterprises of people of that kind, whose wealth
+and pride overwhelmed the nobles, who are rich only in courage.
+
+But as the nobility must be defended from their oppressors, so also must
+they be strictly prevented from oppressing those who are below them,
+whom God has armed to labour but not to self-defence. Uncompromisingly
+justice must ensure security, under shelter of your laws, to the least
+and feeblest of your subjects.
+
+Those nobles who do not serve the state are a charge upon it; and, like
+a paralysed limb, are a burden where they should be a defence and a
+comfort. As men of gentle birth should be well treated so long as they
+deserve it, so they should be checked severely when they are found
+wanting to the obligations of their birth; and I have no hesitation in
+advising that those who have so degenerated from the virtues of their
+fathers as to avoid the service of the crown with their swords and with
+their lives, deserve to be degraded from their hereditary honours and
+advantages, and should be reduced to take part in bearing the burdens of
+the people.
+
+
+_Of the Disorders of Justice_
+
+
+It is much easier to recognise the defects of justice than to prescribe
+the remedy. Certain it is that they have arrived at such a point that
+they could hardly be graver; yet I know that it is your majesty's desire
+that the administration of justice should be as pure as the
+imperfections and corruptions of mankind will permit.
+
+In the opinion of the great majority of the people, the sovereign remedy
+consists in suppressing venality, in doing away with the hereditary
+principle in judicial offices, and in giving their positions
+gratuitously to men of such well-known probity and capacity that not
+even envy itself can contest their merit. But as it would be difficult
+to follow this counsel at any time, and is quite impossible to follow it
+here and now, it is useless to propose means calculated to secure that
+end.
+
+Although it is always dangerous to hold a view which others do not
+share, I must boldly say that in my opinion, in the present state of
+affairs and in any that one can foresee, it is better to suffer venality
+and hereditary offices to continue than to change, from top to bottom,
+your majesty's judicial establishment. The present abuses are great; but
+I believe that a system under which the offices of justice should be
+appointed by nomination by the king would lead to even greater abuses.
+The distribution of these important charges would, in effect, depend on
+the favour and intrigue of the courtiers who might at the time have most
+power with the king, or on whose reports he must base his nominations.
+
+Certainly venality and heredity in this matter are evils, but they are
+evils of long standing. We have only to look back to the reigns of St.
+Louis, when offices were already paid for, and of the great Francis, who
+erected the principle into a regular traffic, to see that so inveterate
+a custom is not easily to be eradicated. Our aim should be to turn the
+minds of men gently and continuously to better ways, and not to pass
+suddenly from one extreme to the other. The architect whose skill is
+able to correct the weakness of an ancient building, and to bring it
+into some degree of symmetry without first pulling it down, deserves far
+greater praise than the man who must throw it into ruins in order to
+construct something entirely new. It is difficult to change the
+established order without changing the hearts of those who possess it,
+and it is often prudent to weaken one's remedies in order that they may
+have the greater effect.
+
+
+_To the Officers of Finance_
+
+
+These form a class of men who are prejudicial to the state, yet are
+necessary to and we can only hope to reduce their power within tolerable
+limits. At present, their excesses and irregularities are intolerable;
+and it is impossible that they should further increase their wealth and
+their power without ruining the state, and themselves with it.
+
+I do not advise the general confiscation of their gains, although the
+excessive wealth which they amass in a short time, easily proved by the
+difference between their possessions on entering office and what they
+own at present, must often be the result of thefts and extortions.
+Confiscation may be made, in its turn, the greatest of injustice and
+violence. Yet I do not think that anyone could complain if the more
+flagrant offenders were chastised. Otherwise, they will, as I have said,
+ruin the kingdom, which bears on its face the marks of their frauds.
+
+The gold with which they have gorged themselves has opened to them
+alliances with the most ancient families, whose blood and character are
+thereby so far debased that their representatives resemble their
+ancestors no more in the generosity of their motives than they do in the
+purity of their features.
+
+I can advise nothing but a great reduction in the number of these
+officials, a reform which might be easily accomplished; and the
+appointment, in times to come, only of substantial men, of character and
+position suitable to this responsibility. As for the plan of squeezing
+these financiers like a sponge, or of making treaties and compositions
+with them, it is a remedy worse than the disorder; it is as much as to
+teach them that peculation is their business and their right.
+
+
+_Of the People_
+
+
+All statesmen agree that if the people were in too easy a condition it
+would be impossible to restrain them within the limits of their duty.
+Having less knowledge and cultivation than those in other ranks of the
+state, they would not easily follow the rules prescribed by reason and
+by law, unless bound thereto by a certain degree of necessity.
+
+Reason does not permit us to exempt them from all taxation, lest, having
+lost the symbol of their subjection, they should forget their legitimate
+condition, and, being free from tribute, should think themselves free
+from obedience also.
+
+Mules accustomed to a load suffer more from a long rest than they do
+from work; but, on the other hand, their work must be moderate and the
+load proportionate to their strength. So it is with the taxation of the
+people, which becomes unjust if it is not moderated at the point at
+which it is useful to the public.
+
+There is a sense in which the tribute which kings draw from the people
+returns to the people again, in the enjoyment of peace and in the
+security of their life and possessions; for these cannot be safeguarded
+unless contribution be made to the state. I know of several princes who
+have lost their kingdoms and their subjects by letting their strength
+decay through fear of taxing them; and subjects have before now fallen
+into servitude to their enemies, through wishing too much liberty under
+their natural sovereign. The proportion between the burden and the
+strength of those who have to support it ought to be even religiously
+observed; a prince cannot be considered good if he draws more than he
+ought from his subjects; yet the best princes are not always those who
+never levy more than is necessary.
+
+
+_Reason and Government_
+
+
+Man, having been made a rational creature, ought to do nothing except by
+reason; for, otherwise he acts against nature, and so against the Author
+of nature. Again, the greater a man is, and the higher his position, the
+more strictly is he bound to follow reason. It follows that if he is
+sovereignly rational, he is bound to make reason reign; that is to say,
+it is his duty to make all those who are under his authority revere and
+obey reason religiously. Love is the most potent motive for obedience;
+and it is impossible that subjects should not love their prince if they
+know that reason is the guide of all his actions.
+
+Since reason should be the guide of princes, passion, which is of all
+things the most incompatible with reason, should be allowed no influence
+on their actions. Passion can only blind them; make them take the shadow
+for the substance; and win for them odium in the place of affection.
+
+Government requires a masculine virtue and an immovable firmness; for
+softness exposes those in whom it is found to the machinations of their
+enemies. Though there have been notable exceptions, their softness and
+their passions have generally made women unfit for rule.
+
+
+_Public Interests First_
+
+
+The public advantage should be the single object of the king and his
+counsellors, or should at least be preferred to every private interest.
+It is impossible to estimate the good which a prince and his ministers
+may do if they religiously follow this principle, or to estimate the
+disasters which must fall upon the state whose public interests are
+ruled by private considerations. True philosophy, the Christian law, and
+the art of statesmanship, unite to teach this truth.
+
+The prosperity which Spain has enjoyed for several centuries has been
+due to no other cause than that her council has consistently preferred
+the interests of the state to all others, and most of the calamities
+which have visited France have been due to the preference of private
+advantage.
+
+It is easy for princes to consent to the general regulations of their
+state, because in making them they have only reason and justice before
+their eyes, and men willingly embrace reason and justice when there are
+no obstacles to turn them from the right path. But when occasions arise
+for putting these regulations into practice, we do not find that princes
+always show the same firmness, for then the interests of factions and of
+minorities are pressed upon them; pity, sympathy, favour, and
+importunities solicit them and oppose their just designs; and they have
+not always strength enough to conquer themselves and to despise these
+partial considerations, which ought to have no weight at all in the
+affairs of the commonwealth.
+
+It is on these occasions that they must gather up all their strength
+against their weakness, and remember that God has placed them there to
+safeguard the public interest.
+
+
+_The Power of Kingship_
+
+
+Power is one of the most necessary conditions of the greatness of kings
+and of the happiness of their government, and those who have to do with
+the conduct of a state should omit nothing which may enhance the
+authority of their master and the respect in which he is held by all the
+world.
+
+As goodness is the object of love, power is the cause of fear; and fear,
+founded in esteem and reverence, makes dutiful conduct the interest of
+every subject, and warns all foreigners not to offend a prince who can
+harm them if he will.
+
+I have said that the power of which I speak must be founded on esteem,
+and I will add that if it be otherwise founded it is dangerous in the
+extreme. Princes are never in a more perilous position than when they
+are the objects of hatred or aversion rather than of a reasonable fear.
+
+That kingly power which causes princes to be feared with esteem and
+love, includes within it different elements of power; it is a tree with
+several branches, which draw their nourishment from common Stock. Thus,
+the prince must be powerful by his reputation. Secondly, by a reasonable
+number of soldiers, continually maintained. Thirdly, by a notable
+reserve, in gold, in his coffers, ready for the unforeseen occasions
+which arise when least expected. And, lastly, by the possession of the
+hearts of his people. If the finances be considerately adjusted on the
+principles which I have advised the people will find entire relief, and
+the king will base his power on the possession of the hearts of his
+subjects. They will know that they are his care, and their own interests
+will lead them to love him.
+
+The kings of old thought so highly of this foundation of kingship that
+some of them held it worthier to be King of the French than King of
+France. Indeed, this nation was in old time illustrious for passionate
+attachment to its princes; and under the earlier kings, until Philip the
+Fair, the treasure of hearts was the sole public treasure that was
+maintained in this kingdom.
+
+I know that we cannot judge of the present altogether by the past, and
+that what was good in one century is not always possible in another.
+Yet, though the treasure of hearts may not suffice to-day, it is quite
+certain that without it the treasure of gold is almost worthless;
+without that treasure of hearts we shall be bankrupt in the midst of
+abundance.
+
+
+_The Whole Duty of Princes_
+
+
+In conclusion, as kings are obliged to do many more things as sovereigns
+than they do in their private capacity, they are liable to be guilty of
+far more faults by omission than those of which a private person could
+be guilty by commission. Considered as men, they are subject to the same
+faults as all other men; but considered as charged with the welfare of
+the public, they are subject also to many duties which they cannot omit
+without sin.
+
+If princes neglect to do all that they can to rule the various orders of
+their state; if they are careless in the choice of good advisers, or
+despise their salutary counsels; if they fail to make their own example
+a speaking voice; if they are idle in the establishment of the reign of
+God, and of reason, and of justice; if they fail to protect the
+innocent, to reward public services, and to chastise the guilty and
+disobedient; if they are not solicitous to foresee and to provide for
+the troubles which may arise, or to turn aside, by careful diplomacy,
+the storms which darken the horizon; if favour rather than merit
+dictates their choice of ministers for the high offices of the kingdom;
+if they do not immovably establish the state in its rightful power; if
+they do not on all occasions prefer public interests to private
+interests; then, however upright their life may otherwise be, they will
+be found far more guilty than those who actively transgress the
+commandments and the laws of God. And if kings or magistrates make use
+of their power to commit any injustice or violence which they cannot
+commit as private persons, they commit a king's or a magistrate's sin,
+which has its source in their authority, and one for which the King of
+Kings will doubtless demand a searching account on the day of judgement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
+
+
+Confessions
+
+
+     Rousseau's "Confessions" were written in England at Wootton,
+     in Staffordshire, where he had taken refuge after his
+     revolutionary ideas incurred the displeasure of the
+     authorities in France. They were first published in 1782. From
+     this refuge he was pursued from place to place by his
+     delusions through miserable years, until he died, near Paris,
+     on July 2, 1778. In no circumstances or relation of his life
+     was Rousseau a pleasant spectacle. The "Confessions,"
+     unexpurgated, are often revolting to any sane mind, and have
+     been proved to be untrustworthy even as a record of fact. But
+     almost incredible baseness was coupled with extraordinary
+     gifts, and it is impossible to overestimate Rousseau's
+     influence upon the modern world, and upon its literature and
+     its whole point of view and way of thinking. (Rousseau,
+     biography: see FICTION.)
+
+
+I am undertaking a task for which there is no example, and one which
+will find no imitator. It is to exhibit a man in the whole truth of
+nature; and the man whom I shall reveal is myself. Myself alone; for I
+verily believe I am like no other living man. In this book I have hidden
+nothing evil and added nothing good; and I challenge any man to say,
+having unveiled his heart with equal sincerity, "I am better than he."
+
+I was born at Geneva in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau, watchmaker, and of
+Susanne, his wife. My birth, the first of my misfortunes, cost my mother
+her life, and I came into the world so weakly that I was not expected to
+live. My father's sister lavished on me the tenderest care, and he,
+disconsolate, loved me with extreme affection.
+
+Like all children, but even more than others, I felt before I thought;
+and my consciousness was first awakened by reading stories with my
+father. Sometimes we read together until the birds were singing in the
+morning light. These tales gave me a most precocious insight into human
+passions, and the confused emotions which swept through me brought with
+them the queerest and most romantic views of life. But when I was seven
+we came to the end of my mother's old stock of romances, and we fell
+back on Bossuet, Molière, Plutarch, Ovid, and the like. Plutarch went
+far to cure me of novels; indeed, his "Lives" were the means of forming
+that free and republican spirit, intolerant of servitude, which has been
+my torment. To my aunt, who knew endless songs, and used to chant them
+with a sweet, tiny thread of a voice, I owe my passion for music.
+
+These, then, were my first affections. These formed that heart of mine,
+so proud yet so tender; they fashioned that effeminate yet untamable
+character, which has ever drifted between weakness and virtue. For I
+have been in contradiction with myself, in such a way that abstinence
+and fruition, pleasure and wisdom, have escaped me equally.
+
+My father having left Geneva, I remained under the care of my uncle
+Bernard, and was placed, with his son of my own age, in the house of M.
+Lambercier, protestant minister at Bossey, to learn all the trivialities
+that are called education. Here I gained my keen love of country
+pleasures, and tasted, with my cousin, the delights of simple
+friendship. But a cruel punishment for a fault which I had not
+committed, put an end to my childish simplicity, and soon I left Bossey
+without regret. There followed two or three years of indolence at
+Geneva.
+
+After a brief and luckless trial of a notary's office I was apprenticed
+to an engraver, a petty tyrant, whose injustice taught me to lie and to
+steal. Restless, dissatisfied, and in perpetual terror of my master's
+savagery, I here reached my sixteenth year. But one day, finding the
+city gates closed on my return from a country excursion, I determined,
+rather than face the inevitable thrashing, to seek my fortune in the
+unknown world.
+
+
+_Madame de Warens_
+
+
+How fair were the illusions of freedom and of the future! I asked
+little--only a manor where I should be the favourite of the lord of the
+land, his daughter's lover, her brother's friend, and protector of the
+neighbourhood. I roamed the countryside, sleeping at nights in
+hospitable cottages, and on arriving at Confignon I called, out of
+curiosity, on M. de Ponteverre, the parish priest. He gave me a dinner
+which convinced me, even more than his arguments, of the advantages of
+the catholic faith; and I was willing enough to set off, with his
+introduction, to Annecy. Here I was to seek Mme. de Warens, a recent
+convert, who was in receipt of a pension from the King of Sardinia. I
+was assured that her benevolence would support me for the present. Three
+days later I was at Annecy.
+
+This introduction fixed my character and destiny. I was now in my
+sixteenth year, doubtless of engaging though not striking appearance; I
+had the timidity of a loving nature, always afraid of giving offence;
+and I was quite without knowledge of the world or of manners. I arrived
+on Palm Sunday, 1728. Mme. de Warens had left the house for church; I
+ran after her, saw her, spoke to her--how well do I remember the place,
+so often in later days wet with my tears and covered with kisses!
+
+I saw an enchanting form, a countenance full of graciousness, a dazzling
+colour, blue eyes beaming kindness; you may imagine that my conversion
+was from that moment decided. Smiling, she read the good priest's
+letter, and sent me back to the house for breakfast.
+
+Louise Éléonore de Warens, daughter of a noble family of Vevai, in the
+Vaud country, had early married M. de Warens, of Lausanne. The marriage
+was childless and otherwise unfortunate; and the young wife, exasperated
+by some domestic difficulty, had abandoned her husband and her country,
+and crossing the lake, had thrown herself at the feet of the king. He
+took her under his protection, gave her a moderate pension, and for fear
+of scandal sent her to Annecy, where she renounced her errors at the
+Convent of the Visitation.
+
+She had been six years at Annecy when I met her, and was now
+twenty-eight years of age. Her beauty was still in its first radiance,
+and her smile was angelic. She was short of stature, but it was
+impossible to imagine more beautiful features or hands. Her education
+had been very desultory; she had learned more from lovers than from
+teachers. She had a strong taste for empirical medicine and for alchemy,
+and was always compounding elixirs, tinctures and balms, some of which
+she regarded as valuable secrets. So it was that charlatans, trading on
+her weakness, made her consume, amid drugs and furnaces, a talent and a
+spirit which might have distinguished her in the highest societies. Yet
+her loving and sweet character, her compassion for the unhappy, her
+inexhaustible goodness and her open and gay humour never changed; and
+even when old age was coming on, in the midst of poverty and varied
+misfortunes, her inward serenity preserved to the end the charming
+gaiety of her youth. All her mistakes arose from a restless activity
+which demanded incessant occupation. She thirsted, not for intrigues,
+but for enterprises.
+
+Well, the first sight of Mme. de Warens inspired me not only with the
+liveliest attachment, but with an entire trust which was never
+disappointed. Her presence filled my whole being with peace and
+confidence.
+
+
+_Three Years in Turin_
+
+
+My situation was discussed with the Bishop, and it was decided that I
+should go to Turin and remain for a time at an institution devoted to
+the instruction of catechumens. Thither I went, regarding myself as the
+pupil, the friend, and almost the lover, of Mme. de Warens. The great
+doors closed upon me, and here I was instructed for several weeks in
+very indifferent company. At length, having been received into the
+church, I found myself in the street with twenty francs in my pocket,
+and the counsel that I should be a good Christian.
+
+I took a lodging in Turin, and was presently introduced, by the kindness
+of my hostess, to the service of a countess. But this lady died shortly
+afterwards, and I left her house bearing with me lasting remorse for an
+atrocious action: I had accused a fellow-servant of a theft which I had
+myself committed, and thus may very well have caused the poor child's
+ruin.
+
+Returning to my old lodging, I spent my days in wandering about town,
+often offending the public by my depravities. But I had kept certain
+acquaintances made during my situation with the countess, and one of
+these, a M. Gaime, whom I sometimes visited, gave me most valuable
+instructions in the principles of morals. He was a priest, and one of
+the most honest men I have known. I had cherished false ideas of life;
+he gave me a true picture of it, and showed me that happiness depends
+only on wisdom, and that wisdom is to be found in every rank. He used to
+say that if everyone could read the hearts of others, most would wish to
+descend in the social scale. This M. Gaime is the original, in large
+part, of my vicar of Savoy.
+
+Then followed a new situation in the house of the Count de Gouvon,
+where, nominally a footman, I was soon treated more as a pupil or even
+as a favourite. His son, a priest, did his best to teach me Latin, and I
+have since realised that it was the purpose of this noble family, who
+had considerable political ambition, to train a talented dependent who
+might serve them in offices of great responsibility. But my fatal
+inconstancy frustrated this good fortune, my flagrant disobediences led
+to my dismissal, and presently I was on the road to Geneva with a gay
+lad from thence who had found me out in Turin.
+
+I happened to own a mechanical toy, a little fountain, and our mad
+project was nothing less than to pay our way throughout the world by
+showing its performances in every village. We started in the highest
+spirits, but the fountain was never remunerative, and soon its works
+went wrong. This threw no gloom over our merry, fantastic journey, and
+it was only when Annecy was near that I became a little thoughtful, for
+my benefactress supposed that my last place had established me for life.
+
+We entered the little town and parted, and I came trembling to her door.
+The adorable woman showed little surprise, and no sorrow. I told her my
+story, and was forgiven. Henceforth her home was mine.
+
+
+_Seeking a Career_
+
+
+The house was an old one, but spacious and comfortable, and the window
+of my room looked out, over garden and stream, to the open country. The
+ménage was by no means magnificent, but was abundant in a patriarchal
+way; Madame de Warens had no idea of economy, and with her hospitalities
+and speculations was ever running more deeply into debt. The household,
+besides herself and me, consisted of housemaid, cook, and a footman
+named Claude Anet.
+
+From the first day, the sweetest familiarity reigned our intercourse.
+She called me "Little one," I called her my little mother, and these
+names express the relation of our hearts. She sought always my good,
+never her own pleasure; she was deeply attached to me, and lavished on
+me her maternal caresses. I was now about nineteen years old, but was
+only occupied about the house in writing for her, or in helping her in
+her pharmaceutical experiments.
+
+But madame was thinking of my future, and sent me on some pretext to see
+M. d'Aubonne, a relative of hers, to find out what might be made of me.
+His report of me was, that I was a poor-spirited creature, narrow,
+ignorant, and clownish, and that the career of village priest was the
+best that could be hoped for. Once more, therefore, I was set to Latin
+at the seminary; but after some months I was returned by the bishop and
+the rector as incapable of learning, though a passably well-conducted
+youth. In the meantime I had been taken with a strong taste for music,
+and it was arranged that I should spend the winter at the house of M. le
+Maitre, director of music at the cathedral; he was a young man of great
+talent and of high spirits, and lived only twenty paces from my little
+mother. There I spent one of the most pleasant times of my life. But it
+was cut short by a quarrel between Le Maitre and the cathedral chapter,
+who had, as he thought, put a slight upon him. His revenge was to desert
+his post on the eve of the elaborate Easter services, and madame desired
+me to assist him in his flight. I was to attend him to Lyons, and remain
+with him as long as he should need me. Her purpose was, as I have since
+learned, to detach me from a plausible adventurer, M. Venture, a man of
+great musical talent who had turned up at Annecy, and had engaged my
+fancy. Our flight was successful. But on the second day after our
+arrival at Lyons Le Maitre fell ill with a sudden seizure in the street,
+and I, after telling the bystanders the name of his inn, and begging
+them to carry him thither, slipped round the nearest corner and
+disappeared. Le Maitre was deserted at his worst need by the only friend
+on whom he had to count. I returned at once to Annecy, only to find that
+madame had left for Paris.
+
+M. Venture, however, was still there, and had turned the heads of all
+the ladies in the place, and for a time I shared his lodging. Then,
+after travelling with Merceret, the housemaid, as far as her home at
+Fribourg-for she had to return thither and could find no other
+attendant--I turned aside to Lausanne, with the idea of seeing the lake.
+I arrived here without a penny, and it occurred to me to play Venture's
+game on my own account. I took a false name, called myself a Parisian,
+and having secured a lodging, set up as a teacher of music, though I
+knew next to nothing of the art. There was a professor of law in the
+town who was an amateur of music, and held concert parties in his house;
+to this man I had the effrontry to propose a symphony of my own. I
+worked a fortnight at this production, wrote out the instrumental parts,
+and on the appointed evening stood up before the orchestra and audience,
+tapped my desk, raised by baton, and--never since music began has there
+been such an orgy of discords. The musicians could hardly sit in their
+chairs for laughing, yet played even louder and louder as the fun took
+hold of them; the audience sought to stop their ears; and I, sweat
+pouring down my face, conducted this atrocity to the end. But the end
+was a little minuet which Venture had taught me; I had appended it to my
+symphony, calling it my own work. Its magic put the whole room in good
+humour, and I was feliciated on my taste in melody. Next day one of my
+orchestra came to see me, and in my despair and broken spirit I told him
+my whole story. By nightfall it was known to all Lausanne. But at
+Neufchâtel, through the next winter, I gradually learned music by
+teaching it.
+
+My next occupation was that of interpreter to a Greek prelate and
+archimandrite of Jerusalem, whom I met when dining in a little
+restaurant. He was collecting money throughout Europe for the
+restoration of the Holy Sepulchre; and accompanying him from city to
+city, I was of much service to him, even addressing the Senate at Berne
+on behalf of his project. Unfortunately for my employer, he addressed
+himself to the Marquis de Bonac, who had been ambassador to the Porte,
+and knew all about the Holy Sepulchre. I don't know what passed at their
+interview, but the archimandrite disappeared and I was detained. In my
+desolation I told the marquis the history of my life, and by him was
+sent to Paris, with plenty of money in my pocket, to enter the service
+of a young friend of his in the army. My first sight of the city was a
+disappointment which I have never got over, and the proposed engagement
+fell through. Coming to the end of my resources, I set out by way of
+Lyons, where I suffered the extremity of poverty, to find Mme. de
+Warens, who was now, as I learned, at Chambéri. I came to her house and
+found the intendant-general with her. Without addressing me, she said,
+"Here, sir, he is; protect him as long as he deserves it, and his future
+is assured." And to me, "My child, you belong to the king." And thus I
+became a secretary in the ordnance survey. After five years of follies
+and sufferings since I had left Geneva, I began to earn an honest
+living.
+
+
+_Our Little Circle_
+
+
+It was in 1732, and I was nearly twenty-one years old, when I began the
+life of the office. I lived with the little mother in a dismal house,
+which she rented because it belonged to the financial secretary who
+controlled her pension. The faithful Claude Anet was still with her, and
+shortly after my return I learned accidentally that their relation was
+closer than I had ever dreamed of. In a fit of temper his mistress had
+taunted him outrageously. The poor fellow, in despair, had taken
+laudanum; and madame, in her terror and distress, told me the whole
+story. We brought him round, and things went on as before, but it was
+hard to me to know that anyone was more intimate with her than myself.
+
+My passion for music increased this year until I could hardly take
+interest in anything else, and at last the work at the office grew so
+intolerable to me that I determined to resign my place. I extorted an
+unwilling permission from madame, said good-bye to my chief, and threw
+myself into the teaching of music.
+
+I soon had as many pupils as I needed, and the constant intercourse with
+these ladies was very pleasant to me. But from the stories which I
+carried home of our interviews the little mother apprehended dangers of
+which I was not at that time conscious. The course which she took was a
+singular one. She had rented a little garden outside the town, and here
+she invited me to spend the day with her. Thither we went, and from the
+drift of her conversation, which was full of good sense and kindliest
+warnings, I gradually perceived the degree of her goodness towards me.
+The compact involved conditions, and my answer was to be given on that
+day week.
+
+Thus was established among the three of us a society to which there is
+perhaps no parallel. All our wishes, our cares, our interests were in
+common. If one of us was missing from the dinner-table, or a fourth was
+present, all seemed out of order. But our little circle was broken all
+too soon. Claude Anet, on a botanical excursion, fell a victim to
+pleurisy, and died, notwithstanding all her care. He had been a most
+watchful economist of her pension and a restraint on her enterprises,
+and his loss was felt not only in our diminished party, but also in the
+wasting of her resources. For the next three years these went from bad
+to worse. Unfortunately, the life to which I had taken, of drifting from
+one interest to another--now literature, now chess, now a journey, now
+music--brought in nothing and cost a good deal; and to complete our
+anxieties, I fell ill nearly to death. Her care and utter devotion saved
+me, and from that time our very existence was in common.
+
+
+_Les Charmettes_
+
+
+I was ordered to the country. We found near Chambéri a little house, Les
+Charmettes, set in a garden among trees, as retired and solitary a home
+as if it had been a hundred miles from the town. There we took up a new
+life towards the autumn of 1736; there began the brief happiness of my
+existence. We were all in all to one another; together we roamed the
+country, worked in the garden, gathered fruit and flowers, lay under the
+trees and listened to the birds. Golden hours, your memory is my only
+treasure!
+
+Even a sudden illness, which affected my heart so that its pulse has
+from that time incessantly throbbed like a drum in my ears, and has made
+me a constant sufferer from insomnia, turned out to be a heavenly
+blessing. Thinking myself a dead man, I only then began to live, and
+applied myself very eagerly to learning. With my little mother as my
+teacher, I turned to the study of religion. I sought books, and
+philosophy, the sciences, and Latin followed in their turn. Nature,
+learning, leisure, and our ineffably sweet companionship--I thought,
+poor fool, that these joys would be with me to the end. It was otherwise
+decreed.
+
+My bodily condition has become pitiable, and it was determined that I
+should go to Montpellier to consult a physician. I fell in, on the way
+thither, with the Marquis de Torignan and his party, who were travelling
+in the same direction. We struck up acquaintance, and I joined them,
+taking an assumed name, and giving myself out for an Englishman.
+Becoming intimate with a Madame de Larnage, who was among them, I
+continued to travel with her day by day, after the others had reached
+their destination. She was a woman of infinite charm. Mme. de Warens was
+forgotten utterly, and I willingly agreed to settle down in her
+vicinity, after fulfilling the purpose of my journey to Montpellier.
+However, after two pleasurable months in that city, when I found myself
+at the stage where the road divided--one road going to Mme. de Larnage,
+the other to Les Charmettes--I balanced love against pleasure, and
+finding an equipoise, I decided by reason.
+
+The little mother knew by my letter at what hour I should arrive. I came
+to the garden; no one came out to meet me. I entered; the servants
+seemed surprised to see me. I ran upstairs and found her; her welcome
+was restrained and cold. The truth burst upon me. My place was taken!
+
+Darkness flooded my soul, and from that moment onward my sensibilities
+have been but half-alive. I took a situation as tutor in a private
+family, but all my thoughts were of Charmettes and of our innocent life
+together, now gone for ever. O dreadful illusion of human destiny!
+
+
+_The Gathering Gloom_
+
+
+I take up my pen again, after an interval of two years, to add a sequel
+to my confessions. How different is the picture now! For thirty years
+fate had favoured my inclinations, but for the second thirty, which I
+must try to sketch, she has ground me in the mortar of the most
+appalling afflictions.
+
+This second part must inevitably be inferior, in every respect, to the
+first. For I wrote, before, with pleasure and at ease; but now my
+decaying memory and enfeebled brain have made me almost incapable of
+work, and I have nothing to tell of but treacheries, perfidies, and
+torturing memories. The walls around me have ears; I am encompassed by
+spies and vigilant enemies. Racked with anxiety and fear, I scribble
+page after page without revising them. An immense conspiracy surrounds
+me....
+
+[These delusions of suspicion are perhaps the most characteristic
+symptoms of insanity. They colour so deeply the entire texture of
+Rousseau's prolix second part as to make it not only unreliable, but
+almost unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first
+part; from the second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy
+creature, besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman;
+and this morbid condition had been aggravated by years of brooding
+rancour before he wrote this miserable indictment of men who had done
+their best to befriend him.--ED.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, was born in Paris on
+     September 15, 1613. Sprung from one of the noblest families of
+     France, handsome, winning, and brave to recklessness, he
+     intrigued and fought against Richelieu and Mazarin, and was
+     one of the leaders in the civil war of La Fronde. But though
+     marked by birth and talent for a high position in the state,
+     he failed in nearly everything he undertook, owing to his
+     extraordinary indolence of mind, and in the prime of his life
+     he became a rather embittered spectator of a world in which he
+     was not able to make his way. The "Memoirs," with their
+     studied tone of historical coldness, present a striking
+     contrast to the brilliant vivacity of the "Maxims." This, in
+     all probability, is due to the fact that while the latter were
+     frequently added to and edited during their author's lifetime,
+     no such fate befell the "Memoirs," of which the first edition,
+     published without La Rochefoucauld's authority, appeared in
+     1662. Barely a third of them could be attributed to their
+     reputed author, the work being compiled mainly from various
+     commonplace books. In spite of La Rochefoucauld's protests,
+     the pirated "Memoirs" continued to be printed, and it was not
+     until very many years after his death, in 1817, that an
+     authentic edition made its appearance. The "Memoirs" are of
+     great literary value, yielding in interest to no memoirs of
+     the time. La Rochefoucauld died in Paris on March 17, 1680.
+
+
+_Court Intrigues_
+
+
+King Louis XIII. was of feeble constitution, further impaired by
+over-exertion in hunting. His temperament was severe and solitary; he
+wished to be governed, but was sometimes impatient of government. His
+mind took note only of details, and his knowledge of war was fit rather
+for a subordinate officer than for a king. Cardinal Richelieu, who owed
+all his elevation to the queen-mother, Marie de Médicis, was ruler of
+the state. His vast and penetrating mind formed projects as bold as he
+was personally timid. His policy was to establish the king's authority
+and his own, by the ruin of the Huguenots and of the great houses of the
+kingdom, and then to attack the house of Austria, a power most
+redoubtable to France. He stuck at nothing, either to advance his
+satellites or to destroy his enemies. The passion which he had long
+cherished for the queen had changed to dislike, and she had an aversion
+for Richelieu. The king was embittered against her by jealousy and by
+the sterility of their marriage. The queen was an amiable woman, without
+falsity of any kind, and with many virtues; her intimate friend was
+Madame de Chevreuse, who was of her own age and of kindred sentiments.
+
+But Madame de Chevreuse almost always brought misfortune to those whom
+she interested in her projects. She had much spirit, ambition, and
+beauty, and made full use of her charms to forward these enterprises of
+hers. Already Cardinal Richelieu had accused the queen and her of
+complicity in Chalais's plot against the king's life--for Chalais had
+been her warm admirer--and the king believed in their guilt to the end
+of his days. Again, when the young and handsome Lord Holland came to
+France to arrange the marriage of the King of England to the sister of
+the King of France, and quickly won the affection of Madame de
+Chevreuse, the two lovers thought fit to celebrate their attachment by
+inspiring a similar intrigue between the French queen and the Duke of
+Buckingham, who had not so much as met one another. This astonishing
+undertaking was successful. Buckingham came over to wed madame in the
+name of his master, and his ardent love for the queen, which she fully
+returned, deeply wounded both the king and Richelieu. The cardinal
+sought his revenge through Lady Carlisle. That haughty and jealous
+woman, to whom Buckingham had long been attached, noticed one night at a
+ball in England that he was wearing diamonds which she had not seen
+before, and contrived, unobserved, to detach them, in order that she
+might send them to Richelieu. These diamonds had been the gift of the
+King of France to his queen, and it was intended that the cardinal, by
+showing them to the king, should prove the queen's weakness. But the
+Duke of Buckingham discovered his loss the same night, and at once
+suspected Lady Carlisle's design. He issued an immediate order that the
+English ports should be closed, and that no one should be permitted,
+under whatever pretext, to leave the country; and then, having had
+exactly similar jewels prepared, he sent them to the Queen of France,
+with an account of the whole matter.
+
+It was at this time that the cardinal formed the project of the
+destruction of the Huguenot party, and of laying siege to La Rochelle.
+The Duke of Buckingham came with a powerful fleet to aid La Rochelle,
+but in vain; the fortress was taken, and the duke was assassinated in
+England. This murder gave the cardinal an inhuman joy; he jested at the
+queen's sorrows, and began to hope again.
+
+After the ruin of the Huguenots I returned from the army to court, being
+now seventeen years old, and began to notice the state of affairs. The
+queen-mother and the cardinal were at enmity, and though everyone saw
+that something would come of it, no one could foretell what would
+happen. The cardinal's situation was precarious, the king had learned of
+his love for the queen, and was quite ready to disgrace him, and even
+asked the queen-mother to nominate someone to replace him. She
+hesitated, and that hesitation was her ruin and saved the cardinal.
+
+The reversal of the situation took place on the famous "day of dupes,"
+on which the queen-mother, presuming too much on her power, challenged
+the cardinal, in the king's presence, with his ingratitude and
+treacheries. No one doubted but that Richelieu's day was over, and the
+whole court crowded to the queen-mother to share her imaginary triumph.
+But the king went the same day to Versailles, and the cardinal followed
+him; the queen, fearing that she would find Versailles dull and
+uncomfortable, remained behind; and the wily statesman made such good
+use of his opportunity that the king's consent was won to the downfall
+of his mother. She was soon arrested, and her sorrows lasted as long as
+her life.
+
+Many were implicated in her ruin, and were exiled or thrown into the
+Bastille, or brought to the scaffold; and so much bloodshed and so many
+fortunes reversed brought odium on the name of Richelieu. The mild
+regency of Marie de Médicis was remembered, and all the great families
+lamented that liberty was a thing of the past.
+
+For my part, I thought that the queen's cause was the only one, which an
+honourable man could follow. She was unhappy; the cardinal was rather
+her tyrant than her lover; she had been good to me, and had trusted me;
+Mademoiselle d'Hautefort, with whom I had great friendship, was her
+friend, too--sufficient reasons, these, to dazzle a youth who had seen
+almost nothing of the world, and to turn his steps in a direction quite
+contrary to his interests. King and cardinal alike soon came to detest
+me, and my life thenceforth was troubled by the visitations of their
+displeasure. In recording the scenes in which I have had a part, I have
+no intention of writing history, but only of touching on a few personal
+episodes.
+
+
+_Richelieu's Death_
+
+
+War was declared in 1635 against the King of Spain, and I accompanied
+the French army of twenty thousand men which marched to the support of
+the Prince of Orange in Flanders. During neither this nor the following
+winter was I allowed at court. Madame de Chevreuse, who had been sent to
+Tours on the occasion of Richelieu's triumph had heard a good account of
+me from the queen, and invited me to see her; we soon struck up a very
+great friendship, and I came to be a confidential intermediary between
+the queen and her, and was often entrusted by one or other of them with
+most perilous commissions.
+
+When I was at last readmitted to court in 1637, I found the queen in
+great trouble. She had been accused of a crime against the state, a
+treasonable understanding with the Spanish minister; some of her
+servants were arrested; the chancellor examined her like a criminal; it
+was even proposed to seclude her at Havre, annul her marriage, and
+repudiate her altogether. In this extremity, abandoned by all the world,
+she proposed that I should kidnap her and Mademoiselle d'Hautefort and
+carry them off to Brussels. Difficult and dangerous as this project was,
+it gave me greater joy than any I had known, for I was at an age when a
+man likes to engage in dashing and heroic feats. Happily, however, the
+chancellor's investigations proved her majesty not guilty.
+
+But an unfortunate series of accidents led to my imprisonment for a week
+in the Bastille. A signal had been agreed upon between the queen and
+Madame de Chevreuse during the recent trouble. If all went well, Madame
+de Chevreuse was to receive a prayer-book bound in green, but a red
+binding was to indicate disaster. I never knew which of the two ladies
+made the mistake, but when the queen was acquitted Madame de Chevreuse
+received what she took to be the signal of misfortune; concluded that
+both she and the queen were undone, and disguising herself as a man, she
+fled to Spain. This escapade, so surprising at the very moment when the
+Queen's troubles had come to an end, inspired the king and the cardinal
+with the gravest suspicions that they had not, after all, fathomed her
+majesty's treachery. The cardinal summoned me to Paris, and hinted at
+unpleasant consequences if I did not reveal all I knew. I knew nothing;
+and as my manner seemed more reserved and dry than he was accustomed to,
+I was sent to the Bastille.
+
+The little time that I spent there showed me more vividly than anything
+I had yet seen the picture of vengeance. I saw there men of great names
+and of great merits, an infinite number of men and women of all ranks in
+life, all unhappy in the affliction of long and cruel incarceration. The
+sight of so many pitiable creatures did much to increase my natural
+hatred for Cardinal Richelieu's administration. I was released in eight
+days, and thought myself very fortunate to escape at a period when none
+others were set at liberty.
+
+But my disgrace was well repaid. The queen showed herself gratefully
+aware of all that I had suffered in her service; Mademoiselle
+d'Hautefort gave full expression to her esteem and friendship; and
+Madame de Chevreuse was not less gracious. I enjoyed not only the favour
+of those to whom I was attached, but also a certain approval which the
+world is not slow to give to the unfortunate whose conduct has not
+really been disgraceful. Under these conditions an exile of two or three
+years from court was not intolerable. I was young; the king and the
+cardinal were failing in health; I had everything to hope for from a
+change. I was happy in my family, and enjoyed all the pleasures of
+country life, and the neighbouring provinces were full of other exiles.
+
+Cardinal Richelieu died on December 4, 1642. Although his enemies could
+only rejoice at finding themselves free at last from so many
+persecutions, the event has shown that the state could ill spare him. He
+had made so many changes in public affairs that he alone was able to
+direct them safely. No one before Richelieu had known all the power of
+the kingdom, or had been able to gather it all up into the hands of the
+sovereign. The severity of his adminstration had cost many lives; the
+nobility had been humbled, and the common people had been loaded with
+taxes; but the grandeur of his political designs, such as the taking of
+La Rochelle, the destruction of the Huguenot party, and the weakening of
+the house of Austria, no less than his intrepidity in carrying them out,
+have secured for his memory a justly-merited fame.
+
+
+_Under Mazarin's Rule_
+
+
+I returned to Paris immediately after the death of Richelieu, thinking
+that I might have occasion to serve the queen. In accordance with the
+late cardinal's will, Cardinal Mazarin succeeded to his powers. The
+king's state of health went from bad to worse, and the court was filled
+with intrigues with regard to the regency which must so soon be
+appointed. His death took place on May 14, 1643. The queen at once
+brought her little son, Louis XIV., to Paris; two days later she was
+declared regent in parliament; and the same evening, to the amazement of
+his enemies, she appointed Cardinal Mazarin chief of the council.
+
+Mazarin's mind was great, industrious, insinuating, and artful, and his
+character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he
+had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest
+projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his
+temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A
+pretended moderation veiled his ambition and his avarice; he said he
+wanted nothing for himself.
+
+The court was now divided between the Duke of Beaufort and the cardinal,
+and it was expected that the return of Madame de Chevreuse would incline
+the queen to the former party. But the queen was in no hurry for that
+lady's return, knowing well what turmoils she was apt to bring in her
+train. Perhaps I urged her recall more boldly than was wise; at any
+rate, I won my point, and her majesty sent me to form Madame de
+Chevreuse for her appearance at court under the new conditions.
+
+I represented to her how indispensable Cardinal Mazarin was to the
+state; that he was accused of no crime, and was guiltless of Richelieu's
+oppressions; and that the most fatal course she could take would be to
+attempt to govern the queen. Madame de Chevreuse promised to follow my
+advice, and came up to court, but her old instincts of domination were
+too much for her, and she soon declared herself openly against the
+minister who enjoyed all the queen's confidence. She even attempted his
+overthrow, and for that purpose united herself to the party known as the
+"_Importans_," which was led by the Duke of Beaufort.
+
+After various manoeuvres on the part of the cardinal and of Madame de
+Chevreuse to get the upper hand, Mazarin discovered a plot against his
+life, in which the Duke of Beaufort was implicated, and had the duke
+arrested and imprisoned. At the same time Madame de Chevreuse was sent
+away to Tours, and as I was unwilling to promise that I would have no
+more to do with her, I lost the favour of the queen, provoked the
+cardinal's displeasure, and soon found that Madame de Chevreuse herself
+was forgetful of all I had done for her.
+
+Kept in idleness, tantalised by promises of office which were never
+fulfilled, and forbidden even to follow the wars, my wretched position
+led me at last to seek some way of showing my resentment at the
+treatment I had received from the queen and cardinal. The means were at
+hand. Like many others, I had come under the spell of the beauty and
+charm of Madame de Longueville, and thus come gradually into association
+with the party of the Fronde. I followed the Duke of Enghien, her
+brother, to the attack on Courtray, then to Mardick, where I was
+wounded; and this time of military service united me more closely to his
+later interests.
+
+By the year 1647 everyone was weary of Mazarin's rule. His bad faith,
+his weakness, and his trickiness were becoming known, provinces and
+towns alike were groaning under taxation, and the citizens of Paris were
+reduced to mere despair. Parliament tried respectful remonstrances in
+vain; the cardinal thought himself safe in the servility of the nation.
+But the great majority in France desired a change, and then smouldering
+discontent soon burst into a flame.
+
+The Duke of Enghien, who had become, by the death of his father, Prince
+of Condé, had gained in 1648 a great victory in Flanders, and a solemn
+thanksgiving was held in Notre Dame to celebrate it. Mazarin chose this
+moment for the arrest of Broussel and other members of parliament who
+had voiced most urgently the public distress. The action roused Paris to
+a fury which astonished him; the people sought him to tear him to
+pieces; barricades were erected in the streets, and the king and queen
+were besieged in the royal palace. Resistance to the parliament's
+demands were at the moment impossible; the prisoners had to be released.
+
+I was at this time absent from Paris, having been sent down by the queen
+to my government at Poitou, which I had purchased; the province was
+almost in insurrection and I had to pacify it. I happened to be deeply
+wounded by a new slight which Cardinal Mazarin had put upon me, when
+Madame de Longueville sent for me to come to Paris, informing me that
+the whole plan for a civil war had been drawn up, and asking for my
+counsel in the matter. The news delighted me, and I arrived at the
+capital eager for my revenge on the queen and the cardinal.
+
+Mazarin, on the other hand, had formed his plan. Realising that Paris
+was unsafe, he determined to leave it, to place the king at
+Saint-Germain, and to lay siege to the city, which would soon be reduced
+to famine and dissensions. Their escape was made at midnight on the eve
+of Epiphany, 1649, all the court following in great disorder.
+
+The city was for a time in much perplexity, but the arrival of the Duke
+of Beaufort, who had broken prison at Vincennes, put heart into the
+people, who took him for their liberator. Other great personages threw
+in their lot with the popular cause; a large war-chest was quickly
+raised and troops were levied, and the parliament of Paris put itself
+into communication with the other parliaments of the kingdom. All
+preparations were made for a civil war, the real basis of which was a
+general hatred of Cardinal Mazarin, which was common to both parties. In
+an early engagement outside the city I was so gravely wounded as to see
+no more of this war, the events of which are hardly worth narrating. On
+April 1, 1649, the Parliament received an amnesty from the king. Neither
+party had vanquished the other; the cardinal and the parliament were
+each as strong as before, but everyone was glad to be rid, for the time,
+of the horrors of civil war.
+
+
+_Wars of the Fronde_
+
+
+The Prince of Condé, who had great influence in the council, showed
+himself so contemptuous to Mazarin, and became so inconvenient to the
+queen by his arrogance that she decided to arrest him, and to involve
+Madame de Longueville, the duke, her husband, and the Prince of Conti in
+the same disgrace. Accordingly, on January 18, 1650, the Prince of
+Condé, the Duke of Longueville, and the Prince of Conti were seized and
+imprisoned at Vincennes, and the order was given at the same time to
+arrest Madame de Longueville and myself. But we succeeded in escaping
+together to Dieppe, where we were forced to separate; Madame de
+Longueville found refuge at Stenay, where she met with Turenne, and I
+returned to my government of Poitou and formed an alliance there with
+the Duke of Bouillon, Turenne's brother. Together the duke and I matured
+designs which led to the civil war in the south.
+
+My father having died at Verteuil in March, 1650, I succeeded to the
+title of Duke of La Rochefoucauld. I invited a large number of nobles
+and gentlemen of that region to the funeral ceremonies; our plans were
+put before them; though some of them held back, most were favourable;
+and I soon found myself at the head of a force of two thousand horse and
+eight hundred foot. The Duke of Bouillon and I were joined by the young
+Princess of Condé, with her son the Duke of Enghien; we gathered more
+troops at Turenne, and marched upon Bordeaux. After overcoming some
+opposition, the princess entered that city in triumph on May 31, 1650,
+and we joined her a few days later.
+
+The grievance of the princess and the presence of her son excited the
+liveliest enthusiasm, and the party opposed to Mazarin had entire
+mastery of the town. The revolt of Bordeaux carried with it almost all
+Guienne, and Mazarin determined to crush it before it should extend to
+the neighbouring provinces. A royal army of veterans was sent down,
+Bordeaux was closely invested, an obstinate defence was made, but the
+town had to capitulate on September 28, on the condition of an amnesty
+to the princess and her adherents.
+
+Meanwhile Turenne, with a Spanish force, had made a vain attempt to
+rescue the captive princes, and Mazarin had removed them to Havre, where
+the government was devoted to him. There was now such general dread and
+hatred of the cardinal, that people were willing to unite with those
+whom they had considered their mortal enemies in order to secure his
+ruin. In the early days of 1651 I was summoned to Paris by the Princess
+Palatine, who united a taste for gallantry with a remarkable talent for
+intrigue, and remained for some time hidden in her house, where I was
+witness to many consultations for the removal of Mazarin from power. I
+even made a last attempt to persuade the cardinal himself to release the
+princes; in four nocturnal interviews I tried to show him how all
+parties were uniting to compass his ruin, but was unable to convince him
+without betraying secrets which were not my own. Mazarin gave me no hope
+of their liberation.
+
+Then arose a general storm against the minister, and he made his escape
+on the night of February 7. The queen would have followed him with her
+son, but the Frondeurs and the partisans of the princes kept her
+prisoner in her palace. Without any hope of assistance, and daunted day
+and night by an infuriated populate, she sent for me and gave me an
+order to the governor of Havre to release the princes immediately. I
+warned the leaders of the Fronde that her sincerity was not above
+suspicion, and that all depended upon her close imprisonment, and so set
+out along the northern road upon my mission. But the cardinal had been
+beforehand with me, the princes were at liberty, and on February 16 they
+entered Paris in triumph.
+
+Mazarin, who had fled to Cologne, whence he continued to direct the
+queen's cabinet, returned to France at the head of a small army in
+January, 1652, and arrived at Poitiers without meeting any resistance.
+The party opposed to him was rent by faction and strife, but the Prince
+of Condé united it, and fought an indecisive engagement with the royal
+troops on April 8. On the 11th the prince and I were well received in
+Paris, but it was evident that the citizens were weary of all these
+troubles, desired nothing so much as the king's return, and detested the
+ambition of the leaders of faction. Indeed, the magistrates were
+negotiating with Mazarin, and declared the city neutral. On July 2 the
+Prince of Condé was marching his force from Saint-Cloud to Charenton
+when he was attacked by Turenne; and in the sanguinary combat which
+followed, and in which I was fighting beside the prince, I received a
+wound in the head which prevented my taking any further part in these
+disturbances.
+
+Shortly afterwards, the Prince of Condé, his popularity wholly gone,
+took service under the King of Spain; King Louis XIV., amid general
+acclamations, returned to Paris on October 21; and Cardinal Mazarin,
+having overcome all his enemies, entered the capital in a veritable
+triumph, in February, 1653.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ
+
+
+Letters
+
+
+     Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, who became Madame de Sévigné, was
+     born at Paris on February 6, 1626. Her father and mother died
+     during her childhood and Marie was left to the care of her
+     uncle, priest of Coulanges; she received an admirable
+     education and became a great lover of history and of classical
+     literature. At eighteen years of age she married the Marquis
+     Henri de Sévigné, who was killed in a duel in 1651, and
+     thenceforth Madame de Sévigné gave herself up altogether to
+     the care of her two children. Her wit, her kindliness, and
+     happiness, her charity and fidelity, and especially a certain
+     rare genius for friendship, won for her the warm devotion of
+     many great people of that brilliant age. Her daughter was
+     married in 1669 to the Comte de Grignan, a great official,
+     lieutenant-general of Languedoc and then of Provence, a man of
+     honour, but accustomed to the most lavish expenditure, which
+     burdened his life with enormous debts. The famous "Letters" of
+     Madame de Sévigné numbering over 1,000 were written over a
+     period of twenty-five years, chiefly to this daughter, Madame
+     de Grignan. They are valued for their vivacious and graceful
+     style, the light which they throw upon the thoughts and
+     movements of her time, but especially for their revelation of
+     a wonderfully sweet and gracious personality. Madame de
+     Sévigné died on April 18, 169696.
+
+
+_Love for her Daughter_
+
+
+My dear child: I have been here but three hours, and already take my pen
+to talk to you. I left Paris with the Abbé, Hélène, Hébert and Marphise,
+so that I might get away from the noise and bustle of the town until
+Thursday evening. I want to have perfect quietness, in which to reflect.
+I intend to fast for many good reasons, and to walk much to make up for
+the long time I have spent in my room; and above all, I want to
+discipline myself for the love of God.
+
+But, my dear daughter, what I shall do more than all this, will be to
+think of you. I have not ceased to do so since I arrived here; and being
+quite unable to restrain my feelings, I have betaken myself to the
+little shady walk you so loved, to write to you, and am sitting on the
+mossy bank where you so often used to lie. But, my dear, where in this
+place have I not seen you? Do not thoughts of you haunt my heart
+everywhere I turn?--in the house, in the church, in the field, in the
+garden--every spot speaks to me of you. You are in my thoughts all the
+time, and my heart cries out for you again and again. I search in vain
+for the dear, dear child I love so passionately; but she is 600 miles
+away, and I cannot call her to my side. My tears fall, and I cannot stop
+them. I know it is weak, but this tenderness for you is right and
+natural and I cannot be strong.
+
+I wonder what your mood will be when you receive this letter; perhaps at
+that moment you will not be touched with the emotions I now feel so
+poignantly, and then you may not read it in the spirit in which it was
+written. But against that I cannot guard, and the act of writing
+relieves my feelings at the moment--that is at least what I ask of it.
+You would not believe the condition into which this place has thrown me.
+
+Do not refer to my weakness, I beg of you; but you must love me, and
+have respect for my tears, since they flow from a heart which is full of
+you.
+
+
+_The Brinvilliers Affair_
+
+
+The Brinvilliers affair is still the only thing talked of in Paris. The
+Marquise confessed to having poisoned her father, her brothers, and one
+of her children. The Chevalier Duget had been one of those who had
+partaken of a poisoned dish of pigeon-pie; and when the Brinvilliers was
+told three years later that he was still alive, her only remark was
+"that man surely has an excellent constitution." It seems she fell
+deeply in love with Sainte Croix, an officer in the regiment of her
+husband, the Marquis, who lived in their house. Believing that Sainte
+Croix would marry her if she were free, she attempted to poison her
+husband. Sainte Croix, not reciprocating her desire, administered an
+antidote, and thus saved the poor Marquis's life.
+
+And now, all is over. The Brinvilliers is no more. Judgment was given
+yesterday and this morning her sentence was read to her--she was to make
+a public confession in front of Notre Dame, after which she was to be
+executed, her body burnt and her ashes scattered to the winds. She was
+threatened with torture, but said it was unnecessary and that she would
+tell all. Accordingly she recounted the history of her whole life, which
+was even more horrible than anyone had imagined, and I could not hear of
+it without shuddering.
+
+At six in the morning she was led out, barefoot, and clad only in one
+loose garment, with a halter round her neck. From Notre Dame she was
+carried back in the same Tumbril, in which I saw her lying on straw,
+with the Doctor on one side of her and the executioner on the other; the
+sight of her struck me with horror. I am told that she mounted the
+scaffold with a firm step, and died as she had lived, resolutely, and
+without fear or emotion.
+
+She asked her confessor to place the executioner so that she need not
+gaze on Degrais, who, you _will remember_, tracked her to England, and
+ultimately arrested her at Liège. After she had mounted the ladder to
+the scaffold she was exposed to the public for a quarter of an hour,
+while the executioner arranged her for execution. This raised a murmur
+of disapproval among the people, and it was a great cruelty. It seems
+that some say she was a saint; and after her body had been burned, the
+people crowded near to search for bones as relics, but little was to be
+found, as her ashes were thrown into the fire. And, it may be supposed,
+that we now inhale what remains of her. It is to be hoped that we shall
+not inhale her murderous instincts also.
+
+She had two confessors, of whom one counselled her to tell everything,
+the other nothing. She laughed, and said, "I may in conscience do what
+pleases me best."
+
+I was pleased to hear what you think of this horrible woman; it is not
+possible that she should be in Paradise; her vile soul must be separated
+from others.
+
+
+_Devotion_
+
+
+You ask me if I am devout. Alas! No, which is a sorrow to me; but I am
+in a way detached from what is called the world. Old age, and a little
+sickness give one time to reflect. But, my dear child, what I do not
+give to the world, I give to you; so that I hardly advance in the region
+of detachment; and you know the true way towards a devout life lies in
+some degree of effacement, first of all, of that which our heart holds
+dearest.
+
+One of my great desires is to become devout. Every day I am tormented by
+this idea. I do not belong to God, neither do I belong to the Devil;
+this indecision is a perpetual torment to me, although between
+ourselves, I believe this state to be a most natural one. One does not
+belong to the Devil, because one fears God: also, one does not belong to
+God, because His law is hard, and one does not like to renounce oneself.
+These are the luke-warm, and their great number does not surprise me at
+all; I can enter into their reasonings; but God hates them; therefore we
+must cease to serve in this state--and there is the difficulty.
+
+I am overwhelmed by the death of M. du Mans; I had never thought of
+death in connection with him. Yet he has died of a trifling fever,
+without having had time to think either of heaven or of earth.
+Providence sometimes shows its authority by sudden visitations, from
+which we should profit.
+
+What you say as to the anxieties which we so often and so naturally feel
+about the future, and as to how our inclinations are insensibly changed
+by necessity, is a subject worthy of a book like Pascal's; nothing is so
+satisfying, nothing so useful as meditations of this kind. But how many
+people of your age think this? I know of none; and I honour your sound
+reasoning and courage. With me it is not so, especially when my heart
+afflicts me; my words are indifferently good; I write as those who speak
+well; but the depth of my feeling kills me. This I feel when I write to
+you of the pain of separation. I have not myself found the proverb true,
+"To cloak oneself according to the cold." I have no cloak against cold
+like this. Yet I manage to find occupation, and the time passes somehow.
+But in general it is true that our thoughts and inclinations turn into
+other channels, and our sorrows cease to be such.
+
+
+_Love of Life_
+
+
+You ask me, dear child, if I am still in love with life. I must confess
+that I find its sorrows grievous, but my distaste for death is even
+stronger. It is sad to think I must finish my life with death, and if it
+were possible I would retrace my steps. I find myself embarked on life
+without my consent, and am in a perplexing situation. I shall have to
+take leave of life, and the fact overwhelms me: for how, or by what
+gate, shall I pass away? When will death come, and in what disposition
+will it find me? Shall I suffer a thousand pains which will make me die
+in despair? Shall I die in a transport of joy? Shall I die of an
+accident? How shall I stand before God? What shall I have to offer Him?
+Shall I return to Him in fear and necessity, and be conscious of no
+other feeling but terror? What can I hope for? Am I worthy of Paradise?
+Or worthy only of Hell? What an alternative! What perplexity! Nothing is
+so mad as to leave one's safety thus in uncertainty; but nothing is more
+natural; and the foolish life I lead is perfectly easy to understand. I
+plunge myself into these thoughts; and I find death so terrible, that I
+hate life more because it leads to death, than because it leads me
+through troublesome places. You will say I wish to live for ever. Not at
+all; but if I had been asked, I would willingly have died in my nurse's
+arms, for I should thus have avoided many sorrows and would have secured
+heaven with certainty and ease.
+
+
+_The Order of God_
+
+
+Providence wills order; but if order is nothing other than the will of
+God, almost all that occurs is done against His will: all the
+persecutions, for instance, against St. Athanasius; all the prosperity
+of ill-doers and tyrants--all this is against order and therefore
+against the will of God. We must surely hold to what St. Augustine says,
+that God permits all these things so that he may manifest His glory by
+means that are unknown to us. St. Augustine knows no rule nor order but
+the will of God. If we did not follow this doctrine, we should be forced
+to conclude that almost everything is contrary to the will of Him who
+made it, and this seems to me a dreadful conclusion.
+
+I should like to complain to Father Malebranche about the mice which eat
+everything here; is that in order? Sugar, fruit, preserves, everything
+is devoured by them. And was it order last year, that miserable
+caterpillars destroyed the leaves of our forest-trees and gardens, and
+all the fruit in the country-side? Father Payen, most peaceable of men,
+has his head broken; is that order? Yes, Father, all that is doubtless
+good. God knows how to dispose of it to His glory, though we know not
+how. We must take it as true, for if we do not regard the will of God as
+equivalent to all law and order, we fall into great difficulties.
+
+You are such a philosopher, my very dear child, that there is no way of
+being happy with you. Your mind runs on beyond our hopes to picture to
+itself the loss of all we hope for; and you see, in our meetings, the
+inevitable separation that is to follow. Surely that is not the way to
+deal with the good things Providence prepares for us; we should rather
+husband and enjoy them. But after having made this little reproach, I
+must confess in all honesty that I deserve it just as much as you. No
+one can be more daunted than I am by the flight of time, nor feel more
+keenly beforehand the griefs which ordinarily follow pleasures. Indeed,
+my daughter, life mingles its good and ill: when one has what one
+desires, one is all the nearer to losing it; when it is further from us,
+we dream of finding it. So we must just take things as God sends them.
+For my part, I would cherish the hope of seeing you without mixing in
+with other feelings; and look forward to holding you in my arms next
+month. I wish to believe God will allow us this perfect joy, although it
+would be the easiest thing in the world to mix it with bitterness, if we
+so desired. All that remains, my very dear one, is to breathe and to
+live.
+
+
+_The Prince of Orange and England_
+
+
+The Prince of Orange has declared himself protector of the religion of
+England, and has asked to have charge of the education of the young
+Prince. It is a bold step, and several of the English nobility have
+joined him. We are all hoping that the Prince of Orange has made a
+mistake, and that King James II. will give him a good beating. He has
+received the Milords, confirmed the attachment of those most devoted to
+him, and has declared entire liberty of conscience. But we understand
+that the King of England has united all his people round him, by
+affording a greater degree of religious liberty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What shall we say of this English nation? Its customs and manners go
+from bad to worse. The King of England has escaped from London,
+apparently by kind permission of the Prince of Orange; the Queen will
+arrive at St. Germain in a day or two. It is quite certain that war will
+be declared against us soon, if indeed we are not the first to declare
+it. We are sending the Abbé Testu to St. Germain to help in establishing
+there the King and Queen of England and the Prince of Wales. Our King of
+France has behaved quite divinely to these Majesties of England; for to
+comfort and sustain, as he has done, a betrayed and abandoned king, is
+to act in the image of the Almighty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is good news that the King of England has left this morning for
+Ireland, where they are anxiously awaiting him. He will be better there
+than here. He is travelling through Brittany like lightning, and at
+Brest he will find Marshall d'Estrée with transport and frigates ready.
+He carries large treasure, and the King has given him arms for ten
+thousand men; as his Majesty of England was saying good-bye, he said,
+laughing, that he had forgotten arms for himself, and our King gave him
+his own. Our heroes of romance have done nothing more gallant. What will
+not this brave and unfortunate King accomplish with these ever
+victorious weapons? He goes forth with the helmet and cuirass of Renaud,
+Amadis, and our most illustrious paladins, supported by unexampled
+generosity and magnanimity.
+
+
+_Old Age_
+
+
+So you have been struck by Madame de la Fayette's words, inspired by so
+much friendliness. I never let myself forget the fact that I am growing
+old; but I must confess that I was simply astonished at what she said,
+because I do not yet feel any infirmity to keep me in mind of my
+advancing years. I think of them, however, and find that life offers us
+hard conditions: here have I been led, in spite of myself, to the fatal
+period at which one must die--old age. I see it; old age has stolen upon
+me; and my only desire is to go no further. I do not want to travel
+along that road of infirmities, pains, the loss of memory, the
+disfigurements to which I look forward as an outrage; yet I hear a voice
+saying in my ear--"You must pass down that road, whether you like it or
+not, or else you must die"; and this second alternative is as repugnant
+to nature as the first. This is the inevitable lot of whoever advances
+too far along the course of life. Yet, a return to God's will, and
+submission to that universal law which has condemned us all to death, is
+enough to seat reason again on her throne, and to give us patience. Do
+you too have patience, my darling; don't let your love, too tender,
+cause you tears which your reason must condemn.
+
+Your brother has come under the Empire of Ninon de Lenclos; I fear it
+will bring evil; she ruined his father. We must recommend him to God.
+Christian women, or at least who wish to be so, cannot see disorder like
+his without sorrow.
+
+But what a dangerous person this Ninon is! She finds that your brother
+has the simplicity of a dove, and is like his mother; it is Madame de
+Grignan who has all the salt of the family, and is not so simple as to
+be ruled. Someone, meaning to take your part, tried to correct her
+notion of you, but Ninon contradicted him and said she knew you better.
+What a corrupt creature! Because you are beautiful and spirited she must
+needs add to you another quality without which, on her principles, you
+cannot be perfect. I have been deeply troubled by the harm she is doing
+to my son. But do not speak of the matter to him; Madame de la Fayette
+and I are doing our best to extricate him from his perilous attachment.
+
+We have been reading for our amusement those little Provincial Letters.
+Heavens, what charm they have! How eagerly my son reads them! I always
+think of my daughter, and how worthy of her is the incomparable justice
+of their reasoning; but your brother says that you complain that the
+writer is always saying the same thing. Well, well; all the better! Is
+it possible that there should be a more perfect style, or a finer, more
+delicate or more natural raillery? Could anything be more worthy of
+comparison with Plato's "Dialogues"? But after the first ten letters,
+what earnestness, solidity, force and eloquence! What love for God and
+for truth, what exquisite skill in maintaining it and making it
+understood, characterise these eight last letters with their so
+different tone! I understand that you have read them only hurriedly,
+enjoying the more amusing passages; but that is not how one reads them
+at leisure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+
+The Life of Nelson
+
+
+     Robert Southey, man of letters and poet-laureate, was born at
+     Bristol on August 12, 1774, and received at various schools a
+     desultory education, which he completed by an idle year at
+     Oxford. Here he became acquainted with Coleridge; and Southey,
+     who had practised verse from early boyhood, and acquired a
+     strong taste for the drama, being also an ardent republican
+     and romanticist, was easily enlisted by the elder poet in his
+     scheme for a model republic, or "Pantisocracy," in the wilds
+     of America. They married two sisters, the Misses Fricker, and
+     a third sister married Robert Lovel, also a poet. The
+     experiment of pantisocracy was fortunately never carried out,
+     and Southey's career for the next eight years was exceedingly
+     fragmentary; but in 1803 there was a reunion of the three
+     sisters at Keswick, though one of the husbands, Lovel, was
+     dead. Here Southey entered steadily and industriously on the
+     life of an author for livelihood; it was by no means
+     unremunerative. Southey's output of work, both prose and
+     verse, was very voluminous, and its quality could not but
+     suffer. He was appointed poet-laureate in 1813; and received a
+     government pension of £160 a year from 1807, which was
+     increased by £300 a year in 1835. He died on March 21, 1843.
+     In a prefatory note to that peerless model of short
+     biographies, the "Life of Nelson," which appeared in 1813, and
+     is considered his most important work, Southey describes it as
+     "clear and concise enough to become a manual for the young
+     sailor, which he may carry about with him till he has
+     treasured up the example in his memory and in his heart."
+
+
+_I.--A Captain at Twenty_
+
+
+Horatio, son of Edmund and Catherine Nelson, was born on September 29,
+1758, in the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, a Norfolk village, where his
+father was rector. His mother's maiden name was Suckling; her
+grandmother was an elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, and this child
+was named after his godfather, the first Lord Walpole. Mrs. Nelson died
+in 1767, leaving eight children, and her brother, Captain Maurice
+Suckling, R.N., visited the widower, and promised to take care of one of
+the boys.
+
+Three years later, when Horatio was twelve years old, he read in the
+newspaper that his uncle was appointed to the Raisonnable, and urged his
+father to let him go to sea with his Uncle Maurice.
+
+The boy was never strong, but he had already given proofs of a resolute
+heart and a noble mind. Captain Suckling took an interest in him, and
+sent him on a first voyage in a merchant ship to the West Indies, and
+then, as coxswain, with the Arctic expedition of 1773, when Horatio
+showed his courage by attacking a Polar bear.
+
+A voyage to the East Indies followed, and gave him the rank of
+midshipman. But the tropical climate reduced him almost to a skeleton;
+he lost for a time the use of his limbs, and was sent home as his only
+chance of life. He returned under great depression of spirits. In later
+years he related how the despair was cleared away by a glow of
+patriotism, in which his king and country came vividly before his mind.
+"Well, then," he exclaimed, "I will be a hero, and, confiding in
+Providence, I will brave every danger!"
+
+On April 8, 1777, he passed his examination for a lieutenancy, and was
+appointed to the Lowestoft frigate, Captain Locker, then fitting out for
+Jamaica. Privateers under American colours were harassing British trade
+in the West Indies, and Nelson saw much active service. He was removed
+to the Bristol flagship, then to the command of the Badger, then to the
+Hinchinbrook, and before the age of twenty-one he had gained a rank
+which brought all the honours of the service within his reach.
+
+An expedition was at this time projected to seize the region of Lake
+Nicaragua, and thus to cut the communication of the Spaniards between
+their northern and southern possessions; and in pursuit of this policy
+Nelson was sent with a small force, early in 1780, to Honduras. Here,
+after deeds of great gallantry, his command was almost annihilated by
+the deadly climate, and he himself was so reduced by dysentery that he
+was compelled to return to England.
+
+His next ship was the Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, in which he was
+kept, to his great annoyance, in the North Sea for the whole winter of
+1781-2, and was sent in the spring to Quebec. The Albemarle then served
+on the West Indian station until tidings came that the preliminaries of
+peace had been signed, and she returned to England, and was paid off in
+1783.
+
+"I have closed the war," said Nelson, in one of his letters, "without a
+fortune; but there is not a speck on my character. True honour, I hope,
+predominated in my mind far above riches." He did not apply for a ship,
+because he was not wealthy enough to live on board in the manner which
+was then customary.
+
+But, after living for a time in lodgings in St. Omer's in France, he was
+appointed to the Boreas, going to the Leeward Islands, and on his
+arrival in the West Indies in 1784, found himself senior captain, and
+therefore second in command on that station.
+
+The Americans were at this time trading with our islands, taking
+advantage of the register of their ships, which had been issued while
+they were British subjects. Nelson knew that, by the Navigation Act, no
+foreigners, directly or indirectly, were permitted to carry on any trade
+with these possessions; and also that the Americans had made themselves
+foreigners with regard to England.
+
+Contrary to the orders both of the admiral and of the governor, he
+insisted that our ships of war were not sent abroad to make a show of,
+and seized four American vessels at Nevis; and when the matter was
+brought into court at that place he pleaded his own cause, and the ships
+were condemned.
+
+While the lawsuit was proceeding, Nelson formed an attachment to a young
+widow, Mrs. Nisbet, niece of the President of Nevis, and was married to
+her on March 11, 1787. She was then in her eighteenth year, and had one
+child, a son, Josiah, who was three years old. They returned together to
+England and took up their abode at the old parsonage, where Nelson
+amused himself with farming and country sports, and continued a
+relentless campaign against the speculators and fraudulent contractors
+attached to the naval service in the West Indies. After many vain
+attempts to secure a ship, he was at last appointed, on January 30,
+1793, to the Agamemnon, sixty-four guns.
+
+
+_II.--In the Mediterranean_
+
+
+The Agamemnon was ordered to the Mediterranean under Lord Hood, and
+Nelson was sent with despatches to Sir William Hamilton, our envoy to
+the court of Naples. Sir William, after his first interview with him,
+told Lady Hamilton that he was about to introduce a little man to her
+who could not boast of being very handsome, but who would one day
+astonish the world. Thus that acquaintance began which ended in the
+destruction of Nelson's domestic happiness, though it threatened no such
+consequences then. Here also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan
+court which led to the only blot on Nelson's public character.
+
+Having accomplished this mission, Nelson was sent to join Commodore
+Linzee at Tunis, and shortly afterwards to co-operate with General Paoli
+and the Anti-Gallican party in Corsica. At this time, 1794, Nelson was
+able to say, "My seamen are now what British seamen ought to be, almost
+invincible. They really mind shot no more than peas." And again, after
+capturing Bastia, "I am all astonishment when I reflect on what we have
+achieved! I was always of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never
+had any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three
+Frenchmen." The Agamemnon was then dispatched to co-operate in the siege
+of Calvi with General Sir Charles Stuart, at which Nelson lost the sight
+of one eye; and later played a glorious part in the attack by Admiral
+Hotham's squadron on the French fleet. This action saved Corsica for the
+time.
+
+Nelson was made colonel of marines in 1795, a mark of approbation which
+he had long wished for; and the Agamemnon was ordered to Genoa, to
+co-operate with the Austrian and Sardinian forces. The incapacity and
+misconduct of the Austrian General de Vins, however, gave the enemy
+possession of the Genoese coast. The Agamemnon, therefore, could no
+longer be useful on this station, and Nelson sailed for Leghorn to
+refit, and then joined the Mediterranean fleet under Sir John Jervis.
+
+England at that time depended too much on the rotten governments of the
+Continent, and too little upon itself. Corsica was therefore abandoned
+by Britain, and Nelson, after superintending the evacuation of Corsica,
+was ordered to hoist his broad pennant on board the Minerva frigate. He
+then sailed for Gibraltar, and proceeded westward in search of the
+admiral.
+
+
+_III.--St. Vincent and the Nile_
+
+
+Off the mouth of the Straits of Gilbraltar he fell in with the Spanish
+fleet; and on February 13, 1797, reaching the station off Cape St.
+Vincent, he communicated this intelligence to Sir John Jervis, and was
+directed to shift his broad pennant on board the Captain. On the
+following morning was fought the battle of Cape St. Vincent. The British
+had only fifteen ships of the line against twenty-seven Spanish ships,
+but Britain, largely through Nelson's intrepidity, secured an
+overwhelming victory. The commander-in-chief was rewarded with the title
+of Earl St. Vincent, and Nelson was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral
+and received the Order of the Bath.
+
+Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson was now removed to the Theseus, and was
+employed in the blockade of Cadiz, where he went through the most
+perilous action in which he was ever engaged. Making a night attack upon
+the Spanish gunboats, his barge, carrying twelve men, was attacked by an
+armed launch carrying twenty-six men; the admiral was only saved by the
+heroic devotion of his coxswain; but eighteen of the enemy were killed,
+the rest wounded, and their launch taken.
+
+Twelve days later Nelson sailed at the head of an expedition against
+Teneriffe, and on the night of July 24, 1797, made a boat attack on the
+port of Santa Cruz. On this occasion he was wounded in the right elbow,
+and the arm had to be amputated. The small force, which had made its way
+into the town, capitulated on honourable terms, and the Spanish governor
+distinguished himself by the most humane and generous conduct to his
+enemies. There is no doubt that Nelson's life was saved by the careful
+attentions of his stepson, Nisbet, who was with him in the boat.
+
+Nisbet was immediately promoted, and honours awaited Nelson in England.
+The freedom of the cities of Bristol and London were conferred on him,
+and he received a pension of £1,000 a year. He had performed an
+extraordinary series of services during the war; including four actions
+with the fleets of the enemy, three actions with boats employed in
+cutting out of harbour, and in taking three towns; he had commanded the
+batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi, he had assisted at the
+capture of twenty-eight ships of war, and had taken and destroyed nearly
+fifty merchant vessels; and had been engaged against the enemy upwards
+of a hundred and twenty times, in which service he had lost his right
+eye and right arm.
+
+Early in 1789, Sir Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and
+left England to rejoin Earl St. Vincent. He was dispatched to the
+Mediterranean, to ascertain the object of Bonaparte's great expedition,
+then fitting out at Toulon; and sailed from Gibraltar on May 9 with
+three ships of the line, four frigates, and a sloop. The Vanguard was
+dismantled in a storm, but was refitted in the Sardinian harbour of St.
+Pietro, and was joined by a reinforcement of eleven ships from Earl St.
+Vincent.
+
+The first news of the enemy's armament was that it had surprised Malta,
+but Nelson soon heard that they had left that island on June 16, and
+judged that Egypt was their destination. He arrived off Alexandria on
+the 28th, but did not find them; returned by a circuitous course to
+Sicily, then sailed to the Morea, where he gained news of the French,
+and on August I came in sight of Alexandria and the French fleet.
+"Before this time to-morrow," he said to his officers, "I shall have
+gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey."
+
+Bonaparte's ships of war, under Admiral Brueys, were moored in Aboukir
+Bay in a strong line of battle; and the advantage of numbers, both in
+ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. Yet only four French
+ships out of seventeen escaped, and the victory was the most complete
+and glorious in the annals of naval history.
+
+Nelson was now at the summit of his glory; and congratulations, rewards,
+and honours were showered upon him by all the states, princes, and
+powers to whom his victory had given respite. He was created Baron
+Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, with a pension of £2,000 a
+year for his own life, and those of his successors; a grant of £10,000
+was voted to him by the East India Company; and the King of Naples made
+him Duke of Bronte.
+
+
+_IV.--Lady Hamilton_
+
+
+As soon as his shattered frame had sufficiently recovered, Nelson was
+called to services of greater importance than any one in which he had
+been hitherto employed.
+
+The kindest attentions and warmest affection were awaiting him at
+Naples; the king, the queen, and Lady Hamilton, who was the queen's
+constant favourite, welcomed their hero and deliverer with the most
+splendid festivities. General Mack, with whom Nelson was to co-operate,
+was at the head of the Neapolitan troops; and while he marched with
+32,000 men into the Roman state, 5,000 Neapolitans were embarked on the
+British and Portuguese squadron to take possession of Leghorn.
+
+Nelson's fears of the result were soon verified. "The Neapolitan
+officers," he said, "did not lose much honour, for God knows they had
+not much to lose--but they lost all they had." The French in the Roman
+State routed the cowardly Neapolitans. There was a strong revolutionary
+party in Naples itself; and it was agreed that the royal family must
+seek safety in flight. Their secret escape, with much treasure, on board
+the Vanguard, was conducted with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton,
+and Nelson conveyed them through a wild storm to Palermo.
+
+He had by this time formed an infatuated attachment for Lady Hamilton,
+which totally weaned his affections from his wife. He was dissatisfied
+with himself and weary of the world. But, in accordance with his
+principle of duty "to assist in driving the French to the devil and in
+restoring peace and happiness to mankind," he at length expelled the
+French from Naples and restored Ferdinand to his throne. Weak in health,
+dispirited, and smarting under a censure from the Admiralty for a
+disobedience to orders, Nelson resigned his command, and reached England
+in November 1800, having travelled with Sir William and Lady Hamilton.
+
+The great admiral was welcomed to England with every mark of popular
+honour; but he had forfeited domestic happiness for ever. Before he had
+been three months at home, he separated from Lady Nelson, vowing that
+there was nothing in her or in her conduct that he could have wished
+otherwise.
+
+In January 1801 he was sent to the Baltic as second in command under Sir
+Hyde Parker. Russia, Denmark, and Sweden had founded a confederacy for
+making England resign her naval rights, and the British Cabinet decided
+instantly to crush it. The fleet sailed on March 12; Nelson represented
+to Sir Hyde Parker the necessity of attacking Copenhagen; and on April 2
+the British vessels opened fire on the Danish fleet and land batteries.
+The Danes, in return, fought their guns manfully, and at one o'clock,
+after three hours' endurance, Sir Hyde Parker gave the signal for
+discontinuing action. Nelson ordered that signal to be acknowledged, but
+continued to fly the signal for close action. "You know, Foley," he
+said, turning to the captain of the ship, "I have only one eye; I have a
+right to be blind sometimes!" Then, putting the glass to his blind eye,
+in the mood that sports with bitterness, he exclaimed, "I really do not
+see the signal. Keep mine for closer battle flying! That's the way I
+answer such signals. Nail mine to that mast!" Admiral Graves disobeyed
+in like manner, and the other ships of the line also continued the
+action. The victory was soon complete, and Sir Hyde Parker heartily
+expressed his satisfaction and gratitude.
+
+For the battle of Copenhagen, Nelson was raised to the rank of viscount.
+Had he lived long enough, he would have fought his way up to a dukedom.
+
+After holding a command in the English Channel, to watch the
+preparations which were being made at Boulogne for an invasion of
+England, Nelson retired on the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens to his
+estate at Merton, in Surrey, meaning to pass his days there in the
+society of Sir William and Lady Hamilton. Sir William died early in
+1803, and, as the government would do nothing for her, Nelson settled on
+Lady Hamilton a sum equal to the pension of £1,200 a year which her
+husband had enjoyed. A few weeks after this event the war was renewed,
+and the day after his majesty's message to parliament, Nelson departed
+to take command of the Mediterranean fleet.
+
+He took his station immediately off Toulon, and there, with incessant
+vigilance, waited for the coming out of the enemy. From May 1803 to
+August 1805 he left the Victory only three times, each time upon the
+king's service, and on no occasion for more than an hour.
+
+War having been declared between England and Spain, the Toulon fleet,
+having the Spaniards to co-operate with them, put to sea on January 18,
+1804. Nelson, who was off Sardinia when he heard the news the next day,
+sought them in vain through the Mediterranean, until he heard that they
+had been dispersed by a gale, and had returned to Toulon. On March 31
+they emerged again, and passed out of the Straits of Gibraltar, but the
+British fleet was kept by adverse winds from reaching the Atlantic till
+April 5.
+
+The enemy had thirty-five days start on their run to the West Indies,
+and Nelson, misled by false information, sought them among the islands,
+until he learned at Antigua on June 9 that they had sailed again for
+Europe. He made all speed across the Atlantic, and again sought the
+enemy vainly, until he joined Admiral Cornwallis off Ushant on August
+15. The same evening he was ordered to proceed with the Victory and
+Superb to Portsmouth.
+
+
+_V.--Trafalgar_
+
+
+Here, at last, he heard news of the combined fleets; Sir Robert Calder
+had fallen in with them near Finisterre and had fought an indecisive
+engagement.
+
+On September 14, 1805, he passed through the crowds at Portsmouth, many
+of whom were in tears, many kneeling and blessing him as he passed. He
+arrived off Cadiz on September 29 with twenty-three ships, and on
+October 9 he sent Collingwood his plan of attack--what he called "the
+Nelson-touch." These tactics consisted in cutting through the line of
+the enemy in three places.
+
+On the morning of the 19th the enemy came out of the port of Cadiz, and
+all that day and night, and the next day, the British pursued them. At
+daybreak of the 21st, the combined fleets were distinctly seen from the
+Victory, about twelve miles to leeward. Signal was made to bear down on
+the enemy in two lines, and all sail was set, the Victory leading.
+
+Nelson now retired to his cabin and wrote in his diary a prayer
+committing himself and the British cause to Heaven, and then wrote a
+memorial setting forth Lady Hamilton's services to Britain, and leaving
+her and her daughter Horatia as a legacy to his country.
+
+Villeneuve, commanding the enemy, was a skilful seaman, and his plan of
+defence was as original as the plan of attack. He formed the fleet in a
+double line, every alternate ship being a cable's length to windward of
+her second ahead and astern. Nelson, certain of triumph, issued his last
+signal: "England expects every man to do his duty," which was received
+throughout the fleet with acclamations.
+
+The English lines, led by Nelson and by Collingwood, swept down upon the
+hostile fleet, the Victory steering for the bow of the Santissima
+Trinidad. At four minutes after twelve she opened fire, and almost
+immediately ran against the Redoubtable. Four ships, two British and two
+French, formed as compact a tier as if they had been moored together,
+their heads all lying the same way.
+
+At a quarter past one, a ball fired from the mizzen-top of the
+Redoubtable struck Nelson on the left shoulder, and he fell on his face.
+"They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said; "my backbone is shot
+through." He was carried below, laid on a pallet in the midshipmen's
+berth, and insisted that the surgeon should leave him--"for you can do
+nothing for me." He was in great pain, and expressed much anxiety for
+the event of the action, until Captain Hardy was able to tell him that
+fifteen of the enemy had been taken. Repeating that he left Lady
+Hamilton and Horatia as a legacy to his country, and exclaiming, "Thank
+God, I have done my duty!" Nelson expired.
+
+He cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MADAME DE STAAL
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Marguerite Jeanne de Launay, Baronne de Staal, was born in
+     Paris on May 30, 1684. Her father was a painter of the name of
+     Cordier who was in England when his daughter was born; and the
+     name by which she was known, de Launay, was that of her
+     mother's family. Her story is told by herself, with admirable
+     sincerity, in these Memoirs, which follow her life until the
+     year 1735, when, at the age of fifty-one, she married Baron de
+     Staal, a widower and an officer in the Guard. Her death took
+     place in Paris on June 16, 1750. Her Memoirs, first published
+     in 1755, are among the most interesting records of that
+     period, and though their historical accuracy has been doubted,
+     her portraits of persons are vivid and convincing. Her style
+     has been highly commended by Sainte-Beuve and other French
+     literary critics.
+
+
+_A Convent Child_
+
+
+If I write the record of my life, it is not because it deserves
+attention, but in order to amuse myself by my recollections. My story is
+just the opposite of the ordinary romance, wherein a girl brought up as
+a peasant becomes an illustrious princess; for I was treated in
+childhood as a person of distinction, and had to find out later that I
+was a nobody and owned nothing in the world. And so, not having been
+trained from the first to ill fortune, my spirit has always rebelled
+against the servitude in which I have had to live.
+
+My father, for some reason that I never knew, had to leave France and
+live in England; and my mother, alone in Paris and without resources,
+took me with her as an infant to find a refuge in the abbey of
+Saint-Sauveur d'Evreux in Normandy, where Madame de La Rochefoucauld,
+the abbess, received us free of charge.
+
+There was at that time a lengthy disagreement between King Louis XIV.
+and the Pope with regard to the nomination of abbesses, in consequence
+of which two ladies Mesdames de Grieu, having been disappointed of an
+expected establishment, retired to Saint-Sauveur, where they formed a
+great friendship with my mother, and became devoted to her two-year-old
+child. I was naturally very popular in the convent, and having a bright
+disposition I was educated with the utmost care.
+
+Chiefly with a view to giving me greater advantage, the elder Madame de
+Grieu sought and at length obtained the Priory of Saint-Louis at Rouen,
+and took me thither with the consent of my mother. Saint-Louis was like
+a little kingdom, where I reigned as a sovereign; the abbess and her
+sister had no thought but to satisfy my every fancy, and the whole
+convent was forced to pay court to me. All that was done for me cost me
+so little that it seemed a matter of course that I should be flattered
+and served, and at an early age I had contracted all the defects which I
+have since had to allow for in the great.
+
+This extreme indulgence would have turned my defects into vices, if
+devotion had not ruled my passions from the first. Religion was the one
+great object before my eyes; I had been well instructed in it; I read
+continually the devotional books in the convent library, and passed much
+of my time in prayer and meditation. Yet my early desire to become a nun
+passed gradually away, until I thought of it no more.
+
+Mademoiselle de Silly, an amiable and cultivated young lady whose
+actions were ruled by principles rather than by feelings, came to live
+at Saint-Louis, and I was soon attached to her with all the ardour of a
+girl's affection; her tastes became mine, and I used to read all day
+beside her. She was then studying the philosophy of Descartes, and I
+became absorbed in questions of that kind to the neglect of everything
+else, until, fearing lest they might disturb my faith, I resolutely
+banished them from my mind.
+
+I was about fourteen years old when the convent of Saint-Louis fell into
+great poverty owing to a famine which was desolating France, and the
+disaffection of the nuns was centred on me as a chief cause of
+unnecessary expense. Their complaints came to the archbishop of Rouen,
+and abbess had difficulty in keeping me with her. My helpless condition
+began to force itself on my attention; and I realised that if the abbess
+were to die I was alone and without support in the world.
+
+An unexpected event now drew me closer to Mademoiselle de Silly. Her
+mother, having come to Rouen, took her home to Silly, and invited me to
+accompany her. I accepted joyfully, and spent several months in the
+solitary and melancholy old castle. The Marquis was extremely
+economical, the Marquise very devout, and we saw few people. One visitor
+from the neighborhood, however, attracted me strongly; and as he came
+often and stayed long, my friend and I agreed that one of us had pleased
+him. When he had declared his affection, and it was not for me, I
+learned what jealousy is--a kind of horror like that of falling down
+through a fathomless abyss.
+
+During the next visit to Silly in the following year the son of the
+house arrived, and at first kept very much to himself and to his books.
+But having heard his sister and myself complaining of these unsociable
+ways, he frankly confessed his fault and amended it, and from that day
+we spent every hour together. His mind and his manner was infinitely
+agreeable; and in my successive visits to Silly we formed a delightful
+friendship which was never interrupted by more ardent feelings.
+
+
+_Thrown on the World_
+
+
+At length my dear abbess fell so dangerously ill that I saw I was about
+to lose her; and I became desolately aware that I owed her all, and that
+her death would not only leave me absolutely helpless, but would also
+deprive me of my best friend. I never knew anyone else so abundant in
+goodness, with so much sweetness, attention for others and forgetfulness
+of self, nor with such exact regard for every duty. Her death came soon,
+and it was evident that neither her sister nor I could remain at the
+convent. Several generous helpers came forward with offers of support,
+but in my uncertain position I judged it better to refuse them all. I
+was resolved to suffer any misery and servitude rather than sacrifice my
+independence, and only accepted a small loan sufficient to take me to
+Paris.
+
+I was soon in the great city, looking out for a situation as children's
+governess; fortunately, I had a taste for that occupation, and imagined
+that taste for it meant talent. I had a sister, in the household of the
+Duchess de La Ferté, and found her very amiable and helpful. With her
+assistance I went to board at a cheap rate in the convent of the
+Presentation, and she succeeded in inspiring her mistress with so
+elevated an idea of my attainments that the Duchess soon afterwards sent
+for me. After showing me off as a prodigy of learning to all her
+friends, the Duchess de La Ferté, a voluble and enthusiastic woman,
+conceived a violent affection for me, and projected innumerable schemes
+for my advancement, which ended in my being received into her own
+household as her secretary.
+
+I should have been delighted with this position if I had not remembered
+how my sister, who had gone there as her favourite, had fallen to the
+situation of chambermaid, and if I had not realised that my mistress's
+affection would probably be as short-lived as it was intemperate. It
+proved to be so indeed; it was succeeded by a hatred as violent as her
+attachment had been; and after subjecting me to every indignity she
+finally disposed of me by placing me in the household of the Duchess of
+Maine, at Sceaux.
+
+Here I inhabited a tiny room, without windows or fireplace, and so low
+that it was impossible to stand upright. I was given sewing to do, but
+my first piece of work proved my incapacity, and my extremely
+short-sight made me equally helpless in waiting on the Duchess. I was
+astonished at the patience with which she bore my awkwardness, but my
+fellow-servants, with whom I was most unpopular, were less merciful. The
+hard and thankless existence, so different from anything which I had
+been accustomed, threw me into a profound depression, until I began to
+cherish the idea of taking leave of life.
+
+But gradually my situation altered for the better. Her Serene Highness
+the Duchess began to take notice of me, and became accustomed to speak
+to me and to take interest and pleasure in my replies. She had now
+succeeded in raising her family to rank equal to her own, and by a
+famous edict her children and their descendants had been brought within
+the succession to the crown. Her delight in amusements and in pageants
+was now at its highest, and it happened that the Abbé de Vaubrun,
+designing a spectacular piece in honor of Night, confided to me the task
+of writing and delivering an epilogue in that character. My stage-fright
+spoiled my elocution, but from that day I was entrusted with the
+organisation of these magnificent entertainments, and the last of them
+was entirely designed and written by myself. By this means I came to
+take a quite different place in the household.
+
+
+_Political Intrigues_
+
+
+King Louis XIV. had been failing for some time, though every one
+pretended not to notice it; and the Duchess of Maine, ever anxious for
+the greatness of her family, was very eager to know his testamentary
+intentions. Enough was ascertained, by the help of Madame de Maintenon,
+to show that the King's dispositions were in favour of the Duke of
+Orleans, and the mistake was made of confiding to the Duke his future
+advantage. As the illness progressed, a council of regency was formed
+with the Duke of Orleans at its head, and when the King died the Duke
+was appointed Regent by Parliament, and the Duke of Maine was entrusted
+with the education of the young King.
+
+The Duchess of Maine, who had come up to Paris for this anxious time,
+suffered a good deal from insomnia, and now called me in to read to her
+every night. But there was more conversation than reading, and she
+poured out to me in entire confidence all her secrets, projects,
+complaints and regrets. This touching confidence made me very deeply
+attached to her; and when she and her husband removed to the Tuilleries
+to superintend the King's education, they took me with them.
+
+In defence of the interests of her family in the succession to the
+Crown, which were threatened by the Duke of Orleans, Cardinal Polignac
+and others undertook the preparation of a very learned memoir, based on
+a great mass of historical and legal precedents; the Duchess threw
+herself into the most laborious researches to assist them, and I was set
+to study ancient volumes and to correspond with all kinds of
+authorities. The great work was finished at last; it was a fine,
+well-written production; but it did not repay the trouble it had cost.
+The question was decided against the family of Maine, the edict
+conferring on them the succession to the Crown was revoked, and the rank
+of princes of the blood was taken from them.
+
+It is impossible to describe the sorrow of my mistress at this sudden
+overthrow of the fortunes of her family. She was wholly unable to
+acquiesce in it, and her illtreatment in France suggested to her the
+idea of seeking help from the King of Spain. The Baron de Walef, who was
+going to that court, undertook to represent her case there, and the
+Duchess of Maine held secret interviews with the Spanish ambassador in
+Paris. Several other persons became implicated in these intrigues; the
+Duchess became more deeply compromised than she had at first intended;
+and her interests became interwoven with other chimerical projects,
+including the restoration of the Pretender in England. These movements
+became known to the Duke of Orleans, and my mistress's intrigues were
+soon brought to an end.
+
+On December 9, 1718, we were informed that the house of the Spanish
+Ambassador was surrounded by troops, and a day or two later we learned
+that our arrest, on the charge of inciting to revolution, might be
+expected at any moment. On the 29th, we were awakened early in the
+morning to find the house full of soldiers; the Duchess was carried off
+to imprisonment at Dijon, and the Duke of Maine was immured in the
+citadel of Dourlans in Picardy.
+
+
+_In the Bastille_
+
+
+I was taken in a carriage with three musketeers, to a little bridge
+before a wall, and delivered to the governor of the Bastille, who sent
+me to a large empty room, the walls of which were covered with charcoal
+drawings executed by former prisoners. A little chair was brought me, a
+bundle of wood was lighted on the hearth, one small candle was fixed to
+the wall, and I heard half a dozen locks and bolts closing the door that
+shut me off from mankind. The first hour, which I spent gazing at my
+crackling fire, was the most desolate of all my imprisonment.
+
+Then the governor appeared, with my attendant Mademoiselle Rondel; I was
+rejoiced to find that she was to relieve my solitude, and to hear from
+her that she had managed to hide all my papers after my capture. Our
+room was presently furnished with beds, table and chairs; on the
+following day we were given books and a pack of cards; our meals were
+tolerable, and except for our captivity we were comfortable enough.
+
+The two judges charged with the interrogation of the prisoners in our
+affair, of whom there seemed to be a considerable number, came daily,
+and held their interviews in a room immediately below ours; so that
+Rondel could see through the window one of our acquaintances after
+another being brought across the court to be examined. My time did not
+come for many days, and I spent long hours racking my brain for the
+answers which I ought to give. The fear of the questions by torture
+began to force itself on my mind; and though I thought I could face pain
+or even death I was doubtful whether I should be able to keep silence
+under that dreadful ordeal.
+
+After these weeks of suspense I was called before the judges, and was
+asked whether the Duchess of Maine had not great confidence in me and
+whether I had not been aware of her treasonable correspondence and
+intrigues. The line I took was to represent my services to my mistress
+as having been of a very humble nature; I insisted that I knew nothing
+of her private affairs, and had seen and heard nothing that could at all
+compromise her loyalty to the Government. This appeared to satisfy them
+for the present, and after enquiring whether I was well treated in
+prison they dismissed me.
+
+I did not suffer from ennui in the Bastille; I devised for myself many
+little occupations; and soon a surreptitious correspondence with the
+Chevalier de Menil, who had been imprisoned for participation in our
+affair, gave interest to the days. We were even permitted occasional
+interviews by favour of one of the subordinate officials, and before we
+regained our liberty I had promised to be his wife.
+
+The Regent at last became anxious to bring to an end the whole episode
+of the Duchess of Maine's intrigue; but he wished first to secure a full
+admission of guilt from the principal actors in it. The Duchess was
+promised her complete liberty if she would send him a frank confession
+in writing, which should be seen by no one but himself. Finding herself
+in a position to secure the freedom of all those whom she had
+imperilled, she sent the Duke of Orleans the required paper, in which
+she disclosed everything in detail and with entire sincerity.
+
+I was examined again without making any disclosure, but after receiving
+the written command of the Duchess I wrote out a declaration of all that
+I knew and was a few days later set at liberty, after two years of
+captivity. I went down at once to Sceaux, where I was affectionately
+received by my mistress.
+
+Returning to Paris two days later, to fetch my things from the Bastille,
+I called at the Convent of the Presentation, and found in the parlour
+the Chevalier de Menil. I was astonished at his manner, no less than by
+what he said; it was evidently that his only desire was to break his
+engagement with me. I realised that the man was without honour or
+kindness, and yet it was difficult to detach my affections from him.
+
+It was about a year later that M. Dacier was introduced to me, after the
+death of his wife, by the Duchess de La Ferté, and an ardent desire for
+liberty from my condition of servitude led me to accept his proposal of
+marriage, subject only to be the permission of my Duchess. This she was
+reluctant to give, and the matter was still under discussion when we
+heard of M. Dacier's sudden death.
+
+The rest of my life, though it has been a long one, contains little of
+interest. I found myself without any object to live for, and a strange
+deadness of feeling came over me, harder to bear than illness or death.
+I had a distaste for existence and a horror of the world, and desired
+nothing more than to hide myself away. A little pension had been secured
+for me; my mistress had fallen dangerously ill; I wished to leave Sceaux
+in order to run away from a new attachment which was gaining power over
+me; and the thought of entering a Carmelite house became a settled
+project. But I was refused even this last refuge; the prioress deciding
+that I had no vocation for the religious life.
+
+I spent several years without coming to any harmony either with myself
+or with fortune. Several offers of marriage were made to me, but I could
+not bring myself to accept any of them, until a sudden fancy for the
+sweet simplicities of country life led me to agree to a marriage with M.
+de Staal.
+
+A few days after my marriage I heard of the death of the Duchess of
+Maine. I never knew a more perfectly reasonable woman. She was all
+feeling; even her thoughts were really sentiments; she was lively
+without moodiness, impassioned without violence, always animated; sweet
+and sensible. There was a vivid warmth about her, that made her a
+perfectly gracious friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+EARL STANHOPE
+
+
+Life of William Pitt
+
+
+     The biographer of Pitt was a grandson of the Lord Mahon,
+     afterwards Earl of Stanhope, who married, in 1774, the great
+     statesman's eldest sister. Philip Henry Stanhope was born at
+     Walmer on January 30, 1805, and entered the House of Commons
+     as Lord Mahon in 1831. He took a prominent part in the
+     foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, and the
+     Historical Manuscripts Commission, and the promotion of
+     successful archaeological investigations on the site of Troy.
+     His literary labours were considerable and important. Chief
+     among them were the "History of England from the Peace of
+     Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," the "History of Queen
+     Anne's Reign," and the "Life of the Right Honourable William
+     Pitt." The last named, published in 1861-2, is one of the most
+     authoritative of political biographies, compiled with a
+     gravity and care characteristic of its author, and of abiding
+     value as a standard book of reference for one of the greatest
+     personalities and one of the most stirring periods of English
+     history. Earl Stanhope died on December 24, 1875.
+
+
+_I.--The Boy Statesman_
+
+
+William Pitt, the elder, afterwards Earl of Chatham, married in 1754
+Lady Hester Grenville. William Pitt, their second son, was born on May
+28, 1759, at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent.
+
+In his boyhood, from the earliest years, William Pitt evinced to all
+around him many tokens of intellectual promise and ambition; but his
+parents were frequently distressed by his delicate health. It was no
+doubt on this account that he was not sent to any public or private
+school. Lord Chatham was extremely careful of the education of his
+family; and, without any disparagement to young William's tutor, it was
+certainly from his father that he profited most.
+
+William was at fourteen so forward in his studies that he was sent to
+Cambridge, commencing his residence at Pembroke Hall in October 1773.
+His health at this period gave cause for great alarm. A serious illness
+at Cambridge, however, proved a turning-point; for long afterwards he
+enjoyed fairly good health. Early hours, daily exercise on horseback,
+and liberal potations of port wine--his elixir of strength at this time,
+although it helped in later years to undermine his constitution--made
+him far stronger after his illness than before it.
+
+In 1778, after the death of his father, he was entered at Lincoln's Inn,
+and was called to the Bar in 1780. But he had little opportunity of
+practising as a barrister, for his parliamentary ambitions were soon
+fulfilled. In the autumn of 1780 he was an unsuccessful candidate for
+Cambridge University; but through the influence of Sir James Lowther he
+was returned in the same year for Appleby, and took his seat in the
+Commons on January 23, 1781.
+
+Lord North was still at the head of affairs, and the Opposition
+consisted of two parties: the aristocratic Whigs, whose leader was the
+Marquis of Rockingham, but whose true guiding spirit was Charles James
+Fox; and a smaller band of the old adherents of Lord Chatham, under Lord
+Shelburne. To this party Pitt, as a matter of course, attached himself.
+His first speech was made on February 26, in support of Burke's bill for
+economical reform. He completely fulfilled the high expectations that
+had been formed of the son of so illustrious a father. Not only did he
+please, it may be said that he astonished the House.
+
+Two speeches later in the session confirmed the distinction of the young
+orator. In 1782, after a long series of Opposition attacks, Lord North
+resigned; but in the new arrangements Pitt was not included. He had
+determined that he would serve his sovereign as a cabinet minister, or
+not at all. For a time he devoted his efforts, without success, to the
+reform of the representation of the House of Commons. But in July 1782
+Lord Rockingham died; there was a cabinet split, due to a quarrel
+between Fox and Shelburne; the latter became First Lord of the Treasury,
+and Pitt, at the age of twenty-three, was offered and accepted the post
+of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
+
+The newly-formed ministry was soon exposed to hot attacks by the
+coalition of the parties of Fox and North, and Pitt, in attacking this
+"baneful alliance," made one of the greatest speeches of his career. But
+the ministry was defeated; Lord Shelburne resigned; and the king,
+advised by Shelburne, invited Pitt to become Prime Minister. After
+anxious consideration he refused.
+
+The Fox and North coalition now assumed office. This union of extremes
+was unpopular in the country, although powerful in parliamentary
+strength. Pitt tried once more to pass a measure of parliamentary
+reform; and during the recess he paid a visit to France--the one foreign
+journey of his life.
+
+When parliament resumed its sittings, in the autumn of 1783, Fox's India
+Bill was passed by the Commons, but rejected by the Lords. The king, who
+was vehemently opposed to the bill, demanded the resignation of Fox and
+North, and on December 19 invited Pitt, now aged twenty-four, to become
+Prime Minister. This time the invitation was not refused.
+
+Pitt had great difficulty in forming a cabinet, and was the only cabinet
+minister in the Commons. His main support in that house was Henry
+Dundas, treasurer of the navy--his life-long friend. On facing
+parliament at the opening of 1784, Pitt's purpose was to delay a
+dissolution until the coalition's unpopularity in the country had
+reached its height, and with this end he patiently endured defeat after
+defeat. In March he deemed that the right moment had come, and his
+judgement was rewarded at the General Election by a triumphant majority.
+
+Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the
+Treasury, and during the years of peace that followed, his successes
+were largely financial. He established a series of financial reforms
+that not only increased the favour in which his ministry was held, but
+undoubtedly enabled the country to bear the terrible strain that was
+afterwards to be placed upon it. In his attempt to adjust commercial
+relations with Ireland he was less successful; he was obliged, besides,
+to abandon his schemes of parliamentary reform, and his exertions, in
+concert with his friend Wilberforce, to destroy the slave traffic ended
+in disappointment--even although in this he had the hearty support of
+his rival, Fox.
+
+Young as he was, and victorious as he had become, he was never tempted
+to presume upon his genius, or relax in his application. He allowed
+himself but little holiday. He spent a good deal of such time as he
+could spare at Holwood, a property he had bought near Bromley; and
+occasional visits to Brighton, and to his mother's residence at Burton
+Pynsent, in Somersetshire, made up the greater part of his travels.
+
+
+_II.--The Regency Problem_
+
+
+Not only had Pitt's administration rehabilitated English finances; it
+had gained for England a strong measure of European support. In 1788
+there was concluded what was virtually a triple defensive alliance with
+Prussia and Holland; and with France herself, should she be willing to
+remain at peace, there was a treaty of commerce to engage her in more
+friendly relations.
+
+But towards the end of the year Pitt was confronted with what seemed a
+certainty of loss of office. King George III., after a long period of
+ill health, was found to be definitely suffering from mental alienation.
+A regency became necessary, and the person clearly marked out for the
+office was the Prince of Wales. But the prince was the political
+associate of Fox, and there was no doubt that his first step on
+accession to power would be the dismissal of Pitt.
+
+Pitt saw the prospect before him, and did not attempt to shirk it. But
+he did propose certain restrictions on the regency in order that the
+king, should he recover his reason, might without difficulty resume his
+power.
+
+When parliament assembled in December, Fox declared boldly that the
+prince had as much right to assume sovereignty during the king's
+incapacity as he would have in the event of the king's death. Pitt,
+exulting in his rival's indiscreet departure from Whig principles,
+retorted that the assertion of such a right, independent of the decision
+of the two houses, was little less than treason to the constitution.
+Fox's attitude was unpopular, and Pitt's resolutions, and the Regency
+Bill that followed, were carried through the Commons.
+
+Towards the end of February, the third reading of the Regency Bill was
+impending in the Lords. Pitt had proposed that the difficulty about
+procuring the royal assent to the measure should be overcome by
+empowering the chancellor by a joint vote of both houses to put the
+Great Seal to a commission for giving the assent. But this expedient was
+unnecessary. By February 22 the king was completely recovered. The
+Regency Bill fell to the ground, and all the hopes which the Opposition
+had reared upon it.
+
+The day of thanksgiving for the king's recovery is regarded by Lord
+Macaulay as the zenith in Pitt's political life. "To such a height of
+power and glory," he says, "had this extraordinary man risen at
+twenty-nine years of age. And now," he adds, perhaps less justly, "the
+tide was on the turn."
+
+
+_III.--The Struggle with France_
+
+
+Pitt was able to declare, in the session that preceded the dissolution
+of 1790, that "we are adding daily to our strength, wealth, and
+prosperity," and, as a result of the elections, his parliamentary
+majority was more than confirmed.
+
+But symptoms of the coming stress were already manifest. The minister
+was anxiously watching the course of the revolution in France; and,
+while far from sharing the enthusiasm of Fox for the new principles, he
+did not endorse the fierce hostility of Burke.
+
+"I cannot regard with envious eyes," he said, "any approximation in
+neighbouring states to those sentiments which are the characteristics of
+every British subject."
+
+But the development of events soon made it clear that the new France had
+become a danger to the peace of Europe. As long as possible Pitt avoided
+war, which was ultimately forced upon him in 1793 by France's attack
+upon Holland, to which we were bound by treaty obligations.
+
+From that time, until the peace in 1802, English naval enterprises were
+generally successful, and English military enterprises generally failed.
+Pitt has often been blamed for the faults of his country's generals; but
+it is assuredly true that he did all that a civilian could do to secure
+success in the field.
+
+The heavy cost of the war, increased as it was by the subsidies paid to
+Austria, and afterwards to Russia, compelled an entire departure from
+Pitt's old financial methods. Each year brought an increase of taxation
+and an increase of debt; and at the beginning of 1797 the directors of
+the Bank of England, in dire perplexity, told Pitt that the state, for
+all his expedients, was threatened with insolvency. Pitt did not falter.
+An order in council was issued, suspending cash payments at the bank.
+Thus was established a gigantic system of paper credit, giving us power
+to cope with no less gigantic foes. Cash payments were not resumed until
+1819.
+
+Pitt had not only to cope with enemies without, but with sedition
+within. Societies formed for propagating the principles of the
+revolution advocated the subversion of the constitution under the
+pretence of parliamentary reform; the populace, angered by the
+privations caused by the clearness of food, listened readily to the
+agitators; riots were frequent, but the most mischievous form taken by
+sedition was that of armed conspiracy. Against these evils Pitt
+contended by royal proclamations, prosecutions, and, above all, by the
+suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. In his firm suppression of disorder
+Pitt was loyally supported by large majorities in both houses, and the
+country generally was on his side. But his domestic policy, his foreign
+policy, and his finance were unsparingly attacked by Fox and a small
+band of devoted followers--followers who did not abate in their
+resolution when their leader, weary of the unequal conflict, retired for
+a time from public life.
+
+In the busy and anxious year 1796, there was a report that Pitt was on
+the point of marriage. During his short intervals of leisure at Holwood,
+he often visited his neighbour, Lord Auckland, at Beckenham, and was
+much attracted by Lord Auckland's eldest daughter, the Hon. Eleanor
+Eden. This strong attachment did not proceed to a proposal and a
+marriage. Pitt wrote to Lord Auckland avowing his affection, but
+explaining that in the circumstances of pecuniary difficulty in which he
+was involved, he would not presume to make the lady an offer. Lord
+Auckland acknowledged the explanation as adequate, and thus honourably
+ended the only "love-passage" in the life of Pitt.
+
+Considering that Pitt's income as minister was £6,000 a year, and that
+he derived an additional £3,000 a year from the Lord Wardenship of the
+Cinque Ports, his pecuniary troubles may seem hard to explain. He had no
+family, and no expensive tastes. But he was so intent upon the national
+exchequer that he neglected his private accounts, with the consequence
+that he was plundered by his domestics. His expenses were not checked,
+and his debts continued to grow.
+
+
+_IV.--Resignation_
+
+
+In the year 1800 Pitt was able to achieve a momentous change in the
+affairs of Ireland. The chronic discontent of that country, largely due
+to the resentment of the Catholics at their exclusion from the rights of
+citizenship, had been fanned by the importation of revolutionary ideas;
+and there were hopes, once or twice on the point of realisation, of a
+French invasion of the island. In 1798 a rebellion broke out, but was
+suppressed with promptness, and, it must be added, in many instances
+with cruelty. But to Pitt the suppression of the insurrection was only
+the first part of his duty. He thought that to revert to the old system
+would be a most shallow policy. A new, and comprehensive, and healing
+method must be tried--an Act of Union, which should raise the minds of
+Irishmen from local to imperial aims--which should blend the two
+legislatures, and, if possible, also the two nations, in one.
+
+In 1800 the project was fulfilled--not without fierce resistance in the
+Irish Parliament, and not without a certain distribution of favours to
+those for whose support the government was anxious; although the
+allegations made on this subject seem to be exaggerated. Having
+accomplished the union, Pitt laid plans for a further reform which led,
+early in the following year, to his retirement from office.
+
+He proposed the emancipation of the Catholics by the substitution of a
+political for the religious test of fitness for citizenship. Although
+the Anglican bishops and clergy and many laymen were strongly opposed to
+Catholic emancipation, Pitt would probably have been able to carry his
+scheme had it not been for royal antagonism. The king believed,
+erroneously but passionately, that by consenting to such a measure he
+would violate his coronation oath.
+
+His majesty expressed his opinions on the subject so publicly and so
+vehemently that on January 31, 1801, Pitt felt compelled to ask leave to
+resign unless he were allowed to pursue his course on the Catholic
+question. The king required the abandonment of the scheme, and on
+February 3 Pitt resigned office. Thus abruptly ended his renowned
+administration of more than seventeen years.
+
+The new Prime Minister was Mr. Addington, formerly Speaker of the
+Commons. Several of Pitt's colleagues remained in the ministry, although
+others withdrew from it; and Pitt himself gave general support to the
+government--support which was offered with especial warmth, and
+possessed especial value, during the hotly criticised peace negotiations
+with the First Consul Bonaparte in 1801 and 1802. Although Pitt had been
+obliged when in office to refuse several inadequate offers of peace, he
+had always been prepared to end the war under honourable conditions. The
+distinction of ending the war did not fall to his share; but his
+services were not forgotten. On May 7, 1802, the House of Commons
+carried by overwhelming numbers a motion, "That the Right Hon. William
+Pitt has rendered great and important services to his country, and
+especially deserves the gratitude of this house." And on May 28, 1802,
+Pitt's birthday, more than 800 persons assembled at a memorable banquet
+in honour of "the pilot that weathered the storm."
+
+Until the renewal of war in 1803 Pitt took little-part in public
+affairs. Most of his time was spent at Walmer Castle, with occasional
+visits to Bath for the sake of his health, which had been uncertain
+since an attack of serious illness in 1797. He remained in constant
+communication with his political friends, and sometimes during the
+earlier part of his retirement aided the ministry with his advice. But
+with the progress of time he found himself less and less able to support
+Addington and his colleagues.
+
+In May 1803 the uneasy peace came to an end. The constant aggressions of
+Bonaparte and his dominating tone made friendly relations impossible.
+There was a widespread feeling in the country that now that the storm
+had recommenced the old pilot should be called to the helm. Pitt
+returned to the Commons after the declaration of war, and forcibly
+criticised some of the financial and defensive measures of the ministry.
+
+In 1804 the ministry showed itself wholly unequal to the strain upon it;
+and the situation was complicated by a temporary return of the king's
+malady. Pitt not only renewed his opposition to Addington, but made it
+plain that he was prepared to take part in a strong and comprehensive
+administration, including even Fox, that should be formed to rescue the
+crown and country from the dangers to which they were exposed under the
+Addington ministry.
+
+A series of combined attacks was directed against the government during
+the month of April. Although Addington was not defeated in the Commons,
+he saw his majority steadily diminish; and on April 26 he resolved to
+resign. On the 30th, the Lord Chancellor intimated to Pitt his majesty's
+desire to receive the plan of a new administration.
+
+
+_V.--The Last Ministry_
+
+
+The king's opposition made the inclusion of Fox in the new ministry
+impossible. His hostility to Fox, however, was not simply on political
+grounds; he believed him to be responsible for the excesses of the
+Prince of Wales. Pitt was in consequence obliged to be content with a
+restricted choice of ministers, and had to face a powerful opposition in
+parliament. Addington was persuaded to join the ministry early in 1805.
+
+During the summer of 1804 Bonaparte and his host lay menacingly at
+Boulogne, awaiting that command of the channel "for six hours," which
+the great warrior recognised as essential to his plans. Meanwhile, Pitt
+laboured to form another coalition, and, at the cost of heavy subsidies,
+was successful. Russia, Austria, and Sweden joined in the league against
+Napoleon; Prussia still hesitated.
+
+In the summer of 1805 Napoleon was again at Boulogne, but his plan of
+invasion was wrecked by the failure of the French fleet to reach the
+Channel. When Napoleon learned that the fleet had gone south, and that
+the attack upon England had been thwarted, he straightway marched his
+army to mid-Europe. Pitt had staked everything on the new coalition, and
+the surrender of the Austrians at Ulm was news of the utmost bitterness
+to him. But a splendid corrective came soon afterwards in the crowning
+naval victory of Trafalgar. Although the nation's feelings were divided
+between joy at the triumph and grief at the death of the illustrious
+victor, Pitt's popularity, which had been somewhat uncertain, was
+enormously enhanced by the event. The Lord Mayor proposed his health as
+"the saviour of Europe."
+
+Pitt's reply was nearly as follows: "I return you many thanks for the
+honour you have done me, but Europe is not to be saved by any single
+man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, I trust, save
+Europe by her example." With only these two sentences the minister sat
+down. They were the last words that Pitt ever spoke in public.
+
+He was suffering much at this time from gout, and his general health was
+undermined by anxiety. In December he journeyed to Bath, and at Bath
+there reached him the news of the destruction of his coalition at
+Austerlitz. The battle was the cause of his death. He was struck down by
+a severe internal malady and he was in a state of extreme debility when
+on January 11, 1806, he returned home to the house he had taken on
+Putney Heath. It is said that as he passed along to his bedroom, he
+observed a map of Europe hanging on the wall, upon which he turned to
+his niece and mournfully said: "Roll up that map. It will not be wanted
+these ten years."
+
+For a few days the doctors had hopes that he might recover, but on the
+22nd it became evident that he could not live for twenty-four hours.
+Early in the morning of the 23rd he died.
+
+"At about half-past two," wrote the Hon. James Hamilton Stanhope, who
+was at his bedside, "Mr. Pitt ceased moaning, and did not make the
+slightest sound for some time. Shortly afterwards, in a tone I never
+shall forget, he exclaimed: 'Oh, my country! How I love my country!'
+From that time he never spoke or moved, and at half-past four expired
+without a groan or struggle. His strength being quite exhausted, his
+life departed like a candle burning out."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY
+
+
+The Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D.
+
+
+     Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born at Alderley Rectory, Cheshire,
+     on December 13, 1815. He was educated at Rugby under Arnold,
+     and at Oxford, where Tait, the future Archbishop of
+     Canterbury, was his tutor. Entering holy orders, he was
+     appointed select preacher in 1845; became Canon of Canterbury
+     in 1851; and in 1863 succeeded Trench as Dean of Westminster.
+     He died on July 18, 1881, and by Queen Victoria's commands his
+     remains were laid beside those of his wife, Lady Augusta
+     Bruce, in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster. Of all his works,
+     perhaps his most important contribution to English literature
+     is the "Life of Arnold," which was published two years after
+     the death of the famous master of Rugby. To the task of
+     writing the book Stanley devoted all his energies, steering
+     clear, however, of any attempt to form an opinion of his own
+     upon Arnold's life and character, while achieving a result
+     that not only assured his own position at Oxford, but brought
+     him well into the front rank of contemporary writers. The
+     religious animosity at Oxford was uncongenial to Stanley, and
+     it was only the prospect of Dr. Arnold occupying the Chair of
+     Modern History that reconciled him to his surroundings.
+
+
+_I.--Youth and Early Manhood_
+
+
+Thomas Arnold, seventh child and youngest son of William and Martha
+Arnold, was born June 13, 1795, at East Cowes, Isle of Wight, where his
+father was collector of customs. His early education was undertaken by a
+sister; and in 1803 he was sent to Warminister School, in Wiltshire. In
+1807 he went to Winchester, where, having entered as a commoner and
+afterwards become a scholar of the college, he remained till 1811. In
+after life he always cherished a strong Wykehamist feeling, and, during
+his headmastership at Rugby, often recurred to his knowledge there first
+acquired, of the peculiar constitution of a public school.
+
+He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring disposition; but his
+manner as a child, and till his entrance at Oxford, was marked by a
+stiffness and formality, the very reverse of the joyousness and
+simplicity of his later years. He was unlike those of his own age, with
+pursuits peculiar to himself; and the tone and style of his early
+letters are such as might have been produced by living chiefly with his
+elders, and reading, or hearing read, books suited to a more advanced
+age. Both as boy and young man he was remarkable for a difficulty in
+early rising amounting almost to a constitutional infirmity; and though
+in after life this was overcome by habit, he often said that early
+rising was a daily effort to him.
+
+The beginning of some of his later interests may be traced in his
+earlier amusements and occupations. He never lost the recollection of
+the impression produced upon him by the excitement of naval and military
+affairs, of which he naturally saw and heard much by living at Cowes in
+the time of the Napoleonic war; and with his playmates he would sail
+rival toy fleets or act the battles of the Homeric heroes with
+improvised spears and shields. He was extremely fond of ballad poetry,
+and his earliest compositions all ran in that direction. At Winchester
+he was noted for his forwardness in history and geography; and there
+also he gave indications of that mnemonic faculty which in later years
+showed itself in minute details, extending to the exact state of the
+weather on particular days, or the exact words or passages he had not
+seen for twenty years. The period of his home and school education was
+too short to exercise much influence on his after life, but he always
+looked back upon it with tenderness.
+
+In 1811 he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; in
+1814 he took a first class in classics; in 1815 he was made a Fellow of
+Oriel; and he gained the Chancellor's prizes for the Latin and English
+essays in 1815 and 1817. During his later time at Oxford he took private
+pupils and read extensively in the libraries. Meanwhile, he had been led
+gradually to fix on his future life course. In December, 1818, he was
+ordained deacon and next year settled at Laleham, where, in August,
+1820, he married Mary Penrose, daughter of the rector of Fledborough,
+Notts.
+
+At Laleham he remained for nine years, coaching private pupils for the
+universities. Here were born six of his nine children; the youngest
+three, besides one who died in infancy, were born at Rugby. During this
+period an essential change and growth of Arnold's character became
+manifest. The warm feelings of his youth gave place to the fixed
+earnestness and devotion which henceforth took possession of him. His
+former indolent habits, his morbid restlessness and occasional weariness
+of duty, indulgence of vague schemes without definite purpose,
+intellectual doubts as to accepted religious beliefs--all seem to have
+vanished for ever.
+
+It was now that the religious aspect of his character came to be
+emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of
+his religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is
+impossible to understand his religious belief except through the
+knowledge of his life and writings on ordinary subjects, it is
+impossible on the other hand, to understand his life and writings
+without bearing in mind how vivid was his realisation of those truths of
+religion on which he most habitually dwelt. It was this which enabled
+him to undertake labours which, without such a power, must have crushed
+or enfeebled the spiritual growth which in him they seemed only to
+foster. His letters at this time show better than anything else how he
+was, though unconsciously to himself, maturing for the arduous duties he
+afterwards undertook. It was now, too, that he first became acquainted
+with Niebuhr's "History of Rome," which revolutionised his views of
+history, and, later, served as a model for his own "History of Rome."
+
+
+_II.--Headmaster of Rugby_
+
+
+Arnold was not without his visions of ambition and extensive influence
+from the first, but he liked Laleham, and always looked back with fond
+regret to his time there. "I have always thought," he wrote in 1823,
+"with regard to ambition, that I should like to be _aut Caesar aut
+nullus;_ and as it is pretty well settled for me that I shall not be
+Caesar, I am quite content to live in peace as _nullus_." But the fates
+had ordered it otherwise. Friends had long been urging him to seek a
+larger sphere of usefulness; and when, in August, 1827, the
+headmastership of Rugby became vacant, he applied for the post.
+
+He had himself little hope of success. The testimonials he sent in were
+few, but all spoke strongly of his qualifications. Among them was a
+letter from Dr. Hawkins, the future Provost of Oriel, in which the
+prediction was made that if Arnold were elected he would change the face
+of education throughout the public schools of England. The impression
+produced upon the trustees by this letter and by the other testimonials
+was such that Arnold was immediately appointed. In June, 1828, he
+received priest's orders; in April and November of the same year took
+his degrees of B.D. and D.D., and in August entered on his new office.
+
+The post was in many respects suited to his natural tastes--to his love
+of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him that he declared
+sometimes that he could hardly live without such employment; to the
+vigour and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than
+the old; to the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting
+things secular with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest
+principles of action into regions comparatively uncongenial to their
+reception. He had not, however, accepted it without grave doubts about
+his fitness. In a private letter he says:
+
+     I confess that I should very much object to undertake a charge
+     in which I was not invested with pretty full discretion.
+     According to my notions of what large schools are, founded on
+     all I know and all I have ever heard of them, expulsion should
+     be practised much oftener than it is. Now, I know that
+     trustees, in general, are averse to this plan, because it has
+     a tendency to lessen the numbers of the school, and they
+     regard quantity more than quality. In fact, my opinions on
+     this point might, perhaps, generally be considered as
+     disqualifying me for the situation of master of a great
+     school; yet I could not consent to tolerate much that I know
+     is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should not like to
+     enter on an office which I could not discharge according to my
+     own views of what is right.
+
+At Rugby, Arnold from the first maintained that in the actual working of
+the school he must be completely independent, and that the remedy of the
+trustees, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but
+dismissal. It was on this condition that he took the post; and any
+attempt to control either the administration of the school or his own
+private occupations he felt bound to resist as a duty not only to
+himself but the master of every foundation school in England. The
+remonstrances which he encountered, particularly from his fixed
+determination always to get rid of unpromising subjects, were vehement
+and numerous; but he repeatedly declared that on no other conditions
+could he hold his appointment, or justify the existence of the public
+school system in a Christian country.
+
+"My object," he wrote, just before taking up duty, "will be, if
+possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope
+to make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they
+are not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development
+upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many
+respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in
+what I consider the boyhood of the human race."
+
+This is the keynote of his whole system. As he put it, what he looked
+for in the school was, first, religious and moral principles; second,
+gentlemanly conduct; and third, intellectual ability. Intellectual
+training was never for a moment underrated, but he always thought first
+of his charges as schoolboys who must grow up to be Christian men. His
+education, in short, "was not based upon religion, but was itself
+_religious_." For cleverness as such, Arnold had no regard. "Mere
+intellectual acuteness," he used to say, "divested as it is, in too many
+cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more
+revolting than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like
+the spirit of Mephistopheles." Often when this intellectual cleverness
+was seen in union with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its
+existence altogether.
+
+A mere plodding boy was, above all others, encouraged by him. At Laleham
+he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this
+kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you speak
+angrily, sir? Indeed, I am doing the best that I can." Years afterwards
+he used to tell the story to his children, and said, "I never felt so
+much ashamed in my life--that look and that speech I have never
+forgotten." And though it would, of course, happen that clever boys,
+from a greater sympathy with his understanding, would be brought into
+closer intercourse with him, this did not affect his feeling of respect,
+and even of reverence, for those who, without ability, were
+distinguished for high principle and industry. "If there be one thing on
+earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an
+inferiority of natural powers where they have been honestly, truly and
+zealously cultivated."
+
+
+_III.--As Teacher and Preacher_
+
+
+Arnold had always been painfully impressed by the evils of the public
+school system, according to which a number of boys are left to form an
+independent society of their own, in which the influence they exert over
+each other is far greater than that exerted by the masters. He writes,
+in 1837:
+
+     Of all the painful things connected with my employment,
+     nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy come to school
+     innocent and promising, and tracing the corruption of his
+     character from the influence of the temptations around him, in
+     the very place which ought to have strengthened and improved
+     it. But in most cases those who come with a character of
+     positive good are benefited; it is the neutral and indecisive
+     characters which are apt to be decided for evil by schools, as
+     they would be, in fact, by any other temptation.
+
+This very feeling led him to catch with eagerness at every means by
+which the trial might be shortened or alleviated. He believed that the
+change from childhood to manhood might be hastened without prematurely
+exhausting the faculties of body and mind; and it was on this principle
+that he chiefly acted. He desired the boys to cultivate true manliness
+as the only step to something higher. He treated them as gentlemen, and
+appealed and trusted to their common sense and conscience.
+
+Lying to the masters he made a grave offence. He placed implicit
+confidence in a boy's assertion, and then, if a falsehood were
+discovered, punished it severely. In the higher forms any attempt at
+further proof of an assertion was immediately checked. "If you say so,
+that is quite enough; of course, I believe your word"; and there grew up
+in consequence a general feeling that "it was a shame to tell Arnold a
+lie: he always believed you." Few scenes can be recorded more
+characteristic of him than when, in consequence of a disturbance, he had
+been obliged to send away several boys, and when, in the midst of the
+general spirit of discontent which this excited, he stood in his place
+before the assembled school and said, "It is _not_ necessary that this
+should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys;
+but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen."
+
+Arnold's method of teaching was founded on the principle of awakening
+the intellect of every individual boy. Hence it was his practice to
+teach by questioning. As a general rule, he never gave information,
+except as a kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld it
+altogether, or checked himself in the very act of uttering it, from a
+sense that those whom he was addressing had not sufficient interest or
+sympathy to receive it. His explanations were at short as
+possible--enough to dispose of the difficulty and no more; and his
+questions were of a kind to call the attention of the boys to the real
+point of every subject and to disclose to them the exact boundaries of
+what they knew or did not know. With regard to the younger boys, he
+said: "It is a great mistake to think that they should _understand_ all
+they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the memory should act
+vigorously, independent of the understanding--whereas a man cannot
+usually recollect a thing unless he understands it."
+
+At Rugby he made it an essential part of the headmaster's office to
+preach a sermon every Sunday in the school chapel. "The veriest
+stranger," he said, "who ever attends service in this chapel does well
+to feel something more than common interest in the sight of the
+congregation here assembled. But if the sight so interests a mere
+stranger, what should it be to ourselves, both to you and to me?" More
+than either matter or manner of his preaching was the impression of
+himself. Even the mere readers of his sermons will derive from them the
+history of his whole mind, and of his whole management of the school.
+But to his hearers it was more than this. It was the man himself, there
+more than in any other place, concentrating all his various faculties
+and feelings on one sole object, combating face to face the evil which,
+directly or indirectly, he was elsewhere perpetually struggling.
+
+His personal interest in the boys was always strong. "Do you see," he on
+one occasion said to an assistant-master who had recently come, "those
+two boys walking together? I never saw them together before; you should
+make an especial point of observing the company they keep; nothing so
+tells the changes in a boy's character."
+
+
+_IV.--Influence of the Great Teacher_
+
+
+But the impression which Arnold produced upon the boys was derived not
+so much from any immediate intercourse or conversation with them as from
+the general influence of his whole character, displayed consistently
+whenever he appeared before them. This influence, with its consequent
+effects, was gradually on the increase during the whole of his stay.
+From the earliest period, indeed, the boys were conscious of something
+unlike what they had been taught to imagine of a schoolmaster, and by
+many a lasting regard was contracted for him. In the higher forms, at
+least, it became the fashion, so to speak, to think and talk of him with
+pride and affection. As regards the permanent effects of his whole
+system, it may be said that not so much among his own pupils, or in the
+scene of his actual labours, as in every public school throughout
+England is to be sought the chief and enduring monument of Arnold's
+headmastership at Rugby.
+
+Of Arnold's general life at Rugby there is no need to say much; for
+although the school did not occupy his whole energies, it is almost
+solely by his school work that he is remembered. He took a not
+unimportant part in the political and theological discussions of his
+time, and various literary enterprises also engaged his attention. In
+theology he entertained very broad views. One great principle he
+advocated with intense earnestness was that a Christian people and a
+Christian Church should be synonymous. That use of the word "Church"
+which limits it to the clergy, or which implies in the clergy any
+particular sacredness, he entirely repudiated.
+
+He was convinced that the founders of our constitution in Church and
+State did truly consider them to be identical; the Christian nation of
+England to be the Church of England; the head of that nation to be, for
+that very reason, the head of the Church. This view placed him in
+antagonism to the High Church party; but, as a matter of fact, he
+neither belonged, nor felt himself to belong, to any section of the
+English clergy. Politically, he held himself to be a strong Whig; but
+that he was not, in the common sense of the word, a member of any party
+is shown by the readiness with which all parties alike, according to the
+fashion of the time, claimed or renounced him as an associate.
+
+Arnold did not like the flat scenery of Warwickshire He described
+himself as "in it like a plant sunk in the ground in a pot." His
+holidays were always spent away from Rugby, either on the Continent, or,
+in later years, at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a small estate
+between Rydal and Ambleside, which he purchased in 1832. He was just
+about to leave Rugby for Fox How when his life was mournfully and
+suddenly ended by an attack of angina pectoris, on June 12, 1842. Only
+the year before he had been appointed by Lord Melbourne Regius Professor
+of Modern History at Oxford.
+
+Arnold's principal works are six volumes of sermons, a three-volume
+edition of Thucydides, the Oxford "Lectures on Modern History," and the
+three-volume "History of Rome," which, by his unfortunate death, was
+broken off at the Second Punic War. To the last-named he looked as the
+chief monument of his historical fame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+AGNES STRICKLAND
+
+
+Life of Queen Elizabeth
+
+
+     Agnes Strickland, born in London on August 19, 1796, with her
+     sister Elizabeth began in 1840 the publication of the immense
+     series of historical biographies of which the "Lives of the
+     Queens of England" formed the first and most important group.
+     In that group the "Elizabeth" is recognised as holding the
+     highest rank. It is an essentially feminine study of one of
+     the most remarkable of women; not a history, for historical
+     events are treated as of infinitely less importance than
+     picturesque personal details and miscellaneous gossip, but
+     presenting altogether an admirable picture of the outward
+     seeming of those spacious days, and a discriminating and
+     judicious portrait of the maiden queen herself. The author's
+     views, however, would not always be endorsed by a masculine
+     critic. Agnes Strickland died on July 13, 1874. The literature
+     relating to the life and times of Queen Elizabeth would form a
+     library of contemporary records. Many volumes of state papers
+     have been published: Camden's "Annals of Elizabeth" is the
+     classical account of her. Creighton's "Queen Elizabeth" and
+     volumes VII. to XII. of Froude's "History of England" are the
+     leading modern works; and no one who wishes to know anything
+     of the great queen can afford to neglect Hume's "Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," which will also be found in these pages (see
+     Hume).
+
+
+_I.--The Lady Elizabeth_
+
+
+Queen Elizabeth first saw the light at Greenwich Palace, where, says
+Heywood, "she was born on the eve of the Virgin's nativity, and died on
+the eve of the Virgin's annunciation." The christening ceremony was
+gorgeous and elaborate, but, with the downfall of her mother, Anne
+Boleyn, she ceased to be treated as a princess. She seems to have owed
+much to the judicious training of Lady Margaret Bryan, in whose charge
+she was. Later, she was associated with Prince Edward, four years her
+junior; both displayed an extraordinary precocity and capacity for
+learning.
+
+On Henry's death, she resided with his widow, Catharine Parr, who
+married the Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour. That ambitious nobleman,
+brother of the Protector, certainly designed, when Catharine died, to
+marry Elizabeth; an intention which was among the causes of his
+execution under attainder. His relations with her had already been
+unduly familiar, but there was no warrant for the scandalous stories
+that were repeated; and although Elizabeth all her life was naturally
+disposed to an excessive freedom of manners, she now became a pattern of
+decorum. But she was probably more in love with Seymour, as a girl of
+fifteen, than with anyone else in after life; though, on his death, she
+called him "a man of much wit and very little judgement."
+
+Ascham is full of praises of her learning and her wide reading, both in
+Greek and Latin, which is displayed somewhat pedantically in her
+letters; her propriety and simplicity of apparel in these days is in
+curious contrast to the extravagances of her wardrobe in later life.
+
+Mary treated her conspicuously as a sister; she refused, however, to
+abjure her Protestantism. Her position became extremely difficult, as
+the French, the Spaniards, and the Protestant party each sought to
+involve her in plots for their own ends. These culminated in Wyat's
+rebellion. The inevitable suspicions attaching to her caused her to be
+lodged in the Tower; but, in spite of the machinations of the Spanish
+party and the distrust of Mary, the evidence produced failed to warrant
+her condemnation.
+
+Yet she was kept in rigorous confinement, her life continuing to be in
+danger for a month after Wyat himself had been executed. She was then
+removed to Richmond, but refused to purchase liberty at the price of
+marriage to a foreign prince, Philibert of Savoy--a scheme intended as a
+cover for Mary's determination to marry Philip, the Prince of Spain.
+Finally, she was transferred to Woodstock, where she was held a close
+prisoner.
+
+Policy now led her to profess acceptance of the Roman religion, but in
+very ambiguous fashion. Probably it was through the intercession of
+Philip--now her brother-in-law, whose policy at this time was to
+conciliate the English people--that she was set at liberty and
+readmitted to court at Christmas.
+
+At the end of the next year Elizabeth was at Hatfield, under the gentle
+surveillance of Sir Thomas Pope. She continued to be involved in grave
+dangers by perpetual plots, in which she was far too shrewd to let
+herself be implicated; and she guarded herself by a continued profession
+of Romanism to the hour of her accession on her sister's death.
+
+As the hour of Mary's death approached, there was no doubt of
+Elizabeth's succession, though there was alarm as to possible
+complications. On November 17, 1558, the Chancellor announced to
+Parliament that Mary was dead, and Elizabeth queen. She held her first
+council at Hatfield two days later, when William Cecil took his place as
+her chief counsellor; on her entry into London, the position which was
+to be occupied by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, was
+already conspicuous.
+
+The coronation, which took place in January, was a magnificent pageant,
+in which Elizabeth openly courted the favour and affection of her
+subjects; and it became at once apparent that the breach with Rome was
+reopened. The supremacy of the crown was reasserted, the all but empty
+bench of bishops was filled up with reformers; and, in answer to the
+Commons, Elizabeth very clearly implied her intention of reigning a
+virgin queen. She had already declined Philip of Spain's offer of his
+widowed hand; and now the fact that Mary Stuart stood next in the
+succession--with a better title than Elizabeth's own, if her legitimacy
+were challenged--became of immense importance.
+
+Accordingly, an express declaration of her legitimate right to the
+throne was procured from Parliament. For some time pageants and popular
+displays were the order of the day. But, in spite of Elizabeth's own
+declarations, all her council were convinced that the safety of the
+realm demanded her marriage; and suitors began to abound. Arran
+appears--who now stood very near the throne of Scotland. Pickering,
+Arundel, Dudley, all seemed possible aspirants. The Austrian Archduke
+Charles, cousin of Philip of Spain, and Eric of Norway, were candidates.
+She played with them all, and the play was made more grim by the tragic
+death of Dudley's wife, Amy Robsart.
+
+
+_II.--Mary Stuart and Saint Bartholomew_
+
+
+The proposals for Elizabeth's own hand were now diversified by her
+interest in those for the hand of the Queen of Scots; for it was of
+immense importance to the Queen of England that Mary should not wed a
+foreign prince who might support her claim to the English throne. Mary
+professed willingness to be guided by her "sister," but was insulted by
+Elizabeth's offer of her own favourite, Dudley, who was made Earl of
+Leicester. Melville, the courtly Scots ambassador, had much ado to
+answer Elizabeth's questions about his mistress's beauty and
+accomplishments in a manner agreeable to the English queen. Mary solved
+her own problem, only to create a new one, by marrying her cousin, Lord
+Darnley. Elizabeth was bitterly aggrieved when a son--afterwards James
+I.--was born to them. She herself continued to agitate Cecil and the
+council by the favours she lavished on Leicester. But the renewed
+entreaties of Parliament, that steps might be taken to secure the
+succession, led to what threatened to be a serious quarrel.
+
+Amongst these high matters, the records of her majesty's wardrobe, and
+the interests of Cecil in capturing for her service a tailor employed by
+Catherine de Medici, form an entertaining interlude. But tragedy was at
+hand; the murder of Darnley, Mary's marriage to the murderer Bothwell,
+her imprisonment at Loch Leven, Elizabeth's perturbation--for she was
+sincere in her fear of encouraging subjects to control monarchs by force
+of arms--was diversified by a last negotiation for her marriage with the
+Archduke Charles, which broke down over his refusal to abjure his
+religion.
+
+Then came a turn of the wheel; Mary escaped from Loch Leven, her
+followers were dispersed at Langside, and she fled across the Solway to
+throw herself on Elizabeth's protection and find herself Elizabeth's
+prisoner.
+
+The Scottish queen was consigned to Bolton; an investigation was held at
+York, when Mary's accusers were allowed to produce, and Mary's friends
+were not allowed to test, their evidence of her complicity in Darnley's
+murder. At that stage the investigations were stopped; but the Duke of
+Norfolk, the head of the commission, was not deterred from pressing the
+design of marrying Mary himself. Mary was placed in the charge of
+Shrewsbury and his termagant spouse, Bess of Hardwick.
+
+From this time for fifteen years, Elizabeth was perpetually playing at
+proposals for her own marriage with one or other of the French King's
+brothers, to keep the French court from a _rapprochement_ with Spain.
+Suspicions of Norfolk's intentions led to his arrest, and this
+precipitated the rising in favour of Mary under the Catholic northern
+earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; an insurrection promptly and
+cruelly crushed. In the spring of 1570 the Pope issued a bull of
+deposition; and the plots on behalf of Mary as Catholic claimant to the
+throne thickened.
+
+In 1571 it appeared that Elizabeth was set on the marriage with Henry of
+Anjou, nineteen years her junior, the brother who stood next in
+succession to the throne of Charles IX. of France--a marriage not at all
+approved by her council, and very little to Henry's own taste. It was at
+this time that the conduct of negotiations in Paris was entrusted to
+Francis Walsingham.
+
+The relations between the queen and the Commons were exemplified by her
+attempt to exclude an obnoxious member, Strickland, met by the
+successful assertion of their privileges on the part of the House.
+
+In this year the plot known as Ridolfi's was discovered, and it is to be
+noted that Elizabeth herself ordered the rack to be used to extort
+information. The result was condemnation of Norfolk to the block. The
+recalcitrance of Henry of Anjou led to his definitely withdrawing from
+his courtship, while the young Alençon became the new subject of
+matrimonial negotiation.
+
+Elizabeth played with the new proposal, as usual, relying always on her
+ability to back out of the negotiations, as in previous cases, by
+demanding of her suitor a more uncompromising acceptance of
+Protestantism than could be admitted. The whole affair, however, was
+apparently brought to a check by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with
+the perpetration of which it seemed impossible for the most powerful of
+Protestant monarchs to associate herself.
+
+Cecil--now Lord Burleigh--would have used the occasion for the
+destruction of Mary Stuart; but the device for doing so irreproachably
+by handing her over to her own rebels, was frustrated--though Elizabeth
+concurred--by the refusal of the Scots lords to play the part which was
+assigned to them. The Alençon affair was soon in full swing again, the
+young prince writing love-letters to the lady whom he had not seen.
+
+
+_III.--The Hour of Mary's Doom_
+
+
+Elizabeth's fondness for pageantry--partly out of a personal delight in
+it, partly from a politic appreciation of its value in making her
+popular--especially pageantry at some one else's expense, was
+illustrated in the gorgeous doings at Kenilworth, depicted (with sundry
+anachronisms) in Scott's novel.
+
+These gaieties were the embroidery on more serious matters, for the
+Netherlands had for some time been engaged in their apparently desperate
+struggle with the power of Spain, and now actually invited the Queen of
+England to assume sovereignty over them--an offer which she was too
+acute to accept.
+
+Yet we cannot pass over a highly characteristic incident. When the
+queen's majesty had a bad toothache, the protestations of her whole
+council failed to persuade her to face the extraction of the tooth, till
+the Bishop of London invited the surgeon to operate first on him in her
+presence, with satisfactory results. We must also record how the ugly
+little Alençon, or Anjou as he was now called, arrived unexpectedly to
+woo her in person, charmed her by his chivalrous audacity in doing so,
+and won from her the appropriate name of "Little Frog."
+
+Whether she really wished to marry her "frog" is extremely doubtful. She
+made all the more parade of her desire to do so, since the extreme
+antipathy of the council and the nation to the project would secure her
+a retreat to the last. The expectation of the marriage caused the
+Netherlanders to offer Anjou the sovereignty which she had rejected;
+with the idea of thus securing the united support of England and France.
+But when matters reached the point of negotiation for an Anglo-French
+league, with the marriage as one of the articles, Elizabeth, of course,
+could not be brought to a definite answer, and after long delay Anjou
+found himself obliged to return to the Netherlands, neither accepted nor
+rejected. His subsequent death put an end to this, her last, matrimonial
+comedy.
+
+At last an English force was actually sent to help the Netherlanders,
+under the command of Leicester. His conduct there led to his recall.
+Another favourite stood high in the queen's good graces--Walter Raleigh.
+Probably it was with a view to ousting this rival that Leicester brought
+his stepson Essex into the queen's notice.
+
+But now the hour of Mary's doom was approaching. A plot was set on foot
+for the assassination of Elizabeth, into which Anthony Babington, whose
+name it bears, was drawn. Walsingham, possessed of complete information
+from the beginning, through his spies, nursed the plot carefully;
+letters from Mary were systematically intercepted and copied till the
+moment came for striking; the conspirators were arrested, and suffered
+the extreme penalty of the treason laws; and Elizabeth consented to have
+Mary herself at last brought to trial. She was refused counsel; the
+commission condemned her. Parliament demanded the execution of the death
+sentence. Elizabeth had her own misgivings.
+
+She was afraid of the responsibility. Leicester suggested poison, but
+Burleigh and Walsingham stood by the law. A special embassy of
+remonstrance came from France; Mary wrote a dignified letter, not an
+appeal for her life, which moved the queen to tears; protests from the
+King of Scotland only aroused indignation; Elizabeth was frightened by
+rumours of fresh plots and of a French invasion.
+
+At last she signed the death warrant, brought to her by Secretary
+Davison; the Chancellor's seal was attached, and the council, fearing
+some evasion on Elizabeth's part, issued the commission for Mary's
+execution without further reference to the queen; she was kept in
+ignorance of the fact till the tragedy was completed. She was furious
+with the council, but powerless against their unanimity. She could
+venture to make a scapegoat of Davison, and made a vain attempt to clear
+herself of responsibility in a letter to James, which failed to soothe
+the burst of indignation with which the news was received in Scotland.
+But the one thing she feared--a coalition of France, Spain, and
+Scotland--was made impossible by the antagonisms of the former and the
+weakness of the last.
+
+Another crisis was at hand. Philip of Spain, claiming the throne of
+England as a descendant of John of Gaunt, was preparing the great
+Armada; Pope Sixtus V. was proclaiming a crusade against the heretic
+queen. Drake sailed into Cadiz harbour, and "singed the don's whiskers,"
+but the vast preparations went on. A lofty spirit animated the queen and
+the people. London undertook to provide double the number of ships and
+men demanded from her. The militia was gathered at Tilbury, under
+Leicester. Howard of Effingham was Lord Admiral, with Drake as
+vice-admiral; in the enthusiasm of the moment, Elizabeth bestowed
+knighthood on a valorous lady, Mary, the wife of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley.
+
+A report that the Armada had been destroyed by a gale, which actually
+drove it into Corunna for repairs, caused Elizabeth, with her usual
+parsimony, to order four great vessels to be dismantled; Howard retained
+them instead, at his own charges. On July 19, 1588, the Armada was
+sighted off the Lizard, and for eighteen days the naval heroes were
+grappling with that "invincible" fleet. Elizabeth herself visited the
+camp at Tilbury, rode through the lines, wearing a corselet and a
+farthingale of amazing dimensions, while a page bore her helmet, and
+addressed her soldiers in stirring words.
+
+The victory was celebrated by medals bearing the device of a fleet in
+full sail, with the words _Venit, vidit, fugit_ ("it came, it saw, it
+fled"), and of the dispersal by fireships with the words, _Dux femina
+facti_ ("a woman led the movement").
+
+
+_IV.--Elizabeth's Closing Years_
+
+
+The defeat of the Armada was followed by an expedition to Lisbon, to
+wrest Portugal from Spain; owing to inadequate equipment it failed,
+after a promising beginning, the Portuguese lending no help. Essex
+managed to escape from court and join the expedition, messengers
+ordering him to return being too late. For this he was forgiven; but
+when he secretly married the widow of Sidney, and daughter of
+Walsingham, Elizabeth was furiously angry.
+
+Not Essex, but Norris was sent to command a force dispatched to the aid
+of Henry of Navarre, who was now fighting for the crown of France.
+Essex, however, was subsequently sent, at Henry's own request. His
+absence was utilised by Burleigh to secure the advancement of his own
+astute son, Robert Cecil, who secured the royal favour by the ingenuity
+of his flattery.
+
+When Essex finally returned from France, he was received with the utmost
+favour; but in the interval he had been transformed into an intriguing
+politician. Parliament, which had not been called for four years, met in
+1593, and there was an immediate collision with the Crown. Elizabeth's
+tone was much more despotic than of old. Petitions for the settlement of
+the succession were met by the arbitrary imprisonment of Wentworth and
+other members.
+
+Essex favoured the popular party, but had not the courage to head it; he
+was moved not by patriotism, but by jealousy of the Cecil ascendancy.
+The queen, when she had passed the age of sixty, was as determined as
+ever to pose as a youthful beauty, and her courtiers had no reluctance
+in assuming the tone of despairing lovers. No one played this part more
+persistently than Raleigh, who, when relegated to the Tower for
+marrying, proclaimed his misery, not at being separated from his bride,
+but at being shut out of the radiant presence of the queen.
+
+Essex and Raleigh were associated in two expeditions, one directed with
+complete success against Cadiz, the other being a complete failure. The
+Burleigh faction succeeded in getting for Raleigh whatever credit there
+was in both cases, though Essex was better entitled to it.
+
+But it was Ireland that wrought the ruin of Essex. A dispute in the
+council on the subject caused the queen to box the favourite's ears,
+which caused him to retire in resentment for many months. Soon after his
+return to court, he brought upon himself his own appointment to the
+lord-deputyship of Ireland. His conduct there displeased her; from her
+scolding letters, he concluded that his enemies in the council were
+undermining his position in his absence. He deserted his post, hurried
+to London, and burst, travel-stained as he was, into Elizabeth's
+chamber. For the moment she appeared disposed to forgive him, but was
+not long in deciding that his insolence must be punished, and he was
+placed in confinement.
+
+So he continued for about a year, in spite of appeals to the queen. The
+adverse party in the council had the predominance. At last, however, he
+was granted a degree of liberty, and Francis Bacon tried to conciliate
+Elizabeth towards her former favourite. But the unfortunate man allowed
+his resentment to carry him into dangerous courses. His house became a
+rendezvous of the discontented. Finally, a futile attempt on his part to
+raise the citizens of London in his favour consummated his ruin. He was
+soon a prisoner; his condemnation was now a foregone conclusion;
+Elizabeth signed the warrant with fingers which did not tremble; and, to
+the universal astonishment, the favourite was executed.
+
+Elizabeth's meeting with her last parliament displays in a marked degree
+the tact which never deserted her when she thought fit to employ it.
+Their protest against the practice of monopolies, instead of rousing her
+ire, brought from her a notably gracious promise to redress the
+grievances complained of. This was in 1601. In the next year, when she
+became sixty-nine, there was no relaxation in her gaieties; but under
+the surface, Elizabeth was old and sad.
+
+Her popularity had never been the same since the death of Essex; and the
+memory of the man she had cherished and finally sent to his doom,
+well-deserved as that was, was a perpetual source of grief to her. In
+March 1603, she was stricken with her last fatal illness. Yet she would
+not go to bed. At last she gave in; she knew herself dying long before
+she admitted it.
+
+It was uncertain whether even in her last moments she would acknowledge
+the right of any successor to her throne, but a gesture was interpreted
+as favouring the King of Scots. Finally, she sank into a sleep from
+which she never awoke. So passed away England's Elizabeth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JONATHAN SWIFT
+
+
+Journal to Stella
+
+
+     The "Journal to Stella," which extends over the years 1710 to
+     1713, was first published in 1766 and has often been
+     republished since. The manuscripts are preserved in the
+     British Museum. It was at Sir William Temple's home, Moor Park
+     in Surrey, that Swift came to know Esther Johnson, or
+     "Stella," who was fourteen years younger than himself. In 1699
+     Temple died, and Stella, with her friend, Rebecca Dingley,
+     came to Ireland at Swift's request. Their relation has been
+     made a great mystery. It will perhaps always be doubtful
+     whether he was nominally married to her secretly; the evidence
+     is on the whole against the existence of such a bond. But to
+     the further question--why did he not take her to live as his
+     wife--a sufficient reply may be found in his abnormal nature.
+     In the "Journal" the word "Presto" refers to Swift himself
+     (see FICTION); "MD" to Stella.
+
+
+LONDON, Sept. 9, 1710.
+
+
+I got here last Thursday, after five days' travelling, weary the first,
+almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest;
+and am now glad of the fatigue, which has served for exercise; and I am
+at present well enough. The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay
+hold on me as a twig while they are drowning, and the great men making
+me their clumsy apologies, etc. But my Lord Treasurer received me with a
+great deal of coldness, which has enraged me so, I am almost vowing
+revenge. I have not yet gone half my circle; but I find all my
+acquaintance just as I left them. Everything is turning upside down;
+every Whig in great office will, to a man, be infallibly put out; and we
+shall have such a winter as hath not been seen in England.
+
+The Tatler expects every day to be turned out of his employment; and the
+Duke of Ormond, they say, will be Lieutenant of Ireland. I hope you are
+now peaceably in Presto's lodgings; but I resolve to turn you out by
+Christmas; in which time I shall either have done my business, or find
+it not to be done. Pray be at Trim by the time this letter comes to you;
+and ride little Johnson, who must needs be now in good case. I have
+begun this letter unusually, on the post-night, and have already written
+to the Archbishop; and cannot lengthen this. Henceforth I will write
+something every day to MD, and make it a sort of journal; and when it is
+full, I will send it, whether MD writes or no; and so that will be
+pretty: and I shall always be in conversation with MD, and MD with
+Presto; and so farewell.
+
+
+LONDON, NOV. 11, 1710.
+
+
+I dined to-day in the City, and then went to christen Will Frankland's
+child; Lady Falconbridge was one of the godmothers; this is a daughter
+of Oliver Cromwell, and extremely like him by the picture I have seen.
+My business in the City was to thank Stratford for a kindness he has
+done me. I found Bank stock fallen thirty-four to the hundred, and was
+mighty desirous to buy it. I had three hundred pounds in Ireland, and I
+desired Stratford to buy me three hundred pounds in Bank stock and that
+he keep the papers, and that I would be bound to pay him for them; and,
+if it should rise or fall, I should take my chance and pay him interest
+in the meantime. I was told money was so hard to get here, and no one
+would do this for me. However, Stratford, one of the most generous men
+alive, has done this for me: so that three hundred pounds cost me three
+hundred pounds and thirty shillings. This was done a week ago, and I can
+have five pounds for my bargain already. I writ to your Mother to desire
+Lady Giffard would do the same with what she owes me, but she tells your
+mother she has no money. I would to God, all you had in the world was
+there. Whenever you lend money, take this rule, to have two people
+bound, who have both visible fortunes; for they will hardly die
+together; and, when one dies, you fall upon the other, and make him add
+another security. So, ladies, enough of business for one night. Paaaaast
+twelve o'clock; nite, nite deelest MD. I must only add, that, after a
+long fit of rainy weather, it has been fair two or three days, and is
+this day grown cold and frosty; so you must give poor little Presto
+leave to have a fire in his chamber morning and evening too; and he will
+do as much for you. Shall I send this to-morrow? Well I will, to oblige
+MD. 'Tis late, so I bid you good-night.
+
+
+CHELSEA, June, 1711.
+
+
+I went at noon to see Mr. Secretary at his office, and there was Lord
+Treasurer; so I killed two birds, etc., and we were glad to see one
+another and so forth. And the Secretary and I dined at Sir William
+Wyndam's, who married Lady Catherine Seymour, your acquaintance, I
+suppose. There were ten of us at dinner. It seems, in my absence, they
+had erected a Club, and made me one; and we made some laws to-day, which
+I am to digest and add to, against next meeting. Our meetings are to be
+every Thursday. We are yet but twelve; Lord Keeper and Lord Treasurer
+were proposed; but I was against them, and so was Mr. Secretary, though
+their sons are of it, and so they are excluded; but we design to admit
+the Duke of Shrewsbury. The end of our Club is to advance conversation
+and friendship, and to reward deserving persons with our interest and
+recommendation. We take in none but men of wit or men of interest; and
+if we go on as we begin, no other Club in this town will be worth
+talking of. This letter will come three weeks after the last, so there
+is a week lost; but that is owing to my being out of town.
+
+Well, but I must answer this letter of our MD's. Saturday approaches,
+and I han't written down this side. Oh, faith, Presto has been a sort of
+lazy fellow: but Presto will remove to town this day se'night: the
+Secretary has commanded me to do so: and I believe he and I shall go
+some days to Windsor, where he will have leisure to mind some business
+we have together. To-day our Society (it must not be called a Club)
+dined at Mr. Secretary's: we were but eight. We made some laws, and then
+I went to take my leave of Lady Ashburnham, who goes out of town
+to-morrow.
+
+Steele has had the assurance to write to me that I would engage my Lord
+Treasurer to keep a friend of his in an employment. I believe I told you
+how he and Addison served me for my good offices in Steele's behalf; and
+I promised Lord Treasurer never to speak for either of them again.
+
+We have plays acted in our town; and Patrick was at one of them, oh, oh.
+He was damnably mauled one day when he was drunk, by a brother-footman,
+who dragged him along the floor on his face, which looked for a week
+after as if he had the leprosy, and I was glad enough to see it. I have
+been ten times sending him back to you; yet now he has new clothes and a
+laced hat, which the hatter brought by his orders, and he offered to pay
+for the lace out of his wages.
+
+I must rise now and shave, and walk to town, unless I go with the Dean
+in his chariot at twelve: and I have not seen that Lord Peterborough
+yet. The Duke of Shrewsbury is almost well again, but what care you? You
+do not care for my friends. Farewell, my dearest lives and delights: I
+love you better than ever, if possible, as hope saved, I do, and ever
+will. God almighty bless you ever, and make us happy together! I pray
+for this twice every day; and I hope God will hear my poor hearty
+prayers. Remember, if I am used ill and ungratefully, as I have formerly
+been, 'tis what I am prepared for, and I shall not wonder at it. Yet I
+am now envied, and thought in high favour, and have every day numbers of
+considerable men teasing me to solicit for them. And the Ministry all
+use me perfectly well; and all that know them say they love me. Yet I
+can count upon nothing, nor will, but upon MD's love and kindness. They
+think me useful; they pretended they were afraid of none but me, and
+that they resolved to have me; they have often confessed this: yet all
+this makes little impression on me--Pox of these speculations! They give
+me the spleen; a disease I was not born to. Let me alone, sirrahs, and
+be satisfied: I am, as long as MD and Presto are well. Little wealth,
+and much health, and a life by stealth: that is all we want; and so
+farewell, dearest MD; Stella, Dingley, Presto, all together; now and for
+ever all together. Farewell again and again.
+
+
+LONDON, July, 1711.
+
+
+I have just sent my 26th, and have nothing to say, because I have other
+letters to write (pshaw, I began too high) but to-morrow I will say
+more, and fetch up this line to be straight This is enough at present
+for two dear saucy naughty girls.
+
+Morning. It is a terrible rainy day. Patrick lay out all last night, and
+is not yet returned: faith, poor Presto is a desolate creature; neither
+servant, nor linen, nor anything.
+
+I was at Court and Church to-day: I am acquainted with about thirty in
+the drawing-room, and I am so proud I make all the Lords come up to me;
+one passes half an hour pleasant enough. We had a dunce to preach before
+the queen to-day, which often happens. Windsor is a delicious situation,
+but the town is scoundrel. The Duke of Hamilton would needs be witty,
+and hold up my train as I walked upstairs. It is an ill circumstance
+that on Sundays much company always meet at the great tables. The
+Secretary showed me his bill of fare, to encourage me to dine with him.
+"Poh," said I, "show me a bill of company, for I value not your dinner."
+
+In my conscience. I fear I shall have the gout. I sometimes feel pains
+about my feet and toes: I never drank till within these two years, and I
+did it to cure my head. I often sit evenings with some of these people,
+and drink in my turn; but I am resolved to drink ten times less than
+before; but they advise me to let what I drink be all wine, and not to
+put water in it. Tooke and the printer stayed to-day to finish their
+affair. Then I went to see Lord Treasurer, and chid him for not taking
+notice of me at Windsor. He said he kept a place for me yesterday at
+dinner, and expected me there; but I was glad I did not go, because the
+Duke of Buckingham was there, and that would have made us acquainted;
+which I have no mind to.
+
+I have sent a noble haunch of venison this afternoon to Mrs. Vanhomrigh;
+I wish you had it sirrahs. I dined gravely with my landlord, the
+Secretary. The queen was abroad to-day to hunt; but finding it disposed
+to rain, she kept in her coach, which she drives herself, and drives
+furiously, like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod. Dingley has
+heard of Nimrod, but not Stella, for it is in the Bible. Mr. Secretary
+has given me a warrant for a buck; I can't sent it to MD. It is a sad
+thing, faith, considering how Presto loves MD, and how MD would love
+Presto's venison for Presto's sake. God bless the two dear Wexford
+girls!
+
+There was a drawing-room to-day at Court; but so few company, that the
+queen sent for us into her bedchamber, where we made our bows, and stood
+about twenty of us round the room, while she looked at us round with her
+fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that
+were nearest to her, and then she was told dinner was ready, and went
+out.
+
+
+LONDON, Dec. 1, 1711.
+
+
+To-morrow is the fatal day for the Parliament meeting, and we are full
+of hopes and fears. We reckon we have a majority of ten on our side in
+the House of Lords; yet I observe Mrs. Masham a little uneasy. The Duke
+of Marlborough has not seen the queen for some days past; Mrs. Masham is
+glad of it, because she says he tells a hundred lies to his friends of
+what she says to him: he is one day humble, and the next day on the high
+ropes.
+
+This being the day Parliament was to meet, and the great question to be
+determined, I went with Dr. Freind to dine in the City, on purpose to be
+out of the way, and we sent our printer to see what was our fate; but he
+gave us a most melancholy account of things. The Earl of Nottingham
+began and spoke against a peace, and desired that in their address they
+might put in a clause to advise the queen not to make a peace without
+Spain; which was debated, and carried by the Whigs by about six voices:
+and this has happened entirely by my Lord Treasurer's neglect, who did
+not take timely care to make up his strength, although every one of us
+gave him caution enough. Nottingham has certainly been bribed. The
+question is yet only carried in the Committee of the whole House, and we
+hope when it is reported to the House to-morrow, we shall have a
+majority.
+
+This is a day that may produce great alterations and hazard the ruin of
+England. The Whigs are all in triumph; they foretold how all this would
+be, but we thought it boasting. Nay, they said the Parliament should be
+dissolved before Christmas, and perhaps it may: this is all your d----d
+Duchess of Somerset's doings. I warned them of this nine months ago, and
+a hundred times since. I told Lord Treasurer I should have the advantage
+of him; for he would lose his head, and I should only be hanged, and so
+carry my body entire to the grave.
+
+I was this morning with Mr. Secretary: we are both of opinion that the
+queen is false. He gave me reasons to believe the whole matter is
+settled between the queen and the Whigs. Things are now in a crisis, and
+a day or two will determine. I have desired him to engage Lord Treasurer
+to send, me abroad as Queen's Secretary somewhere or other, where I will
+remain till the new Ministers recall me; and then I will be sick for
+five or six months, till the storm has spent itself. I hope he will
+grant me this; for I should hardly trust myself to the mercy of my
+enemies while their anger is fresh.
+
+Morning. They say the Occasional Bill is brought to-day into the House
+of Lords; but I know not. I will now put an end to my letter, and give
+it into the post-house with my own fair hands. This will be a memorable
+letter, and I shall sigh to see it some years hence. Here are the first
+steps towards the ruin of an excellent Ministry; for I look upon them as
+certainly ruined; and God knows what may be the consequence.--I now bid
+my dearest MD farewell; for company is coming, and I must be at Lord
+Dartmouth's office by noon. Farewell, dearest MD; I wish you a merry
+Christmas; I believe you will have this about that time. Love Presto,
+who loves MD above all things a thousand times. Farewell again, dearest
+MD.
+
+
+LONDON, Dec. 20, 1711.
+
+
+I was with the Secretary this morning, and, for aught I can see, we
+shall have a languishing death: I can know nothing, nor themselves
+neither. I dined, you know, with our Society, and that odious Secretary
+would make me President next week; so I must entertain them this day
+se'night at the Thatched House Tavern: it will cost me five or six
+pounds; yet the Secretary says he will give me wine.
+
+Saturday night. I have broken open my letter, and tore it into the
+bargain, to let you know that we are all safe: the queen has made no
+less than twelve Lords to have a majority; nine new ones, the other
+three peers' sons; and has turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is
+awaked at last, and so is Lord Treasurer: I want nothing now but to see
+the Duchess out. But we shall do without her. We are all extremely
+happy. Give me joy, sirrahs. This is written in a coffee-house.
+
+
+LONDON, Feb. 26, 1712.
+
+
+I was again busy with the Secretary. I dined with him, and we were to do
+more business after dinner; but after dinner is after dinner--an old
+saying and a true, "much drinking, little thinking." We had company with
+us, and nothing could be done, so I am to go there again to-morrow.
+
+To-day in the morning I visited upwards: first I saw the Duke of Ormond
+below stairs, and gave him joy of being declared General in Flanders;
+then I went up one pair of stairs, and sat with the duchess; then I went
+up another pair of stairs, and paid a visit to Lady Betty; and then
+desired her woman to go up to the garret, that I might pass half an hour
+with her, for she was young and handsome, but she would not.
+
+Tell Walls that I spoke to the Duke of Ormond about his friend's
+affairs. I likewise mentioned his own affair to Mr. Southwell. But oo
+must not know zees sings, zey are secrets; and we must keep them flom
+nauty dallars. I was with Lord Treasurer to-day, and hat care oo for
+zat? Monday is parson's holiday, and oo lost oo money at cards; ze
+devil's device. Nite, nite, my two deelest logues.
+
+
+LONDON, April 6, 1713
+
+
+I was this morning at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called
+"Cato," which is to be acted on Friday. There were not above half a
+score of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough
+to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them;
+and the drab that acts Cato's daughter, in the midst of a passionate
+part, calling out "What's next?" I went back and dined with Mr. Addison.
+
+Nothing new to-day; so I'll seal up this to-night. Pray write soon....
+Farewell, deelest MD, MD, MD. Love Presto.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LYOF N. TOLSTOY
+
+
+Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
+
+
+     Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth
+     (1855-57)--Tolstoy's first literary efforts--may be regarded
+     as semi-autobiographical studies; if not in detail, at least
+     in the wider sense that all his books contain pictures more or
+     less accurate of himself and his own experiences. No plot runs
+     through them; they simply analyse and describe with
+     extraordinary minuteness the feelings of a nervous and morbid
+     boy--a male Marie Bashkirtseff. They are tales rather of the
+     developments of the thoughts, than of the life of a child,
+     with a pale background of men and events. The distinct charm
+     lies in the sincerity with which this development is
+     represented.
+
+
+_I.--Childhood_
+
+
+August 12, 18--, was the third day after my tenth birthday anniversary.
+Wonderful presents had been given me. My tutor, Karl Ivanitch, roused me
+at seven by striking at a fly directly over my head with a flapper made
+of sugar paper fastened to a stick. He generally spoke in German, and in
+his kindly voice exclaimed, "Auf, Kinder, auf; es ist Zeit. Die Mutter
+ist schon im Saal." ("Get up, children, it is time. Your Mother is
+already in the drawing-room.")
+
+Dyadka Nikolai, the valet of us children, a neat little man, brought in
+the clothes for me and Volodya, who was imitating my sister's governess,
+Marya Ivanova, in mocking, merry laughter. Somewhat sternly presently
+Karl Ivanitch called from the schoolroom to know if we were nearly ready
+to begin our lessons.
+
+In the schoolroom, on one shelf was our promiscuous assortment of books,
+on another, the still more miscellaneous collection which our dear old
+tutor was pleased to call his library. I remember that it included a
+German treatise on cabbage gardens, a history of the Seven Years' War,
+and a work on hydrostatic. Karl Ivanitch spent all his spare time in
+reading his beloved books, but he never read anything beyond these and
+the Northern Bee. After early lessons our tutor conducted us downstairs
+to greet Mamma.
+
+She was sitting in the parlour, in front of the samovar, pouring out
+tea. To the left of the divan was the old English grand piano, on which
+my dark-complexioned sister, Liubotchka, eleven years old, was painfully
+practising Clementi's exercises. Near her Marya Ivanova, with scowls on
+her face, was loudly counting, and beating time with her foot. She
+frowned still more disagreeably at Karl as he entered, but he appeared
+to ignore this and kissed my mother's hand with a German salutation.
+After mutually affectionate greetings Mamma told us to go to our father
+and to ask him to come to her before he went to the threshing floor.
+
+We found Papa angrily discussing business affairs with Yakov Mikhailof,
+the chief concern being apparently about money from Mamma's estate at
+Khabarovka, her native village. A large sum was due to the council, and
+Yakov pleaded that it would be difficult to raise it from the sale of
+hay and the proceeds of the mill. "For example," said he, "the miller
+has been twice to ask me for delay, swearing by Christ the Lord that he
+has no money. What little cash he had he put into the dam."
+
+Yakov was a serf, and was a most devoted and assiduous man, excessively
+economical in managing his master's affairs, and constantly worried
+himself over the increase of his master's property at the expense of
+that of his mistress.
+
+For some days we had been expecting something unusual, from preparations
+which we saw going on for some journey, but an announcement from Papa at
+length surprised us terribly. He greeted us one morning with the remark
+that it was time to put an end to our idleness, and that as he was going
+that evening to Moscow, we were to go with him and to live there with
+our grandmother, Mamma remaining on the estate with the girls.
+
+My thoughts were mingled, for I was very grieved for the sake of Mamma,
+yet I felt pleasure at the idea that we were grown up. For poor Karl
+Ivanitch I was extremely sorry, as he would be discharged. On my way
+upstairs I saw Papa's favourite greyhound, Milka, basking in the
+sunshine on the terrace, and ran out, kissed her on the nose and
+caressed her, saying, "Farewell, Milotchka. We shall never see each
+other again." Then, altogether overcome with emotion, I burst into
+tears.
+
+My father was a chivalrous character of the last century, who regarded
+with contempt the people of the present century. His two chief passions
+were cards and women. He was tall and commanding, bald, with small eyes
+ever twinkling vivaciously, and a lisping utterance. He knew how to
+exercise a spell over people of every grade, and in the highest society
+he was held in great esteem. He seemed born to shine in his brilliant
+position, and was an expert in the management of all things that could
+conduce to comfort and pleasure.
+
+A lover of music, he sang to his own piano accompaniment operatic songs,
+but had no liking for Beethoven's sonatas and other scientific
+compositions. His principles grew more fixed as years rolled on; he
+judged actions as being good or bad accordingly as they procured him
+happiness and pleasure, or otherwise; he talked persuasively; and he
+could represent the same deed as either an innocent piece of playfulness
+or of abominable villainy.
+
+Happy days of childhood that can never be recalled! What memories I yet
+cherish of them. I see Mamma just as plainly as when she so long since
+was talking to some one at the tea-table, while I, in my high chair,
+grew drowsy. Presently she stroked my hair with her soft hand, saying,
+"Get up, my darling, it is time to go to bed. Get up, my angel."
+
+I spring up and embrace her, and exclaim, "Dear, dear Mamma, how I love
+you!" With her sad and fascinating smile she places me on her knees, is
+silent awhile, and then speaks. "So you love me very much? Love me
+always and never forget me. If you lose your Mamma, Nikolinka, you will
+not forget her?"
+
+She kisses me still more lovingly, and I cry with tears of love and
+rapture flooding my face, "Oh, do not say that, my darling, my precious
+one." Will that freshness, that happy carelessness, that thirst for love
+which made life's only requirements, ever return? Where are those pure
+tears of tenderest emotion? The angel of consolation came and wiped them
+away. Do the memories alone abide?
+
+About a month after we had removed to Moscow, Grandmamma received a
+visit from Princess Kornakova, a woman of forty-five, with disagreeable
+gray-green eyes, but sweetly curved lips, bright red hair, and
+insalubrious face. In spite of these peculiarities her aspect was noble.
+I took a dislike to her because I found from her talk that she was given
+to beating her own children, and thought that other people's children,
+especially boys, needed to be whipped.
+
+Another visitor was Prince Ivan Ivanitch, distinguished for his noble
+character, handsome person, splendid bravery and extraordinary good
+fortune. He belonged to a powerful family, and lived in accordance with
+principles of the strictest religion and morality. Though somewhat
+reserved and haughty, in demeanour, he was full of kindly feeling.
+Prince Ivan Ivanitch was a highly cultured man of most versatile
+accomplishments. Our Grandmamma was evidently delighted to see him, and
+his magnificent aspect and her liking for him inspired me with unbounded
+admiration and reverence.
+
+He asked why Mamma had not come to Moscow. "Ah," was the reply, "she
+would have come if possible, but they have no income this year."
+
+"I do not understand," replied the Prince. "Her Khabarovka is a
+wonderful estate, and it must always bring in a fine revenue."
+
+"I will tell you," said Grandmamma, sadly. "It seems to me that all the
+pretexts are made simply to enable him to live a gay life here, while
+she, angel of goodness that she is, suspects nothing. She believes him
+in everything."
+
+This conversation should not have been overheard by me, but, having
+overheard it, I crept out of the room.
+
+On the 16th of April, nearly six months later, serious news came from
+Mamma. She wrote to Papa that she had contracted a chill, which had
+caused a fever, that this was over, but had left her in such utter
+weakness that she would never rise from her bed again, although those
+about her were not aware of such a condition. She wished him to come to
+her at once and to bring her two boys with him. She prayed that God's
+holy will might be done.
+
+On April 25th we reached our Petrovskoe home. Papa had been very sad and
+thoughtful during the journey. We at once learned from the steward that
+Mamma had not left her room for six days. I shall never forget what I
+saw when we entered Mamma's room. She was unconscious. Her eyes were
+open, but she saw nothing. We were led away. Mamma soon passed away.
+
+She was dead, the funeral obsequies took place, and then our life went
+on much as before. We rose, had our repasts, and retired to rest at the
+same hours. Three days after the funeral the whole household removed to
+Moscow. Grandmamma only learned what had happened when we arrived, and
+her grief was terrible. She lay unconscious for a week, and the doctor
+feared for her life, for she would not eat, speak, or take medicine.
+When she recovered somewhat, her first thought was of us children. She
+cried softly, spoke of Mamma, and tenderly caressed us.
+
+
+_II.--Boyhood_
+
+
+On our arrival in Moscow a change had taken place in my views of things.
+My sentiment of reverence for Grandmamma had changed to one of sympathy.
+As she covered my cheeks with kisses I realised that each kiss expressed
+the thought "She is gone; I shall never see her more." Papa had very
+little to do with us in Moscow, coming to us only at dinner time, and
+lost much in my eyes, with his ostentatious dress, his stewards, his
+clerks, and his hunting and business expeditions.
+
+Between us and the girls also an invisible barrier seemed to rise. We
+were proud of our trousers and straps, and they of their petticoats,
+which increased in length. Their showier Sunday dress made it manifest
+that we were no longer in the country. But soon commenced a period of my
+life of which it is difficult to trace a record. Rarely during memories
+of it do I find moments of the genuine warmth of feeling which so
+frequently illumined the earliest years of my life.
+
+Vivid is the recollection of Volodya's entrance at the university. He
+was barely two years my senior in age. The day of his first examination
+arrived, and he presented a handsome appearance in his blue uniform with
+brass buttons and lacquered boots. The examination lasted ten days, and
+Volodya, having passed brilliantly, returned on the last day no longer
+in blue coat and grey cap, but in student uniform, with blue embroidered
+collar, three-cornered hat, and a gilt dagger by his side. Joy and
+excitement reigned in the whole household. For the first time since
+Mamma's death, Grandmamma drank champagne, and weeps with joy as she
+looks at Volodya, who henceforth rode in his own equipage, receives
+friends in his own rooms, smokes tobacco, goes to balls.
+
+But soon another incident happened which is engraven on memory. The dear
+old Grandmamma was growing daily weaker, and one morning the
+announcement thrilled us that she was dead. Again, the house was full of
+mourning. In a few months I should be preparing to enter the university.
+I was by degrees emerging from my boyish moods, with the exception of
+one--a tendency to metaphysical dreaminess, which was fated to do me
+much injury in after years.
+
+At this period an intimacy commenced between me and a very remarkable
+man, Prince Dmitri Nekhliudoff. He was a tall and commanding figure,
+with an extraordinary intellect. Whenever he found me alone, we seated
+ourselves in some secluded corner and found mutual delight in
+metaphysical discussions. With ecstasy in those moments I soared higher
+and higher into the realms of thought. This strange friendship grew. We
+agreed to confess everything to each other, and thus we should really
+know each other and not be ashamed; but, in order that we should not be
+in any fear of strangers, we vowed never to say anything to anybody else
+about each other. And we kept the vow. As may be imagined, the influence
+of my friend over me was greater than mine over him. I adopted his
+fervent ideas, which included lofty aspirations for the reformation of
+all mankind.
+
+
+_III.--Youth_
+
+
+I was nearly sixteen, and from that time I date the beginning of youth.
+Under various professors I studied, though by no means willingly, to
+prepare for the university. At length, on April 16, I went for the first
+time to the great hall of the university. For the first time in my life
+I wore a dress coat. The bright hall was filled with a brilliant crowd
+of hundreds of young men in gymnasium costumes and dress coats, stately
+professors moving freely about among the tables. On that day I was
+examined in history and answered questions in Russian history in
+brilliant style, for I knew the subject well. I received five marks.
+Similar success rewarded my efforts at the examination in mathematics,
+for the professor told me I had answered even better than was required,
+and on this occasion I received five points.
+
+Everything went splendidly till I came to the Latin examination. The
+Latin professor was spoken of in accents of terror, for he had the
+reputation of taking a fierce delight in plucking candidates. My success
+so far had made me feel proudly confident, and as I could translate
+Cicero and Horace without the lexicon and was proficient in Zumpt's
+Grammar, I thought I might equal the rest. But not so. The professor
+amicably passed one of my young acquaintances, although the youth was
+palpably deficient in his answers. I afterwards learned that he was the
+student's protector.
+
+When my turn came, immediately afterwards, the professor turned on me in
+truly savage demeanour. "That is not it; that is not it at all,"
+exclaimed he. "This is not the way to prepare for higher education. You
+only want to wear the uniform and to boast of being first."
+
+The demeanour of this professor so affected me that my confusion was
+complete. I only received two marks, and the injustice so depressed me
+that I lost all ambition and allowed the remaining examinations to
+proceed without making any effort. I made up my mind that it was unwise
+to aim at being first, and I resolved to adhere to this sentiment in the
+university.
+
+My father married again. He was forty-eight when he took Avdotya
+Epifanova as his second wife. She was a beautiful woman, whom Mamma used
+to call Dunitchka. But I had suspected nothing until Papa actually
+announced to us that he was going to marry her. The wedding was to take
+place in a fortnight. I and Volodya returned to Moscow at the beginning
+of September, and on the following day I went to the university for my
+first lecture.
+
+It was a magnificent, sunny day, and as I entered the auditorium I felt
+lost in the throng of gay youths flitting about through the doors and
+among the corridors. Belonging to no particular group I felt isolated,
+and then even angry, and I remember in my heart that this first day was
+a dismal occasion for me. I looked at the professor with an ironical
+feeling, for he commenced his lecture with an introduction which, to my
+mind, was without sense. I decided at this first lecture that there was
+no need to write down everything that each professor said, and to this
+principle I adhered.
+
+Though during my course I made many pleasant acquaintances, and so felt
+less isolated than at first, I indulged in little real comradeship. But
+during the winter my attention was much engrossed with affairs of the
+heart, for I was in love three times. Yet I was overwhelmed with
+shyness, fearing that my love should be discovered by its object. With
+two of the young ladies, indeed, I had already been in love previously.
+Of one of them I was now enamoured for the third time. But I knew that
+Volodya also regarded her with passionate ecstasy. I felt that it would
+certainly not be agreeable to him to learn that two brothers were in
+love with the same young woman.
+
+Therefore I said nothing to him of my love. But great satisfaction was
+afforded to my mind by the fact that our love was so pure, and that each
+would be ready, if needful, to make a sacrifice for the sake of the
+other. But that self-abnegation did not, after all, extend to Volodya,
+for when he heard that a certain diplomat was to marry the girl, he was
+disposed to slap his face and to challenge him to a duel. It happened
+that I had only spoken once to the young lady, and my love passed away
+in a week, as I made no effort to perpetuate it.
+
+During that winter I was quite disenchanted with the social pleasures to
+which I had looked forward when I entered the university, in imitation
+of my brother Volodya. He danced a great deal, and Papa also went with
+his young wife to balls. But at the first one which I attended I was so
+shy that I declined the invitation of the Princess Kornakova to dance,
+declaring that I did not dance, though I had come to her evening party
+with the express intention of dancing a great deal. I remained silently
+in one place the whole evening.
+
+Avdotya's passionate love for Papa was evident in every word, look, and
+action. We were always hypocritically polite to her, called her _chère
+maman_, and noted that at first she was fond of calling herself
+stepmother, and that she plainly felt the unpleasantness of her
+position. Her disposition was very amiable and she was in no way
+exacting.
+
+My first examination at length arrived. It was on differential and
+integral calculus. I was indifferent and abstracted, but a feeling of
+some dread passed over me when the same young professor who had
+questioned me at the entrance examination looked me in the face. I
+answered so badly that he looked at me compassionately, and said quietly
+but firmly that as I should not pass in the second class I had better
+not present myself for examination. I went home and remained weeping in
+my room for three days over my failure. I even looked out my pistols, in
+order that they might be at hand if I should feel a wish to shoot
+myself. Finally, I saw my father and begged him to permit me to enter
+the hussars, or to go to the Caucasus.
+
+Though he was not pleased, yet, when he saw how deep was my grief he
+sought to comfort me by saying that it was not so very bad, and that
+arrangements might be made for a different course of study. After a few
+days I became composed, but did not leave the house till we departed for
+the country. I may some day relate the sequel in the happier half of my
+youth.
+
+[Tolstoy has never published the continuation, but it is generally
+considered that he represents himself in Constantine Levin, the hero of
+the greatest of his stories, and that thus we gain an insight into his
+mature thoughts.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+My Confession
+
+
+     Count Lyof N. Tolstoy in writing this work expressed himself
+     in such independent terms that it could not be published in
+     Russia, but was issued in Geneva in 1888, by the firm of
+     Elpidine, who had printed in 1886 his "What is my Life," and
+     in 1892 brought out his "Walk in the Light." The books thus
+     issued in the original Russian version outside of the famous
+     author's native land are all purely spiritual, and are written
+     in the most elevated tone. But Tolstoy's mode of interpreting
+     the Scriptures is not approved by the Holy Synod of the
+     Eastern Orthodox Church, or Russo-Greek Communion, and thus
+     most of his treatises which come within the strictly religious
+     category are classed amongst the "Forbidden Books" of modern
+     Russian literature. In this "Confession" Tolstoy emphatically
+     strikes the keynote which is the _motif_ of all his didactic
+     writings. It is an affirmation of the principle that the pure
+     spirit of religion, apart from external dogma, is the really
+     precious factor of life. He follows the same strain in his
+     "What I Believe," and his "Christianity of Christ." The
+     following synopsis is translated and summarised from the
+     original Russian.
+
+
+_I.--Evil Early Years_
+
+
+Though reared in the faith of the Orthodox Eastern, or Russo-Greek
+Church, I had by the time when, at the age of eighteen, I left the
+university ceased to believe what I had been taught. My faith could
+never have been well grounded in conviction. I not only ceased to pray,
+but also to attend the services and to fast. Without denying the
+existence of God, yet I cherished no ideas either as to the nature of
+God or the teaching of Christ.
+
+I found that my wish to become a good and virtuous man, whenever the
+aspiration was in any way expressed, simply exposed me to ridicule;
+while I instantly gained praise for any vicious behaviour. Even my
+excellent aunt declared that she wished two things for me. One was that
+I should form a liaison with some married lady; the other that I should
+become an adjutant to the Tsar.
+
+I look back with horror on the years of my young manhood, for I was
+guilty of slaying men in battle, of gambling, of riotous squandering of
+substance gained by the toil of serfs, of deceit, and of profligacy.
+That course of life lasted ten years. Then I took to writing, but the
+motive was grovelling, for I aimed at gaining money and flattery.
+
+My aims were gratified, for, coming to St. Petersburg at the age of 26,
+I secured the flattering reception I had coveted from the authors most
+in repute. The war, about which I had written much from the field of
+conflict, had just closed. I found that a theory prevailed amongst the
+"Intelligentia" that the function of writers, thinkers, and poets was to
+teach; they were to teach not because they knew or understood, but
+unconsciously and intuitively. Acting on this philosophy, I, as a
+thinker and poet, wrote and taught I knew not what, received large
+remuneration for my efforts with the pen, and lived loosely, gaily, and
+extravagantly.
+
+Thus I was one of the hierarchs of the literary faith, and for a
+considerable time was undisturbed by any doubts as to its soundness; but
+when three years had been thus spent, serious suspicions entered my
+mind. I noted that the devotees of this apparently infallible principle
+were at variance amongst themselves, for they disputed, deceived,
+abused, and swindled each other. And many were grossly selfish, and most
+immoral.
+
+Disgust supervened, both with myself and with mankind in general. My
+error now was that though my eyes were opened to the vanity and delusion
+of the position, yet I retained it, imagining that I, as thinker, poet,
+teacher, could teach other men while not at all knowing what to teach.
+To my other faults an inordinate pride had been added by my intercourse
+with these _litterateurs_. That period viewed retrospectively seems to
+me like one of a kind of madness. Hundreds of us wrote to teach the
+people, while we all abused and confuted one another. We could teach
+nothing, yet we sent millions of pages all over Russia, and we were
+unspeakably vexed that we seemed to gain no attention whatever, for
+nobody appeared to listen to us.
+
+
+_II.--Groping in Darkness_
+
+
+I travelled in Europe at this period, before my marriage, still
+cherishing in my mind the idea of general perfectibility, which was so
+popular at that time with the "Intelligentia." Cultured circles clung to
+the theory of what we call "progress," vague though are the notions
+attaching to the term. I was horrified with the spectacle of an
+execution in Paris, and my eyes were opened to the fallacy underlying
+the theory of human wisdom. The doctrine of "progress" I now felt to be
+a mere superstition, and I was further confirmed in my conviction by the
+sad death of my brother after a painful illness of a whole year.
+
+My brother was kind, amiable, clever, and serious; but he passed away
+without ever knowing why he had lived or what his death meant for him.
+All theories were futile in the face of this tragedy. Returning to
+Russia I settled in my rural home and began to organise schools for the
+peasants, feeling real enthusiasm for the enterprise. For I still clung
+to a great extent to the idea of progress by development. I thought that
+though highly cultured men all thought and taught differently and agreed
+about nothing, yet in the case of the children of the mujiks the
+difficulty could easily be surmounted by permitting the children to
+learn what they liked.
+
+I also tried through my own newspaper to indoctrinate the people, but my
+mind grew more and more embarrassed. At length I fell sick, rather
+mentally than physically. I went off to the Steppes to breathe the pure
+air and to take mare's milk and to live the simple life. I married soon
+after my return to my estate. As time passed on I became happily
+absorbed in the interests of wife and children, largely forgetting
+during a happy interval of fifteen years the old anxiety for individual
+perfection. For this desire was superseded by that of promoting the
+welfare of my family.
+
+All this time, however, I was writing busily, and was gaining much money
+as well as winning great applause. And in everything I wrote I
+persistently taught what was for me the sole truth--that our chief
+object in life should be to secure our own happiness and that of our
+family. Then, five years ago, supervened a mood of mental lethargy. I
+grew despondent; my perplexity increased, and I was tormented by the
+constant recurrence of such questions as--"Why?" and "What afterwards?"
+And by degrees the questions took a more concrete form. "I now possess
+six thousand 'desyatins' of land in the government of Samara, and three
+hundred horses--what then?" I could find no answer. Then came the
+question, "What if I could excel Shakespeare, and Molière, and Gogol,
+and become the most celebrated the world has ever seen--what then?"
+Answer, there was none; yet I felt that I must find one in order to go
+on living.
+
+Life had now lost its meaning, and was no longer real to me. I was a
+healthy and happy man, and yet so empty did life seem to me that I was
+afraid of being tempted to commit suicide, even though I had not the
+slightest intention to perpetrate such a deed. But, fearing lest the
+temptation might come upon me I hid a rope away out of my sight, and
+ceased carrying a gun in my walks.
+
+
+_III.--The Spirit of Despair_
+
+
+It was in my 50th year that the question "What is life" had reduced me
+to utter despair. Various queries clustered round this central
+interrogation. "Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there
+any signification in life that can overcome inevitable death?" I found
+that in human knowledge no real answer was forthcoming to such
+yearnings. None of the theories of the philosophers gave any
+satisfaction. In my search for a solution of life's problem I felt like
+a traveller lost in a forest, out of which he can find no issue.
+
+I found that not only did Solomon declare that he hated life, for all is
+vanity and vexation of spirit; but that Sakya Muni, the Indian sage,
+equally decided that life was a great evil; while Socrates and
+Schopenhauer agree that annihilation is the only thing to be wished for.
+But neither these testimonies of great minds nor my own reasoning could
+induce me to destroy myself. For a force within me, combined with an
+instinctive consciousness of life, counteracted the feeling of despair
+and drew me out of my misery of soul. I felt that I must study life not
+merely as it was amongst those like myself, but as it was amongst the
+millions of the common people. I reflected that knowledge based on
+reason, the knowledge of the cultured, imparted no meaning to life, but
+that, on the other hand, amongst the masses of the common people there
+was an unreasoning consciousness of life which gave it a significance.
+
+This unreasoning knowledge was the very faith which I was rejecting. It
+was faith in things I could not understand; in God, one yet three; in
+the creation of devils and angels. Such things seemed utterly contrary
+to reason. So I began to reflect that perhaps what I considered
+reasonable was after all not so, and what appeared unreasonable might
+not really be so.
+
+I discovered one great error that I had perpetrated. I had been
+comparing life with life, that is, the finite with the finite, and the
+infinite with the infinite. The process was vain. It was like comparing
+force with force, matter with matter, nothing with nothing. It was like
+saying in mathematics that A equals A, or O equals O. Thus the only
+answer was "identity."
+
+Now I saw that scientific knowledge would give no reply to my questions.
+I began to comprehend that though faith seemed to give unreasonable
+answers, these answers certainly did one important thing. They did at
+least bring in the relation of the finite to the infinite. I came to
+feel that in addition to the reasoning knowledge which I once reckoned
+to be the sole true knowledge, there was in every man also an
+unreasoning species of knowledge which makes life possible. That
+unreasoning knowledge is faith.
+
+What is this faith? It is not only belief in God and in things unseen,
+but it is the apprehension of life's meaning. It is the force of life. I
+began to understand that the deepest source of human wisdom was to be
+found in the answers given by faith, that I had no reasonable right to
+reject them, and that they alone solved the problem of life.
+
+
+_IV.--Mistakes Apprehended_
+
+
+Nevertheless my heart was not lightened. I studied the writings of
+Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. I also studied actual religious life
+by turning to the orthodox, the monks, and the Evangelicals who preach
+salvation through faith in a Redeemer. I asked what meaning was given
+for them to life by what they believed. But I could not accept the faith
+of any of these men, because I saw that it did not explain the meaning
+of life, but only obscured it. So I felt a return of the terrible
+feeling of despair.
+
+Being unable to believe in the sincerity of men who did not live
+consistently with the doctrines they professed, and feeling that they
+were self-deceived, and, like myself, were satisfied with the lusts of
+the flesh, I began to draw near to the believers amongst the poor,
+simple, and ignorant, the pilgrims, monks, and peasants. I found that
+though their faith was mingled with much superstition, yet with them the
+whole life was a confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith
+gave them.
+
+The more I contemplated the lives of these simple folk, the more deeply
+was I convinced of the reality of their faith, which I perceived to be a
+necessity for them, for it alone gave life a meaning and made it worth
+living. This was in direct opposition to what I saw in my own circle,
+where I marked the possibility of living without faith, for not one in a
+thousand professed to be a believer, while amongst the poorer classes
+not one in thousands was an unbeliever. The contradiction was extreme.
+In my class a tranquil death, without terror or despair, is rare; in
+that lower class, an uneasy death is a rare exception. I found that
+countless numbers in that lower mass of humanity had so understood the
+meaning of life that they were able both to live bearing contentedly the
+burdens of life, and to die peacefully.
+
+The more I learned of these men of faith the more I liked them, and the
+easier I felt it so to live. For two years I lived in their fashion.
+Then the life of my own wealthy and cultured class became repellent to
+me, for it had lost all meaning whatever. It seemed like empty child's
+play, while the life of the working classes appeared to me in its true
+significance.
+
+Now I began to apprehend where I had judged wrongly. My mistake was that
+I had applied an answer to my question concerning life which only
+concerned my own life, to life in general. My life had been but one long
+indulgence of my passions. It was evil and meaningless. Therefore such
+an answer had no application to life at large, but only to my individual
+life.
+
+I understood the truth which the Gospel subsequently taught me more
+fully, that men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds
+were evil. I understood that for the comprehension of life, it was
+essential that life should be something more than an evil and
+meaningless thing revealed by reason. Life must be considered as a
+whole, not merely in its parasitic excrescences. I felt that to be good
+was more important than to believe. I loved good men. I hated myself. I
+accepted truth. I understood that we were all more or less mad with the
+love of evil.
+
+I looked at the animals, saw the birds building nests, living only to
+fly and to subsist. I saw how the goat, hare, and wolf live, but to feed
+and to nurture their young, and are contented and happy. Their life is a
+reasonable one. And man must gain his living like the animals do, only
+with this great difference, that if he should attempt this alone, he
+will perish. So he must labour for the good of all, not merely for
+himself.
+
+I had not helped others. My life for thirty years had been that of a
+mere parasite. I had been contented to remain ignorant of the reason why
+I lived at all.
+
+There is a supreme will in the universe. Some one makes the universal
+life his secret care. To know what that supreme will is, we must obey it
+implicitly. No reproaches against their masters come from the simple
+workers who do just what is required of them, though we are in the habit
+of regarding them as brutes. We, on the contrary, who think ourselves
+wise, consume the goods of our master while we do nothing willingly that
+he prescribes. We think that it would be stupid for us to do so.
+
+What does such conduct imply? Simply that our master is stupid, or that
+we have no master.
+
+
+_V.--Feeling Versus Reason_
+
+
+Thus I was led at last to the conclusion that knowledge based on reason
+is fallacious, and that the knowledge of truth can be secured only by
+living. I had come to feel that I must live a real, not a parasitical
+life, and that the meaning of life could be perceived only by
+observation of the combined lives of the great human community.
+
+The feelings of my mind during all these experiences and observations
+were mingled with a heart-torment which I can only describe as a
+searching after God. This search was a feeling rather than a course of
+reasoning. For it came from my heart, and was actually opposed to my way
+of thinking. Kant had shown the impossibility of proving the existence
+of God, yet I still hoped to find Him, and I still addressed Him in
+prayer. Yet I did not find Him whom I sought.
+
+At times I contended against the reasoning of Kant and Schopenhauer, and
+argued that causation is not in the same category with thought and space
+and time. I argued that if I existed, there was a cause of my being, and
+that cause was the cause of all causes. Then I pondered the idea that
+the cause of all things is what is called God, and with all my powers I
+strove to attain a sense of the presence of this cause.
+
+Directly I became conscious of a power over me I felt a possibility of
+living. Then I asked myself what was this cause, and what was my
+relation to what I called God? Simply the old familiar answer occurred
+to me, that God is the creator, the giver of all. Yet I was dissatisfied
+and fearful, and the more I prayed, the more convinced I was that I was
+not heard. In my despair I cried aloud for mercy, but no one had mercy
+on me, and I felt as if life stagnated within me.
+
+Yet the conviction kept recurring that I must have appeared in this
+world with some motive on the part of some one who had sent me into it.
+If I had been sent here, who sent me? I had not been like a fledgling
+flung out of a nest to perish. Some one had cared for me, had loved me.
+Who was it? Again came the same answer, God. He knew and saw my fear, my
+despair, and so I passed from the consideration of the existence of God,
+which was proved, on to that of our relation towards him as our Redeemer
+through His Son. But I felt this to be a thing apart from me and from
+the world, and this God vanished like melting ice from my eyes. Again I
+was left in despair. I felt there was nothing left but to put an end to
+my life; yet I knew that I should never do this.
+
+Thus did moods of joy and despair come and go, till one day, when I was
+listening to the sounds in a forest, and was still on that day in the
+early springtide seeking after God in my thoughts, a flash of joy
+illumined my soul. I realised that the conception of God was not God
+Himself. I felt that I had only truly lived when I believed in God. God
+is life. Live to seek God and life will not be without Him. The light
+that then shone never left me. Thus I was saved from self-destruction.
+Gradually I felt the glow and strength of life return to me. I renounced
+the life of my own class, because it was unreal, and its luxurious
+superfluity rendered comprehension of life impossible. The simple men
+around me, the working classes, were the real Russian people. To them I
+turned. They made the meaning of life clear. It may thus be expressed:--
+
+Each of us is so created by God that he may ruin or save his soul. To
+save his soul, a man must live after God's word by humility, charity,
+and endurance, while renouncing all the pleasures of life. This is for
+the common people the meaning of the whole system of faith,
+traditionally delivered to them from the past and administered to them
+by the pastors of the Church.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PASQUALE VILLARI
+
+
+The Life of Girolamo Savonarola
+
+
+     Pasquale Villari was born October 3, 1827, at Naples. At the
+     age of twenty he produced his first literary effort, a Liberal
+     manifesto against Neapolitan Bourbonism, which necessitated
+     his flight from his native city. He retreated to Florence and
+     there wrote his work on "Savonarola," which at once achieved
+     fame and was translated into French, German, and English. His
+     next great book was his "Macchiavelli." Villari had been
+     appointed Professor of History at Nice, but left that city for
+     a similar position at Florence. He entered political life in
+     1862, and has sat as a Parliamentary Deputy several times. In
+     1884 he was made senator, and in 1891 he was minister of
+     public instruction in the Rudini Cabinet. Villari's essays on
+     Dante are much esteemed. His treatise on "The First Two
+     Centuries of Florentine History" is considered a standard
+     work. All his books have been translated into our language by
+     his English wife, Linda Villari, who is herself an
+     accomplished authoress.
+
+
+_I.--1452-1494_
+
+
+The House of Savonarola derived its ancient origin from the city of
+Padua. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the family removed to
+Ferrara where, on September 21, 1452, the subject of this biography,
+Girolamo Savonarola, first saw the light. He was the third of seven
+children of his parents. The lad became the favourite of his
+grandfather, Michele, who wished to see him become a great physician,
+and devoted most assiduous care on the task of training his intellect.
+But unfortunately the grandfather soon passed away, and Girolamo's
+studies were then directed by his father, who began to instruct him in
+philosophy.
+
+The natural sciences were then only branches of philosophy, and the
+latter, though employed as preliminary to the study of medicine, was
+purely scholastic. The books which came into the hands of the young
+Savonarola were the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Arabic
+commentaries on Aristotle. He was specially fascinated with the works of
+St. Thomas, but besides literature he studied music. He also composed
+verses.
+
+All particulars, however, of Savonarola's boyhood are unfortunately
+lacking. But we can form a vivid idea of the surroundings which must
+have influenced him. Ferrara was then the splendid capital of the House
+of Este, with 100,000 inhabitants and a court which was one of the first
+in Italy, and was continually visited by princes, emperors, and popes.
+The lad must have witnessed gorgeous pageants, like the two which
+occurred on visits of Pope Pius II., in 1459 and 1460. But during all
+this period Savonarola was entirely absorbed in studying the Scriptures
+and St. Thomas Aquinas, allowing himself no recreation save playing sad
+music on his lute, or writing verses expressing, not without force and
+simplicity, the griefs of his heart.
+
+The contrasts that the youth witnessed between the magnificence
+ostentatiously displayed and the evidences of tyranny in palaces and
+castles in whose dungeons were immured numerous victims, clanking their
+chains, made indelible impressions on his mind. Conducted once by his
+parents to the ducal palace at Ferrara, he firmly refused ever to enter
+its doors again. With singular spiritual fervour in one so young,
+Savonarola surrendered his whole heart and soul to religious sentiments
+and exercises. To him worldly life, as he saw all Ferrara absorbed in
+its gaieties, became utterly repellent, and a sermon to which he
+listened from an Augustinian friar determined him to adopt the monastic
+life.
+
+April 24, 1475, when his parents were absent from home attending the
+festival of St. George, he ran away to Bologna and presented himself at
+the Monastery of St. Dominic, begging that he might be admitted for the
+most menial service. He was instantly received, and at once began to
+prepare for his novitiate. In this retreat he submitted himself to the
+severest penances and discipline and displayed such excessive zeal and
+devotion as to win the admiration of the monks, who at times believed
+him to be rapt in a holy trance.
+
+
+_II.--1475-1481_
+
+
+Savonarola's sojourn at Bologna in the Dominican Monastery lasted for
+seven years, during which his spirit was occupied not only with faith
+and prayer, but with deep meditation on the miserable condition of the
+Church. His soul was stirred to wrathful indignation. The shocking
+corruption of the Papacy, dating from the death of Pius II. in 1464, was
+to reach its climax under Alexander VI. The avarice of Paul II. was soon
+noted by all the world, and so boundless was the profligacy of his
+successor, Sixtus IV., that no deed was too scandalous for him to
+commit.
+
+The state of Italy as well as of the Church was miserable, and the soul
+of the young monk was filled with horror-stricken grief, relieved only
+by study and prayer. He had been much occupied in instructing the
+novices, but now he was promoted to the function of preacher. In 1481 he
+was sent by his superiors to preach in Ferrara. Nothing is known of the
+effect of the sermons he delivered at that time and place. Savonarola
+had not yet developed his gifts of oratory. He was driven from Ferrara
+by an outbreak of war with the Venetians, and repaired to Florence,
+where, in the Monastery of St. Mark the brightest as well as the saddest
+years of his life were to be spent. The Monastery contained the first
+public library established in Italy, which was kept in excellent order
+by the monks.
+
+Savonarola was half intoxicated with joy during his first days in
+Florence. He was charmed by the soft lines of the Tuscan hills and the
+beauty of the Tuscan speech. Lorenzo the Magnificent had been ruling
+Florence for many years and was then at the climacteric of his fame.
+Under his sway everything appeared to prosper. Enemies had been
+imprisoned or banished, and factions had ceased to distract the city.
+Lorenzo's shameless licentiousness was condoned by reason of his
+brilliancy, his patronage of art and literature, and his lavish public
+entertainments.
+
+Greek scholars, driven westward by the fall of Constantinople, sought
+refuge at the Florentine court. The fine arts flourished and a Platonic
+Academy was established. It was even proposed that the Pope should
+canonise Plato as a saint. In fact that period witnessed the
+inauguration of modern culture.
+
+
+_III.--1481-1490_
+
+
+After the first few days in Florence, Savonarola again began to
+experience the feeling of isolation. For he speedily detected the
+unbelief and frivolity under the surface of the intellectual culture of
+the people. Even in St. Mark's Monastery there was no real religion.
+Savonarola was soon invited to preach the Lenten sermons in St. Lorenzo.
+His discourses produced no special effect, for the Florentines preferred
+preachers who indulged in Pagan quotations and rhetorical elegancies
+rather than in expatiating in the precepts of Christianity. But a
+stirring event was at hand.
+
+Savonarola was sent by his superiors to Reggio to attend a Chapter of
+the Dominicans. During the discussion he was suddenly impelled to rise
+to his feet and to plunge into a powerful declamation against the
+corruptions of the Church and the clergy which transfixed his hearers
+with astonishment. This outburst was a revelation of his extraordinary
+powers. It instantly secured his fame and from that moment many sought
+his acquaintance.
+
+Savonarola's mind from that moment became strangely excited and it is
+not surprising that he should have seen many visions. He on one occasion
+saw the heavens open. A panorama of the calamities of the Church passed
+before him and he heard a voice charging him to proclaim them to the
+people. In that year, 1484, Pope Sixtus died. The election of his
+successor, Innocent VIII. destroyed the hopes of honest men. For the new
+Pope no longer disguised his children under the appellation of nephews,
+but openly acknowledged them as his sons, conferring on them the title
+of princes.
+
+We may imagine the storms of emotion excited in the soul of Savonarola.
+Fortunately, he was sent to preach Lenten sermons at San Gimignano, the
+"City of the Grey Towers" in the Siennese hills. Here he found his true
+vocation. His words flowed freely and were eloquent and effective. Next
+he was sent to Brescia, where his predictions of coming terrors and his
+exhortations to repentance produced a profound impression. During the
+sack of that same city in 1512 by the fierce soldiers of Gaston de Foix,
+when 6,000 citizens were slain, the stricken people vividly remembered
+the Apocalyptic denunciations and predictions of the preacher from
+Ferrara.
+
+Through the wonderful success of these Lenten sermons the name of
+Savonarola became known throughout Italy, and he no longer felt
+uncertain as to his proper mission. Yet, the more popular he became the
+greater was his humility and the more ardent was his devotion to prayer.
+He seemed when engaged in prayer frequently to lapse into a trance, and
+tradition even alleges that at such times a bright halo was seen to
+encircle his head.
+
+
+_IV.--1491_
+
+
+Returning to Florence, Savonarola by his Lenten sermons in 1491 drew
+immense crowds to the Duomo. From that moment he became the paramount
+power in the pulpit. His vivid imagery and his predictions of coming
+troubles seemed to produce a magical effect on the minds of the people.
+But this growing influence was a source of considerable vexation to
+Lorenzo de' Medici and his friends. Savonarola vehemently denounced the
+greed of the clergy and their neglect of spiritual life for the sake of
+mere external ceremonialism, and he with equal insistence inveighed
+against the corruption of public manners. As Lorenzo was already
+considered a tyrant by many of the citizens, and as he was universally
+charged with having corrupted the magistrates and appropriated the
+public and private funds, it was generally inferred that Savonarola had
+had the audacity to make allusion to him.
+
+This only enhanced the Friar's reputation and in July, 1491, he was
+elected Prior of St. Mark's. The office made him both more prominent
+than before and also more independent. He showed this to be the case by
+at once refusing to go according to custom to do homage to the
+Magnificent, declaring that he owed his election to God alone, and to
+God only would he vow obedience. Lorenzo was deeply offended, yet he
+judged it discreet rather to win the new Prior over by kindness than to
+wage war with him.
+
+The Seignior only deepened Savonarola's contempt by sending rich gifts
+to the convent and by sending five of the chief citizens to him in order
+to induce him to modify the strain of his preaching. The gifts were
+immediately distributed among the poor, and Savonarola in a pulpit
+allusion observed that a faithful dog does not cease barking in his
+master's defence because a bone is flung him. To the five citizens, who
+hinted to the Prior that he might be sent into exile, he replied that
+they should bid Lorenzo do penance for his sins, for God was no
+respecter of persons and did not spare the princes of the earth.
+
+Wonderful was the effect of Savonarola's preaching on the corrupt and
+pagan society of Florence. His natural, spontaneous, heart-stirring
+eloquence, with its exalted imagery and outbursts of righteous
+indignation, was entirely unprecedented in that era of pedantry and
+simulation of the classic and heathen oratory. The scholastic jargon
+indulged in by the preachers of the time was utterly unintelligible to
+the common people. Savonarola's voice was the only one that addressed
+the multitude in familiar and fascinating tones and in an accent that
+evinced true affection for the people. They knew that he alone fought
+for truth and was fervently devoted to goodness. Thus he was the one
+truly eloquent preacher of the time, who restored pulpit preaching to
+its pristine honour, and he well deserves to be styled the first orator
+of modern times.
+
+
+_V.--1492-1494_
+
+
+A wasting disease from which Lorenzo suffered had by the beginning of
+April, 1492, made such inroads as to end all hopes of his recovery. The
+Magnificent turned his thoughts to religion and suddenly asked to
+confess to Savonarola. Though astonished at the request, the Prior
+acceded to it and found Lorenzo in great agitation, which he sought to
+calm by reminding the sick man of the goodness and mercy of God.
+
+A painful scene ensued. Savonarola added that three things were needful.
+First, a living faith in God's mercy. Secondly, Lorenzo must restore all
+his ill-gotten wealth, or at least command his sons to do it in his
+name. Lastly, he must restore liberty to the people of Florence. The
+sick man, collecting all his remaining strength, angrily turned his back
+on his Confessor, who at once left his presence. On April 8, 1492, the
+Magnificent, in an agony of remorse, breathed his last. On July 25 of
+the same year Pope Innocent VIII. expired.
+
+The next Pope, Alexander VI., was notorious for his avarice and his
+profligacy. The announcement of his elevation to the papal chair was
+received throughout Italy with dismay. The worst apprehensions were soon
+fulfilled, for the Pope proved to be guilty of shocking extortion, the
+object of which was to provide more lavishly for his dissolute children.
+
+This deplorable state of things caused men to look wistfully to
+Savonarola. The times he had foretold seemed to be at hand, and the
+excitement was intensified by two visions which he declared had been
+manifested to him as celestial revelations. He had seen a sword in the
+sky and had heard voices proclaiming mercy to the righteous and
+retribution to the wicked.
+
+In the other vision a black cross hung over the city of Rome, stretching
+its arms over the whole earth. On it was written, "The Cross of God's
+wrath." But from Jerusalem rose a golden cross, inscribed, "The Cross of
+God's compassion." Discontent was growing in Florence. The insolence and
+the rapacity of Pietro de' Medici increased. In the autumn of that year
+Savonarola delivered a famous course of sermons on Noah's Ark, warning
+all to take refuge from the coming flood in the mystical Ark of mercy.
+The flood came indeed, for suddenly all Florence was startled as if by a
+thunderclap by the news that a foreign army was pouring over the Alps
+for the conquest of Italy. The terror was overwhelming. Italy was
+unprepared, for the princes had no efficient armies for resistance.
+
+The invader was the new King of France, the young and adventurous
+Charles VIII. His army was a model to all Europe in the art of war. It
+possessed weapons of the latest invention and its main strength lay in
+its splendid infantry. Florence was entered without a blow, and King
+Charles demanded as a ransom a far larger sum than the Republic could
+pay. He remained day after day in the city, showing no inclination to
+depart. Then was manifested a proof of the wonderful influence of
+Savonarola's personality.
+
+The Prior being earnestly entreated by the citizens to ask the French
+king to depart, he readily undertook the mission and presented himself
+to Charles, who, surrounded by his barons, received him cordially and
+listened graciously to his proposal. Savonarola admonished him not to
+bring ruin on the city and the anger of the Lord on himself.
+
+The Prior's overtures were completely successful, for on November 28,
+the king departed with his army. And now all was changed in Florence.
+The partisans of the Medici had vanished magically and Savonarola ruled
+the city at the head of the popular party. He speedily proposed a new
+form of government suggesting as the best model, a Grand Council like
+that of Venice. The new Government was formed of a Grand Council and a
+Council of Eighty answering to an Assembly of the People and a Senate.
+All the proposals of the Prior were adopted, and laws were framed almost
+in his own words.
+
+
+_VI.--1495-1497_
+
+
+Germs of civil discord were not lacking, and these soon developed so as
+to divide Florence into factions, the two chief of these being the
+Whites, who were favourable to popular liberty, and the Greys, who were
+adherents of the Medici. The latter were dangerous and treacherous
+enemies of Savonarola and of the Republic. For a time the Prior's
+preaching confounded his foes, for it completely changed the aspect of
+the city. The women cast off their jewels and dressed simply; young
+profligates were transformed into sober, religious men, the churches
+were filled with people at prayer, and the Bible was diligently read.
+
+Now came danger from without. The departure of the French had endangered
+the security of Florence. The Pope and Venice desired the reinstatement
+of the fallen tyrant Pietro de' Medici, and he prepared to attack the
+city. But he was foiled by the energy to which the Prior roused the
+Florentines for measures of defence. Meantime, Savonarola once more
+displayed his noble independence by spurning the offer on the part of
+the Pope of a Cardinal's hat. And terrible in their vehemence and
+audacity were his denunciations against the vices of Rome, delivered in
+his Lenten sermons of 1496.
+
+In his usual strain, but with increasing power, Savonarola graphically
+and vividly described the woes of Italy, as though he were gifted with
+prophetic vision. One of his sermons was interdicted by the Pope, but
+the preacher modified nothing and defied the Vatican. And now, while the
+enthusiasm of his followers was developing into fanaticism, the hatred
+of his enemies was approaching a climax, and the war was waxing furious.
+
+The fame of this marvellous preacher was now extending throughout the
+world by means of his printed sermons. Even the Sultan of Turkey
+commanded them to be translated into Turkish for his own study. Of
+course the individual aim of Savonarola was simply to be the regenerator
+of religion. The Florentines, however, adulated him as the real founder
+of the free Republic. Hence they displayed immense ardour in defending
+him against the Pope, seeing that thus they were upholding their own
+freedom, because the Pope was aiming at reinstating the Medici in
+Florence.
+
+The Pope had hoped that the Prior would moderate his tone, but this was
+only more aggressive than ever, and threatening messages arrived from
+the Vatican. Attempts by his friends, some of them of high and
+influential position, to defend him, only the more enraged Pope
+Alexander Borgia. He summoned a consistory of fourteen Dominican
+theologians who were ordered to investigate Savonarola's conduct and
+doctrine. The strange issue was he was charged with having been the
+cause of all the misfortunes that had befallen Pietro de' Medici.
+
+After Lent the Prior went to preach a course of sermons at Prato, and on
+his return to Florence he delivered a sermon in the Hall of the Greater
+Council in the presence of all the magistrates and leading citizens of
+the city, in which he openly and courageously defied all the wrath of
+Alexander Borgia. Then he once more set himself to the work of serving
+the Republic, though, as the sequel shows, he was fated to meet with a
+base reward.
+
+Commerce and industry had been paralysed in Florence by the incessant
+commotions of past years. The immense sums paid to the French king had
+together with sums spent on war drained the public resources and lowered
+the credit of the Republic. And now famine was threatened, for the
+people in the rural districts were pinched with hunger. The starving
+peasantry began to flock in great numbers into the city, so that the
+misery increased. Terror was occasioned by a few cases of death from
+plague. Florence was at war with Pisa, but without success, for many of
+her mercenary soldiers were deserting and the forces besieging Pisa were
+dwindling for lack of supplies.
+
+Fresh adversities were in store for the Florentines. Though the rumours
+of a second invasion of Italy by King Charles proved unfounded, for he
+renounced all idea of returning, new enemies arose. The Emperor
+Maximilian was marching towards the frontier, and the Pope felt
+encouraged to enter into open war with the Florentines. His forces and
+the troops from Sienna actually attempted an incursion into the
+territories of the Republic, but they suffered repeated repulses, and at
+length were put to flight. But this conflict weakened still more the
+forces before Pisa, at which city Maximilian arrived with 1,000 foot
+soldiers, receiving a cordial welcome from the Pisans.
+
+The Florentines did not quail before the storm. Their courage never
+failed. They collected fresh stores and sent abundant provisions to the
+camp. But the hatred of the Pope grew more intense, especially against
+Savonarola, who, however, had not returned to the pulpit, being actuated
+by a wish not to accentuate the situation. For the general misery in
+Florence daily increased and the plague was extending its ravages. The
+hospitals were full. And the faction against Savonarola, named the
+Arrabbiati, seemed positively to regard the distress with glee, for
+these fanatics went about crying aloud, "At last we can all perceive how
+we have been deceived! This is the happiness that the Friar predicted
+for Florence!" Moreover they proclaimed that now was the time to
+overthrow the Government.
+
+But the Seigniory entreated Savonarola to come forth again from his
+retirement. He entered the pulpit on October 28, but only to look on
+people whose faces were marked by distress and terror. Yet his sermons
+administered such comfort to the citizens who in the majority still
+adhered to him, though the Arrabbiati mocked at his words. Temporary
+relief was at hand, for suddenly, as if by a miracle, ships arrived from
+Marseilles bringing long-expected reinforcements and supplies of corn.
+The people were frantic with joy and solemn thanksgivings were offered
+in the churches.
+
+The Pope was now designing measures to entrap the Prior. A new
+Vicar-General was appointed with power which would invest him with such
+authority over Savonarola that the latter would lose his independence.
+But he displayed no disposition to yield to Rome. On the contrary, he
+delivered in the Duomo those eight magnificent, fearless, and immortal
+sermons which intensified the bitter struggle with Rome, while for the
+time being they made the great Reformer's name and authority again
+ascendant, and rendered the popular party once more master of the
+situation, notwithstanding the strategy of the Pope and the machinations
+of the factions.
+
+
+_VII.--1497-1498_
+
+
+During Lent, 1497, Savonarola continued his course of sermons on
+Ezekiel, and in these discourses he said much that bore on the conflict
+with Rome, now daily growing more virulent. He inveighed against the
+temporal wealth of the Church and launched many accusations against
+Rome. The impression produced was the deeper because of the general
+presentiment in men's minds of the coming uprising of Christendom
+against the abominations of Rome.
+
+Savonarola now daily expected to be excommunicated and he was determined
+to defy the Pope. The plague increased in Florence and the Seigniory
+prohibited preaching in the churches for a time, but Savonarola
+persisted in preaching on Ascension Day. The factions were infuriated.
+They denied the pulpit with filth and draped it with the skin of an ass,
+and threatened the life of the Prior. His friends implored him not to
+preach at the risk of his life. He refused to yield, but a fearful riot
+took place in the church which was talked of through all Italy.
+
+The storm was now gathering. The fury of the factions increased, as also
+did the wrath of the Pope. At length, on May 13, the excommunicatory
+brief was despatched from Rome, directed against a "certain Fra Girolamo
+Savonarola who had disseminated pernicious doctrines to the scandal and
+grief of simple souls." The event threw all Florence into confusion. The
+Arrabbiati were triumphant. But the city was filled with lamentation and
+disorder. The rabble rejoiced. The churches were quickly deserted; the
+taverns were filled; immorality returned as if magically; and again
+women attired in dazzling finery paraded the streets. In less than a
+month, so rapid was the transformation, Florence seemed to have relapsed
+into the days of the Magnificent, and piety and patriotism were alike
+forgotten.
+
+Meantime, the Prior was calm and composed and took measures for his
+defence. He wrote an Epistle against surreptitious excommunication,
+addressed to all Christians beloved of God. He followed it by a second
+letter, also breathing courage and defiance. A conflict ensued. The
+Arrabbiati sent accusations against the Prior to Rome, while the
+Seigniory sought to vindicate him, most of the members, newly elected,
+being his friends. The plague grew so terrible that on some days there
+were a hundred deaths. In the autumn it abated, and gradually
+disappeared. Savonarola's energy in fighting the pestilence was
+unwearied throughout.
+
+The Prior soon commenced to preach again. On Christmas Day he put an end
+to all suspense as to his policy by thrice performing high mass,
+afterwards leading his monks in solemn procession through St. Mark's
+Square. He continued to issue new tracts and to preach regularly. But on
+February 26 the Pope announced that Savonarola's preaching should be
+tolerated no longer. The Prior was conscious that the end was near. His
+last sermon was delivered, after he had preached in Florence for eight
+years, on March 18, 1498. His adherents were terrified, and seemed to
+vanish.
+
+On April 8, Palm Sunday, the Arrabbiati attacked St. Mark's Convent.
+Savonarola was seized and bound by a brutal rabble, and he and two of
+his monks were lodged in prison. Cruel proceedings followed. For a whole
+month he was brought day after day to examination and he was repeatedly
+subjected to torture. The Pope's Commissioners were never able to
+extract from him any confession of guilt. Savonarola was from first to
+last unflinchingly consistent with himself.
+
+On May 22 sentence of death was passed on Savonarola, on Fra Silvestro,
+and on Fra Domenico. They prepared to face death firmly and well. The
+tragedy was enacted next morning. Three platforms had been erected on
+the steps of the Ringhiera, on which sat the Bishop of Vasona, the
+Apostolic Commissioners, and the Gonfaliero with the Council of Eight.
+On a gibbet in the form of a cross hung three chains, and combustibles
+were piled beneath. Sad and solemn was the silence of the vast throng
+assembled in the Piazza, excepting where members of the factions were
+raging like wild beasts and venting indecent blasphemies.
+
+The three friars were publicly stripped of their monkish robes and
+degraded. Tranquilly they mounted the scaffold, the dregs of the
+populace assailing them with vile words. But silence reigned at the
+moment of the execution. As soon as life was extinct the flames were
+kindled beneath the bodies of the three victims. The tragic and awful
+spectacle elicited bitter grief amongst the people on the one side,
+while cries of wild exultation were raised on the other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN WESLEY
+
+
+Journal
+
+
+     John Wesley, who was born June 17, 1703, at Epworth, and who
+     died in London March 2, 1791, was the son of a Lincolnshire
+     rector. His history covers practically the whole of the
+     eighteenth century, of which he was one of the most typical
+     personalities, as he was certainly the most strenuous figure.
+     His career was absolutely without parallel, for John Wesley,
+     as an itinerating clergyman, and as the propagator of that
+     mission of Methodism which he founded, travelled on his
+     preaching tours for forty years, mostly on horseback. He paid
+     more turnpike fees than any man that ever bestrode a horse,
+     and 8,000 miles constituted his annual record for many a year,
+     during each of which he preached on the average 5,000 times.
+     John Wesley received a classical education at Charterhouse and
+     Christ Church, Oxford, and all through his wonderful life of
+     endurance and adventure, of devotion and consecration,
+     remained a scholar and a gentleman. His "Journal" is valuable
+     for its pictures of the England of his day, as well as for his
+     own simple and unpretending record of his experiences. Wesley
+     made religion his business and incorporated it into the
+     national life. Of him Mr. Augustine Birrell says:--"No man
+     lived nearer the centre than John Wesley. Neither Clive nor
+     Pitt, neither Mansfield nor Johnson. You cannot cut him out of
+     our national life. No single figure influenced so many minds,
+     no single voice touched so many hearts. No other man did such
+     a life's work for England."
+
+
+_The Holy Club_
+
+
+In November 1729, at which time I came to reside at Oxford, Mr. Morgan,
+my brother, myself, and one more, agreed to spend three or four evenings
+in a week together. Our design was to read over the classics, which we
+had before read in private, on common nights, and on Sunday some book in
+divinity. In the summer following, Mr. M. told me he had called at the
+gaol, to see a man who was condemned for killing his wife; and that,
+from the talk he had with one of the debtors, he verily believed it
+would do much good, if any one would be at the pains of now and then
+speaking with them.
+
+This he so frequently repeated, that on August 24, 1730, my brother and
+I walked with him to the castle. We were so well satisfied with our
+conversation there, that we agreed to go thither once or twice a week;
+which we had not done long, before he desired me to go with him to see a
+poor sick woman in the town.
+
+I next proposed to Mr. Gerard, the Bishop of Oxford's chaplain, who took
+care of any prisoners condemned to die, that I intended to preach in the
+prison once a month, if the bishop approved. Our design was approved and
+permission was granted. Soon after a gentleman of Merton College, who
+was one of our little company, now consisting of five persons,
+acquainted us that he had been much rallied the day before for being a
+member of the Holy Club, and that it was become a common topic of mirth
+at his college, where they had found out several of our customs, to
+which we were ourselves utter strangers.
+
+I corresponded with my father, and from him received encouragement, so
+that we still continued to meet as usual, and to do what service we
+could to the prisoners, and to two or three poor families in the town.
+
+
+_A Missioner to Georgia_
+
+
+1735. Oct. 14. Mr. Benjamin Ingham, of Queen's College, Oxford; Mr.
+Charles Delamotte, son of a London merchant, my brother Charles, and
+myself, took boat for Gravesend, in order to embark for Georgia. Our end
+in leaving our country was singly this, to save our souls; to live
+wholly to the glory of God. In the afternoon we found the "Simmonds" off
+Gravesend, and immediately went on board.
+
+Oct. 17. I began to learn German, in order to converse with the 26
+Germans on board. On Sunday I preached extempore and then administered
+the Lord's supper to seven communicants.
+
+Oct. 20. Believing the denying ourselves might be helpful, we wholly
+left off the use of flesh and wine, and confined ourselves to vegetable
+food, chiefly rice and biscuit.
+
+1736. Feb. 5. After a passage in which storms were frequent, between two
+and three in the afternoon, God brought us all safe into the Savannah
+river. We cast anchor near Tybee Island, where the groves of pines along
+the shore made an agreeable prospect, showing, as it were, the bloom of
+spring in the depth of winter.
+
+Sunday, March 7. I entered upon my ministry at Savannah. I do here bear
+witness against myself, that when I saw the number of people crowding
+into the church, the deep attention with which they received the word,
+and the seriousness that sat on all their faces, I could hardly believe
+that the greater part of them would hereafter trample under foot that
+word, and say all manner of evil falsely against him that spake it.
+
+March 30. Mr. Delamotte and I began to try, whether life might not be as
+well sustained by one sort as by a variety of food. We chose to make the
+experiment with bread, and were never more vigorous and healthy than
+while we tasted nothing else.
+
+June 30. I hoped a door was opened for my main design, which was to
+preach the gospel to the Indians, and I purposed to go immediately to
+the Choctaws, the least polished, that is, the least corrupted of the
+tribes. On my informing Lieutenant-Governor Oglethorpe of our wish, he
+objected, alleging not only danger from the French, but also the
+inexpediency of leaving Savannah without a minister. These objections I
+related to our brethren, who were all of opinion, "We ought not to go
+yet."
+
+
+_Warrant for Wesley's Arrest_
+
+
+July 3. Preaching at Charlestown, immediately after communion I
+mentioned to Mrs. Williamson (Mr. Causton's niece) some things I thought
+reprovable in her behaviour. At this she appeared extremely angry.
+
+Aug. 7. I repelled Mrs. Williamson from the holy communion. And next day
+Mr. Recorder, of Savannah, issued out a warrant for my arrest. Mr.
+Jones, the constable, served the warrant, and carried me before Mr.
+Bailiff Parker and Mr. Recorder. I was told that I must appear at the
+next court. Mr. Causton came to my house and declared that the affront
+had been offered to him; that he espoused the cause of his niece; that
+he was ill-used, and that he would have satisfaction if it was to be had
+in this world.
+
+To many persons Mr. Causton declared that "Mr. Wesley had repelled Sophy
+from holy communion purely out of revenge, because he had made proposals
+of marriage to her which she had rejected, and married Mr. Williamson."
+But when the case came on the grand jury, having heard the charge,
+declared themselves thoroughly persuaded that it was an artifice of Mr.
+Causton's designed "rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley, than
+to free the colony from religious tyranny, as he had been pleased to
+term it."
+
+Oct. 7. I consulted my friends whether God did not call me to return to
+England. I had found no possibility of instructing the Indians. They
+were unanimous that I ought to go, but not yet. But subsequently they
+agreed with me that the time was come.
+
+
+_In London Again_
+
+
+1738. Feb. 1. Landed at Deal. It is now two years and almost four months
+since I left my native country. After reading prayers and explaining a
+portion of Scripture to a large company at the inn, I left Deal, and
+came in the evening to Feversham. I here read prayers and explained the
+second lesson to a few of those who were called Christians, but were
+indeed more savage in their behaviour than the wildest Indians I have
+yet met with.
+
+Feb. 26. Sunday. I preached at six in the morning at St. Lawrence's,
+London; at ten, in St. Catherine Cree's; and in the afternoon at St.
+John's, Wapping. I believe it pleased God to bless the first sermon
+most, because it gave most offence.
+
+March 4. I found my brother at Oxford, and with him Peter Böhler; by
+whom, in the great hand of God, I was, on Sunday, the 5th, clearly
+convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are
+saved. Immediately it struck into my mind, "Leave off preaching. How can
+you preach to others who have not faith yourself?" I asked Böhler
+whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered, "By no
+means." I asked, "But what can I preach?" He said, "Preach faith till
+you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith."
+
+Accordingly, Monday, 6, I began preaching this new doctrine, though my
+soul started back from the work. The first person to whom I offered
+salvation through faith alone, was a prisoner under sentence of death.
+
+On Tuesday 25, I spoke clearly and fully at Blendon to Mr. Delamotte's
+family of the nature and fruits of faith. Mr. Broughton and my brother
+were there. Mr. Broughton's great objection was, he could never think
+that I had not faith, who had done and suffered such things. My brother
+was very angry, and told me I did not know what mischief I had done by
+talking thus. And, indeed, it did please God to kindle a fire which I
+trust shall never be extinguished.
+
+On May 1 our little society began, which afterwards met in Fetter Lane.
+May 3. My brother had a long and particular conversation with Peter
+Böhler. And it now pleased God to open his eyes; so that he also saw
+clearly what was the nature of that one true living faith, thereby
+alone, "through grace we are saved."
+
+Sunday 7. I preached at St. Lawrence's in the morning; and afterwards at
+St. Catherine Cree's. I was enabled to speak strong words at both; and
+was therefore the less surprised at being informed I was not to preach
+any more in either of those churches. I was likewise after preaching the
+next Sunday at St. Ann's, Aldersgate, and the following Sunday at St.
+John's, Wapping and at St. Bennett's, Paul's Wharf, that at these
+churches I must preach no more.
+
+1739. March 28. A letter from Mr. Whitefield, and another from Mr.
+Seward, pressed me to come to Bristol. I reached Bristol March 31 and
+met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarcely at first reconcile myself to
+the strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me the
+example, for all my life I should have thought the saving of souls
+almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church; but I now proclaimed
+in the highways the glad tidings of salvation speaking in the open air
+to about three thousand people.
+
+May 9. We took possession of a piece of ground in the Horse Fair,
+Bristol, where it was designed to build a room large enough to contain
+both the societies of Nicholas and Baldwin Street; and on May 12 the
+first stone was laid with thanksgiving. The responsibility of payment I
+took entirely on myself. Money I had not, it is true, nor any human
+prospect of procuring it; but I knew "the earth is the Lord's and the
+fulness thereof."
+
+
+_Beau Nash Argues with Wesley_
+
+
+June 5. There was great expectation at Bath of what a noted man was to
+do to me there. Many appeared surprised and were sinking apace into
+seriousness when their champion came up to me and asked by what
+authority I did these things. I replied, "By the authority of Jesus
+Christ, conveyed to me by the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his
+hands on me." He said, "This is contrary to the Act of Parliament; this
+is a conventicle. Besides, your preaching frightens people out of their
+wits."
+
+"Give me leave, Sir, to ask, is not your name Nash?" "My name is Nash."
+An old woman said to him, "You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we
+take care of our souls; and for the food of our souls we come here." He
+replied not a word, but walked away.
+
+
+_"All the World My Parish"_
+
+
+All this time I had many thoughts concerning my manner of ministering;
+but after frequently laying it before the Lord, I could not but adhere
+to what I had some time since written to a friend--"I look on all the
+world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part I am of it,
+I judge it meet to declare to all who are willing to hear, the glad
+tidings of salvation."
+
+June 14. I went with Mr. Whitefield to Blackheath, where were, I
+believe, 12,000 people. He a little surprised me by desiring me to
+preach in his stead; and I was greatly moved with compassion for the
+rich that were there, to whom I made a particular application. Some of
+them seemed to attend, while others drove away their coaches from so
+uncouth a preacher.
+
+Sunday 24. As I was riding to Rose Green, near Bristol, my horse
+suddenly pitched on his head, and rolled over and over. I received no
+other hurt than a little bruise on my side; which for the present I felt
+not, but preached without pain to seven thousand people.
+
+Sept. 16. I preached at Moorfields to about ten thousand, and at
+Kennington Common to near twenty thousand. At both places I described
+the real difference between what is generally called Christianity and
+the real old Christianity, which under the new name of Methodism is now
+everywhere spoken against.
+
+
+_The Colliers of Kingswood_
+
+
+Nov. 27. Few persons have lived in the west of England who have not
+heard of the colliers of Kingswood, famous for neither regarding God nor
+man. The scene is changed. Kingswood does not now, as a year ago,
+resound with cursing and blasphemy. Peace and love reign there since the
+preaching of the Gospel in the spring. Great numbers of the people are
+gentle, mild, and easy to be entreated.
+
+1745. July 3. At Gwennap, in Cornwall, I was seized for a soldier. As I
+was reading my text a man rode up and cried "Seize the preacher for his
+Majesty's service." As the people would not do it, he leaped off his
+horse, and caught hold of my cassock, crying, "I take you to serve his
+Majesty." He walked off with me and talked with me for some time, but
+then let me go.
+
+
+_In Ireland_
+
+
+1748. April 9. I preached in Connaught, a few miles from Athlone. Many
+heard, but, I doubt, felt nothing. The Shannon comes within a mile of
+the house where I preached. I think there is not such another river in
+Europe. It is here ten miles wide, though only thirty miles from its
+source. There are many islands in it, once well inhabited, but now
+mostly desolate. In almost every one is a ruined church; in one, the
+remains of no fewer than seven.
+
+1750. May 21. At Bandon the mob burnt me in effigy. Yet, though Dr. B.
+tried to stir up the people against me more and more, and a clergyman,
+said to be in drink, opposed me, and some young gentlemen came on the
+scene with pistols in their hands, I was enabled to preach. God gave me
+great peace in Bandon, in spite of these efforts against me.
+
+May 31. I rode to Rathcormuck. There being a great burying in the
+afternoon, to which people came from all parts, I preached after Mr.
+Lloyd had read the service. I was exceedingly shocked at (what I had
+only heard of before) the Irish howl which followed. It was not a song,
+as I supposed, but a dismal, inarticulate yell, set up at the grave by
+four shrill-voiced women, hired for the purpose. But I saw not one that
+shed a tear; for that, it seems, was not in their bargain.
+
+
+_Clothing French Prisoners_
+
+
+1759. Oct. 1. At Bristol. I had ridden in about seven months not less
+than 2,400 miles. On Monday, Oct. 15, I went to Knowle, a mile from
+Bristol, to see the French prisoners. About 1,100 were there confined,
+with only a little dirty straw to lie on, so that they died like rotten
+sheep. I was much affected, and after I had preached the sum of £18 was
+contributed immediately, which next day we made up to £24. With this we
+bought linen and woollen cloth, and this was made up into clothing for
+the prisoners. Presently after, the Corporation of Bristol sent a large
+quantity of mattresses and blankets. And it was not long before
+contributions were set on foot in London, and other parts of the
+country; so that I believe that from this time they were pretty well
+provided with the necessaries of life.
+
+
+_Gwennap's Famous Amphitheatre_
+
+
+1766. Sept. 14. I preached in the natural amphitheatre at Gwennap; far
+the finest I know in the kingdom. It is a round, green hollow, gently
+shelving down, about 50 feet deep; but I suppose it is 200 feet across
+one way, and nearly 300 the other. I believe there were full 20,000
+people; and, the evening being calm, all could hear.
+
+1770. April 21. I rode slowly on this and the following days through
+Staffordshire and Cheshire to Manchester. In this journey, as well as in
+many others, I observed a mistake that almost universally prevails; and
+I desire all travellers to take good notice of it, which may save them
+from both trouble and danger. Near 30 years ago I was thinking, "How is
+it that no horse ever stumbles while I am reading?" (History, poetry,
+and philosophy I commonly read on horseback, having other employment at
+other times.) No account can possibly be given but this: because then I
+throw the reins on his neck. I then set myself to observe; and I aver,
+that in riding above 100,000 miles I scarce ever remember my horse
+(except two, that would fall head over heels anyway) to fall, or make a
+considerable stumble, while I rode with a slack rein. To fancy,
+therefore, that a tight rein prevents stumbling, is a capital blunder.
+
+1771. Jan. 23. For what cause I know not to this day, my wife set out
+for Newcastle, purposing "never to return." _Non eam reliqui: non
+dimisi: non revocabo._ (I did not desert her: I did not send her away: I
+will not recall her.)
+
+
+_The American War_
+
+
+1775. In November I published the following letter in Lloyd's "Evening
+Post":
+
+"Sir--I have been seriously asked from what motive I published my _Calm
+Address to the American Colonies_? I seriously answer, Not to get money;
+not to get preferment; not to please any man living; least of all to
+inflame any; just the contrary. I contributed my mite towards putting
+out the flame that rages. This I have more opportunity to see than any
+man in England. I see with pain to what a height this already rises, in
+every part of the nation. And I see many pouring oil into the flame, by
+crying out, 'How unjustly, how cruelly, the King is using the poor
+Americans; who are only contending for their liberty, and for their
+legal privileges.'
+
+"Now there is no possible way to put out this flame, or hinder its
+rising higher and higher, but to show that the Americans are not used
+either cruelly or unjustly; that they are not injured at all, seeing
+they are not contending for liberty (this they had, even in its full
+extent, both civil and religious); neither for any legal privileges; for
+they enjoy all that their charters grant. But what they contend for is,
+the illegal privilege of being exempt from parliamentary taxation. A
+privilege this, which no charter ever gave to any American colony yet;
+which no charter can give, unless it be confirmed both by King, Lords,
+and Commons; which in fact our Colonies never had; which they never
+claimed till the present reign; and probably they would not have claimed
+now, had they not been incited thereto by letters from England. One of
+these was read, according to the desire of the writer, not only at the
+Continental Congress but likewise in many congregations throughout the
+Combined Provinces. It advised them to seize upon all the King's
+officers; and exhorted them, 'Stand valiantly, only for six months, and
+in that time there will be such commotions in England that you may have
+your own terms.' This being the real state of the question, without any
+colouring or exaggeration, what impartial man can either blame the King,
+or commend the Americans? With this view, to quench the fire, by laying
+the blame where it was due, the 'Calm Address' was written.
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+JOHN WESLEY."
+
+
+_City Road Chapel Begun_
+
+
+1777. April 21. The day appointed for laying the foundation of the new
+chapel. The rain befriended us much, by keeping away thousands who
+proposed to be there. But there were still such multitudes, that it was
+with great difficulty I got through them, to lay the first stone. Upon
+this was a plate of brass (covered with another stone) on which was
+engraved, "This was laid by Mr. John Wesley, on April 21, 1777."
+Probably this will be seen no more, by any human eye; but will remain
+there, till the earth and the works thereof are burned up.
+
+1778. Dec. 17. Having been many times desired, for near forty years, to
+publish a magazine, I at length complied, and now began to collect
+materials for it. If it once begin, I incline to think it will not end
+but with my life. Just at this time there was a combination among many
+of the postchaise drivers on the Bath road, especially those that drove
+in the night, to deliver their passengers into each other's hands. One
+driver stopped at the spot they had appointed, when another waited to
+attack the chaise. In consequence of this many were robbed; but I had a
+good Protector still. I have travelled all roads, by day and by night,
+for these forty years, and never was interrupted yet.
+
+June 28. I am this day 75 years old; and I do not find myself, blessed
+be God, any weaker than I was at 25. This also hath God wrought.
+
+
+_Attended by Felons_
+
+
+1779. July 21. When I came to Coventry, I found notice had been given
+for my preaching in the park; but the heavy rain prevented. I sent to
+the Mayor, desiring the use of the town-hall. He refused; but the same
+day gave the use of it to a dancing-master. I then went to the women's
+market. Many soon gathered together and listened with all seriousness. I
+preached there again the next morning, and again in the evening. Then I
+took coach for London. I was nobly attended: behind the coach were ten
+convicted felons, loudly blaspheming and rattling their chains; by my
+side sat a man with a loaded blunderbuss, and another upon the coach.
+
+1780. May 20. In Scotland. I took one more walk through Holyrood House,
+the mansion of ancient kings. But how melancholy an appearance does it
+make now! The stately rooms are dirty as stables; the colours of the
+tapestry are quite faded; several of the pictures are cut and defaced.
+The roof of the royal chapel is fallen in; and the bones of James V.,
+and the once beautiful Lord Dankley, are scattered about like those of
+sheep or oxen. Such is human greatness. Is not "a living dog better than
+a dead lion?"
+
+1782. May 14. Some years ago four factories were set up at Epworth. In
+these a large number of young women and boys and girls were employed.
+The whole conversation of these was profane and loose to the last
+degree. But some of them stumbling in at the prayermeeting were suddenly
+cut to the heart. These never rested till they had gained their
+companions. The whole scene was changed. In three of the factories no
+more lewdness was found: for God had put a new song in their mouth, and
+blasphemies were turned to praise. Those three I visited to-day, and
+found religion had taken deep root in them. No trifling word was heard
+among them, and they watch over each other in love.
+
+
+_Enters His 80th Year_
+
+
+June 26. I preached at Thirsk; 27, at York. Friday, 28, I entered my
+80th year; but, blessed be God, my strength is not "labour and sorrow."
+I find no more pain or bodily infirmities than at 25. This I still
+impute, 1. To the power of God, fitting me for what He calls me to. 2.
+To my still travelling four or five thousand miles a year. 3. To my
+still sleeping, night or day, whenever I want it. 4. To my rising at a
+set hour. And 5. To my constant preaching, particularly in the morning.
+
+1783. Dec. 18. I spent two hours with that great man, Dr. Johnson, who
+is sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.
+
+1784. June 28 (Epworth). To-day I entered on my 82nd year, and found
+myself just as strong to labour, and as fit for any exercise of body and
+mind, as I was 40 years ago. I am as strong at 81 as I was at 21; but
+abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the headache, toothache,
+and other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth.
+
+1785. Jan. 25. I spent two or three hours in the House of Lords. I had
+frequently heard that this was the most venerable assembly in England.
+But how I was disappointed! What is a lord, but a sinner, born to die!
+
+1786. Jan. 24. I was desired to go and hear the King deliver his speech
+in the House of Lords. But how agreeably I was surprised. He pronounced
+every word with exact propriety. I doubt whether there be any other King
+in Europe, that is so just and natural a speaker.
+
+
+_His 86th Christmas_
+
+
+1789. Dec 25. Being Christmas Day, we began the service in the new
+chapel at four in the morning, as usual, where I preached again in the
+evening after having officiated in West Street at the common hour.
+Sunday, 27, I preached in St. Luke's, our parish church, to a very
+numerous congregation. So are the tables turned that I have now more
+invitations to preach in churches than I can accept.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN WOOLMAN
+
+
+Journal
+
+
+     John Woolman, American Quaker evangelist, author of this
+     autobiography, was born in West Jersey in 1720 and followed
+     the trade of a tailor. But all his interests lay in the
+     practice of piety, and in the uncompromising application of
+     religious Principles to the problems of social life. He
+     advocated incessantly two principal reforms--that members of
+     the Society of Friends should separate utterly from the
+     possession of slaves, and that they should return to their
+     primitive simplicity and moderation in the use of worldly
+     things. Like many economists before and after him, he saw in
+     luxury, extravagance and ostentation, the true cause of all
+     poverty and oppression; and a tract of his entitled "A Word of
+     Remembrance and Caution to the Rich," first published in 1793,
+     was republished a hundred years later by the Fabian Society.
+     His most important treatise, published in 1754, entitled "Some
+     Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes," was one of the
+     earliest indications of the growing Abolitionist feeling in
+     New England. His voyage across the Atlantic in May and Tune,
+     1772, to visit the English Quakers, was followed by his death
+     from small-pox, in the city of York, on October 7 in the same
+     year. The "Journal," which is marked by great simplicity and
+     sincerity, was published shortly afterwards and has been
+     issued in many subsequent editions.
+
+
+_I.--The Curse of Slavery_
+
+
+Having reached manhood, I wrought at my trade as a tailor; carefully
+attended meetings for worship and discipline; and found an enlargement
+of gospel love in my mind, and therein a concern to visit friends in the
+settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia and other parts. I expressed it to
+my beloved friend, Isaac Andrews, who then told me that he had drawings
+to the same places. I opened the case in our monthly meeting, and
+friends expressing their unity therewith, we obtained certificates to
+travel as companions.
+
+Two things were remarkable to me in this journey. First, in regard to my
+entertainment; when I ate, drank and lodged free of cost with people who
+lived in ease on the hard labour of their slaves, I felt uneasy, and
+this uneasiness returned upon me, at times, through the whole visit.
+Secondly, this trade of importing slaves from their native country being
+much encouraged among them, and the white people and their children so
+generally living without much labour, was frequently the subject of my
+serious thoughts. And I saw in these southern provinces so many vices
+and corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it
+appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land; and though
+now many willingly run into it, yet in future the consequence will be
+grievous to posterity.
+
+About this time, believing it good for me to settle, and thinking
+seriously about a companion, my heart was turned to the Lord and He was
+pleased to give me a well-inclined damsel, Sarah Ellis, to whom I was
+married the 18th day of the 8th month, in the year 1749.
+
+
+_II--Among the Indians_
+
+
+Having many years felt love in my heart towards the natives of this
+land, who dwell far back in the wilderness, whose ancestors were the
+owners of the land where we dwell, and being at Philadelphia in 1761, I
+fell in company with some of those natives who live on the east branch
+of the river Susquehannah, at an Indian town called Wehaloosing, 200
+miles from Philadelphia; and in conversation with them by an
+interpreter, as also by observations on their character and conduct, I
+believed some of them were acquainted with that divine power which
+subjects the rough and froward will of the creature.
+
+At times I felt inward drawings toward a visit to that place, and laid
+it before friends at our monthly and quarterly, and afterwards at our
+general spring meeting; and having the unity of friends, I agreed to
+join certain Indians, in 1763, on their return to their town. So I took
+leave of my family and neighbours, and with my friend Benjamin Parvin,
+met the Indians.
+
+About four miles from Fort Allen we met with an Indian trader, lately
+come from Wyoming; and in conversation with him I perceived that many
+white people do often sell rum to the Indians, which is a great evil:
+first, their being thereby deprived of the use of their reason, and
+their spirits being violently agitated, quarrels often arise which end
+in mischief; again their skins and furs, gotten through much fatigue in
+hunting, with which they intended to buy clothing, when they become
+intoxicated, they often sell at a low rate for more rum, and afterwards
+are angry with those who, for the sake of gain, took advantage of their
+weakness. To sell to people that which we know does them harm, manifests
+a hardened and corrupt heart.
+
+We crossed the western branch of the Delaware, having laboured hard over
+the mountains called the Blue Ridge, and pitched our tent near the banks
+of the river. Near our tent, on the sides of large trees peeled for that
+purpose, were various representations of men going to, and returning
+from the wars, and of some killed in battle, this being a path used by
+warriors. As I walked about viewing those Indian histories, painted in
+red and in black; and thinking on the innumerable afflictions which the
+proud, fierce spirit produceth in the world; thinking on the toils and
+fatigues of warriors, travelling over mountains and deserts; and of
+their restless, unquiet state of mind, who live in this spirit, and of
+the hatred which mutually grows up in the minds of the children of those
+nations engaged in war; during these meditations, the desire to cherish
+the spirit of love and peace among these people arose very fresh in me.
+
+As I rode, day after day, over the barren hills, my thoughts were on the
+alterations of the circumstances of the natives since the coming of the
+English. The lands near the sea are conveniently situated for fishing;
+the lands near the rivers are in many places fertile and not
+mountainous. Those natives have, in some places, for trifling
+considerations, sold their inheritance so favourably situated; and in
+other places, have been driven back by superior force. By the extending
+of English settlements, and partly by English hunters, the wild beasts
+they chiefly depend upon for a subsistence are not so plentiful as they
+were; and people too often open a door for them to waste their furs, in
+purchasing a liquor which tends to the ruin of them and their families.
+
+
+_III.--Across the Atlantic_
+
+
+Having been for some time under a religious concern to cross the seas,
+in order to visit friends in England, after weighty consideration I
+thought it expedient to inform friends, at our monthly meeting at
+Burlington, of it; who, having unity with me therein, gave me a
+certificate; and I afterwards communicated the same to our general
+meeting, and they likewise signified their unity by a certificate, dated
+the 24th day of the third month, 1772, directed to friends in Great
+Britain.
+
+I was informed that my beloved friend Samuel Emlen, intended to go to
+London, and had taken a passage in the cabin of the ship called Mary and
+Elizabeth; and I, feeling a draft in my mind towards the steerage of the
+same ship, went and opened to Samuel the feeling I had concerning it. My
+beloved friend wept when I spake to him; and he offering to go with me,
+we went on board, first into the cabin, a commodious room, and then into
+the steerage, where we sat down on a chest and the owner of the ship
+came and sat down with us. I made no agreement as to a passage in the
+ship; but on the next morning I went with Samuel to the house of the
+owner, to whom I opened my exercise in relation to a scruple I felt with
+regard to a passage in the cabin.
+
+I told the owner that on the outside of that part of the ship where the
+cabin was, I observed sundry sorts of carved work and imagery; and that
+in the cabin I observed some superfluity of workmanship of several
+sorts; and that the monies received from the passengers are calculated
+to answer the expense of these superfluities; and that I felt a scruple
+with regard to paying my money to defray such expenses. After this, I
+agreed for a passage in the steerage, and went on board with Samuel
+Emlen on the first day of the fifth month.
+
+My lodging in the steerage afforded me opportunities of seeing, hearing
+and feeling, with respect to the life and spirit of many poor sailors;
+and an inward exercise of soul hath attended me, in regard to placing
+out children and youth where they may be exampled and instructed in the
+fear of the Lord. Now, concerning lads being trained up as seamen, I
+believe a communication from one part of the world to some other parts
+of it, by sea, is at times consistent with the will of our heavenly
+Father; and to educate some youth in the practice of sailing, I believe
+may be right. But how lamentable is the present corruption of the world!
+How impure are the channels through which trade hath a conveyance! How
+great is that danger to which poor lads are now exposed, when placed on
+shipboard to learn the art of sailing!
+
+
+_IV.--Prices, Wages, and Religion_
+
+
+On landing at London I went straight to the yearly meeting of ministers
+and elders, which, by adjournments, continued near a week. I then went
+to quarterly meetings at Hertford, Sherrington, Northampton, Banbury and
+Shipston, and visited other meetings at Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick,
+Nottingham, Sheffield, Settle, and other places.
+
+On inquiry, I found the price of rye about five shillings, wheat about
+eight shillings, per bushel; mutton threepence to fivepence per pound;
+bacon from sevenpence to ninepence; cheese from fourpence to sixpence;
+butter from eightpence to tenpence; house-rent, for a poor man, from
+twenty-five shillings to forty shillings per year, to be paid weekly;
+wood for fire very scarce and dear; coal in some places two shillings
+and sixpence per hundredweight but near the pits not a quarter so much.
+O may the wealthy consider the poor!
+
+The wages of labouring men, in several counties toward London, is
+tenpence per day in common business; the employer finds small beer and
+the labourer finds his own food; but in harvest and hay times wages are
+about one shilling per day and the labourer hath all his diet. In the
+north of England poor labouring men do rather better than nearer London.
+Industrious women who spin in the factories get some fourpence, some
+fivepence, and so on to tenpence per day, and find their own house-room
+and diet. Great numbers of poor people live chiefly on bread and water,
+and there are many poor children not even taught to read. May those, who
+have plenty, lay these things to heart!
+
+Stage coaches frequently go upwards of an hundred miles in twenty-four
+hours; and I have heard friends say, in several places, that it is
+common for horses to be killed with hard driving. Post-boys pursue their
+business, each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some
+boys, who ride long stages, suffer greatly on winter nights, and at
+several places I have heard of their being frozen to death. So great is
+the hurry in the spirit in this world, that in aiming to do business
+quickly, and to gain wealth, the creation, at this day doth loudly
+groan!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol X, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12572 ***
diff --git a/12572-h/12572-h.htm b/12572-h/12572-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32a34e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/12572-h/12572-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,11393 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+        content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
+  <title>The World's Greatest Books, Volume X</title>
+  <style type="text/css">
+
+  body
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+
+  p
+  {text-align: justify;}
+
+  blockquote
+  {text-align: justify;}
+
+  h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6
+  {text-align: center;}
+
+  hr
+  {text-align: center; width: 50%;}
+
+  html>body hr
+  {margin-right: 25%; margin-left: 25%; width: 50%;}
+
+  hr.full
+  {width: 100%;}
+  html>body hr.full
+  {margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 0%; width: 100%;}
+
+  pre
+  {font-size: 0.7em; color: #000; background-color: #FFF;}
+
+  .poetry
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 0%;
+  text-align: left;}
+
+  .footnote
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
+  font-size: 0.9em;}
+
+  .index
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
+  text-align: center;}
+
+  .figure
+  {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;
+  text-align: center; font-size: 0.8em;}
+  .figure img
+  {border: none;}
+
+  .date
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
+  text-align: right;}
+
+  span.rightnote
+  {position: absolute; left: 92%; right: 1%;
+  font-size: 0.7em; border-bottom: solid 1px;}
+
+  span.leftnote
+  {position: absolute; left: 1%; right: 92%;
+  font-size: 0.7em; border-bottom: solid 1px;}
+
+  span.linenum
+  {float:right;
+  text-align: right; font-size: 0.7em;}
+  </style>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12572 ***</div>
+
+<h1>THE WORLD'S</h1> <h1>GREATEST</h1> <h1>BOOKS</h1>
+
+<h2>JOINT EDITORS</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR MEE</h2> <h3>Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge</h3>
+
+<h2>J.A. HAMMERTON</h2> <h3>Editor of Harmsworth's Universal
+Encyclopaedia</h3>
+
+<h2>VOL. X</h2> <h3>LIVES AND LETTERS</h3>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1><a name="Table_of_Contents"></a>Table of Contents</h1>
+
+<blockquote>
+<a href="#VICTOR_HUGO">HUGO, VICTOR</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Deeds_and_Words">Deeds and Words</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#MARTIN_HUME">HUME, MARTIN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Courtships_of_Elizabeth">Courtships of
+Elizabeth</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Love_Affairs_of_Mary_Queen_of_Scots">Love Affairs
+of Mary Queen of Scots</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#WASHINGTON_IRVING">IRVING, WASHINGTON</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Christopher_Columbus">Life of Christopher
+Columbus</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_George_Washington">Life of George
+Washington</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOSEPHUS">JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Autobiography">Autobiography</a><br />
+<br />
+LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: See ROCHEFOUCAULD<br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOHN_GIBSON_LOCKHART">LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Sir_Walter_Scott">Life of Sir Walter
+Scott</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Life_of_Robert_Burns">Life of Robert Burns</a><br
+/>
+<br />
+<a href="#MARTIN_LUTHER">LUTHER, MARTIN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Table_Talk">Table Talk</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#MIRABEAU">MIRABEAU, COMTE DE</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Memoirs1">Memoirs</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#THOMAS_MOORE">MOORE, THOMAS</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Byron">Life of Byron</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JAMES_COTTER_MORISON">MORISON, J.A.C.</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_and_Times_of_St_Bernard">Life of St.
+Bernard</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOHN_MORLEY">MORLEY, JOHN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Richard_Cobden">Life of Cobden</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#SAMUEL_PEPYS">PEPYS, SAMUEL</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Diary">Diary</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#PLINY_THE_YOUNGER">PLINY THE YOUNGER</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Letters1">Letters</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#CARDINAL_RICHELIEU">RICHELIEU, CARDINAL</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Political_Testament">Political
+Testament</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JEAN_JACQUES_ROUSSEAU">ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Confessions">Confessions</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#LA_ROCHEFOUCAULD">ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRAN&Ccedil;OIS DUC de LA</a><br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Memoirs2">Memoirs</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#MADAME_DE_SEVIGNE">S&Eacute;VIGN&Eacute;, Mme. de</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Letters2">Letters</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#ROBERT_SOUTHEY">SOUTHEY, ROBERT</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Life_of_Nelson">Life of Nelson</a><br
+/>
+<br />
+<a href="#MADAME_DE_STAAL">STAAL, Mme. de</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Memoirs3">Memoirs</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#EARL_STANHOPE">STANHOPE, EARL</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_William_Pitt">Life of Pitt</a><br
+/>
+<br />
+<a href="#ARTHUR_PENRHYN_STANLEY">STANLEY, A.P.</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Life_of_Thomas_Arnold_DD">Life of
+Thomas Arnold, D.D.</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#AGNES_STRICKLAND">STRICKLAND, AGNES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Queen_Elizabeth">Life of Queen
+Elizabeth</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JONATHAN_SWIFT">SWIFT, JONATHAN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Journal_to_Stella">Journal to
+Stella</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#LYOF_N_TOLSTOY">TOLSTOY, COUNT LYOF N.</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Childhood_Boyhood_Youth">Childhood,
+Boyhood, Youth</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#My_Confession">My Confession</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#PASQUALE_VILLARI">VILLARI, PASQUALE</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Life_of_Girolamo_Savonarola">Life of
+Girolamo Savanarola</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOHN_WESLEY">WESLEY, JOHN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Journal1">Journal</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOHN_WOOLMAN">WOOLMAN, JOHN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Journal2">Journal</a><br />
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
+of Volume XX.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="Acknowledgement"></a><i>Acknowledgement</i></h2>
+
+<blockquote><p> Acknowledgement and thanks for permitting the use of the
+following selections in this volume, viz., "The Courtships of Queen
+Elizabeth," and "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots," by Major Martin
+Hume, are herewith tendered to Everleigh Nash, of London, England.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="VICTOR_HUGO"></a>VICTOR HUGO</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Deeds_and_Words"></a>Deeds and Words</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> "Deeds and Words" ("Actes et Paroles"), which is dated
+June, 1875, is the record of Victor Hugo's public life, speeches and
+letters, down to the year of his death, which occurred on May 32, 1885; but
+it is most important as a defence of his political career from 1848
+onwards. It does not, however, tell us how changeable his opinions had
+actually been. His inconstant attachments are thus summed up by Dr.
+Brandes: "He warmly supports the candidacy of Louis Napoleon for the post
+of President of the Republic ... lends him his support when he occupies
+that post, and is even favourable to the idea of an empire, until the
+feeling that he is despised as a politician estranges him from the
+Prince-President, and resentment at the coup d'etat drives him into the
+camp of the extreme Republicans. His life may be said to mirror the
+political movements of France during the first half of the century." (See
+FICTION.) </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Right and Law</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>All human eloquence, among all peoples and in all times, may be summed
+up as the quarrel of Right against Law.</p>
+
+<p>But this quarrel tends ever to decrease, and therein lies the whole of
+progress. On the day when it has disappeared, civilisation will have
+attained its highest point; that which ought to be will have become one
+with that which is; there will be an end of catastrophes, and even, so to
+speak, of events; and society will develop majestically according to
+nature. There will be no more disputes nor factions; no longer will laws be
+made, they will only be discovered. Education will have taken the place of
+war, and by means of universal suffrage there will be chosen a parliament
+of intellect.</p>
+
+<p>In that serene and glorious age there will be no more warriors, but
+workers only; creators in the place of exterminators. The civilisation of
+action will have passed away, and that of thought will have succeeded. The
+masterpieces of art and of literature will be the great events.</p>
+
+<p>Frontiers will disappear; and France, which is destined to die as the
+gods die, by transfiguration, will become Europe. For the Revolution of
+France will be known as the evolution of the peoples. France has laboured
+not for herself alone, but has aroused world-wide hopes, and is herself the
+representative of all human good-will.</p>
+
+<p>Right and Law are the two great forces whose harmony gives birth to
+order, but their antagonism is the source of all catastrophe. Right is the
+divine truth, and Law is the earthly reality; liberty is Right and society
+is Law. Wherefore there are two tribunes, one of the men of ideas, the
+other of the men of facts; and between these two the consciences of most
+still vacillate. Not yet is there harmony between the immutable and the
+variable power; Right and Law are in ceaseless conflict.</p>
+
+<p>To Right belong the inviolability of human life, liberty, peace; and
+nothing that is indissoluble, irrevocable, or irreparable. To Law belong
+the scaffold, sword, and sceptre; war itself; and every kind of yoke, from
+divorceless marriage in the family to the state of siege in the city. Right
+is to come and go, buy, sell, exchange; Law has its frontiers and its
+custom-houses. Right would have free and compulsory education, without
+encroaching on young consciences; that is to say, lay instruction; Law
+would have the teaching of ignorant friars. Right demands liberty of
+belief, but Law establishes the state religions. Universal suffrage and
+universal jury belong to Right, but restricted franchise and packed juries
+are creatures of the Law.</p>
+
+<p>What a difference there is! And let it be understood that all social
+agitation arises from the persistence of Right against the obstinacy of
+Law. The keynote of the present writer's public life has been "<i>Pro jure
+contra legem"</i>--for the Right which makes men, against the Law which men
+have made. He believes that liberty is the highest expression of Right, and
+that the republican formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," leaves
+nothing to be added or to be taken away. For Liberty is Right, Equality is
+Fact, and Fraternity is Duty. The whole of man is there. We are brothers in
+our life, equal in birth and death, free in soul.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Days of Childhood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>At the beginning of this nineteenth century there was a child who lived
+in a great house, surrounded by a large garden, in the most deserted part
+of Paris. He lived with his mother, two brothers, and a venerable and
+worthy priest, who was his only tutor, and taught him much Latin, a little
+Greek, and no history at all. Here, at the time of the First Empire, the
+three boys played and worked, watched the clouds and trees and listened to
+the birds, under the sweet influence of their mother's smile.</p>
+
+<p>It was the child's misfortune, though no one's fault, that he was taught
+by a priest. What can be more terrible than a system of untruth, sincerely
+believed? For a priest teaches falsehoods, ignorant of the truth, and
+thinks he does well; everything he does for the child is done against the
+child, making crooked that which nature has made straight; his teaching
+poisons the young mind with aged prejudices, drawing evening twilight, like
+a curtain, over the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>That ancient, solitary house and garden, formerly a convent and then the
+home of his childhood, is still in his old age a dear and religious memory,
+though its site is now profaned by a modern street He sees it in a romantic
+atmosphere, in which, amid sunbeams and roses, his spirit opened into
+flower. What a stillness was in its vast rooms and cloisters. Only at long
+intervals was the silence broken by the return of a plumed and sabred
+general, his father, from the wars. That child, already thoughtful, was
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>One night--it was some great festival of the empire, and all Paris was
+illumined--my mother was walking in the garden with three of my father's
+comrades, and I was following them, when we saw a tall figure in the gloom
+of the trees. It was the proscribed Victor du Lahorie, my godfather. He was
+even then conspiring against Bonaparte in the cause of liberty, and was
+shortly after executed. I remember his saying, "If Rome had kept her kings,
+she had not been Rome," and then, looking on me, "Child, put liberty first
+of all!" That one word outweighed my whole education.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Before the Exile</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was not until the writer saw, in 1848, the triumph of all the enemies
+of progress that he knew in the depths of his heart that he belonged, not
+to the conquerors, but to the vanquished. The Republic lay inanimate; but,
+gazing on her form, he saw that she was liberty, and not even the sure
+fore-knowledge of the ruin and exile that must follow could prevent his
+espousal with the dead. On June 15 he made his protest from the tribune,
+and from that day he fought relentless battle for liberty and the republic.
+And on December 2, 1851, he received what he had expected--twenty years of
+exile. That is the history of what has been called his apostasy.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout that strange period before his exile, the frightful phantom
+of the past was all-powerful with men. Every kind of question was
+debated--national independence, individual liberty, liberty of conscience,
+of thought, of speech, and of the Press; questions of marriage, of
+education, of the right to work, of the right to one's fatherland as
+against exile, of the right to life as against penal law, of the separation
+of Church and state, of the federation of Europe, of frontiers to be wiped
+out, and of custom-houses to be done away--all these questions were
+proposed, debated, and sometimes settled.</p>
+
+<p>In these debates the author of this memoir took his part and did his
+duty, and was repaid with insults. He remembers interjecting, when they
+were insisting on parental rights, that the children had rights, too. He
+astounded the assembly by asserting that it was possible to do away with
+misery. On July 17, 1851, he denounced the conspiracy of Louis Bonaparte,
+unveiling the project of the president to become emperor. On another day he
+pronounced from the tribune a phrase which had never yet been uttered--"The
+United States of Europe." Contempt and calumny were poured upon him, but
+what of that? They called George Washington a pickpocket.</p>
+
+<p>These men of the old majority, who were doing all the evil that they
+could--did they mean to do evil? Not a bit of it. They deceived themselves,
+thinking that they had the truth, and they lied in the service of the
+truth. Their pity for society was pitiless for the people, whence arose so
+many laws, so many actions, that were blindly ferocious. They were rather a
+mob than a senate, and were led by the worst of their number. Let us be
+indulgent, and let night hide the men of night.</p>
+
+<p>What do our labours and our troubles and our exiles matter if they have
+been for the general good; if the human race be indeed passing from
+December to its April; if the winter of tyrannies and of wars indeed be
+finished; if superstitions and prejudices no longer fall on our heads like
+snow; and if, after so many clouds of empire and of carnage have rolled
+away, we at last descry upon the horizon the rosy dawn of universal
+peace?</p>
+
+<p>O my brothers, let us be reconciled! Let us set out on the immense
+highway of peace. Surely there has been enough of hatred. When will you
+understand that we are all together on the same ship, and that the immense
+menace of the sea is for all of us together? Our solidarity is terrible,
+but brotherhood is sweet.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Republican Principles</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, and the liberty of
+the Press are all the same thing under three different names. The three
+together constitute the whole of our public right; the first is its
+principle, the second its manner, and the third its expression. The three
+principles are indissoluble from one another. The sovereignty of the people
+is the life-giving soul of the nation, universal suffrage its government,
+the Press its illumination; but they are all really one, and that unity is
+the republic. It is curious to notice how these principles appear again in
+the watchword of the republic; for the sovereignty of the people creates
+liberty, universal suffrage creates equality, and the Press, which
+enlightens the general mind, creates fraternity.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever these three great principles exist in their powers and
+plenitude there is the republic, even though it be known as monarchy.
+Wherever, on the other hand, they are betrayed, hindered, or oppressed, the
+actual state is a monarchy or an oligarchy, even though it goes under the
+name of a republic. In the latter case we see the monstrous phenomenon of a
+government betrayed by its proper guardians, and it is this phenomenon that
+makes the stoutest hearts begin to be doubtful of revolutions. For
+revolutions are vast, ill-guided movements, which bring forth out of the
+darkness at one and the same time the greatest of ideas and the smallest of
+men; they are movements which we welcome as salutary when we look at their
+principles, but which we can only call catastrophes when he consider the
+character of their leaders.</p>
+
+<p>Let us never forget that our three first principles live with a common
+life, and mutually defend one another. If the Liberty of the Press is in
+danger, the suffrages of the people arise and protect it; and, again, if
+the franchise is threatened, it is safeguarded by the freedom of the Press.
+Any attempt against either of them is a treachery to the sovereignty of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The movement of this great nineteenth century is the movement not of one
+people only, but of all. France leads, and the nations follow. We are
+passing from the old world to the new, and our governors attempt in vain to
+arrest ideas by laws. There is in France and in Europe a party inspired by
+fear, which is not to be accounted the party of order; and its incessant
+question is: Who is to blame?</p>
+
+<p>In the crisis through which we are passing, though it is a salutary
+crisis which will lead only to good, everyone exclaims at the dreadful
+moral disorder and the imminent social danger. Who, then, is guilty of
+these ravages? Whom shall we punish? Throughout Europe, the party of fear
+answers "France." Throughout France, it answers "Paris." In Paris, it
+blames the Press. But every thoughtful man must see that it is none of
+these, but is the human spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It is the human spirit that has made the nations what they are. From the
+beginning, through infinite debate and contradiction, it has sought,
+unresting, to solve the problem eternally placed before the creature by his
+Creator. It is the human spirit which takes from age to age the form of the
+great revolts of history; it has been in turn, and sometimes altogether,
+error, illusion, heresy, schism, protest, and the truth. The human spirit
+is ever the great shepherd of the generations, proceeding always towards
+the just, the beautiful, and the true, enlightening the multitude,
+ennobling souls, directing the mind of man towards God.</p>
+
+<p>Let the party of fear throughout Europe consider the magnitude of the
+task which they have undertaken. When they have destroyed the Press, they
+have yet to destroy Paris. When Paris is fallen, there remains France. Let
+France be annihilated, there still remains the human spirit--a thing
+intangible as the light, inaccessible as the sun.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--In Exile</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Nothing is more terrible than exile. I do not say for him who suffers,
+but for the tyrant who inflicts it. A solitary figure paces a distant
+shore, or rises in the morning to his philosophic labours, or calls on God
+among the rocks and trees; his hairs become grey, and then white, in the
+slow passing of the years and in his longing for home; his lot is a
+sorrowful one; but his innocence is terrible to the crowned miscreant who
+sent him there. From 1852 to 1870 I was in exile.</p>
+
+<p>How pleasant are those islands of the Channel, and how like France!
+Jersey, perhaps, more charming than Guernsey, prettier if less imposing; in
+Jersey the forest has become a garden; the island is like a bouquet of
+flowers, of the size of London, a smiling land, an idyll set in the midst
+of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The exile soon learns that, though the tyrant has placed him afar, he
+does not release his hold. Many and ingenious are the snares laid for the
+banished. A prince calls on you, but though he is of royal blood, he is
+also a detective of police. A grave professor stays at your house, and you
+surprise him searching your papers. Everything is permitted against you;
+you are outside the law, outside of common justice, outside of respect.
+They will say that they have your authority to publish your conversations,
+and will attribute to you words that you have never spoken and actions that
+you have never done. Never write to your friends--your letters are opened
+on the way. Beware of all who are kindly to you in exile; they are ruining
+you in Paris. You are isolated as a leper. A mysterious stranger whispers
+in your ear that he can procure the assassination of Bonaparte; it is
+Bonaparte offering to kill himself. Every day of your life is a new
+outrage. Only one thing is open to the exile; it is to turn his thought to
+other subjects.</p>
+
+<p>He is at least beside the sea; let its infinity bring him wisdom. The
+eternal rioting of the surges against the rocks is as the agitation of
+impostures against the truth. It is a vain convulsion; the foam gains
+nothing by it, the granite loses nothing, and only sparkles the more
+bravely in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>But exile has this great advantage--one is free to contemplate, to
+think, to suffer. To be alone, and yet to feel that one is with all
+humanity; to consolidate oneself as a citizen, and to purify oneself as a
+philosopher; to be poor, and begin again to work for one's living, to
+meditate on what is good and to contrive for what is better; to be angry in
+the public cause, but to crush all personal enmity; to breathe the vast,
+living winds of the solitudes; to compose a deeper indignation with a
+profounder peace--these are the opportunities of exile. I accustomed myself
+to say, "If, after a revolution, Bonaparte should knock at my door and ask
+shelter, let never a hair of his head be injured."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, an exile becomes a well-wisher. He loves the roses, and the birds'
+nests, and the flitting hither and thither of the butterflies. He mingles
+with the sweet joys of the creatures, and learns a changeless faith in some
+secret and infinite goodness. The green glades are his chosen dwelling and
+his life is April; he reclines amazed at the mysteries of a tuft of grass;
+he studies the ant-hills of tiny republicans; he learns to know the birds
+by their songs; he watches the children playing barefoot in the edge of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>Against this dangerous man governments are taking the most strenuous
+precautions. Victoria offers to hand over the exiles to Napoleon, and
+messages of compliment are passed from one throne to the other. But that
+gift did not take place. The English royalist Press applauded, but the
+people of London would have none of it. The great city muttered thunder.
+Majesty clothed in probity--that is the character of the English nation.
+That good and proud people showed their indignation, and Palmerston and
+Bonaparte had to be content with the expulsion of the exiles.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole long night of my exile I never lost Paris from my view.
+When Europe and even France were in darkness, Paris was never hidden. That
+is because Paris is the frontier of the future, the visible frontier of the
+unknown. All of to-morrow that can be seen to-day is in Paris. The eyes
+that are searching for progress come to rest on Paris, for Paris is the
+city of light.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>VI.--After the Exile</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>This triology, "Before, During, and After the Exile," is no work of
+mine, it is the doing of Napoleon III. He it is who has divided my life in
+this way, observing, as one might say, the rules of art. Returning to my
+country on September 5, 1870, I found the sky more gloomy and my duty more
+clamant than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Though it is sad to leave the fatherland, to return to it is sometimes
+sadder still; and there is no Frenchman who would not have preferred a
+life-long banishment, to seeing France ground beneath the Prussian heel,
+and the loss of Metz and Strasburg. This was an invasion of barbarians; but
+there is another menace that is not less formidable. I mean the invasion of
+our land by darkness, an invasion of the nineteenth century by the middle
+ages. After the emperor, the pope; after Berlin, Rome; after the triumph of
+the sword, the triumph of night. For the light of civilisation may be
+extinguished in either of two ways, by a military or by a clerical
+invasion. The former threatens our mother, France; the latter our child,
+the future.</p>
+
+<p>A double inviolability is the most precious possession of a civilised
+people--the inviolability of territory and the inviolability of conscience;
+and as the soldier violates the first, so does the priest violate the
+other. Yet the soldier does but obey his orders and the priest his dogmas,
+so that there are only two who are ultimately culpable--Caesar, who slays,
+and Peter, who lies. There is no religion which has not as its aim to seize
+forcibly the human soul, and it is to attempts of this kind that France is
+given up to-day.</p>
+
+<p>One may say, indeed, that in our age there are two schools, and that
+these two schools sum up in themselves the two opposed currents which draw
+civilisation, the one towards the future and the other towards the past.
+One of these schools is called Paris and the other Rome. Each of them has
+its book; the one has the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," the other has
+the "Syllabus"; and the first of these books says "Yes" to progress, but
+the second of them says "No." Yet progress is the footstep of God.</p>
+
+<p>Paris means Montaigne, Rabelais, Pascal, Corneille, Moli&egrave;re,
+Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Danton. Rome, on the
+other hand, means Innocent III., Pius V., Alexander VI., Urban VIII.,
+Arbuez, Cisneros, Lainez, Guillandus, Ignatius.</p>
+
+<p>To educate is nothing less than to govern; and clerical education means
+a clerical government, with a despotism as its summit and ignorance as its
+foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Rome already holds Belgium, and would now seize Paris. We are witnesses
+of a struggle to the death. Against us is all that manifold power which
+emerges from the past, the spirit of monarchy, of superstition, of the
+barrack and of the convent; we have against us temerity, effrontery,
+audacity, and fear. On our side there is nothing but the light. That is why
+the victory will be with us. For to enlighten is to deliver. Every increase
+in liberty involves increased responsibility. Nothing is graver than
+freedom; liberty has burdens of her own, and lays on the conscience all the
+chains which she unshackles from the limbs. We find rights transforming
+themselves into duties. Let us therefore take heed to what we are doing; we
+live in a difficult time and are answerable at once to the past and to the
+future. The time has come, in this year 1876, to replace commotions by
+concessions. That is how civilisation advances. For progress is nothing
+other than revolution effected amicably.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, legislators and citizens, let us redouble our good-will. Let
+all wounds be healed, all animosities extinguished; by overcoming hatred we
+shall overcome war; let no disturbance that may come be due to our fault.
+Our task of entering into the unknown is difficult enough without angers
+and bitterness. I am one of those who hope from that unknown future, but
+only on condition that we make use from the first of every means of
+pacification that is in our power. Let us act with the virile kindness of
+the strong.</p>
+
+<p>Let us then calm the nations by peace, and the hearts of men by
+brotherhood, and let us never forget that we are ourselves responsible for
+this last half of the nineteenth century, and that we are placed between a
+great past, the Revolution of France, and a great future, the Revolution of
+Europe.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MARTIN_HUME"></a>MARTIN HUME</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Courtships_of_Elizabeth"></a>The Courtships of
+Elizabeth</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Major Martin Andrew Hume, born in London on December 8,
+1847, and educated at Madrid, comes of an English family, the members of
+which have resided in Spain for a hundred years. He began life in the
+British Army, from which he retired with the rank of major. Major Hume was
+appointed editor of the Spanish state papers published by the Record
+Office; he is also lecturer in Spanish History and Literature at Cambridge,
+and examiner and lecturer in Spanish at the Birmingham University. He has
+written numerous works on the history of Spain; but perhaps he is best
+known for his historical studies of the Tudor period, of which may be
+mentioned "The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth," "The Love Affairs of Mary
+Queen of Scots," and "The Wives of Henry VIII." In the first-named work,
+published in 1896, Major Hume has presented an exceedingly interesting
+human document, and classified a tangled mass of material. The epitome here
+presented has been prepared for THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS by the author
+himself. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Foreign Philandering</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world's chessboard was
+that consummate succession of intrigues which, for nearly half a century,
+was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the object of
+playing off one great Continental power against another for the benefit of
+England and Protestantism, with which the interests of the queen were
+inextricably involved. Those in the midst of the strife worked mostly for
+immediate aims, and neither saw, nor cared, for the ultimate results; but
+we, looking back, see that out of that tangle of duplicity there emerged a
+new era of civilisation and a host of vigorous impulses which move us to
+this hour.</p>
+
+<p>The victory of England in that struggle meant the dominance of modern
+ideas of liberty and of the imperial destiny of our race, and it seems as
+if the result could only have been attained in the peculiar combination of
+circumstances and persons then existing. Elizabeth triumphed as much by her
+weakness as by her strength. Honest Cecil kept his hand upon the helm so
+long because the only alternative to him was the greedy crew of councillors
+eager for foreign bribes. Without Leicester as a permanent matrimonial
+possibility, the queen could never have held the balance between her
+foreign suitors; and, but for the follies of Mary Stuart, the English
+Catholics would not have been subjected so easily, whilst the religious
+dissensions in France and the character of Philip II. aided Elizabeth's
+diplomacy. Elizabeth was more than once betrothed in her childhood to aid
+her father's policy, but when Henry died, in 1547, his younger daughter was
+unbetrothed.</p>
+
+<p>During her residence with the Queen-Dowager, Catharine Parr, who soon
+married Thomas, Lord Seymour, the fourteen-year-old girl was exposed to
+peril from the designs of the ambitious Seymour. The indecorous romping,
+perhaps innocent at first, that took place between her and her married host
+provided grave scandal which touched even the honour of the girl, and her
+keen wits alone saved her on this occasion from disgrace. Her crafty
+reticence served her well, when the intrigues of Wyat, Courtenay, and the
+French party threatened Mary's throne; but when Mary was married, the
+Spanish party at once became interested in securing Elizabeth to their side
+by her marriage. Mary's jealousy, and Elizabeth's own determination not to
+be made a tool, frustrated Philip's attempt to marry the princess to his
+cousin, the Duke of Savoy; and when the Protestant Swedes clandestinely
+offered her the hand of Prince Eric, her discreet wariness again protected
+her from the dangerous proposal.</p>
+
+<p>When Mary lay dying, Feria, the Spanish ambassador, hurried to Hatfield
+to salute the rising sun, and hinted even thus early that Elizabeth might
+marry her powerful Spanish brother-in-law. But she resented his patronage,
+and though she coquetted, as usual, with the proposal of marriage, she took
+care not to pledge herself or submit England to foreign dictation. To Spain
+it was vital that England should be at her bidding. If the queen could not
+marry Philip, surely she could only wed one of his Austrian cousins; or, if
+not, then England must be conquered by the sword. All that Elizabeth wanted
+was time, and tardy Philip played into her hands. One English noble after
+the other was taken up and dropped, in the intervals of foreign
+philandering. Lord Arundel, foolish, old, and vain, had high hopes; Sir
+William Pickering's chances looked bright, and France and Spain sought to
+patronise each English candidate in his turn, especially Lord Robert
+Dudley, the queen's friend from childhood, though he was already married to
+Amy Robsart.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after many days of dallying, great Philip decided to
+sacrifice himself for Spain and marry his enigmatical sister-in-law. She
+must, of course, renounce Protestantism and all the laws that made her
+legally a queen; which was absurd, as Feria soon saw, and frankly told his
+master. So then Philip half-heartedly patronised the suit of his Austrian
+cousin, the Archduke Charles. If the latter would be an obedient Spanish
+instrument he could have Philip's support; but German Lutherans and English
+Protestants had also to be considered, and Elizabeth's court was divided
+into those who feared any consort not wholly Protestant and those who were
+eager for any marriage that shielded England from Spanish attack.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth thought she could avoid the latter danger without marriage at
+all, so she dexterously played with all her suitors, English and foreign,
+while strengthening her position and gaining popularity. Sometimes she
+swore she would never marry, and the next day would grow sentimental over
+the archduke, or flirted with Dudley--keeping them all in suspense and
+afraid of offending her. The French, having no marriageable prince of their
+own, supported Dudley, or any other English candidate whom they could use
+against Spain; whilst Dudley himself pretended to favour the archduke, till
+matters looked serious, and then found means of frustrating him, often to
+Elizabeth's rage, for she wished to play her own deep game unhampered. She
+knew she could always choke off the Austrian when she wished by making
+fresh religious demands. The English nobles were furious at Dudley's
+selfish manoeuvres to keep the queen unwed till he was free, and they
+planned to marry the queen to Arran, the next heir of Scotland. This looked
+promising for months, but Dudley and his sister, Lady Sidney, checked the
+plan.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Nine Years' Comedy</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In September, 1559, Dudley and his sister warmly took up the archduke's
+cause, and assured Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, that if the suitor would
+flatter the queen by coming to England on chance, she would marry him. But
+Elizabeth and Cecil, though they hinted much, would not clearly confirm
+Dudley's promise, and Philip and the emperor dared not expose the archduke
+to the risk of being repulsed. The English nobles, in good faith, urged the
+archduke's suit, and said that Dudley was plotting to kill his wife and
+marry the queen; but they and the Spanish ambassador were outwitted at
+every point by Elizabeth's diplomacy, and through 1559 and 1560 all the
+rivals were kept between hope and fear.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in September 1560, the long-predicted murder of Amy Robsart set
+Dudley free, and made the nobles and Cecil more anxious than ever that the
+archduke should be bold, take the risk, and come to England. The queen, to
+weaken the new friendship between France and Spain, herself again pretended
+eagerness for the Austrian's coming; but the trick was stale now, and
+neither Philip nor the emperor believed her. To checkmate Dudley the
+Protestants were actively urging the suit of Eric of Sweden, when, in
+January 1561, the former made a bold bid for Spanish support. He was, he
+said, quite innocent of his wife's death, and he promised Quadra that if
+the King of Spain would urge his (Dudley's) suit upon the queen, England
+should send envoys to the Council of Trent, receive a papal legate, and
+become practically Catholic. He might promise, but such a thing was
+impossible, and Cecil, when he learnt of the intrigue, promptly embroiled
+matters and spoilt the plan.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth, too, saw whither she was drifting, and by pretended levity
+turned it into a joke. At one time she invited the old Spanish bishop to
+marry her to Dudley, and next day said she would never marry at all. But
+she never ceased to flirt with Dudley, who, when his intrigue with Spain
+fell through, cynically appealed to the French Protestants for support.
+They were in no position to help him, and by January 1562, he was cringing
+to Spain, and pretending to be Catholic. But English Catholics hated him,
+and he was now no fit instrument for Philip.</p>
+
+<p>In her own court it was firmly believed that Elizabeth was secretly
+married to Dudley--it was high time, said the gossips; but in truth the
+international importance of her marriage was now (1562-63) partially
+obscured by that of the widowed Mary Queen of Scots. Before the latter were
+dangled Eric of Sweden, the Archduke Charles, the Earl of Arran, and
+Darnley; but the match which Mary most wished for, and the most threatening
+to Elizabeth, was that with the vicious young lunatic, Don Carlos, the heir
+of Philip of Spain. The match with Darnley, too, as he was in the English
+succession, was distasteful to Elizabeth; but in order to divert the
+Spanish match--which, really, though she knew it not, was out of the
+question--she pretended to favour Darnley's suit at first.</p>
+
+<p>In order still more to avert the Catholic alliance, Elizabeth sent
+active help to the French Huguenots, and drew closer to the Protestants of
+Germany and Holland, where distrust of their Spanish sovereign was already
+brewing. In these circumstances, Elizabeth for the first time could defy
+Spain, and Quadra, accused of conspiring against the queen, was expelled
+the country. When the Darnley match for Mary Stuart looked too serious,
+Elizabeth diverted it for a time by proposing that Dudley--now Earl of
+Leicester--should marry Mary. It was, of course, but a trick, through which
+the Scottish queen saw, with the object of preventing the Darnley marriage
+and discrediting Mary in the eyes of foreign princes; but it served its
+turn for a time.</p>
+
+<p>In July 1564, when the league of France and Spain again menaced her,
+Elizabeth set her cap at the boy Don Carlos, and even swore to the Spanish
+ambassador that she was really a Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>The further to alienate the Catholic powers from each other, she
+simultaneously approached the emperor to revive the proposal of marriage
+with the Archduke Charles, and to Catherine de Medici to drop a hint that
+she--Elizabeth--might marry the young King of France, Charles IX., a youth
+barely half her age--anything to prevent a combination against her and the
+marriage of Don Carlos with Mary Stuart. Catherine de Medici had her own
+reasons at the time for smiling upon Elizabeth's suggestion. She did not
+wish to be bound too tightly to Spain and the Catholics, for fear of the
+Huguenots; and in February 1565, she wrote to Elizabeth, saying that she
+would be the happiest of mothers if she could see her dearly beloved sister
+of England married to her son, Charles IX.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth was full of maidenly hesitation. She was too old for him;
+perhaps he would not think her beautiful, and so on; but she took care to
+say that there was no one else she could marry, as she would not wed a
+subject. The Huguenots actively pushed the proposal, and Leicester
+pretended to favour it, though Cecil was against it on many grounds. But it
+was never seriously meant. It brought the Huguenots to Catherine's side on
+the eve of her voyage to renew the Catholic league with Philip, and it
+brought the Archduke Charles once more forward as a suitor for Elizabeth's
+hand. When it had thus served its purpose, the idea of the mature English
+queen marrying the boy Charles IX. was dropped.</p>
+
+<p>The Austrian's new advances were looked upon somewhat askance by Spain,
+until his attitude towards religion was assured, and, to have a second
+string, the Spanish ambassador, Guzman, affected to favour Leicester's
+suit. Cecil and the conservative nobles were sincere now in their advocacy
+of the archduke, and between the two parties Elizabeth steered coquettishly
+and diplomatically, modestly urging the archduke's coming, and yet flirting
+desperately with Leicester. The breach between the English nobles was
+profound, as all but Leicester wished the question of the queen's marriage
+and succession to be settled; and Leicester's chances were stronger than
+ever when it became clear, late in 1565, that the archduke would not come
+to England without a firm pledge. The French played off Leicester, too,
+against the archduke; sometimes even again suggesting their own king when
+Leicester's star waxed pale.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in 1566, the Lords and Commons urged the queen to marry, even
+Leicester joining in the remonstrance. But Elizabeth wished to play the
+game in her own way, and soundly scolded them. She did not mean to marry
+the archduke, or perhaps anyone, but whilst she kept him dangling, she knew
+she need not fear the Catholic combination. Soon all danger from that
+quarter disappeared for a time. Philip was in death struggle with his
+Protestant subjects in Holland; civil war was again raging in France, and
+Mary Stuart was a disgraced prisoner in the hands of her enemies. In the
+nine years that Elizabeth had carried on the marriage comedy she had kept
+the balance whilst England was growing stronger. Now, in 1568, she could
+afford to rest from her labours until danger from abroad again loomed.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Catholics and Heretics</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The peace of St. Germain in 1570 ended the long religious war in France,
+and the Guises and Catholics there, free from the strife, planned the
+rescue of the imprisoned Mary Stuart by force, and her marriage with the
+Duke of Anjou, the heir and brother of Charles IX. This was a danger both
+to Elizabeth and to the Huguenots, and was at once counteracted by their
+bringing forward the suggestion that the Queen of England might marry
+Anjou. He was, it is true, a fanatical Catholic, but the Huguenots thought
+that with England as a bait, and the powerful mind of Elizabeth to guide
+him, the youth might change his views. Leicester offered his help--for he
+knew the match was unlikely--and soon Catherine de Medici's agents were
+busy by Elizabeth's side. Elizabeth, as usual, was coy and maidenly. She
+was too old, she said, the thought of marriage was shocking to her; but,
+withal, the courtship went on actively. Anjou's charms and rumoured
+gallantries were the staple gossip at her court, and Elizabeth never tired
+of hearing praises of her young suitor.</p>
+
+<p>But soon the Guises and the Catholic League took fright, and urged Anjou
+not to be drawn into a match with a heretic too old for him. Better, said
+they, win England by force and marry Mary. To England the marriage, or a
+similar one, seemed really necessary. The Catholics at home and abroad were
+busily plotting against Elizabeth. Philip and Alba were ready to connive at
+her murder; the Protestants in Holland and France were powerless, and this
+match with Anjou seemed the only way to meet the danger. Anjou, under
+Catholic influence, was scornful, whilst Catherine, anxious for the
+greatness of her favourite son, was in despair at his "assottedness."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Buckhurst went, as ambassador to Paris, to forward the match in
+March 1571; but it soon became evident that Elizabeth could never concede
+the terms demanded by the French on religion. For many months the
+Huguenots, and Walsingham, as Elizabeth's ambassador, tried to reconcile
+the differences; and Catherine's agents in England laboured hard in the
+same cause. Elizabeth herself was ambiguous, though loving, and sometimes
+even Anjou was almost persuaded by his mother to accept the English crown
+matrimonial at the price demanded. For Elizabeth it was necessary to keep
+up the pretence at all costs, for the Spaniards were plotting her murder;
+and to split the Catholic party whilst secretly aiding the rebel
+Netherlanders seemed her only chance of safety. On one occasion, when Spain
+and France drew together, Elizabeth professed to be willing to marry Anjou
+on his own terms; but the prince grew ever more opposed to the match, and
+in January 1572, Catherine suddenly suggested that, as Anjou was so bigoted
+on religion, her youngest son, Alen&ccedil;on, might marry Elizabeth on any
+conditions she liked.</p>
+
+<p>The lad was but seventeen--a swarthy, pock-marked youth--and Elizabeth
+was inclined at first to resent the way in which Anjou had flouted her. She
+was thirty-nine, and her vanity was wounded; but yet the friendship or
+neutrality of France was vital to her. "How tall is he?" she asked Cecil.
+"About as tall as I am," replied the elderly minister. "As tall as your
+grandson, you mean!" snapped the queen. But Walsingham, Smith, and the
+French envoys plied her busily with descriptions of Alen&ccedil;on's manly
+charms, and a treaty between France and England was settled by which the
+Huguenots for a time became paramount in France conjointly with the
+marriage of the Huguenot Henry of Navarre with Margaret, the king's sister.
+Feasts and cordiality were the rules on both sides of the Channel now, and
+the Huguenot leaders urged the Alen&ccedil;on match with Elizabeth with all
+their force. In reply to all these offers, Elizabeth replied that, though
+the discrepancy of age was a great drawback, yet the pock-marks on the
+suitor's face were a greater objection still; yet if he would let her see
+him, without a pledge, she might like him. She would never, she said, marry
+a man she had not seen.</p>
+
+<p>But already Charles IX. and his mother were chafing under the Huguenot
+yoke and cooling towards England. They were determined not to be drawn by
+their new treaty with England into war with Spain; so, under the pretence
+of keeping up the negotiations for the Alen&ccedil;on match, they sent the
+youth La Mole to England in the autumn of 1572, really for the purpose of
+dissociating France from the Huguenot-English aid to the Protestant
+Netherlanders. La Mole was a gallant young lover, with whom Elizabeth was
+charmed, and when he played the vicarious wooer for Alen&ccedil;on, she
+could not make enough of him. But whilst he was philandering with her at
+Kenilworth, and she was losing patience at his political mission, there
+fell like a thunderbolt the awful news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew
+at Navarre's fatal wedding. At once the scene changed. La Mole and the
+French envoy hurried away amidst curses upon all false Frenchmen.
+Elizabeth, in a panic, smiled upon Spaniards again, and, for a time, the
+project of a French consort for her slept.</p>
+
+<p>But not for long. Alen&ccedil;on had no part in the massacre, and was
+known to favour Huguenots. He wrote a fervent love-letter to Elizabeth, and
+proposed to escape to England; whilst his agent Maisonfleur joined with
+Mauvissi&egrave;re, the official French ambassador, in wooing Elizabeth
+anew for Alen&ccedil;on and for France. Gradually the parties drew together
+again, for Catherine was already alarmed at the effect of St. Bartholomew.
+All the Protestant world was arming, the English ports were full of
+privateers to attack Catholic shipping, and aid in plenty was being sent
+from England to the Huguenots of Rochelle and the rebel Dutchmen.</p>
+
+<p>France could therefore not afford to quarrel with England, but Anjou and
+Charles IX. took care to hold Alen&ccedil;on tight, that he might not
+escape and strengthen the Protestant cause in union with Elizabeth, whilst
+they still kept up the appearance of marriage negotiations. Elizabeth was
+ever on the alert to serve her cause, and in March 1573, said she would go
+no further in the Alen&ccedil;on match unless the Protestants in Rochelle
+were allowed fair terms and the siege raised. Anjou, already tired of the
+war, consented, and soon afterwards Catherine asked whether Elizabeth would
+now proceed with the Alen&ccedil;on plan. The lad had grown much, she said,
+and his budding beard covered some of his facial imperfections. It was
+settled that the prince should make a flying visit to Dover, but soon
+Catherine began to make fresh conditions. It would be such a shame to them,
+she said, if her son went and returned unmarried.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--The Lovelorn Alen&ccedil;on</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the meanwhile, Alen&ccedil;on's love-letters to his mature flame grew
+warmer; but much as Elizabeth liked such attentions, she dreaded to go too
+far. Charles IX. was sinking fast, and the next heir was Anjou. With
+Alen&ccedil;on for heir-presumptive of France, the position would be
+changed; and once more the queen began to get doubtful about those
+unfortunate pock-marks on her lover's face. Once Alen&ccedil;on planned
+with Henry of Navarre to escape from his mother's custody and make a dash
+for England on his own account, but Catherine held him firmly.</p>
+
+<p>Both the Huguenots and the French king wished for the marriage, but each
+party frustrated the other because their objects were different. When the
+French ambassador, therefore, asked Elizabeth when Alen&ccedil;on might
+come to see her, she refused to name a time, because she knew secretly that
+a great Huguenot movement in France was pending, and she wished
+Alen&ccedil;on to be there as figurehead at the time--the very thing that
+the official French Government wished to avoid. The projected movement was
+betrayed and suppressed, and Alen&ccedil;on's life was for a time in
+danger; but when Henry III. (Anjou) was seated on the throne,
+Alen&ccedil;on kept openly a rival court to that of his brother, and the
+Huguenots around the prince were at deadly feud with the minions of the
+king.</p>
+
+<p>At last the crisis came. Alen&ccedil;on escaped from Paris in disguise,
+pursued by his mother, and, joining the Huguenots in arms, defied the king
+and the Guises. France was not big enough to hold both brothers in peace,
+and Catherine told Alen&ccedil;on that as Elizabeth seemed so ready to help
+him and his Huguenots, he ought to reopen the marriage negotiations. But
+Alen&ccedil;on was useless to England as a counterbalance to Spain unless
+France herself could be pledged as well, and Elizabeth considered it safest
+for the time, since that could not be done, to feign a new cordiality with
+Philip.</p>
+
+<p>The Catholic party in France was again paramount, and by bribery and
+Catherine's diplomacy, Alen&ccedil;on and his friends were bought over. For
+the next three years the young prince held aloof from affairs, but in 1578
+the hollow truce ended; he was suspected and placed under arrest, all his
+friends being cast into the Bastille. In February, 1578, Alen&ccedil;on
+broke his prison and fled, and all France was plunged into turmoil.
+Elizabeth was profoundly moved. The keynote of English policy was the
+exclusion of France from Flanders, and if Alen&ccedil;on was secretly
+supported in his action by his brother, then Elizabeth must oppose to the
+death any interference in Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>And so began the long and clever juggle by which she used
+Alen&ccedil;on's ambition to wed her as a means to compass her ends without
+marrying him. Huguenots flocked to Alen&ccedil;on's standard, whilst he
+sent by every post love-lorn epistles to Elizabeth, praying her to aid him
+to free Flanders from the bloodthirsty Spaniards. On July 7, 1578,
+Alen&ccedil;on entered Flanders with his army, and Elizabeth, still full of
+distrust of Frenchmen, feigned to Spaniards her deep disapproval, whilst
+she took care that many English and Germans in her pay slipped into
+Flanders at the same time, to prevent any French national domination.
+Presently, persuaded that Alen&ccedil;on had no secret pact with his
+brother, Elizabeth took Alen&ccedil;on and the Flemish revolt into her own
+hands, and effusively welcomed Alen&ccedil;on's envoys who came to promote
+his love suit.</p>
+
+<p>He chose for his emissary one Jehan Simier, an experienced gallant, who
+soon wooed Elizabeth to such good purpose that she fell violently in love
+with the messenger, as well as with his absent master. Protestant England
+took fright at the pending marriage of the queen with a papist of half her
+age. Simier, whom she called her "monkey," had bewitched her, said the
+courtiers, and remonstrances from all sides came to the queen.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--The Battle of Wits</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Alen&ccedil;on's demands were high, but Elizabeth seems really for once
+to have lost her head, and but for the strong opposition of her Council,
+might have been drawn into the marriage. Simier, seeing the deadlock,
+decided to bring Alen&ccedil;on over at all risks. Leicester, deadly
+jealous, tried to assassinate Simier, who revenged himself by divulging to
+the queen Leicester's secret marriage. Elizabeth was beside herself with
+rage, and more in love than ever with Alen&ccedil;on and his envoy. At
+length, in August 1579, the young French prince, in disguise, suddenly
+appeared at Greenwich. The queen's vanity was flattered, and though the
+visit was supposed to be secret, she hardly left her young lover, whilst
+he, to judge by his letters, was as badly smitten as she. But though she
+promised him marriage, he had to return with little else, and as soon as he
+had gone she found many good reasons for delay and hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>In October 1580, a new Catholic combination forced Elizabeth's hands,
+and she promised greater help to Alen&ccedil;on's project, whilst trying to
+draw France also into open war with Spain. The combat of wits was keen and
+cynical, each party trying to pledge the other and to keep free himself. A
+great French embassy came to England in April 1581, to negotiate an
+alliance and the queen's marriage with Alen&ccedil;on, who had now
+re-entered Flanders and was immersed in the struggle against the Spaniards.
+The discussions in England were becoming interminable, for the French
+ambassadors asked hard terms, when Alen&ccedil;on, in June 1581, losing
+patience, suddenly rushed over to England to plead his own cause
+independently of his brother's envoys, whom he distrusted with good reason.
+This suited Elizabeth, for it made Alen&ccedil;on more dependent upon her,
+and again she sent her lover back full of great promises to help him.</p>
+
+<p>In August Alen&ccedil;on again entered Flanders, depending entirely upon
+Elizabeth for support, and thenceforward he looked alone to his marriage
+with her for his salvation. She was sparing, and the poor prince retired to
+France in September. In desperation he came to England again to press for
+money and marriage in November 1581; and for months the love-making was
+fast and furious. Frantic prayers, sighs, and tears on his part were
+answered by kisses and promises on hers, but she gave as little money as
+would serve to get rid of him. On February 1, 1582, Alen&ccedil;on sailed
+for Holland to Elizabeth's professed grief and real joy; and thenceforward
+the prince, first in Flanders as sovereign, and afterwards in France a
+fugitive, supplicated and threatened his betrothed for money, and ever more
+money. But Elizabeth had now taken the Netherlands revolt into her own
+hands, and thenceforward her French lover was useless to her there. So,
+though she still kept up the pretence of her willingness to marry him on
+impossible conditions, and drove the poor creature to love-lorn despair,
+Alen&ccedil;on had served his matrimonial purpose before he died, in 1584,
+and Elizabeth's courtships with a political object came to an end. She and
+England were strong enough now to face her possible foes without fear.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Love_Affairs_of_Mary_Queen_of_Scots"></a>The Love Affairs
+of Mary Queen of Scots</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Mary Queen of Scots was one of the most remarkable women
+who ever presided over the destinies of a nation. She was born at
+Linlithgow on December 8, 1542, a few days before the death of her father,
+James V., thus becoming a queen before she was a week old. Her complex
+personality and varied accomplishments have inspired many and various
+historians, but it has remained for Major Martin Hume to demonstrate the
+historical fatality of Mary's love affairs. In "The Love Affairs of Mary
+Queen of Scots," published in 1903, Major Hume gives a convincing and
+logical reason for Mary's political failure, inasmuch as it did not spring
+from her goodness or badness as a woman, but from a certain weakness of
+character. This epitome has been prepared by Major Hume himself.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Betrothed in her Cradle</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When in the great hall at Worms, on that ever-memorable April day in
+1521, before the panic-stricken princes, Luther insolently flung at the
+emperor his defiance of the mediaeval church, the crash, though all unheard
+by the ears of men, shook to their base the crumbling foundations upon
+which, for hundreds of years, the institutions of Europe had rested. The
+sixteenth century thenceforward was a period of disintegration and
+reconstruction, in which fresh lines of cleavage between old political
+associates were opened, new affinities were formed, and the international
+balance re-adjusted.</p>
+
+<p>In the long struggle of the house of Aragon, and its successor, Charles
+V., with France for the domination of Italy, the only effectual guarantee
+against England's actively aiding its traditional ally, the ruler of Spain
+and Flanders, against its traditional enemy, France, was for the latter
+country to keep a tight hold of its alliance with Scotland, by means of
+which English force might be diverted at any time. The existence of the
+Scottish "back door" to England, with the ever probable enemy behind it,
+had long been a check upon English power, and a humiliation to English
+kings in their efforts to hold the balance between the Continental rivals.
+But with the spread of Lutheranism in Germany and Henry VIII.'s defiance of
+the Papacy, the Catholic powers, drawn together in the face of common
+danger, found a fresh bond of union in their orthodoxy which partially
+superseded old rivalries.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances the English policy, which had aimed at the
+control of Scottish foreign relations to the exclusion of French influence,
+became not only desirable as it always had been, but vitally necessary to
+preserve England's independence.</p>
+
+<p>Henry VIII.'s policy towards Scotland had been that of <i>divide et
+impera</i>, and a series of royal minorities and the greed and poverty of
+the semi-independent Scottish nobles had aided him. The rout of the Scots
+at Solway Moss, and the pathetic passing of the gallant James V., leaving
+his new-born daughter, Mary, as queen (December 1542), seemed at length to
+place Scotland in England's power. The murder of Cardinal Beaton, the
+bribery of the Douglases, and the marriage of Lennox with Henry's sister
+were all subsequent moves in the same game. Mary was betrothed in her
+cradle to the heir of England, and France, whose sheet anchor for centuries
+had been the "auld alliance" with the Scots, appeared to be helpless
+against a coalition of England and the emperor.</p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward, England's main object was to keep a tight grip upon
+Scotland by religion or otherwise, while at first France, and subsequently
+the Catholic league, strove ceaselessly, with the help of Mary Stuart, to
+free Scotland from English influence. The marriage juggle of Elizabeth was
+largely inspired by her Scottish aims, and if the fortuitous adjustment of
+her qualities kept England Protestant, and France wavering for all those
+critical years, if she secured the inactivity of Spain, the resistance of
+Protestant Holland, and the freedom of navigation by her skilful
+statecraft, her rival Mary Stuart was a hardly less powerful factor in the
+final triumph of England by reason of certain defects in her character, the
+consequences of which are dealt with in this book.</p>
+
+<p>Mary possessed a finer and nobler nature than Elizabeth; she was a woman
+of higher courage and greater conviction, more generous, magnanimous, and
+confiding, and, apart from her incomparably greater beauty and fascination,
+she possessed mental endowments fully equal to those of the English queen.
+But, whilst caution and love of mastery in Elizabeth always saved her from
+her weakness at the critical moment, Mary Stuart possessed no such
+safeguards, and was periodically swept along helplessly by the irresistible
+rush of her amorous passion.</p>
+
+<p>French intrigue and money, aided by the queen-regent of Scotland, Mary
+of Guise, succeeded, after Henry's death and Somerset's invasion of
+Scotland, in gaining firm hold upon Scotland, and Mary, as the betrothed
+wife of the dauphin Francis, was carried to France in 1548, at the age of
+six, to be reared by her cunning kinsmen of Lorraine, and made, as it was
+hoped, a future powerful instrument to aid Catholic French objects against
+England, and the reformation in France and elsewhere. As she grew towards
+womanhood in the bravest and most amorous court in Europe, the
+queen-dauphiness became a paragon of beauty, charm, accomplishments, the
+theme of poets, the despair of lovers innumerable worshipping her from
+afar.</p>
+
+<p>The boy Francis de Valois, to whom she was affianced, was a poor,
+bilious, degenerate weakling, stunted in figure, uncomely of face. He was
+shy and timid, shunning active exercises, and though at the time of his
+marriage (1558) he was too young to have been actively engaged in the vices
+of the outwardly devout court, he appears to have been fully alive to the
+desirability of his bride. Mary was precocious and ambitious; she was
+surrounded by profligates, male and female, and, though she can hardly have
+been in love with her young husband, she appears to have been fully
+reconciled to the union.</p>
+
+<p>With unsurpassed magnificence the wedding of Mary and Francis took place
+in Paris, but it signified to the world much more than the wedding of a boy
+and girl. So far as men could see, it meant the triumph of the papal Guises
+in France, and a death-blow to Protestant hopes of ranging Scotland on the
+side of the reformation.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Intrigue, Plot, and Intrigue</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Francis died after sixteen months reign, and Mary Stuart and her Guisan
+uncles, hated jealously by the queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, and by
+the reforming Bourbons, fell, for a time, into the background. Mary can
+hardly have loved her puny boy husband, but she nursed him night and day in
+his long sickness and his death so affected her that "she would not receive
+any consolation, but, brooding over her disasters with constant tears and
+passionate, doleful lamentations, she universally inspired deep pity." She
+had, indeed, lost much besides her royal husband; and in a poem written by
+her afterwards, the waste of her youth in widowhood, the loss of her great
+position as Queen of France, and her powerlessness any longer to enforce
+her rule in Scotland by French power, are the main burden of her complaints
+against Providence, not pity for the husband she had lost.</p>
+
+<p>The Guises were loath to surrender power without a struggle, and as soon
+as Francis died they sought to sell their niece in marriage again. Their
+first idea was for her to marry her child-brother-in-law, the new King
+Charles IX., but Catharine de Medici at once stopped that plan, though the
+boy himself was anxious for it and Mary was not averse. That failing,
+Cardinal Lorraine turned to the heir of Spain, Don Carlos, as a husband for
+her. This would have been a death-blow to Elizabeth, and Philip feigned to
+listen to it; but all the strength and cunning of Huguenots and
+Protestants, joined by those of Catharine and Elizabeth, were brought into
+play against this threatening move, and Mary went to Scotland with a
+sinking, sad, and angry heart in 1561, fearing her uncouth subjects,
+foreign to her now, vexed with the Protestant party for standing in the way
+of her ambitious marriage, and determined to oppose Elizabeth to the utmost
+in her designs against the independence of Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>With these views, gay and winsome though she was, it was not long before
+Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman,
+John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and
+Secretary Lethington that a <i>modus vivendi</i> might be found by
+persuading Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she
+herself died childless, on the undertaking of Mary that her marriage and
+policy should be dictated by England; but it was not Elizabeth's plan to
+pledge the future of England, and her nimble evasiveness drove the Scottish
+statesmen to despair.</p>
+
+<p>Brawls and bitterness grew in Mary's court around the Catholicism of the
+queen, and English money and intrigue were freely lavished to set Scotland
+by the ears. Half the nobles were disaffected, and Murray and Lethington,
+having failed to secure Scottish interests by moderate counsels and the
+conciliation of Elizabeth, were forced to take a strong course. Of foreign
+suitors Mary had many, some promoted by the Protestants, some by the Pope
+and the Guises, while the Catholics of England were secretly intriguing to
+force Elizabeth's hand by arranging Mary's marriage with young Henry
+Stuart, Lord Darnley, eldest son of Margaret, Countess of Lennox, niece of
+Henry VIII., who lived at Elizabeth's court. Cecil's spies were everywhere,
+and the plot was soon known and stopped by Elizabeth, violently angry with
+her kinswoman for listening to such a scheme.</p>
+
+<p>But Murray and Lethington, in desperation, were aiming at higher game
+even than this. They were Protestant, they had tried their best to win
+Elizabeth's recognition; but they were Scotsmen first, and if their country
+was to be independent it must have a great ally behind it. France was out
+of the question while the Guises were in the shade and Catharine was
+queen-mother. So the ministers of Mary turned their eyes to the Protestant
+heir of the Catholic king. Elizabeth soon heard of this, too, and suddenly
+pretended to be in favour of the Darnley match for Mary, while she
+developed the most cordial friendship for Mary herself; for the Guises had
+again become paramount in France, and Elizabeth could not afford to flout
+all the Catholic interests at once.</p>
+
+<p>That danger soon passed, for the Huguenots flew to arms, and Guise was
+murdered, Mary losing thus her principal prop abroad. And Lethington now
+pushed vigorously what seemed to be Scotland's only chance of safety--the
+marriage of Mary with the semi-idiot heir of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The English Catholics were drawn into the plot. "Only let Mary marry the
+heir of Spain, and we will salute her as our leader," said they. But
+Elizabeth soon gained wind of it, as usual, and was ready with her
+antidote--a most extraordinary one--the proposal that Mary should wed her
+own lover, Lord Robert Dudley, with the assurance of the English succession
+after Elizabeth's death without issue. It was a mere feint, of course, but
+it divided Scotland, and unsettled Mary herself.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Philip, with his leaden methods, was pondering and seeking
+fresh pledges and guarantees from the English Catholics. Before his
+temporising answer came Elizabeth had frightened Mary's advisers into
+doubt, while she was holding the English Catholics in check by dangling
+Darnley and Dudley before Mary's eyes, and swearing deadly vengeance if she
+married the Spaniard.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth's first aim was to embroil Mary's prospects by discrediting
+her in the eyes of foreign powers. To this end was directed the offer
+alternately of Dudley and Darnley as a husband, and Elizabeth's pretence of
+shocked reprobation of Mary in connection with Chastelard's escapade. It
+must be confessed that Mary's imprudence aided Elizabeth's object, and the
+sour bigotry of Knox, which looked upon all gaiety as a sin, served the
+same purpose. All this drove the unhappy queen more and more into the arms
+of the Catholic party as her only means of defence.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Prudence Overcome by Passion</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The intrigue to wed Mary to the Spanish prince was met by Elizabeth
+cordially taking up Lady Lennox, and her son, Darnley, who by many was now
+regarded as the intended heir of England, and was held out to Mary as an
+ideal husband for her. So long as she had hopes of the Spanish prince she
+gave but evasive answers; but late in 1564 the cunning diplomacy of
+Catharine and the falseness of Cardinal Lorraine had diverted that danger;
+and Philip gave Mary to understand that the match with his son was
+impossible, Mary's great hope had been founded upon this marriage. Unless
+she could have a foreign Catholic husband strong enough to defy Elizabeth
+she knew that she must make terms with Elizabeth's enemies, the English
+Catholics, and thus bring pressure to bear upon her by internal
+dissensions.</p>
+
+<p>It was a dangerous game to play, for it meant conspiracy; and so long as
+the Lennoxes and their effeminate, lanky son were basking in Elizabeth's
+favour, the English queen held her trump card. But Lady Lennox was
+intriguing and ambitious, the head of English Catholic disaffection, and
+could only be held to Elizabeth's side by delusive hopes of the English
+succession for her son. Lennox himself, with some misgiving, was allowed to
+go to Scotland to claim his forfeited estates, and there, to Elizabeth's
+anger, was received with marked respect, which made the English queen hold
+Darnley and his mother more firmly than ever, and again push forward Dudley
+as a suitor for Mary's hand. Anxious to get Darnley to Scotland, not
+necessarily to marry him, but as a useful instrument, Mary feigned
+willingness to accept Dudley; and, in face of this, Elizabeth was induced
+to allow young Darnley to go to Scotland for a short time, ostensibly on
+business of the family estates.</p>
+
+<p>In February 1565, Darnley, aged nineteen, crossed the border, to the
+dismay of the English agents in Scotland. It was soon after Mary had
+received news that the Spanish match was at an end, and she was ready for a
+new plan to circumvent Elizabeth. Darnley as a husband would bring to her
+the support of English Catholics, and a new claim to the English crown. So
+when her eyes first lit upon the fair stripling at Wemyss Castle, she
+looked upon him with favour as "the properest tall man she ever saw." He
+was on his best behaviour, and danced delightfully with the queen. Up to
+this time Mary had played her game with self-command and policy, but now
+for the first time her heart ran away with her, and she took a false
+step.</p>
+
+<p>To have married Darnley as part of a transaction with Elizabeth, and
+with the approval of her own Protestant subjects, would have been a
+master-stroke. But she fell in love with the "long lad," and could not wait
+for negotiation; so she at once sent off to pray King Philip to support her
+with money and men against England and the Protestants if she married
+Darnley and became the tool of Spain. Philip, nothing loth, consented, and
+welcomed the coming union as a Catholic alliance and a powerful weapon
+against Elizabeth. Mary thus made herself the head of a vast Catholic
+conspiracy looking to Spain for support, and Elizabeth was furious both
+with Mary and Darnley for having apparently beaten her at her own cunning
+game.</p>
+
+<p>How Elizabeth sought a diversion, at first by new matrimonial schemes of
+her own, has been told elsewhere, but her more effectual weapon was to
+arouse the fears of Scottish Protestants, and breed dissension in Mary's
+realm. "The young fool," Darnley, insolent and proud of his new greatness,
+offended all the nobles, whilst Mary grew daily more infatuated with him.
+They were married in July 1565, and the great conspiracy against Elizabeth
+and Protestantism was complete. Already the Scottish Protestant lords were
+in a panic, and after an abortive rising, they fled before Mary's bold
+attack, taking refuge in England.</p>
+
+<p>The queen herself led her forces, armed and mounted, with her stripling
+husband by her side; but she was followed close by the shaggy, stern,
+martial figure of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, just returned from exile
+to serve her; and upon him she looked with kindling eyes as a stouter man
+than the fribble she had wed. Mary had now apparently triumphed by her
+Darnley marriage, but the avalanche was gathering to crush her. She looked
+mainly to Spain and the Pope for help, and had all Protestantism against
+her, led by Elizabeth, whose hate and fury knew no bounds. It was a duel
+now of life or death between two systems and two women, one with a heart
+and the other without; and, as usual, the heartless won.</p>
+
+<p>English money and skill honeycombed Scottish loyalty. Darnley, vicious,
+vain, and passionate, was an easy prey to intrigue. The tools of England
+whispered in his ear that his wife was too intimate with the Italian
+secretary Rizzio, who had conducted the correspondence with the Catholic
+powers. Darnley, who had earned his wife's contempt already, was beside
+himself with jealousy, and himself led the Protestant conspirators and
+friends of England, who murdered Rizzio in the queen's presence at Holyrood
+(March 1566). From that hour Darnley's doom was sealed.</p>
+
+<p>He had thought to be king indeed now, but Mary outwitted him; for she
+recalled her exiled lords, welcomed her brother Murray, and threw herself
+into the arms of Darnley's Protestant foes, the very men who had risen in
+arms against the marriage. As she fled by night with Darnley after Rizzio's
+murder, to betray him, she swore over Rizzio's new-made grave that a
+"fatter one" than he should lie there ere long. Whether she knew of the
+plot of his foes to murder her husband is not proved, but she almost
+certainly did so, and welcomed the deed when it was done. She made no
+pretence of love for him after Rizzio's death, and her husband repaid her
+coldness by sulky loutishness and bursts of drunken violence. Mary's
+conduct toward Bothwell, too, began to arouse scandal. By November 1566,
+matters had reached a crisis, and Mary, at Kelso, said that unless she was
+freed from Darnley she would put an end to herself. She spoke not to deaf
+ears. Morton, and the rest of Rizzio's slayers and bitter enemies, were
+pardoned, and the deadly bond was signed.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Dire Infatuation</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On February 9, 1567, as the doomed consort lay sick and sorry outside
+Edinburgh at the lone house of Kirk o' Field, he was, done to death by
+Bothwell and the foes of the Lennoxes; and Mary Stuart's first true love
+affair was ended in tragedy. But already the second was in full blast.
+Bothwell had recently married; he was disliked by the Scottish nobles, and
+the queen's constant association with him had already brought discredit
+upon her. There had been a good political excuse for her union with
+Darnley, but Bothwell could bring no support to her cause; for his creed
+was doubtful, and he had no friends. Nothing, indeed, but the infatuation
+of an amorous woman for a brutally strong man could have so blinded her to
+her own great aims as to make her take Bothwell, the prime mover of
+Darnley's murder, for her husband.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the crime was known, all fingers were pointed to Bothwell and
+the queen as the murderers, and Protestants everywhere hastened to cast
+obloquy upon Mary for it. But for the nobles' jealousy of Bothwell, and the
+religious animus, probably Darnley's death would soon have been forgotten
+or condoned; but as it was, Scotland blazed out in denunciation of it, and
+though Bothwell was put upon a mock trial and acquitted, the hate against
+him grew, especially when he arranged to divorce his wife in April 1567,
+and, ostensibly by force, but clearly by Mary's connivance, abducted the
+queen and bore her off to his castle of Dunbar.</p>
+
+<p>On her return to Edinburgh a few weeks later Mary publicly married
+Bothwell--she swore afterwards against her will, but, in any case, to the
+anger and disgust of her subjects. She found her new husband an arrogant
+tyrant rather than her slave, and he watched her closely. The dire
+infatuation of the lovelorn woman soon wore off, and again she sighed to be
+free; but it was too late, for the Catholic powers stood aloof from her now
+that she had married a divorced man, and all her nobles had abandoned her.
+So Mary clung to Bothwell still, for he was strong, and all Scotland cried
+shame upon her.</p>
+
+<p>In June, Mary and her husband, fearing attack or treachery, fled from
+Edinburgh Castle, which at once opened its gates to Morton and the rebel
+lords. A parley was sent to Mary offering submission if she would leave
+Bothwell to his fate. She indignantly refused, for she feared the lords and
+hated Morton. Bothwell was strong, she thought, and he was the father of
+her unborn child; be might protect her. So by Bothwell's side she rode out
+at the head of the border clansmen, and met the rebel army at Carberry
+Hill, hard by Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>It was agreed that the dispute should be decided by the single combat
+between Bothwell and Lindsay, but before the duel began Mary's bordermen
+became disordered, and then she knew that all was lost. Kirkaldy of Grange
+came from her opponents to parley with her and offer safety for her, but
+not for Bothwell. Whilst they were speaking, Bothwell attempted to murder
+Grange; and when Mary forbade such treachery, he lost his nerve and began
+to whimper. In a moment the scales fell from Mary's eyes. This man was but
+a lath painted like steel. His strength was but a lie, and he was unworthy
+of her. She turned from him in contempt, and surrendered to the lords;
+while Bothwell fled, and unhappy Mary saw him no more.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Langside and After</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Cursed by crowds, who reviled her as a murderess and adulteress, Mary
+was led, a captive, to her capital. By night, to save her from the fury of
+the mob, she was smuggled out of Edinburgh and lodged, a prisoner, in the
+island fortress of Lochleven. During her long incarceration there the story
+of her wrongs and sufferings stirred the Catholics at home and abroad in
+her favour, and her friends and foes were again sharply divided according
+to their religious creeds. The rulers of Scotland, too, headed by her
+brother Murray, were far from easy; for the Catholics were strong, and
+foreign crowned heads looked black at those who kept a sovereign in
+durance. So attempts were made to conciliate her by proposing marriage with
+some harmless Scottish noble, conjoined with her abdication. But her heart
+was high still, and she would bate no jot of her queenship; rather would
+she exercise her glamour upon her gaolers and escape to power and
+sovereignty again. Her fascination was irresistible, and Murray's
+half-brother, young George Douglas, a mere lad, fell a victim to her
+smiles. Once more Mary fell in love, and proposed to marry the youth who
+had endeavoured to aid her escape.</p>
+
+<p>Murray was shocked, and had his brother expelled the castle; but in
+April 1568 the faithful George planned her evasion of the guard and
+joyfully welcomed her on the shore of the lake. To her standard flocked the
+Catholic lords, and, safe at Hamilton, Mary, again a queen, swore vengeance
+upon her foes. On her way with her army to Dumbarton she met Murray's force
+at Langside, near Glasgow. She had been strong at Carberry Hill with
+Bothwell at her side. Here she was weak, for no man of weight or character
+was with her, and as her men wavered she turned rein and fled.</p>
+
+<p>For sixty miles on bad roads she struggled on, almost without sleep, and
+living on beggar's fare. With no adviser or woman near her, in her panic
+and despair she took the fatal resolve and crossed the Solway into
+Elizabeth's realm, trusting to the magnanimity of the woman whom she had
+tried to ruin and supplant. Again her heart had deceived her. Elizabeth had
+no pity for a vanquished foe, and for the rest of her miserable life, well
+nigh a score of years, Mary Stuart was a prisoner. But in all those years
+she never ceased to plot and plan for the overthrow of Elizabeth and her
+own elevation to the Catholic throne of all Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst her many weapons, that of marriage and her personal fascination
+were not forgotten. Twice, at least, she tried to make her love affairs
+serve her political ambition. Poor, feckless Norfolk was drawn by his
+vanity and ambition into her net. Love epistles, breathing eternal
+devotion, passed between them, but murder was behind it all--the murder of
+Elizabeth, and the subjection of England to Spain to work Mary's vengeance
+on her foes, and Norfolk lost his head deservedly.</p>
+
+<p>Again she dreamed of marrying the Christian champion, Don Juan of
+Austria, and conquering and ruling over a Catholic England. But this plot,
+too, was discovered, and Don Juan, like all the rest of Mary's lovers, died
+miserably. Mary thenceforward was the centre of Spain's great conspiracy
+against England's queen, but she sought the end no more by love; for that
+had failed her every time she tried. She and her cause were beaten because
+her heart of fire was pitted against a heart of ice, and she lost all
+because she loved too much.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="WASHINGTON_IRVING"></a>WASHINGTON IRVING</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Christopher_Columbus"></a>Life of Christopher
+Columbus</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Washington Irving, American historian and essayist, was
+born on April 3, 1783, in New York, of a family which came originally from
+Scotland. He knew Europe well, and was equally at home in London, Paris,
+and Madrid; he held the offices, in 1829, of Secretary to the American
+Embassy in London, and, in 1842, of American Minister in Spain. He was
+deeply interested in Spanish history, and besides the "Life and Voyages of
+Christopher Columbus," he wrote "The Voyages of the Companions of
+Columbus," "The Conquest of Granada," "The Alhambra," and "Legends of the
+Conquest of Spain." He was an industrious man of letters, having an
+excellent style, wide knowledge, and pleasant humour. His chief work was
+the "Life of George Washington," of which we give an epitome elsewhere.
+Other writings include "A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,"
+the celebrated "Sketch Book," "Bracebridge Hall," "Tales of a Traveller,"
+and a "Life of Goldsmith." Irving did not marry, and died on November 28,
+1859, in his home at Sunnyside on the Hudson River, and is buried at
+Tarrytown. The "Life of Columbus" was published in 1828 and is now
+obtainable in a number of popular editions. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Years of Waiting</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa about 1435, of poor but reputable
+parents. He soon evinced a passion for geographical knowledge, and an
+irresistible inclination for the sea. We have but shadowy traces of his
+life till he took up his abode in Lisbon about 1470. His contemporaries
+describe him as tall and muscular; he was moderate and simple in diet and
+apparel, eloquent, engaging, and affable. At Lisbon he married a lady of
+rank, Do&ntilde;a Felipa. He supported his family by making maps and
+charts.</p>
+
+<p>Portugal was prosecuting modern discovery with great enthusiasm, seeking
+a route to India by the coast of Africa; Columbus's genius conceived the
+bold idea of seeking India across the Atlantic. He set it down that the
+earth was a terraqueous globe, which might be travelled round. The
+circumference he divided into twenty-four hours. Of these he imagined that
+fifteen hours had been known to the ancients; the Portguese had advanced
+the western frontier one hour more by the discovery of the Azores and the
+Cape de Verde Islands; still, about eight hours remained to be explored.
+This space he imagined to be occupied in great measure by the eastern
+regions of Asia. A navigator, therefore, pursuing a direct course from east
+to west, must arrive at Asia or discover intervening land.</p>
+
+<p>The work of Marco Polo is the key to many of the ideas of Columbus. The
+territories of the Great Khan were the object of his search in all his
+voyages. Much of the success of his enterprise rested on two happy errors;
+the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed smallness of the
+earth. Without these errors he would hardly have ventured into the
+immeasurable waste of waters of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>A deep religious sentiment mingled with his thoughts; he looked upon
+himself as chosen from among men, and he read of his discovery as foretold
+in Holy Writ. Navigation was still too imperfect for such an undertaking;
+mariners rarely ventured far out of sight of land. But knowledge was
+advancing, and the astrolabe, which has been modified into the modern
+quadrant, was being applied to navigation. This was the one thing wanting
+to free the mariner from his long bondage to the land.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus now laid his great project before the King of Portugal, but
+without success. Greatly disappointed, he sailed to Spain, hoping to
+receive the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was many months before
+he could even obtain a hearing; his means were exhausted, and he had to
+contend against ridicule and scorn, but the royal audience was at length
+obtained. Ferdinand assembled learned astronomers and cosmographers to hold
+a conference with Columbus. They assailed him with citations from the
+Bible. One objection advanced was, that should a ship ever succeed in
+reaching India, she could never come back, for the rotundity of the globe
+would present a mountain, up which it would be impossible to sail. Finally,
+after five years, the junta condemned the scheme as vain and
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus was on the point of leaving Spain, when the real grandeur of
+the subject broke at last on Isabella's mind, and she resolved to undertake
+the enterprise. Articles of agreement were drawn up and signed by Ferdinand
+and Isabella. Columbus and his heirs were to have the office of High
+Admiral in all the seas, lands, and continents he might discover, and he
+was to be viceroy over the said lands and continents. He was to have
+one-tenth of all profits, and contribute an eighth of the expense of
+expeditions. Columbus proposed that the profits from his discoveries should
+be consecrated to a crusade.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The First Voyage</i></h3>
+
+<h3>(August, 1492--March, 1493)</h3>
+
+
+<p>Columbus set out joyfully for Palos, where the expedition was to be
+fitted out. He had spent eighteen years in hopeless solicitation, amidst
+poverty, neglect, and ridicule. When the nature of the expedition was
+heard, the boldest seamen shrank from such a chimerical cruise, but at last
+every difficulty was vanquished, and the vessels were ready for sea. Two of
+them were light, half-decked caravels; the Santa Maria, on which Columbus
+hoisted his flag, was completely decked. The whole number of persons was
+one hundred and twenty.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492, steering for the Canary Islands.
+From there they were wafted gently over a tranquil sea by the trade wind,
+and for many days did not change a sail. The poor mariners gradually became
+uneasy at the length of the voyage. The sight of small birds, too feeble to
+fly far, cheered their hearts for a time, but again their impatience rose
+to absolute mutiny. Then new hopes diverted them. There was an appearance
+of land, and the ships altered their course and stood all night to the
+south-west, but the morning light put an end to their hopes; the fancied
+land proved to be an evening cloud.</p>
+
+<p>Again the seamen broke forth into loud clamours, and insisted on
+abandoning the voyage. Fortunately, the following day a branch with berries
+on it floated by; they picked up also a small board and a carved staff, and
+all murmuring was now at an end. Not an eye was closed that night. Columbus
+took his station on the top of the cabin. Suddenly, about ten o'clock, he
+beheld a light. At two in the morning the land was clearly seen, and they
+took in sail, waiting for the dawn. The great mystery of the ocean was
+revealed.</p>
+
+<p>When the day dawned, Columbus landed, threw himself upon his knees,
+kissed the earth, and returned thanks to God. Rising, he drew his sword,
+displayed the royal standard, and took possession in the names of the
+Castillian sovereigns, naming the island San Salvador. It is one of the
+Bahama Islands, and still retains that name, though also called Cat
+Island.</p>
+
+<p>The natives thought that the ships had descended from above on their
+ample wings, and that these marvellous beings were inhabitants of the
+skies. They appeared to be simple and artless people, and of gentle and
+friendly dispositions. As Columbus supposed that the island was at the
+extremity of India, he called them Indians. He understood them to say that
+a king of great wealth resided in the south. This, he concluded, could be
+no other than Cipango, or Japan. He now beheld a number of beautiful
+islands, green, level, and fertile; and supposed them to be the archipelago
+described by Marco Polo. He was enchanted by the lovely scenery, the
+singing of the birds, and the brilliantly colored fish, though disappointed
+in his hopes of finding gold or spice; but the natives continued to point
+to the south as the region of wealth, and spoke of an Island called
+Cuba.</p>
+
+<p>He set sail in search of it, and was struck with its magnitude, the
+grandeur of its mountains, its fertile valleys, sweeping plains, stately
+forests, and noble rivers. He explored the coast to the east end of Cuba,
+supposing it the extreme point of Asia, and then descried the mountains of
+Hayti to the south-east. In coasting along this island, which he named
+Hispaniola, his ship was carried by a current on a sandbank and lost. The
+admiral and crew took refuge in one of the caravels. The natives,
+especially the cacique Guacanagari, offered him every assistance. The
+Spanish mariners regarded with a wistful eye the easy and idle existence of
+these Indians, who seemed to live in a golden world without toil, and they
+entreated permission to remain.</p>
+
+<p>This suggested to Columbus the idea of forming the germ of a future
+colony. The cacique was overjoyed, and the natives helped to build a fort,
+thus assisting to place on their necks the yoke of slavery. The fortress
+and harbour were named La Navidad.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus chose thirty-nine of those who volunteered to remain, charged
+them to be circumspect and friendly with the natives, and set sail for
+Spain. He encountered violent tempests, his small and crazy vessels were
+little fitted for the wild storms of the Atlantic; the oldest mariners had
+never known so tempestuous a winter, and their preservation seemed
+miraculous. They were forced to run into Tagus for shelter. The King of
+Portugal treated Columbus with the most honourable attentions. When the
+weather had moderated he put to sea again, and arrived safely at Palos on
+March 15, having taken not quite seven months and a half to accomplish this
+most momentous of all maritime enterprises.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus landed and walked in procession to the church to return thanks
+to God. Bells were rung, the shops shut, and all business suspended. The
+sovereigns were dazzled by this easy acquisition of a new empire. They
+addressed Columbus as admiral and viceroy, and urged him to repair
+immediately to court to concert plans for a second expedition. His journey
+to Barcelona was like the progress of a sovereign, and his entrance into
+that city has been compared to a Roman triumph. On his approach the
+sovereigns rose and ordered him to seat himself in their presence. When
+Columbus had given an account of his voyage, the king and queen sank on
+their knees, and a <i>Te Deum</i> was chanted by the choir of the royal
+chapel. Such was the manner in which the brilliant court of Spain
+celebrated this sublime event.</p>
+
+<p>The whole civilised world was filled with wonder and delight, but no one
+had an idea of the real importance of the discovery. The opinion of
+Columbus was universally adopted that Cuba was the end of Asia; the islands
+were named the West Indies, and the vast region was called the New
+World.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Second Voyage</i></h3>
+
+<h3>(September, 1493--June, 1496)</h3>
+
+
+<p>Extraordinary excitement prevailed about the second expedition, and many
+hidalgos of high rank pressed into it. They sailed from Cadiz in September
+1493; all were full of animation, anticipating a triumphant return. When
+they reached La Navidad they found the fortress burnt. At length, from some
+natives they heard the story of the brawls of the colonists between
+themselves, and their surprise and destruction by unfriendly Indians.
+Columbus fixed upon a new site for his colony, which he named Isabella. Two
+small expeditions were sent inland to explore, and returned with
+enthusiastic accounts of the promise of the mountains, and Columbus sent to
+Spain a glowing report of the prospects of the colony.</p>
+
+<p>Soon, however, maladies made their appearance, provisions began to fail,
+and murmuring prevailed among the colonists. In truth, the fate of many of
+the young cavaliers, who had come out deluded by romantic dreams, was
+lamentable in the extreme. Columbus arranged for the government of the
+island, and set sail to explore the southern coast of Cuba, supposing it to
+be the extreme end of Asia. He had to contend with almost incredible
+perils, and was obliged to return. Had he continued for two or three days
+longer he would have passed round the extremity of Cuba; his illusion would
+have been dispelled, and a different course given to his subsequent
+discoveries.</p>
+
+<p>During his absence from Isabella the whole island had become a scene of
+violence and discord. Margarite, the general left in charge of the
+soldiers, and Friar Boyle, the apostolical vicar, formed a cabal of the
+discontented, took possession of certain ships, and set sail for Spain, to
+represent the disastrous state of the country, and to complain of the
+tyranny of Columbus. The soldiers indulged in all kinds of excesses, and
+the Indians were converted from gentle hosts into vindictive enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, a commissioner was sent out to inquire into the distress of
+the colony and the conduct of Columbus. He collected all complaints, and
+returned to Spain, Columbus sailing at the same time. Never did a more
+miserable crew return from a land of promise.</p>
+
+<p>The vessels anchored at Cadiz, and a feeble train of wretched men
+crawled forth, emaciated by diseases. Contrary to his anticipation,
+Columbus was received with distinguished favour. Thus encouraged, he
+proposed a further enterprise, and asked for eight ships, which were
+readily promised; but it was not until May 1498, that he again set
+sail.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Third Voyage</i></h3>
+
+<h3>(May, 1498--October, 1500)</h3>
+
+
+<p>From the Cape de Verde Islands, Columbus steered to the south-west,
+until he arrived at the fifth degree of north latitude. The air was like a
+furnace, the mariners lost all strength and spirit, and Columbus was
+induced to alter his course to the northwest. After sailing some distance
+they reached a genial region with a cooling breeze and serene and clear
+sky. They descried three mountains above the horizon; as they drew nearer,
+they proved to be united at the base, and Columbus, therefore, named this
+island La Trinidad. He coasted round Trinidad, and landed on the mainland,
+but mistook it for an island. He was astonished at the body of fresh water
+flowing into the Gulf of Paria, and came to the conclusion that it must be
+the outpouring of a great unknown continent stretching to the south, far
+beyond the equator. His supplies were now almost exhausted, and he
+determined to return to Hispaniola.</p>
+
+<p>He found the island in a lamentable situation. A conspiracy had been
+formed against his viceroy, and the Indians, perceiving the dissensions
+among the Spaniards, threw off their allegiance. After long negotiations
+Columbus was forced to sign a humiliating capitulation with the rebels.
+Meanwhile, every vessel that returned from the New World came freighted
+with complaints against Columbus. The support of the colony was an
+incessant drain upon the mother country. Was this compatible, it was asked,
+with the pictures he had drawn of the wealth of the island?</p>
+
+<p>Isabella herself at last began to entertain doubts about Columbus, and
+the sovereigns decided to send out Don Francisco del Bobadilla to
+investigate his conduct. This officer appears to have been needy,
+passionate, and ambitious. He acted as if he had been sent out to degrade
+the admiral, not to inquire into his conduct. He threw Columbus into irons,
+and seized his arms, gold, jewels, books, and most secret manuscripts.
+Columbus conducted himself with characteristic magnanimity, and bore all
+indignities in silence. Bobadilla collected testimony sufficient, as he
+thought, to ensure the condemnation of Columbus, and sent him a prisoner to
+Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, in chains, produced almost as great a
+sensation as his first triumphant return. A general burst of indignation
+arose. The sovereigns sent orders that he should be instantly set at
+liberty, and promised that Columbus should be reinstated in all his
+dignities. But Ferdinand repented having invested such great powers in any
+subject, and especially in a foreigner. Plausible reasons were given for
+delaying his reappointment, and meanwhile Don Nicholas de Ovando was sent
+out to supersede Bobadilla.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Fourth Voyage</i></h3>
+
+<h3>(May, 1502--November, 1504)</h3>
+
+
+<p>Columbus's thoughts were suddenly turned to a new enterprise. Vasco da
+Gama had recently reached India round the Cape of Good Hope, and immense
+wealth was poured by this route into Portugal. Columbus was persuaded that
+the currents of the Caribbean Sea must pass between Cuba and the land which
+he had discovered to the south, and that this route to India would be more
+easy and direct than that of Vasco da Gama. His plan was promptly adopted
+by the sovereigns, and he sailed in May 1502, on his last and most
+disastrous voyage. He steered to Hispaniola, but was not permitted to land,
+and then coasted along Honduras and down the Mosquito Coast to Costa Rica.
+Here he found gold among the natives, and heard rumours of Mexico. He
+continued beyond Cape Nombre de Dios in search for the imaginary strait,
+and then gave up all attempt to find it.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly he knew that another voyager, coasting from the eastward, had
+reached this point. He turned westward to search for the gold-mines of
+Veragua, and attempted unsuccessfully to found a settlement there. As his
+vessels were no longer capable of standing the sea, he ran them aground on
+Jamaica, fastened them together, and put the wreck in a state of defence.
+He dispatched canoes to Hispaniola, asking Ovando to send a ship to relieve
+him, but many months of suffering and difficulty elapsed before it
+came.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus returned to Spain in November 1504. Care and sorrow were
+destined to follow him; his finances were exhausted, and he was unable,
+from his infirmities, to go to court. The death of Isabella was a fatal
+blow to his fortunes. Many months were passed by him in painful and
+humiliating solicitation for the restitution of his high offices. At length
+he saw that further hope of redress from Ferdinand was vain. His illness
+increased, and he expired, with great resignation, on May 20, 1506.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus was a man of great and inventive genius, and his ambition was
+noble and lofty. Instead of ravaging the newly-found countries, he sought
+to found regular and prosperous enterprises. He was naturally irritable and
+impetuous, but, though continually outraged in his dignity, and foiled in
+his plans by turbulent and worthless men, he restrained his valiant and
+indignant spirit, and brought himself to forbear and reason, and even to
+supplicate. His piety was genuine and fervent, and diffused a sober dignity
+over his whole deportment.</p>
+
+<p>He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discovery. What visions
+of glory would have broken upon his mind could he have known that he had
+indeed discovered a new continent! And how would his spirit have been
+consoled, amidst the afflictions of age and the injustice of an ungrateful
+king, could he have anticipated the empires which would arise in the world
+he had discovered; and the nations, towns, and languages, which were to
+revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_George_Washington"></a>Life of George Washington</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> This great historical biography was Washington Irving's
+principal work. It was founded chiefly upon George Washington's
+correspondence, which is preserved in manuscript in the archives of the
+United States Government. Irving worked at it intermittently for many
+years; and it was published in successive sections during the last years of
+his life, 1855 to 1859, while he was living in retirement with his nieces
+at Sunnyside, on the Hudson River. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The De Wessyngton family, of the county of Durham, in feudal times,
+produced many men of mark in the field and in the cloister, and at a later
+period the Washingtons were intrepid supporters of the unfortunate House of
+Stuart. Compromised by this allegiance, two brothers, John and Andrew,
+uncles of Sir Henry Washington, the gallant defender of Worcester,
+emigrated to Virginia in 1657, and purchased lands in Westmoreland County,
+by the River Potomac. John, who became military leader of the Virginians
+against the Indians, was great-grandfather of the illustrious George
+Washington.</p>
+
+<p>George, born February 22, 1732, in a homestead on Bridges Creek, was the
+eldest son of Mary Ball, second wife of Augustine Washington. Two
+half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, survived from the first marriage;
+and Mary had three other sons and two daughters. George received his first
+education in an "old field school-house," taught by the parish sexton; but
+the chief influences of his boyhood were the morality of his home and the
+military ardour of the colonists against the Spanish and the French.
+Lawrence, his eldest brother, had a captaincy in the colonial regiment
+which fought for England in the West Indies, in 1740, and the boy's whole
+mind was turned to war.</p>
+
+<p>His father died when he was eleven years old, and George was sent to
+live with his married brother Augustine. Here he attended school, was eager
+in the acquirement of knowledge, and became expert in all athletic
+exercises. He very nearly entered on a naval career, but at his mother's
+earnest entreaty renounced the project, and returning to school, studied
+land-surveying.</p>
+
+<p>Lawrence, his brother, having married into the Fairfax family, George
+came under the notice of Lord Fairfax, owner of immense tracts of country,
+who was so pleased with the lad's character and accomplishments that he
+entrusted him with the task of surveying his possessions. At the age of
+sixteen George Washington set out into the wilderness, and acquitted
+himself so well that he was appointed public surveyor. He thus gained an
+intimate knowledge, and of the ways of the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>The English and French governments were at this time making conflicting
+claims to the Ohio valley, and their agents were treating with the various
+Indian tribes. At length the French prepared to enforce their claim by
+arms, and Washington received, in 1751, a commission as adjutant-general
+over a military district of Virginia. In October, 1753, he was sent by
+Governor Dinwiddie on a mission to the French commander, from which he
+returned in the following January; and his conduct on this occasion, when
+he had to traverse great distances of unknown forest at midwinter, and to
+cope with the craft of white men and savages alike, marked him out as a
+youth fitted for the most important civil and military trusts.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Conflicts with the French</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Washington was for the first time under fire in April, 1754, when he had
+been sent, as second in command of the colonial forces, to take charge of a
+fort on the Ohio. He fell in with a French party of spies, whom his small
+force, with Indian assistance, put to flight. His fort, named Fort
+Necessity, was defended by three hundred men, but was attacked in July by a
+greatly superior force of French and Indians, and Washington had to
+capitulate, marching out with the honours of war.</p>
+
+<p>When it was determined, the same autumn, by the Governor and the British
+Secretary of State, that the colonial troops should be reduced to
+independent companies, so that there should no longer be colonial officers
+above the rank of captain, Washington, in accordance with the dawning
+republicism of America, resigned his commission, and settling at Mount
+Vernon, prepared to devote himself to agriculture. But in 1755, General
+Braddock was sent out to undertake energetic operations against the French,
+and Washington accepted the General's offer of a position on his
+staff.</p>
+
+<p>It was now that the eminent Benjamin Franklin did such great service to
+the British arms by organizing transport, and listened with astonishment to
+Braddock's anticipations of easy victory. The young aide-de-camp also
+warned the English soldier in vain. On July 9 Braddock's force was utterly
+routed by the French and Indians, and the general himself was slain. This
+reverse did away with all belief, throughout the colonies, in the power of
+British arms, and prepared the way for the independence that was to
+follow.</p>
+
+<p>On August 14 George Washington was appointed to the supreme command of
+the Virginian forces, with his headquarters at Winchester, and was occupied
+in the defence of a wide frontier with an insufficient force, until the
+expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1758, when he planted the British flag
+on its smoking ruins, and put an end to the French domination of the
+Ohio.</p>
+
+<p>His marriage to Mrs. Martha Custis, a young and wealthy widow, was
+celebrated on January 6, 1759; he took his seat in the House of Burgesses
+at Williamsburg, and established himself at Mount Vernon to develop his
+estates. A large Virginia estate, in those days, was a little empire.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Dawn of Independence</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The definitive treaty of peace between France and England was signed at
+Fontainebleau in 1763; but the tranquility of the colonies was again broken
+by an Indian insurrection, known as Pontiac's war. Washington had no part
+in its suppression, but he was soon to be called again to the defence of
+his country.</p>
+
+<p>He was in his place in the House of Burgesses on May 29, 1765, when the
+claims of Britain to tax the colony were first repudiated, and it was
+declared that the General Assembly of Virginia had the exclusive right to
+tax the inhabitants, and that whoever maintained the contrary should be
+deemed an enemy to the colony. These resolutions were the signal for
+general applause throughout the continent.</p>
+
+<p>The repeal, in 1766, of the objectionable Stamp Act only postponed the
+crisis, which became acute when the port of Boston was closed by
+Parliament, because of the resistance of that city to the importation of
+East Indian tea. A General Congress of deputies from the several colonies
+was convened for September 5, 1773, at Philadelphia, in which Washington
+took part, and a Federal Union of the colonies was then established. The
+English commander, General Gage, struck the first blow against popular
+liberties, in the engagement at Lexington, April 18, 1775, and on June 15
+Washington was unanimously elected commander-in-chief of the American
+forces.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later was fought, outside Boston, the heroic battle of Bunker's
+Hill, and on the 21st Washington set out from Philadelphia to the seat of
+war, where he laid a strict siege about Boston, with a view to forcing the
+British to come out. An English ship having bombarded the American port of
+Falmouth, an act was passed by the General Court of Massachusetts,
+encouraging the fitting out of armed vessels to defend the coast of
+America, and granting letters of marque and reprisal. In October a
+conference of delegates was held, under Washington's presidency, of which
+Benjamin Franklin was a member, with regard to a new organisation of the
+army; and a new force of twenty-two thousand was formed, every soldier
+being enlisted for one year only.</p>
+
+<p>Montreal had been captured by an American expedition, and Washington was
+now looking forward to equal success in an expedition against Quebec. He
+was further encouraged by the capture, by one of his cruisers, of a
+brigantine laden with munitions of war, including a huge brass mortar. His
+wife joined the camp before Boston, and the eventful year was closed with
+festivities.</p>
+
+<p>But the gallant attempt on Quebec, in which Montgomery fell, was
+frustrated, and the siege of Boston dragged on uneventfully, until the
+Americans, in March, seized Dorchester Heights, and made the town no longer
+tenable. On the 17th there were in Boston Harbor seventy-eight ships and
+transports casting loose for sea, and twelve thousand soldiers, sailors and
+refugees, hurrying to embark. The flag of thirteen stripes, the standard of
+the Union, floated above the Boston forts, after ten tedious months of
+siege.</p>
+
+<p>The eminent services of Washington throughout this arduous period, his
+admirable management by which, in the course of a few months, an
+undisciplined band of husbandmen became soldiers, and were able to expel a
+brave army of veterans, commanded by the most experienced generals, won the
+enthusiastic applause of the nation. A unanimous vote of thanks was passed
+to him in Congress.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Declaration of Independence</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Despatches from Canada continued to be disastrous, and the evacuation of
+that country was determined on in June, 1776. The great aim of the British
+was now to get possession of New York and the Hudson, and to make them the
+basis of military operations. While danger was gathering round New York,
+and its inhabitants were in mute suspense and fearful anticipations, the
+General Congress at Philadelphia was discussing with closed doors the
+greatest question ever debated in America. A resolution was passed
+unanimously, on July 2, "that these United Colonies are, of right ought to
+be, free and independent States."</p>
+
+<p>The fourth of July is the day of national rejoicing, for on that day the
+"Declaration of Independence," that solemn and sublime document, was
+adopted. Tradition gives a dramatic effect to its announcement. It was
+known to be under discussion, but the closed doors of Congress excluded the
+populace. They awaited, in throngs, an appointed signal. In the steeple of
+the state-house was a bell, bearing the portentous text from Scripture,
+"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants
+thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the bill had been
+passed. It was the knell of British domination.</p>
+
+<p>Washington hailed the Declaration with joy. It was but a formal
+recognition of a state of things which had long existed, but it put an end
+to all those temporizing hopes of reconciliation which had clogged the
+military action of the country. On July 9, he caused it to be read at the
+head of each brigade of the army. "The general hopes," said he, "that this
+important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and
+soldier, to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that now the peace
+and safety of his country depend, under God, solely on the success of our
+arms; and that he is now in the service of a state possessed of sufficient
+power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest honours of a free
+country." and again: "The general hopes and trusts that every officer and
+man will endeavour so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier,
+defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Winning of Independence</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>But the exultation of the patriots of New York was soon overclouded.
+British warships, under Admiral Lord Howe, were in the harbour on July 12,
+and affairs now approached a crisis. Lord Howe came "as a mediator, not as
+a destroyer," and had prepared a declaration inviting communities as well
+as individuals to merit and receive pardon by a prompt return to their
+duty; it was a matter of sore regret to him that his call to loyalty had
+been forestalled by the Declaration of Independence.</p>
+
+<p>The British force in the neighbourhood of New York, under General Howe,
+brother of the Admiral, was about thirty thousand men; the Americans were
+only about twenty thousand, for the most part raw and undisciplined, and
+the sectional jealousies prevalent among them were more and more a subject
+of uneasiness to Washington. On August 27 the American force was defeated
+with great loss in the battle of Long Island, and was withdrawn from the
+island by a masterly night retreat; this led to the loss of New York and
+the Hudson River to the British. Reverse followed reverse; Washington was
+driven by the British arms from one point after another; many of the chief
+American cities were taken; and on September 26, 1777, General Sir William
+Howe marched into Philadelphia and thus occupied the capital of the
+confederacy. But Washington still maintained his characteristic equanimity.
+"I hope," he said, "that a little time will put our affairs in a more
+flourishing condition."</p>
+
+<p>This anticipation was soon to be fulfilled. General Burgoyne had been
+advancing from the north with a large force of British and Hessian troops,
+but was compelled by General Gates, with a superior American force, to
+capitulate on October 17,1777. By this capitulation the Americans gained a
+fine train of artillery, seven thousand stand of arms, and a great quantity
+of clothing, tents, and military stores of all kinds; and the surrender of
+Burgoyne struck dismay into the British army on the Hudson River.</p>
+
+<p>But the struggle for independence was still to continue for four years
+of incessant military operations, and it was not until the surrender of
+Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, by Lord Cornwallis, that Britain gave up
+hope of reducing her rebel colonies. When the redoubts of Yorktown were
+taken, Washington exclaimed, "The work is done, and well done!"</p>
+
+<p>A general treaty of peace was signed in Paris on January 20, 1783; and
+in March of that year Sir Guy Carleton informed Washington that he was
+ordered to proclaim a cessation of hostilities by sea and land. On April
+19, the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, thus completing the eighth
+year of the war, Washington issued a general order to the army in these
+terms--"The generous task for which we first flew to arms being
+accomplished, the liberties of our country being fully acknowledged and
+firmly secured, and the characters of those who have persevered through
+every extremity of hardship, suffering, and danger, being immortalised by
+the illustrious appellation of 'the patriot army,' nothing now remains but
+for the actors of this mighty scene to preserve a perfect, unvarying
+consistency of character through the very last act, to close the drama with
+applause, and to retire from the military theatre with the same approbation
+of angels and men which has crowned all their former virtuous actions."</p>
+
+<p>Writing, on June 8, to the Governors of the several States, he
+said--"The great object for which I had the honour to hold an appointment
+in the service of my country being accomplished, I am now preparing to
+return to that domestic retirement which, it is well known, I left with the
+greatest reluctance; a retirement for which I have never ceased to sigh,
+through a long and painful absence, and in which, remote from the noise and
+trouble of the world, I meditate to pass the remainder of life in a state
+of undisturbed repose."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Years of Peace</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Washington returned to Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve, 1783, and busied
+himself with the care of his estates. He had never ceased to be the
+agriculturist; through all his campaigns he had kept himself informed of
+the course of rural affairs at Mount Vernon. By means of maps on which
+every field was laid down and numbered, he was enabled to give directions
+for their several cultivation, and to receive accounts of their several
+crops. No hurry of affairs prevented a correspondence with his agent, and
+he exacted weekly reports. He now read much on agriculture and gardening,
+and corresponded with the celebrated Arthur Young, from whom he obtained
+seeds of all kinds, improved ploughs, plans for laying out farmyards, and
+advice on various parts of rural economy.</p>
+
+<p>His active day at Mount Vernon began some time before dawn. Much of his
+correspondence was despatched before breakfast, which took place at
+half-past seven. After breakfast he mounted his horse and rode off to
+various parts of his estate; dined at half-past two; if there was no
+company he would write until dark; and in the evening he read, or amused
+himself with a game of whist.</p>
+
+<p>The adoption of the Federal Constitution opened another epoch in the
+life of Washington. Before the official forms of an election could be
+carried into operation, a unanimous sentiment throughout the Union
+pronounced him the nation's choice to fill the presidential chair. The
+election took place, and Washington was chosen President for a term of four
+years from March 4, 1788. An entry in his diary, on March 16, says--"I bade
+adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity; and with
+a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words
+to express, set out for New York with the best disposition to render
+service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of
+answering its expectations."</p>
+
+<p>The weight and influence of his name and character were deemed all
+essential to complete his work; to set the new government in motion, and
+conduct it through its first perils and trials. He undertook the task, firm
+in the resolve in all things to act as his conscience told him was "right
+as it respected his God, his country, and himself." For he knew no divided
+fidelity, no separate obligation; his most sacred duty to himself was his
+highest duty to his country and his God.</p>
+
+<p>His death took place on December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p>The character of Washington may want some of the poetical elements which
+dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities and a
+rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man.
+Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgement, an
+immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never
+wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOSEPHUS"></a>JOSEPHUS</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Autobiography"></a>Autobiography</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Flavius Josephus was born in Jerusalem in 37 A.D. His
+father, Matthias, was a priest, and his mother belonged to the Asmonean
+princely family. So distinguished was he as a student that, at the age of
+twenty-six, he was chosen delegate to Nero. When the critical juncture
+arose for his nation, through the rebellion excited by the cruelties of
+Gessius Florus, the Roman procurator, Josephus was appointed governor of
+Galilee The insurrection proved fatal, for Vespasian by his invasion
+rendered resistance hopeless. Subsequently he lived in Rome, and the date
+of his death is unknown. The works of this writer are monumental. He wrote
+his vivid "Wars of the Jews" in both Hebrew and Greek. His "Antiquities of
+the Jews" traces the whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the
+great war. Scaliger, one of the acutest of mediaeval critics, declares that
+in his writings on the affairs of the Jews, and even on those of foreign
+nations, Josephus deserves more credit than all the Greek and Roman writers
+put together. His fidelity and veracity are as universally admitted as his
+direct and lucid style is generally admired. His account of his own life
+and career is a masterpiece in this category of literature, for it is
+written with blended modesty and na&iuml;vet&eacute;. In many passages of
+this "Autobiography" he does not hesitate to assume great credit for his
+own courage, probity, and skill, but in each case the justification is
+manifest, for he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous
+machinations of his virulent enemies. The "Autobiography" is from beginning
+to end a thrilling and wonderful romance of real life, for the hairbreadth
+escapes of this extraordinary man are among the most singular recitals in
+the whole world of adventure. The whole story is unique, as was the noble
+individuality of the man himself. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Priest of the Blood-Royal</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The family from which I, Flavius Josephus, am derived is not an ignoble
+one, but hath descended all along from the priests. I am not only sprung
+from a sacerdotal family in general, but from the first of the twenty-four
+courses of the Jewish priests, and I am of the chief family of that course
+also. With us, to be of the sacerdotal dignity is an indication of the
+splendour of a family. But, further, by my mother I am of the royal blood;
+for the children of Asmonaeus, from whom that family was derived, had both
+the office of the high-priesthood and the dignity of a king for a long time
+together.</p>
+
+<p>My father Matthias, to whom I was born in the first year of the reign of
+Gaius Caesar, was not only eminent in Jerusalem, our greatest city, on
+account of his nobility, but had a higher commendation on account of his
+righteousness. I was brought up with my brother Matthias. As a child I
+gained a great reputation through my love for learning, and, when I was
+about fourteen years of age, was frequently asked by the high-priests and
+chief men of the city my opinion about the accurate understanding of points
+of the law.</p>
+
+<p>In my twenty-sixth year I took a voyage to Rome. My object was to plead
+before Caesar the cause of certain excellent priests whom Felix, then
+procurator of Judaea, had put in bonds on a trivial pretext. I was desirous
+to procure deliverance for them, not only because they were of my own
+friends, but because I heard that they sustained their piety towards God
+under their afflictions, and that they simply subsisted on figs and
+nuts.</p>
+
+<p>Our voyage was an adventurous one, for the ship was wrecked in the
+Adriatic Sea, and we that were in it, being about six hundred in number,
+swam all night for our lives. I and about eighty others were saved by a
+ship of Cyrene. When I had thus escaped, and was come to Puteoli, I became
+acquainted with an actor named Alityrus, much beloved by Nero, but a Jew by
+birth. Through his interest I became known to Poppaea, Caesar's wife, and
+having, through her, procured the liberty of the priests, besides receiving
+from her many presents, I returned to Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>Now I perceived that many innovations were begun, and that many were
+cherishing hopes of a revolt from the Romans.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Prelude to the Great Crisis</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>So I retired to the inner court of the Temple. Yet I went out of the
+Temple again, after Menahem and the chief members of the band of robbers
+were put to death, and abode among the high-priests and the chief of the
+Pharisees. But no small fear seized upon us when we saw the people in arms,
+while we were not able to restrain the seditious. We hoped that Gessius
+Floras would speedily arrive with great forces. But on his arrival he was
+defeated with great loss.</p>
+
+<p>The disgrace that fell upon him became the calamity of our whole nation,
+for it elevated the hopes of conquering the Romans on the part of those who
+desired war. But another cause of the revolt arose in Syria from the cruel
+treatment of the Jews in many cities, where they showed not the least
+disposition towards rebellion. About 13,000 were treacherously slain in
+Scythopolis, and the Jews in Damascus underwent many miseries; but of these
+events accounts are given in the books of the Jewish War.</p>
+
+<p>I was now sent, together with two other priests, Joazar and Judas, by
+the principal men of Jerusalem, to Galilee, to persuade the ill men there
+to lay down their arms, and to teach them that it were better for us all to
+wait to see what the Romans would do. I came into Galilee, and found the
+people of Sepphoris in no small agony about their country, by reason that
+the Galileans had resolved to plunder it, because of their friendship with
+the Romans, and because they had made a league with Cestius Gallus, the
+president of Syria. But I quieted their fears. Yet I found the people of
+Tiberias ready to take arms, for there were three factions in that
+city.</p>
+
+<p>The first faction, with Julius Capellus for the head, was composed of
+men of worth and gravity, and advised the city to continue in allegiance to
+the Romans; the second faction, consisting of the most ignoble persons, was
+determined for war. But as for Justus, the head of the third faction,
+though he pretended to be doubtful about war, yet he was really desirous of
+innovation, as supposing that he should gain power by the change of
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>By his harangues Justus inflamed the minds of many of the people,
+persuading them to take arms, and then he went out and set fire to the
+villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos, on the border of Tiberias, and
+of the region of Scythopolis.</p>
+
+<p>Gamala persevered in its allegiance to the Romans, under the persuasion
+of Philip, the son of Jacimus, who was governor of the city under King
+Agrippa. He reminded the people of the benefits the king had bestowed on
+them, and pointed out how powerful the Romans were, and thus he restrained
+the zeal of the citizens.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as soon as I was come into Galilee, and had ascertained the state
+of affairs, I wrote to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem asking for their
+direction. They replied that I should remain there; and that, if my
+fellow-delegates were willing, I should join with them in the care of
+Galilee. But these my colleagues, having gotten great riches from those
+tithes which as priests were their dues, and were given to them, determined
+to return to their own country. Yet when I desired them to stay to settle
+public affairs, they complied, and we removed from Sepphoris to Bethmanus,
+a village four furlongs from Tiberias, whence I sent messengers to the
+senate of that city, asking that the principal men should come to me.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Governor of Galilee</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When the chief men of Tiberias were come, I told them I was sent as a
+legate from the people at Jerusalem, in order to persuade them to destroy
+that house which Herod the tetrarch had built in Tiberias, and which,
+contrary to our laws, contained the figures of living creatures. I desired
+that they would give us leave to do so; but for a good while they were
+unwilling, only being overcome by long persuasion. Then Jesus, son of
+Sapphias, one of the leaders of sedition, anticipated us and set the palace
+on fire, thinking that as some of the roofs were covered with gold, he
+should gain much money thereby. These incendiaries also plundered much
+furniture; then they slew all the Greeks who dwelt in Tiberias, and as many
+others as were their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>When I understood this state of things, I was greatly provoked, and went
+down to Tiberias and took care of all the royal furniture that could be
+recovered from such as had plundered it. Next I committed it to ten of the
+chief senators. From thence I and my fellow-delegates went to Gischala to
+John, to learn his designs, and soon discovered that he was for
+innovations, for he wished me to give him authority to carry off the corn
+that belonged to Caesar, and to lay it in the villages of Upper Galilee.
+Though I refused, he corrupted my colleagues with money, and so I, being
+out-voted, held my tongue. By various other cunning contrivances which I
+could not prevent, John gained vast sums of money. But when I had dismissed
+my fellow-delegates I took care to have arms provided and the cities
+fortified. My first care was to keep Galilee in peace, so I made friends of
+seventy of the principal men, and took them on my journeys as companions,
+and set them to judge causes.</p>
+
+<p>I was now about thirty years of age, in which time of life it is
+difficult to escape from the calumnies of the envious. Yet did I preserve
+every woman free from injury; I despised and refused presents; nor would I
+take the tithes due to me as a priest. When I twice took Sepphoris by
+force, and Tiberias four times, and Gadara once, and when I had subdued and
+captured John, who had laid treacherous snares for me, I did not punish
+with death either him or others. And on this account I suppose it was that
+God, Who is never unacquainted with those that do as they ought to do,
+delivered me still out of the hands of my enemies, and afterwards preserved
+me when I fell into many perils.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, when my abode was at Cana, a village of Galilee, John came
+to Tiberias and stirred a revolt against me, so that my life was in danger.
+I escaped only by fleeing down the lake in a ship to Taricheae, whence I
+proceeded to Sepphoris. John returned to Gischala, where he continued to
+cultivate bitter hatred against me. Through the machinations of himself and
+Simon, a chief man in Gadara, all Galilee was filled with rumours that
+their country was about to be betrayed by me to the Romans.</p>
+
+<p>Hereby I again incurred extreme peril, but I took a bold course. Dressed
+in a black garment, with my sword hung at my neck, I went to face, in the
+hippodrome, a multitude of the citizens of Taricheae, and addressed them in
+such terms that, though some wished to kill me, these were overcome by the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>Although the multitude returned to their homes, yet the robbers and
+other authors of the tumult, afraid lest I might punish them, took six
+hundred armed men and came to burn the house where I abode. Thinking it
+ignoble to run away, I resolved to expose myself to danger; so I shut
+myself up in an upper room, and asked that one of them should be sent up to
+me, by whom I would send out to them money from the spoils I had taken.</p>
+
+<p>When they had sent in one of their boldest, I had him whipped severely,
+and commanded one of his hands to be cut off and hung about his neck. In
+this case he was put out, and those who had sent him, affrighted at the
+supposition that I had more armed men about me than they had, immediately
+fled.</p>
+
+<p>I dealt in like manner with Clitus, a young man of Tiberias, who was the
+author of a fresh sedition in that city. Since I thought it not agreeable
+to piety to put one of my own people to death, I called to Clitus himself,
+and said to him, "Since thou deservest to lose both thy hands for thine
+ingratitude to me, be thou thine own executioner, lest by refusal to do so
+thou undergo a worse punishment."</p>
+
+<p>When he earnestly begged me to spare one of his hands, it was with
+difficulty that I granted it. So, in order to prevent the loss of both his
+hands, he willingly took his sword and cut off his own left hand; and this
+put an end to the sedition.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--The Failure of His Foes</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The people of Gamala wrote to me, asking that I would send them an armed
+force, and also workmen to raise up the walls of their city, and I acceded
+to each of their requests. I also built walls about many villages and
+cities in Upper and Lower Galilee, besides laying up in them much corn. But
+the hatred of John of Gischala grew more violent by reason of my
+prosperity. He sent his brother Simon to Jerusalem with a hundred armed men
+to induce the Sanhedrin to deprive me of my commission; but this was not an
+easy thing to do, for Ananus, one of the chief priests, demonstrated that
+many of the people bore witness that I had acted like an excellent
+general.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Ananus and some of his friends, corrupted by bribes, secretly agreed
+to expel me out of Galilee, without making the rest of the citizens
+acquainted with what they were doing. Accordingly they sent four men of
+distinction down to Galilee to seek to supersede me in ruling the
+province.</p>
+
+<p>These were to ask the people of Galilee what was their reason of their
+love to me. If the people alleged that it was because I was born at
+Jerusalem, that I was versed in the law, and that I was a priest, then they
+were to reply that they also were natives of Jerusalem, that they
+understood the law, and that two of them were priests. To Jonathan and his
+companion were given 40,000 drachmae out of the public money, and a large
+band of men was equipped with arms and money to accompany them.</p>
+
+<p>But wonderful was what I saw in a dream that very night. It seemed to me
+that a certain person stood by me, and said, "O Josephus, put away all
+fear, for what now afflicts thee will render thee most happy, and thou
+shalt overcome all difficulties! Be not cast down, but remember that thou
+art to fight the Romans."</p>
+
+<p>When I had seen this vision I arose, intending to go down to the plain
+to meet a great multitude who, I knew, would be assembled, for my friends,
+on my refusal had dispatched messengers all around to inform the people of
+Galilee of my purpose to depart. And when the great assembly of men, with
+their wives and children, saw me, they fell on their faces weeping, and
+besought me not to leave them to be exposed to their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>When I heard this, and saw what sorrow affected the people, I was moved
+with compassion, and promised that I would stay with them, thinking it
+became me to undergo manifold hazards for the sake of so great a multitude.
+So I ordered that five thousand of them should come to me armed, and that
+the rest should depart to their own homes.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before Vespasian landed at Tyre, and King Agrippa with
+him. How he then came into Galilee, and how he fought his first battle with
+me near Taricheae, and how, after the capture of Jotapata, I was taken
+alive and bound, and how I was afterward loosed, with all that was done by
+me in the Jewish war, and during the siege of Jerusalem, I have accurately
+related in the books concerning the "Wars of the Jews."</p>
+
+<p>When the siege of Jotapata was over, and I was among the Romans, I was
+kept with much care, by means of the great respect that Vespasian showed
+me. After being freed from my bonds I went to Alexandria, where I married.
+From thence I was sent, together with Titus, to the siege of Jerusalem, and
+was frequently in danger of being put to death. For the Jews desired to get
+me into their power to have me punished, and the Romans, whenever they were
+beaten, thought it was through my treachery. But Titus Caesar was well
+acquainted with the uncertain fortune of war, and returned no answer to the
+soldiers' solicitation against me.</p>
+
+<p>When Titus was going away to Rome he made choice of me to sail along
+with him, and paid me great respect And when we were come to Rome I had
+great care taken of me by Vespasian, for he gave me an apartment in his own
+house.</p>
+
+<p>When Vespasian was dead, Titus kept up the same kindness which his
+father had shown me, and Domitian, who succeeded, still augmented his
+respects to me; nay, Domitia, the wife of Caesar, continued to show me many
+kindnesses.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOHN_GIBSON_LOCKHART"></a>JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Sir_Walter_Scott"></a>Life of Sir Walter Scott</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> John Gibson Lockhart was born in Scotland in 1794. He
+received part of his education at Glasgow, part at Oxford, and in 1816 he
+became an advocate at the Scotch bar. As one of the chief supporters of
+Blackwood's Magazine, he began to exhibit that sharp, bitter wit which was
+his most salient characteristic. In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of
+Sir Walter Scott, and for this reason, perhaps no one has been better
+qualified to write the biography of the great novelist. Lockhart's "Life of
+Sir Walter Scott" is a biography in the best sense of the word--one which
+has been ranked even with Boswell's "Johnson." It reveals to the reader the
+inmost personality of the man himself, and no life from first to last could
+better afford such complete revelation. Moreover, the "Life" was a labour
+of love, Lockhart himself receiving not a fraction of its very considerable
+proceeds, but resigning them absolutely to Scott's creditors. Published in
+seven volumes in 1838, in every respect it is the greatest of all
+Lockhart's books. Lockhart died in 1854. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>Early Years</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Sir Walter Scott was distantly connected with ancient families both on
+his father's and his mother's side. His father, Walter Scott, a Writer to
+the Signet in Edinburgh, was a handsome, hospitable, shrewd and religious
+man, who married, in 1758, Anne, eldest daughter of Dr. John Rutherford,
+professor of medicine in Edinburgh University. The Scotts had twelve
+children, of whom only five survived early youth.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of this biography was born on August 15, 1771, in a house at
+the head of the College Wynd. He was a healthy child, but when eighteen
+months old was affected with a fever which left a permanent lameness in the
+right leg. With a view to curing this weakness he was sent to live with his
+paternal grandfather, at the farm house of Sandy-Knowe near Dryburgh Abbey,
+in the extreme south of Berwickshire.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in the country air, he became a sturdy boy, and his mind was
+stored with the old Broder tales and songs. In his fourth year he was taken
+to London by sea, and thence to Bath, where he remained about a year for
+the sake of the waters, became acquainted with the venerable John Home,
+author of "Douglas," and was introduced by his uncle, Capt. Robert Scott,
+to the delights of the theatre and "As You Like It."</p>
+
+<p>From his eighth year Scott lived at his father's house in George Square,
+Edinburgh. His lameness and solitary habits had made him a good reader, and
+he used to read aloud to his mother, Pope's translation of Homer and Allan
+Ramsay's "Evergreen;" his mother had the happiest of tempers and a good
+love of poetry. In the same year he was sent to the High School, Edinburgh,
+under the celebrated Dr. Adam, who made him sensible of the beauties of the
+Latin poets.</p>
+
+<p>After his school years, the lad, who had become delicate from rapid
+growth, spent half a year with an aunt, Miss Janet Scott, at Kelso. He had
+now awaked to the poetry of Shakespeare and of Spenser, and had acquired an
+ample and indiscriminate appetite for reading of all kinds. To this time at
+Kelso he also traced his earliest feeling for the beauties of natural
+objects. The love of Nature, especially when combined with ancient ruins,
+or remains of our forefathers' piety or splendour, became his insatiable
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>He was then sent to classes in the Faculty of Arts in Edinburgh
+University; and in 1785 was articled to his father and entered upon the
+wilderness of law. Though he disliked the drudgery of the office, he loved
+his father and was ambitious, and the allowance which he received afforded
+the pleasures of the circulating library and the theatre. His reading had
+now extended to the great writers in French, Spanish and Italian
+literature. Distant excursions on foot or on horseback formed his favorite
+amusement, undertaken for the pleasure of seeing romantic scenery and
+places distinguished by historic events.</p>
+
+<p>In 1790, Scott determined, in accordance with his father's wishes, to
+become an advocate, and assumed the gown on July 11, 1792. His personal
+appearance at this time was engaging. He had a fresh, brilliant complexion,
+his eyes were clear and radiant, and the noble expanse of his brow gave
+dignity to his whole aspect. His smile was always delightful, and there was
+a playful intermixture of tenderness and gravity well calculated to fix a
+lady's eye. His figure, except for the blemish in one limb, was eminently
+handsome, and much above the usual stature; and the whole outline was that
+of extraordinary vigour, without a touch of clumsiness.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Poet's Education</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I do not know when his first attachment began; its object was Margaret,
+daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belcher, of Invermay. But after
+Scott had for several years nourished the dream of union with this lady,
+his hopes terminated in her being married to the late Sir William Forbes,
+of Pitsligo, a gentleman of the highest character, who lived to act the
+part of a generous friend to his rival throughout the distresses of 1826
+and 1827.</p>
+
+<p>After being admitted an advocate, Scott undertook many excursions to
+various parts of Scotland, gaining that intimate knowledge of the country,
+and its people and traditions, which appears in his poems and novels. Thus,
+he visited Northumberland, and made a close inspection of the battle-field
+of Flodden, and on another journey studied the Saxon cathedral of Hexam.
+During seven successive years he made raids, as he called them, into the
+wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale, picking up the ancient
+"riding ballads" preserved among the descendants of the moss-troopers. To
+these rambles he owed much of the materials of his "Minstrelsy of the
+Border," and here he came to know Willie Elliot, the original of Dandie
+Dinmont. Another expedition, into Galloway, carried him into the scenery of
+Guy Mannering. Stirlingshire, Perthshire and Forfarshire became familiar
+ground to him, and the scenery of Loch Katrine especially was associated
+with many a merry expedition. His first appearance as counsel in a criminal
+court was at the Jedburgh assizes, where he helped a veteran poacher and
+sheep-stealer to escape through the meshes of the law.</p>
+
+<p>In June, 1795, Scott was appointed one of the curators of the Advocate's
+Library and became an adept in the deciphering of old manuscript. His
+highlands and border raids were constantly suggesting inquiries as to
+ancient local history and legend, which could nowhere else have been
+pursued with equal advantage.</p>
+
+<p>In the same year, a rhymed translation of Burger's "Lenore," from his
+pen, was shown by him to Miss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of Purgstall,
+who was delighted and astonished at it. "Upon my word," she wrote in a
+letter to a friend, "Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet--something of
+a cross I think between Burns and Gray." This lady had the ballad elegantly
+printed in April, 1796, and Scott thus made his first appearance as an
+author. In October, this translation, together with that of the "Wild
+Huntsman," also from Burger, was published anonymously in a thin quarto by
+Manners and Miller, of Edinburgh. The little volume found warm favour: its
+free, masculine and lively style revealing the hand of a poet.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Marriage</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In July, 1797, Scott set out on a tour to the English lakes, accompanied
+by his brother John and Adam Fergusson, visiting Tweeddale, Carlisle,
+Penrith, Ullswater and Windermere, and at length fixing their headquarters
+at Gilsland, a peaceful and sequestered little watering place.</p>
+
+<p>He was riding one day with Fergusson when they met, some miles away from
+home, a young lady on horseback, whose appearance instantly struck both of
+them so much, that they kept her in view until they had satisfied
+themselves that she was staying in Gilsland. The same evening there was a
+ball, at which Scott was introduced to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter.</p>
+
+<p>Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal
+attractions; a fairy-like form; a clear olive complexion; large, deep eyes
+of Italian brown; a profusion of silken tresses, raven-black; her address
+mingling the reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman with a certain natural
+archness and gaiety that suited well her French accent. A lovelier vision,
+as all who remember her youth have assured me, could hardly be imagined,
+and from that hour the fate of the poet was fixed.</p>
+
+<p>She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a devoted royalist,
+who died in the beginning of the Revolution; Madame Charpentier had died
+soon after bringing her children to London; and the Marquis of Downshire
+had become their guardian. Miss Charpentier was now making a summer
+excursion under the care of the lady who had superintended her
+education.</p>
+
+<p>In an affectionate and dutiful letter Scott acquainted his mother with
+his purpose of marriage, and Miss Carpenter remained at Carlisle until her
+destiny was settled. The lady had a considerable private income, amounting
+to about &pound;500 a year; the difficulties presented by the prudence and
+prejudices of family connections were soon overcome; and the marriage took
+place in St. Mary's, Carlisle, on December 24, 1797. Scott took his bride
+to a lodging in George Street, Edinburgh, the house which he had taken not
+being quite ready, and the first fortnight convinced her husband's family
+that she had the sterling qualities of a wife.</p>
+
+<p>Their house in South Castle Street, soon after exchanged for one in
+North Castle Street, which he inhabited down to 1826, became the centre of
+a highly agreeable circle; the evenings passed in a round of innocent
+gaiety; and they and their friends were passionately fond of the theatre.
+Perhaps nowhere else could have been formed a society on so small a scale
+as that of Edinburgh at this time, including more of vigorous intellect,
+varied information, elegant tastes, and real virtue, affection and mutual
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1798, Scott hired a cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk,
+about six miles from Edinburgh, having a garden with a most beautiful view.
+In this retreat they spent several happy summers, receiving the visits of
+their chosen friends from the neighbouring city, and wandering amidst some
+of the most romantic scenery of Scotland.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Early Poems</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In February, 1799, a London Bookseller named Bell, brought out Scott's
+version of Goethe's tragedy, "Goetz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand,"
+having purchased the copyright for twenty-five guineas. This was the first
+publication that bore Scott's name. In March of that year he took his wife
+to London, and met with some literary and fashionable society; but his
+chief object was to examine the antiquities of the Tower and Westminster,
+and to make researches among the manuscripts of the British Museum. He
+found his "Goetz" favourably spoken of by the critics, but it had not
+attracted general attention.</p>
+
+<p>About this time Scott wrote a play entitled "House of Aspen" which,
+having been read and commended by the celebrated actress, Mrs. Esten, was
+put in rehearsal by Kemble for the stage. But the notion was abandoned; and
+discovering the play thirty years after among his papers, Scott sent it to
+the "Keepsake" of 1829.</p>
+
+<p>His return to Scotland was hastened by the news of his father's death,
+and his mother and sister spent the following summer and autumn in his
+cottage at Lasswade. This summer produced his first serious attempt in
+verse, "Glenfinlas," which was followed by the noble ballads, "Eve of St.
+John," "The Grey Brother" and "Fire-King"; and it was in the course of this
+autumn that he first visited Bothwell Castle, the seat of Archibald, Lord
+Douglas, whose wife, and her companion, Lady Louisa Stuart, were among his
+dearest friends through life.</p>
+
+<p>During a visit to Kelso, before returning to Edinburgh for the winter,
+Scott renewed an acquaintance with a classfellow of his boyhood, Mr. James
+Ballantyne, who was now printer and editor of a weekly paper in his native
+town. Scott showed him some of his poems, expressed his wonder that his old
+friend did not try to get some bookseller's printing and suggested a
+collection of old Border ballads. Ballantyne printed for him a few
+specimens to show to the booksellers; and thus began an experiment which
+changed the fortunes of both Scott and Ballantyne.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the commencement of the Winter Session, the office of
+Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant, and the Duke of Buccleuch
+used his influence with Mr. Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville, to
+procure it for Scott. The appointment to the Sheriff ship was made on
+December 16, 1799. It brought him an annual salary of &pound;300; the
+duties of the office were far from heavy; the small pastoral territory was
+largely the property of the Duke of Buccleuch; and Scott turned with
+redoubled zeal to his project of editing the ballads, many of which belong
+to this district. In this design he found able assistants in Richard Heber
+and John Leyden. During the years 1800 and 1801, the "Minstrelsy" formed
+his chief occupation.</p>
+
+<p>The duties of the Sheriffship took him frequently to Ettrick Forest, and
+on such occasions he took up his lodging at the little inn at Clovenford, a
+favourite fishing station on the road from Edinburgh to Selkirk. Here he
+was within a few miles of the values of Yarrow and Ettrick. On one of his
+excursions here, penetrating beyond St Mary's Lake, he found hospitality at
+the farmhouse of William Laidlaw, through whom he came to know James Hogg,
+a brother poet hardly conscious of his powers.</p>
+
+<p>The first and second volumes of the "Minstrelsy" appeared in January,
+1802, from the house of Cadell and Davies in the Strand, and formed Scott's
+first introduction as an original writer to the English public. Their
+reception greatly elated Ballantyne, the printer, who looked on his
+connection with them as the most fortunate event in his life. The great
+bookseller, Longman, repaired to Scotland soon after this, and purchased
+the copyright of the "Minstrelsy," including the third volume; and not long
+afterwards James Ballantyne set up as a printer in Edinburgh, assisted by a
+liberal loan from Scott.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Scott's Chief Poems</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The "Edinburgh Review" was begun in 1802, and Scott soon became a
+contributor of critical articles for his friend Mr. Jeffrey, the elder. His
+chief work was now on "Sir Tristram," a romance ascribed to Thomas of
+Ercildoune; but "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was making progress in 1803,
+when Scott made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and his sister, under
+circumstances described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal. In the
+following May, he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel, with an adjoining
+farm, on the southern bank of the Tweed, a few miles from Selkirk; and in
+the same month "Sir Tristram" was published by Constable of Edinburgh.
+Captain Robert Scott, his uncle, died in June, leaving him the house of
+Rosebank near Kelso, which Scott sold for &pound;5000.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published in the first week of 1805,
+and its success at once decided that literature should form the main
+business of Scott's life. Its design arose originally from the suggestion
+of the lovely Countess of Dalkeith, who had heard a wild, rude legend of
+Border <i>diablerie</i>, and sportively asked him to make it the subject of
+a ballad. He cast about for a new variety of diction and rhyme, and having
+happened to hear a recitation of Coleridge's unpublished "Christabel"
+determined to adopt a similar cadence. The division into cantos was
+suggested by one of his friends, after the example of Spenser's "Faery
+Queen." The creation of the framework, the conception of the ancient
+harper, came last of all. Thus did "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" grow out
+of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." The publishers were Longman of
+London, and Constable of Edinburgh, and the author's share of profits came
+to &pound;769.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time that Scott took over a third share in Ballantyne's
+business, a commercial tie which bound him for twenty years. Its influence
+on his literary work and his fortunes was productive of much good and not a
+little evil. Meanwhile, he entered with the zest of an active partner into
+many publishing schemes, and exerted himself in the interests of many
+authors less fortunate than himself.</p>
+
+<p>With the desire of placing his financial position on a more substantial
+basis, Scott had solicited the office of Clerk of Session; and after some
+difficulties, during which he visited London and was received by the
+Princess of Wales, he was installed in that position on March 8, 1806, and
+continued to discharge its duties with exemplary regularity for twenty-five
+years.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of "Marmion" was further interrupted by Scott's appointment
+as secretary to a Commission for the improvement of Scottish Jurisprudence,
+but the poems appeared at last in February, 1808. It received only very
+qualified praise from Jeffrey, but I think it may be considered on the
+whole Scott's greatest poem, and its popularity was from the very first
+extraordinary.</p>
+
+<p>In April of the same year William Miller of Albemarle Street published
+Scott's great edition of Dryden, with a biography, in eighteen volumes; and
+the editor's industry and critical judgement were the subject of a
+laudatory article by Hallam in the "Edinburgh Review."</p>
+
+<p>Scott was now engaged in a vast multiplicity of business. He was
+preparing an edition of Swift for Constable, establishing his own partner
+as a publisher in Edinburgh under the title of "John Ballantyne and Co.,
+Booksellers," and was projecting a new periodical of sound constitutional
+principles, to be known as the "Quarterly Review," published by Murray in
+London and by Ballantyne in Edinburgh. In connection with the latter
+enterprise Scott and Mrs. Scott went up to London for two months in the
+Spring of 1809, and enjoyed the society of Coleridge, Canning, Croker, and
+Ellis. The first "Quarterly" appeared while he was in London, and contained
+three articles from his pen. At this time also he prevailed on Henry
+Siddons, the nephew of Kemble, to undertake the lease and management of the
+Edinburgh Theatre; and purchasing a share himself, became an acting
+trustee, and for many years took a lively concern in the Edinburgh
+company.</p>
+
+<p>Early in May, 1810, "The Lady of the Lake" came out, like her two elder
+sisters, in all the majesty of quarto, at the price of two guineas, the
+author receiving two thousand guineas for the copyright. The whole country
+rang with the praises of the poet, and crowds set off to view the scenery
+of Loch Katrine. The critics were in full harmony with one another and with
+the popular voice.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Waverley Novels</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On returning, in 1810, from an excursion to the Islands of the western
+Scottish coast, where he had been collecting impressions for "The Lord of
+the Isles," Scott was searching one morning for fishing-flies in an old
+desk at Ashestiel, when he came across a forgotten manuscript, written and
+abandoned five years before. It contained the first two chapters of
+"Waverley." He submitted it to Ballantyne, whose opinion was on the whole
+against completion of the novel, and it was again laid aside.</p>
+
+<p>Although his publishing venture had begun to wear a bad aspect, Scott
+was now in receipt of &pound;1300 a year as Clerk of Session, and when the
+lease of Ashestiel ran out in May, 1811, he felt justified in purchasing,
+for &pound;4000, a farm on the banks of the Tweed above Galafoot. This
+farm, then known as "Garty Holes," became "Abbotsford," so called because
+these lands had belonged of old to the great Abbey of Melrose; and in his
+own mind Scott became henceforth the "Laird of Abbotsford."</p>
+
+<p>The last days at Ashestiel were marked by a friendly interchange of
+letters with Lord Byron, whose "Childe Harold" had just come out, and with
+correspondence with Johanna Baillie and with Crabbe. At Whitsuntide the
+family, which included two boys and two girls, moved to their new
+possession, and structural alterations on the farmhouse began.</p>
+
+<p>The poem "Rokeby" appeared in January, 1813. A month or two later the
+crisis in the war affected credit aniversally, and many publishing firms,
+including that of the Ballantynes, were brought to extremity. The
+difficulty was relieved for a time by the sale of copyrights and much of
+the stock to Constable, on the understanding that the publishing concern
+should be wound up as soon as possible. But Scott was preparing fresh
+embarrassments for himself by the purchase of another parcel of land; a yet
+more acute crisis in the Ballantyne firm forced him to borrow from the Duke
+of Buccleuch; and when planning out his work for the purpose of retrieving
+his position he determined to complete the fragment of "Waverley."</p>
+
+<p>The offer of the post of poet-laureate was made to Scott at this time,
+but holding already two lucrative offices in the gift of the Crown, he
+declined the honour and suggested that it should be given to Southey, which
+was accordingly done. The "Swift" in nineteen volumes, appeared in July,
+1814, and had a moderate success.</p>
+
+<p>"Waverley," of which Scott was to receive half the profits, was
+published by Constable in July, 1814, without the author's name, and its
+great success with the public was assured from the first. None of Scott's
+intimate friends ever had, or could have, the slightest doubt as to its
+parentage, and when Mr. Jeffrey reviewed the book, doing justice to its
+substantial merits, he was at no pains to conceal his conviction of the
+authorship. With the single exception of the "Quarterly," the critics
+hailed it as a work of original creative genius, one of the masterpieces of
+prose fiction.</p>
+
+<p>From a voyage to the Hebrides with the Commissioners of the Northern
+Lighthouses, Scott returned in vigour to his desk at Abbotsford, where he
+worked at "The Lord of the Isles" and "Guy Mannering." The poem appeared in
+January and the novel in February, 1815. "The Lord of the Isles" never
+reached the same popularity as the earlier poems had enjoyed, but "Guy
+Mannering" was pronounced by acclamation to be fully worthy of the honours
+of "Waverley." In March, Scott went to London with his wife and daughter,
+met Byron almost daily in Murray's house, and was presented to the Prince
+Regent, who was enchanted with Scott, as Scott with him. A visit to Paris
+in July of the same year is commemorated in "Paul's Letters to His
+Kinsfolk." Scott's reputation had as yet made little way among the French,
+but the Duke of Wellington, then in Paris, treated him with kindness and
+confidence, and a few eminent Frenchmen vied with the enthusiastic Germans
+in their attentions to him.</p>
+
+<p>"The Antiquary" came out early in 1816, and was its author's favourite
+among all his novels. The "Tales of my Landlord," published by Murray and
+Blackwood, appeared in December, and though anonymous was at once
+recognized as Scott's. The four volumes included the "Black Dwarf" and "Old
+Mortality." A month later followed a poem, "Harold the Dauntless." The
+title of "Rob Roy" was suggested by Constable; and the novel was published
+on the last day of 1817.</p>
+
+<p>During this year the existing house of Abbotsford had been building, and
+Scott had added to his estate the lands of Toftfield, at a price of
+&pound;10,000. He was then thought to be consolidating a large fortune, for
+the annual profits of his novels alone had, for several years, been not
+less than the cost of Toftfield.</p>
+
+<p>Having been asked by the Ballantynes to contribute to the historical
+department of the "Annual Register," I often had occasion now to visit
+Scott in his house in Castle Street, where I usually found him working in
+his "den," a small room behind the dining parlour, in company with his dog,
+Maida. Besides his own huge elbow-chair, there were but two others in the
+room, and one of these was reserved for his amanuensis, a portrait of
+Claverhouse, over the chimneypiece, with a Highland target on either side
+and broadswords and dirks disposed star-fashion round them. A venerable
+cat, fat and sleek, watched the proceedings of his toaster <b>and</b> Maids
+with dignified equanimity.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Abbotsford</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The house of Abbotsford was not completed, and finally rid of carpenters
+and upholsterers, until Christmas, 1824; but the first time I saw it was in
+1818, and from that time onwards Scott's hospitality was extended freely
+not only to the proprietors and tenants of the surrounding district, but to
+a never-ending succession of visitors who came to Abbotsford as pilgrims.
+In the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his prosperity was at its
+height, he entertained under his roof as many persons of distinction in
+rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and in science, as the most
+princely nobleman of his age ever did in the like space of time. It is not
+beyond the mark to add that of the eminent foreigners who visited our
+Island within this period, a moiety crossed the Channel mainly in
+consequence of the interest in which his writings had invested Scotland,
+and that the hope of beholding the man under his own roof was the crowning
+motive with half that moiety. His rural neighbours were assembled
+principally at two annual festivals of sport; one was a solemn bout of
+salmon fishing for the neighbouring gentry, presided over by the Sheriff;
+and the other was the "Abbotsford Hunt," a coursing field on a large scale,
+including, with many of the young gentry, all Scott's personal favourites
+among the yeomen and farmers of the surrounding country.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding all his prodigious hospitality, his double official
+duties as Sheriff and Clerk of Session, the labours and anxieties in which
+the ill-directed and tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him, the keen
+interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the house and
+estate of Abbotsford, and finally, notwithstanding obstinate and agonizing
+attacks of internal cramp which were undermining his constitution, Scott
+continued to produce rapidly the wonderful series of the Waverley Novels.
+"The Bride of Lammermoor," "Legend of Montrose" and "Ivanhoe" appeared in
+1819, "The Monastery," "The Abbot" and "Kenilworth" in 1820, "The Pirate"
+in 1821, "The Fortunes of Nigel" in 1822, "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin
+Durward" and "St. Ronan's Well" in 1823, and "Redgauntlet" in 1824. His
+great literary reputation was acknowledged by a baronetcy conferred in
+1820, and by the most flattering condescensions on the part of King George
+IV on his visit to Edinburgh in 1822.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The End of All</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Scott's Diary from November, 1825, shows dear forebodings of the
+collapse of the houses of Constable and Ballantyne. In a time of universal
+confidence and prosperity, the banks had supported them to an extent quite
+unwarranted by their assets or their trade, and as soon as the banks began
+to doubt and to enquire, their fall was a foregone conclusion. In December,
+Scott borrowed &pound;10,000 on the lands of Abbotsford, and advanced that
+sum to the struggling houses; on January 16, 1826, their ruin, and Scott's
+with them, were complete. Scott immediately placed his whole affairs in the
+hands of three trustees, and by the 26th all his creditors had agreed to a
+private trust to which he mortgaged all his future literary labours.</p>
+
+<p>On March 15, he left for the last time his house in Castle Street; on
+April 3; "Woodstock" was sold for the creditors' behoof, realising
+&pound;8228; on May 15, Lady Scott died, after a short illness, at
+Abbotsford. "I think," writes Scott in his Diary, "my heart will break.
+Lonely, aged, deprived of all my family--all but poor Anne; an
+impoverished, embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and
+counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous
+apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her
+foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my
+weary self-reflections."</p>
+
+<p>An expedition to Paris, in October, to gather materials for his "Life of
+Napoleon." was a seasonable relief. On his return through London, the King
+undertook that his son, Charles Scott, then at Oxford, should be launched
+in the diplomatic service. The elder son, heir to the baronetcy, was now
+with his regiment in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The "Life of Buonaparte" was published in June, 1827, and secured high
+praise from many, among whom was Goethe. It realised &pound;18,000 for the
+creditors, and had health been spared him, Scott must soon have freed
+himself from all encumbrances. Before the close of 1829 he had published
+also the "Chronicles of the Canongate," "Tales of a Grandfather," "The Fair
+Maid of Perth" and "Anne of Geirstein," but he had been visited also by
+several threatenings of apoplexy, and on February 15, 1830, was prostrated
+by a serious attack. Recovering from this illness, Scott resigned his
+office as Clerk of Session, and during the rest of the year produced a
+great quantity of manuscript, including the "Letters on Demonology and
+Witchcraft," and the series of "Tales of a Grandfather" dealing with French
+history. April, 1831, brought with it a distinct stroke of paralysis, yet
+both "Castle Dangerous" and "Count Robert of Paris" were finished in the
+course of the year.</p>
+
+<p>Sailing in October, in the "Barham," Sir Walter Scott visited Malta and
+Naples, and came to Rome in April, 1832. In May he set out for home by
+Venice, Munich and the Rhine, but his companions could hardly prevail on
+him to look at the interesting objects by the way, and another serious
+attack fell upon him at Nimeguen. He reached London on June 13, and on July
+7 was carried on board the steamer for Leith, and was at Abbotsford by the
+11th. Here the remains of his strength gradually declined, and his mind was
+hopelessly obscured.</p>
+
+<p>As I was dressing on the morning of September 17, a servant came to tell
+me that his master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness, and
+wished to see me immediately. I found him entirely himself, though in the
+last extreme of feebleness. "Lockhart," he said "I may have no more than a
+minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man--be virtuous--be
+religious--be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you
+come to lie here." He scarcely afterwards gave any sign of consciousness,
+and breathed his last on September 21, in the presence of all his
+children.</p>
+
+<p>His funeral was unostentatious but the attendance was very great. He was
+laid in the Abbey of Dryburgh, by the side of his wife, in the sepulchre of
+his ancestors.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Life_of_Robert_Burns"></a>The Life of Robert Burns</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> John Gibson Lockhart was born, a son of the manse, at
+Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, on July 14, 1794. Receiving his early education
+in Glasgow, he went, at sixteen, with a scholarship to Balliol College,
+Oxford. In 1816 he was called to the Scottish Bar; but literature occupied
+him more than law, and as early as 1819 he wrote the once popular "Peter's
+Letters to his Kinsfolk." Next year he married Scott's eldest daughter,
+Sophia. Lockhart was a leading contributor to the early "Blackwood," where
+his fine translations of Spanish ballads first appeared, and he edited the
+"Quarterly Review" from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25,
+1854, and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's forte
+was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside Boswell's "Johnson."
+The "Life of Burns" was published first in Constable's "Miscellany" in
+1828, when the whole impression was exhausted in six weeks. It passed
+through five editions before the author's death. Though many lives of Burns
+have appeared since, with details unknown to Lockhart, his biography is in
+many respects the best we possess, and is never likely to be superseded.
+Even Mr. Henley is "glad to agree with Lockhart." It is this book that is
+the subject of Carlyle's famous essay on Burns. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Poet in the Making</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage at Alloway,
+two miles south of Ayr, and near the "auld brig o' Doon." His father,
+William Burnes, or Burness--for so he spelt his name--was from
+Kincardineshire. When Robert was born he had the lease of a seven-acre
+croft, and had intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He was a man
+of notable character and individuality, immortalised by his son as "the
+saint, the father, and the husband" of "The Cottar's Saturday Night." "I
+have met with few," said Burns, "who understood men, their manners, and
+their ways, equal to my father." Agnes Brown, the poet's mother, is
+described as a very sagacious woman, with an inexhaustible store of ballads
+and traditionary tales, upon which she nourished Robert's infant
+imagination, while her husband attended to "the weightier matters of the
+law."</p>
+
+<p>When Burns was between six and seven, his father removed to the farm of
+Mount Oliphant, two miles from the Brig o' Doon. But the soil was poor, and
+the factor--afterwards pictured in "The Twa Dogs"--so harsh and
+unreasonable, that the tenant was glad to quit. In 1777 he removed about
+ten miles to the larger and better farm of Lochlea, in the parish of
+Tarbolton. Here, after a short interval of prosperity, some trouble arose
+about the conditions of the lease. The dispute involved William Burnes in
+ruin, and he died broken-hearted in February, 1784.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, at the age of six, Robert, with his brother Gilbert, was
+learning to read, write, and sum under the direction of John Murdoch, an
+itinerant teacher, who has left an interesting description of his
+pupil.</p>
+
+<p>"Gilbert always appeared to me to possess a more lively imagination,"
+says Murdoch, "and to be more of the wit, than Robert. I attempted to teach
+them a little church-music. Here they were left far behind by all the rest
+of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably dull, and his
+voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to distinguish one
+tune from another. Robert's countenance was generally grave and expressive
+of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind. Gilbert's face said,
+'Mirth, with thee I mean to live;' and, certainly, if any person who knew
+the two boys had been asked which of them was the more likely to court the
+muses, he would never have guessed that Robert had a propensity of that
+kind."</p>
+
+<p>When Murdoch left the district, the father himself continued to instruct
+the boys; but when Robert was about thirteen he and Gilbert were sent,
+"week about, during a summer quarter," to the parish school of Dalrymple.
+The good man could not pay two fees, or his two boys could not be spared at
+the same time from the farm!</p>
+
+<p>"We lived very poorly," says the poet. "I was a dexterous ploughman for
+my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother [Gilbert], who could drive
+the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel-writer might
+perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I."
+Burns's person, inured to daily toil, and continually exposed to every
+variety of weather, presented, before the usual time, every characteristic
+of robust and vigorous manhood. He says himself that he never feared a
+competitor in any species of rural exertion; and Gilbert, a man of uncommon
+bodily strength, adds that neither he, nor any labourer he ever saw at
+work, was equal to him, either in the cornfield or on the
+thrashing-floor.</p>
+
+<p>Before his sixteenth year Burns had read a large amount of literature.
+But a collection of songs, he says significantly, "was my <i>vade
+mecum</i>. I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song
+by song, verse by verse; carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime
+from affectation or fustian." It was about this date that he "first
+committed the sin of rhyme." The subject was a "bewitching creature," a
+partner in the harvest field, and the song was that beginning "Once I loved
+a bonnie lass."</p>
+
+<p>After this, though much occupied with labour and love, he found leisure
+occasionally to clothe the various moods of his mind in verse. It was as
+early as seventeen that he wrote the stanzas which open beautifully, "I
+dream'd I lay where flowers were springing," and also the ballad, "My
+father was a farmer upon the Carrick border," which, years afterwards, he
+used to con over with delight, because of the faithfulness with which it
+recalled to him the circumstances and feelings of his opening manhood.
+These are the only two of his very early productions in which there is
+nothing expressly about love. The rest were composed to celebrate the
+charms of those rustic beauties who followed each other in the domain of
+his fancy, or shared the capacious throne between them. The excursions of
+the rural lover form the theme of almost all the songs which Burns is known
+to have produced about this period; and such of these juvenile performances
+as have been preserved are beautiful. They show how powerfully his boyish
+fancy had been affected by the old rural minstrelsy of his own country, and
+how easily his native taste caught the secret of its charm.</p>
+
+<p>In 1781, despairing of farming, he went to Irvine to learn flax-dressing
+with a relative. He was diligent at first, but misfortune soon overtook
+him. The shop where he was engaged caught fire, and he "was left, like a
+true poet, not worth a sixpence." Gilbert Burns dates a serious change in
+his character and conduct from this six months' residence in the seaport
+town. "He contracted," he says, "some acquaintance of a freer manner of
+thinking than he had been accustomed to, whose society prepared him for
+overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue which had hitherto restrained
+him."</p>
+
+<p>He had certainly not come unscathed out of the society of those persons
+of "liberal opinions" with whom he consorted in Irvine; and he expressly
+attributes to their lessons the scrape into which he fell soon after "he
+put his hand to plough again." He was compelled, according to the then all
+but universal custom of rural parishes in Scotland, to do penance in
+church, before the congregation, in consequence of the birth of an
+illegitimate child. But not the amours, or the tavern, or drudging manual
+labour could keep him long from his true calling. "Rhyme," he says, "I had
+given up [on going to Irvine], but meeting with Fergusson's 'Scottish
+Poems,' I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour." It
+was probably this accidental meeting with Fergusson that in a great measure
+finally determined the Scottish character of his poetry.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Loves of a Peasant Poet</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Just before their father's death, Robert and Gilbert took the cold and
+ungrateful farm of Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline, to which the
+family now removed. The four years of Burns's connection with this place
+were the most important of his life. It was then that his genius developed
+its highest energies; on the works produced in these years his fame was
+first established, and must ever continue mainly to rest; it was then also
+that his personal character came out in all its brightest lights, and in
+all but its darkest shadows; and indeed from the commencement of this
+period the history of the man may be traced, step by step, in his own
+immortal writings.</p>
+
+<p>Burns now began to know that Nature had meant him for a poet; and
+diligently, though as yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be his
+destined vocation. He was never more productive than at this time, when he
+wrote such skits on the kirk and its associates as "The Twa Herds"
+(pastors), "Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Holy Fair," and "The Ordination."
+"Hallowe'en," a descriptive poem, perhaps even more exquisitely wrought
+than "The Holy Fair," also belongs to the Mossgiel period, as does an even
+more notable effort.</p>
+
+<p>Burns had often remarked to his brother that there was something
+peculiarly venerable in the phrase, "Let us worship God," used by a decent,
+sober head of a family introducing family worship. To this sentiment we are
+indebted for "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the hint of the plan and title
+of which were taken from Fergusson's "Farmer's Ingle." It is, perhaps, of
+all Burns's pieces, the one whose exclusion from the collection, were such
+a thing possible nowadays, would be the most injurious, if not to the
+genius, at least to the character of the man. In spite of many feeble lines
+and some heavy stanzas, it appears to me that even his genius would suffer
+more in estimation by being contemplated in the absence of this poem than
+of any other single performance he has left us. Loftier flights he
+certainly has made, but in these he remained but a short while on the wing,
+and effort is too often perceptible; here the motion is easy, gentle,
+placidly undulating.</p>
+
+<p>Burns's art had now reached its climax; but it is time to revert more
+particularly to his personal history. In this his loves very nearly occupy
+the chief place. That they were many, his songs prove; for in those days he
+wrote no love-songs on imaginary heroines. "Mary Morison," "Behind yon
+hills where Lugar flows," and "On Cessnock banks there lives a lass,"
+belong to this date; and there are three or four inspired by Mary
+Campbell--"Highland Mary"--the object of by far the deepest passion Burns
+ever knew, a passion which he has immortalised in the noblest of his
+elegiacs, "To Mary in Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>Farming had, of course, to engage his attention as well as love-making,
+but he was less successful in the one than in the other. The first year of
+Mossgiel, from buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, he lost
+half his crops. In these circumstances, he thought of proceeding to the
+West Indies. Presently he had further cause for contemplating an escape
+from his native land. Among his "flames" was one Jean Armour, the daughter
+of a mason in Mauchline, where she was the reigning toast. Jean found
+herself "as ladies wish to be that love their lords." Burns's worldly
+circumstances were in a most miserable state when he was informed of her
+condition, and he was staggered. He saw nothing for it but to fly the
+country at once.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, meeting Jean, he yielded to her tears, and gave her a written
+acknowledgment of marriage, valid according to Scottish law. Her father's
+wrath was not appeased thereby. Burns, confessing himself unequal to the
+support of a family, proposed to go immediately to Jamaica in search of
+better fortunes. He offered, if this were rejected, to abandon his farm,
+already a hopeless concern, and earn at least bread for his wife and
+children as a day labourer at home. But nothing would satisfy Armour, who,
+in his indignation, made his daughter destroy the written evidence of her
+"marriage."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Burns at His Zenith</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Such was his poverty that he could not satisfy the parish officers; and
+the only alternative that presented itself to him was America or a gaol. A
+situation was obtained for him in Jamaica, but he had no money to pay his
+passage. It occurred to him that the money might be raised by publishing
+his poems; and a first edition, printed at Kilmarnock in 1786, brought him
+nearly &pound;20, out of which he paid for a steerage passage from the
+Clyde. "My chest was on the road to Greenock," he tells; "I had composed
+the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia, 'The gloomy night is
+gathering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine
+overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic
+ambition."</p>
+
+<p>Blacklock, the blind divine upon whom Johnson "looked with reverence,"
+had read the newly published poems, and it was his praise of them that
+directly prevented Burns from expatriating himself. "His opinion that I
+would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh fired me so much that away I
+posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of
+introduction. The baneful star that had so long shed its blasting influence
+in my zenith for once made a revolution to the nadir." In Edinburgh, which
+Burns reached in November, 1786, he was introduced by Blacklock to all the
+<i>literati</i>, and within a fortnight he was writing to a friend: "I am
+in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis or John Bunyan; and
+you may expect to see my birthday inscribed among the wonderful events in
+the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday and the
+Battle of Bothwell Bridge."</p>
+
+<p>But he bore his honours in a manner worthy of himself. "The attentions
+he received," says Dugald Stewart, "from all ranks and descriptions of
+persons were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot say
+that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his mind."
+Scott, then a lad of fifteen, met him, and wrote a vivid description of his
+appearance:</p>
+
+<p>"His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a
+sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its
+effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His
+features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys the
+idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective. I think his
+countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would
+have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious
+country farmer of the old Scotch school--<i>i.e.</i>, none of your modern
+agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the <i>douce
+gudeman</i> who held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense
+and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the
+poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which
+glowed (I say literally <i>glowed</i>) when he spoke with feeling or
+interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen
+the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect
+self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. He was like a farmer
+dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do not speak in <i>malam
+partem</i> when I say I never saw a man in company with his superiors in
+station and information more perfectly free from either the reality or the
+affectation of embarrassment. I was told that his address to females was
+extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or
+humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late
+Duchess of Gordon remark this."</p>
+
+<p>It needs no effort of imagination to conceive what the sensations of an
+isolated set of scholars, almost all either clergymen or professors, must
+have been in the presence of this big-boned, brawny stranger, with his
+great flashing eyes, who had forced his way among them from the plough-tail
+at a single stride; and it will always be a reflection in their honour that
+they suffered no pedantic prejudices to interfere with their reception of
+the poet.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after his arrival he arranged with Creech, the chief bookseller
+in Edinburgh, to undertake a second edition of his poems. This was
+published in March, 1787, the subscribers numbering over 1,500. Out of
+money thus derived, he provided a tombstone for the neglected grave of
+Robert Fergusson, his "elder brother in the muses," in the Canongate
+churchyard. Then he decided to visit some of the classic scenes of Scottish
+history and romance. He had as yet seen but a small part of his own
+country, and this by no means among the most interesting, until, indeed,
+his own poetry made it equal, on that score, to any other. Various tours
+were, in fact, undertaken, the chief being, however, in the Border district
+and in the Highlands. Usually he returned to Edinburgh, partly to be near
+his jovial intimates, and partly because, after the excitement attending
+his first appearance in the capital, he found himself incapable of settling
+down contentedly in the humble circle at Mossgiel.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--The Clarinda Romance</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>During the winter of 1787--1788, he had a little romance with Mrs.
+McLehose, the beautiful widow to whom he addressed the song, "Clarinda,
+mistress of my soul," and a series of letters which present more instances
+of bad taste, bombastic language, and fulsome sentiment than could be
+produced from all his writings besides. It was the same lady who inspired
+the lines which furnished Byron with a motto, and Scott declared to be
+"worth a thousand romances ":</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+Had we never loved so kindly<br />
+Had we never loved sae blindly,<br />
+Never met--or never parted,<br />
+We had ne'er been broken-hearted.<br />
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>At this time the publication of Johnson's "Scots Musical Museum" was
+going on in Edinburgh; and Burns, being enlisted as a contributor,
+furnished many of his best songs to that work. From his youth upwards he
+had been an enthusiastic lover of the old minstrelsy and music of his
+country; but he now studied both subjects with better opportunities and
+appliances than he could have commanded previously; and it is from this
+time that we must date his ambition to transmit his own poetry to
+posterity, in eternal association with those exquisite airs which had
+hitherto, in far too many instances, been married to verses that did not
+deserve to be immortal. Later, beginning in 1792, he wrote about sixty
+songs for George Thomson's collection, many of which, like "Auld Lang Syne"
+and "Scots Wha Hae," are in the front rank of popularity. The letters he
+addressed to Thomson are full of interesting detail of various kinds. In
+one he writes:</p>
+
+<p>"Until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing, such as it is,
+I can never compose for it. My way is this. I consider the poetic sentiment
+correspondent to my idea of the musical expression--then choose my
+theme--compose one stanza. When that is composed, which is generally the
+most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and then,
+look out for objects in Nature round me that are in unison or harmony with
+the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and
+then the air, with the verses I have framed. When I feel my muse beginning
+to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my
+effusions to paper; swinging at intervals on the hind legs of my
+elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my pen
+goes. Seriously this, at home, is almost invariably my way."</p>
+
+<p>But to return. During his second winter in Edinburgh, Burns met with a
+hackney coach accident which kept him to the house for six weeks. While in
+this state he learned from Mauchline that his intimacy with Jean Armour had
+again exposed her to the reproaches of her family. The father sternly
+turned her out of doors, and Burns had to arrange about a shelter for her
+and his children in a friend's house. In the meantime, through the
+influence of some sympathisers, he had been appointed an officer of excise.
+"I have chosen this," he wrote, "after mature deliberation. It is immediate
+bread, and, though poor in comparison of the last eighteen months of my
+existence, 'tis luxury in comparison of all my preceding life." However,
+when he settled finally with Creech about his poems, he found himself with
+between &pound;500 and &pound;600; and he retained his excise commission as
+a <i>dernier ressort</i>, to be used only if a reverse of fortune rendered
+it necessary.</p>
+
+<p>He decided now to exchange Mossgiel for Ellisland farm, about six miles
+from Dumfries. As soon as he was able to leave Edinburgh, he had hurried to
+Mossgiel and gone through a justice-of-peace marriage with Jean Armour.
+Burns, with all his faults, was an honest and a high-spirited man, and he
+loved the mother of his children. Had he hesitated to make her his wife, he
+must have sunk into the callousness of a ruffian, or that misery of
+miseries, the remorse of a poet.</p>
+
+<p>Some months later he writes that his marriage "was not, perhaps, in
+consequence of the attachment of romance, but I have no cause to repent it.
+If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I
+am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school
+affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the
+soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country." It was during
+the honeymoon, as he calls it, that he wrote the beautiful "O a' the airts
+the wind can blaw." He used to say that the happiest period of his life was
+the first winter at Ellisland, with wife and children around him. It was
+then that he wrote, among other songs, "John Anderson, my Jo," "Tarn Glen,"
+"My heart's in the Highlands," "Go fetch to me a pint of wine," and "Willie
+brewed a peck o' maut."</p>
+
+<p>But the "golden days" of Ellisland were short. Burns's farming
+speculations once more failed, and he had to take up his excise commission.
+"I am now," says he, "a poor rascally gauger, condemned to gallop two
+hundred miles every week to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty barrels." Both
+in prose and verse he has recorded the feelings with which he first
+followed his new vocation, and his jests on the subject are uniformly
+bitter. It was a vocation which exposed him to temptations of the kind he
+was least likely to resist. His extraordinary conversational powers led him
+into peril wherever he went. If he entered an inn at midnight, after all
+the inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the cellar
+to the garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his
+guests were assembled round the ingle; the largest punch-bowl was produced;
+and "Be ours this night--who knows what comes to-morrow?" was the language
+of every eye in the circle that welcomed him.</p>
+
+<p>At home, too, lion-gazers from all quarters beset him; they ate and
+drank at his cost, and often went away to criticise him and his fare, as if
+they had done Burns and his black bowl great honour in condescending to be
+entertained for a single evening with such company. Among others who called
+on him was Captain Grose, the antiquary, and it is to this acquaintance
+that we owe "Tam o' Shanter," which Burns believed to be the best of all
+his productions.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Closing Years of the Poet's Life</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Towards the close of 1791 he gave up his farm, and procuring an excise
+appointment to the Dumfries division, removed to the county town. His moral
+course from this time was downwards. "In Dumfries," says Heron, speaking
+from personal knowledge, "his dissipation became still more deeply
+habitual. He was here exposed more than in the country to be solicited to
+share the riot of the dissolute and idle." His intemperance was, as Heron
+says, in fits; his aberrations were occasional, not systematic; they were
+all to himself the sources of exquisite misery in the retrospect; they were
+the aberrations of a man whose moral sense was never deadened, of one who
+encountered more temptations from without and from within than the immense
+majority of mankind, far from having to contend against, are even able to
+imagine; of one, finally, who prayed for pardon, where alone effectual
+pardon could be found.</p>
+
+<p>In how far the "thoughtless follies" of the poet did actually hasten his
+end, it is needless to conjecture. They had their share, unquestionably,
+along with other influences which it would be inhuman to characterise as
+mere follies. In these closing years of his life he had to struggle
+constantly with pecuniary difficulties, than which nothing could have been
+more likely to pour bitterness intolerable into the cup of his existence.
+His lively imagination exaggerated to itself every real evil; and this
+among, and perhaps above, all the rest; at least, in many of his letters we
+find him alluding to the probability of his being arrested for debts, which
+we now know to have been of very trivial amount.</p>
+
+<p>In 1795 he was greatly upset by the death, in his absence, of his
+youngest child. Writing in January, 1796, he says: "I had scarcely begun to
+recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most severe
+rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful, until, after many weeks of
+a sick-bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl
+across my room, and once indeed have been before my own door in the
+street."</p>
+
+<p>But a few days after this Burns was so imprudent as to join a festive
+circle at a tavern dinner, where he remained till about three in the
+morning. The weather was severe, and he, being too much intoxicated, took
+no precaution in thus exposing his debilitated frame to its influence. It
+has been said that he fell asleep upon the snow on his way home. The result
+was an acute return of his rheumatism, and his health gradually got worse.
+He went to the Solway for sea-bathing, but came back to Dumfries "visibly
+changed in his looks, being with difficulty able to stand upright and reach
+his own door."</p>
+
+<p>It soon became known that he was dying, and the anxiety, not of the rich
+and the learned only, but of the mechanics and peasants, exceeded all
+belief. Wherever two or three people stood together their talk was solely
+of Burns. His good humour was unruffled, and his wit never forsook him; but
+he repressed with a smile the hopes of his friends, and told them he had
+lived long enough. The fever increased, and his strength diminished, and he
+died on July 21, 1796. His funeral, attended by ten or twelve thousand
+people, was an impressive and mournful sight. The grave was at first
+covered by a plain tombstone; but a costly mausoleum was subsequently
+erected on the most elevated site which the churchyard presented. Thither
+the remains of the poet were solemnly transferred on June 5, 1815.</p>
+
+<p>It requires a graver audacity of hypocrisy than falls to the share of
+most men to declaim against Burns's sensibility to the tangible cares and
+toils of his earthly condition; there are more who venture on broad
+denunciations of his sympathy with the joys of sense and passion.</p>
+
+<p>That some men in every age will comfort themselves in the practice of
+certain vices, by reference to particular passages both in the history and
+in the poetry of Burns, there is all reason to fear; but surely the general
+influence of both is calculated, and has been found, to produce far
+different effects. The universal popularity which his writings have all
+along enjoyed among one of the most virtuous of nations is of itself a
+decisive circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>On one point there can be no controversy; the poetry of Burns has had
+most powerful influence in reviving and strengthening the national feelings
+of his countrymen. Amidst penury and labour his youth fed on the old
+minstrelsy and traditional glories of his nation, and his genius divined
+that what he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might lie
+smothered around him, but could not be extinguished. Burns "knew his own
+worth, and reverenced the lyre." But he ever announced himself, as a
+peasant, the representative of his class, the painter of their manners,
+inspired by the same influences which ruled their bosoms; and whosoever
+sympathised with his verse had his soul opened for the moment to the whole
+family of man.</p>
+
+<p>Short and painful as were his years, Burns has left behind him a volume
+in which there is inspiration for every fancy and music for every mood;
+which lives, and will live in strength and vigour, "to soothe," as a
+generous lover of genius has said, "the sorrows of how many a lover, to
+inflame the patriotism of how many a soldier, to fan the fires of how many
+a genius, to disperse the gloom of solitude, appease the agonies of pain,
+encourage virtue, and show vice its ugliness." In this volume, centuries
+hence as now, wherever a Scotsman may wander he will find the dearest
+consolation of his exile.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MARTIN_LUTHER"></a>MARTIN LUTHER</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Table_Talk"></a>Table Talk</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Martin Luther, "the monk who shook the world," was born
+Nov. 10, 1483, at Eisleben, in Germany. In 1507 he was ordained a priest,
+and became popular almost immediately as a preacher. A visit to Rome
+shocked him, and in revolt against the practice of raising money by the
+sale of indulgences, he began his career as a reformer. In 1518 he was
+summoned to Rome to answer for his opinions, which now included a total
+denial of the right of the Pope to forgive sins. He proceeded to attack the
+whole doctrinal system of the Roman Catholic Church. For this he was
+denounced in a papal bull and his writings were condemned to be burned. In
+1525 he married an escaped nun. That Luther was a true child of his age may
+be seen in the selections made from his "Table Talk." His shrewdness,
+humour, plain bold speech, and his change of belief from an infallible
+Church to an infallible Bible there appear, as also do his narrowness of
+knowledge, asperity of temper, and susceptibility to superstition. He must
+be judged by the mind of his times, not by modern standards. We give some
+of his strong opinions that have not borne the wear and tear of later ages;
+but they are more than balanced by teaching what is beautiful, as well as
+true. Luther died on February 18, 1546. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>God's Word and Book</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>That the Bible is God's word and book I prove thus. Infinite potentates
+have raged against it, and sought to destroy and uproot it--King Alexander
+the Great, the princes of Egypt and Babylon, the monarchs of Persia, of
+Greece, and of Rome, the Emperors Julius and Augustus--but they nothing
+prevailed; they are all gone and vanished, while the book remains and will
+remain. Who has thus helped it? Who has thus protected it against such
+mighty forces? No one, surely, but God Himself, who is the Master of all
+things.</p>
+
+<p>The Holy Scriptures are full of divine gifts and virtues. The books of
+the heathen taught nothing of faith, hope, or charity; they present no idea
+of these things; they contemplate only the present, and that which man,
+with the use of his material reason, can grasp and comprehend. Look not
+therein for aught of hope and trust in God. But see how the Psalms and the
+Book of Job treat of faith, hope, resignation, and prayer; in a word, the
+Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under
+all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to
+comprehend faith, hope, and charity far otherwise than mere human reason
+can, and when evil oppresses us it teaches how these virtues throw light
+upon the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure or limit to
+the fever for writing. The Bible is now buried under so many commentaries
+that the text is nothing regarded. I could wish all my books were buried
+nine ells deep in the ground by reason of the ill example they will give. I
+would not have those who read my books, in these stormy times, devote one
+moment to them that they would otherwise have consecrated to the Bible
+itself.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>God's Dealing with Us</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>How should God deal with us? Good days we cannot bear, evil we cannot
+endure. Gives He riches unto us--then we are proud, so that no man can live
+by us in peace; nay, we will be carried on heads and shoulders, and will be
+adored as gods. Gives He poverty to us--then are we dismayed, impatient,
+and murmur against Him.</p>
+
+<p>God only, and not wealth, maintains the world; riches merely make people
+proud and lazy. Great wealth cannot still hunger, but rather occasions more
+dearth, for where rich people are there things are always dear. Moreover,
+money makes no man right merry, but much rather pensive and full of sorrow;
+for riches, says Christ, are thorns that prick people. Yet is the world so
+made that it sets therein all its joy and felicity, and we are such
+unthankful slovens that we give God not so much as a <i>Deo Gratias</i>,
+though we receive of Him overflowing benefits, merely out of His goodness
+and mercy. No man can estimate the great charge God is at only in
+maintaining birds and such creatures, comparatively nothing worth. I am
+persuaded that it costs Him yearly more to maintain only the sparrows than
+the revenue of the French king amounts to.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Points from "Popedom"</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I much marvel that the pope extols his church at Rome as the chief,
+whereas the church at Jerusalem is the mother; for there Christian doctrine
+was first revealed. Next was the church at Antioch, whence the Christians
+have their name. Thirdly, was the church at Alexandria; and still before
+the Romish were the churches of the Galatians, of the Corinthians,
+Ephesians, Philippians. Is it so great a matter that St. Peter was at Rome?
+Which, however, has never yet been proved, nor ever will be, whereas our
+blessed Saviour Christ Himself was at Jerusalem, where all the articles of
+our Christian faith were made.</p>
+
+<p>Prayer in popedom is mere tongue-threshing; not prayer but a work of
+obedience. Hence the confused sea of howling and babbling in cells and
+monasteries, where they read and sing the psalms and collects without any
+spiritual devotion. Though I had done no more but only freed people from
+that torment, they might well give me thanks for it.</p>
+
+<p>Kings and princes coin money only out of metals, but the pope coins
+money out of everything--indulgences, ceremonials, dispensations, pardons;
+'tis all fish comes to his net. 'Tis only baptism escapes him, for children
+come into the world without clothes to be stolen or teeth to be drawn.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Patristic Literature</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I will not presume to criticise too closely the writings of the fathers,
+seeing they are received of the church and have great applause, but whoso
+reads Chrysostom will find he digresses from the chief points, and proceeds
+on other matters, saying nothing, or very little, of that which pertains to
+the business. St. Jerome wrote upon Matthew, upon the Epistles to the
+Galatians, and Titus, but, alas, very coldly. Ambrose wrote six books upon
+the first book of Moses, but they are very poor.</p>
+
+<p>We must read the fathers cautiously, and lay them in the gold balance,
+for they often stumbled and went astray. Gregory expounds the five pounds
+mentioned in the Gospel, which the husbandman gave to his servant to put to
+use, to be the five senses, which the beasts also possess. The two pounds
+he construes to be the reason and understanding. Faithful Christians should
+heed only the embassy of our blessed Saviour Christ, and what He says.</p>
+
+<p>None of the fathers of the church made mention of original sin until
+Augustine came, who made a difference between original and actual sin,
+namely, that original sin is to covet, to lust, and to desire, which is the
+root and cause of actual sin.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Hints for Preachers</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The good preacher should know when to make an end. A preacher that will
+speak everything that comes into his mind is like a maid that goes to
+market, and, meeting another maid, makes a stand, and they hold together a
+goose-market.</p>
+
+<p>I would not have preachers in their sermons use Hebrew, Greek, or
+foreign languages, for in the church we ought to speak as we use to do at
+home, the plain mother tongue, which everyone is acquainted with. It may be
+allowed in courtiers, lawyers, advocates, etc., to use quaint, curious
+words. St. Paul never used such high and stately words as Demosthenes and
+Cicero used.</p>
+
+<p>Ambition is the rankest poison to the church when it possesses
+preachers. It is a consuming fire.</p>
+
+<p>When I preach I sink myself deep down. I regard neither doctors nor
+magistrates, of whom are here in this church above forty; but I have an eye
+to the multitude of young people, children, and servants, of whom are more
+than two thousand. I preach to those. Will not the rest hear me?</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Time's Forelock</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is said Occasion has a forelock, but it is bald behind. Our Lord has
+taught this by the course of nature. A farmer must sow his barley and oats
+about Easter; if he defer it till Michaelmas it were too late. When apples
+are ripe they must be plucked from the tree or they are spoiled.
+Procrastination is as bad as over-hastiness. There is my servant Wolf, when
+four or five birds fall upon the bird-net he will not draw it; but says,
+"Oh, I will stay until more come." Then they all fly away, and he gets
+none.</p>
+
+<p>Occasion is a great matter. Terence says well, "I came in time, which is
+the chief thing of all." Julius Caesar understood Occasion; Pompey and
+Hannibal did not. Boys at school understand it not, therefore they must
+have fathers and masters, with the rod, to hold them thereto, that they
+neglect not time and lose it. Many a young fellow has a school stipend for
+six or seven years, during which he ought diligently to study, but he
+thinks, "Oh, I have time enough yet." But I say, "No, fellow; what little
+Jack learns not great John learns not." Occasion salutes thee, and reaches
+out her forelock to thee, saying, "Here I am, take hold of me." Thou
+thinkest she will come again. Then says she, "Well, seeing thou wilt not
+take hold of my top, take hold of my tail," and therewith she flings
+away.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Modern Luxury</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Whereto serve or profit such superfluity, such show, such ostentation,
+such extraordinary luxurious kind of life as is now come upon us? If Adam
+were to return to earth, and see our mode of living, our food, drink, and
+dress, how would he marvel. He would say: "Surely this is not the world I
+was in?" For Adam drank water, ate fruit from the trees, and, if he had any
+house at all, 'twas a hut supported by four wooden forks; he had no knife
+or iron, and he wore simply a coat of skin. Now we spend immense sums in
+eating and drinking, now we raise sumptuous palaces, and decorate them with
+a luxury beyond all comparison. The ancient Israelites lived in great
+moderation and quiet. Boaz says: "Dip thy bread in vinegar and refresh
+thyself therewith."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Ministers and Matrimony</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I advise in everything that ministers interfere not in matrimonial
+questions. First, because we have enough to do in our own office; secondly,
+because these affairs concern not the church, but are temporal things,
+pertaining to temporal magistrates; thirdly, because such cases are in a
+manner innumerable; they are very high, broad, and deep, and produce many
+offences, which may tend to the shame and dishonour of the Gospel.
+Moreover, we are therein ill dealt with--they draw us into the business,
+and then, if the issue is evil, the blame is laid altogether upon us.
+Therefore, we will leave them to the lawyers and magistrates.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Miscellaneous Topics</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Philip Melancthon showing Luther a letter from Augsburg wherein he was
+informed that a very learned divine, a papist of that city, was converted,
+and had received the Gospel, Luther said, "I like best those that do not
+fall off suddenly, but ponder the case with considerate discretion, compare
+together the writing and arguments of both parties, and lay them on the
+gold balance, and in God's fear search after the upright truth; and of such
+fit people are made, able to stand in controversy. Such a man was St. Paul,
+who at first was a strict Pharisee and man of works, who stiffly and
+earnestly defended the law; but afterwards preached Christ in the best and
+purest manner against the whole nation of the Jews."</p>
+
+<p>As all people feel they must die, each seeks immortality here on earth,
+that he may be had in everlasting remembrance. Some great princes and kings
+seek it by raising great columns of stone and high pyramids, great
+churches, costly and glorious palaces and castles. Soldiers hunt after
+praise and honour by obtaining famous victories. The learned seek an
+everlasting name by writing books. With these and such like things people
+think to be immortal. But as to the true everlasting and incorruptible
+honour and eternity of God, no man thinks or looks after these things.</p>
+
+<p>When two goats meet on a narrow bridge over deep waters how do they
+behave? Neither of them can turn back again, and neither can pass the other
+because the bridge is too narrow. If they should thrust one another they
+might both fall into the water and be drowned. Nature, then, has taught
+them that if one lays himself down and permits the other to go over him
+both remain without hurt. Even so, people should endure to be trod upon
+rather than to fall into discord with one another.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Strong Opinions Outworn by Time</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I should have no compassion on witches; I would burn all of them. We
+read in the old law that the priests threw the first stone at such
+malefactors. Our ordinary sins offend and anger God. What then must be His
+wrath against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high treason
+against divine majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God. The
+maladies I suffer are not natural but devils' spells.</p>
+
+<p>Luther, taking up a caterpillar, said: "'Tis an emblem of the devil in
+its crawling, and bears his colours in its changing hue."</p>
+
+<p>The devil plagues and torments us in the place where we are most tender
+and weak. In Paradise he fell not upon Adam, but upon Eve. It commonly
+rains where it was wet enough before.</p>
+
+<p>The anabaptists pretend that children, not as yet having reason, ought
+not to receive baptism. I answer: That reason in no way contributes to
+faith. Nay, in that children are destitute of reason they are all the more
+fit and proper recipients of baptism. For reason is the greatest enemy that
+faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.</p>
+
+<p>I always loved music. A schoolmaster ought to have skill in music, or I
+would not regard him; neither should we ordain young men as preachers
+unless they have been well exercised in music.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the
+earth. He made several attempts to draw me into his snares, and I should
+have been in danger but that God lent me special aid. Erasmus was poisoned
+at Rome and at Venice with epicurean doctrines. His chief doctrine is that
+we must carry ourselves according to the time, or, as the proverb goes,
+hang the cloak according to the wind. I hold Erasmus to be Christ's most
+bitter enemy.</p>
+
+<p>I never work better than when I am inspired by anger. When I am angry I
+can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is
+quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and
+temptations depart.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Characteristic Sayings</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When the abbot throws the dice, the whole convent will play.</p>
+
+<p>When men blaspheme we should pray and be silent, and not carry wood to
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>When Jesus Christ utters a word, He opens His mouth so wide that it
+embraces all heaven and earth, even though that word be but in a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>When I lay sucking at my mother's breast I had no notion how I should
+afterwards eat, drink, and live. Even so we on the earth have no idea what
+the life to come will be.</p>
+
+<p>The two sins, hatred and pride, deck and trim themselves out as the
+devil clothed himself in the Godhead. Hatred will be godlike; pride will be
+truth. These two are right deadly sins; hatred is killing, pride is
+lying.</p>
+
+<p>A scorpion thinks that when his head lies hid under a leaf he cannot be
+seen; even so the hypocrites and false saints think, when they have hoisted
+up one or two good works, all their sins therewith are covered and hid.</p>
+
+<p>Luther, holding a rose in his hand, said, "'Tis a magnificent work of
+God. Could a man make but one such rose as this he would be thought worthy
+of all honour, but the manifold gifts of God lose their value in our eyes
+from their very infinity."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MIRABEAU"></a>MIRABEAU</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Memoirs1"></a>Memoirs</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Honor&eacute; Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, was born
+at Bignon, near Nemours, on March 9, 1749, and died at Paris on April 2,
+1791. His father was a most eccentric and tyrannical representative of the
+French aristocracy, and Honor&eacute;, a younger son, inherited something
+of his violent temperament, but was endowed with real genius. Entering the
+army, young Mirabeau soon displayed an erratic disposition by eloping with
+the young wife of an aged nobleman. He fled to Holland, but was captured
+and imprisoned. Being at length liberated, he turned to literature and
+politics, and soon gained celebrity in both. His magnificent oratorical
+powers brought him rapidly to the front in the period immediately anterior
+to the outbreak of the Revolution. Mirabeau's "Memoirs, by Himself, his
+Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son," published in eight volumes in
+1834, contain no original writings by Mirabeau himself, except in the shape
+of extracts from his speeches, letters, and pamphlets. The following
+epitome has been prepared from the French text. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--"The Hurricane"</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Marquis of Mirabeau, father of Honor&eacute; Gabriel, the subject of
+these memoirs, was endowed with a mind of great power, rendered fruitful by
+the best education. He had, however, become independent at too early an
+age, and this had brought into play his natural inordinate vanity.</p>
+
+<p>Honor&eacute; Gabriel, since so famous under the name of the Count of
+Mirabeau, was the fifth child of the marquis. Destined to be the most
+turbulent and active of youths, as well as the most eloquent of men and the
+greatest orator of his day, Gabriel was born with one foot twisted and his
+tongue tied, in addition to which his size and strength were extraordinary,
+and already two molars were formed in his jaw. At the age of three the boy
+nearly lost his life from small-pox, and was thus disfigured greatly for
+life; while the other children were, like the parents, gifted with
+wonderful beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Young Gabriel was a most precocious child, and he received an excellent
+education. At the age of seven he was confirmed by a cardinal, but his
+childhood was difficult of control, and chastisement from his father and
+tutor was continual. His inquisitiveness was irrepressible. He relates that
+at the family supper after his confirmation, "they explained to me that God
+could not make contradictions--for instance, a stick with only one end. I
+asked whether a stick which had but one end was not a miracle. My
+grandmother never forgave me."</p>
+
+<p>Placed under the kindly teaching of the Abb&eacute; Choquart in a
+military school of high repute in Paris, Gabriel made marvellously rapid
+progress, assiduously exercising his memory, which afterwards became a
+prodigious repository of the most diversified knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>On July 10, 1767, Gabriel entered the army, joining the Marquis of
+Lambert's regiment. The young volunteer, who was now eighteen, behaved
+well, and speedily gave evidence of the military talents he afterwards
+displayed. But a quarrel arose over a love affair, which led to harsh
+punishment by his colonel. The incident was bitterly resented by his
+father, who condemned him without hearing his side of the matter, and
+actually procured his imprisonment in the fortress of the Isle of
+Rh&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>When the young soldier came out of prison he unwittingly offended an
+officer at Rochelle, who had been dismissed the service. The result was a
+duel, in which the aggressor was wounded. Gabriel was appointed to service
+in Corsica, with the rank of second-lieutenant, and here he distinguished
+himself by his zeal, his military talents, and his constant
+application.</p>
+
+<p>Young Mirabeau was, in September, 1770, transferred to Limousin, in west
+Central France. Such was his energy that he was called "the hurricane." Now
+began a series of troubles caused by bitter quarrels between his parents,
+who were openly at variance. Each sought to gain an adherent in their son,
+who was condemned to witness the wickedness and folly of both in their
+ungovernable passion. The effect on the character of the young count was
+deplorable.</p>
+
+<p>Then ensued a singular episode. The marquis had determined that Gabriel
+should marry before the age of twenty-three, and had fixed on Mary Emily de
+Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, eighteen years of age,
+for his son's bride. She was plain, yet attractive, with a sweet smile,
+fine eyes, and beautiful hair, and was gay, lively, sensible, mild, and
+very amiable. Having been neglected by her father and ill-treated by her
+mother, she showed no disinclination to marriage, and in 1772 young
+Mirabeau obtained the hand of the wealthy heiress.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was the young count married than every attempt was made to
+ruin him. He received no property with his bride, and his avaricious father
+refused to advance him any money for necessary expenses. His father-in-law
+offered to lend him 60,000 livres, but his father's consent was
+indispensable, and this was sternly refused. Mirabeau, harassed by
+creditors, was dragged into lawsuits, and his embarrassments only set his
+father entirely against him. The marquis actually procured a <i>lettre de
+cachet</i>, obliging his son to leave the home he had set up, and to
+confine himself to the little town of Manosque.</p>
+
+<p>Here domestic sorrow and the most painful circumstances assailed the
+young exile. But these did not prevent him from pursuing serious studies
+and composing his first work, the "Essay on Despotism." Misfortunes
+accumulated. Chastising with a horsewhip a baron who grossly insulted him,
+the count was again imprisoned, this time in the Ch&acirc;teau d'If, a
+gloomy citadel on a barren rock near Marseilles.</p>
+
+<p>On May 25, 1770, Mirabeau was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near
+Pontarlier, where, on June 11, 1775, festivities were held, as at other
+places, to honour the coronation of Louis XVI. Here Mirabeau enjoyed a sort
+of half freedom, being allowed to visit in Pontarlier, and the event ensued
+which, it must sorrowfully be owned, tarnished his name. In a word, we see
+Mirabeau "ruin himself," by a fatal intimacy with the young wife of the
+aged Marquis of Monnier. The two fled to Dijon, where Mirabeau surrendered
+himself at the castle.</p>
+
+<p>He was released after a short time and went on to Geneva, nearly
+perishing in a storm on the lake. Returning to Pontarlier, he was joined by
+Sophie Monnier, and the two left for Holland, and arrived at Amsterdam on
+October 7, 1776. Mirabeau was naturally obliged to draw his principal means
+of subsistence from his literary labours, and this, perhaps, had been his
+motive for choosing Holland as his residence, for at that period the Dutch
+booksellers entered largely into literary speculations.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau and Sophie Monnier were arrested at Amsterdam on May 14, 1777.
+Both were brought to France. She was placed in a convent at Monilmontant,
+and Mirabeau was deposited on June 7 in the donjon of Vincennes, and was
+subjected to every sort of privation, remaining in confinement for
+forty-two months. His release marked the end of his private life; his
+public and political life was about to begin.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Into Political Life</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The "Essay on Despotism" had been the first sign of Mirabeau's political
+vocation, and the most singular instance, perhaps, of a war audaciously
+declared against despotism by a young man bearing its yoke. The keynote is
+that though the <i>natural</i> man may not be inclined to despotism, the
+<i>social</i> man assuredly is disposed to be a despot. This spirit,
+maintains Mirabeau, exists even in republics.</p>
+
+<p>In 1784 Mirabeau visited England. One of his motives was to collect
+materials for his "Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus," a treatise
+dealing with Washington and American independence. He was greatly delighted
+with English scenery. "It is here," he says, "that nature is improved, not
+forced. All tells me that here the people are something; that every man
+enjoys the development and free exercise of his faculties, and that I am in
+another order of things."</p>
+
+<p>But he proceeds: "I am not an enthusiast in favour of England, and I now
+know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution is the
+best known, the application of this constitution is the worst possible; and
+that if the Englishman is as a social man the most free in the world, the
+English people are the least free of any."</p>
+
+<p>He resided in England from August to February, 1785. During that brief
+period he began to write his "History of Geneva," and he showed his
+versatility by composing for a young refugee clergyman a sermon on the
+immortality of the soul. By the gift of this sermon he drew the exiled
+preacher from poverty, for it was the means of obtaining for him a
+lucrative appointment.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau sent forth from Paris several most able pamphlets on banking
+and on share companies. These were written with energy and often with
+violence. As they attacked many private interests they aroused against
+their author much hatred, insult, and calumny. He was accused of venality,
+though he was attacking and driving to despair powerful stock-jobbers, who
+would have paid him magnificently for silence, could he have been
+bought.</p>
+
+<p>In July, 1785, Mirabeau went to Berlin. It is a singular fact that in
+his various journeys some accident always befel him. On the way to Berlin
+an attempt was made to assassinate him by some unknown enemies, but he
+safely reached the German capital. King Frederick the Great, now very aged,
+no longer received foreigners, yet he replied to a letter from Mirabeau and
+fixed a day for seeing him at Potsdam.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau informed the king that he had come to seek permission to study
+the great military manoeuvres, and that he hoped to push on to Russia.
+During this period he worked like a labourer all day at his writings. Part
+of his time he spent at supper parties of the most tiresome etiquette. The
+same laborious habits attended him everywhere, in prison and in freedom, in
+his own country and in other lands. It was in Germany that he conceived the
+idea of his treatise on "The Reform of the Jews," which is acknowledged to
+be one of his best works.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick the Great died on August 17, 1786. Feeling that he could do
+nothing useful, Mirabeau resolved at the close of 1786 to quit Berlin. He
+was urged also by a special motive in which he took pride, and which he
+thus described in a letter: "My heart has not grown old, and if my
+enthusiasm is damped, it is not extinguished. I have fully experienced this
+to-day. I consider one of the best days of my life that on which I received
+an account of the convocation of the notables, which no doubt will not long
+precede that of the National Assembly. In this I see a new order of things
+which may regenerate the monarchy. I should deem myself a thousand times
+honoured in being even the junior secretary of this assembly, of which I
+had the happiness of giving the first idea."</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau was prodigiously occupied at Berlin. He often did not retire to
+rest till one in the morning, but regularly rose at five, even in the midst
+of severe winter. Without anything on but a simple quilted dressing-gown,
+without stockings or waistcoat, he worked away without even calling up his
+servant to light a fire. Besides his correspondence in cypher, which
+occupied him much, he worked assiduously at his "Prussian Monarchy," which
+was published in 1788.</p>
+
+<p>On departing from Berlin the count wrote a most eloquent letter of
+counsel to King Frederick William, appealing to him to cultivate peace,
+reminding him that his illustrious predecessor had conquered the admiration
+of mankind but never won their love, commending him not to extend the
+direct action of the royal power to matters which did not require it,
+advising him not to govern too much, and exhorting him to abolish military
+slavery; that is to say, the obligation then imposed on every Prussian to
+serve as a soldier from the age of eighteen to sixty or more, which forced
+men to go to the battle-field like cattle to the slaughterhouse.</p>
+
+<p>In the same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the
+harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the
+country. The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement
+protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of
+seizing the property of deceased foreigners, and demanded for burghers the
+freedom of purchasing the estates of nobles. He urged Frederick William to
+abolish the prerogatives claimed by nobles and the helotism of all who were
+not noble, and suggested that judges should be appointed for life and
+justice rendered free of expense.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--For King and People</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was chiefly the meeting of the notables which had hastened Mirabeau's
+return to Paris. He felt that his proper place was in the centre of the
+great events announced and begun by this convocation. After the undignified
+and inglorious prodigality of the previous reign, which had laid the
+foundation of serious financial vicissitudes, the young King Louis XVI. had
+brought with him to the throne the private virtues of a good and honest
+man, but not the qualities of a sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>Though economic to excess himself, he nevertheless suffered to exist and
+even to increase around him those dilapidations which at last ruined the
+resources of the state. He had no confidence in himself, and Mirabeau
+respectfully reproached him with his fatal timidity. Nothing was done
+either to increase revenue or diminish expenditure.</p>
+
+<p>The possessors of privilege and representatives of personal interest,
+the courtiers, the great lords, and the parliaments strenuously resisted
+all reforms and then drove from office the best intentioned, the most
+virtuous, and the ablest ministers whom the young king, in the sincerity of
+his patriotism, had chosen on his accession, in deference to public
+feeling. Among these ministers were Malesherbes, Turgot, Necker, and
+Calonne.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau returned to Paris on January 27, 1787. He at once published
+that famous "Address to the Notables," in which he denounced the whole
+corrupt system of finance and in which he demanded local provincial
+administrations. This and his "Denunciation of Stock-jobbing" made great
+impression on the public mind.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the "Denunciation" displeased the government, and the
+author was much persecuted. He learned that he was to be arrested and sent,
+not to the Bastille, but to a remote provincial fortress, where he would
+have been lost to public notice. So he escaped from Paris to Li&egrave;ge,
+whence he again attacked the administration of Calonne and the policy of
+Necker, declaring that loans should have been effected on methods less
+onerous for the state.</p>
+
+<p>His exile from Paris was of brief duration, for friends intervened. But
+Mirabeau returned only to renew and intensify his attacks. He remained,
+however, only for a short time, for on May 24, 1787, he set out on a third
+journey to Prussia, in order to complete his great work on the "Prussian
+Monarchy." Returning to France, he reached Paris in September. Five months
+had elapsed since the assembling of the notables. The eloquent Leominie de
+Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, had been the most brilliant figure in the
+conclave. The first assembly broke up on July 27, 1787. Though gathered by
+the privileged orders, patriotism had raised its voice within it, and the
+archbishop, as prime minister, had failed to direct the new current
+aright.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau disapproved of what had taken place in his absence, and
+declined to be employed by the administration, but he offered to undertake
+any foreign mission in the exercise of the king to which he might be
+appointed. The application was unsuccessful. The crisis approached nearer
+and nearer. Archbishop Brienne passed rapidly from violence to weakness.
+Mirabeau refused to countenance his plans for contracting a new loan of 420
+millions. The king was resisted by an almost unanimous opposition, headed
+by the Duke of Orleans, and the loan was refused at a memorable
+sitting.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau exhorted the government to announce in precise and solemn terms
+the convocation of the States-General in 1789, that bankruptcy might be
+averted and the national honour saved. Said he: "The year in which the king
+assembles the nation will be the finest in his life. Everybody knows that
+he has been deceived, and could not help being so, and everybody will do
+justice to his intentions. The assembled nation has a right to vote a tax.
+In future the nation alone will raise up its political fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau saw that the nation ought to be trusted. He strenuously
+contended for a policy in accordance with this conviction. But he
+indefatigably continued his literary labours, sending forth pamphlet after
+pamphlet, one against the prison system in vogue, another demanding the
+liberty of the Press, in which he extolled the example of England. He
+became increasingly impatient with the ineptitude of the government, for
+the affairs of the state were lapsing into desperate disorder, and the
+public discontent was being steadily aggravated.</p>
+
+<p>The aim of Mirabeau was at one and the same time to support the monarchy
+and to subvert the influences by which the throne was environed. He was
+solicitous of securing popular freedom, but regarded the monarchy as the
+only form of rule suitable for France in that age, and was led to adopt
+that peculiar statesmanship identifying the royal interest with the popular
+cause. Though ready to give his life for the people, he did not hesitate to
+risk his popularity by his fidelity to the throne.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--President of the National Assembly</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The immediate causes of the Revolution were now in full operation.
+Mirabeau, attempting to practise his own doctrine of the freedom of the
+Press, turned journalist and brought out a gazette. The famous National
+Assembly opened on May 5, 1789. He then entered on a career of immense
+political energy, beginning by issuing a stirring and eloquent "Address to
+the French People." This was especially a reply to a reactionary protest on
+the part of the clergy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon there were disturbances everywhere. The Bastille was stormed by the
+furious Parisians and demolished. Just at this time Mirabeau lost his
+father, and the event overwhelmed him with grief. He refused to stand for
+election as mayor of Paris. But he brought about a constitutional
+organisation of the municipality, and delivered a splendid series of
+orations on various abuses, such as plural voting, iniquitous monopolies,
+etc. Yet he proved his studious moderation by strenuously declaiming
+against the famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man," pronouncing it
+inopportune and perilous. His heroic harangues provoked disorder in his
+audience dangerous to himself. But his courage was dauntless, for even when
+the king and his chief minister abandoned the royal prerogative, Mirabeau
+defended it.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the terrible events of 1789 Mirabeau was consistent as a
+loyalist and as a patriot. But disappointment awaited his generous
+illusions, for the vacillation of the king rendered the outlook
+hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of January, 1791, he was appointed president of the National
+Assembly, which, during the stormy period of its existence during
+twenty-one months, had already had forty-two presidents.</p>
+
+<p>He exercised his functions with consummate skill, but the end of his
+wonderful life was at hand. He had been in weak health from the very first
+sittings of the Assembly, his condition causing constant anxiety to his
+intimate friends and his admirers. He was depressed by sad presentiments,
+and was in constant apprehension of assassination, for it was well-known
+that there were plots against his life. After a brilliant oration, the
+great tribune went home exhausted, and, indeed, dying.</p>
+
+<p>One of his last experiences was a pathetic interview with Talleyrand,
+with whom he had often crossed swords in debate. His weakness dated from
+February, 1788, when he was attacked with violent internal pains, and was
+bled to such an extent by a surgeon that he never recovered his wonderful
+natural vitality. After much suffering, endured with the most heroic
+fortitude, he passed away as if in sleep, with a sweet smile on his
+features. France mourned the loss of the greatest orator that had ever
+graced her tribune. His funeral was celebrated at St. Genevieve with
+splendid ceremonial. The verdict of those best qualified to judge was that
+Mirabeau was the most remarkable man of the eighteenth century, and that
+his premature death, soon after the outbreak of the Revolution, led to the
+overthrow of a monarchy which he alone could have saved.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="THOMAS_MOORE"></a>THOMAS MOORE</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Byron"></a>Life of Byron</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, was born in Dublin on May 28,
+1779, was educated at Trinity College, and studied for the Bar at the
+Middle Temple. At twenty-one years of age he published a translation of
+Anacreon, and his reputation was further established by his love-poems,
+under the pseudonym of Thomas Little, in 1801. He received in 1803 an
+official post in Bermuda, but entrusted his duties there to a substitute,
+by whose defalcations he was later embarrassed. He was married at
+thirty-one to a beautiful and amiable actress, Bessy Dyke, and lived very
+happily for most of his life in Wiltshire, but with an interval of a few
+years in Paris. In 1835 he received a literary pension of &pound;300, to
+which a Civil List pension of &pound;100 was added in 1850. He died on
+February 25, 1852. Undoubtedly, Moore's most important contribution to
+prose literature was his "Letters and Journals of Lord Byron," published in
+1830, six years after the poet's death; as payment he received
+&pound;4,200. Although the work was frankly and even severely criticised in
+many quarters, it did a great deal to put Byron right with public opinion.
+Certainly no literary contemporary was better fitted to write the biography
+of his friend than Moore, who, moreover, had been marked for this work by a
+free gift of Byron's own memoirs. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Ancestors and Early Days</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It has been said of Lord Byron that he was prouder of being a descendant
+of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into
+England, than of having been the author of "Childe Harold." The remark is
+not altogether unfounded, for the pride of ancestry was a feature of his
+character; and justly so, for his line was honourably known on the fields
+of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor; and in the faithful royalist, Sir
+John Biron, afterwards Lord Biron, throughout the Civil Wars.</p>
+
+<p>In 1784, the father of the poet, Captain John Byron, nephew of the fifth
+Lord Byron, with the sole object of relieving his debts, married, as his
+second wife, Miss Catherine Gordon, a wealthy lady of illustrious Scottish
+ancestry. Her fortune was swallowed up, and she was reduced to &pound;150 a
+year, before she gave birth, on January 22, 1788, in Holles Street, London,
+to her first and only child, George Gordon Byron. The boy was somewhat
+deformed, one of his feet being twisted.</p>
+
+<p>In 1790, we find the unhappy parents living in separate lodgings in
+Aberdeen; and this estrangement was followed by complete separation, the
+worthless Captain Byron proceeding to France, where he died in the
+following year. The mother, a woman of the most passionate extremes, sent
+the boy to day school and grammar school. His schoolmates remember him as
+lively, warm-hearted, and more ready to give a blow than to take one. To
+summer excursions with his mother in the Highlands the poet traces his love
+of scenery and especially of mountainous countries; and he refers many
+years after, still with keen feeling, to a little girl, Mary Duff, for
+whom, in his eighth year, he cherished a consuming attachment. So early
+were his sensibilities dominant.</p>
+
+<p>On the death, in 1794, of the grandson of the old lord, little George
+stood in immediate succession to the peerage; in May, 1798, the fifth Lord
+Byron died at Newstead Abbey, and the boy's name was called in school with
+the title "Dominus." The Earl of Carlisle was appointed his guardian in
+chancery, and in the same summer, Lord Byron, in his eleventh year, took
+possession, with his mother, of the seat of his ancestors. The next year
+Mrs. Byron was placed on the Civil List for a pension of &pound;300 a year.
+Removing to London, she placed George at school with Dr. Glennie at
+Dulwich, but thwarted the progress of his education with her fondness and
+self-will, until Lord Carlisle gave up all hope of ruling her. It was at
+this period that a boyish love for Margaret Parker, his cousin, who died
+shortly after, led Byron into the practice of verse.</p>
+
+<p>From 1801 to 1805, from thirteen years of age to seventeen, George was
+at Harrow, where he sat beside Peel, the future statesman. This period of
+ardent friendship with his fellows includes also the romantic affection, in
+1803, for Miss Chaworth, heiress of Annesley, near Newstead, who looked on
+her admirer as the mere schoolboy that he was. Leaving Harrow with the
+reputation of an idler who would never learn, Byron was entered at Trinity
+College, Cambridge, in October, 1805. His vacations were spent with his
+mother at Southwell, and her explosions of temper, in which she would throw
+poker and tongs, alienated him increasingly. In vacation and in term alike
+he read with extraordinary avidity and variety, wrote a great deal of
+verse, and in November, 1806, printed a small volume of poems for private
+circulation.</p>
+
+<p>He was a frank and vivid correspondent; his letters to Miss Pigot, of
+Southwell, and others, are full of the liveliest descriptions of the
+Cambridge days. At this time Byron was painfully shy of new faces, and
+perpetually mortified on account of his poverty. He rose, and retired to
+rest, very late. He was very fond of the exercises of swimming, riding,
+shooting, fencing, and sparring; greatly devoted to his dogs, delighted in
+music, and was known as remarkably superstitious. Of his charity and
+kindheartedness there was no end. Always conscious of his deformity, and
+terribly afraid of becoming corpulent, he was sedulously careful of his
+person and dress.</p>
+
+<p>"Hours of Idleness," Byron's first published volume, came out while he
+was at the university, and was received by the "Edinburgh Review" with a
+contempt which stung him to the quick. With intervals of dissipation in
+London and at Brighton, Byron threw himself, at Newstead, into the
+preparation of a satirical revenge, training himself for it by a deep study
+of the writings of Pope. After his coming of age, in 1809, he went up to
+London with his satire, and on March 13 took his seat in the House of
+Lords. A few days later "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" was the talk
+of the town. Wild festivities at Newstead followed its publication, and on
+July 2 Byron sailed from Falmouth in the Lisbon packet.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Poet Finds Himself</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Lord Byron was absent from England for two years, and in the solitude of
+his nights at sea and in his lone wanderings through Greece he had leisure
+and seclusion to look within himself, and there catch the first glimpses of
+his glorious mind. His deep passion for solitude grew to full power; the
+varied excitement of his travels invigorated his character and stored his
+imagination with impressions, and his inborn sadness rose from a querulous
+bitterness to the grandeur of his later melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>His letters show him on Parnassus, where a flight of eagles seemed an
+omen of his destiny; at Athens, where he lodged with the mother of the
+"Maid of Athens"; standing among the ruins of Ephesus and the mounds of
+Troy; swimming the Hellespont in honour of Leander; at Constantinople,
+where the prospect of the Golden Horn seemed the fairest of all; at Patras,
+in the woeful debility of fever; and again at Athens, making acquaintance
+with Lady Hester Stanhope and "Abyssinian" Bruce. Through all these varied
+scenes his mind was brooding on the verses of the "Childe Harold."</p>
+
+<p>On Byron's return to England, in July, 1811, that poem was placed in Mr.
+Murray's hands, and thus was laid the foundation of a long connection
+between author and publisher. Mrs. Byron died on August 1. With all her
+faults she had loved her son deeply, and he could at least look back upon
+dutiful and kindly behaviour to her. It was in November that I first had
+the pleasure of meeting the poet at dinner, and what I chiefly remarked was
+the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his voice and
+manner, and his marked kindness. From our first meeting our acquaintance
+quickly ripened into friendship.</p>
+
+<p>On February 27, 1812, a day or two before the appearance of "Childe
+Harold," Byron made the first trial of his eloquence in the House of Lords,
+and it was on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Lord Holland.
+The subject of debate was the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill. Workmen were
+rioting and wrecking because their labour had been displaced by the
+introduction of machinery, and Byron's view was that "we must not allow
+mankind to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism"--"the maintenance of
+the industrious poor is of greater consequence than the enrichment of
+monopolists"--"I have seen the state of these miserable men, and it is a
+disgrace to a civilised country." The speech was well received. The
+impression produced two days later by Byron's "Childe Harold" was as
+instantaneous as it has proved deep and lasting. Even the dashes of
+scepticism, with which he darkened his strain, served only to heighten its
+success. The Prince Regent had the poet presented to him, and the author of
+"Marmion" offered his praise. In the following May appeared the wild and
+beautiful fragment, "The Giaour." This new offspring of his genius was
+hailed with wonder and delight, and on my rejoining him in town this
+spring, I found an intense enthusiasm for Byron throughout the literary and
+social world. But his mind was already turning to freedom and solitude, and
+his third and last speech in the House of Lords was made in June.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Byron's Unfortunate Marriage</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Byron's restlessness is reflected throughout his "Journal," which he
+began at this time. He had dreams of living in the Grecian Islands and of
+adopting an Eastern manner of life; but in December, 1813, when "The Bride
+of Abydos" was published, he was still feverishly dissipating himself in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>A significant entry in the "Journal" says: "A wife would be the
+salvation of me," and Lord Byron became a suitor for the hand of Miss
+Milbanke, a relative of Lady Melbourne. His proposal was not at first
+accepted, but a correspondence ensued between them, and in September, 1814,
+after the appearance of "The Corsair" and "Lara," they became formally
+affianced. I was much in his society at this time, and was filled with
+foreboding anxieties, which the unfortunate events that followed only too
+fully justified. At the end of December he set out for Seaham, the seat of
+Sir Ralph Milbanke, the lady's father, and on January 2, 1815, was married.
+On March 8, he wrote to me from Seaham: "Bell is in health, and unvaried
+good-humour and behaviour."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron's pecuniary embarrassments now accumulated upon him, and just
+a year after his marriage, and shortly after the birth of their daughter, I
+received a letter which breathed a profound melancholy, due partly to his
+difficulties, but more, I thought, to a return of the restless and roving
+spirit. I replied: "Do tell me you are happier than that letter has led me
+to fear, and I shall be satisfied." It was only a few weeks later that Lady
+Byron adopted the resolution of parting from him. She had left London in
+January on a visit to her father, and Byron was to follow her. They had
+parted in the utmost kindness; she wrote him a letter, full of playfulness
+and affection, on the road; but immediately on her arrival her father wrote
+to acquaint Lord Byron that she would return to him no more. At the time
+when he had to stand this unexpected shock, his financial troubles, which
+had led to eight or nine executions in his house within the year, had
+arrived at their utmost; and at a moment when, to use his own expression,
+he was "standing alone on his hearth, with his household gods shivered
+around him," he was also doomed to receive the startling intelligence that
+the wife who had just parted with him in kindness, had parted with him for
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>I must quote from a letter he wrote me in March: "The fault was not in
+my choice, unless in choosing at all; for I do not believe--and I must say
+it in the very dregs of all this bitter business--that there ever was a
+better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and agreeable being
+than Lady Byron. I never had any reproach to make her while with me. Where
+there is blame, it belongs to myself, and if I cannot redeem, I must bear
+it."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Wanderings and Work</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On April 25, 1816, being now twenty-eight years of age, Byron took final
+leave of England, and sailed with two servants for Ostend. His route, by
+Flanders and the Rhine, may be traced in his matchless verses. He settled
+in Geneva, where he met Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; they boated on the lake
+and walked together, and Byron's susceptible mind was deeply influenced by
+his mystical companion. We may discover traces of that vague sublimity in
+the third canto of "Childe Harold," and traces also of Mr. Wordsworth's
+mood which Byron absorbed from Shelley's favourite author.</p>
+
+<p>From November, 1816, his letters are dated from Venice. "This has always
+been, next to the East, the greenest island of my imagination, and it has
+not disappointed me." They are considerably taken up with love affairs of
+an irregular kind, and contain also many vivid pictures of Venetian society
+and manners. "Manfred" was completed in 1817, and was followed by the
+fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Margarita Cogni was the reigning favourite
+of Byron's unworthy harem at this time; and his poem of "Don Juan," now
+begun, most faithfully and lamentably reflects every whim and passion that,
+like the rack of autumn, swept across his mind.</p>
+
+<p>But April, 1819, brought a revulsion against all this libertine way of
+living, and brought also the dawn of the only real love of his whole life.
+Lord Byron had first met the Countess Guiccioli in the autumn of 1818, when
+she made her appearance, three days after her marriage, at the house of the
+Countess Albrizzi, in all the gaiety of bridal array, and the first delight
+of exchanging a convent for the world. She has given her impressions of
+their meeting: "His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the tone
+of his voice, his manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him,
+rendered him so superior a being to any whom I had hitherto seen, that it
+was impossible he should not have left the most profound impression upon
+me."</p>
+
+<p>In June, Byron joined her at Ravenna, and for the next three years
+remained devotedly attached to her. She struck me, during our first
+interview, when I visited them at La Mira, as a lady not only of a style of
+beauty singular in an Italian, as being fair-complexioned and delicate, but
+also as being highly intelligent and amiable.</p>
+
+<p>A letter to me from Pisa, dated August 27, 1822, has a mournful
+interest: "We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on the
+seashore. You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral
+pile has, with mountains in the background and the sea before." Another, of
+November 17, to Lady Byron, shows that if the author of it had not right on
+his side, he had at least most of those good feelings which generally
+accompany it. "I have to acknowledge the receipt of Ada's [their
+daughter's] hair; this note will reach you about her birthday.... We both
+made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and better so.... I assure you
+that I bear you now no resentment whatever.... Whether the offence has been
+solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to
+reflect on any but two things--that you are the mother of my child, and
+that we shall never meet again."</p>
+
+<p>Byron was thirty-five years old when from his exile at Genoa he turned
+his eyes to Greece, where a spirit was now rising such as he had imaged
+forth in dreams of song, but hardly could have dreamed that he should have
+lived to see it realised. He longed to witness, and very probably to share
+in, the present triumphs of liberty on those very fields where he had
+gathered for immortality such memorials of the liberty of the past. Lord
+Byron was in touch with the committee concerned with Grecian liberty in
+May, 1823, and two months later sailed with his party on July 14.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving at Cephalonia he made a journey to Ithaca for a few days. His
+confidence in the Greek cause was soon clouded; the people were grossly
+degenerate, and he saw that the work of regeneration must be slow. To
+convince the government and the chiefs of the paralysing effect of their
+dissensions, to inculcate the spirit of union, to endeavour to humanise the
+feelings of the belligerents on both sides, so as to take from the war the
+character of barbarism--these, with the generous aid of his money, were the
+objects of his interference.</p>
+
+<p>At length the time for action arrived, and, leaving Cephalonia, Byron
+landed at Missolonghi on January 4, 1824. He was welcomed with all honour,
+and at the end of the month received a formal commission from the
+government as commander of the expedition against Lepanto, a fortified
+town. This design was a failure, and Byron occupied himself with the
+fortification of Missolonghi, and with the formation of a brigade for the
+next campaign.</p>
+
+<p>But his health had lately been giving way; he was living in little
+better than a swamp; and one day, after exposure to a heavy shower, he was
+seized with acute pains. On April 11, the illness, now recognised as
+rheumatic fever, increased, and on the 19th he was no more. The funeral
+took place in the Church of St. Nicholas, Missolonghi, on April 22, and the
+remains were carried to England on the brig Florida, and buried, close to
+those of his mother, in the village church of Hucknall.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--A Bewildering Personality</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Can I clear away some of the mists that hang round my friend, and show
+him as worthy of love as he was of admiration? The task is not an easy one.
+In most minds some one influence governs, from which all secondary impulses
+are found to radiate, but this pivot of character was wanting to Lord
+Byron. Governed at different moments by totally different passions, and
+impelled sometimes, as in his excess of parsimony in Italy, by springs of
+action never before developed in his nature, he presents the strangest
+contradictions and inconsistencies, a bewildering complication of
+qualities.</p>
+
+<p>So various, indeed, were his moral and intellectual attributes, that he
+may be pronounced to have been not one, but many. It was this multiform
+aspect that led the world to compare him with a medley host of personages:
+"within nine years," as he playfully records, "to Rousseau, Goethe, Young,
+Aretino, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, Satan, Shakespeare, Buonaparte,
+Tiberius, &AElig;schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, Henry VIII.,
+Mirabeau, Michael Angelo, Diogenes, Milton, Alfieri, and many others."</p>
+
+<p>But this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix the
+fairy fabric of his character, is itself the clue to whatever was most
+dazzling in his might, or startling in his levity, or most attractive or
+most repellent in his life and genius. A variety of powers almost
+boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them; an unusual
+susceptibility and an uncontrolled impetuosity--such were the two great
+sources of all that varied spectacle of his life--unchecked feeling and
+dominant self-will.</p>
+
+<p>Great versatility of power will hardly be found without a tendency to
+versatility of principle. Byron was fully aware, not only of this
+characteristic quality of his nature, but also of its danger to singleness
+of character; and this consciousness had the effect of keeping him in a
+general line of consistency, throughout life, on certain great subjects,
+and helped him to preserve unbroken the greater number of his personal
+attachments. But, except in some few respects, he gave way to his versatile
+humour without scruple or check; and it was impossible but that such a
+range of will and power should be abused. Is it to be wondered at that in
+the works of one thus gifted and carried away we should find, without any
+design of corrupting on his side, evil too often invested with a grandeur
+which belongs intrinsically but to good?</p>
+
+<p>Nay, it will be found that even the strength and impressiveness of
+Byron's poetry is sometimes injured by a capricious and desultory quality
+due to this very pliancy of mind. It may be questioned whether a
+concentration of his powers would not have afforded a grander result. It
+may be that, if Lord Byron had not been so actively versatile, he would
+have been, not less wonderful, but more great.</p>
+
+<p>Again, this love of variety was one of the most pervading weaknesses,
+not only to his poetry, but of his life. The pride of personating every
+kind of character, evil as well as good, influenced his ambition and his
+conduct; and to such a perverse length did he carry this fancy for
+self-defamation that, if there was any tendency to mental derangement, it
+was in this point that it manifested itself. I have known him more than
+once, as we have sat together, to throw out dark hints of his past life
+with an air of gloom and mystery designed to awaken interest; and I have
+little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any
+crime so dark or so desperate of which, in the excitement of acting upon
+the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been
+guilty. It has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's
+separation from him may have been nothing more, after all, than some
+imposture of this kind, some dim confession of undefined horror.</p>
+
+<p>But the over-frankness with which he uttered every chance impression of
+the moment was by itself enough to bring his character unfavourably before
+the world. Which of us could bear to be judged by the unnumbered thoughts
+that course like waves of the sea through our minds and pass away unuttered
+and even unowned by ourselves? To such a test was Byron's character,
+throughout his life, exposed.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or
+lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed his personal
+fascination. His social intercourse was perfectly charming, because whoever
+was with him occupied for the moment all his thoughts and feelings. Even
+with the casual acquaintance of the hour his heart was on his lips, ready
+to give away every secret of his life.</p>
+
+<p>To my assertion that "at no time of his life was Lord Byron a confirmed
+unbeliever" it has been objected that his writings prove the direct
+contrary. But this is to confuse the words "unbeliever" and "sceptic," the
+former of which implies decision of opinion, and the latter only doubt.
+Many passages in his "Journal" show doubt strongly inclined to belief. "Of
+the immortality of the soul it appears to me there can be little doubt." "I
+have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could never bear
+its introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded
+upon the soul." Here are doubt and unrest, but not unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>And so I conclude my labours, undertaken at the wish of my friend, and
+leave his character to the judgement of the world. Let it be remembered
+that through life, with all his faults, he never lost a friend; that those
+about him in his youth, whether as companions, teachers, or servants,
+remained attached to him to the last; that the woman to whom he gave the
+love of his maturer years idolises his name; and that, with a single
+unhappy exception, those who were brought into relations of amity with him
+have felt towards him a kind regard in life, and retain a fondness for his
+memory.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JAMES_COTTER_MORISON"></a>JAMES COTTER MORISON</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_and_Times_of_St_Bernard"></a>Life and Times of St.
+Bernard</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> James Augustus Cotter Morison, English essayist and
+historian, was born in London on April 20, 1832, and was the son of the
+inventor and proprietor of "Morison's Pills." His first years were spent in
+Paris, where he laid the foundation of his intimate knowledge of the French
+people. After graduating at Oxford, he wrote for the "Saturday Review" and
+other papers, and in 1863 brought out his "Life and Times of Saint
+Bernard." His other chief work is entitled "The Service of Man: an Essay
+towards the Religion of the Future," published in 1886. He had projected an
+historical study of France under Louis XIV., but never completed it. He
+died on February 26, 1888. Morison was a Positivist, and had many friends
+in that group, and his rich mind and genial temper endeared him to several
+of the leading literary men of his time, such as George Meredith, Mark
+Pattison and Matthew Arnold. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Early Days of a Useful Life</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Saint Bernard was born in 1091, and died in 1153. His life thus almost
+coincides with the central portion of the Middle Ages. He saw the First and
+Second Crusades, the rising liberties of the communes, and the beginnings
+of scholasticism under Abelard. A large Church reformation and the noblest
+period of monasticism occurred in his day, and received deep marks of his
+genius.</p>
+
+<p>He was the son of Tesselin, a wealthy feudal baron of Burgundy,
+remarkable for his courage, piety, justice and modesty. Alith, his mother,
+was earnest, loving and devout, and full of humility and charity. His
+earliest years were passed amid the European fervour of the First Crusade;
+and as he grew from boyhood into youth--at which time his mother died--he
+made choice of the monastic profession. His friends vainly tried to tempt
+him aside into the pursuit of philosophy; but his commanding personal
+ascendancy brought his brothers and friends to follow him instead into the
+religious life. Having assembled a company of about thirty chosen spirits,
+he retired into seclusion with them for six months, and then, in 1113, at
+the age of twenty-two, led them within the gates of Citeaux.</p>
+
+<p>This community, founded fifteen years before, and now ruled by Stephen
+Harding, an Englishman from Dorsetshire, was exceedingly austere, keeping
+Saint Benedict's rule literally. Here Bernard's uncompromising
+self-mortification, and his love of, and communion with, Nature, showed
+themselves as the chief characteristics of his noble spirit. "Believe me,"
+he said to a pupil, "you will find something far greater in the woods than
+you will in books; stones and trees will teach you that which you will
+never learn from masters." The arrival of Bernard and his companions was a
+turning-point in the history of Citeaux; and the monastery had to send out
+two colonies, to La Fert&eacute; and Pontigny, and in 1115 a third, under
+Bernard himself, to Clairvaux. Here, in a deep umbrageous valley, traversed
+by a limpid stream, the thirteen pioneers built a house little better than
+a barn. Their privations were great. Beech-nuts and roots were at first
+their main support; but soon the sympathy of the surrounding country
+brought sufficiency for their frugal needs. Bernard was consecrated Abbot
+of Clairvaux by the Bishop of Chalons, the renowned William of Champeaux,
+with whom he established a deep friendship.</p>
+
+<p>His labours, anxieties and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to
+the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to Citeaux,
+and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and obtained leave
+to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young abbot obeyed his
+new director absolutely, and lived in a cottage apart from the monastery
+"at leisure for himself and God, and exulting, as it were, in the delights
+of Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>William of St. Thierry and other chroniclers, telling of Clairvaux at
+this time, are fervid in their reverence and praise. "Methought I saw a new
+heaven and a new earth" ... "the golden age seemed to have revisited the
+world" ... "as you descended the hill you could see it was a temple of God;
+the still, silent valley bespoke the unfeigned humility of Christ's poor.
+In this valley full of men, where one and all were occupied with their
+allotted tasks, a silence, deep as that of night, prevailed. The sounds of
+labour, or the chants of the brethren in the choral service, were the only
+exceptions. The order of this silence struck such a reverence even into
+secular persons that they dreaded breaking it even by pertinent
+remarks."</p>
+
+<p>Saint Benedict's rule had reference only to a single religious house;
+but Abbot Stephen of Citeaux united in one compact whole all the
+monasteries which sprang from the parent stock of Citeaux, and established
+an organised system of mutual supervision and control. A general chapter
+was held annually in September, and every Cistercian abbot whose monastery
+was in France, Italy or Germany was bound to attend every year; those from
+Spain, every two years; those from Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Portugal,
+every four years; those from Norway, every five years; and those from Syria
+and Palestine, every seven years. The "Charter of Charity," promulgated by
+this chapter for the guidance of the Cistercian Order, is a brief but
+pregnant document, which quite explains its success.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--A Great Preacher and Essayist</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>About 1119, Bernard, who had resumed the duties of abbot, began the
+career of literary and ecclesiastical activity--the wide and impassioned
+correspondence, the series of marvellous sermons--which have won for him
+the title of the Last of the Fathers. His early essays are vigorous, but
+lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed
+from the tender poetry of his later writings. Three years later we find
+Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry,
+who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his record
+of the saint. It was then regarded as natural that a man of eminent piety
+should work miracles; and we ought to accept these stories, in their native
+crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as significant. Belonging to the
+time, as much as feudal castles and mail armour do, they form part of a
+picture of it.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse, and of another to
+Paris, where he preached the "true philosophy" of poverty and contempt of
+the world to the schools distracted by scholastic puzzles, Bernard remained
+a secluded monk of a new and humble Order. But already, in his thirty-fifth
+year, the foundations had been laid of that authority which enabled him to
+quell a widespread schism, to oppose a formidable heretic, and to give the
+strongest impulse to the Second Crusade. His power was growing, chiefly by
+his voluminous correspondence. He wrote to persons of all classes on all
+subjects; his letters afford to the historian a wide repertory of
+indubitable facts, and show what was the part played at that time by the
+spiritual power--that of a divine morality and superior culture coming into
+conflict with, and strong enough to withstand, a vigorous barbarism. These
+epistles are full of commonsense and clear, practical advice, and often
+give us a glimpse of the human, as distinct from the ascetic, element in
+monastic life. They show how men could pass pleasant and thoughtful days
+amid the barbarism of the time.</p>
+
+<p>The feudal fighting, plundering and slaying seemed to spectators of that
+time, and doubtless to Bernard also, as fixed and unalterable, part of the
+nature of things. Louis VI., King of France, had spent his life in a
+succession of sieges, forays and devastations, as one feudal lord among
+others often more powerful than he. But generally he was in the right, and
+his enemies in the wrong; he generally fought for justice and mercy, and
+they for power and for plunder. The feudal aristocracy was now at the
+zenith of its power, and the peasant was oppressed by injustice, taxation
+and forced labour. Only the Church, and she only on grand occasions, could
+stand up for the poor; but now the royal power made common cause with
+Church and poor, and was rewarded by a gain in extent and in influence. Yet
+even Louis, whose whole life showed respect for the spiritual power, had
+some disagreement with the Bishop of Paris and with the Archbishop of Sens,
+so that the two ecclesiastics placed the kingdom under interdict, and fled
+to Citeaux. Thence Bernard, with an astonishing tone of authority, called
+upon his king to do justice; and Louis was on the point of restoring the
+stolen property. Pope Honorius, however, sent letters to the king, raising
+the interdict, and thereupon Bernard turned his fearless indignation upon
+the supreme pontiff himself. "We speak with sadness; the honour of the
+Church has been not a little blemished in the time of Honorius."</p>
+
+<p>The same intrepidity is shown in Bernard's controversy with the monks of
+Cluny, an abbey of pre-eminent power and moral authority, so that Louis had
+called it the "noblest member of his kingdom." Pontius, its abbot, having
+fallen into ways of pride and extortion, had been induced from Rome to
+resign his abbacy, and to promise a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; but soon
+afterwards he fell upon the monastery with an armed force, and ruled there
+like a robber chieftain. This scandalous outrage was soon reported at Rome,
+and the sacrilegious usurper was excommunicated and banished. Bernard
+seized the moment when laxity of observance of the rule had produced its
+bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and warnings, as well to his
+own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the decline of the genuine monastic
+spirit. The invective of what he calls his "Apology" spares neither the
+softness, nor the ostentation, nor the avarice, of religious houses. It
+condemns even their stately sanctuaries. "The walls of your church are
+resplendent, but the poor are not there." It recalls the erring monasteries
+to real mortification. In another early treatise, "The Degrees of Humility
+and of Pride," the modes of pride are exhibited forcibly, and with not a
+little humour. Curiosity, thoughtless mirth, mock humility, and other
+symptoms of the protean vice are painted by a master.</p>
+
+<p>But Bernard's period of retirement was drawing to a close; he was
+becoming indispensable to his contemporaries. In 1128 he was called to the
+Council of Troyes, at which the Order of Knights Templars was founded, and
+wrote a treatise in praise of the "new warfare," called the "Exhortation to
+the Knights of the Temple." He was brought, again, to the council convened
+by Louis VI. at &Eacute;tampes to decide between the claims of the rival
+Popes in the Papal schism. The council opened by unanimous consent that
+Bernard's judgement should decide their views; and without hesitation he
+pronounced Innocent II. the lawful Pope, and Peter Leonis, or Anacletus
+II., a vain pretender. He bore the same testimony, in the presence of
+Innocent, before Henry I. of England, at Chartres, and before Lotharius,
+the German Emperor, at Li&egrave;ge. The Pope visited Clairvaux, where he
+was moved to tears at the sight of the tattered flock of "Christ's poor,"
+then presided at the Council of Rheims, 1131, and continued his journey
+into Italy, still accompanied by the Abbot of Clairvaux. Bernard, convinced
+that the cause of Innocent was the cause of justice and religion, set no
+bounds to his advocacy of it in letters to kings, bishops and cities. Such
+was now the fame of his sanctity that on his approach to Milan the whole
+population came out to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to Clairvaux in 1135, where he found the community all
+living in Christian amity, and again retired to a cottage in the
+neighbourhood for rest and reflection. "Bernard was in the heavens," says
+Arnold of Bonnevaux; "but they compelled him to come down and listen to
+their sublunary business." The buildings were too small for their
+constantly growing numbers, and a convenient site had been found in an open
+plain farther down the valley. Bishops, barons and merchants came to the
+help of the good work; and the new abbey and church rose quickly.</p>
+
+<p>To Bernard's forty-fifth year belong the "Sermons on the Canticles." In
+the auditorium, or talking-room of the monastery, the abbot, surrounded by
+his white-cowled monks, delivered his spiritual discourses. A strange
+company it was: the old, stooping monk and the young beginner, the lord and
+the peasant, listening together to the man whose message they believed came
+from another world.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--St. Bernard and the Second Crusade</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the meanwhile, the affairs of the Papacy had not improved--Innocent
+was still an exile from his see. Worst of all, the monastery of Monte
+Casino, the head and type of Western monarchism, had declared for
+Anacletus, the anti-Pope; and in 1137 Bernard set out for Italy, visited
+Innocent at Viterbo, and proceeded to Rome. As he advanced, Anacletus was
+rapidly deserted by his supporters, and shortly afterwards solved the
+difficulty by his death. So ended the schism; and Bernard left Rome within
+five days after finishing his work. With broken health and depressed
+spirits he returned to Clairvaux. His brother Gerard, who had shared his
+journey, died soon after they reached home; and Bernard's discourse on that
+event is one of the most remarkable funeral sermons on record. The monk had
+not ceased to be a loving and impassioned man.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of 1139, the heresies of Peter Abelard, brought to his
+notice by William of St. Thierry, called the Abbot of Clairvaux again into
+public controversy. He implored Pope and cardinals to stay the progress of
+a second Arius. Abelard was at this time sixty-one years old, Bernard's
+senior by twelve years, and was without a rival in the schools. The two men
+were such that they could not but oppose one another; they looked at the
+shield from opposite sides; reconciliation, however desirable, could be
+only superficial. Bernard met Abelard, and "admonished him secretly." He
+well knew to what epoch this subtle mind, with its "human and philosophic
+reasons," was about to lead; his quick ear caught the distant thunder-roll
+of free inquiry. The heresies of Peter de Bruis and the rebellion of Arnold
+of Brescia had already marked the beginning of the great change. At last
+Bernard unwillingly yielded to Abelard's challenge to a public dispute at
+Sens; but his speech had hardly begun when Abelard rose in his place,
+refused to hear more, and appealed to Rome. He never reached Rome, but
+remained a penitent monk at Cluny, reconciled to his great antagonist.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard was fifty-five years of age, and old for his years, when the
+Pope delegated to him the office of preaching the Second Crusade. Pale and
+attenuated to a degree which seemed almost supernatural, his contemporaries
+discovered something in the mere glance of his eyes which filled them with
+wonder and awe. When his words of love, aspiration and sublime
+self-sacrifice reached their ears, they were no longer masters of
+themselves or of their feelings. A great meeting had been convened by Pope
+and king at V&eacute;zelay, on Easter, 1146. Bernard, attended by the king,
+spoke from a platform erected on a hill; there was a shout of "Crosses!
+Crosses!" and the preacher scattered a sheaf of these badges among the
+people. The spiritual mind of Europe had spoken through Bernard, and now
+the military mind spoke through Louis VII. He called upon France to destroy
+the enemies of God. Then Bernard preached the Crusade through France and
+Germany, welcomed everywhere by almost unparalleled enthusiasm and attended
+by miraculous signs.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard was shortly to die; but he had first to bear the trial of being
+reviled as the author of the calamities which had overtaken the Crusade.
+Why had he preached it and prophesied success if this was to be the event?
+A murmur of wrath against him was heard from the broad population of
+Europe. It was during this dark time that he began his largest literary
+work, the five books "De Consideratione," addressed to his disciple,
+Eugenius III., a powerful and elaborate plea against the excessive
+centralization of all administration and decisions into the hands of the
+Papal Court. Bernard called this period "the season of calamities." He
+discovered that his secretary had been forging his name and used his
+authority to recommend men and causes most unworthy of his patronage. His
+health was such that he could take no solid food; sleep had left him; his
+debility was extreme. Pope Eugenius died in July, 1153; and Bernard had no
+wish to stay behind. "I am no longer of this world," he said; and on August
+20 he passed away.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOHN_MORLEY"></a>JOHN MORLEY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Richard_Cobden"></a>Life of Richard Cobden</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> In an age when many have gained the double distinction of
+eminence in statesmanship and in letters, the name of Lord Morley stands
+out as that of a man so illustrious in both provinces that it is hard to
+decide in which he has earned the greater fame. We are here concerned with
+him as a brilliant English man of letters. The "Life of Cobden" was
+published in 1881, when John Morley was in the height of his literary
+activity. Born at Blackburn on December 24, 1838, and educated at
+Cheltenham and Oxford, he had entered journalism, had edited the "Pall Mall
+Gazette" and the "Fortnightly Review," and had followed up his first
+book--a monograph on Burke--by a remarkable study of Voltaire, and by his
+work entitled "On Compromise." Political preoccupations drew him somewhat
+away from literature after 1881; but in 1901 he published his book on
+Cromwell, which was followed two years later by the monumental "Life of
+Gladstone." </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--On the Road</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Heyshott is a hamlet in a sequestered corner of West Sussex, not many
+miles from the Hampshire border. Here, in an old farmhouse, known as
+Dunford, Richard Cobden was born on June 3, 1804. His ancestors were yeomen
+of the soil, and, it is said, with every appearance of truth, that the name
+can be traced in the annals of the district as far back as the fourteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>Cobden's father, a man of soft and affectionate disposition, but wholly
+without the energy of affairs, met with financial disaster in 1814, and
+relatives charged themselves with the maintenance of his dozen children.
+Richard was sent by his mother's brother-in-law, a merchant in London, to a
+school in Yorkshire. Here he remained for five years, a grim and desolate
+time, of which he could never afterwards endure to speak. In 1819 he was
+received as a clerk in his uncle's warehouse in Old Change; and at the age
+of twenty-one he was advanced from the drudgery of the warehouse to the
+glories of the road. What made the life of a traveller specially welcome to
+Cobden was the gratification that it offered to the master-passion of his
+life, an insatiable desire to know the affairs of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In 1826, his employer failed, and for some months Cobden had to take
+unwelcome holiday. In September he found a situation, and again set out on
+the road with his samples of muslin and calico prints. Two years
+afterwards, in 1828, he and two friends determined to begin business on
+their own account. They arranged with a firm of Manchester calico-printers
+to sell goods on commission; and so profitable was the enterprise that in
+1831 the partners determined to print their own goods, and took an old
+factory at Sabden in Lancashire.</p>
+
+<p>Cobden's imagination was struck by the busy life of the county with
+which his name was destined to be so closely bound up. "Manchester," he
+writes with enthusiasm, "is the place for all men of bargain and business."
+His pen acquires a curiously exulting animation as he describes the bustle
+of its streets, the quaintness of its dialect, the abundance of its
+capital, and the sturdy veterans with a hundred thousand pounds in each
+pocket, who might be seen in the evening smoking clay pipes and calling for
+brandy-and-water in the bar-parlours of homely taverns. He prospered
+rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but it is at Sabden, not at
+Manchester, that we see the first monument of his public spirit--a little
+stone school-house, built as the result of an agitation led by him with as
+much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw afterwards into great affairs of
+state.</p>
+
+<p>Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with
+surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and
+wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide
+interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. His first motion
+was towards his own intellectual improvement, and early in life he
+perceived that for his purposes no preparation could be so effective as
+that of travel. In 1833 and 1834 he visited the Continent; in 1835, the
+United States; and in 1836 and 1837 he travelled to Egypt, the Levant, and
+Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>In the interval between the two latter journeys he made what was
+probably his first public speech, at a meeting to further the demand of a
+corporation for Manchester. The speech is described as a signal failure.
+"He was nervous," says the chronicler, "confused, and in fact practically
+broke down, and the chairman had to apologise for him."</p>
+
+<p>He was much more successful in two pamphlets he published at this time,
+"England, Ireland, and America," and "Russia," in which he opened the long
+struggle he was to wage against the restriction of commerce, and the policy
+of intervention in European feuds. It is no strained pretension to say that
+already Richard Cobden, the Manchester manufacturer, was fully possessed of
+the philosophic gift of feeling about society as a whole, and thinking
+about the problems of society in an ordered connection.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Corn Laws</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In 1837, Cobden was invited to become candidate for the borough of
+Stockport. Although he threw himself into the struggle with all his energy,
+on the day of election he was found to be at the bottom of the poll. Four
+years later he was returned for Stockport by a triumphant majority. But in
+1841 he was no longer a rising young politician; he had become the leading
+spirit of a national agitation.</p>
+
+<p>In October, 1838, a band of seven men met at an hotel in Manchester, and
+formed a new Anti-Corn-Law Association. They were speedily joined by
+others, including Cobden, who from this moment began to take a prominent
+part in all counsel and action. The abolition of the duties on corn was the
+single object of Cobden's political energy during the seven years that
+followed, and their destruction was the one finished triumph with which his
+name is associated.</p>
+
+<p>After the rejection in the following year by a large majority of Mr.
+Villiers' motion that the House of Commons should consider the act
+regulating the importation of corn, the association developed into a League
+of Federated Anti-Corn-Law Associations in different towns and districts.
+The repealers began the work of propagandism by sending out a band of
+economic missionaries, who were not long in discovering how hardly an old
+class interest dies. In many districts neither law nor equity gave them
+protection. The members of the league were described in the London Press as
+unprincipled schemers, as commercial and political swindlers, and as
+revolutionary emissaries, whom all well-disposed persons ought to assist
+the authorities in putting down.</p>
+
+<p>Before he entered Parliament, Cobden re-settled his business by entering
+into partnership with his brother Frederick, and married (May, 1840) a
+young Welsh lady, Miss Catherine Ann Williams. In Parliament Cobden was
+instantly successful. His early speeches produced that singular and
+profound effect which is perceived in English deliberative assemblies when
+a speaker leaves party recriminations, abstract argument, and commonplaces
+of sentiment, in order to inform his hearers of telling facts in the
+condition of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>But Cobden's parliamentary work was at this time less important than his
+work as an agitator. If in one sense the Corn Laws did not seem a promising
+theme for a popular agitation, they were excellently fitted to bring out
+Cobden's peculiar strength. It was not passion, but persuasiveness, to
+which we must look for the secret of his oratorical success. Cobden made
+his way to men's hearts by the union which they saw in him of simplicity,
+earnestness, and conviction, with a singular facility of exposition. Then
+men were attracted by his mental alacrity, by the instant readiness with
+which he turned round to grapple with a new objection.</p>
+
+<p>His patience in acquiring and shaping matter for argument was surpassed
+by his inexhaustible patience in dealing with the mental infirmities of
+those whom it was his business to persuade. He was wholly free from the
+unmeasured anger against human stupidity which is itself one of the most
+provoking forms of that stupidity.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Cobden and Bright</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1841, Cobden and Bright made that solemn compact which
+was the beginning of an affectionate and noble friendship that lasted
+without a cloud or a jar until Cobden's death.</p>
+
+<p>"On the day when Mr. Cobden called upon me," said Bright, "I was in the
+depths of grief, I might almost say of despair; for the light and sunshine
+of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth of my young
+wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too brief happiness, was
+lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden called upon me as
+a friend, and addressed me, as you might suppose, with words of condolence.
+After a time he looked up, and said, 'There are thousands of houses in
+England at this moment where wives, mothers, and children are dying of
+hunger. Now,' he said, 'when the first paroxysm of your grief is past, I
+would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the Corn Law
+is repealed.' I accepted his invitation."</p>
+
+<p>Although the agitation for repeal was in Cobden's mind only a part of
+the broad aims of peace and social and moral progress for which he strove,
+he was too practical to put forth his thoughts on too many subjects at
+once. He confined his enthusiasm to repeal until repeal was accomplished.
+But his efforts left him no time to attend to his own business, which was
+falling to pieces under the management of his brother Frederick. In the
+autumn of 1845 he felt compelled to give up his work as an agitator on
+account of his private affairs, but Bright and one or two friends procured
+the money that sufficed to tide over the emergency.</p>
+
+<p>The cause was now on the eve of victory. The autumn of 1845 was the
+wettest in the memory of man. For long the downpour never ceased by night
+or by day; it was the rain that rained away the Corn Laws. The bad harvest
+and the Irish potato famine brought the long hesitation of Sir Robert Peel
+to an end. Soon after the opening of the session of 1846, he announced his
+proposals.</p>
+
+<p>The repeal of the Corn Laws was to be total, but not immediate. For
+three years there was to be a lowered duty on a sliding scale, and then the
+ports were to be opened entirely. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" wrote Cobden to his
+wife on June 26, "the Corn Bill is law, and now my work is done!"</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--In the Cause of Peace</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Cobden was now absent from England for fourteen months, travelling on
+the Continent. His reception was everywhere that of a great discoverer in a
+science which interests the bulk of mankind much more keenly than any
+other, the science of wealth. People looked on him as a man who had found
+out a momentous secret. He had interviews with the Pope, with three or four
+kings, with ambassadors, and with all the prominent statesmen. He never
+lost an opportunity of speaking a word in season. They were not all
+converted, but they all listened to him; and they all taught him something,
+whether they chose to learn anything from him in return or not.</p>
+
+<p>On his return he joined with Bright in an agitation for financial and
+parliamentary reform. While he believed in an extension of the franchise as
+a means of attaining the objects he had in view, he was essentially an
+economical, a moral, and a social reformer. He was never an enthusiast for
+mere reform in the machinery. He made it his special mission to advocate
+financial reform, and left the advocacy for franchise extension very
+largely to his colleague.</p>
+
+<p>Retrenchment was the keynote of the financial reform urged by Cobden;
+and retrenchment involved the furtherance of international peace and the
+reduction of British armaments by means of the abandonment of the policy of
+intervention in European disputes and the policy of "clinging to colonies,"
+with the consequent expenditure upon colonial defence. From 1846 to 1851
+Lord Palmerston was at the Foreign Office, and was incessantly active in
+the affairs of half the countries of Europe. To this policy of interference
+Cobden offered resolute opposition. He was especially energetic in
+protesting against the lending to Austria and Russia of money that was in
+effect borrowed to repay the cost of the oppressive war against Hungary. It
+is impossible not to admire the courage, the sound sense, and the elevation
+with which Cobden thus strove to diffuse the doctrine of moral
+responsibility in connection with the use of capital.</p>
+
+<p>In 1852, a Protectionist Ministry under Lord Derby came into power, and
+the Anti-Corn Law League was revived. The danger, however, soon passed
+away; the Derby Ministry made no attempt to interfere with freedom of
+trade, and ere the year ended gave place to the Aberdeen Ministry. Cobden's
+policy of peace and retrenchment, however, became more and more unpopular.
+Cobden's urgent feeling about war was not in any degree sentimental. He
+opposed war because war and the preparation for it consumed the resources
+which were required for the improvement of the temporal condition of the
+population. But in the inflamed condition of public opinion his arguments
+were powerless.</p>
+
+<p>The invasion panic of 1853 was followed in 1854 by the Crimean War, and
+in opposing that war Cobden and Bright found themselves absolutely
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>"The British nation," said Lord Palmerston, "is unanimous in this
+matter. I say unanimous, for I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright, and Co. for
+anything." His estimate was perfectly correct; Cobden and Bright had the
+whole world against them. The moral fortitude, like the political wisdom,
+of these two strong men, stands out with a splendour that already recalls
+the great historic types of statesmanship and patriotism.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Cobden as Treaty-Maker</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In 1857, Cobden was compelled to retire for a time from politics. He
+vigorously opposed the Chinese War, and succeeded in defeating Lord
+Palmerston's Government in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, with his
+usual acuteness and courage, at once dissolved parliament, and in the
+General Election his victory was complete. The Manchester School was
+routed. Cobden, who contested Huddersfield, was heavily beaten; and at
+Manchester itself Bright was at the bottom of the poll. Cobden went to his
+home at Dunford, in Sussex, and remained there nearly two years. Once more
+he was afflicted with financial trouble. An unfortunate land speculation at
+Manchester, and certain investments in American railroads, had again
+brought him into difficulties, from which he was ultimately rescued by a
+munificent gift of &pound;40,000 from subscribers whose names he never
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>The General Election of 1859 was held while Cobden was absent in the
+United States, and on his return he found that he had been chosen member
+for Rochdale. To his surprise, he also received from his old enemy,
+Palmerston, an offer of the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Cobden, who
+had consistently refrained from accepting any office, courteously
+declined.</p>
+
+<p>But he was none the less able to render a great service to the new
+Government. Mr. Bright, in a parliamentary speech, incidentally asked why,
+instead of lavishing the national substance in armaments, they did not go
+to the French Emperor and attempt to persuade him to allow his people to
+trade freely with ours. The idea of a commercial treaty occurred to M.
+Chevalier on reading the speech, and he wrote in this sense to Cobden, who
+was strongly impressed by the notion. He opened his mind to Gladstone, who
+was then Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, as the outcome, Cobden went to
+Paris in the autumn of 1859 as unofficial negotiator of a treaty.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiation was long and tedious. Cobden had to convert the emperor
+to his views, and to await the reconciliation of the various French
+interests that were opposed to freedom of trade. It was not until November,
+1860, that Cobden's labours were concluded. England cleared her tariff of
+protection, and reduced the duties which were retained for revenue on the
+two French staples of wine and brandy. France, on her part, replaced
+prohibition by a series of moderate duties.</p>
+
+<p>Palmerston offered Cobden a choice between a baronetcy and a Privy
+Councillorship as a reward for his services. He replied begging permission
+most respectfully to deny himself the honour. "An indisposition to accept a
+title," he wrote, "being in my case rather an affair of feeling than of
+reason, I will not dwell further on the subject."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>VI.--The Last Days of Cobden</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When Cobden returned to England his public position had more than
+recovered the authority and renown which had been seriously impaired by his
+unpopular attitude on the Russian war. But he and Bright were soon involved
+in an almost angrier conflict than before with the upper and middle
+classes, on account of their championship of the North in the American
+Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining years of his life were largely spent in systematic
+onslaughts upon the policy of Lord Palmerston, and in opposition to
+military expenditure. It was with the purpose of resisting a Canadian
+fortification scheme that he made his last journey to London in March,
+1865. On his arrival he was seized by a sharp attack of asthma; bronchitis
+supervened, and it became evident that he would not recover. On the morning
+of Sunday, April 2, Bright took his place by the side of the dying man. As
+the bells were ringing for the morning service the mists of death began to
+settle heavily on his brow, and his ardent, courageous, and brotherly
+spirit soon passed tranquilly away.</p>
+
+<p>He was buried by the side of his son in the little churchyard at
+Lavington, on the slope of the hill among the pine-woods. "Before we left
+the house," Bright has told us, "standing by me, and leaning on the coffin,
+was his sorrowing daughter, one whose attachment to her father seems to
+have been a passion scarcely equalled among daughters. She said, 'My father
+used to like me very much to read to him the Sermon on the Mount. His own
+life was, to a large, extent, a sermon based upon that best, that greatest
+of all sermons. His was a life of perpetual self-sacrifice.'"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="SAMUEL_PEPYS"></a>SAMUEL PEPYS</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Diary"></a>Diary</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Samuel Pepys, author of the incomparable "Diary," was born
+either in London or at Brampton, Huntingdonshire, on February 23, 1632-3,
+son of John Pepys, a London tailor. By the influence of the Earl of
+Sandwich, he was entered in the public service. Beginning as a clerk in the
+Exchequer, he was soon transferred to the Naval Department, and rose to the
+high office of secretary to the Admiralty. His services were interrupted
+for a time, on the baseless suspicion that he was a Catholic, during the
+panic about the supposed "Popish Plot," but he was returned to his charge,
+and held it until the accession of William and Mary. Pepys was a man of
+very wide interests. He was a member of parliament, and became president of
+the Royal Society. He was an accomplished musician and a keen critic of
+painting, architecture, and the drama. But it is as a connoisseur of human
+nature that Pepys is known to-day. The "Diary" extended over the ten years,
+January, 1659-60, to May, 1669; it closed when he was thirty-seven years
+old, and he lived thirty-four years afterwards. The manuscript, written in
+shorthand, fills six volumes, which repose at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
+It was deciphered in 1825, when it was published as "Memoirs of Samuel
+Pepys, comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. J.
+Smith, and a Selection of his Private Correspondence, edited by Lord
+Braybrooke." Pepys died on May 26, 1703. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--"God Bless King Charles"</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>January</i> 1, 1659-60. Blessed be God, at the end of last year I was
+in very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of
+cold. I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife and servant, Jane, and no other
+in family than us three.</p>
+
+<p>The condition of the state was thus: the Rump, after being disturbed by
+my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again. The officers of the army
+all forced to yield. Lawson still lies in the river, and Monk is with his
+army in Scotland. The New Common Council of the City do speak very high;
+and had sent to Monk their sword-bearer, to acquaint him with their desires
+for a free and full parliament, which is at present the desires, and the
+hopes, and the expectations of all. My own private condition very handsome,
+and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor; besides my goods of my house, and
+my office, which at present is somewhat certain.</p>
+
+<p><i>March 9, 1660.</i> To my lord at his lodging, and came to Westminster
+with him in the coach; and I telling him that I was willing and ready to go
+with him to sea, he agreed that I should. I hear that it is resolved
+privately that a treaty be offered with the king.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 1.</i> To-day I hear they were very merry at Deal, setting up the
+king's flag upon one of their maypoles, and drinking his health upon their
+knees in the streets, and firing the guns, which the soldiers of the castle
+threatened, but durst not oppose.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 2.</i> Welcome news of the parliament's votes yesterday, which
+will be remembered for the happiest May-day that hath been many a year to
+England. The king's letter was read in the house, wherein he submits
+himself and all things to them. The house, upon reading the letter, ordered
+&pound;50,000 to be forthwith provided to send to his majesty for his
+present supply. The City of London have put out a declaration, wherein they
+do disclaim their owning any other government but that of a king, lords,
+and commons.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 3.</i> This morning my lord showed me the king's declaration to
+be communicated to the fleet. I went up to the quarter-deck with my lord
+and the commanders, and there read the papers; which done, the seamen did
+all of them cry out, "God bless King Charles!" with the greatest joy
+imaginable. After dinner to the rest of the ships quite through the
+fleet.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 11.</i> This morning we began to pull down all the state's arms
+in the fleet, having first sent to Dover for painters to come and set up
+the king's. After dinner we set sail from the Downs, but dropped anchor
+again over against Dover Castle.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 12.</i> My lord gave order for weighing anchor, which we did, and
+sailed all day.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 14.</i> In the morning the Hague was clearly to be seen by us.
+The weather bad; we were sadly washed when we come near the shore, it being
+very hard to land there.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 23.</i> Come infinity of people on board from the king to go
+along with him. The king, with the two dukes and Queen of Bohemia, Princess
+Royal, and Prince of Orange, come on board, where I, in their coming in,
+kissed the king's, queen's, and princess's hands, having done the other
+before. Infinite shooting of the runs, and that in a disorder on purpose,
+which was better than if it had been otherwise. We weighed anchor, and with
+a fresh gale and most happy weather we set sail for England.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 24.</i> Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the
+stockings on and wide canons that I bought at Hague. Extraordinary press of
+noble company, and great mirth all day.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 25.</i> By the morning we were come close to the land, and
+everybody made ready to get on shore. I spoke to the Duke of York about
+business, who called me Pepys by name, and upon my desire did promise me
+his future favour. The king went in my lord's barge with the two dukes, and
+was received by General Monk with all love and respect at his entrance upon
+the land of Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>1660-1661. At the end of the last and the beginning of this year, I do
+live in one of the houses belonging to the Navy Office, as one of the
+principal officers; my family being myself, my wife, Jane, Will Hewer, and
+Wayneman, my girl's brother. Myself in constant good health, and in a most
+handsome and thriving condition. Blessed be God for it. The king settled,
+and loved of all.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Plague</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>July 31, 1665.</i> I ended this month with the greatest joy that I
+ever did any in my life, because I have spent the greatest part of it with
+abundance of joy, and honour, and pleasant journeys, and brave
+entertainments, and without cost of money. We end this month after the
+greatest glut of content that ever I had, only under some difficulty
+because of the plague, which grows mightily upon us, the last week being
+about 1,700 or 1,800 of the plague. My Lord Sandwich at sea with a fleet of
+about one hundred sail, to the northward, expecting De Ruyter, or the Dutch
+East India fleet.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 8.</i> To my office a little, and then to the Duke of
+Albemarle's about some business. The streets empty all the way now, even in
+London, which is a sad sight. To Westminster Hall, where talking, hearing
+very sad stories. So home through the City again, wishing I may have taken
+no ill in going; but I will go, I think, no more thither. The news of De
+Ruyter's coming home is certain, and told to the great disadvantage of our
+fleet; but it cannot be helped.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 10.</i> To the office, where we sat all morning; in great
+trouble to see the bill this week rise so high, to above 4,000 in all, and
+of them above 3,000 of the plague. Home to draw over anew my will, which I
+had bound myself by oath to dispatch by to-morrow night; the town growing
+so unhealthy that a man cannot depend upon living two days.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 12.</i> The people die so that now it seems they are fain to
+carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it
+in. And my lord mayor commands people to be within at nine at night, that
+the sick may have liberty to go abroad for air. There is one also dead out
+of one of our ships at Deptford, which troubles us mightily. I am told,
+too, that a wife of one of the grooms at court is dead at Salisbury, so
+that the king and queen are speedily to be all gone to Milton. So God
+preserve us!</p>
+
+<p><i>August 16.</i> To the Exchange, where I have not been in a great
+while. But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people,
+and very few upon the 'Change. Jealous of every door that one sees shut up
+lest it should be the plague; and about two shops in three, if not more,
+generally shut up.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 22.</i> I walked to Greenwich, in my way seeing a coffin with
+a dead body therein, dead of the plague, which was carried out last night,
+and the parish have not appointed anybody to bury it; but only set a watch
+there all day and night, that nobody should go thither or come thence, this
+disease making us more cruel to one another than we are to dogs.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 25.</i> This day I am told that Dr. Burnett, my physician, is
+this morning dead of the plague, which is strange, his man dying so long
+ago, and his house this month open again. Now himself dead. Poor,
+unfortunate man!</p>
+
+<p><i>August 30.</i> I went forth and walked towards Moorfields to see (God
+forgive my presumption!) whether I could see any dead corpse going to the
+grave. But, Lord! how everybody looks, and discourse in the street is of
+death and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the town is
+like a place distressed and forsaken.</p>
+
+<p><i>September 3 (Lord's Day).</i> Up; and put on my coloured silk suit
+very fine, and my new periwig, bought a good while since, but durst not
+wear, because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a
+wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwigs,
+for nobody will dare to buy any hair, for fear of the infection, that it
+has been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague. My Lord Brouncker,
+Sir J. Minnes, and I up to the vestry at the desire of the justices of the
+peace, in order to the doing something for the keeping of the plague from
+growing; but, Lord! to consider the madness of the people of the town, who
+will, because they are forbid, come in crowds along with the dead corpses
+to see them buried.</p>
+
+<p><i>September 6.</i> To London, to pack up more things; and there I saw
+fires burning in the streets, as it is through the whole city, by the lord
+mayor's order.</p>
+
+<p><i>September 14.</i> To the Duke of Albemarle, where I find a letter
+from my Lord Sandwich, of the fleet's meeting with about eighteen more of
+the Dutch fleet, and his taking of most of them; and the messenger says
+they had taken three after the letter was sealed, which being twenty-one,
+and those took the other day, is forty-five sail, some of which are good,
+and others rich ships. Having taken a copy of my lord's letter, I away
+toward the 'Change, the plague being all thereabouts. Here my news was
+highly welcome, and I did wonder to see the 'Change so full--I believe two
+hundred people. And, Lord! to see how I did endeavour to talk with as few
+as I could, there being now no shutting up of houses infected, that to be
+sure we do converse and meet with people that have the plague upon them. I
+spent some thought on the occurrences of this day, giving matter for as
+much content on one hand and melancholy on another, as any day in all my
+life. For the first, the finding of my money and plate all safe at London;
+the hearing of this good news after so great a despair of my lord's doing
+anything this year; and the decrease of 500 and more, which is the first
+decrease we have yet had in the sickness since it begun. Then, on the other
+side, my finding that though the bill in general is abated, yet in the City
+within the walls it is increased; my meeting dead corpses, carried close to
+me at noonday in Fenchurch Street.</p>
+
+<p>One of my own watermen, that carried me daily, fell sick as soon as he
+had landed me on Friday last, when I had been all night upon the water, and
+is now dead of the plague. And, lastly, that both my servants, W. Hewer and
+Tom Edwards, have lost their fathers of the plague this week, do put me
+into great apprehension of melancholy, and with good reason.</p>
+
+<p><i>November 15.</i> The plague, blessed be God! is decreased 400, making
+the whole this week but 1,300 and odd, for which the Lord be praised!</p>
+
+<p><i>December 25 (Christmas Day).</i> To church in the morning, and there
+saw a wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day, and the
+young people so merry with one another, and strange to see what delight we
+married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition,
+every man and woman gazing and smiling at them.</p>
+
+<p><i>December 31.</i> Thus ends this year, to my great joy, in this
+manner. I have raised my estate from &pound;1,300 in this year to
+&pound;4,400. I have got myself greater interest, I think, by my diligence,
+and my employments increased by that of treasurer for Tangier and surveyor
+of the victuals. It is true we have gone through great melancholy because
+of the plague, and I put to great charges by it, by keeping my family long
+at Woolwich, and myself and my clerks at Greenwich, and a maid at London;
+but I hope the king will give us some satisfaction for that. But now the
+plague is abated almost to nothing, and I intending to get to London as
+fast as I can. To our great joy the town fills apace, and shops begin to be
+open again.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--The Great Fire</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>September 2, 1666.</i> Some of our maids sitting up late last night
+to get things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three
+in the morning to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose,
+and slipped on my nightgown, and went to her window, and thought it to be
+on the back side of Mark Lane at the farthest, and so went to bed again.
+About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at the window,
+and saw the fire not so much as it was, and further off. By-and-by Jane
+comes and tells me that above 300 houses have been burned down, and that it
+is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge. So I made myself
+ready, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high
+places; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on
+fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side of the bridge.
+So down with my heart full of trouble to the lieutenant of the Tower, who
+tells me that it begun this morning in the king's baker's house in Pudding
+Lane.</p>
+
+<p>So I down to the waterside, and there got a boat, and through bridge,
+and there saw a lamentable fire. Everybody endeavouring to remove their
+goods, and flinging into the river, or bringing them into lighters that lay
+off; poor people staying in their houses till the very fire touched them,
+and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stairs by the
+waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive,
+were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and
+balconies till they burned their wings and fell down. Having staid, and in
+an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my sight,
+endeavouring to quench it, I to White Hall, and there up to the king's
+closet in the chapel, where people come about me, and I did give them an
+account which dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the king.</p>
+
+<p>So I was called for, and did tell the king and Duke of York what I saw,
+and that unless his majesty did command houses to be pulled down, nothing
+could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the king commanded me
+to go to my lord mayor from him and command him to spare no houses, but to
+pull down before the fire every way. Meeting with Captain Cocke, I in his
+coach, which he lent me, to Paul's, and there walked along Watling Street,
+as well as I could, every creature coming away loaded with goods to save,
+and here and there sick people carried away in beds. At last met my lord
+mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent. To the king's message, he cried,
+like a fainting woman, "Lord! what can I do? I am spent; people will not
+obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster
+than we can do it." So I walked home, seeing people almost all distracted,
+and no manner of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very
+thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tar in
+Thames Street, and warehouses of oil and wines and brandy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon as I dined, I away, and walked through the City, the streets full
+of people, and horses and carts loaden with goods. To Paul's Wharf, where I
+took boat, and saw the fire was now got further, both below and above
+bridge, and no likelihood of stopping it. Met with the king and Duke of
+York in their barge. Their order was only to pull down houses apace; but
+little was or could be done, the fire coming so fast. Having seen as much
+as I could, I away to White Hall by appointment, and there walked to St.
+James's Park, and there met my wife, and Creed and Wood and his wife, and
+walked to my boat; and upon the water again, and to the fire, still
+increasing, and the wind great. So near the fire as we could for smoke, and
+all over the Thames you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops.</p>
+
+<p>When you could endure no more upon the water, we to a little ale-house
+on the Bankside, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire
+grow; and as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and
+upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up
+the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like
+the fine flame of an ordinary fire. We stayed till, it being darkish, we
+saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of
+the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long; it
+made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming
+at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at
+their ruin. So home with a sad heart.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Of the Badness of the Government</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>April 26, 1667.</i> To White Hall, and there saw the Duke of
+Albemarle, who is not well, and do grow crazy. Then I took a turn with Mr.
+Evelyn, with whom I walked two hours; talking of the badness of the
+government, where nothing but wickedness, and wicked men and women command
+the king; that it is not in his nature to gainsay anything that relates to
+his pleasures; that much of it arises from the sickliness of our ministers
+of state, who cannot be about him as the idle companions are, and therefore
+he gives way to the young rogues; and then from the negligence of the
+clergy, that a bishop shall never be seen about him, as the King of France
+hath always; that the king would fain have some of the same gang to be lord
+treasurer, which would be yet worse.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the court
+lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's
+coming in. He tells me that now the Countess Castlemaine do carry all
+before her. He did tell me of the ridiculous humour of our king and knights
+of the Garter the other day, who, whereas heretofore their robes were only
+to be worn during their ceremonies, these, as proud of their coats, did
+wear them all day till night, and then rode in the park with them on. Nay,
+he tells me he did see my Lord Oxford and Duke of Monmouth in a hackney
+coach with two footmen in the park, with their robes on, which is a most
+scandalous thing, so as all gravity may be said to be lost among us.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--The End of the Diary</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>November 30, 1668.</i> My wife after dinner went the first time
+abroad in her coach, calling on Roger Pepys, and visiting Mrs. Creed and my
+cousin Turner. Thus endeth this month with very good content, but most
+expenseful to my purse on things of pleasure, having furnished my wife's
+closet and the best chamber, and a coach and horses that ever I knew in the
+world; and I am put into the greatest condition of outward state that ever
+I was in, or hoped ever to be. But my eyes are come to that condition that
+I am not able to work. God do His will in it!</p>
+
+<p><i>December 2.</i> Abroad with my wife, the first time that ever I rode
+in my own coach, which do make my heart rejoice and praise God. So she and
+I to the king's playhouse, and there saw "The Usurper," a pretty good play.
+Then we to White Hall; where my wife stayed while I up to the duchess, to
+speak with the Duke of York; and here saw all the ladies, and heard the
+silly discourse of the king with his people about him.</p>
+
+<p><i>December 21.</i> To the Duke's playhouse, and saw "Macbeth." The king
+and court there, and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine. And my
+wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never
+thought so much before, and so did Talbot and W. Hewer. The king and Duke
+of York minded me, and smiled upon me; but it vexed me to see Moll Davis in
+the box over the king and my Lady Castlemaine, look down upon the king, and
+he up to her. And so did my Lady Castlemaine once; but when she saw Moll
+Davis she looked like fire, which troubled me.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 31, 1669.</i> Up very betimes, and continued all the morning
+examining my accounts, in order to the fitting myself to go abroad beyond
+sea, which the ill-condition of my eyes and my neglect hath kept me
+behindhand in. Had another meeting with the Duke of York at White Hall on
+yesterday's work, and made a good advance; and so being called by my wife,
+we to the park, Mary Batelier and a Dutch gentleman, a friend of hers,
+being with us. Thence to "The World's End," a drinking house by the park;
+and there merry, and so home late.</p>
+
+<p>And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own
+eyes in the keeping of my journal, having done now so long as to undo my
+eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore resolve,
+from this time forward to have it kept by my people in longhand, and must
+be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to
+know. And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to
+see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will
+accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me! S. P.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="PLINY_THE_YOUNGER"></a>PLINY THE YOUNGER</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Letters1"></a>Letters</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, or Pliny the Younger, was
+born in 62 A.D. at Novum Comum, in the neighbourhood of Lake Como, in the
+north of Italy. His family was honourable, wealthy, and able, and his
+uncle, Pliny the Elder, was the encyclopaedic student and author of the
+famous "Natural History." On his father's death, young Pliny, a boy of
+nine, was adopted by the elder Pliny, educated in literary studies and as
+an advocate, and was a notable pleader before his twentieth year. Through a
+succession of offices he rose to the consulship in the year 100, and
+afterwards continued to hold important appointments. He was twice married,
+but left no children. The date of his death is unknown. The "Letters of
+Pliny the Younger" are valuable as throwing light upon the life of the
+Roman people; but they are also models of Latin style, and have all the
+charm of their author's upright, urbane, and tolerant character. His
+epistle to the Emperor Trajan with regard to the Christians is of peculiar
+interest. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Cornelius Tacitus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>You will certainly laugh, and well may you laugh, when I tell you that
+your old friend has turned sportsman, and has captured three magnificent
+boars. "What," you say, "Pliny?" Yes, I myself, though without giving up my
+much loved inactivity. While I sat at the nets, you might have found me
+holding, not a spear, but my pen. I was resolved, if I returned with my
+hands empty, at least to bring home my tablets full. This open-air way of
+studying is not at all to be despised. The activity and the scene stimulate
+the imagination; and there is something in the solemnity and solitude of
+the woods, and in the expectant silence of the chase, that greatly promotes
+meditation. I advise you whenever you hunt in future to take your tablets
+with you as well as your basket and flask. You will find that Minerva, as
+well as Diana, haunts these hills.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Minucius Fundanus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When I consider how the days pass with us at Rome, I am surprised to
+find that any single day taken by itself is spent reasonably enough, or at
+least seems to be so, and yet when I add up many days together the
+impression is quite otherwise. If you ask anyone what he has been doing
+to-day, he will tell you perhaps that he has been attending the ceremony of
+a youth's coming of age; he has assisted at a wedding, been present at the
+hearing of a lawsuit, witnessed a will, or taken part in a consultation.
+These occupations seem very necessary while one is engaged in them; and
+yet, looking back at leisure upon the many hours we have thus employed, we
+cannot but consider them mere frivolities. Looking back especially on town
+life from a country retreat, one is inclined to regret how much of life has
+been spent in these wretched trifles.</p>
+
+<p>This reflection is one which often occurs to me at my place at
+Laurentum, when I am immersed in studies or invigorating my bodily health.
+In that peaceful home I neither hear nor say anything which needs to be
+repented of. There is no one there who speaks evil of anyone; and I have
+not to complain of any man, except sometimes of myself when I am
+dissatisfied with my work. There I live undisturbed by rumours, free from
+the vicissitudes of hope and fear, conversing only with myself and my
+books. What a true and genuine life it is; what a delightful and honest
+repose--surely more to be desired than the highest employments. O sea and
+solitary shore, secret haunt of the Muses, with how many noble thoughts
+have you inspired me! Do you then, my friend, take the first opportunity of
+leaving the noisy town with all its empty pursuits, and devote your days to
+study or leisure. For, as Attilius well says, it is better to have nothing
+to do than to be doing of nothing.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Septicius Clarus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>How did it happen, my friend, that you failed to keep your engagement to
+dine with me? I shall expect you to repay me what I spent on the
+festival--no small sum, I can assure you. I had prepared for each of us,
+you must know, a lettuce, three snails, two eggs, and a barley cake served
+with sweet wine and snow; the snow most certainly I shall charge to your
+account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots, gourds, onions,
+and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard a comedian, or the
+reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you had liked, all three,
+such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies and Spanish dancing girls
+at some other house were more to your taste. I shall have my revenge of
+you, depend upon it, but I won't say how. Indeed, it was not kind thus to
+mortify your friend--I had almost said yourself; for how delightfully we
+should have passed the evening in jests and laughter, and in deeper talk!
+It is true you may dine at many houses more sumptuously than at mine but
+nowhere will you find more unconstrained gaiety, simplicity and freedom.
+Only make the experiment, and if you do not ever afterwards prefer my table
+to any other, never favour me with your company again.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Avitus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It would be a long story, and of no great importance, if I were to tell
+you by what accident I dined lately with a man who, in his own opinion,
+entertained us with great splendour and economy, but in my opinion with
+meanness combined with extravagance. He and a few of his guests enjoyed
+some very excellent dishes indeed, but the fare placed before the rest of
+the company was of the most inferior kind. There were three kinds of wine
+in small bottles, but it was not intended that the guests should take their
+choice at all. The best was for himself and for us; another vintage was for
+his friends of a lower order--for you must know he divides his friends into
+classes--and the third kind was for his own and his guests freed-men. My
+neighbor noticed this, and asked me if I approved of it. "Not at all," I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"What then," said he, "is your custom in entertaining?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mine," said I, "is to offer the same fare to everybody. I invite my
+friends to dinner without separating them into classes. Everyone who comes
+to my table is equal, and even my freed-men are then my guests just as much
+as anyone else."</p>
+
+<p>He asked me if I did not find this very expensive. I assured him that it
+was not so at all, and that the whole secret lay in drinking no better wine
+myself that I gave to others. If a man is wise enough to moderate his own
+luxury, he will not find it very expensive to entertain all his visitors on
+equal terms. Restrain your own tastes if you would really economise. This
+is a better way of saving expense than making these insulting distinctions
+between guests.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a pity if a man of your excellent disposition should be
+imposed upon by the immoderate ostentation which prevails at some tables
+under the guise of frugality. I tell you of this as an example of what you
+ought to shun. Nothing is to be more avoided than this preposterous
+association of extravagance and meanness--defects which are unpleasant
+enough when found separately, but are particularly detestable when
+combined.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Baebius Macer</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I am glad to hear that you are so great an admirer of my Uncle Pliny's
+works as to wish to have a complete collection of them. You will wonder how
+a man so much occupied as he was could find time to write so many books,
+some of them upon very difficult subjects. You will be still more surprised
+when you hear that for a considerable time he practised at the bar, that he
+died in his fifty-sixth year, and that from the time of his retirement from
+the bar to his death he was employed in some of the highest offices of
+state, and in the immediate service of the emperors. But he had a very
+quick intelligence, an incredible power of application, and an unusual
+faculty of doing without sleep. In summer he used to begin to work at
+midnight; in winter, generally at one in the morning, or two at the latest,
+and often at midnight. But he would often, without leaving his studies,
+refresh himself by a short sleep. Before daybreak he used to wait upon the
+Emperor Vespasian, who also was a night worker, and after that attended to
+his official duties. Having taken a light meal at noon, after the custom of
+our ancestors, he would in summer, if unoccupied, lie down in the sun,
+while a book was read to him from which he made extracts and notes. Indeed
+he never read without making extracts; he used to say that no book was so
+bad as not to teach one at least something. After this reading he usually
+took a cold bath, then a light refreshment, and went to sleep for a little
+while. Then, as if beginning a new day, he resumed his studies until
+dinner, when a book was again read to him, upon which he would make passing
+comments. I remember once, when his reader had pronounced a word wrongly,
+someone at the table made him repeat it again; upon which my uncle asked
+his friend if he had not understood it. He admitted that the word was clear
+enough. "Why did you stop him then?" asked my uncle; "we have lost more
+than ten lines by this interruption of yours." Even so parsimonious was he
+of every moment of time! In summer he always rose from dinner by daylight,
+and in winter as soon as it was dark; this was an invariable law with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Such was his life amidst the noise and bustle of the city; but when he
+was in the country his whole time, without exception, was given to study
+except when he bathed. And by this exception I mean only the time when he
+was actually in the bath, for all the time when he was being rubbed and
+dried he was read to, or was himself dictating. Again, when travelling he
+gave his whole time to study; a secretary constantly attended him with
+books and tablets, and in winter wore very warm gloves so that the cold
+weather might not interrupt my uncle's work; and, for the same reason, when
+in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I remember he once reproved me
+for going for a walk, saying that I might have used the hours to greater
+advantage; for he thought all time was lost which was not given to study.
+It was by this extraordinary application that he found time to write so
+many volumes, besides a hundred and sixty books of extracts which he left
+me, written on both sides in an extremely small hand, so that their number
+might be reckoned considerably greater.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Cornelius Tacitus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I understand you wish to hear about the earthquake at Misenum. After my
+uncle had left us on that day, I went on with my studies until it was time
+to bathe; then I had supper and went to bed. But my sleep was broken and
+disturbed. There had been many slight shocks, which were very frequent in
+Campania, but on this night they were so violent that it seemed as though
+everything must be overthrown. My mother ran into my room, and we went out
+into a small court which separated our house from the sea. I do not know
+whether to call it courage or rashness on my part, as I was only eighteen
+years old; but I took up Livy and read and made extracts from him. When
+morning came the light was faint and sickly; the buildings around us were
+tottering to their fall, and there was great and unavoidable danger in
+remaining where we were. We resolved to leave the town. The people followed
+us in consternation, and pressed in great crowds about us on our way out.
+Having gone a good distance from the house, we stood still in the midst of
+a dreadful scene. The carriages for which we had sent, though standing upon
+level ground, were being thrown from side to side, and could not be kept
+still even when supported by large stones. The sea appeared to roll back
+upon itself, driven from its shores by the convulsive movements of the
+earth; a large portion of the sea-bottom was uncovered, and many marine
+animals were left exposed. Landward, a black and dreadful cloud was rolling
+down, broken by great flashes of forked lightning, and divided by long
+trains of flame which resembled lightning but were much larger.</p>
+
+<p>Soon afterwards the clouds seemed to descend and cover the whole surface
+of the ocean, hiding the island of Capri altogether and blotting out the
+promontory of Misenum. My mother implored me earnestly to make my escape,
+saying that her age and frame made it impossible for her to get away, but
+that she would willingly meet her death if she could know that she had not
+been the cause of mine. But I absolutely refused to forsake her, and
+seizing her hand I led her on. The ashes now began to fall upon us, though
+as yet in no great quantity. I looked back and saw behind us a dense cloud
+which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed that while we still
+had life we should turn out of the high road, lest she should be trampled
+to death in the dark by the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>We had scarcely sat down when darkness closed in upon us, not like the
+darkness of a moonless night, or of a night obscured by clouds, but the
+darkness of a closed room where all the lights have been put out. We heard
+the shrieks of women, the cries of children, and the shouts of men; some
+were calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their
+husbands or wives, and recognising one another through the darkness by
+their voices. Some were calling for death through very fear of death;
+others raised their hands to the gods; but most imagined that the last
+eternal night had come, and that the gods and the world were being
+destroyed together. Among these were some who added imaginary terrors to
+the real danger, and persuaded the terror-stricken multitude that Misenum
+was in flames. At last a glimmer of light appeared which we imagined to be
+a sign of approaching flames, as in truth it was; but the fire fell at a
+considerable distance from us, and again we were immersed in darkness. A
+heavy shower of ashes now rained upon us, so that we were obliged from time
+to time to shake them off, or we should have been crushed and buried in the
+heap. I might congratulate myself that during all this horror not a sigh or
+expression of fear escaped me, if it had not been that I then believed
+myself to be perishing with the world itself, and that all mankind were
+involved in the same calamity--a miserable consolation indeed, but a
+powerful one.</p>
+
+<p>At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees like a cloud of
+smoke; real day returned, and even the sun appeared, though very faintly as
+he appears during an eclipse. Everything before our trembling eyes was
+changed, being covered over with white ashes as with deep snow. We returned
+to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could and passed an
+anxious night between hope and fear. There was more fear than hope,
+however; for the earthquake still continued and many crazy people were
+running about predicting awful horrors.</p>
+
+<p>You must read my story without any view of writing about it in your
+history, of which it is quite unworthy; indeed, my only excuse for writing
+it in a letter is that you have asked for it.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Calpurnia, His Wife</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is incredible how impatiently I wish for your return, such is the
+tenderness of my love for you, and so unaccustomed are we to separation. I
+lie awake great part of the nights thinking of you; and in the day my feet
+carry me of their own accord to your room at the hours when I used to see
+you, but not finding you there I go away as sorrowful and disappointed as
+an excluded lover. The only time when I am free from this distress is when
+I am in the forum busy with the lawsuits of my friends. You may judge how
+wretched my life is when I find my repose only in labour and my consolation
+in miseries and cares.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Germinius</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>You must very well know the kind of people who, though themselves slaves
+to every passion, are mightily indignant at the vices of others, and most
+severe against those whom they most closely resemble. Surely leniency is
+the most becoming of all virtues, even in persons who have least need of
+anyone's indulgence. The highest of all characters, in my estimation, is
+that of a man who is as ready to pardon human errors as though he were
+every day himself guilty of them, and who yet abstains from faults as
+though he never forgave them. Let us observe this rule, both in our public
+and in our private relations--to be inexorable to ourselves, but to treat
+the rest of the world with tenderness, including even those who forgive
+only themselves. Let us always remember the saying of that most humane and
+therefore very great Thrasea: "He who hates vices, hates mankind."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you will ask who it is that has moved me to these reflections?
+There was a certain person lately--But I will tell you of that when we
+meet. No; on second thoughts I will not tell you even then, lest by
+condemning him and exposing his conduct I should be violating the principle
+which I have just condemned. So, whoever he is, and whatever he may be, the
+matter shall remain unspoken; since to expose him would be of no advantage
+for the purpose of example; but to hide his fault will be of great
+advantage to good nature.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To the Emperor Trajan</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is my rule, to refer to you all matters about which I have any doubt.
+For who can be more capable of removing my scruples or of instructing my
+ignorance?</p>
+
+<p>I have never been present at any trials of Christians, and am,
+therefore, ignorant of the reasons for which punishment is inflicted, as
+well as of the examinations which it is proper to make of their guilt. As
+to whether any difference is usually made with respect to the ages of the
+guilty, or whether no distinction is to be observed between the young and
+the old; whether repentance entitles them to a pardon, or whether it is of
+no advantage to a man who has once been a Christian that he has ceased to
+be one; whether the very profession of Christianity unattended by any
+criminal act, or only the crimes that are inherent in the profession are
+punishable--in all these points I am very doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, the method which I have observed towards those who have
+been brought before me as Christians is this. I have interrogated them as
+to whether they were Christians; if they confessed I repeated the question
+twice again, adding threats at the same time; and if they still persevered
+I ordered them to execution. For I was persuaded that whatever the nature
+of their opinions might be, their pertinacity and inflexible obstinacy
+ought certainly to be punished. Others also were brought before me
+possessed by the same madness, but as they were Roman citizens I ordered
+them to be sent to Rome. As this crime spread while it was actually under
+prosecution, many fresh cases were brought up. An anonymous paper was given
+me containing a charge against many persons. Those who denied that they
+were Christians, or that they had ever been so, repeated after me an
+invocation to the gods, offered wine and incense before your statue, which
+for this purpose I had ordered to be placed among the statues of the gods,
+and even reviled the name of Christ; and so, as it is impossible to force
+those who are really Christians to do any of these things, I thought it
+proper to dismiss them. Others who had been accused confessed themselves at
+first to be Christians, but immediately afterwards denied it; and others
+owned that they had formerly been of that number, but had now forsaken
+their error. All these worshipped your statue and the images of the gods,
+at the same time reviling the name of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>They affirmed that the whole of their guilt, or their error, had been as
+follows. They met on a stated day before sunrise and addressed a form of
+invocation to Christ as to a God; they also bound themselves by an oath,
+not for any wicked purpose but never to commit thefts, robberies, or
+adulteries, never to break their word, nor to deny a trust when they should
+be called upon to deliver it up. After this had been done they used to
+separate, and then reassemble to partake in common of an innocent meal.
+They had desisted, however, from this custom, after the publication of my
+edict, by which, in accordance with your orders, I had forbidden
+fraternities to exist. Having received this account I thought it all the
+more necessary to make sure of the real truth by putting two slave-girls,
+who were said to have taken part in their religious functions, to the
+torture; but I could discover nothing more than an absurd and extravagant
+superstition.</p>
+
+<p>I have, therefore, adjourned all further proceedings in the affair in
+order to consult with you. It appears to be a matter highly deserving your
+consideration, especially as very many persons are involved in the danger
+of these prosecutions; for the inquiry has already extended and is likely
+further to extend to persons of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes. This
+contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread
+its infection among the villages and country districts as well; and it
+seems impossible to cure this evil or to restrain its progress. It is true
+that the temples which were once almost deserted have lately been
+frequented, and that the religious rites which had been interrupted are
+again revived; and there is a general demand for animals for sacrificial
+victims, which for some time past have met with few purchasers. From all
+this it is easy to imagine what numbers might be reclaimed from this error
+if pardon were granted to those who may repent of it.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="CARDINAL_RICHELIEU"></a>CARDINAL RICHELIEU</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Political_Testament"></a>Political Testament</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the great French
+cardinal-statesman, was born in Paris on September 5, 1585, of a noble
+family, and was at first educated for the profession of arms, but entered
+the Church in order to become Bishop of Lu&ccedil;on in 1606. Having come
+up to Paris to make his way in the world, he was appointed almoner to the
+young queen Anne of Austria, and rose in 1616 to be Secretary of State for
+War and for Foreign Affairs. He received the cardinal's hat in 1622, and
+for a period of eighteen years, from 1624 to 1642, he was, in everything
+but name, the Majesty of France. His mind was bold, unscrupulous,
+remorseless, and inscrutable. Yet it was always noble--the minister who
+sent so many to the scaffold could truly say that in his vast labours he
+had but one pleasure, to know that so many honest folk slept in security
+while he watched night after night. He was a friend to literature, was
+founder of the Academy, and was himself a considerable author in history
+and theology. His greatest work, "Testament Politique du Cardinal de
+Richelieu," which was published in 1764, and in which is embodied his
+counsel in statecraft, is a literary achievement of no small importance,
+exhibiting as it does not only a political acumen of a very high order but
+an acute faculty for literary expression. Richelieu died on December 4,
+1642. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>Retrospect</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>At the time when your majesty admitted me to your counsels and confided
+to me the direction of public affairs I may say with truth that the
+Huguenots divided the state with your majesty, the great families behaved
+as though they had no sovereign, and the governor of provinces as if they
+had been sovereigns themselves. Every man took his own audacity to be the
+measure of his merit, so that the most presumptious were considered the
+wisest, and proved often the most fortunate. Abroad the friendship of
+France was despised. At home private interests were preferred to the
+general advantage. The dignity of the throne had so far declined, through
+the fault of my predecessors in office, that it was almost unrecognisable.
+To have continued to entrust to their hands the helm of the state would
+have led to irremediable disaster; yet, on the other hand, too swift and
+too great a change would have been fraught with dangers of its own. In that
+emergency the wisest considered that it was hardly possible to pass without
+shipwreck through the reefs and shoals, and there were many who had
+foretold my fall even before your majesty had raised me to power.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, knowing what kings may do when they make good use of their power, I
+was able to promise your majesty that your prudence and firmness, with the
+blessing of God, would give new health to this kingdom. I promised to
+devote all my labours, and all the authority with which I might be clothed,
+to procuring the ruin of the Huguenot party, to humbling the pride of the
+great, to reducing all your subjects to their duty, and to elevating your
+majesty's name among foreign nations to its rightful reputation.</p>
+
+<p>I asked, to that end, your majesty's entire confidence, and assured you
+that my policy would be the direct contrary of that of my predecessors,
+inasmuch as, instead of removing the queen, your mother, from your
+majesty's counsels, I would leave nothing undone to promote the closest
+union between you, to the great advantage and honour of the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>The success which has followed the good intentions which it has pleased
+God to give me for the administration of this state will justify, to the
+ages to come, the constancy with which I have pursued this design--that the
+union which exists between your majesties in nature, may be completed also
+between you in grace. And if, after many years, this purpose by the malice
+of your enemies, has been defeated, it is my consolation to remember how
+often your majesty has been heard to say that when I was working most for
+the honour of the queen, your mother, she was conspiring for my ruin.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Of Education</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Letters are one of the greatest ornaments of states, and their
+cultivation is necessary to the commonwealth. Yet it is certain that they
+should not be taught indiscriminately to every one. A nation whose every
+subject should be educated would be as monstrous as a body having eyes in
+every part; pride and presumption would be general, and obedience almost
+disappear.</p>
+
+<p>Unrestrained trade in knowledge must banish that trade in merchandise to
+which states owe their wealth; ruin husbandry, the true mother and nurse of
+peoples; and destroy our source of soldiery, which springs up in rustic
+ignorance rather than from the forcing-ground of culture and the sciences.
+It would fill France with half-taught fellows, minds formed only to
+<i>chicane</i>, men who might ruin families and trouble public peace, but
+could not be of any service to the state. There would be more people
+capable of doubts than capable of resolving them; more intelligences fitted
+to oppose than to defend the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, when I consider the great number who make a profession of
+teaching, and the crowds of children who are taught, I seem to see an
+infinite multitude of weaklings and diseased, who, having no other desire
+than to drink pure water for their healing, are urged by an inordinate
+thirst to drink all that is offered them, though it is mostly impure and
+often poisoned, whereby their thirst and their malady are equally
+aggravated.</p>
+
+<p>Two principal evils arise from the great number of colleges established
+in every district: there are not sufficient worthy teachers to supply them;
+and many children of little aptitude are compelled by their parents to
+study. In the result, almost all the pupils leave with but a smattering of
+learning, some because they have been badly taught, others because they
+have been incapable of more. The remedy that I propose is this. Let the
+colleges in all towns which are not of metropolitan rank be reduced to two
+or three classes, sufficient to raise the young out of gross ignorance,
+such as is harmful even to those who are destined for military service or
+for trade. Then, before the children are determined to any special line of
+life, two are three years will reveal their dispositions and their
+capacities; and the more promising children, who will then be sent on to
+the metropolitan colleges, will succeed far better; for they will have
+minds suited for education and will be placed in the hands of the best
+teachers.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, let care be taken that the colleges shall not all come under
+the same hands. The universities, on the one hand, the Jesuits on the
+other, tend towards a monopoly of education. Let their emulation increase
+their virtues and efficiency; but let neither party be deprived of the
+instruction of youth; let neither secure a monopoly.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Of the Nobility</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The nobility, which is one of the principal nerves of the state, may
+contribute much to its consolidation and power, but it has been for some
+time past greatly depreciated by the large number of officials whom the
+misfortunes of our age have raised up to its prejudice. It must be
+supported against the enterprises of people of that kind, whose wealth and
+pride overwhelmed the nobles, who are rich only in courage.</p>
+
+<p>But as the nobility must be defended from their oppressors, so also must
+they be strictly prevented from oppressing those who are below them, whom
+God has armed to labour but not to self-defence. Uncompromisingly justice
+must ensure security, under shelter of your laws, to the least and feeblest
+of your subjects.</p>
+
+<p>Those nobles who do not serve the state are a charge upon it; and, like
+a paralysed limb, are a burden where they should be a defence and a
+comfort. As men of gentle birth should be well treated so long as they
+deserve it, so they should be checked severely when they are found wanting
+to the obligations of their birth; and I have no hesitation in advising
+that those who have so degenerated from the virtues of their fathers as to
+avoid the service of the crown with their swords and with their lives,
+deserve to be degraded from their hereditary honours and advantages, and
+should be reduced to take part in bearing the burdens of the people.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Of the Disorders of Justice</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is much easier to recognise the defects of justice than to prescribe
+the remedy. Certain it is that they have arrived at such a point that they
+could hardly be graver; yet I know that it is your majesty's desire that
+the administration of justice should be as pure as the imperfections and
+corruptions of mankind will permit.</p>
+
+<p>In the opinion of the great majority of the people, the sovereign remedy
+consists in suppressing venality, in doing away with the hereditary
+principle in judicial offices, and in giving their positions gratuitously
+to men of such well-known probity and capacity that not even envy itself
+can contest their merit. But as it would be difficult to follow this
+counsel at any time, and is quite impossible to follow it here and now, it
+is useless to propose means calculated to secure that end.</p>
+
+<p>Although it is always dangerous to hold a view which others do not
+share, I must boldly say that in my opinion, in the present state of
+affairs and in any that one can foresee, it is better to suffer venality
+and hereditary offices to continue than to change, from top to bottom, your
+majesty's judicial establishment. The present abuses are great; but I
+believe that a system under which the offices of justice should be
+appointed by nomination by the king would lead to even greater abuses. The
+distribution of these important charges would, in effect, depend on the
+favour and intrigue of the courtiers who might at the time have most power
+with the king, or on whose reports he must base his nominations.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly venality and heredity in this matter are evils, but they are
+evils of long standing. We have only to look back to the reigns of St.
+Louis, when offices were already paid for, and of the great Francis, who
+erected the principle into a regular traffic, to see that so inveterate a
+custom is not easily to be eradicated. Our aim should be to turn the minds
+of men gently and continuously to better ways, and not to pass suddenly
+from one extreme to the other. The architect whose skill is able to correct
+the weakness of an ancient building, and to bring it into some degree of
+symmetry without first pulling it down, deserves far greater praise than
+the man who must throw it into ruins in order to construct something
+entirely new. It is difficult to change the established order without
+changing the hearts of those who possess it, and it is often prudent to
+weaken one's remedies in order that they may have the greater effect.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To the Officers of Finance</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>These form a class of men who are prejudicial to the state, yet are
+necessary to and we can only hope to reduce their power within tolerable
+limits. At present, their excesses and irregularities are intolerable; and
+it is impossible that they should further increase their wealth and their
+power without ruining the state, and themselves with it.</p>
+
+<p>I do not advise the general confiscation of their gains, although the
+excessive wealth which they amass in a short time, easily proved by the
+difference between their possessions on entering office and what they own
+at present, must often be the result of thefts and extortions. Confiscation
+may be made, in its turn, the greatest of injustice and violence. Yet I do
+not think that anyone could complain if the more flagrant offenders were
+chastised. Otherwise, they will, as I have said, ruin the kingdom, which
+bears on its face the marks of their frauds.</p>
+
+<p>The gold with which they have gorged themselves has opened to them
+alliances with the most ancient families, whose blood and character are
+thereby so far debased that their representatives resemble their ancestors
+no more in the generosity of their motives than they do in the purity of
+their features.</p>
+
+<p>I can advise nothing but a great reduction in the number of these
+officials, a reform which might be easily accomplished; and the
+appointment, in times to come, only of substantial men, of character and
+position suitable to this responsibility. As for the plan of squeezing
+these financiers like a sponge, or of making treaties and compositions with
+them, it is a remedy worse than the disorder; it is as much as to teach
+them that peculation is their business and their right.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Of the People</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>All statesmen agree that if the people were in too easy a condition it
+would be impossible to restrain them within the limits of their duty.
+Having less knowledge and cultivation than those in other ranks of the
+state, they would not easily follow the rules prescribed by reason and by
+law, unless bound thereto by a certain degree of necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Reason does not permit us to exempt them from all taxation, lest, having
+lost the symbol of their subjection, they should forget their legitimate
+condition, and, being free from tribute, should think themselves free from
+obedience also.</p>
+
+<p>Mules accustomed to a load suffer more from a long rest than they do
+from work; but, on the other hand, their work must be moderate and the load
+proportionate to their strength. So it is with the taxation of the people,
+which becomes unjust if it is not moderated at the point at which it is
+useful to the public.</p>
+
+<p>There is a sense in which the tribute which kings draw from the people
+returns to the people again, in the enjoyment of peace and in the security
+of their life and possessions; for these cannot be safeguarded unless
+contribution be made to the state. I know of several princes who have lost
+their kingdoms and their subjects by letting their strength decay through
+fear of taxing them; and subjects have before now fallen into servitude to
+their enemies, through wishing too much liberty under their natural
+sovereign. The proportion between the burden and the strength of those who
+have to support it ought to be even religiously observed; a prince cannot
+be considered good if he draws more than he ought from his subjects; yet
+the best princes are not always those who never levy more than is
+necessary.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Reason and Government</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Man, having been made a rational creature, ought to do nothing except by
+reason; for, otherwise he acts against nature, and so against the Author of
+nature. Again, the greater a man is, and the higher his position, the more
+strictly is he bound to follow reason. It follows that if he is sovereignly
+rational, he is bound to make reason reign; that is to say, it is his duty
+to make all those who are under his authority revere and obey reason
+religiously. Love is the most potent motive for obedience; and it is
+impossible that subjects should not love their prince if they know that
+reason is the guide of all his actions.</p>
+
+<p>Since reason should be the guide of princes, passion, which is of all
+things the most incompatible with reason, should be allowed no influence on
+their actions. Passion can only blind them; make them take the shadow for
+the substance; and win for them odium in the place of affection.</p>
+
+<p>Government requires a masculine virtue and an immovable firmness; for
+softness exposes those in whom it is found to the machinations of their
+enemies. Though there have been notable exceptions, their softness and
+their passions have generally made women unfit for rule.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Public Interests First</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The public advantage should be the single object of the king and his
+counsellors, or should at least be preferred to every private interest. It
+is impossible to estimate the good which a prince and his ministers may do
+if they religiously follow this principle, or to estimate the disasters
+which must fall upon the state whose public interests are ruled by private
+considerations. True philosophy, the Christian law, and the art of
+statesmanship, unite to teach this truth.</p>
+
+<p>The prosperity which Spain has enjoyed for several centuries has been
+due to no other cause than that her council has consistently preferred the
+interests of the state to all others, and most of the calamities which have
+visited France have been due to the preference of private advantage.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy for princes to consent to the general regulations of their
+state, because in making them they have only reason and justice before
+their eyes, and men willingly embrace reason and justice when there are no
+obstacles to turn them from the right path. But when occasions arise for
+putting these regulations into practice, we do not find that princes always
+show the same firmness, for then the interests of factions and of
+minorities are pressed upon them; pity, sympathy, favour, and importunities
+solicit them and oppose their just designs; and they have not always
+strength enough to conquer themselves and to despise these partial
+considerations, which ought to have no weight at all in the affairs of the
+commonwealth.</p>
+
+<p>It is on these occasions that they must gather up all their strength
+against their weakness, and remember that God has placed them there to
+safeguard the public interest.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Power of Kingship</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Power is one of the most necessary conditions of the greatness of kings
+and of the happiness of their government, and those who have to do with the
+conduct of a state should omit nothing which may enhance the authority of
+their master and the respect in which he is held by all the world.</p>
+
+<p>As goodness is the object of love, power is the cause of fear; and fear,
+founded in esteem and reverence, makes dutiful conduct the interest of
+every subject, and warns all foreigners not to offend a prince who can harm
+them if he will.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that the power of which I speak must be founded on esteem,
+and I will add that if it be otherwise founded it is dangerous in the
+extreme. Princes are never in a more perilous position than when they are
+the objects of hatred or aversion rather than of a reasonable fear.</p>
+
+<p>That kingly power which causes princes to be feared with esteem and
+love, includes within it different elements of power; it is a tree with
+several branches, which draw their nourishment from common Stock. Thus, the
+prince must be powerful by his reputation. Secondly, by a reasonable number
+of soldiers, continually maintained. Thirdly, by a notable reserve, in
+gold, in his coffers, ready for the unforeseen occasions which arise when
+least expected. And, lastly, by the possession of the hearts of his people.
+If the finances be considerately adjusted on the principles which I have
+advised the people will find entire relief, and the king will base his
+power on the possession of the hearts of his subjects. They will know that
+they are his care, and their own interests will lead them to love him.</p>
+
+<p>The kings of old thought so highly of this foundation of kingship that
+some of them held it worthier to be King of the French than King of France.
+Indeed, this nation was in old time illustrious for passionate attachment
+to its princes; and under the earlier kings, until Philip the Fair, the
+treasure of hearts was the sole public treasure that was maintained in this
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>I know that we cannot judge of the present altogether by the past, and
+that what was good in one century is not always possible in another. Yet,
+though the treasure of hearts may not suffice to-day, it is quite certain
+that without it the treasure of gold is almost worthless; without that
+treasure of hearts we shall be bankrupt in the midst of abundance.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Whole Duty of Princes</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In conclusion, as kings are obliged to do many more things as sovereigns
+than they do in their private capacity, they are liable to be guilty of far
+more faults by omission than those of which a private person could be
+guilty by commission. Considered as men, they are subject to the same
+faults as all other men; but considered as charged with the welfare of the
+public, they are subject also to many duties which they cannot omit without
+sin.</p>
+
+<p>If princes neglect to do all that they can to rule the various orders of
+their state; if they are careless in the choice of good advisers, or
+despise their salutary counsels; if they fail to make their own example a
+speaking voice; if they are idle in the establishment of the reign of God,
+and of reason, and of justice; if they fail to protect the innocent, to
+reward public services, and to chastise the guilty and disobedient; if they
+are not solicitous to foresee and to provide for the troubles which may
+arise, or to turn aside, by careful diplomacy, the storms which darken the
+horizon; if favour rather than merit dictates their choice of ministers for
+the high offices of the kingdom; if they do not immovably establish the
+state in its rightful power; if they do not on all occasions prefer public
+interests to private interests; then, however upright their life may
+otherwise be, they will be found far more guilty than those who actively
+transgress the commandments and the laws of God. And if kings or
+magistrates make use of their power to commit any injustice or violence
+which they cannot commit as private persons, they commit a king's or a
+magistrate's sin, which has its source in their authority, and one for
+which the King of Kings will doubtless demand a searching account on the
+day of judgement.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JEAN_JACQUES_ROUSSEAU"></a>JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Confessions"></a>Confessions</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Rousseau's "Confessions" were written in England at
+Wootton, in Staffordshire, where he had taken refuge after his
+revolutionary ideas incurred the displeasure of the authorities in France.
+They were first published in 1782. From this refuge he was pursued from
+place to place by his delusions through miserable years, until he died,
+near Paris, on July 2, 1778. In no circumstances or relation of his life
+was Rousseau a pleasant spectacle. The "Confessions," unexpurgated, are
+often revolting to any sane mind, and have been proved to be untrustworthy
+even as a record of fact. But almost incredible baseness was coupled with
+extraordinary gifts, and it is impossible to overestimate Rousseau's
+influence upon the modern world, and upon its literature and its whole
+point of view and way of thinking. (Rousseau, biography: see FICTION.)
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>I am undertaking a task for which there is no example, and one which
+will find no imitator. It is to exhibit a man in the whole truth of nature;
+and the man whom I shall reveal is myself. Myself alone; for I verily
+believe I am like no other living man. In this book I have hidden nothing
+evil and added nothing good; and I challenge any man to say, having
+unveiled his heart with equal sincerity, "I am better than he."</p>
+
+<p>I was born at Geneva in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau, watchmaker, and of
+Susanne, his wife. My birth, the first of my misfortunes, cost my mother
+her life, and I came into the world so weakly that I was not expected to
+live. My father's sister lavished on me the tenderest care, and he,
+disconsolate, loved me with extreme affection.</p>
+
+<p>Like all children, but even more than others, I felt before I thought;
+and my consciousness was first awakened by reading stories with my father.
+Sometimes we read together until the birds were singing in the morning
+light. These tales gave me a most precocious insight into human passions,
+and the confused emotions which swept through me brought with them the
+queerest and most romantic views of life. But when I was seven we came to
+the end of my mother's old stock of romances, and we fell back on Bossuet,
+Moli&egrave;re, Plutarch, Ovid, and the like. Plutarch went far to cure me
+of novels; indeed, his "Lives" were the means of forming that free and
+republican spirit, intolerant of servitude, which has been my torment. To
+my aunt, who knew endless songs, and used to chant them with a sweet, tiny
+thread of a voice, I owe my passion for music.</p>
+
+<p>These, then, were my first affections. These formed that heart of mine,
+so proud yet so tender; they fashioned that effeminate yet untamable
+character, which has ever drifted between weakness and virtue. For I have
+been in contradiction with myself, in such a way that abstinence and
+fruition, pleasure and wisdom, have escaped me equally.</p>
+
+<p>My father having left Geneva, I remained under the care of my uncle
+Bernard, and was placed, with his son of my own age, in the house of M.
+Lambercier, protestant minister at Bossey, to learn all the trivialities
+that are called education. Here I gained my keen love of country pleasures,
+and tasted, with my cousin, the delights of simple friendship. But a cruel
+punishment for a fault which I had not committed, put an end to my childish
+simplicity, and soon I left Bossey without regret. There followed two or
+three years of indolence at Geneva.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief and luckless trial of a notary's office I was apprenticed
+to an engraver, a petty tyrant, whose injustice taught me to lie and to
+steal. Restless, dissatisfied, and in perpetual terror of my master's
+savagery, I here reached my sixteenth year. But one day, finding the city
+gates closed on my return from a country excursion, I determined, rather
+than face the inevitable thrashing, to seek my fortune in the unknown
+world.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Madame de Warens</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>How fair were the illusions of freedom and of the future! I asked
+little--only a manor where I should be the favourite of the lord of the
+land, his daughter's lover, her brother's friend, and protector of the
+neighbourhood. I roamed the countryside, sleeping at nights in hospitable
+cottages, and on arriving at Confignon I called, out of curiosity, on M. de
+Ponteverre, the parish priest. He gave me a dinner which convinced me, even
+more than his arguments, of the advantages of the catholic faith; and I was
+willing enough to set off, with his introduction, to Annecy. Here I was to
+seek Mme. de Warens, a recent convert, who was in receipt of a pension from
+the King of Sardinia. I was assured that her benevolence would support me
+for the present. Three days later I was at Annecy.</p>
+
+<p>This introduction fixed my character and destiny. I was now in my
+sixteenth year, doubtless of engaging though not striking appearance; I had
+the timidity of a loving nature, always afraid of giving offence; and I was
+quite without knowledge of the world or of manners. I arrived on Palm
+Sunday, 1728. Mme. de Warens had left the house for church; I ran after
+her, saw her, spoke to her--how well do I remember the place, so often in
+later days wet with my tears and covered with kisses!</p>
+
+<p>I saw an enchanting form, a countenance full of graciousness, a dazzling
+colour, blue eyes beaming kindness; you may imagine that my conversion was
+from that moment decided. Smiling, she read the good priest's letter, and
+sent me back to the house for breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Louise &Eacute;l&eacute;onore de Warens, daughter of a noble family of
+Vevai, in the Vaud country, had early married M. de Warens, of Lausanne.
+The marriage was childless and otherwise unfortunate; and the young wife,
+exasperated by some domestic difficulty, had abandoned her husband and her
+country, and crossing the lake, had thrown herself at the feet of the king.
+He took her under his protection, gave her a moderate pension, and for fear
+of scandal sent her to Annecy, where she renounced her errors at the
+Convent of the Visitation.</p>
+
+<p>She had been six years at Annecy when I met her, and was now
+twenty-eight years of age. Her beauty was still in its first radiance, and
+her smile was angelic. She was short of stature, but it was impossible to
+imagine more beautiful features or hands. Her education had been very
+desultory; she had learned more from lovers than from teachers. She had a
+strong taste for empirical medicine and for alchemy, and was always
+compounding elixirs, tinctures and balms, some of which she regarded as
+valuable secrets. So it was that charlatans, trading on her weakness, made
+her consume, amid drugs and furnaces, a talent and a spirit which might
+have distinguished her in the highest societies. Yet her loving and sweet
+character, her compassion for the unhappy, her inexhaustible goodness and
+her open and gay humour never changed; and even when old age was coming on,
+in the midst of poverty and varied misfortunes, her inward serenity
+preserved to the end the charming gaiety of her youth. All her mistakes
+arose from a restless activity which demanded incessant occupation. She
+thirsted, not for intrigues, but for enterprises.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the first sight of Mme. de Warens inspired me not only with the
+liveliest attachment, but with an entire trust which was never
+disappointed. Her presence filled my whole being with peace and
+confidence.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Three Years in Turin</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>My situation was discussed with the Bishop, and it was decided that I
+should go to Turin and remain for a time at an institution devoted to the
+instruction of catechumens. Thither I went, regarding myself as the pupil,
+the friend, and almost the lover, of Mme. de Warens. The great doors closed
+upon me, and here I was instructed for several weeks in very indifferent
+company. At length, having been received into the church, I found myself in
+the street with twenty francs in my pocket, and the counsel that I should
+be a good Christian.</p>
+
+<p>I took a lodging in Turin, and was presently introduced, by the kindness
+of my hostess, to the service of a countess. But this lady died shortly
+afterwards, and I left her house bearing with me lasting remorse for an
+atrocious action: I had accused a fellow-servant of a theft which I had
+myself committed, and thus may very well have caused the poor child's
+ruin.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to my old lodging, I spent my days in wandering about town,
+often offending the public by my depravities. But I had kept certain
+acquaintances made during my situation with the countess, and one of these,
+a M. Gaime, whom I sometimes visited, gave me most valuable instructions in
+the principles of morals. He was a priest, and one of the most honest men I
+have known. I had cherished false ideas of life; he gave me a true picture
+of it, and showed me that happiness depends only on wisdom, and that wisdom
+is to be found in every rank. He used to say that if everyone could read
+the hearts of others, most would wish to descend in the social scale. This
+M. Gaime is the original, in large part, of my vicar of Savoy.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed a new situation in the house of the Count de Gouvon,
+where, nominally a footman, I was soon treated more as a pupil or even as a
+favourite. His son, a priest, did his best to teach me Latin, and I have
+since realised that it was the purpose of this noble family, who had
+considerable political ambition, to train a talented dependent who might
+serve them in offices of great responsibility. But my fatal inconstancy
+frustrated this good fortune, my flagrant disobediences led to my
+dismissal, and presently I was on the road to Geneva with a gay lad from
+thence who had found me out in Turin.</p>
+
+<p>I happened to own a mechanical toy, a little fountain, and our mad
+project was nothing less than to pay our way throughout the world by
+showing its performances in every village. We started in the highest
+spirits, but the fountain was never remunerative, and soon its works went
+wrong. This threw no gloom over our merry, fantastic journey, and it was
+only when Annecy was near that I became a little thoughtful, for my
+benefactress supposed that my last place had established me for life.</p>
+
+<p>We entered the little town and parted, and I came trembling to her door.
+The adorable woman showed little surprise, and no sorrow. I told her my
+story, and was forgiven. Henceforth her home was mine.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Seeking a Career</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The house was an old one, but spacious and comfortable, and the window
+of my room looked out, over garden and stream, to the open country. The
+m&eacute;nage was by no means magnificent, but was abundant in a
+patriarchal way; Madame de Warens had no idea of economy, and with her
+hospitalities and speculations was ever running more deeply into debt. The
+household, besides herself and me, consisted of housemaid, cook, and a
+footman named Claude Anet.</p>
+
+<p>From the first day, the sweetest familiarity reigned our intercourse.
+She called me "Little one," I called her my little mother, and these names
+express the relation of our hearts. She sought always my good, never her
+own pleasure; she was deeply attached to me, and lavished on me her
+maternal caresses. I was now about nineteen years old, but was only
+occupied about the house in writing for her, or in helping her in her
+pharmaceutical experiments.</p>
+
+<p>But madame was thinking of my future, and sent me on some pretext to see
+M. d'Aubonne, a relative of hers, to find out what might be made of me. His
+report of me was, that I was a poor-spirited creature, narrow, ignorant,
+and clownish, and that the career of village priest was the best that could
+be hoped for. Once more, therefore, I was set to Latin at the seminary; but
+after some months I was returned by the bishop and the rector as incapable
+of learning, though a passably well-conducted youth. In the meantime I had
+been taken with a strong taste for music, and it was arranged that I should
+spend the winter at the house of M. le Maitre, director of music at the
+cathedral; he was a young man of great talent and of high spirits, and
+lived only twenty paces from my little mother. There I spent one of the
+most pleasant times of my life. But it was cut short by a quarrel between
+Le Maitre and the cathedral chapter, who had, as he thought, put a slight
+upon him. His revenge was to desert his post on the eve of the elaborate
+Easter services, and madame desired me to assist him in his flight. I was
+to attend him to Lyons, and remain with him as long as he should need me.
+Her purpose was, as I have since learned, to detach me from a plausible
+adventurer, M. Venture, a man of great musical talent who had turned up at
+Annecy, and had engaged my fancy. Our flight was successful. But on the
+second day after our arrival at Lyons Le Maitre fell ill with a sudden
+seizure in the street, and I, after telling the bystanders the name of his
+inn, and begging them to carry him thither, slipped round the nearest
+corner and disappeared. Le Maitre was deserted at his worst need by the
+only friend on whom he had to count. I returned at once to Annecy, only to
+find that madame had left for Paris.</p>
+
+<p>M. Venture, however, was still there, and had turned the heads of all
+the ladies in the place, and for a time I shared his lodging. Then, after
+travelling with Merceret, the housemaid, as far as her home at Fribourg-for
+she had to return thither and could find no other attendant--I turned aside
+to Lausanne, with the idea of seeing the lake. I arrived here without a
+penny, and it occurred to me to play Venture's game on my own account. I
+took a false name, called myself a Parisian, and having secured a lodging,
+set up as a teacher of music, though I knew next to nothing of the art.
+There was a professor of law in the town who was an amateur of music, and
+held concert parties in his house; to this man I had the effrontry to
+propose a symphony of my own. I worked a fortnight at this production,
+wrote out the instrumental parts, and on the appointed evening stood up
+before the orchestra and audience, tapped my desk, raised by baton,
+and--never since music began has there been such an orgy of discords. The
+musicians could hardly sit in their chairs for laughing, yet played even
+louder and louder as the fun took hold of them; the audience sought to stop
+their ears; and I, sweat pouring down my face, conducted this atrocity to
+the end. But the end was a little minuet which Venture had taught me; I had
+appended it to my symphony, calling it my own work. Its magic put the whole
+room in good humour, and I was feliciated on my taste in melody. Next day
+one of my orchestra came to see me, and in my despair and broken spirit I
+told him my whole story. By nightfall it was known to all Lausanne. But at
+Neufch&acirc;tel, through the next winter, I gradually learned music by
+teaching it.</p>
+
+<p>My next occupation was that of interpreter to a Greek prelate and
+archimandrite of Jerusalem, whom I met when dining in a little restaurant.
+He was collecting money throughout Europe for the restoration of the Holy
+Sepulchre; and accompanying him from city to city, I was of much service to
+him, even addressing the Senate at Berne on behalf of his project.
+Unfortunately for my employer, he addressed himself to the Marquis de
+Bonac, who had been ambassador to the Porte, and knew all about the Holy
+Sepulchre. I don't know what passed at their interview, but the
+archimandrite disappeared and I was detained. In my desolation I told the
+marquis the history of my life, and by him was sent to Paris, with plenty
+of money in my pocket, to enter the service of a young friend of his in the
+army. My first sight of the city was a disappointment which I have never
+got over, and the proposed engagement fell through. Coming to the end of my
+resources, I set out by way of Lyons, where I suffered the extremity of
+poverty, to find Mme. de Warens, who was now, as I learned, at
+Chamb&eacute;ri. I came to her house and found the intendant-general with
+her. Without addressing me, she said, "Here, sir, he is; protect him as
+long as he deserves it, and his future is assured." And to me, "My child,
+you belong to the king." And thus I became a secretary in the ordnance
+survey. After five years of follies and sufferings since I had left Geneva,
+I began to earn an honest living.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Our Little Circle</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was in 1732, and I was nearly twenty-one years old, when I began the
+life of the office. I lived with the little mother in a dismal house, which
+she rented because it belonged to the financial secretary who controlled
+her pension. The faithful Claude Anet was still with her, and shortly after
+my return I learned accidentally that their relation was closer than I had
+ever dreamed of. In a fit of temper his mistress had taunted him
+outrageously. The poor fellow, in despair, had taken laudanum; and madame,
+in her terror and distress, told me the whole story. We brought him round,
+and things went on as before, but it was hard to me to know that anyone was
+more intimate with her than myself.</p>
+
+<p>My passion for music increased this year until I could hardly take
+interest in anything else, and at last the work at the office grew so
+intolerable to me that I determined to resign my place. I extorted an
+unwilling permission from madame, said good-bye to my chief, and threw
+myself into the teaching of music.</p>
+
+<p>I soon had as many pupils as I needed, and the constant intercourse with
+these ladies was very pleasant to me. But from the stories which I carried
+home of our interviews the little mother apprehended dangers of which I was
+not at that time conscious. The course which she took was a singular one.
+She had rented a little garden outside the town, and here she invited me to
+spend the day with her. Thither we went, and from the drift of her
+conversation, which was full of good sense and kindliest warnings, I
+gradually perceived the degree of her goodness towards me. The compact
+involved conditions, and my answer was to be given on that day week.</p>
+
+<p>Thus was established among the three of us a society to which there is
+perhaps no parallel. All our wishes, our cares, our interests were in
+common. If one of us was missing from the dinner-table, or a fourth was
+present, all seemed out of order. But our little circle was broken all too
+soon. Claude Anet, on a botanical excursion, fell a victim to pleurisy, and
+died, notwithstanding all her care. He had been a most watchful economist
+of her pension and a restraint on her enterprises, and his loss was felt
+not only in our diminished party, but also in the wasting of her resources.
+For the next three years these went from bad to worse. Unfortunately, the
+life to which I had taken, of drifting from one interest to another--now
+literature, now chess, now a journey, now music--brought in nothing and
+cost a good deal; and to complete our anxieties, I fell ill nearly to
+death. Her care and utter devotion saved me, and from that time our very
+existence was in common.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Les Charmettes</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I was ordered to the country. We found near Chamb&eacute;ri a little
+house, Les Charmettes, set in a garden among trees, as retired and solitary
+a home as if it had been a hundred miles from the town. There we took up a
+new life towards the autumn of 1736; there began the brief happiness of my
+existence. We were all in all to one another; together we roamed the
+country, worked in the garden, gathered fruit and flowers, lay under the
+trees and listened to the birds. Golden hours, your memory is my only
+treasure!</p>
+
+<p>Even a sudden illness, which affected my heart so that its pulse has
+from that time incessantly throbbed like a drum in my ears, and has made me
+a constant sufferer from insomnia, turned out to be a heavenly blessing.
+Thinking myself a dead man, I only then began to live, and applied myself
+very eagerly to learning. With my little mother as my teacher, I turned to
+the study of religion. I sought books, and philosophy, the sciences, and
+Latin followed in their turn. Nature, learning, leisure, and our ineffably
+sweet companionship--I thought, poor fool, that these joys would be with me
+to the end. It was otherwise decreed.</p>
+
+<p>My bodily condition has become pitiable, and it was determined that I
+should go to Montpellier to consult a physician. I fell in, on the way
+thither, with the Marquis de Torignan and his party, who were travelling in
+the same direction. We struck up acquaintance, and I joined them, taking an
+assumed name, and giving myself out for an Englishman. Becoming intimate
+with a Madame de Larnage, who was among them, I continued to travel with
+her day by day, after the others had reached their destination. She was a
+woman of infinite charm. Mme. de Warens was forgotten utterly, and I
+willingly agreed to settle down in her vicinity, after fulfilling the
+purpose of my journey to Montpellier. However, after two pleasurable months
+in that city, when I found myself at the stage where the road divided--one
+road going to Mme. de Larnage, the other to Les Charmettes--I balanced love
+against pleasure, and finding an equipoise, I decided by reason.</p>
+
+<p>The little mother knew by my letter at what hour I should arrive. I came
+to the garden; no one came out to meet me. I entered; the servants seemed
+surprised to see me. I ran upstairs and found her; her welcome was
+restrained and cold. The truth burst upon me. My place was taken!</p>
+
+<p>Darkness flooded my soul, and from that moment onward my sensibilities
+have been but half-alive. I took a situation as tutor in a private family,
+but all my thoughts were of Charmettes and of our innocent life together,
+now gone for ever. O dreadful illusion of human destiny!</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Gathering Gloom</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I take up my pen again, after an interval of two years, to add a sequel
+to my confessions. How different is the picture now! For thirty years fate
+had favoured my inclinations, but for the second thirty, which I must try
+to sketch, she has ground me in the mortar of the most appalling
+afflictions.</p>
+
+<p>This second part must inevitably be inferior, in every respect, to the
+first. For I wrote, before, with pleasure and at ease; but now my decaying
+memory and enfeebled brain have made me almost incapable of work, and I
+have nothing to tell of but treacheries, perfidies, and torturing memories.
+The walls around me have ears; I am encompassed by spies and vigilant
+enemies. Racked with anxiety and fear, I scribble page after page without
+revising them. An immense conspiracy surrounds me....</p>
+
+<p>[These delusions of suspicion are perhaps the most characteristic
+symptoms of insanity. They colour so deeply the entire texture of
+Rousseau's prolix second part as to make it not only unreliable, but almost
+unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first part; from the
+second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy creature,
+besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman; and this
+morbid condition had been aggravated by years of brooding rancour before he
+wrote this miserable indictment of men who had done their best to befriend
+him.--ED.]</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="LA_ROCHEFOUCAULD"></a>LA ROCHEFOUCAULD</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Memoirs2"></a>Memoirs</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, was born in Paris on
+September 15, 1613. Sprung from one of the noblest families of France,
+handsome, winning, and brave to recklessness, he intrigued and fought
+against Richelieu and Mazarin, and was one of the leaders in the civil war
+of La Fronde. But though marked by birth and talent for a high position in
+the state, he failed in nearly everything he undertook, owing to his
+extraordinary indolence of mind, and in the prime of his life he became a
+rather embittered spectator of a world in which he was not able to make his
+way. The "Memoirs," with their studied tone of historical coldness, present
+a striking contrast to the brilliant vivacity of the "Maxims." This, in all
+probability, is due to the fact that while the latter were frequently added
+to and edited during their author's lifetime, no such fate befell the
+"Memoirs," of which the first edition, published without La Rochefoucauld's
+authority, appeared in 1662. Barely a third of them could be attributed to
+their reputed author, the work being compiled mainly from various
+commonplace books. In spite of La Rochefoucauld's protests, the pirated
+"Memoirs" continued to be printed, and it was not until very many years
+after his death, in 1817, that an authentic edition made its appearance.
+The "Memoirs" are of great literary value, yielding in interest to no
+memoirs of the time. La Rochefoucauld died in Paris on March 17, 1680.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>Court Intrigues</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>King Louis XIII. was of feeble constitution, further impaired by
+over-exertion in hunting. His temperament was severe and solitary; he
+wished to be governed, but was sometimes impatient of government. His mind
+took note only of details, and his knowledge of war was fit rather for a
+subordinate officer than for a king. Cardinal Richelieu, who owed all his
+elevation to the queen-mother, Marie de M&eacute;dicis, was ruler of the
+state. His vast and penetrating mind formed projects as bold as he was
+personally timid. His policy was to establish the king's authority and his
+own, by the ruin of the Huguenots and of the great houses of the kingdom,
+and then to attack the house of Austria, a power most redoubtable to
+France. He stuck at nothing, either to advance his satellites or to destroy
+his enemies. The passion which he had long cherished for the queen had
+changed to dislike, and she had an aversion for Richelieu. The king was
+embittered against her by jealousy and by the sterility of their marriage.
+The queen was an amiable woman, without falsity of any kind, and with many
+virtues; her intimate friend was Madame de Chevreuse, who was of her own
+age and of kindred sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>But Madame de Chevreuse almost always brought misfortune to those whom
+she interested in her projects. She had much spirit, ambition, and beauty,
+and made full use of her charms to forward these enterprises of hers.
+Already Cardinal Richelieu had accused the queen and her of complicity in
+Chalais's plot against the king's life--for Chalais had been her warm
+admirer--and the king believed in their guilt to the end of his days.
+Again, when the young and handsome Lord Holland came to France to arrange
+the marriage of the King of England to the sister of the King of France,
+and quickly won the affection of Madame de Chevreuse, the two lovers
+thought fit to celebrate their attachment by inspiring a similar intrigue
+between the French queen and the Duke of Buckingham, who had not so much as
+met one another. This astonishing undertaking was successful. Buckingham
+came over to wed madame in the name of his master, and his ardent love for
+the queen, which she fully returned, deeply wounded both the king and
+Richelieu. The cardinal sought his revenge through Lady Carlisle. That
+haughty and jealous woman, to whom Buckingham had long been attached,
+noticed one night at a ball in England that he was wearing diamonds which
+she had not seen before, and contrived, unobserved, to detach them, in
+order that she might send them to Richelieu. These diamonds had been the
+gift of the King of France to his queen, and it was intended that the
+cardinal, by showing them to the king, should prove the queen's weakness.
+But the Duke of Buckingham discovered his loss the same night, and at once
+suspected Lady Carlisle's design. He issued an immediate order that the
+English ports should be closed, and that no one should be permitted, under
+whatever pretext, to leave the country; and then, having had exactly
+similar jewels prepared, he sent them to the Queen of France, with an
+account of the whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time that the cardinal formed the project of the
+destruction of the Huguenot party, and of laying siege to La Rochelle. The
+Duke of Buckingham came with a powerful fleet to aid La Rochelle, but in
+vain; the fortress was taken, and the duke was assassinated in England.
+This murder gave the cardinal an inhuman joy; he jested at the queen's
+sorrows, and began to hope again.</p>
+
+<p>After the ruin of the Huguenots I returned from the army to court, being
+now seventeen years old, and began to notice the state of affairs. The
+queen-mother and the cardinal were at enmity, and though everyone saw that
+something would come of it, no one could foretell what would happen. The
+cardinal's situation was precarious, the king had learned of his love for
+the queen, and was quite ready to disgrace him, and even asked the
+queen-mother to nominate someone to replace him. She hesitated, and that
+hesitation was her ruin and saved the cardinal.</p>
+
+<p>The reversal of the situation took place on the famous "day of dupes,"
+on which the queen-mother, presuming too much on her power, challenged the
+cardinal, in the king's presence, with his ingratitude and treacheries. No
+one doubted but that Richelieu's day was over, and the whole court crowded
+to the queen-mother to share her imaginary triumph. But the king went the
+same day to Versailles, and the cardinal followed him; the queen, fearing
+that she would find Versailles dull and uncomfortable, remained behind; and
+the wily statesman made such good use of his opportunity that the king's
+consent was won to the downfall of his mother. She was soon arrested, and
+her sorrows lasted as long as her life.</p>
+
+<p>Many were implicated in her ruin, and were exiled or thrown into the
+Bastille, or brought to the scaffold; and so much bloodshed and so many
+fortunes reversed brought odium on the name of Richelieu. The mild regency
+of Marie de M&eacute;dicis was remembered, and all the great families
+lamented that liberty was a thing of the past.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, I thought that the queen's cause was the only one, which an
+honourable man could follow. She was unhappy; the cardinal was rather her
+tyrant than her lover; she had been good to me, and had trusted me;
+Mademoiselle d'Hautefort, with whom I had great friendship, was her friend,
+too--sufficient reasons, these, to dazzle a youth who had seen almost
+nothing of the world, and to turn his steps in a direction quite contrary
+to his interests. King and cardinal alike soon came to detest me, and my
+life thenceforth was troubled by the visitations of their displeasure. In
+recording the scenes in which I have had a part, I have no intention of
+writing history, but only of touching on a few personal episodes.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Richelieu's Death</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>War was declared in 1635 against the King of Spain, and I accompanied
+the French army of twenty thousand men which marched to the support of the
+Prince of Orange in Flanders. During neither this nor the following winter
+was I allowed at court. Madame de Chevreuse, who had been sent to Tours on
+the occasion of Richelieu's triumph had heard a good account of me from the
+queen, and invited me to see her; we soon struck up a very great
+friendship, and I came to be a confidential intermediary between the queen
+and her, and was often entrusted by one or other of them with most perilous
+commissions.</p>
+
+<p>When I was at last readmitted to court in 1637, I found the queen in
+great trouble. She had been accused of a crime against the state, a
+treasonable understanding with the Spanish minister; some of her servants
+were arrested; the chancellor examined her like a criminal; it was even
+proposed to seclude her at Havre, annul her marriage, and repudiate her
+altogether. In this extremity, abandoned by all the world, she proposed
+that I should kidnap her and Mademoiselle d'Hautefort and carry them off to
+Brussels. Difficult and dangerous as this project was, it gave me greater
+joy than any I had known, for I was at an age when a man likes to engage in
+dashing and heroic feats. Happily, however, the chancellor's investigations
+proved her majesty not guilty.</p>
+
+<p>But an unfortunate series of accidents led to my imprisonment for a week
+in the Bastille. A signal had been agreed upon between the queen and Madame
+de Chevreuse during the recent trouble. If all went well, Madame de
+Chevreuse was to receive a prayer-book bound in green, but a red binding
+was to indicate disaster. I never knew which of the two ladies made the
+mistake, but when the queen was acquitted Madame de Chevreuse received what
+she took to be the signal of misfortune; concluded that both she and the
+queen were undone, and disguising herself as a man, she fled to Spain. This
+escapade, so surprising at the very moment when the Queen's troubles had
+come to an end, inspired the king and the cardinal with the gravest
+suspicions that they had not, after all, fathomed her majesty's treachery.
+The cardinal summoned me to Paris, and hinted at unpleasant consequences if
+I did not reveal all I knew. I knew nothing; and as my manner seemed more
+reserved and dry than he was accustomed to, I was sent to the Bastille.</p>
+
+<p>The little time that I spent there showed me more vividly than anything
+I had yet seen the picture of vengeance. I saw there men of great names and
+of great merits, an infinite number of men and women of all ranks in life,
+all unhappy in the affliction of long and cruel incarceration. The sight of
+so many pitiable creatures did much to increase my natural hatred for
+Cardinal Richelieu's administration. I was released in eight days, and
+thought myself very fortunate to escape at a period when none others were
+set at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>But my disgrace was well repaid. The queen showed herself gratefully
+aware of all that I had suffered in her service; Mademoiselle d'Hautefort
+gave full expression to her esteem and friendship; and Madame de Chevreuse
+was not less gracious. I enjoyed not only the favour of those to whom I was
+attached, but also a certain approval which the world is not slow to give
+to the unfortunate whose conduct has not really been disgraceful. Under
+these conditions an exile of two or three years from court was not
+intolerable. I was young; the king and the cardinal were failing in health;
+I had everything to hope for from a change. I was happy in my family, and
+enjoyed all the pleasures of country life, and the neighbouring provinces
+were full of other exiles.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal Richelieu died on December 4, 1642. Although his enemies could
+only rejoice at finding themselves free at last from so many persecutions,
+the event has shown that the state could ill spare him. He had made so many
+changes in public affairs that he alone was able to direct them safely. No
+one before Richelieu had known all the power of the kingdom, or had been
+able to gather it all up into the hands of the sovereign. The severity of
+his adminstration had cost many lives; the nobility had been humbled, and
+the common people had been loaded with taxes; but the grandeur of his
+political designs, such as the taking of La Rochelle, the destruction of
+the Huguenot party, and the weakening of the house of Austria, no less than
+his intrepidity in carrying them out, have secured for his memory a
+justly-merited fame.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Under Mazarin's Rule</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I returned to Paris immediately after the death of Richelieu, thinking
+that I might have occasion to serve the queen. In accordance with the late
+cardinal's will, Cardinal Mazarin succeeded to his powers. The king's state
+of health went from bad to worse, and the court was filled with intrigues
+with regard to the regency which must so soon be appointed. His death took
+place on May 14, 1643. The queen at once brought her little son, Louis
+XIV., to Paris; two days later she was declared regent in parliament; and
+the same evening, to the amazement of his enemies, she appointed Cardinal
+Mazarin chief of the council.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin's mind was great, industrious, insinuating, and artful, and his
+character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he
+had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest
+projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his
+temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A
+pretended moderation veiled his ambition and his avarice; he said he wanted
+nothing for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The court was now divided between the Duke of Beaufort and the cardinal,
+and it was expected that the return of Madame de Chevreuse would incline
+the queen to the former party. But the queen was in no hurry for that
+lady's return, knowing well what turmoils she was apt to bring in her
+train. Perhaps I urged her recall more boldly than was wise; at any rate, I
+won my point, and her majesty sent me to form Madame de Chevreuse for her
+appearance at court under the new conditions.</p>
+
+<p>I represented to her how indispensable Cardinal Mazarin was to the
+state; that he was accused of no crime, and was guiltless of Richelieu's
+oppressions; and that the most fatal course she could take would be to
+attempt to govern the queen. Madame de Chevreuse promised to follow my
+advice, and came up to court, but her old instincts of domination were too
+much for her, and she soon declared herself openly against the minister who
+enjoyed all the queen's confidence. She even attempted his overthrow, and
+for that purpose united herself to the party known as the
+"<i>Importans</i>," which was led by the Duke of Beaufort.</p>
+
+<p>After various manoeuvres on the part of the cardinal and of Madame de
+Chevreuse to get the upper hand, Mazarin discovered a plot against his
+life, in which the Duke of Beaufort was implicated, and had the duke
+arrested and imprisoned. At the same time Madame de Chevreuse was sent away
+to Tours, and as I was unwilling to promise that I would have no more to do
+with her, I lost the favour of the queen, provoked the cardinal's
+displeasure, and soon found that Madame de Chevreuse herself was forgetful
+of all I had done for her.</p>
+
+<p>Kept in idleness, tantalised by promises of office which were never
+fulfilled, and forbidden even to follow the wars, my wretched position led
+me at last to seek some way of showing my resentment at the treatment I had
+received from the queen and cardinal. The means were at hand. Like many
+others, I had come under the spell of the beauty and charm of Madame de
+Longueville, and thus come gradually into association with the party of the
+Fronde. I followed the Duke of Enghien, her brother, to the attack on
+Courtray, then to Mardick, where I was wounded; and this time of military
+service united me more closely to his later interests.</p>
+
+<p>By the year 1647 everyone was weary of Mazarin's rule. His bad faith,
+his weakness, and his trickiness were becoming known, provinces and towns
+alike were groaning under taxation, and the citizens of Paris were reduced
+to mere despair. Parliament tried respectful remonstrances in vain; the
+cardinal thought himself safe in the servility of the nation. But the great
+majority in France desired a change, and then smouldering discontent soon
+burst into a flame.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of Enghien, who had become, by the death of his father, Prince
+of Cond&eacute;, had gained in 1648 a great victory in Flanders, and a
+solemn thanksgiving was held in Notre Dame to celebrate it. Mazarin chose
+this moment for the arrest of Broussel and other members of parliament who
+had voiced most urgently the public distress. The action roused Paris to a
+fury which astonished him; the people sought him to tear him to pieces;
+barricades were erected in the streets, and the king and queen were
+besieged in the royal palace. Resistance to the parliament's demands were
+at the moment impossible; the prisoners had to be released.</p>
+
+<p>I was at this time absent from Paris, having been sent down by the queen
+to my government at Poitou, which I had purchased; the province was almost
+in insurrection and I had to pacify it. I happened to be deeply wounded by
+a new slight which Cardinal Mazarin had put upon me, when Madame de
+Longueville sent for me to come to Paris, informing me that the whole plan
+for a civil war had been drawn up, and asking for my counsel in the matter.
+The news delighted me, and I arrived at the capital eager for my revenge on
+the queen and the cardinal.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin, on the other hand, had formed his plan. Realising that Paris
+was unsafe, he determined to leave it, to place the king at Saint-Germain,
+and to lay siege to the city, which would soon be reduced to famine and
+dissensions. Their escape was made at midnight on the eve of Epiphany,
+1649, all the court following in great disorder.</p>
+
+<p>The city was for a time in much perplexity, but the arrival of the Duke
+of Beaufort, who had broken prison at Vincennes, put heart into the people,
+who took him for their liberator. Other great personages threw in their lot
+with the popular cause; a large war-chest was quickly raised and troops
+were levied, and the parliament of Paris put itself into communication with
+the other parliaments of the kingdom. All preparations were made for a
+civil war, the real basis of which was a general hatred of Cardinal
+Mazarin, which was common to both parties. In an early engagement outside
+the city I was so gravely wounded as to see no more of this war, the events
+of which are hardly worth narrating. On April 1, 1649, the Parliament
+received an amnesty from the king. Neither party had vanquished the other;
+the cardinal and the parliament were each as strong as before, but everyone
+was glad to be rid, for the time, of the horrors of civil war.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Wars of the Fronde</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Prince of Cond&eacute;, who had great influence in the council,
+showed himself so contemptuous to Mazarin, and became so inconvenient to
+the queen by his arrogance that she decided to arrest him, and to involve
+Madame de Longueville, the duke, her husband, and the Prince of Conti in
+the same disgrace. Accordingly, on January 18, 1650, the Prince of
+Cond&eacute;, the Duke of Longueville, and the Prince of Conti were seized
+and imprisoned at Vincennes, and the order was given at the same time to
+arrest Madame de Longueville and myself. But we succeeded in escaping
+together to Dieppe, where we were forced to separate; Madame de Longueville
+found refuge at Stenay, where she met with Turenne, and I returned to my
+government of Poitou and formed an alliance there with the Duke of
+Bouillon, Turenne's brother. Together the duke and I matured designs which
+led to the civil war in the south.</p>
+
+<p>My father having died at Verteuil in March, 1650, I succeeded to the
+title of Duke of La Rochefoucauld. I invited a large number of nobles and
+gentlemen of that region to the funeral ceremonies; our plans were put
+before them; though some of them held back, most were favourable; and I
+soon found myself at the head of a force of two thousand horse and eight
+hundred foot. The Duke of Bouillon and I were joined by the young Princess
+of Cond&eacute;, with her son the Duke of Enghien; we gathered more troops
+at Turenne, and marched upon Bordeaux. After overcoming some opposition,
+the princess entered that city in triumph on May 31, 1650, and we joined
+her a few days later.</p>
+
+<p>The grievance of the princess and the presence of her son excited the
+liveliest enthusiasm, and the party opposed to Mazarin had entire mastery
+of the town. The revolt of Bordeaux carried with it almost all Guienne, and
+Mazarin determined to crush it before it should extend to the neighbouring
+provinces. A royal army of veterans was sent down, Bordeaux was closely
+invested, an obstinate defence was made, but the town had to capitulate on
+September 28, on the condition of an amnesty to the princess and her
+adherents.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Turenne, with a Spanish force, had made a vain attempt to
+rescue the captive princes, and Mazarin had removed them to Havre, where
+the government was devoted to him. There was now such general dread and
+hatred of the cardinal, that people were willing to unite with those whom
+they had considered their mortal enemies in order to secure his ruin. In
+the early days of 1651 I was summoned to Paris by the Princess Palatine,
+who united a taste for gallantry with a remarkable talent for intrigue, and
+remained for some time hidden in her house, where I was witness to many
+consultations for the removal of Mazarin from power. I even made a last
+attempt to persuade the cardinal himself to release the princes; in four
+nocturnal interviews I tried to show him how all parties were uniting to
+compass his ruin, but was unable to convince him without betraying secrets
+which were not my own. Mazarin gave me no hope of their liberation.</p>
+
+<p>Then arose a general storm against the minister, and he made his escape
+on the night of February 7. The queen would have followed him with her son,
+but the Frondeurs and the partisans of the princes kept her prisoner in her
+palace. Without any hope of assistance, and daunted day and night by an
+infuriated populate, she sent for me and gave me an order to the governor
+of Havre to release the princes immediately. I warned the leaders of the
+Fronde that her sincerity was not above suspicion, and that all depended
+upon her close imprisonment, and so set out along the northern road upon my
+mission. But the cardinal had been beforehand with me, the princes were at
+liberty, and on February 16 they entered Paris in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin, who had fled to Cologne, whence he continued to direct the
+queen's cabinet, returned to France at the head of a small army in January,
+1652, and arrived at Poitiers without meeting any resistance. The party
+opposed to him was rent by faction and strife, but the Prince of
+Cond&eacute; united it, and fought an indecisive engagement with the royal
+troops on April 8. On the 11th the prince and I were well received in
+Paris, but it was evident that the citizens were weary of all these
+troubles, desired nothing so much as the king's return, and detested the
+ambition of the leaders of faction. Indeed, the magistrates were
+negotiating with Mazarin, and declared the city neutral. On July 2 the
+Prince of Cond&eacute; was marching his force from Saint-Cloud to Charenton
+when he was attacked by Turenne; and in the sanguinary combat which
+followed, and in which I was fighting beside the prince, I received a wound
+in the head which prevented my taking any further part in these
+disturbances.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly afterwards, the Prince of Cond&eacute;, his popularity wholly
+gone, took service under the King of Spain; King Louis XIV., amid general
+acclamations, returned to Paris on October 21; and Cardinal Mazarin, having
+overcome all his enemies, entered the capital in a veritable triumph, in
+February, 1653.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MADAME_DE_SEVIGNE"></a>MADAME DE S&Eacute;VIGN&Eacute;</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Letters2"></a>Letters</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, who became Madame de
+S&eacute;vign&eacute;, was born at Paris on February 6, 1626. Her father
+and mother died during her childhood and Marie was left to the care of her
+uncle, priest of Coulanges; she received an admirable education and became
+a great lover of history and of classical literature. At eighteen years of
+age she married the Marquis Henri de S&eacute;vign&eacute;, who was killed
+in a duel in 1651, and thenceforth Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute; gave
+herself up altogether to the care of her two children. Her wit, her
+kindliness, and happiness, her charity and fidelity, and especially a
+certain rare genius for friendship, won for her the warm devotion of many
+great people of that brilliant age. Her daughter was married in 1669 to the
+Comte de Grignan, a great official, lieutenant-general of Languedoc and
+then of Provence, a man of honour, but accustomed to the most lavish
+expenditure, which burdened his life with enormous debts. The famous
+"Letters" of Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute; numbering over 1,000 were
+written over a period of twenty-five years, chiefly to this daughter,
+Madame de Grignan. They are valued for their vivacious and graceful style,
+the light which they throw upon the thoughts and movements of her time, but
+especially for their revelation of a wonderfully sweet and gracious
+personality. Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute; died on April 18, 169696.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>Love for her Daughter</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>My dear child: I have been here but three hours, and already take my pen
+to talk to you. I left Paris with the Abb&eacute;, H&eacute;l&egrave;ne,
+H&eacute;bert and Marphise, so that I might get away from the noise and
+bustle of the town until Thursday evening. I want to have perfect
+quietness, in which to reflect. I intend to fast for many good reasons, and
+to walk much to make up for the long time I have spent in my room; and
+above all, I want to discipline myself for the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>But, my dear daughter, what I shall do more than all this, will be to
+think of you. I have not ceased to do so since I arrived here; and being
+quite unable to restrain my feelings, I have betaken myself to the little
+shady walk you so loved, to write to you, and am sitting on the mossy bank
+where you so often used to lie. But, my dear, where in this place have I
+not seen you? Do not thoughts of you haunt my heart everywhere I turn?--in
+the house, in the church, in the field, in the garden--every spot speaks to
+me of you. You are in my thoughts all the time, and my heart cries out for
+you again and again. I search in vain for the dear, dear child I love so
+passionately; but she is 600 miles away, and I cannot call her to my side.
+My tears fall, and I cannot stop them. I know it is weak, but this
+tenderness for you is right and natural and I cannot be strong.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder what your mood will be when you receive this letter; perhaps at
+that moment you will not be touched with the emotions I now feel so
+poignantly, and then you may not read it in the spirit in which it was
+written. But against that I cannot guard, and the act of writing relieves
+my feelings at the moment--that is at least what I ask of it. You would not
+believe the condition into which this place has thrown me.</p>
+
+<p>Do not refer to my weakness, I beg of you; but you must love me, and
+have respect for my tears, since they flow from a heart which is full of
+you.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Brinvilliers Affair</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Brinvilliers affair is still the only thing talked of in Paris. The
+Marquise confessed to having poisoned her father, her brothers, and one of
+her children. The Chevalier Duget had been one of those who had partaken of
+a poisoned dish of pigeon-pie; and when the Brinvilliers was told three
+years later that he was still alive, her only remark was "that man surely
+has an excellent constitution." It seems she fell deeply in love with
+Sainte Croix, an officer in the regiment of her husband, the Marquis, who
+lived in their house. Believing that Sainte Croix would marry her if she
+were free, she attempted to poison her husband. Sainte Croix, not
+reciprocating her desire, administered an antidote, and thus saved the poor
+Marquis's life.</p>
+
+<p>And now, all is over. The Brinvilliers is no more. Judgment was given
+yesterday and this morning her sentence was read to her--she was to make a
+public confession in front of Notre Dame, after which she was to be
+executed, her body burnt and her ashes scattered to the winds. She was
+threatened with torture, but said it was unnecessary and that she would
+tell all. Accordingly she recounted the history of her whole life, which
+was even more horrible than anyone had imagined, and I could not hear of it
+without shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>At six in the morning she was led out, barefoot, and clad only in one
+loose garment, with a halter round her neck. From Notre Dame she was
+carried back in the same Tumbril, in which I saw her lying on straw, with
+the Doctor on one side of her and the executioner on the other; the sight
+of her struck me with horror. I am told that she mounted the scaffold with
+a firm step, and died as she had lived, resolutely, and without fear or
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>She asked her confessor to place the executioner so that she need not
+gaze on Degrais, who, you <i>will remember</i>, tracked her to England, and
+ultimately arrested her at Li&egrave;ge. After she had mounted the ladder
+to the scaffold she was exposed to the public for a quarter of an hour,
+while the executioner arranged her for execution. This raised a murmur of
+disapproval among the people, and it was a great cruelty. It seems that
+some say she was a saint; and after her body had been burned, the people
+crowded near to search for bones as relics, but little was to be found, as
+her ashes were thrown into the fire. And, it may be supposed, that we now
+inhale what remains of her. It is to be hoped that we shall not inhale her
+murderous instincts also.</p>
+
+<p>She had two confessors, of whom one counselled her to tell everything,
+the other nothing. She laughed, and said, "I may in conscience do what
+pleases me best."</p>
+
+<p>I was pleased to hear what you think of this horrible woman; it is not
+possible that she should be in Paradise; her vile soul must be separated
+from others.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Devotion</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>You ask me if I am devout. Alas! No, which is a sorrow to me; but I am
+in a way detached from what is called the world. Old age, and a little
+sickness give one time to reflect. But, my dear child, what I do not give
+to the world, I give to you; so that I hardly advance in the region of
+detachment; and you know the true way towards a devout life lies in some
+degree of effacement, first of all, of that which our heart holds
+dearest.</p>
+
+<p>One of my great desires is to become devout. Every day I am tormented by
+this idea. I do not belong to God, neither do I belong to the Devil; this
+indecision is a perpetual torment to me, although between ourselves, I
+believe this state to be a most natural one. One does not belong to the
+Devil, because one fears God: also, one does not belong to God, because His
+law is hard, and one does not like to renounce oneself. These are the
+luke-warm, and their great number does not surprise me at all; I can enter
+into their reasonings; but God hates them; therefore we must cease to serve
+in this state--and there is the difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>I am overwhelmed by the death of M. du Mans; I had never thought of
+death in connection with him. Yet he has died of a trifling fever, without
+having had time to think either of heaven or of earth. Providence sometimes
+shows its authority by sudden visitations, from which we should profit.</p>
+
+<p>What you say as to the anxieties which we so often and so naturally feel
+about the future, and as to how our inclinations are insensibly changed by
+necessity, is a subject worthy of a book like Pascal's; nothing is so
+satisfying, nothing so useful as meditations of this kind. But how many
+people of your age think this? I know of none; and I honour your sound
+reasoning and courage. With me it is not so, especially when my heart
+afflicts me; my words are indifferently good; I write as those who speak
+well; but the depth of my feeling kills me. This I feel when I write to you
+of the pain of separation. I have not myself found the proverb true, "To
+cloak oneself according to the cold." I have no cloak against cold like
+this. Yet I manage to find occupation, and the time passes somehow. But in
+general it is true that our thoughts and inclinations turn into other
+channels, and our sorrows cease to be such.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Love of Life</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>You ask me, dear child, if I am still in love with life. I must confess
+that I find its sorrows grievous, but my distaste for death is even
+stronger. It is sad to think I must finish my life with death, and if it
+were possible I would retrace my steps. I find myself embarked on life
+without my consent, and am in a perplexing situation. I shall have to take
+leave of life, and the fact overwhelms me: for how, or by what gate, shall
+I pass away? When will death come, and in what disposition will it find me?
+Shall I suffer a thousand pains which will make me die in despair? Shall I
+die in a transport of joy? Shall I die of an accident? How shall I stand
+before God? What shall I have to offer Him? Shall I return to Him in fear
+and necessity, and be conscious of no other feeling but terror? What can I
+hope for? Am I worthy of Paradise? Or worthy only of Hell? What an
+alternative! What perplexity! Nothing is so mad as to leave one's safety
+thus in uncertainty; but nothing is more natural; and the foolish life I
+lead is perfectly easy to understand. I plunge myself into these thoughts;
+and I find death so terrible, that I hate life more because it leads to
+death, than because it leads me through troublesome places. You will say I
+wish to live for ever. Not at all; but if I had been asked, I would
+willingly have died in my nurse's arms, for I should thus have avoided many
+sorrows and would have secured heaven with certainty and ease.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Order of God</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Providence wills order; but if order is nothing other than the will of
+God, almost all that occurs is done against His will: all the persecutions,
+for instance, against St. Athanasius; all the prosperity of ill-doers and
+tyrants--all this is against order and therefore against the will of God.
+We must surely hold to what St. Augustine says, that God permits all these
+things so that he may manifest His glory by means that are unknown to us.
+St. Augustine knows no rule nor order but the will of God. If we did not
+follow this doctrine, we should be forced to conclude that almost
+everything is contrary to the will of Him who made it, and this seems to me
+a dreadful conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to complain to Father Malebranche about the mice which eat
+everything here; is that in order? Sugar, fruit, preserves, everything is
+devoured by them. And was it order last year, that miserable caterpillars
+destroyed the leaves of our forest-trees and gardens, and all the fruit in
+the country-side? Father Payen, most peaceable of men, has his head broken;
+is that order? Yes, Father, all that is doubtless good. God knows how to
+dispose of it to His glory, though we know not how. We must take it as
+true, for if we do not regard the will of God as equivalent to all law and
+order, we fall into great difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>You are such a philosopher, my very dear child, that there is no way of
+being happy with you. Your mind runs on beyond our hopes to picture to
+itself the loss of all we hope for; and you see, in our meetings, the
+inevitable separation that is to follow. Surely that is not the way to deal
+with the good things Providence prepares for us; we should rather husband
+and enjoy them. But after having made this little reproach, I must confess
+in all honesty that I deserve it just as much as you. No one can be more
+daunted than I am by the flight of time, nor feel more keenly beforehand
+the griefs which ordinarily follow pleasures. Indeed, my daughter, life
+mingles its good and ill: when one has what one desires, one is all the
+nearer to losing it; when it is further from us, we dream of finding it. So
+we must just take things as God sends them. For my part, I would cherish
+the hope of seeing you without mixing in with other feelings; and look
+forward to holding you in my arms next month. I wish to believe God will
+allow us this perfect joy, although it would be the easiest thing in the
+world to mix it with bitterness, if we so desired. All that remains, my
+very dear one, is to breathe and to live.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Prince of Orange and England</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Prince of Orange has declared himself protector of the religion of
+England, and has asked to have charge of the education of the young Prince.
+It is a bold step, and several of the English nobility have joined him. We
+are all hoping that the Prince of Orange has made a mistake, and that King
+James II. will give him a good beating. He has received the Milords,
+confirmed the attachment of those most devoted to him, and has declared
+entire liberty of conscience. But we understand that the King of England
+has united all his people round him, by affording a greater degree of
+religious liberty.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>What shall we say of this English nation? Its customs and manners go
+from bad to worse. The King of England has escaped from London, apparently
+by kind permission of the Prince of Orange; the Queen will arrive at St.
+Germain in a day or two. It is quite certain that war will be declared
+against us soon, if indeed we are not the first to declare it. We are
+sending the Abb&eacute; Testu to St. Germain to help in establishing there
+the King and Queen of England and the Prince of Wales. Our King of France
+has behaved quite divinely to these Majesties of England; for to comfort
+and sustain, as he has done, a betrayed and abandoned king, is to act in
+the image of the Almighty.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It is good news that the King of England has left this morning for
+Ireland, where they are anxiously awaiting him. He will be better there
+than here. He is travelling through Brittany like lightning, and at Brest
+he will find Marshall d'Estr&eacute;e with transport and frigates ready. He
+carries large treasure, and the King has given him arms for ten thousand
+men; as his Majesty of England was saying good-bye, he said, laughing, that
+he had forgotten arms for himself, and our King gave him his own. Our
+heroes of romance have done nothing more gallant. What will not this brave
+and unfortunate King accomplish with these ever victorious weapons? He goes
+forth with the helmet and cuirass of Renaud, Amadis, and our most
+illustrious paladins, supported by unexampled generosity and
+magnanimity.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Old Age</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>So you have been struck by Madame de la Fayette's words, inspired by so
+much friendliness. I never let myself forget the fact that I am growing
+old; but I must confess that I was simply astonished at what she said,
+because I do not yet feel any infirmity to keep me in mind of my advancing
+years. I think of them, however, and find that life offers us hard
+conditions: here have I been led, in spite of myself, to the fatal period
+at which one must die--old age. I see it; old age has stolen upon me; and
+my only desire is to go no further. I do not want to travel along that road
+of infirmities, pains, the loss of memory, the disfigurements to which I
+look forward as an outrage; yet I hear a voice saying in my ear--"You must
+pass down that road, whether you like it or not, or else you must die"; and
+this second alternative is as repugnant to nature as the first. This is the
+inevitable lot of whoever advances too far along the course of life. Yet, a
+return to God's will, and submission to that universal law which has
+condemned us all to death, is enough to seat reason again on her throne,
+and to give us patience. Do you too have patience, my darling; don't let
+your love, too tender, cause you tears which your reason must condemn.</p>
+
+<p>Your brother has come under the Empire of Ninon de Lenclos; I fear it
+will bring evil; she ruined his father. We must recommend him to God.
+Christian women, or at least who wish to be so, cannot see disorder like
+his without sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>But what a dangerous person this Ninon is! She finds that your brother
+has the simplicity of a dove, and is like his mother; it is Madame de
+Grignan who has all the salt of the family, and is not so simple as to be
+ruled. Someone, meaning to take your part, tried to correct her notion of
+you, but Ninon contradicted him and said she knew you better. What a
+corrupt creature! Because you are beautiful and spirited she must needs add
+to you another quality without which, on her principles, you cannot be
+perfect. I have been deeply troubled by the harm she is doing to my son.
+But do not speak of the matter to him; Madame de la Fayette and I are doing
+our best to extricate him from his perilous attachment.</p>
+
+<p>We have been reading for our amusement those little Provincial Letters.
+Heavens, what charm they have! How eagerly my son reads them! I always
+think of my daughter, and how worthy of her is the incomparable justice of
+their reasoning; but your brother says that you complain that the writer is
+always saying the same thing. Well, well; all the better! Is it possible
+that there should be a more perfect style, or a finer, more delicate or
+more natural raillery? Could anything be more worthy of comparison with
+Plato's "Dialogues"? But after the first ten letters, what earnestness,
+solidity, force and eloquence! What love for God and for truth, what
+exquisite skill in maintaining it and making it understood, characterise
+these eight last letters with their so different tone! I understand that
+you have read them only hurriedly, enjoying the more amusing passages; but
+that is not how one reads them at leisure.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="ROBERT_SOUTHEY"></a>ROBERT SOUTHEY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Life_of_Nelson"></a>The Life of Nelson</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Robert Southey, man of letters and poet-laureate, was born
+at Bristol on August 12, 1774, and received at various schools a desultory
+education, which he completed by an idle year at Oxford. Here he became
+acquainted with Coleridge; and Southey, who had practised verse from early
+boyhood, and acquired a strong taste for the drama, being also an ardent
+republican and romanticist, was easily enlisted by the elder poet in his
+scheme for a model republic, or "Pantisocracy," in the wilds of America.
+They married two sisters, the Misses Fricker, and a third sister married
+Robert Lovel, also a poet. The experiment of pantisocracy was fortunately
+never carried out, and Southey's career for the next eight years was
+exceedingly fragmentary; but in 1803 there was a reunion of the three
+sisters at Keswick, though one of the husbands, Lovel, was dead. Here
+Southey entered steadily and industriously on the life of an author for
+livelihood; it was by no means unremunerative. Southey's output of work,
+both prose and verse, was very voluminous, and its quality could not but
+suffer. He was appointed poet-laureate in 1813; and received a government
+pension of &pound;160 a year from 1807, which was increased by &pound;300 a
+year in 1835. He died on March 21, 1843. In a prefatory note to that
+peerless model of short biographies, the "Life of Nelson," which appeared
+in 1813, and is considered his most important work, Southey describes it as
+"clear and concise enough to become a manual for the young sailor, which he
+may carry about with him till he has treasured up the example in his memory
+and in his heart." </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--A Captain at Twenty</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Horatio, son of Edmund and Catherine Nelson, was born on September 29,
+1758, in the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, a Norfolk village, where his
+father was rector. His mother's maiden name was Suckling; her grandmother
+was an elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, and this child was named after
+his godfather, the first Lord Walpole. Mrs. Nelson died in 1767, leaving
+eight children, and her brother, Captain Maurice Suckling, R.N., visited
+the widower, and promised to take care of one of the boys.</p>
+
+<p>Three years later, when Horatio was twelve years old, he read in the
+newspaper that his uncle was appointed to the Raisonnable, and urged his
+father to let him go to sea with his Uncle Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was never strong, but he had already given proofs of a resolute
+heart and a noble mind. Captain Suckling took an interest in him, and sent
+him on a first voyage in a merchant ship to the West Indies, and then, as
+coxswain, with the Arctic expedition of 1773, when Horatio showed his
+courage by attacking a Polar bear.</p>
+
+<p>A voyage to the East Indies followed, and gave him the rank of
+midshipman. But the tropical climate reduced him almost to a skeleton; he
+lost for a time the use of his limbs, and was sent home as his only chance
+of life. He returned under great depression of spirits. In later years he
+related how the despair was cleared away by a glow of patriotism, in which
+his king and country came vividly before his mind. "Well, then," he
+exclaimed, "I will be a hero, and, confiding in Providence, I will brave
+every danger!"</p>
+
+<p>On April 8, 1777, he passed his examination for a lieutenancy, and was
+appointed to the Lowestoft frigate, Captain Locker, then fitting out for
+Jamaica. Privateers under American colours were harassing British trade in
+the West Indies, and Nelson saw much active service. He was removed to the
+Bristol flagship, then to the command of the Badger, then to the
+Hinchinbrook, and before the age of twenty-one he had gained a rank which
+brought all the honours of the service within his reach.</p>
+
+<p>An expedition was at this time projected to seize the region of Lake
+Nicaragua, and thus to cut the communication of the Spaniards between their
+northern and southern possessions; and in pursuit of this policy Nelson was
+sent with a small force, early in 1780, to Honduras. Here, after deeds of
+great gallantry, his command was almost annihilated by the deadly climate,
+and he himself was so reduced by dysentery that he was compelled to return
+to England.</p>
+
+<p>His next ship was the Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, in which he was
+kept, to his great annoyance, in the North Sea for the whole winter of
+1781-2, and was sent in the spring to Quebec. The Albemarle then served on
+the West Indian station until tidings came that the preliminaries of peace
+had been signed, and she returned to England, and was paid off in 1783.</p>
+
+<p>"I have closed the war," said Nelson, in one of his letters, "without a
+fortune; but there is not a speck on my character. True honour, I hope,
+predominated in my mind far above riches." He did not apply for a ship,
+because he was not wealthy enough to live on board in the manner which was
+then customary.</p>
+
+<p>But, after living for a time in lodgings in St. Omer's in France, he was
+appointed to the Boreas, going to the Leeward Islands, and on his arrival
+in the West Indies in 1784, found himself senior captain, and therefore
+second in command on that station.</p>
+
+<p>The Americans were at this time trading with our islands, taking
+advantage of the register of their ships, which had been issued while they
+were British subjects. Nelson knew that, by the Navigation Act, no
+foreigners, directly or indirectly, were permitted to carry on any trade
+with these possessions; and also that the Americans had made themselves
+foreigners with regard to England.</p>
+
+<p>Contrary to the orders both of the admiral and of the governor, he
+insisted that our ships of war were not sent abroad to make a show of, and
+seized four American vessels at Nevis; and when the matter was brought into
+court at that place he pleaded his own cause, and the ships were
+condemned.</p>
+
+<p>While the lawsuit was proceeding, Nelson formed an attachment to a young
+widow, Mrs. Nisbet, niece of the President of Nevis, and was married to her
+on March 11, 1787. She was then in her eighteenth year, and had one child,
+a son, Josiah, who was three years old. They returned together to England
+and took up their abode at the old parsonage, where Nelson amused himself
+with farming and country sports, and continued a relentless campaign
+against the speculators and fraudulent contractors attached to the naval
+service in the West Indies. After many vain attempts to secure a ship, he
+was at last appointed, on January 30, 1793, to the Agamemnon, sixty-four
+guns.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--In the Mediterranean</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Agamemnon was ordered to the Mediterranean under Lord Hood, and
+Nelson was sent with despatches to Sir William Hamilton, our envoy to the
+court of Naples. Sir William, after his first interview with him, told Lady
+Hamilton that he was about to introduce a little man to her who could not
+boast of being very handsome, but who would one day astonish the world.
+Thus that acquaintance began which ended in the destruction of Nelson's
+domestic happiness, though it threatened no such consequences then. Here
+also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan court which led to the
+only blot on Nelson's public character.</p>
+
+<p>Having accomplished this mission, Nelson was sent to join Commodore
+Linzee at Tunis, and shortly afterwards to co-operate with General Paoli
+and the Anti-Gallican party in Corsica. At this time, 1794, Nelson was able
+to say, "My seamen are now what British seamen ought to be, almost
+invincible. They really mind shot no more than peas." And again, after
+capturing Bastia, "I am all astonishment when I reflect on what we have
+achieved! I was always of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never had
+any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen."
+The Agamemnon was then dispatched to co-operate in the siege of Calvi with
+General Sir Charles Stuart, at which Nelson lost the sight of one eye; and
+later played a glorious part in the attack by Admiral Hotham's squadron on
+the French fleet. This action saved Corsica for the time.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson was made colonel of marines in 1795, a mark of approbation which
+he had long wished for; and the Agamemnon was ordered to Genoa, to
+co-operate with the Austrian and Sardinian forces. The incapacity and
+misconduct of the Austrian General de Vins, however, gave the enemy
+possession of the Genoese coast. The Agamemnon, therefore, could no longer
+be useful on this station, and Nelson sailed for Leghorn to refit, and then
+joined the Mediterranean fleet under Sir John Jervis.</p>
+
+<p>England at that time depended too much on the rotten governments of the
+Continent, and too little upon itself. Corsica was therefore abandoned by
+Britain, and Nelson, after superintending the evacuation of Corsica, was
+ordered to hoist his broad pennant on board the Minerva frigate. He then
+sailed for Gibraltar, and proceeded westward in search of the admiral.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--St. Vincent and the Nile</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Off the mouth of the Straits of Gilbraltar he fell in with the Spanish
+fleet; and on February 13, 1797, reaching the station off Cape St. Vincent,
+he communicated this intelligence to Sir John Jervis, and was directed to
+shift his broad pennant on board the Captain. On the following morning was
+fought the battle of Cape St. Vincent. The British had only fifteen ships
+of the line against twenty-seven Spanish ships, but Britain, largely
+through Nelson's intrepidity, secured an overwhelming victory. The
+commander-in-chief was rewarded with the title of Earl St. Vincent, and
+Nelson was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral and received the Order of
+the Bath.</p>
+
+<p>Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson was now removed to the Theseus, and was
+employed in the blockade of Cadiz, where he went through the most perilous
+action in which he was ever engaged. Making a night attack upon the Spanish
+gunboats, his barge, carrying twelve men, was attacked by an armed launch
+carrying twenty-six men; the admiral was only saved by the heroic devotion
+of his coxswain; but eighteen of the enemy were killed, the rest wounded,
+and their launch taken.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve days later Nelson sailed at the head of an expedition against
+Teneriffe, and on the night of July 24, 1797, made a boat attack on the
+port of Santa Cruz. On this occasion he was wounded in the right elbow, and
+the arm had to be amputated. The small force, which had made its way into
+the town, capitulated on honourable terms, and the Spanish governor
+distinguished himself by the most humane and generous conduct to his
+enemies. There is no doubt that Nelson's life was saved by the careful
+attentions of his stepson, Nisbet, who was with him in the boat.</p>
+
+<p>Nisbet was immediately promoted, and honours awaited Nelson in England.
+The freedom of the cities of Bristol and London were conferred on him, and
+he received a pension of &pound;1,000 a year. He had performed an
+extraordinary series of services during the war; including four actions
+with the fleets of the enemy, three actions with boats employed in cutting
+out of harbour, and in taking three towns; he had commanded the batteries
+at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi, he had assisted at the capture of
+twenty-eight ships of war, and had taken and destroyed nearly fifty
+merchant vessels; and had been engaged against the enemy upwards of a
+hundred and twenty times, in which service he had lost his right eye and
+right arm.</p>
+
+<p>Early in 1789, Sir Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and
+left England to rejoin Earl St. Vincent. He was dispatched to the
+Mediterranean, to ascertain the object of Bonaparte's great expedition,
+then fitting out at Toulon; and sailed from Gibraltar on May 9 with three
+ships of the line, four frigates, and a sloop. The Vanguard was dismantled
+in a storm, but was refitted in the Sardinian harbour of St. Pietro, and
+was joined by a reinforcement of eleven ships from Earl St. Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>The first news of the enemy's armament was that it had surprised Malta,
+but Nelson soon heard that they had left that island on June 16, and judged
+that Egypt was their destination. He arrived off Alexandria on the 28th,
+but did not find them; returned by a circuitous course to Sicily, then
+sailed to the Morea, where he gained news of the French, and on August I
+came in sight of Alexandria and the French fleet. "Before this time
+to-morrow," he said to his officers, "I shall have gained a peerage or
+Westminster Abbey."</p>
+
+<p>Bonaparte's ships of war, under Admiral Brueys, were moored in Aboukir
+Bay in a strong line of battle; and the advantage of numbers, both in
+ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. Yet only four French
+ships out of seventeen escaped, and the victory was the most complete and
+glorious in the annals of naval history.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson was now at the summit of his glory; and congratulations, rewards,
+and honours were showered upon him by all the states, princes, and powers
+to whom his victory had given respite. He was created Baron Nelson of the
+Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, with a pension of &pound;2,000 a year for his
+own life, and those of his successors; a grant of &pound;10,000 was voted
+to him by the East India Company; and the King of Naples made him Duke of
+Bronte.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Lady Hamilton</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>As soon as his shattered frame had sufficiently recovered, Nelson was
+called to services of greater importance than any one in which he had been
+hitherto employed.</p>
+
+<p>The kindest attentions and warmest affection were awaiting him at
+Naples; the king, the queen, and Lady Hamilton, who was the queen's
+constant favourite, welcomed their hero and deliverer with the most
+splendid festivities. General Mack, with whom Nelson was to co-operate, was
+at the head of the Neapolitan troops; and while he marched with 32,000 men
+into the Roman state, 5,000 Neapolitans were embarked on the British and
+Portuguese squadron to take possession of Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson's fears of the result were soon verified. "The Neapolitan
+officers," he said, "did not lose much honour, for God knows they had not
+much to lose--but they lost all they had." The French in the Roman State
+routed the cowardly Neapolitans. There was a strong revolutionary party in
+Naples itself; and it was agreed that the royal family must seek safety in
+flight. Their secret escape, with much treasure, on board the Vanguard, was
+conducted with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton, and Nelson conveyed
+them through a wild storm to Palermo.</p>
+
+<p>He had by this time formed an infatuated attachment for Lady Hamilton,
+which totally weaned his affections from his wife. He was dissatisfied with
+himself and weary of the world. But, in accordance with his principle of
+duty "to assist in driving the French to the devil and in restoring peace
+and happiness to mankind," he at length expelled the French from Naples and
+restored Ferdinand to his throne. Weak in health, dispirited, and smarting
+under a censure from the Admiralty for a disobedience to orders, Nelson
+resigned his command, and reached England in November 1800, having
+travelled with Sir William and Lady Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>The great admiral was welcomed to England with every mark of popular
+honour; but he had forfeited domestic happiness for ever. Before he had
+been three months at home, he separated from Lady Nelson, vowing that there
+was nothing in her or in her conduct that he could have wished
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>In January 1801 he was sent to the Baltic as second in command under Sir
+Hyde Parker. Russia, Denmark, and Sweden had founded a confederacy for
+making England resign her naval rights, and the British Cabinet decided
+instantly to crush it. The fleet sailed on March 12; Nelson represented to
+Sir Hyde Parker the necessity of attacking Copenhagen; and on April 2 the
+British vessels opened fire on the Danish fleet and land batteries. The
+Danes, in return, fought their guns manfully, and at one o'clock, after
+three hours' endurance, Sir Hyde Parker gave the signal for discontinuing
+action. Nelson ordered that signal to be acknowledged, but continued to fly
+the signal for close action. "You know, Foley," he said, turning to the
+captain of the ship, "I have only one eye; I have a right to be blind
+sometimes!" Then, putting the glass to his blind eye, in the mood that
+sports with bitterness, he exclaimed, "I really do not see the signal. Keep
+mine for closer battle flying! That's the way I answer such signals. Nail
+mine to that mast!" Admiral Graves disobeyed in like manner, and the other
+ships of the line also continued the action. The victory was soon complete,
+and Sir Hyde Parker heartily expressed his satisfaction and gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>For the battle of Copenhagen, Nelson was raised to the rank of viscount.
+Had he lived long enough, he would have fought his way up to a dukedom.</p>
+
+<p>After holding a command in the English Channel, to watch the
+preparations which were being made at Boulogne for an invasion of England,
+Nelson retired on the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens to his estate at
+Merton, in Surrey, meaning to pass his days there in the society of Sir
+William and Lady Hamilton. Sir William died early in 1803, and, as the
+government would do nothing for her, Nelson settled on Lady Hamilton a sum
+equal to the pension of &pound;1,200 a year which her husband had enjoyed.
+A few weeks after this event the war was renewed, and the day after his
+majesty's message to parliament, Nelson departed to take command of the
+Mediterranean fleet.</p>
+
+<p>He took his station immediately off Toulon, and there, with incessant
+vigilance, waited for the coming out of the enemy. From May 1803 to August
+1805 he left the Victory only three times, each time upon the king's
+service, and on no occasion for more than an hour.</p>
+
+<p>War having been declared between England and Spain, the Toulon fleet,
+having the Spaniards to co-operate with them, put to sea on January 18,
+1804. Nelson, who was off Sardinia when he heard the news the next day,
+sought them in vain through the Mediterranean, until he heard that they had
+been dispersed by a gale, and had returned to Toulon. On March 31 they
+emerged again, and passed out of the Straits of Gibraltar, but the British
+fleet was kept by adverse winds from reaching the Atlantic till April
+5.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy had thirty-five days start on their run to the West Indies,
+and Nelson, misled by false information, sought them among the islands,
+until he learned at Antigua on June 9 that they had sailed again for
+Europe. He made all speed across the Atlantic, and again sought the enemy
+vainly, until he joined Admiral Cornwallis off Ushant on August 15. The
+same evening he was ordered to proceed with the Victory and Superb to
+Portsmouth.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Trafalgar</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Here, at last, he heard news of the combined fleets; Sir Robert Calder
+had fallen in with them near Finisterre and had fought an indecisive
+engagement.</p>
+
+<p>On September 14, 1805, he passed through the crowds at Portsmouth, many
+of whom were in tears, many kneeling and blessing him as he passed. He
+arrived off Cadiz on September 29 with twenty-three ships, and on October 9
+he sent Collingwood his plan of attack--what he called "the Nelson-touch."
+These tactics consisted in cutting through the line of the enemy in three
+places.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the 19th the enemy came out of the port of Cadiz, and
+all that day and night, and the next day, the British pursued them. At
+daybreak of the 21st, the combined fleets were distinctly seen from the
+Victory, about twelve miles to leeward. Signal was made to bear down on the
+enemy in two lines, and all sail was set, the Victory leading.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson now retired to his cabin and wrote in his diary a prayer
+committing himself and the British cause to Heaven, and then wrote a
+memorial setting forth Lady Hamilton's services to Britain, and leaving her
+and her daughter Horatia as a legacy to his country.</p>
+
+<p>Villeneuve, commanding the enemy, was a skilful seaman, and his plan of
+defence was as original as the plan of attack. He formed the fleet in a
+double line, every alternate ship being a cable's length to windward of her
+second ahead and astern. Nelson, certain of triumph, issued his last
+signal: "England expects every man to do his duty," which was received
+throughout the fleet with acclamations.</p>
+
+<p>The English lines, led by Nelson and by Collingwood, swept down upon the
+hostile fleet, the Victory steering for the bow of the Santissima Trinidad.
+At four minutes after twelve she opened fire, and almost immediately ran
+against the Redoubtable. Four ships, two British and two French, formed as
+compact a tier as if they had been moored together, their heads all lying
+the same way.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter past one, a ball fired from the mizzen-top of the
+Redoubtable struck Nelson on the left shoulder, and he fell on his face.
+"They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said; "my backbone is shot
+through." He was carried below, laid on a pallet in the midshipmen's berth,
+and insisted that the surgeon should leave him--"for you can do nothing for
+me." He was in great pain, and expressed much anxiety for the event of the
+action, until Captain Hardy was able to tell him that fifteen of the enemy
+had been taken. Repeating that he left Lady Hamilton and Horatia as a
+legacy to his country, and exclaiming, "Thank God, I have done my duty!"
+Nelson expired.</p>
+
+<p>He cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MADAME_DE_STAAL"></a>MADAME DE STAAL</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Memoirs3"></a>Memoirs</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Marguerite Jeanne de Launay, Baronne de Staal, was born in
+Paris on May 30, 1684. Her father was a painter of the name of Cordier who
+was in England when his daughter was born; and the name by which she was
+known, de Launay, was that of her mother's family. Her story is told by
+herself, with admirable sincerity, in these Memoirs, which follow her life
+until the year 1735, when, at the age of fifty-one, she married Baron de
+Staal, a widower and an officer in the Guard. Her death took place in Paris
+on June 16, 1750. Her Memoirs, first published in 1755, are among the most
+interesting records of that period, and though their historical accuracy
+has been doubted, her portraits of persons are vivid and convincing. Her
+style has been highly commended by Sainte-Beuve and other French literary
+critics. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>A Convent Child</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>If I write the record of my life, it is not because it deserves
+attention, but in order to amuse myself by my recollections. My story is
+just the opposite of the ordinary romance, wherein a girl brought up as a
+peasant becomes an illustrious princess; for I was treated in childhood as
+a person of distinction, and had to find out later that I was a nobody and
+owned nothing in the world. And so, not having been trained from the first
+to ill fortune, my spirit has always rebelled against the servitude in
+which I have had to live.</p>
+
+<p>My father, for some reason that I never knew, had to leave France and
+live in England; and my mother, alone in Paris and without resources, took
+me with her as an infant to find a refuge in the abbey of Saint-Sauveur
+d'Evreux in Normandy, where Madame de La Rochefoucauld, the abbess,
+received us free of charge.</p>
+
+<p>There was at that time a lengthy disagreement between King Louis XIV.
+and the Pope with regard to the nomination of abbesses, in consequence of
+which two ladies Mesdames de Grieu, having been disappointed of an expected
+establishment, retired to Saint-Sauveur, where they formed a great
+friendship with my mother, and became devoted to her two-year-old child. I
+was naturally very popular in the convent, and having a bright disposition
+I was educated with the utmost care.</p>
+
+<p>Chiefly with a view to giving me greater advantage, the elder Madame de
+Grieu sought and at length obtained the Priory of Saint-Louis at Rouen, and
+took me thither with the consent of my mother. Saint-Louis was like a
+little kingdom, where I reigned as a sovereign; the abbess and her sister
+had no thought but to satisfy my every fancy, and the whole convent was
+forced to pay court to me. All that was done for me cost me so little that
+it seemed a matter of course that I should be flattered and served, and at
+an early age I had contracted all the defects which I have since had to
+allow for in the great.</p>
+
+<p>This extreme indulgence would have turned my defects into vices, if
+devotion had not ruled my passions from the first. Religion was the one
+great object before my eyes; I had been well instructed in it; I read
+continually the devotional books in the convent library, and passed much of
+my time in prayer and meditation. Yet my early desire to become a nun
+passed gradually away, until I thought of it no more.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle de Silly, an amiable and cultivated young lady whose
+actions were ruled by principles rather than by feelings, came to live at
+Saint-Louis, and I was soon attached to her with all the ardour of a girl's
+affection; her tastes became mine, and I used to read all day beside her.
+She was then studying the philosophy of Descartes, and I became absorbed in
+questions of that kind to the neglect of everything else, until, fearing
+lest they might disturb my faith, I resolutely banished them from my
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>I was about fourteen years old when the convent of Saint-Louis fell into
+great poverty owing to a famine which was desolating France, and the
+disaffection of the nuns was centred on me as a chief cause of unnecessary
+expense. Their complaints came to the archbishop of Rouen, and abbess had
+difficulty in keeping me with her. My helpless condition began to force
+itself on my attention; and I realised that if the abbess were to die I was
+alone and without support in the world.</p>
+
+<p>An unexpected event now drew me closer to Mademoiselle de Silly. Her
+mother, having come to Rouen, took her home to Silly, and invited me to
+accompany her. I accepted joyfully, and spent several months in the
+solitary and melancholy old castle. The Marquis was extremely economical,
+the Marquise very devout, and we saw few people. One visitor from the
+neighborhood, however, attracted me strongly; and as he came often and
+stayed long, my friend and I agreed that one of us had pleased him. When he
+had declared his affection, and it was not for me, I learned what jealousy
+is--a kind of horror like that of falling down through a fathomless
+abyss.</p>
+
+<p>During the next visit to Silly in the following year the son of the
+house arrived, and at first kept very much to himself and to his books. But
+having heard his sister and myself complaining of these unsociable ways, he
+frankly confessed his fault and amended it, and from that day we spent
+every hour together. His mind and his manner was infinitely agreeable; and
+in my successive visits to Silly we formed a delightful friendship which
+was never interrupted by more ardent feelings.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Thrown on the World</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>At length my dear abbess fell so dangerously ill that I saw I was about
+to lose her; and I became desolately aware that I owed her all, and that
+her death would not only leave me absolutely helpless, but would also
+deprive me of my best friend. I never knew anyone else so abundant in
+goodness, with so much sweetness, attention for others and forgetfulness of
+self, nor with such exact regard for every duty. Her death came soon, and
+it was evident that neither her sister nor I could remain at the convent.
+Several generous helpers came forward with offers of support, but in my
+uncertain position I judged it better to refuse them all. I was resolved to
+suffer any misery and servitude rather than sacrifice my independence, and
+only accepted a small loan sufficient to take me to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>I was soon in the great city, looking out for a situation as children's
+governess; fortunately, I had a taste for that occupation, and imagined
+that taste for it meant talent. I had a sister, in the household of the
+Duchess de La Fert&eacute;, and found her very amiable and helpful. With
+her assistance I went to board at a cheap rate in the convent of the
+Presentation, and she succeeded in inspiring her mistress with so elevated
+an idea of my attainments that the Duchess soon afterwards sent for me.
+After showing me off as a prodigy of learning to all her friends, the
+Duchess de La Fert&eacute;, a voluble and enthusiastic woman, conceived a
+violent affection for me, and projected innumerable schemes for my
+advancement, which ended in my being received into her own household as her
+secretary.</p>
+
+<p>I should have been delighted with this position if I had not remembered
+how my sister, who had gone there as her favourite, had fallen to the
+situation of chambermaid, and if I had not realised that my mistress's
+affection would probably be as short-lived as it was intemperate. It proved
+to be so indeed; it was succeeded by a hatred as violent as her attachment
+had been; and after subjecting me to every indignity she finally disposed
+of me by placing me in the household of the Duchess of Maine, at
+Sceaux.</p>
+
+<p>Here I inhabited a tiny room, without windows or fireplace, and so low
+that it was impossible to stand upright. I was given sewing to do, but my
+first piece of work proved my incapacity, and my extremely short-sight made
+me equally helpless in waiting on the Duchess. I was astonished at the
+patience with which she bore my awkwardness, but my fellow-servants, with
+whom I was most unpopular, were less merciful. The hard and thankless
+existence, so different from anything which I had been accustomed, threw me
+into a profound depression, until I began to cherish the idea of taking
+leave of life.</p>
+
+<p>But gradually my situation altered for the better. Her Serene Highness
+the Duchess began to take notice of me, and became accustomed to speak to
+me and to take interest and pleasure in my replies. She had now succeeded
+in raising her family to rank equal to her own, and by a famous edict her
+children and their descendants had been brought within the succession to
+the crown. Her delight in amusements and in pageants was now at its
+highest, and it happened that the Abb&eacute; de Vaubrun, designing a
+spectacular piece in honor of Night, confided to me the task of writing and
+delivering an epilogue in that character. My stage-fright spoiled my
+elocution, but from that day I was entrusted with the organisation of these
+magnificent entertainments, and the last of them was entirely designed and
+written by myself. By this means I came to take a quite different place in
+the household.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Political Intrigues</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>King Louis XIV. had been failing for some time, though every one
+pretended not to notice it; and the Duchess of Maine, ever anxious for the
+greatness of her family, was very eager to know his testamentary
+intentions. Enough was ascertained, by the help of Madame de Maintenon, to
+show that the King's dispositions were in favour of the Duke of Orleans,
+and the mistake was made of confiding to the Duke his future advantage. As
+the illness progressed, a council of regency was formed with the Duke of
+Orleans at its head, and when the King died the Duke was appointed Regent
+by Parliament, and the Duke of Maine was entrusted with the education of
+the young King.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Maine, who had come up to Paris for this anxious time,
+suffered a good deal from insomnia, and now called me in to read to her
+every night. But there was more conversation than reading, and she poured
+out to me in entire confidence all her secrets, projects, complaints and
+regrets. This touching confidence made me very deeply attached to her; and
+when she and her husband removed to the Tuilleries to superintend the
+King's education, they took me with them.</p>
+
+<p>In defence of the interests of her family in the succession to the
+Crown, which were threatened by the Duke of Orleans, Cardinal Polignac and
+others undertook the preparation of a very learned memoir, based on a great
+mass of historical and legal precedents; the Duchess threw herself into the
+most laborious researches to assist them, and I was set to study ancient
+volumes and to correspond with all kinds of authorities. The great work was
+finished at last; it was a fine, well-written production; but it did not
+repay the trouble it had cost. The question was decided against the family
+of Maine, the edict conferring on them the succession to the Crown was
+revoked, and the rank of princes of the blood was taken from them.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to describe the sorrow of my mistress at this sudden
+overthrow of the fortunes of her family. She was wholly unable to acquiesce
+in it, and her illtreatment in France suggested to her the idea of seeking
+help from the King of Spain. The Baron de Walef, who was going to that
+court, undertook to represent her case there, and the Duchess of Maine held
+secret interviews with the Spanish ambassador in Paris. Several other
+persons became implicated in these intrigues; the Duchess became more
+deeply compromised than she had at first intended; and her interests became
+interwoven with other chimerical projects, including the restoration of the
+Pretender in England. These movements became known to the Duke of Orleans,
+and my mistress's intrigues were soon brought to an end.</p>
+
+<p>On December 9, 1718, we were informed that the house of the Spanish
+Ambassador was surrounded by troops, and a day or two later we learned that
+our arrest, on the charge of inciting to revolution, might be expected at
+any moment. On the 29th, we were awakened early in the morning to find the
+house full of soldiers; the Duchess was carried off to imprisonment at
+Dijon, and the Duke of Maine was immured in the citadel of Dourlans in
+Picardy.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>In the Bastille</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I was taken in a carriage with three musketeers, to a little bridge
+before a wall, and delivered to the governor of the Bastille, who sent me
+to a large empty room, the walls of which were covered with charcoal
+drawings executed by former prisoners. A little chair was brought me, a
+bundle of wood was lighted on the hearth, one small candle was fixed to the
+wall, and I heard half a dozen locks and bolts closing the door that shut
+me off from mankind. The first hour, which I spent gazing at my crackling
+fire, was the most desolate of all my imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>Then the governor appeared, with my attendant Mademoiselle Rondel; I was
+rejoiced to find that she was to relieve my solitude, and to hear from her
+that she had managed to hide all my papers after my capture. Our room was
+presently furnished with beds, table and chairs; on the following day we
+were given books and a pack of cards; our meals were tolerable, and except
+for our captivity we were comfortable enough.</p>
+
+<p>The two judges charged with the interrogation of the prisoners in our
+affair, of whom there seemed to be a considerable number, came daily, and
+held their interviews in a room immediately below ours; so that Rondel
+could see through the window one of our acquaintances after another being
+brought across the court to be examined. My time did not come for many
+days, and I spent long hours racking my brain for the answers which I ought
+to give. The fear of the questions by torture began to force itself on my
+mind; and though I thought I could face pain or even death I was doubtful
+whether I should be able to keep silence under that dreadful ordeal.</p>
+
+<p>After these weeks of suspense I was called before the judges, and was
+asked whether the Duchess of Maine had not great confidence in me and
+whether I had not been aware of her treasonable correspondence and
+intrigues. The line I took was to represent my services to my mistress as
+having been of a very humble nature; I insisted that I knew nothing of her
+private affairs, and had seen and heard nothing that could at all
+compromise her loyalty to the Government. This appeared to satisfy them for
+the present, and after enquiring whether I was well treated in prison they
+dismissed me.</p>
+
+<p>I did not suffer from ennui in the Bastille; I devised for myself many
+little occupations; and soon a surreptitious correspondence with the
+Chevalier de Menil, who had been imprisoned for participation in our
+affair, gave interest to the days. We were even permitted occasional
+interviews by favour of one of the subordinate officials, and before we
+regained our liberty I had promised to be his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The Regent at last became anxious to bring to an end the whole episode
+of the Duchess of Maine's intrigue; but he wished first to secure a full
+admission of guilt from the principal actors in it. The Duchess was
+promised her complete liberty if she would send him a frank confession in
+writing, which should be seen by no one but himself. Finding herself in a
+position to secure the freedom of all those whom she had imperilled, she
+sent the Duke of Orleans the required paper, in which she disclosed
+everything in detail and with entire sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>I was examined again without making any disclosure, but after receiving
+the written command of the Duchess I wrote out a declaration of all that I
+knew and was a few days later set at liberty, after two years of captivity.
+I went down at once to Sceaux, where I was affectionately received by my
+mistress.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to Paris two days later, to fetch my things from the Bastille,
+I called at the Convent of the Presentation, and found in the parlour the
+Chevalier de Menil. I was astonished at his manner, no less than by what he
+said; it was evidently that his only desire was to break his engagement
+with me. I realised that the man was without honour or kindness, and yet it
+was difficult to detach my affections from him.</p>
+
+<p>It was about a year later that M. Dacier was introduced to me, after the
+death of his wife, by the Duchess de La Fert&eacute;, and an ardent desire
+for liberty from my condition of servitude led me to accept his proposal of
+marriage, subject only to be the permission of my Duchess. This she was
+reluctant to give, and the matter was still under discussion when we heard
+of M. Dacier's sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of my life, though it has been a long one, contains little of
+interest. I found myself without any object to live for, and a strange
+deadness of feeling came over me, harder to bear than illness or death. I
+had a distaste for existence and a horror of the world, and desired nothing
+more than to hide myself away. A little pension had been secured for me; my
+mistress had fallen dangerously ill; I wished to leave Sceaux in order to
+run away from a new attachment which was gaining power over me; and the
+thought of entering a Carmelite house became a settled project. But I was
+refused even this last refuge; the prioress deciding that I had no vocation
+for the religious life.</p>
+
+<p>I spent several years without coming to any harmony either with myself
+or with fortune. Several offers of marriage were made to me, but I could
+not bring myself to accept any of them, until a sudden fancy for the sweet
+simplicities of country life led me to agree to a marriage with M. de
+Staal.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after my marriage I heard of the death of the Duchess of
+Maine. I never knew a more perfectly reasonable woman. She was all feeling;
+even her thoughts were really sentiments; she was lively without moodiness,
+impassioned without violence, always animated; sweet and sensible. There
+was a vivid warmth about her, that made her a perfectly gracious
+friend.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="EARL_STANHOPE"></a>EARL STANHOPE</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_William_Pitt"></a>Life of William Pitt</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> The biographer of Pitt was a grandson of the Lord Mahon,
+afterwards Earl of Stanhope, who married, in 1774, the great statesman's
+eldest sister. Philip Henry Stanhope was born at Walmer on January 30,
+1805, and entered the House of Commons as Lord Mahon in 1831. He took a
+prominent part in the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, and the
+Historical Manuscripts Commission, and the promotion of successful
+archaeological investigations on the site of Troy. His literary labours
+were considerable and important. Chief among them were the "History of
+England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," the "History
+of Queen Anne's Reign," and the "Life of the Right Honourable William
+Pitt." The last named, published in 1861-2, is one of the most
+authoritative of political biographies, compiled with a gravity and care
+characteristic of its author, and of abiding value as a standard book of
+reference for one of the greatest personalities and one of the most
+stirring periods of English history. Earl Stanhope died on December 24,
+1875. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Boy Statesman</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>William Pitt, the elder, afterwards Earl of Chatham, married in 1754
+Lady Hester Grenville. William Pitt, their second son, was born on May 28,
+1759, at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent.</p>
+
+<p>In his boyhood, from the earliest years, William Pitt evinced to all
+around him many tokens of intellectual promise and ambition; but his
+parents were frequently distressed by his delicate health. It was no doubt
+on this account that he was not sent to any public or private school. Lord
+Chatham was extremely careful of the education of his family; and, without
+any disparagement to young William's tutor, it was certainly from his
+father that he profited most.</p>
+
+<p>William was at fourteen so forward in his studies that he was sent to
+Cambridge, commencing his residence at Pembroke Hall in October 1773. His
+health at this period gave cause for great alarm. A serious illness at
+Cambridge, however, proved a turning-point; for long afterwards he enjoyed
+fairly good health. Early hours, daily exercise on horseback, and liberal
+potations of port wine--his elixir of strength at this time, although it
+helped in later years to undermine his constitution--made him far stronger
+after his illness than before it.</p>
+
+<p>In 1778, after the death of his father, he was entered at Lincoln's Inn,
+and was called to the Bar in 1780. But he had little opportunity of
+practising as a barrister, for his parliamentary ambitions were soon
+fulfilled. In the autumn of 1780 he was an unsuccessful candidate for
+Cambridge University; but through the influence of Sir James Lowther he was
+returned in the same year for Appleby, and took his seat in the Commons on
+January 23, 1781.</p>
+
+<p>Lord North was still at the head of affairs, and the Opposition
+consisted of two parties: the aristocratic Whigs, whose leader was the
+Marquis of Rockingham, but whose true guiding spirit was Charles James Fox;
+and a smaller band of the old adherents of Lord Chatham, under Lord
+Shelburne. To this party Pitt, as a matter of course, attached himself. His
+first speech was made on February 26, in support of Burke's bill for
+economical reform. He completely fulfilled the high expectations that had
+been formed of the son of so illustrious a father. Not only did he please,
+it may be said that he astonished the House.</p>
+
+<p>Two speeches later in the session confirmed the distinction of the young
+orator. In 1782, after a long series of Opposition attacks, Lord North
+resigned; but in the new arrangements Pitt was not included. He had
+determined that he would serve his sovereign as a cabinet minister, or not
+at all. For a time he devoted his efforts, without success, to the reform
+of the representation of the House of Commons. But in July 1782 Lord
+Rockingham died; there was a cabinet split, due to a quarrel between Fox
+and Shelburne; the latter became First Lord of the Treasury, and Pitt, at
+the age of twenty-three, was offered and accepted the post of Chancellor of
+the Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>The newly-formed ministry was soon exposed to hot attacks by the
+coalition of the parties of Fox and North, and Pitt, in attacking this
+"baneful alliance," made one of the greatest speeches of his career. But
+the ministry was defeated; Lord Shelburne resigned; and the king, advised
+by Shelburne, invited Pitt to become Prime Minister. After anxious
+consideration he refused.</p>
+
+<p>The Fox and North coalition now assumed office. This union of extremes
+was unpopular in the country, although powerful in parliamentary strength.
+Pitt tried once more to pass a measure of parliamentary reform; and during
+the recess he paid a visit to France--the one foreign journey of his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>When parliament resumed its sittings, in the autumn of 1783, Fox's India
+Bill was passed by the Commons, but rejected by the Lords. The king, who
+was vehemently opposed to the bill, demanded the resignation of Fox and
+North, and on December 19 invited Pitt, now aged twenty-four, to become
+Prime Minister. This time the invitation was not refused.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt had great difficulty in forming a cabinet, and was the only cabinet
+minister in the Commons. His main support in that house was Henry Dundas,
+treasurer of the navy--his life-long friend. On facing parliament at the
+opening of 1784, Pitt's purpose was to delay a dissolution until the
+coalition's unpopularity in the country had reached its height, and with
+this end he patiently endured defeat after defeat. In March he deemed that
+the right moment had come, and his judgement was rewarded at the General
+Election by a triumphant majority.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the
+Treasury, and during the years of peace that followed, his successes were
+largely financial. He established a series of financial reforms that not
+only increased the favour in which his ministry was held, but undoubtedly
+enabled the country to bear the terrible strain that was afterwards to be
+placed upon it. In his attempt to adjust commercial relations with Ireland
+he was less successful; he was obliged, besides, to abandon his schemes of
+parliamentary reform, and his exertions, in concert with his friend
+Wilberforce, to destroy the slave traffic ended in disappointment--even
+although in this he had the hearty support of his rival, Fox.</p>
+
+<p>Young as he was, and victorious as he had become, he was never tempted
+to presume upon his genius, or relax in his application. He allowed himself
+but little holiday. He spent a good deal of such time as he could spare at
+Holwood, a property he had bought near Bromley; and occasional visits to
+Brighton, and to his mother's residence at Burton Pynsent, in
+Somersetshire, made up the greater part of his travels.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Regency Problem</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Not only had Pitt's administration rehabilitated English finances; it
+had gained for England a strong measure of European support. In 1788 there
+was concluded what was virtually a triple defensive alliance with Prussia
+and Holland; and with France herself, should she be willing to remain at
+peace, there was a treaty of commerce to engage her in more friendly
+relations.</p>
+
+<p>But towards the end of the year Pitt was confronted with what seemed a
+certainty of loss of office. King George III., after a long period of ill
+health, was found to be definitely suffering from mental alienation. A
+regency became necessary, and the person clearly marked out for the office
+was the Prince of Wales. But the prince was the political associate of Fox,
+and there was no doubt that his first step on accession to power would be
+the dismissal of Pitt.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt saw the prospect before him, and did not attempt to shirk it. But
+he did propose certain restrictions on the regency in order that the king,
+should he recover his reason, might without difficulty resume his
+power.</p>
+
+<p>When parliament assembled in December, Fox declared boldly that the
+prince had as much right to assume sovereignty during the king's incapacity
+as he would have in the event of the king's death. Pitt, exulting in his
+rival's indiscreet departure from Whig principles, retorted that the
+assertion of such a right, independent of the decision of the two houses,
+was little less than treason to the constitution. Fox's attitude was
+unpopular, and Pitt's resolutions, and the Regency Bill that followed, were
+carried through the Commons.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of February, the third reading of the Regency Bill was
+impending in the Lords. Pitt had proposed that the difficulty about
+procuring the royal assent to the measure should be overcome by empowering
+the chancellor by a joint vote of both houses to put the Great Seal to a
+commission for giving the assent. But this expedient was unnecessary. By
+February 22 the king was completely recovered. The Regency Bill fell to the
+ground, and all the hopes which the Opposition had reared upon it.</p>
+
+<p>The day of thanksgiving for the king's recovery is regarded by Lord
+Macaulay as the zenith in Pitt's political life. "To such a height of power
+and glory," he says, "had this extraordinary man risen at twenty-nine years
+of age. And now," he adds, perhaps less justly, "the tide was on the
+turn."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--The Struggle with France</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Pitt was able to declare, in the session that preceded the dissolution
+of 1790, that "we are adding daily to our strength, wealth, and
+prosperity," and, as a result of the elections, his parliamentary majority
+was more than confirmed.</p>
+
+<p>But symptoms of the coming stress were already manifest. The minister
+was anxiously watching the course of the revolution in France; and, while
+far from sharing the enthusiasm of Fox for the new principles, he did not
+endorse the fierce hostility of Burke.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot regard with envious eyes," he said, "any approximation in
+neighbouring states to those sentiments which are the characteristics of
+every British subject."</p>
+
+<p>But the development of events soon made it clear that the new France had
+become a danger to the peace of Europe. As long as possible Pitt avoided
+war, which was ultimately forced upon him in 1793 by France's attack upon
+Holland, to which we were bound by treaty obligations.</p>
+
+<p>From that time, until the peace in 1802, English naval enterprises were
+generally successful, and English military enterprises generally failed.
+Pitt has often been blamed for the faults of his country's generals; but it
+is assuredly true that he did all that a civilian could do to secure
+success in the field.</p>
+
+<p>The heavy cost of the war, increased as it was by the subsidies paid to
+Austria, and afterwards to Russia, compelled an entire departure from
+Pitt's old financial methods. Each year brought an increase of taxation and
+an increase of debt; and at the beginning of 1797 the directors of the Bank
+of England, in dire perplexity, told Pitt that the state, for all his
+expedients, was threatened with insolvency. Pitt did not falter. An order
+in council was issued, suspending cash payments at the bank. Thus was
+established a gigantic system of paper credit, giving us power to cope with
+no less gigantic foes. Cash payments were not resumed until 1819.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt had not only to cope with enemies without, but with sedition
+within. Societies formed for propagating the principles of the revolution
+advocated the subversion of the constitution under the pretence of
+parliamentary reform; the populace, angered by the privations caused by the
+clearness of food, listened readily to the agitators; riots were frequent,
+but the most mischievous form taken by sedition was that of armed
+conspiracy. Against these evils Pitt contended by royal proclamations,
+prosecutions, and, above all, by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act.
+In his firm suppression of disorder Pitt was loyally supported by large
+majorities in both houses, and the country generally was on his side. But
+his domestic policy, his foreign policy, and his finance were unsparingly
+attacked by Fox and a small band of devoted followers--followers who did
+not abate in their resolution when their leader, weary of the unequal
+conflict, retired for a time from public life.</p>
+
+<p>In the busy and anxious year 1796, there was a report that Pitt was on
+the point of marriage. During his short intervals of leisure at Holwood, he
+often visited his neighbour, Lord Auckland, at Beckenham, and was much
+attracted by Lord Auckland's eldest daughter, the Hon. Eleanor Eden. This
+strong attachment did not proceed to a proposal and a marriage. Pitt wrote
+to Lord Auckland avowing his affection, but explaining that in the
+circumstances of pecuniary difficulty in which he was involved, he would
+not presume to make the lady an offer. Lord Auckland acknowledged the
+explanation as adequate, and thus honourably ended the only "love-passage"
+in the life of Pitt.</p>
+
+<p>Considering that Pitt's income as minister was &pound;6,000 a year, and
+that he derived an additional &pound;3,000 a year from the Lord Wardenship
+of the Cinque Ports, his pecuniary troubles may seem hard to explain. He
+had no family, and no expensive tastes. But he was so intent upon the
+national exchequer that he neglected his private accounts, with the
+consequence that he was plundered by his domestics. His expenses were not
+checked, and his debts continued to grow.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Resignation</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the year 1800 Pitt was able to achieve a momentous change in the
+affairs of Ireland. The chronic discontent of that country, largely due to
+the resentment of the Catholics at their exclusion from the rights of
+citizenship, had been fanned by the importation of revolutionary ideas; and
+there were hopes, once or twice on the point of realisation, of a French
+invasion of the island. In 1798 a rebellion broke out, but was suppressed
+with promptness, and, it must be added, in many instances with cruelty. But
+to Pitt the suppression of the insurrection was only the first part of his
+duty. He thought that to revert to the old system would be a most shallow
+policy. A new, and comprehensive, and healing method must be tried--an Act
+of Union, which should raise the minds of Irishmen from local to imperial
+aims--which should blend the two legislatures, and, if possible, also the
+two nations, in one.</p>
+
+<p>In 1800 the project was fulfilled--not without fierce resistance in the
+Irish Parliament, and not without a certain distribution of favours to
+those for whose support the government was anxious; although the
+allegations made on this subject seem to be exaggerated. Having
+accomplished the union, Pitt laid plans for a further reform which led,
+early in the following year, to his retirement from office.</p>
+
+<p>He proposed the emancipation of the Catholics by the substitution of a
+political for the religious test of fitness for citizenship. Although the
+Anglican bishops and clergy and many laymen were strongly opposed to
+Catholic emancipation, Pitt would probably have been able to carry his
+scheme had it not been for royal antagonism. The king believed, erroneously
+but passionately, that by consenting to such a measure he would violate his
+coronation oath.</p>
+
+<p>His majesty expressed his opinions on the subject so publicly and so
+vehemently that on January 31, 1801, Pitt felt compelled to ask leave to
+resign unless he were allowed to pursue his course on the Catholic
+question. The king required the abandonment of the scheme, and on February
+3 Pitt resigned office. Thus abruptly ended his renowned administration of
+more than seventeen years.</p>
+
+<p>The new Prime Minister was Mr. Addington, formerly Speaker of the
+Commons. Several of Pitt's colleagues remained in the ministry, although
+others withdrew from it; and Pitt himself gave general support to the
+government--support which was offered with especial warmth, and possessed
+especial value, during the hotly criticised peace negotiations with the
+First Consul Bonaparte in 1801 and 1802. Although Pitt had been obliged
+when in office to refuse several inadequate offers of peace, he had always
+been prepared to end the war under honourable conditions. The distinction
+of ending the war did not fall to his share; but his services were not
+forgotten. On May 7, 1802, the House of Commons carried by overwhelming
+numbers a motion, "That the Right Hon. William Pitt has rendered great and
+important services to his country, and especially deserves the gratitude of
+this house." And on May 28, 1802, Pitt's birthday, more than 800 persons
+assembled at a memorable banquet in honour of "the pilot that weathered the
+storm."</p>
+
+<p>Until the renewal of war in 1803 Pitt took little-part in public
+affairs. Most of his time was spent at Walmer Castle, with occasional
+visits to Bath for the sake of his health, which had been uncertain since
+an attack of serious illness in 1797. He remained in constant communication
+with his political friends, and sometimes during the earlier part of his
+retirement aided the ministry with his advice. But with the progress of
+time he found himself less and less able to support Addington and his
+colleagues.</p>
+
+<p>In May 1803 the uneasy peace came to an end. The constant aggressions of
+Bonaparte and his dominating tone made friendly relations impossible. There
+was a widespread feeling in the country that now that the storm had
+recommenced the old pilot should be called to the helm. Pitt returned to
+the Commons after the declaration of war, and forcibly criticised some of
+the financial and defensive measures of the ministry.</p>
+
+<p>In 1804 the ministry showed itself wholly unequal to the strain upon it;
+and the situation was complicated by a temporary return of the king's
+malady. Pitt not only renewed his opposition to Addington, but made it
+plain that he was prepared to take part in a strong and comprehensive
+administration, including even Fox, that should be formed to rescue the
+crown and country from the dangers to which they were exposed under the
+Addington ministry.</p>
+
+<p>A series of combined attacks was directed against the government during
+the month of April. Although Addington was not defeated in the Commons, he
+saw his majority steadily diminish; and on April 26 he resolved to resign.
+On the 30th, the Lord Chancellor intimated to Pitt his majesty's desire to
+receive the plan of a new administration.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--The Last Ministry</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The king's opposition made the inclusion of Fox in the new ministry
+impossible. His hostility to Fox, however, was not simply on political
+grounds; he believed him to be responsible for the excesses of the Prince
+of Wales. Pitt was in consequence obliged to be content with a restricted
+choice of ministers, and had to face a powerful opposition in parliament.
+Addington was persuaded to join the ministry early in 1805.</p>
+
+<p>During the summer of 1804 Bonaparte and his host lay menacingly at
+Boulogne, awaiting that command of the channel "for six hours," which the
+great warrior recognised as essential to his plans. Meanwhile, Pitt
+laboured to form another coalition, and, at the cost of heavy subsidies,
+was successful. Russia, Austria, and Sweden joined in the league against
+Napoleon; Prussia still hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1805 Napoleon was again at Boulogne, but his plan of
+invasion was wrecked by the failure of the French fleet to reach the
+Channel. When Napoleon learned that the fleet had gone south, and that the
+attack upon England had been thwarted, he straightway marched his army to
+mid-Europe. Pitt had staked everything on the new coalition, and the
+surrender of the Austrians at Ulm was news of the utmost bitterness to him.
+But a splendid corrective came soon afterwards in the crowning naval
+victory of Trafalgar. Although the nation's feelings were divided between
+joy at the triumph and grief at the death of the illustrious victor, Pitt's
+popularity, which had been somewhat uncertain, was enormously enhanced by
+the event. The Lord Mayor proposed his health as "the saviour of
+Europe."</p>
+
+<p>Pitt's reply was nearly as follows: "I return you many thanks for the
+honour you have done me, but Europe is not to be saved by any single man.
+England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, I trust, save Europe
+by her example." With only these two sentences the minister sat down. They
+were the last words that Pitt ever spoke in public.</p>
+
+<p>He was suffering much at this time from gout, and his general health was
+undermined by anxiety. In December he journeyed to Bath, and at Bath there
+reached him the news of the destruction of his coalition at Austerlitz. The
+battle was the cause of his death. He was struck down by a severe internal
+malady and he was in a state of extreme debility when on January 11, 1806,
+he returned home to the house he had taken on Putney Heath. It is said that
+as he passed along to his bedroom, he observed a map of Europe hanging on
+the wall, upon which he turned to his niece and mournfully said: "Roll up
+that map. It will not be wanted these ten years."</p>
+
+<p>For a few days the doctors had hopes that he might recover, but on the
+22nd it became evident that he could not live for twenty-four hours. Early
+in the morning of the 23rd he died.</p>
+
+<p>"At about half-past two," wrote the Hon. James Hamilton Stanhope, who
+was at his bedside, "Mr. Pitt ceased moaning, and did not make the
+slightest sound for some time. Shortly afterwards, in a tone I never shall
+forget, he exclaimed: 'Oh, my country! How I love my country!' From that
+time he never spoke or moved, and at half-past four expired without a groan
+or struggle. His strength being quite exhausted, his life departed like a
+candle burning out."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="ARTHUR_PENRHYN_STANLEY"></a>ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Life_of_Thomas_Arnold_DD"></a>The Life of Thomas Arnold,
+D.D.</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born at Alderley Rectory,
+Cheshire, on December 13, 1815. He was educated at Rugby under Arnold, and
+at Oxford, where Tait, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, was his tutor.
+Entering holy orders, he was appointed select preacher in 1845; became
+Canon of Canterbury in 1851; and in 1863 succeeded Trench as Dean of
+Westminster. He died on July 18, 1881, and by Queen Victoria's commands his
+remains were laid beside those of his wife, Lady Augusta Bruce, in Henry
+VII.'s Chapel, Westminster. Of all his works, perhaps his most important
+contribution to English literature is the "Life of Arnold," which was
+published two years after the death of the famous master of Rugby. To the
+task of writing the book Stanley devoted all his energies, steering clear,
+however, of any attempt to form an opinion of his own upon Arnold's life
+and character, while achieving a result that not only assured his own
+position at Oxford, but brought him well into the front rank of
+contemporary writers. The religious animosity at Oxford was uncongenial to
+Stanley, and it was only the prospect of Dr. Arnold occupying the Chair of
+Modern History that reconciled him to his surroundings. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Youth and Early Manhood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Thomas Arnold, seventh child and youngest son of William and Martha
+Arnold, was born June 13, 1795, at East Cowes, Isle of Wight, where his
+father was collector of customs. His early education was undertaken by a
+sister; and in 1803 he was sent to Warminister School, in Wiltshire. In
+1807 he went to Winchester, where, having entered as a commoner and
+afterwards become a scholar of the college, he remained till 1811. In after
+life he always cherished a strong Wykehamist feeling, and, during his
+headmastership at Rugby, often recurred to his knowledge there first
+acquired, of the peculiar constitution of a public school.</p>
+
+<p>He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring disposition; but his
+manner as a child, and till his entrance at Oxford, was marked by a
+stiffness and formality, the very reverse of the joyousness and simplicity
+of his later years. He was unlike those of his own age, with pursuits
+peculiar to himself; and the tone and style of his early letters are such
+as might have been produced by living chiefly with his elders, and reading,
+or hearing read, books suited to a more advanced age. Both as boy and young
+man he was remarkable for a difficulty in early rising amounting almost to
+a constitutional infirmity; and though in after life this was overcome by
+habit, he often said that early rising was a daily effort to him.</p>
+
+<p>The beginning of some of his later interests may be traced in his
+earlier amusements and occupations. He never lost the recollection of the
+impression produced upon him by the excitement of naval and military
+affairs, of which he naturally saw and heard much by living at Cowes in the
+time of the Napoleonic war; and with his playmates he would sail rival toy
+fleets or act the battles of the Homeric heroes with improvised spears and
+shields. He was extremely fond of ballad poetry, and his earliest
+compositions all ran in that direction. At Winchester he was noted for his
+forwardness in history and geography; and there also he gave indications of
+that mnemonic faculty which in later years showed itself in minute details,
+extending to the exact state of the weather on particular days, or the
+exact words or passages he had not seen for twenty years. The period of his
+home and school education was too short to exercise much influence on his
+after life, but he always looked back upon it with tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>In 1811 he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; in
+1814 he took a first class in classics; in 1815 he was made a Fellow of
+Oriel; and he gained the Chancellor's prizes for the Latin and English
+essays in 1815 and 1817. During his later time at Oxford he took private
+pupils and read extensively in the libraries. Meanwhile, he had been led
+gradually to fix on his future life course. In December, 1818, he was
+ordained deacon and next year settled at Laleham, where, in August, 1820,
+he married Mary Penrose, daughter of the rector of Fledborough, Notts.</p>
+
+<p>At Laleham he remained for nine years, coaching private pupils for the
+universities. Here were born six of his nine children; the youngest three,
+besides one who died in infancy, were born at Rugby. During this period an
+essential change and growth of Arnold's character became manifest. The warm
+feelings of his youth gave place to the fixed earnestness and devotion
+which henceforth took possession of him. His former indolent habits, his
+morbid restlessness and occasional weariness of duty, indulgence of vague
+schemes without definite purpose, intellectual doubts as to accepted
+religious beliefs--all seem to have vanished for ever.</p>
+
+<p>It was now that the religious aspect of his character came to be
+emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of his
+religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is impossible to
+understand his religious belief except through the knowledge of his life
+and writings on ordinary subjects, it is impossible on the other hand, to
+understand his life and writings without bearing in mind how vivid was his
+realisation of those truths of religion on which he most habitually dwelt.
+It was this which enabled him to undertake labours which, without such a
+power, must have crushed or enfeebled the spiritual growth which in him
+they seemed only to foster. His letters at this time show better than
+anything else how he was, though unconsciously to himself, maturing for the
+arduous duties he afterwards undertook. It was now, too, that he first
+became acquainted with Niebuhr's "History of Rome," which revolutionised
+his views of history, and, later, served as a model for his own "History of
+Rome."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Headmaster of Rugby</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Arnold was not without his visions of ambition and extensive influence
+from the first, but he liked Laleham, and always looked back with fond
+regret to his time there. "I have always thought," he wrote in 1823, "with
+regard to ambition, that I should like to be <i>aut Caesar aut nullus;</i>
+and as it is pretty well settled for me that I shall not be Caesar, I am
+quite content to live in peace as <i>nullus</i>." But the fates had ordered
+it otherwise. Friends had long been urging him to seek a larger sphere of
+usefulness; and when, in August, 1827, the headmastership of Rugby became
+vacant, he applied for the post.</p>
+
+<p>He had himself little hope of success. The testimonials he sent in were
+few, but all spoke strongly of his qualifications. Among them was a letter
+from Dr. Hawkins, the future Provost of Oriel, in which the prediction was
+made that if Arnold were elected he would change the face of education
+throughout the public schools of England. The impression produced upon the
+trustees by this letter and by the other testimonials was such that Arnold
+was immediately appointed. In June, 1828, he received priest's orders; in
+April and November of the same year took his degrees of B.D. and D.D., and
+in August entered on his new office.</p>
+
+<p>The post was in many respects suited to his natural tastes--to his love
+of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him that he declared
+sometimes that he could hardly live without such employment; to the vigour
+and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than the old; to
+the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting things secular
+with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest principles of action
+into regions comparatively uncongenial to their reception. He had not,
+however, accepted it without grave doubts about his fitness. In a private
+letter he says:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p> I confess that I should very much object to undertake a
+charge in which I was not invested with pretty full discretion. According
+to my notions of what large schools are, founded on all I know and all I
+have ever heard of them, expulsion should be practised much oftener than it
+is. Now, I know that trustees, in general, are averse to this plan, because
+it has a tendency to lessen the numbers of the school, and they regard
+quantity more than quality. In fact, my opinions on this point might,
+perhaps, generally be considered as disqualifying me for the situation of
+master of a great school; yet I could not consent to tolerate much that I
+know is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should not like to enter on
+an office which I could not discharge according to my own views of what is
+right. </p></blockquote>
+
+<p>At Rugby, Arnold from the first maintained that in the actual working of
+the school he must be completely independent, and that the remedy of the
+trustees, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but dismissal.
+It was on this condition that he took the post; and any attempt to control
+either the administration of the school or his own private occupations he
+felt bound to resist as a duty not only to himself but the master of every
+foundation school in England. The remonstrances which he encountered,
+particularly from his fixed determination always to get rid of unpromising
+subjects, were vehement and numerous; but he repeatedly declared that on no
+other conditions could he hold his appointment, or justify the existence of
+the public school system in a Christian country.</p>
+
+<p>"My object," he wrote, just before taking up duty, "will be, if
+possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to
+make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they are
+not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development upon
+their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many
+respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in
+what I consider the boyhood of the human race."</p>
+
+<p>This is the keynote of his whole system. As he put it, what he looked
+for in the school was, first, religious and moral principles; second,
+gentlemanly conduct; and third, intellectual ability. Intellectual training
+was never for a moment underrated, but he always thought first of his
+charges as schoolboys who must grow up to be Christian men. His education,
+in short, "was not based upon religion, but was itself <i>religious</i>."
+For cleverness as such, Arnold had no regard. "Mere intellectual
+acuteness," he used to say, "divested as it is, in too many cases, of all
+that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more revolting than the
+most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like the spirit of
+Mephistopheles." Often when this intellectual cleverness was seen in union
+with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its existence
+altogether.</p>
+
+<p>A mere plodding boy was, above all others, encouraged by him. At Laleham
+he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this
+kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you speak
+angrily, sir? Indeed, I am doing the best that I can." Years afterwards he
+used to tell the story to his children, and said, "I never felt so much
+ashamed in my life--that look and that speech I have never forgotten." And
+though it would, of course, happen that clever boys, from a greater
+sympathy with his understanding, would be brought into closer intercourse
+with him, this did not affect his feeling of respect, and even of
+reverence, for those who, without ability, were distinguished for high
+principle and industry. "If there be one thing on earth which is truly
+admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural
+powers where they have been honestly, truly and zealously cultivated."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--As Teacher and Preacher</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Arnold had always been painfully impressed by the evils of the public
+school system, according to which a number of boys are left to form an
+independent society of their own, in which the influence they exert over
+each other is far greater than that exerted by the masters. He writes, in
+1837:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p> Of all the painful things connected with my employment,
+nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy come to school innocent and
+promising, and tracing the corruption of his character from the influence
+of the temptations around him, in the very place which ought to have
+strengthened and improved it. But in most cases those who come with a
+character of positive good are benefited; it is the neutral and indecisive
+characters which are apt to be decided for evil by schools, as they would
+be, in fact, by any other temptation. </p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This very feeling led him to catch with eagerness at every means by
+which the trial might be shortened or alleviated. He believed that the
+change from childhood to manhood might be hastened without prematurely
+exhausting the faculties of body and mind; and it was on this principle
+that he chiefly acted. He desired the boys to cultivate true manliness as
+the only step to something higher. He treated them as gentlemen, and
+appealed and trusted to their common sense and conscience.</p>
+
+<p>Lying to the masters he made a grave offence. He placed implicit
+confidence in a boy's assertion, and then, if a falsehood were discovered,
+punished it severely. In the higher forms any attempt at further proof of
+an assertion was immediately checked. "If you say so, that is quite enough;
+of course, I believe your word"; and there grew up in consequence a general
+feeling that "it was a shame to tell Arnold a lie: he always believed you."
+Few scenes can be recorded more characteristic of him than when, in
+consequence of a disturbance, he had been obliged to send away several
+boys, and when, in the midst of the general spirit of discontent which this
+excited, he stood in his place before the assembled school and said, "It is
+<i>not</i> necessary that this should be a school of three hundred, or one
+hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school
+of Christian gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>Arnold's method of teaching was founded on the principle of awakening
+the intellect of every individual boy. Hence it was his practice to teach
+by questioning. As a general rule, he never gave information, except as a
+kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld it altogether, or checked
+himself in the very act of uttering it, from a sense that those whom he was
+addressing had not sufficient interest or sympathy to receive it. His
+explanations were at short as possible--enough to dispose of the difficulty
+and no more; and his questions were of a kind to call the attention of the
+boys to the real point of every subject and to disclose to them the exact
+boundaries of what they knew or did not know. With regard to the younger
+boys, he said: "It is a great mistake to think that they should
+<i>understand</i> all they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the
+memory should act vigorously, independent of the understanding--whereas a
+man cannot usually recollect a thing unless he understands it."</p>
+
+<p>At Rugby he made it an essential part of the headmaster's office to
+preach a sermon every Sunday in the school chapel. "The veriest stranger,"
+he said, "who ever attends service in this chapel does well to feel
+something more than common interest in the sight of the congregation here
+assembled. But if the sight so interests a mere stranger, what should it be
+to ourselves, both to you and to me?" More than either matter or manner of
+his preaching was the impression of himself. Even the mere readers of his
+sermons will derive from them the history of his whole mind, and of his
+whole management of the school. But to his hearers it was more than this.
+It was the man himself, there more than in any other place, concentrating
+all his various faculties and feelings on one sole object, combating face
+to face the evil which, directly or indirectly, he was elsewhere
+perpetually struggling.</p>
+
+<p>His personal interest in the boys was always strong. "Do you see," he on
+one occasion said to an assistant-master who had recently come, "those two
+boys walking together? I never saw them together before; you should make an
+especial point of observing the company they keep; nothing so tells the
+changes in a boy's character."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Influence of the Great Teacher</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>But the impression which Arnold produced upon the boys was derived not
+so much from any immediate intercourse or conversation with them as from
+the general influence of his whole character, displayed consistently
+whenever he appeared before them. This influence, with its consequent
+effects, was gradually on the increase during the whole of his stay. From
+the earliest period, indeed, the boys were conscious of something unlike
+what they had been taught to imagine of a schoolmaster, and by many a
+lasting regard was contracted for him. In the higher forms, at least, it
+became the fashion, so to speak, to think and talk of him with pride and
+affection. As regards the permanent effects of his whole system, it may be
+said that not so much among his own pupils, or in the scene of his actual
+labours, as in every public school throughout England is to be sought the
+chief and enduring monument of Arnold's headmastership at Rugby.</p>
+
+<p>Of Arnold's general life at Rugby there is no need to say much; for
+although the school did not occupy his whole energies, it is almost solely
+by his school work that he is remembered. He took a not unimportant part in
+the political and theological discussions of his time, and various literary
+enterprises also engaged his attention. In theology he entertained very
+broad views. One great principle he advocated with intense earnestness was
+that a Christian people and a Christian Church should be synonymous. That
+use of the word "Church" which limits it to the clergy, or which implies in
+the clergy any particular sacredness, he entirely repudiated.</p>
+
+<p>He was convinced that the founders of our constitution in Church and
+State did truly consider them to be identical; the Christian nation of
+England to be the Church of England; the head of that nation to be, for
+that very reason, the head of the Church. This view placed him in
+antagonism to the High Church party; but, as a matter of fact, he neither
+belonged, nor felt himself to belong, to any section of the English clergy.
+Politically, he held himself to be a strong Whig; but that he was not, in
+the common sense of the word, a member of any party is shown by the
+readiness with which all parties alike, according to the fashion of the
+time, claimed or renounced him as an associate.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold did not like the flat scenery of Warwickshire He described
+himself as "in it like a plant sunk in the ground in a pot." His holidays
+were always spent away from Rugby, either on the Continent, or, in later
+years, at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a small estate between Rydal and
+Ambleside, which he purchased in 1832. He was just about to leave Rugby for
+Fox How when his life was mournfully and suddenly ended by an attack of
+angina pectoris, on June 12, 1842. Only the year before he had been
+appointed by Lord Melbourne Regius Professor of Modern History at
+Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold's principal works are six volumes of sermons, a three-volume
+edition of Thucydides, the Oxford "Lectures on Modern History," and the
+three-volume "History of Rome," which, by his unfortunate death, was broken
+off at the Second Punic War. To the last-named he looked as the chief
+monument of his historical fame.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="AGNES_STRICKLAND"></a>AGNES STRICKLAND</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Queen_Elizabeth"></a>Life of Queen Elizabeth</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Agnes Strickland, born in London on August 19, 1796, with
+her sister Elizabeth began in 1840 the publication of the immense series of
+historical biographies of which the "Lives of the Queens of England" formed
+the first and most important group. In that group the "Elizabeth" is
+recognised as holding the highest rank. It is an essentially feminine study
+of one of the most remarkable of women; not a history, for historical
+events are treated as of infinitely less importance than picturesque
+personal details and miscellaneous gossip, but presenting altogether an
+admirable picture of the outward seeming of those spacious days, and a
+discriminating and judicious portrait of the maiden queen herself. The
+author's views, however, would not always be endorsed by a masculine
+critic. Agnes Strickland died on July 13, 1874. The literature relating to
+the life and times of Queen Elizabeth would form a library of contemporary
+records. Many volumes of state papers have been published: Camden's "Annals
+of Elizabeth" is the classical account of her. Creighton's "Queen
+Elizabeth" and volumes VII. to XII. of Froude's "History of England" are
+the leading modern works; and no one who wishes to know anything of the
+great queen can afford to neglect Hume's "Courtships of Queen Elizabeth,"
+which will also be found in these pages (see Hume). </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Lady Elizabeth</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Queen Elizabeth first saw the light at Greenwich Palace, where, says
+Heywood, "she was born on the eve of the Virgin's nativity, and died on the
+eve of the Virgin's annunciation." The christening ceremony was gorgeous
+and elaborate, but, with the downfall of her mother, Anne Boleyn, she
+ceased to be treated as a princess. She seems to have owed much to the
+judicious training of Lady Margaret Bryan, in whose charge she was. Later,
+she was associated with Prince Edward, four years her junior; both
+displayed an extraordinary precocity and capacity for learning.</p>
+
+<p>On Henry's death, she resided with his widow, Catharine Parr, who
+married the Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour. That ambitious nobleman, brother
+of the Protector, certainly designed, when Catharine died, to marry
+Elizabeth; an intention which was among the causes of his execution under
+attainder. His relations with her had already been unduly familiar, but
+there was no warrant for the scandalous stories that were repeated; and
+although Elizabeth all her life was naturally disposed to an excessive
+freedom of manners, she now became a pattern of decorum. But she was
+probably more in love with Seymour, as a girl of fifteen, than with anyone
+else in after life; though, on his death, she called him "a man of much wit
+and very little judgement."</p>
+
+<p>Ascham is full of praises of her learning and her wide reading, both in
+Greek and Latin, which is displayed somewhat pedantically in her letters;
+her propriety and simplicity of apparel in these days is in curious
+contrast to the extravagances of her wardrobe in later life.</p>
+
+<p>Mary treated her conspicuously as a sister; she refused, however, to
+abjure her Protestantism. Her position became extremely difficult, as the
+French, the Spaniards, and the Protestant party each sought to involve her
+in plots for their own ends. These culminated in Wyat's rebellion. The
+inevitable suspicions attaching to her caused her to be lodged in the
+Tower; but, in spite of the machinations of the Spanish party and the
+distrust of Mary, the evidence produced failed to warrant her
+condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she was kept in rigorous confinement, her life continuing to be in
+danger for a month after Wyat himself had been executed. She was then
+removed to Richmond, but refused to purchase liberty at the price of
+marriage to a foreign prince, Philibert of Savoy--a scheme intended as a
+cover for Mary's determination to marry Philip, the Prince of Spain.
+Finally, she was transferred to Woodstock, where she was held a close
+prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>Policy now led her to profess acceptance of the Roman religion, but in
+very ambiguous fashion. Probably it was through the intercession of
+Philip--now her brother-in-law, whose policy at this time was to conciliate
+the English people--that she was set at liberty and readmitted to court at
+Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the next year Elizabeth was at Hatfield, under the gentle
+surveillance of Sir Thomas Pope. She continued to be involved in grave
+dangers by perpetual plots, in which she was far too shrewd to let herself
+be implicated; and she guarded herself by a continued profession of
+Romanism to the hour of her accession on her sister's death.</p>
+
+<p>As the hour of Mary's death approached, there was no doubt of
+Elizabeth's succession, though there was alarm as to possible
+complications. On November 17, 1558, the Chancellor announced to Parliament
+that Mary was dead, and Elizabeth queen. She held her first council at
+Hatfield two days later, when William Cecil took his place as her chief
+counsellor; on her entry into London, the position which was to be occupied
+by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, was already
+conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>The coronation, which took place in January, was a magnificent pageant,
+in which Elizabeth openly courted the favour and affection of her subjects;
+and it became at once apparent that the breach with Rome was reopened. The
+supremacy of the crown was reasserted, the all but empty bench of bishops
+was filled up with reformers; and, in answer to the Commons, Elizabeth very
+clearly implied her intention of reigning a virgin queen. She had already
+declined Philip of Spain's offer of his widowed hand; and now the fact that
+Mary Stuart stood next in the succession--with a better title than
+Elizabeth's own, if her legitimacy were challenged--became of immense
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, an express declaration of her legitimate right to the
+throne was procured from Parliament. For some time pageants and popular
+displays were the order of the day. But, in spite of Elizabeth's own
+declarations, all her council were convinced that the safety of the realm
+demanded her marriage; and suitors began to abound. Arran appears--who now
+stood very near the throne of Scotland. Pickering, Arundel, Dudley, all
+seemed possible aspirants. The Austrian Archduke Charles, cousin of Philip
+of Spain, and Eric of Norway, were candidates. She played with them all,
+and the play was made more grim by the tragic death of Dudley's wife, Amy
+Robsart.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Mary Stuart and Saint Bartholomew</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The proposals for Elizabeth's own hand were now diversified by her
+interest in those for the hand of the Queen of Scots; for it was of immense
+importance to the Queen of England that Mary should not wed a foreign
+prince who might support her claim to the English throne. Mary professed
+willingness to be guided by her "sister," but was insulted by Elizabeth's
+offer of her own favourite, Dudley, who was made Earl of Leicester.
+Melville, the courtly Scots ambassador, had much ado to answer Elizabeth's
+questions about his mistress's beauty and accomplishments in a manner
+agreeable to the English queen. Mary solved her own problem, only to create
+a new one, by marrying her cousin, Lord Darnley. Elizabeth was bitterly
+aggrieved when a son--afterwards James I.--was born to them. She herself
+continued to agitate Cecil and the council by the favours she lavished on
+Leicester. But the renewed entreaties of Parliament, that steps might be
+taken to secure the succession, led to what threatened to be a serious
+quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst these high matters, the records of her majesty's wardrobe, and
+the interests of Cecil in capturing for her service a tailor employed by
+Catherine de Medici, form an entertaining interlude. But tragedy was at
+hand; the murder of Darnley, Mary's marriage to the murderer Bothwell, her
+imprisonment at Loch Leven, Elizabeth's perturbation--for she was sincere
+in her fear of encouraging subjects to control monarchs by force of
+arms--was diversified by a last negotiation for her marriage with the
+Archduke Charles, which broke down over his refusal to abjure his
+religion.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a turn of the wheel; Mary escaped from Loch Leven, her
+followers were dispersed at Langside, and she fled across the Solway to
+throw herself on Elizabeth's protection and find herself Elizabeth's
+prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>The Scottish queen was consigned to Bolton; an investigation was held at
+York, when Mary's accusers were allowed to produce, and Mary's friends were
+not allowed to test, their evidence of her complicity in Darnley's murder.
+At that stage the investigations were stopped; but the Duke of Norfolk, the
+head of the commission, was not deterred from pressing the design of
+marrying Mary himself. Mary was placed in the charge of Shrewsbury and his
+termagant spouse, Bess of Hardwick.</p>
+
+<p>From this time for fifteen years, Elizabeth was perpetually playing at
+proposals for her own marriage with one or other of the French King's
+brothers, to keep the French court from a <i>rapprochement</i> with Spain.
+Suspicions of Norfolk's intentions led to his arrest, and this precipitated
+the rising in favour of Mary under the Catholic northern earls of
+Northumberland and Westmoreland; an insurrection promptly and cruelly
+crushed. In the spring of 1570 the Pope issued a bull of deposition; and
+the plots on behalf of Mary as Catholic claimant to the throne
+thickened.</p>
+
+<p>In 1571 it appeared that Elizabeth was set on the marriage with Henry of
+Anjou, nineteen years her junior, the brother who stood next in succession
+to the throne of Charles IX. of France--a marriage not at all approved by
+her council, and very little to Henry's own taste. It was at this time that
+the conduct of negotiations in Paris was entrusted to Francis
+Walsingham.</p>
+
+<p>The relations between the queen and the Commons were exemplified by her
+attempt to exclude an obnoxious member, Strickland, met by the successful
+assertion of their privileges on the part of the House.</p>
+
+<p>In this year the plot known as Ridolfi's was discovered, and it is to be
+noted that Elizabeth herself ordered the rack to be used to extort
+information. The result was condemnation of Norfolk to the block. The
+recalcitrance of Henry of Anjou led to his definitely withdrawing from his
+courtship, while the young Alen&ccedil;on became the new subject of
+matrimonial negotiation.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth played with the new proposal, as usual, relying always on her
+ability to back out of the negotiations, as in previous cases, by demanding
+of her suitor a more uncompromising acceptance of Protestantism than could
+be admitted. The whole affair, however, was apparently brought to a check
+by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with the perpetration of which it
+seemed impossible for the most powerful of Protestant monarchs to associate
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>Cecil--now Lord Burleigh--would have used the occasion for the
+destruction of Mary Stuart; but the device for doing so irreproachably by
+handing her over to her own rebels, was frustrated--though Elizabeth
+concurred--by the refusal of the Scots lords to play the part which was
+assigned to them. The Alen&ccedil;on affair was soon in full swing again,
+the young prince writing love-letters to the lady whom he had not seen.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--The Hour of Mary's Doom</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Elizabeth's fondness for pageantry--partly out of a personal delight in
+it, partly from a politic appreciation of its value in making her
+popular--especially pageantry at some one else's expense, was illustrated
+in the gorgeous doings at Kenilworth, depicted (with sundry anachronisms)
+in Scott's novel.</p>
+
+<p>These gaieties were the embroidery on more serious matters, for the
+Netherlands had for some time been engaged in their apparently desperate
+struggle with the power of Spain, and now actually invited the Queen of
+England to assume sovereignty over them--an offer which she was too acute
+to accept.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we cannot pass over a highly characteristic incident. When the
+queen's majesty had a bad toothache, the protestations of her whole council
+failed to persuade her to face the extraction of the tooth, till the Bishop
+of London invited the surgeon to operate first on him in her presence, with
+satisfactory results. We must also record how the ugly little
+Alen&ccedil;on, or Anjou as he was now called, arrived unexpectedly to woo
+her in person, charmed her by his chivalrous audacity in doing so, and won
+from her the appropriate name of "Little Frog."</p>
+
+<p>Whether she really wished to marry her "frog" is extremely doubtful. She
+made all the more parade of her desire to do so, since the extreme
+antipathy of the council and the nation to the project would secure her a
+retreat to the last. The expectation of the marriage caused the
+Netherlanders to offer Anjou the sovereignty which she had rejected; with
+the idea of thus securing the united support of England and France. But
+when matters reached the point of negotiation for an Anglo-French league,
+with the marriage as one of the articles, Elizabeth, of course, could not
+be brought to a definite answer, and after long delay Anjou found himself
+obliged to return to the Netherlands, neither accepted nor rejected. His
+subsequent death put an end to this, her last, matrimonial comedy.</p>
+
+<p>At last an English force was actually sent to help the Netherlanders,
+under the command of Leicester. His conduct there led to his recall.
+Another favourite stood high in the queen's good graces--Walter Raleigh.
+Probably it was with a view to ousting this rival that Leicester brought
+his stepson Essex into the queen's notice.</p>
+
+<p>But now the hour of Mary's doom was approaching. A plot was set on foot
+for the assassination of Elizabeth, into which Anthony Babington, whose
+name it bears, was drawn. Walsingham, possessed of complete information
+from the beginning, through his spies, nursed the plot carefully; letters
+from Mary were systematically intercepted and copied till the moment came
+for striking; the conspirators were arrested, and suffered the extreme
+penalty of the treason laws; and Elizabeth consented to have Mary herself
+at last brought to trial. She was refused counsel; the commission condemned
+her. Parliament demanded the execution of the death sentence. Elizabeth had
+her own misgivings.</p>
+
+<p>She was afraid of the responsibility. Leicester suggested poison, but
+Burleigh and Walsingham stood by the law. A special embassy of remonstrance
+came from France; Mary wrote a dignified letter, not an appeal for her
+life, which moved the queen to tears; protests from the King of Scotland
+only aroused indignation; Elizabeth was frightened by rumours of fresh
+plots and of a French invasion.</p>
+
+<p>At last she signed the death warrant, brought to her by Secretary
+Davison; the Chancellor's seal was attached, and the council, fearing some
+evasion on Elizabeth's part, issued the commission for Mary's execution
+without further reference to the queen; she was kept in ignorance of the
+fact till the tragedy was completed. She was furious with the council, but
+powerless against their unanimity. She could venture to make a scapegoat of
+Davison, and made a vain attempt to clear herself of responsibility in a
+letter to James, which failed to soothe the burst of indignation with which
+the news was received in Scotland. But the one thing she feared--a
+coalition of France, Spain, and Scotland--was made impossible by the
+antagonisms of the former and the weakness of the last.</p>
+
+<p>Another crisis was at hand. Philip of Spain, claiming the throne of
+England as a descendant of John of Gaunt, was preparing the great Armada;
+Pope Sixtus V. was proclaiming a crusade against the heretic queen. Drake
+sailed into Cadiz harbour, and "singed the don's whiskers," but the vast
+preparations went on. A lofty spirit animated the queen and the people.
+London undertook to provide double the number of ships and men demanded
+from her. The militia was gathered at Tilbury, under Leicester. Howard of
+Effingham was Lord Admiral, with Drake as vice-admiral; in the enthusiasm
+of the moment, Elizabeth bestowed knighthood on a valorous lady, Mary, the
+wife of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley.</p>
+
+<p>A report that the Armada had been destroyed by a gale, which actually
+drove it into Corunna for repairs, caused Elizabeth, with her usual
+parsimony, to order four great vessels to be dismantled; Howard retained
+them instead, at his own charges. On July 19, 1588, the Armada was sighted
+off the Lizard, and for eighteen days the naval heroes were grappling with
+that "invincible" fleet. Elizabeth herself visited the camp at Tilbury,
+rode through the lines, wearing a corselet and a farthingale of amazing
+dimensions, while a page bore her helmet, and addressed her soldiers in
+stirring words.</p>
+
+<p>The victory was celebrated by medals bearing the device of a fleet in
+full sail, with the words <i>Venit, vidit, fugit</i> ("it came, it saw, it
+fled"), and of the dispersal by fireships with the words, <i>Dux femina
+facti</i> ("a woman led the movement").</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Elizabeth's Closing Years</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The defeat of the Armada was followed by an expedition to Lisbon, to
+wrest Portugal from Spain; owing to inadequate equipment it failed, after a
+promising beginning, the Portuguese lending no help. Essex managed to
+escape from court and join the expedition, messengers ordering him to
+return being too late. For this he was forgiven; but when he secretly
+married the widow of Sidney, and daughter of Walsingham, Elizabeth was
+furiously angry.</p>
+
+<p>Not Essex, but Norris was sent to command a force dispatched to the aid
+of Henry of Navarre, who was now fighting for the crown of France. Essex,
+however, was subsequently sent, at Henry's own request. His absence was
+utilised by Burleigh to secure the advancement of his own astute son,
+Robert Cecil, who secured the royal favour by the ingenuity of his
+flattery.</p>
+
+<p>When Essex finally returned from France, he was received with the utmost
+favour; but in the interval he had been transformed into an intriguing
+politician. Parliament, which had not been called for four years, met in
+1593, and there was an immediate collision with the Crown. Elizabeth's tone
+was much more despotic than of old. Petitions for the settlement of the
+succession were met by the arbitrary imprisonment of Wentworth and other
+members.</p>
+
+<p>Essex favoured the popular party, but had not the courage to head it; he
+was moved not by patriotism, but by jealousy of the Cecil ascendancy. The
+queen, when she had passed the age of sixty, was as determined as ever to
+pose as a youthful beauty, and her courtiers had no reluctance in assuming
+the tone of despairing lovers. No one played this part more persistently
+than Raleigh, who, when relegated to the Tower for marrying, proclaimed his
+misery, not at being separated from his bride, but at being shut out of the
+radiant presence of the queen.</p>
+
+<p>Essex and Raleigh were associated in two expeditions, one directed with
+complete success against Cadiz, the other being a complete failure. The
+Burleigh faction succeeded in getting for Raleigh whatever credit there was
+in both cases, though Essex was better entitled to it.</p>
+
+<p>But it was Ireland that wrought the ruin of Essex. A dispute in the
+council on the subject caused the queen to box the favourite's ears, which
+caused him to retire in resentment for many months. Soon after his return
+to court, he brought upon himself his own appointment to the
+lord-deputyship of Ireland. His conduct there displeased her; from her
+scolding letters, he concluded that his enemies in the council were
+undermining his position in his absence. He deserted his post, hurried to
+London, and burst, travel-stained as he was, into Elizabeth's chamber. For
+the moment she appeared disposed to forgive him, but was not long in
+deciding that his insolence must be punished, and he was placed in
+confinement.</p>
+
+<p>So he continued for about a year, in spite of appeals to the queen. The
+adverse party in the council had the predominance. At last, however, he was
+granted a degree of liberty, and Francis Bacon tried to conciliate
+Elizabeth towards her former favourite. But the unfortunate man allowed his
+resentment to carry him into dangerous courses. His house became a
+rendezvous of the discontented. Finally, a futile attempt on his part to
+raise the citizens of London in his favour consummated his ruin. He was
+soon a prisoner; his condemnation was now a foregone conclusion; Elizabeth
+signed the warrant with fingers which did not tremble; and, to the
+universal astonishment, the favourite was executed.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth's meeting with her last parliament displays in a marked degree
+the tact which never deserted her when she thought fit to employ it. Their
+protest against the practice of monopolies, instead of rousing her ire,
+brought from her a notably gracious promise to redress the grievances
+complained of. This was in 1601. In the next year, when she became
+sixty-nine, there was no relaxation in her gaieties; but under the surface,
+Elizabeth was old and sad.</p>
+
+<p>Her popularity had never been the same since the death of Essex; and the
+memory of the man she had cherished and finally sent to his doom,
+well-deserved as that was, was a perpetual source of grief to her. In March
+1603, she was stricken with her last fatal illness. Yet she would not go to
+bed. At last she gave in; she knew herself dying long before she admitted
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It was uncertain whether even in her last moments she would acknowledge
+the right of any successor to her throne, but a gesture was interpreted as
+favouring the King of Scots. Finally, she sank into a sleep from which she
+never awoke. So passed away England's Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JONATHAN_SWIFT"></a>JONATHAN SWIFT</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Journal_to_Stella"></a>Journal to Stella</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> The "Journal to Stella," which extends over the years 1710
+to 1713, was first published in 1766 and has often been republished since.
+The manuscripts are preserved in the British Museum. It was at Sir William
+Temple's home, Moor Park in Surrey, that Swift came to know Esther Johnson,
+or "Stella," who was fourteen years younger than himself. In 1699 Temple
+died, and Stella, with her friend, Rebecca Dingley, came to Ireland at
+Swift's request. Their relation has been made a great mystery. It will
+perhaps always be doubtful whether he was nominally married to her
+secretly; the evidence is on the whole against the existence of such a
+bond. But to the further question--why did he not take her to live as his
+wife--a sufficient reply may be found in his abnormal nature. In the
+"Journal" the word "Presto" refers to Swift himself (see FICTION); "MD" to
+Stella. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, Sept. 9, 1710.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I got here last Thursday, after five days' travelling, weary the first,
+almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest; and
+am now glad of the fatigue, which has served for exercise; and I am at
+present well enough. The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay hold
+on me as a twig while they are drowning, and the great men making me their
+clumsy apologies, etc. But my Lord Treasurer received me with a great deal
+of coldness, which has enraged me so, I am almost vowing revenge. I have
+not yet gone half my circle; but I find all my acquaintance just as I left
+them. Everything is turning upside down; every Whig in great office will,
+to a man, be infallibly put out; and we shall have such a winter as hath
+not been seen in England.</p>
+
+<p>The Tatler expects every day to be turned out of his employment; and the
+Duke of Ormond, they say, will be Lieutenant of Ireland. I hope you are now
+peaceably in Presto's lodgings; but I resolve to turn you out by Christmas;
+in which time I shall either have done my business, or find it not to be
+done. Pray be at Trim by the time this letter comes to you; and ride little
+Johnson, who must needs be now in good case. I have begun this letter
+unusually, on the post-night, and have already written to the Archbishop;
+and cannot lengthen this. Henceforth I will write something every day to
+MD, and make it a sort of journal; and when it is full, I will send it,
+whether MD writes or no; and so that will be pretty: and I shall always be
+in conversation with MD, and MD with Presto; and so farewell.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, NOV. 11, 1710.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I dined to-day in the City, and then went to christen Will Frankland's
+child; Lady Falconbridge was one of the godmothers; this is a daughter of
+Oliver Cromwell, and extremely like him by the picture I have seen. My
+business in the City was to thank Stratford for a kindness he has done me.
+I found Bank stock fallen thirty-four to the hundred, and was mighty
+desirous to buy it. I had three hundred pounds in Ireland, and I desired
+Stratford to buy me three hundred pounds in Bank stock and that he keep the
+papers, and that I would be bound to pay him for them; and, if it should
+rise or fall, I should take my chance and pay him interest in the meantime.
+I was told money was so hard to get here, and no one would do this for me.
+However, Stratford, one of the most generous men alive, has done this for
+me: so that three hundred pounds cost me three hundred pounds and thirty
+shillings. This was done a week ago, and I can have five pounds for my
+bargain already. I writ to your Mother to desire Lady Giffard would do the
+same with what she owes me, but she tells your mother she has no money. I
+would to God, all you had in the world was there. Whenever you lend money,
+take this rule, to have two people bound, who have both visible fortunes;
+for they will hardly die together; and, when one dies, you fall upon the
+other, and make him add another security. So, ladies, enough of business
+for one night. Paaaaast twelve o'clock; nite, nite deelest MD. I must only
+add, that, after a long fit of rainy weather, it has been fair two or three
+days, and is this day grown cold and frosty; so you must give poor little
+Presto leave to have a fire in his chamber morning and evening too; and he
+will do as much for you. Shall I send this to-morrow? Well I will, to
+oblige MD. 'Tis late, so I bid you good-night.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHELSEA, June, 1711.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I went at noon to see Mr. Secretary at his office, and there was Lord
+Treasurer; so I killed two birds, etc., and we were glad to see one another
+and so forth. And the Secretary and I dined at Sir William Wyndam's, who
+married Lady Catherine Seymour, your acquaintance, I suppose. There were
+ten of us at dinner. It seems, in my absence, they had erected a Club, and
+made me one; and we made some laws to-day, which I am to digest and add to,
+against next meeting. Our meetings are to be every Thursday. We are yet but
+twelve; Lord Keeper and Lord Treasurer were proposed; but I was against
+them, and so was Mr. Secretary, though their sons are of it, and so they
+are excluded; but we design to admit the Duke of Shrewsbury. The end of our
+Club is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward deserving
+persons with our interest and recommendation. We take in none but men of
+wit or men of interest; and if we go on as we begin, no other Club in this
+town will be worth talking of. This letter will come three weeks after the
+last, so there is a week lost; but that is owing to my being out of
+town.</p>
+
+<p>Well, but I must answer this letter of our MD's. Saturday approaches,
+and I han't written down this side. Oh, faith, Presto has been a sort of
+lazy fellow: but Presto will remove to town this day se'night: the
+Secretary has commanded me to do so: and I believe he and I shall go some
+days to Windsor, where he will have leisure to mind some business we have
+together. To-day our Society (it must not be called a Club) dined at Mr.
+Secretary's: we were but eight. We made some laws, and then I went to take
+my leave of Lady Ashburnham, who goes out of town to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Steele has had the assurance to write to me that I would engage my Lord
+Treasurer to keep a friend of his in an employment. I believe I told you
+how he and Addison served me for my good offices in Steele's behalf; and I
+promised Lord Treasurer never to speak for either of them again.</p>
+
+<p>We have plays acted in our town; and Patrick was at one of them, oh, oh.
+He was damnably mauled one day when he was drunk, by a brother-footman, who
+dragged him along the floor on his face, which looked for a week after as
+if he had the leprosy, and I was glad enough to see it. I have been ten
+times sending him back to you; yet now he has new clothes and a laced hat,
+which the hatter brought by his orders, and he offered to pay for the lace
+out of his wages.</p>
+
+<p>I must rise now and shave, and walk to town, unless I go with the Dean
+in his chariot at twelve: and I have not seen that Lord Peterborough yet.
+The Duke of Shrewsbury is almost well again, but what care you? You do not
+care for my friends. Farewell, my dearest lives and delights: I love you
+better than ever, if possible, as hope saved, I do, and ever will. God
+almighty bless you ever, and make us happy together! I pray for this twice
+every day; and I hope God will hear my poor hearty prayers. Remember, if I
+am used ill and ungratefully, as I have formerly been, 'tis what I am
+prepared for, and I shall not wonder at it. Yet I am now envied, and
+thought in high favour, and have every day numbers of considerable men
+teasing me to solicit for them. And the Ministry all use me perfectly well;
+and all that know them say they love me. Yet I can count upon nothing, nor
+will, but upon MD's love and kindness. They think me useful; they pretended
+they were afraid of none but me, and that they resolved to have me; they
+have often confessed this: yet all this makes little impression on me--Pox
+of these speculations! They give me the spleen; a disease I was not born
+to. Let me alone, sirrahs, and be satisfied: I am, as long as MD and Presto
+are well. Little wealth, and much health, and a life by stealth: that is
+all we want; and so farewell, dearest MD; Stella, Dingley, Presto, all
+together; now and for ever all together. Farewell again and again.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, July, 1711.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I have just sent my 26th, and have nothing to say, because I have other
+letters to write (pshaw, I began too high) but to-morrow I will say more,
+and fetch up this line to be straight This is enough at present for two
+dear saucy naughty girls.</p>
+
+<p>Morning. It is a terrible rainy day. Patrick lay out all last night, and
+is not yet returned: faith, poor Presto is a desolate creature; neither
+servant, nor linen, nor anything.</p>
+
+<p>I was at Court and Church to-day: I am acquainted with about thirty in
+the drawing-room, and I am so proud I make all the Lords come up to me; one
+passes half an hour pleasant enough. We had a dunce to preach before the
+queen to-day, which often happens. Windsor is a delicious situation, but
+the town is scoundrel. The Duke of Hamilton would needs be witty, and hold
+up my train as I walked upstairs. It is an ill circumstance that on Sundays
+much company always meet at the great tables. The Secretary showed me his
+bill of fare, to encourage me to dine with him. "Poh," said I, "show me a
+bill of company, for I value not your dinner."</p>
+
+<p>In my conscience. I fear I shall have the gout. I sometimes feel pains
+about my feet and toes: I never drank till within these two years, and I
+did it to cure my head. I often sit evenings with some of these people, and
+drink in my turn; but I am resolved to drink ten times less than before;
+but they advise me to let what I drink be all wine, and not to put water in
+it. Tooke and the printer stayed to-day to finish their affair. Then I went
+to see Lord Treasurer, and chid him for not taking notice of me at Windsor.
+He said he kept a place for me yesterday at dinner, and expected me there;
+but I was glad I did not go, because the Duke of Buckingham was there, and
+that would have made us acquainted; which I have no mind to.</p>
+
+<p>I have sent a noble haunch of venison this afternoon to Mrs. Vanhomrigh;
+I wish you had it sirrahs. I dined gravely with my landlord, the Secretary.
+The queen was abroad to-day to hunt; but finding it disposed to rain, she
+kept in her coach, which she drives herself, and drives furiously, like
+Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod. Dingley has heard of Nimrod, but
+not Stella, for it is in the Bible. Mr. Secretary has given me a warrant
+for a buck; I can't sent it to MD. It is a sad thing, faith, considering
+how Presto loves MD, and how MD would love Presto's venison for Presto's
+sake. God bless the two dear Wexford girls!</p>
+
+<p>There was a drawing-room to-day at Court; but so few company, that the
+queen sent for us into her bedchamber, where we made our bows, and stood
+about twenty of us round the room, while she looked at us round with her
+fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that
+were nearest to her, and then she was told dinner was ready, and went
+out.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, Dec. 1, 1711.</h3>
+
+
+<p>To-morrow is the fatal day for the Parliament meeting, and we are full
+of hopes and fears. We reckon we have a majority of ten on our side in the
+House of Lords; yet I observe Mrs. Masham a little uneasy. The Duke of
+Marlborough has not seen the queen for some days past; Mrs. Masham is glad
+of it, because she says he tells a hundred lies to his friends of what she
+says to him: he is one day humble, and the next day on the high ropes.</p>
+
+<p>This being the day Parliament was to meet, and the great question to be
+determined, I went with Dr. Freind to dine in the City, on purpose to be
+out of the way, and we sent our printer to see what was our fate; but he
+gave us a most melancholy account of things. The Earl of Nottingham began
+and spoke against a peace, and desired that in their address they might put
+in a clause to advise the queen not to make a peace without Spain; which
+was debated, and carried by the Whigs by about six voices: and this has
+happened entirely by my Lord Treasurer's neglect, who did not take timely
+care to make up his strength, although every one of us gave him caution
+enough. Nottingham has certainly been bribed. The question is yet only
+carried in the Committee of the whole House, and we hope when it is
+reported to the House to-morrow, we shall have a majority.</p>
+
+<p>This is a day that may produce great alterations and hazard the ruin of
+England. The Whigs are all in triumph; they foretold how all this would be,
+but we thought it boasting. Nay, they said the Parliament should be
+dissolved before Christmas, and perhaps it may: this is all your d----d
+Duchess of Somerset's doings. I warned them of this nine months ago, and a
+hundred times since. I told Lord Treasurer I should have the advantage of
+him; for he would lose his head, and I should only be hanged, and so carry
+my body entire to the grave.</p>
+
+<p>I was this morning with Mr. Secretary: we are both of opinion that the
+queen is false. He gave me reasons to believe the whole matter is settled
+between the queen and the Whigs. Things are now in a crisis, and a day or
+two will determine. I have desired him to engage Lord Treasurer to send, me
+abroad as Queen's Secretary somewhere or other, where I will remain till
+the new Ministers recall me; and then I will be sick for five or six
+months, till the storm has spent itself. I hope he will grant me this; for
+I should hardly trust myself to the mercy of my enemies while their anger
+is fresh.</p>
+
+<p>Morning. They say the Occasional Bill is brought to-day into the House
+of Lords; but I know not. I will now put an end to my letter, and give it
+into the post-house with my own fair hands. This will be a memorable
+letter, and I shall sigh to see it some years hence. Here are the first
+steps towards the ruin of an excellent Ministry; for I look upon them as
+certainly ruined; and God knows what may be the consequence.--I now bid my
+dearest MD farewell; for company is coming, and I must be at Lord
+Dartmouth's office by noon. Farewell, dearest MD; I wish you a merry
+Christmas; I believe you will have this about that time. Love Presto, who
+loves MD above all things a thousand times. Farewell again, dearest MD.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, Dec. 20, 1711.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was with the Secretary this morning, and, for aught I can see, we
+shall have a languishing death: I can know nothing, nor themselves neither.
+I dined, you know, with our Society, and that odious Secretary would make
+me President next week; so I must entertain them this day se'night at the
+Thatched House Tavern: it will cost me five or six pounds; yet the
+Secretary says he will give me wine.</p>
+
+<p>Saturday night. I have broken open my letter, and tore it into the
+bargain, to let you know that we are all safe: the queen has made no less
+than twelve Lords to have a majority; nine new ones, the other three peers'
+sons; and has turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is awaked at last, and
+so is Lord Treasurer: I want nothing now but to see the Duchess out. But we
+shall do without her. We are all extremely happy. Give me joy, sirrahs.
+This is written in a coffee-house.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, Feb. 26, 1712.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was again busy with the Secretary. I dined with him, and we were to do
+more business after dinner; but after dinner is after dinner--an old saying
+and a true, "much drinking, little thinking." We had company with us, and
+nothing could be done, so I am to go there again to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>To-day in the morning I visited upwards: first I saw the Duke of Ormond
+below stairs, and gave him joy of being declared General in Flanders; then
+I went up one pair of stairs, and sat with the duchess; then I went up
+another pair of stairs, and paid a visit to Lady Betty; and then desired
+her woman to go up to the garret, that I might pass half an hour with her,
+for she was young and handsome, but she would not.</p>
+
+<p>Tell Walls that I spoke to the Duke of Ormond about his friend's
+affairs. I likewise mentioned his own affair to Mr. Southwell. But oo must
+not know zees sings, zey are secrets; and we must keep them flom nauty
+dallars. I was with Lord Treasurer to-day, and hat care oo for zat? Monday
+is parson's holiday, and oo lost oo money at cards; ze devil's device.
+Nite, nite, my two deelest logues.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, April 6, 1713</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was this morning at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called
+"Cato," which is to be acted on Friday. There were not above half a score
+of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough to see
+the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them; and the drab
+that acts Cato's daughter, in the midst of a passionate part, calling out
+"What's next?" I went back and dined with Mr. Addison.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing new to-day; so I'll seal up this to-night. Pray write soon....
+Farewell, deelest MD, MD, MD. Love Presto.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="LYOF_N_TOLSTOY"></a>LYOF N. TOLSTOY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Childhood_Boyhood_Youth"></a>Childhood, Boyhood, Youth</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth
+(1855-57)--Tolstoy's first literary efforts--may be regarded as
+semi-autobiographical studies; if not in detail, at least in the wider
+sense that all his books contain pictures more or less accurate of himself
+and his own experiences. No plot runs through them; they simply analyse and
+describe with extraordinary minuteness the feelings of a nervous and morbid
+boy--a male Marie Bashkirtseff. They are tales rather of the developments
+of the thoughts, than of the life of a child, with a pale background of men
+and events. The distinct charm lies in the sincerity with which this
+development is represented. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Childhood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>August 12, 18--, was the third day after my tenth birthday anniversary.
+Wonderful presents had been given me. My tutor, Karl Ivanitch, roused me at
+seven by striking at a fly directly over my head with a flapper made of
+sugar paper fastened to a stick. He generally spoke in German, and in his
+kindly voice exclaimed, "Auf, Kinder, auf; es ist Zeit. Die Mutter ist
+schon im Saal." ("Get up, children, it is time. Your Mother is already in
+the drawing-room.")</p>
+
+<p>Dyadka Nikolai, the valet of us children, a neat little man, brought in
+the clothes for me and Volodya, who was imitating my sister's governess,
+Marya Ivanova, in mocking, merry laughter. Somewhat sternly presently Karl
+Ivanitch called from the schoolroom to know if we were nearly ready to
+begin our lessons.</p>
+
+<p>In the schoolroom, on one shelf was our promiscuous assortment of books,
+on another, the still more miscellaneous collection which our dear old
+tutor was pleased to call his library. I remember that it included a German
+treatise on cabbage gardens, a history of the Seven Years' War, and a work
+on hydrostatic. Karl Ivanitch spent all his spare time in reading his
+beloved books, but he never read anything beyond these and the Northern
+Bee. After early lessons our tutor conducted us downstairs to greet
+Mamma.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting in the parlour, in front of the samovar, pouring out
+tea. To the left of the divan was the old English grand piano, on which my
+dark-complexioned sister, Liubotchka, eleven years old, was painfully
+practising Clementi's exercises. Near her Marya Ivanova, with scowls on her
+face, was loudly counting, and beating time with her foot. She frowned
+still more disagreeably at Karl as he entered, but he appeared to ignore
+this and kissed my mother's hand with a German salutation. After mutually
+affectionate greetings Mamma told us to go to our father and to ask him to
+come to her before he went to the threshing floor.</p>
+
+<p>We found Papa angrily discussing business affairs with Yakov Mikhailof,
+the chief concern being apparently about money from Mamma's estate at
+Khabarovka, her native village. A large sum was due to the council, and
+Yakov pleaded that it would be difficult to raise it from the sale of hay
+and the proceeds of the mill. "For example," said he, "the miller has been
+twice to ask me for delay, swearing by Christ the Lord that he has no
+money. What little cash he had he put into the dam."</p>
+
+<p>Yakov was a serf, and was a most devoted and assiduous man, excessively
+economical in managing his master's affairs, and constantly worried himself
+over the increase of his master's property at the expense of that of his
+mistress.</p>
+
+<p>For some days we had been expecting something unusual, from preparations
+which we saw going on for some journey, but an announcement from Papa at
+length surprised us terribly. He greeted us one morning with the remark
+that it was time to put an end to our idleness, and that as he was going
+that evening to Moscow, we were to go with him and to live there with our
+grandmother, Mamma remaining on the estate with the girls.</p>
+
+<p>My thoughts were mingled, for I was very grieved for the sake of Mamma,
+yet I felt pleasure at the idea that we were grown up. For poor Karl
+Ivanitch I was extremely sorry, as he would be discharged. On my way
+upstairs I saw Papa's favourite greyhound, Milka, basking in the sunshine
+on the terrace, and ran out, kissed her on the nose and caressed her,
+saying, "Farewell, Milotchka. We shall never see each other again." Then,
+altogether overcome with emotion, I burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>My father was a chivalrous character of the last century, who regarded
+with contempt the people of the present century. His two chief passions
+were cards and women. He was tall and commanding, bald, with small eyes
+ever twinkling vivaciously, and a lisping utterance. He knew how to
+exercise a spell over people of every grade, and in the highest society he
+was held in great esteem. He seemed born to shine in his brilliant
+position, and was an expert in the management of all things that could
+conduce to comfort and pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>A lover of music, he sang to his own piano accompaniment operatic songs,
+but had no liking for Beethoven's sonatas and other scientific
+compositions. His principles grew more fixed as years rolled on; he judged
+actions as being good or bad accordingly as they procured him happiness and
+pleasure, or otherwise; he talked persuasively; and he could represent the
+same deed as either an innocent piece of playfulness or of abominable
+villainy.</p>
+
+<p>Happy days of childhood that can never be recalled! What memories I yet
+cherish of them. I see Mamma just as plainly as when she so long since was
+talking to some one at the tea-table, while I, in my high chair, grew
+drowsy. Presently she stroked my hair with her soft hand, saying, "Get up,
+my darling, it is time to go to bed. Get up, my angel."</p>
+
+<p>I spring up and embrace her, and exclaim, "Dear, dear Mamma, how I love
+you!" With her sad and fascinating smile she places me on her knees, is
+silent awhile, and then speaks. "So you love me very much? Love me always
+and never forget me. If you lose your Mamma, Nikolinka, you will not forget
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>She kisses me still more lovingly, and I cry with tears of love and
+rapture flooding my face, "Oh, do not say that, my darling, my precious
+one." Will that freshness, that happy carelessness, that thirst for love
+which made life's only requirements, ever return? Where are those pure
+tears of tenderest emotion? The angel of consolation came and wiped them
+away. Do the memories alone abide?</p>
+
+<p>About a month after we had removed to Moscow, Grandmamma received a
+visit from Princess Kornakova, a woman of forty-five, with disagreeable
+gray-green eyes, but sweetly curved lips, bright red hair, and insalubrious
+face. In spite of these peculiarities her aspect was noble. I took a
+dislike to her because I found from her talk that she was given to beating
+her own children, and thought that other people's children, especially
+boys, needed to be whipped.</p>
+
+<p>Another visitor was Prince Ivan Ivanitch, distinguished for his noble
+character, handsome person, splendid bravery and extraordinary good
+fortune. He belonged to a powerful family, and lived in accordance with
+principles of the strictest religion and morality. Though somewhat reserved
+and haughty, in demeanour, he was full of kindly feeling. Prince Ivan
+Ivanitch was a highly cultured man of most versatile accomplishments. Our
+Grandmamma was evidently delighted to see him, and his magnificent aspect
+and her liking for him inspired me with unbounded admiration and
+reverence.</p>
+
+<p>He asked why Mamma had not come to Moscow. "Ah," was the reply, "she
+would have come if possible, but they have no income this year."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand," replied the Prince. "Her Khabarovka is a
+wonderful estate, and it must always bring in a fine revenue."</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you," said Grandmamma, sadly. "It seems to me that all the
+pretexts are made simply to enable him to live a gay life here, while she,
+angel of goodness that she is, suspects nothing. She believes him in
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>This conversation should not have been overheard by me, but, having
+overheard it, I crept out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>On the 16th of April, nearly six months later, serious news came from
+Mamma. She wrote to Papa that she had contracted a chill, which had caused
+a fever, that this was over, but had left her in such utter weakness that
+she would never rise from her bed again, although those about her were not
+aware of such a condition. She wished him to come to her at once and to
+bring her two boys with him. She prayed that God's holy will might be
+done.</p>
+
+<p>On April 25th we reached our Petrovskoe home. Papa had been very sad and
+thoughtful during the journey. We at once learned from the steward that
+Mamma had not left her room for six days. I shall never forget what I saw
+when we entered Mamma's room. She was unconscious. Her eyes were open, but
+she saw nothing. We were led away. Mamma soon passed away.</p>
+
+<p>She was dead, the funeral obsequies took place, and then our life went
+on much as before. We rose, had our repasts, and retired to rest at the
+same hours. Three days after the funeral the whole household removed to
+Moscow. Grandmamma only learned what had happened when we arrived, and her
+grief was terrible. She lay unconscious for a week, and the doctor feared
+for her life, for she would not eat, speak, or take medicine. When she
+recovered somewhat, her first thought was of us children. She cried softly,
+spoke of Mamma, and tenderly caressed us.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Boyhood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On our arrival in Moscow a change had taken place in my views of things.
+My sentiment of reverence for Grandmamma had changed to one of sympathy. As
+she covered my cheeks with kisses I realised that each kiss expressed the
+thought "She is gone; I shall never see her more." Papa had very little to
+do with us in Moscow, coming to us only at dinner time, and lost much in my
+eyes, with his ostentatious dress, his stewards, his clerks, and his
+hunting and business expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>Between us and the girls also an invisible barrier seemed to rise. We
+were proud of our trousers and straps, and they of their petticoats, which
+increased in length. Their showier Sunday dress made it manifest that we
+were no longer in the country. But soon commenced a period of my life of
+which it is difficult to trace a record. Rarely during memories of it do I
+find moments of the genuine warmth of feeling which so frequently illumined
+the earliest years of my life.</p>
+
+<p>Vivid is the recollection of Volodya's entrance at the university. He
+was barely two years my senior in age. The day of his first examination
+arrived, and he presented a handsome appearance in his blue uniform with
+brass buttons and lacquered boots. The examination lasted ten days, and
+Volodya, having passed brilliantly, returned on the last day no longer in
+blue coat and grey cap, but in student uniform, with blue embroidered
+collar, three-cornered hat, and a gilt dagger by his side. Joy and
+excitement reigned in the whole household. For the first time since Mamma's
+death, Grandmamma drank champagne, and weeps with joy as she looks at
+Volodya, who henceforth rode in his own equipage, receives friends in his
+own rooms, smokes tobacco, goes to balls.</p>
+
+<p>But soon another incident happened which is engraven on memory. The dear
+old Grandmamma was growing daily weaker, and one morning the announcement
+thrilled us that she was dead. Again, the house was full of mourning. In a
+few months I should be preparing to enter the university. I was by degrees
+emerging from my boyish moods, with the exception of one--a tendency to
+metaphysical dreaminess, which was fated to do me much injury in after
+years.</p>
+
+<p>At this period an intimacy commenced between me and a very remarkable
+man, Prince Dmitri Nekhliudoff. He was a tall and commanding figure, with
+an extraordinary intellect. Whenever he found me alone, we seated ourselves
+in some secluded corner and found mutual delight in metaphysical
+discussions. With ecstasy in those moments I soared higher and higher into
+the realms of thought. This strange friendship grew. We agreed to confess
+everything to each other, and thus we should really know each other and not
+be ashamed; but, in order that we should not be in any fear of strangers,
+we vowed never to say anything to anybody else about each other. And we
+kept the vow. As may be imagined, the influence of my friend over me was
+greater than mine over him. I adopted his fervent ideas, which included
+lofty aspirations for the reformation of all mankind.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Youth</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I was nearly sixteen, and from that time I date the beginning of youth.
+Under various professors I studied, though by no means willingly, to
+prepare for the university. At length, on April 16, I went for the first
+time to the great hall of the university. For the first time in my life I
+wore a dress coat. The bright hall was filled with a brilliant crowd of
+hundreds of young men in gymnasium costumes and dress coats, stately
+professors moving freely about among the tables. On that day I was examined
+in history and answered questions in Russian history in brilliant style,
+for I knew the subject well. I received five marks. Similar success
+rewarded my efforts at the examination in mathematics, for the professor
+told me I had answered even better than was required, and on this occasion
+I received five points.</p>
+
+<p>Everything went splendidly till I came to the Latin examination. The
+Latin professor was spoken of in accents of terror, for he had the
+reputation of taking a fierce delight in plucking candidates. My success so
+far had made me feel proudly confident, and as I could translate Cicero and
+Horace without the lexicon and was proficient in Zumpt's Grammar, I thought
+I might equal the rest. But not so. The professor amicably passed one of my
+young acquaintances, although the youth was palpably deficient in his
+answers. I afterwards learned that he was the student's protector.</p>
+
+<p>When my turn came, immediately afterwards, the professor turned on me in
+truly savage demeanour. "That is not it; that is not it at all," exclaimed
+he. "This is not the way to prepare for higher education. You only want to
+wear the uniform and to boast of being first."</p>
+
+<p>The demeanour of this professor so affected me that my confusion was
+complete. I only received two marks, and the injustice so depressed me that
+I lost all ambition and allowed the remaining examinations to proceed
+without making any effort. I made up my mind that it was unwise to aim at
+being first, and I resolved to adhere to this sentiment in the
+university.</p>
+
+<p>My father married again. He was forty-eight when he took Avdotya
+Epifanova as his second wife. She was a beautiful woman, whom Mamma used to
+call Dunitchka. But I had suspected nothing until Papa actually announced
+to us that he was going to marry her. The wedding was to take place in a
+fortnight. I and Volodya returned to Moscow at the beginning of September,
+and on the following day I went to the university for my first lecture.</p>
+
+<p>It was a magnificent, sunny day, and as I entered the auditorium I felt
+lost in the throng of gay youths flitting about through the doors and among
+the corridors. Belonging to no particular group I felt isolated, and then
+even angry, and I remember in my heart that this first day was a dismal
+occasion for me. I looked at the professor with an ironical feeling, for he
+commenced his lecture with an introduction which, to my mind, was without
+sense. I decided at this first lecture that there was no need to write down
+everything that each professor said, and to this principle I adhered.</p>
+
+<p>Though during my course I made many pleasant acquaintances, and so felt
+less isolated than at first, I indulged in little real comradeship. But
+during the winter my attention was much engrossed with affairs of the
+heart, for I was in love three times. Yet I was overwhelmed with shyness,
+fearing that my love should be discovered by its object. With two of the
+young ladies, indeed, I had already been in love previously. Of one of them
+I was now enamoured for the third time. But I knew that Volodya also
+regarded her with passionate ecstasy. I felt that it would certainly not be
+agreeable to him to learn that two brothers were in love with the same
+young woman.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I said nothing to him of my love. But great satisfaction was
+afforded to my mind by the fact that our love was so pure, and that each
+would be ready, if needful, to make a sacrifice for the sake of the other.
+But that self-abnegation did not, after all, extend to Volodya, for when he
+heard that a certain diplomat was to marry the girl, he was disposed to
+slap his face and to challenge him to a duel. It happened that I had only
+spoken once to the young lady, and my love passed away in a week, as I made
+no effort to perpetuate it.</p>
+
+<p>During that winter I was quite disenchanted with the social pleasures to
+which I had looked forward when I entered the university, in imitation of
+my brother Volodya. He danced a great deal, and Papa also went with his
+young wife to balls. But at the first one which I attended I was so shy
+that I declined the invitation of the Princess Kornakova to dance,
+declaring that I did not dance, though I had come to her evening party with
+the express intention of dancing a great deal. I remained silently in one
+place the whole evening.</p>
+
+<p>Avdotya's passionate love for Papa was evident in every word, look, and
+action. We were always hypocritically polite to her, called her
+<i>ch&egrave;re maman</i>, and noted that at first she was fond of calling
+herself stepmother, and that she plainly felt the unpleasantness of her
+position. Her disposition was very amiable and she was in no way
+exacting.</p>
+
+<p>My first examination at length arrived. It was on differential and
+integral calculus. I was indifferent and abstracted, but a feeling of some
+dread passed over me when the same young professor who had questioned me at
+the entrance examination looked me in the face. I answered so badly that he
+looked at me compassionately, and said quietly but firmly that as I should
+not pass in the second class I had better not present myself for
+examination. I went home and remained weeping in my room for three days
+over my failure. I even looked out my pistols, in order that they might be
+at hand if I should feel a wish to shoot myself. Finally, I saw my father
+and begged him to permit me to enter the hussars, or to go to the
+Caucasus.</p>
+
+<p>Though he was not pleased, yet, when he saw how deep was my grief he
+sought to comfort me by saying that it was not so very bad, and that
+arrangements might be made for a different course of study. After a few
+days I became composed, but did not leave the house till we departed for
+the country. I may some day relate the sequel in the happier half of my
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>[Tolstoy has never published the continuation, but it is generally
+considered that he represents himself in Constantine Levin, the hero of the
+greatest of his stories, and that thus we gain an insight into his mature
+thoughts.]</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="My_Confession"></a>My Confession</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Count Lyof N. Tolstoy in writing this work expressed
+himself in such independent terms that it could not be published in Russia,
+but was issued in Geneva in 1888, by the firm of Elpidine, who had printed
+in 1886 his "What is my Life," and in 1892 brought out his "Walk in the
+Light." The books thus issued in the original Russian version outside of
+the famous author's native land are all purely spiritual, and are written
+in the most elevated tone. But Tolstoy's mode of interpreting the
+Scriptures is not approved by the Holy Synod of the Eastern Orthodox
+Church, or Russo-Greek Communion, and thus most of his treatises which come
+within the strictly religious category are classed amongst the "Forbidden
+Books" of modern Russian literature. In this "Confession" Tolstoy
+emphatically strikes the keynote which is the <i>motif</i> of all his
+didactic writings. It is an affirmation of the principle that the pure
+spirit of religion, apart from external dogma, is the really precious
+factor of life. He follows the same strain in his "What I Believe," and his
+"Christianity of Christ." The following synopsis is translated and
+summarised from the original Russian. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Evil Early Years</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Though reared in the faith of the Orthodox Eastern, or Russo-Greek
+Church, I had by the time when, at the age of eighteen, I left the
+university ceased to believe what I had been taught. My faith could never
+have been well grounded in conviction. I not only ceased to pray, but also
+to attend the services and to fast. Without denying the existence of God,
+yet I cherished no ideas either as to the nature of God or the teaching of
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>I found that my wish to become a good and virtuous man, whenever the
+aspiration was in any way expressed, simply exposed me to ridicule; while I
+instantly gained praise for any vicious behaviour. Even my excellent aunt
+declared that she wished two things for me. One was that I should form a
+liaison with some married lady; the other that I should become an adjutant
+to the Tsar.</p>
+
+<p>I look back with horror on the years of my young manhood, for I was
+guilty of slaying men in battle, of gambling, of riotous squandering of
+substance gained by the toil of serfs, of deceit, and of profligacy. That
+course of life lasted ten years. Then I took to writing, but the motive was
+grovelling, for I aimed at gaining money and flattery.</p>
+
+<p>My aims were gratified, for, coming to St. Petersburg at the age of 26,
+I secured the flattering reception I had coveted from the authors most in
+repute. The war, about which I had written much from the field of conflict,
+had just closed. I found that a theory prevailed amongst the
+"Intelligentia" that the function of writers, thinkers, and poets was to
+teach; they were to teach not because they knew or understood, but
+unconsciously and intuitively. Acting on this philosophy, I, as a thinker
+and poet, wrote and taught I knew not what, received large remuneration for
+my efforts with the pen, and lived loosely, gaily, and extravagantly.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I was one of the hierarchs of the literary faith, and for a
+considerable time was undisturbed by any doubts as to its soundness; but
+when three years had been thus spent, serious suspicions entered my mind. I
+noted that the devotees of this apparently infallible principle were at
+variance amongst themselves, for they disputed, deceived, abused, and
+swindled each other. And many were grossly selfish, and most immoral.</p>
+
+<p>Disgust supervened, both with myself and with mankind in general. My
+error now was that though my eyes were opened to the vanity and delusion of
+the position, yet I retained it, imagining that I, as thinker, poet,
+teacher, could teach other men while not at all knowing what to teach. To
+my other faults an inordinate pride had been added by my intercourse with
+these <i>litterateurs</i>. That period viewed retrospectively seems to me
+like one of a kind of madness. Hundreds of us wrote to teach the people,
+while we all abused and confuted one another. We could teach nothing, yet
+we sent millions of pages all over Russia, and we were unspeakably vexed
+that we seemed to gain no attention whatever, for nobody appeared to listen
+to us.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Groping in Darkness</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I travelled in Europe at this period, before my marriage, still
+cherishing in my mind the idea of general perfectibility, which was so
+popular at that time with the "Intelligentia." Cultured circles clung to
+the theory of what we call "progress," vague though are the notions
+attaching to the term. I was horrified with the spectacle of an execution
+in Paris, and my eyes were opened to the fallacy underlying the theory of
+human wisdom. The doctrine of "progress" I now felt to be a mere
+superstition, and I was further confirmed in my conviction by the sad death
+of my brother after a painful illness of a whole year.</p>
+
+<p>My brother was kind, amiable, clever, and serious; but he passed away
+without ever knowing why he had lived or what his death meant for him. All
+theories were futile in the face of this tragedy. Returning to Russia I
+settled in my rural home and began to organise schools for the peasants,
+feeling real enthusiasm for the enterprise. For I still clung to a great
+extent to the idea of progress by development. I thought that though highly
+cultured men all thought and taught differently and agreed about nothing,
+yet in the case of the children of the mujiks the difficulty could easily
+be surmounted by permitting the children to learn what they liked.</p>
+
+<p>I also tried through my own newspaper to indoctrinate the people, but my
+mind grew more and more embarrassed. At length I fell sick, rather mentally
+than physically. I went off to the Steppes to breathe the pure air and to
+take mare's milk and to live the simple life. I married soon after my
+return to my estate. As time passed on I became happily absorbed in the
+interests of wife and children, largely forgetting during a happy interval
+of fifteen years the old anxiety for individual perfection. For this desire
+was superseded by that of promoting the welfare of my family.</p>
+
+<p>All this time, however, I was writing busily, and was gaining much money
+as well as winning great applause. And in everything I wrote I persistently
+taught what was for me the sole truth--that our chief object in life should
+be to secure our own happiness and that of our family. Then, five years
+ago, supervened a mood of mental lethargy. I grew despondent; my perplexity
+increased, and I was tormented by the constant recurrence of such questions
+as--"Why?" and "What afterwards?" And by degrees the questions took a more
+concrete form. "I now possess six thousand 'desyatins' of land in the
+government of Samara, and three hundred horses--what then?" I could find no
+answer. Then came the question, "What if I could excel Shakespeare, and
+Moli&egrave;re, and Gogol, and become the most celebrated the world has
+ever seen--what then?" Answer, there was none; yet I felt that I must find
+one in order to go on living.</p>
+
+<p>Life had now lost its meaning, and was no longer real to me. I was a
+healthy and happy man, and yet so empty did life seem to me that I was
+afraid of being tempted to commit suicide, even though I had not the
+slightest intention to perpetrate such a deed. But, fearing lest the
+temptation might come upon me I hid a rope away out of my sight, and ceased
+carrying a gun in my walks.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--The Spirit of Despair</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was in my 50th year that the question "What is life" had reduced me
+to utter despair. Various queries clustered round this central
+interrogation. "Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there any
+signification in life that can overcome inevitable death?" I found that in
+human knowledge no real answer was forthcoming to such yearnings. None of
+the theories of the philosophers gave any satisfaction. In my search for a
+solution of life's problem I felt like a traveller lost in a forest, out of
+which he can find no issue.</p>
+
+<p>I found that not only did Solomon declare that he hated life, for all is
+vanity and vexation of spirit; but that Sakya Muni, the Indian sage,
+equally decided that life was a great evil; while Socrates and Schopenhauer
+agree that annihilation is the only thing to be wished for. But neither
+these testimonies of great minds nor my own reasoning could induce me to
+destroy myself. For a force within me, combined with an instinctive
+consciousness of life, counteracted the feeling of despair and drew me out
+of my misery of soul. I felt that I must study life not merely as it was
+amongst those like myself, but as it was amongst the millions of the common
+people. I reflected that knowledge based on reason, the knowledge of the
+cultured, imparted no meaning to life, but that, on the other hand, amongst
+the masses of the common people there was an unreasoning consciousness of
+life which gave it a significance.</p>
+
+<p>This unreasoning knowledge was the very faith which I was rejecting. It
+was faith in things I could not understand; in God, one yet three; in the
+creation of devils and angels. Such things seemed utterly contrary to
+reason. So I began to reflect that perhaps what I considered reasonable was
+after all not so, and what appeared unreasonable might not really be
+so.</p>
+
+<p>I discovered one great error that I had perpetrated. I had been
+comparing life with life, that is, the finite with the finite, and the
+infinite with the infinite. The process was vain. It was like comparing
+force with force, matter with matter, nothing with nothing. It was like
+saying in mathematics that A equals A, or O equals O. Thus the only answer
+was "identity."</p>
+
+<p>Now I saw that scientific knowledge would give no reply to my questions.
+I began to comprehend that though faith seemed to give unreasonable
+answers, these answers certainly did one important thing. They did at least
+bring in the relation of the finite to the infinite. I came to feel that in
+addition to the reasoning knowledge which I once reckoned to be the sole
+true knowledge, there was in every man also an unreasoning species of
+knowledge which makes life possible. That unreasoning knowledge is
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>What is this faith? It is not only belief in God and in things unseen,
+but it is the apprehension of life's meaning. It is the force of life. I
+began to understand that the deepest source of human wisdom was to be found
+in the answers given by faith, that I had no reasonable right to reject
+them, and that they alone solved the problem of life.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Mistakes Apprehended</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Nevertheless my heart was not lightened. I studied the writings of
+Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. I also studied actual religious life by
+turning to the orthodox, the monks, and the Evangelicals who preach
+salvation through faith in a Redeemer. I asked what meaning was given for
+them to life by what they believed. But I could not accept the faith of any
+of these men, because I saw that it did not explain the meaning of life,
+but only obscured it. So I felt a return of the terrible feeling of
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>Being unable to believe in the sincerity of men who did not live
+consistently with the doctrines they professed, and feeling that they were
+self-deceived, and, like myself, were satisfied with the lusts of the
+flesh, I began to draw near to the believers amongst the poor, simple, and
+ignorant, the pilgrims, monks, and peasants. I found that though their
+faith was mingled with much superstition, yet with them the whole life was
+a confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith gave them.</p>
+
+<p>The more I contemplated the lives of these simple folk, the more deeply
+was I convinced of the reality of their faith, which I perceived to be a
+necessity for them, for it alone gave life a meaning and made it worth
+living. This was in direct opposition to what I saw in my own circle, where
+I marked the possibility of living without faith, for not one in a thousand
+professed to be a believer, while amongst the poorer classes not one in
+thousands was an unbeliever. The contradiction was extreme. In my class a
+tranquil death, without terror or despair, is rare; in that lower class, an
+uneasy death is a rare exception. I found that countless numbers in that
+lower mass of humanity had so understood the meaning of life that they were
+able both to live bearing contentedly the burdens of life, and to die
+peacefully.</p>
+
+<p>The more I learned of these men of faith the more I liked them, and the
+easier I felt it so to live. For two years I lived in their fashion. Then
+the life of my own wealthy and cultured class became repellent to me, for
+it had lost all meaning whatever. It seemed like empty child's play, while
+the life of the working classes appeared to me in its true
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>Now I began to apprehend where I had judged wrongly. My mistake was that
+I had applied an answer to my question concerning life which only concerned
+my own life, to life in general. My life had been but one long indulgence
+of my passions. It was evil and meaningless. Therefore such an answer had
+no application to life at large, but only to my individual life.</p>
+
+<p>I understood the truth which the Gospel subsequently taught me more
+fully, that men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
+evil. I understood that for the comprehension of life, it was essential
+that life should be something more than an evil and meaningless thing
+revealed by reason. Life must be considered as a whole, not merely in its
+parasitic excrescences. I felt that to be good was more important than to
+believe. I loved good men. I hated myself. I accepted truth. I understood
+that we were all more or less mad with the love of evil.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the animals, saw the birds building nests, living only to
+fly and to subsist. I saw how the goat, hare, and wolf live, but to feed
+and to nurture their young, and are contented and happy. Their life is a
+reasonable one. And man must gain his living like the animals do, only with
+this great difference, that if he should attempt this alone, he will
+perish. So he must labour for the good of all, not merely for himself.</p>
+
+<p>I had not helped others. My life for thirty years had been that of a
+mere parasite. I had been contented to remain ignorant of the reason why I
+lived at all.</p>
+
+<p>There is a supreme will in the universe. Some one makes the universal
+life his secret care. To know what that supreme will is, we must obey it
+implicitly. No reproaches against their masters come from the simple
+workers who do just what is required of them, though we are in the habit of
+regarding them as brutes. We, on the contrary, who think ourselves wise,
+consume the goods of our master while we do nothing willingly that he
+prescribes. We think that it would be stupid for us to do so.</p>
+
+<p>What does such conduct imply? Simply that our master is stupid, or that
+we have no master.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Feeling Versus Reason</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Thus I was led at last to the conclusion that knowledge based on reason
+is fallacious, and that the knowledge of truth can be secured only by
+living. I had come to feel that I must live a real, not a parasitical life,
+and that the meaning of life could be perceived only by observation of the
+combined lives of the great human community.</p>
+
+<p>The feelings of my mind during all these experiences and observations
+were mingled with a heart-torment which I can only describe as a searching
+after God. This search was a feeling rather than a course of reasoning. For
+it came from my heart, and was actually opposed to my way of thinking. Kant
+had shown the impossibility of proving the existence of God, yet I still
+hoped to find Him, and I still addressed Him in prayer. Yet I did not find
+Him whom I sought.</p>
+
+<p>At times I contended against the reasoning of Kant and Schopenhauer, and
+argued that causation is not in the same category with thought and space
+and time. I argued that if I existed, there was a cause of my being, and
+that cause was the cause of all causes. Then I pondered the idea that the
+cause of all things is what is called God, and with all my powers I strove
+to attain a sense of the presence of this cause.</p>
+
+<p>Directly I became conscious of a power over me I felt a possibility of
+living. Then I asked myself what was this cause, and what was my relation
+to what I called God? Simply the old familiar answer occurred to me, that
+God is the creator, the giver of all. Yet I was dissatisfied and fearful,
+and the more I prayed, the more convinced I was that I was not heard. In my
+despair I cried aloud for mercy, but no one had mercy on me, and I felt as
+if life stagnated within me.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the conviction kept recurring that I must have appeared in this
+world with some motive on the part of some one who had sent me into it. If
+I had been sent here, who sent me? I had not been like a fledgling flung
+out of a nest to perish. Some one had cared for me, had loved me. Who was
+it? Again came the same answer, God. He knew and saw my fear, my despair,
+and so I passed from the consideration of the existence of God, which was
+proved, on to that of our relation towards him as our Redeemer through His
+Son. But I felt this to be a thing apart from me and from the world, and
+this God vanished like melting ice from my eyes. Again I was left in
+despair. I felt there was nothing left but to put an end to my life; yet I
+knew that I should never do this.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did moods of joy and despair come and go, till one day, when I was
+listening to the sounds in a forest, and was still on that day in the early
+springtide seeking after God in my thoughts, a flash of joy illumined my
+soul. I realised that the conception of God was not God Himself. I felt
+that I had only truly lived when I believed in God. God is life. Live to
+seek God and life will not be without Him. The light that then shone never
+left me. Thus I was saved from self-destruction. Gradually I felt the glow
+and strength of life return to me. I renounced the life of my own class,
+because it was unreal, and its luxurious superfluity rendered comprehension
+of life impossible. The simple men around me, the working classes, were the
+real Russian people. To them I turned. They made the meaning of life clear.
+It may thus be expressed:--</p>
+
+<p>Each of us is so created by God that he may ruin or save his soul. To
+save his soul, a man must live after God's word by humility, charity, and
+endurance, while renouncing all the pleasures of life. This is for the
+common people the meaning of the whole system of faith, traditionally
+delivered to them from the past and administered to them by the pastors of
+the Church.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="PASQUALE_VILLARI"></a>PASQUALE VILLARI</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Life_of_Girolamo_Savonarola"></a>The Life of Girolamo
+Savonarola</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Pasquale Villari was born October 3, 1827, at Naples. At
+the age of twenty he produced his first literary effort, a Liberal
+manifesto against Neapolitan Bourbonism, which necessitated his flight from
+his native city. He retreated to Florence and there wrote his work on
+"Savonarola," which at once achieved fame and was translated into French,
+German, and English. His next great book was his "Macchiavelli." Villari
+had been appointed Professor of History at Nice, but left that city for a
+similar position at Florence. He entered political life in 1862, and has
+sat as a Parliamentary Deputy several times. In 1884 he was made senator,
+and in 1891 he was minister of public instruction in the Rudini Cabinet.
+Villari's essays on Dante are much esteemed. His treatise on "The First Two
+Centuries of Florentine History" is considered a standard work. All his
+books have been translated into our language by his English wife, Linda
+Villari, who is herself an accomplished authoress. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--1452-1494</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The House of Savonarola derived its ancient origin from the city of
+Padua. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the family removed to
+Ferrara where, on September 21, 1452, the subject of this biography,
+Girolamo Savonarola, first saw the light. He was the third of seven
+children of his parents. The lad became the favourite of his grandfather,
+Michele, who wished to see him become a great physician, and devoted most
+assiduous care on the task of training his intellect. But unfortunately the
+grandfather soon passed away, and Girolamo's studies were then directed by
+his father, who began to instruct him in philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>The natural sciences were then only branches of philosophy, and the
+latter, though employed as preliminary to the study of medicine, was purely
+scholastic. The books which came into the hands of the young Savonarola
+were the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Arabic commentaries on
+Aristotle. He was specially fascinated with the works of St. Thomas, but
+besides literature he studied music. He also composed verses.</p>
+
+<p>All particulars, however, of Savonarola's boyhood are unfortunately
+lacking. But we can form a vivid idea of the surroundings which must have
+influenced him. Ferrara was then the splendid capital of the House of Este,
+with 100,000 inhabitants and a court which was one of the first in Italy,
+and was continually visited by princes, emperors, and popes. The lad must
+have witnessed gorgeous pageants, like the two which occurred on visits of
+Pope Pius II., in 1459 and 1460. But during all this period Savonarola was
+entirely absorbed in studying the Scriptures and St. Thomas Aquinas,
+allowing himself no recreation save playing sad music on his lute, or
+writing verses expressing, not without force and simplicity, the griefs of
+his heart.</p>
+
+<p>The contrasts that the youth witnessed between the magnificence
+ostentatiously displayed and the evidences of tyranny in palaces and
+castles in whose dungeons were immured numerous victims, clanking their
+chains, made indelible impressions on his mind. Conducted once by his
+parents to the ducal palace at Ferrara, he firmly refused ever to enter its
+doors again. With singular spiritual fervour in one so young, Savonarola
+surrendered his whole heart and soul to religious sentiments and exercises.
+To him worldly life, as he saw all Ferrara absorbed in its gaieties, became
+utterly repellent, and a sermon to which he listened from an Augustinian
+friar determined him to adopt the monastic life.</p>
+
+<p>April 24, 1475, when his parents were absent from home attending the
+festival of St. George, he ran away to Bologna and presented himself at the
+Monastery of St. Dominic, begging that he might be admitted for the most
+menial service. He was instantly received, and at once began to prepare for
+his novitiate. In this retreat he submitted himself to the severest
+penances and discipline and displayed such excessive zeal and devotion as
+to win the admiration of the monks, who at times believed him to be rapt in
+a holy trance.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--1475-1481</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Savonarola's sojourn at Bologna in the Dominican Monastery lasted for
+seven years, during which his spirit was occupied not only with faith and
+prayer, but with deep meditation on the miserable condition of the Church.
+His soul was stirred to wrathful indignation. The shocking corruption of
+the Papacy, dating from the death of Pius II. in 1464, was to reach its
+climax under Alexander VI. The avarice of Paul II. was soon noted by all
+the world, and so boundless was the profligacy of his successor, Sixtus
+IV., that no deed was too scandalous for him to commit.</p>
+
+<p>The state of Italy as well as of the Church was miserable, and the soul
+of the young monk was filled with horror-stricken grief, relieved only by
+study and prayer. He had been much occupied in instructing the novices, but
+now he was promoted to the function of preacher. In 1481 he was sent by his
+superiors to preach in Ferrara. Nothing is known of the effect of the
+sermons he delivered at that time and place. Savonarola had not yet
+developed his gifts of oratory. He was driven from Ferrara by an outbreak
+of war with the Venetians, and repaired to Florence, where, in the
+Monastery of St. Mark the brightest as well as the saddest years of his
+life were to be spent. The Monastery contained the first public library
+established in Italy, which was kept in excellent order by the monks.</p>
+
+<p>Savonarola was half intoxicated with joy during his first days in
+Florence. He was charmed by the soft lines of the Tuscan hills and the
+beauty of the Tuscan speech. Lorenzo the Magnificent had been ruling
+Florence for many years and was then at the climacteric of his fame. Under
+his sway everything appeared to prosper. Enemies had been imprisoned or
+banished, and factions had ceased to distract the city. Lorenzo's shameless
+licentiousness was condoned by reason of his brilliancy, his patronage of
+art and literature, and his lavish public entertainments.</p>
+
+<p>Greek scholars, driven westward by the fall of Constantinople, sought
+refuge at the Florentine court. The fine arts flourished and a Platonic
+Academy was established. It was even proposed that the Pope should canonise
+Plato as a saint. In fact that period witnessed the inauguration of modern
+culture.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--1481-1490</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>After the first few days in Florence, Savonarola again began to
+experience the feeling of isolation. For he speedily detected the unbelief
+and frivolity under the surface of the intellectual culture of the people.
+Even in St. Mark's Monastery there was no real religion. Savonarola was
+soon invited to preach the Lenten sermons in St. Lorenzo. His discourses
+produced no special effect, for the Florentines preferred preachers who
+indulged in Pagan quotations and rhetorical elegancies rather than in
+expatiating in the precepts of Christianity. But a stirring event was at
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Savonarola was sent by his superiors to Reggio to attend a Chapter of
+the Dominicans. During the discussion he was suddenly impelled to rise to
+his feet and to plunge into a powerful declamation against the corruptions
+of the Church and the clergy which transfixed his hearers with
+astonishment. This outburst was a revelation of his extraordinary powers.
+It instantly secured his fame and from that moment many sought his
+acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>Savonarola's mind from that moment became strangely excited and it is
+not surprising that he should have seen many visions. He on one occasion
+saw the heavens open. A panorama of the calamities of the Church passed
+before him and he heard a voice charging him to proclaim them to the
+people. In that year, 1484, Pope Sixtus died. The election of his
+successor, Innocent VIII. destroyed the hopes of honest men. For the new
+Pope no longer disguised his children under the appellation of nephews, but
+openly acknowledged them as his sons, conferring on them the title of
+princes.</p>
+
+<p>We may imagine the storms of emotion excited in the soul of Savonarola.
+Fortunately, he was sent to preach Lenten sermons at San Gimignano, the
+"City of the Grey Towers" in the Siennese hills. Here he found his true
+vocation. His words flowed freely and were eloquent and effective. Next he
+was sent to Brescia, where his predictions of coming terrors and his
+exhortations to repentance produced a profound impression. During the sack
+of that same city in 1512 by the fierce soldiers of Gaston de Foix, when
+6,000 citizens were slain, the stricken people vividly remembered the
+Apocalyptic denunciations and predictions of the preacher from Ferrara.</p>
+
+<p>Through the wonderful success of these Lenten sermons the name of
+Savonarola became known throughout Italy, and he no longer felt uncertain
+as to his proper mission. Yet, the more popular he became the greater was
+his humility and the more ardent was his devotion to prayer. He seemed when
+engaged in prayer frequently to lapse into a trance, and tradition even
+alleges that at such times a bright halo was seen to encircle his head.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--1491</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Returning to Florence, Savonarola by his Lenten sermons in 1491 drew
+immense crowds to the Duomo. From that moment he became the paramount power
+in the pulpit. His vivid imagery and his predictions of coming troubles
+seemed to produce a magical effect on the minds of the people. But this
+growing influence was a source of considerable vexation to Lorenzo de'
+Medici and his friends. Savonarola vehemently denounced the greed of the
+clergy and their neglect of spiritual life for the sake of mere external
+ceremonialism, and he with equal insistence inveighed against the
+corruption of public manners. As Lorenzo was already considered a tyrant by
+many of the citizens, and as he was universally charged with having
+corrupted the magistrates and appropriated the public and private funds, it
+was generally inferred that Savonarola had had the audacity to make
+allusion to him.</p>
+
+<p>This only enhanced the Friar's reputation and in July, 1491, he was
+elected Prior of St. Mark's. The office made him both more prominent than
+before and also more independent. He showed this to be the case by at once
+refusing to go according to custom to do homage to the Magnificent,
+declaring that he owed his election to God alone, and to God only would he
+vow obedience. Lorenzo was deeply offended, yet he judged it discreet
+rather to win the new Prior over by kindness than to wage war with him.</p>
+
+<p>The Seignior only deepened Savonarola's contempt by sending rich gifts
+to the convent and by sending five of the chief citizens to him in order to
+induce him to modify the strain of his preaching. The gifts were
+immediately distributed among the poor, and Savonarola in a pulpit allusion
+observed that a faithful dog does not cease barking in his master's defence
+because a bone is flung him. To the five citizens, who hinted to the Prior
+that he might be sent into exile, he replied that they should bid Lorenzo
+do penance for his sins, for God was no respecter of persons and did not
+spare the princes of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful was the effect of Savonarola's preaching on the corrupt and
+pagan society of Florence. His natural, spontaneous, heart-stirring
+eloquence, with its exalted imagery and outbursts of righteous indignation,
+was entirely unprecedented in that era of pedantry and simulation of the
+classic and heathen oratory. The scholastic jargon indulged in by the
+preachers of the time was utterly unintelligible to the common people.
+Savonarola's voice was the only one that addressed the multitude in
+familiar and fascinating tones and in an accent that evinced true affection
+for the people. They knew that he alone fought for truth and was fervently
+devoted to goodness. Thus he was the one truly eloquent preacher of the
+time, who restored pulpit preaching to its pristine honour, and he well
+deserves to be styled the first orator of modern times.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--1492-1494</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>A wasting disease from which Lorenzo suffered had by the beginning of
+April, 1492, made such inroads as to end all hopes of his recovery. The
+Magnificent turned his thoughts to religion and suddenly asked to confess
+to Savonarola. Though astonished at the request, the Prior acceded to it
+and found Lorenzo in great agitation, which he sought to calm by reminding
+the sick man of the goodness and mercy of God.</p>
+
+<p>A painful scene ensued. Savonarola added that three things were needful.
+First, a living faith in God's mercy. Secondly, Lorenzo must restore all
+his ill-gotten wealth, or at least command his sons to do it in his name.
+Lastly, he must restore liberty to the people of Florence. The sick man,
+collecting all his remaining strength, angrily turned his back on his
+Confessor, who at once left his presence. On April 8, 1492, the
+Magnificent, in an agony of remorse, breathed his last. On July 25 of the
+same year Pope Innocent VIII. expired.</p>
+
+<p>The next Pope, Alexander VI., was notorious for his avarice and his
+profligacy. The announcement of his elevation to the papal chair was
+received throughout Italy with dismay. The worst apprehensions were soon
+fulfilled, for the Pope proved to be guilty of shocking extortion, the
+object of which was to provide more lavishly for his dissolute
+children.</p>
+
+<p>This deplorable state of things caused men to look wistfully to
+Savonarola. The times he had foretold seemed to be at hand, and the
+excitement was intensified by two visions which he declared had been
+manifested to him as celestial revelations. He had seen a sword in the sky
+and had heard voices proclaiming mercy to the righteous and retribution to
+the wicked.</p>
+
+<p>In the other vision a black cross hung over the city of Rome, stretching
+its arms over the whole earth. On it was written, "The Cross of God's
+wrath." But from Jerusalem rose a golden cross, inscribed, "The Cross of
+God's compassion." Discontent was growing in Florence. The insolence and
+the rapacity of Pietro de' Medici increased. In the autumn of that year
+Savonarola delivered a famous course of sermons on Noah's Ark, warning all
+to take refuge from the coming flood in the mystical Ark of mercy. The
+flood came indeed, for suddenly all Florence was startled as if by a
+thunderclap by the news that a foreign army was pouring over the Alps for
+the conquest of Italy. The terror was overwhelming. Italy was unprepared,
+for the princes had no efficient armies for resistance.</p>
+
+<p>The invader was the new King of France, the young and adventurous
+Charles VIII. His army was a model to all Europe in the art of war. It
+possessed weapons of the latest invention and its main strength lay in its
+splendid infantry. Florence was entered without a blow, and King Charles
+demanded as a ransom a far larger sum than the Republic could pay. He
+remained day after day in the city, showing no inclination to depart. Then
+was manifested a proof of the wonderful influence of Savonarola's
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>The Prior being earnestly entreated by the citizens to ask the French
+king to depart, he readily undertook the mission and presented himself to
+Charles, who, surrounded by his barons, received him cordially and listened
+graciously to his proposal. Savonarola admonished him not to bring ruin on
+the city and the anger of the Lord on himself.</p>
+
+<p>The Prior's overtures were completely successful, for on November 28,
+the king departed with his army. And now all was changed in Florence. The
+partisans of the Medici had vanished magically and Savonarola ruled the
+city at the head of the popular party. He speedily proposed a new form of
+government suggesting as the best model, a Grand Council like that of
+Venice. The new Government was formed of a Grand Council and a Council of
+Eighty answering to an Assembly of the People and a Senate. All the
+proposals of the Prior were adopted, and laws were framed almost in his own
+words.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>VI.--1495-1497</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Germs of civil discord were not lacking, and these soon developed so as
+to divide Florence into factions, the two chief of these being the Whites,
+who were favourable to popular liberty, and the Greys, who were adherents
+of the Medici. The latter were dangerous and treacherous enemies of
+Savonarola and of the Republic. For a time the Prior's preaching confounded
+his foes, for it completely changed the aspect of the city. The women cast
+off their jewels and dressed simply; young profligates were transformed
+into sober, religious men, the churches were filled with people at prayer,
+and the Bible was diligently read.</p>
+
+<p>Now came danger from without. The departure of the French had endangered
+the security of Florence. The Pope and Venice desired the reinstatement of
+the fallen tyrant Pietro de' Medici, and he prepared to attack the city.
+But he was foiled by the energy to which the Prior roused the Florentines
+for measures of defence. Meantime, Savonarola once more displayed his noble
+independence by spurning the offer on the part of the Pope of a Cardinal's
+hat. And terrible in their vehemence and audacity were his denunciations
+against the vices of Rome, delivered in his Lenten sermons of 1496.</p>
+
+<p>In his usual strain, but with increasing power, Savonarola graphically
+and vividly described the woes of Italy, as though he were gifted with
+prophetic vision. One of his sermons was interdicted by the Pope, but the
+preacher modified nothing and defied the Vatican. And now, while the
+enthusiasm of his followers was developing into fanaticism, the hatred of
+his enemies was approaching a climax, and the war was waxing furious.</p>
+
+<p>The fame of this marvellous preacher was now extending throughout the
+world by means of his printed sermons. Even the Sultan of Turkey commanded
+them to be translated into Turkish for his own study. Of course the
+individual aim of Savonarola was simply to be the regenerator of religion.
+The Florentines, however, adulated him as the real founder of the free
+Republic. Hence they displayed immense ardour in defending him against the
+Pope, seeing that thus they were upholding their own freedom, because the
+Pope was aiming at reinstating the Medici in Florence.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope had hoped that the Prior would moderate his tone, but this was
+only more aggressive than ever, and threatening messages arrived from the
+Vatican. Attempts by his friends, some of them of high and influential
+position, to defend him, only the more enraged Pope Alexander Borgia. He
+summoned a consistory of fourteen Dominican theologians who were ordered to
+investigate Savonarola's conduct and doctrine. The strange issue was he was
+charged with having been the cause of all the misfortunes that had befallen
+Pietro de' Medici.</p>
+
+<p>After Lent the Prior went to preach a course of sermons at Prato, and on
+his return to Florence he delivered a sermon in the Hall of the Greater
+Council in the presence of all the magistrates and leading citizens of the
+city, in which he openly and courageously defied all the wrath of Alexander
+Borgia. Then he once more set himself to the work of serving the Republic,
+though, as the sequel shows, he was fated to meet with a base reward.</p>
+
+<p>Commerce and industry had been paralysed in Florence by the incessant
+commotions of past years. The immense sums paid to the French king had
+together with sums spent on war drained the public resources and lowered
+the credit of the Republic. And now famine was threatened, for the people
+in the rural districts were pinched with hunger. The starving peasantry
+began to flock in great numbers into the city, so that the misery
+increased. Terror was occasioned by a few cases of death from plague.
+Florence was at war with Pisa, but without success, for many of her
+mercenary soldiers were deserting and the forces besieging Pisa were
+dwindling for lack of supplies.</p>
+
+<p>Fresh adversities were in store for the Florentines. Though the rumours
+of a second invasion of Italy by King Charles proved unfounded, for he
+renounced all idea of returning, new enemies arose. The Emperor Maximilian
+was marching towards the frontier, and the Pope felt encouraged to enter
+into open war with the Florentines. His forces and the troops from Sienna
+actually attempted an incursion into the territories of the Republic, but
+they suffered repeated repulses, and at length were put to flight. But this
+conflict weakened still more the forces before Pisa, at which city
+Maximilian arrived with 1,000 foot soldiers, receiving a cordial welcome
+from the Pisans.</p>
+
+<p>The Florentines did not quail before the storm. Their courage never
+failed. They collected fresh stores and sent abundant provisions to the
+camp. But the hatred of the Pope grew more intense, especially against
+Savonarola, who, however, had not returned to the pulpit, being actuated by
+a wish not to accentuate the situation. For the general misery in Florence
+daily increased and the plague was extending its ravages. The hospitals
+were full. And the faction against Savonarola, named the Arrabbiati, seemed
+positively to regard the distress with glee, for these fanatics went about
+crying aloud, "At last we can all perceive how we have been deceived! This
+is the happiness that the Friar predicted for Florence!" Moreover they
+proclaimed that now was the time to overthrow the Government.</p>
+
+<p>But the Seigniory entreated Savonarola to come forth again from his
+retirement. He entered the pulpit on October 28, but only to look on people
+whose faces were marked by distress and terror. Yet his sermons
+administered such comfort to the citizens who in the majority still adhered
+to him, though the Arrabbiati mocked at his words. Temporary relief was at
+hand, for suddenly, as if by a miracle, ships arrived from Marseilles
+bringing long-expected reinforcements and supplies of corn. The people were
+frantic with joy and solemn thanksgivings were offered in the churches.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope was now designing measures to entrap the Prior. A new
+Vicar-General was appointed with power which would invest him with such
+authority over Savonarola that the latter would lose his independence. But
+he displayed no disposition to yield to Rome. On the contrary, he delivered
+in the Duomo those eight magnificent, fearless, and immortal sermons which
+intensified the bitter struggle with Rome, while for the time being they
+made the great Reformer's name and authority again ascendant, and rendered
+the popular party once more master of the situation, notwithstanding the
+strategy of the Pope and the machinations of the factions.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>VII.--1497-1498</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>During Lent, 1497, Savonarola continued his course of sermons on
+Ezekiel, and in these discourses he said much that bore on the conflict
+with Rome, now daily growing more virulent. He inveighed against the
+temporal wealth of the Church and launched many accusations against Rome.
+The impression produced was the deeper because of the general presentiment
+in men's minds of the coming uprising of Christendom against the
+abominations of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Savonarola now daily expected to be excommunicated and he was determined
+to defy the Pope. The plague increased in Florence and the Seigniory
+prohibited preaching in the churches for a time, but Savonarola persisted
+in preaching on Ascension Day. The factions were infuriated. They denied
+the pulpit with filth and draped it with the skin of an ass, and threatened
+the life of the Prior. His friends implored him not to preach at the risk
+of his life. He refused to yield, but a fearful riot took place in the
+church which was talked of through all Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The storm was now gathering. The fury of the factions increased, as also
+did the wrath of the Pope. At length, on May 13, the excommunicatory brief
+was despatched from Rome, directed against a "certain Fra Girolamo
+Savonarola who had disseminated pernicious doctrines to the scandal and
+grief of simple souls." The event threw all Florence into confusion. The
+Arrabbiati were triumphant. But the city was filled with lamentation and
+disorder. The rabble rejoiced. The churches were quickly deserted; the
+taverns were filled; immorality returned as if magically; and again women
+attired in dazzling finery paraded the streets. In less than a month, so
+rapid was the transformation, Florence seemed to have relapsed into the
+days of the Magnificent, and piety and patriotism were alike forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the Prior was calm and composed and took measures for his
+defence. He wrote an Epistle against surreptitious excommunication,
+addressed to all Christians beloved of God. He followed it by a second
+letter, also breathing courage and defiance. A conflict ensued. The
+Arrabbiati sent accusations against the Prior to Rome, while the Seigniory
+sought to vindicate him, most of the members, newly elected, being his
+friends. The plague grew so terrible that on some days there were a hundred
+deaths. In the autumn it abated, and gradually disappeared. Savonarola's
+energy in fighting the pestilence was unwearied throughout.</p>
+
+<p>The Prior soon commenced to preach again. On Christmas Day he put an end
+to all suspense as to his policy by thrice performing high mass, afterwards
+leading his monks in solemn procession through St. Mark's Square. He
+continued to issue new tracts and to preach regularly. But on February 26
+the Pope announced that Savonarola's preaching should be tolerated no
+longer. The Prior was conscious that the end was near. His last sermon was
+delivered, after he had preached in Florence for eight years, on March 18,
+1498. His adherents were terrified, and seemed to vanish.</p>
+
+<p>On April 8, Palm Sunday, the Arrabbiati attacked St. Mark's Convent.
+Savonarola was seized and bound by a brutal rabble, and he and two of his
+monks were lodged in prison. Cruel proceedings followed. For a whole month
+he was brought day after day to examination and he was repeatedly subjected
+to torture. The Pope's Commissioners were never able to extract from him
+any confession of guilt. Savonarola was from first to last unflinchingly
+consistent with himself.</p>
+
+<p>On May 22 sentence of death was passed on Savonarola, on Fra Silvestro,
+and on Fra Domenico. They prepared to face death firmly and well. The
+tragedy was enacted next morning. Three platforms had been erected on the
+steps of the Ringhiera, on which sat the Bishop of Vasona, the Apostolic
+Commissioners, and the Gonfaliero with the Council of Eight. On a gibbet in
+the form of a cross hung three chains, and combustibles were piled beneath.
+Sad and solemn was the silence of the vast throng assembled in the Piazza,
+excepting where members of the factions were raging like wild beasts and
+venting indecent blasphemies.</p>
+
+<p>The three friars were publicly stripped of their monkish robes and
+degraded. Tranquilly they mounted the scaffold, the dregs of the populace
+assailing them with vile words. But silence reigned at the moment of the
+execution. As soon as life was extinct the flames were kindled beneath the
+bodies of the three victims. The tragic and awful spectacle elicited bitter
+grief amongst the people on the one side, while cries of wild exultation
+were raised on the other.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOHN_WESLEY"></a>JOHN WESLEY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Journal1"></a>Journal</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> John Wesley, who was born June 17, 1703, at Epworth, and
+who died in London March 2, 1791, was the son of a Lincolnshire rector. His
+history covers practically the whole of the eighteenth century, of which he
+was one of the most typical personalities, as he was certainly the most
+strenuous figure. His career was absolutely without parallel, for John
+Wesley, as an itinerating clergyman, and as the propagator of that mission
+of Methodism which he founded, travelled on his preaching tours for forty
+years, mostly on horseback. He paid more turnpike fees than any man that
+ever bestrode a horse, and 8,000 miles constituted his annual record for
+many a year, during each of which he preached on the average 5,000 times.
+John Wesley received a classical education at Charterhouse and Christ
+Church, Oxford, and all through his wonderful life of endurance and
+adventure, of devotion and consecration, remained a scholar and a
+gentleman. His "Journal" is valuable for its pictures of the England of his
+day, as well as for his own simple and unpretending record of his
+experiences. Wesley made religion his business and incorporated it into the
+national life. Of him Mr. Augustine Birrell says:--"No man lived nearer the
+centre than John Wesley. Neither Clive nor Pitt, neither Mansfield nor
+Johnson. You cannot cut him out of our national life. No single figure
+influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts. No other
+man did such a life's work for England." </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Holy Club</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In November 1729, at which time I came to reside at Oxford, Mr. Morgan,
+my brother, myself, and one more, agreed to spend three or four evenings in
+a week together. Our design was to read over the classics, which we had
+before read in private, on common nights, and on Sunday some book in
+divinity. In the summer following, Mr. M. told me he had called at the
+gaol, to see a man who was condemned for killing his wife; and that, from
+the talk he had with one of the debtors, he verily believed it would do
+much good, if any one would be at the pains of now and then speaking with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>This he so frequently repeated, that on August 24, 1730, my brother and
+I walked with him to the castle. We were so well satisfied with our
+conversation there, that we agreed to go thither once or twice a week;
+which we had not done long, before he desired me to go with him to see a
+poor sick woman in the town.</p>
+
+<p>I next proposed to Mr. Gerard, the Bishop of Oxford's chaplain, who took
+care of any prisoners condemned to die, that I intended to preach in the
+prison once a month, if the bishop approved. Our design was approved and
+permission was granted. Soon after a gentleman of Merton College, who was
+one of our little company, now consisting of five persons, acquainted us
+that he had been much rallied the day before for being a member of the Holy
+Club, and that it was become a common topic of mirth at his college, where
+they had found out several of our customs, to which we were ourselves utter
+strangers.</p>
+
+<p>I corresponded with my father, and from him received encouragement, so
+that we still continued to meet as usual, and to do what service we could
+to the prisoners, and to two or three poor families in the town.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>A Missioner to Georgia</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1735. Oct. 14. Mr. Benjamin Ingham, of Queen's College, Oxford; Mr.
+Charles Delamotte, son of a London merchant, my brother Charles, and
+myself, took boat for Gravesend, in order to embark for Georgia. Our end in
+leaving our country was singly this, to save our souls; to live wholly to
+the glory of God. In the afternoon we found the "Simmonds" off Gravesend,
+and immediately went on board.</p>
+
+<p>Oct. 17. I began to learn German, in order to converse with the 26
+Germans on board. On Sunday I preached extempore and then administered the
+Lord's supper to seven communicants.</p>
+
+<p>Oct. 20. Believing the denying ourselves might be helpful, we wholly
+left off the use of flesh and wine, and confined ourselves to vegetable
+food, chiefly rice and biscuit.</p>
+
+<p>1736. Feb. 5. After a passage in which storms were frequent, between two
+and three in the afternoon, God brought us all safe into the Savannah
+river. We cast anchor near Tybee Island, where the groves of pines along
+the shore made an agreeable prospect, showing, as it were, the bloom of
+spring in the depth of winter.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday, March 7. I entered upon my ministry at Savannah. I do here bear
+witness against myself, that when I saw the number of people crowding into
+the church, the deep attention with which they received the word, and the
+seriousness that sat on all their faces, I could hardly believe that the
+greater part of them would hereafter trample under foot that word, and say
+all manner of evil falsely against him that spake it.</p>
+
+<p>March 30. Mr. Delamotte and I began to try, whether life might not be as
+well sustained by one sort as by a variety of food. We chose to make the
+experiment with bread, and were never more vigorous and healthy than while
+we tasted nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>June 30. I hoped a door was opened for my main design, which was to
+preach the gospel to the Indians, and I purposed to go immediately to the
+Choctaws, the least polished, that is, the least corrupted of the tribes.
+On my informing Lieutenant-Governor Oglethorpe of our wish, he objected,
+alleging not only danger from the French, but also the inexpediency of
+leaving Savannah without a minister. These objections I related to our
+brethren, who were all of opinion, "We ought not to go yet."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Warrant for Wesley's Arrest</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>July 3. Preaching at Charlestown, immediately after communion I
+mentioned to Mrs. Williamson (Mr. Causton's niece) some things I thought
+reprovable in her behaviour. At this she appeared extremely angry.</p>
+
+<p>Aug. 7. I repelled Mrs. Williamson from the holy communion. And next day
+Mr. Recorder, of Savannah, issued out a warrant for my arrest. Mr. Jones,
+the constable, served the warrant, and carried me before Mr. Bailiff Parker
+and Mr. Recorder. I was told that I must appear at the next court. Mr.
+Causton came to my house and declared that the affront had been offered to
+him; that he espoused the cause of his niece; that he was ill-used, and
+that he would have satisfaction if it was to be had in this world.</p>
+
+<p>To many persons Mr. Causton declared that "Mr. Wesley had repelled Sophy
+from holy communion purely out of revenge, because he had made proposals of
+marriage to her which she had rejected, and married Mr. Williamson." But
+when the case came on the grand jury, having heard the charge, declared
+themselves thoroughly persuaded that it was an artifice of Mr. Causton's
+designed "rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley, than to free the
+colony from religious tyranny, as he had been pleased to term it."</p>
+
+<p>Oct. 7. I consulted my friends whether God did not call me to return to
+England. I had found no possibility of instructing the Indians. They were
+unanimous that I ought to go, but not yet. But subsequently they agreed
+with me that the time was come.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>In London Again</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1738. Feb. 1. Landed at Deal. It is now two years and almost four months
+since I left my native country. After reading prayers and explaining a
+portion of Scripture to a large company at the inn, I left Deal, and came
+in the evening to Feversham. I here read prayers and explained the second
+lesson to a few of those who were called Christians, but were indeed more
+savage in their behaviour than the wildest Indians I have yet met with.</p>
+
+<p>Feb. 26. Sunday. I preached at six in the morning at St. Lawrence's,
+London; at ten, in St. Catherine Cree's; and in the afternoon at St.
+John's, Wapping. I believe it pleased God to bless the first sermon most,
+because it gave most offence.</p>
+
+<p>March 4. I found my brother at Oxford, and with him Peter B&ouml;hler;
+by whom, in the great hand of God, I was, on Sunday, the 5th, clearly
+convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are
+saved. Immediately it struck into my mind, "Leave off preaching. How can
+you preach to others who have not faith yourself?" I asked B&ouml;hler
+whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered, "By no
+means." I asked, "But what can I preach?" He said, "Preach faith till you
+have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, Monday, 6, I began preaching this new doctrine, though my
+soul started back from the work. The first person to whom I offered
+salvation through faith alone, was a prisoner under sentence of death.</p>
+
+<p>On Tuesday 25, I spoke clearly and fully at Blendon to Mr. Delamotte's
+family of the nature and fruits of faith. Mr. Broughton and my brother were
+there. Mr. Broughton's great objection was, he could never think that I had
+not faith, who had done and suffered such things. My brother was very
+angry, and told me I did not know what mischief I had done by talking thus.
+And, indeed, it did please God to kindle a fire which I trust shall never
+be extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>On May 1 our little society began, which afterwards met in Fetter Lane.
+May 3. My brother had a long and particular conversation with Peter
+B&ouml;hler. And it now pleased God to open his eyes; so that he also saw
+clearly what was the nature of that one true living faith, thereby alone,
+"through grace we are saved."</p>
+
+<p>Sunday 7. I preached at St. Lawrence's in the morning; and afterwards at
+St. Catherine Cree's. I was enabled to speak strong words at both; and was
+therefore the less surprised at being informed I was not to preach any more
+in either of those churches. I was likewise after preaching the next Sunday
+at St. Ann's, Aldersgate, and the following Sunday at St. John's, Wapping
+and at St. Bennett's, Paul's Wharf, that at these churches I must preach no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>1739. March 28. A letter from Mr. Whitefield, and another from Mr.
+Seward, pressed me to come to Bristol. I reached Bristol March 31 and met
+Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarcely at first reconcile myself to the
+strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me the example, for
+all my life I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it
+had not been done in a church; but I now proclaimed in the highways the
+glad tidings of salvation speaking in the open air to about three thousand
+people.</p>
+
+<p>May 9. We took possession of a piece of ground in the Horse Fair,
+Bristol, where it was designed to build a room large enough to contain both
+the societies of Nicholas and Baldwin Street; and on May 12 the first stone
+was laid with thanksgiving. The responsibility of payment I took entirely
+on myself. Money I had not, it is true, nor any human prospect of procuring
+it; but I knew "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Beau Nash Argues with Wesley</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>June 5. There was great expectation at Bath of what a noted man was to
+do to me there. Many appeared surprised and were sinking apace into
+seriousness when their champion came up to me and asked by what authority I
+did these things. I replied, "By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to
+me by the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his hands on me." He said,
+"This is contrary to the Act of Parliament; this is a conventicle. Besides,
+your preaching frightens people out of their wits."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me leave, Sir, to ask, is not your name Nash?" "My name is Nash."
+An old woman said to him, "You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we take
+care of our souls; and for the food of our souls we come here." He replied
+not a word, but walked away.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>"All the World My Parish"</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>All this time I had many thoughts concerning my manner of ministering;
+but after frequently laying it before the Lord, I could not but adhere to
+what I had some time since written to a friend--"I look on all the world as
+my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part I am of it, I judge it
+meet to declare to all who are willing to hear, the glad tidings of
+salvation."</p>
+
+<p>June 14. I went with Mr. Whitefield to Blackheath, where were, I
+believe, 12,000 people. He a little surprised me by desiring me to preach
+in his stead; and I was greatly moved with compassion for the rich that
+were there, to whom I made a particular application. Some of them seemed to
+attend, while others drove away their coaches from so uncouth a
+preacher.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday 24. As I was riding to Rose Green, near Bristol, my horse
+suddenly pitched on his head, and rolled over and over. I received no other
+hurt than a little bruise on my side; which for the present I felt not, but
+preached without pain to seven thousand people.</p>
+
+<p>Sept. 16. I preached at Moorfields to about ten thousand, and at
+Kennington Common to near twenty thousand. At both places I described the
+real difference between what is generally called Christianity and the real
+old Christianity, which under the new name of Methodism is now everywhere
+spoken against.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Colliers of Kingswood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Nov. 27. Few persons have lived in the west of England who have not
+heard of the colliers of Kingswood, famous for neither regarding God nor
+man. The scene is changed. Kingswood does not now, as a year ago, resound
+with cursing and blasphemy. Peace and love reign there since the preaching
+of the Gospel in the spring. Great numbers of the people are gentle, mild,
+and easy to be entreated.</p>
+
+<p>1745. July 3. At Gwennap, in Cornwall, I was seized for a soldier. As I
+was reading my text a man rode up and cried "Seize the preacher for his
+Majesty's service." As the people would not do it, he leaped off his horse,
+and caught hold of my cassock, crying, "I take you to serve his Majesty."
+He walked off with me and talked with me for some time, but then let me
+go.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>In Ireland</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1748. April 9. I preached in Connaught, a few miles from Athlone. Many
+heard, but, I doubt, felt nothing. The Shannon comes within a mile of the
+house where I preached. I think there is not such another river in Europe.
+It is here ten miles wide, though only thirty miles from its source. There
+are many islands in it, once well inhabited, but now mostly desolate. In
+almost every one is a ruined church; in one, the remains of no fewer than
+seven.</p>
+
+<p>1750. May 21. At Bandon the mob burnt me in effigy. Yet, though Dr. B.
+tried to stir up the people against me more and more, and a clergyman, said
+to be in drink, opposed me, and some young gentlemen came on the scene with
+pistols in their hands, I was enabled to preach. God gave me great peace in
+Bandon, in spite of these efforts against me.</p>
+
+<p>May 31. I rode to Rathcormuck. There being a great burying in the
+afternoon, to which people came from all parts, I preached after Mr. Lloyd
+had read the service. I was exceedingly shocked at (what I had only heard
+of before) the Irish howl which followed. It was not a song, as I supposed,
+but a dismal, inarticulate yell, set up at the grave by four shrill-voiced
+women, hired for the purpose. But I saw not one that shed a tear; for that,
+it seems, was not in their bargain.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Clothing French Prisoners</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1759. Oct. 1. At Bristol. I had ridden in about seven months not less
+than 2,400 miles. On Monday, Oct. 15, I went to Knowle, a mile from
+Bristol, to see the French prisoners. About 1,100 were there confined, with
+only a little dirty straw to lie on, so that they died like rotten sheep. I
+was much affected, and after I had preached the sum of &pound;18 was
+contributed immediately, which next day we made up to &pound;24. With this
+we bought linen and woollen cloth, and this was made up into clothing for
+the prisoners. Presently after, the Corporation of Bristol sent a large
+quantity of mattresses and blankets. And it was not long before
+contributions were set on foot in London, and other parts of the country;
+so that I believe that from this time they were pretty well provided with
+the necessaries of life.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Gwennap's Famous Amphitheatre</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1766. Sept. 14. I preached in the natural amphitheatre at Gwennap; far
+the finest I know in the kingdom. It is a round, green hollow, gently
+shelving down, about 50 feet deep; but I suppose it is 200 feet across one
+way, and nearly 300 the other. I believe there were full 20,000 people;
+and, the evening being calm, all could hear.</p>
+
+<p>1770. April 21. I rode slowly on this and the following days through
+Staffordshire and Cheshire to Manchester. In this journey, as well as in
+many others, I observed a mistake that almost universally prevails; and I
+desire all travellers to take good notice of it, which may save them from
+both trouble and danger. Near 30 years ago I was thinking, "How is it that
+no horse ever stumbles while I am reading?" (History, poetry, and
+philosophy I commonly read on horseback, having other employment at other
+times.) No account can possibly be given but this: because then I throw the
+reins on his neck. I then set myself to observe; and I aver, that in riding
+above 100,000 miles I scarce ever remember my horse (except two, that would
+fall head over heels anyway) to fall, or make a considerable stumble, while
+I rode with a slack rein. To fancy, therefore, that a tight rein prevents
+stumbling, is a capital blunder.</p>
+
+<p>1771. Jan. 23. For what cause I know not to this day, my wife set out
+for Newcastle, purposing "never to return." <i>Non eam reliqui: non dimisi:
+non revocabo.</i> (I did not desert her: I did not send her away: I will
+not recall her.)</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The American War</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1775. In November I published the following letter in Lloyd's "Evening
+Post":</p>
+
+<p>"Sir--I have been seriously asked from what motive I published my
+<i>Calm Address to the American Colonies</i>? I seriously answer, Not to
+get money; not to get preferment; not to please any man living; least of
+all to inflame any; just the contrary. I contributed my mite towards
+putting out the flame that rages. This I have more opportunity to see than
+any man in England. I see with pain to what a height this already rises, in
+every part of the nation. And I see many pouring oil into the flame, by
+crying out, 'How unjustly, how cruelly, the King is using the poor
+Americans; who are only contending for their liberty, and for their legal
+privileges.'</p>
+
+<p>"Now there is no possible way to put out this flame, or hinder its
+rising higher and higher, but to show that the Americans are not used
+either cruelly or unjustly; that they are not injured at all, seeing they
+are not contending for liberty (this they had, even in its full extent,
+both civil and religious); neither for any legal privileges; for they enjoy
+all that their charters grant. But what they contend for is, the illegal
+privilege of being exempt from parliamentary taxation. A privilege this,
+which no charter ever gave to any American colony yet; which no charter can
+give, unless it be confirmed both by King, Lords, and Commons; which in
+fact our Colonies never had; which they never claimed till the present
+reign; and probably they would not have claimed now, had they not been
+incited thereto by letters from England. One of these was read, according
+to the desire of the writer, not only at the Continental Congress but
+likewise in many congregations throughout the Combined Provinces. It
+advised them to seize upon all the King's officers; and exhorted them,
+'Stand valiantly, only for six months, and in that time there will be such
+commotions in England that you may have your own terms.' This being the
+real state of the question, without any colouring or exaggeration, what
+impartial man can either blame the King, or commend the Americans? With
+this view, to quench the fire, by laying the blame where it was due, the
+'Calm Address' was written.</p>
+
+<p>Your humble servant,</p>
+
+<p>JOHN WESLEY."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>City Road Chapel Begun</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1777. April 21. The day appointed for laying the foundation of the new
+chapel. The rain befriended us much, by keeping away thousands who proposed
+to be there. But there were still such multitudes, that it was with great
+difficulty I got through them, to lay the first stone. Upon this was a
+plate of brass (covered with another stone) on which was engraved, "This
+was laid by Mr. John Wesley, on April 21, 1777." Probably this will be seen
+no more, by any human eye; but will remain there, till the earth and the
+works thereof are burned up.</p>
+
+<p>1778. Dec. 17. Having been many times desired, for near forty years, to
+publish a magazine, I at length complied, and now began to collect
+materials for it. If it once begin, I incline to think it will not end but
+with my life. Just at this time there was a combination among many of the
+postchaise drivers on the Bath road, especially those that drove in the
+night, to deliver their passengers into each other's hands. One driver
+stopped at the spot they had appointed, when another waited to attack the
+chaise. In consequence of this many were robbed; but I had a good Protector
+still. I have travelled all roads, by day and by night, for these forty
+years, and never was interrupted yet.</p>
+
+<p>June 28. I am this day 75 years old; and I do not find myself, blessed
+be God, any weaker than I was at 25. This also hath God wrought.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Attended by Felons</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1779. July 21. When I came to Coventry, I found notice had been given
+for my preaching in the park; but the heavy rain prevented. I sent to the
+Mayor, desiring the use of the town-hall. He refused; but the same day gave
+the use of it to a dancing-master. I then went to the women's market. Many
+soon gathered together and listened with all seriousness. I preached there
+again the next morning, and again in the evening. Then I took coach for
+London. I was nobly attended: behind the coach were ten convicted felons,
+loudly blaspheming and rattling their chains; by my side sat a man with a
+loaded blunderbuss, and another upon the coach.</p>
+
+<p>1780. May 20. In Scotland. I took one more walk through Holyrood House,
+the mansion of ancient kings. But how melancholy an appearance does it make
+now! The stately rooms are dirty as stables; the colours of the tapestry
+are quite faded; several of the pictures are cut and defaced. The roof of
+the royal chapel is fallen in; and the bones of James V., and the once
+beautiful Lord Dankley, are scattered about like those of sheep or oxen.
+Such is human greatness. Is not "a living dog better than a dead lion?"</p>
+
+<p>1782. May 14. Some years ago four factories were set up at Epworth. In
+these a large number of young women and boys and girls were employed. The
+whole conversation of these was profane and loose to the last degree. But
+some of them stumbling in at the prayermeeting were suddenly cut to the
+heart. These never rested till they had gained their companions. The whole
+scene was changed. In three of the factories no more lewdness was found:
+for God had put a new song in their mouth, and blasphemies were turned to
+praise. Those three I visited to-day, and found religion had taken deep
+root in them. No trifling word was heard among them, and they watch over
+each other in love.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Enters His 80th Year</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>June 26. I preached at Thirsk; 27, at York. Friday, 28, I entered my
+80th year; but, blessed be God, my strength is not "labour and sorrow." I
+find no more pain or bodily infirmities than at 25. This I still impute, 1.
+To the power of God, fitting me for what He calls me to. 2. To my still
+travelling four or five thousand miles a year. 3. To my still sleeping,
+night or day, whenever I want it. 4. To my rising at a set hour. And 5. To
+my constant preaching, particularly in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>1783. Dec. 18. I spent two hours with that great man, Dr. Johnson, who
+is sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.</p>
+
+<p>1784. June 28 (Epworth). To-day I entered on my 82nd year, and found
+myself just as strong to labour, and as fit for any exercise of body and
+mind, as I was 40 years ago. I am as strong at 81 as I was at 21; but
+abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the headache, toothache, and
+other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth.</p>
+
+<p>1785. Jan. 25. I spent two or three hours in the House of Lords. I had
+frequently heard that this was the most venerable assembly in England. But
+how I was disappointed! What is a lord, but a sinner, born to die!</p>
+
+<p>1786. Jan. 24. I was desired to go and hear the King deliver his speech
+in the House of Lords. But how agreeably I was surprised. He pronounced
+every word with exact propriety. I doubt whether there be any other King in
+Europe, that is so just and natural a speaker.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>His 86th Christmas</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1789. Dec 25. Being Christmas Day, we began the service in the new
+chapel at four in the morning, as usual, where I preached again in the
+evening after having officiated in West Street at the common hour. Sunday,
+27, I preached in St. Luke's, our parish church, to a very numerous
+congregation. So are the tables turned that I have now more invitations to
+preach in churches than I can accept.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOHN_WOOLMAN"></a>JOHN WOOLMAN</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Journal2"></a>Journal</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> John Woolman, American Quaker evangelist, author of this
+autobiography, was born in West Jersey in 1720 and followed the trade of a
+tailor. But all his interests lay in the practice of piety, and in the
+uncompromising application of religious Principles to the problems of
+social life. He advocated incessantly two principal reforms--that members
+of the Society of Friends should separate utterly from the possession of
+slaves, and that they should return to their primitive simplicity and
+moderation in the use of worldly things. Like many economists before and
+after him, he saw in luxury, extravagance and ostentation, the true cause
+of all poverty and oppression; and a tract of his entitled "A Word of
+Remembrance and Caution to the Rich," first published in 1793, was
+republished a hundred years later by the Fabian Society. His most important
+treatise, published in 1754, entitled "Some Considerations on the Keeping
+of Negroes," was one of the earliest indications of the growing
+Abolitionist feeling in New England. His voyage across the Atlantic in May
+and Tune, 1772, to visit the English Quakers, was followed by his death
+from small-pox, in the city of York, on October 7 in the same year. The
+"Journal," which is marked by great simplicity and sincerity, was published
+shortly afterwards and has been issued in many subsequent editions.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Curse of Slavery</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Having reached manhood, I wrought at my trade as a tailor; carefully
+attended meetings for worship and discipline; and found an enlargement of
+gospel love in my mind, and therein a concern to visit friends in the
+settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia and other parts. I expressed it to my
+beloved friend, Isaac Andrews, who then told me that he had drawings to the
+same places. I opened the case in our monthly meeting, and friends
+expressing their unity therewith, we obtained certificates to travel as
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>Two things were remarkable to me in this journey. First, in regard to my
+entertainment; when I ate, drank and lodged free of cost with people who
+lived in ease on the hard labour of their slaves, I felt uneasy, and this
+uneasiness returned upon me, at times, through the whole visit. Secondly,
+this trade of importing slaves from their native country being much
+encouraged among them, and the white people and their children so generally
+living without much labour, was frequently the subject of my serious
+thoughts. And I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and
+corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it appeared
+to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land; and though now many
+willingly run into it, yet in future the consequence will be grievous to
+posterity.</p>
+
+<p>About this time, believing it good for me to settle, and thinking
+seriously about a companion, my heart was turned to the Lord and He was
+pleased to give me a well-inclined damsel, Sarah Ellis, to whom I was
+married the 18th day of the 8th month, in the year 1749.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II--Among the Indians</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Having many years felt love in my heart towards the natives of this
+land, who dwell far back in the wilderness, whose ancestors were the owners
+of the land where we dwell, and being at Philadelphia in 1761, I fell in
+company with some of those natives who live on the east branch of the river
+Susquehannah, at an Indian town called Wehaloosing, 200 miles from
+Philadelphia; and in conversation with them by an interpreter, as also by
+observations on their character and conduct, I believed some of them were
+acquainted with that divine power which subjects the rough and froward will
+of the creature.</p>
+
+<p>At times I felt inward drawings toward a visit to that place, and laid
+it before friends at our monthly and quarterly, and afterwards at our
+general spring meeting; and having the unity of friends, I agreed to join
+certain Indians, in 1763, on their return to their town. So I took leave of
+my family and neighbours, and with my friend Benjamin Parvin, met the
+Indians.</p>
+
+<p>About four miles from Fort Allen we met with an Indian trader, lately
+come from Wyoming; and in conversation with him I perceived that many white
+people do often sell rum to the Indians, which is a great evil: first,
+their being thereby deprived of the use of their reason, and their spirits
+being violently agitated, quarrels often arise which end in mischief; again
+their skins and furs, gotten through much fatigue in hunting, with which
+they intended to buy clothing, when they become intoxicated, they often
+sell at a low rate for more rum, and afterwards are angry with those who,
+for the sake of gain, took advantage of their weakness. To sell to people
+that which we know does them harm, manifests a hardened and corrupt
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>We crossed the western branch of the Delaware, having laboured hard over
+the mountains called the Blue Ridge, and pitched our tent near the banks of
+the river. Near our tent, on the sides of large trees peeled for that
+purpose, were various representations of men going to, and returning from
+the wars, and of some killed in battle, this being a path used by warriors.
+As I walked about viewing those Indian histories, painted in red and in
+black; and thinking on the innumerable afflictions which the proud, fierce
+spirit produceth in the world; thinking on the toils and fatigues of
+warriors, travelling over mountains and deserts; and of their restless,
+unquiet state of mind, who live in this spirit, and of the hatred which
+mutually grows up in the minds of the children of those nations engaged in
+war; during these meditations, the desire to cherish the spirit of love and
+peace among these people arose very fresh in me.</p>
+
+<p>As I rode, day after day, over the barren hills, my thoughts were on the
+alterations of the circumstances of the natives since the coming of the
+English. The lands near the sea are conveniently situated for fishing; the
+lands near the rivers are in many places fertile and not mountainous. Those
+natives have, in some places, for trifling considerations, sold their
+inheritance so favourably situated; and in other places, have been driven
+back by superior force. By the extending of English settlements, and partly
+by English hunters, the wild beasts they chiefly depend upon for a
+subsistence are not so plentiful as they were; and people too often open a
+door for them to waste their furs, in purchasing a liquor which tends to
+the ruin of them and their families.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Across the Atlantic</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Having been for some time under a religious concern to cross the seas,
+in order to visit friends in England, after weighty consideration I thought
+it expedient to inform friends, at our monthly meeting at Burlington, of
+it; who, having unity with me therein, gave me a certificate; and I
+afterwards communicated the same to our general meeting, and they likewise
+signified their unity by a certificate, dated the 24th day of the third
+month, 1772, directed to friends in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>I was informed that my beloved friend Samuel Emlen, intended to go to
+London, and had taken a passage in the cabin of the ship called Mary and
+Elizabeth; and I, feeling a draft in my mind towards the steerage of the
+same ship, went and opened to Samuel the feeling I had concerning it. My
+beloved friend wept when I spake to him; and he offering to go with me, we
+went on board, first into the cabin, a commodious room, and then into the
+steerage, where we sat down on a chest and the owner of the ship came and
+sat down with us. I made no agreement as to a passage in the ship; but on
+the next morning I went with Samuel to the house of the owner, to whom I
+opened my exercise in relation to a scruple I felt with regard to a passage
+in the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>I told the owner that on the outside of that part of the ship where the
+cabin was, I observed sundry sorts of carved work and imagery; and that in
+the cabin I observed some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts; and
+that the monies received from the passengers are calculated to answer the
+expense of these superfluities; and that I felt a scruple with regard to
+paying my money to defray such expenses. After this, I agreed for a passage
+in the steerage, and went on board with Samuel Emlen on the first day of
+the fifth month.</p>
+
+<p>My lodging in the steerage afforded me opportunities of seeing, hearing
+and feeling, with respect to the life and spirit of many poor sailors; and
+an inward exercise of soul hath attended me, in regard to placing out
+children and youth where they may be exampled and instructed in the fear of
+the Lord. Now, concerning lads being trained up as seamen, I believe a
+communication from one part of the world to some other parts of it, by sea,
+is at times consistent with the will of our heavenly Father; and to educate
+some youth in the practice of sailing, I believe may be right. But how
+lamentable is the present corruption of the world! How impure are the
+channels through which trade hath a conveyance! How great is that danger to
+which poor lads are now exposed, when placed on shipboard to learn the art
+of sailing!</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Prices, Wages, and Religion</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On landing at London I went straight to the yearly meeting of ministers
+and elders, which, by adjournments, continued near a week. I then went to
+quarterly meetings at Hertford, Sherrington, Northampton, Banbury and
+Shipston, and visited other meetings at Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick,
+Nottingham, Sheffield, Settle, and other places.</p>
+
+<p>On inquiry, I found the price of rye about five shillings, wheat about
+eight shillings, per bushel; mutton threepence to fivepence per pound;
+bacon from sevenpence to ninepence; cheese from fourpence to sixpence;
+butter from eightpence to tenpence; house-rent, for a poor man, from
+twenty-five shillings to forty shillings per year, to be paid weekly; wood
+for fire very scarce and dear; coal in some places two shillings and
+sixpence per hundredweight but near the pits not a quarter so much. O may
+the wealthy consider the poor!</p>
+
+<p>The wages of labouring men, in several counties toward London, is
+tenpence per day in common business; the employer finds small beer and the
+labourer finds his own food; but in harvest and hay times wages are about
+one shilling per day and the labourer hath all his diet. In the north of
+England poor labouring men do rather better than nearer London. Industrious
+women who spin in the factories get some fourpence, some fivepence, and so
+on to tenpence per day, and find their own house-room and diet. Great
+numbers of poor people live chiefly on bread and water, and there are many
+poor children not even taught to read. May those, who have plenty, lay
+these things to heart!</p>
+
+<p>Stage coaches frequently go upwards of an hundred miles in twenty-four
+hours; and I have heard friends say, in several places, that it is common
+for horses to be killed with hard driving. Post-boys pursue their business,
+each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some boys, who ride
+long stages, suffer greatly on winter nights, and at several places I have
+heard of their being frozen to death. So great is the hurry in the spirit
+in this world, that in aiming to do business quickly, and to gain wealth,
+the creation, at this day doth loudly groan!</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12572 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e81691
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12572 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12572)
diff --git a/old/12572-8.txt b/old/12572-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fdb187a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12572-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12029 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World's Greatest Books, Vol X, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The World's Greatest Books, Vol X
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 10, 2004 [EBook #12572]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS, VOL X ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS
+
+JOINT EDITORS
+
+ARTHUR MEE Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge
+
+J.A. HAMMERTON Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
+
+VOL. X LIVES AND LETTERS
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Table of Contents
+
+    HUGO, VICTOR
+     Deeds and Words
+
+    HUME, MARTIN
+     Courtships of Elizabeth
+     Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots
+
+    IRVING, WASHINGTON
+     Life of Christopher Columbus
+     Life of George Washington
+
+    JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS
+     Autobiography
+
+    LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: See ROCHEFOUCAULD
+
+    LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON
+     Life of Sir Walter Scott
+     Life of Robert Burns
+
+    LUTHER, MARTIN
+     Table Talk
+
+    MIRABEAU, COMTE DE
+     Memoirs
+
+    MOORE, THOMAS
+     Life of Byron
+
+    MORISON, J.A.C.
+     Life of St. Bernard
+
+    MORLEY, JOHN
+     Life of Cobden
+
+    PEPYS, SAMUEL
+     Diary
+
+    PLINY THE YOUNGER
+      Letters
+
+    RICHELIEU, CARDINAL
+      Political Testament
+
+    ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES
+      Confessions
+
+    ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRANÇOIS DUC de LA
+       Memoirs
+
+    SÉVIGNÉ, Mme. de
+      Letters
+
+    SOUTHEY, ROBERT
+      Life of Nelson
+
+    STAAL, Mme. de
+      Memoirs
+
+    STANHOPE, EARL
+      Life of Pitt
+
+    STANLEY, A.P.
+      Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D.
+
+    STRICKLAND, AGNES
+      Life of Queen Elizabeth
+
+    SWIFT, JONATHAN
+      Journal to Stella
+
+    TOLSTOY, COUNT LYOF N.
+      Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
+      My Confession
+
+    VILLARI, PASQUALE
+      Life of Girolamo Savanarola
+
+    WESLEY, JOHN
+      Journal
+
+    WOOLMAN, JOHN
+      Journal
+
+A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
+of Volume XX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_Acknowledgement_
+
+     Acknowledgement and thanks for permitting the use of the
+     following selections in this volume, viz., "The Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," and "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of
+     Scots," by Major Martin Hume, are herewith tendered to
+     Everleigh Nash, of London, England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+VICTOR HUGO
+
+
+Deeds and Words
+
+
+     "Deeds and Words" ("Actes et Paroles"), which is dated June,
+     1875, is the record of Victor Hugo's public life, speeches and
+     letters, down to the year of his death, which occurred on May
+     32, 1885; but it is most important as a defence of his
+     political career from 1848 onwards. It does not, however, tell
+     us how changeable his opinions had actually been. His
+     inconstant attachments are thus summed up by Dr. Brandes: "He
+     warmly supports the candidacy of Louis Napoleon for the post
+     of President of the Republic ... lends him his support when he
+     occupies that post, and is even favourable to the idea of an
+     empire, until the feeling that he is despised as a politician
+     estranges him from the Prince-President, and resentment at the
+     coup d'etat drives him into the camp of the extreme
+     Republicans. His life may be said to mirror the political
+     movements of France during the first half of the century."
+     (See FICTION.)
+
+
+_I.--Right and Law_
+
+
+All human eloquence, among all peoples and in all times, may be summed
+up as the quarrel of Right against Law.
+
+But this quarrel tends ever to decrease, and therein lies the whole of
+progress. On the day when it has disappeared, civilisation will have
+attained its highest point; that which ought to be will have become one
+with that which is; there will be an end of catastrophes, and even, so
+to speak, of events; and society will develop majestically according to
+nature. There will be no more disputes nor factions; no longer will laws
+be made, they will only be discovered. Education will have taken the
+place of war, and by means of universal suffrage there will be chosen a
+parliament of intellect.
+
+In that serene and glorious age there will be no more warriors, but
+workers only; creators in the place of exterminators. The civilisation
+of action will have passed away, and that of thought will have
+succeeded. The masterpieces of art and of literature will be the great
+events.
+
+Frontiers will disappear; and France, which is destined to die as the
+gods die, by transfiguration, will become Europe. For the Revolution of
+France will be known as the evolution of the peoples. France has
+laboured not for herself alone, but has aroused world-wide hopes, and is
+herself the representative of all human good-will.
+
+Right and Law are the two great forces whose harmony gives birth to
+order, but their antagonism is the source of all catastrophe. Right is
+the divine truth, and Law is the earthly reality; liberty is Right and
+society is Law. Wherefore there are two tribunes, one of the men of
+ideas, the other of the men of facts; and between these two the
+consciences of most still vacillate. Not yet is there harmony between
+the immutable and the variable power; Right and Law are in ceaseless
+conflict.
+
+To Right belong the inviolability of human life, liberty, peace; and
+nothing that is indissoluble, irrevocable, or irreparable. To Law belong
+the scaffold, sword, and sceptre; war itself; and every kind of yoke,
+from divorceless marriage in the family to the state of siege in the
+city. Right is to come and go, buy, sell, exchange; Law has its
+frontiers and its custom-houses. Right would have free and compulsory
+education, without encroaching on young consciences; that is to say, lay
+instruction; Law would have the teaching of ignorant friars. Right
+demands liberty of belief, but Law establishes the state religions.
+Universal suffrage and universal jury belong to Right, but restricted
+franchise and packed juries are creatures of the Law.
+
+What a difference there is! And let it be understood that all social
+agitation arises from the persistence of Right against the obstinacy of
+Law. The keynote of the present writer's public life has been "_Pro jure
+contra legem"_--for the Right which makes men, against the Law which men
+have made. He believes that liberty is the highest expression of Right,
+and that the republican formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,"
+leaves nothing to be added or to be taken away. For Liberty is Right,
+Equality is Fact, and Fraternity is Duty. The whole of man is there. We
+are brothers in our life, equal in birth and death, free in soul.
+
+
+_II.--Days of Childhood_
+
+
+At the beginning of this nineteenth century there was a child who lived
+in a great house, surrounded by a large garden, in the most deserted
+part of Paris. He lived with his mother, two brothers, and a venerable
+and worthy priest, who was his only tutor, and taught him much Latin, a
+little Greek, and no history at all. Here, at the time of the First
+Empire, the three boys played and worked, watched the clouds and trees
+and listened to the birds, under the sweet influence of their mother's
+smile.
+
+It was the child's misfortune, though no one's fault, that he was taught
+by a priest. What can be more terrible than a system of untruth,
+sincerely believed? For a priest teaches falsehoods, ignorant of the
+truth, and thinks he does well; everything he does for the child is done
+against the child, making crooked that which nature has made straight;
+his teaching poisons the young mind with aged prejudices, drawing
+evening twilight, like a curtain, over the dawn.
+
+That ancient, solitary house and garden, formerly a convent and then the
+home of his childhood, is still in his old age a dear and religious
+memory, though its site is now profaned by a modern street He sees it in
+a romantic atmosphere, in which, amid sunbeams and roses, his spirit
+opened into flower. What a stillness was in its vast rooms and
+cloisters. Only at long intervals was the silence broken by the return
+of a plumed and sabred general, his father, from the wars. That child,
+already thoughtful, was myself.
+
+One night--it was some great festival of the empire, and all Paris was
+illumined--my mother was walking in the garden with three of my father's
+comrades, and I was following them, when we saw a tall figure in the
+gloom of the trees. It was the proscribed Victor du Lahorie, my
+godfather. He was even then conspiring against Bonaparte in the cause of
+liberty, and was shortly after executed. I remember his saying, "If Rome
+had kept her kings, she had not been Rome," and then, looking on me,
+"Child, put liberty first of all!" That one word outweighed my whole
+education.
+
+
+_III.--Before the Exile_
+
+
+It was not until the writer saw, in 1848, the triumph of all the enemies
+of progress that he knew in the depths of his heart that he belonged,
+not to the conquerors, but to the vanquished. The Republic lay
+inanimate; but, gazing on her form, he saw that she was liberty, and not
+even the sure fore-knowledge of the ruin and exile that must follow
+could prevent his espousal with the dead. On June 15 he made his protest
+from the tribune, and from that day he fought relentless battle for
+liberty and the republic. And on December 2, 1851, he received what he
+had expected--twenty years of exile. That is the history of what has
+been called his apostasy.
+
+Throughout that strange period before his exile, the frightful phantom
+of the past was all-powerful with men. Every kind of question was
+debated--national independence, individual liberty, liberty of
+conscience, of thought, of speech, and of the Press; questions of
+marriage, of education, of the right to work, of the right to one's
+fatherland as against exile, of the right to life as against penal law,
+of the separation of Church and state, of the federation of Europe, of
+frontiers to be wiped out, and of custom-houses to be done away--all
+these questions were proposed, debated, and sometimes settled.
+
+In these debates the author of this memoir took his part and did his
+duty, and was repaid with insults. He remembers interjecting, when they
+were insisting on parental rights, that the children had rights, too. He
+astounded the assembly by asserting that it was possible to do away with
+misery. On July 17, 1851, he denounced the conspiracy of Louis
+Bonaparte, unveiling the project of the president to become emperor. On
+another day he pronounced from the tribune a phrase which had never yet
+been uttered--"The United States of Europe." Contempt and calumny were
+poured upon him, but what of that? They called George Washington a
+pickpocket.
+
+These men of the old majority, who were doing all the evil that they
+could--did they mean to do evil? Not a bit of it. They deceived
+themselves, thinking that they had the truth, and they lied in the
+service of the truth. Their pity for society was pitiless for the
+people, whence arose so many laws, so many actions, that were blindly
+ferocious. They were rather a mob than a senate, and were led by the
+worst of their number. Let us be indulgent, and let night hide the men
+of night.
+
+What do our labours and our troubles and our exiles matter if they have
+been for the general good; if the human race be indeed passing from
+December to its April; if the winter of tyrannies and of wars indeed be
+finished; if superstitions and prejudices no longer fall on our heads
+like snow; and if, after so many clouds of empire and of carnage have
+rolled away, we at last descry upon the horizon the rosy dawn of
+universal peace?
+
+O my brothers, let us be reconciled! Let us set out on the immense
+highway of peace. Surely there has been enough of hatred. When will you
+understand that we are all together on the same ship, and that the
+immense menace of the sea is for all of us together? Our solidarity is
+terrible, but brotherhood is sweet.
+
+
+_IV.--Republican Principles_
+
+
+The sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, and the liberty of
+the Press are all the same thing under three different names. The three
+together constitute the whole of our public right; the first is its
+principle, the second its manner, and the third its expression. The
+three principles are indissoluble from one another. The sovereignty of
+the people is the life-giving soul of the nation, universal suffrage its
+government, the Press its illumination; but they are all really one, and
+that unity is the republic. It is curious to notice how these principles
+appear again in the watchword of the republic; for the sovereignty of
+the people creates liberty, universal suffrage creates equality, and the
+Press, which enlightens the general mind, creates fraternity.
+
+Wherever these three great principles exist in their powers and
+plenitude there is the republic, even though it be known as monarchy.
+Wherever, on the other hand, they are betrayed, hindered, or oppressed,
+the actual state is a monarchy or an oligarchy, even though it goes
+under the name of a republic. In the latter case we see the monstrous
+phenomenon of a government betrayed by its proper guardians, and it is
+this phenomenon that makes the stoutest hearts begin to be doubtful of
+revolutions. For revolutions are vast, ill-guided movements, which bring
+forth out of the darkness at one and the same time the greatest of ideas
+and the smallest of men; they are movements which we welcome as salutary
+when we look at their principles, but which we can only call
+catastrophes when he consider the character of their leaders.
+
+Let us never forget that our three first principles live with a common
+life, and mutually defend one another. If the Liberty of the Press is in
+danger, the suffrages of the people arise and protect it; and, again, if
+the franchise is threatened, it is safeguarded by the freedom of the
+Press. Any attempt against either of them is a treachery to the
+sovereignty of the people.
+
+The movement of this great nineteenth century is the movement not of one
+people only, but of all. France leads, and the nations follow. We are
+passing from the old world to the new, and our governors attempt in vain
+to arrest ideas by laws. There is in France and in Europe a party
+inspired by fear, which is not to be accounted the party of order; and
+its incessant question is: Who is to blame?
+
+In the crisis through which we are passing, though it is a salutary
+crisis which will lead only to good, everyone exclaims at the dreadful
+moral disorder and the imminent social danger. Who, then, is guilty of
+these ravages? Whom shall we punish? Throughout Europe, the party of
+fear answers "France." Throughout France, it answers "Paris." In Paris,
+it blames the Press. But every thoughtful man must see that it is none
+of these, but is the human spirit.
+
+It is the human spirit that has made the nations what they are. From the
+beginning, through infinite debate and contradiction, it has sought,
+unresting, to solve the problem eternally placed before the creature by
+his Creator. It is the human spirit which takes from age to age the form
+of the great revolts of history; it has been in turn, and sometimes
+altogether, error, illusion, heresy, schism, protest, and the truth. The
+human spirit is ever the great shepherd of the generations, proceeding
+always towards the just, the beautiful, and the true, enlightening the
+multitude, ennobling souls, directing the mind of man towards God.
+
+Let the party of fear throughout Europe consider the magnitude of the
+task which they have undertaken. When they have destroyed the Press,
+they have yet to destroy Paris. When Paris is fallen, there remains
+France. Let France be annihilated, there still remains the human
+spirit--a thing intangible as the light, inaccessible as the sun.
+
+
+_V.--In Exile_
+
+
+Nothing is more terrible than exile. I do not say for him who suffers,
+but for the tyrant who inflicts it. A solitary figure paces a distant
+shore, or rises in the morning to his philosophic labours, or calls on
+God among the rocks and trees; his hairs become grey, and then white, in
+the slow passing of the years and in his longing for home; his lot is a
+sorrowful one; but his innocence is terrible to the crowned miscreant
+who sent him there. From 1852 to 1870 I was in exile.
+
+How pleasant are those islands of the Channel, and how like France!
+Jersey, perhaps, more charming than Guernsey, prettier if less imposing;
+in Jersey the forest has become a garden; the island is like a bouquet
+of flowers, of the size of London, a smiling land, an idyll set in the
+midst of the sea.
+
+The exile soon learns that, though the tyrant has placed him afar, he
+does not release his hold. Many and ingenious are the snares laid for
+the banished. A prince calls on you, but though he is of royal blood, he
+is also a detective of police. A grave professor stays at your house,
+and you surprise him searching your papers. Everything is permitted
+against you; you are outside the law, outside of common justice, outside
+of respect. They will say that they have your authority to publish your
+conversations, and will attribute to you words that you have never
+spoken and actions that you have never done. Never write to your
+friends--your letters are opened on the way. Beware of all who are
+kindly to you in exile; they are ruining you in Paris. You are isolated
+as a leper. A mysterious stranger whispers in your ear that he can
+procure the assassination of Bonaparte; it is Bonaparte offering to kill
+himself. Every day of your life is a new outrage. Only one thing is open
+to the exile; it is to turn his thought to other subjects.
+
+He is at least beside the sea; let its infinity bring him wisdom. The
+eternal rioting of the surges against the rocks is as the agitation of
+impostures against the truth. It is a vain convulsion; the foam gains
+nothing by it, the granite loses nothing, and only sparkles the more
+bravely in the sun.
+
+But exile has this great advantage--one is free to contemplate, to
+think, to suffer. To be alone, and yet to feel that one is with all
+humanity; to consolidate oneself as a citizen, and to purify oneself as
+a philosopher; to be poor, and begin again to work for one's living, to
+meditate on what is good and to contrive for what is better; to be angry
+in the public cause, but to crush all personal enmity; to breathe the
+vast, living winds of the solitudes; to compose a deeper indignation
+with a profounder peace--these are the opportunities of exile. I
+accustomed myself to say, "If, after a revolution, Bonaparte should
+knock at my door and ask shelter, let never a hair of his head be
+injured."
+
+Yes, an exile becomes a well-wisher. He loves the roses, and the birds'
+nests, and the flitting hither and thither of the butterflies. He
+mingles with the sweet joys of the creatures, and learns a changeless
+faith in some secret and infinite goodness. The green glades are his
+chosen dwelling and his life is April; he reclines amazed at the
+mysteries of a tuft of grass; he studies the ant-hills of tiny
+republicans; he learns to know the birds by their songs; he watches the
+children playing barefoot in the edge of the sea.
+
+Against this dangerous man governments are taking the most strenuous
+precautions. Victoria offers to hand over the exiles to Napoleon, and
+messages of compliment are passed from one throne to the other. But that
+gift did not take place. The English royalist Press applauded, but the
+people of London would have none of it. The great city muttered thunder.
+Majesty clothed in probity--that is the character of the English nation.
+That good and proud people showed their indignation, and Palmerston and
+Bonaparte had to be content with the expulsion of the exiles.
+
+During the whole long night of my exile I never lost Paris from my view.
+When Europe and even France were in darkness, Paris was never hidden.
+That is because Paris is the frontier of the future, the visible
+frontier of the unknown. All of to-morrow that can be seen to-day is in
+Paris. The eyes that are searching for progress come to rest on Paris,
+for Paris is the city of light.
+
+
+_VI.--After the Exile_
+
+
+This triology, "Before, During, and After the Exile," is no work of
+mine, it is the doing of Napoleon III. He it is who has divided my life
+in this way, observing, as one might say, the rules of art. Returning to
+my country on September 5, 1870, I found the sky more gloomy and my duty
+more clamant than ever.
+
+Though it is sad to leave the fatherland, to return to it is sometimes
+sadder still; and there is no Frenchman who would not have preferred a
+life-long banishment, to seeing France ground beneath the Prussian heel,
+and the loss of Metz and Strasburg. This was an invasion of barbarians;
+but there is another menace that is not less formidable. I mean the
+invasion of our land by darkness, an invasion of the nineteenth century
+by the middle ages. After the emperor, the pope; after Berlin, Rome;
+after the triumph of the sword, the triumph of night. For the light of
+civilisation may be extinguished in either of two ways, by a military or
+by a clerical invasion. The former threatens our mother, France; the
+latter our child, the future.
+
+A double inviolability is the most precious possession of a civilised
+people--the inviolability of territory and the inviolability of
+conscience; and as the soldier violates the first, so does the priest
+violate the other. Yet the soldier does but obey his orders and the
+priest his dogmas, so that there are only two who are ultimately
+culpable--Caesar, who slays, and Peter, who lies. There is no religion
+which has not as its aim to seize forcibly the human soul, and it is to
+attempts of this kind that France is given up to-day.
+
+One may say, indeed, that in our age there are two schools, and that
+these two schools sum up in themselves the two opposed currents which
+draw civilisation, the one towards the future and the other towards the
+past. One of these schools is called Paris and the other Rome. Each of
+them has its book; the one has the "Declaration of the Rights of Man,"
+the other has the "Syllabus"; and the first of these books says "Yes" to
+progress, but the second of them says "No." Yet progress is the footstep
+of God.
+
+Paris means Montaigne, Rabelais, Pascal, Corneille, Molière,
+Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Danton. Rome, on the
+other hand, means Innocent III., Pius V., Alexander VI., Urban VIII.,
+Arbuez, Cisneros, Lainez, Guillandus, Ignatius.
+
+To educate is nothing less than to govern; and clerical education means
+a clerical government, with a despotism as its summit and ignorance as
+its foundation.
+
+Rome already holds Belgium, and would now seize Paris. We are witnesses
+of a struggle to the death. Against us is all that manifold power which
+emerges from the past, the spirit of monarchy, of superstition, of the
+barrack and of the convent; we have against us temerity, effrontery,
+audacity, and fear. On our side there is nothing but the light. That is
+why the victory will be with us. For to enlighten is to deliver. Every
+increase in liberty involves increased responsibility. Nothing is graver
+than freedom; liberty has burdens of her own, and lays on the conscience
+all the chains which she unshackles from the limbs. We find rights
+transforming themselves into duties. Let us therefore take heed to what
+we are doing; we live in a difficult time and are answerable at once to
+the past and to the future. The time has come, in this year 1876, to
+replace commotions by concessions. That is how civilisation advances.
+For progress is nothing other than revolution effected amicably.
+
+Therefore, legislators and citizens, let us redouble our good-will. Let
+all wounds be healed, all animosities extinguished; by overcoming hatred
+we shall overcome war; let no disturbance that may come be due to our
+fault. Our task of entering into the unknown is difficult enough without
+angers and bitterness. I am one of those who hope from that unknown
+future, but only on condition that we make use from the first of every
+means of pacification that is in our power. Let us act with the virile
+kindness of the strong.
+
+Let us then calm the nations by peace, and the hearts of men by
+brotherhood, and let us never forget that we are ourselves responsible
+for this last half of the nineteenth century, and that we are placed
+between a great past, the Revolution of France, and a great future, the
+Revolution of Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MARTIN HUME
+
+
+The Courtships of Elizabeth
+
+
+     Major Martin Andrew Hume, born in London on December 8, 1847,
+     and educated at Madrid, comes of an English family, the
+     members of which have resided in Spain for a hundred years. He
+     began life in the British Army, from which he retired with the
+     rank of major. Major Hume was appointed editor of the Spanish
+     state papers published by the Record Office; he is also
+     lecturer in Spanish History and Literature at Cambridge, and
+     examiner and lecturer in Spanish at the Birmingham University.
+     He has written numerous works on the history of Spain; but
+     perhaps he is best known for his historical studies of the
+     Tudor period, of which may be mentioned "The Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots,"
+     and "The Wives of Henry VIII." In the first-named work,
+     published in 1896, Major Hume has presented an exceedingly
+     interesting human document, and classified a tangled mass of
+     material. The epitome here presented has been prepared for THE
+     WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS by the author himself.
+
+
+_I.--Foreign Philandering_
+
+
+The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world's chessboard was
+that consummate succession of intrigues which, for nearly half a
+century, was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the
+object of playing off one great Continental power against another for
+the benefit of England and Protestantism, with which the interests of
+the queen were inextricably involved. Those in the midst of the strife
+worked mostly for immediate aims, and neither saw, nor cared, for the
+ultimate results; but we, looking back, see that out of that tangle of
+duplicity there emerged a new era of civilisation and a host of vigorous
+impulses which move us to this hour.
+
+The victory of England in that struggle meant the dominance of modern
+ideas of liberty and of the imperial destiny of our race, and it seems
+as if the result could only have been attained in the peculiar
+combination of circumstances and persons then existing. Elizabeth
+triumphed as much by her weakness as by her strength. Honest Cecil kept
+his hand upon the helm so long because the only alternative to him was
+the greedy crew of councillors eager for foreign bribes. Without
+Leicester as a permanent matrimonial possibility, the queen could never
+have held the balance between her foreign suitors; and, but for the
+follies of Mary Stuart, the English Catholics would not have been
+subjected so easily, whilst the religious dissensions in France and the
+character of Philip II. aided Elizabeth's diplomacy. Elizabeth was more
+than once betrothed in her childhood to aid her father's policy, but
+when Henry died, in 1547, his younger daughter was unbetrothed.
+
+During her residence with the Queen-Dowager, Catharine Parr, who soon
+married Thomas, Lord Seymour, the fourteen-year-old girl was exposed to
+peril from the designs of the ambitious Seymour. The indecorous romping,
+perhaps innocent at first, that took place between her and her married
+host provided grave scandal which touched even the honour of the girl,
+and her keen wits alone saved her on this occasion from disgrace. Her
+crafty reticence served her well, when the intrigues of Wyat, Courtenay,
+and the French party threatened Mary's throne; but when Mary was
+married, the Spanish party at once became interested in securing
+Elizabeth to their side by her marriage. Mary's jealousy, and
+Elizabeth's own determination not to be made a tool, frustrated Philip's
+attempt to marry the princess to his cousin, the Duke of Savoy; and when
+the Protestant Swedes clandestinely offered her the hand of Prince Eric,
+her discreet wariness again protected her from the dangerous proposal.
+
+When Mary lay dying, Feria, the Spanish ambassador, hurried to Hatfield
+to salute the rising sun, and hinted even thus early that Elizabeth
+might marry her powerful Spanish brother-in-law. But she resented his
+patronage, and though she coquetted, as usual, with the proposal of
+marriage, she took care not to pledge herself or submit England to
+foreign dictation. To Spain it was vital that England should be at her
+bidding. If the queen could not marry Philip, surely she could only wed
+one of his Austrian cousins; or, if not, then England must be conquered
+by the sword. All that Elizabeth wanted was time, and tardy Philip
+played into her hands. One English noble after the other was taken up
+and dropped, in the intervals of foreign philandering. Lord Arundel,
+foolish, old, and vain, had high hopes; Sir William Pickering's chances
+looked bright, and France and Spain sought to patronise each English
+candidate in his turn, especially Lord Robert Dudley, the queen's friend
+from childhood, though he was already married to Amy Robsart.
+
+At length, after many days of dallying, great Philip decided to
+sacrifice himself for Spain and marry his enigmatical sister-in-law. She
+must, of course, renounce Protestantism and all the laws that made her
+legally a queen; which was absurd, as Feria soon saw, and frankly told
+his master. So then Philip half-heartedly patronised the suit of his
+Austrian cousin, the Archduke Charles. If the latter would be an
+obedient Spanish instrument he could have Philip's support; but German
+Lutherans and English Protestants had also to be considered, and
+Elizabeth's court was divided into those who feared any consort not
+wholly Protestant and those who were eager for any marriage that
+shielded England from Spanish attack.
+
+Elizabeth thought she could avoid the latter danger without marriage at
+all, so she dexterously played with all her suitors, English and
+foreign, while strengthening her position and gaining popularity.
+Sometimes she swore she would never marry, and the next day would grow
+sentimental over the archduke, or flirted with Dudley--keeping them all
+in suspense and afraid of offending her. The French, having no
+marriageable prince of their own, supported Dudley, or any other English
+candidate whom they could use against Spain; whilst Dudley himself
+pretended to favour the archduke, till matters looked serious, and then
+found means of frustrating him, often to Elizabeth's rage, for she
+wished to play her own deep game unhampered. She knew she could always
+choke off the Austrian when she wished by making fresh religious
+demands. The English nobles were furious at Dudley's selfish manoeuvres
+to keep the queen unwed till he was free, and they planned to marry the
+queen to Arran, the next heir of Scotland. This looked promising for
+months, but Dudley and his sister, Lady Sidney, checked the plan.
+
+
+_II.--The Nine Years' Comedy_
+
+
+In September, 1559, Dudley and his sister warmly took up the archduke's
+cause, and assured Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, that if the suitor
+would flatter the queen by coming to England on chance, she would marry
+him. But Elizabeth and Cecil, though they hinted much, would not clearly
+confirm Dudley's promise, and Philip and the emperor dared not expose
+the archduke to the risk of being repulsed. The English nobles, in good
+faith, urged the archduke's suit, and said that Dudley was plotting to
+kill his wife and marry the queen; but they and the Spanish ambassador
+were outwitted at every point by Elizabeth's diplomacy, and through 1559
+and 1560 all the rivals were kept between hope and fear.
+
+Then, in September 1560, the long-predicted murder of Amy Robsart set
+Dudley free, and made the nobles and Cecil more anxious than ever that
+the archduke should be bold, take the risk, and come to England. The
+queen, to weaken the new friendship between France and Spain, herself
+again pretended eagerness for the Austrian's coming; but the trick was
+stale now, and neither Philip nor the emperor believed her. To checkmate
+Dudley the Protestants were actively urging the suit of Eric of Sweden,
+when, in January 1561, the former made a bold bid for Spanish support.
+He was, he said, quite innocent of his wife's death, and he promised
+Quadra that if the King of Spain would urge his (Dudley's) suit upon the
+queen, England should send envoys to the Council of Trent, receive a
+papal legate, and become practically Catholic. He might promise, but
+such a thing was impossible, and Cecil, when he learnt of the intrigue,
+promptly embroiled matters and spoilt the plan.
+
+Elizabeth, too, saw whither she was drifting, and by pretended levity
+turned it into a joke. At one time she invited the old Spanish bishop to
+marry her to Dudley, and next day said she would never marry at all. But
+she never ceased to flirt with Dudley, who, when his intrigue with Spain
+fell through, cynically appealed to the French Protestants for support.
+They were in no position to help him, and by January 1562, he was
+cringing to Spain, and pretending to be Catholic. But English Catholics
+hated him, and he was now no fit instrument for Philip.
+
+In her own court it was firmly believed that Elizabeth was secretly
+married to Dudley--it was high time, said the gossips; but in truth the
+international importance of her marriage was now (1562-63) partially
+obscured by that of the widowed Mary Queen of Scots. Before the latter
+were dangled Eric of Sweden, the Archduke Charles, the Earl of Arran,
+and Darnley; but the match which Mary most wished for, and the most
+threatening to Elizabeth, was that with the vicious young lunatic, Don
+Carlos, the heir of Philip of Spain. The match with Darnley, too, as he
+was in the English succession, was distasteful to Elizabeth; but in
+order to divert the Spanish match--which, really, though she knew it
+not, was out of the question--she pretended to favour Darnley's suit at
+first.
+
+In order still more to avert the Catholic alliance, Elizabeth sent
+active help to the French Huguenots, and drew closer to the Protestants
+of Germany and Holland, where distrust of their Spanish sovereign was
+already brewing. In these circumstances, Elizabeth for the first time
+could defy Spain, and Quadra, accused of conspiring against the queen,
+was expelled the country. When the Darnley match for Mary Stuart looked
+too serious, Elizabeth diverted it for a time by proposing that
+Dudley--now Earl of Leicester--should marry Mary. It was, of course, but
+a trick, through which the Scottish queen saw, with the object of
+preventing the Darnley marriage and discrediting Mary in the eyes of
+foreign princes; but it served its turn for a time.
+
+In July 1564, when the league of France and Spain again menaced her,
+Elizabeth set her cap at the boy Don Carlos, and even swore to the
+Spanish ambassador that she was really a Catholic.
+
+The further to alienate the Catholic powers from each other, she
+simultaneously approached the emperor to revive the proposal of marriage
+with the Archduke Charles, and to Catherine de Medici to drop a hint
+that she--Elizabeth--might marry the young King of France, Charles IX.,
+a youth barely half her age--anything to prevent a combination against
+her and the marriage of Don Carlos with Mary Stuart. Catherine de Medici
+had her own reasons at the time for smiling upon Elizabeth's suggestion.
+She did not wish to be bound too tightly to Spain and the Catholics, for
+fear of the Huguenots; and in February 1565, she wrote to Elizabeth,
+saying that she would be the happiest of mothers if she could see her
+dearly beloved sister of England married to her son, Charles IX.
+
+Elizabeth was full of maidenly hesitation. She was too old for him;
+perhaps he would not think her beautiful, and so on; but she took care
+to say that there was no one else she could marry, as she would not wed
+a subject. The Huguenots actively pushed the proposal, and Leicester
+pretended to favour it, though Cecil was against it on many grounds. But
+it was never seriously meant. It brought the Huguenots to Catherine's
+side on the eve of her voyage to renew the Catholic league with Philip,
+and it brought the Archduke Charles once more forward as a suitor for
+Elizabeth's hand. When it had thus served its purpose, the idea of the
+mature English queen marrying the boy Charles IX. was dropped.
+
+The Austrian's new advances were looked upon somewhat askance by Spain,
+until his attitude towards religion was assured, and, to have a second
+string, the Spanish ambassador, Guzman, affected to favour Leicester's
+suit. Cecil and the conservative nobles were sincere now in their
+advocacy of the archduke, and between the two parties Elizabeth steered
+coquettishly and diplomatically, modestly urging the archduke's coming,
+and yet flirting desperately with Leicester. The breach between the
+English nobles was profound, as all but Leicester wished the question of
+the queen's marriage and succession to be settled; and Leicester's
+chances were stronger than ever when it became clear, late in 1565, that
+the archduke would not come to England without a firm pledge. The French
+played off Leicester, too, against the archduke; sometimes even again
+suggesting their own king when Leicester's star waxed pale.
+
+Later, in 1566, the Lords and Commons urged the queen to marry, even
+Leicester joining in the remonstrance. But Elizabeth wished to play the
+game in her own way, and soundly scolded them. She did not mean to marry
+the archduke, or perhaps anyone, but whilst she kept him dangling, she
+knew she need not fear the Catholic combination. Soon all danger from
+that quarter disappeared for a time. Philip was in death struggle with
+his Protestant subjects in Holland; civil war was again raging in
+France, and Mary Stuart was a disgraced prisoner in the hands of her
+enemies. In the nine years that Elizabeth had carried on the marriage
+comedy she had kept the balance whilst England was growing stronger.
+Now, in 1568, she could afford to rest from her labours until danger
+from abroad again loomed.
+
+
+_III.--Catholics and Heretics_
+
+
+The peace of St. Germain in 1570 ended the long religious war in France,
+and the Guises and Catholics there, free from the strife, planned the
+rescue of the imprisoned Mary Stuart by force, and her marriage with the
+Duke of Anjou, the heir and brother of Charles IX. This was a danger
+both to Elizabeth and to the Huguenots, and was at once counteracted by
+their bringing forward the suggestion that the Queen of England might
+marry Anjou. He was, it is true, a fanatical Catholic, but the Huguenots
+thought that with England as a bait, and the powerful mind of Elizabeth
+to guide him, the youth might change his views. Leicester offered his
+help--for he knew the match was unlikely--and soon Catherine de Medici's
+agents were busy by Elizabeth's side. Elizabeth, as usual, was coy and
+maidenly. She was too old, she said, the thought of marriage was
+shocking to her; but, withal, the courtship went on actively. Anjou's
+charms and rumoured gallantries were the staple gossip at her court, and
+Elizabeth never tired of hearing praises of her young suitor.
+
+But soon the Guises and the Catholic League took fright, and urged Anjou
+not to be drawn into a match with a heretic too old for him. Better,
+said they, win England by force and marry Mary. To England the marriage,
+or a similar one, seemed really necessary. The Catholics at home and
+abroad were busily plotting against Elizabeth. Philip and Alba were
+ready to connive at her murder; the Protestants in Holland and France
+were powerless, and this match with Anjou seemed the only way to meet
+the danger. Anjou, under Catholic influence, was scornful, whilst
+Catherine, anxious for the greatness of her favourite son, was in
+despair at his "assottedness."
+
+Lord Buckhurst went, as ambassador to Paris, to forward the match in
+March 1571; but it soon became evident that Elizabeth could never
+concede the terms demanded by the French on religion. For many months
+the Huguenots, and Walsingham, as Elizabeth's ambassador, tried to
+reconcile the differences; and Catherine's agents in England laboured
+hard in the same cause. Elizabeth herself was ambiguous, though loving,
+and sometimes even Anjou was almost persuaded by his mother to accept
+the English crown matrimonial at the price demanded. For Elizabeth it
+was necessary to keep up the pretence at all costs, for the Spaniards
+were plotting her murder; and to split the Catholic party whilst
+secretly aiding the rebel Netherlanders seemed her only chance of
+safety. On one occasion, when Spain and France drew together, Elizabeth
+professed to be willing to marry Anjou on his own terms; but the prince
+grew ever more opposed to the match, and in January 1572, Catherine
+suddenly suggested that, as Anjou was so bigoted on religion, her
+youngest son, Alençon, might marry Elizabeth on any conditions she
+liked.
+
+The lad was but seventeen--a swarthy, pock-marked youth--and Elizabeth
+was inclined at first to resent the way in which Anjou had flouted her.
+She was thirty-nine, and her vanity was wounded; but yet the friendship
+or neutrality of France was vital to her. "How tall is he?" she asked
+Cecil. "About as tall as I am," replied the elderly minister. "As tall
+as your grandson, you mean!" snapped the queen. But Walsingham, Smith,
+and the French envoys plied her busily with descriptions of Alençon's
+manly charms, and a treaty between France and England was settled by
+which the Huguenots for a time became paramount in France conjointly
+with the marriage of the Huguenot Henry of Navarre with Margaret, the
+king's sister. Feasts and cordiality were the rules on both sides of the
+Channel now, and the Huguenot leaders urged the Alençon match with
+Elizabeth with all their force. In reply to all these offers, Elizabeth
+replied that, though the discrepancy of age was a great drawback, yet
+the pock-marks on the suitor's face were a greater objection still; yet
+if he would let her see him, without a pledge, she might like him. She
+would never, she said, marry a man she had not seen.
+
+But already Charles IX. and his mother were chafing under the Huguenot
+yoke and cooling towards England. They were determined not to be drawn
+by their new treaty with England into war with Spain; so, under the
+pretence of keeping up the negotiations for the Alençon match, they sent
+the youth La Mole to England in the autumn of 1572, really for the
+purpose of dissociating France from the Huguenot-English aid to the
+Protestant Netherlanders. La Mole was a gallant young lover, with whom
+Elizabeth was charmed, and when he played the vicarious wooer for
+Alençon, she could not make enough of him. But whilst he was
+philandering with her at Kenilworth, and she was losing patience at his
+political mission, there fell like a thunderbolt the awful news of the
+massacre of St. Bartholomew at Navarre's fatal wedding. At once the
+scene changed. La Mole and the French envoy hurried away amidst curses
+upon all false Frenchmen. Elizabeth, in a panic, smiled upon Spaniards
+again, and, for a time, the project of a French consort for her slept.
+
+But not for long. Alençon had no part in the massacre, and was known to
+favour Huguenots. He wrote a fervent love-letter to Elizabeth, and
+proposed to escape to England; whilst his agent Maisonfleur joined with
+Mauvissière, the official French ambassador, in wooing Elizabeth anew
+for Alençon and for France. Gradually the parties drew together again,
+for Catherine was already alarmed at the effect of St. Bartholomew. All
+the Protestant world was arming, the English ports were full of
+privateers to attack Catholic shipping, and aid in plenty was being sent
+from England to the Huguenots of Rochelle and the rebel Dutchmen.
+
+France could therefore not afford to quarrel with England, but Anjou and
+Charles IX. took care to hold Alençon tight, that he might not escape
+and strengthen the Protestant cause in union with Elizabeth, whilst they
+still kept up the appearance of marriage negotiations. Elizabeth was
+ever on the alert to serve her cause, and in March 1573, said she would
+go no further in the Alençon match unless the Protestants in Rochelle
+were allowed fair terms and the siege raised. Anjou, already tired of
+the war, consented, and soon afterwards Catherine asked whether
+Elizabeth would now proceed with the Alençon plan. The lad had grown
+much, she said, and his budding beard covered some of his facial
+imperfections. It was settled that the prince should make a flying visit
+to Dover, but soon Catherine began to make fresh conditions. It would be
+such a shame to them, she said, if her son went and returned unmarried.
+
+
+_IV.--The Lovelorn Alençon_
+
+
+In the meanwhile, Alençon's love-letters to his mature flame grew
+warmer; but much as Elizabeth liked such attentions, she dreaded to go
+too far. Charles IX. was sinking fast, and the next heir was Anjou. With
+Alençon for heir-presumptive of France, the position would be changed;
+and once more the queen began to get doubtful about those unfortunate
+pock-marks on her lover's face. Once Alençon planned with Henry of
+Navarre to escape from his mother's custody and make a dash for England
+on his own account, but Catherine held him firmly.
+
+Both the Huguenots and the French king wished for the marriage, but each
+party frustrated the other because their objects were different. When
+the French ambassador, therefore, asked Elizabeth when Alençon might
+come to see her, she refused to name a time, because she knew secretly
+that a great Huguenot movement in France was pending, and she wished
+Alençon to be there as figurehead at the time--the very thing that the
+official French Government wished to avoid. The projected movement was
+betrayed and suppressed, and Alençon's life was for a time in danger;
+but when Henry III. (Anjou) was seated on the throne, Alençon kept
+openly a rival court to that of his brother, and the Huguenots around
+the prince were at deadly feud with the minions of the king.
+
+At last the crisis came. Alençon escaped from Paris in disguise, pursued
+by his mother, and, joining the Huguenots in arms, defied the king and
+the Guises. France was not big enough to hold both brothers in peace,
+and Catherine told Alençon that as Elizabeth seemed so ready to help him
+and his Huguenots, he ought to reopen the marriage negotiations. But
+Alençon was useless to England as a counterbalance to Spain unless
+France herself could be pledged as well, and Elizabeth considered it
+safest for the time, since that could not be done, to feign a new
+cordiality with Philip.
+
+The Catholic party in France was again paramount, and by bribery and
+Catherine's diplomacy, Alençon and his friends were bought over. For the
+next three years the young prince held aloof from affairs, but in 1578
+the hollow truce ended; he was suspected and placed under arrest, all
+his friends being cast into the Bastille. In February, 1578, Alençon
+broke his prison and fled, and all France was plunged into turmoil.
+Elizabeth was profoundly moved. The keynote of English policy was the
+exclusion of France from Flanders, and if Alençon was secretly supported
+in his action by his brother, then Elizabeth must oppose to the death
+any interference in Flanders.
+
+And so began the long and clever juggle by which she used Alençon's
+ambition to wed her as a means to compass her ends without marrying him.
+Huguenots flocked to Alençon's standard, whilst he sent by every post
+love-lorn epistles to Elizabeth, praying her to aid him to free Flanders
+from the bloodthirsty Spaniards. On July 7, 1578, Alençon entered
+Flanders with his army, and Elizabeth, still full of distrust of
+Frenchmen, feigned to Spaniards her deep disapproval, whilst she took
+care that many English and Germans in her pay slipped into Flanders at
+the same time, to prevent any French national domination. Presently,
+persuaded that Alençon had no secret pact with his brother, Elizabeth
+took Alençon and the Flemish revolt into her own hands, and effusively
+welcomed Alençon's envoys who came to promote his love suit.
+
+He chose for his emissary one Jehan Simier, an experienced gallant, who
+soon wooed Elizabeth to such good purpose that she fell violently in
+love with the messenger, as well as with his absent master. Protestant
+England took fright at the pending marriage of the queen with a papist
+of half her age. Simier, whom she called her "monkey," had bewitched
+her, said the courtiers, and remonstrances from all sides came to the
+queen.
+
+
+_V.--The Battle of Wits_
+
+
+Alençon's demands were high, but Elizabeth seems really for once to have
+lost her head, and but for the strong opposition of her Council, might
+have been drawn into the marriage. Simier, seeing the deadlock, decided
+to bring Alençon over at all risks. Leicester, deadly jealous, tried to
+assassinate Simier, who revenged himself by divulging to the queen
+Leicester's secret marriage. Elizabeth was beside herself with rage, and
+more in love than ever with Alençon and his envoy. At length, in August
+1579, the young French prince, in disguise, suddenly appeared at
+Greenwich. The queen's vanity was flattered, and though the visit was
+supposed to be secret, she hardly left her young lover, whilst he, to
+judge by his letters, was as badly smitten as she. But though she
+promised him marriage, he had to return with little else, and as soon as
+he had gone she found many good reasons for delay and hesitation.
+
+In October 1580, a new Catholic combination forced Elizabeth's hands,
+and she promised greater help to Alençon's project, whilst trying to
+draw France also into open war with Spain. The combat of wits was keen
+and cynical, each party trying to pledge the other and to keep free
+himself. A great French embassy came to England in April 1581, to
+negotiate an alliance and the queen's marriage with Alençon, who had now
+re-entered Flanders and was immersed in the struggle against the
+Spaniards. The discussions in England were becoming interminable, for
+the French ambassadors asked hard terms, when Alençon, in June 1581,
+losing patience, suddenly rushed over to England to plead his own cause
+independently of his brother's envoys, whom he distrusted with good
+reason. This suited Elizabeth, for it made Alençon more dependent upon
+her, and again she sent her lover back full of great promises to help
+him.
+
+In August Alençon again entered Flanders, depending entirely upon
+Elizabeth for support, and thenceforward he looked alone to his marriage
+with her for his salvation. She was sparing, and the poor prince retired
+to France in September. In desperation he came to England again to press
+for money and marriage in November 1581; and for months the love-making
+was fast and furious. Frantic prayers, sighs, and tears on his part were
+answered by kisses and promises on hers, but she gave as little money as
+would serve to get rid of him. On February 1, 1582, Alençon sailed for
+Holland to Elizabeth's professed grief and real joy; and thenceforward
+the prince, first in Flanders as sovereign, and afterwards in France a
+fugitive, supplicated and threatened his betrothed for money, and ever
+more money. But Elizabeth had now taken the Netherlands revolt into her
+own hands, and thenceforward her French lover was useless to her there.
+So, though she still kept up the pretence of her willingness to marry
+him on impossible conditions, and drove the poor creature to love-lorn
+despair, Alençon had served his matrimonial purpose before he died, in
+1584, and Elizabeth's courtships with a political object came to an end.
+She and England were strong enough now to face her possible foes without
+fear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots
+
+
+     Mary Queen of Scots was one of the most remarkable women who
+     ever presided over the destinies of a nation. She was born at
+     Linlithgow on December 8, 1542, a few days before the death of
+     her father, James V., thus becoming a queen before she was a
+     week old. Her complex personality and varied accomplishments
+     have inspired many and various historians, but it has remained
+     for Major Martin Hume to demonstrate the historical fatality
+     of Mary's love affairs. In "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of
+     Scots," published in 1903, Major Hume gives a convincing and
+     logical reason for Mary's political failure, inasmuch as it
+     did not spring from her goodness or badness as a woman, but
+     from a certain weakness of character. This epitome has been
+     prepared by Major Hume himself.
+
+
+_I.--Betrothed in her Cradle_
+
+
+When in the great hall at Worms, on that ever-memorable April day in
+1521, before the panic-stricken princes, Luther insolently flung at the
+emperor his defiance of the mediaeval church, the crash, though all
+unheard by the ears of men, shook to their base the crumbling
+foundations upon which, for hundreds of years, the institutions of
+Europe had rested. The sixteenth century thenceforward was a period of
+disintegration and reconstruction, in which fresh lines of cleavage
+between old political associates were opened, new affinities were
+formed, and the international balance re-adjusted.
+
+In the long struggle of the house of Aragon, and its successor, Charles
+V., with France for the domination of Italy, the only effectual
+guarantee against England's actively aiding its traditional ally, the
+ruler of Spain and Flanders, against its traditional enemy, France, was
+for the latter country to keep a tight hold of its alliance with
+Scotland, by means of which English force might be diverted at any time.
+The existence of the Scottish "back door" to England, with the ever
+probable enemy behind it, had long been a check upon English power, and
+a humiliation to English kings in their efforts to hold the balance
+between the Continental rivals. But with the spread of Lutheranism in
+Germany and Henry VIII.'s defiance of the Papacy, the Catholic powers,
+drawn together in the face of common danger, found a fresh bond of union
+in their orthodoxy which partially superseded old rivalries.
+
+In these circumstances the English policy, which had aimed at the
+control of Scottish foreign relations to the exclusion of French
+influence, became not only desirable as it always had been, but vitally
+necessary to preserve England's independence.
+
+Henry VIII.'s policy towards Scotland had been that of _divide et
+impera_, and a series of royal minorities and the greed and poverty of
+the semi-independent Scottish nobles had aided him. The rout of the
+Scots at Solway Moss, and the pathetic passing of the gallant James V.,
+leaving his new-born daughter, Mary, as queen (December 1542), seemed at
+length to place Scotland in England's power. The murder of Cardinal
+Beaton, the bribery of the Douglases, and the marriage of Lennox with
+Henry's sister were all subsequent moves in the same game. Mary was
+betrothed in her cradle to the heir of England, and France, whose sheet
+anchor for centuries had been the "auld alliance" with the Scots,
+appeared to be helpless against a coalition of England and the emperor.
+
+Thenceforward, England's main object was to keep a tight grip upon
+Scotland by religion or otherwise, while at first France, and
+subsequently the Catholic league, strove ceaselessly, with the help of
+Mary Stuart, to free Scotland from English influence. The marriage
+juggle of Elizabeth was largely inspired by her Scottish aims, and if
+the fortuitous adjustment of her qualities kept England Protestant, and
+France wavering for all those critical years, if she secured the
+inactivity of Spain, the resistance of Protestant Holland, and the
+freedom of navigation by her skilful statecraft, her rival Mary Stuart
+was a hardly less powerful factor in the final triumph of England by
+reason of certain defects in her character, the consequences of which
+are dealt with in this book.
+
+Mary possessed a finer and nobler nature than Elizabeth; she was a woman
+of higher courage and greater conviction, more generous, magnanimous,
+and confiding, and, apart from her incomparably greater beauty and
+fascination, she possessed mental endowments fully equal to those of the
+English queen. But, whilst caution and love of mastery in Elizabeth
+always saved her from her weakness at the critical moment, Mary Stuart
+possessed no such safeguards, and was periodically swept along
+helplessly by the irresistible rush of her amorous passion.
+
+French intrigue and money, aided by the queen-regent of Scotland, Mary
+of Guise, succeeded, after Henry's death and Somerset's invasion of
+Scotland, in gaining firm hold upon Scotland, and Mary, as the betrothed
+wife of the dauphin Francis, was carried to France in 1548, at the age
+of six, to be reared by her cunning kinsmen of Lorraine, and made, as it
+was hoped, a future powerful instrument to aid Catholic French objects
+against England, and the reformation in France and elsewhere. As she
+grew towards womanhood in the bravest and most amorous court in Europe,
+the queen-dauphiness became a paragon of beauty, charm, accomplishments,
+the theme of poets, the despair of lovers innumerable worshipping her
+from afar.
+
+The boy Francis de Valois, to whom she was affianced, was a poor,
+bilious, degenerate weakling, stunted in figure, uncomely of face. He
+was shy and timid, shunning active exercises, and though at the time of
+his marriage (1558) he was too young to have been actively engaged in
+the vices of the outwardly devout court, he appears to have been fully
+alive to the desirability of his bride. Mary was precocious and
+ambitious; she was surrounded by profligates, male and female, and,
+though she can hardly have been in love with her young husband, she
+appears to have been fully reconciled to the union.
+
+With unsurpassed magnificence the wedding of Mary and Francis took place
+in Paris, but it signified to the world much more than the wedding of a
+boy and girl. So far as men could see, it meant the triumph of the papal
+Guises in France, and a death-blow to Protestant hopes of ranging
+Scotland on the side of the reformation.
+
+
+_II.--Intrigue, Plot, and Intrigue_
+
+
+Francis died after sixteen months reign, and Mary Stuart and her Guisan
+uncles, hated jealously by the queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, and by
+the reforming Bourbons, fell, for a time, into the background. Mary can
+hardly have loved her puny boy husband, but she nursed him night and day
+in his long sickness and his death so affected her that "she would not
+receive any consolation, but, brooding over her disasters with constant
+tears and passionate, doleful lamentations, she universally inspired
+deep pity." She had, indeed, lost much besides her royal husband; and in
+a poem written by her afterwards, the waste of her youth in widowhood,
+the loss of her great position as Queen of France, and her powerlessness
+any longer to enforce her rule in Scotland by French power, are the main
+burden of her complaints against Providence, not pity for the husband
+she had lost.
+
+The Guises were loath to surrender power without a struggle, and as soon
+as Francis died they sought to sell their niece in marriage again. Their
+first idea was for her to marry her child-brother-in-law, the new King
+Charles IX., but Catharine de Medici at once stopped that plan, though
+the boy himself was anxious for it and Mary was not averse. That
+failing, Cardinal Lorraine turned to the heir of Spain, Don Carlos, as a
+husband for her. This would have been a death-blow to Elizabeth, and
+Philip feigned to listen to it; but all the strength and cunning of
+Huguenots and Protestants, joined by those of Catharine and Elizabeth,
+were brought into play against this threatening move, and Mary went to
+Scotland with a sinking, sad, and angry heart in 1561, fearing her
+uncouth subjects, foreign to her now, vexed with the Protestant party
+for standing in the way of her ambitious marriage, and determined to
+oppose Elizabeth to the utmost in her designs against the independence
+of Scotland.
+
+With these views, gay and winsome though she was, it was not long before
+Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman,
+John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and
+Secretary Lethington that a _modus vivendi_ might be found by persuading
+Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she herself
+died childless, on the undertaking of Mary that her marriage and policy
+should be dictated by England; but it was not Elizabeth's plan to pledge
+the future of England, and her nimble evasiveness drove the Scottish
+statesmen to despair.
+
+Brawls and bitterness grew in Mary's court around the Catholicism of the
+queen, and English money and intrigue were freely lavished to set
+Scotland by the ears. Half the nobles were disaffected, and Murray and
+Lethington, having failed to secure Scottish interests by moderate
+counsels and the conciliation of Elizabeth, were forced to take a strong
+course. Of foreign suitors Mary had many, some promoted by the
+Protestants, some by the Pope and the Guises, while the Catholics of
+England were secretly intriguing to force Elizabeth's hand by arranging
+Mary's marriage with young Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, eldest son of
+Margaret, Countess of Lennox, niece of Henry VIII., who lived at
+Elizabeth's court. Cecil's spies were everywhere, and the plot was soon
+known and stopped by Elizabeth, violently angry with her kinswoman for
+listening to such a scheme.
+
+But Murray and Lethington, in desperation, were aiming at higher game
+even than this. They were Protestant, they had tried their best to win
+Elizabeth's recognition; but they were Scotsmen first, and if their
+country was to be independent it must have a great ally behind it.
+France was out of the question while the Guises were in the shade and
+Catharine was queen-mother. So the ministers of Mary turned their eyes
+to the Protestant heir of the Catholic king. Elizabeth soon heard of
+this, too, and suddenly pretended to be in favour of the Darnley match
+for Mary, while she developed the most cordial friendship for Mary
+herself; for the Guises had again become paramount in France, and
+Elizabeth could not afford to flout all the Catholic interests at once.
+
+That danger soon passed, for the Huguenots flew to arms, and Guise was
+murdered, Mary losing thus her principal prop abroad. And Lethington now
+pushed vigorously what seemed to be Scotland's only chance of
+safety--the marriage of Mary with the semi-idiot heir of Spain.
+
+The English Catholics were drawn into the plot. "Only let Mary marry the
+heir of Spain, and we will salute her as our leader," said they. But
+Elizabeth soon gained wind of it, as usual, and was ready with her
+antidote--a most extraordinary one--the proposal that Mary should wed
+her own lover, Lord Robert Dudley, with the assurance of the English
+succession after Elizabeth's death without issue. It was a mere feint,
+of course, but it divided Scotland, and unsettled Mary herself.
+
+Meanwhile, Philip, with his leaden methods, was pondering and seeking
+fresh pledges and guarantees from the English Catholics. Before his
+temporising answer came Elizabeth had frightened Mary's advisers into
+doubt, while she was holding the English Catholics in check by dangling
+Darnley and Dudley before Mary's eyes, and swearing deadly vengeance if
+she married the Spaniard.
+
+Elizabeth's first aim was to embroil Mary's prospects by discrediting
+her in the eyes of foreign powers. To this end was directed the offer
+alternately of Dudley and Darnley as a husband, and Elizabeth's pretence
+of shocked reprobation of Mary in connection with Chastelard's escapade.
+It must be confessed that Mary's imprudence aided Elizabeth's object,
+and the sour bigotry of Knox, which looked upon all gaiety as a sin,
+served the same purpose. All this drove the unhappy queen more and more
+into the arms of the Catholic party as her only means of defence.
+
+
+_III.--Prudence Overcome by Passion_
+
+
+The intrigue to wed Mary to the Spanish prince was met by Elizabeth
+cordially taking up Lady Lennox, and her son, Darnley, who by many was
+now regarded as the intended heir of England, and was held out to Mary
+as an ideal husband for her. So long as she had hopes of the Spanish
+prince she gave but evasive answers; but late in 1564 the cunning
+diplomacy of Catharine and the falseness of Cardinal Lorraine had
+diverted that danger; and Philip gave Mary to understand that the match
+with his son was impossible, Mary's great hope had been founded upon
+this marriage. Unless she could have a foreign Catholic husband strong
+enough to defy Elizabeth she knew that she must make terms with
+Elizabeth's enemies, the English Catholics, and thus bring pressure to
+bear upon her by internal dissensions.
+
+It was a dangerous game to play, for it meant conspiracy; and so long as
+the Lennoxes and their effeminate, lanky son were basking in Elizabeth's
+favour, the English queen held her trump card. But Lady Lennox was
+intriguing and ambitious, the head of English Catholic disaffection, and
+could only be held to Elizabeth's side by delusive hopes of the English
+succession for her son. Lennox himself, with some misgiving, was allowed
+to go to Scotland to claim his forfeited estates, and there, to
+Elizabeth's anger, was received with marked respect, which made the
+English queen hold Darnley and his mother more firmly than ever, and
+again push forward Dudley as a suitor for Mary's hand. Anxious to get
+Darnley to Scotland, not necessarily to marry him, but as a useful
+instrument, Mary feigned willingness to accept Dudley; and, in face of
+this, Elizabeth was induced to allow young Darnley to go to Scotland for
+a short time, ostensibly on business of the family estates.
+
+In February 1565, Darnley, aged nineteen, crossed the border, to the
+dismay of the English agents in Scotland. It was soon after Mary had
+received news that the Spanish match was at an end, and she was ready
+for a new plan to circumvent Elizabeth. Darnley as a husband would bring
+to her the support of English Catholics, and a new claim to the English
+crown. So when her eyes first lit upon the fair stripling at Wemyss
+Castle, she looked upon him with favour as "the properest tall man she
+ever saw." He was on his best behaviour, and danced delightfully with
+the queen. Up to this time Mary had played her game with self-command
+and policy, but now for the first time her heart ran away with her, and
+she took a false step.
+
+To have married Darnley as part of a transaction with Elizabeth, and
+with the approval of her own Protestant subjects, would have been a
+master-stroke. But she fell in love with the "long lad," and could not
+wait for negotiation; so she at once sent off to pray King Philip to
+support her with money and men against England and the Protestants if
+she married Darnley and became the tool of Spain. Philip, nothing loth,
+consented, and welcomed the coming union as a Catholic alliance and a
+powerful weapon against Elizabeth. Mary thus made herself the head of a
+vast Catholic conspiracy looking to Spain for support, and Elizabeth was
+furious both with Mary and Darnley for having apparently beaten her at
+her own cunning game.
+
+How Elizabeth sought a diversion, at first by new matrimonial schemes of
+her own, has been told elsewhere, but her more effectual weapon was to
+arouse the fears of Scottish Protestants, and breed dissension in Mary's
+realm. "The young fool," Darnley, insolent and proud of his new
+greatness, offended all the nobles, whilst Mary grew daily more
+infatuated with him. They were married in July 1565, and the great
+conspiracy against Elizabeth and Protestantism was complete. Already the
+Scottish Protestant lords were in a panic, and after an abortive rising,
+they fled before Mary's bold attack, taking refuge in England.
+
+The queen herself led her forces, armed and mounted, with her stripling
+husband by her side; but she was followed close by the shaggy, stern,
+martial figure of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, just returned from
+exile to serve her; and upon him she looked with kindling eyes as a
+stouter man than the fribble she had wed. Mary had now apparently
+triumphed by her Darnley marriage, but the avalanche was gathering to
+crush her. She looked mainly to Spain and the Pope for help, and had all
+Protestantism against her, led by Elizabeth, whose hate and fury knew no
+bounds. It was a duel now of life or death between two systems and two
+women, one with a heart and the other without; and, as usual, the
+heartless won.
+
+English money and skill honeycombed Scottish loyalty. Darnley, vicious,
+vain, and passionate, was an easy prey to intrigue. The tools of England
+whispered in his ear that his wife was too intimate with the Italian
+secretary Rizzio, who had conducted the correspondence with the Catholic
+powers. Darnley, who had earned his wife's contempt already, was beside
+himself with jealousy, and himself led the Protestant conspirators and
+friends of England, who murdered Rizzio in the queen's presence at
+Holyrood (March 1566). From that hour Darnley's doom was sealed.
+
+He had thought to be king indeed now, but Mary outwitted him; for she
+recalled her exiled lords, welcomed her brother Murray, and threw
+herself into the arms of Darnley's Protestant foes, the very men who had
+risen in arms against the marriage. As she fled by night with Darnley
+after Rizzio's murder, to betray him, she swore over Rizzio's new-made
+grave that a "fatter one" than he should lie there ere long. Whether she
+knew of the plot of his foes to murder her husband is not proved, but
+she almost certainly did so, and welcomed the deed when it was done. She
+made no pretence of love for him after Rizzio's death, and her husband
+repaid her coldness by sulky loutishness and bursts of drunken violence.
+Mary's conduct toward Bothwell, too, began to arouse scandal. By
+November 1566, matters had reached a crisis, and Mary, at Kelso, said
+that unless she was freed from Darnley she would put an end to herself.
+She spoke not to deaf ears. Morton, and the rest of Rizzio's slayers and
+bitter enemies, were pardoned, and the deadly bond was signed.
+
+
+_IV.--Dire Infatuation_
+
+
+On February 9, 1567, as the doomed consort lay sick and sorry outside
+Edinburgh at the lone house of Kirk o' Field, he was, done to death by
+Bothwell and the foes of the Lennoxes; and Mary Stuart's first true love
+affair was ended in tragedy. But already the second was in full blast.
+Bothwell had recently married; he was disliked by the Scottish nobles,
+and the queen's constant association with him had already brought
+discredit upon her. There had been a good political excuse for her union
+with Darnley, but Bothwell could bring no support to her cause; for his
+creed was doubtful, and he had no friends. Nothing, indeed, but the
+infatuation of an amorous woman for a brutally strong man could have so
+blinded her to her own great aims as to make her take Bothwell, the
+prime mover of Darnley's murder, for her husband.
+
+As soon as the crime was known, all fingers were pointed to Bothwell and
+the queen as the murderers, and Protestants everywhere hastened to cast
+obloquy upon Mary for it. But for the nobles' jealousy of Bothwell, and
+the religious animus, probably Darnley's death would soon have been
+forgotten or condoned; but as it was, Scotland blazed out in
+denunciation of it, and though Bothwell was put upon a mock trial and
+acquitted, the hate against him grew, especially when he arranged to
+divorce his wife in April 1567, and, ostensibly by force, but clearly by
+Mary's connivance, abducted the queen and bore her off to his castle of
+Dunbar.
+
+On her return to Edinburgh a few weeks later Mary publicly married
+Bothwell--she swore afterwards against her will, but, in any case, to
+the anger and disgust of her subjects. She found her new husband an
+arrogant tyrant rather than her slave, and he watched her closely. The
+dire infatuation of the lovelorn woman soon wore off, and again she
+sighed to be free; but it was too late, for the Catholic powers stood
+aloof from her now that she had married a divorced man, and all her
+nobles had abandoned her. So Mary clung to Bothwell still, for he was
+strong, and all Scotland cried shame upon her.
+
+In June, Mary and her husband, fearing attack or treachery, fled from
+Edinburgh Castle, which at once opened its gates to Morton and the rebel
+lords. A parley was sent to Mary offering submission if she would leave
+Bothwell to his fate. She indignantly refused, for she feared the lords
+and hated Morton. Bothwell was strong, she thought, and he was the
+father of her unborn child; be might protect her. So by Bothwell's side
+she rode out at the head of the border clansmen, and met the rebel army
+at Carberry Hill, hard by Edinburgh.
+
+It was agreed that the dispute should be decided by the single combat
+between Bothwell and Lindsay, but before the duel began Mary's bordermen
+became disordered, and then she knew that all was lost. Kirkaldy of
+Grange came from her opponents to parley with her and offer safety for
+her, but not for Bothwell. Whilst they were speaking, Bothwell attempted
+to murder Grange; and when Mary forbade such treachery, he lost his
+nerve and began to whimper. In a moment the scales fell from Mary's
+eyes. This man was but a lath painted like steel. His strength was but a
+lie, and he was unworthy of her. She turned from him in contempt, and
+surrendered to the lords; while Bothwell fled, and unhappy Mary saw him
+no more.
+
+
+_V.--Langside and After_
+
+
+Cursed by crowds, who reviled her as a murderess and adulteress, Mary
+was led, a captive, to her capital. By night, to save her from the fury
+of the mob, she was smuggled out of Edinburgh and lodged, a prisoner, in
+the island fortress of Lochleven. During her long incarceration there
+the story of her wrongs and sufferings stirred the Catholics at home and
+abroad in her favour, and her friends and foes were again sharply
+divided according to their religious creeds. The rulers of Scotland,
+too, headed by her brother Murray, were far from easy; for the Catholics
+were strong, and foreign crowned heads looked black at those who kept a
+sovereign in durance. So attempts were made to conciliate her by
+proposing marriage with some harmless Scottish noble, conjoined with her
+abdication. But her heart was high still, and she would bate no jot of
+her queenship; rather would she exercise her glamour upon her gaolers
+and escape to power and sovereignty again. Her fascination was
+irresistible, and Murray's half-brother, young George Douglas, a mere
+lad, fell a victim to her smiles. Once more Mary fell in love, and
+proposed to marry the youth who had endeavoured to aid her escape.
+
+Murray was shocked, and had his brother expelled the castle; but in
+April 1568 the faithful George planned her evasion of the guard and
+joyfully welcomed her on the shore of the lake. To her standard flocked
+the Catholic lords, and, safe at Hamilton, Mary, again a queen, swore
+vengeance upon her foes. On her way with her army to Dumbarton she met
+Murray's force at Langside, near Glasgow. She had been strong at
+Carberry Hill with Bothwell at her side. Here she was weak, for no man
+of weight or character was with her, and as her men wavered she turned
+rein and fled.
+
+For sixty miles on bad roads she struggled on, almost without sleep, and
+living on beggar's fare. With no adviser or woman near her, in her panic
+and despair she took the fatal resolve and crossed the Solway into
+Elizabeth's realm, trusting to the magnanimity of the woman whom she had
+tried to ruin and supplant. Again her heart had deceived her. Elizabeth
+had no pity for a vanquished foe, and for the rest of her miserable
+life, well nigh a score of years, Mary Stuart was a prisoner. But in all
+those years she never ceased to plot and plan for the overthrow of
+Elizabeth and her own elevation to the Catholic throne of all Britain.
+
+Amidst her many weapons, that of marriage and her personal fascination
+were not forgotten. Twice, at least, she tried to make her love affairs
+serve her political ambition. Poor, feckless Norfolk was drawn by his
+vanity and ambition into her net. Love epistles, breathing eternal
+devotion, passed between them, but murder was behind it all--the murder
+of Elizabeth, and the subjection of England to Spain to work Mary's
+vengeance on her foes, and Norfolk lost his head deservedly.
+
+Again she dreamed of marrying the Christian champion, Don Juan of
+Austria, and conquering and ruling over a Catholic England. But this
+plot, too, was discovered, and Don Juan, like all the rest of Mary's
+lovers, died miserably. Mary thenceforward was the centre of Spain's
+great conspiracy against England's queen, but she sought the end no more
+by love; for that had failed her every time she tried. She and her cause
+were beaten because her heart of fire was pitted against a heart of ice,
+and she lost all because she loved too much.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+Life of Christopher Columbus
+
+
+     Washington Irving, American historian and essayist, was born
+     on April 3, 1783, in New York, of a family which came
+     originally from Scotland. He knew Europe well, and was equally
+     at home in London, Paris, and Madrid; he held the offices, in
+     1829, of Secretary to the American Embassy in London, and, in
+     1842, of American Minister in Spain. He was deeply interested
+     in Spanish history, and besides the "Life and Voyages of
+     Christopher Columbus," he wrote "The Voyages of the Companions
+     of Columbus," "The Conquest of Granada," "The Alhambra," and
+     "Legends of the Conquest of Spain." He was an industrious man
+     of letters, having an excellent style, wide knowledge, and
+     pleasant humour. His chief work was the "Life of George
+     Washington," of which we give an epitome elsewhere. Other
+     writings include "A History of New York, by Diedrich
+     Knickerbocker," the celebrated "Sketch Book," "Bracebridge
+     Hall," "Tales of a Traveller," and a "Life of Goldsmith."
+     Irving did not marry, and died on November 28, 1859, in his
+     home at Sunnyside on the Hudson River, and is buried at
+     Tarrytown. The "Life of Columbus" was published in 1828 and is
+     now obtainable in a number of popular editions.
+
+
+_The Years of Waiting_
+
+
+Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa about 1435, of poor but reputable
+parents. He soon evinced a passion for geographical knowledge, and an
+irresistible inclination for the sea. We have but shadowy traces of his
+life till he took up his abode in Lisbon about 1470. His contemporaries
+describe him as tall and muscular; he was moderate and simple in diet
+and apparel, eloquent, engaging, and affable. At Lisbon he married a
+lady of rank, Doña Felipa. He supported his family by making maps and
+charts.
+
+Portugal was prosecuting modern discovery with great enthusiasm, seeking
+a route to India by the coast of Africa; Columbus's genius conceived the
+bold idea of seeking India across the Atlantic. He set it down that the
+earth was a terraqueous globe, which might be travelled round. The
+circumference he divided into twenty-four hours. Of these he imagined
+that fifteen hours had been known to the ancients; the Portguese had
+advanced the western frontier one hour more by the discovery of the
+Azores and the Cape de Verde Islands; still, about eight hours remained
+to be explored. This space he imagined to be occupied in great measure
+by the eastern regions of Asia. A navigator, therefore, pursuing a
+direct course from east to west, must arrive at Asia or discover
+intervening land.
+
+The work of Marco Polo is the key to many of the ideas of Columbus. The
+territories of the Great Khan were the object of his search in all his
+voyages. Much of the success of his enterprise rested on two happy
+errors; the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed
+smallness of the earth. Without these errors he would hardly have
+ventured into the immeasurable waste of waters of the Atlantic.
+
+A deep religious sentiment mingled with his thoughts; he looked upon
+himself as chosen from among men, and he read of his discovery as
+foretold in Holy Writ. Navigation was still too imperfect for such an
+undertaking; mariners rarely ventured far out of sight of land. But
+knowledge was advancing, and the astrolabe, which has been modified into
+the modern quadrant, was being applied to navigation. This was the one
+thing wanting to free the mariner from his long bondage to the land.
+
+Columbus now laid his great project before the King of Portugal, but
+without success. Greatly disappointed, he sailed to Spain, hoping to
+receive the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was many months
+before he could even obtain a hearing; his means were exhausted, and he
+had to contend against ridicule and scorn, but the royal audience was at
+length obtained. Ferdinand assembled learned astronomers and
+cosmographers to hold a conference with Columbus. They assailed him with
+citations from the Bible. One objection advanced was, that should a ship
+ever succeed in reaching India, she could never come back, for the
+rotundity of the globe would present a mountain, up which it would be
+impossible to sail. Finally, after five years, the junta condemned the
+scheme as vain and impossible.
+
+Columbus was on the point of leaving Spain, when the real grandeur of
+the subject broke at last on Isabella's mind, and she resolved to
+undertake the enterprise. Articles of agreement were drawn up and signed
+by Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus and his heirs were to have the
+office of High Admiral in all the seas, lands, and continents he might
+discover, and he was to be viceroy over the said lands and continents.
+He was to have one-tenth of all profits, and contribute an eighth of the
+expense of expeditions. Columbus proposed that the profits from his
+discoveries should be consecrated to a crusade.
+
+
+_The First Voyage_
+
+(August, 1492--March, 1493)
+
+
+Columbus set out joyfully for Palos, where the expedition was to be
+fitted out. He had spent eighteen years in hopeless solicitation, amidst
+poverty, neglect, and ridicule. When the nature of the expedition was
+heard, the boldest seamen shrank from such a chimerical cruise, but at
+last every difficulty was vanquished, and the vessels were ready for
+sea. Two of them were light, half-decked caravels; the Santa Maria, on
+which Columbus hoisted his flag, was completely decked. The whole number
+of persons was one hundred and twenty.
+
+Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492, steering for the Canary Islands.
+From there they were wafted gently over a tranquil sea by the trade
+wind, and for many days did not change a sail. The poor mariners
+gradually became uneasy at the length of the voyage. The sight of small
+birds, too feeble to fly far, cheered their hearts for a time, but again
+their impatience rose to absolute mutiny. Then new hopes diverted them.
+There was an appearance of land, and the ships altered their course and
+stood all night to the south-west, but the morning light put an end to
+their hopes; the fancied land proved to be an evening cloud.
+
+Again the seamen broke forth into loud clamours, and insisted on
+abandoning the voyage. Fortunately, the following day a branch with
+berries on it floated by; they picked up also a small board and a carved
+staff, and all murmuring was now at an end. Not an eye was closed that
+night. Columbus took his station on the top of the cabin. Suddenly,
+about ten o'clock, he beheld a light. At two in the morning the land was
+clearly seen, and they took in sail, waiting for the dawn. The great
+mystery of the ocean was revealed.
+
+When the day dawned, Columbus landed, threw himself upon his knees,
+kissed the earth, and returned thanks to God. Rising, he drew his sword,
+displayed the royal standard, and took possession in the names of the
+Castillian sovereigns, naming the island San Salvador. It is one of the
+Bahama Islands, and still retains that name, though also called Cat
+Island.
+
+The natives thought that the ships had descended from above on their
+ample wings, and that these marvellous beings were inhabitants of the
+skies. They appeared to be simple and artless people, and of gentle and
+friendly dispositions. As Columbus supposed that the island was at the
+extremity of India, he called them Indians. He understood them to say
+that a king of great wealth resided in the south. This, he concluded,
+could be no other than Cipango, or Japan. He now beheld a number of
+beautiful islands, green, level, and fertile; and supposed them to be
+the archipelago described by Marco Polo. He was enchanted by the lovely
+scenery, the singing of the birds, and the brilliantly colored fish,
+though disappointed in his hopes of finding gold or spice; but the
+natives continued to point to the south as the region of wealth, and
+spoke of an Island called Cuba.
+
+He set sail in search of it, and was struck with its magnitude, the
+grandeur of its mountains, its fertile valleys, sweeping plains, stately
+forests, and noble rivers. He explored the coast to the east end of
+Cuba, supposing it the extreme point of Asia, and then descried the
+mountains of Hayti to the south-east. In coasting along this island,
+which he named Hispaniola, his ship was carried by a current on a
+sandbank and lost. The admiral and crew took refuge in one of the
+caravels. The natives, especially the cacique Guacanagari, offered him
+every assistance. The Spanish mariners regarded with a wistful eye the
+easy and idle existence of these Indians, who seemed to live in a golden
+world without toil, and they entreated permission to remain.
+
+This suggested to Columbus the idea of forming the germ of a future
+colony. The cacique was overjoyed, and the natives helped to build a
+fort, thus assisting to place on their necks the yoke of slavery. The
+fortress and harbour were named La Navidad.
+
+Columbus chose thirty-nine of those who volunteered to remain, charged
+them to be circumspect and friendly with the natives, and set sail for
+Spain. He encountered violent tempests, his small and crazy vessels were
+little fitted for the wild storms of the Atlantic; the oldest mariners
+had never known so tempestuous a winter, and their preservation seemed
+miraculous. They were forced to run into Tagus for shelter. The King of
+Portugal treated Columbus with the most honourable attentions. When the
+weather had moderated he put to sea again, and arrived safely at Palos
+on March 15, having taken not quite seven months and a half to
+accomplish this most momentous of all maritime enterprises.
+
+Columbus landed and walked in procession to the church to return thanks
+to God. Bells were rung, the shops shut, and all business suspended. The
+sovereigns were dazzled by this easy acquisition of a new empire. They
+addressed Columbus as admiral and viceroy, and urged him to repair
+immediately to court to concert plans for a second expedition. His
+journey to Barcelona was like the progress of a sovereign, and his
+entrance into that city has been compared to a Roman triumph. On his
+approach the sovereigns rose and ordered him to seat himself in their
+presence. When Columbus had given an account of his voyage, the king and
+queen sank on their knees, and a _Te Deum_ was chanted by the choir of
+the royal chapel. Such was the manner in which the brilliant court of
+Spain celebrated this sublime event.
+
+The whole civilised world was filled with wonder and delight, but no one
+had an idea of the real importance of the discovery. The opinion of
+Columbus was universally adopted that Cuba was the end of Asia; the
+islands were named the West Indies, and the vast region was called the
+New World.
+
+
+_The Second Voyage_
+
+(September, 1493--June, 1496)
+
+
+Extraordinary excitement prevailed about the second expedition, and many
+hidalgos of high rank pressed into it. They sailed from Cadiz in
+September 1493; all were full of animation, anticipating a triumphant
+return. When they reached La Navidad they found the fortress burnt. At
+length, from some natives they heard the story of the brawls of the
+colonists between themselves, and their surprise and destruction by
+unfriendly Indians. Columbus fixed upon a new site for his colony, which
+he named Isabella. Two small expeditions were sent inland to explore,
+and returned with enthusiastic accounts of the promise of the mountains,
+and Columbus sent to Spain a glowing report of the prospects of the
+colony.
+
+Soon, however, maladies made their appearance, provisions began to fail,
+and murmuring prevailed among the colonists. In truth, the fate of many
+of the young cavaliers, who had come out deluded by romantic dreams, was
+lamentable in the extreme. Columbus arranged for the government of the
+island, and set sail to explore the southern coast of Cuba, supposing it
+to be the extreme end of Asia. He had to contend with almost incredible
+perils, and was obliged to return. Had he continued for two or three
+days longer he would have passed round the extremity of Cuba; his
+illusion would have been dispelled, and a different course given to his
+subsequent discoveries.
+
+During his absence from Isabella the whole island had become a scene of
+violence and discord. Margarite, the general left in charge of the
+soldiers, and Friar Boyle, the apostolical vicar, formed a cabal of the
+discontented, took possession of certain ships, and set sail for Spain,
+to represent the disastrous state of the country, and to complain of the
+tyranny of Columbus. The soldiers indulged in all kinds of excesses, and
+the Indians were converted from gentle hosts into vindictive enemies.
+
+Meanwhile, a commissioner was sent out to inquire into the distress of
+the colony and the conduct of Columbus. He collected all complaints, and
+returned to Spain, Columbus sailing at the same time. Never did a more
+miserable crew return from a land of promise.
+
+The vessels anchored at Cadiz, and a feeble train of wretched men
+crawled forth, emaciated by diseases. Contrary to his anticipation,
+Columbus was received with distinguished favour. Thus encouraged, he
+proposed a further enterprise, and asked for eight ships, which were
+readily promised; but it was not until May 1498, that he again set sail.
+
+
+_The Third Voyage_
+
+(May, 1498--October, 1500)
+
+
+From the Cape de Verde Islands, Columbus steered to the south-west,
+until he arrived at the fifth degree of north latitude. The air was like
+a furnace, the mariners lost all strength and spirit, and Columbus was
+induced to alter his course to the northwest. After sailing some
+distance they reached a genial region with a cooling breeze and serene
+and clear sky. They descried three mountains above the horizon; as they
+drew nearer, they proved to be united at the base, and Columbus,
+therefore, named this island La Trinidad. He coasted round Trinidad, and
+landed on the mainland, but mistook it for an island. He was astonished
+at the body of fresh water flowing into the Gulf of Paria, and came to
+the conclusion that it must be the outpouring of a great unknown
+continent stretching to the south, far beyond the equator. His supplies
+were now almost exhausted, and he determined to return to Hispaniola.
+
+He found the island in a lamentable situation. A conspiracy had been
+formed against his viceroy, and the Indians, perceiving the dissensions
+among the Spaniards, threw off their allegiance. After long negotiations
+Columbus was forced to sign a humiliating capitulation with the rebels.
+Meanwhile, every vessel that returned from the New World came freighted
+with complaints against Columbus. The support of the colony was an
+incessant drain upon the mother country. Was this compatible, it was
+asked, with the pictures he had drawn of the wealth of the island?
+
+Isabella herself at last began to entertain doubts about Columbus, and
+the sovereigns decided to send out Don Francisco del Bobadilla to
+investigate his conduct. This officer appears to have been needy,
+passionate, and ambitious. He acted as if he had been sent out to
+degrade the admiral, not to inquire into his conduct. He threw Columbus
+into irons, and seized his arms, gold, jewels, books, and most secret
+manuscripts. Columbus conducted himself with characteristic magnanimity,
+and bore all indignities in silence. Bobadilla collected testimony
+sufficient, as he thought, to ensure the condemnation of Columbus, and
+sent him a prisoner to Spain.
+
+The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, in chains, produced almost as great a
+sensation as his first triumphant return. A general burst of indignation
+arose. The sovereigns sent orders that he should be instantly set at
+liberty, and promised that Columbus should be reinstated in all his
+dignities. But Ferdinand repented having invested such great powers in
+any subject, and especially in a foreigner. Plausible reasons were given
+for delaying his reappointment, and meanwhile Don Nicholas de Ovando was
+sent out to supersede Bobadilla.
+
+
+_The Fourth Voyage_
+
+(May, 1502--November, 1504)
+
+
+Columbus's thoughts were suddenly turned to a new enterprise. Vasco da
+Gama had recently reached India round the Cape of Good Hope, and immense
+wealth was poured by this route into Portugal. Columbus was persuaded
+that the currents of the Caribbean Sea must pass between Cuba and the
+land which he had discovered to the south, and that this route to India
+would be more easy and direct than that of Vasco da Gama. His plan was
+promptly adopted by the sovereigns, and he sailed in May 1502, on his
+last and most disastrous voyage. He steered to Hispaniola, but was not
+permitted to land, and then coasted along Honduras and down the Mosquito
+Coast to Costa Rica. Here he found gold among the natives, and heard
+rumours of Mexico. He continued beyond Cape Nombre de Dios in search for
+the imaginary strait, and then gave up all attempt to find it.
+
+Possibly he knew that another voyager, coasting from the eastward, had
+reached this point. He turned westward to search for the gold-mines of
+Veragua, and attempted unsuccessfully to found a settlement there. As
+his vessels were no longer capable of standing the sea, he ran them
+aground on Jamaica, fastened them together, and put the wreck in a state
+of defence. He dispatched canoes to Hispaniola, asking Ovando to send a
+ship to relieve him, but many months of suffering and difficulty elapsed
+before it came.
+
+Columbus returned to Spain in November 1504. Care and sorrow were
+destined to follow him; his finances were exhausted, and he was unable,
+from his infirmities, to go to court. The death of Isabella was a fatal
+blow to his fortunes. Many months were passed by him in painful and
+humiliating solicitation for the restitution of his high offices. At
+length he saw that further hope of redress from Ferdinand was vain. His
+illness increased, and he expired, with great resignation, on May 20,
+1506.
+
+Columbus was a man of great and inventive genius, and his ambition was
+noble and lofty. Instead of ravaging the newly-found countries, he
+sought to found regular and prosperous enterprises. He was naturally
+irritable and impetuous, but, though continually outraged in his
+dignity, and foiled in his plans by turbulent and worthless men, he
+restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, and brought himself to
+forbear and reason, and even to supplicate. His piety was genuine and
+fervent, and diffused a sober dignity over his whole deportment.
+
+He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discovery. What visions
+of glory would have broken upon his mind could he have known that he had
+indeed discovered a new continent! And how would his spirit have been
+consoled, amidst the afflictions of age and the injustice of an
+ungrateful king, could he have anticipated the empires which would arise
+in the world he had discovered; and the nations, towns, and languages,
+which were to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Life of George Washington
+
+
+     This great historical biography was Washington Irving's
+     principal work. It was founded chiefly upon George
+     Washington's correspondence, which is preserved in manuscript
+     in the archives of the United States Government. Irving worked
+     at it intermittently for many years; and it was published in
+     successive sections during the last years of his life, 1855 to
+     1859, while he was living in retirement with his nieces at
+     Sunnyside, on the Hudson River.
+
+
+The De Wessyngton family, of the county of Durham, in feudal times,
+produced many men of mark in the field and in the cloister, and at a
+later period the Washingtons were intrepid supporters of the unfortunate
+House of Stuart. Compromised by this allegiance, two brothers, John and
+Andrew, uncles of Sir Henry Washington, the gallant defender of
+Worcester, emigrated to Virginia in 1657, and purchased lands in
+Westmoreland County, by the River Potomac. John, who became military
+leader of the Virginians against the Indians, was great-grandfather of
+the illustrious George Washington.
+
+George, born February 22, 1732, in a homestead on Bridges Creek, was the
+eldest son of Mary Ball, second wife of Augustine Washington. Two
+half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, survived from the first marriage;
+and Mary had three other sons and two daughters. George received his
+first education in an "old field school-house," taught by the parish
+sexton; but the chief influences of his boyhood were the morality of his
+home and the military ardour of the colonists against the Spanish and
+the French. Lawrence, his eldest brother, had a captaincy in the
+colonial regiment which fought for England in the West Indies, in 1740,
+and the boy's whole mind was turned to war.
+
+His father died when he was eleven years old, and George was sent to
+live with his married brother Augustine. Here he attended school, was
+eager in the acquirement of knowledge, and became expert in all athletic
+exercises. He very nearly entered on a naval career, but at his mother's
+earnest entreaty renounced the project, and returning to school, studied
+land-surveying.
+
+Lawrence, his brother, having married into the Fairfax family, George
+came under the notice of Lord Fairfax, owner of immense tracts of
+country, who was so pleased with the lad's character and accomplishments
+that he entrusted him with the task of surveying his possessions. At the
+age of sixteen George Washington set out into the wilderness, and
+acquitted himself so well that he was appointed public surveyor. He thus
+gained an intimate knowledge, and of the ways of the Indians.
+
+The English and French governments were at this time making conflicting
+claims to the Ohio valley, and their agents were treating with the
+various Indian tribes. At length the French prepared to enforce their
+claim by arms, and Washington received, in 1751, a commission as
+adjutant-general over a military district of Virginia. In October, 1753,
+he was sent by Governor Dinwiddie on a mission to the French commander,
+from which he returned in the following January; and his conduct on this
+occasion, when he had to traverse great distances of unknown forest at
+midwinter, and to cope with the craft of white men and savages alike,
+marked him out as a youth fitted for the most important civil and
+military trusts.
+
+
+_Conflicts with the French_
+
+
+Washington was for the first time under fire in April, 1754, when he had
+been sent, as second in command of the colonial forces, to take charge
+of a fort on the Ohio. He fell in with a French party of spies, whom his
+small force, with Indian assistance, put to flight. His fort, named Fort
+Necessity, was defended by three hundred men, but was attacked in July
+by a greatly superior force of French and Indians, and Washington had to
+capitulate, marching out with the honours of war.
+
+When it was determined, the same autumn, by the Governor and the British
+Secretary of State, that the colonial troops should be reduced to
+independent companies, so that there should no longer be colonial
+officers above the rank of captain, Washington, in accordance with the
+dawning republicism of America, resigned his commission, and settling at
+Mount Vernon, prepared to devote himself to agriculture. But in 1755,
+General Braddock was sent out to undertake energetic operations against
+the French, and Washington accepted the General's offer of a position
+on his staff.
+
+It was now that the eminent Benjamin Franklin did such great service to
+the British arms by organizing transport, and listened with astonishment
+to Braddock's anticipations of easy victory. The young aide-de-camp also
+warned the English soldier in vain. On July 9 Braddock's force was
+utterly routed by the French and Indians, and the general himself was
+slain. This reverse did away with all belief, throughout the colonies,
+in the power of British arms, and prepared the way for the independence
+that was to follow.
+
+On August 14 George Washington was appointed to the supreme command of
+the Virginian forces, with his headquarters at Winchester, and was
+occupied in the defence of a wide frontier with an insufficient force,
+until the expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1758, when he planted the
+British flag on its smoking ruins, and put an end to the French
+domination of the Ohio.
+
+His marriage to Mrs. Martha Custis, a young and wealthy widow, was
+celebrated on January 6, 1759; he took his seat in the House of
+Burgesses at Williamsburg, and established himself at Mount Vernon to
+develop his estates. A large Virginia estate, in those days, was a
+little empire.
+
+
+_The Dawn of Independence_
+
+
+The definitive treaty of peace between France and England was signed at
+Fontainebleau in 1763; but the tranquility of the colonies was again
+broken by an Indian insurrection, known as Pontiac's war. Washington had
+no part in its suppression, but he was soon to be called again to the
+defence of his country.
+
+He was in his place in the House of Burgesses on May 29, 1765, when the
+claims of Britain to tax the colony were first repudiated, and it was
+declared that the General Assembly of Virginia had the exclusive right
+to tax the inhabitants, and that whoever maintained the contrary should
+be deemed an enemy to the colony. These resolutions were the signal for
+general applause throughout the continent.
+
+The repeal, in 1766, of the objectionable Stamp Act only postponed the
+crisis, which became acute when the port of Boston was closed by
+Parliament, because of the resistance of that city to the importation of
+East Indian tea. A General Congress of deputies from the several
+colonies was convened for September 5, 1773, at Philadelphia, in which
+Washington took part, and a Federal Union of the colonies was then
+established. The English commander, General Gage, struck the first blow
+against popular liberties, in the engagement at Lexington, April 18,
+1775, and on June 15 Washington was unanimously elected
+commander-in-chief of the American forces.
+
+Two days later was fought, outside Boston, the heroic battle of Bunker's
+Hill, and on the 21st Washington set out from Philadelphia to the seat
+of war, where he laid a strict siege about Boston, with a view to
+forcing the British to come out. An English ship having bombarded the
+American port of Falmouth, an act was passed by the General Court of
+Massachusetts, encouraging the fitting out of armed vessels to defend
+the coast of America, and granting letters of marque and reprisal. In
+October a conference of delegates was held, under Washington's
+presidency, of which Benjamin Franklin was a member, with regard to a
+new organisation of the army; and a new force of twenty-two thousand was
+formed, every soldier being enlisted for one year only.
+
+Montreal had been captured by an American expedition, and Washington was
+now looking forward to equal success in an expedition against Quebec. He
+was further encouraged by the capture, by one of his cruisers, of a
+brigantine laden with munitions of war, including a huge brass mortar.
+His wife joined the camp before Boston, and the eventful year was closed
+with festivities.
+
+But the gallant attempt on Quebec, in which Montgomery fell, was
+frustrated, and the siege of Boston dragged on uneventfully, until the
+Americans, in March, seized Dorchester Heights, and made the town no
+longer tenable. On the 17th there were in Boston Harbor seventy-eight
+ships and transports casting loose for sea, and twelve thousand
+soldiers, sailors and refugees, hurrying to embark. The flag of thirteen
+stripes, the standard of the Union, floated above the Boston forts,
+after ten tedious months of siege.
+
+The eminent services of Washington throughout this arduous period, his
+admirable management by which, in the course of a few months, an
+undisciplined band of husbandmen became soldiers, and were able to expel
+a brave army of veterans, commanded by the most experienced generals,
+won the enthusiastic applause of the nation. A unanimous vote of thanks
+was passed to him in Congress.
+
+
+_Declaration of Independence_
+
+
+Despatches from Canada continued to be disastrous, and the evacuation of
+that country was determined on in June, 1776. The great aim of the
+British was now to get possession of New York and the Hudson, and to
+make them the basis of military operations. While danger was gathering
+round New York, and its inhabitants were in mute suspense and fearful
+anticipations, the General Congress at Philadelphia was discussing with
+closed doors the greatest question ever debated in America. A resolution
+was passed unanimously, on July 2, "that these United Colonies are, of
+right ought to be, free and independent States."
+
+The fourth of July is the day of national rejoicing, for on that day the
+"Declaration of Independence," that solemn and sublime document, was
+adopted. Tradition gives a dramatic effect to its announcement. It was
+known to be under discussion, but the closed doors of Congress excluded
+the populace. They awaited, in throngs, an appointed signal. In the
+steeple of the state-house was a bell, bearing the portentous text from
+Scripture, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the
+inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the
+bill had been passed. It was the knell of British domination.
+
+Washington hailed the Declaration with joy. It was but a formal
+recognition of a state of things which had long existed, but it put an
+end to all those temporizing hopes of reconciliation which had clogged
+the military action of the country. On July 9, he caused it to be read
+at the head of each brigade of the army. "The general hopes," said he,
+"that this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every
+officer and soldier, to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that
+now the peace and safety of his country depend, under God, solely on the
+success of our arms; and that he is now in the service of a state
+possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to
+the highest honours of a free country." and again: "The general hopes
+and trusts that every officer and man will endeavour so to live and act
+as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and
+liberties of his country."
+
+
+_The Winning of Independence_
+
+
+But the exultation of the patriots of New York was soon overclouded.
+British warships, under Admiral Lord Howe, were in the harbour on July
+12, and affairs now approached a crisis. Lord Howe came "as a mediator,
+not as a destroyer," and had prepared a declaration inviting communities
+as well as individuals to merit and receive pardon by a prompt return to
+their duty; it was a matter of sore regret to him that his call to
+loyalty had been forestalled by the Declaration of Independence.
+
+The British force in the neighbourhood of New York, under General Howe,
+brother of the Admiral, was about thirty thousand men; the Americans
+were only about twenty thousand, for the most part raw and
+undisciplined, and the sectional jealousies prevalent among them were
+more and more a subject of uneasiness to Washington. On August 27 the
+American force was defeated with great loss in the battle of Long
+Island, and was withdrawn from the island by a masterly night retreat;
+this led to the loss of New York and the Hudson River to the British.
+Reverse followed reverse; Washington was driven by the British arms from
+one point after another; many of the chief American cities were taken;
+and on September 26, 1777, General Sir William Howe marched into
+Philadelphia and thus occupied the capital of the confederacy. But
+Washington still maintained his characteristic equanimity. "I hope," he
+said, "that a little time will put our affairs in a more flourishing
+condition."
+
+This anticipation was soon to be fulfilled. General Burgoyne had been
+advancing from the north with a large force of British and Hessian
+troops, but was compelled by General Gates, with a superior American
+force, to capitulate on October 17,1777. By this capitulation the
+Americans gained a fine train of artillery, seven thousand stand of
+arms, and a great quantity of clothing, tents, and military stores of
+all kinds; and the surrender of Burgoyne struck dismay into the British
+army on the Hudson River.
+
+But the struggle for independence was still to continue for four years
+of incessant military operations, and it was not until the surrender of
+Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, by Lord Cornwallis, that Britain gave up
+hope of reducing her rebel colonies. When the redoubts of Yorktown were
+taken, Washington exclaimed, "The work is done, and well done!"
+
+A general treaty of peace was signed in Paris on January 20, 1783; and
+in March of that year Sir Guy Carleton informed Washington that he was
+ordered to proclaim a cessation of hostilities by sea and land. On April
+19, the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, thus completing the
+eighth year of the war, Washington issued a general order to the army in
+these terms--"The generous task for which we first flew to arms being
+accomplished, the liberties of our country being fully acknowledged and
+firmly secured, and the characters of those who have persevered through
+every extremity of hardship, suffering, and danger, being immortalised
+by the illustrious appellation of 'the patriot army,' nothing now
+remains but for the actors of this mighty scene to preserve a perfect,
+unvarying consistency of character through the very last act, to close
+the drama with applause, and to retire from the military theatre with
+the same approbation of angels and men which has crowned all their
+former virtuous actions."
+
+Writing, on June 8, to the Governors of the several States, he
+said--"The great object for which I had the honour to hold an
+appointment in the service of my country being accomplished, I am now
+preparing to return to that domestic retirement which, it is well known,
+I left with the greatest reluctance; a retirement for which I have never
+ceased to sigh, through a long and painful absence, and in which, remote
+from the noise and trouble of the world, I meditate to pass the
+remainder of life in a state of undisturbed repose."
+
+
+_The Years of Peace_
+
+
+Washington returned to Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve, 1783, and busied
+himself with the care of his estates. He had never ceased to be the
+agriculturist; through all his campaigns he had kept himself informed of
+the course of rural affairs at Mount Vernon. By means of maps on which
+every field was laid down and numbered, he was enabled to give
+directions for their several cultivation, and to receive accounts of
+their several crops. No hurry of affairs prevented a correspondence with
+his agent, and he exacted weekly reports. He now read much on
+agriculture and gardening, and corresponded with the celebrated Arthur
+Young, from whom he obtained seeds of all kinds, improved ploughs, plans
+for laying out farmyards, and advice on various parts of rural economy.
+
+His active day at Mount Vernon began some time before dawn. Much of his
+correspondence was despatched before breakfast, which took place at
+half-past seven. After breakfast he mounted his horse and rode off to
+various parts of his estate; dined at half-past two; if there was no
+company he would write until dark; and in the evening he read, or amused
+himself with a game of whist.
+
+The adoption of the Federal Constitution opened another epoch in the
+life of Washington. Before the official forms of an election could be
+carried into operation, a unanimous sentiment throughout the Union
+pronounced him the nation's choice to fill the presidential chair. The
+election took place, and Washington was chosen President for a term of
+four years from March 4, 1788. An entry in his diary, on March 16,
+says--"I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic
+felicity; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful
+sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York with the
+best disposition to render service to my country in obedience to its
+call, but with less hope of answering its expectations."
+
+The weight and influence of his name and character were deemed all
+essential to complete his work; to set the new government in motion, and
+conduct it through its first perils and trials. He undertook the task,
+firm in the resolve in all things to act as his conscience told him was
+"right as it respected his God, his country, and himself." For he knew
+no divided fidelity, no separate obligation; his most sacred duty to
+himself was his highest duty to his country and his God.
+
+His death took place on December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon.
+
+The character of Washington may want some of the poetical elements which
+dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities
+and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one
+man. Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgement,
+an immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never
+wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOSEPHUS
+
+
+Autobiography
+
+
+     Flavius Josephus was born in Jerusalem in 37 A.D. His father,
+     Matthias, was a priest, and his mother belonged to the
+     Asmonean princely family. So distinguished was he as a student
+     that, at the age of twenty-six, he was chosen delegate to
+     Nero. When the critical juncture arose for his nation, through
+     the rebellion excited by the cruelties of Gessius Florus, the
+     Roman procurator, Josephus was appointed governor of Galilee
+     The insurrection proved fatal, for Vespasian by his invasion
+     rendered resistance hopeless. Subsequently he lived in Rome,
+     and the date of his death is unknown. The works of this writer
+     are monumental. He wrote his vivid "Wars of the Jews" in both
+     Hebrew and Greek. His "Antiquities of the Jews" traces the
+     whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the great
+     war. Scaliger, one of the acutest of mediaeval critics,
+     declares that in his writings on the affairs of the Jews, and
+     even on those of foreign nations, Josephus deserves more
+     credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put together. His
+     fidelity and veracity are as universally admitted as his
+     direct and lucid style is generally admired. His account of
+     his own life and career is a masterpiece in this category of
+     literature, for it is written with blended modesty and
+     naïveté. In many passages of this "Autobiography" he does not
+     hesitate to assume great credit for his own courage, probity,
+     and skill, but in each case the justification is manifest, for
+     he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous
+     machinations of his virulent enemies. The "Autobiography" is
+     from beginning to end a thrilling and wonderful romance of
+     real life, for the hairbreadth escapes of this extraordinary
+     man are among the most singular recitals in the whole world of
+     adventure. The whole story is unique, as was the noble
+     individuality of the man himself.
+
+
+_I.--Priest of the Blood-Royal_
+
+
+The family from which I, Flavius Josephus, am derived is not an ignoble
+one, but hath descended all along from the priests. I am not only sprung
+from a sacerdotal family in general, but from the first of the
+twenty-four courses of the Jewish priests, and I am of the chief family
+of that course also. With us, to be of the sacerdotal dignity is an
+indication of the splendour of a family. But, further, by my mother I am
+of the royal blood; for the children of Asmonaeus, from whom that family
+was derived, had both the office of the high-priesthood and the dignity
+of a king for a long time together.
+
+My father Matthias, to whom I was born in the first year of the reign of
+Gaius Caesar, was not only eminent in Jerusalem, our greatest city, on
+account of his nobility, but had a higher commendation on account of his
+righteousness. I was brought up with my brother Matthias. As a child I
+gained a great reputation through my love for learning, and, when I was
+about fourteen years of age, was frequently asked by the high-priests
+and chief men of the city my opinion about the accurate understanding of
+points of the law.
+
+In my twenty-sixth year I took a voyage to Rome. My object was to plead
+before Caesar the cause of certain excellent priests whom Felix, then
+procurator of Judaea, had put in bonds on a trivial pretext. I was
+desirous to procure deliverance for them, not only because they were of
+my own friends, but because I heard that they sustained their piety
+towards God under their afflictions, and that they simply subsisted on
+figs and nuts.
+
+Our voyage was an adventurous one, for the ship was wrecked in the
+Adriatic Sea, and we that were in it, being about six hundred in number,
+swam all night for our lives. I and about eighty others were saved by a
+ship of Cyrene. When I had thus escaped, and was come to Puteoli, I
+became acquainted with an actor named Alityrus, much beloved by Nero,
+but a Jew by birth. Through his interest I became known to Poppaea,
+Caesar's wife, and having, through her, procured the liberty of the
+priests, besides receiving from her many presents, I returned to
+Jerusalem.
+
+Now I perceived that many innovations were begun, and that many were
+cherishing hopes of a revolt from the Romans.
+
+
+_II.--The Prelude to the Great Crisis_
+
+
+So I retired to the inner court of the Temple. Yet I went out of the
+Temple again, after Menahem and the chief members of the band of robbers
+were put to death, and abode among the high-priests and the chief of the
+Pharisees. But no small fear seized upon us when we saw the people in
+arms, while we were not able to restrain the seditious. We hoped that
+Gessius Floras would speedily arrive with great forces. But on his
+arrival he was defeated with great loss.
+
+The disgrace that fell upon him became the calamity of our whole nation,
+for it elevated the hopes of conquering the Romans on the part of those
+who desired war. But another cause of the revolt arose in Syria from the
+cruel treatment of the Jews in many cities, where they showed not the
+least disposition towards rebellion. About 13,000 were treacherously
+slain in Scythopolis, and the Jews in Damascus underwent many miseries;
+but of these events accounts are given in the books of the Jewish War.
+
+I was now sent, together with two other priests, Joazar and Judas, by
+the principal men of Jerusalem, to Galilee, to persuade the ill men
+there to lay down their arms, and to teach them that it were better for
+us all to wait to see what the Romans would do. I came into Galilee, and
+found the people of Sepphoris in no small agony about their country, by
+reason that the Galileans had resolved to plunder it, because of their
+friendship with the Romans, and because they had made a league with
+Cestius Gallus, the president of Syria. But I quieted their fears. Yet I
+found the people of Tiberias ready to take arms, for there were three
+factions in that city.
+
+The first faction, with Julius Capellus for the head, was composed of
+men of worth and gravity, and advised the city to continue in allegiance
+to the Romans; the second faction, consisting of the most ignoble
+persons, was determined for war. But as for Justus, the head of the
+third faction, though he pretended to be doubtful about war, yet he was
+really desirous of innovation, as supposing that he should gain power by
+the change of affairs.
+
+By his harangues Justus inflamed the minds of many of the people,
+persuading them to take arms, and then he went out and set fire to the
+villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos, on the border of Tiberias,
+and of the region of Scythopolis.
+
+Gamala persevered in its allegiance to the Romans, under the persuasion
+of Philip, the son of Jacimus, who was governor of the city under King
+Agrippa. He reminded the people of the benefits the king had bestowed on
+them, and pointed out how powerful the Romans were, and thus he
+restrained the zeal of the citizens.
+
+Now, as soon as I was come into Galilee, and had ascertained the state
+of affairs, I wrote to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem asking for their
+direction. They replied that I should remain there; and that, if my
+fellow-delegates were willing, I should join with them in the care of
+Galilee. But these my colleagues, having gotten great riches from those
+tithes which as priests were their dues, and were given to them,
+determined to return to their own country. Yet when I desired them to
+stay to settle public affairs, they complied, and we removed from
+Sepphoris to Bethmanus, a village four furlongs from Tiberias, whence I
+sent messengers to the senate of that city, asking that the principal
+men should come to me.
+
+
+_III.--Governor of Galilee_
+
+
+When the chief men of Tiberias were come, I told them I was sent as a
+legate from the people at Jerusalem, in order to persuade them to
+destroy that house which Herod the tetrarch had built in Tiberias, and
+which, contrary to our laws, contained the figures of living creatures.
+I desired that they would give us leave to do so; but for a good while
+they were unwilling, only being overcome by long persuasion. Then Jesus,
+son of Sapphias, one of the leaders of sedition, anticipated us and set
+the palace on fire, thinking that as some of the roofs were covered with
+gold, he should gain much money thereby. These incendiaries also
+plundered much furniture; then they slew all the Greeks who dwelt in
+Tiberias, and as many others as were their enemies.
+
+When I understood this state of things, I was greatly provoked, and went
+down to Tiberias and took care of all the royal furniture that could be
+recovered from such as had plundered it. Next I committed it to ten of
+the chief senators. From thence I and my fellow-delegates went to
+Gischala to John, to learn his designs, and soon discovered that he was
+for innovations, for he wished me to give him authority to carry off the
+corn that belonged to Caesar, and to lay it in the villages of Upper
+Galilee. Though I refused, he corrupted my colleagues with money, and so
+I, being out-voted, held my tongue. By various other cunning
+contrivances which I could not prevent, John gained vast sums of money.
+But when I had dismissed my fellow-delegates I took care to have arms
+provided and the cities fortified. My first care was to keep Galilee in
+peace, so I made friends of seventy of the principal men, and took them
+on my journeys as companions, and set them to judge causes.
+
+I was now about thirty years of age, in which time of life it is
+difficult to escape from the calumnies of the envious. Yet did I
+preserve every woman free from injury; I despised and refused presents;
+nor would I take the tithes due to me as a priest. When I twice took
+Sepphoris by force, and Tiberias four times, and Gadara once, and when I
+had subdued and captured John, who had laid treacherous snares for me, I
+did not punish with death either him or others. And on this account I
+suppose it was that God, Who is never unacquainted with those that do as
+they ought to do, delivered me still out of the hands of my enemies, and
+afterwards preserved me when I fell into many perils.
+
+At this time, when my abode was at Cana, a village of Galilee, John came
+to Tiberias and stirred a revolt against me, so that my life was in
+danger. I escaped only by fleeing down the lake in a ship to Taricheae,
+whence I proceeded to Sepphoris. John returned to Gischala, where he
+continued to cultivate bitter hatred against me. Through the
+machinations of himself and Simon, a chief man in Gadara, all Galilee
+was filled with rumours that their country was about to be betrayed by
+me to the Romans.
+
+Hereby I again incurred extreme peril, but I took a bold course. Dressed
+in a black garment, with my sword hung at my neck, I went to face, in
+the hippodrome, a multitude of the citizens of Taricheae, and addressed
+them in such terms that, though some wished to kill me, these were
+overcome by the rest.
+
+Although the multitude returned to their homes, yet the robbers and
+other authors of the tumult, afraid lest I might punish them, took six
+hundred armed men and came to burn the house where I abode. Thinking it
+ignoble to run away, I resolved to expose myself to danger; so I shut
+myself up in an upper room, and asked that one of them should be sent up
+to me, by whom I would send out to them money from the spoils I had
+taken.
+
+When they had sent in one of their boldest, I had him whipped severely,
+and commanded one of his hands to be cut off and hung about his neck. In
+this case he was put out, and those who had sent him, affrighted at the
+supposition that I had more armed men about me than they had,
+immediately fled.
+
+I dealt in like manner with Clitus, a young man of Tiberias, who was the
+author of a fresh sedition in that city. Since I thought it not
+agreeable to piety to put one of my own people to death, I called to
+Clitus himself, and said to him, "Since thou deservest to lose both thy
+hands for thine ingratitude to me, be thou thine own executioner, lest
+by refusal to do so thou undergo a worse punishment."
+
+When he earnestly begged me to spare one of his hands, it was with
+difficulty that I granted it. So, in order to prevent the loss of both
+his hands, he willingly took his sword and cut off his own left hand;
+and this put an end to the sedition.
+
+
+_IV.--The Failure of His Foes_
+
+
+The people of Gamala wrote to me, asking that I would send them an armed
+force, and also workmen to raise up the walls of their city, and I
+acceded to each of their requests. I also built walls about many
+villages and cities in Upper and Lower Galilee, besides laying up in
+them much corn. But the hatred of John of Gischala grew more violent by
+reason of my prosperity. He sent his brother Simon to Jerusalem with a
+hundred armed men to induce the Sanhedrin to deprive me of my
+commission; but this was not an easy thing to do, for Ananus, one of the
+chief priests, demonstrated that many of the people bore witness that I
+had acted like an excellent general.
+
+Yet Ananus and some of his friends, corrupted by bribes, secretly agreed
+to expel me out of Galilee, without making the rest of the citizens
+acquainted with what they were doing. Accordingly they sent four men of
+distinction down to Galilee to seek to supersede me in ruling the
+province.
+
+These were to ask the people of Galilee what was their reason of their
+love to me. If the people alleged that it was because I was born at
+Jerusalem, that I was versed in the law, and that I was a priest, then
+they were to reply that they also were natives of Jerusalem, that they
+understood the law, and that two of them were priests. To Jonathan and
+his companion were given 40,000 drachmae out of the public money, and a
+large band of men was equipped with arms and money to accompany them.
+
+But wonderful was what I saw in a dream that very night. It seemed to me
+that a certain person stood by me, and said, "O Josephus, put away all
+fear, for what now afflicts thee will render thee most happy, and thou
+shalt overcome all difficulties! Be not cast down, but remember that
+thou art to fight the Romans."
+
+When I had seen this vision I arose, intending to go down to the plain
+to meet a great multitude who, I knew, would be assembled, for my
+friends, on my refusal had dispatched messengers all around to inform
+the people of Galilee of my purpose to depart. And when the great
+assembly of men, with their wives and children, saw me, they fell on
+their faces weeping, and besought me not to leave them to be exposed to
+their enemies.
+
+When I heard this, and saw what sorrow affected the people, I was moved
+with compassion, and promised that I would stay with them, thinking it
+became me to undergo manifold hazards for the sake of so great a
+multitude. So I ordered that five thousand of them should come to me
+armed, and that the rest should depart to their own homes.
+
+It was not long before Vespasian landed at Tyre, and King Agrippa with
+him. How he then came into Galilee, and how he fought his first battle
+with me near Taricheae, and how, after the capture of Jotapata, I was
+taken alive and bound, and how I was afterward loosed, with all that was
+done by me in the Jewish war, and during the siege of Jerusalem, I have
+accurately related in the books concerning the "Wars of the Jews."
+
+When the siege of Jotapata was over, and I was among the Romans, I was
+kept with much care, by means of the great respect that Vespasian showed
+me. After being freed from my bonds I went to Alexandria, where I
+married. From thence I was sent, together with Titus, to the siege of
+Jerusalem, and was frequently in danger of being put to death. For the
+Jews desired to get me into their power to have me punished, and the
+Romans, whenever they were beaten, thought it was through my treachery.
+But Titus Caesar was well acquainted with the uncertain fortune of war,
+and returned no answer to the soldiers' solicitation against me.
+
+When Titus was going away to Rome he made choice of me to sail along
+with him, and paid me great respect And when we were come to Rome I had
+great care taken of me by Vespasian, for he gave me an apartment in his
+own house.
+
+When Vespasian was dead, Titus kept up the same kindness which his
+father had shown me, and Domitian, who succeeded, still augmented his
+respects to me; nay, Domitia, the wife of Caesar, continued to show me
+many kindnesses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
+
+
+Life of Sir Walter Scott
+
+
+     John Gibson Lockhart was born in Scotland in 1794. He received
+     part of his education at Glasgow, part at Oxford, and in 1816
+     he became an advocate at the Scotch bar. As one of the chief
+     supporters of Blackwood's Magazine, he began to exhibit that
+     sharp, bitter wit which was his most salient characteristic.
+     In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott,
+     and for this reason, perhaps no one has been better qualified
+     to write the biography of the great novelist. Lockhart's "Life
+     of Sir Walter Scott" is a biography in the best sense of the
+     word--one which has been ranked even with Boswell's "Johnson."
+     It reveals to the reader the inmost personality of the man
+     himself, and no life from first to last could better afford
+     such complete revelation. Moreover, the "Life" was a labour of
+     love, Lockhart himself receiving not a fraction of its very
+     considerable proceeds, but resigning them absolutely to
+     Scott's creditors. Published in seven volumes in 1838, in
+     every respect it is the greatest of all Lockhart's books.
+     Lockhart died in 1854.
+
+
+_Early Years_
+
+
+Sir Walter Scott was distantly connected with ancient families both on
+his father's and his mother's side. His father, Walter Scott, a Writer
+to the Signet in Edinburgh, was a handsome, hospitable, shrewd and
+religious man, who married, in 1758, Anne, eldest daughter of Dr. John
+Rutherford, professor of medicine in Edinburgh University. The Scotts
+had twelve children, of whom only five survived early youth.
+
+The subject of this biography was born on August 15, 1771, in a house at
+the head of the College Wynd. He was a healthy child, but when eighteen
+months old was affected with a fever which left a permanent lameness in
+the right leg. With a view to curing this weakness he was sent to live
+with his paternal grandfather, at the farm house of Sandy-Knowe near
+Dryburgh Abbey, in the extreme south of Berwickshire.
+
+Here, in the country air, he became a sturdy boy, and his mind was
+stored with the old Broder tales and songs. In his fourth year he was
+taken to London by sea, and thence to Bath, where he remained about a
+year for the sake of the waters, became acquainted with the venerable
+John Home, author of "Douglas," and was introduced by his uncle, Capt.
+Robert Scott, to the delights of the theatre and "As You Like It."
+
+From his eighth year Scott lived at his father's house in George Square,
+Edinburgh. His lameness and solitary habits had made him a good reader,
+and he used to read aloud to his mother, Pope's translation of Homer and
+Allan Ramsay's "Evergreen;" his mother had the happiest of tempers and a
+good love of poetry. In the same year he was sent to the High School,
+Edinburgh, under the celebrated Dr. Adam, who made him sensible of the
+beauties of the Latin poets.
+
+After his school years, the lad, who had become delicate from rapid
+growth, spent half a year with an aunt, Miss Janet Scott, at Kelso. He
+had now awaked to the poetry of Shakespeare and of Spenser, and had
+acquired an ample and indiscriminate appetite for reading of all kinds.
+To this time at Kelso he also traced his earliest feeling for the
+beauties of natural objects. The love of Nature, especially when
+combined with ancient ruins, or remains of our forefathers' piety or
+splendour, became his insatiable passion.
+
+He was then sent to classes in the Faculty of Arts in Edinburgh
+University; and in 1785 was articled to his father and entered upon the
+wilderness of law. Though he disliked the drudgery of the office, he
+loved his father and was ambitious, and the allowance which he received
+afforded the pleasures of the circulating library and the theatre. His
+reading had now extended to the great writers in French, Spanish and
+Italian literature. Distant excursions on foot or on horseback formed
+his favorite amusement, undertaken for the pleasure of seeing romantic
+scenery and places distinguished by historic events.
+
+In 1790, Scott determined, in accordance with his father's wishes, to
+become an advocate, and assumed the gown on July 11, 1792. His personal
+appearance at this time was engaging. He had a fresh, brilliant
+complexion, his eyes were clear and radiant, and the noble expanse of
+his brow gave dignity to his whole aspect. His smile was always
+delightful, and there was a playful intermixture of tenderness and
+gravity well calculated to fix a lady's eye. His figure, except for the
+blemish in one limb, was eminently handsome, and much above the usual
+stature; and the whole outline was that of extraordinary vigour, without
+a touch of clumsiness.
+
+
+_The Poet's Education_
+
+
+I do not know when his first attachment began; its object was Margaret,
+daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belcher, of Invermay. But
+after Scott had for several years nourished the dream of union with this
+lady, his hopes terminated in her being married to the late Sir William
+Forbes, of Pitsligo, a gentleman of the highest character, who lived to
+act the part of a generous friend to his rival throughout the distresses
+of 1826 and 1827.
+
+After being admitted an advocate, Scott undertook many excursions to
+various parts of Scotland, gaining that intimate knowledge of the
+country, and its people and traditions, which appears in his poems and
+novels. Thus, he visited Northumberland, and made a close inspection of
+the battle-field of Flodden, and on another journey studied the Saxon
+cathedral of Hexam. During seven successive years he made raids, as he
+called them, into the wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale,
+picking up the ancient "riding ballads" preserved among the descendants
+of the moss-troopers. To these rambles he owed much of the materials of
+his "Minstrelsy of the Border," and here he came to know Willie Elliot,
+the original of Dandie Dinmont. Another expedition, into Galloway,
+carried him into the scenery of Guy Mannering. Stirlingshire, Perthshire
+and Forfarshire became familiar ground to him, and the scenery of Loch
+Katrine especially was associated with many a merry expedition. His
+first appearance as counsel in a criminal court was at the Jedburgh
+assizes, where he helped a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape
+through the meshes of the law.
+
+In June, 1795, Scott was appointed one of the curators of the Advocate's
+Library and became an adept in the deciphering of old manuscript. His
+highlands and border raids were constantly suggesting inquiries as to
+ancient local history and legend, which could nowhere else have been
+pursued with equal advantage.
+
+In the same year, a rhymed translation of Burger's "Lenore," from his
+pen, was shown by him to Miss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of
+Purgstall, who was delighted and astonished at it. "Upon my word," she
+wrote in a letter to a friend, "Walter Scott is going to turn out a
+poet--something of a cross I think between Burns and Gray." This lady
+had the ballad elegantly printed in April, 1796, and Scott thus made his
+first appearance as an author. In October, this translation, together
+with that of the "Wild Huntsman," also from Burger, was published
+anonymously in a thin quarto by Manners and Miller, of Edinburgh. The
+little volume found warm favour: its free, masculine and lively style
+revealing the hand of a poet.
+
+
+_Marriage_
+
+
+In July, 1797, Scott set out on a tour to the English lakes, accompanied
+by his brother John and Adam Fergusson, visiting Tweeddale, Carlisle,
+Penrith, Ullswater and Windermere, and at length fixing their
+headquarters at Gilsland, a peaceful and sequestered little watering
+place.
+
+He was riding one day with Fergusson when they met, some miles away from
+home, a young lady on horseback, whose appearance instantly struck both
+of them so much, that they kept her in view until they had satisfied
+themselves that she was staying in Gilsland. The same evening there was
+a ball, at which Scott was introduced to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter.
+
+Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal
+attractions; a fairy-like form; a clear olive complexion; large, deep
+eyes of Italian brown; a profusion of silken tresses, raven-black; her
+address mingling the reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman with a
+certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well her French accent.
+A lovelier vision, as all who remember her youth have assured me, could
+hardly be imagined, and from that hour the fate of the poet was fixed.
+
+She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a devoted royalist,
+who died in the beginning of the Revolution; Madame Charpentier had died
+soon after bringing her children to London; and the Marquis of Downshire
+had become their guardian. Miss Charpentier was now making a summer
+excursion under the care of the lady who had superintended her
+education.
+
+In an affectionate and dutiful letter Scott acquainted his mother with
+his purpose of marriage, and Miss Carpenter remained at Carlisle until
+her destiny was settled. The lady had a considerable private income,
+amounting to about £500 a year; the difficulties presented by the
+prudence and prejudices of family connections were soon overcome; and
+the marriage took place in St. Mary's, Carlisle, on December 24, 1797.
+Scott took his bride to a lodging in George Street, Edinburgh, the house
+which he had taken not being quite ready, and the first fortnight
+convinced her husband's family that she had the sterling qualities of a
+wife.
+
+Their house in South Castle Street, soon after exchanged for one in
+North Castle Street, which he inhabited down to 1826, became the centre
+of a highly agreeable circle; the evenings passed in a round of innocent
+gaiety; and they and their friends were passionately fond of the
+theatre. Perhaps nowhere else could have been formed a society on so
+small a scale as that of Edinburgh at this time, including more of
+vigorous intellect, varied information, elegant tastes, and real virtue,
+affection and mutual confidence.
+
+In the summer of 1798, Scott hired a cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk,
+about six miles from Edinburgh, having a garden with a most beautiful
+view. In this retreat they spent several happy summers, receiving the
+visits of their chosen friends from the neighbouring city, and wandering
+amidst some of the most romantic scenery of Scotland.
+
+
+_Early Poems_
+
+
+In February, 1799, a London Bookseller named Bell, brought out Scott's
+version of Goethe's tragedy, "Goetz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand,"
+having purchased the copyright for twenty-five guineas. This was the
+first publication that bore Scott's name. In March of that year he took
+his wife to London, and met with some literary and fashionable society;
+but his chief object was to examine the antiquities of the Tower and
+Westminster, and to make researches among the manuscripts of the British
+Museum. He found his "Goetz" favourably spoken of by the critics, but it
+had not attracted general attention.
+
+About this time Scott wrote a play entitled "House of Aspen" which,
+having been read and commended by the celebrated actress, Mrs. Esten,
+was put in rehearsal by Kemble for the stage. But the notion was
+abandoned; and discovering the play thirty years after among his papers,
+Scott sent it to the "Keepsake" of 1829.
+
+His return to Scotland was hastened by the news of his father's death,
+and his mother and sister spent the following summer and autumn in his
+cottage at Lasswade. This summer produced his first serious attempt in
+verse, "Glenfinlas," which was followed by the noble ballads, "Eve of
+St. John," "The Grey Brother" and "Fire-King"; and it was in the course
+of this autumn that he first visited Bothwell Castle, the seat of
+Archibald, Lord Douglas, whose wife, and her companion, Lady Louisa
+Stuart, were among his dearest friends through life.
+
+During a visit to Kelso, before returning to Edinburgh for the winter,
+Scott renewed an acquaintance with a classfellow of his boyhood, Mr.
+James Ballantyne, who was now printer and editor of a weekly paper in
+his native town. Scott showed him some of his poems, expressed his
+wonder that his old friend did not try to get some bookseller's printing
+and suggested a collection of old Border ballads. Ballantyne printed for
+him a few specimens to show to the booksellers; and thus began an
+experiment which changed the fortunes of both Scott and Ballantyne.
+
+Soon after the commencement of the Winter Session, the office of
+Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant, and the Duke of Buccleuch
+used his influence with Mr. Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville,
+to procure it for Scott. The appointment to the Sheriff ship was made on
+December 16, 1799. It brought him an annual salary of £300; the duties
+of the office were far from heavy; the small pastoral territory was
+largely the property of the Duke of Buccleuch; and Scott turned with
+redoubled zeal to his project of editing the ballads, many of which
+belong to this district. In this design he found able assistants in
+Richard Heber and John Leyden. During the years 1800 and 1801, the
+"Minstrelsy" formed his chief occupation.
+
+The duties of the Sheriffship took him frequently to Ettrick Forest, and
+on such occasions he took up his lodging at the little inn at
+Clovenford, a favourite fishing station on the road from Edinburgh to
+Selkirk. Here he was within a few miles of the values of Yarrow and
+Ettrick. On one of his excursions here, penetrating beyond St Mary's
+Lake, he found hospitality at the farmhouse of William Laidlaw, through
+whom he came to know James Hogg, a brother poet hardly conscious of his
+powers.
+
+The first and second volumes of the "Minstrelsy" appeared in January,
+1802, from the house of Cadell and Davies in the Strand, and formed
+Scott's first introduction as an original writer to the English public.
+Their reception greatly elated Ballantyne, the printer, who looked on
+his connection with them as the most fortunate event in his life. The
+great bookseller, Longman, repaired to Scotland soon after this, and
+purchased the copyright of the "Minstrelsy," including the third volume;
+and not long afterwards James Ballantyne set up as a printer in
+Edinburgh, assisted by a liberal loan from Scott.
+
+
+_Scott's Chief Poems_
+
+
+The "Edinburgh Review" was begun in 1802, and Scott soon became a
+contributor of critical articles for his friend Mr. Jeffrey, the elder.
+His chief work was now on "Sir Tristram," a romance ascribed to Thomas
+of Ercildoune; but "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was making progress in
+1803, when Scott made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and his sister,
+under circumstances described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal. In
+the following May, he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel, with an
+adjoining farm, on the southern bank of the Tweed, a few miles from
+Selkirk; and in the same month "Sir Tristram" was published by Constable
+of Edinburgh. Captain Robert Scott, his uncle, died in June, leaving him
+the house of Rosebank near Kelso, which Scott sold for £5000.
+
+"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published in the first week of 1805,
+and its success at once decided that literature should form the main
+business of Scott's life. Its design arose originally from the
+suggestion of the lovely Countess of Dalkeith, who had heard a wild,
+rude legend of Border _diablerie_, and sportively asked him to make it
+the subject of a ballad. He cast about for a new variety of diction and
+rhyme, and having happened to hear a recitation of Coleridge's
+unpublished "Christabel" determined to adopt a similar cadence. The
+division into cantos was suggested by one of his friends, after the
+example of Spenser's "Faery Queen." The creation of the framework, the
+conception of the ancient harper, came last of all. Thus did "The Lay of
+the Last Minstrel" grow out of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border."
+The publishers were Longman of London, and Constable of Edinburgh, and
+the author's share of profits came to £769.
+
+It was at this time that Scott took over a third share in Ballantyne's
+business, a commercial tie which bound him for twenty years. Its
+influence on his literary work and his fortunes was productive of much
+good and not a little evil. Meanwhile, he entered with the zest of an
+active partner into many publishing schemes, and exerted himself in the
+interests of many authors less fortunate than himself.
+
+With the desire of placing his financial position on a more substantial
+basis, Scott had solicited the office of Clerk of Session; and after
+some difficulties, during which he visited London and was received by
+the Princess of Wales, he was installed in that position on March 8,
+1806, and continued to discharge its duties with exemplary regularity
+for twenty-five years.
+
+The progress of "Marmion" was further interrupted by Scott's appointment
+as secretary to a Commission for the improvement of Scottish
+Jurisprudence, but the poems appeared at last in February, 1808. It
+received only very qualified praise from Jeffrey, but I think it may be
+considered on the whole Scott's greatest poem, and its popularity was
+from the very first extraordinary.
+
+In April of the same year William Miller of Albemarle Street published
+Scott's great edition of Dryden, with a biography, in eighteen volumes;
+and the editor's industry and critical judgement were the subject of a
+laudatory article by Hallam in the "Edinburgh Review."
+
+Scott was now engaged in a vast multiplicity of business. He was
+preparing an edition of Swift for Constable, establishing his own
+partner as a publisher in Edinburgh under the title of "John Ballantyne
+and Co., Booksellers," and was projecting a new periodical of sound
+constitutional principles, to be known as the "Quarterly Review,"
+published by Murray in London and by Ballantyne in Edinburgh. In
+connection with the latter enterprise Scott and Mrs. Scott went up to
+London for two months in the Spring of 1809, and enjoyed the society of
+Coleridge, Canning, Croker, and Ellis. The first "Quarterly" appeared
+while he was in London, and contained three articles from his pen. At
+this time also he prevailed on Henry Siddons, the nephew of Kemble, to
+undertake the lease and management of the Edinburgh Theatre; and
+purchasing a share himself, became an acting trustee, and for many years
+took a lively concern in the Edinburgh company.
+
+Early in May, 1810, "The Lady of the Lake" came out, like her two elder
+sisters, in all the majesty of quarto, at the price of two guineas, the
+author receiving two thousand guineas for the copyright. The whole
+country rang with the praises of the poet, and crowds set off to view
+the scenery of Loch Katrine. The critics were in full harmony with one
+another and with the popular voice.
+
+
+_The Waverley Novels_
+
+
+On returning, in 1810, from an excursion to the Islands of the western
+Scottish coast, where he had been collecting impressions for "The Lord
+of the Isles," Scott was searching one morning for fishing-flies in an
+old desk at Ashestiel, when he came across a forgotten manuscript,
+written and abandoned five years before. It contained the first two
+chapters of "Waverley." He submitted it to Ballantyne, whose opinion was
+on the whole against completion of the novel, and it was again laid
+aside.
+
+Although his publishing venture had begun to wear a bad aspect, Scott
+was now in receipt of £1300 a year as Clerk of Session, and when the
+lease of Ashestiel ran out in May, 1811, he felt justified in
+purchasing, for £4000, a farm on the banks of the Tweed above Galafoot.
+This farm, then known as "Garty Holes," became "Abbotsford," so called
+because these lands had belonged of old to the great Abbey of Melrose;
+and in his own mind Scott became henceforth the "Laird of Abbotsford."
+
+The last days at Ashestiel were marked by a friendly interchange of
+letters with Lord Byron, whose "Childe Harold" had just come out, and
+with correspondence with Johanna Baillie and with Crabbe. At Whitsuntide
+the family, which included two boys and two girls, moved to their new
+possession, and structural alterations on the farmhouse began.
+
+The poem "Rokeby" appeared in January, 1813. A month or two later the
+crisis in the war affected credit aniversally, and many publishing
+firms, including that of the Ballantynes, were brought to extremity. The
+difficulty was relieved for a time by the sale of copyrights and much of
+the stock to Constable, on the understanding that the publishing concern
+should be wound up as soon as possible. But Scott was preparing fresh
+embarrassments for himself by the purchase of another parcel of land; a
+yet more acute crisis in the Ballantyne firm forced him to borrow from
+the Duke of Buccleuch; and when planning out his work for the purpose of
+retrieving his position he determined to complete the fragment of
+"Waverley."
+
+The offer of the post of poet-laureate was made to Scott at this time,
+but holding already two lucrative offices in the gift of the Crown, he
+declined the honour and suggested that it should be given to Southey,
+which was accordingly done. The "Swift" in nineteen volumes, appeared in
+July, 1814, and had a moderate success.
+
+"Waverley," of which Scott was to receive half the profits, was
+published by Constable in July, 1814, without the author's name, and its
+great success with the public was assured from the first. None of
+Scott's intimate friends ever had, or could have, the slightest doubt as
+to its parentage, and when Mr. Jeffrey reviewed the book, doing justice
+to its substantial merits, he was at no pains to conceal his conviction
+of the authorship. With the single exception of the "Quarterly," the
+critics hailed it as a work of original creative genius, one of the
+masterpieces of prose fiction.
+
+From a voyage to the Hebrides with the Commissioners of the Northern
+Lighthouses, Scott returned in vigour to his desk at Abbotsford, where
+he worked at "The Lord of the Isles" and "Guy Mannering." The poem
+appeared in January and the novel in February, 1815. "The Lord of the
+Isles" never reached the same popularity as the earlier poems had
+enjoyed, but "Guy Mannering" was pronounced by acclamation to be fully
+worthy of the honours of "Waverley." In March, Scott went to London with
+his wife and daughter, met Byron almost daily in Murray's house, and was
+presented to the Prince Regent, who was enchanted with Scott, as Scott
+with him. A visit to Paris in July of the same year is commemorated in
+"Paul's Letters to His Kinsfolk." Scott's reputation had as yet made
+little way among the French, but the Duke of Wellington, then in Paris,
+treated him with kindness and confidence, and a few eminent Frenchmen
+vied with the enthusiastic Germans in their attentions to him.
+
+"The Antiquary" came out early in 1816, and was its author's favourite
+among all his novels. The "Tales of my Landlord," published by Murray
+and Blackwood, appeared in December, and though anonymous was at once
+recognized as Scott's. The four volumes included the "Black Dwarf" and
+"Old Mortality." A month later followed a poem, "Harold the Dauntless."
+The title of "Rob Roy" was suggested by Constable; and the novel was
+published on the last day of 1817.
+
+During this year the existing house of Abbotsford had been building, and
+Scott had added to his estate the lands of Toftfield, at a price of
+£10,000. He was then thought to be consolidating a large fortune, for
+the annual profits of his novels alone had, for several years, been not
+less than the cost of Toftfield.
+
+Having been asked by the Ballantynes to contribute to the historical
+department of the "Annual Register," I often had occasion now to visit
+Scott in his house in Castle Street, where I usually found him working
+in his "den," a small room behind the dining parlour, in company with
+his dog, Maida. Besides his own huge elbow-chair, there were but two
+others in the room, and one of these was reserved for his amanuensis, a
+portrait of Claverhouse, over the chimneypiece, with a Highland target
+on either side and broadswords and dirks disposed star-fashion round
+them. A venerable cat, fat and sleek, watched the proceedings of his
+toaster AND Maids with dignified equanimity.
+
+
+_Abbotsford_
+
+
+The house of Abbotsford was not completed, and finally rid of carpenters
+and upholsterers, until Christmas, 1824; but the first time I saw it was
+in 1818, and from that time onwards Scott's hospitality was extended
+freely not only to the proprietors and tenants of the surrounding
+district, but to a never-ending succession of visitors who came to
+Abbotsford as pilgrims. In the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his
+prosperity was at its height, he entertained under his roof as many
+persons of distinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and
+in science, as the most princely nobleman of his age ever did in the
+like space of time. It is not beyond the mark to add that of the eminent
+foreigners who visited our Island within this period, a moiety crossed
+the Channel mainly in consequence of the interest in which his writings
+had invested Scotland, and that the hope of beholding the man under his
+own roof was the crowning motive with half that moiety. His rural
+neighbours were assembled principally at two annual festivals of sport;
+one was a solemn bout of salmon fishing for the neighbouring gentry,
+presided over by the Sheriff; and the other was the "Abbotsford Hunt," a
+coursing field on a large scale, including, with many of the young
+gentry, all Scott's personal favourites among the yeomen and farmers of
+the surrounding country.
+
+Notwithstanding all his prodigious hospitality, his double official
+duties as Sheriff and Clerk of Session, the labours and anxieties in
+which the ill-directed and tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him,
+the keen interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the
+house and estate of Abbotsford, and finally, notwithstanding obstinate
+and agonizing attacks of internal cramp which were undermining his
+constitution, Scott continued to produce rapidly the wonderful series of
+the Waverley Novels. "The Bride of Lammermoor," "Legend of Montrose" and
+"Ivanhoe" appeared in 1819, "The Monastery," "The Abbot" and
+"Kenilworth" in 1820, "The Pirate" in 1821, "The Fortunes of Nigel" in
+1822, "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward" and "St. Ronan's Well" in
+1823, and "Redgauntlet" in 1824. His great literary reputation was
+acknowledged by a baronetcy conferred in 1820, and by the most
+flattering condescensions on the part of King George IV on his visit to
+Edinburgh in 1822.
+
+
+_The End of All_
+
+
+Scott's Diary from November, 1825, shows dear forebodings of the
+collapse of the houses of Constable and Ballantyne. In a time of
+universal confidence and prosperity, the banks had supported them to an
+extent quite unwarranted by their assets or their trade, and as soon as
+the banks began to doubt and to enquire, their fall was a foregone
+conclusion. In December, Scott borrowed £10,000 on the lands of
+Abbotsford, and advanced that sum to the struggling houses; on January
+16, 1826, their ruin, and Scott's with them, were complete. Scott
+immediately placed his whole affairs in the hands of three trustees, and
+by the 26th all his creditors had agreed to a private trust to which he
+mortgaged all his future literary labours.
+
+On March 15, he left for the last time his house in Castle Street; on
+April 3; "Woodstock" was sold for the creditors' behoof, realising
+£8228; on May 15, Lady Scott died, after a short illness, at Abbotsford.
+"I think," writes Scott in his Diary, "my heart will break. Lonely,
+aged, deprived of all my family--all but poor Anne; an impoverished,
+embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who
+could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which
+break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of
+service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my weary
+self-reflections."
+
+An expedition to Paris, in October, to gather materials for his "Life of
+Napoleon." was a seasonable relief. On his return through London, the
+King undertook that his son, Charles Scott, then at Oxford, should be
+launched in the diplomatic service. The elder son, heir to the
+baronetcy, was now with his regiment in Ireland.
+
+The "Life of Buonaparte" was published in June, 1827, and secured high
+praise from many, among whom was Goethe. It realised £18,000 for the
+creditors, and had health been spared him, Scott must soon have freed
+himself from all encumbrances. Before the close of 1829 he had published
+also the "Chronicles of the Canongate," "Tales of a Grandfather," "The
+Fair Maid of Perth" and "Anne of Geirstein," but he had been visited
+also by several threatenings of apoplexy, and on February 15, 1830, was
+prostrated by a serious attack. Recovering from this illness, Scott
+resigned his office as Clerk of Session, and during the rest of the year
+produced a great quantity of manuscript, including the "Letters on
+Demonology and Witchcraft," and the series of "Tales of a Grandfather"
+dealing with French history. April, 1831, brought with it a distinct
+stroke of paralysis, yet both "Castle Dangerous" and "Count Robert of
+Paris" were finished in the course of the year.
+
+Sailing in October, in the "Barham," Sir Walter Scott visited Malta and
+Naples, and came to Rome in April, 1832. In May he set out for home by
+Venice, Munich and the Rhine, but his companions could hardly prevail on
+him to look at the interesting objects by the way, and another serious
+attack fell upon him at Nimeguen. He reached London on June 13, and on
+July 7 was carried on board the steamer for Leith, and was at Abbotsford
+by the 11th. Here the remains of his strength gradually declined, and
+his mind was hopelessly obscured.
+
+As I was dressing on the morning of September 17, a servant came to tell
+me that his master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness,
+and wished to see me immediately. I found him entirely himself, though
+in the last extreme of feebleness. "Lockhart," he said "I may have no
+more than a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man--be
+virtuous--be religious--be a good man. Nothing else will give you any
+comfort when you come to lie here." He scarcely afterwards gave any sign
+of consciousness, and breathed his last on September 21, in the presence
+of all his children.
+
+His funeral was unostentatious but the attendance was very great. He was
+laid in the Abbey of Dryburgh, by the side of his wife, in the sepulchre
+of his ancestors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Life of Robert Burns
+
+
+     John Gibson Lockhart was born, a son of the manse, at
+     Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, on July 14, 1794. Receiving his
+     early education in Glasgow, he went, at sixteen, with a
+     scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1816 he was called
+     to the Scottish Bar; but literature occupied him more than
+     law, and as early as 1819 he wrote the once popular "Peter's
+     Letters to his Kinsfolk." Next year he married Scott's eldest
+     daughter, Sophia. Lockhart was a leading contributor to the
+     early "Blackwood," where his fine translations of Spanish
+     ballads first appeared, and he edited the "Quarterly Review"
+     from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25, 1854,
+     and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's
+     forte was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside
+     Boswell's "Johnson." The "Life of Burns" was published first
+     in Constable's "Miscellany" in 1828, when the whole impression
+     was exhausted in six weeks. It passed through five editions
+     before the author's death. Though many lives of Burns have
+     appeared since, with details unknown to Lockhart, his
+     biography is in many respects the best we possess, and is
+     never likely to be superseded. Even Mr. Henley is "glad to
+     agree with Lockhart." It is this book that is the subject of
+     Carlyle's famous essay on Burns.
+
+
+_I.--The Poet in the Making_
+
+
+Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage at Alloway,
+two miles south of Ayr, and near the "auld brig o' Doon." His father,
+William Burnes, or Burness--for so he spelt his name--was from
+Kincardineshire. When Robert was born he had the lease of a seven-acre
+croft, and had intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He was a
+man of notable character and individuality, immortalised by his son as
+"the saint, the father, and the husband" of "The Cottar's Saturday
+Night." "I have met with few," said Burns, "who understood men, their
+manners, and their ways, equal to my father." Agnes Brown, the poet's
+mother, is described as a very sagacious woman, with an inexhaustible
+store of ballads and traditionary tales, upon which she nourished
+Robert's infant imagination, while her husband attended to "the
+weightier matters of the law."
+
+When Burns was between six and seven, his father removed to the farm of
+Mount Oliphant, two miles from the Brig o' Doon. But the soil was poor,
+and the factor--afterwards pictured in "The Twa Dogs"--so harsh and
+unreasonable, that the tenant was glad to quit. In 1777 he removed about
+ten miles to the larger and better farm of Lochlea, in the parish of
+Tarbolton. Here, after a short interval of prosperity, some trouble
+arose about the conditions of the lease. The dispute involved William
+Burnes in ruin, and he died broken-hearted in February, 1784.
+
+Meanwhile, at the age of six, Robert, with his brother Gilbert, was
+learning to read, write, and sum under the direction of John Murdoch, an
+itinerant teacher, who has left an interesting description of his pupil.
+
+"Gilbert always appeared to me to possess a more lively imagination,"
+says Murdoch, "and to be more of the wit, than Robert. I attempted to
+teach them a little church-music. Here they were left far behind by all
+the rest of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably
+dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to
+distinguish one tune from another. Robert's countenance was generally
+grave and expressive of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind.
+Gilbert's face said, 'Mirth, with thee I mean to live;' and, certainly,
+if any person who knew the two boys had been asked which of them was the
+more likely to court the muses, he would never have guessed that Robert
+had a propensity of that kind."
+
+When Murdoch left the district, the father himself continued to instruct
+the boys; but when Robert was about thirteen he and Gilbert were sent,
+"week about, during a summer quarter," to the parish school of
+Dalrymple. The good man could not pay two fees, or his two boys could
+not be spared at the same time from the farm!
+
+"We lived very poorly," says the poet. "I was a dexterous ploughman for
+my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother [Gilbert], who could
+drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A
+novel-writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some
+satisfaction, but so did not I." Burns's person, inured to daily toil,
+and continually exposed to every variety of weather, presented, before
+the usual time, every characteristic of robust and vigorous manhood. He
+says himself that he never feared a competitor in any species of rural
+exertion; and Gilbert, a man of uncommon bodily strength, adds that
+neither he, nor any labourer he ever saw at work, was equal to him,
+either in the cornfield or on the thrashing-floor.
+
+Before his sixteenth year Burns had read a large amount of literature.
+But a collection of songs, he says significantly, "was my _vade mecum_.
+I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song,
+verse by verse; carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime from
+affectation or fustian." It was about this date that he "first committed
+the sin of rhyme." The subject was a "bewitching creature," a partner in
+the harvest field, and the song was that beginning "Once I loved a
+bonnie lass."
+
+After this, though much occupied with labour and love, he found leisure
+occasionally to clothe the various moods of his mind in verse. It was as
+early as seventeen that he wrote the stanzas which open beautifully, "I
+dream'd I lay where flowers were springing," and also the ballad, "My
+father was a farmer upon the Carrick border," which, years afterwards,
+he used to con over with delight, because of the faithfulness with which
+it recalled to him the circumstances and feelings of his opening
+manhood. These are the only two of his very early productions in which
+there is nothing expressly about love. The rest were composed to
+celebrate the charms of those rustic beauties who followed each other in
+the domain of his fancy, or shared the capacious throne between them.
+The excursions of the rural lover form the theme of almost all the songs
+which Burns is known to have produced about this period; and such of
+these juvenile performances as have been preserved are beautiful. They
+show how powerfully his boyish fancy had been affected by the old rural
+minstrelsy of his own country, and how easily his native taste caught
+the secret of its charm.
+
+In 1781, despairing of farming, he went to Irvine to learn flax-dressing
+with a relative. He was diligent at first, but misfortune soon overtook
+him. The shop where he was engaged caught fire, and he "was left, like a
+true poet, not worth a sixpence." Gilbert Burns dates a serious change
+in his character and conduct from this six months' residence in the
+seaport town. "He contracted," he says, "some acquaintance of a freer
+manner of thinking than he had been accustomed to, whose society
+prepared him for overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue which had
+hitherto restrained him."
+
+He had certainly not come unscathed out of the society of those persons
+of "liberal opinions" with whom he consorted in Irvine; and he expressly
+attributes to their lessons the scrape into which he fell soon after "he
+put his hand to plough again." He was compelled, according to the then
+all but universal custom of rural parishes in Scotland, to do penance in
+church, before the congregation, in consequence of the birth of an
+illegitimate child. But not the amours, or the tavern, or drudging
+manual labour could keep him long from his true calling. "Rhyme," he
+says, "I had given up [on going to Irvine], but meeting with Fergusson's
+'Scottish Poems,' I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating
+vigour." It was probably this accidental meeting with Fergusson that in
+a great measure finally determined the Scottish character of his poetry.
+
+
+_II.--The Loves of a Peasant Poet_
+
+
+Just before their father's death, Robert and Gilbert took the cold and
+ungrateful farm of Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline, to which the
+family now removed. The four years of Burns's connection with this place
+were the most important of his life. It was then that his genius
+developed its highest energies; on the works produced in these years his
+fame was first established, and must ever continue mainly to rest; it
+was then also that his personal character came out in all its brightest
+lights, and in all but its darkest shadows; and indeed from the
+commencement of this period the history of the man may be traced, step
+by step, in his own immortal writings.
+
+Burns now began to know that Nature had meant him for a poet; and
+diligently, though as yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be
+his destined vocation. He was never more productive than at this time,
+when he wrote such skits on the kirk and its associates as "The Twa
+Herds" (pastors), "Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Holy Fair," and "The
+Ordination." "Hallowe'en," a descriptive poem, perhaps even more
+exquisitely wrought than "The Holy Fair," also belongs to the Mossgiel
+period, as does an even more notable effort.
+
+Burns had often remarked to his brother that there was something
+peculiarly venerable in the phrase, "Let us worship God," used by a
+decent, sober head of a family introducing family worship. To this
+sentiment we are indebted for "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the hint of
+the plan and title of which were taken from Fergusson's "Farmer's
+Ingle." It is, perhaps, of all Burns's pieces, the one whose exclusion
+from the collection, were such a thing possible nowadays, would be the
+most injurious, if not to the genius, at least to the character of the
+man. In spite of many feeble lines and some heavy stanzas, it appears to
+me that even his genius would suffer more in estimation by being
+contemplated in the absence of this poem than of any other single
+performance he has left us. Loftier flights he certainly has made, but
+in these he remained but a short while on the wing, and effort is too
+often perceptible; here the motion is easy, gentle, placidly undulating.
+
+Burns's art had now reached its climax; but it is time to revert more
+particularly to his personal history. In this his loves very nearly
+occupy the chief place. That they were many, his songs prove; for in
+those days he wrote no love-songs on imaginary heroines. "Mary Morison,"
+"Behind yon hills where Lugar flows," and "On Cessnock banks there lives
+a lass," belong to this date; and there are three or four inspired by
+Mary Campbell--"Highland Mary"--the object of by far the deepest passion
+Burns ever knew, a passion which he has immortalised in the noblest of
+his elegiacs, "To Mary in Heaven."
+
+Farming had, of course, to engage his attention as well as love-making,
+but he was less successful in the one than in the other. The first year
+of Mossgiel, from buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, he
+lost half his crops. In these circumstances, he thought of proceeding to
+the West Indies. Presently he had further cause for contemplating an
+escape from his native land. Among his "flames" was one Jean Armour, the
+daughter of a mason in Mauchline, where she was the reigning toast. Jean
+found herself "as ladies wish to be that love their lords." Burns's
+worldly circumstances were in a most miserable state when he was
+informed of her condition, and he was staggered. He saw nothing for it
+but to fly the country at once.
+
+Meanwhile, meeting Jean, he yielded to her tears, and gave her a written
+acknowledgment of marriage, valid according to Scottish law. Her
+father's wrath was not appeased thereby. Burns, confessing himself
+unequal to the support of a family, proposed to go immediately to
+Jamaica in search of better fortunes. He offered, if this were rejected,
+to abandon his farm, already a hopeless concern, and earn at least bread
+for his wife and children as a day labourer at home. But nothing would
+satisfy Armour, who, in his indignation, made his daughter destroy the
+written evidence of her "marriage."
+
+
+_III.--Burns at His Zenith_
+
+
+Such was his poverty that he could not satisfy the parish officers; and
+the only alternative that presented itself to him was America or a gaol.
+A situation was obtained for him in Jamaica, but he had no money to pay
+his passage. It occurred to him that the money might be raised by
+publishing his poems; and a first edition, printed at Kilmarnock in
+1786, brought him nearly £20, out of which he paid for a steerage
+passage from the Clyde. "My chest was on the road to Greenock," he
+tells; "I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia,
+'The gloomy night is gathering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock
+to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects
+to my poetic ambition."
+
+Blacklock, the blind divine upon whom Johnson "looked with reverence,"
+had read the newly published poems, and it was his praise of them that
+directly prevented Burns from expatriating himself. "His opinion that I
+would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh fired me so much that away I
+posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter
+of introduction. The baneful star that had so long shed its blasting
+influence in my zenith for once made a revolution to the nadir." In
+Edinburgh, which Burns reached in November, 1786, he was introduced by
+Blacklock to all the _literati_, and within a fortnight he was writing
+to a friend: "I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à
+Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect to see my birthday inscribed
+among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks,
+along with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge."
+
+But he bore his honours in a manner worthy of himself. "The attentions
+he received," says Dugald Stewart, "from all ranks and descriptions of
+persons were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot
+say that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his
+mind." Scott, then a lad of fifteen, met him, and wrote a vivid
+description of his appearance:
+
+"His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a
+sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its
+effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His
+features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys
+the idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective. I think his
+countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I
+would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very
+sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school--_i.e._, none of your
+modern agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the
+_douce gudeman_ who held his own plough. There was a strong expression
+of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think,
+indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a
+dark cast, which glowed (I say literally _glowed_) when he spoke with
+feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head,
+though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His
+conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest
+presumption. He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the
+laird. I do not speak in _malam partem_ when I say I never saw a man in
+company with his superiors in station and information more perfectly
+free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was
+told that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always
+with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their
+attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark
+this."
+
+It needs no effort of imagination to conceive what the sensations of an
+isolated set of scholars, almost all either clergymen or professors,
+must have been in the presence of this big-boned, brawny stranger, with
+his great flashing eyes, who had forced his way among them from the
+plough-tail at a single stride; and it will always be a reflection in
+their honour that they suffered no pedantic prejudices to interfere with
+their reception of the poet.
+
+Shortly after his arrival he arranged with Creech, the chief bookseller
+in Edinburgh, to undertake a second edition of his poems. This was
+published in March, 1787, the subscribers numbering over 1,500. Out of
+money thus derived, he provided a tombstone for the neglected grave of
+Robert Fergusson, his "elder brother in the muses," in the Canongate
+churchyard. Then he decided to visit some of the classic scenes of
+Scottish history and romance. He had as yet seen but a small part of his
+own country, and this by no means among the most interesting, until,
+indeed, his own poetry made it equal, on that score, to any other.
+Various tours were, in fact, undertaken, the chief being, however, in
+the Border district and in the Highlands. Usually he returned to
+Edinburgh, partly to be near his jovial intimates, and partly because,
+after the excitement attending his first appearance in the capital, he
+found himself incapable of settling down contentedly in the humble
+circle at Mossgiel.
+
+
+_IV.--The Clarinda Romance_
+
+
+During the winter of 1787--1788, he had a little romance with Mrs.
+McLehose, the beautiful widow to whom he addressed the song, "Clarinda,
+mistress of my soul," and a series of letters which present more
+instances of bad taste, bombastic language, and fulsome sentiment than
+could be produced from all his writings besides. It was the same lady
+who inspired the lines which furnished Byron with a motto, and Scott
+declared to be "worth a thousand romances ":
+
+    Had we never loved so kindly
+    Had we never loved sae blindly,
+    Never met--or never parted,
+    We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
+
+At this time the publication of Johnson's "Scots Musical Museum" was
+going on in Edinburgh; and Burns, being enlisted as a contributor,
+furnished many of his best songs to that work. From his youth upwards he
+had been an enthusiastic lover of the old minstrelsy and music of his
+country; but he now studied both subjects with better opportunities and
+appliances than he could have commanded previously; and it is from this
+time that we must date his ambition to transmit his own poetry to
+posterity, in eternal association with those exquisite airs which had
+hitherto, in far too many instances, been married to verses that did not
+deserve to be immortal. Later, beginning in 1792, he wrote about sixty
+songs for George Thomson's collection, many of which, like "Auld Lang
+Syne" and "Scots Wha Hae," are in the front rank of popularity. The
+letters he addressed to Thomson are full of interesting detail of
+various kinds. In one he writes:
+
+"Until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing, such as it is,
+I can never compose for it. My way is this. I consider the poetic
+sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression--then
+choose my theme--compose one stanza. When that is composed, which is
+generally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down
+now and then, look out for objects in Nature round me that are in unison
+or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom,
+humming every now and then the air, with the verses I have framed. When
+I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of
+my study, and there commit my effusions to paper; swinging at intervals
+on the hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own
+critical strictures, as my pen goes. Seriously this, at home, is almost
+invariably my way."
+
+But to return. During his second winter in Edinburgh, Burns met with a
+hackney coach accident which kept him to the house for six weeks. While
+in this state he learned from Mauchline that his intimacy with Jean
+Armour had again exposed her to the reproaches of her family. The father
+sternly turned her out of doors, and Burns had to arrange about a
+shelter for her and his children in a friend's house. In the meantime,
+through the influence of some sympathisers, he had been appointed an
+officer of excise. "I have chosen this," he wrote, "after mature
+deliberation. It is immediate bread, and, though poor in comparison of
+the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison of
+all my preceding life." However, when he settled finally with Creech
+about his poems, he found himself with between £500 and £600; and he
+retained his excise commission as a _dernier ressort_, to be used only
+if a reverse of fortune rendered it necessary.
+
+He decided now to exchange Mossgiel for Ellisland farm, about six miles
+from Dumfries. As soon as he was able to leave Edinburgh, he had hurried
+to Mossgiel and gone through a justice-of-peace marriage with Jean
+Armour. Burns, with all his faults, was an honest and a high-spirited
+man, and he loved the mother of his children. Had he hesitated to make
+her his wife, he must have sunk into the callousness of a ruffian, or
+that misery of miseries, the remorse of a poet.
+
+Some months later he writes that his marriage "was not, perhaps, in
+consequence of the attachment of romance, but I have no cause to repent
+it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable
+dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of
+boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the
+sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the
+country." It was during the honeymoon, as he calls it, that he wrote the
+beautiful "O a' the airts the wind can blaw." He used to say that the
+happiest period of his life was the first winter at Ellisland, with wife
+and children around him. It was then that he wrote, among other songs,
+"John Anderson, my Jo," "Tarn Glen," "My heart's in the Highlands," "Go
+fetch to me a pint of wine," and "Willie brewed a peck o' maut."
+
+But the "golden days" of Ellisland were short. Burns's farming
+speculations once more failed, and he had to take up his excise
+commission. "I am now," says he, "a poor rascally gauger, condemned to
+gallop two hundred miles every week to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty
+barrels." Both in prose and verse he has recorded the feelings with
+which he first followed his new vocation, and his jests on the subject
+are uniformly bitter. It was a vocation which exposed him to temptations
+of the kind he was least likely to resist. His extraordinary
+conversational powers led him into peril wherever he went. If he entered
+an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his
+arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes
+had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were assembled round the
+ingle; the largest punch-bowl was produced; and "Be ours this night--who
+knows what comes to-morrow?" was the language of every eye in the circle
+that welcomed him.
+
+At home, too, lion-gazers from all quarters beset him; they ate and
+drank at his cost, and often went away to criticise him and his fare, as
+if they had done Burns and his black bowl great honour in condescending
+to be entertained for a single evening with such company. Among others
+who called on him was Captain Grose, the antiquary, and it is to this
+acquaintance that we owe "Tam o' Shanter," which Burns believed to be
+the best of all his productions.
+
+
+_V.--Closing Years of the Poet's Life_
+
+
+Towards the close of 1791 he gave up his farm, and procuring an excise
+appointment to the Dumfries division, removed to the county town. His
+moral course from this time was downwards. "In Dumfries," says Heron,
+speaking from personal knowledge, "his dissipation became still more
+deeply habitual. He was here exposed more than in the country to be
+solicited to share the riot of the dissolute and idle." His intemperance
+was, as Heron says, in fits; his aberrations were occasional, not
+systematic; they were all to himself the sources of exquisite misery in
+the retrospect; they were the aberrations of a man whose moral sense was
+never deadened, of one who encountered more temptations from without and
+from within than the immense majority of mankind, far from having to
+contend against, are even able to imagine; of one, finally, who prayed
+for pardon, where alone effectual pardon could be found.
+
+In how far the "thoughtless follies" of the poet did actually hasten his
+end, it is needless to conjecture. They had their share, unquestionably,
+along with other influences which it would be inhuman to characterise as
+mere follies. In these closing years of his life he had to struggle
+constantly with pecuniary difficulties, than which nothing could have
+been more likely to pour bitterness intolerable into the cup of his
+existence. His lively imagination exaggerated to itself every real evil;
+and this among, and perhaps above, all the rest; at least, in many of
+his letters we find him alluding to the probability of his being
+arrested for debts, which we now know to have been of very trivial
+amount.
+
+In 1795 he was greatly upset by the death, in his absence, of his
+youngest child. Writing in January, 1796, he says: "I had scarcely begun
+to recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most
+severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful, until, after
+many weeks of a sick-bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am
+beginning to crawl across my room, and once indeed have been before my
+own door in the street."
+
+But a few days after this Burns was so imprudent as to join a festive
+circle at a tavern dinner, where he remained till about three in the
+morning. The weather was severe, and he, being too much intoxicated,
+took no precaution in thus exposing his debilitated frame to its
+influence. It has been said that he fell asleep upon the snow on his way
+home. The result was an acute return of his rheumatism, and his health
+gradually got worse. He went to the Solway for sea-bathing, but came
+back to Dumfries "visibly changed in his looks, being with difficulty
+able to stand upright and reach his own door."
+
+It soon became known that he was dying, and the anxiety, not of the rich
+and the learned only, but of the mechanics and peasants, exceeded all
+belief. Wherever two or three people stood together their talk was
+solely of Burns. His good humour was unruffled, and his wit never
+forsook him; but he repressed with a smile the hopes of his friends, and
+told them he had lived long enough. The fever increased, and his
+strength diminished, and he died on July 21, 1796. His funeral, attended
+by ten or twelve thousand people, was an impressive and mournful sight.
+The grave was at first covered by a plain tombstone; but a costly
+mausoleum was subsequently erected on the most elevated site which the
+churchyard presented. Thither the remains of the poet were solemnly
+transferred on June 5, 1815.
+
+It requires a graver audacity of hypocrisy than falls to the share of
+most men to declaim against Burns's sensibility to the tangible cares
+and toils of his earthly condition; there are more who venture on broad
+denunciations of his sympathy with the joys of sense and passion.
+
+That some men in every age will comfort themselves in the practice of
+certain vices, by reference to particular passages both in the history
+and in the poetry of Burns, there is all reason to fear; but surely the
+general influence of both is calculated, and has been found, to produce
+far different effects. The universal popularity which his writings have
+all along enjoyed among one of the most virtuous of nations is of itself
+a decisive circumstance.
+
+On one point there can be no controversy; the poetry of Burns has had
+most powerful influence in reviving and strengthening the national
+feelings of his countrymen. Amidst penury and labour his youth fed on
+the old minstrelsy and traditional glories of his nation, and his genius
+divined that what he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might
+lie smothered around him, but could not be extinguished. Burns "knew his
+own worth, and reverenced the lyre." But he ever announced himself, as a
+peasant, the representative of his class, the painter of their manners,
+inspired by the same influences which ruled their bosoms; and whosoever
+sympathised with his verse had his soul opened for the moment to the
+whole family of man.
+
+Short and painful as were his years, Burns has left behind him a volume
+in which there is inspiration for every fancy and music for every mood;
+which lives, and will live in strength and vigour, "to soothe," as a
+generous lover of genius has said, "the sorrows of how many a lover, to
+inflame the patriotism of how many a soldier, to fan the fires of how
+many a genius, to disperse the gloom of solitude, appease the agonies of
+pain, encourage virtue, and show vice its ugliness." In this volume,
+centuries hence as now, wherever a Scotsman may wander he will find the
+dearest consolation of his exile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MARTIN LUTHER
+
+
+Table Talk
+
+
+     Martin Luther, "the monk who shook the world," was born Nov.
+     10, 1483, at Eisleben, in Germany. In 1507 he was ordained a
+     priest, and became popular almost immediately as a preacher. A
+     visit to Rome shocked him, and in revolt against the practice
+     of raising money by the sale of indulgences, he began his
+     career as a reformer. In 1518 he was summoned to Rome to
+     answer for his opinions, which now included a total denial of
+     the right of the Pope to forgive sins. He proceeded to attack
+     the whole doctrinal system of the Roman Catholic Church. For
+     this he was denounced in a papal bull and his writings were
+     condemned to be burned. In 1525 he married an escaped nun.
+     That Luther was a true child of his age may be seen in the
+     selections made from his "Table Talk." His shrewdness, humour,
+     plain bold speech, and his change of belief from an infallible
+     Church to an infallible Bible there appear, as also do his
+     narrowness of knowledge, asperity of temper, and
+     susceptibility to superstition. He must be judged by the mind
+     of his times, not by modern standards. We give some of his
+     strong opinions that have not borne the wear and tear of later
+     ages; but they are more than balanced by teaching what is
+     beautiful, as well as true. Luther died on February 18, 1546.
+
+
+_God's Word and Book_
+
+
+That the Bible is God's word and book I prove thus. Infinite potentates
+have raged against it, and sought to destroy and uproot it--King
+Alexander the Great, the princes of Egypt and Babylon, the monarchs of
+Persia, of Greece, and of Rome, the Emperors Julius and Augustus--but
+they nothing prevailed; they are all gone and vanished, while the book
+remains and will remain. Who has thus helped it? Who has thus protected
+it against such mighty forces? No one, surely, but God Himself, who is
+the Master of all things.
+
+The Holy Scriptures are full of divine gifts and virtues. The books of
+the heathen taught nothing of faith, hope, or charity; they present no
+idea of these things; they contemplate only the present, and that which
+man, with the use of his material reason, can grasp and comprehend. Look
+not therein for aught of hope and trust in God. But see how the Psalms
+and the Book of Job treat of faith, hope, resignation, and prayer; in a
+word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in
+comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel,
+to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity far otherwise than
+mere human reason can, and when evil oppresses us it teaches how these
+virtues throw light upon the darkness.
+
+The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure or limit to
+the fever for writing. The Bible is now buried under so many
+commentaries that the text is nothing regarded. I could wish all my
+books were buried nine ells deep in the ground by reason of the ill
+example they will give. I would not have those who read my books, in
+these stormy times, devote one moment to them that they would otherwise
+have consecrated to the Bible itself.
+
+
+_God's Dealing with Us_
+
+
+How should God deal with us? Good days we cannot bear, evil we cannot
+endure. Gives He riches unto us--then we are proud, so that no man can
+live by us in peace; nay, we will be carried on heads and shoulders, and
+will be adored as gods. Gives He poverty to us--then are we dismayed,
+impatient, and murmur against Him.
+
+God only, and not wealth, maintains the world; riches merely make people
+proud and lazy. Great wealth cannot still hunger, but rather occasions
+more dearth, for where rich people are there things are always dear.
+Moreover, money makes no man right merry, but much rather pensive and
+full of sorrow; for riches, says Christ, are thorns that prick people.
+Yet is the world so made that it sets therein all its joy and felicity,
+and we are such unthankful slovens that we give God not so much as a
+_Deo Gratias_, though we receive of Him overflowing benefits, merely out
+of His goodness and mercy. No man can estimate the great charge God is
+at only in maintaining birds and such creatures, comparatively nothing
+worth. I am persuaded that it costs Him yearly more to maintain only the
+sparrows than the revenue of the French king amounts to.
+
+
+_Points from "Popedom"_
+
+
+I much marvel that the pope extols his church at Rome as the chief,
+whereas the church at Jerusalem is the mother; for there Christian
+doctrine was first revealed. Next was the church at Antioch, whence the
+Christians have their name. Thirdly, was the church at Alexandria; and
+still before the Romish were the churches of the Galatians, of the
+Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians. Is it so great a matter that St.
+Peter was at Rome? Which, however, has never yet been proved, nor ever
+will be, whereas our blessed Saviour Christ Himself was at Jerusalem,
+where all the articles of our Christian faith were made.
+
+Prayer in popedom is mere tongue-threshing; not prayer but a work of
+obedience. Hence the confused sea of howling and babbling in cells and
+monasteries, where they read and sing the psalms and collects without
+any spiritual devotion. Though I had done no more but only freed people
+from that torment, they might well give me thanks for it.
+
+Kings and princes coin money only out of metals, but the pope coins
+money out of everything--indulgences, ceremonials, dispensations,
+pardons; 'tis all fish comes to his net. 'Tis only baptism escapes him,
+for children come into the world without clothes to be stolen or teeth
+to be drawn.
+
+
+_Patristic Literature_
+
+
+I will not presume to criticise too closely the writings of the fathers,
+seeing they are received of the church and have great applause, but
+whoso reads Chrysostom will find he digresses from the chief points, and
+proceeds on other matters, saying nothing, or very little, of that which
+pertains to the business. St. Jerome wrote upon Matthew, upon the
+Epistles to the Galatians, and Titus, but, alas, very coldly. Ambrose
+wrote six books upon the first book of Moses, but they are very poor.
+
+We must read the fathers cautiously, and lay them in the gold balance,
+for they often stumbled and went astray. Gregory expounds the five
+pounds mentioned in the Gospel, which the husbandman gave to his servant
+to put to use, to be the five senses, which the beasts also possess. The
+two pounds he construes to be the reason and understanding. Faithful
+Christians should heed only the embassy of our blessed Saviour Christ,
+and what He says.
+
+None of the fathers of the church made mention of original sin until
+Augustine came, who made a difference between original and actual sin,
+namely, that original sin is to covet, to lust, and to desire, which is
+the root and cause of actual sin.
+
+
+_Hints for Preachers_
+
+
+The good preacher should know when to make an end. A preacher that will
+speak everything that comes into his mind is like a maid that goes to
+market, and, meeting another maid, makes a stand, and they hold together
+a goose-market.
+
+I would not have preachers in their sermons use Hebrew, Greek, or
+foreign languages, for in the church we ought to speak as we use to do
+at home, the plain mother tongue, which everyone is acquainted with. It
+may be allowed in courtiers, lawyers, advocates, etc., to use quaint,
+curious words. St. Paul never used such high and stately words as
+Demosthenes and Cicero used.
+
+Ambition is the rankest poison to the church when it possesses
+preachers. It is a consuming fire.
+
+When I preach I sink myself deep down. I regard neither doctors nor
+magistrates, of whom are here in this church above forty; but I have an
+eye to the multitude of young people, children, and servants, of whom
+are more than two thousand. I preach to those. Will not the rest hear
+me?
+
+
+_Time's Forelock_
+
+
+It is said Occasion has a forelock, but it is bald behind. Our Lord has
+taught this by the course of nature. A farmer must sow his barley and
+oats about Easter; if he defer it till Michaelmas it were too late. When
+apples are ripe they must be plucked from the tree or they are spoiled.
+Procrastination is as bad as over-hastiness. There is my servant Wolf,
+when four or five birds fall upon the bird-net he will not draw it; but
+says, "Oh, I will stay until more come." Then they all fly away, and he
+gets none.
+
+Occasion is a great matter. Terence says well, "I came in time, which is
+the chief thing of all." Julius Caesar understood Occasion; Pompey and
+Hannibal did not. Boys at school understand it not, therefore they must
+have fathers and masters, with the rod, to hold them thereto, that they
+neglect not time and lose it. Many a young fellow has a school stipend
+for six or seven years, during which he ought diligently to study, but
+he thinks, "Oh, I have time enough yet." But I say, "No, fellow; what
+little Jack learns not great John learns not." Occasion salutes thee,
+and reaches out her forelock to thee, saying, "Here I am, take hold of
+me." Thou thinkest she will come again. Then says she, "Well, seeing
+thou wilt not take hold of my top, take hold of my tail," and therewith
+she flings away.
+
+
+_Modern Luxury_
+
+
+Whereto serve or profit such superfluity, such show, such ostentation,
+such extraordinary luxurious kind of life as is now come upon us? If
+Adam were to return to earth, and see our mode of living, our food,
+drink, and dress, how would he marvel. He would say: "Surely this is not
+the world I was in?" For Adam drank water, ate fruit from the trees,
+and, if he had any house at all, 'twas a hut supported by four wooden
+forks; he had no knife or iron, and he wore simply a coat of skin. Now
+we spend immense sums in eating and drinking, now we raise sumptuous
+palaces, and decorate them with a luxury beyond all comparison. The
+ancient Israelites lived in great moderation and quiet. Boaz says: "Dip
+thy bread in vinegar and refresh thyself therewith."
+
+
+_Ministers and Matrimony_
+
+
+I advise in everything that ministers interfere not in matrimonial
+questions. First, because we have enough to do in our own office;
+secondly, because these affairs concern not the church, but are temporal
+things, pertaining to temporal magistrates; thirdly, because such cases
+are in a manner innumerable; they are very high, broad, and deep, and
+produce many offences, which may tend to the shame and dishonour of the
+Gospel. Moreover, we are therein ill dealt with--they draw us into the
+business, and then, if the issue is evil, the blame is laid altogether
+upon us. Therefore, we will leave them to the lawyers and magistrates.
+
+
+_Miscellaneous Topics_
+
+
+Philip Melancthon showing Luther a letter from Augsburg wherein he was
+informed that a very learned divine, a papist of that city, was
+converted, and had received the Gospel, Luther said, "I like best those
+that do not fall off suddenly, but ponder the case with considerate
+discretion, compare together the writing and arguments of both parties,
+and lay them on the gold balance, and in God's fear search after the
+upright truth; and of such fit people are made, able to stand in
+controversy. Such a man was St. Paul, who at first was a strict Pharisee
+and man of works, who stiffly and earnestly defended the law; but
+afterwards preached Christ in the best and purest manner against the
+whole nation of the Jews."
+
+As all people feel they must die, each seeks immortality here on earth,
+that he may be had in everlasting remembrance. Some great princes and
+kings seek it by raising great columns of stone and high pyramids, great
+churches, costly and glorious palaces and castles. Soldiers hunt after
+praise and honour by obtaining famous victories. The learned seek an
+everlasting name by writing books. With these and such like things
+people think to be immortal. But as to the true everlasting and
+incorruptible honour and eternity of God, no man thinks or looks after
+these things.
+
+When two goats meet on a narrow bridge over deep waters how do they
+behave? Neither of them can turn back again, and neither can pass the
+other because the bridge is too narrow. If they should thrust one
+another they might both fall into the water and be drowned. Nature,
+then, has taught them that if one lays himself down and permits the
+other to go over him both remain without hurt. Even so, people should
+endure to be trod upon rather than to fall into discord with one
+another.
+
+
+_Strong Opinions Outworn by Time_
+
+
+I should have no compassion on witches; I would burn all of them. We
+read in the old law that the priests threw the first stone at such
+malefactors. Our ordinary sins offend and anger God. What then must be
+His wrath against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high treason
+against divine majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God. The
+maladies I suffer are not natural but devils' spells.
+
+Luther, taking up a caterpillar, said: "'Tis an emblem of the devil in
+its crawling, and bears his colours in its changing hue."
+
+The devil plagues and torments us in the place where we are most tender
+and weak. In Paradise he fell not upon Adam, but upon Eve. It commonly
+rains where it was wet enough before.
+
+The anabaptists pretend that children, not as yet having reason, ought
+not to receive baptism. I answer: That reason in no way contributes to
+faith. Nay, in that children are destitute of reason they are all the
+more fit and proper recipients of baptism. For reason is the greatest
+enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.
+
+I always loved music. A schoolmaster ought to have skill in music, or I
+would not regard him; neither should we ordain young men as preachers
+unless they have been well exercised in music.
+
+Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the
+earth. He made several attempts to draw me into his snares, and I should
+have been in danger but that God lent me special aid. Erasmus was
+poisoned at Rome and at Venice with epicurean doctrines. His chief
+doctrine is that we must carry ourselves according to the time, or, as
+the proverb goes, hang the cloak according to the wind. I hold Erasmus
+to be Christ's most bitter enemy.
+
+I never work better than when I am inspired by anger. When I am angry I
+can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is
+quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and
+temptations depart.
+
+
+_Characteristic Sayings_
+
+
+When the abbot throws the dice, the whole convent will play.
+
+When men blaspheme we should pray and be silent, and not carry wood to
+the fire.
+
+When Jesus Christ utters a word, He opens His mouth so wide that it
+embraces all heaven and earth, even though that word be but in a
+whisper.
+
+When I lay sucking at my mother's breast I had no notion how I should
+afterwards eat, drink, and live. Even so we on the earth have no idea
+what the life to come will be.
+
+The two sins, hatred and pride, deck and trim themselves out as the
+devil clothed himself in the Godhead. Hatred will be godlike; pride will
+be truth. These two are right deadly sins; hatred is killing, pride is
+lying.
+
+A scorpion thinks that when his head lies hid under a leaf he cannot be
+seen; even so the hypocrites and false saints think, when they have
+hoisted up one or two good works, all their sins therewith are covered
+and hid.
+
+Luther, holding a rose in his hand, said, "'Tis a magnificent work of
+God. Could a man make but one such rose as this he would be thought
+worthy of all honour, but the manifold gifts of God lose their value in
+our eyes from their very infinity."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MIRABEAU
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, was born at Bignon,
+     near Nemours, on March 9, 1749, and died at Paris on April 2,
+     1791. His father was a most eccentric and tyrannical
+     representative of the French aristocracy, and Honoré, a
+     younger son, inherited something of his violent temperament,
+     but was endowed with real genius. Entering the army, young
+     Mirabeau soon displayed an erratic disposition by eloping with
+     the young wife of an aged nobleman. He fled to Holland, but
+     was captured and imprisoned. Being at length liberated, he
+     turned to literature and politics, and soon gained celebrity
+     in both. His magnificent oratorical powers brought him rapidly
+     to the front in the period immediately anterior to the
+     outbreak of the Revolution. Mirabeau's "Memoirs, by Himself,
+     his Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son," published in
+     eight volumes in 1834, contain no original writings by
+     Mirabeau himself, except in the shape of extracts from his
+     speeches, letters, and pamphlets. The following epitome has
+     been prepared from the French text.
+
+
+_I.--"The Hurricane"_
+
+
+The Marquis of Mirabeau, father of Honoré Gabriel, the subject of these
+memoirs, was endowed with a mind of great power, rendered fruitful by
+the best education. He had, however, become independent at too early an
+age, and this had brought into play his natural inordinate vanity.
+
+Honoré Gabriel, since so famous under the name of the Count of Mirabeau,
+was the fifth child of the marquis. Destined to be the most turbulent
+and active of youths, as well as the most eloquent of men and the
+greatest orator of his day, Gabriel was born with one foot twisted and
+his tongue tied, in addition to which his size and strength were
+extraordinary, and already two molars were formed in his jaw. At the age
+of three the boy nearly lost his life from small-pox, and was thus
+disfigured greatly for life; while the other children were, like the
+parents, gifted with wonderful beauty.
+
+Young Gabriel was a most precocious child, and he received an excellent
+education. At the age of seven he was confirmed by a cardinal, but his
+childhood was difficult of control, and chastisement from his father and
+tutor was continual. His inquisitiveness was irrepressible. He relates
+that at the family supper after his confirmation, "they explained to me
+that God could not make contradictions--for instance, a stick with only
+one end. I asked whether a stick which had but one end was not a
+miracle. My grandmother never forgave me."
+
+Placed under the kindly teaching of the Abbé Choquart in a military
+school of high repute in Paris, Gabriel made marvellously rapid
+progress, assiduously exercising his memory, which afterwards became a
+prodigious repository of the most diversified knowledge.
+
+On July 10, 1767, Gabriel entered the army, joining the Marquis of
+Lambert's regiment. The young volunteer, who was now eighteen, behaved
+well, and speedily gave evidence of the military talents he afterwards
+displayed. But a quarrel arose over a love affair, which led to harsh
+punishment by his colonel. The incident was bitterly resented by his
+father, who condemned him without hearing his side of the matter, and
+actually procured his imprisonment in the fortress of the Isle of Rhé.
+
+When the young soldier came out of prison he unwittingly offended an
+officer at Rochelle, who had been dismissed the service. The result was
+a duel, in which the aggressor was wounded. Gabriel was appointed to
+service in Corsica, with the rank of second-lieutenant, and here he
+distinguished himself by his zeal, his military talents, and his
+constant application.
+
+Young Mirabeau was, in September, 1770, transferred to Limousin, in west
+Central France. Such was his energy that he was called "the hurricane."
+Now began a series of troubles caused by bitter quarrels between his
+parents, who were openly at variance. Each sought to gain an adherent in
+their son, who was condemned to witness the wickedness and folly of both
+in their ungovernable passion. The effect on the character of the young
+count was deplorable.
+
+Then ensued a singular episode. The marquis had determined that Gabriel
+should marry before the age of twenty-three, and had fixed on Mary Emily
+de Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, eighteen years of
+age, for his son's bride. She was plain, yet attractive, with a sweet
+smile, fine eyes, and beautiful hair, and was gay, lively, sensible,
+mild, and very amiable. Having been neglected by her father and
+ill-treated by her mother, she showed no disinclination to marriage, and
+in 1772 young Mirabeau obtained the hand of the wealthy heiress.
+
+No sooner was the young count married than every attempt was made to
+ruin him. He received no property with his bride, and his avaricious
+father refused to advance him any money for necessary expenses. His
+father-in-law offered to lend him 60,000 livres, but his father's
+consent was indispensable, and this was sternly refused. Mirabeau,
+harassed by creditors, was dragged into lawsuits, and his embarrassments
+only set his father entirely against him. The marquis actually procured
+a _lettre de cachet_, obliging his son to leave the home he had set up,
+and to confine himself to the little town of Manosque.
+
+Here domestic sorrow and the most painful circumstances assailed the
+young exile. But these did not prevent him from pursuing serious studies
+and composing his first work, the "Essay on Despotism." Misfortunes
+accumulated. Chastising with a horsewhip a baron who grossly insulted
+him, the count was again imprisoned, this time in the Château d'If, a
+gloomy citadel on a barren rock near Marseilles.
+
+On May 25, 1770, Mirabeau was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near
+Pontarlier, where, on June 11, 1775, festivities were held, as at other
+places, to honour the coronation of Louis XVI. Here Mirabeau enjoyed a
+sort of half freedom, being allowed to visit in Pontarlier, and the
+event ensued which, it must sorrowfully be owned, tarnished his name. In
+a word, we see Mirabeau "ruin himself," by a fatal intimacy with the
+young wife of the aged Marquis of Monnier. The two fled to Dijon, where
+Mirabeau surrendered himself at the castle.
+
+He was released after a short time and went on to Geneva, nearly
+perishing in a storm on the lake. Returning to Pontarlier, he was joined
+by Sophie Monnier, and the two left for Holland, and arrived at
+Amsterdam on October 7, 1776. Mirabeau was naturally obliged to draw his
+principal means of subsistence from his literary labours, and this,
+perhaps, had been his motive for choosing Holland as his residence, for
+at that period the Dutch booksellers entered largely into literary
+speculations.
+
+Mirabeau and Sophie Monnier were arrested at Amsterdam on May 14, 1777.
+Both were brought to France. She was placed in a convent at
+Monilmontant, and Mirabeau was deposited on June 7 in the donjon of
+Vincennes, and was subjected to every sort of privation, remaining in
+confinement for forty-two months. His release marked the end of his
+private life; his public and political life was about to begin.
+
+
+_II.--Into Political Life_
+
+
+The "Essay on Despotism" had been the first sign of Mirabeau's political
+vocation, and the most singular instance, perhaps, of a war audaciously
+declared against despotism by a young man bearing its yoke. The keynote
+is that though the _natural_ man may not be inclined to despotism, the
+_social_ man assuredly is disposed to be a despot. This spirit,
+maintains Mirabeau, exists even in republics.
+
+In 1784 Mirabeau visited England. One of his motives was to collect
+materials for his "Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus," a
+treatise dealing with Washington and American independence. He was
+greatly delighted with English scenery. "It is here," he says, "that
+nature is improved, not forced. All tells me that here the people are
+something; that every man enjoys the development and free exercise of
+his faculties, and that I am in another order of things."
+
+But he proceeds: "I am not an enthusiast in favour of England, and I now
+know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution is
+the best known, the application of this constitution is the worst
+possible; and that if the Englishman is as a social man the most free in
+the world, the English people are the least free of any."
+
+He resided in England from August to February, 1785. During that brief
+period he began to write his "History of Geneva," and he showed his
+versatility by composing for a young refugee clergyman a sermon on the
+immortality of the soul. By the gift of this sermon he drew the exiled
+preacher from poverty, for it was the means of obtaining for him a
+lucrative appointment.
+
+Mirabeau sent forth from Paris several most able pamphlets on banking
+and on share companies. These were written with energy and often with
+violence. As they attacked many private interests they aroused against
+their author much hatred, insult, and calumny. He was accused of
+venality, though he was attacking and driving to despair powerful
+stock-jobbers, who would have paid him magnificently for silence, could
+he have been bought.
+
+In July, 1785, Mirabeau went to Berlin. It is a singular fact that in
+his various journeys some accident always befel him. On the way to
+Berlin an attempt was made to assassinate him by some unknown enemies,
+but he safely reached the German capital. King Frederick the Great, now
+very aged, no longer received foreigners, yet he replied to a letter
+from Mirabeau and fixed a day for seeing him at Potsdam.
+
+Mirabeau informed the king that he had come to seek permission to study
+the great military manoeuvres, and that he hoped to push on to Russia.
+During this period he worked like a labourer all day at his writings.
+Part of his time he spent at supper parties of the most tiresome
+etiquette. The same laborious habits attended him everywhere, in prison
+and in freedom, in his own country and in other lands. It was in Germany
+that he conceived the idea of his treatise on "The Reform of the Jews,"
+which is acknowledged to be one of his best works.
+
+Frederick the Great died on August 17, 1786. Feeling that he could do
+nothing useful, Mirabeau resolved at the close of 1786 to quit Berlin.
+He was urged also by a special motive in which he took pride, and which
+he thus described in a letter: "My heart has not grown old, and if my
+enthusiasm is damped, it is not extinguished. I have fully experienced
+this to-day. I consider one of the best days of my life that on which I
+received an account of the convocation of the notables, which no doubt
+will not long precede that of the National Assembly. In this I see a new
+order of things which may regenerate the monarchy. I should deem myself
+a thousand times honoured in being even the junior secretary of this
+assembly, of which I had the happiness of giving the first idea."
+
+Mirabeau was prodigiously occupied at Berlin. He often did not retire to
+rest till one in the morning, but regularly rose at five, even in the
+midst of severe winter. Without anything on but a simple quilted
+dressing-gown, without stockings or waistcoat, he worked away without
+even calling up his servant to light a fire. Besides his correspondence
+in cypher, which occupied him much, he worked assiduously at his
+"Prussian Monarchy," which was published in 1788.
+
+On departing from Berlin the count wrote a most eloquent letter of
+counsel to King Frederick William, appealing to him to cultivate peace,
+reminding him that his illustrious predecessor had conquered the
+admiration of mankind but never won their love, commending him not to
+extend the direct action of the royal power to matters which did not
+require it, advising him not to govern too much, and exhorting him to
+abolish military slavery; that is to say, the obligation then imposed on
+every Prussian to serve as a soldier from the age of eighteen to sixty
+or more, which forced men to go to the battle-field like cattle to the
+slaughterhouse.
+
+In the same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the
+harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the
+country. The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement
+protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of
+seizing the property of deceased foreigners, and demanded for burghers
+the freedom of purchasing the estates of nobles. He urged Frederick
+William to abolish the prerogatives claimed by nobles and the helotism
+of all who were not noble, and suggested that judges should be appointed
+for life and justice rendered free of expense.
+
+
+_III.--For King and People_
+
+
+It was chiefly the meeting of the notables which had hastened Mirabeau's
+return to Paris. He felt that his proper place was in the centre of the
+great events announced and begun by this convocation. After the
+undignified and inglorious prodigality of the previous reign, which had
+laid the foundation of serious financial vicissitudes, the young King
+Louis XVI. had brought with him to the throne the private virtues of a
+good and honest man, but not the qualities of a sovereign.
+
+Though economic to excess himself, he nevertheless suffered to exist and
+even to increase around him those dilapidations which at last ruined the
+resources of the state. He had no confidence in himself, and Mirabeau
+respectfully reproached him with his fatal timidity. Nothing was done
+either to increase revenue or diminish expenditure.
+
+The possessors of privilege and representatives of personal interest,
+the courtiers, the great lords, and the parliaments strenuously resisted
+all reforms and then drove from office the best intentioned, the most
+virtuous, and the ablest ministers whom the young king, in the sincerity
+of his patriotism, had chosen on his accession, in deference to public
+feeling. Among these ministers were Malesherbes, Turgot, Necker, and
+Calonne.
+
+Mirabeau returned to Paris on January 27, 1787. He at once published
+that famous "Address to the Notables," in which he denounced the whole
+corrupt system of finance and in which he demanded local provincial
+administrations. This and his "Denunciation of Stock-jobbing" made great
+impression on the public mind.
+
+Nevertheless, the "Denunciation" displeased the government, and the
+author was much persecuted. He learned that he was to be arrested and
+sent, not to the Bastille, but to a remote provincial fortress, where he
+would have been lost to public notice. So he escaped from Paris to
+Liège, whence he again attacked the administration of Calonne and the
+policy of Necker, declaring that loans should have been effected on
+methods less onerous for the state.
+
+His exile from Paris was of brief duration, for friends intervened. But
+Mirabeau returned only to renew and intensify his attacks. He remained,
+however, only for a short time, for on May 24, 1787, he set out on a
+third journey to Prussia, in order to complete his great work on the
+"Prussian Monarchy." Returning to France, he reached Paris in September.
+Five months had elapsed since the assembling of the notables. The
+eloquent Leominie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, had been the most
+brilliant figure in the conclave. The first assembly broke up on July
+27, 1787. Though gathered by the privileged orders, patriotism had
+raised its voice within it, and the archbishop, as prime minister, had
+failed to direct the new current aright.
+
+Mirabeau disapproved of what had taken place in his absence, and
+declined to be employed by the administration, but he offered to
+undertake any foreign mission in the exercise of the king to which he
+might be appointed. The application was unsuccessful. The crisis
+approached nearer and nearer. Archbishop Brienne passed rapidly from
+violence to weakness. Mirabeau refused to countenance his plans for
+contracting a new loan of 420 millions. The king was resisted by an
+almost unanimous opposition, headed by the Duke of Orleans, and the loan
+was refused at a memorable sitting.
+
+Mirabeau exhorted the government to announce in precise and solemn terms
+the convocation of the States-General in 1789, that bankruptcy might be
+averted and the national honour saved. Said he: "The year in which the
+king assembles the nation will be the finest in his life. Everybody
+knows that he has been deceived, and could not help being so, and
+everybody will do justice to his intentions. The assembled nation has a
+right to vote a tax. In future the nation alone will raise up its
+political fortunes."
+
+Mirabeau saw that the nation ought to be trusted. He strenuously
+contended for a policy in accordance with this conviction. But he
+indefatigably continued his literary labours, sending forth pamphlet
+after pamphlet, one against the prison system in vogue, another
+demanding the liberty of the Press, in which he extolled the example of
+England. He became increasingly impatient with the ineptitude of the
+government, for the affairs of the state were lapsing into desperate
+disorder, and the public discontent was being steadily aggravated.
+
+The aim of Mirabeau was at one and the same time to support the monarchy
+and to subvert the influences by which the throne was environed. He was
+solicitous of securing popular freedom, but regarded the monarchy as the
+only form of rule suitable for France in that age, and was led to adopt
+that peculiar statesmanship identifying the royal interest with the
+popular cause. Though ready to give his life for the people, he did not
+hesitate to risk his popularity by his fidelity to the throne.
+
+
+_IV.--President of the National Assembly_
+
+
+The immediate causes of the Revolution were now in full operation.
+Mirabeau, attempting to practise his own doctrine of the freedom of the
+Press, turned journalist and brought out a gazette. The famous National
+Assembly opened on May 5, 1789. He then entered on a career of immense
+political energy, beginning by issuing a stirring and eloquent "Address
+to the French People." This was especially a reply to a reactionary
+protest on the part of the clergy.
+
+Soon there were disturbances everywhere. The Bastille was stormed by the
+furious Parisians and demolished. Just at this time Mirabeau lost his
+father, and the event overwhelmed him with grief. He refused to stand
+for election as mayor of Paris. But he brought about a constitutional
+organisation of the municipality, and delivered a splendid series of
+orations on various abuses, such as plural voting, iniquitous
+monopolies, etc. Yet he proved his studious moderation by strenuously
+declaiming against the famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man,"
+pronouncing it inopportune and perilous. His heroic harangues provoked
+disorder in his audience dangerous to himself. But his courage was
+dauntless, for even when the king and his chief minister abandoned the
+royal prerogative, Mirabeau defended it.
+
+Throughout the terrible events of 1789 Mirabeau was consistent as a
+loyalist and as a patriot. But disappointment awaited his generous
+illusions, for the vacillation of the king rendered the outlook
+hopeless.
+
+At the end of January, 1791, he was appointed president of the National
+Assembly, which, during the stormy period of its existence during
+twenty-one months, had already had forty-two presidents.
+
+He exercised his functions with consummate skill, but the end of his
+wonderful life was at hand. He had been in weak health from the very
+first sittings of the Assembly, his condition causing constant anxiety
+to his intimate friends and his admirers. He was depressed by sad
+presentiments, and was in constant apprehension of assassination, for it
+was well-known that there were plots against his life. After a brilliant
+oration, the great tribune went home exhausted, and, indeed, dying.
+
+One of his last experiences was a pathetic interview with Talleyrand,
+with whom he had often crossed swords in debate. His weakness dated from
+February, 1788, when he was attacked with violent internal pains, and
+was bled to such an extent by a surgeon that he never recovered his
+wonderful natural vitality. After much suffering, endured with the most
+heroic fortitude, he passed away as if in sleep, with a sweet smile on
+his features. France mourned the loss of the greatest orator that had
+ever graced her tribune. His funeral was celebrated at St. Genevieve
+with splendid ceremonial. The verdict of those best qualified to judge
+was that Mirabeau was the most remarkable man of the eighteenth century,
+and that his premature death, soon after the outbreak of the Revolution,
+led to the overthrow of a monarchy which he alone could have saved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THOMAS MOORE
+
+
+Life of Byron
+
+
+     Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, was born in Dublin on May 28,
+     1779, was educated at Trinity College, and studied for the Bar
+     at the Middle Temple. At twenty-one years of age he published
+     a translation of Anacreon, and his reputation was further
+     established by his love-poems, under the pseudonym of Thomas
+     Little, in 1801. He received in 1803 an official post in
+     Bermuda, but entrusted his duties there to a substitute, by
+     whose defalcations he was later embarrassed. He was married at
+     thirty-one to a beautiful and amiable actress, Bessy Dyke, and
+     lived very happily for most of his life in Wiltshire, but with
+     an interval of a few years in Paris. In 1835 he received a
+     literary pension of £300, to which a Civil List pension of
+     £100 was added in 1850. He died on February 25, 1852.
+     Undoubtedly, Moore's most important contribution to prose
+     literature was his "Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,"
+     published in 1830, six years after the poet's death; as
+     payment he received £4,200. Although the work was frankly and
+     even severely criticised in many quarters, it did a great deal
+     to put Byron right with public opinion. Certainly no literary
+     contemporary was better fitted to write the biography of his
+     friend than Moore, who, moreover, had been marked for this
+     work by a free gift of Byron's own memoirs.
+
+
+_I.--Ancestors and Early Days_
+
+
+It has been said of Lord Byron that he was prouder of being a descendant
+of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into
+England, than of having been the author of "Childe Harold." The remark
+is not altogether unfounded, for the pride of ancestry was a feature of
+his character; and justly so, for his line was honourably known on the
+fields of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor; and in the faithful
+royalist, Sir John Biron, afterwards Lord Biron, throughout the Civil
+Wars.
+
+In 1784, the father of the poet, Captain John Byron, nephew of the fifth
+Lord Byron, with the sole object of relieving his debts, married, as his
+second wife, Miss Catherine Gordon, a wealthy lady of illustrious
+Scottish ancestry. Her fortune was swallowed up, and she was reduced to
+£150 a year, before she gave birth, on January 22, 1788, in Holles
+Street, London, to her first and only child, George Gordon Byron. The
+boy was somewhat deformed, one of his feet being twisted.
+
+In 1790, we find the unhappy parents living in separate lodgings in
+Aberdeen; and this estrangement was followed by complete separation, the
+worthless Captain Byron proceeding to France, where he died in the
+following year. The mother, a woman of the most passionate extremes,
+sent the boy to day school and grammar school. His schoolmates remember
+him as lively, warm-hearted, and more ready to give a blow than to take
+one. To summer excursions with his mother in the Highlands the poet
+traces his love of scenery and especially of mountainous countries; and
+he refers many years after, still with keen feeling, to a little girl,
+Mary Duff, for whom, in his eighth year, he cherished a consuming
+attachment. So early were his sensibilities dominant.
+
+On the death, in 1794, of the grandson of the old lord, little George
+stood in immediate succession to the peerage; in May, 1798, the fifth
+Lord Byron died at Newstead Abbey, and the boy's name was called in
+school with the title "Dominus." The Earl of Carlisle was appointed his
+guardian in chancery, and in the same summer, Lord Byron, in his
+eleventh year, took possession, with his mother, of the seat of his
+ancestors. The next year Mrs. Byron was placed on the Civil List for a
+pension of £300 a year. Removing to London, she placed George at school
+with Dr. Glennie at Dulwich, but thwarted the progress of his education
+with her fondness and self-will, until Lord Carlisle gave up all hope of
+ruling her. It was at this period that a boyish love for Margaret
+Parker, his cousin, who died shortly after, led Byron into the practice
+of verse.
+
+From 1801 to 1805, from thirteen years of age to seventeen, George was
+at Harrow, where he sat beside Peel, the future statesman. This period
+of ardent friendship with his fellows includes also the romantic
+affection, in 1803, for Miss Chaworth, heiress of Annesley, near
+Newstead, who looked on her admirer as the mere schoolboy that he was.
+Leaving Harrow with the reputation of an idler who would never learn,
+Byron was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October, 1805. His
+vacations were spent with his mother at Southwell, and her explosions of
+temper, in which she would throw poker and tongs, alienated him
+increasingly. In vacation and in term alike he read with extraordinary
+avidity and variety, wrote a great deal of verse, and in November, 1806,
+printed a small volume of poems for private circulation.
+
+He was a frank and vivid correspondent; his letters to Miss Pigot, of
+Southwell, and others, are full of the liveliest descriptions of the
+Cambridge days. At this time Byron was painfully shy of new faces, and
+perpetually mortified on account of his poverty. He rose, and retired to
+rest, very late. He was very fond of the exercises of swimming, riding,
+shooting, fencing, and sparring; greatly devoted to his dogs, delighted
+in music, and was known as remarkably superstitious. Of his charity and
+kindheartedness there was no end. Always conscious of his deformity, and
+terribly afraid of becoming corpulent, he was sedulously careful of his
+person and dress.
+
+"Hours of Idleness," Byron's first published volume, came out while he
+was at the university, and was received by the "Edinburgh Review" with a
+contempt which stung him to the quick. With intervals of dissipation in
+London and at Brighton, Byron threw himself, at Newstead, into the
+preparation of a satirical revenge, training himself for it by a deep
+study of the writings of Pope. After his coming of age, in 1809, he went
+up to London with his satire, and on March 13 took his seat in the House
+of Lords. A few days later "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" was the
+talk of the town. Wild festivities at Newstead followed its publication,
+and on July 2 Byron sailed from Falmouth in the Lisbon packet.
+
+
+_II.--The Poet Finds Himself_
+
+
+Lord Byron was absent from England for two years, and in the solitude of
+his nights at sea and in his lone wanderings through Greece he had
+leisure and seclusion to look within himself, and there catch the first
+glimpses of his glorious mind. His deep passion for solitude grew to
+full power; the varied excitement of his travels invigorated his
+character and stored his imagination with impressions, and his inborn
+sadness rose from a querulous bitterness to the grandeur of his later
+melancholy.
+
+His letters show him on Parnassus, where a flight of eagles seemed an
+omen of his destiny; at Athens, where he lodged with the mother of the
+"Maid of Athens"; standing among the ruins of Ephesus and the mounds of
+Troy; swimming the Hellespont in honour of Leander; at Constantinople,
+where the prospect of the Golden Horn seemed the fairest of all; at
+Patras, in the woeful debility of fever; and again at Athens, making
+acquaintance with Lady Hester Stanhope and "Abyssinian" Bruce. Through
+all these varied scenes his mind was brooding on the verses of the
+"Childe Harold."
+
+On Byron's return to England, in July, 1811, that poem was placed in Mr.
+Murray's hands, and thus was laid the foundation of a long connection
+between author and publisher. Mrs. Byron died on August 1. With all her
+faults she had loved her son deeply, and he could at least look back
+upon dutiful and kindly behaviour to her. It was in November that I
+first had the pleasure of meeting the poet at dinner, and what I chiefly
+remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his
+voice and manner, and his marked kindness. From our first meeting our
+acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship.
+
+On February 27, 1812, a day or two before the appearance of "Childe
+Harold," Byron made the first trial of his eloquence in the House of
+Lords, and it was on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Lord
+Holland. The subject of debate was the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill.
+Workmen were rioting and wrecking because their labour had been
+displaced by the introduction of machinery, and Byron's view was that
+"we must not allow mankind to be sacrificed to improvements in
+mechanism"--"the maintenance of the industrious poor is of greater
+consequence than the enrichment of monopolists"--"I have seen the state
+of these miserable men, and it is a disgrace to a civilised country."
+The speech was well received. The impression produced two days later by
+Byron's "Childe Harold" was as instantaneous as it has proved deep and
+lasting. Even the dashes of scepticism, with which he darkened his
+strain, served only to heighten its success. The Prince Regent had the
+poet presented to him, and the author of "Marmion" offered his praise.
+In the following May appeared the wild and beautiful fragment, "The
+Giaour." This new offspring of his genius was hailed with wonder and
+delight, and on my rejoining him in town this spring, I found an intense
+enthusiasm for Byron throughout the literary and social world. But his
+mind was already turning to freedom and solitude, and his third and last
+speech in the House of Lords was made in June.
+
+
+_III.--Byron's Unfortunate Marriage_
+
+
+Byron's restlessness is reflected throughout his "Journal," which he
+began at this time. He had dreams of living in the Grecian Islands and
+of adopting an Eastern manner of life; but in December, 1813, when "The
+Bride of Abydos" was published, he was still feverishly dissipating
+himself in England.
+
+A significant entry in the "Journal" says: "A wife would be the
+salvation of me," and Lord Byron became a suitor for the hand of Miss
+Milbanke, a relative of Lady Melbourne. His proposal was not at first
+accepted, but a correspondence ensued between them, and in September,
+1814, after the appearance of "The Corsair" and "Lara," they became
+formally affianced. I was much in his society at this time, and was
+filled with foreboding anxieties, which the unfortunate events that
+followed only too fully justified. At the end of December he set out for
+Seaham, the seat of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the lady's father, and on
+January 2, 1815, was married. On March 8, he wrote to me from Seaham:
+"Bell is in health, and unvaried good-humour and behaviour."
+
+Lord Byron's pecuniary embarrassments now accumulated upon him, and just
+a year after his marriage, and shortly after the birth of their
+daughter, I received a letter which breathed a profound melancholy, due
+partly to his difficulties, but more, I thought, to a return of the
+restless and roving spirit. I replied: "Do tell me you are happier than
+that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied." It was only a
+few weeks later that Lady Byron adopted the resolution of parting from
+him. She had left London in January on a visit to her father, and Byron
+was to follow her. They had parted in the utmost kindness; she wrote him
+a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; but
+immediately on her arrival her father wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that
+she would return to him no more. At the time when he had to stand this
+unexpected shock, his financial troubles, which had led to eight or nine
+executions in his house within the year, had arrived at their utmost;
+and at a moment when, to use his own expression, he was "standing alone
+on his hearth, with his household gods shivered around him," he was also
+doomed to receive the startling intelligence that the wife who had just
+parted with him in kindness, had parted with him for ever.
+
+I must quote from a letter he wrote me in March: "The fault was not in
+my choice, unless in choosing at all; for I do not believe--and I must
+say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business--that there ever
+was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and
+agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had any reproach to make her
+while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself, and if I
+cannot redeem, I must bear it."
+
+
+_IV.--Wanderings and Work_
+
+
+On April 25, 1816, being now twenty-eight years of age, Byron took final
+leave of England, and sailed with two servants for Ostend. His route, by
+Flanders and the Rhine, may be traced in his matchless verses. He
+settled in Geneva, where he met Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; they boated on
+the lake and walked together, and Byron's susceptible mind was deeply
+influenced by his mystical companion. We may discover traces of that
+vague sublimity in the third canto of "Childe Harold," and traces also
+of Mr. Wordsworth's mood which Byron absorbed from Shelley's favourite
+author.
+
+From November, 1816, his letters are dated from Venice. "This has always
+been, next to the East, the greenest island of my imagination, and it
+has not disappointed me." They are considerably taken up with love
+affairs of an irregular kind, and contain also many vivid pictures of
+Venetian society and manners. "Manfred" was completed in 1817, and was
+followed by the fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Margarita Cogni was the
+reigning favourite of Byron's unworthy harem at this time; and his poem
+of "Don Juan," now begun, most faithfully and lamentably reflects every
+whim and passion that, like the rack of autumn, swept across his mind.
+
+But April, 1819, brought a revulsion against all this libertine way of
+living, and brought also the dawn of the only real love of his whole
+life. Lord Byron had first met the Countess Guiccioli in the autumn of
+1818, when she made her appearance, three days after her marriage, at
+the house of the Countess Albrizzi, in all the gaiety of bridal array,
+and the first delight of exchanging a convent for the world. She has
+given her impressions of their meeting: "His noble and exquisitely
+beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice, his manners, the thousand
+enchantments that surrounded him, rendered him so superior a being to
+any whom I had hitherto seen, that it was impossible he should not have
+left the most profound impression upon me."
+
+In June, Byron joined her at Ravenna, and for the next three years
+remained devotedly attached to her. She struck me, during our first
+interview, when I visited them at La Mira, as a lady not only of a style
+of beauty singular in an Italian, as being fair-complexioned and
+delicate, but also as being highly intelligent and amiable.
+
+A letter to me from Pisa, dated August 27, 1822, has a mournful
+interest: "We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on
+the seashore. You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a
+funeral pile has, with mountains in the background and the sea before."
+Another, of November 17, to Lady Byron, shows that if the author of it
+had not right on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings
+which generally accompany it. "I have to acknowledge the receipt of
+Ada's [their daughter's] hair; this note will reach you about her
+birthday.... We both made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and
+better so.... I assure you that I bear you now no resentment
+whatever.... Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or
+reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect on any but two
+things--that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never
+meet again."
+
+Byron was thirty-five years old when from his exile at Genoa he turned
+his eyes to Greece, where a spirit was now rising such as he had imaged
+forth in dreams of song, but hardly could have dreamed that he should
+have lived to see it realised. He longed to witness, and very probably
+to share in, the present triumphs of liberty on those very fields where
+he had gathered for immortality such memorials of the liberty of the
+past. Lord Byron was in touch with the committee concerned with Grecian
+liberty in May, 1823, and two months later sailed with his party on July
+14.
+
+Arriving at Cephalonia he made a journey to Ithaca for a few days. His
+confidence in the Greek cause was soon clouded; the people were grossly
+degenerate, and he saw that the work of regeneration must be slow. To
+convince the government and the chiefs of the paralysing effect of their
+dissensions, to inculcate the spirit of union, to endeavour to humanise
+the feelings of the belligerents on both sides, so as to take from the
+war the character of barbarism--these, with the generous aid of his
+money, were the objects of his interference.
+
+At length the time for action arrived, and, leaving Cephalonia, Byron
+landed at Missolonghi on January 4, 1824. He was welcomed with all
+honour, and at the end of the month received a formal commission from
+the government as commander of the expedition against Lepanto, a
+fortified town. This design was a failure, and Byron occupied himself
+with the fortification of Missolonghi, and with the formation of a
+brigade for the next campaign.
+
+But his health had lately been giving way; he was living in little
+better than a swamp; and one day, after exposure to a heavy shower, he
+was seized with acute pains. On April 11, the illness, now recognised as
+rheumatic fever, increased, and on the 19th he was no more. The funeral
+took place in the Church of St. Nicholas, Missolonghi, on April 22, and
+the remains were carried to England on the brig Florida, and buried,
+close to those of his mother, in the village church of Hucknall.
+
+
+_V.--A Bewildering Personality_
+
+
+Can I clear away some of the mists that hang round my friend, and show
+him as worthy of love as he was of admiration? The task is not an easy
+one. In most minds some one influence governs, from which all secondary
+impulses are found to radiate, but this pivot of character was wanting
+to Lord Byron. Governed at different moments by totally different
+passions, and impelled sometimes, as in his excess of parsimony in
+Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, he
+presents the strangest contradictions and inconsistencies, a bewildering
+complication of qualities.
+
+So various, indeed, were his moral and intellectual attributes, that he
+may be pronounced to have been not one, but many. It was this multiform
+aspect that led the world to compare him with a medley host of
+personages: "within nine years," as he playfully records, "to Rousseau,
+Goethe, Young, Aretino, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, Satan,
+Shakespeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
+Harlequin, Henry VIII., Mirabeau, Michael Angelo, Diogenes, Milton,
+Alfieri, and many others."
+
+But this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix the
+fairy fabric of his character, is itself the clue to whatever was most
+dazzling in his might, or startling in his levity, or most attractive or
+most repellent in his life and genius. A variety of powers almost
+boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them; an unusual
+susceptibility and an uncontrolled impetuosity--such were the two great
+sources of all that varied spectacle of his life--unchecked feeling and
+dominant self-will.
+
+Great versatility of power will hardly be found without a tendency to
+versatility of principle. Byron was fully aware, not only of this
+characteristic quality of his nature, but also of its danger to
+singleness of character; and this consciousness had the effect of
+keeping him in a general line of consistency, throughout life, on
+certain great subjects, and helped him to preserve unbroken the greater
+number of his personal attachments. But, except in some few respects, he
+gave way to his versatile humour without scruple or check; and it was
+impossible but that such a range of will and power should be abused. Is
+it to be wondered at that in the works of one thus gifted and carried
+away we should find, without any design of corrupting on his side, evil
+too often invested with a grandeur which belongs intrinsically but to
+good?
+
+Nay, it will be found that even the strength and impressiveness of
+Byron's poetry is sometimes injured by a capricious and desultory
+quality due to this very pliancy of mind. It may be questioned whether a
+concentration of his powers would not have afforded a grander result. It
+may be that, if Lord Byron had not been so actively versatile, he would
+have been, not less wonderful, but more great.
+
+Again, this love of variety was one of the most pervading weaknesses,
+not only to his poetry, but of his life. The pride of personating every
+kind of character, evil as well as good, influenced his ambition and his
+conduct; and to such a perverse length did he carry this fancy for
+self-defamation that, if there was any tendency to mental derangement,
+it was in this point that it manifested itself. I have known him more
+than once, as we have sat together, to throw out dark hints of his past
+life with an air of gloom and mystery designed to awaken interest; and I
+have little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly
+any crime so dark or so desperate of which, in the excitement of acting
+upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had
+been guilty. It has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of
+his lady's separation from him may have been nothing more, after all,
+than some imposture of this kind, some dim confession of undefined
+horror.
+
+But the over-frankness with which he uttered every chance impression of
+the moment was by itself enough to bring his character unfavourably
+before the world. Which of us could bear to be judged by the unnumbered
+thoughts that course like waves of the sea through our minds and pass
+away unuttered and even unowned by ourselves? To such a test was Byron's
+character, throughout his life, exposed.
+
+Yet, to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or
+lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed his personal
+fascination. His social intercourse was perfectly charming, because
+whoever was with him occupied for the moment all his thoughts and
+feelings. Even with the casual acquaintance of the hour his heart was on
+his lips, ready to give away every secret of his life.
+
+To my assertion that "at no time of his life was Lord Byron a confirmed
+unbeliever" it has been objected that his writings prove the direct
+contrary. But this is to confuse the words "unbeliever" and "sceptic,"
+the former of which implies decision of opinion, and the latter only
+doubt. Many passages in his "Journal" show doubt strongly inclined to
+belief. "Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me there can be
+little doubt." "I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy,
+but could never bear its introduction into Christianity, which appears
+to me essentially founded upon the soul." Here are doubt and unrest, but
+not unbelief.
+
+And so I conclude my labours, undertaken at the wish of my friend, and
+leave his character to the judgement of the world. Let it be remembered
+that through life, with all his faults, he never lost a friend; that
+those about him in his youth, whether as companions, teachers, or
+servants, remained attached to him to the last; that the woman to whom
+he gave the love of his maturer years idolises his name; and that, with
+a single unhappy exception, those who were brought into relations of
+amity with him have felt towards him a kind regard in life, and retain a
+fondness for his memory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JAMES COTTER MORISON
+
+
+Life and Times of St. Bernard
+
+
+     James Augustus Cotter Morison, English essayist and historian,
+     was born in London on April 20, 1832, and was the son of the
+     inventor and proprietor of "Morison's Pills." His first years
+     were spent in Paris, where he laid the foundation of his
+     intimate knowledge of the French people. After graduating at
+     Oxford, he wrote for the "Saturday Review" and other papers,
+     and in 1863 brought out his "Life and Times of Saint Bernard."
+     His other chief work is entitled "The Service of Man: an Essay
+     towards the Religion of the Future," published in 1886. He had
+     projected an historical study of France under Louis XIV., but
+     never completed it. He died on February 26, 1888. Morison was
+     a Positivist, and had many friends in that group, and his rich
+     mind and genial temper endeared him to several of the leading
+     literary men of his time, such as George Meredith, Mark
+     Pattison and Matthew Arnold.
+
+
+_I.--The Early Days of a Useful Life_
+
+
+Saint Bernard was born in 1091, and died in 1153. His life thus almost
+coincides with the central portion of the Middle Ages. He saw the First
+and Second Crusades, the rising liberties of the communes, and the
+beginnings of scholasticism under Abelard. A large Church reformation
+and the noblest period of monasticism occurred in his day, and received
+deep marks of his genius.
+
+He was the son of Tesselin, a wealthy feudal baron of Burgundy,
+remarkable for his courage, piety, justice and modesty. Alith, his
+mother, was earnest, loving and devout, and full of humility and
+charity. His earliest years were passed amid the European fervour of the
+First Crusade; and as he grew from boyhood into youth--at which time his
+mother died--he made choice of the monastic profession. His friends
+vainly tried to tempt him aside into the pursuit of philosophy; but his
+commanding personal ascendancy brought his brothers and friends to
+follow him instead into the religious life. Having assembled a company
+of about thirty chosen spirits, he retired into seclusion with them for
+six months, and then, in 1113, at the age of twenty-two, led them within
+the gates of Citeaux.
+
+This community, founded fifteen years before, and now ruled by Stephen
+Harding, an Englishman from Dorsetshire, was exceedingly austere,
+keeping Saint Benedict's rule literally. Here Bernard's uncompromising
+self-mortification, and his love of, and communion with, Nature, showed
+themselves as the chief characteristics of his noble spirit. "Believe
+me," he said to a pupil, "you will find something far greater in the
+woods than you will in books; stones and trees will teach you that which
+you will never learn from masters." The arrival of Bernard and his
+companions was a turning-point in the history of Citeaux; and the
+monastery had to send out two colonies, to La Ferté and Pontigny, and in
+1115 a third, under Bernard himself, to Clairvaux. Here, in a deep
+umbrageous valley, traversed by a limpid stream, the thirteen pioneers
+built a house little better than a barn. Their privations were great.
+Beech-nuts and roots were at first their main support; but soon the
+sympathy of the surrounding country brought sufficiency for their frugal
+needs. Bernard was consecrated Abbot of Clairvaux by the Bishop of
+Chalons, the renowned William of Champeaux, with whom he established a
+deep friendship.
+
+His labours, anxieties and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to
+the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to
+Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and
+obtained leave to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young
+abbot obeyed his new director absolutely, and lived in a cottage apart
+from the monastery "at leisure for himself and God, and exulting, as it
+were, in the delights of Paradise."
+
+William of St. Thierry and other chroniclers, telling of Clairvaux at
+this time, are fervid in their reverence and praise. "Methought I saw a
+new heaven and a new earth" ... "the golden age seemed to have revisited
+the world" ... "as you descended the hill you could see it was a temple
+of God; the still, silent valley bespoke the unfeigned humility of
+Christ's poor. In this valley full of men, where one and all were
+occupied with their allotted tasks, a silence, deep as that of night,
+prevailed. The sounds of labour, or the chants of the brethren in the
+choral service, were the only exceptions. The order of this silence
+struck such a reverence even into secular persons that they dreaded
+breaking it even by pertinent remarks."
+
+Saint Benedict's rule had reference only to a single religious house;
+but Abbot Stephen of Citeaux united in one compact whole all the
+monasteries which sprang from the parent stock of Citeaux, and
+established an organised system of mutual supervision and control. A
+general chapter was held annually in September, and every Cistercian
+abbot whose monastery was in France, Italy or Germany was bound to
+attend every year; those from Spain, every two years; those from
+Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Portugal, every four years; those from
+Norway, every five years; and those from Syria and Palestine, every
+seven years. The "Charter of Charity," promulgated by this chapter for
+the guidance of the Cistercian Order, is a brief but pregnant document,
+which quite explains its success.
+
+
+_II.--A Great Preacher and Essayist_
+
+
+About 1119, Bernard, who had resumed the duties of abbot, began the
+career of literary and ecclesiastical activity--the wide and impassioned
+correspondence, the series of marvellous sermons--which have won for him
+the title of the Last of the Fathers. His early essays are vigorous, but
+lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed
+from the tender poetry of his later writings. Three years later we find
+Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry,
+who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his
+record of the saint. It was then regarded as natural that a man of
+eminent piety should work miracles; and we ought to accept these
+stories, in their native crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as
+significant. Belonging to the time, as much as feudal castles and mail
+armour do, they form part of a picture of it.
+
+With the exception of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse, and of another to
+Paris, where he preached the "true philosophy" of poverty and contempt
+of the world to the schools distracted by scholastic puzzles, Bernard
+remained a secluded monk of a new and humble Order. But already, in his
+thirty-fifth year, the foundations had been laid of that authority which
+enabled him to quell a widespread schism, to oppose a formidable
+heretic, and to give the strongest impulse to the Second Crusade. His
+power was growing, chiefly by his voluminous correspondence. He wrote to
+persons of all classes on all subjects; his letters afford to the
+historian a wide repertory of indubitable facts, and show what was the
+part played at that time by the spiritual power--that of a divine
+morality and superior culture coming into conflict with, and strong
+enough to withstand, a vigorous barbarism. These epistles are full of
+commonsense and clear, practical advice, and often give us a glimpse of
+the human, as distinct from the ascetic, element in monastic life. They
+show how men could pass pleasant and thoughtful days amid the barbarism
+of the time.
+
+The feudal fighting, plundering and slaying seemed to spectators of that
+time, and doubtless to Bernard also, as fixed and unalterable, part of
+the nature of things. Louis VI., King of France, had spent his life in a
+succession of sieges, forays and devastations, as one feudal lord among
+others often more powerful than he. But generally he was in the right,
+and his enemies in the wrong; he generally fought for justice and mercy,
+and they for power and for plunder. The feudal aristocracy was now at
+the zenith of its power, and the peasant was oppressed by injustice,
+taxation and forced labour. Only the Church, and she only on grand
+occasions, could stand up for the poor; but now the royal power made
+common cause with Church and poor, and was rewarded by a gain in extent
+and in influence. Yet even Louis, whose whole life showed respect for
+the spiritual power, had some disagreement with the Bishop of Paris and
+with the Archbishop of Sens, so that the two ecclesiastics placed the
+kingdom under interdict, and fled to Citeaux. Thence Bernard, with an
+astonishing tone of authority, called upon his king to do justice; and
+Louis was on the point of restoring the stolen property. Pope Honorius,
+however, sent letters to the king, raising the interdict, and thereupon
+Bernard turned his fearless indignation upon the supreme pontiff
+himself. "We speak with sadness; the honour of the Church has been not a
+little blemished in the time of Honorius."
+
+The same intrepidity is shown in Bernard's controversy with the monks of
+Cluny, an abbey of pre-eminent power and moral authority, so that Louis
+had called it the "noblest member of his kingdom." Pontius, its abbot,
+having fallen into ways of pride and extortion, had been induced from
+Rome to resign his abbacy, and to promise a pilgrimage to the Holy Land;
+but soon afterwards he fell upon the monastery with an armed force, and
+ruled there like a robber chieftain. This scandalous outrage was soon
+reported at Rome, and the sacrilegious usurper was excommunicated and
+banished. Bernard seized the moment when laxity of observance of the
+rule had produced its bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and
+warnings, as well to his own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the
+decline of the genuine monastic spirit. The invective of what he calls
+his "Apology" spares neither the softness, nor the ostentation, nor the
+avarice, of religious houses. It condemns even their stately
+sanctuaries. "The walls of your church are resplendent, but the poor are
+not there." It recalls the erring monasteries to real mortification. In
+another early treatise, "The Degrees of Humility and of Pride," the
+modes of pride are exhibited forcibly, and with not a little humour.
+Curiosity, thoughtless mirth, mock humility, and other symptoms of the
+protean vice are painted by a master.
+
+But Bernard's period of retirement was drawing to a close; he was
+becoming indispensable to his contemporaries. In 1128 he was called to
+the Council of Troyes, at which the Order of Knights Templars was
+founded, and wrote a treatise in praise of the "new warfare," called the
+"Exhortation to the Knights of the Temple." He was brought, again, to
+the council convened by Louis VI. at Étampes to decide between the
+claims of the rival Popes in the Papal schism. The council opened by
+unanimous consent that Bernard's judgement should decide their views;
+and without hesitation he pronounced Innocent II. the lawful Pope, and
+Peter Leonis, or Anacletus II., a vain pretender. He bore the same
+testimony, in the presence of Innocent, before Henry I. of England, at
+Chartres, and before Lotharius, the German Emperor, at Liège. The Pope
+visited Clairvaux, where he was moved to tears at the sight of the
+tattered flock of "Christ's poor," then presided at the Council of
+Rheims, 1131, and continued his journey into Italy, still accompanied by
+the Abbot of Clairvaux. Bernard, convinced that the cause of Innocent
+was the cause of justice and religion, set no bounds to his advocacy of
+it in letters to kings, bishops and cities. Such was now the fame of his
+sanctity that on his approach to Milan the whole population came out to
+meet him.
+
+He returned to Clairvaux in 1135, where he found the community all
+living in Christian amity, and again retired to a cottage in the
+neighbourhood for rest and reflection. "Bernard was in the heavens,"
+says Arnold of Bonnevaux; "but they compelled him to come down and
+listen to their sublunary business." The buildings were too small for
+their constantly growing numbers, and a convenient site had been found
+in an open plain farther down the valley. Bishops, barons and merchants
+came to the help of the good work; and the new abbey and church rose
+quickly.
+
+To Bernard's forty-fifth year belong the "Sermons on the Canticles." In
+the auditorium, or talking-room of the monastery, the abbot, surrounded
+by his white-cowled monks, delivered his spiritual discourses. A strange
+company it was: the old, stooping monk and the young beginner, the lord
+and the peasant, listening together to the man whose message they
+believed came from another world.
+
+
+_III.--St. Bernard and the Second Crusade_
+
+
+In the meanwhile, the affairs of the Papacy had not improved--Innocent
+was still an exile from his see. Worst of all, the monastery of Monte
+Casino, the head and type of Western monarchism, had declared for
+Anacletus, the anti-Pope; and in 1137 Bernard set out for Italy, visited
+Innocent at Viterbo, and proceeded to Rome. As he advanced, Anacletus
+was rapidly deserted by his supporters, and shortly afterwards solved
+the difficulty by his death. So ended the schism; and Bernard left Rome
+within five days after finishing his work. With broken health and
+depressed spirits he returned to Clairvaux. His brother Gerard, who had
+shared his journey, died soon after they reached home; and Bernard's
+discourse on that event is one of the most remarkable funeral sermons on
+record. The monk had not ceased to be a loving and impassioned man.
+
+Towards the end of 1139, the heresies of Peter Abelard, brought to his
+notice by William of St. Thierry, called the Abbot of Clairvaux again
+into public controversy. He implored Pope and cardinals to stay the
+progress of a second Arius. Abelard was at this time sixty-one years
+old, Bernard's senior by twelve years, and was without a rival in the
+schools. The two men were such that they could not but oppose one
+another; they looked at the shield from opposite sides; reconciliation,
+however desirable, could be only superficial. Bernard met Abelard, and
+"admonished him secretly." He well knew to what epoch this subtle mind,
+with its "human and philosophic reasons," was about to lead; his quick
+ear caught the distant thunder-roll of free inquiry. The heresies of
+Peter de Bruis and the rebellion of Arnold of Brescia had already marked
+the beginning of the great change. At last Bernard unwillingly yielded
+to Abelard's challenge to a public dispute at Sens; but his speech had
+hardly begun when Abelard rose in his place, refused to hear more, and
+appealed to Rome. He never reached Rome, but remained a penitent monk at
+Cluny, reconciled to his great antagonist.
+
+Bernard was fifty-five years of age, and old for his years, when the
+Pope delegated to him the office of preaching the Second Crusade. Pale
+and attenuated to a degree which seemed almost supernatural, his
+contemporaries discovered something in the mere glance of his eyes which
+filled them with wonder and awe. When his words of love, aspiration and
+sublime self-sacrifice reached their ears, they were no longer masters
+of themselves or of their feelings. A great meeting had been convened by
+Pope and king at Vézelay, on Easter, 1146. Bernard, attended by the
+king, spoke from a platform erected on a hill; there was a shout of
+"Crosses! Crosses!" and the preacher scattered a sheaf of these badges
+among the people. The spiritual mind of Europe had spoken through
+Bernard, and now the military mind spoke through Louis VII. He called
+upon France to destroy the enemies of God. Then Bernard preached the
+Crusade through France and Germany, welcomed everywhere by almost
+unparalleled enthusiasm and attended by miraculous signs.
+
+Bernard was shortly to die; but he had first to bear the trial of being
+reviled as the author of the calamities which had overtaken the Crusade.
+Why had he preached it and prophesied success if this was to be the
+event? A murmur of wrath against him was heard from the broad population
+of Europe. It was during this dark time that he began his largest
+literary work, the five books "De Consideratione," addressed to his
+disciple, Eugenius III., a powerful and elaborate plea against the
+excessive centralization of all administration and decisions into the
+hands of the Papal Court. Bernard called this period "the season of
+calamities." He discovered that his secretary had been forging his name
+and used his authority to recommend men and causes most unworthy of his
+patronage. His health was such that he could take no solid food; sleep
+had left him; his debility was extreme. Pope Eugenius died in July,
+1153; and Bernard had no wish to stay behind. "I am no longer of this
+world," he said; and on August 20 he passed away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN MORLEY
+
+
+Life of Richard Cobden
+
+
+     In an age when many have gained the double distinction of
+     eminence in statesmanship and in letters, the name of Lord
+     Morley stands out as that of a man so illustrious in both
+     provinces that it is hard to decide in which he has earned the
+     greater fame. We are here concerned with him as a brilliant
+     English man of letters. The "Life of Cobden" was published in
+     1881, when John Morley was in the height of his literary
+     activity. Born at Blackburn on December 24, 1838, and educated
+     at Cheltenham and Oxford, he had entered journalism, had
+     edited the "Pall Mall Gazette" and the "Fortnightly Review,"
+     and had followed up his first book--a monograph on Burke--by a
+     remarkable study of Voltaire, and by his work entitled "On
+     Compromise." Political preoccupations drew him somewhat away
+     from literature after 1881; but in 1901 he published his book
+     on Cromwell, which was followed two years later by the
+     monumental "Life of Gladstone."
+
+
+_I.--On the Road_
+
+
+Heyshott is a hamlet in a sequestered corner of West Sussex, not many
+miles from the Hampshire border. Here, in an old farmhouse, known as
+Dunford, Richard Cobden was born on June 3, 1804. His ancestors were
+yeomen of the soil, and, it is said, with every appearance of truth,
+that the name can be traced in the annals of the district as far back as
+the fourteenth century.
+
+Cobden's father, a man of soft and affectionate disposition, but wholly
+without the energy of affairs, met with financial disaster in 1814, and
+relatives charged themselves with the maintenance of his dozen children.
+Richard was sent by his mother's brother-in-law, a merchant in London,
+to a school in Yorkshire. Here he remained for five years, a grim and
+desolate time, of which he could never afterwards endure to speak. In
+1819 he was received as a clerk in his uncle's warehouse in Old Change;
+and at the age of twenty-one he was advanced from the drudgery of the
+warehouse to the glories of the road. What made the life of a traveller
+specially welcome to Cobden was the gratification that it offered to the
+master-passion of his life, an insatiable desire to know the affairs of
+the world.
+
+In 1826, his employer failed, and for some months Cobden had to take
+unwelcome holiday. In September he found a situation, and again set out
+on the road with his samples of muslin and calico prints. Two years
+afterwards, in 1828, he and two friends determined to begin business on
+their own account. They arranged with a firm of Manchester
+calico-printers to sell goods on commission; and so profitable was the
+enterprise that in 1831 the partners determined to print their own
+goods, and took an old factory at Sabden in Lancashire.
+
+Cobden's imagination was struck by the busy life of the county with
+which his name was destined to be so closely bound up. "Manchester," he
+writes with enthusiasm, "is the place for all men of bargain and
+business." His pen acquires a curiously exulting animation as he
+describes the bustle of its streets, the quaintness of its dialect, the
+abundance of its capital, and the sturdy veterans with a hundred
+thousand pounds in each pocket, who might be seen in the evening smoking
+clay pipes and calling for brandy-and-water in the bar-parlours of
+homely taverns. He prospered rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but
+it is at Sabden, not at Manchester, that we see the first monument of
+his public spirit--a little stone school-house, built as the result of
+an agitation led by him with as much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw
+afterwards into great affairs of state.
+
+Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with
+surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and
+wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide
+interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. His first
+motion was towards his own intellectual improvement, and early in life
+he perceived that for his purposes no preparation could be so effective
+as that of travel. In 1833 and 1834 he visited the Continent; in 1835,
+the United States; and in 1836 and 1837 he travelled to Egypt, the
+Levant, and Turkey.
+
+In the interval between the two latter journeys he made what was
+probably his first public speech, at a meeting to further the demand of
+a corporation for Manchester. The speech is described as a signal
+failure. "He was nervous," says the chronicler, "confused, and in fact
+practically broke down, and the chairman had to apologise for him."
+
+He was much more successful in two pamphlets he published at this time,
+"England, Ireland, and America," and "Russia," in which he opened the
+long struggle he was to wage against the restriction of commerce, and
+the policy of intervention in European feuds. It is no strained
+pretension to say that already Richard Cobden, the Manchester
+manufacturer, was fully possessed of the philosophic gift of feeling
+about society as a whole, and thinking about the problems of society in
+an ordered connection.
+
+
+_II.--The Corn Laws_
+
+
+In 1837, Cobden was invited to become candidate for the borough of
+Stockport. Although he threw himself into the struggle with all his
+energy, on the day of election he was found to be at the bottom of the
+poll. Four years later he was returned for Stockport by a triumphant
+majority. But in 1841 he was no longer a rising young politician; he had
+become the leading spirit of a national agitation.
+
+In October, 1838, a band of seven men met at an hotel in Manchester, and
+formed a new Anti-Corn-Law Association. They were speedily joined by
+others, including Cobden, who from this moment began to take a prominent
+part in all counsel and action. The abolition of the duties on corn was
+the single object of Cobden's political energy during the seven years
+that followed, and their destruction was the one finished triumph with
+which his name is associated.
+
+After the rejection in the following year by a large majority of Mr.
+Villiers' motion that the House of Commons should consider the act
+regulating the importation of corn, the association developed into a
+League of Federated Anti-Corn-Law Associations in different towns and
+districts. The repealers began the work of propagandism by sending out a
+band of economic missionaries, who were not long in discovering how
+hardly an old class interest dies. In many districts neither law nor
+equity gave them protection. The members of the league were described in
+the London Press as unprincipled schemers, as commercial and political
+swindlers, and as revolutionary emissaries, whom all well-disposed
+persons ought to assist the authorities in putting down.
+
+Before he entered Parliament, Cobden re-settled his business by entering
+into partnership with his brother Frederick, and married (May, 1840) a
+young Welsh lady, Miss Catherine Ann Williams. In Parliament Cobden was
+instantly successful. His early speeches produced that singular and
+profound effect which is perceived in English deliberative assemblies
+when a speaker leaves party recriminations, abstract argument, and
+commonplaces of sentiment, in order to inform his hearers of telling
+facts in the condition of the nation.
+
+But Cobden's parliamentary work was at this time less important than his
+work as an agitator. If in one sense the Corn Laws did not seem a
+promising theme for a popular agitation, they were excellently fitted to
+bring out Cobden's peculiar strength. It was not passion, but
+persuasiveness, to which we must look for the secret of his oratorical
+success. Cobden made his way to men's hearts by the union which they saw
+in him of simplicity, earnestness, and conviction, with a singular
+facility of exposition. Then men were attracted by his mental alacrity,
+by the instant readiness with which he turned round to grapple with a
+new objection.
+
+His patience in acquiring and shaping matter for argument was surpassed
+by his inexhaustible patience in dealing with the mental infirmities of
+those whom it was his business to persuade. He was wholly free from the
+unmeasured anger against human stupidity which is itself one of the most
+provoking forms of that stupidity.
+
+
+_III.--Cobden and Bright_
+
+
+In the autumn of 1841, Cobden and Bright made that solemn compact which
+was the beginning of an affectionate and noble friendship that lasted
+without a cloud or a jar until Cobden's death.
+
+"On the day when Mr. Cobden called upon me," said Bright, "I was in the
+depths of grief, I might almost say of despair; for the light and
+sunshine of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth
+of my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too brief
+happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden
+called upon me as a friend, and addressed me, as you might suppose, with
+words of condolence. After a time he looked up, and said, 'There are
+thousands of houses in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and
+children are dying of hunger. Now,' he said, 'when the first paroxysm of
+your grief is past, I would advise you to come with me, and we will
+never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.' I accepted his invitation."
+
+Although the agitation for repeal was in Cobden's mind only a part of
+the broad aims of peace and social and moral progress for which he
+strove, he was too practical to put forth his thoughts on too many
+subjects at once. He confined his enthusiasm to repeal until repeal was
+accomplished. But his efforts left him no time to attend to his own
+business, which was falling to pieces under the management of his
+brother Frederick. In the autumn of 1845 he felt compelled to give up
+his work as an agitator on account of his private affairs, but Bright
+and one or two friends procured the money that sufficed to tide over the
+emergency.
+
+The cause was now on the eve of victory. The autumn of 1845 was the
+wettest in the memory of man. For long the downpour never ceased by
+night or by day; it was the rain that rained away the Corn Laws. The bad
+harvest and the Irish potato famine brought the long hesitation of Sir
+Robert Peel to an end. Soon after the opening of the session of 1846, he
+announced his proposals.
+
+The repeal of the Corn Laws was to be total, but not immediate. For
+three years there was to be a lowered duty on a sliding scale, and then
+the ports were to be opened entirely. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" wrote Cobden to
+his wife on June 26, "the Corn Bill is law, and now my work is done!"
+
+
+_IV.--In the Cause of Peace_
+
+
+Cobden was now absent from England for fourteen months, travelling on
+the Continent. His reception was everywhere that of a great discoverer
+in a science which interests the bulk of mankind much more keenly than
+any other, the science of wealth. People looked on him as a man who had
+found out a momentous secret. He had interviews with the Pope, with
+three or four kings, with ambassadors, and with all the prominent
+statesmen. He never lost an opportunity of speaking a word in season.
+They were not all converted, but they all listened to him; and they all
+taught him something, whether they chose to learn anything from him in
+return or not.
+
+On his return he joined with Bright in an agitation for financial and
+parliamentary reform. While he believed in an extension of the franchise
+as a means of attaining the objects he had in view, he was essentially
+an economical, a moral, and a social reformer. He was never an
+enthusiast for mere reform in the machinery. He made it his special
+mission to advocate financial reform, and left the advocacy for
+franchise extension very largely to his colleague.
+
+Retrenchment was the keynote of the financial reform urged by Cobden;
+and retrenchment involved the furtherance of international peace and the
+reduction of British armaments by means of the abandonment of the policy
+of intervention in European disputes and the policy of "clinging to
+colonies," with the consequent expenditure upon colonial defence. From
+1846 to 1851 Lord Palmerston was at the Foreign Office, and was
+incessantly active in the affairs of half the countries of Europe. To
+this policy of interference Cobden offered resolute opposition. He was
+especially energetic in protesting against the lending to Austria and
+Russia of money that was in effect borrowed to repay the cost of the
+oppressive war against Hungary. It is impossible not to admire the
+courage, the sound sense, and the elevation with which Cobden thus
+strove to diffuse the doctrine of moral responsibility in connection
+with the use of capital.
+
+In 1852, a Protectionist Ministry under Lord Derby came into power, and
+the Anti-Corn Law League was revived. The danger, however, soon passed
+away; the Derby Ministry made no attempt to interfere with freedom of
+trade, and ere the year ended gave place to the Aberdeen Ministry.
+Cobden's policy of peace and retrenchment, however, became more and more
+unpopular. Cobden's urgent feeling about war was not in any degree
+sentimental. He opposed war because war and the preparation for it
+consumed the resources which were required for the improvement of the
+temporal condition of the population. But in the inflamed condition of
+public opinion his arguments were powerless.
+
+The invasion panic of 1853 was followed in 1854 by the Crimean War, and
+in opposing that war Cobden and Bright found themselves absolutely
+alone.
+
+"The British nation," said Lord Palmerston, "is unanimous in this
+matter. I say unanimous, for I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright, and Co. for
+anything." His estimate was perfectly correct; Cobden and Bright had the
+whole world against them. The moral fortitude, like the political
+wisdom, of these two strong men, stands out with a splendour that
+already recalls the great historic types of statesmanship and
+patriotism.
+
+
+_V.--Cobden as Treaty-Maker_
+
+
+In 1857, Cobden was compelled to retire for a time from politics. He
+vigorously opposed the Chinese War, and succeeded in defeating Lord
+Palmerston's Government in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, with
+his usual acuteness and courage, at once dissolved parliament, and in
+the General Election his victory was complete. The Manchester School was
+routed. Cobden, who contested Huddersfield, was heavily beaten; and at
+Manchester itself Bright was at the bottom of the poll. Cobden went to
+his home at Dunford, in Sussex, and remained there nearly two years.
+Once more he was afflicted with financial trouble. An unfortunate land
+speculation at Manchester, and certain investments in American
+railroads, had again brought him into difficulties, from which he was
+ultimately rescued by a munificent gift of £40,000 from subscribers
+whose names he never knew.
+
+The General Election of 1859 was held while Cobden was absent in the
+United States, and on his return he found that he had been chosen member
+for Rochdale. To his surprise, he also received from his old enemy,
+Palmerston, an offer of the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Cobden,
+who had consistently refrained from accepting any office, courteously
+declined.
+
+But he was none the less able to render a great service to the new
+Government. Mr. Bright, in a parliamentary speech, incidentally asked
+why, instead of lavishing the national substance in armaments, they did
+not go to the French Emperor and attempt to persuade him to allow his
+people to trade freely with ours. The idea of a commercial treaty
+occurred to M. Chevalier on reading the speech, and he wrote in this
+sense to Cobden, who was strongly impressed by the notion. He opened his
+mind to Gladstone, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, as the
+outcome, Cobden went to Paris in the autumn of 1859 as unofficial
+negotiator of a treaty.
+
+The negotiation was long and tedious. Cobden had to convert the emperor
+to his views, and to await the reconciliation of the various French
+interests that were opposed to freedom of trade. It was not until
+November, 1860, that Cobden's labours were concluded. England cleared
+her tariff of protection, and reduced the duties which were retained for
+revenue on the two French staples of wine and brandy. France, on her
+part, replaced prohibition by a series of moderate duties.
+
+Palmerston offered Cobden a choice between a baronetcy and a Privy
+Councillorship as a reward for his services. He replied begging
+permission most respectfully to deny himself the honour. "An
+indisposition to accept a title," he wrote, "being in my case rather an
+affair of feeling than of reason, I will not dwell further on the
+subject."
+
+
+_VI.--The Last Days of Cobden_
+
+
+When Cobden returned to England his public position had more than
+recovered the authority and renown which had been seriously impaired by
+his unpopular attitude on the Russian war. But he and Bright were soon
+involved in an almost angrier conflict than before with the upper and
+middle classes, on account of their championship of the North in the
+American Civil War.
+
+The remaining years of his life were largely spent in systematic
+onslaughts upon the policy of Lord Palmerston, and in opposition to
+military expenditure. It was with the purpose of resisting a Canadian
+fortification scheme that he made his last journey to London in March,
+1865. On his arrival he was seized by a sharp attack of asthma;
+bronchitis supervened, and it became evident that he would not recover.
+On the morning of Sunday, April 2, Bright took his place by the side of
+the dying man. As the bells were ringing for the morning service the
+mists of death began to settle heavily on his brow, and his ardent,
+courageous, and brotherly spirit soon passed tranquilly away.
+
+He was buried by the side of his son in the little churchyard at
+Lavington, on the slope of the hill among the pine-woods. "Before we
+left the house," Bright has told us, "standing by me, and leaning on the
+coffin, was his sorrowing daughter, one whose attachment to her father
+seems to have been a passion scarcely equalled among daughters. She
+said, 'My father used to like me very much to read to him the Sermon on
+the Mount. His own life was, to a large, extent, a sermon based upon
+that best, that greatest of all sermons. His was a life of perpetual
+self-sacrifice.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+SAMUEL PEPYS
+
+
+Diary
+
+
+     Samuel Pepys, author of the incomparable "Diary," was born
+     either in London or at Brampton, Huntingdonshire, on February
+     23, 1632-3, son of John Pepys, a London tailor. By the
+     influence of the Earl of Sandwich, he was entered in the
+     public service. Beginning as a clerk in the Exchequer, he was
+     soon transferred to the Naval Department, and rose to the high
+     office of secretary to the Admiralty. His services were
+     interrupted for a time, on the baseless suspicion that he was
+     a Catholic, during the panic about the supposed "Popish Plot,"
+     but he was returned to his charge, and held it until the
+     accession of William and Mary. Pepys was a man of very wide
+     interests. He was a member of parliament, and became president
+     of the Royal Society. He was an accomplished musician and a
+     keen critic of painting, architecture, and the drama. But it
+     is as a connoisseur of human nature that Pepys is known
+     to-day. The "Diary" extended over the ten years, January,
+     1659-60, to May, 1669; it closed when he was thirty-seven
+     years old, and he lived thirty-four years afterwards. The
+     manuscript, written in shorthand, fills six volumes, which
+     repose at Magdalene College, Cambridge. It was deciphered in
+     1825, when it was published as "Memoirs of Samuel Pepys,
+     comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev.
+     J. Smith, and a Selection of his Private Correspondence,
+     edited by Lord Braybrooke." Pepys died on May 26, 1703.
+
+
+_I.--"God Bless King Charles"_
+
+
+_January_ 1, 1659-60. Blessed be God, at the end of last year I was in
+very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of
+cold. I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife and servant, Jane, and no
+other in family than us three.
+
+The condition of the state was thus: the Rump, after being disturbed by
+my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again. The officers of the
+army all forced to yield. Lawson still lies in the river, and Monk is
+with his army in Scotland. The New Common Council of the City do speak
+very high; and had sent to Monk their sword-bearer, to acquaint him with
+their desires for a free and full parliament, which is at present the
+desires, and the hopes, and the expectations of all. My own private
+condition very handsome, and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor;
+besides my goods of my house, and my office, which at present is
+somewhat certain.
+
+_March 9, 1660._ To my lord at his lodging, and came to Westminster with
+him in the coach; and I telling him that I was willing and ready to go
+with him to sea, he agreed that I should. I hear that it is resolved
+privately that a treaty be offered with the king.
+
+_May 1._ To-day I hear they were very merry at Deal, setting up the
+king's flag upon one of their maypoles, and drinking his health upon
+their knees in the streets, and firing the guns, which the soldiers of
+the castle threatened, but durst not oppose.
+
+_May 2._ Welcome news of the parliament's votes yesterday, which will be
+remembered for the happiest May-day that hath been many a year to
+England. The king's letter was read in the house, wherein he submits
+himself and all things to them. The house, upon reading the letter,
+ordered £50,000 to be forthwith provided to send to his majesty for his
+present supply. The City of London have put out a declaration, wherein
+they do disclaim their owning any other government but that of a king,
+lords, and commons.
+
+_May 3._ This morning my lord showed me the king's declaration to be
+communicated to the fleet. I went up to the quarter-deck with my lord
+and the commanders, and there read the papers; which done, the seamen
+did all of them cry out, "God bless King Charles!" with the greatest joy
+imaginable. After dinner to the rest of the ships quite through the
+fleet.
+
+_May 11._ This morning we began to pull down all the state's arms in the
+fleet, having first sent to Dover for painters to come and set up the
+king's. After dinner we set sail from the Downs, but dropped anchor
+again over against Dover Castle.
+
+_May 12._ My lord gave order for weighing anchor, which we did, and
+sailed all day.
+
+_May 14._ In the morning the Hague was clearly to be seen by us. The
+weather bad; we were sadly washed when we come near the shore, it being
+very hard to land there.
+
+_May 23._ Come infinity of people on board from the king to go along
+with him. The king, with the two dukes and Queen of Bohemia, Princess
+Royal, and Prince of Orange, come on board, where I, in their coming in,
+kissed the king's, queen's, and princess's hands, having done the other
+before. Infinite shooting of the runs, and that in a disorder on
+purpose, which was better than if it had been otherwise. We weighed
+anchor, and with a fresh gale and most happy weather we set sail for
+England.
+
+_May 24._ Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the stockings on
+and wide canons that I bought at Hague. Extraordinary press of noble
+company, and great mirth all day.
+
+_May 25._ By the morning we were come close to the land, and everybody
+made ready to get on shore. I spoke to the Duke of York about business,
+who called me Pepys by name, and upon my desire did promise me his
+future favour. The king went in my lord's barge with the two dukes, and
+was received by General Monk with all love and respect at his entrance
+upon the land of Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past
+imagination.
+
+1660-1661. At the end of the last and the beginning of this year, I do
+live in one of the houses belonging to the Navy Office, as one of the
+principal officers; my family being myself, my wife, Jane, Will Hewer,
+and Wayneman, my girl's brother. Myself in constant good health, and in
+a most handsome and thriving condition. Blessed be God for it. The king
+settled, and loved of all.
+
+
+_II.--The Plague_
+
+
+_July 31, 1665._ I ended this month with the greatest joy that I ever
+did any in my life, because I have spent the greatest part of it with
+abundance of joy, and honour, and pleasant journeys, and brave
+entertainments, and without cost of money. We end this month after the
+greatest glut of content that ever I had, only under some difficulty
+because of the plague, which grows mightily upon us, the last week being
+about 1,700 or 1,800 of the plague. My Lord Sandwich at sea with a fleet
+of about one hundred sail, to the northward, expecting De Ruyter, or the
+Dutch East India fleet.
+
+_August 8._ To my office a little, and then to the Duke of Albemarle's
+about some business. The streets empty all the way now, even in London,
+which is a sad sight. To Westminster Hall, where talking, hearing very
+sad stories. So home through the City again, wishing I may have taken no
+ill in going; but I will go, I think, no more thither. The news of De
+Ruyter's coming home is certain, and told to the great disadvantage of
+our fleet; but it cannot be helped.
+
+_August 10._ To the office, where we sat all morning; in great trouble
+to see the bill this week rise so high, to above 4,000 in all, and of
+them above 3,000 of the plague. Home to draw over anew my will, which I
+had bound myself by oath to dispatch by to-morrow night; the town
+growing so unhealthy that a man cannot depend upon living two days.
+
+_August 12._ The people die so that now it seems they are fain to carry
+the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in.
+And my lord mayor commands people to be within at nine at night, that
+the sick may have liberty to go abroad for air. There is one also dead
+out of one of our ships at Deptford, which troubles us mightily. I am
+told, too, that a wife of one of the grooms at court is dead at
+Salisbury, so that the king and queen are speedily to be all gone to
+Milton. So God preserve us!
+
+_August 16._ To the Exchange, where I have not been in a great while.
+But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people, and
+very few upon the 'Change. Jealous of every door that one sees shut up
+lest it should be the plague; and about two shops in three, if not more,
+generally shut up.
+
+_August 22._ I walked to Greenwich, in my way seeing a coffin with a
+dead body therein, dead of the plague, which was carried out last night,
+and the parish have not appointed anybody to bury it; but only set a
+watch there all day and night, that nobody should go thither or come
+thence, this disease making us more cruel to one another than we are to
+dogs.
+
+_August 25._ This day I am told that Dr. Burnett, my physician, is this
+morning dead of the plague, which is strange, his man dying so long ago,
+and his house this month open again. Now himself dead. Poor, unfortunate
+man!
+
+_August 30._ I went forth and walked towards Moorfields to see (God
+forgive my presumption!) whether I could see any dead corpse going to
+the grave. But, Lord! how everybody looks, and discourse in the street
+is of death and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the
+town is like a place distressed and forsaken.
+
+_September 3 (Lord's Day)._ Up; and put on my coloured silk suit very
+fine, and my new periwig, bought a good while since, but durst not wear,
+because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a
+wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwigs,
+for nobody will dare to buy any hair, for fear of the infection, that it
+has been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague. My Lord
+Brouncker, Sir J. Minnes, and I up to the vestry at the desire of the
+justices of the peace, in order to the doing something for the keeping
+of the plague from growing; but, Lord! to consider the madness of the
+people of the town, who will, because they are forbid, come in crowds
+along with the dead corpses to see them buried.
+
+_September 6._ To London, to pack up more things; and there I saw fires
+burning in the streets, as it is through the whole city, by the lord
+mayor's order.
+
+_September 14._ To the Duke of Albemarle, where I find a letter from my
+Lord Sandwich, of the fleet's meeting with about eighteen more of the
+Dutch fleet, and his taking of most of them; and the messenger says they
+had taken three after the letter was sealed, which being twenty-one, and
+those took the other day, is forty-five sail, some of which are good,
+and others rich ships. Having taken a copy of my lord's letter, I away
+toward the 'Change, the plague being all thereabouts. Here my news was
+highly welcome, and I did wonder to see the 'Change so full--I believe
+two hundred people. And, Lord! to see how I did endeavour to talk with
+as few as I could, there being now no shutting up of houses infected,
+that to be sure we do converse and meet with people that have the plague
+upon them. I spent some thought on the occurrences of this day, giving
+matter for as much content on one hand and melancholy on another, as any
+day in all my life. For the first, the finding of my money and plate all
+safe at London; the hearing of this good news after so great a despair
+of my lord's doing anything this year; and the decrease of 500 and more,
+which is the first decrease we have yet had in the sickness since it
+begun. Then, on the other side, my finding that though the bill in
+general is abated, yet in the City within the walls it is increased; my
+meeting dead corpses, carried close to me at noonday in Fenchurch
+Street.
+
+One of my own watermen, that carried me daily, fell sick as soon as he
+had landed me on Friday last, when I had been all night upon the water,
+and is now dead of the plague. And, lastly, that both my servants, W.
+Hewer and Tom Edwards, have lost their fathers of the plague this week,
+do put me into great apprehension of melancholy, and with good reason.
+
+_November 15._ The plague, blessed be God! is decreased 400, making the
+whole this week but 1,300 and odd, for which the Lord be praised!
+
+_December 25 (Christmas Day)._ To church in the morning, and there saw a
+wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day, and the young
+people so merry with one another, and strange to see what delight we
+married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition,
+every man and woman gazing and smiling at them.
+
+_December 31._ Thus ends this year, to my great joy, in this manner. I
+have raised my estate from £1,300 in this year to £4,400. I have got
+myself greater interest, I think, by my diligence, and my employments
+increased by that of treasurer for Tangier and surveyor of the victuals.
+It is true we have gone through great melancholy because of the plague,
+and I put to great charges by it, by keeping my family long at Woolwich,
+and myself and my clerks at Greenwich, and a maid at London; but I hope
+the king will give us some satisfaction for that. But now the plague is
+abated almost to nothing, and I intending to get to London as fast as I
+can. To our great joy the town fills apace, and shops begin to be open
+again.
+
+
+_III.--The Great Fire_
+
+
+_September 2, 1666._ Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get
+things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three in
+the morning to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose,
+and slipped on my nightgown, and went to her window, and thought it to
+be on the back side of Mark Lane at the farthest, and so went to bed
+again. About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at
+the window, and saw the fire not so much as it was, and further off.
+By-and-by Jane comes and tells me that above 300 houses have been burned
+down, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge.
+So I made myself ready, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon
+one of the high places; and there I did see the houses at that end of
+the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other
+side of the bridge. So down with my heart full of trouble to the
+lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the
+king's baker's house in Pudding Lane.
+
+So I down to the waterside, and there got a boat, and through bridge,
+and there saw a lamentable fire. Everybody endeavouring to remove their
+goods, and flinging into the river, or bringing them into lighters that
+lay off; poor people staying in their houses till the very fire touched
+them, and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stairs
+by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I
+perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows
+and balconies till they burned their wings and fell down. Having staid,
+and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my
+sight, endeavouring to quench it, I to White Hall, and there up to the
+king's closet in the chapel, where people come about me, and I did give
+them an account which dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the
+king.
+
+So I was called for, and did tell the king and Duke of York what I saw,
+and that unless his majesty did command houses to be pulled down,
+nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the king
+commanded me to go to my lord mayor from him and command him to spare no
+houses, but to pull down before the fire every way. Meeting with Captain
+Cocke, I in his coach, which he lent me, to Paul's, and there walked
+along Watling Street, as well as I could, every creature coming away
+loaded with goods to save, and here and there sick people carried away
+in beds. At last met my lord mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent.
+To the king's message, he cried, like a fainting woman, "Lord! what can
+I do? I am spent; people will not obey me. I have been pulling down
+houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." So I walked
+home, seeing people almost all distracted, and no manner of means used
+to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full
+of matter for burning, as pitch and tar in Thames Street, and warehouses
+of oil and wines and brandy.
+
+Soon as I dined, I away, and walked through the City, the streets full
+of people, and horses and carts loaden with goods. To Paul's Wharf,
+where I took boat, and saw the fire was now got further, both below and
+above bridge, and no likelihood of stopping it. Met with the king and
+Duke of York in their barge. Their order was only to pull down houses
+apace; but little was or could be done, the fire coming so fast. Having
+seen as much as I could, I away to White Hall by appointment, and there
+walked to St. James's Park, and there met my wife, and Creed and Wood
+and his wife, and walked to my boat; and upon the water again, and to
+the fire, still increasing, and the wind great. So near the fire as we
+could for smoke, and all over the Thames you were almost burned with a
+shower of fire-drops.
+
+When you could endure no more upon the water, we to a little ale-house
+on the Bankside, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the
+fire grow; and as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners
+and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could
+see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame,
+not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. We stayed till, it being
+darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to
+the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of
+above a mile long; it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and
+all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and
+the cracking of houses at their ruin. So home with a sad heart.
+
+
+_IV.--Of the Badness of the Government_
+
+
+_April 26, 1667._ To White Hall, and there saw the Duke of Albemarle,
+who is not well, and do grow crazy. Then I took a turn with Mr. Evelyn,
+with whom I walked two hours; talking of the badness of the government,
+where nothing but wickedness, and wicked men and women command the king;
+that it is not in his nature to gainsay anything that relates to his
+pleasures; that much of it arises from the sickliness of our ministers
+of state, who cannot be about him as the idle companions are, and
+therefore he gives way to the young rogues; and then from the negligence
+of the clergy, that a bishop shall never be seen about him, as the King
+of France hath always; that the king would fain have some of the same
+gang to be lord treasurer, which would be yet worse.
+
+And Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the court
+lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's
+coming in. He tells me that now the Countess Castlemaine do carry all
+before her. He did tell me of the ridiculous humour of our king and
+knights of the Garter the other day, who, whereas heretofore their robes
+were only to be worn during their ceremonies, these, as proud of their
+coats, did wear them all day till night, and then rode in the park with
+them on. Nay, he tells me he did see my Lord Oxford and Duke of Monmouth
+in a hackney coach with two footmen in the park, with their robes on,
+which is a most scandalous thing, so as all gravity may be said to be
+lost among us.
+
+
+_V.--The End of the Diary_
+
+
+_November 30, 1668._ My wife after dinner went the first time abroad in
+her coach, calling on Roger Pepys, and visiting Mrs. Creed and my cousin
+Turner. Thus endeth this month with very good content, but most
+expenseful to my purse on things of pleasure, having furnished my wife's
+closet and the best chamber, and a coach and horses that ever I knew in
+the world; and I am put into the greatest condition of outward state
+that ever I was in, or hoped ever to be. But my eyes are come to that
+condition that I am not able to work. God do His will in it!
+
+_December 2._ Abroad with my wife, the first time that ever I rode in my
+own coach, which do make my heart rejoice and praise God. So she and I
+to the king's playhouse, and there saw "The Usurper," a pretty good
+play. Then we to White Hall; where my wife stayed while I up to the
+duchess, to speak with the Duke of York; and here saw all the ladies,
+and heard the silly discourse of the king with his people about him.
+
+_December 21._ To the Duke's playhouse, and saw "Macbeth." The king and
+court there, and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine. And my
+wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never
+thought so much before, and so did Talbot and W. Hewer. The king and
+Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me; but it vexed me to see Moll
+Davis in the box over the king and my Lady Castlemaine, look down upon
+the king, and he up to her. And so did my Lady Castlemaine once; but
+when she saw Moll Davis she looked like fire, which troubled me.
+
+_May 31, 1669._ Up very betimes, and continued all the morning examining
+my accounts, in order to the fitting myself to go abroad beyond sea,
+which the ill-condition of my eyes and my neglect hath kept me
+behindhand in. Had another meeting with the Duke of York at White Hall
+on yesterday's work, and made a good advance; and so being called by my
+wife, we to the park, Mary Batelier and a Dutch gentleman, a friend of
+hers, being with us. Thence to "The World's End," a drinking house by
+the park; and there merry, and so home late.
+
+And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own
+eyes in the keeping of my journal, having done now so long as to undo my
+eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore
+resolve, from this time forward to have it kept by my people in
+longhand, and must be contented to set down no more than is fit for them
+and all the world to know. And so I betake myself to that course, which
+is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all
+the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare
+me! S.P.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PLINY THE YOUNGER
+
+
+Letters
+
+
+     Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, or Pliny the Younger, was
+     born in 62 A.D. at Novum Comum, in the neighbourhood of Lake
+     Como, in the north of Italy. His family was honourable,
+     wealthy, and able, and his uncle, Pliny the Elder, was the
+     encyclopaedic student and author of the famous "Natural
+     History." On his father's death, young Pliny, a boy of nine,
+     was adopted by the elder Pliny, educated in literary studies
+     and as an advocate, and was a notable pleader before his
+     twentieth year. Through a succession of offices he rose to the
+     consulship in the year 100, and afterwards continued to hold
+     important appointments. He was twice married, but left no
+     children. The date of his death is unknown. The "Letters of
+     Pliny the Younger" are valuable as throwing light upon the
+     life of the Roman people; but they are also models of Latin
+     style, and have all the charm of their author's upright,
+     urbane, and tolerant character. His epistle to the Emperor
+     Trajan with regard to the Christians is of peculiar interest.
+
+
+_To Cornelius Tacitus_
+
+
+You will certainly laugh, and well may you laugh, when I tell you that
+your old friend has turned sportsman, and has captured three magnificent
+boars. "What," you say, "Pliny?" Yes, I myself, though without giving up
+my much loved inactivity. While I sat at the nets, you might have found
+me holding, not a spear, but my pen. I was resolved, if I returned with
+my hands empty, at least to bring home my tablets full. This open-air
+way of studying is not at all to be despised. The activity and the scene
+stimulate the imagination; and there is something in the solemnity and
+solitude of the woods, and in the expectant silence of the chase, that
+greatly promotes meditation. I advise you whenever you hunt in future to
+take your tablets with you as well as your basket and flask. You will
+find that Minerva, as well as Diana, haunts these hills.
+
+
+_To Minucius Fundanus_
+
+
+When I consider how the days pass with us at Rome, I am surprised to
+find that any single day taken by itself is spent reasonably enough, or
+at least seems to be so, and yet when I add up many days together the
+impression is quite otherwise. If you ask anyone what he has been doing
+to-day, he will tell you perhaps that he has been attending the ceremony
+of a youth's coming of age; he has assisted at a wedding, been present
+at the hearing of a lawsuit, witnessed a will, or taken part in a
+consultation. These occupations seem very necessary while one is engaged
+in them; and yet, looking back at leisure upon the many hours we have
+thus employed, we cannot but consider them mere frivolities. Looking
+back especially on town life from a country retreat, one is inclined to
+regret how much of life has been spent in these wretched trifles.
+
+This reflection is one which often occurs to me at my place at
+Laurentum, when I am immersed in studies or invigorating my bodily
+health. In that peaceful home I neither hear nor say anything which
+needs to be repented of. There is no one there who speaks evil of
+anyone; and I have not to complain of any man, except sometimes of
+myself when I am dissatisfied with my work. There I live undisturbed by
+rumours, free from the vicissitudes of hope and fear, conversing only
+with myself and my books. What a true and genuine life it is; what a
+delightful and honest repose--surely more to be desired than the highest
+employments. O sea and solitary shore, secret haunt of the Muses, with
+how many noble thoughts have you inspired me! Do you then, my friend,
+take the first opportunity of leaving the noisy town with all its empty
+pursuits, and devote your days to study or leisure. For, as Attilius
+well says, it is better to have nothing to do than to be doing of
+nothing.
+
+
+_To Septicius Clarus_
+
+
+How did it happen, my friend, that you failed to keep your engagement to
+dine with me? I shall expect you to repay me what I spent on the
+festival--no small sum, I can assure you. I had prepared for each of us,
+you must know, a lettuce, three snails, two eggs, and a barley cake
+served with sweet wine and snow; the snow most certainly I shall charge
+to your account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots,
+gourds, onions, and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard
+a comedian, or the reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you
+had liked, all three, such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies
+and Spanish dancing girls at some other house were more to your taste. I
+shall have my revenge of you, depend upon it, but I won't say how.
+Indeed, it was not kind thus to mortify your friend--I had almost said
+yourself; for how delightfully we should have passed the evening in
+jests and laughter, and in deeper talk! It is true you may dine at many
+houses more sumptuously than at mine but nowhere will you find more
+unconstrained gaiety, simplicity and freedom. Only make the experiment,
+and if you do not ever afterwards prefer my table to any other, never
+favour me with your company again.
+
+
+_To Avitus_
+
+
+It would be a long story, and of no great importance, if I were to tell
+you by what accident I dined lately with a man who, in his own opinion,
+entertained us with great splendour and economy, but in my opinion with
+meanness combined with extravagance. He and a few of his guests enjoyed
+some very excellent dishes indeed, but the fare placed before the rest
+of the company was of the most inferior kind. There were three kinds of
+wine in small bottles, but it was not intended that the guests should
+take their choice at all. The best was for himself and for us; another
+vintage was for his friends of a lower order--for you must know he
+divides his friends into classes--and the third kind was for his own and
+his guests freed-men. My neighbor noticed this, and asked me if I
+approved of it. "Not at all," I said.
+
+"What then," said he, "is your custom in entertaining?"
+
+"Mine," said I, "is to offer the same fare to everybody. I invite my
+friends to dinner without separating them into classes. Everyone who
+comes to my table is equal, and even my freed-men are then my guests
+just as much as anyone else."
+
+He asked me if I did not find this very expensive. I assured him that it
+was not so at all, and that the whole secret lay in drinking no better
+wine myself that I gave to others. If a man is wise enough to moderate
+his own luxury, he will not find it very expensive to entertain all his
+visitors on equal terms. Restrain your own tastes if you would really
+economise. This is a better way of saving expense than making these
+insulting distinctions between guests.
+
+It would be a pity if a man of your excellent disposition should be
+imposed upon by the immoderate ostentation which prevails at some tables
+under the guise of frugality. I tell you of this as an example of what
+you ought to shun. Nothing is to be more avoided than this preposterous
+association of extravagance and meanness--defects which are unpleasant
+enough when found separately, but are particularly detestable when
+combined.
+
+
+_To Baebius Macer_
+
+
+I am glad to hear that you are so great an admirer of my Uncle Pliny's
+works as to wish to have a complete collection of them. You will wonder
+how a man so much occupied as he was could find time to write so many
+books, some of them upon very difficult subjects. You will be still more
+surprised when you hear that for a considerable time he practised at the
+bar, that he died in his fifty-sixth year, and that from the time of his
+retirement from the bar to his death he was employed in some of the
+highest offices of state, and in the immediate service of the emperors.
+But he had a very quick intelligence, an incredible power of
+application, and an unusual faculty of doing without sleep. In summer he
+used to begin to work at midnight; in winter, generally at one in the
+morning, or two at the latest, and often at midnight. But he would
+often, without leaving his studies, refresh himself by a short sleep.
+Before daybreak he used to wait upon the Emperor Vespasian, who also was
+a night worker, and after that attended to his official duties. Having
+taken a light meal at noon, after the custom of our ancestors, he would
+in summer, if unoccupied, lie down in the sun, while a book was read to
+him from which he made extracts and notes. Indeed he never read without
+making extracts; he used to say that no book was so bad as not to teach
+one at least something. After this reading he usually took a cold bath,
+then a light refreshment, and went to sleep for a little while. Then, as
+if beginning a new day, he resumed his studies until dinner, when a book
+was again read to him, upon which he would make passing comments. I
+remember once, when his reader had pronounced a word wrongly, someone at
+the table made him repeat it again; upon which my uncle asked his friend
+if he had not understood it. He admitted that the word was clear enough.
+"Why did you stop him then?" asked my uncle; "we have lost more than ten
+lines by this interruption of yours." Even so parsimonious was he of
+every moment of time! In summer he always rose from dinner by daylight,
+and in winter as soon as it was dark; this was an invariable law with
+him.
+
+Such was his life amidst the noise and bustle of the city; but when he
+was in the country his whole time, without exception, was given to study
+except when he bathed. And by this exception I mean only the time when
+he was actually in the bath, for all the time when he was being rubbed
+and dried he was read to, or was himself dictating. Again, when
+travelling he gave his whole time to study; a secretary constantly
+attended him with books and tablets, and in winter wore very warm gloves
+so that the cold weather might not interrupt my uncle's work; and, for
+the same reason, when in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I
+remember he once reproved me for going for a walk, saying that I might
+have used the hours to greater advantage; for he thought all time was
+lost which was not given to study. It was by this extraordinary
+application that he found time to write so many volumes, besides a
+hundred and sixty books of extracts which he left me, written on both
+sides in an extremely small hand, so that their number might be reckoned
+considerably greater.
+
+
+_To Cornelius Tacitus_
+
+
+I understand you wish to hear about the earthquake at Misenum. After my
+uncle had left us on that day, I went on with my studies until it was
+time to bathe; then I had supper and went to bed. But my sleep was
+broken and disturbed. There had been many slight shocks, which were very
+frequent in Campania, but on this night they were so violent that it
+seemed as though everything must be overthrown. My mother ran into my
+room, and we went out into a small court which separated our house from
+the sea. I do not know whether to call it courage or rashness on my
+part, as I was only eighteen years old; but I took up Livy and read and
+made extracts from him. When morning came the light was faint and
+sickly; the buildings around us were tottering to their fall, and there
+was great and unavoidable danger in remaining where we were. We resolved
+to leave the town. The people followed us in consternation, and pressed
+in great crowds about us on our way out. Having gone a good distance
+from the house, we stood still in the midst of a dreadful scene. The
+carriages for which we had sent, though standing upon level ground, were
+being thrown from side to side, and could not be kept still even when
+supported by large stones. The sea appeared to roll back upon itself,
+driven from its shores by the convulsive movements of the earth; a large
+portion of the sea-bottom was uncovered, and many marine animals were
+left exposed. Landward, a black and dreadful cloud was rolling down,
+broken by great flashes of forked lightning, and divided by long trains
+of flame which resembled lightning but were much larger.
+
+Soon afterwards the clouds seemed to descend and cover the whole surface
+of the ocean, hiding the island of Capri altogether and blotting out the
+promontory of Misenum. My mother implored me earnestly to make my
+escape, saying that her age and frame made it impossible for her to get
+away, but that she would willingly meet her death if she could know that
+she had not been the cause of mine. But I absolutely refused to forsake
+her, and seizing her hand I led her on. The ashes now began to fall upon
+us, though as yet in no great quantity. I looked back and saw behind us
+a dense cloud which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed
+that while we still had life we should turn out of the high road, lest
+she should be trampled to death in the dark by the crowd.
+
+We had scarcely sat down when darkness closed in upon us, not like the
+darkness of a moonless night, or of a night obscured by clouds, but the
+darkness of a closed room where all the lights have been put out. We
+heard the shrieks of women, the cries of children, and the shouts of
+men; some were calling for their children, others for their parents,
+others for their husbands or wives, and recognising one another through
+the darkness by their voices. Some were calling for death through very
+fear of death; others raised their hands to the gods; but most imagined
+that the last eternal night had come, and that the gods and the world
+were being destroyed together. Among these were some who added imaginary
+terrors to the real danger, and persuaded the terror-stricken multitude
+that Misenum was in flames. At last a glimmer of light appeared which we
+imagined to be a sign of approaching flames, as in truth it was; but the
+fire fell at a considerable distance from us, and again we were immersed
+in darkness. A heavy shower of ashes now rained upon us, so that we were
+obliged from time to time to shake them off, or we should have been
+crushed and buried in the heap. I might congratulate myself that during
+all this horror not a sigh or expression of fear escaped me, if it had
+not been that I then believed myself to be perishing with the world
+itself, and that all mankind were involved in the same calamity--a
+miserable consolation indeed, but a powerful one.
+
+At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees like a cloud of
+smoke; real day returned, and even the sun appeared, though very faintly
+as he appears during an eclipse. Everything before our trembling eyes
+was changed, being covered over with white ashes as with deep snow. We
+returned to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could
+and passed an anxious night between hope and fear. There was more fear
+than hope, however; for the earthquake still continued and many crazy
+people were running about predicting awful horrors.
+
+You must read my story without any view of writing about it in your
+history, of which it is quite unworthy; indeed, my only excuse for
+writing it in a letter is that you have asked for it.
+
+
+_To Calpurnia, His Wife_
+
+
+It is incredible how impatiently I wish for your return, such is the
+tenderness of my love for you, and so unaccustomed are we to separation.
+I lie awake great part of the nights thinking of you; and in the day my
+feet carry me of their own accord to your room at the hours when I used
+to see you, but not finding you there I go away as sorrowful and
+disappointed as an excluded lover. The only time when I am free from
+this distress is when I am in the forum busy with the lawsuits of my
+friends. You may judge how wretched my life is when I find my repose
+only in labour and my consolation in miseries and cares.
+
+
+_To Germinius_
+
+
+You must very well know the kind of people who, though themselves slaves
+to every passion, are mightily indignant at the vices of others, and
+most severe against those whom they most closely resemble. Surely
+leniency is the most becoming of all virtues, even in persons who have
+least need of anyone's indulgence. The highest of all characters, in my
+estimation, is that of a man who is as ready to pardon human errors as
+though he were every day himself guilty of them, and who yet abstains
+from faults as though he never forgave them. Let us observe this rule,
+both in our public and in our private relations--to be inexorable to
+ourselves, but to treat the rest of the world with tenderness, including
+even those who forgive only themselves. Let us always remember the
+saying of that most humane and therefore very great Thrasea: "He who
+hates vices, hates mankind."
+
+Perhaps you will ask who it is that has moved me to these reflections?
+There was a certain person lately--But I will tell you of that when we
+meet. No; on second thoughts I will not tell you even then, lest by
+condemning him and exposing his conduct I should be violating the
+principle which I have just condemned. So, whoever he is, and whatever
+he may be, the matter shall remain unspoken; since to expose him would
+be of no advantage for the purpose of example; but to hide his fault
+will be of great advantage to good nature.
+
+
+_To the Emperor Trajan_
+
+
+It is my rule, to refer to you all matters about which I have any doubt.
+For who can be more capable of removing my scruples or of instructing my
+ignorance?
+
+I have never been present at any trials of Christians, and am,
+therefore, ignorant of the reasons for which punishment is inflicted, as
+well as of the examinations which it is proper to make of their guilt.
+As to whether any difference is usually made with respect to the ages of
+the guilty, or whether no distinction is to be observed between the
+young and the old; whether repentance entitles them to a pardon, or
+whether it is of no advantage to a man who has once been a Christian
+that he has ceased to be one; whether the very profession of
+Christianity unattended by any criminal act, or only the crimes that are
+inherent in the profession are punishable--in all these points I am very
+doubtful.
+
+In the meantime, the method which I have observed towards those who have
+been brought before me as Christians is this. I have interrogated them
+as to whether they were Christians; if they confessed I repeated the
+question twice again, adding threats at the same time; and if they still
+persevered I ordered them to execution. For I was persuaded that
+whatever the nature of their opinions might be, their pertinacity and
+inflexible obstinacy ought certainly to be punished. Others also were
+brought before me possessed by the same madness, but as they were Roman
+citizens I ordered them to be sent to Rome. As this crime spread while
+it was actually under prosecution, many fresh cases were brought up. An
+anonymous paper was given me containing a charge against many persons.
+Those who denied that they were Christians, or that they had ever been
+so, repeated after me an invocation to the gods, offered wine and
+incense before your statue, which for this purpose I had ordered to be
+placed among the statues of the gods, and even reviled the name of
+Christ; and so, as it is impossible to force those who are really
+Christians to do any of these things, I thought it proper to dismiss
+them. Others who had been accused confessed themselves at first to be
+Christians, but immediately afterwards denied it; and others owned that
+they had formerly been of that number, but had now forsaken their error.
+All these worshipped your statue and the images of the gods, at the same
+time reviling the name of Christ.
+
+They affirmed that the whole of their guilt, or their error, had been as
+follows. They met on a stated day before sunrise and addressed a form of
+invocation to Christ as to a God; they also bound themselves by an oath,
+not for any wicked purpose but never to commit thefts, robberies, or
+adulteries, never to break their word, nor to deny a trust when they
+should be called upon to deliver it up. After this had been done they
+used to separate, and then reassemble to partake in common of an
+innocent meal. They had desisted, however, from this custom, after the
+publication of my edict, by which, in accordance with your orders, I had
+forbidden fraternities to exist. Having received this account I thought
+it all the more necessary to make sure of the real truth by putting two
+slave-girls, who were said to have taken part in their religious
+functions, to the torture; but I could discover nothing more than an
+absurd and extravagant superstition.
+
+I have, therefore, adjourned all further proceedings in the affair in
+order to consult with you. It appears to be a matter highly deserving
+your consideration, especially as very many persons are involved in the
+danger of these prosecutions; for the inquiry has already extended and
+is likely further to extend to persons of all ranks and ages, and of
+both sexes. This contagious superstition is not confined to the cities
+only, but has spread its infection among the villages and country
+districts as well; and it seems impossible to cure this evil or to
+restrain its progress. It is true that the temples which were once
+almost deserted have lately been frequented, and that the religious
+rites which had been interrupted are again revived; and there is a
+general demand for animals for sacrificial victims, which for some time
+past have met with few purchasers. From all this it is easy to imagine
+what numbers might be reclaimed from this error if pardon were granted
+to those who may repent of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CARDINAL RICHELIEU
+
+
+Political Testament
+
+
+     Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the great French
+     cardinal-statesman, was born in Paris on September 5, 1585, of
+     a noble family, and was at first educated for the profession
+     of arms, but entered the Church in order to become Bishop of
+     Luçon in 1606. Having come up to Paris to make his way in the
+     world, he was appointed almoner to the young queen Anne of
+     Austria, and rose in 1616 to be Secretary of State for War and
+     for Foreign Affairs. He received the cardinal's hat in 1622,
+     and for a period of eighteen years, from 1624 to 1642, he was,
+     in everything but name, the Majesty of France. His mind was
+     bold, unscrupulous, remorseless, and inscrutable. Yet it was
+     always noble--the minister who sent so many to the scaffold
+     could truly say that in his vast labours he had but one
+     pleasure, to know that so many honest folk slept in security
+     while he watched night after night. He was a friend to
+     literature, was founder of the Academy, and was himself a
+     considerable author in history and theology. His greatest
+     work, "Testament Politique du Cardinal de Richelieu," which
+     was published in 1764, and in which is embodied his counsel in
+     statecraft, is a literary achievement of no small importance,
+     exhibiting as it does not only a political acumen of a very
+     high order but an acute faculty for literary expression.
+     Richelieu died on December 4, 1642.
+
+
+_Retrospect_
+
+
+At the time when your majesty admitted me to your counsels and confided
+to me the direction of public affairs I may say with truth that the
+Huguenots divided the state with your majesty, the great families
+behaved as though they had no sovereign, and the governor of provinces
+as if they had been sovereigns themselves. Every man took his own
+audacity to be the measure of his merit, so that the most presumptious
+were considered the wisest, and proved often the most fortunate. Abroad
+the friendship of France was despised. At home private interests were
+preferred to the general advantage. The dignity of the throne had so far
+declined, through the fault of my predecessors in office, that it was
+almost unrecognisable. To have continued to entrust to their hands the
+helm of the state would have led to irremediable disaster; yet, on the
+other hand, too swift and too great a change would have been fraught
+with dangers of its own. In that emergency the wisest considered that it
+was hardly possible to pass without shipwreck through the reefs and
+shoals, and there were many who had foretold my fall even before your
+majesty had raised me to power.
+
+Yet, knowing what kings may do when they make good use of their power, I
+was able to promise your majesty that your prudence and firmness, with
+the blessing of God, would give new health to this kingdom. I promised
+to devote all my labours, and all the authority with which I might be
+clothed, to procuring the ruin of the Huguenot party, to humbling the
+pride of the great, to reducing all your subjects to their duty, and to
+elevating your majesty's name among foreign nations to its rightful
+reputation.
+
+I asked, to that end, your majesty's entire confidence, and assured you
+that my policy would be the direct contrary of that of my predecessors,
+inasmuch as, instead of removing the queen, your mother, from your
+majesty's counsels, I would leave nothing undone to promote the closest
+union between you, to the great advantage and honour of the kingdom.
+
+The success which has followed the good intentions which it has pleased
+God to give me for the administration of this state will justify, to the
+ages to come, the constancy with which I have pursued this design--that
+the union which exists between your majesties in nature, may be
+completed also between you in grace. And if, after many years, this
+purpose by the malice of your enemies, has been defeated, it is my
+consolation to remember how often your majesty has been heard to say
+that when I was working most for the honour of the queen, your mother,
+she was conspiring for my ruin.
+
+
+_Of Education_
+
+
+Letters are one of the greatest ornaments of states, and their
+cultivation is necessary to the commonwealth. Yet it is certain that
+they should not be taught indiscriminately to every one. A nation whose
+every subject should be educated would be as monstrous as a body having
+eyes in every part; pride and presumption would be general, and
+obedience almost disappear.
+
+Unrestrained trade in knowledge must banish that trade in merchandise to
+which states owe their wealth; ruin husbandry, the true mother and nurse
+of peoples; and destroy our source of soldiery, which springs up in
+rustic ignorance rather than from the forcing-ground of culture and the
+sciences. It would fill France with half-taught fellows, minds formed
+only to _chicane_, men who might ruin families and trouble public peace,
+but could not be of any service to the state. There would be more people
+capable of doubts than capable of resolving them; more intelligences
+fitted to oppose than to defend the truth.
+
+Indeed, when I consider the great number who make a profession of
+teaching, and the crowds of children who are taught, I seem to see an
+infinite multitude of weaklings and diseased, who, having no other
+desire than to drink pure water for their healing, are urged by an
+inordinate thirst to drink all that is offered them, though it is mostly
+impure and often poisoned, whereby their thirst and their malady are
+equally aggravated.
+
+Two principal evils arise from the great number of colleges established
+in every district: there are not sufficient worthy teachers to supply
+them; and many children of little aptitude are compelled by their
+parents to study. In the result, almost all the pupils leave with but a
+smattering of learning, some because they have been badly taught, others
+because they have been incapable of more. The remedy that I propose is
+this. Let the colleges in all towns which are not of metropolitan rank
+be reduced to two or three classes, sufficient to raise the young out of
+gross ignorance, such as is harmful even to those who are destined for
+military service or for trade. Then, before the children are determined
+to any special line of life, two are three years will reveal their
+dispositions and their capacities; and the more promising children, who
+will then be sent on to the metropolitan colleges, will succeed far
+better; for they will have minds suited for education and will be placed
+in the hands of the best teachers.
+
+Finally, let care be taken that the colleges shall not all come under
+the same hands. The universities, on the one hand, the Jesuits on the
+other, tend towards a monopoly of education. Let their emulation
+increase their virtues and efficiency; but let neither party be deprived
+of the instruction of youth; let neither secure a monopoly.
+
+
+_Of the Nobility_
+
+
+The nobility, which is one of the principal nerves of the state, may
+contribute much to its consolidation and power, but it has been for some
+time past greatly depreciated by the large number of officials whom the
+misfortunes of our age have raised up to its prejudice. It must be
+supported against the enterprises of people of that kind, whose wealth
+and pride overwhelmed the nobles, who are rich only in courage.
+
+But as the nobility must be defended from their oppressors, so also must
+they be strictly prevented from oppressing those who are below them,
+whom God has armed to labour but not to self-defence. Uncompromisingly
+justice must ensure security, under shelter of your laws, to the least
+and feeblest of your subjects.
+
+Those nobles who do not serve the state are a charge upon it; and, like
+a paralysed limb, are a burden where they should be a defence and a
+comfort. As men of gentle birth should be well treated so long as they
+deserve it, so they should be checked severely when they are found
+wanting to the obligations of their birth; and I have no hesitation in
+advising that those who have so degenerated from the virtues of their
+fathers as to avoid the service of the crown with their swords and with
+their lives, deserve to be degraded from their hereditary honours and
+advantages, and should be reduced to take part in bearing the burdens of
+the people.
+
+
+_Of the Disorders of Justice_
+
+
+It is much easier to recognise the defects of justice than to prescribe
+the remedy. Certain it is that they have arrived at such a point that
+they could hardly be graver; yet I know that it is your majesty's desire
+that the administration of justice should be as pure as the
+imperfections and corruptions of mankind will permit.
+
+In the opinion of the great majority of the people, the sovereign remedy
+consists in suppressing venality, in doing away with the hereditary
+principle in judicial offices, and in giving their positions
+gratuitously to men of such well-known probity and capacity that not
+even envy itself can contest their merit. But as it would be difficult
+to follow this counsel at any time, and is quite impossible to follow it
+here and now, it is useless to propose means calculated to secure that
+end.
+
+Although it is always dangerous to hold a view which others do not
+share, I must boldly say that in my opinion, in the present state of
+affairs and in any that one can foresee, it is better to suffer venality
+and hereditary offices to continue than to change, from top to bottom,
+your majesty's judicial establishment. The present abuses are great; but
+I believe that a system under which the offices of justice should be
+appointed by nomination by the king would lead to even greater abuses.
+The distribution of these important charges would, in effect, depend on
+the favour and intrigue of the courtiers who might at the time have most
+power with the king, or on whose reports he must base his nominations.
+
+Certainly venality and heredity in this matter are evils, but they are
+evils of long standing. We have only to look back to the reigns of St.
+Louis, when offices were already paid for, and of the great Francis, who
+erected the principle into a regular traffic, to see that so inveterate
+a custom is not easily to be eradicated. Our aim should be to turn the
+minds of men gently and continuously to better ways, and not to pass
+suddenly from one extreme to the other. The architect whose skill is
+able to correct the weakness of an ancient building, and to bring it
+into some degree of symmetry without first pulling it down, deserves far
+greater praise than the man who must throw it into ruins in order to
+construct something entirely new. It is difficult to change the
+established order without changing the hearts of those who possess it,
+and it is often prudent to weaken one's remedies in order that they may
+have the greater effect.
+
+
+_To the Officers of Finance_
+
+
+These form a class of men who are prejudicial to the state, yet are
+necessary to and we can only hope to reduce their power within tolerable
+limits. At present, their excesses and irregularities are intolerable;
+and it is impossible that they should further increase their wealth and
+their power without ruining the state, and themselves with it.
+
+I do not advise the general confiscation of their gains, although the
+excessive wealth which they amass in a short time, easily proved by the
+difference between their possessions on entering office and what they
+own at present, must often be the result of thefts and extortions.
+Confiscation may be made, in its turn, the greatest of injustice and
+violence. Yet I do not think that anyone could complain if the more
+flagrant offenders were chastised. Otherwise, they will, as I have said,
+ruin the kingdom, which bears on its face the marks of their frauds.
+
+The gold with which they have gorged themselves has opened to them
+alliances with the most ancient families, whose blood and character are
+thereby so far debased that their representatives resemble their
+ancestors no more in the generosity of their motives than they do in the
+purity of their features.
+
+I can advise nothing but a great reduction in the number of these
+officials, a reform which might be easily accomplished; and the
+appointment, in times to come, only of substantial men, of character and
+position suitable to this responsibility. As for the plan of squeezing
+these financiers like a sponge, or of making treaties and compositions
+with them, it is a remedy worse than the disorder; it is as much as to
+teach them that peculation is their business and their right.
+
+
+_Of the People_
+
+
+All statesmen agree that if the people were in too easy a condition it
+would be impossible to restrain them within the limits of their duty.
+Having less knowledge and cultivation than those in other ranks of the
+state, they would not easily follow the rules prescribed by reason and
+by law, unless bound thereto by a certain degree of necessity.
+
+Reason does not permit us to exempt them from all taxation, lest, having
+lost the symbol of their subjection, they should forget their legitimate
+condition, and, being free from tribute, should think themselves free
+from obedience also.
+
+Mules accustomed to a load suffer more from a long rest than they do
+from work; but, on the other hand, their work must be moderate and the
+load proportionate to their strength. So it is with the taxation of the
+people, which becomes unjust if it is not moderated at the point at
+which it is useful to the public.
+
+There is a sense in which the tribute which kings draw from the people
+returns to the people again, in the enjoyment of peace and in the
+security of their life and possessions; for these cannot be safeguarded
+unless contribution be made to the state. I know of several princes who
+have lost their kingdoms and their subjects by letting their strength
+decay through fear of taxing them; and subjects have before now fallen
+into servitude to their enemies, through wishing too much liberty under
+their natural sovereign. The proportion between the burden and the
+strength of those who have to support it ought to be even religiously
+observed; a prince cannot be considered good if he draws more than he
+ought from his subjects; yet the best princes are not always those who
+never levy more than is necessary.
+
+
+_Reason and Government_
+
+
+Man, having been made a rational creature, ought to do nothing except by
+reason; for, otherwise he acts against nature, and so against the Author
+of nature. Again, the greater a man is, and the higher his position, the
+more strictly is he bound to follow reason. It follows that if he is
+sovereignly rational, he is bound to make reason reign; that is to say,
+it is his duty to make all those who are under his authority revere and
+obey reason religiously. Love is the most potent motive for obedience;
+and it is impossible that subjects should not love their prince if they
+know that reason is the guide of all his actions.
+
+Since reason should be the guide of princes, passion, which is of all
+things the most incompatible with reason, should be allowed no influence
+on their actions. Passion can only blind them; make them take the shadow
+for the substance; and win for them odium in the place of affection.
+
+Government requires a masculine virtue and an immovable firmness; for
+softness exposes those in whom it is found to the machinations of their
+enemies. Though there have been notable exceptions, their softness and
+their passions have generally made women unfit for rule.
+
+
+_Public Interests First_
+
+
+The public advantage should be the single object of the king and his
+counsellors, or should at least be preferred to every private interest.
+It is impossible to estimate the good which a prince and his ministers
+may do if they religiously follow this principle, or to estimate the
+disasters which must fall upon the state whose public interests are
+ruled by private considerations. True philosophy, the Christian law, and
+the art of statesmanship, unite to teach this truth.
+
+The prosperity which Spain has enjoyed for several centuries has been
+due to no other cause than that her council has consistently preferred
+the interests of the state to all others, and most of the calamities
+which have visited France have been due to the preference of private
+advantage.
+
+It is easy for princes to consent to the general regulations of their
+state, because in making them they have only reason and justice before
+their eyes, and men willingly embrace reason and justice when there are
+no obstacles to turn them from the right path. But when occasions arise
+for putting these regulations into practice, we do not find that princes
+always show the same firmness, for then the interests of factions and of
+minorities are pressed upon them; pity, sympathy, favour, and
+importunities solicit them and oppose their just designs; and they have
+not always strength enough to conquer themselves and to despise these
+partial considerations, which ought to have no weight at all in the
+affairs of the commonwealth.
+
+It is on these occasions that they must gather up all their strength
+against their weakness, and remember that God has placed them there to
+safeguard the public interest.
+
+
+_The Power of Kingship_
+
+
+Power is one of the most necessary conditions of the greatness of kings
+and of the happiness of their government, and those who have to do with
+the conduct of a state should omit nothing which may enhance the
+authority of their master and the respect in which he is held by all the
+world.
+
+As goodness is the object of love, power is the cause of fear; and fear,
+founded in esteem and reverence, makes dutiful conduct the interest of
+every subject, and warns all foreigners not to offend a prince who can
+harm them if he will.
+
+I have said that the power of which I speak must be founded on esteem,
+and I will add that if it be otherwise founded it is dangerous in the
+extreme. Princes are never in a more perilous position than when they
+are the objects of hatred or aversion rather than of a reasonable fear.
+
+That kingly power which causes princes to be feared with esteem and
+love, includes within it different elements of power; it is a tree with
+several branches, which draw their nourishment from common Stock. Thus,
+the prince must be powerful by his reputation. Secondly, by a reasonable
+number of soldiers, continually maintained. Thirdly, by a notable
+reserve, in gold, in his coffers, ready for the unforeseen occasions
+which arise when least expected. And, lastly, by the possession of the
+hearts of his people. If the finances be considerately adjusted on the
+principles which I have advised the people will find entire relief, and
+the king will base his power on the possession of the hearts of his
+subjects. They will know that they are his care, and their own interests
+will lead them to love him.
+
+The kings of old thought so highly of this foundation of kingship that
+some of them held it worthier to be King of the French than King of
+France. Indeed, this nation was in old time illustrious for passionate
+attachment to its princes; and under the earlier kings, until Philip the
+Fair, the treasure of hearts was the sole public treasure that was
+maintained in this kingdom.
+
+I know that we cannot judge of the present altogether by the past, and
+that what was good in one century is not always possible in another.
+Yet, though the treasure of hearts may not suffice to-day, it is quite
+certain that without it the treasure of gold is almost worthless;
+without that treasure of hearts we shall be bankrupt in the midst of
+abundance.
+
+
+_The Whole Duty of Princes_
+
+
+In conclusion, as kings are obliged to do many more things as sovereigns
+than they do in their private capacity, they are liable to be guilty of
+far more faults by omission than those of which a private person could
+be guilty by commission. Considered as men, they are subject to the same
+faults as all other men; but considered as charged with the welfare of
+the public, they are subject also to many duties which they cannot omit
+without sin.
+
+If princes neglect to do all that they can to rule the various orders of
+their state; if they are careless in the choice of good advisers, or
+despise their salutary counsels; if they fail to make their own example
+a speaking voice; if they are idle in the establishment of the reign of
+God, and of reason, and of justice; if they fail to protect the
+innocent, to reward public services, and to chastise the guilty and
+disobedient; if they are not solicitous to foresee and to provide for
+the troubles which may arise, or to turn aside, by careful diplomacy,
+the storms which darken the horizon; if favour rather than merit
+dictates their choice of ministers for the high offices of the kingdom;
+if they do not immovably establish the state in its rightful power; if
+they do not on all occasions prefer public interests to private
+interests; then, however upright their life may otherwise be, they will
+be found far more guilty than those who actively transgress the
+commandments and the laws of God. And if kings or magistrates make use
+of their power to commit any injustice or violence which they cannot
+commit as private persons, they commit a king's or a magistrate's sin,
+which has its source in their authority, and one for which the King of
+Kings will doubtless demand a searching account on the day of judgement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
+
+
+Confessions
+
+
+     Rousseau's "Confessions" were written in England at Wootton,
+     in Staffordshire, where he had taken refuge after his
+     revolutionary ideas incurred the displeasure of the
+     authorities in France. They were first published in 1782. From
+     this refuge he was pursued from place to place by his
+     delusions through miserable years, until he died, near Paris,
+     on July 2, 1778. In no circumstances or relation of his life
+     was Rousseau a pleasant spectacle. The "Confessions,"
+     unexpurgated, are often revolting to any sane mind, and have
+     been proved to be untrustworthy even as a record of fact. But
+     almost incredible baseness was coupled with extraordinary
+     gifts, and it is impossible to overestimate Rousseau's
+     influence upon the modern world, and upon its literature and
+     its whole point of view and way of thinking. (Rousseau,
+     biography: see FICTION.)
+
+
+I am undertaking a task for which there is no example, and one which
+will find no imitator. It is to exhibit a man in the whole truth of
+nature; and the man whom I shall reveal is myself. Myself alone; for I
+verily believe I am like no other living man. In this book I have hidden
+nothing evil and added nothing good; and I challenge any man to say,
+having unveiled his heart with equal sincerity, "I am better than he."
+
+I was born at Geneva in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau, watchmaker, and of
+Susanne, his wife. My birth, the first of my misfortunes, cost my mother
+her life, and I came into the world so weakly that I was not expected to
+live. My father's sister lavished on me the tenderest care, and he,
+disconsolate, loved me with extreme affection.
+
+Like all children, but even more than others, I felt before I thought;
+and my consciousness was first awakened by reading stories with my
+father. Sometimes we read together until the birds were singing in the
+morning light. These tales gave me a most precocious insight into human
+passions, and the confused emotions which swept through me brought with
+them the queerest and most romantic views of life. But when I was seven
+we came to the end of my mother's old stock of romances, and we fell
+back on Bossuet, Molière, Plutarch, Ovid, and the like. Plutarch went
+far to cure me of novels; indeed, his "Lives" were the means of forming
+that free and republican spirit, intolerant of servitude, which has been
+my torment. To my aunt, who knew endless songs, and used to chant them
+with a sweet, tiny thread of a voice, I owe my passion for music.
+
+These, then, were my first affections. These formed that heart of mine,
+so proud yet so tender; they fashioned that effeminate yet untamable
+character, which has ever drifted between weakness and virtue. For I
+have been in contradiction with myself, in such a way that abstinence
+and fruition, pleasure and wisdom, have escaped me equally.
+
+My father having left Geneva, I remained under the care of my uncle
+Bernard, and was placed, with his son of my own age, in the house of M.
+Lambercier, protestant minister at Bossey, to learn all the trivialities
+that are called education. Here I gained my keen love of country
+pleasures, and tasted, with my cousin, the delights of simple
+friendship. But a cruel punishment for a fault which I had not
+committed, put an end to my childish simplicity, and soon I left Bossey
+without regret. There followed two or three years of indolence at
+Geneva.
+
+After a brief and luckless trial of a notary's office I was apprenticed
+to an engraver, a petty tyrant, whose injustice taught me to lie and to
+steal. Restless, dissatisfied, and in perpetual terror of my master's
+savagery, I here reached my sixteenth year. But one day, finding the
+city gates closed on my return from a country excursion, I determined,
+rather than face the inevitable thrashing, to seek my fortune in the
+unknown world.
+
+
+_Madame de Warens_
+
+
+How fair were the illusions of freedom and of the future! I asked
+little--only a manor where I should be the favourite of the lord of the
+land, his daughter's lover, her brother's friend, and protector of the
+neighbourhood. I roamed the countryside, sleeping at nights in
+hospitable cottages, and on arriving at Confignon I called, out of
+curiosity, on M. de Ponteverre, the parish priest. He gave me a dinner
+which convinced me, even more than his arguments, of the advantages of
+the catholic faith; and I was willing enough to set off, with his
+introduction, to Annecy. Here I was to seek Mme. de Warens, a recent
+convert, who was in receipt of a pension from the King of Sardinia. I
+was assured that her benevolence would support me for the present. Three
+days later I was at Annecy.
+
+This introduction fixed my character and destiny. I was now in my
+sixteenth year, doubtless of engaging though not striking appearance; I
+had the timidity of a loving nature, always afraid of giving offence;
+and I was quite without knowledge of the world or of manners. I arrived
+on Palm Sunday, 1728. Mme. de Warens had left the house for church; I
+ran after her, saw her, spoke to her--how well do I remember the place,
+so often in later days wet with my tears and covered with kisses!
+
+I saw an enchanting form, a countenance full of graciousness, a dazzling
+colour, blue eyes beaming kindness; you may imagine that my conversion
+was from that moment decided. Smiling, she read the good priest's
+letter, and sent me back to the house for breakfast.
+
+Louise Éléonore de Warens, daughter of a noble family of Vevai, in the
+Vaud country, had early married M. de Warens, of Lausanne. The marriage
+was childless and otherwise unfortunate; and the young wife, exasperated
+by some domestic difficulty, had abandoned her husband and her country,
+and crossing the lake, had thrown herself at the feet of the king. He
+took her under his protection, gave her a moderate pension, and for fear
+of scandal sent her to Annecy, where she renounced her errors at the
+Convent of the Visitation.
+
+She had been six years at Annecy when I met her, and was now
+twenty-eight years of age. Her beauty was still in its first radiance,
+and her smile was angelic. She was short of stature, but it was
+impossible to imagine more beautiful features or hands. Her education
+had been very desultory; she had learned more from lovers than from
+teachers. She had a strong taste for empirical medicine and for alchemy,
+and was always compounding elixirs, tinctures and balms, some of which
+she regarded as valuable secrets. So it was that charlatans, trading on
+her weakness, made her consume, amid drugs and furnaces, a talent and a
+spirit which might have distinguished her in the highest societies. Yet
+her loving and sweet character, her compassion for the unhappy, her
+inexhaustible goodness and her open and gay humour never changed; and
+even when old age was coming on, in the midst of poverty and varied
+misfortunes, her inward serenity preserved to the end the charming
+gaiety of her youth. All her mistakes arose from a restless activity
+which demanded incessant occupation. She thirsted, not for intrigues,
+but for enterprises.
+
+Well, the first sight of Mme. de Warens inspired me not only with the
+liveliest attachment, but with an entire trust which was never
+disappointed. Her presence filled my whole being with peace and
+confidence.
+
+
+_Three Years in Turin_
+
+
+My situation was discussed with the Bishop, and it was decided that I
+should go to Turin and remain for a time at an institution devoted to
+the instruction of catechumens. Thither I went, regarding myself as the
+pupil, the friend, and almost the lover, of Mme. de Warens. The great
+doors closed upon me, and here I was instructed for several weeks in
+very indifferent company. At length, having been received into the
+church, I found myself in the street with twenty francs in my pocket,
+and the counsel that I should be a good Christian.
+
+I took a lodging in Turin, and was presently introduced, by the kindness
+of my hostess, to the service of a countess. But this lady died shortly
+afterwards, and I left her house bearing with me lasting remorse for an
+atrocious action: I had accused a fellow-servant of a theft which I had
+myself committed, and thus may very well have caused the poor child's
+ruin.
+
+Returning to my old lodging, I spent my days in wandering about town,
+often offending the public by my depravities. But I had kept certain
+acquaintances made during my situation with the countess, and one of
+these, a M. Gaime, whom I sometimes visited, gave me most valuable
+instructions in the principles of morals. He was a priest, and one of
+the most honest men I have known. I had cherished false ideas of life;
+he gave me a true picture of it, and showed me that happiness depends
+only on wisdom, and that wisdom is to be found in every rank. He used to
+say that if everyone could read the hearts of others, most would wish to
+descend in the social scale. This M. Gaime is the original, in large
+part, of my vicar of Savoy.
+
+Then followed a new situation in the house of the Count de Gouvon,
+where, nominally a footman, I was soon treated more as a pupil or even
+as a favourite. His son, a priest, did his best to teach me Latin, and I
+have since realised that it was the purpose of this noble family, who
+had considerable political ambition, to train a talented dependent who
+might serve them in offices of great responsibility. But my fatal
+inconstancy frustrated this good fortune, my flagrant disobediences led
+to my dismissal, and presently I was on the road to Geneva with a gay
+lad from thence who had found me out in Turin.
+
+I happened to own a mechanical toy, a little fountain, and our mad
+project was nothing less than to pay our way throughout the world by
+showing its performances in every village. We started in the highest
+spirits, but the fountain was never remunerative, and soon its works
+went wrong. This threw no gloom over our merry, fantastic journey, and
+it was only when Annecy was near that I became a little thoughtful, for
+my benefactress supposed that my last place had established me for life.
+
+We entered the little town and parted, and I came trembling to her door.
+The adorable woman showed little surprise, and no sorrow. I told her my
+story, and was forgiven. Henceforth her home was mine.
+
+
+_Seeking a Career_
+
+
+The house was an old one, but spacious and comfortable, and the window
+of my room looked out, over garden and stream, to the open country. The
+ménage was by no means magnificent, but was abundant in a patriarchal
+way; Madame de Warens had no idea of economy, and with her hospitalities
+and speculations was ever running more deeply into debt. The household,
+besides herself and me, consisted of housemaid, cook, and a footman
+named Claude Anet.
+
+From the first day, the sweetest familiarity reigned our intercourse.
+She called me "Little one," I called her my little mother, and these
+names express the relation of our hearts. She sought always my good,
+never her own pleasure; she was deeply attached to me, and lavished on
+me her maternal caresses. I was now about nineteen years old, but was
+only occupied about the house in writing for her, or in helping her in
+her pharmaceutical experiments.
+
+But madame was thinking of my future, and sent me on some pretext to see
+M. d'Aubonne, a relative of hers, to find out what might be made of me.
+His report of me was, that I was a poor-spirited creature, narrow,
+ignorant, and clownish, and that the career of village priest was the
+best that could be hoped for. Once more, therefore, I was set to Latin
+at the seminary; but after some months I was returned by the bishop and
+the rector as incapable of learning, though a passably well-conducted
+youth. In the meantime I had been taken with a strong taste for music,
+and it was arranged that I should spend the winter at the house of M. le
+Maitre, director of music at the cathedral; he was a young man of great
+talent and of high spirits, and lived only twenty paces from my little
+mother. There I spent one of the most pleasant times of my life. But it
+was cut short by a quarrel between Le Maitre and the cathedral chapter,
+who had, as he thought, put a slight upon him. His revenge was to desert
+his post on the eve of the elaborate Easter services, and madame desired
+me to assist him in his flight. I was to attend him to Lyons, and remain
+with him as long as he should need me. Her purpose was, as I have since
+learned, to detach me from a plausible adventurer, M. Venture, a man of
+great musical talent who had turned up at Annecy, and had engaged my
+fancy. Our flight was successful. But on the second day after our
+arrival at Lyons Le Maitre fell ill with a sudden seizure in the street,
+and I, after telling the bystanders the name of his inn, and begging
+them to carry him thither, slipped round the nearest corner and
+disappeared. Le Maitre was deserted at his worst need by the only friend
+on whom he had to count. I returned at once to Annecy, only to find that
+madame had left for Paris.
+
+M. Venture, however, was still there, and had turned the heads of all
+the ladies in the place, and for a time I shared his lodging. Then,
+after travelling with Merceret, the housemaid, as far as her home at
+Fribourg-for she had to return thither and could find no other
+attendant--I turned aside to Lausanne, with the idea of seeing the lake.
+I arrived here without a penny, and it occurred to me to play Venture's
+game on my own account. I took a false name, called myself a Parisian,
+and having secured a lodging, set up as a teacher of music, though I
+knew next to nothing of the art. There was a professor of law in the
+town who was an amateur of music, and held concert parties in his house;
+to this man I had the effrontry to propose a symphony of my own. I
+worked a fortnight at this production, wrote out the instrumental parts,
+and on the appointed evening stood up before the orchestra and audience,
+tapped my desk, raised by baton, and--never since music began has there
+been such an orgy of discords. The musicians could hardly sit in their
+chairs for laughing, yet played even louder and louder as the fun took
+hold of them; the audience sought to stop their ears; and I, sweat
+pouring down my face, conducted this atrocity to the end. But the end
+was a little minuet which Venture had taught me; I had appended it to my
+symphony, calling it my own work. Its magic put the whole room in good
+humour, and I was feliciated on my taste in melody. Next day one of my
+orchestra came to see me, and in my despair and broken spirit I told him
+my whole story. By nightfall it was known to all Lausanne. But at
+Neufchâtel, through the next winter, I gradually learned music by
+teaching it.
+
+My next occupation was that of interpreter to a Greek prelate and
+archimandrite of Jerusalem, whom I met when dining in a little
+restaurant. He was collecting money throughout Europe for the
+restoration of the Holy Sepulchre; and accompanying him from city to
+city, I was of much service to him, even addressing the Senate at Berne
+on behalf of his project. Unfortunately for my employer, he addressed
+himself to the Marquis de Bonac, who had been ambassador to the Porte,
+and knew all about the Holy Sepulchre. I don't know what passed at their
+interview, but the archimandrite disappeared and I was detained. In my
+desolation I told the marquis the history of my life, and by him was
+sent to Paris, with plenty of money in my pocket, to enter the service
+of a young friend of his in the army. My first sight of the city was a
+disappointment which I have never got over, and the proposed engagement
+fell through. Coming to the end of my resources, I set out by way of
+Lyons, where I suffered the extremity of poverty, to find Mme. de
+Warens, who was now, as I learned, at Chambéri. I came to her house and
+found the intendant-general with her. Without addressing me, she said,
+"Here, sir, he is; protect him as long as he deserves it, and his future
+is assured." And to me, "My child, you belong to the king." And thus I
+became a secretary in the ordnance survey. After five years of follies
+and sufferings since I had left Geneva, I began to earn an honest
+living.
+
+
+_Our Little Circle_
+
+
+It was in 1732, and I was nearly twenty-one years old, when I began the
+life of the office. I lived with the little mother in a dismal house,
+which she rented because it belonged to the financial secretary who
+controlled her pension. The faithful Claude Anet was still with her, and
+shortly after my return I learned accidentally that their relation was
+closer than I had ever dreamed of. In a fit of temper his mistress had
+taunted him outrageously. The poor fellow, in despair, had taken
+laudanum; and madame, in her terror and distress, told me the whole
+story. We brought him round, and things went on as before, but it was
+hard to me to know that anyone was more intimate with her than myself.
+
+My passion for music increased this year until I could hardly take
+interest in anything else, and at last the work at the office grew so
+intolerable to me that I determined to resign my place. I extorted an
+unwilling permission from madame, said good-bye to my chief, and threw
+myself into the teaching of music.
+
+I soon had as many pupils as I needed, and the constant intercourse with
+these ladies was very pleasant to me. But from the stories which I
+carried home of our interviews the little mother apprehended dangers of
+which I was not at that time conscious. The course which she took was a
+singular one. She had rented a little garden outside the town, and here
+she invited me to spend the day with her. Thither we went, and from the
+drift of her conversation, which was full of good sense and kindliest
+warnings, I gradually perceived the degree of her goodness towards me.
+The compact involved conditions, and my answer was to be given on that
+day week.
+
+Thus was established among the three of us a society to which there is
+perhaps no parallel. All our wishes, our cares, our interests were in
+common. If one of us was missing from the dinner-table, or a fourth was
+present, all seemed out of order. But our little circle was broken all
+too soon. Claude Anet, on a botanical excursion, fell a victim to
+pleurisy, and died, notwithstanding all her care. He had been a most
+watchful economist of her pension and a restraint on her enterprises,
+and his loss was felt not only in our diminished party, but also in the
+wasting of her resources. For the next three years these went from bad
+to worse. Unfortunately, the life to which I had taken, of drifting from
+one interest to another--now literature, now chess, now a journey, now
+music--brought in nothing and cost a good deal; and to complete our
+anxieties, I fell ill nearly to death. Her care and utter devotion saved
+me, and from that time our very existence was in common.
+
+
+_Les Charmettes_
+
+
+I was ordered to the country. We found near Chambéri a little house, Les
+Charmettes, set in a garden among trees, as retired and solitary a home
+as if it had been a hundred miles from the town. There we took up a new
+life towards the autumn of 1736; there began the brief happiness of my
+existence. We were all in all to one another; together we roamed the
+country, worked in the garden, gathered fruit and flowers, lay under the
+trees and listened to the birds. Golden hours, your memory is my only
+treasure!
+
+Even a sudden illness, which affected my heart so that its pulse has
+from that time incessantly throbbed like a drum in my ears, and has made
+me a constant sufferer from insomnia, turned out to be a heavenly
+blessing. Thinking myself a dead man, I only then began to live, and
+applied myself very eagerly to learning. With my little mother as my
+teacher, I turned to the study of religion. I sought books, and
+philosophy, the sciences, and Latin followed in their turn. Nature,
+learning, leisure, and our ineffably sweet companionship--I thought,
+poor fool, that these joys would be with me to the end. It was otherwise
+decreed.
+
+My bodily condition has become pitiable, and it was determined that I
+should go to Montpellier to consult a physician. I fell in, on the way
+thither, with the Marquis de Torignan and his party, who were travelling
+in the same direction. We struck up acquaintance, and I joined them,
+taking an assumed name, and giving myself out for an Englishman.
+Becoming intimate with a Madame de Larnage, who was among them, I
+continued to travel with her day by day, after the others had reached
+their destination. She was a woman of infinite charm. Mme. de Warens was
+forgotten utterly, and I willingly agreed to settle down in her
+vicinity, after fulfilling the purpose of my journey to Montpellier.
+However, after two pleasurable months in that city, when I found myself
+at the stage where the road divided--one road going to Mme. de Larnage,
+the other to Les Charmettes--I balanced love against pleasure, and
+finding an equipoise, I decided by reason.
+
+The little mother knew by my letter at what hour I should arrive. I came
+to the garden; no one came out to meet me. I entered; the servants
+seemed surprised to see me. I ran upstairs and found her; her welcome
+was restrained and cold. The truth burst upon me. My place was taken!
+
+Darkness flooded my soul, and from that moment onward my sensibilities
+have been but half-alive. I took a situation as tutor in a private
+family, but all my thoughts were of Charmettes and of our innocent life
+together, now gone for ever. O dreadful illusion of human destiny!
+
+
+_The Gathering Gloom_
+
+
+I take up my pen again, after an interval of two years, to add a sequel
+to my confessions. How different is the picture now! For thirty years
+fate had favoured my inclinations, but for the second thirty, which I
+must try to sketch, she has ground me in the mortar of the most
+appalling afflictions.
+
+This second part must inevitably be inferior, in every respect, to the
+first. For I wrote, before, with pleasure and at ease; but now my
+decaying memory and enfeebled brain have made me almost incapable of
+work, and I have nothing to tell of but treacheries, perfidies, and
+torturing memories. The walls around me have ears; I am encompassed by
+spies and vigilant enemies. Racked with anxiety and fear, I scribble
+page after page without revising them. An immense conspiracy surrounds
+me....
+
+[These delusions of suspicion are perhaps the most characteristic
+symptoms of insanity. They colour so deeply the entire texture of
+Rousseau's prolix second part as to make it not only unreliable, but
+almost unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first
+part; from the second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy
+creature, besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman;
+and this morbid condition had been aggravated by years of brooding
+rancour before he wrote this miserable indictment of men who had done
+their best to befriend him.--ED.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, was born in Paris on
+     September 15, 1613. Sprung from one of the noblest families of
+     France, handsome, winning, and brave to recklessness, he
+     intrigued and fought against Richelieu and Mazarin, and was
+     one of the leaders in the civil war of La Fronde. But though
+     marked by birth and talent for a high position in the state,
+     he failed in nearly everything he undertook, owing to his
+     extraordinary indolence of mind, and in the prime of his life
+     he became a rather embittered spectator of a world in which he
+     was not able to make his way. The "Memoirs," with their
+     studied tone of historical coldness, present a striking
+     contrast to the brilliant vivacity of the "Maxims." This, in
+     all probability, is due to the fact that while the latter were
+     frequently added to and edited during their author's lifetime,
+     no such fate befell the "Memoirs," of which the first edition,
+     published without La Rochefoucauld's authority, appeared in
+     1662. Barely a third of them could be attributed to their
+     reputed author, the work being compiled mainly from various
+     commonplace books. In spite of La Rochefoucauld's protests,
+     the pirated "Memoirs" continued to be printed, and it was not
+     until very many years after his death, in 1817, that an
+     authentic edition made its appearance. The "Memoirs" are of
+     great literary value, yielding in interest to no memoirs of
+     the time. La Rochefoucauld died in Paris on March 17, 1680.
+
+
+_Court Intrigues_
+
+
+King Louis XIII. was of feeble constitution, further impaired by
+over-exertion in hunting. His temperament was severe and solitary; he
+wished to be governed, but was sometimes impatient of government. His
+mind took note only of details, and his knowledge of war was fit rather
+for a subordinate officer than for a king. Cardinal Richelieu, who owed
+all his elevation to the queen-mother, Marie de Médicis, was ruler of
+the state. His vast and penetrating mind formed projects as bold as he
+was personally timid. His policy was to establish the king's authority
+and his own, by the ruin of the Huguenots and of the great houses of the
+kingdom, and then to attack the house of Austria, a power most
+redoubtable to France. He stuck at nothing, either to advance his
+satellites or to destroy his enemies. The passion which he had long
+cherished for the queen had changed to dislike, and she had an aversion
+for Richelieu. The king was embittered against her by jealousy and by
+the sterility of their marriage. The queen was an amiable woman, without
+falsity of any kind, and with many virtues; her intimate friend was
+Madame de Chevreuse, who was of her own age and of kindred sentiments.
+
+But Madame de Chevreuse almost always brought misfortune to those whom
+she interested in her projects. She had much spirit, ambition, and
+beauty, and made full use of her charms to forward these enterprises of
+hers. Already Cardinal Richelieu had accused the queen and her of
+complicity in Chalais's plot against the king's life--for Chalais had
+been her warm admirer--and the king believed in their guilt to the end
+of his days. Again, when the young and handsome Lord Holland came to
+France to arrange the marriage of the King of England to the sister of
+the King of France, and quickly won the affection of Madame de
+Chevreuse, the two lovers thought fit to celebrate their attachment by
+inspiring a similar intrigue between the French queen and the Duke of
+Buckingham, who had not so much as met one another. This astonishing
+undertaking was successful. Buckingham came over to wed madame in the
+name of his master, and his ardent love for the queen, which she fully
+returned, deeply wounded both the king and Richelieu. The cardinal
+sought his revenge through Lady Carlisle. That haughty and jealous
+woman, to whom Buckingham had long been attached, noticed one night at a
+ball in England that he was wearing diamonds which she had not seen
+before, and contrived, unobserved, to detach them, in order that she
+might send them to Richelieu. These diamonds had been the gift of the
+King of France to his queen, and it was intended that the cardinal, by
+showing them to the king, should prove the queen's weakness. But the
+Duke of Buckingham discovered his loss the same night, and at once
+suspected Lady Carlisle's design. He issued an immediate order that the
+English ports should be closed, and that no one should be permitted,
+under whatever pretext, to leave the country; and then, having had
+exactly similar jewels prepared, he sent them to the Queen of France,
+with an account of the whole matter.
+
+It was at this time that the cardinal formed the project of the
+destruction of the Huguenot party, and of laying siege to La Rochelle.
+The Duke of Buckingham came with a powerful fleet to aid La Rochelle,
+but in vain; the fortress was taken, and the duke was assassinated in
+England. This murder gave the cardinal an inhuman joy; he jested at the
+queen's sorrows, and began to hope again.
+
+After the ruin of the Huguenots I returned from the army to court, being
+now seventeen years old, and began to notice the state of affairs. The
+queen-mother and the cardinal were at enmity, and though everyone saw
+that something would come of it, no one could foretell what would
+happen. The cardinal's situation was precarious, the king had learned of
+his love for the queen, and was quite ready to disgrace him, and even
+asked the queen-mother to nominate someone to replace him. She
+hesitated, and that hesitation was her ruin and saved the cardinal.
+
+The reversal of the situation took place on the famous "day of dupes,"
+on which the queen-mother, presuming too much on her power, challenged
+the cardinal, in the king's presence, with his ingratitude and
+treacheries. No one doubted but that Richelieu's day was over, and the
+whole court crowded to the queen-mother to share her imaginary triumph.
+But the king went the same day to Versailles, and the cardinal followed
+him; the queen, fearing that she would find Versailles dull and
+uncomfortable, remained behind; and the wily statesman made such good
+use of his opportunity that the king's consent was won to the downfall
+of his mother. She was soon arrested, and her sorrows lasted as long as
+her life.
+
+Many were implicated in her ruin, and were exiled or thrown into the
+Bastille, or brought to the scaffold; and so much bloodshed and so many
+fortunes reversed brought odium on the name of Richelieu. The mild
+regency of Marie de Médicis was remembered, and all the great families
+lamented that liberty was a thing of the past.
+
+For my part, I thought that the queen's cause was the only one, which an
+honourable man could follow. She was unhappy; the cardinal was rather
+her tyrant than her lover; she had been good to me, and had trusted me;
+Mademoiselle d'Hautefort, with whom I had great friendship, was her
+friend, too--sufficient reasons, these, to dazzle a youth who had seen
+almost nothing of the world, and to turn his steps in a direction quite
+contrary to his interests. King and cardinal alike soon came to detest
+me, and my life thenceforth was troubled by the visitations of their
+displeasure. In recording the scenes in which I have had a part, I have
+no intention of writing history, but only of touching on a few personal
+episodes.
+
+
+_Richelieu's Death_
+
+
+War was declared in 1635 against the King of Spain, and I accompanied
+the French army of twenty thousand men which marched to the support of
+the Prince of Orange in Flanders. During neither this nor the following
+winter was I allowed at court. Madame de Chevreuse, who had been sent to
+Tours on the occasion of Richelieu's triumph had heard a good account of
+me from the queen, and invited me to see her; we soon struck up a very
+great friendship, and I came to be a confidential intermediary between
+the queen and her, and was often entrusted by one or other of them with
+most perilous commissions.
+
+When I was at last readmitted to court in 1637, I found the queen in
+great trouble. She had been accused of a crime against the state, a
+treasonable understanding with the Spanish minister; some of her
+servants were arrested; the chancellor examined her like a criminal; it
+was even proposed to seclude her at Havre, annul her marriage, and
+repudiate her altogether. In this extremity, abandoned by all the world,
+she proposed that I should kidnap her and Mademoiselle d'Hautefort and
+carry them off to Brussels. Difficult and dangerous as this project was,
+it gave me greater joy than any I had known, for I was at an age when a
+man likes to engage in dashing and heroic feats. Happily, however, the
+chancellor's investigations proved her majesty not guilty.
+
+But an unfortunate series of accidents led to my imprisonment for a week
+in the Bastille. A signal had been agreed upon between the queen and
+Madame de Chevreuse during the recent trouble. If all went well, Madame
+de Chevreuse was to receive a prayer-book bound in green, but a red
+binding was to indicate disaster. I never knew which of the two ladies
+made the mistake, but when the queen was acquitted Madame de Chevreuse
+received what she took to be the signal of misfortune; concluded that
+both she and the queen were undone, and disguising herself as a man, she
+fled to Spain. This escapade, so surprising at the very moment when the
+Queen's troubles had come to an end, inspired the king and the cardinal
+with the gravest suspicions that they had not, after all, fathomed her
+majesty's treachery. The cardinal summoned me to Paris, and hinted at
+unpleasant consequences if I did not reveal all I knew. I knew nothing;
+and as my manner seemed more reserved and dry than he was accustomed to,
+I was sent to the Bastille.
+
+The little time that I spent there showed me more vividly than anything
+I had yet seen the picture of vengeance. I saw there men of great names
+and of great merits, an infinite number of men and women of all ranks in
+life, all unhappy in the affliction of long and cruel incarceration. The
+sight of so many pitiable creatures did much to increase my natural
+hatred for Cardinal Richelieu's administration. I was released in eight
+days, and thought myself very fortunate to escape at a period when none
+others were set at liberty.
+
+But my disgrace was well repaid. The queen showed herself gratefully
+aware of all that I had suffered in her service; Mademoiselle
+d'Hautefort gave full expression to her esteem and friendship; and
+Madame de Chevreuse was not less gracious. I enjoyed not only the favour
+of those to whom I was attached, but also a certain approval which the
+world is not slow to give to the unfortunate whose conduct has not
+really been disgraceful. Under these conditions an exile of two or three
+years from court was not intolerable. I was young; the king and the
+cardinal were failing in health; I had everything to hope for from a
+change. I was happy in my family, and enjoyed all the pleasures of
+country life, and the neighbouring provinces were full of other exiles.
+
+Cardinal Richelieu died on December 4, 1642. Although his enemies could
+only rejoice at finding themselves free at last from so many
+persecutions, the event has shown that the state could ill spare him. He
+had made so many changes in public affairs that he alone was able to
+direct them safely. No one before Richelieu had known all the power of
+the kingdom, or had been able to gather it all up into the hands of the
+sovereign. The severity of his adminstration had cost many lives; the
+nobility had been humbled, and the common people had been loaded with
+taxes; but the grandeur of his political designs, such as the taking of
+La Rochelle, the destruction of the Huguenot party, and the weakening of
+the house of Austria, no less than his intrepidity in carrying them out,
+have secured for his memory a justly-merited fame.
+
+
+_Under Mazarin's Rule_
+
+
+I returned to Paris immediately after the death of Richelieu, thinking
+that I might have occasion to serve the queen. In accordance with the
+late cardinal's will, Cardinal Mazarin succeeded to his powers. The
+king's state of health went from bad to worse, and the court was filled
+with intrigues with regard to the regency which must so soon be
+appointed. His death took place on May 14, 1643. The queen at once
+brought her little son, Louis XIV., to Paris; two days later she was
+declared regent in parliament; and the same evening, to the amazement of
+his enemies, she appointed Cardinal Mazarin chief of the council.
+
+Mazarin's mind was great, industrious, insinuating, and artful, and his
+character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he
+had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest
+projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his
+temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A
+pretended moderation veiled his ambition and his avarice; he said he
+wanted nothing for himself.
+
+The court was now divided between the Duke of Beaufort and the cardinal,
+and it was expected that the return of Madame de Chevreuse would incline
+the queen to the former party. But the queen was in no hurry for that
+lady's return, knowing well what turmoils she was apt to bring in her
+train. Perhaps I urged her recall more boldly than was wise; at any
+rate, I won my point, and her majesty sent me to form Madame de
+Chevreuse for her appearance at court under the new conditions.
+
+I represented to her how indispensable Cardinal Mazarin was to the
+state; that he was accused of no crime, and was guiltless of Richelieu's
+oppressions; and that the most fatal course she could take would be to
+attempt to govern the queen. Madame de Chevreuse promised to follow my
+advice, and came up to court, but her old instincts of domination were
+too much for her, and she soon declared herself openly against the
+minister who enjoyed all the queen's confidence. She even attempted his
+overthrow, and for that purpose united herself to the party known as the
+"_Importans_," which was led by the Duke of Beaufort.
+
+After various manoeuvres on the part of the cardinal and of Madame de
+Chevreuse to get the upper hand, Mazarin discovered a plot against his
+life, in which the Duke of Beaufort was implicated, and had the duke
+arrested and imprisoned. At the same time Madame de Chevreuse was sent
+away to Tours, and as I was unwilling to promise that I would have no
+more to do with her, I lost the favour of the queen, provoked the
+cardinal's displeasure, and soon found that Madame de Chevreuse herself
+was forgetful of all I had done for her.
+
+Kept in idleness, tantalised by promises of office which were never
+fulfilled, and forbidden even to follow the wars, my wretched position
+led me at last to seek some way of showing my resentment at the
+treatment I had received from the queen and cardinal. The means were at
+hand. Like many others, I had come under the spell of the beauty and
+charm of Madame de Longueville, and thus come gradually into association
+with the party of the Fronde. I followed the Duke of Enghien, her
+brother, to the attack on Courtray, then to Mardick, where I was
+wounded; and this time of military service united me more closely to his
+later interests.
+
+By the year 1647 everyone was weary of Mazarin's rule. His bad faith,
+his weakness, and his trickiness were becoming known, provinces and
+towns alike were groaning under taxation, and the citizens of Paris were
+reduced to mere despair. Parliament tried respectful remonstrances in
+vain; the cardinal thought himself safe in the servility of the nation.
+But the great majority in France desired a change, and then smouldering
+discontent soon burst into a flame.
+
+The Duke of Enghien, who had become, by the death of his father, Prince
+of Condé, had gained in 1648 a great victory in Flanders, and a solemn
+thanksgiving was held in Notre Dame to celebrate it. Mazarin chose this
+moment for the arrest of Broussel and other members of parliament who
+had voiced most urgently the public distress. The action roused Paris to
+a fury which astonished him; the people sought him to tear him to
+pieces; barricades were erected in the streets, and the king and queen
+were besieged in the royal palace. Resistance to the parliament's
+demands were at the moment impossible; the prisoners had to be released.
+
+I was at this time absent from Paris, having been sent down by the queen
+to my government at Poitou, which I had purchased; the province was
+almost in insurrection and I had to pacify it. I happened to be deeply
+wounded by a new slight which Cardinal Mazarin had put upon me, when
+Madame de Longueville sent for me to come to Paris, informing me that
+the whole plan for a civil war had been drawn up, and asking for my
+counsel in the matter. The news delighted me, and I arrived at the
+capital eager for my revenge on the queen and the cardinal.
+
+Mazarin, on the other hand, had formed his plan. Realising that Paris
+was unsafe, he determined to leave it, to place the king at
+Saint-Germain, and to lay siege to the city, which would soon be reduced
+to famine and dissensions. Their escape was made at midnight on the eve
+of Epiphany, 1649, all the court following in great disorder.
+
+The city was for a time in much perplexity, but the arrival of the Duke
+of Beaufort, who had broken prison at Vincennes, put heart into the
+people, who took him for their liberator. Other great personages threw
+in their lot with the popular cause; a large war-chest was quickly
+raised and troops were levied, and the parliament of Paris put itself
+into communication with the other parliaments of the kingdom. All
+preparations were made for a civil war, the real basis of which was a
+general hatred of Cardinal Mazarin, which was common to both parties. In
+an early engagement outside the city I was so gravely wounded as to see
+no more of this war, the events of which are hardly worth narrating. On
+April 1, 1649, the Parliament received an amnesty from the king. Neither
+party had vanquished the other; the cardinal and the parliament were
+each as strong as before, but everyone was glad to be rid, for the time,
+of the horrors of civil war.
+
+
+_Wars of the Fronde_
+
+
+The Prince of Condé, who had great influence in the council, showed
+himself so contemptuous to Mazarin, and became so inconvenient to the
+queen by his arrogance that she decided to arrest him, and to involve
+Madame de Longueville, the duke, her husband, and the Prince of Conti in
+the same disgrace. Accordingly, on January 18, 1650, the Prince of
+Condé, the Duke of Longueville, and the Prince of Conti were seized and
+imprisoned at Vincennes, and the order was given at the same time to
+arrest Madame de Longueville and myself. But we succeeded in escaping
+together to Dieppe, where we were forced to separate; Madame de
+Longueville found refuge at Stenay, where she met with Turenne, and I
+returned to my government of Poitou and formed an alliance there with
+the Duke of Bouillon, Turenne's brother. Together the duke and I matured
+designs which led to the civil war in the south.
+
+My father having died at Verteuil in March, 1650, I succeeded to the
+title of Duke of La Rochefoucauld. I invited a large number of nobles
+and gentlemen of that region to the funeral ceremonies; our plans were
+put before them; though some of them held back, most were favourable;
+and I soon found myself at the head of a force of two thousand horse and
+eight hundred foot. The Duke of Bouillon and I were joined by the young
+Princess of Condé, with her son the Duke of Enghien; we gathered more
+troops at Turenne, and marched upon Bordeaux. After overcoming some
+opposition, the princess entered that city in triumph on May 31, 1650,
+and we joined her a few days later.
+
+The grievance of the princess and the presence of her son excited the
+liveliest enthusiasm, and the party opposed to Mazarin had entire
+mastery of the town. The revolt of Bordeaux carried with it almost all
+Guienne, and Mazarin determined to crush it before it should extend to
+the neighbouring provinces. A royal army of veterans was sent down,
+Bordeaux was closely invested, an obstinate defence was made, but the
+town had to capitulate on September 28, on the condition of an amnesty
+to the princess and her adherents.
+
+Meanwhile Turenne, with a Spanish force, had made a vain attempt to
+rescue the captive princes, and Mazarin had removed them to Havre, where
+the government was devoted to him. There was now such general dread and
+hatred of the cardinal, that people were willing to unite with those
+whom they had considered their mortal enemies in order to secure his
+ruin. In the early days of 1651 I was summoned to Paris by the Princess
+Palatine, who united a taste for gallantry with a remarkable talent for
+intrigue, and remained for some time hidden in her house, where I was
+witness to many consultations for the removal of Mazarin from power. I
+even made a last attempt to persuade the cardinal himself to release the
+princes; in four nocturnal interviews I tried to show him how all
+parties were uniting to compass his ruin, but was unable to convince him
+without betraying secrets which were not my own. Mazarin gave me no hope
+of their liberation.
+
+Then arose a general storm against the minister, and he made his escape
+on the night of February 7. The queen would have followed him with her
+son, but the Frondeurs and the partisans of the princes kept her
+prisoner in her palace. Without any hope of assistance, and daunted day
+and night by an infuriated populate, she sent for me and gave me an
+order to the governor of Havre to release the princes immediately. I
+warned the leaders of the Fronde that her sincerity was not above
+suspicion, and that all depended upon her close imprisonment, and so set
+out along the northern road upon my mission. But the cardinal had been
+beforehand with me, the princes were at liberty, and on February 16 they
+entered Paris in triumph.
+
+Mazarin, who had fled to Cologne, whence he continued to direct the
+queen's cabinet, returned to France at the head of a small army in
+January, 1652, and arrived at Poitiers without meeting any resistance.
+The party opposed to him was rent by faction and strife, but the Prince
+of Condé united it, and fought an indecisive engagement with the royal
+troops on April 8. On the 11th the prince and I were well received in
+Paris, but it was evident that the citizens were weary of all these
+troubles, desired nothing so much as the king's return, and detested the
+ambition of the leaders of faction. Indeed, the magistrates were
+negotiating with Mazarin, and declared the city neutral. On July 2 the
+Prince of Condé was marching his force from Saint-Cloud to Charenton
+when he was attacked by Turenne; and in the sanguinary combat which
+followed, and in which I was fighting beside the prince, I received a
+wound in the head which prevented my taking any further part in these
+disturbances.
+
+Shortly afterwards, the Prince of Condé, his popularity wholly gone,
+took service under the King of Spain; King Louis XIV., amid general
+acclamations, returned to Paris on October 21; and Cardinal Mazarin,
+having overcome all his enemies, entered the capital in a veritable
+triumph, in February, 1653.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ
+
+
+Letters
+
+
+     Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, who became Madame de Sévigné, was
+     born at Paris on February 6, 1626. Her father and mother died
+     during her childhood and Marie was left to the care of her
+     uncle, priest of Coulanges; she received an admirable
+     education and became a great lover of history and of classical
+     literature. At eighteen years of age she married the Marquis
+     Henri de Sévigné, who was killed in a duel in 1651, and
+     thenceforth Madame de Sévigné gave herself up altogether to
+     the care of her two children. Her wit, her kindliness, and
+     happiness, her charity and fidelity, and especially a certain
+     rare genius for friendship, won for her the warm devotion of
+     many great people of that brilliant age. Her daughter was
+     married in 1669 to the Comte de Grignan, a great official,
+     lieutenant-general of Languedoc and then of Provence, a man of
+     honour, but accustomed to the most lavish expenditure, which
+     burdened his life with enormous debts. The famous "Letters" of
+     Madame de Sévigné numbering over 1,000 were written over a
+     period of twenty-five years, chiefly to this daughter, Madame
+     de Grignan. They are valued for their vivacious and graceful
+     style, the light which they throw upon the thoughts and
+     movements of her time, but especially for their revelation of
+     a wonderfully sweet and gracious personality. Madame de
+     Sévigné died on April 18, 169696.
+
+
+_Love for her Daughter_
+
+
+My dear child: I have been here but three hours, and already take my pen
+to talk to you. I left Paris with the Abbé, Hélène, Hébert and Marphise,
+so that I might get away from the noise and bustle of the town until
+Thursday evening. I want to have perfect quietness, in which to reflect.
+I intend to fast for many good reasons, and to walk much to make up for
+the long time I have spent in my room; and above all, I want to
+discipline myself for the love of God.
+
+But, my dear daughter, what I shall do more than all this, will be to
+think of you. I have not ceased to do so since I arrived here; and being
+quite unable to restrain my feelings, I have betaken myself to the
+little shady walk you so loved, to write to you, and am sitting on the
+mossy bank where you so often used to lie. But, my dear, where in this
+place have I not seen you? Do not thoughts of you haunt my heart
+everywhere I turn?--in the house, in the church, in the field, in the
+garden--every spot speaks to me of you. You are in my thoughts all the
+time, and my heart cries out for you again and again. I search in vain
+for the dear, dear child I love so passionately; but she is 600 miles
+away, and I cannot call her to my side. My tears fall, and I cannot stop
+them. I know it is weak, but this tenderness for you is right and
+natural and I cannot be strong.
+
+I wonder what your mood will be when you receive this letter; perhaps at
+that moment you will not be touched with the emotions I now feel so
+poignantly, and then you may not read it in the spirit in which it was
+written. But against that I cannot guard, and the act of writing
+relieves my feelings at the moment--that is at least what I ask of it.
+You would not believe the condition into which this place has thrown me.
+
+Do not refer to my weakness, I beg of you; but you must love me, and
+have respect for my tears, since they flow from a heart which is full of
+you.
+
+
+_The Brinvilliers Affair_
+
+
+The Brinvilliers affair is still the only thing talked of in Paris. The
+Marquise confessed to having poisoned her father, her brothers, and one
+of her children. The Chevalier Duget had been one of those who had
+partaken of a poisoned dish of pigeon-pie; and when the Brinvilliers was
+told three years later that he was still alive, her only remark was
+"that man surely has an excellent constitution." It seems she fell
+deeply in love with Sainte Croix, an officer in the regiment of her
+husband, the Marquis, who lived in their house. Believing that Sainte
+Croix would marry her if she were free, she attempted to poison her
+husband. Sainte Croix, not reciprocating her desire, administered an
+antidote, and thus saved the poor Marquis's life.
+
+And now, all is over. The Brinvilliers is no more. Judgment was given
+yesterday and this morning her sentence was read to her--she was to make
+a public confession in front of Notre Dame, after which she was to be
+executed, her body burnt and her ashes scattered to the winds. She was
+threatened with torture, but said it was unnecessary and that she would
+tell all. Accordingly she recounted the history of her whole life, which
+was even more horrible than anyone had imagined, and I could not hear of
+it without shuddering.
+
+At six in the morning she was led out, barefoot, and clad only in one
+loose garment, with a halter round her neck. From Notre Dame she was
+carried back in the same Tumbril, in which I saw her lying on straw,
+with the Doctor on one side of her and the executioner on the other; the
+sight of her struck me with horror. I am told that she mounted the
+scaffold with a firm step, and died as she had lived, resolutely, and
+without fear or emotion.
+
+She asked her confessor to place the executioner so that she need not
+gaze on Degrais, who, you _will remember_, tracked her to England, and
+ultimately arrested her at Liège. After she had mounted the ladder to
+the scaffold she was exposed to the public for a quarter of an hour,
+while the executioner arranged her for execution. This raised a murmur
+of disapproval among the people, and it was a great cruelty. It seems
+that some say she was a saint; and after her body had been burned, the
+people crowded near to search for bones as relics, but little was to be
+found, as her ashes were thrown into the fire. And, it may be supposed,
+that we now inhale what remains of her. It is to be hoped that we shall
+not inhale her murderous instincts also.
+
+She had two confessors, of whom one counselled her to tell everything,
+the other nothing. She laughed, and said, "I may in conscience do what
+pleases me best."
+
+I was pleased to hear what you think of this horrible woman; it is not
+possible that she should be in Paradise; her vile soul must be separated
+from others.
+
+
+_Devotion_
+
+
+You ask me if I am devout. Alas! No, which is a sorrow to me; but I am
+in a way detached from what is called the world. Old age, and a little
+sickness give one time to reflect. But, my dear child, what I do not
+give to the world, I give to you; so that I hardly advance in the region
+of detachment; and you know the true way towards a devout life lies in
+some degree of effacement, first of all, of that which our heart holds
+dearest.
+
+One of my great desires is to become devout. Every day I am tormented by
+this idea. I do not belong to God, neither do I belong to the Devil;
+this indecision is a perpetual torment to me, although between
+ourselves, I believe this state to be a most natural one. One does not
+belong to the Devil, because one fears God: also, one does not belong to
+God, because His law is hard, and one does not like to renounce oneself.
+These are the luke-warm, and their great number does not surprise me at
+all; I can enter into their reasonings; but God hates them; therefore we
+must cease to serve in this state--and there is the difficulty.
+
+I am overwhelmed by the death of M. du Mans; I had never thought of
+death in connection with him. Yet he has died of a trifling fever,
+without having had time to think either of heaven or of earth.
+Providence sometimes shows its authority by sudden visitations, from
+which we should profit.
+
+What you say as to the anxieties which we so often and so naturally feel
+about the future, and as to how our inclinations are insensibly changed
+by necessity, is a subject worthy of a book like Pascal's; nothing is so
+satisfying, nothing so useful as meditations of this kind. But how many
+people of your age think this? I know of none; and I honour your sound
+reasoning and courage. With me it is not so, especially when my heart
+afflicts me; my words are indifferently good; I write as those who speak
+well; but the depth of my feeling kills me. This I feel when I write to
+you of the pain of separation. I have not myself found the proverb true,
+"To cloak oneself according to the cold." I have no cloak against cold
+like this. Yet I manage to find occupation, and the time passes somehow.
+But in general it is true that our thoughts and inclinations turn into
+other channels, and our sorrows cease to be such.
+
+
+_Love of Life_
+
+
+You ask me, dear child, if I am still in love with life. I must confess
+that I find its sorrows grievous, but my distaste for death is even
+stronger. It is sad to think I must finish my life with death, and if it
+were possible I would retrace my steps. I find myself embarked on life
+without my consent, and am in a perplexing situation. I shall have to
+take leave of life, and the fact overwhelms me: for how, or by what
+gate, shall I pass away? When will death come, and in what disposition
+will it find me? Shall I suffer a thousand pains which will make me die
+in despair? Shall I die in a transport of joy? Shall I die of an
+accident? How shall I stand before God? What shall I have to offer Him?
+Shall I return to Him in fear and necessity, and be conscious of no
+other feeling but terror? What can I hope for? Am I worthy of Paradise?
+Or worthy only of Hell? What an alternative! What perplexity! Nothing is
+so mad as to leave one's safety thus in uncertainty; but nothing is more
+natural; and the foolish life I lead is perfectly easy to understand. I
+plunge myself into these thoughts; and I find death so terrible, that I
+hate life more because it leads to death, than because it leads me
+through troublesome places. You will say I wish to live for ever. Not at
+all; but if I had been asked, I would willingly have died in my nurse's
+arms, for I should thus have avoided many sorrows and would have secured
+heaven with certainty and ease.
+
+
+_The Order of God_
+
+
+Providence wills order; but if order is nothing other than the will of
+God, almost all that occurs is done against His will: all the
+persecutions, for instance, against St. Athanasius; all the prosperity
+of ill-doers and tyrants--all this is against order and therefore
+against the will of God. We must surely hold to what St. Augustine says,
+that God permits all these things so that he may manifest His glory by
+means that are unknown to us. St. Augustine knows no rule nor order but
+the will of God. If we did not follow this doctrine, we should be forced
+to conclude that almost everything is contrary to the will of Him who
+made it, and this seems to me a dreadful conclusion.
+
+I should like to complain to Father Malebranche about the mice which eat
+everything here; is that in order? Sugar, fruit, preserves, everything
+is devoured by them. And was it order last year, that miserable
+caterpillars destroyed the leaves of our forest-trees and gardens, and
+all the fruit in the country-side? Father Payen, most peaceable of men,
+has his head broken; is that order? Yes, Father, all that is doubtless
+good. God knows how to dispose of it to His glory, though we know not
+how. We must take it as true, for if we do not regard the will of God as
+equivalent to all law and order, we fall into great difficulties.
+
+You are such a philosopher, my very dear child, that there is no way of
+being happy with you. Your mind runs on beyond our hopes to picture to
+itself the loss of all we hope for; and you see, in our meetings, the
+inevitable separation that is to follow. Surely that is not the way to
+deal with the good things Providence prepares for us; we should rather
+husband and enjoy them. But after having made this little reproach, I
+must confess in all honesty that I deserve it just as much as you. No
+one can be more daunted than I am by the flight of time, nor feel more
+keenly beforehand the griefs which ordinarily follow pleasures. Indeed,
+my daughter, life mingles its good and ill: when one has what one
+desires, one is all the nearer to losing it; when it is further from us,
+we dream of finding it. So we must just take things as God sends them.
+For my part, I would cherish the hope of seeing you without mixing in
+with other feelings; and look forward to holding you in my arms next
+month. I wish to believe God will allow us this perfect joy, although it
+would be the easiest thing in the world to mix it with bitterness, if we
+so desired. All that remains, my very dear one, is to breathe and to
+live.
+
+
+_The Prince of Orange and England_
+
+
+The Prince of Orange has declared himself protector of the religion of
+England, and has asked to have charge of the education of the young
+Prince. It is a bold step, and several of the English nobility have
+joined him. We are all hoping that the Prince of Orange has made a
+mistake, and that King James II. will give him a good beating. He has
+received the Milords, confirmed the attachment of those most devoted to
+him, and has declared entire liberty of conscience. But we understand
+that the King of England has united all his people round him, by
+affording a greater degree of religious liberty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What shall we say of this English nation? Its customs and manners go
+from bad to worse. The King of England has escaped from London,
+apparently by kind permission of the Prince of Orange; the Queen will
+arrive at St. Germain in a day or two. It is quite certain that war will
+be declared against us soon, if indeed we are not the first to declare
+it. We are sending the Abbé Testu to St. Germain to help in establishing
+there the King and Queen of England and the Prince of Wales. Our King of
+France has behaved quite divinely to these Majesties of England; for to
+comfort and sustain, as he has done, a betrayed and abandoned king, is
+to act in the image of the Almighty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is good news that the King of England has left this morning for
+Ireland, where they are anxiously awaiting him. He will be better there
+than here. He is travelling through Brittany like lightning, and at
+Brest he will find Marshall d'Estrée with transport and frigates ready.
+He carries large treasure, and the King has given him arms for ten
+thousand men; as his Majesty of England was saying good-bye, he said,
+laughing, that he had forgotten arms for himself, and our King gave him
+his own. Our heroes of romance have done nothing more gallant. What will
+not this brave and unfortunate King accomplish with these ever
+victorious weapons? He goes forth with the helmet and cuirass of Renaud,
+Amadis, and our most illustrious paladins, supported by unexampled
+generosity and magnanimity.
+
+
+_Old Age_
+
+
+So you have been struck by Madame de la Fayette's words, inspired by so
+much friendliness. I never let myself forget the fact that I am growing
+old; but I must confess that I was simply astonished at what she said,
+because I do not yet feel any infirmity to keep me in mind of my
+advancing years. I think of them, however, and find that life offers us
+hard conditions: here have I been led, in spite of myself, to the fatal
+period at which one must die--old age. I see it; old age has stolen upon
+me; and my only desire is to go no further. I do not want to travel
+along that road of infirmities, pains, the loss of memory, the
+disfigurements to which I look forward as an outrage; yet I hear a voice
+saying in my ear--"You must pass down that road, whether you like it or
+not, or else you must die"; and this second alternative is as repugnant
+to nature as the first. This is the inevitable lot of whoever advances
+too far along the course of life. Yet, a return to God's will, and
+submission to that universal law which has condemned us all to death, is
+enough to seat reason again on her throne, and to give us patience. Do
+you too have patience, my darling; don't let your love, too tender,
+cause you tears which your reason must condemn.
+
+Your brother has come under the Empire of Ninon de Lenclos; I fear it
+will bring evil; she ruined his father. We must recommend him to God.
+Christian women, or at least who wish to be so, cannot see disorder like
+his without sorrow.
+
+But what a dangerous person this Ninon is! She finds that your brother
+has the simplicity of a dove, and is like his mother; it is Madame de
+Grignan who has all the salt of the family, and is not so simple as to
+be ruled. Someone, meaning to take your part, tried to correct her
+notion of you, but Ninon contradicted him and said she knew you better.
+What a corrupt creature! Because you are beautiful and spirited she must
+needs add to you another quality without which, on her principles, you
+cannot be perfect. I have been deeply troubled by the harm she is doing
+to my son. But do not speak of the matter to him; Madame de la Fayette
+and I are doing our best to extricate him from his perilous attachment.
+
+We have been reading for our amusement those little Provincial Letters.
+Heavens, what charm they have! How eagerly my son reads them! I always
+think of my daughter, and how worthy of her is the incomparable justice
+of their reasoning; but your brother says that you complain that the
+writer is always saying the same thing. Well, well; all the better! Is
+it possible that there should be a more perfect style, or a finer, more
+delicate or more natural raillery? Could anything be more worthy of
+comparison with Plato's "Dialogues"? But after the first ten letters,
+what earnestness, solidity, force and eloquence! What love for God and
+for truth, what exquisite skill in maintaining it and making it
+understood, characterise these eight last letters with their so
+different tone! I understand that you have read them only hurriedly,
+enjoying the more amusing passages; but that is not how one reads them
+at leisure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+
+The Life of Nelson
+
+
+     Robert Southey, man of letters and poet-laureate, was born at
+     Bristol on August 12, 1774, and received at various schools a
+     desultory education, which he completed by an idle year at
+     Oxford. Here he became acquainted with Coleridge; and Southey,
+     who had practised verse from early boyhood, and acquired a
+     strong taste for the drama, being also an ardent republican
+     and romanticist, was easily enlisted by the elder poet in his
+     scheme for a model republic, or "Pantisocracy," in the wilds
+     of America. They married two sisters, the Misses Fricker, and
+     a third sister married Robert Lovel, also a poet. The
+     experiment of pantisocracy was fortunately never carried out,
+     and Southey's career for the next eight years was exceedingly
+     fragmentary; but in 1803 there was a reunion of the three
+     sisters at Keswick, though one of the husbands, Lovel, was
+     dead. Here Southey entered steadily and industriously on the
+     life of an author for livelihood; it was by no means
+     unremunerative. Southey's output of work, both prose and
+     verse, was very voluminous, and its quality could not but
+     suffer. He was appointed poet-laureate in 1813; and received a
+     government pension of £160 a year from 1807, which was
+     increased by £300 a year in 1835. He died on March 21, 1843.
+     In a prefatory note to that peerless model of short
+     biographies, the "Life of Nelson," which appeared in 1813, and
+     is considered his most important work, Southey describes it as
+     "clear and concise enough to become a manual for the young
+     sailor, which he may carry about with him till he has
+     treasured up the example in his memory and in his heart."
+
+
+_I.--A Captain at Twenty_
+
+
+Horatio, son of Edmund and Catherine Nelson, was born on September 29,
+1758, in the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, a Norfolk village, where his
+father was rector. His mother's maiden name was Suckling; her
+grandmother was an elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, and this child
+was named after his godfather, the first Lord Walpole. Mrs. Nelson died
+in 1767, leaving eight children, and her brother, Captain Maurice
+Suckling, R.N., visited the widower, and promised to take care of one of
+the boys.
+
+Three years later, when Horatio was twelve years old, he read in the
+newspaper that his uncle was appointed to the Raisonnable, and urged his
+father to let him go to sea with his Uncle Maurice.
+
+The boy was never strong, but he had already given proofs of a resolute
+heart and a noble mind. Captain Suckling took an interest in him, and
+sent him on a first voyage in a merchant ship to the West Indies, and
+then, as coxswain, with the Arctic expedition of 1773, when Horatio
+showed his courage by attacking a Polar bear.
+
+A voyage to the East Indies followed, and gave him the rank of
+midshipman. But the tropical climate reduced him almost to a skeleton;
+he lost for a time the use of his limbs, and was sent home as his only
+chance of life. He returned under great depression of spirits. In later
+years he related how the despair was cleared away by a glow of
+patriotism, in which his king and country came vividly before his mind.
+"Well, then," he exclaimed, "I will be a hero, and, confiding in
+Providence, I will brave every danger!"
+
+On April 8, 1777, he passed his examination for a lieutenancy, and was
+appointed to the Lowestoft frigate, Captain Locker, then fitting out for
+Jamaica. Privateers under American colours were harassing British trade
+in the West Indies, and Nelson saw much active service. He was removed
+to the Bristol flagship, then to the command of the Badger, then to the
+Hinchinbrook, and before the age of twenty-one he had gained a rank
+which brought all the honours of the service within his reach.
+
+An expedition was at this time projected to seize the region of Lake
+Nicaragua, and thus to cut the communication of the Spaniards between
+their northern and southern possessions; and in pursuit of this policy
+Nelson was sent with a small force, early in 1780, to Honduras. Here,
+after deeds of great gallantry, his command was almost annihilated by
+the deadly climate, and he himself was so reduced by dysentery that he
+was compelled to return to England.
+
+His next ship was the Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, in which he was
+kept, to his great annoyance, in the North Sea for the whole winter of
+1781-2, and was sent in the spring to Quebec. The Albemarle then served
+on the West Indian station until tidings came that the preliminaries of
+peace had been signed, and she returned to England, and was paid off in
+1783.
+
+"I have closed the war," said Nelson, in one of his letters, "without a
+fortune; but there is not a speck on my character. True honour, I hope,
+predominated in my mind far above riches." He did not apply for a ship,
+because he was not wealthy enough to live on board in the manner which
+was then customary.
+
+But, after living for a time in lodgings in St. Omer's in France, he was
+appointed to the Boreas, going to the Leeward Islands, and on his
+arrival in the West Indies in 1784, found himself senior captain, and
+therefore second in command on that station.
+
+The Americans were at this time trading with our islands, taking
+advantage of the register of their ships, which had been issued while
+they were British subjects. Nelson knew that, by the Navigation Act, no
+foreigners, directly or indirectly, were permitted to carry on any trade
+with these possessions; and also that the Americans had made themselves
+foreigners with regard to England.
+
+Contrary to the orders both of the admiral and of the governor, he
+insisted that our ships of war were not sent abroad to make a show of,
+and seized four American vessels at Nevis; and when the matter was
+brought into court at that place he pleaded his own cause, and the ships
+were condemned.
+
+While the lawsuit was proceeding, Nelson formed an attachment to a young
+widow, Mrs. Nisbet, niece of the President of Nevis, and was married to
+her on March 11, 1787. She was then in her eighteenth year, and had one
+child, a son, Josiah, who was three years old. They returned together to
+England and took up their abode at the old parsonage, where Nelson
+amused himself with farming and country sports, and continued a
+relentless campaign against the speculators and fraudulent contractors
+attached to the naval service in the West Indies. After many vain
+attempts to secure a ship, he was at last appointed, on January 30,
+1793, to the Agamemnon, sixty-four guns.
+
+
+_II.--In the Mediterranean_
+
+
+The Agamemnon was ordered to the Mediterranean under Lord Hood, and
+Nelson was sent with despatches to Sir William Hamilton, our envoy to
+the court of Naples. Sir William, after his first interview with him,
+told Lady Hamilton that he was about to introduce a little man to her
+who could not boast of being very handsome, but who would one day
+astonish the world. Thus that acquaintance began which ended in the
+destruction of Nelson's domestic happiness, though it threatened no such
+consequences then. Here also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan
+court which led to the only blot on Nelson's public character.
+
+Having accomplished this mission, Nelson was sent to join Commodore
+Linzee at Tunis, and shortly afterwards to co-operate with General Paoli
+and the Anti-Gallican party in Corsica. At this time, 1794, Nelson was
+able to say, "My seamen are now what British seamen ought to be, almost
+invincible. They really mind shot no more than peas." And again, after
+capturing Bastia, "I am all astonishment when I reflect on what we have
+achieved! I was always of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never
+had any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three
+Frenchmen." The Agamemnon was then dispatched to co-operate in the siege
+of Calvi with General Sir Charles Stuart, at which Nelson lost the sight
+of one eye; and later played a glorious part in the attack by Admiral
+Hotham's squadron on the French fleet. This action saved Corsica for the
+time.
+
+Nelson was made colonel of marines in 1795, a mark of approbation which
+he had long wished for; and the Agamemnon was ordered to Genoa, to
+co-operate with the Austrian and Sardinian forces. The incapacity and
+misconduct of the Austrian General de Vins, however, gave the enemy
+possession of the Genoese coast. The Agamemnon, therefore, could no
+longer be useful on this station, and Nelson sailed for Leghorn to
+refit, and then joined the Mediterranean fleet under Sir John Jervis.
+
+England at that time depended too much on the rotten governments of the
+Continent, and too little upon itself. Corsica was therefore abandoned
+by Britain, and Nelson, after superintending the evacuation of Corsica,
+was ordered to hoist his broad pennant on board the Minerva frigate. He
+then sailed for Gibraltar, and proceeded westward in search of the
+admiral.
+
+
+_III.--St. Vincent and the Nile_
+
+
+Off the mouth of the Straits of Gilbraltar he fell in with the Spanish
+fleet; and on February 13, 1797, reaching the station off Cape St.
+Vincent, he communicated this intelligence to Sir John Jervis, and was
+directed to shift his broad pennant on board the Captain. On the
+following morning was fought the battle of Cape St. Vincent. The British
+had only fifteen ships of the line against twenty-seven Spanish ships,
+but Britain, largely through Nelson's intrepidity, secured an
+overwhelming victory. The commander-in-chief was rewarded with the title
+of Earl St. Vincent, and Nelson was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral
+and received the Order of the Bath.
+
+Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson was now removed to the Theseus, and was
+employed in the blockade of Cadiz, where he went through the most
+perilous action in which he was ever engaged. Making a night attack upon
+the Spanish gunboats, his barge, carrying twelve men, was attacked by an
+armed launch carrying twenty-six men; the admiral was only saved by the
+heroic devotion of his coxswain; but eighteen of the enemy were killed,
+the rest wounded, and their launch taken.
+
+Twelve days later Nelson sailed at the head of an expedition against
+Teneriffe, and on the night of July 24, 1797, made a boat attack on the
+port of Santa Cruz. On this occasion he was wounded in the right elbow,
+and the arm had to be amputated. The small force, which had made its way
+into the town, capitulated on honourable terms, and the Spanish governor
+distinguished himself by the most humane and generous conduct to his
+enemies. There is no doubt that Nelson's life was saved by the careful
+attentions of his stepson, Nisbet, who was with him in the boat.
+
+Nisbet was immediately promoted, and honours awaited Nelson in England.
+The freedom of the cities of Bristol and London were conferred on him,
+and he received a pension of £1,000 a year. He had performed an
+extraordinary series of services during the war; including four actions
+with the fleets of the enemy, three actions with boats employed in
+cutting out of harbour, and in taking three towns; he had commanded the
+batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi, he had assisted at the
+capture of twenty-eight ships of war, and had taken and destroyed nearly
+fifty merchant vessels; and had been engaged against the enemy upwards
+of a hundred and twenty times, in which service he had lost his right
+eye and right arm.
+
+Early in 1789, Sir Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and
+left England to rejoin Earl St. Vincent. He was dispatched to the
+Mediterranean, to ascertain the object of Bonaparte's great expedition,
+then fitting out at Toulon; and sailed from Gibraltar on May 9 with
+three ships of the line, four frigates, and a sloop. The Vanguard was
+dismantled in a storm, but was refitted in the Sardinian harbour of St.
+Pietro, and was joined by a reinforcement of eleven ships from Earl St.
+Vincent.
+
+The first news of the enemy's armament was that it had surprised Malta,
+but Nelson soon heard that they had left that island on June 16, and
+judged that Egypt was their destination. He arrived off Alexandria on
+the 28th, but did not find them; returned by a circuitous course to
+Sicily, then sailed to the Morea, where he gained news of the French,
+and on August I came in sight of Alexandria and the French fleet.
+"Before this time to-morrow," he said to his officers, "I shall have
+gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey."
+
+Bonaparte's ships of war, under Admiral Brueys, were moored in Aboukir
+Bay in a strong line of battle; and the advantage of numbers, both in
+ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. Yet only four French
+ships out of seventeen escaped, and the victory was the most complete
+and glorious in the annals of naval history.
+
+Nelson was now at the summit of his glory; and congratulations, rewards,
+and honours were showered upon him by all the states, princes, and
+powers to whom his victory had given respite. He was created Baron
+Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, with a pension of £2,000 a
+year for his own life, and those of his successors; a grant of £10,000
+was voted to him by the East India Company; and the King of Naples made
+him Duke of Bronte.
+
+
+_IV.--Lady Hamilton_
+
+
+As soon as his shattered frame had sufficiently recovered, Nelson was
+called to services of greater importance than any one in which he had
+been hitherto employed.
+
+The kindest attentions and warmest affection were awaiting him at
+Naples; the king, the queen, and Lady Hamilton, who was the queen's
+constant favourite, welcomed their hero and deliverer with the most
+splendid festivities. General Mack, with whom Nelson was to co-operate,
+was at the head of the Neapolitan troops; and while he marched with
+32,000 men into the Roman state, 5,000 Neapolitans were embarked on the
+British and Portuguese squadron to take possession of Leghorn.
+
+Nelson's fears of the result were soon verified. "The Neapolitan
+officers," he said, "did not lose much honour, for God knows they had
+not much to lose--but they lost all they had." The French in the Roman
+State routed the cowardly Neapolitans. There was a strong revolutionary
+party in Naples itself; and it was agreed that the royal family must
+seek safety in flight. Their secret escape, with much treasure, on board
+the Vanguard, was conducted with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton,
+and Nelson conveyed them through a wild storm to Palermo.
+
+He had by this time formed an infatuated attachment for Lady Hamilton,
+which totally weaned his affections from his wife. He was dissatisfied
+with himself and weary of the world. But, in accordance with his
+principle of duty "to assist in driving the French to the devil and in
+restoring peace and happiness to mankind," he at length expelled the
+French from Naples and restored Ferdinand to his throne. Weak in health,
+dispirited, and smarting under a censure from the Admiralty for a
+disobedience to orders, Nelson resigned his command, and reached England
+in November 1800, having travelled with Sir William and Lady Hamilton.
+
+The great admiral was welcomed to England with every mark of popular
+honour; but he had forfeited domestic happiness for ever. Before he had
+been three months at home, he separated from Lady Nelson, vowing that
+there was nothing in her or in her conduct that he could have wished
+otherwise.
+
+In January 1801 he was sent to the Baltic as second in command under Sir
+Hyde Parker. Russia, Denmark, and Sweden had founded a confederacy for
+making England resign her naval rights, and the British Cabinet decided
+instantly to crush it. The fleet sailed on March 12; Nelson represented
+to Sir Hyde Parker the necessity of attacking Copenhagen; and on April 2
+the British vessels opened fire on the Danish fleet and land batteries.
+The Danes, in return, fought their guns manfully, and at one o'clock,
+after three hours' endurance, Sir Hyde Parker gave the signal for
+discontinuing action. Nelson ordered that signal to be acknowledged, but
+continued to fly the signal for close action. "You know, Foley," he
+said, turning to the captain of the ship, "I have only one eye; I have a
+right to be blind sometimes!" Then, putting the glass to his blind eye,
+in the mood that sports with bitterness, he exclaimed, "I really do not
+see the signal. Keep mine for closer battle flying! That's the way I
+answer such signals. Nail mine to that mast!" Admiral Graves disobeyed
+in like manner, and the other ships of the line also continued the
+action. The victory was soon complete, and Sir Hyde Parker heartily
+expressed his satisfaction and gratitude.
+
+For the battle of Copenhagen, Nelson was raised to the rank of viscount.
+Had he lived long enough, he would have fought his way up to a dukedom.
+
+After holding a command in the English Channel, to watch the
+preparations which were being made at Boulogne for an invasion of
+England, Nelson retired on the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens to his
+estate at Merton, in Surrey, meaning to pass his days there in the
+society of Sir William and Lady Hamilton. Sir William died early in
+1803, and, as the government would do nothing for her, Nelson settled on
+Lady Hamilton a sum equal to the pension of £1,200 a year which her
+husband had enjoyed. A few weeks after this event the war was renewed,
+and the day after his majesty's message to parliament, Nelson departed
+to take command of the Mediterranean fleet.
+
+He took his station immediately off Toulon, and there, with incessant
+vigilance, waited for the coming out of the enemy. From May 1803 to
+August 1805 he left the Victory only three times, each time upon the
+king's service, and on no occasion for more than an hour.
+
+War having been declared between England and Spain, the Toulon fleet,
+having the Spaniards to co-operate with them, put to sea on January 18,
+1804. Nelson, who was off Sardinia when he heard the news the next day,
+sought them in vain through the Mediterranean, until he heard that they
+had been dispersed by a gale, and had returned to Toulon. On March 31
+they emerged again, and passed out of the Straits of Gibraltar, but the
+British fleet was kept by adverse winds from reaching the Atlantic till
+April 5.
+
+The enemy had thirty-five days start on their run to the West Indies,
+and Nelson, misled by false information, sought them among the islands,
+until he learned at Antigua on June 9 that they had sailed again for
+Europe. He made all speed across the Atlantic, and again sought the
+enemy vainly, until he joined Admiral Cornwallis off Ushant on August
+15. The same evening he was ordered to proceed with the Victory and
+Superb to Portsmouth.
+
+
+_V.--Trafalgar_
+
+
+Here, at last, he heard news of the combined fleets; Sir Robert Calder
+had fallen in with them near Finisterre and had fought an indecisive
+engagement.
+
+On September 14, 1805, he passed through the crowds at Portsmouth, many
+of whom were in tears, many kneeling and blessing him as he passed. He
+arrived off Cadiz on September 29 with twenty-three ships, and on
+October 9 he sent Collingwood his plan of attack--what he called "the
+Nelson-touch." These tactics consisted in cutting through the line of
+the enemy in three places.
+
+On the morning of the 19th the enemy came out of the port of Cadiz, and
+all that day and night, and the next day, the British pursued them. At
+daybreak of the 21st, the combined fleets were distinctly seen from the
+Victory, about twelve miles to leeward. Signal was made to bear down on
+the enemy in two lines, and all sail was set, the Victory leading.
+
+Nelson now retired to his cabin and wrote in his diary a prayer
+committing himself and the British cause to Heaven, and then wrote a
+memorial setting forth Lady Hamilton's services to Britain, and leaving
+her and her daughter Horatia as a legacy to his country.
+
+Villeneuve, commanding the enemy, was a skilful seaman, and his plan of
+defence was as original as the plan of attack. He formed the fleet in a
+double line, every alternate ship being a cable's length to windward of
+her second ahead and astern. Nelson, certain of triumph, issued his last
+signal: "England expects every man to do his duty," which was received
+throughout the fleet with acclamations.
+
+The English lines, led by Nelson and by Collingwood, swept down upon the
+hostile fleet, the Victory steering for the bow of the Santissima
+Trinidad. At four minutes after twelve she opened fire, and almost
+immediately ran against the Redoubtable. Four ships, two British and two
+French, formed as compact a tier as if they had been moored together,
+their heads all lying the same way.
+
+At a quarter past one, a ball fired from the mizzen-top of the
+Redoubtable struck Nelson on the left shoulder, and he fell on his face.
+"They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said; "my backbone is shot
+through." He was carried below, laid on a pallet in the midshipmen's
+berth, and insisted that the surgeon should leave him--"for you can do
+nothing for me." He was in great pain, and expressed much anxiety for
+the event of the action, until Captain Hardy was able to tell him that
+fifteen of the enemy had been taken. Repeating that he left Lady
+Hamilton and Horatia as a legacy to his country, and exclaiming, "Thank
+God, I have done my duty!" Nelson expired.
+
+He cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MADAME DE STAAL
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Marguerite Jeanne de Launay, Baronne de Staal, was born in
+     Paris on May 30, 1684. Her father was a painter of the name of
+     Cordier who was in England when his daughter was born; and the
+     name by which she was known, de Launay, was that of her
+     mother's family. Her story is told by herself, with admirable
+     sincerity, in these Memoirs, which follow her life until the
+     year 1735, when, at the age of fifty-one, she married Baron de
+     Staal, a widower and an officer in the Guard. Her death took
+     place in Paris on June 16, 1750. Her Memoirs, first published
+     in 1755, are among the most interesting records of that
+     period, and though their historical accuracy has been doubted,
+     her portraits of persons are vivid and convincing. Her style
+     has been highly commended by Sainte-Beuve and other French
+     literary critics.
+
+
+_A Convent Child_
+
+
+If I write the record of my life, it is not because it deserves
+attention, but in order to amuse myself by my recollections. My story is
+just the opposite of the ordinary romance, wherein a girl brought up as
+a peasant becomes an illustrious princess; for I was treated in
+childhood as a person of distinction, and had to find out later that I
+was a nobody and owned nothing in the world. And so, not having been
+trained from the first to ill fortune, my spirit has always rebelled
+against the servitude in which I have had to live.
+
+My father, for some reason that I never knew, had to leave France and
+live in England; and my mother, alone in Paris and without resources,
+took me with her as an infant to find a refuge in the abbey of
+Saint-Sauveur d'Evreux in Normandy, where Madame de La Rochefoucauld,
+the abbess, received us free of charge.
+
+There was at that time a lengthy disagreement between King Louis XIV.
+and the Pope with regard to the nomination of abbesses, in consequence
+of which two ladies Mesdames de Grieu, having been disappointed of an
+expected establishment, retired to Saint-Sauveur, where they formed a
+great friendship with my mother, and became devoted to her two-year-old
+child. I was naturally very popular in the convent, and having a bright
+disposition I was educated with the utmost care.
+
+Chiefly with a view to giving me greater advantage, the elder Madame de
+Grieu sought and at length obtained the Priory of Saint-Louis at Rouen,
+and took me thither with the consent of my mother. Saint-Louis was like
+a little kingdom, where I reigned as a sovereign; the abbess and her
+sister had no thought but to satisfy my every fancy, and the whole
+convent was forced to pay court to me. All that was done for me cost me
+so little that it seemed a matter of course that I should be flattered
+and served, and at an early age I had contracted all the defects which I
+have since had to allow for in the great.
+
+This extreme indulgence would have turned my defects into vices, if
+devotion had not ruled my passions from the first. Religion was the one
+great object before my eyes; I had been well instructed in it; I read
+continually the devotional books in the convent library, and passed much
+of my time in prayer and meditation. Yet my early desire to become a nun
+passed gradually away, until I thought of it no more.
+
+Mademoiselle de Silly, an amiable and cultivated young lady whose
+actions were ruled by principles rather than by feelings, came to live
+at Saint-Louis, and I was soon attached to her with all the ardour of a
+girl's affection; her tastes became mine, and I used to read all day
+beside her. She was then studying the philosophy of Descartes, and I
+became absorbed in questions of that kind to the neglect of everything
+else, until, fearing lest they might disturb my faith, I resolutely
+banished them from my mind.
+
+I was about fourteen years old when the convent of Saint-Louis fell into
+great poverty owing to a famine which was desolating France, and the
+disaffection of the nuns was centred on me as a chief cause of
+unnecessary expense. Their complaints came to the archbishop of Rouen,
+and abbess had difficulty in keeping me with her. My helpless condition
+began to force itself on my attention; and I realised that if the abbess
+were to die I was alone and without support in the world.
+
+An unexpected event now drew me closer to Mademoiselle de Silly. Her
+mother, having come to Rouen, took her home to Silly, and invited me to
+accompany her. I accepted joyfully, and spent several months in the
+solitary and melancholy old castle. The Marquis was extremely
+economical, the Marquise very devout, and we saw few people. One visitor
+from the neighborhood, however, attracted me strongly; and as he came
+often and stayed long, my friend and I agreed that one of us had pleased
+him. When he had declared his affection, and it was not for me, I
+learned what jealousy is--a kind of horror like that of falling down
+through a fathomless abyss.
+
+During the next visit to Silly in the following year the son of the
+house arrived, and at first kept very much to himself and to his books.
+But having heard his sister and myself complaining of these unsociable
+ways, he frankly confessed his fault and amended it, and from that day
+we spent every hour together. His mind and his manner was infinitely
+agreeable; and in my successive visits to Silly we formed a delightful
+friendship which was never interrupted by more ardent feelings.
+
+
+_Thrown on the World_
+
+
+At length my dear abbess fell so dangerously ill that I saw I was about
+to lose her; and I became desolately aware that I owed her all, and that
+her death would not only leave me absolutely helpless, but would also
+deprive me of my best friend. I never knew anyone else so abundant in
+goodness, with so much sweetness, attention for others and forgetfulness
+of self, nor with such exact regard for every duty. Her death came soon,
+and it was evident that neither her sister nor I could remain at the
+convent. Several generous helpers came forward with offers of support,
+but in my uncertain position I judged it better to refuse them all. I
+was resolved to suffer any misery and servitude rather than sacrifice my
+independence, and only accepted a small loan sufficient to take me to
+Paris.
+
+I was soon in the great city, looking out for a situation as children's
+governess; fortunately, I had a taste for that occupation, and imagined
+that taste for it meant talent. I had a sister, in the household of the
+Duchess de La Ferté, and found her very amiable and helpful. With her
+assistance I went to board at a cheap rate in the convent of the
+Presentation, and she succeeded in inspiring her mistress with so
+elevated an idea of my attainments that the Duchess soon afterwards sent
+for me. After showing me off as a prodigy of learning to all her
+friends, the Duchess de La Ferté, a voluble and enthusiastic woman,
+conceived a violent affection for me, and projected innumerable schemes
+for my advancement, which ended in my being received into her own
+household as her secretary.
+
+I should have been delighted with this position if I had not remembered
+how my sister, who had gone there as her favourite, had fallen to the
+situation of chambermaid, and if I had not realised that my mistress's
+affection would probably be as short-lived as it was intemperate. It
+proved to be so indeed; it was succeeded by a hatred as violent as her
+attachment had been; and after subjecting me to every indignity she
+finally disposed of me by placing me in the household of the Duchess of
+Maine, at Sceaux.
+
+Here I inhabited a tiny room, without windows or fireplace, and so low
+that it was impossible to stand upright. I was given sewing to do, but
+my first piece of work proved my incapacity, and my extremely
+short-sight made me equally helpless in waiting on the Duchess. I was
+astonished at the patience with which she bore my awkwardness, but my
+fellow-servants, with whom I was most unpopular, were less merciful. The
+hard and thankless existence, so different from anything which I had
+been accustomed, threw me into a profound depression, until I began to
+cherish the idea of taking leave of life.
+
+But gradually my situation altered for the better. Her Serene Highness
+the Duchess began to take notice of me, and became accustomed to speak
+to me and to take interest and pleasure in my replies. She had now
+succeeded in raising her family to rank equal to her own, and by a
+famous edict her children and their descendants had been brought within
+the succession to the crown. Her delight in amusements and in pageants
+was now at its highest, and it happened that the Abbé de Vaubrun,
+designing a spectacular piece in honor of Night, confided to me the task
+of writing and delivering an epilogue in that character. My stage-fright
+spoiled my elocution, but from that day I was entrusted with the
+organisation of these magnificent entertainments, and the last of them
+was entirely designed and written by myself. By this means I came to
+take a quite different place in the household.
+
+
+_Political Intrigues_
+
+
+King Louis XIV. had been failing for some time, though every one
+pretended not to notice it; and the Duchess of Maine, ever anxious for
+the greatness of her family, was very eager to know his testamentary
+intentions. Enough was ascertained, by the help of Madame de Maintenon,
+to show that the King's dispositions were in favour of the Duke of
+Orleans, and the mistake was made of confiding to the Duke his future
+advantage. As the illness progressed, a council of regency was formed
+with the Duke of Orleans at its head, and when the King died the Duke
+was appointed Regent by Parliament, and the Duke of Maine was entrusted
+with the education of the young King.
+
+The Duchess of Maine, who had come up to Paris for this anxious time,
+suffered a good deal from insomnia, and now called me in to read to her
+every night. But there was more conversation than reading, and she
+poured out to me in entire confidence all her secrets, projects,
+complaints and regrets. This touching confidence made me very deeply
+attached to her; and when she and her husband removed to the Tuilleries
+to superintend the King's education, they took me with them.
+
+In defence of the interests of her family in the succession to the
+Crown, which were threatened by the Duke of Orleans, Cardinal Polignac
+and others undertook the preparation of a very learned memoir, based on
+a great mass of historical and legal precedents; the Duchess threw
+herself into the most laborious researches to assist them, and I was set
+to study ancient volumes and to correspond with all kinds of
+authorities. The great work was finished at last; it was a fine,
+well-written production; but it did not repay the trouble it had cost.
+The question was decided against the family of Maine, the edict
+conferring on them the succession to the Crown was revoked, and the rank
+of princes of the blood was taken from them.
+
+It is impossible to describe the sorrow of my mistress at this sudden
+overthrow of the fortunes of her family. She was wholly unable to
+acquiesce in it, and her illtreatment in France suggested to her the
+idea of seeking help from the King of Spain. The Baron de Walef, who was
+going to that court, undertook to represent her case there, and the
+Duchess of Maine held secret interviews with the Spanish ambassador in
+Paris. Several other persons became implicated in these intrigues; the
+Duchess became more deeply compromised than she had at first intended;
+and her interests became interwoven with other chimerical projects,
+including the restoration of the Pretender in England. These movements
+became known to the Duke of Orleans, and my mistress's intrigues were
+soon brought to an end.
+
+On December 9, 1718, we were informed that the house of the Spanish
+Ambassador was surrounded by troops, and a day or two later we learned
+that our arrest, on the charge of inciting to revolution, might be
+expected at any moment. On the 29th, we were awakened early in the
+morning to find the house full of soldiers; the Duchess was carried off
+to imprisonment at Dijon, and the Duke of Maine was immured in the
+citadel of Dourlans in Picardy.
+
+
+_In the Bastille_
+
+
+I was taken in a carriage with three musketeers, to a little bridge
+before a wall, and delivered to the governor of the Bastille, who sent
+me to a large empty room, the walls of which were covered with charcoal
+drawings executed by former prisoners. A little chair was brought me, a
+bundle of wood was lighted on the hearth, one small candle was fixed to
+the wall, and I heard half a dozen locks and bolts closing the door that
+shut me off from mankind. The first hour, which I spent gazing at my
+crackling fire, was the most desolate of all my imprisonment.
+
+Then the governor appeared, with my attendant Mademoiselle Rondel; I was
+rejoiced to find that she was to relieve my solitude, and to hear from
+her that she had managed to hide all my papers after my capture. Our
+room was presently furnished with beds, table and chairs; on the
+following day we were given books and a pack of cards; our meals were
+tolerable, and except for our captivity we were comfortable enough.
+
+The two judges charged with the interrogation of the prisoners in our
+affair, of whom there seemed to be a considerable number, came daily,
+and held their interviews in a room immediately below ours; so that
+Rondel could see through the window one of our acquaintances after
+another being brought across the court to be examined. My time did not
+come for many days, and I spent long hours racking my brain for the
+answers which I ought to give. The fear of the questions by torture
+began to force itself on my mind; and though I thought I could face pain
+or even death I was doubtful whether I should be able to keep silence
+under that dreadful ordeal.
+
+After these weeks of suspense I was called before the judges, and was
+asked whether the Duchess of Maine had not great confidence in me and
+whether I had not been aware of her treasonable correspondence and
+intrigues. The line I took was to represent my services to my mistress
+as having been of a very humble nature; I insisted that I knew nothing
+of her private affairs, and had seen and heard nothing that could at all
+compromise her loyalty to the Government. This appeared to satisfy them
+for the present, and after enquiring whether I was well treated in
+prison they dismissed me.
+
+I did not suffer from ennui in the Bastille; I devised for myself many
+little occupations; and soon a surreptitious correspondence with the
+Chevalier de Menil, who had been imprisoned for participation in our
+affair, gave interest to the days. We were even permitted occasional
+interviews by favour of one of the subordinate officials, and before we
+regained our liberty I had promised to be his wife.
+
+The Regent at last became anxious to bring to an end the whole episode
+of the Duchess of Maine's intrigue; but he wished first to secure a full
+admission of guilt from the principal actors in it. The Duchess was
+promised her complete liberty if she would send him a frank confession
+in writing, which should be seen by no one but himself. Finding herself
+in a position to secure the freedom of all those whom she had
+imperilled, she sent the Duke of Orleans the required paper, in which
+she disclosed everything in detail and with entire sincerity.
+
+I was examined again without making any disclosure, but after receiving
+the written command of the Duchess I wrote out a declaration of all that
+I knew and was a few days later set at liberty, after two years of
+captivity. I went down at once to Sceaux, where I was affectionately
+received by my mistress.
+
+Returning to Paris two days later, to fetch my things from the Bastille,
+I called at the Convent of the Presentation, and found in the parlour
+the Chevalier de Menil. I was astonished at his manner, no less than by
+what he said; it was evidently that his only desire was to break his
+engagement with me. I realised that the man was without honour or
+kindness, and yet it was difficult to detach my affections from him.
+
+It was about a year later that M. Dacier was introduced to me, after the
+death of his wife, by the Duchess de La Ferté, and an ardent desire for
+liberty from my condition of servitude led me to accept his proposal of
+marriage, subject only to be the permission of my Duchess. This she was
+reluctant to give, and the matter was still under discussion when we
+heard of M. Dacier's sudden death.
+
+The rest of my life, though it has been a long one, contains little of
+interest. I found myself without any object to live for, and a strange
+deadness of feeling came over me, harder to bear than illness or death.
+I had a distaste for existence and a horror of the world, and desired
+nothing more than to hide myself away. A little pension had been secured
+for me; my mistress had fallen dangerously ill; I wished to leave Sceaux
+in order to run away from a new attachment which was gaining power over
+me; and the thought of entering a Carmelite house became a settled
+project. But I was refused even this last refuge; the prioress deciding
+that I had no vocation for the religious life.
+
+I spent several years without coming to any harmony either with myself
+or with fortune. Several offers of marriage were made to me, but I could
+not bring myself to accept any of them, until a sudden fancy for the
+sweet simplicities of country life led me to agree to a marriage with M.
+de Staal.
+
+A few days after my marriage I heard of the death of the Duchess of
+Maine. I never knew a more perfectly reasonable woman. She was all
+feeling; even her thoughts were really sentiments; she was lively
+without moodiness, impassioned without violence, always animated; sweet
+and sensible. There was a vivid warmth about her, that made her a
+perfectly gracious friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+EARL STANHOPE
+
+
+Life of William Pitt
+
+
+     The biographer of Pitt was a grandson of the Lord Mahon,
+     afterwards Earl of Stanhope, who married, in 1774, the great
+     statesman's eldest sister. Philip Henry Stanhope was born at
+     Walmer on January 30, 1805, and entered the House of Commons
+     as Lord Mahon in 1831. He took a prominent part in the
+     foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, and the
+     Historical Manuscripts Commission, and the promotion of
+     successful archaeological investigations on the site of Troy.
+     His literary labours were considerable and important. Chief
+     among them were the "History of England from the Peace of
+     Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," the "History of Queen
+     Anne's Reign," and the "Life of the Right Honourable William
+     Pitt." The last named, published in 1861-2, is one of the most
+     authoritative of political biographies, compiled with a
+     gravity and care characteristic of its author, and of abiding
+     value as a standard book of reference for one of the greatest
+     personalities and one of the most stirring periods of English
+     history. Earl Stanhope died on December 24, 1875.
+
+
+_I.--The Boy Statesman_
+
+
+William Pitt, the elder, afterwards Earl of Chatham, married in 1754
+Lady Hester Grenville. William Pitt, their second son, was born on May
+28, 1759, at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent.
+
+In his boyhood, from the earliest years, William Pitt evinced to all
+around him many tokens of intellectual promise and ambition; but his
+parents were frequently distressed by his delicate health. It was no
+doubt on this account that he was not sent to any public or private
+school. Lord Chatham was extremely careful of the education of his
+family; and, without any disparagement to young William's tutor, it was
+certainly from his father that he profited most.
+
+William was at fourteen so forward in his studies that he was sent to
+Cambridge, commencing his residence at Pembroke Hall in October 1773.
+His health at this period gave cause for great alarm. A serious illness
+at Cambridge, however, proved a turning-point; for long afterwards he
+enjoyed fairly good health. Early hours, daily exercise on horseback,
+and liberal potations of port wine--his elixir of strength at this time,
+although it helped in later years to undermine his constitution--made
+him far stronger after his illness than before it.
+
+In 1778, after the death of his father, he was entered at Lincoln's Inn,
+and was called to the Bar in 1780. But he had little opportunity of
+practising as a barrister, for his parliamentary ambitions were soon
+fulfilled. In the autumn of 1780 he was an unsuccessful candidate for
+Cambridge University; but through the influence of Sir James Lowther he
+was returned in the same year for Appleby, and took his seat in the
+Commons on January 23, 1781.
+
+Lord North was still at the head of affairs, and the Opposition
+consisted of two parties: the aristocratic Whigs, whose leader was the
+Marquis of Rockingham, but whose true guiding spirit was Charles James
+Fox; and a smaller band of the old adherents of Lord Chatham, under Lord
+Shelburne. To this party Pitt, as a matter of course, attached himself.
+His first speech was made on February 26, in support of Burke's bill for
+economical reform. He completely fulfilled the high expectations that
+had been formed of the son of so illustrious a father. Not only did he
+please, it may be said that he astonished the House.
+
+Two speeches later in the session confirmed the distinction of the young
+orator. In 1782, after a long series of Opposition attacks, Lord North
+resigned; but in the new arrangements Pitt was not included. He had
+determined that he would serve his sovereign as a cabinet minister, or
+not at all. For a time he devoted his efforts, without success, to the
+reform of the representation of the House of Commons. But in July 1782
+Lord Rockingham died; there was a cabinet split, due to a quarrel
+between Fox and Shelburne; the latter became First Lord of the Treasury,
+and Pitt, at the age of twenty-three, was offered and accepted the post
+of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
+
+The newly-formed ministry was soon exposed to hot attacks by the
+coalition of the parties of Fox and North, and Pitt, in attacking this
+"baneful alliance," made one of the greatest speeches of his career. But
+the ministry was defeated; Lord Shelburne resigned; and the king,
+advised by Shelburne, invited Pitt to become Prime Minister. After
+anxious consideration he refused.
+
+The Fox and North coalition now assumed office. This union of extremes
+was unpopular in the country, although powerful in parliamentary
+strength. Pitt tried once more to pass a measure of parliamentary
+reform; and during the recess he paid a visit to France--the one foreign
+journey of his life.
+
+When parliament resumed its sittings, in the autumn of 1783, Fox's India
+Bill was passed by the Commons, but rejected by the Lords. The king, who
+was vehemently opposed to the bill, demanded the resignation of Fox and
+North, and on December 19 invited Pitt, now aged twenty-four, to become
+Prime Minister. This time the invitation was not refused.
+
+Pitt had great difficulty in forming a cabinet, and was the only cabinet
+minister in the Commons. His main support in that house was Henry
+Dundas, treasurer of the navy--his life-long friend. On facing
+parliament at the opening of 1784, Pitt's purpose was to delay a
+dissolution until the coalition's unpopularity in the country had
+reached its height, and with this end he patiently endured defeat after
+defeat. In March he deemed that the right moment had come, and his
+judgement was rewarded at the General Election by a triumphant majority.
+
+Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the
+Treasury, and during the years of peace that followed, his successes
+were largely financial. He established a series of financial reforms
+that not only increased the favour in which his ministry was held, but
+undoubtedly enabled the country to bear the terrible strain that was
+afterwards to be placed upon it. In his attempt to adjust commercial
+relations with Ireland he was less successful; he was obliged, besides,
+to abandon his schemes of parliamentary reform, and his exertions, in
+concert with his friend Wilberforce, to destroy the slave traffic ended
+in disappointment--even although in this he had the hearty support of
+his rival, Fox.
+
+Young as he was, and victorious as he had become, he was never tempted
+to presume upon his genius, or relax in his application. He allowed
+himself but little holiday. He spent a good deal of such time as he
+could spare at Holwood, a property he had bought near Bromley; and
+occasional visits to Brighton, and to his mother's residence at Burton
+Pynsent, in Somersetshire, made up the greater part of his travels.
+
+
+_II.--The Regency Problem_
+
+
+Not only had Pitt's administration rehabilitated English finances; it
+had gained for England a strong measure of European support. In 1788
+there was concluded what was virtually a triple defensive alliance with
+Prussia and Holland; and with France herself, should she be willing to
+remain at peace, there was a treaty of commerce to engage her in more
+friendly relations.
+
+But towards the end of the year Pitt was confronted with what seemed a
+certainty of loss of office. King George III., after a long period of
+ill health, was found to be definitely suffering from mental alienation.
+A regency became necessary, and the person clearly marked out for the
+office was the Prince of Wales. But the prince was the political
+associate of Fox, and there was no doubt that his first step on
+accession to power would be the dismissal of Pitt.
+
+Pitt saw the prospect before him, and did not attempt to shirk it. But
+he did propose certain restrictions on the regency in order that the
+king, should he recover his reason, might without difficulty resume his
+power.
+
+When parliament assembled in December, Fox declared boldly that the
+prince had as much right to assume sovereignty during the king's
+incapacity as he would have in the event of the king's death. Pitt,
+exulting in his rival's indiscreet departure from Whig principles,
+retorted that the assertion of such a right, independent of the decision
+of the two houses, was little less than treason to the constitution.
+Fox's attitude was unpopular, and Pitt's resolutions, and the Regency
+Bill that followed, were carried through the Commons.
+
+Towards the end of February, the third reading of the Regency Bill was
+impending in the Lords. Pitt had proposed that the difficulty about
+procuring the royal assent to the measure should be overcome by
+empowering the chancellor by a joint vote of both houses to put the
+Great Seal to a commission for giving the assent. But this expedient was
+unnecessary. By February 22 the king was completely recovered. The
+Regency Bill fell to the ground, and all the hopes which the Opposition
+had reared upon it.
+
+The day of thanksgiving for the king's recovery is regarded by Lord
+Macaulay as the zenith in Pitt's political life. "To such a height of
+power and glory," he says, "had this extraordinary man risen at
+twenty-nine years of age. And now," he adds, perhaps less justly, "the
+tide was on the turn."
+
+
+_III.--The Struggle with France_
+
+
+Pitt was able to declare, in the session that preceded the dissolution
+of 1790, that "we are adding daily to our strength, wealth, and
+prosperity," and, as a result of the elections, his parliamentary
+majority was more than confirmed.
+
+But symptoms of the coming stress were already manifest. The minister
+was anxiously watching the course of the revolution in France; and,
+while far from sharing the enthusiasm of Fox for the new principles, he
+did not endorse the fierce hostility of Burke.
+
+"I cannot regard with envious eyes," he said, "any approximation in
+neighbouring states to those sentiments which are the characteristics of
+every British subject."
+
+But the development of events soon made it clear that the new France had
+become a danger to the peace of Europe. As long as possible Pitt avoided
+war, which was ultimately forced upon him in 1793 by France's attack
+upon Holland, to which we were bound by treaty obligations.
+
+From that time, until the peace in 1802, English naval enterprises were
+generally successful, and English military enterprises generally failed.
+Pitt has often been blamed for the faults of his country's generals; but
+it is assuredly true that he did all that a civilian could do to secure
+success in the field.
+
+The heavy cost of the war, increased as it was by the subsidies paid to
+Austria, and afterwards to Russia, compelled an entire departure from
+Pitt's old financial methods. Each year brought an increase of taxation
+and an increase of debt; and at the beginning of 1797 the directors of
+the Bank of England, in dire perplexity, told Pitt that the state, for
+all his expedients, was threatened with insolvency. Pitt did not falter.
+An order in council was issued, suspending cash payments at the bank.
+Thus was established a gigantic system of paper credit, giving us power
+to cope with no less gigantic foes. Cash payments were not resumed until
+1819.
+
+Pitt had not only to cope with enemies without, but with sedition
+within. Societies formed for propagating the principles of the
+revolution advocated the subversion of the constitution under the
+pretence of parliamentary reform; the populace, angered by the
+privations caused by the clearness of food, listened readily to the
+agitators; riots were frequent, but the most mischievous form taken by
+sedition was that of armed conspiracy. Against these evils Pitt
+contended by royal proclamations, prosecutions, and, above all, by the
+suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. In his firm suppression of disorder
+Pitt was loyally supported by large majorities in both houses, and the
+country generally was on his side. But his domestic policy, his foreign
+policy, and his finance were unsparingly attacked by Fox and a small
+band of devoted followers--followers who did not abate in their
+resolution when their leader, weary of the unequal conflict, retired for
+a time from public life.
+
+In the busy and anxious year 1796, there was a report that Pitt was on
+the point of marriage. During his short intervals of leisure at Holwood,
+he often visited his neighbour, Lord Auckland, at Beckenham, and was
+much attracted by Lord Auckland's eldest daughter, the Hon. Eleanor
+Eden. This strong attachment did not proceed to a proposal and a
+marriage. Pitt wrote to Lord Auckland avowing his affection, but
+explaining that in the circumstances of pecuniary difficulty in which he
+was involved, he would not presume to make the lady an offer. Lord
+Auckland acknowledged the explanation as adequate, and thus honourably
+ended the only "love-passage" in the life of Pitt.
+
+Considering that Pitt's income as minister was £6,000 a year, and that
+he derived an additional £3,000 a year from the Lord Wardenship of the
+Cinque Ports, his pecuniary troubles may seem hard to explain. He had no
+family, and no expensive tastes. But he was so intent upon the national
+exchequer that he neglected his private accounts, with the consequence
+that he was plundered by his domestics. His expenses were not checked,
+and his debts continued to grow.
+
+
+_IV.--Resignation_
+
+
+In the year 1800 Pitt was able to achieve a momentous change in the
+affairs of Ireland. The chronic discontent of that country, largely due
+to the resentment of the Catholics at their exclusion from the rights of
+citizenship, had been fanned by the importation of revolutionary ideas;
+and there were hopes, once or twice on the point of realisation, of a
+French invasion of the island. In 1798 a rebellion broke out, but was
+suppressed with promptness, and, it must be added, in many instances
+with cruelty. But to Pitt the suppression of the insurrection was only
+the first part of his duty. He thought that to revert to the old system
+would be a most shallow policy. A new, and comprehensive, and healing
+method must be tried--an Act of Union, which should raise the minds of
+Irishmen from local to imperial aims--which should blend the two
+legislatures, and, if possible, also the two nations, in one.
+
+In 1800 the project was fulfilled--not without fierce resistance in the
+Irish Parliament, and not without a certain distribution of favours to
+those for whose support the government was anxious; although the
+allegations made on this subject seem to be exaggerated. Having
+accomplished the union, Pitt laid plans for a further reform which led,
+early in the following year, to his retirement from office.
+
+He proposed the emancipation of the Catholics by the substitution of a
+political for the religious test of fitness for citizenship. Although
+the Anglican bishops and clergy and many laymen were strongly opposed to
+Catholic emancipation, Pitt would probably have been able to carry his
+scheme had it not been for royal antagonism. The king believed,
+erroneously but passionately, that by consenting to such a measure he
+would violate his coronation oath.
+
+His majesty expressed his opinions on the subject so publicly and so
+vehemently that on January 31, 1801, Pitt felt compelled to ask leave to
+resign unless he were allowed to pursue his course on the Catholic
+question. The king required the abandonment of the scheme, and on
+February 3 Pitt resigned office. Thus abruptly ended his renowned
+administration of more than seventeen years.
+
+The new Prime Minister was Mr. Addington, formerly Speaker of the
+Commons. Several of Pitt's colleagues remained in the ministry, although
+others withdrew from it; and Pitt himself gave general support to the
+government--support which was offered with especial warmth, and
+possessed especial value, during the hotly criticised peace negotiations
+with the First Consul Bonaparte in 1801 and 1802. Although Pitt had been
+obliged when in office to refuse several inadequate offers of peace, he
+had always been prepared to end the war under honourable conditions. The
+distinction of ending the war did not fall to his share; but his
+services were not forgotten. On May 7, 1802, the House of Commons
+carried by overwhelming numbers a motion, "That the Right Hon. William
+Pitt has rendered great and important services to his country, and
+especially deserves the gratitude of this house." And on May 28, 1802,
+Pitt's birthday, more than 800 persons assembled at a memorable banquet
+in honour of "the pilot that weathered the storm."
+
+Until the renewal of war in 1803 Pitt took little-part in public
+affairs. Most of his time was spent at Walmer Castle, with occasional
+visits to Bath for the sake of his health, which had been uncertain
+since an attack of serious illness in 1797. He remained in constant
+communication with his political friends, and sometimes during the
+earlier part of his retirement aided the ministry with his advice. But
+with the progress of time he found himself less and less able to support
+Addington and his colleagues.
+
+In May 1803 the uneasy peace came to an end. The constant aggressions of
+Bonaparte and his dominating tone made friendly relations impossible.
+There was a widespread feeling in the country that now that the storm
+had recommenced the old pilot should be called to the helm. Pitt
+returned to the Commons after the declaration of war, and forcibly
+criticised some of the financial and defensive measures of the ministry.
+
+In 1804 the ministry showed itself wholly unequal to the strain upon it;
+and the situation was complicated by a temporary return of the king's
+malady. Pitt not only renewed his opposition to Addington, but made it
+plain that he was prepared to take part in a strong and comprehensive
+administration, including even Fox, that should be formed to rescue the
+crown and country from the dangers to which they were exposed under the
+Addington ministry.
+
+A series of combined attacks was directed against the government during
+the month of April. Although Addington was not defeated in the Commons,
+he saw his majority steadily diminish; and on April 26 he resolved to
+resign. On the 30th, the Lord Chancellor intimated to Pitt his majesty's
+desire to receive the plan of a new administration.
+
+
+_V.--The Last Ministry_
+
+
+The king's opposition made the inclusion of Fox in the new ministry
+impossible. His hostility to Fox, however, was not simply on political
+grounds; he believed him to be responsible for the excesses of the
+Prince of Wales. Pitt was in consequence obliged to be content with a
+restricted choice of ministers, and had to face a powerful opposition in
+parliament. Addington was persuaded to join the ministry early in 1805.
+
+During the summer of 1804 Bonaparte and his host lay menacingly at
+Boulogne, awaiting that command of the channel "for six hours," which
+the great warrior recognised as essential to his plans. Meanwhile, Pitt
+laboured to form another coalition, and, at the cost of heavy subsidies,
+was successful. Russia, Austria, and Sweden joined in the league against
+Napoleon; Prussia still hesitated.
+
+In the summer of 1805 Napoleon was again at Boulogne, but his plan of
+invasion was wrecked by the failure of the French fleet to reach the
+Channel. When Napoleon learned that the fleet had gone south, and that
+the attack upon England had been thwarted, he straightway marched his
+army to mid-Europe. Pitt had staked everything on the new coalition, and
+the surrender of the Austrians at Ulm was news of the utmost bitterness
+to him. But a splendid corrective came soon afterwards in the crowning
+naval victory of Trafalgar. Although the nation's feelings were divided
+between joy at the triumph and grief at the death of the illustrious
+victor, Pitt's popularity, which had been somewhat uncertain, was
+enormously enhanced by the event. The Lord Mayor proposed his health as
+"the saviour of Europe."
+
+Pitt's reply was nearly as follows: "I return you many thanks for the
+honour you have done me, but Europe is not to be saved by any single
+man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, I trust, save
+Europe by her example." With only these two sentences the minister sat
+down. They were the last words that Pitt ever spoke in public.
+
+He was suffering much at this time from gout, and his general health was
+undermined by anxiety. In December he journeyed to Bath, and at Bath
+there reached him the news of the destruction of his coalition at
+Austerlitz. The battle was the cause of his death. He was struck down by
+a severe internal malady and he was in a state of extreme debility when
+on January 11, 1806, he returned home to the house he had taken on
+Putney Heath. It is said that as he passed along to his bedroom, he
+observed a map of Europe hanging on the wall, upon which he turned to
+his niece and mournfully said: "Roll up that map. It will not be wanted
+these ten years."
+
+For a few days the doctors had hopes that he might recover, but on the
+22nd it became evident that he could not live for twenty-four hours.
+Early in the morning of the 23rd he died.
+
+"At about half-past two," wrote the Hon. James Hamilton Stanhope, who
+was at his bedside, "Mr. Pitt ceased moaning, and did not make the
+slightest sound for some time. Shortly afterwards, in a tone I never
+shall forget, he exclaimed: 'Oh, my country! How I love my country!'
+From that time he never spoke or moved, and at half-past four expired
+without a groan or struggle. His strength being quite exhausted, his
+life departed like a candle burning out."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY
+
+
+The Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D.
+
+
+     Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born at Alderley Rectory, Cheshire,
+     on December 13, 1815. He was educated at Rugby under Arnold,
+     and at Oxford, where Tait, the future Archbishop of
+     Canterbury, was his tutor. Entering holy orders, he was
+     appointed select preacher in 1845; became Canon of Canterbury
+     in 1851; and in 1863 succeeded Trench as Dean of Westminster.
+     He died on July 18, 1881, and by Queen Victoria's commands his
+     remains were laid beside those of his wife, Lady Augusta
+     Bruce, in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster. Of all his works,
+     perhaps his most important contribution to English literature
+     is the "Life of Arnold," which was published two years after
+     the death of the famous master of Rugby. To the task of
+     writing the book Stanley devoted all his energies, steering
+     clear, however, of any attempt to form an opinion of his own
+     upon Arnold's life and character, while achieving a result
+     that not only assured his own position at Oxford, but brought
+     him well into the front rank of contemporary writers. The
+     religious animosity at Oxford was uncongenial to Stanley, and
+     it was only the prospect of Dr. Arnold occupying the Chair of
+     Modern History that reconciled him to his surroundings.
+
+
+_I.--Youth and Early Manhood_
+
+
+Thomas Arnold, seventh child and youngest son of William and Martha
+Arnold, was born June 13, 1795, at East Cowes, Isle of Wight, where his
+father was collector of customs. His early education was undertaken by a
+sister; and in 1803 he was sent to Warminister School, in Wiltshire. In
+1807 he went to Winchester, where, having entered as a commoner and
+afterwards become a scholar of the college, he remained till 1811. In
+after life he always cherished a strong Wykehamist feeling, and, during
+his headmastership at Rugby, often recurred to his knowledge there first
+acquired, of the peculiar constitution of a public school.
+
+He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring disposition; but his
+manner as a child, and till his entrance at Oxford, was marked by a
+stiffness and formality, the very reverse of the joyousness and
+simplicity of his later years. He was unlike those of his own age, with
+pursuits peculiar to himself; and the tone and style of his early
+letters are such as might have been produced by living chiefly with his
+elders, and reading, or hearing read, books suited to a more advanced
+age. Both as boy and young man he was remarkable for a difficulty in
+early rising amounting almost to a constitutional infirmity; and though
+in after life this was overcome by habit, he often said that early
+rising was a daily effort to him.
+
+The beginning of some of his later interests may be traced in his
+earlier amusements and occupations. He never lost the recollection of
+the impression produced upon him by the excitement of naval and military
+affairs, of which he naturally saw and heard much by living at Cowes in
+the time of the Napoleonic war; and with his playmates he would sail
+rival toy fleets or act the battles of the Homeric heroes with
+improvised spears and shields. He was extremely fond of ballad poetry,
+and his earliest compositions all ran in that direction. At Winchester
+he was noted for his forwardness in history and geography; and there
+also he gave indications of that mnemonic faculty which in later years
+showed itself in minute details, extending to the exact state of the
+weather on particular days, or the exact words or passages he had not
+seen for twenty years. The period of his home and school education was
+too short to exercise much influence on his after life, but he always
+looked back upon it with tenderness.
+
+In 1811 he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; in
+1814 he took a first class in classics; in 1815 he was made a Fellow of
+Oriel; and he gained the Chancellor's prizes for the Latin and English
+essays in 1815 and 1817. During his later time at Oxford he took private
+pupils and read extensively in the libraries. Meanwhile, he had been led
+gradually to fix on his future life course. In December, 1818, he was
+ordained deacon and next year settled at Laleham, where, in August,
+1820, he married Mary Penrose, daughter of the rector of Fledborough,
+Notts.
+
+At Laleham he remained for nine years, coaching private pupils for the
+universities. Here were born six of his nine children; the youngest
+three, besides one who died in infancy, were born at Rugby. During this
+period an essential change and growth of Arnold's character became
+manifest. The warm feelings of his youth gave place to the fixed
+earnestness and devotion which henceforth took possession of him. His
+former indolent habits, his morbid restlessness and occasional weariness
+of duty, indulgence of vague schemes without definite purpose,
+intellectual doubts as to accepted religious beliefs--all seem to have
+vanished for ever.
+
+It was now that the religious aspect of his character came to be
+emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of
+his religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is
+impossible to understand his religious belief except through the
+knowledge of his life and writings on ordinary subjects, it is
+impossible on the other hand, to understand his life and writings
+without bearing in mind how vivid was his realisation of those truths of
+religion on which he most habitually dwelt. It was this which enabled
+him to undertake labours which, without such a power, must have crushed
+or enfeebled the spiritual growth which in him they seemed only to
+foster. His letters at this time show better than anything else how he
+was, though unconsciously to himself, maturing for the arduous duties he
+afterwards undertook. It was now, too, that he first became acquainted
+with Niebuhr's "History of Rome," which revolutionised his views of
+history, and, later, served as a model for his own "History of Rome."
+
+
+_II.--Headmaster of Rugby_
+
+
+Arnold was not without his visions of ambition and extensive influence
+from the first, but he liked Laleham, and always looked back with fond
+regret to his time there. "I have always thought," he wrote in 1823,
+"with regard to ambition, that I should like to be _aut Caesar aut
+nullus;_ and as it is pretty well settled for me that I shall not be
+Caesar, I am quite content to live in peace as _nullus_." But the fates
+had ordered it otherwise. Friends had long been urging him to seek a
+larger sphere of usefulness; and when, in August, 1827, the
+headmastership of Rugby became vacant, he applied for the post.
+
+He had himself little hope of success. The testimonials he sent in were
+few, but all spoke strongly of his qualifications. Among them was a
+letter from Dr. Hawkins, the future Provost of Oriel, in which the
+prediction was made that if Arnold were elected he would change the face
+of education throughout the public schools of England. The impression
+produced upon the trustees by this letter and by the other testimonials
+was such that Arnold was immediately appointed. In June, 1828, he
+received priest's orders; in April and November of the same year took
+his degrees of B.D. and D.D., and in August entered on his new office.
+
+The post was in many respects suited to his natural tastes--to his love
+of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him that he declared
+sometimes that he could hardly live without such employment; to the
+vigour and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than
+the old; to the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting
+things secular with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest
+principles of action into regions comparatively uncongenial to their
+reception. He had not, however, accepted it without grave doubts about
+his fitness. In a private letter he says:
+
+     I confess that I should very much object to undertake a charge
+     in which I was not invested with pretty full discretion.
+     According to my notions of what large schools are, founded on
+     all I know and all I have ever heard of them, expulsion should
+     be practised much oftener than it is. Now, I know that
+     trustees, in general, are averse to this plan, because it has
+     a tendency to lessen the numbers of the school, and they
+     regard quantity more than quality. In fact, my opinions on
+     this point might, perhaps, generally be considered as
+     disqualifying me for the situation of master of a great
+     school; yet I could not consent to tolerate much that I know
+     is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should not like to
+     enter on an office which I could not discharge according to my
+     own views of what is right.
+
+At Rugby, Arnold from the first maintained that in the actual working of
+the school he must be completely independent, and that the remedy of the
+trustees, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but
+dismissal. It was on this condition that he took the post; and any
+attempt to control either the administration of the school or his own
+private occupations he felt bound to resist as a duty not only to
+himself but the master of every foundation school in England. The
+remonstrances which he encountered, particularly from his fixed
+determination always to get rid of unpromising subjects, were vehement
+and numerous; but he repeatedly declared that on no other conditions
+could he hold his appointment, or justify the existence of the public
+school system in a Christian country.
+
+"My object," he wrote, just before taking up duty, "will be, if
+possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope
+to make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they
+are not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development
+upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many
+respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in
+what I consider the boyhood of the human race."
+
+This is the keynote of his whole system. As he put it, what he looked
+for in the school was, first, religious and moral principles; second,
+gentlemanly conduct; and third, intellectual ability. Intellectual
+training was never for a moment underrated, but he always thought first
+of his charges as schoolboys who must grow up to be Christian men. His
+education, in short, "was not based upon religion, but was itself
+_religious_." For cleverness as such, Arnold had no regard. "Mere
+intellectual acuteness," he used to say, "divested as it is, in too many
+cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more
+revolting than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like
+the spirit of Mephistopheles." Often when this intellectual cleverness
+was seen in union with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its
+existence altogether.
+
+A mere plodding boy was, above all others, encouraged by him. At Laleham
+he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this
+kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you speak
+angrily, sir? Indeed, I am doing the best that I can." Years afterwards
+he used to tell the story to his children, and said, "I never felt so
+much ashamed in my life--that look and that speech I have never
+forgotten." And though it would, of course, happen that clever boys,
+from a greater sympathy with his understanding, would be brought into
+closer intercourse with him, this did not affect his feeling of respect,
+and even of reverence, for those who, without ability, were
+distinguished for high principle and industry. "If there be one thing on
+earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an
+inferiority of natural powers where they have been honestly, truly and
+zealously cultivated."
+
+
+_III.--As Teacher and Preacher_
+
+
+Arnold had always been painfully impressed by the evils of the public
+school system, according to which a number of boys are left to form an
+independent society of their own, in which the influence they exert over
+each other is far greater than that exerted by the masters. He writes,
+in 1837:
+
+     Of all the painful things connected with my employment,
+     nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy come to school
+     innocent and promising, and tracing the corruption of his
+     character from the influence of the temptations around him, in
+     the very place which ought to have strengthened and improved
+     it. But in most cases those who come with a character of
+     positive good are benefited; it is the neutral and indecisive
+     characters which are apt to be decided for evil by schools, as
+     they would be, in fact, by any other temptation.
+
+This very feeling led him to catch with eagerness at every means by
+which the trial might be shortened or alleviated. He believed that the
+change from childhood to manhood might be hastened without prematurely
+exhausting the faculties of body and mind; and it was on this principle
+that he chiefly acted. He desired the boys to cultivate true manliness
+as the only step to something higher. He treated them as gentlemen, and
+appealed and trusted to their common sense and conscience.
+
+Lying to the masters he made a grave offence. He placed implicit
+confidence in a boy's assertion, and then, if a falsehood were
+discovered, punished it severely. In the higher forms any attempt at
+further proof of an assertion was immediately checked. "If you say so,
+that is quite enough; of course, I believe your word"; and there grew up
+in consequence a general feeling that "it was a shame to tell Arnold a
+lie: he always believed you." Few scenes can be recorded more
+characteristic of him than when, in consequence of a disturbance, he had
+been obliged to send away several boys, and when, in the midst of the
+general spirit of discontent which this excited, he stood in his place
+before the assembled school and said, "It is _not_ necessary that this
+should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys;
+but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen."
+
+Arnold's method of teaching was founded on the principle of awakening
+the intellect of every individual boy. Hence it was his practice to
+teach by questioning. As a general rule, he never gave information,
+except as a kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld it
+altogether, or checked himself in the very act of uttering it, from a
+sense that those whom he was addressing had not sufficient interest or
+sympathy to receive it. His explanations were at short as
+possible--enough to dispose of the difficulty and no more; and his
+questions were of a kind to call the attention of the boys to the real
+point of every subject and to disclose to them the exact boundaries of
+what they knew or did not know. With regard to the younger boys, he
+said: "It is a great mistake to think that they should _understand_ all
+they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the memory should act
+vigorously, independent of the understanding--whereas a man cannot
+usually recollect a thing unless he understands it."
+
+At Rugby he made it an essential part of the headmaster's office to
+preach a sermon every Sunday in the school chapel. "The veriest
+stranger," he said, "who ever attends service in this chapel does well
+to feel something more than common interest in the sight of the
+congregation here assembled. But if the sight so interests a mere
+stranger, what should it be to ourselves, both to you and to me?" More
+than either matter or manner of his preaching was the impression of
+himself. Even the mere readers of his sermons will derive from them the
+history of his whole mind, and of his whole management of the school.
+But to his hearers it was more than this. It was the man himself, there
+more than in any other place, concentrating all his various faculties
+and feelings on one sole object, combating face to face the evil which,
+directly or indirectly, he was elsewhere perpetually struggling.
+
+His personal interest in the boys was always strong. "Do you see," he on
+one occasion said to an assistant-master who had recently come, "those
+two boys walking together? I never saw them together before; you should
+make an especial point of observing the company they keep; nothing so
+tells the changes in a boy's character."
+
+
+_IV.--Influence of the Great Teacher_
+
+
+But the impression which Arnold produced upon the boys was derived not
+so much from any immediate intercourse or conversation with them as from
+the general influence of his whole character, displayed consistently
+whenever he appeared before them. This influence, with its consequent
+effects, was gradually on the increase during the whole of his stay.
+From the earliest period, indeed, the boys were conscious of something
+unlike what they had been taught to imagine of a schoolmaster, and by
+many a lasting regard was contracted for him. In the higher forms, at
+least, it became the fashion, so to speak, to think and talk of him with
+pride and affection. As regards the permanent effects of his whole
+system, it may be said that not so much among his own pupils, or in the
+scene of his actual labours, as in every public school throughout
+England is to be sought the chief and enduring monument of Arnold's
+headmastership at Rugby.
+
+Of Arnold's general life at Rugby there is no need to say much; for
+although the school did not occupy his whole energies, it is almost
+solely by his school work that he is remembered. He took a not
+unimportant part in the political and theological discussions of his
+time, and various literary enterprises also engaged his attention. In
+theology he entertained very broad views. One great principle he
+advocated with intense earnestness was that a Christian people and a
+Christian Church should be synonymous. That use of the word "Church"
+which limits it to the clergy, or which implies in the clergy any
+particular sacredness, he entirely repudiated.
+
+He was convinced that the founders of our constitution in Church and
+State did truly consider them to be identical; the Christian nation of
+England to be the Church of England; the head of that nation to be, for
+that very reason, the head of the Church. This view placed him in
+antagonism to the High Church party; but, as a matter of fact, he
+neither belonged, nor felt himself to belong, to any section of the
+English clergy. Politically, he held himself to be a strong Whig; but
+that he was not, in the common sense of the word, a member of any party
+is shown by the readiness with which all parties alike, according to the
+fashion of the time, claimed or renounced him as an associate.
+
+Arnold did not like the flat scenery of Warwickshire He described
+himself as "in it like a plant sunk in the ground in a pot." His
+holidays were always spent away from Rugby, either on the Continent, or,
+in later years, at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a small estate
+between Rydal and Ambleside, which he purchased in 1832. He was just
+about to leave Rugby for Fox How when his life was mournfully and
+suddenly ended by an attack of angina pectoris, on June 12, 1842. Only
+the year before he had been appointed by Lord Melbourne Regius Professor
+of Modern History at Oxford.
+
+Arnold's principal works are six volumes of sermons, a three-volume
+edition of Thucydides, the Oxford "Lectures on Modern History," and the
+three-volume "History of Rome," which, by his unfortunate death, was
+broken off at the Second Punic War. To the last-named he looked as the
+chief monument of his historical fame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+AGNES STRICKLAND
+
+
+Life of Queen Elizabeth
+
+
+     Agnes Strickland, born in London on August 19, 1796, with her
+     sister Elizabeth began in 1840 the publication of the immense
+     series of historical biographies of which the "Lives of the
+     Queens of England" formed the first and most important group.
+     In that group the "Elizabeth" is recognised as holding the
+     highest rank. It is an essentially feminine study of one of
+     the most remarkable of women; not a history, for historical
+     events are treated as of infinitely less importance than
+     picturesque personal details and miscellaneous gossip, but
+     presenting altogether an admirable picture of the outward
+     seeming of those spacious days, and a discriminating and
+     judicious portrait of the maiden queen herself. The author's
+     views, however, would not always be endorsed by a masculine
+     critic. Agnes Strickland died on July 13, 1874. The literature
+     relating to the life and times of Queen Elizabeth would form a
+     library of contemporary records. Many volumes of state papers
+     have been published: Camden's "Annals of Elizabeth" is the
+     classical account of her. Creighton's "Queen Elizabeth" and
+     volumes VII. to XII. of Froude's "History of England" are the
+     leading modern works; and no one who wishes to know anything
+     of the great queen can afford to neglect Hume's "Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," which will also be found in these pages (see
+     Hume).
+
+
+_I.--The Lady Elizabeth_
+
+
+Queen Elizabeth first saw the light at Greenwich Palace, where, says
+Heywood, "she was born on the eve of the Virgin's nativity, and died on
+the eve of the Virgin's annunciation." The christening ceremony was
+gorgeous and elaborate, but, with the downfall of her mother, Anne
+Boleyn, she ceased to be treated as a princess. She seems to have owed
+much to the judicious training of Lady Margaret Bryan, in whose charge
+she was. Later, she was associated with Prince Edward, four years her
+junior; both displayed an extraordinary precocity and capacity for
+learning.
+
+On Henry's death, she resided with his widow, Catharine Parr, who
+married the Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour. That ambitious nobleman,
+brother of the Protector, certainly designed, when Catharine died, to
+marry Elizabeth; an intention which was among the causes of his
+execution under attainder. His relations with her had already been
+unduly familiar, but there was no warrant for the scandalous stories
+that were repeated; and although Elizabeth all her life was naturally
+disposed to an excessive freedom of manners, she now became a pattern of
+decorum. But she was probably more in love with Seymour, as a girl of
+fifteen, than with anyone else in after life; though, on his death, she
+called him "a man of much wit and very little judgement."
+
+Ascham is full of praises of her learning and her wide reading, both in
+Greek and Latin, which is displayed somewhat pedantically in her
+letters; her propriety and simplicity of apparel in these days is in
+curious contrast to the extravagances of her wardrobe in later life.
+
+Mary treated her conspicuously as a sister; she refused, however, to
+abjure her Protestantism. Her position became extremely difficult, as
+the French, the Spaniards, and the Protestant party each sought to
+involve her in plots for their own ends. These culminated in Wyat's
+rebellion. The inevitable suspicions attaching to her caused her to be
+lodged in the Tower; but, in spite of the machinations of the Spanish
+party and the distrust of Mary, the evidence produced failed to warrant
+her condemnation.
+
+Yet she was kept in rigorous confinement, her life continuing to be in
+danger for a month after Wyat himself had been executed. She was then
+removed to Richmond, but refused to purchase liberty at the price of
+marriage to a foreign prince, Philibert of Savoy--a scheme intended as a
+cover for Mary's determination to marry Philip, the Prince of Spain.
+Finally, she was transferred to Woodstock, where she was held a close
+prisoner.
+
+Policy now led her to profess acceptance of the Roman religion, but in
+very ambiguous fashion. Probably it was through the intercession of
+Philip--now her brother-in-law, whose policy at this time was to
+conciliate the English people--that she was set at liberty and
+readmitted to court at Christmas.
+
+At the end of the next year Elizabeth was at Hatfield, under the gentle
+surveillance of Sir Thomas Pope. She continued to be involved in grave
+dangers by perpetual plots, in which she was far too shrewd to let
+herself be implicated; and she guarded herself by a continued profession
+of Romanism to the hour of her accession on her sister's death.
+
+As the hour of Mary's death approached, there was no doubt of
+Elizabeth's succession, though there was alarm as to possible
+complications. On November 17, 1558, the Chancellor announced to
+Parliament that Mary was dead, and Elizabeth queen. She held her first
+council at Hatfield two days later, when William Cecil took his place as
+her chief counsellor; on her entry into London, the position which was
+to be occupied by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, was
+already conspicuous.
+
+The coronation, which took place in January, was a magnificent pageant,
+in which Elizabeth openly courted the favour and affection of her
+subjects; and it became at once apparent that the breach with Rome was
+reopened. The supremacy of the crown was reasserted, the all but empty
+bench of bishops was filled up with reformers; and, in answer to the
+Commons, Elizabeth very clearly implied her intention of reigning a
+virgin queen. She had already declined Philip of Spain's offer of his
+widowed hand; and now the fact that Mary Stuart stood next in the
+succession--with a better title than Elizabeth's own, if her legitimacy
+were challenged--became of immense importance.
+
+Accordingly, an express declaration of her legitimate right to the
+throne was procured from Parliament. For some time pageants and popular
+displays were the order of the day. But, in spite of Elizabeth's own
+declarations, all her council were convinced that the safety of the
+realm demanded her marriage; and suitors began to abound. Arran
+appears--who now stood very near the throne of Scotland. Pickering,
+Arundel, Dudley, all seemed possible aspirants. The Austrian Archduke
+Charles, cousin of Philip of Spain, and Eric of Norway, were candidates.
+She played with them all, and the play was made more grim by the tragic
+death of Dudley's wife, Amy Robsart.
+
+
+_II.--Mary Stuart and Saint Bartholomew_
+
+
+The proposals for Elizabeth's own hand were now diversified by her
+interest in those for the hand of the Queen of Scots; for it was of
+immense importance to the Queen of England that Mary should not wed a
+foreign prince who might support her claim to the English throne. Mary
+professed willingness to be guided by her "sister," but was insulted by
+Elizabeth's offer of her own favourite, Dudley, who was made Earl of
+Leicester. Melville, the courtly Scots ambassador, had much ado to
+answer Elizabeth's questions about his mistress's beauty and
+accomplishments in a manner agreeable to the English queen. Mary solved
+her own problem, only to create a new one, by marrying her cousin, Lord
+Darnley. Elizabeth was bitterly aggrieved when a son--afterwards James
+I.--was born to them. She herself continued to agitate Cecil and the
+council by the favours she lavished on Leicester. But the renewed
+entreaties of Parliament, that steps might be taken to secure the
+succession, led to what threatened to be a serious quarrel.
+
+Amongst these high matters, the records of her majesty's wardrobe, and
+the interests of Cecil in capturing for her service a tailor employed by
+Catherine de Medici, form an entertaining interlude. But tragedy was at
+hand; the murder of Darnley, Mary's marriage to the murderer Bothwell,
+her imprisonment at Loch Leven, Elizabeth's perturbation--for she was
+sincere in her fear of encouraging subjects to control monarchs by force
+of arms--was diversified by a last negotiation for her marriage with the
+Archduke Charles, which broke down over his refusal to abjure his
+religion.
+
+Then came a turn of the wheel; Mary escaped from Loch Leven, her
+followers were dispersed at Langside, and she fled across the Solway to
+throw herself on Elizabeth's protection and find herself Elizabeth's
+prisoner.
+
+The Scottish queen was consigned to Bolton; an investigation was held at
+York, when Mary's accusers were allowed to produce, and Mary's friends
+were not allowed to test, their evidence of her complicity in Darnley's
+murder. At that stage the investigations were stopped; but the Duke of
+Norfolk, the head of the commission, was not deterred from pressing the
+design of marrying Mary himself. Mary was placed in the charge of
+Shrewsbury and his termagant spouse, Bess of Hardwick.
+
+From this time for fifteen years, Elizabeth was perpetually playing at
+proposals for her own marriage with one or other of the French King's
+brothers, to keep the French court from a _rapprochement_ with Spain.
+Suspicions of Norfolk's intentions led to his arrest, and this
+precipitated the rising in favour of Mary under the Catholic northern
+earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; an insurrection promptly and
+cruelly crushed. In the spring of 1570 the Pope issued a bull of
+deposition; and the plots on behalf of Mary as Catholic claimant to the
+throne thickened.
+
+In 1571 it appeared that Elizabeth was set on the marriage with Henry of
+Anjou, nineteen years her junior, the brother who stood next in
+succession to the throne of Charles IX. of France--a marriage not at all
+approved by her council, and very little to Henry's own taste. It was at
+this time that the conduct of negotiations in Paris was entrusted to
+Francis Walsingham.
+
+The relations between the queen and the Commons were exemplified by her
+attempt to exclude an obnoxious member, Strickland, met by the
+successful assertion of their privileges on the part of the House.
+
+In this year the plot known as Ridolfi's was discovered, and it is to be
+noted that Elizabeth herself ordered the rack to be used to extort
+information. The result was condemnation of Norfolk to the block. The
+recalcitrance of Henry of Anjou led to his definitely withdrawing from
+his courtship, while the young Alençon became the new subject of
+matrimonial negotiation.
+
+Elizabeth played with the new proposal, as usual, relying always on her
+ability to back out of the negotiations, as in previous cases, by
+demanding of her suitor a more uncompromising acceptance of
+Protestantism than could be admitted. The whole affair, however, was
+apparently brought to a check by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with
+the perpetration of which it seemed impossible for the most powerful of
+Protestant monarchs to associate herself.
+
+Cecil--now Lord Burleigh--would have used the occasion for the
+destruction of Mary Stuart; but the device for doing so irreproachably
+by handing her over to her own rebels, was frustrated--though Elizabeth
+concurred--by the refusal of the Scots lords to play the part which was
+assigned to them. The Alençon affair was soon in full swing again, the
+young prince writing love-letters to the lady whom he had not seen.
+
+
+_III.--The Hour of Mary's Doom_
+
+
+Elizabeth's fondness for pageantry--partly out of a personal delight in
+it, partly from a politic appreciation of its value in making her
+popular--especially pageantry at some one else's expense, was
+illustrated in the gorgeous doings at Kenilworth, depicted (with sundry
+anachronisms) in Scott's novel.
+
+These gaieties were the embroidery on more serious matters, for the
+Netherlands had for some time been engaged in their apparently desperate
+struggle with the power of Spain, and now actually invited the Queen of
+England to assume sovereignty over them--an offer which she was too
+acute to accept.
+
+Yet we cannot pass over a highly characteristic incident. When the
+queen's majesty had a bad toothache, the protestations of her whole
+council failed to persuade her to face the extraction of the tooth, till
+the Bishop of London invited the surgeon to operate first on him in her
+presence, with satisfactory results. We must also record how the ugly
+little Alençon, or Anjou as he was now called, arrived unexpectedly to
+woo her in person, charmed her by his chivalrous audacity in doing so,
+and won from her the appropriate name of "Little Frog."
+
+Whether she really wished to marry her "frog" is extremely doubtful. She
+made all the more parade of her desire to do so, since the extreme
+antipathy of the council and the nation to the project would secure her
+a retreat to the last. The expectation of the marriage caused the
+Netherlanders to offer Anjou the sovereignty which she had rejected;
+with the idea of thus securing the united support of England and France.
+But when matters reached the point of negotiation for an Anglo-French
+league, with the marriage as one of the articles, Elizabeth, of course,
+could not be brought to a definite answer, and after long delay Anjou
+found himself obliged to return to the Netherlands, neither accepted nor
+rejected. His subsequent death put an end to this, her last, matrimonial
+comedy.
+
+At last an English force was actually sent to help the Netherlanders,
+under the command of Leicester. His conduct there led to his recall.
+Another favourite stood high in the queen's good graces--Walter Raleigh.
+Probably it was with a view to ousting this rival that Leicester brought
+his stepson Essex into the queen's notice.
+
+But now the hour of Mary's doom was approaching. A plot was set on foot
+for the assassination of Elizabeth, into which Anthony Babington, whose
+name it bears, was drawn. Walsingham, possessed of complete information
+from the beginning, through his spies, nursed the plot carefully;
+letters from Mary were systematically intercepted and copied till the
+moment came for striking; the conspirators were arrested, and suffered
+the extreme penalty of the treason laws; and Elizabeth consented to have
+Mary herself at last brought to trial. She was refused counsel; the
+commission condemned her. Parliament demanded the execution of the death
+sentence. Elizabeth had her own misgivings.
+
+She was afraid of the responsibility. Leicester suggested poison, but
+Burleigh and Walsingham stood by the law. A special embassy of
+remonstrance came from France; Mary wrote a dignified letter, not an
+appeal for her life, which moved the queen to tears; protests from the
+King of Scotland only aroused indignation; Elizabeth was frightened by
+rumours of fresh plots and of a French invasion.
+
+At last she signed the death warrant, brought to her by Secretary
+Davison; the Chancellor's seal was attached, and the council, fearing
+some evasion on Elizabeth's part, issued the commission for Mary's
+execution without further reference to the queen; she was kept in
+ignorance of the fact till the tragedy was completed. She was furious
+with the council, but powerless against their unanimity. She could
+venture to make a scapegoat of Davison, and made a vain attempt to clear
+herself of responsibility in a letter to James, which failed to soothe
+the burst of indignation with which the news was received in Scotland.
+But the one thing she feared--a coalition of France, Spain, and
+Scotland--was made impossible by the antagonisms of the former and the
+weakness of the last.
+
+Another crisis was at hand. Philip of Spain, claiming the throne of
+England as a descendant of John of Gaunt, was preparing the great
+Armada; Pope Sixtus V. was proclaiming a crusade against the heretic
+queen. Drake sailed into Cadiz harbour, and "singed the don's whiskers,"
+but the vast preparations went on. A lofty spirit animated the queen and
+the people. London undertook to provide double the number of ships and
+men demanded from her. The militia was gathered at Tilbury, under
+Leicester. Howard of Effingham was Lord Admiral, with Drake as
+vice-admiral; in the enthusiasm of the moment, Elizabeth bestowed
+knighthood on a valorous lady, Mary, the wife of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley.
+
+A report that the Armada had been destroyed by a gale, which actually
+drove it into Corunna for repairs, caused Elizabeth, with her usual
+parsimony, to order four great vessels to be dismantled; Howard retained
+them instead, at his own charges. On July 19, 1588, the Armada was
+sighted off the Lizard, and for eighteen days the naval heroes were
+grappling with that "invincible" fleet. Elizabeth herself visited the
+camp at Tilbury, rode through the lines, wearing a corselet and a
+farthingale of amazing dimensions, while a page bore her helmet, and
+addressed her soldiers in stirring words.
+
+The victory was celebrated by medals bearing the device of a fleet in
+full sail, with the words _Venit, vidit, fugit_ ("it came, it saw, it
+fled"), and of the dispersal by fireships with the words, _Dux femina
+facti_ ("a woman led the movement").
+
+
+_IV.--Elizabeth's Closing Years_
+
+
+The defeat of the Armada was followed by an expedition to Lisbon, to
+wrest Portugal from Spain; owing to inadequate equipment it failed,
+after a promising beginning, the Portuguese lending no help. Essex
+managed to escape from court and join the expedition, messengers
+ordering him to return being too late. For this he was forgiven; but
+when he secretly married the widow of Sidney, and daughter of
+Walsingham, Elizabeth was furiously angry.
+
+Not Essex, but Norris was sent to command a force dispatched to the aid
+of Henry of Navarre, who was now fighting for the crown of France.
+Essex, however, was subsequently sent, at Henry's own request. His
+absence was utilised by Burleigh to secure the advancement of his own
+astute son, Robert Cecil, who secured the royal favour by the ingenuity
+of his flattery.
+
+When Essex finally returned from France, he was received with the utmost
+favour; but in the interval he had been transformed into an intriguing
+politician. Parliament, which had not been called for four years, met in
+1593, and there was an immediate collision with the Crown. Elizabeth's
+tone was much more despotic than of old. Petitions for the settlement of
+the succession were met by the arbitrary imprisonment of Wentworth and
+other members.
+
+Essex favoured the popular party, but had not the courage to head it; he
+was moved not by patriotism, but by jealousy of the Cecil ascendancy.
+The queen, when she had passed the age of sixty, was as determined as
+ever to pose as a youthful beauty, and her courtiers had no reluctance
+in assuming the tone of despairing lovers. No one played this part more
+persistently than Raleigh, who, when relegated to the Tower for
+marrying, proclaimed his misery, not at being separated from his bride,
+but at being shut out of the radiant presence of the queen.
+
+Essex and Raleigh were associated in two expeditions, one directed with
+complete success against Cadiz, the other being a complete failure. The
+Burleigh faction succeeded in getting for Raleigh whatever credit there
+was in both cases, though Essex was better entitled to it.
+
+But it was Ireland that wrought the ruin of Essex. A dispute in the
+council on the subject caused the queen to box the favourite's ears,
+which caused him to retire in resentment for many months. Soon after his
+return to court, he brought upon himself his own appointment to the
+lord-deputyship of Ireland. His conduct there displeased her; from her
+scolding letters, he concluded that his enemies in the council were
+undermining his position in his absence. He deserted his post, hurried
+to London, and burst, travel-stained as he was, into Elizabeth's
+chamber. For the moment she appeared disposed to forgive him, but was
+not long in deciding that his insolence must be punished, and he was
+placed in confinement.
+
+So he continued for about a year, in spite of appeals to the queen. The
+adverse party in the council had the predominance. At last, however, he
+was granted a degree of liberty, and Francis Bacon tried to conciliate
+Elizabeth towards her former favourite. But the unfortunate man allowed
+his resentment to carry him into dangerous courses. His house became a
+rendezvous of the discontented. Finally, a futile attempt on his part to
+raise the citizens of London in his favour consummated his ruin. He was
+soon a prisoner; his condemnation was now a foregone conclusion;
+Elizabeth signed the warrant with fingers which did not tremble; and, to
+the universal astonishment, the favourite was executed.
+
+Elizabeth's meeting with her last parliament displays in a marked degree
+the tact which never deserted her when she thought fit to employ it.
+Their protest against the practice of monopolies, instead of rousing her
+ire, brought from her a notably gracious promise to redress the
+grievances complained of. This was in 1601. In the next year, when she
+became sixty-nine, there was no relaxation in her gaieties; but under
+the surface, Elizabeth was old and sad.
+
+Her popularity had never been the same since the death of Essex; and the
+memory of the man she had cherished and finally sent to his doom,
+well-deserved as that was, was a perpetual source of grief to her. In
+March 1603, she was stricken with her last fatal illness. Yet she would
+not go to bed. At last she gave in; she knew herself dying long before
+she admitted it.
+
+It was uncertain whether even in her last moments she would acknowledge
+the right of any successor to her throne, but a gesture was interpreted
+as favouring the King of Scots. Finally, she sank into a sleep from
+which she never awoke. So passed away England's Elizabeth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JONATHAN SWIFT
+
+
+Journal to Stella
+
+
+     The "Journal to Stella," which extends over the years 1710 to
+     1713, was first published in 1766 and has often been
+     republished since. The manuscripts are preserved in the
+     British Museum. It was at Sir William Temple's home, Moor Park
+     in Surrey, that Swift came to know Esther Johnson, or
+     "Stella," who was fourteen years younger than himself. In 1699
+     Temple died, and Stella, with her friend, Rebecca Dingley,
+     came to Ireland at Swift's request. Their relation has been
+     made a great mystery. It will perhaps always be doubtful
+     whether he was nominally married to her secretly; the evidence
+     is on the whole against the existence of such a bond. But to
+     the further question--why did he not take her to live as his
+     wife--a sufficient reply may be found in his abnormal nature.
+     In the "Journal" the word "Presto" refers to Swift himself
+     (see FICTION); "MD" to Stella.
+
+
+LONDON, Sept. 9, 1710.
+
+
+I got here last Thursday, after five days' travelling, weary the first,
+almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest;
+and am now glad of the fatigue, which has served for exercise; and I am
+at present well enough. The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay
+hold on me as a twig while they are drowning, and the great men making
+me their clumsy apologies, etc. But my Lord Treasurer received me with a
+great deal of coldness, which has enraged me so, I am almost vowing
+revenge. I have not yet gone half my circle; but I find all my
+acquaintance just as I left them. Everything is turning upside down;
+every Whig in great office will, to a man, be infallibly put out; and we
+shall have such a winter as hath not been seen in England.
+
+The Tatler expects every day to be turned out of his employment; and the
+Duke of Ormond, they say, will be Lieutenant of Ireland. I hope you are
+now peaceably in Presto's lodgings; but I resolve to turn you out by
+Christmas; in which time I shall either have done my business, or find
+it not to be done. Pray be at Trim by the time this letter comes to you;
+and ride little Johnson, who must needs be now in good case. I have
+begun this letter unusually, on the post-night, and have already written
+to the Archbishop; and cannot lengthen this. Henceforth I will write
+something every day to MD, and make it a sort of journal; and when it is
+full, I will send it, whether MD writes or no; and so that will be
+pretty: and I shall always be in conversation with MD, and MD with
+Presto; and so farewell.
+
+
+LONDON, NOV. 11, 1710.
+
+
+I dined to-day in the City, and then went to christen Will Frankland's
+child; Lady Falconbridge was one of the godmothers; this is a daughter
+of Oliver Cromwell, and extremely like him by the picture I have seen.
+My business in the City was to thank Stratford for a kindness he has
+done me. I found Bank stock fallen thirty-four to the hundred, and was
+mighty desirous to buy it. I had three hundred pounds in Ireland, and I
+desired Stratford to buy me three hundred pounds in Bank stock and that
+he keep the papers, and that I would be bound to pay him for them; and,
+if it should rise or fall, I should take my chance and pay him interest
+in the meantime. I was told money was so hard to get here, and no one
+would do this for me. However, Stratford, one of the most generous men
+alive, has done this for me: so that three hundred pounds cost me three
+hundred pounds and thirty shillings. This was done a week ago, and I can
+have five pounds for my bargain already. I writ to your Mother to desire
+Lady Giffard would do the same with what she owes me, but she tells your
+mother she has no money. I would to God, all you had in the world was
+there. Whenever you lend money, take this rule, to have two people
+bound, who have both visible fortunes; for they will hardly die
+together; and, when one dies, you fall upon the other, and make him add
+another security. So, ladies, enough of business for one night. Paaaaast
+twelve o'clock; nite, nite deelest MD. I must only add, that, after a
+long fit of rainy weather, it has been fair two or three days, and is
+this day grown cold and frosty; so you must give poor little Presto
+leave to have a fire in his chamber morning and evening too; and he will
+do as much for you. Shall I send this to-morrow? Well I will, to oblige
+MD. 'Tis late, so I bid you good-night.
+
+
+CHELSEA, June, 1711.
+
+
+I went at noon to see Mr. Secretary at his office, and there was Lord
+Treasurer; so I killed two birds, etc., and we were glad to see one
+another and so forth. And the Secretary and I dined at Sir William
+Wyndam's, who married Lady Catherine Seymour, your acquaintance, I
+suppose. There were ten of us at dinner. It seems, in my absence, they
+had erected a Club, and made me one; and we made some laws to-day, which
+I am to digest and add to, against next meeting. Our meetings are to be
+every Thursday. We are yet but twelve; Lord Keeper and Lord Treasurer
+were proposed; but I was against them, and so was Mr. Secretary, though
+their sons are of it, and so they are excluded; but we design to admit
+the Duke of Shrewsbury. The end of our Club is to advance conversation
+and friendship, and to reward deserving persons with our interest and
+recommendation. We take in none but men of wit or men of interest; and
+if we go on as we begin, no other Club in this town will be worth
+talking of. This letter will come three weeks after the last, so there
+is a week lost; but that is owing to my being out of town.
+
+Well, but I must answer this letter of our MD's. Saturday approaches,
+and I han't written down this side. Oh, faith, Presto has been a sort of
+lazy fellow: but Presto will remove to town this day se'night: the
+Secretary has commanded me to do so: and I believe he and I shall go
+some days to Windsor, where he will have leisure to mind some business
+we have together. To-day our Society (it must not be called a Club)
+dined at Mr. Secretary's: we were but eight. We made some laws, and then
+I went to take my leave of Lady Ashburnham, who goes out of town
+to-morrow.
+
+Steele has had the assurance to write to me that I would engage my Lord
+Treasurer to keep a friend of his in an employment. I believe I told you
+how he and Addison served me for my good offices in Steele's behalf; and
+I promised Lord Treasurer never to speak for either of them again.
+
+We have plays acted in our town; and Patrick was at one of them, oh, oh.
+He was damnably mauled one day when he was drunk, by a brother-footman,
+who dragged him along the floor on his face, which looked for a week
+after as if he had the leprosy, and I was glad enough to see it. I have
+been ten times sending him back to you; yet now he has new clothes and a
+laced hat, which the hatter brought by his orders, and he offered to pay
+for the lace out of his wages.
+
+I must rise now and shave, and walk to town, unless I go with the Dean
+in his chariot at twelve: and I have not seen that Lord Peterborough
+yet. The Duke of Shrewsbury is almost well again, but what care you? You
+do not care for my friends. Farewell, my dearest lives and delights: I
+love you better than ever, if possible, as hope saved, I do, and ever
+will. God almighty bless you ever, and make us happy together! I pray
+for this twice every day; and I hope God will hear my poor hearty
+prayers. Remember, if I am used ill and ungratefully, as I have formerly
+been, 'tis what I am prepared for, and I shall not wonder at it. Yet I
+am now envied, and thought in high favour, and have every day numbers of
+considerable men teasing me to solicit for them. And the Ministry all
+use me perfectly well; and all that know them say they love me. Yet I
+can count upon nothing, nor will, but upon MD's love and kindness. They
+think me useful; they pretended they were afraid of none but me, and
+that they resolved to have me; they have often confessed this: yet all
+this makes little impression on me--Pox of these speculations! They give
+me the spleen; a disease I was not born to. Let me alone, sirrahs, and
+be satisfied: I am, as long as MD and Presto are well. Little wealth,
+and much health, and a life by stealth: that is all we want; and so
+farewell, dearest MD; Stella, Dingley, Presto, all together; now and for
+ever all together. Farewell again and again.
+
+
+LONDON, July, 1711.
+
+
+I have just sent my 26th, and have nothing to say, because I have other
+letters to write (pshaw, I began too high) but to-morrow I will say
+more, and fetch up this line to be straight This is enough at present
+for two dear saucy naughty girls.
+
+Morning. It is a terrible rainy day. Patrick lay out all last night, and
+is not yet returned: faith, poor Presto is a desolate creature; neither
+servant, nor linen, nor anything.
+
+I was at Court and Church to-day: I am acquainted with about thirty in
+the drawing-room, and I am so proud I make all the Lords come up to me;
+one passes half an hour pleasant enough. We had a dunce to preach before
+the queen to-day, which often happens. Windsor is a delicious situation,
+but the town is scoundrel. The Duke of Hamilton would needs be witty,
+and hold up my train as I walked upstairs. It is an ill circumstance
+that on Sundays much company always meet at the great tables. The
+Secretary showed me his bill of fare, to encourage me to dine with him.
+"Poh," said I, "show me a bill of company, for I value not your dinner."
+
+In my conscience. I fear I shall have the gout. I sometimes feel pains
+about my feet and toes: I never drank till within these two years, and I
+did it to cure my head. I often sit evenings with some of these people,
+and drink in my turn; but I am resolved to drink ten times less than
+before; but they advise me to let what I drink be all wine, and not to
+put water in it. Tooke and the printer stayed to-day to finish their
+affair. Then I went to see Lord Treasurer, and chid him for not taking
+notice of me at Windsor. He said he kept a place for me yesterday at
+dinner, and expected me there; but I was glad I did not go, because the
+Duke of Buckingham was there, and that would have made us acquainted;
+which I have no mind to.
+
+I have sent a noble haunch of venison this afternoon to Mrs. Vanhomrigh;
+I wish you had it sirrahs. I dined gravely with my landlord, the
+Secretary. The queen was abroad to-day to hunt; but finding it disposed
+to rain, she kept in her coach, which she drives herself, and drives
+furiously, like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod. Dingley has
+heard of Nimrod, but not Stella, for it is in the Bible. Mr. Secretary
+has given me a warrant for a buck; I can't sent it to MD. It is a sad
+thing, faith, considering how Presto loves MD, and how MD would love
+Presto's venison for Presto's sake. God bless the two dear Wexford
+girls!
+
+There was a drawing-room to-day at Court; but so few company, that the
+queen sent for us into her bedchamber, where we made our bows, and stood
+about twenty of us round the room, while she looked at us round with her
+fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that
+were nearest to her, and then she was told dinner was ready, and went
+out.
+
+
+LONDON, Dec. 1, 1711.
+
+
+To-morrow is the fatal day for the Parliament meeting, and we are full
+of hopes and fears. We reckon we have a majority of ten on our side in
+the House of Lords; yet I observe Mrs. Masham a little uneasy. The Duke
+of Marlborough has not seen the queen for some days past; Mrs. Masham is
+glad of it, because she says he tells a hundred lies to his friends of
+what she says to him: he is one day humble, and the next day on the high
+ropes.
+
+This being the day Parliament was to meet, and the great question to be
+determined, I went with Dr. Freind to dine in the City, on purpose to be
+out of the way, and we sent our printer to see what was our fate; but he
+gave us a most melancholy account of things. The Earl of Nottingham
+began and spoke against a peace, and desired that in their address they
+might put in a clause to advise the queen not to make a peace without
+Spain; which was debated, and carried by the Whigs by about six voices:
+and this has happened entirely by my Lord Treasurer's neglect, who did
+not take timely care to make up his strength, although every one of us
+gave him caution enough. Nottingham has certainly been bribed. The
+question is yet only carried in the Committee of the whole House, and we
+hope when it is reported to the House to-morrow, we shall have a
+majority.
+
+This is a day that may produce great alterations and hazard the ruin of
+England. The Whigs are all in triumph; they foretold how all this would
+be, but we thought it boasting. Nay, they said the Parliament should be
+dissolved before Christmas, and perhaps it may: this is all your d----d
+Duchess of Somerset's doings. I warned them of this nine months ago, and
+a hundred times since. I told Lord Treasurer I should have the advantage
+of him; for he would lose his head, and I should only be hanged, and so
+carry my body entire to the grave.
+
+I was this morning with Mr. Secretary: we are both of opinion that the
+queen is false. He gave me reasons to believe the whole matter is
+settled between the queen and the Whigs. Things are now in a crisis, and
+a day or two will determine. I have desired him to engage Lord Treasurer
+to send, me abroad as Queen's Secretary somewhere or other, where I will
+remain till the new Ministers recall me; and then I will be sick for
+five or six months, till the storm has spent itself. I hope he will
+grant me this; for I should hardly trust myself to the mercy of my
+enemies while their anger is fresh.
+
+Morning. They say the Occasional Bill is brought to-day into the House
+of Lords; but I know not. I will now put an end to my letter, and give
+it into the post-house with my own fair hands. This will be a memorable
+letter, and I shall sigh to see it some years hence. Here are the first
+steps towards the ruin of an excellent Ministry; for I look upon them as
+certainly ruined; and God knows what may be the consequence.--I now bid
+my dearest MD farewell; for company is coming, and I must be at Lord
+Dartmouth's office by noon. Farewell, dearest MD; I wish you a merry
+Christmas; I believe you will have this about that time. Love Presto,
+who loves MD above all things a thousand times. Farewell again, dearest
+MD.
+
+
+LONDON, Dec. 20, 1711.
+
+
+I was with the Secretary this morning, and, for aught I can see, we
+shall have a languishing death: I can know nothing, nor themselves
+neither. I dined, you know, with our Society, and that odious Secretary
+would make me President next week; so I must entertain them this day
+se'night at the Thatched House Tavern: it will cost me five or six
+pounds; yet the Secretary says he will give me wine.
+
+Saturday night. I have broken open my letter, and tore it into the
+bargain, to let you know that we are all safe: the queen has made no
+less than twelve Lords to have a majority; nine new ones, the other
+three peers' sons; and has turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is
+awaked at last, and so is Lord Treasurer: I want nothing now but to see
+the Duchess out. But we shall do without her. We are all extremely
+happy. Give me joy, sirrahs. This is written in a coffee-house.
+
+
+LONDON, Feb. 26, 1712.
+
+
+I was again busy with the Secretary. I dined with him, and we were to do
+more business after dinner; but after dinner is after dinner--an old
+saying and a true, "much drinking, little thinking." We had company with
+us, and nothing could be done, so I am to go there again to-morrow.
+
+To-day in the morning I visited upwards: first I saw the Duke of Ormond
+below stairs, and gave him joy of being declared General in Flanders;
+then I went up one pair of stairs, and sat with the duchess; then I went
+up another pair of stairs, and paid a visit to Lady Betty; and then
+desired her woman to go up to the garret, that I might pass half an hour
+with her, for she was young and handsome, but she would not.
+
+Tell Walls that I spoke to the Duke of Ormond about his friend's
+affairs. I likewise mentioned his own affair to Mr. Southwell. But oo
+must not know zees sings, zey are secrets; and we must keep them flom
+nauty dallars. I was with Lord Treasurer to-day, and hat care oo for
+zat? Monday is parson's holiday, and oo lost oo money at cards; ze
+devil's device. Nite, nite, my two deelest logues.
+
+
+LONDON, April 6, 1713
+
+
+I was this morning at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called
+"Cato," which is to be acted on Friday. There were not above half a
+score of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough
+to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them;
+and the drab that acts Cato's daughter, in the midst of a passionate
+part, calling out "What's next?" I went back and dined with Mr. Addison.
+
+Nothing new to-day; so I'll seal up this to-night. Pray write soon....
+Farewell, deelest MD, MD, MD. Love Presto.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LYOF N. TOLSTOY
+
+
+Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
+
+
+     Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth
+     (1855-57)--Tolstoy's first literary efforts--may be regarded
+     as semi-autobiographical studies; if not in detail, at least
+     in the wider sense that all his books contain pictures more or
+     less accurate of himself and his own experiences. No plot runs
+     through them; they simply analyse and describe with
+     extraordinary minuteness the feelings of a nervous and morbid
+     boy--a male Marie Bashkirtseff. They are tales rather of the
+     developments of the thoughts, than of the life of a child,
+     with a pale background of men and events. The distinct charm
+     lies in the sincerity with which this development is
+     represented.
+
+
+_I.--Childhood_
+
+
+August 12, 18--, was the third day after my tenth birthday anniversary.
+Wonderful presents had been given me. My tutor, Karl Ivanitch, roused me
+at seven by striking at a fly directly over my head with a flapper made
+of sugar paper fastened to a stick. He generally spoke in German, and in
+his kindly voice exclaimed, "Auf, Kinder, auf; es ist Zeit. Die Mutter
+ist schon im Saal." ("Get up, children, it is time. Your Mother is
+already in the drawing-room.")
+
+Dyadka Nikolai, the valet of us children, a neat little man, brought in
+the clothes for me and Volodya, who was imitating my sister's governess,
+Marya Ivanova, in mocking, merry laughter. Somewhat sternly presently
+Karl Ivanitch called from the schoolroom to know if we were nearly ready
+to begin our lessons.
+
+In the schoolroom, on one shelf was our promiscuous assortment of books,
+on another, the still more miscellaneous collection which our dear old
+tutor was pleased to call his library. I remember that it included a
+German treatise on cabbage gardens, a history of the Seven Years' War,
+and a work on hydrostatic. Karl Ivanitch spent all his spare time in
+reading his beloved books, but he never read anything beyond these and
+the Northern Bee. After early lessons our tutor conducted us downstairs
+to greet Mamma.
+
+She was sitting in the parlour, in front of the samovar, pouring out
+tea. To the left of the divan was the old English grand piano, on which
+my dark-complexioned sister, Liubotchka, eleven years old, was painfully
+practising Clementi's exercises. Near her Marya Ivanova, with scowls on
+her face, was loudly counting, and beating time with her foot. She
+frowned still more disagreeably at Karl as he entered, but he appeared
+to ignore this and kissed my mother's hand with a German salutation.
+After mutually affectionate greetings Mamma told us to go to our father
+and to ask him to come to her before he went to the threshing floor.
+
+We found Papa angrily discussing business affairs with Yakov Mikhailof,
+the chief concern being apparently about money from Mamma's estate at
+Khabarovka, her native village. A large sum was due to the council, and
+Yakov pleaded that it would be difficult to raise it from the sale of
+hay and the proceeds of the mill. "For example," said he, "the miller
+has been twice to ask me for delay, swearing by Christ the Lord that he
+has no money. What little cash he had he put into the dam."
+
+Yakov was a serf, and was a most devoted and assiduous man, excessively
+economical in managing his master's affairs, and constantly worried
+himself over the increase of his master's property at the expense of
+that of his mistress.
+
+For some days we had been expecting something unusual, from preparations
+which we saw going on for some journey, but an announcement from Papa at
+length surprised us terribly. He greeted us one morning with the remark
+that it was time to put an end to our idleness, and that as he was going
+that evening to Moscow, we were to go with him and to live there with
+our grandmother, Mamma remaining on the estate with the girls.
+
+My thoughts were mingled, for I was very grieved for the sake of Mamma,
+yet I felt pleasure at the idea that we were grown up. For poor Karl
+Ivanitch I was extremely sorry, as he would be discharged. On my way
+upstairs I saw Papa's favourite greyhound, Milka, basking in the
+sunshine on the terrace, and ran out, kissed her on the nose and
+caressed her, saying, "Farewell, Milotchka. We shall never see each
+other again." Then, altogether overcome with emotion, I burst into
+tears.
+
+My father was a chivalrous character of the last century, who regarded
+with contempt the people of the present century. His two chief passions
+were cards and women. He was tall and commanding, bald, with small eyes
+ever twinkling vivaciously, and a lisping utterance. He knew how to
+exercise a spell over people of every grade, and in the highest society
+he was held in great esteem. He seemed born to shine in his brilliant
+position, and was an expert in the management of all things that could
+conduce to comfort and pleasure.
+
+A lover of music, he sang to his own piano accompaniment operatic songs,
+but had no liking for Beethoven's sonatas and other scientific
+compositions. His principles grew more fixed as years rolled on; he
+judged actions as being good or bad accordingly as they procured him
+happiness and pleasure, or otherwise; he talked persuasively; and he
+could represent the same deed as either an innocent piece of playfulness
+or of abominable villainy.
+
+Happy days of childhood that can never be recalled! What memories I yet
+cherish of them. I see Mamma just as plainly as when she so long since
+was talking to some one at the tea-table, while I, in my high chair,
+grew drowsy. Presently she stroked my hair with her soft hand, saying,
+"Get up, my darling, it is time to go to bed. Get up, my angel."
+
+I spring up and embrace her, and exclaim, "Dear, dear Mamma, how I love
+you!" With her sad and fascinating smile she places me on her knees, is
+silent awhile, and then speaks. "So you love me very much? Love me
+always and never forget me. If you lose your Mamma, Nikolinka, you will
+not forget her?"
+
+She kisses me still more lovingly, and I cry with tears of love and
+rapture flooding my face, "Oh, do not say that, my darling, my precious
+one." Will that freshness, that happy carelessness, that thirst for love
+which made life's only requirements, ever return? Where are those pure
+tears of tenderest emotion? The angel of consolation came and wiped them
+away. Do the memories alone abide?
+
+About a month after we had removed to Moscow, Grandmamma received a
+visit from Princess Kornakova, a woman of forty-five, with disagreeable
+gray-green eyes, but sweetly curved lips, bright red hair, and
+insalubrious face. In spite of these peculiarities her aspect was noble.
+I took a dislike to her because I found from her talk that she was given
+to beating her own children, and thought that other people's children,
+especially boys, needed to be whipped.
+
+Another visitor was Prince Ivan Ivanitch, distinguished for his noble
+character, handsome person, splendid bravery and extraordinary good
+fortune. He belonged to a powerful family, and lived in accordance with
+principles of the strictest religion and morality. Though somewhat
+reserved and haughty, in demeanour, he was full of kindly feeling.
+Prince Ivan Ivanitch was a highly cultured man of most versatile
+accomplishments. Our Grandmamma was evidently delighted to see him, and
+his magnificent aspect and her liking for him inspired me with unbounded
+admiration and reverence.
+
+He asked why Mamma had not come to Moscow. "Ah," was the reply, "she
+would have come if possible, but they have no income this year."
+
+"I do not understand," replied the Prince. "Her Khabarovka is a
+wonderful estate, and it must always bring in a fine revenue."
+
+"I will tell you," said Grandmamma, sadly. "It seems to me that all the
+pretexts are made simply to enable him to live a gay life here, while
+she, angel of goodness that she is, suspects nothing. She believes him
+in everything."
+
+This conversation should not have been overheard by me, but, having
+overheard it, I crept out of the room.
+
+On the 16th of April, nearly six months later, serious news came from
+Mamma. She wrote to Papa that she had contracted a chill, which had
+caused a fever, that this was over, but had left her in such utter
+weakness that she would never rise from her bed again, although those
+about her were not aware of such a condition. She wished him to come to
+her at once and to bring her two boys with him. She prayed that God's
+holy will might be done.
+
+On April 25th we reached our Petrovskoe home. Papa had been very sad and
+thoughtful during the journey. We at once learned from the steward that
+Mamma had not left her room for six days. I shall never forget what I
+saw when we entered Mamma's room. She was unconscious. Her eyes were
+open, but she saw nothing. We were led away. Mamma soon passed away.
+
+She was dead, the funeral obsequies took place, and then our life went
+on much as before. We rose, had our repasts, and retired to rest at the
+same hours. Three days after the funeral the whole household removed to
+Moscow. Grandmamma only learned what had happened when we arrived, and
+her grief was terrible. She lay unconscious for a week, and the doctor
+feared for her life, for she would not eat, speak, or take medicine.
+When she recovered somewhat, her first thought was of us children. She
+cried softly, spoke of Mamma, and tenderly caressed us.
+
+
+_II.--Boyhood_
+
+
+On our arrival in Moscow a change had taken place in my views of things.
+My sentiment of reverence for Grandmamma had changed to one of sympathy.
+As she covered my cheeks with kisses I realised that each kiss expressed
+the thought "She is gone; I shall never see her more." Papa had very
+little to do with us in Moscow, coming to us only at dinner time, and
+lost much in my eyes, with his ostentatious dress, his stewards, his
+clerks, and his hunting and business expeditions.
+
+Between us and the girls also an invisible barrier seemed to rise. We
+were proud of our trousers and straps, and they of their petticoats,
+which increased in length. Their showier Sunday dress made it manifest
+that we were no longer in the country. But soon commenced a period of my
+life of which it is difficult to trace a record. Rarely during memories
+of it do I find moments of the genuine warmth of feeling which so
+frequently illumined the earliest years of my life.
+
+Vivid is the recollection of Volodya's entrance at the university. He
+was barely two years my senior in age. The day of his first examination
+arrived, and he presented a handsome appearance in his blue uniform with
+brass buttons and lacquered boots. The examination lasted ten days, and
+Volodya, having passed brilliantly, returned on the last day no longer
+in blue coat and grey cap, but in student uniform, with blue embroidered
+collar, three-cornered hat, and a gilt dagger by his side. Joy and
+excitement reigned in the whole household. For the first time since
+Mamma's death, Grandmamma drank champagne, and weeps with joy as she
+looks at Volodya, who henceforth rode in his own equipage, receives
+friends in his own rooms, smokes tobacco, goes to balls.
+
+But soon another incident happened which is engraven on memory. The dear
+old Grandmamma was growing daily weaker, and one morning the
+announcement thrilled us that she was dead. Again, the house was full of
+mourning. In a few months I should be preparing to enter the university.
+I was by degrees emerging from my boyish moods, with the exception of
+one--a tendency to metaphysical dreaminess, which was fated to do me
+much injury in after years.
+
+At this period an intimacy commenced between me and a very remarkable
+man, Prince Dmitri Nekhliudoff. He was a tall and commanding figure,
+with an extraordinary intellect. Whenever he found me alone, we seated
+ourselves in some secluded corner and found mutual delight in
+metaphysical discussions. With ecstasy in those moments I soared higher
+and higher into the realms of thought. This strange friendship grew. We
+agreed to confess everything to each other, and thus we should really
+know each other and not be ashamed; but, in order that we should not be
+in any fear of strangers, we vowed never to say anything to anybody else
+about each other. And we kept the vow. As may be imagined, the influence
+of my friend over me was greater than mine over him. I adopted his
+fervent ideas, which included lofty aspirations for the reformation of
+all mankind.
+
+
+_III.--Youth_
+
+
+I was nearly sixteen, and from that time I date the beginning of youth.
+Under various professors I studied, though by no means willingly, to
+prepare for the university. At length, on April 16, I went for the first
+time to the great hall of the university. For the first time in my life
+I wore a dress coat. The bright hall was filled with a brilliant crowd
+of hundreds of young men in gymnasium costumes and dress coats, stately
+professors moving freely about among the tables. On that day I was
+examined in history and answered questions in Russian history in
+brilliant style, for I knew the subject well. I received five marks.
+Similar success rewarded my efforts at the examination in mathematics,
+for the professor told me I had answered even better than was required,
+and on this occasion I received five points.
+
+Everything went splendidly till I came to the Latin examination. The
+Latin professor was spoken of in accents of terror, for he had the
+reputation of taking a fierce delight in plucking candidates. My success
+so far had made me feel proudly confident, and as I could translate
+Cicero and Horace without the lexicon and was proficient in Zumpt's
+Grammar, I thought I might equal the rest. But not so. The professor
+amicably passed one of my young acquaintances, although the youth was
+palpably deficient in his answers. I afterwards learned that he was the
+student's protector.
+
+When my turn came, immediately afterwards, the professor turned on me in
+truly savage demeanour. "That is not it; that is not it at all,"
+exclaimed he. "This is not the way to prepare for higher education. You
+only want to wear the uniform and to boast of being first."
+
+The demeanour of this professor so affected me that my confusion was
+complete. I only received two marks, and the injustice so depressed me
+that I lost all ambition and allowed the remaining examinations to
+proceed without making any effort. I made up my mind that it was unwise
+to aim at being first, and I resolved to adhere to this sentiment in the
+university.
+
+My father married again. He was forty-eight when he took Avdotya
+Epifanova as his second wife. She was a beautiful woman, whom Mamma used
+to call Dunitchka. But I had suspected nothing until Papa actually
+announced to us that he was going to marry her. The wedding was to take
+place in a fortnight. I and Volodya returned to Moscow at the beginning
+of September, and on the following day I went to the university for my
+first lecture.
+
+It was a magnificent, sunny day, and as I entered the auditorium I felt
+lost in the throng of gay youths flitting about through the doors and
+among the corridors. Belonging to no particular group I felt isolated,
+and then even angry, and I remember in my heart that this first day was
+a dismal occasion for me. I looked at the professor with an ironical
+feeling, for he commenced his lecture with an introduction which, to my
+mind, was without sense. I decided at this first lecture that there was
+no need to write down everything that each professor said, and to this
+principle I adhered.
+
+Though during my course I made many pleasant acquaintances, and so felt
+less isolated than at first, I indulged in little real comradeship. But
+during the winter my attention was much engrossed with affairs of the
+heart, for I was in love three times. Yet I was overwhelmed with
+shyness, fearing that my love should be discovered by its object. With
+two of the young ladies, indeed, I had already been in love previously.
+Of one of them I was now enamoured for the third time. But I knew that
+Volodya also regarded her with passionate ecstasy. I felt that it would
+certainly not be agreeable to him to learn that two brothers were in
+love with the same young woman.
+
+Therefore I said nothing to him of my love. But great satisfaction was
+afforded to my mind by the fact that our love was so pure, and that each
+would be ready, if needful, to make a sacrifice for the sake of the
+other. But that self-abnegation did not, after all, extend to Volodya,
+for when he heard that a certain diplomat was to marry the girl, he was
+disposed to slap his face and to challenge him to a duel. It happened
+that I had only spoken once to the young lady, and my love passed away
+in a week, as I made no effort to perpetuate it.
+
+During that winter I was quite disenchanted with the social pleasures to
+which I had looked forward when I entered the university, in imitation
+of my brother Volodya. He danced a great deal, and Papa also went with
+his young wife to balls. But at the first one which I attended I was so
+shy that I declined the invitation of the Princess Kornakova to dance,
+declaring that I did not dance, though I had come to her evening party
+with the express intention of dancing a great deal. I remained silently
+in one place the whole evening.
+
+Avdotya's passionate love for Papa was evident in every word, look, and
+action. We were always hypocritically polite to her, called her _chère
+maman_, and noted that at first she was fond of calling herself
+stepmother, and that she plainly felt the unpleasantness of her
+position. Her disposition was very amiable and she was in no way
+exacting.
+
+My first examination at length arrived. It was on differential and
+integral calculus. I was indifferent and abstracted, but a feeling of
+some dread passed over me when the same young professor who had
+questioned me at the entrance examination looked me in the face. I
+answered so badly that he looked at me compassionately, and said quietly
+but firmly that as I should not pass in the second class I had better
+not present myself for examination. I went home and remained weeping in
+my room for three days over my failure. I even looked out my pistols, in
+order that they might be at hand if I should feel a wish to shoot
+myself. Finally, I saw my father and begged him to permit me to enter
+the hussars, or to go to the Caucasus.
+
+Though he was not pleased, yet, when he saw how deep was my grief he
+sought to comfort me by saying that it was not so very bad, and that
+arrangements might be made for a different course of study. After a few
+days I became composed, but did not leave the house till we departed for
+the country. I may some day relate the sequel in the happier half of my
+youth.
+
+[Tolstoy has never published the continuation, but it is generally
+considered that he represents himself in Constantine Levin, the hero of
+the greatest of his stories, and that thus we gain an insight into his
+mature thoughts.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+My Confession
+
+
+     Count Lyof N. Tolstoy in writing this work expressed himself
+     in such independent terms that it could not be published in
+     Russia, but was issued in Geneva in 1888, by the firm of
+     Elpidine, who had printed in 1886 his "What is my Life," and
+     in 1892 brought out his "Walk in the Light." The books thus
+     issued in the original Russian version outside of the famous
+     author's native land are all purely spiritual, and are written
+     in the most elevated tone. But Tolstoy's mode of interpreting
+     the Scriptures is not approved by the Holy Synod of the
+     Eastern Orthodox Church, or Russo-Greek Communion, and thus
+     most of his treatises which come within the strictly religious
+     category are classed amongst the "Forbidden Books" of modern
+     Russian literature. In this "Confession" Tolstoy emphatically
+     strikes the keynote which is the _motif_ of all his didactic
+     writings. It is an affirmation of the principle that the pure
+     spirit of religion, apart from external dogma, is the really
+     precious factor of life. He follows the same strain in his
+     "What I Believe," and his "Christianity of Christ." The
+     following synopsis is translated and summarised from the
+     original Russian.
+
+
+_I.--Evil Early Years_
+
+
+Though reared in the faith of the Orthodox Eastern, or Russo-Greek
+Church, I had by the time when, at the age of eighteen, I left the
+university ceased to believe what I had been taught. My faith could
+never have been well grounded in conviction. I not only ceased to pray,
+but also to attend the services and to fast. Without denying the
+existence of God, yet I cherished no ideas either as to the nature of
+God or the teaching of Christ.
+
+I found that my wish to become a good and virtuous man, whenever the
+aspiration was in any way expressed, simply exposed me to ridicule;
+while I instantly gained praise for any vicious behaviour. Even my
+excellent aunt declared that she wished two things for me. One was that
+I should form a liaison with some married lady; the other that I should
+become an adjutant to the Tsar.
+
+I look back with horror on the years of my young manhood, for I was
+guilty of slaying men in battle, of gambling, of riotous squandering of
+substance gained by the toil of serfs, of deceit, and of profligacy.
+That course of life lasted ten years. Then I took to writing, but the
+motive was grovelling, for I aimed at gaining money and flattery.
+
+My aims were gratified, for, coming to St. Petersburg at the age of 26,
+I secured the flattering reception I had coveted from the authors most
+in repute. The war, about which I had written much from the field of
+conflict, had just closed. I found that a theory prevailed amongst the
+"Intelligentia" that the function of writers, thinkers, and poets was to
+teach; they were to teach not because they knew or understood, but
+unconsciously and intuitively. Acting on this philosophy, I, as a
+thinker and poet, wrote and taught I knew not what, received large
+remuneration for my efforts with the pen, and lived loosely, gaily, and
+extravagantly.
+
+Thus I was one of the hierarchs of the literary faith, and for a
+considerable time was undisturbed by any doubts as to its soundness; but
+when three years had been thus spent, serious suspicions entered my
+mind. I noted that the devotees of this apparently infallible principle
+were at variance amongst themselves, for they disputed, deceived,
+abused, and swindled each other. And many were grossly selfish, and most
+immoral.
+
+Disgust supervened, both with myself and with mankind in general. My
+error now was that though my eyes were opened to the vanity and delusion
+of the position, yet I retained it, imagining that I, as thinker, poet,
+teacher, could teach other men while not at all knowing what to teach.
+To my other faults an inordinate pride had been added by my intercourse
+with these _litterateurs_. That period viewed retrospectively seems to
+me like one of a kind of madness. Hundreds of us wrote to teach the
+people, while we all abused and confuted one another. We could teach
+nothing, yet we sent millions of pages all over Russia, and we were
+unspeakably vexed that we seemed to gain no attention whatever, for
+nobody appeared to listen to us.
+
+
+_II.--Groping in Darkness_
+
+
+I travelled in Europe at this period, before my marriage, still
+cherishing in my mind the idea of general perfectibility, which was so
+popular at that time with the "Intelligentia." Cultured circles clung to
+the theory of what we call "progress," vague though are the notions
+attaching to the term. I was horrified with the spectacle of an
+execution in Paris, and my eyes were opened to the fallacy underlying
+the theory of human wisdom. The doctrine of "progress" I now felt to be
+a mere superstition, and I was further confirmed in my conviction by the
+sad death of my brother after a painful illness of a whole year.
+
+My brother was kind, amiable, clever, and serious; but he passed away
+without ever knowing why he had lived or what his death meant for him.
+All theories were futile in the face of this tragedy. Returning to
+Russia I settled in my rural home and began to organise schools for the
+peasants, feeling real enthusiasm for the enterprise. For I still clung
+to a great extent to the idea of progress by development. I thought that
+though highly cultured men all thought and taught differently and agreed
+about nothing, yet in the case of the children of the mujiks the
+difficulty could easily be surmounted by permitting the children to
+learn what they liked.
+
+I also tried through my own newspaper to indoctrinate the people, but my
+mind grew more and more embarrassed. At length I fell sick, rather
+mentally than physically. I went off to the Steppes to breathe the pure
+air and to take mare's milk and to live the simple life. I married soon
+after my return to my estate. As time passed on I became happily
+absorbed in the interests of wife and children, largely forgetting
+during a happy interval of fifteen years the old anxiety for individual
+perfection. For this desire was superseded by that of promoting the
+welfare of my family.
+
+All this time, however, I was writing busily, and was gaining much money
+as well as winning great applause. And in everything I wrote I
+persistently taught what was for me the sole truth--that our chief
+object in life should be to secure our own happiness and that of our
+family. Then, five years ago, supervened a mood of mental lethargy. I
+grew despondent; my perplexity increased, and I was tormented by the
+constant recurrence of such questions as--"Why?" and "What afterwards?"
+And by degrees the questions took a more concrete form. "I now possess
+six thousand 'desyatins' of land in the government of Samara, and three
+hundred horses--what then?" I could find no answer. Then came the
+question, "What if I could excel Shakespeare, and Molière, and Gogol,
+and become the most celebrated the world has ever seen--what then?"
+Answer, there was none; yet I felt that I must find one in order to go
+on living.
+
+Life had now lost its meaning, and was no longer real to me. I was a
+healthy and happy man, and yet so empty did life seem to me that I was
+afraid of being tempted to commit suicide, even though I had not the
+slightest intention to perpetrate such a deed. But, fearing lest the
+temptation might come upon me I hid a rope away out of my sight, and
+ceased carrying a gun in my walks.
+
+
+_III.--The Spirit of Despair_
+
+
+It was in my 50th year that the question "What is life" had reduced me
+to utter despair. Various queries clustered round this central
+interrogation. "Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there
+any signification in life that can overcome inevitable death?" I found
+that in human knowledge no real answer was forthcoming to such
+yearnings. None of the theories of the philosophers gave any
+satisfaction. In my search for a solution of life's problem I felt like
+a traveller lost in a forest, out of which he can find no issue.
+
+I found that not only did Solomon declare that he hated life, for all is
+vanity and vexation of spirit; but that Sakya Muni, the Indian sage,
+equally decided that life was a great evil; while Socrates and
+Schopenhauer agree that annihilation is the only thing to be wished for.
+But neither these testimonies of great minds nor my own reasoning could
+induce me to destroy myself. For a force within me, combined with an
+instinctive consciousness of life, counteracted the feeling of despair
+and drew me out of my misery of soul. I felt that I must study life not
+merely as it was amongst those like myself, but as it was amongst the
+millions of the common people. I reflected that knowledge based on
+reason, the knowledge of the cultured, imparted no meaning to life, but
+that, on the other hand, amongst the masses of the common people there
+was an unreasoning consciousness of life which gave it a significance.
+
+This unreasoning knowledge was the very faith which I was rejecting. It
+was faith in things I could not understand; in God, one yet three; in
+the creation of devils and angels. Such things seemed utterly contrary
+to reason. So I began to reflect that perhaps what I considered
+reasonable was after all not so, and what appeared unreasonable might
+not really be so.
+
+I discovered one great error that I had perpetrated. I had been
+comparing life with life, that is, the finite with the finite, and the
+infinite with the infinite. The process was vain. It was like comparing
+force with force, matter with matter, nothing with nothing. It was like
+saying in mathematics that A equals A, or O equals O. Thus the only
+answer was "identity."
+
+Now I saw that scientific knowledge would give no reply to my questions.
+I began to comprehend that though faith seemed to give unreasonable
+answers, these answers certainly did one important thing. They did at
+least bring in the relation of the finite to the infinite. I came to
+feel that in addition to the reasoning knowledge which I once reckoned
+to be the sole true knowledge, there was in every man also an
+unreasoning species of knowledge which makes life possible. That
+unreasoning knowledge is faith.
+
+What is this faith? It is not only belief in God and in things unseen,
+but it is the apprehension of life's meaning. It is the force of life. I
+began to understand that the deepest source of human wisdom was to be
+found in the answers given by faith, that I had no reasonable right to
+reject them, and that they alone solved the problem of life.
+
+
+_IV.--Mistakes Apprehended_
+
+
+Nevertheless my heart was not lightened. I studied the writings of
+Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. I also studied actual religious life
+by turning to the orthodox, the monks, and the Evangelicals who preach
+salvation through faith in a Redeemer. I asked what meaning was given
+for them to life by what they believed. But I could not accept the faith
+of any of these men, because I saw that it did not explain the meaning
+of life, but only obscured it. So I felt a return of the terrible
+feeling of despair.
+
+Being unable to believe in the sincerity of men who did not live
+consistently with the doctrines they professed, and feeling that they
+were self-deceived, and, like myself, were satisfied with the lusts of
+the flesh, I began to draw near to the believers amongst the poor,
+simple, and ignorant, the pilgrims, monks, and peasants. I found that
+though their faith was mingled with much superstition, yet with them the
+whole life was a confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith
+gave them.
+
+The more I contemplated the lives of these simple folk, the more deeply
+was I convinced of the reality of their faith, which I perceived to be a
+necessity for them, for it alone gave life a meaning and made it worth
+living. This was in direct opposition to what I saw in my own circle,
+where I marked the possibility of living without faith, for not one in a
+thousand professed to be a believer, while amongst the poorer classes
+not one in thousands was an unbeliever. The contradiction was extreme.
+In my class a tranquil death, without terror or despair, is rare; in
+that lower class, an uneasy death is a rare exception. I found that
+countless numbers in that lower mass of humanity had so understood the
+meaning of life that they were able both to live bearing contentedly the
+burdens of life, and to die peacefully.
+
+The more I learned of these men of faith the more I liked them, and the
+easier I felt it so to live. For two years I lived in their fashion.
+Then the life of my own wealthy and cultured class became repellent to
+me, for it had lost all meaning whatever. It seemed like empty child's
+play, while the life of the working classes appeared to me in its true
+significance.
+
+Now I began to apprehend where I had judged wrongly. My mistake was that
+I had applied an answer to my question concerning life which only
+concerned my own life, to life in general. My life had been but one long
+indulgence of my passions. It was evil and meaningless. Therefore such
+an answer had no application to life at large, but only to my individual
+life.
+
+I understood the truth which the Gospel subsequently taught me more
+fully, that men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds
+were evil. I understood that for the comprehension of life, it was
+essential that life should be something more than an evil and
+meaningless thing revealed by reason. Life must be considered as a
+whole, not merely in its parasitic excrescences. I felt that to be good
+was more important than to believe. I loved good men. I hated myself. I
+accepted truth. I understood that we were all more or less mad with the
+love of evil.
+
+I looked at the animals, saw the birds building nests, living only to
+fly and to subsist. I saw how the goat, hare, and wolf live, but to feed
+and to nurture their young, and are contented and happy. Their life is a
+reasonable one. And man must gain his living like the animals do, only
+with this great difference, that if he should attempt this alone, he
+will perish. So he must labour for the good of all, not merely for
+himself.
+
+I had not helped others. My life for thirty years had been that of a
+mere parasite. I had been contented to remain ignorant of the reason why
+I lived at all.
+
+There is a supreme will in the universe. Some one makes the universal
+life his secret care. To know what that supreme will is, we must obey it
+implicitly. No reproaches against their masters come from the simple
+workers who do just what is required of them, though we are in the habit
+of regarding them as brutes. We, on the contrary, who think ourselves
+wise, consume the goods of our master while we do nothing willingly that
+he prescribes. We think that it would be stupid for us to do so.
+
+What does such conduct imply? Simply that our master is stupid, or that
+we have no master.
+
+
+_V.--Feeling Versus Reason_
+
+
+Thus I was led at last to the conclusion that knowledge based on reason
+is fallacious, and that the knowledge of truth can be secured only by
+living. I had come to feel that I must live a real, not a parasitical
+life, and that the meaning of life could be perceived only by
+observation of the combined lives of the great human community.
+
+The feelings of my mind during all these experiences and observations
+were mingled with a heart-torment which I can only describe as a
+searching after God. This search was a feeling rather than a course of
+reasoning. For it came from my heart, and was actually opposed to my way
+of thinking. Kant had shown the impossibility of proving the existence
+of God, yet I still hoped to find Him, and I still addressed Him in
+prayer. Yet I did not find Him whom I sought.
+
+At times I contended against the reasoning of Kant and Schopenhauer, and
+argued that causation is not in the same category with thought and space
+and time. I argued that if I existed, there was a cause of my being, and
+that cause was the cause of all causes. Then I pondered the idea that
+the cause of all things is what is called God, and with all my powers I
+strove to attain a sense of the presence of this cause.
+
+Directly I became conscious of a power over me I felt a possibility of
+living. Then I asked myself what was this cause, and what was my
+relation to what I called God? Simply the old familiar answer occurred
+to me, that God is the creator, the giver of all. Yet I was dissatisfied
+and fearful, and the more I prayed, the more convinced I was that I was
+not heard. In my despair I cried aloud for mercy, but no one had mercy
+on me, and I felt as if life stagnated within me.
+
+Yet the conviction kept recurring that I must have appeared in this
+world with some motive on the part of some one who had sent me into it.
+If I had been sent here, who sent me? I had not been like a fledgling
+flung out of a nest to perish. Some one had cared for me, had loved me.
+Who was it? Again came the same answer, God. He knew and saw my fear, my
+despair, and so I passed from the consideration of the existence of God,
+which was proved, on to that of our relation towards him as our Redeemer
+through His Son. But I felt this to be a thing apart from me and from
+the world, and this God vanished like melting ice from my eyes. Again I
+was left in despair. I felt there was nothing left but to put an end to
+my life; yet I knew that I should never do this.
+
+Thus did moods of joy and despair come and go, till one day, when I was
+listening to the sounds in a forest, and was still on that day in the
+early springtide seeking after God in my thoughts, a flash of joy
+illumined my soul. I realised that the conception of God was not God
+Himself. I felt that I had only truly lived when I believed in God. God
+is life. Live to seek God and life will not be without Him. The light
+that then shone never left me. Thus I was saved from self-destruction.
+Gradually I felt the glow and strength of life return to me. I renounced
+the life of my own class, because it was unreal, and its luxurious
+superfluity rendered comprehension of life impossible. The simple men
+around me, the working classes, were the real Russian people. To them I
+turned. They made the meaning of life clear. It may thus be expressed:--
+
+Each of us is so created by God that he may ruin or save his soul. To
+save his soul, a man must live after God's word by humility, charity,
+and endurance, while renouncing all the pleasures of life. This is for
+the common people the meaning of the whole system of faith,
+traditionally delivered to them from the past and administered to them
+by the pastors of the Church.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PASQUALE VILLARI
+
+
+The Life of Girolamo Savonarola
+
+
+     Pasquale Villari was born October 3, 1827, at Naples. At the
+     age of twenty he produced his first literary effort, a Liberal
+     manifesto against Neapolitan Bourbonism, which necessitated
+     his flight from his native city. He retreated to Florence and
+     there wrote his work on "Savonarola," which at once achieved
+     fame and was translated into French, German, and English. His
+     next great book was his "Macchiavelli." Villari had been
+     appointed Professor of History at Nice, but left that city for
+     a similar position at Florence. He entered political life in
+     1862, and has sat as a Parliamentary Deputy several times. In
+     1884 he was made senator, and in 1891 he was minister of
+     public instruction in the Rudini Cabinet. Villari's essays on
+     Dante are much esteemed. His treatise on "The First Two
+     Centuries of Florentine History" is considered a standard
+     work. All his books have been translated into our language by
+     his English wife, Linda Villari, who is herself an
+     accomplished authoress.
+
+
+_I.--1452-1494_
+
+
+The House of Savonarola derived its ancient origin from the city of
+Padua. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the family removed to
+Ferrara where, on September 21, 1452, the subject of this biography,
+Girolamo Savonarola, first saw the light. He was the third of seven
+children of his parents. The lad became the favourite of his
+grandfather, Michele, who wished to see him become a great physician,
+and devoted most assiduous care on the task of training his intellect.
+But unfortunately the grandfather soon passed away, and Girolamo's
+studies were then directed by his father, who began to instruct him in
+philosophy.
+
+The natural sciences were then only branches of philosophy, and the
+latter, though employed as preliminary to the study of medicine, was
+purely scholastic. The books which came into the hands of the young
+Savonarola were the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Arabic
+commentaries on Aristotle. He was specially fascinated with the works of
+St. Thomas, but besides literature he studied music. He also composed
+verses.
+
+All particulars, however, of Savonarola's boyhood are unfortunately
+lacking. But we can form a vivid idea of the surroundings which must
+have influenced him. Ferrara was then the splendid capital of the House
+of Este, with 100,000 inhabitants and a court which was one of the first
+in Italy, and was continually visited by princes, emperors, and popes.
+The lad must have witnessed gorgeous pageants, like the two which
+occurred on visits of Pope Pius II., in 1459 and 1460. But during all
+this period Savonarola was entirely absorbed in studying the Scriptures
+and St. Thomas Aquinas, allowing himself no recreation save playing sad
+music on his lute, or writing verses expressing, not without force and
+simplicity, the griefs of his heart.
+
+The contrasts that the youth witnessed between the magnificence
+ostentatiously displayed and the evidences of tyranny in palaces and
+castles in whose dungeons were immured numerous victims, clanking their
+chains, made indelible impressions on his mind. Conducted once by his
+parents to the ducal palace at Ferrara, he firmly refused ever to enter
+its doors again. With singular spiritual fervour in one so young,
+Savonarola surrendered his whole heart and soul to religious sentiments
+and exercises. To him worldly life, as he saw all Ferrara absorbed in
+its gaieties, became utterly repellent, and a sermon to which he
+listened from an Augustinian friar determined him to adopt the monastic
+life.
+
+April 24, 1475, when his parents were absent from home attending the
+festival of St. George, he ran away to Bologna and presented himself at
+the Monastery of St. Dominic, begging that he might be admitted for the
+most menial service. He was instantly received, and at once began to
+prepare for his novitiate. In this retreat he submitted himself to the
+severest penances and discipline and displayed such excessive zeal and
+devotion as to win the admiration of the monks, who at times believed
+him to be rapt in a holy trance.
+
+
+_II.--1475-1481_
+
+
+Savonarola's sojourn at Bologna in the Dominican Monastery lasted for
+seven years, during which his spirit was occupied not only with faith
+and prayer, but with deep meditation on the miserable condition of the
+Church. His soul was stirred to wrathful indignation. The shocking
+corruption of the Papacy, dating from the death of Pius II. in 1464, was
+to reach its climax under Alexander VI. The avarice of Paul II. was soon
+noted by all the world, and so boundless was the profligacy of his
+successor, Sixtus IV., that no deed was too scandalous for him to
+commit.
+
+The state of Italy as well as of the Church was miserable, and the soul
+of the young monk was filled with horror-stricken grief, relieved only
+by study and prayer. He had been much occupied in instructing the
+novices, but now he was promoted to the function of preacher. In 1481 he
+was sent by his superiors to preach in Ferrara. Nothing is known of the
+effect of the sermons he delivered at that time and place. Savonarola
+had not yet developed his gifts of oratory. He was driven from Ferrara
+by an outbreak of war with the Venetians, and repaired to Florence,
+where, in the Monastery of St. Mark the brightest as well as the saddest
+years of his life were to be spent. The Monastery contained the first
+public library established in Italy, which was kept in excellent order
+by the monks.
+
+Savonarola was half intoxicated with joy during his first days in
+Florence. He was charmed by the soft lines of the Tuscan hills and the
+beauty of the Tuscan speech. Lorenzo the Magnificent had been ruling
+Florence for many years and was then at the climacteric of his fame.
+Under his sway everything appeared to prosper. Enemies had been
+imprisoned or banished, and factions had ceased to distract the city.
+Lorenzo's shameless licentiousness was condoned by reason of his
+brilliancy, his patronage of art and literature, and his lavish public
+entertainments.
+
+Greek scholars, driven westward by the fall of Constantinople, sought
+refuge at the Florentine court. The fine arts flourished and a Platonic
+Academy was established. It was even proposed that the Pope should
+canonise Plato as a saint. In fact that period witnessed the
+inauguration of modern culture.
+
+
+_III.--1481-1490_
+
+
+After the first few days in Florence, Savonarola again began to
+experience the feeling of isolation. For he speedily detected the
+unbelief and frivolity under the surface of the intellectual culture of
+the people. Even in St. Mark's Monastery there was no real religion.
+Savonarola was soon invited to preach the Lenten sermons in St. Lorenzo.
+His discourses produced no special effect, for the Florentines preferred
+preachers who indulged in Pagan quotations and rhetorical elegancies
+rather than in expatiating in the precepts of Christianity. But a
+stirring event was at hand.
+
+Savonarola was sent by his superiors to Reggio to attend a Chapter of
+the Dominicans. During the discussion he was suddenly impelled to rise
+to his feet and to plunge into a powerful declamation against the
+corruptions of the Church and the clergy which transfixed his hearers
+with astonishment. This outburst was a revelation of his extraordinary
+powers. It instantly secured his fame and from that moment many sought
+his acquaintance.
+
+Savonarola's mind from that moment became strangely excited and it is
+not surprising that he should have seen many visions. He on one occasion
+saw the heavens open. A panorama of the calamities of the Church passed
+before him and he heard a voice charging him to proclaim them to the
+people. In that year, 1484, Pope Sixtus died. The election of his
+successor, Innocent VIII. destroyed the hopes of honest men. For the new
+Pope no longer disguised his children under the appellation of nephews,
+but openly acknowledged them as his sons, conferring on them the title
+of princes.
+
+We may imagine the storms of emotion excited in the soul of Savonarola.
+Fortunately, he was sent to preach Lenten sermons at San Gimignano, the
+"City of the Grey Towers" in the Siennese hills. Here he found his true
+vocation. His words flowed freely and were eloquent and effective. Next
+he was sent to Brescia, where his predictions of coming terrors and his
+exhortations to repentance produced a profound impression. During the
+sack of that same city in 1512 by the fierce soldiers of Gaston de Foix,
+when 6,000 citizens were slain, the stricken people vividly remembered
+the Apocalyptic denunciations and predictions of the preacher from
+Ferrara.
+
+Through the wonderful success of these Lenten sermons the name of
+Savonarola became known throughout Italy, and he no longer felt
+uncertain as to his proper mission. Yet, the more popular he became the
+greater was his humility and the more ardent was his devotion to prayer.
+He seemed when engaged in prayer frequently to lapse into a trance, and
+tradition even alleges that at such times a bright halo was seen to
+encircle his head.
+
+
+_IV.--1491_
+
+
+Returning to Florence, Savonarola by his Lenten sermons in 1491 drew
+immense crowds to the Duomo. From that moment he became the paramount
+power in the pulpit. His vivid imagery and his predictions of coming
+troubles seemed to produce a magical effect on the minds of the people.
+But this growing influence was a source of considerable vexation to
+Lorenzo de' Medici and his friends. Savonarola vehemently denounced the
+greed of the clergy and their neglect of spiritual life for the sake of
+mere external ceremonialism, and he with equal insistence inveighed
+against the corruption of public manners. As Lorenzo was already
+considered a tyrant by many of the citizens, and as he was universally
+charged with having corrupted the magistrates and appropriated the
+public and private funds, it was generally inferred that Savonarola had
+had the audacity to make allusion to him.
+
+This only enhanced the Friar's reputation and in July, 1491, he was
+elected Prior of St. Mark's. The office made him both more prominent
+than before and also more independent. He showed this to be the case by
+at once refusing to go according to custom to do homage to the
+Magnificent, declaring that he owed his election to God alone, and to
+God only would he vow obedience. Lorenzo was deeply offended, yet he
+judged it discreet rather to win the new Prior over by kindness than to
+wage war with him.
+
+The Seignior only deepened Savonarola's contempt by sending rich gifts
+to the convent and by sending five of the chief citizens to him in order
+to induce him to modify the strain of his preaching. The gifts were
+immediately distributed among the poor, and Savonarola in a pulpit
+allusion observed that a faithful dog does not cease barking in his
+master's defence because a bone is flung him. To the five citizens, who
+hinted to the Prior that he might be sent into exile, he replied that
+they should bid Lorenzo do penance for his sins, for God was no
+respecter of persons and did not spare the princes of the earth.
+
+Wonderful was the effect of Savonarola's preaching on the corrupt and
+pagan society of Florence. His natural, spontaneous, heart-stirring
+eloquence, with its exalted imagery and outbursts of righteous
+indignation, was entirely unprecedented in that era of pedantry and
+simulation of the classic and heathen oratory. The scholastic jargon
+indulged in by the preachers of the time was utterly unintelligible to
+the common people. Savonarola's voice was the only one that addressed
+the multitude in familiar and fascinating tones and in an accent that
+evinced true affection for the people. They knew that he alone fought
+for truth and was fervently devoted to goodness. Thus he was the one
+truly eloquent preacher of the time, who restored pulpit preaching to
+its pristine honour, and he well deserves to be styled the first orator
+of modern times.
+
+
+_V.--1492-1494_
+
+
+A wasting disease from which Lorenzo suffered had by the beginning of
+April, 1492, made such inroads as to end all hopes of his recovery. The
+Magnificent turned his thoughts to religion and suddenly asked to
+confess to Savonarola. Though astonished at the request, the Prior
+acceded to it and found Lorenzo in great agitation, which he sought to
+calm by reminding the sick man of the goodness and mercy of God.
+
+A painful scene ensued. Savonarola added that three things were needful.
+First, a living faith in God's mercy. Secondly, Lorenzo must restore all
+his ill-gotten wealth, or at least command his sons to do it in his
+name. Lastly, he must restore liberty to the people of Florence. The
+sick man, collecting all his remaining strength, angrily turned his back
+on his Confessor, who at once left his presence. On April 8, 1492, the
+Magnificent, in an agony of remorse, breathed his last. On July 25 of
+the same year Pope Innocent VIII. expired.
+
+The next Pope, Alexander VI., was notorious for his avarice and his
+profligacy. The announcement of his elevation to the papal chair was
+received throughout Italy with dismay. The worst apprehensions were soon
+fulfilled, for the Pope proved to be guilty of shocking extortion, the
+object of which was to provide more lavishly for his dissolute children.
+
+This deplorable state of things caused men to look wistfully to
+Savonarola. The times he had foretold seemed to be at hand, and the
+excitement was intensified by two visions which he declared had been
+manifested to him as celestial revelations. He had seen a sword in the
+sky and had heard voices proclaiming mercy to the righteous and
+retribution to the wicked.
+
+In the other vision a black cross hung over the city of Rome, stretching
+its arms over the whole earth. On it was written, "The Cross of God's
+wrath." But from Jerusalem rose a golden cross, inscribed, "The Cross of
+God's compassion." Discontent was growing in Florence. The insolence and
+the rapacity of Pietro de' Medici increased. In the autumn of that year
+Savonarola delivered a famous course of sermons on Noah's Ark, warning
+all to take refuge from the coming flood in the mystical Ark of mercy.
+The flood came indeed, for suddenly all Florence was startled as if by a
+thunderclap by the news that a foreign army was pouring over the Alps
+for the conquest of Italy. The terror was overwhelming. Italy was
+unprepared, for the princes had no efficient armies for resistance.
+
+The invader was the new King of France, the young and adventurous
+Charles VIII. His army was a model to all Europe in the art of war. It
+possessed weapons of the latest invention and its main strength lay in
+its splendid infantry. Florence was entered without a blow, and King
+Charles demanded as a ransom a far larger sum than the Republic could
+pay. He remained day after day in the city, showing no inclination to
+depart. Then was manifested a proof of the wonderful influence of
+Savonarola's personality.
+
+The Prior being earnestly entreated by the citizens to ask the French
+king to depart, he readily undertook the mission and presented himself
+to Charles, who, surrounded by his barons, received him cordially and
+listened graciously to his proposal. Savonarola admonished him not to
+bring ruin on the city and the anger of the Lord on himself.
+
+The Prior's overtures were completely successful, for on November 28,
+the king departed with his army. And now all was changed in Florence.
+The partisans of the Medici had vanished magically and Savonarola ruled
+the city at the head of the popular party. He speedily proposed a new
+form of government suggesting as the best model, a Grand Council like
+that of Venice. The new Government was formed of a Grand Council and a
+Council of Eighty answering to an Assembly of the People and a Senate.
+All the proposals of the Prior were adopted, and laws were framed almost
+in his own words.
+
+
+_VI.--1495-1497_
+
+
+Germs of civil discord were not lacking, and these soon developed so as
+to divide Florence into factions, the two chief of these being the
+Whites, who were favourable to popular liberty, and the Greys, who were
+adherents of the Medici. The latter were dangerous and treacherous
+enemies of Savonarola and of the Republic. For a time the Prior's
+preaching confounded his foes, for it completely changed the aspect of
+the city. The women cast off their jewels and dressed simply; young
+profligates were transformed into sober, religious men, the churches
+were filled with people at prayer, and the Bible was diligently read.
+
+Now came danger from without. The departure of the French had endangered
+the security of Florence. The Pope and Venice desired the reinstatement
+of the fallen tyrant Pietro de' Medici, and he prepared to attack the
+city. But he was foiled by the energy to which the Prior roused the
+Florentines for measures of defence. Meantime, Savonarola once more
+displayed his noble independence by spurning the offer on the part of
+the Pope of a Cardinal's hat. And terrible in their vehemence and
+audacity were his denunciations against the vices of Rome, delivered in
+his Lenten sermons of 1496.
+
+In his usual strain, but with increasing power, Savonarola graphically
+and vividly described the woes of Italy, as though he were gifted with
+prophetic vision. One of his sermons was interdicted by the Pope, but
+the preacher modified nothing and defied the Vatican. And now, while the
+enthusiasm of his followers was developing into fanaticism, the hatred
+of his enemies was approaching a climax, and the war was waxing furious.
+
+The fame of this marvellous preacher was now extending throughout the
+world by means of his printed sermons. Even the Sultan of Turkey
+commanded them to be translated into Turkish for his own study. Of
+course the individual aim of Savonarola was simply to be the regenerator
+of religion. The Florentines, however, adulated him as the real founder
+of the free Republic. Hence they displayed immense ardour in defending
+him against the Pope, seeing that thus they were upholding their own
+freedom, because the Pope was aiming at reinstating the Medici in
+Florence.
+
+The Pope had hoped that the Prior would moderate his tone, but this was
+only more aggressive than ever, and threatening messages arrived from
+the Vatican. Attempts by his friends, some of them of high and
+influential position, to defend him, only the more enraged Pope
+Alexander Borgia. He summoned a consistory of fourteen Dominican
+theologians who were ordered to investigate Savonarola's conduct and
+doctrine. The strange issue was he was charged with having been the
+cause of all the misfortunes that had befallen Pietro de' Medici.
+
+After Lent the Prior went to preach a course of sermons at Prato, and on
+his return to Florence he delivered a sermon in the Hall of the Greater
+Council in the presence of all the magistrates and leading citizens of
+the city, in which he openly and courageously defied all the wrath of
+Alexander Borgia. Then he once more set himself to the work of serving
+the Republic, though, as the sequel shows, he was fated to meet with a
+base reward.
+
+Commerce and industry had been paralysed in Florence by the incessant
+commotions of past years. The immense sums paid to the French king had
+together with sums spent on war drained the public resources and lowered
+the credit of the Republic. And now famine was threatened, for the
+people in the rural districts were pinched with hunger. The starving
+peasantry began to flock in great numbers into the city, so that the
+misery increased. Terror was occasioned by a few cases of death from
+plague. Florence was at war with Pisa, but without success, for many of
+her mercenary soldiers were deserting and the forces besieging Pisa were
+dwindling for lack of supplies.
+
+Fresh adversities were in store for the Florentines. Though the rumours
+of a second invasion of Italy by King Charles proved unfounded, for he
+renounced all idea of returning, new enemies arose. The Emperor
+Maximilian was marching towards the frontier, and the Pope felt
+encouraged to enter into open war with the Florentines. His forces and
+the troops from Sienna actually attempted an incursion into the
+territories of the Republic, but they suffered repeated repulses, and at
+length were put to flight. But this conflict weakened still more the
+forces before Pisa, at which city Maximilian arrived with 1,000 foot
+soldiers, receiving a cordial welcome from the Pisans.
+
+The Florentines did not quail before the storm. Their courage never
+failed. They collected fresh stores and sent abundant provisions to the
+camp. But the hatred of the Pope grew more intense, especially against
+Savonarola, who, however, had not returned to the pulpit, being actuated
+by a wish not to accentuate the situation. For the general misery in
+Florence daily increased and the plague was extending its ravages. The
+hospitals were full. And the faction against Savonarola, named the
+Arrabbiati, seemed positively to regard the distress with glee, for
+these fanatics went about crying aloud, "At last we can all perceive how
+we have been deceived! This is the happiness that the Friar predicted
+for Florence!" Moreover they proclaimed that now was the time to
+overthrow the Government.
+
+But the Seigniory entreated Savonarola to come forth again from his
+retirement. He entered the pulpit on October 28, but only to look on
+people whose faces were marked by distress and terror. Yet his sermons
+administered such comfort to the citizens who in the majority still
+adhered to him, though the Arrabbiati mocked at his words. Temporary
+relief was at hand, for suddenly, as if by a miracle, ships arrived from
+Marseilles bringing long-expected reinforcements and supplies of corn.
+The people were frantic with joy and solemn thanksgivings were offered
+in the churches.
+
+The Pope was now designing measures to entrap the Prior. A new
+Vicar-General was appointed with power which would invest him with such
+authority over Savonarola that the latter would lose his independence.
+But he displayed no disposition to yield to Rome. On the contrary, he
+delivered in the Duomo those eight magnificent, fearless, and immortal
+sermons which intensified the bitter struggle with Rome, while for the
+time being they made the great Reformer's name and authority again
+ascendant, and rendered the popular party once more master of the
+situation, notwithstanding the strategy of the Pope and the machinations
+of the factions.
+
+
+_VII.--1497-1498_
+
+
+During Lent, 1497, Savonarola continued his course of sermons on
+Ezekiel, and in these discourses he said much that bore on the conflict
+with Rome, now daily growing more virulent. He inveighed against the
+temporal wealth of the Church and launched many accusations against
+Rome. The impression produced was the deeper because of the general
+presentiment in men's minds of the coming uprising of Christendom
+against the abominations of Rome.
+
+Savonarola now daily expected to be excommunicated and he was determined
+to defy the Pope. The plague increased in Florence and the Seigniory
+prohibited preaching in the churches for a time, but Savonarola
+persisted in preaching on Ascension Day. The factions were infuriated.
+They denied the pulpit with filth and draped it with the skin of an ass,
+and threatened the life of the Prior. His friends implored him not to
+preach at the risk of his life. He refused to yield, but a fearful riot
+took place in the church which was talked of through all Italy.
+
+The storm was now gathering. The fury of the factions increased, as also
+did the wrath of the Pope. At length, on May 13, the excommunicatory
+brief was despatched from Rome, directed against a "certain Fra Girolamo
+Savonarola who had disseminated pernicious doctrines to the scandal and
+grief of simple souls." The event threw all Florence into confusion. The
+Arrabbiati were triumphant. But the city was filled with lamentation and
+disorder. The rabble rejoiced. The churches were quickly deserted; the
+taverns were filled; immorality returned as if magically; and again
+women attired in dazzling finery paraded the streets. In less than a
+month, so rapid was the transformation, Florence seemed to have relapsed
+into the days of the Magnificent, and piety and patriotism were alike
+forgotten.
+
+Meantime, the Prior was calm and composed and took measures for his
+defence. He wrote an Epistle against surreptitious excommunication,
+addressed to all Christians beloved of God. He followed it by a second
+letter, also breathing courage and defiance. A conflict ensued. The
+Arrabbiati sent accusations against the Prior to Rome, while the
+Seigniory sought to vindicate him, most of the members, newly elected,
+being his friends. The plague grew so terrible that on some days there
+were a hundred deaths. In the autumn it abated, and gradually
+disappeared. Savonarola's energy in fighting the pestilence was
+unwearied throughout.
+
+The Prior soon commenced to preach again. On Christmas Day he put an end
+to all suspense as to his policy by thrice performing high mass,
+afterwards leading his monks in solemn procession through St. Mark's
+Square. He continued to issue new tracts and to preach regularly. But on
+February 26 the Pope announced that Savonarola's preaching should be
+tolerated no longer. The Prior was conscious that the end was near. His
+last sermon was delivered, after he had preached in Florence for eight
+years, on March 18, 1498. His adherents were terrified, and seemed to
+vanish.
+
+On April 8, Palm Sunday, the Arrabbiati attacked St. Mark's Convent.
+Savonarola was seized and bound by a brutal rabble, and he and two of
+his monks were lodged in prison. Cruel proceedings followed. For a whole
+month he was brought day after day to examination and he was repeatedly
+subjected to torture. The Pope's Commissioners were never able to
+extract from him any confession of guilt. Savonarola was from first to
+last unflinchingly consistent with himself.
+
+On May 22 sentence of death was passed on Savonarola, on Fra Silvestro,
+and on Fra Domenico. They prepared to face death firmly and well. The
+tragedy was enacted next morning. Three platforms had been erected on
+the steps of the Ringhiera, on which sat the Bishop of Vasona, the
+Apostolic Commissioners, and the Gonfaliero with the Council of Eight.
+On a gibbet in the form of a cross hung three chains, and combustibles
+were piled beneath. Sad and solemn was the silence of the vast throng
+assembled in the Piazza, excepting where members of the factions were
+raging like wild beasts and venting indecent blasphemies.
+
+The three friars were publicly stripped of their monkish robes and
+degraded. Tranquilly they mounted the scaffold, the dregs of the
+populace assailing them with vile words. But silence reigned at the
+moment of the execution. As soon as life was extinct the flames were
+kindled beneath the bodies of the three victims. The tragic and awful
+spectacle elicited bitter grief amongst the people on the one side,
+while cries of wild exultation were raised on the other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN WESLEY
+
+
+Journal
+
+
+     John Wesley, who was born June 17, 1703, at Epworth, and who
+     died in London March 2, 1791, was the son of a Lincolnshire
+     rector. His history covers practically the whole of the
+     eighteenth century, of which he was one of the most typical
+     personalities, as he was certainly the most strenuous figure.
+     His career was absolutely without parallel, for John Wesley,
+     as an itinerating clergyman, and as the propagator of that
+     mission of Methodism which he founded, travelled on his
+     preaching tours for forty years, mostly on horseback. He paid
+     more turnpike fees than any man that ever bestrode a horse,
+     and 8,000 miles constituted his annual record for many a year,
+     during each of which he preached on the average 5,000 times.
+     John Wesley received a classical education at Charterhouse and
+     Christ Church, Oxford, and all through his wonderful life of
+     endurance and adventure, of devotion and consecration,
+     remained a scholar and a gentleman. His "Journal" is valuable
+     for its pictures of the England of his day, as well as for his
+     own simple and unpretending record of his experiences. Wesley
+     made religion his business and incorporated it into the
+     national life. Of him Mr. Augustine Birrell says:--"No man
+     lived nearer the centre than John Wesley. Neither Clive nor
+     Pitt, neither Mansfield nor Johnson. You cannot cut him out of
+     our national life. No single figure influenced so many minds,
+     no single voice touched so many hearts. No other man did such
+     a life's work for England."
+
+
+_The Holy Club_
+
+
+In November 1729, at which time I came to reside at Oxford, Mr. Morgan,
+my brother, myself, and one more, agreed to spend three or four evenings
+in a week together. Our design was to read over the classics, which we
+had before read in private, on common nights, and on Sunday some book in
+divinity. In the summer following, Mr. M. told me he had called at the
+gaol, to see a man who was condemned for killing his wife; and that,
+from the talk he had with one of the debtors, he verily believed it
+would do much good, if any one would be at the pains of now and then
+speaking with them.
+
+This he so frequently repeated, that on August 24, 1730, my brother and
+I walked with him to the castle. We were so well satisfied with our
+conversation there, that we agreed to go thither once or twice a week;
+which we had not done long, before he desired me to go with him to see a
+poor sick woman in the town.
+
+I next proposed to Mr. Gerard, the Bishop of Oxford's chaplain, who took
+care of any prisoners condemned to die, that I intended to preach in the
+prison once a month, if the bishop approved. Our design was approved and
+permission was granted. Soon after a gentleman of Merton College, who
+was one of our little company, now consisting of five persons,
+acquainted us that he had been much rallied the day before for being a
+member of the Holy Club, and that it was become a common topic of mirth
+at his college, where they had found out several of our customs, to
+which we were ourselves utter strangers.
+
+I corresponded with my father, and from him received encouragement, so
+that we still continued to meet as usual, and to do what service we
+could to the prisoners, and to two or three poor families in the town.
+
+
+_A Missioner to Georgia_
+
+
+1735. Oct. 14. Mr. Benjamin Ingham, of Queen's College, Oxford; Mr.
+Charles Delamotte, son of a London merchant, my brother Charles, and
+myself, took boat for Gravesend, in order to embark for Georgia. Our end
+in leaving our country was singly this, to save our souls; to live
+wholly to the glory of God. In the afternoon we found the "Simmonds" off
+Gravesend, and immediately went on board.
+
+Oct. 17. I began to learn German, in order to converse with the 26
+Germans on board. On Sunday I preached extempore and then administered
+the Lord's supper to seven communicants.
+
+Oct. 20. Believing the denying ourselves might be helpful, we wholly
+left off the use of flesh and wine, and confined ourselves to vegetable
+food, chiefly rice and biscuit.
+
+1736. Feb. 5. After a passage in which storms were frequent, between two
+and three in the afternoon, God brought us all safe into the Savannah
+river. We cast anchor near Tybee Island, where the groves of pines along
+the shore made an agreeable prospect, showing, as it were, the bloom of
+spring in the depth of winter.
+
+Sunday, March 7. I entered upon my ministry at Savannah. I do here bear
+witness against myself, that when I saw the number of people crowding
+into the church, the deep attention with which they received the word,
+and the seriousness that sat on all their faces, I could hardly believe
+that the greater part of them would hereafter trample under foot that
+word, and say all manner of evil falsely against him that spake it.
+
+March 30. Mr. Delamotte and I began to try, whether life might not be as
+well sustained by one sort as by a variety of food. We chose to make the
+experiment with bread, and were never more vigorous and healthy than
+while we tasted nothing else.
+
+June 30. I hoped a door was opened for my main design, which was to
+preach the gospel to the Indians, and I purposed to go immediately to
+the Choctaws, the least polished, that is, the least corrupted of the
+tribes. On my informing Lieutenant-Governor Oglethorpe of our wish, he
+objected, alleging not only danger from the French, but also the
+inexpediency of leaving Savannah without a minister. These objections I
+related to our brethren, who were all of opinion, "We ought not to go
+yet."
+
+
+_Warrant for Wesley's Arrest_
+
+
+July 3. Preaching at Charlestown, immediately after communion I
+mentioned to Mrs. Williamson (Mr. Causton's niece) some things I thought
+reprovable in her behaviour. At this she appeared extremely angry.
+
+Aug. 7. I repelled Mrs. Williamson from the holy communion. And next day
+Mr. Recorder, of Savannah, issued out a warrant for my arrest. Mr.
+Jones, the constable, served the warrant, and carried me before Mr.
+Bailiff Parker and Mr. Recorder. I was told that I must appear at the
+next court. Mr. Causton came to my house and declared that the affront
+had been offered to him; that he espoused the cause of his niece; that
+he was ill-used, and that he would have satisfaction if it was to be had
+in this world.
+
+To many persons Mr. Causton declared that "Mr. Wesley had repelled Sophy
+from holy communion purely out of revenge, because he had made proposals
+of marriage to her which she had rejected, and married Mr. Williamson."
+But when the case came on the grand jury, having heard the charge,
+declared themselves thoroughly persuaded that it was an artifice of Mr.
+Causton's designed "rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley, than
+to free the colony from religious tyranny, as he had been pleased to
+term it."
+
+Oct. 7. I consulted my friends whether God did not call me to return to
+England. I had found no possibility of instructing the Indians. They
+were unanimous that I ought to go, but not yet. But subsequently they
+agreed with me that the time was come.
+
+
+_In London Again_
+
+
+1738. Feb. 1. Landed at Deal. It is now two years and almost four months
+since I left my native country. After reading prayers and explaining a
+portion of Scripture to a large company at the inn, I left Deal, and
+came in the evening to Feversham. I here read prayers and explained the
+second lesson to a few of those who were called Christians, but were
+indeed more savage in their behaviour than the wildest Indians I have
+yet met with.
+
+Feb. 26. Sunday. I preached at six in the morning at St. Lawrence's,
+London; at ten, in St. Catherine Cree's; and in the afternoon at St.
+John's, Wapping. I believe it pleased God to bless the first sermon
+most, because it gave most offence.
+
+March 4. I found my brother at Oxford, and with him Peter Böhler; by
+whom, in the great hand of God, I was, on Sunday, the 5th, clearly
+convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are
+saved. Immediately it struck into my mind, "Leave off preaching. How can
+you preach to others who have not faith yourself?" I asked Böhler
+whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered, "By no
+means." I asked, "But what can I preach?" He said, "Preach faith till
+you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith."
+
+Accordingly, Monday, 6, I began preaching this new doctrine, though my
+soul started back from the work. The first person to whom I offered
+salvation through faith alone, was a prisoner under sentence of death.
+
+On Tuesday 25, I spoke clearly and fully at Blendon to Mr. Delamotte's
+family of the nature and fruits of faith. Mr. Broughton and my brother
+were there. Mr. Broughton's great objection was, he could never think
+that I had not faith, who had done and suffered such things. My brother
+was very angry, and told me I did not know what mischief I had done by
+talking thus. And, indeed, it did please God to kindle a fire which I
+trust shall never be extinguished.
+
+On May 1 our little society began, which afterwards met in Fetter Lane.
+May 3. My brother had a long and particular conversation with Peter
+Böhler. And it now pleased God to open his eyes; so that he also saw
+clearly what was the nature of that one true living faith, thereby
+alone, "through grace we are saved."
+
+Sunday 7. I preached at St. Lawrence's in the morning; and afterwards at
+St. Catherine Cree's. I was enabled to speak strong words at both; and
+was therefore the less surprised at being informed I was not to preach
+any more in either of those churches. I was likewise after preaching the
+next Sunday at St. Ann's, Aldersgate, and the following Sunday at St.
+John's, Wapping and at St. Bennett's, Paul's Wharf, that at these
+churches I must preach no more.
+
+1739. March 28. A letter from Mr. Whitefield, and another from Mr.
+Seward, pressed me to come to Bristol. I reached Bristol March 31 and
+met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarcely at first reconcile myself to
+the strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me the
+example, for all my life I should have thought the saving of souls
+almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church; but I now proclaimed
+in the highways the glad tidings of salvation speaking in the open air
+to about three thousand people.
+
+May 9. We took possession of a piece of ground in the Horse Fair,
+Bristol, where it was designed to build a room large enough to contain
+both the societies of Nicholas and Baldwin Street; and on May 12 the
+first stone was laid with thanksgiving. The responsibility of payment I
+took entirely on myself. Money I had not, it is true, nor any human
+prospect of procuring it; but I knew "the earth is the Lord's and the
+fulness thereof."
+
+
+_Beau Nash Argues with Wesley_
+
+
+June 5. There was great expectation at Bath of what a noted man was to
+do to me there. Many appeared surprised and were sinking apace into
+seriousness when their champion came up to me and asked by what
+authority I did these things. I replied, "By the authority of Jesus
+Christ, conveyed to me by the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his
+hands on me." He said, "This is contrary to the Act of Parliament; this
+is a conventicle. Besides, your preaching frightens people out of their
+wits."
+
+"Give me leave, Sir, to ask, is not your name Nash?" "My name is Nash."
+An old woman said to him, "You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we
+take care of our souls; and for the food of our souls we come here." He
+replied not a word, but walked away.
+
+
+_"All the World My Parish"_
+
+
+All this time I had many thoughts concerning my manner of ministering;
+but after frequently laying it before the Lord, I could not but adhere
+to what I had some time since written to a friend--"I look on all the
+world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part I am of it,
+I judge it meet to declare to all who are willing to hear, the glad
+tidings of salvation."
+
+June 14. I went with Mr. Whitefield to Blackheath, where were, I
+believe, 12,000 people. He a little surprised me by desiring me to
+preach in his stead; and I was greatly moved with compassion for the
+rich that were there, to whom I made a particular application. Some of
+them seemed to attend, while others drove away their coaches from so
+uncouth a preacher.
+
+Sunday 24. As I was riding to Rose Green, near Bristol, my horse
+suddenly pitched on his head, and rolled over and over. I received no
+other hurt than a little bruise on my side; which for the present I felt
+not, but preached without pain to seven thousand people.
+
+Sept. 16. I preached at Moorfields to about ten thousand, and at
+Kennington Common to near twenty thousand. At both places I described
+the real difference between what is generally called Christianity and
+the real old Christianity, which under the new name of Methodism is now
+everywhere spoken against.
+
+
+_The Colliers of Kingswood_
+
+
+Nov. 27. Few persons have lived in the west of England who have not
+heard of the colliers of Kingswood, famous for neither regarding God nor
+man. The scene is changed. Kingswood does not now, as a year ago,
+resound with cursing and blasphemy. Peace and love reign there since the
+preaching of the Gospel in the spring. Great numbers of the people are
+gentle, mild, and easy to be entreated.
+
+1745. July 3. At Gwennap, in Cornwall, I was seized for a soldier. As I
+was reading my text a man rode up and cried "Seize the preacher for his
+Majesty's service." As the people would not do it, he leaped off his
+horse, and caught hold of my cassock, crying, "I take you to serve his
+Majesty." He walked off with me and talked with me for some time, but
+then let me go.
+
+
+_In Ireland_
+
+
+1748. April 9. I preached in Connaught, a few miles from Athlone. Many
+heard, but, I doubt, felt nothing. The Shannon comes within a mile of
+the house where I preached. I think there is not such another river in
+Europe. It is here ten miles wide, though only thirty miles from its
+source. There are many islands in it, once well inhabited, but now
+mostly desolate. In almost every one is a ruined church; in one, the
+remains of no fewer than seven.
+
+1750. May 21. At Bandon the mob burnt me in effigy. Yet, though Dr. B.
+tried to stir up the people against me more and more, and a clergyman,
+said to be in drink, opposed me, and some young gentlemen came on the
+scene with pistols in their hands, I was enabled to preach. God gave me
+great peace in Bandon, in spite of these efforts against me.
+
+May 31. I rode to Rathcormuck. There being a great burying in the
+afternoon, to which people came from all parts, I preached after Mr.
+Lloyd had read the service. I was exceedingly shocked at (what I had
+only heard of before) the Irish howl which followed. It was not a song,
+as I supposed, but a dismal, inarticulate yell, set up at the grave by
+four shrill-voiced women, hired for the purpose. But I saw not one that
+shed a tear; for that, it seems, was not in their bargain.
+
+
+_Clothing French Prisoners_
+
+
+1759. Oct. 1. At Bristol. I had ridden in about seven months not less
+than 2,400 miles. On Monday, Oct. 15, I went to Knowle, a mile from
+Bristol, to see the French prisoners. About 1,100 were there confined,
+with only a little dirty straw to lie on, so that they died like rotten
+sheep. I was much affected, and after I had preached the sum of £18 was
+contributed immediately, which next day we made up to £24. With this we
+bought linen and woollen cloth, and this was made up into clothing for
+the prisoners. Presently after, the Corporation of Bristol sent a large
+quantity of mattresses and blankets. And it was not long before
+contributions were set on foot in London, and other parts of the
+country; so that I believe that from this time they were pretty well
+provided with the necessaries of life.
+
+
+_Gwennap's Famous Amphitheatre_
+
+
+1766. Sept. 14. I preached in the natural amphitheatre at Gwennap; far
+the finest I know in the kingdom. It is a round, green hollow, gently
+shelving down, about 50 feet deep; but I suppose it is 200 feet across
+one way, and nearly 300 the other. I believe there were full 20,000
+people; and, the evening being calm, all could hear.
+
+1770. April 21. I rode slowly on this and the following days through
+Staffordshire and Cheshire to Manchester. In this journey, as well as in
+many others, I observed a mistake that almost universally prevails; and
+I desire all travellers to take good notice of it, which may save them
+from both trouble and danger. Near 30 years ago I was thinking, "How is
+it that no horse ever stumbles while I am reading?" (History, poetry,
+and philosophy I commonly read on horseback, having other employment at
+other times.) No account can possibly be given but this: because then I
+throw the reins on his neck. I then set myself to observe; and I aver,
+that in riding above 100,000 miles I scarce ever remember my horse
+(except two, that would fall head over heels anyway) to fall, or make a
+considerable stumble, while I rode with a slack rein. To fancy,
+therefore, that a tight rein prevents stumbling, is a capital blunder.
+
+1771. Jan. 23. For what cause I know not to this day, my wife set out
+for Newcastle, purposing "never to return." _Non eam reliqui: non
+dimisi: non revocabo._ (I did not desert her: I did not send her away: I
+will not recall her.)
+
+
+_The American War_
+
+
+1775. In November I published the following letter in Lloyd's "Evening
+Post":
+
+"Sir--I have been seriously asked from what motive I published my _Calm
+Address to the American Colonies_? I seriously answer, Not to get money;
+not to get preferment; not to please any man living; least of all to
+inflame any; just the contrary. I contributed my mite towards putting
+out the flame that rages. This I have more opportunity to see than any
+man in England. I see with pain to what a height this already rises, in
+every part of the nation. And I see many pouring oil into the flame, by
+crying out, 'How unjustly, how cruelly, the King is using the poor
+Americans; who are only contending for their liberty, and for their
+legal privileges.'
+
+"Now there is no possible way to put out this flame, or hinder its
+rising higher and higher, but to show that the Americans are not used
+either cruelly or unjustly; that they are not injured at all, seeing
+they are not contending for liberty (this they had, even in its full
+extent, both civil and religious); neither for any legal privileges; for
+they enjoy all that their charters grant. But what they contend for is,
+the illegal privilege of being exempt from parliamentary taxation. A
+privilege this, which no charter ever gave to any American colony yet;
+which no charter can give, unless it be confirmed both by King, Lords,
+and Commons; which in fact our Colonies never had; which they never
+claimed till the present reign; and probably they would not have claimed
+now, had they not been incited thereto by letters from England. One of
+these was read, according to the desire of the writer, not only at the
+Continental Congress but likewise in many congregations throughout the
+Combined Provinces. It advised them to seize upon all the King's
+officers; and exhorted them, 'Stand valiantly, only for six months, and
+in that time there will be such commotions in England that you may have
+your own terms.' This being the real state of the question, without any
+colouring or exaggeration, what impartial man can either blame the King,
+or commend the Americans? With this view, to quench the fire, by laying
+the blame where it was due, the 'Calm Address' was written.
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+JOHN WESLEY."
+
+
+_City Road Chapel Begun_
+
+
+1777. April 21. The day appointed for laying the foundation of the new
+chapel. The rain befriended us much, by keeping away thousands who
+proposed to be there. But there were still such multitudes, that it was
+with great difficulty I got through them, to lay the first stone. Upon
+this was a plate of brass (covered with another stone) on which was
+engraved, "This was laid by Mr. John Wesley, on April 21, 1777."
+Probably this will be seen no more, by any human eye; but will remain
+there, till the earth and the works thereof are burned up.
+
+1778. Dec. 17. Having been many times desired, for near forty years, to
+publish a magazine, I at length complied, and now began to collect
+materials for it. If it once begin, I incline to think it will not end
+but with my life. Just at this time there was a combination among many
+of the postchaise drivers on the Bath road, especially those that drove
+in the night, to deliver their passengers into each other's hands. One
+driver stopped at the spot they had appointed, when another waited to
+attack the chaise. In consequence of this many were robbed; but I had a
+good Protector still. I have travelled all roads, by day and by night,
+for these forty years, and never was interrupted yet.
+
+June 28. I am this day 75 years old; and I do not find myself, blessed
+be God, any weaker than I was at 25. This also hath God wrought.
+
+
+_Attended by Felons_
+
+
+1779. July 21. When I came to Coventry, I found notice had been given
+for my preaching in the park; but the heavy rain prevented. I sent to
+the Mayor, desiring the use of the town-hall. He refused; but the same
+day gave the use of it to a dancing-master. I then went to the women's
+market. Many soon gathered together and listened with all seriousness. I
+preached there again the next morning, and again in the evening. Then I
+took coach for London. I was nobly attended: behind the coach were ten
+convicted felons, loudly blaspheming and rattling their chains; by my
+side sat a man with a loaded blunderbuss, and another upon the coach.
+
+1780. May 20. In Scotland. I took one more walk through Holyrood House,
+the mansion of ancient kings. But how melancholy an appearance does it
+make now! The stately rooms are dirty as stables; the colours of the
+tapestry are quite faded; several of the pictures are cut and defaced.
+The roof of the royal chapel is fallen in; and the bones of James V.,
+and the once beautiful Lord Dankley, are scattered about like those of
+sheep or oxen. Such is human greatness. Is not "a living dog better than
+a dead lion?"
+
+1782. May 14. Some years ago four factories were set up at Epworth. In
+these a large number of young women and boys and girls were employed.
+The whole conversation of these was profane and loose to the last
+degree. But some of them stumbling in at the prayermeeting were suddenly
+cut to the heart. These never rested till they had gained their
+companions. The whole scene was changed. In three of the factories no
+more lewdness was found: for God had put a new song in their mouth, and
+blasphemies were turned to praise. Those three I visited to-day, and
+found religion had taken deep root in them. No trifling word was heard
+among them, and they watch over each other in love.
+
+
+_Enters His 80th Year_
+
+
+June 26. I preached at Thirsk; 27, at York. Friday, 28, I entered my
+80th year; but, blessed be God, my strength is not "labour and sorrow."
+I find no more pain or bodily infirmities than at 25. This I still
+impute, 1. To the power of God, fitting me for what He calls me to. 2.
+To my still travelling four or five thousand miles a year. 3. To my
+still sleeping, night or day, whenever I want it. 4. To my rising at a
+set hour. And 5. To my constant preaching, particularly in the morning.
+
+1783. Dec. 18. I spent two hours with that great man, Dr. Johnson, who
+is sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.
+
+1784. June 28 (Epworth). To-day I entered on my 82nd year, and found
+myself just as strong to labour, and as fit for any exercise of body and
+mind, as I was 40 years ago. I am as strong at 81 as I was at 21; but
+abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the headache, toothache,
+and other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth.
+
+1785. Jan. 25. I spent two or three hours in the House of Lords. I had
+frequently heard that this was the most venerable assembly in England.
+But how I was disappointed! What is a lord, but a sinner, born to die!
+
+1786. Jan. 24. I was desired to go and hear the King deliver his speech
+in the House of Lords. But how agreeably I was surprised. He pronounced
+every word with exact propriety. I doubt whether there be any other King
+in Europe, that is so just and natural a speaker.
+
+
+_His 86th Christmas_
+
+
+1789. Dec 25. Being Christmas Day, we began the service in the new
+chapel at four in the morning, as usual, where I preached again in the
+evening after having officiated in West Street at the common hour.
+Sunday, 27, I preached in St. Luke's, our parish church, to a very
+numerous congregation. So are the tables turned that I have now more
+invitations to preach in churches than I can accept.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN WOOLMAN
+
+
+Journal
+
+
+     John Woolman, American Quaker evangelist, author of this
+     autobiography, was born in West Jersey in 1720 and followed
+     the trade of a tailor. But all his interests lay in the
+     practice of piety, and in the uncompromising application of
+     religious Principles to the problems of social life. He
+     advocated incessantly two principal reforms--that members of
+     the Society of Friends should separate utterly from the
+     possession of slaves, and that they should return to their
+     primitive simplicity and moderation in the use of worldly
+     things. Like many economists before and after him, he saw in
+     luxury, extravagance and ostentation, the true cause of all
+     poverty and oppression; and a tract of his entitled "A Word of
+     Remembrance and Caution to the Rich," first published in 1793,
+     was republished a hundred years later by the Fabian Society.
+     His most important treatise, published in 1754, entitled "Some
+     Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes," was one of the
+     earliest indications of the growing Abolitionist feeling in
+     New England. His voyage across the Atlantic in May and Tune,
+     1772, to visit the English Quakers, was followed by his death
+     from small-pox, in the city of York, on October 7 in the same
+     year. The "Journal," which is marked by great simplicity and
+     sincerity, was published shortly afterwards and has been
+     issued in many subsequent editions.
+
+
+_I.--The Curse of Slavery_
+
+
+Having reached manhood, I wrought at my trade as a tailor; carefully
+attended meetings for worship and discipline; and found an enlargement
+of gospel love in my mind, and therein a concern to visit friends in the
+settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia and other parts. I expressed it to
+my beloved friend, Isaac Andrews, who then told me that he had drawings
+to the same places. I opened the case in our monthly meeting, and
+friends expressing their unity therewith, we obtained certificates to
+travel as companions.
+
+Two things were remarkable to me in this journey. First, in regard to my
+entertainment; when I ate, drank and lodged free of cost with people who
+lived in ease on the hard labour of their slaves, I felt uneasy, and
+this uneasiness returned upon me, at times, through the whole visit.
+Secondly, this trade of importing slaves from their native country being
+much encouraged among them, and the white people and their children so
+generally living without much labour, was frequently the subject of my
+serious thoughts. And I saw in these southern provinces so many vices
+and corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it
+appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land; and though
+now many willingly run into it, yet in future the consequence will be
+grievous to posterity.
+
+About this time, believing it good for me to settle, and thinking
+seriously about a companion, my heart was turned to the Lord and He was
+pleased to give me a well-inclined damsel, Sarah Ellis, to whom I was
+married the 18th day of the 8th month, in the year 1749.
+
+
+_II--Among the Indians_
+
+
+Having many years felt love in my heart towards the natives of this
+land, who dwell far back in the wilderness, whose ancestors were the
+owners of the land where we dwell, and being at Philadelphia in 1761, I
+fell in company with some of those natives who live on the east branch
+of the river Susquehannah, at an Indian town called Wehaloosing, 200
+miles from Philadelphia; and in conversation with them by an
+interpreter, as also by observations on their character and conduct, I
+believed some of them were acquainted with that divine power which
+subjects the rough and froward will of the creature.
+
+At times I felt inward drawings toward a visit to that place, and laid
+it before friends at our monthly and quarterly, and afterwards at our
+general spring meeting; and having the unity of friends, I agreed to
+join certain Indians, in 1763, on their return to their town. So I took
+leave of my family and neighbours, and with my friend Benjamin Parvin,
+met the Indians.
+
+About four miles from Fort Allen we met with an Indian trader, lately
+come from Wyoming; and in conversation with him I perceived that many
+white people do often sell rum to the Indians, which is a great evil:
+first, their being thereby deprived of the use of their reason, and
+their spirits being violently agitated, quarrels often arise which end
+in mischief; again their skins and furs, gotten through much fatigue in
+hunting, with which they intended to buy clothing, when they become
+intoxicated, they often sell at a low rate for more rum, and afterwards
+are angry with those who, for the sake of gain, took advantage of their
+weakness. To sell to people that which we know does them harm, manifests
+a hardened and corrupt heart.
+
+We crossed the western branch of the Delaware, having laboured hard over
+the mountains called the Blue Ridge, and pitched our tent near the banks
+of the river. Near our tent, on the sides of large trees peeled for that
+purpose, were various representations of men going to, and returning
+from the wars, and of some killed in battle, this being a path used by
+warriors. As I walked about viewing those Indian histories, painted in
+red and in black; and thinking on the innumerable afflictions which the
+proud, fierce spirit produceth in the world; thinking on the toils and
+fatigues of warriors, travelling over mountains and deserts; and of
+their restless, unquiet state of mind, who live in this spirit, and of
+the hatred which mutually grows up in the minds of the children of those
+nations engaged in war; during these meditations, the desire to cherish
+the spirit of love and peace among these people arose very fresh in me.
+
+As I rode, day after day, over the barren hills, my thoughts were on the
+alterations of the circumstances of the natives since the coming of the
+English. The lands near the sea are conveniently situated for fishing;
+the lands near the rivers are in many places fertile and not
+mountainous. Those natives have, in some places, for trifling
+considerations, sold their inheritance so favourably situated; and in
+other places, have been driven back by superior force. By the extending
+of English settlements, and partly by English hunters, the wild beasts
+they chiefly depend upon for a subsistence are not so plentiful as they
+were; and people too often open a door for them to waste their furs, in
+purchasing a liquor which tends to the ruin of them and their families.
+
+
+_III.--Across the Atlantic_
+
+
+Having been for some time under a religious concern to cross the seas,
+in order to visit friends in England, after weighty consideration I
+thought it expedient to inform friends, at our monthly meeting at
+Burlington, of it; who, having unity with me therein, gave me a
+certificate; and I afterwards communicated the same to our general
+meeting, and they likewise signified their unity by a certificate, dated
+the 24th day of the third month, 1772, directed to friends in Great
+Britain.
+
+I was informed that my beloved friend Samuel Emlen, intended to go to
+London, and had taken a passage in the cabin of the ship called Mary and
+Elizabeth; and I, feeling a draft in my mind towards the steerage of the
+same ship, went and opened to Samuel the feeling I had concerning it. My
+beloved friend wept when I spake to him; and he offering to go with me,
+we went on board, first into the cabin, a commodious room, and then into
+the steerage, where we sat down on a chest and the owner of the ship
+came and sat down with us. I made no agreement as to a passage in the
+ship; but on the next morning I went with Samuel to the house of the
+owner, to whom I opened my exercise in relation to a scruple I felt with
+regard to a passage in the cabin.
+
+I told the owner that on the outside of that part of the ship where the
+cabin was, I observed sundry sorts of carved work and imagery; and that
+in the cabin I observed some superfluity of workmanship of several
+sorts; and that the monies received from the passengers are calculated
+to answer the expense of these superfluities; and that I felt a scruple
+with regard to paying my money to defray such expenses. After this, I
+agreed for a passage in the steerage, and went on board with Samuel
+Emlen on the first day of the fifth month.
+
+My lodging in the steerage afforded me opportunities of seeing, hearing
+and feeling, with respect to the life and spirit of many poor sailors;
+and an inward exercise of soul hath attended me, in regard to placing
+out children and youth where they may be exampled and instructed in the
+fear of the Lord. Now, concerning lads being trained up as seamen, I
+believe a communication from one part of the world to some other parts
+of it, by sea, is at times consistent with the will of our heavenly
+Father; and to educate some youth in the practice of sailing, I believe
+may be right. But how lamentable is the present corruption of the world!
+How impure are the channels through which trade hath a conveyance! How
+great is that danger to which poor lads are now exposed, when placed on
+shipboard to learn the art of sailing!
+
+
+_IV.--Prices, Wages, and Religion_
+
+
+On landing at London I went straight to the yearly meeting of ministers
+and elders, which, by adjournments, continued near a week. I then went
+to quarterly meetings at Hertford, Sherrington, Northampton, Banbury and
+Shipston, and visited other meetings at Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick,
+Nottingham, Sheffield, Settle, and other places.
+
+On inquiry, I found the price of rye about five shillings, wheat about
+eight shillings, per bushel; mutton threepence to fivepence per pound;
+bacon from sevenpence to ninepence; cheese from fourpence to sixpence;
+butter from eightpence to tenpence; house-rent, for a poor man, from
+twenty-five shillings to forty shillings per year, to be paid weekly;
+wood for fire very scarce and dear; coal in some places two shillings
+and sixpence per hundredweight but near the pits not a quarter so much.
+O may the wealthy consider the poor!
+
+The wages of labouring men, in several counties toward London, is
+tenpence per day in common business; the employer finds small beer and
+the labourer finds his own food; but in harvest and hay times wages are
+about one shilling per day and the labourer hath all his diet. In the
+north of England poor labouring men do rather better than nearer London.
+Industrious women who spin in the factories get some fourpence, some
+fivepence, and so on to tenpence per day, and find their own house-room
+and diet. Great numbers of poor people live chiefly on bread and water,
+and there are many poor children not even taught to read. May those, who
+have plenty, lay these things to heart!
+
+Stage coaches frequently go upwards of an hundred miles in twenty-four
+hours; and I have heard friends say, in several places, that it is
+common for horses to be killed with hard driving. Post-boys pursue their
+business, each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some
+boys, who ride long stages, suffer greatly on winter nights, and at
+several places I have heard of their being frozen to death. So great is
+the hurry in the spirit in this world, that in aiming to do business
+quickly, and to gain wealth, the creation, at this day doth loudly
+groan!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol X, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS, VOL X ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12572-8.txt or 12572-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/7/12572/
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
diff --git a/old/12572-8.zip b/old/12572-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df89176
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12572-8.zip
diff --git a/old/12572-h.zip b/old/12572-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd69dd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12572-h.zip
diff --git a/old/12572-h/12572-h.htm b/old/12572-h/12572-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0165af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12572-h/12572-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,11843 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+        content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+  <title>The World's Greatest Books, Volume X</title>
+  <style type="text/css">
+
+  body
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+
+  p
+  {text-align: justify;}
+
+  blockquote
+  {text-align: justify;}
+
+  h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6
+  {text-align: center;}
+
+  hr
+  {text-align: center; width: 50%;}
+
+  html>body hr
+  {margin-right: 25%; margin-left: 25%; width: 50%;}
+
+  hr.full
+  {width: 100%;}
+  html>body hr.full
+  {margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 0%; width: 100%;}
+
+  pre
+  {font-size: 0.7em; color: #000; background-color: #FFF;}
+
+  .poetry
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 0%;
+  text-align: left;}
+
+  .footnote
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
+  font-size: 0.9em;}
+
+  .index
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
+  text-align: center;}
+
+  .figure
+  {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;
+  text-align: center; font-size: 0.8em;}
+  .figure img
+  {border: none;}
+
+  .date
+  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
+  text-align: right;}
+
+  span.rightnote
+  {position: absolute; left: 92%; right: 1%;
+  font-size: 0.7em; border-bottom: solid 1px;}
+
+  span.leftnote
+  {position: absolute; left: 1%; right: 92%;
+  font-size: 0.7em; border-bottom: solid 1px;}
+
+  span.linenum
+  {float:right;
+  text-align: right; font-size: 0.7em;}
+  </style>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World's Greatest Books, Vol X, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The World's Greatest Books, Vol X
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 10, 2004 [EBook #12572]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS, VOL X ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>THE WORLD'S</h1> <h1>GREATEST</h1> <h1>BOOKS</h1>
+
+<h2>JOINT EDITORS</h2>
+
+<h2>ARTHUR MEE</h2> <h3>Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge</h3>
+
+<h2>J.A. HAMMERTON</h2> <h3>Editor of Harmsworth's Universal
+Encyclopaedia</h3>
+
+<h2>VOL. X</h2> <h3>LIVES AND LETTERS</h3>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1><a name="Table_of_Contents"></a>Table of Contents</h1>
+
+<blockquote>
+<a href="#VICTOR_HUGO">HUGO, VICTOR</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Deeds_and_Words">Deeds and Words</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#MARTIN_HUME">HUME, MARTIN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Courtships_of_Elizabeth">Courtships of
+Elizabeth</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Love_Affairs_of_Mary_Queen_of_Scots">Love Affairs
+of Mary Queen of Scots</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#WASHINGTON_IRVING">IRVING, WASHINGTON</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Christopher_Columbus">Life of Christopher
+Columbus</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_George_Washington">Life of George
+Washington</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOSEPHUS">JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Autobiography">Autobiography</a><br />
+<br />
+LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: See ROCHEFOUCAULD<br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOHN_GIBSON_LOCKHART">LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Sir_Walter_Scott">Life of Sir Walter
+Scott</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Life_of_Robert_Burns">Life of Robert Burns</a><br
+/>
+<br />
+<a href="#MARTIN_LUTHER">LUTHER, MARTIN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Table_Talk">Table Talk</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#MIRABEAU">MIRABEAU, COMTE DE</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Memoirs1">Memoirs</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#THOMAS_MOORE">MOORE, THOMAS</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Byron">Life of Byron</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JAMES_COTTER_MORISON">MORISON, J.A.C.</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_and_Times_of_St_Bernard">Life of St.
+Bernard</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOHN_MORLEY">MORLEY, JOHN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Richard_Cobden">Life of Cobden</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#SAMUEL_PEPYS">PEPYS, SAMUEL</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Diary">Diary</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#PLINY_THE_YOUNGER">PLINY THE YOUNGER</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Letters1">Letters</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#CARDINAL_RICHELIEU">RICHELIEU, CARDINAL</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Political_Testament">Political
+Testament</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JEAN_JACQUES_ROUSSEAU">ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Confessions">Confessions</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#LA_ROCHEFOUCAULD">ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRAN&Ccedil;OIS DUC de LA</a><br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Memoirs2">Memoirs</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#MADAME_DE_SEVIGNE">S&Eacute;VIGN&Eacute;, Mme. de</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Letters2">Letters</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#ROBERT_SOUTHEY">SOUTHEY, ROBERT</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Life_of_Nelson">Life of Nelson</a><br
+/>
+<br />
+<a href="#MADAME_DE_STAAL">STAAL, Mme. de</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Memoirs3">Memoirs</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#EARL_STANHOPE">STANHOPE, EARL</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_William_Pitt">Life of Pitt</a><br
+/>
+<br />
+<a href="#ARTHUR_PENRHYN_STANLEY">STANLEY, A.P.</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Life_of_Thomas_Arnold_DD">Life of
+Thomas Arnold, D.D.</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#AGNES_STRICKLAND">STRICKLAND, AGNES</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Life_of_Queen_Elizabeth">Life of Queen
+Elizabeth</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JONATHAN_SWIFT">SWIFT, JONATHAN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Journal_to_Stella">Journal to
+Stella</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#LYOF_N_TOLSTOY">TOLSTOY, COUNT LYOF N.</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Childhood_Boyhood_Youth">Childhood,
+Boyhood, Youth</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#My_Confession">My Confession</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#PASQUALE_VILLARI">VILLARI, PASQUALE</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#The_Life_of_Girolamo_Savonarola">Life of
+Girolamo Savanarola</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOHN_WESLEY">WESLEY, JOHN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Journal1">Journal</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#JOHN_WOOLMAN">WOOLMAN, JOHN</a><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#Journal2">Journal</a><br />
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
+of Volume XX.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="Acknowledgement"></a><i>Acknowledgement</i></h2>
+
+<blockquote><p> Acknowledgement and thanks for permitting the use of the
+following selections in this volume, viz., "The Courtships of Queen
+Elizabeth," and "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots," by Major Martin
+Hume, are herewith tendered to Everleigh Nash, of London, England.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="VICTOR_HUGO"></a>VICTOR HUGO</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Deeds_and_Words"></a>Deeds and Words</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> "Deeds and Words" ("Actes et Paroles"), which is dated
+June, 1875, is the record of Victor Hugo's public life, speeches and
+letters, down to the year of his death, which occurred on May 32, 1885; but
+it is most important as a defence of his political career from 1848
+onwards. It does not, however, tell us how changeable his opinions had
+actually been. His inconstant attachments are thus summed up by Dr.
+Brandes: "He warmly supports the candidacy of Louis Napoleon for the post
+of President of the Republic ... lends him his support when he occupies
+that post, and is even favourable to the idea of an empire, until the
+feeling that he is despised as a politician estranges him from the
+Prince-President, and resentment at the coup d'etat drives him into the
+camp of the extreme Republicans. His life may be said to mirror the
+political movements of France during the first half of the century." (See
+FICTION.) </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Right and Law</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>All human eloquence, among all peoples and in all times, may be summed
+up as the quarrel of Right against Law.</p>
+
+<p>But this quarrel tends ever to decrease, and therein lies the whole of
+progress. On the day when it has disappeared, civilisation will have
+attained its highest point; that which ought to be will have become one
+with that which is; there will be an end of catastrophes, and even, so to
+speak, of events; and society will develop majestically according to
+nature. There will be no more disputes nor factions; no longer will laws be
+made, they will only be discovered. Education will have taken the place of
+war, and by means of universal suffrage there will be chosen a parliament
+of intellect.</p>
+
+<p>In that serene and glorious age there will be no more warriors, but
+workers only; creators in the place of exterminators. The civilisation of
+action will have passed away, and that of thought will have succeeded. The
+masterpieces of art and of literature will be the great events.</p>
+
+<p>Frontiers will disappear; and France, which is destined to die as the
+gods die, by transfiguration, will become Europe. For the Revolution of
+France will be known as the evolution of the peoples. France has laboured
+not for herself alone, but has aroused world-wide hopes, and is herself the
+representative of all human good-will.</p>
+
+<p>Right and Law are the two great forces whose harmony gives birth to
+order, but their antagonism is the source of all catastrophe. Right is the
+divine truth, and Law is the earthly reality; liberty is Right and society
+is Law. Wherefore there are two tribunes, one of the men of ideas, the
+other of the men of facts; and between these two the consciences of most
+still vacillate. Not yet is there harmony between the immutable and the
+variable power; Right and Law are in ceaseless conflict.</p>
+
+<p>To Right belong the inviolability of human life, liberty, peace; and
+nothing that is indissoluble, irrevocable, or irreparable. To Law belong
+the scaffold, sword, and sceptre; war itself; and every kind of yoke, from
+divorceless marriage in the family to the state of siege in the city. Right
+is to come and go, buy, sell, exchange; Law has its frontiers and its
+custom-houses. Right would have free and compulsory education, without
+encroaching on young consciences; that is to say, lay instruction; Law
+would have the teaching of ignorant friars. Right demands liberty of
+belief, but Law establishes the state religions. Universal suffrage and
+universal jury belong to Right, but restricted franchise and packed juries
+are creatures of the Law.</p>
+
+<p>What a difference there is! And let it be understood that all social
+agitation arises from the persistence of Right against the obstinacy of
+Law. The keynote of the present writer's public life has been "<i>Pro jure
+contra legem"</i>--for the Right which makes men, against the Law which men
+have made. He believes that liberty is the highest expression of Right, and
+that the republican formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," leaves
+nothing to be added or to be taken away. For Liberty is Right, Equality is
+Fact, and Fraternity is Duty. The whole of man is there. We are brothers in
+our life, equal in birth and death, free in soul.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Days of Childhood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>At the beginning of this nineteenth century there was a child who lived
+in a great house, surrounded by a large garden, in the most deserted part
+of Paris. He lived with his mother, two brothers, and a venerable and
+worthy priest, who was his only tutor, and taught him much Latin, a little
+Greek, and no history at all. Here, at the time of the First Empire, the
+three boys played and worked, watched the clouds and trees and listened to
+the birds, under the sweet influence of their mother's smile.</p>
+
+<p>It was the child's misfortune, though no one's fault, that he was taught
+by a priest. What can be more terrible than a system of untruth, sincerely
+believed? For a priest teaches falsehoods, ignorant of the truth, and
+thinks he does well; everything he does for the child is done against the
+child, making crooked that which nature has made straight; his teaching
+poisons the young mind with aged prejudices, drawing evening twilight, like
+a curtain, over the dawn.</p>
+
+<p>That ancient, solitary house and garden, formerly a convent and then the
+home of his childhood, is still in his old age a dear and religious memory,
+though its site is now profaned by a modern street He sees it in a romantic
+atmosphere, in which, amid sunbeams and roses, his spirit opened into
+flower. What a stillness was in its vast rooms and cloisters. Only at long
+intervals was the silence broken by the return of a plumed and sabred
+general, his father, from the wars. That child, already thoughtful, was
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>One night--it was some great festival of the empire, and all Paris was
+illumined--my mother was walking in the garden with three of my father's
+comrades, and I was following them, when we saw a tall figure in the gloom
+of the trees. It was the proscribed Victor du Lahorie, my godfather. He was
+even then conspiring against Bonaparte in the cause of liberty, and was
+shortly after executed. I remember his saying, "If Rome had kept her kings,
+she had not been Rome," and then, looking on me, "Child, put liberty first
+of all!" That one word outweighed my whole education.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Before the Exile</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was not until the writer saw, in 1848, the triumph of all the enemies
+of progress that he knew in the depths of his heart that he belonged, not
+to the conquerors, but to the vanquished. The Republic lay inanimate; but,
+gazing on her form, he saw that she was liberty, and not even the sure
+fore-knowledge of the ruin and exile that must follow could prevent his
+espousal with the dead. On June 15 he made his protest from the tribune,
+and from that day he fought relentless battle for liberty and the republic.
+And on December 2, 1851, he received what he had expected--twenty years of
+exile. That is the history of what has been called his apostasy.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout that strange period before his exile, the frightful phantom
+of the past was all-powerful with men. Every kind of question was
+debated--national independence, individual liberty, liberty of conscience,
+of thought, of speech, and of the Press; questions of marriage, of
+education, of the right to work, of the right to one's fatherland as
+against exile, of the right to life as against penal law, of the separation
+of Church and state, of the federation of Europe, of frontiers to be wiped
+out, and of custom-houses to be done away--all these questions were
+proposed, debated, and sometimes settled.</p>
+
+<p>In these debates the author of this memoir took his part and did his
+duty, and was repaid with insults. He remembers interjecting, when they
+were insisting on parental rights, that the children had rights, too. He
+astounded the assembly by asserting that it was possible to do away with
+misery. On July 17, 1851, he denounced the conspiracy of Louis Bonaparte,
+unveiling the project of the president to become emperor. On another day he
+pronounced from the tribune a phrase which had never yet been uttered--"The
+United States of Europe." Contempt and calumny were poured upon him, but
+what of that? They called George Washington a pickpocket.</p>
+
+<p>These men of the old majority, who were doing all the evil that they
+could--did they mean to do evil? Not a bit of it. They deceived themselves,
+thinking that they had the truth, and they lied in the service of the
+truth. Their pity for society was pitiless for the people, whence arose so
+many laws, so many actions, that were blindly ferocious. They were rather a
+mob than a senate, and were led by the worst of their number. Let us be
+indulgent, and let night hide the men of night.</p>
+
+<p>What do our labours and our troubles and our exiles matter if they have
+been for the general good; if the human race be indeed passing from
+December to its April; if the winter of tyrannies and of wars indeed be
+finished; if superstitions and prejudices no longer fall on our heads like
+snow; and if, after so many clouds of empire and of carnage have rolled
+away, we at last descry upon the horizon the rosy dawn of universal
+peace?</p>
+
+<p>O my brothers, let us be reconciled! Let us set out on the immense
+highway of peace. Surely there has been enough of hatred. When will you
+understand that we are all together on the same ship, and that the immense
+menace of the sea is for all of us together? Our solidarity is terrible,
+but brotherhood is sweet.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Republican Principles</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, and the liberty of
+the Press are all the same thing under three different names. The three
+together constitute the whole of our public right; the first is its
+principle, the second its manner, and the third its expression. The three
+principles are indissoluble from one another. The sovereignty of the people
+is the life-giving soul of the nation, universal suffrage its government,
+the Press its illumination; but they are all really one, and that unity is
+the republic. It is curious to notice how these principles appear again in
+the watchword of the republic; for the sovereignty of the people creates
+liberty, universal suffrage creates equality, and the Press, which
+enlightens the general mind, creates fraternity.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever these three great principles exist in their powers and
+plenitude there is the republic, even though it be known as monarchy.
+Wherever, on the other hand, they are betrayed, hindered, or oppressed, the
+actual state is a monarchy or an oligarchy, even though it goes under the
+name of a republic. In the latter case we see the monstrous phenomenon of a
+government betrayed by its proper guardians, and it is this phenomenon that
+makes the stoutest hearts begin to be doubtful of revolutions. For
+revolutions are vast, ill-guided movements, which bring forth out of the
+darkness at one and the same time the greatest of ideas and the smallest of
+men; they are movements which we welcome as salutary when we look at their
+principles, but which we can only call catastrophes when he consider the
+character of their leaders.</p>
+
+<p>Let us never forget that our three first principles live with a common
+life, and mutually defend one another. If the Liberty of the Press is in
+danger, the suffrages of the people arise and protect it; and, again, if
+the franchise is threatened, it is safeguarded by the freedom of the Press.
+Any attempt against either of them is a treachery to the sovereignty of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The movement of this great nineteenth century is the movement not of one
+people only, but of all. France leads, and the nations follow. We are
+passing from the old world to the new, and our governors attempt in vain to
+arrest ideas by laws. There is in France and in Europe a party inspired by
+fear, which is not to be accounted the party of order; and its incessant
+question is: Who is to blame?</p>
+
+<p>In the crisis through which we are passing, though it is a salutary
+crisis which will lead only to good, everyone exclaims at the dreadful
+moral disorder and the imminent social danger. Who, then, is guilty of
+these ravages? Whom shall we punish? Throughout Europe, the party of fear
+answers "France." Throughout France, it answers "Paris." In Paris, it
+blames the Press. But every thoughtful man must see that it is none of
+these, but is the human spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It is the human spirit that has made the nations what they are. From the
+beginning, through infinite debate and contradiction, it has sought,
+unresting, to solve the problem eternally placed before the creature by his
+Creator. It is the human spirit which takes from age to age the form of the
+great revolts of history; it has been in turn, and sometimes altogether,
+error, illusion, heresy, schism, protest, and the truth. The human spirit
+is ever the great shepherd of the generations, proceeding always towards
+the just, the beautiful, and the true, enlightening the multitude,
+ennobling souls, directing the mind of man towards God.</p>
+
+<p>Let the party of fear throughout Europe consider the magnitude of the
+task which they have undertaken. When they have destroyed the Press, they
+have yet to destroy Paris. When Paris is fallen, there remains France. Let
+France be annihilated, there still remains the human spirit--a thing
+intangible as the light, inaccessible as the sun.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--In Exile</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Nothing is more terrible than exile. I do not say for him who suffers,
+but for the tyrant who inflicts it. A solitary figure paces a distant
+shore, or rises in the morning to his philosophic labours, or calls on God
+among the rocks and trees; his hairs become grey, and then white, in the
+slow passing of the years and in his longing for home; his lot is a
+sorrowful one; but his innocence is terrible to the crowned miscreant who
+sent him there. From 1852 to 1870 I was in exile.</p>
+
+<p>How pleasant are those islands of the Channel, and how like France!
+Jersey, perhaps, more charming than Guernsey, prettier if less imposing; in
+Jersey the forest has become a garden; the island is like a bouquet of
+flowers, of the size of London, a smiling land, an idyll set in the midst
+of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The exile soon learns that, though the tyrant has placed him afar, he
+does not release his hold. Many and ingenious are the snares laid for the
+banished. A prince calls on you, but though he is of royal blood, he is
+also a detective of police. A grave professor stays at your house, and you
+surprise him searching your papers. Everything is permitted against you;
+you are outside the law, outside of common justice, outside of respect.
+They will say that they have your authority to publish your conversations,
+and will attribute to you words that you have never spoken and actions that
+you have never done. Never write to your friends--your letters are opened
+on the way. Beware of all who are kindly to you in exile; they are ruining
+you in Paris. You are isolated as a leper. A mysterious stranger whispers
+in your ear that he can procure the assassination of Bonaparte; it is
+Bonaparte offering to kill himself. Every day of your life is a new
+outrage. Only one thing is open to the exile; it is to turn his thought to
+other subjects.</p>
+
+<p>He is at least beside the sea; let its infinity bring him wisdom. The
+eternal rioting of the surges against the rocks is as the agitation of
+impostures against the truth. It is a vain convulsion; the foam gains
+nothing by it, the granite loses nothing, and only sparkles the more
+bravely in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>But exile has this great advantage--one is free to contemplate, to
+think, to suffer. To be alone, and yet to feel that one is with all
+humanity; to consolidate oneself as a citizen, and to purify oneself as a
+philosopher; to be poor, and begin again to work for one's living, to
+meditate on what is good and to contrive for what is better; to be angry in
+the public cause, but to crush all personal enmity; to breathe the vast,
+living winds of the solitudes; to compose a deeper indignation with a
+profounder peace--these are the opportunities of exile. I accustomed myself
+to say, "If, after a revolution, Bonaparte should knock at my door and ask
+shelter, let never a hair of his head be injured."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, an exile becomes a well-wisher. He loves the roses, and the birds'
+nests, and the flitting hither and thither of the butterflies. He mingles
+with the sweet joys of the creatures, and learns a changeless faith in some
+secret and infinite goodness. The green glades are his chosen dwelling and
+his life is April; he reclines amazed at the mysteries of a tuft of grass;
+he studies the ant-hills of tiny republicans; he learns to know the birds
+by their songs; he watches the children playing barefoot in the edge of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>Against this dangerous man governments are taking the most strenuous
+precautions. Victoria offers to hand over the exiles to Napoleon, and
+messages of compliment are passed from one throne to the other. But that
+gift did not take place. The English royalist Press applauded, but the
+people of London would have none of it. The great city muttered thunder.
+Majesty clothed in probity--that is the character of the English nation.
+That good and proud people showed their indignation, and Palmerston and
+Bonaparte had to be content with the expulsion of the exiles.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole long night of my exile I never lost Paris from my view.
+When Europe and even France were in darkness, Paris was never hidden. That
+is because Paris is the frontier of the future, the visible frontier of the
+unknown. All of to-morrow that can be seen to-day is in Paris. The eyes
+that are searching for progress come to rest on Paris, for Paris is the
+city of light.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>VI.--After the Exile</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>This triology, "Before, During, and After the Exile," is no work of
+mine, it is the doing of Napoleon III. He it is who has divided my life in
+this way, observing, as one might say, the rules of art. Returning to my
+country on September 5, 1870, I found the sky more gloomy and my duty more
+clamant than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Though it is sad to leave the fatherland, to return to it is sometimes
+sadder still; and there is no Frenchman who would not have preferred a
+life-long banishment, to seeing France ground beneath the Prussian heel,
+and the loss of Metz and Strasburg. This was an invasion of barbarians; but
+there is another menace that is not less formidable. I mean the invasion of
+our land by darkness, an invasion of the nineteenth century by the middle
+ages. After the emperor, the pope; after Berlin, Rome; after the triumph of
+the sword, the triumph of night. For the light of civilisation may be
+extinguished in either of two ways, by a military or by a clerical
+invasion. The former threatens our mother, France; the latter our child,
+the future.</p>
+
+<p>A double inviolability is the most precious possession of a civilised
+people--the inviolability of territory and the inviolability of conscience;
+and as the soldier violates the first, so does the priest violate the
+other. Yet the soldier does but obey his orders and the priest his dogmas,
+so that there are only two who are ultimately culpable--Caesar, who slays,
+and Peter, who lies. There is no religion which has not as its aim to seize
+forcibly the human soul, and it is to attempts of this kind that France is
+given up to-day.</p>
+
+<p>One may say, indeed, that in our age there are two schools, and that
+these two schools sum up in themselves the two opposed currents which draw
+civilisation, the one towards the future and the other towards the past.
+One of these schools is called Paris and the other Rome. Each of them has
+its book; the one has the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," the other has
+the "Syllabus"; and the first of these books says "Yes" to progress, but
+the second of them says "No." Yet progress is the footstep of God.</p>
+
+<p>Paris means Montaigne, Rabelais, Pascal, Corneille, Moli&egrave;re,
+Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Danton. Rome, on the
+other hand, means Innocent III., Pius V., Alexander VI., Urban VIII.,
+Arbuez, Cisneros, Lainez, Guillandus, Ignatius.</p>
+
+<p>To educate is nothing less than to govern; and clerical education means
+a clerical government, with a despotism as its summit and ignorance as its
+foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Rome already holds Belgium, and would now seize Paris. We are witnesses
+of a struggle to the death. Against us is all that manifold power which
+emerges from the past, the spirit of monarchy, of superstition, of the
+barrack and of the convent; we have against us temerity, effrontery,
+audacity, and fear. On our side there is nothing but the light. That is why
+the victory will be with us. For to enlighten is to deliver. Every increase
+in liberty involves increased responsibility. Nothing is graver than
+freedom; liberty has burdens of her own, and lays on the conscience all the
+chains which she unshackles from the limbs. We find rights transforming
+themselves into duties. Let us therefore take heed to what we are doing; we
+live in a difficult time and are answerable at once to the past and to the
+future. The time has come, in this year 1876, to replace commotions by
+concessions. That is how civilisation advances. For progress is nothing
+other than revolution effected amicably.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, legislators and citizens, let us redouble our good-will. Let
+all wounds be healed, all animosities extinguished; by overcoming hatred we
+shall overcome war; let no disturbance that may come be due to our fault.
+Our task of entering into the unknown is difficult enough without angers
+and bitterness. I am one of those who hope from that unknown future, but
+only on condition that we make use from the first of every means of
+pacification that is in our power. Let us act with the virile kindness of
+the strong.</p>
+
+<p>Let us then calm the nations by peace, and the hearts of men by
+brotherhood, and let us never forget that we are ourselves responsible for
+this last half of the nineteenth century, and that we are placed between a
+great past, the Revolution of France, and a great future, the Revolution of
+Europe.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MARTIN_HUME"></a>MARTIN HUME</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Courtships_of_Elizabeth"></a>The Courtships of
+Elizabeth</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Major Martin Andrew Hume, born in London on December 8,
+1847, and educated at Madrid, comes of an English family, the members of
+which have resided in Spain for a hundred years. He began life in the
+British Army, from which he retired with the rank of major. Major Hume was
+appointed editor of the Spanish state papers published by the Record
+Office; he is also lecturer in Spanish History and Literature at Cambridge,
+and examiner and lecturer in Spanish at the Birmingham University. He has
+written numerous works on the history of Spain; but perhaps he is best
+known for his historical studies of the Tudor period, of which may be
+mentioned "The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth," "The Love Affairs of Mary
+Queen of Scots," and "The Wives of Henry VIII." In the first-named work,
+published in 1896, Major Hume has presented an exceedingly interesting
+human document, and classified a tangled mass of material. The epitome here
+presented has been prepared for THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS by the author
+himself. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Foreign Philandering</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world's chessboard was
+that consummate succession of intrigues which, for nearly half a century,
+was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the object of
+playing off one great Continental power against another for the benefit of
+England and Protestantism, with which the interests of the queen were
+inextricably involved. Those in the midst of the strife worked mostly for
+immediate aims, and neither saw, nor cared, for the ultimate results; but
+we, looking back, see that out of that tangle of duplicity there emerged a
+new era of civilisation and a host of vigorous impulses which move us to
+this hour.</p>
+
+<p>The victory of England in that struggle meant the dominance of modern
+ideas of liberty and of the imperial destiny of our race, and it seems as
+if the result could only have been attained in the peculiar combination of
+circumstances and persons then existing. Elizabeth triumphed as much by her
+weakness as by her strength. Honest Cecil kept his hand upon the helm so
+long because the only alternative to him was the greedy crew of councillors
+eager for foreign bribes. Without Leicester as a permanent matrimonial
+possibility, the queen could never have held the balance between her
+foreign suitors; and, but for the follies of Mary Stuart, the English
+Catholics would not have been subjected so easily, whilst the religious
+dissensions in France and the character of Philip II. aided Elizabeth's
+diplomacy. Elizabeth was more than once betrothed in her childhood to aid
+her father's policy, but when Henry died, in 1547, his younger daughter was
+unbetrothed.</p>
+
+<p>During her residence with the Queen-Dowager, Catharine Parr, who soon
+married Thomas, Lord Seymour, the fourteen-year-old girl was exposed to
+peril from the designs of the ambitious Seymour. The indecorous romping,
+perhaps innocent at first, that took place between her and her married host
+provided grave scandal which touched even the honour of the girl, and her
+keen wits alone saved her on this occasion from disgrace. Her crafty
+reticence served her well, when the intrigues of Wyat, Courtenay, and the
+French party threatened Mary's throne; but when Mary was married, the
+Spanish party at once became interested in securing Elizabeth to their side
+by her marriage. Mary's jealousy, and Elizabeth's own determination not to
+be made a tool, frustrated Philip's attempt to marry the princess to his
+cousin, the Duke of Savoy; and when the Protestant Swedes clandestinely
+offered her the hand of Prince Eric, her discreet wariness again protected
+her from the dangerous proposal.</p>
+
+<p>When Mary lay dying, Feria, the Spanish ambassador, hurried to Hatfield
+to salute the rising sun, and hinted even thus early that Elizabeth might
+marry her powerful Spanish brother-in-law. But she resented his patronage,
+and though she coquetted, as usual, with the proposal of marriage, she took
+care not to pledge herself or submit England to foreign dictation. To Spain
+it was vital that England should be at her bidding. If the queen could not
+marry Philip, surely she could only wed one of his Austrian cousins; or, if
+not, then England must be conquered by the sword. All that Elizabeth wanted
+was time, and tardy Philip played into her hands. One English noble after
+the other was taken up and dropped, in the intervals of foreign
+philandering. Lord Arundel, foolish, old, and vain, had high hopes; Sir
+William Pickering's chances looked bright, and France and Spain sought to
+patronise each English candidate in his turn, especially Lord Robert
+Dudley, the queen's friend from childhood, though he was already married to
+Amy Robsart.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after many days of dallying, great Philip decided to
+sacrifice himself for Spain and marry his enigmatical sister-in-law. She
+must, of course, renounce Protestantism and all the laws that made her
+legally a queen; which was absurd, as Feria soon saw, and frankly told his
+master. So then Philip half-heartedly patronised the suit of his Austrian
+cousin, the Archduke Charles. If the latter would be an obedient Spanish
+instrument he could have Philip's support; but German Lutherans and English
+Protestants had also to be considered, and Elizabeth's court was divided
+into those who feared any consort not wholly Protestant and those who were
+eager for any marriage that shielded England from Spanish attack.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth thought she could avoid the latter danger without marriage at
+all, so she dexterously played with all her suitors, English and foreign,
+while strengthening her position and gaining popularity. Sometimes she
+swore she would never marry, and the next day would grow sentimental over
+the archduke, or flirted with Dudley--keeping them all in suspense and
+afraid of offending her. The French, having no marriageable prince of their
+own, supported Dudley, or any other English candidate whom they could use
+against Spain; whilst Dudley himself pretended to favour the archduke, till
+matters looked serious, and then found means of frustrating him, often to
+Elizabeth's rage, for she wished to play her own deep game unhampered. She
+knew she could always choke off the Austrian when she wished by making
+fresh religious demands. The English nobles were furious at Dudley's
+selfish manoeuvres to keep the queen unwed till he was free, and they
+planned to marry the queen to Arran, the next heir of Scotland. This looked
+promising for months, but Dudley and his sister, Lady Sidney, checked the
+plan.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Nine Years' Comedy</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In September, 1559, Dudley and his sister warmly took up the archduke's
+cause, and assured Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, that if the suitor would
+flatter the queen by coming to England on chance, she would marry him. But
+Elizabeth and Cecil, though they hinted much, would not clearly confirm
+Dudley's promise, and Philip and the emperor dared not expose the archduke
+to the risk of being repulsed. The English nobles, in good faith, urged the
+archduke's suit, and said that Dudley was plotting to kill his wife and
+marry the queen; but they and the Spanish ambassador were outwitted at
+every point by Elizabeth's diplomacy, and through 1559 and 1560 all the
+rivals were kept between hope and fear.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in September 1560, the long-predicted murder of Amy Robsart set
+Dudley free, and made the nobles and Cecil more anxious than ever that the
+archduke should be bold, take the risk, and come to England. The queen, to
+weaken the new friendship between France and Spain, herself again pretended
+eagerness for the Austrian's coming; but the trick was stale now, and
+neither Philip nor the emperor believed her. To checkmate Dudley the
+Protestants were actively urging the suit of Eric of Sweden, when, in
+January 1561, the former made a bold bid for Spanish support. He was, he
+said, quite innocent of his wife's death, and he promised Quadra that if
+the King of Spain would urge his (Dudley's) suit upon the queen, England
+should send envoys to the Council of Trent, receive a papal legate, and
+become practically Catholic. He might promise, but such a thing was
+impossible, and Cecil, when he learnt of the intrigue, promptly embroiled
+matters and spoilt the plan.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth, too, saw whither she was drifting, and by pretended levity
+turned it into a joke. At one time she invited the old Spanish bishop to
+marry her to Dudley, and next day said she would never marry at all. But
+she never ceased to flirt with Dudley, who, when his intrigue with Spain
+fell through, cynically appealed to the French Protestants for support.
+They were in no position to help him, and by January 1562, he was cringing
+to Spain, and pretending to be Catholic. But English Catholics hated him,
+and he was now no fit instrument for Philip.</p>
+
+<p>In her own court it was firmly believed that Elizabeth was secretly
+married to Dudley--it was high time, said the gossips; but in truth the
+international importance of her marriage was now (1562-63) partially
+obscured by that of the widowed Mary Queen of Scots. Before the latter were
+dangled Eric of Sweden, the Archduke Charles, the Earl of Arran, and
+Darnley; but the match which Mary most wished for, and the most threatening
+to Elizabeth, was that with the vicious young lunatic, Don Carlos, the heir
+of Philip of Spain. The match with Darnley, too, as he was in the English
+succession, was distasteful to Elizabeth; but in order to divert the
+Spanish match--which, really, though she knew it not, was out of the
+question--she pretended to favour Darnley's suit at first.</p>
+
+<p>In order still more to avert the Catholic alliance, Elizabeth sent
+active help to the French Huguenots, and drew closer to the Protestants of
+Germany and Holland, where distrust of their Spanish sovereign was already
+brewing. In these circumstances, Elizabeth for the first time could defy
+Spain, and Quadra, accused of conspiring against the queen, was expelled
+the country. When the Darnley match for Mary Stuart looked too serious,
+Elizabeth diverted it for a time by proposing that Dudley--now Earl of
+Leicester--should marry Mary. It was, of course, but a trick, through which
+the Scottish queen saw, with the object of preventing the Darnley marriage
+and discrediting Mary in the eyes of foreign princes; but it served its
+turn for a time.</p>
+
+<p>In July 1564, when the league of France and Spain again menaced her,
+Elizabeth set her cap at the boy Don Carlos, and even swore to the Spanish
+ambassador that she was really a Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>The further to alienate the Catholic powers from each other, she
+simultaneously approached the emperor to revive the proposal of marriage
+with the Archduke Charles, and to Catherine de Medici to drop a hint that
+she--Elizabeth--might marry the young King of France, Charles IX., a youth
+barely half her age--anything to prevent a combination against her and the
+marriage of Don Carlos with Mary Stuart. Catherine de Medici had her own
+reasons at the time for smiling upon Elizabeth's suggestion. She did not
+wish to be bound too tightly to Spain and the Catholics, for fear of the
+Huguenots; and in February 1565, she wrote to Elizabeth, saying that she
+would be the happiest of mothers if she could see her dearly beloved sister
+of England married to her son, Charles IX.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth was full of maidenly hesitation. She was too old for him;
+perhaps he would not think her beautiful, and so on; but she took care to
+say that there was no one else she could marry, as she would not wed a
+subject. The Huguenots actively pushed the proposal, and Leicester
+pretended to favour it, though Cecil was against it on many grounds. But it
+was never seriously meant. It brought the Huguenots to Catherine's side on
+the eve of her voyage to renew the Catholic league with Philip, and it
+brought the Archduke Charles once more forward as a suitor for Elizabeth's
+hand. When it had thus served its purpose, the idea of the mature English
+queen marrying the boy Charles IX. was dropped.</p>
+
+<p>The Austrian's new advances were looked upon somewhat askance by Spain,
+until his attitude towards religion was assured, and, to have a second
+string, the Spanish ambassador, Guzman, affected to favour Leicester's
+suit. Cecil and the conservative nobles were sincere now in their advocacy
+of the archduke, and between the two parties Elizabeth steered coquettishly
+and diplomatically, modestly urging the archduke's coming, and yet flirting
+desperately with Leicester. The breach between the English nobles was
+profound, as all but Leicester wished the question of the queen's marriage
+and succession to be settled; and Leicester's chances were stronger than
+ever when it became clear, late in 1565, that the archduke would not come
+to England without a firm pledge. The French played off Leicester, too,
+against the archduke; sometimes even again suggesting their own king when
+Leicester's star waxed pale.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in 1566, the Lords and Commons urged the queen to marry, even
+Leicester joining in the remonstrance. But Elizabeth wished to play the
+game in her own way, and soundly scolded them. She did not mean to marry
+the archduke, or perhaps anyone, but whilst she kept him dangling, she knew
+she need not fear the Catholic combination. Soon all danger from that
+quarter disappeared for a time. Philip was in death struggle with his
+Protestant subjects in Holland; civil war was again raging in France, and
+Mary Stuart was a disgraced prisoner in the hands of her enemies. In the
+nine years that Elizabeth had carried on the marriage comedy she had kept
+the balance whilst England was growing stronger. Now, in 1568, she could
+afford to rest from her labours until danger from abroad again loomed.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Catholics and Heretics</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The peace of St. Germain in 1570 ended the long religious war in France,
+and the Guises and Catholics there, free from the strife, planned the
+rescue of the imprisoned Mary Stuart by force, and her marriage with the
+Duke of Anjou, the heir and brother of Charles IX. This was a danger both
+to Elizabeth and to the Huguenots, and was at once counteracted by their
+bringing forward the suggestion that the Queen of England might marry
+Anjou. He was, it is true, a fanatical Catholic, but the Huguenots thought
+that with England as a bait, and the powerful mind of Elizabeth to guide
+him, the youth might change his views. Leicester offered his help--for he
+knew the match was unlikely--and soon Catherine de Medici's agents were
+busy by Elizabeth's side. Elizabeth, as usual, was coy and maidenly. She
+was too old, she said, the thought of marriage was shocking to her; but,
+withal, the courtship went on actively. Anjou's charms and rumoured
+gallantries were the staple gossip at her court, and Elizabeth never tired
+of hearing praises of her young suitor.</p>
+
+<p>But soon the Guises and the Catholic League took fright, and urged Anjou
+not to be drawn into a match with a heretic too old for him. Better, said
+they, win England by force and marry Mary. To England the marriage, or a
+similar one, seemed really necessary. The Catholics at home and abroad were
+busily plotting against Elizabeth. Philip and Alba were ready to connive at
+her murder; the Protestants in Holland and France were powerless, and this
+match with Anjou seemed the only way to meet the danger. Anjou, under
+Catholic influence, was scornful, whilst Catherine, anxious for the
+greatness of her favourite son, was in despair at his "assottedness."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Buckhurst went, as ambassador to Paris, to forward the match in
+March 1571; but it soon became evident that Elizabeth could never concede
+the terms demanded by the French on religion. For many months the
+Huguenots, and Walsingham, as Elizabeth's ambassador, tried to reconcile
+the differences; and Catherine's agents in England laboured hard in the
+same cause. Elizabeth herself was ambiguous, though loving, and sometimes
+even Anjou was almost persuaded by his mother to accept the English crown
+matrimonial at the price demanded. For Elizabeth it was necessary to keep
+up the pretence at all costs, for the Spaniards were plotting her murder;
+and to split the Catholic party whilst secretly aiding the rebel
+Netherlanders seemed her only chance of safety. On one occasion, when Spain
+and France drew together, Elizabeth professed to be willing to marry Anjou
+on his own terms; but the prince grew ever more opposed to the match, and
+in January 1572, Catherine suddenly suggested that, as Anjou was so bigoted
+on religion, her youngest son, Alen&ccedil;on, might marry Elizabeth on any
+conditions she liked.</p>
+
+<p>The lad was but seventeen--a swarthy, pock-marked youth--and Elizabeth
+was inclined at first to resent the way in which Anjou had flouted her. She
+was thirty-nine, and her vanity was wounded; but yet the friendship or
+neutrality of France was vital to her. "How tall is he?" she asked Cecil.
+"About as tall as I am," replied the elderly minister. "As tall as your
+grandson, you mean!" snapped the queen. But Walsingham, Smith, and the
+French envoys plied her busily with descriptions of Alen&ccedil;on's manly
+charms, and a treaty between France and England was settled by which the
+Huguenots for a time became paramount in France conjointly with the
+marriage of the Huguenot Henry of Navarre with Margaret, the king's sister.
+Feasts and cordiality were the rules on both sides of the Channel now, and
+the Huguenot leaders urged the Alen&ccedil;on match with Elizabeth with all
+their force. In reply to all these offers, Elizabeth replied that, though
+the discrepancy of age was a great drawback, yet the pock-marks on the
+suitor's face were a greater objection still; yet if he would let her see
+him, without a pledge, she might like him. She would never, she said, marry
+a man she had not seen.</p>
+
+<p>But already Charles IX. and his mother were chafing under the Huguenot
+yoke and cooling towards England. They were determined not to be drawn by
+their new treaty with England into war with Spain; so, under the pretence
+of keeping up the negotiations for the Alen&ccedil;on match, they sent the
+youth La Mole to England in the autumn of 1572, really for the purpose of
+dissociating France from the Huguenot-English aid to the Protestant
+Netherlanders. La Mole was a gallant young lover, with whom Elizabeth was
+charmed, and when he played the vicarious wooer for Alen&ccedil;on, she
+could not make enough of him. But whilst he was philandering with her at
+Kenilworth, and she was losing patience at his political mission, there
+fell like a thunderbolt the awful news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew
+at Navarre's fatal wedding. At once the scene changed. La Mole and the
+French envoy hurried away amidst curses upon all false Frenchmen.
+Elizabeth, in a panic, smiled upon Spaniards again, and, for a time, the
+project of a French consort for her slept.</p>
+
+<p>But not for long. Alen&ccedil;on had no part in the massacre, and was
+known to favour Huguenots. He wrote a fervent love-letter to Elizabeth, and
+proposed to escape to England; whilst his agent Maisonfleur joined with
+Mauvissi&egrave;re, the official French ambassador, in wooing Elizabeth
+anew for Alen&ccedil;on and for France. Gradually the parties drew together
+again, for Catherine was already alarmed at the effect of St. Bartholomew.
+All the Protestant world was arming, the English ports were full of
+privateers to attack Catholic shipping, and aid in plenty was being sent
+from England to the Huguenots of Rochelle and the rebel Dutchmen.</p>
+
+<p>France could therefore not afford to quarrel with England, but Anjou and
+Charles IX. took care to hold Alen&ccedil;on tight, that he might not
+escape and strengthen the Protestant cause in union with Elizabeth, whilst
+they still kept up the appearance of marriage negotiations. Elizabeth was
+ever on the alert to serve her cause, and in March 1573, said she would go
+no further in the Alen&ccedil;on match unless the Protestants in Rochelle
+were allowed fair terms and the siege raised. Anjou, already tired of the
+war, consented, and soon afterwards Catherine asked whether Elizabeth would
+now proceed with the Alen&ccedil;on plan. The lad had grown much, she said,
+and his budding beard covered some of his facial imperfections. It was
+settled that the prince should make a flying visit to Dover, but soon
+Catherine began to make fresh conditions. It would be such a shame to them,
+she said, if her son went and returned unmarried.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--The Lovelorn Alen&ccedil;on</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the meanwhile, Alen&ccedil;on's love-letters to his mature flame grew
+warmer; but much as Elizabeth liked such attentions, she dreaded to go too
+far. Charles IX. was sinking fast, and the next heir was Anjou. With
+Alen&ccedil;on for heir-presumptive of France, the position would be
+changed; and once more the queen began to get doubtful about those
+unfortunate pock-marks on her lover's face. Once Alen&ccedil;on planned
+with Henry of Navarre to escape from his mother's custody and make a dash
+for England on his own account, but Catherine held him firmly.</p>
+
+<p>Both the Huguenots and the French king wished for the marriage, but each
+party frustrated the other because their objects were different. When the
+French ambassador, therefore, asked Elizabeth when Alen&ccedil;on might
+come to see her, she refused to name a time, because she knew secretly that
+a great Huguenot movement in France was pending, and she wished
+Alen&ccedil;on to be there as figurehead at the time--the very thing that
+the official French Government wished to avoid. The projected movement was
+betrayed and suppressed, and Alen&ccedil;on's life was for a time in
+danger; but when Henry III. (Anjou) was seated on the throne,
+Alen&ccedil;on kept openly a rival court to that of his brother, and the
+Huguenots around the prince were at deadly feud with the minions of the
+king.</p>
+
+<p>At last the crisis came. Alen&ccedil;on escaped from Paris in disguise,
+pursued by his mother, and, joining the Huguenots in arms, defied the king
+and the Guises. France was not big enough to hold both brothers in peace,
+and Catherine told Alen&ccedil;on that as Elizabeth seemed so ready to help
+him and his Huguenots, he ought to reopen the marriage negotiations. But
+Alen&ccedil;on was useless to England as a counterbalance to Spain unless
+France herself could be pledged as well, and Elizabeth considered it safest
+for the time, since that could not be done, to feign a new cordiality with
+Philip.</p>
+
+<p>The Catholic party in France was again paramount, and by bribery and
+Catherine's diplomacy, Alen&ccedil;on and his friends were bought over. For
+the next three years the young prince held aloof from affairs, but in 1578
+the hollow truce ended; he was suspected and placed under arrest, all his
+friends being cast into the Bastille. In February, 1578, Alen&ccedil;on
+broke his prison and fled, and all France was plunged into turmoil.
+Elizabeth was profoundly moved. The keynote of English policy was the
+exclusion of France from Flanders, and if Alen&ccedil;on was secretly
+supported in his action by his brother, then Elizabeth must oppose to the
+death any interference in Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>And so began the long and clever juggle by which she used
+Alen&ccedil;on's ambition to wed her as a means to compass her ends without
+marrying him. Huguenots flocked to Alen&ccedil;on's standard, whilst he
+sent by every post love-lorn epistles to Elizabeth, praying her to aid him
+to free Flanders from the bloodthirsty Spaniards. On July 7, 1578,
+Alen&ccedil;on entered Flanders with his army, and Elizabeth, still full of
+distrust of Frenchmen, feigned to Spaniards her deep disapproval, whilst
+she took care that many English and Germans in her pay slipped into
+Flanders at the same time, to prevent any French national domination.
+Presently, persuaded that Alen&ccedil;on had no secret pact with his
+brother, Elizabeth took Alen&ccedil;on and the Flemish revolt into her own
+hands, and effusively welcomed Alen&ccedil;on's envoys who came to promote
+his love suit.</p>
+
+<p>He chose for his emissary one Jehan Simier, an experienced gallant, who
+soon wooed Elizabeth to such good purpose that she fell violently in love
+with the messenger, as well as with his absent master. Protestant England
+took fright at the pending marriage of the queen with a papist of half her
+age. Simier, whom she called her "monkey," had bewitched her, said the
+courtiers, and remonstrances from all sides came to the queen.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--The Battle of Wits</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Alen&ccedil;on's demands were high, but Elizabeth seems really for once
+to have lost her head, and but for the strong opposition of her Council,
+might have been drawn into the marriage. Simier, seeing the deadlock,
+decided to bring Alen&ccedil;on over at all risks. Leicester, deadly
+jealous, tried to assassinate Simier, who revenged himself by divulging to
+the queen Leicester's secret marriage. Elizabeth was beside herself with
+rage, and more in love than ever with Alen&ccedil;on and his envoy. At
+length, in August 1579, the young French prince, in disguise, suddenly
+appeared at Greenwich. The queen's vanity was flattered, and though the
+visit was supposed to be secret, she hardly left her young lover, whilst
+he, to judge by his letters, was as badly smitten as she. But though she
+promised him marriage, he had to return with little else, and as soon as he
+had gone she found many good reasons for delay and hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>In October 1580, a new Catholic combination forced Elizabeth's hands,
+and she promised greater help to Alen&ccedil;on's project, whilst trying to
+draw France also into open war with Spain. The combat of wits was keen and
+cynical, each party trying to pledge the other and to keep free himself. A
+great French embassy came to England in April 1581, to negotiate an
+alliance and the queen's marriage with Alen&ccedil;on, who had now
+re-entered Flanders and was immersed in the struggle against the Spaniards.
+The discussions in England were becoming interminable, for the French
+ambassadors asked hard terms, when Alen&ccedil;on, in June 1581, losing
+patience, suddenly rushed over to England to plead his own cause
+independently of his brother's envoys, whom he distrusted with good reason.
+This suited Elizabeth, for it made Alen&ccedil;on more dependent upon her,
+and again she sent her lover back full of great promises to help him.</p>
+
+<p>In August Alen&ccedil;on again entered Flanders, depending entirely upon
+Elizabeth for support, and thenceforward he looked alone to his marriage
+with her for his salvation. She was sparing, and the poor prince retired to
+France in September. In desperation he came to England again to press for
+money and marriage in November 1581; and for months the love-making was
+fast and furious. Frantic prayers, sighs, and tears on his part were
+answered by kisses and promises on hers, but she gave as little money as
+would serve to get rid of him. On February 1, 1582, Alen&ccedil;on sailed
+for Holland to Elizabeth's professed grief and real joy; and thenceforward
+the prince, first in Flanders as sovereign, and afterwards in France a
+fugitive, supplicated and threatened his betrothed for money, and ever more
+money. But Elizabeth had now taken the Netherlands revolt into her own
+hands, and thenceforward her French lover was useless to her there. So,
+though she still kept up the pretence of her willingness to marry him on
+impossible conditions, and drove the poor creature to love-lorn despair,
+Alen&ccedil;on had served his matrimonial purpose before he died, in 1584,
+and Elizabeth's courtships with a political object came to an end. She and
+England were strong enough now to face her possible foes without fear.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Love_Affairs_of_Mary_Queen_of_Scots"></a>The Love Affairs
+of Mary Queen of Scots</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Mary Queen of Scots was one of the most remarkable women
+who ever presided over the destinies of a nation. She was born at
+Linlithgow on December 8, 1542, a few days before the death of her father,
+James V., thus becoming a queen before she was a week old. Her complex
+personality and varied accomplishments have inspired many and various
+historians, but it has remained for Major Martin Hume to demonstrate the
+historical fatality of Mary's love affairs. In "The Love Affairs of Mary
+Queen of Scots," published in 1903, Major Hume gives a convincing and
+logical reason for Mary's political failure, inasmuch as it did not spring
+from her goodness or badness as a woman, but from a certain weakness of
+character. This epitome has been prepared by Major Hume himself.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Betrothed in her Cradle</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When in the great hall at Worms, on that ever-memorable April day in
+1521, before the panic-stricken princes, Luther insolently flung at the
+emperor his defiance of the mediaeval church, the crash, though all unheard
+by the ears of men, shook to their base the crumbling foundations upon
+which, for hundreds of years, the institutions of Europe had rested. The
+sixteenth century thenceforward was a period of disintegration and
+reconstruction, in which fresh lines of cleavage between old political
+associates were opened, new affinities were formed, and the international
+balance re-adjusted.</p>
+
+<p>In the long struggle of the house of Aragon, and its successor, Charles
+V., with France for the domination of Italy, the only effectual guarantee
+against England's actively aiding its traditional ally, the ruler of Spain
+and Flanders, against its traditional enemy, France, was for the latter
+country to keep a tight hold of its alliance with Scotland, by means of
+which English force might be diverted at any time. The existence of the
+Scottish "back door" to England, with the ever probable enemy behind it,
+had long been a check upon English power, and a humiliation to English
+kings in their efforts to hold the balance between the Continental rivals.
+But with the spread of Lutheranism in Germany and Henry VIII.'s defiance of
+the Papacy, the Catholic powers, drawn together in the face of common
+danger, found a fresh bond of union in their orthodoxy which partially
+superseded old rivalries.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances the English policy, which had aimed at the
+control of Scottish foreign relations to the exclusion of French influence,
+became not only desirable as it always had been, but vitally necessary to
+preserve England's independence.</p>
+
+<p>Henry VIII.'s policy towards Scotland had been that of <i>divide et
+impera</i>, and a series of royal minorities and the greed and poverty of
+the semi-independent Scottish nobles had aided him. The rout of the Scots
+at Solway Moss, and the pathetic passing of the gallant James V., leaving
+his new-born daughter, Mary, as queen (December 1542), seemed at length to
+place Scotland in England's power. The murder of Cardinal Beaton, the
+bribery of the Douglases, and the marriage of Lennox with Henry's sister
+were all subsequent moves in the same game. Mary was betrothed in her
+cradle to the heir of England, and France, whose sheet anchor for centuries
+had been the "auld alliance" with the Scots, appeared to be helpless
+against a coalition of England and the emperor.</p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward, England's main object was to keep a tight grip upon
+Scotland by religion or otherwise, while at first France, and subsequently
+the Catholic league, strove ceaselessly, with the help of Mary Stuart, to
+free Scotland from English influence. The marriage juggle of Elizabeth was
+largely inspired by her Scottish aims, and if the fortuitous adjustment of
+her qualities kept England Protestant, and France wavering for all those
+critical years, if she secured the inactivity of Spain, the resistance of
+Protestant Holland, and the freedom of navigation by her skilful
+statecraft, her rival Mary Stuart was a hardly less powerful factor in the
+final triumph of England by reason of certain defects in her character, the
+consequences of which are dealt with in this book.</p>
+
+<p>Mary possessed a finer and nobler nature than Elizabeth; she was a woman
+of higher courage and greater conviction, more generous, magnanimous, and
+confiding, and, apart from her incomparably greater beauty and fascination,
+she possessed mental endowments fully equal to those of the English queen.
+But, whilst caution and love of mastery in Elizabeth always saved her from
+her weakness at the critical moment, Mary Stuart possessed no such
+safeguards, and was periodically swept along helplessly by the irresistible
+rush of her amorous passion.</p>
+
+<p>French intrigue and money, aided by the queen-regent of Scotland, Mary
+of Guise, succeeded, after Henry's death and Somerset's invasion of
+Scotland, in gaining firm hold upon Scotland, and Mary, as the betrothed
+wife of the dauphin Francis, was carried to France in 1548, at the age of
+six, to be reared by her cunning kinsmen of Lorraine, and made, as it was
+hoped, a future powerful instrument to aid Catholic French objects against
+England, and the reformation in France and elsewhere. As she grew towards
+womanhood in the bravest and most amorous court in Europe, the
+queen-dauphiness became a paragon of beauty, charm, accomplishments, the
+theme of poets, the despair of lovers innumerable worshipping her from
+afar.</p>
+
+<p>The boy Francis de Valois, to whom she was affianced, was a poor,
+bilious, degenerate weakling, stunted in figure, uncomely of face. He was
+shy and timid, shunning active exercises, and though at the time of his
+marriage (1558) he was too young to have been actively engaged in the vices
+of the outwardly devout court, he appears to have been fully alive to the
+desirability of his bride. Mary was precocious and ambitious; she was
+surrounded by profligates, male and female, and, though she can hardly have
+been in love with her young husband, she appears to have been fully
+reconciled to the union.</p>
+
+<p>With unsurpassed magnificence the wedding of Mary and Francis took place
+in Paris, but it signified to the world much more than the wedding of a boy
+and girl. So far as men could see, it meant the triumph of the papal Guises
+in France, and a death-blow to Protestant hopes of ranging Scotland on the
+side of the reformation.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Intrigue, Plot, and Intrigue</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Francis died after sixteen months reign, and Mary Stuart and her Guisan
+uncles, hated jealously by the queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, and by
+the reforming Bourbons, fell, for a time, into the background. Mary can
+hardly have loved her puny boy husband, but she nursed him night and day in
+his long sickness and his death so affected her that "she would not receive
+any consolation, but, brooding over her disasters with constant tears and
+passionate, doleful lamentations, she universally inspired deep pity." She
+had, indeed, lost much besides her royal husband; and in a poem written by
+her afterwards, the waste of her youth in widowhood, the loss of her great
+position as Queen of France, and her powerlessness any longer to enforce
+her rule in Scotland by French power, are the main burden of her complaints
+against Providence, not pity for the husband she had lost.</p>
+
+<p>The Guises were loath to surrender power without a struggle, and as soon
+as Francis died they sought to sell their niece in marriage again. Their
+first idea was for her to marry her child-brother-in-law, the new King
+Charles IX., but Catharine de Medici at once stopped that plan, though the
+boy himself was anxious for it and Mary was not averse. That failing,
+Cardinal Lorraine turned to the heir of Spain, Don Carlos, as a husband for
+her. This would have been a death-blow to Elizabeth, and Philip feigned to
+listen to it; but all the strength and cunning of Huguenots and
+Protestants, joined by those of Catharine and Elizabeth, were brought into
+play against this threatening move, and Mary went to Scotland with a
+sinking, sad, and angry heart in 1561, fearing her uncouth subjects,
+foreign to her now, vexed with the Protestant party for standing in the way
+of her ambitious marriage, and determined to oppose Elizabeth to the utmost
+in her designs against the independence of Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>With these views, gay and winsome though she was, it was not long before
+Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman,
+John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and
+Secretary Lethington that a <i>modus vivendi</i> might be found by
+persuading Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she
+herself died childless, on the undertaking of Mary that her marriage and
+policy should be dictated by England; but it was not Elizabeth's plan to
+pledge the future of England, and her nimble evasiveness drove the Scottish
+statesmen to despair.</p>
+
+<p>Brawls and bitterness grew in Mary's court around the Catholicism of the
+queen, and English money and intrigue were freely lavished to set Scotland
+by the ears. Half the nobles were disaffected, and Murray and Lethington,
+having failed to secure Scottish interests by moderate counsels and the
+conciliation of Elizabeth, were forced to take a strong course. Of foreign
+suitors Mary had many, some promoted by the Protestants, some by the Pope
+and the Guises, while the Catholics of England were secretly intriguing to
+force Elizabeth's hand by arranging Mary's marriage with young Henry
+Stuart, Lord Darnley, eldest son of Margaret, Countess of Lennox, niece of
+Henry VIII., who lived at Elizabeth's court. Cecil's spies were everywhere,
+and the plot was soon known and stopped by Elizabeth, violently angry with
+her kinswoman for listening to such a scheme.</p>
+
+<p>But Murray and Lethington, in desperation, were aiming at higher game
+even than this. They were Protestant, they had tried their best to win
+Elizabeth's recognition; but they were Scotsmen first, and if their country
+was to be independent it must have a great ally behind it. France was out
+of the question while the Guises were in the shade and Catharine was
+queen-mother. So the ministers of Mary turned their eyes to the Protestant
+heir of the Catholic king. Elizabeth soon heard of this, too, and suddenly
+pretended to be in favour of the Darnley match for Mary, while she
+developed the most cordial friendship for Mary herself; for the Guises had
+again become paramount in France, and Elizabeth could not afford to flout
+all the Catholic interests at once.</p>
+
+<p>That danger soon passed, for the Huguenots flew to arms, and Guise was
+murdered, Mary losing thus her principal prop abroad. And Lethington now
+pushed vigorously what seemed to be Scotland's only chance of safety--the
+marriage of Mary with the semi-idiot heir of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The English Catholics were drawn into the plot. "Only let Mary marry the
+heir of Spain, and we will salute her as our leader," said they. But
+Elizabeth soon gained wind of it, as usual, and was ready with her
+antidote--a most extraordinary one--the proposal that Mary should wed her
+own lover, Lord Robert Dudley, with the assurance of the English succession
+after Elizabeth's death without issue. It was a mere feint, of course, but
+it divided Scotland, and unsettled Mary herself.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Philip, with his leaden methods, was pondering and seeking
+fresh pledges and guarantees from the English Catholics. Before his
+temporising answer came Elizabeth had frightened Mary's advisers into
+doubt, while she was holding the English Catholics in check by dangling
+Darnley and Dudley before Mary's eyes, and swearing deadly vengeance if she
+married the Spaniard.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth's first aim was to embroil Mary's prospects by discrediting
+her in the eyes of foreign powers. To this end was directed the offer
+alternately of Dudley and Darnley as a husband, and Elizabeth's pretence of
+shocked reprobation of Mary in connection with Chastelard's escapade. It
+must be confessed that Mary's imprudence aided Elizabeth's object, and the
+sour bigotry of Knox, which looked upon all gaiety as a sin, served the
+same purpose. All this drove the unhappy queen more and more into the arms
+of the Catholic party as her only means of defence.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Prudence Overcome by Passion</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The intrigue to wed Mary to the Spanish prince was met by Elizabeth
+cordially taking up Lady Lennox, and her son, Darnley, who by many was now
+regarded as the intended heir of England, and was held out to Mary as an
+ideal husband for her. So long as she had hopes of the Spanish prince she
+gave but evasive answers; but late in 1564 the cunning diplomacy of
+Catharine and the falseness of Cardinal Lorraine had diverted that danger;
+and Philip gave Mary to understand that the match with his son was
+impossible, Mary's great hope had been founded upon this marriage. Unless
+she could have a foreign Catholic husband strong enough to defy Elizabeth
+she knew that she must make terms with Elizabeth's enemies, the English
+Catholics, and thus bring pressure to bear upon her by internal
+dissensions.</p>
+
+<p>It was a dangerous game to play, for it meant conspiracy; and so long as
+the Lennoxes and their effeminate, lanky son were basking in Elizabeth's
+favour, the English queen held her trump card. But Lady Lennox was
+intriguing and ambitious, the head of English Catholic disaffection, and
+could only be held to Elizabeth's side by delusive hopes of the English
+succession for her son. Lennox himself, with some misgiving, was allowed to
+go to Scotland to claim his forfeited estates, and there, to Elizabeth's
+anger, was received with marked respect, which made the English queen hold
+Darnley and his mother more firmly than ever, and again push forward Dudley
+as a suitor for Mary's hand. Anxious to get Darnley to Scotland, not
+necessarily to marry him, but as a useful instrument, Mary feigned
+willingness to accept Dudley; and, in face of this, Elizabeth was induced
+to allow young Darnley to go to Scotland for a short time, ostensibly on
+business of the family estates.</p>
+
+<p>In February 1565, Darnley, aged nineteen, crossed the border, to the
+dismay of the English agents in Scotland. It was soon after Mary had
+received news that the Spanish match was at an end, and she was ready for a
+new plan to circumvent Elizabeth. Darnley as a husband would bring to her
+the support of English Catholics, and a new claim to the English crown. So
+when her eyes first lit upon the fair stripling at Wemyss Castle, she
+looked upon him with favour as "the properest tall man she ever saw." He
+was on his best behaviour, and danced delightfully with the queen. Up to
+this time Mary had played her game with self-command and policy, but now
+for the first time her heart ran away with her, and she took a false
+step.</p>
+
+<p>To have married Darnley as part of a transaction with Elizabeth, and
+with the approval of her own Protestant subjects, would have been a
+master-stroke. But she fell in love with the "long lad," and could not wait
+for negotiation; so she at once sent off to pray King Philip to support her
+with money and men against England and the Protestants if she married
+Darnley and became the tool of Spain. Philip, nothing loth, consented, and
+welcomed the coming union as a Catholic alliance and a powerful weapon
+against Elizabeth. Mary thus made herself the head of a vast Catholic
+conspiracy looking to Spain for support, and Elizabeth was furious both
+with Mary and Darnley for having apparently beaten her at her own cunning
+game.</p>
+
+<p>How Elizabeth sought a diversion, at first by new matrimonial schemes of
+her own, has been told elsewhere, but her more effectual weapon was to
+arouse the fears of Scottish Protestants, and breed dissension in Mary's
+realm. "The young fool," Darnley, insolent and proud of his new greatness,
+offended all the nobles, whilst Mary grew daily more infatuated with him.
+They were married in July 1565, and the great conspiracy against Elizabeth
+and Protestantism was complete. Already the Scottish Protestant lords were
+in a panic, and after an abortive rising, they fled before Mary's bold
+attack, taking refuge in England.</p>
+
+<p>The queen herself led her forces, armed and mounted, with her stripling
+husband by her side; but she was followed close by the shaggy, stern,
+martial figure of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, just returned from exile
+to serve her; and upon him she looked with kindling eyes as a stouter man
+than the fribble she had wed. Mary had now apparently triumphed by her
+Darnley marriage, but the avalanche was gathering to crush her. She looked
+mainly to Spain and the Pope for help, and had all Protestantism against
+her, led by Elizabeth, whose hate and fury knew no bounds. It was a duel
+now of life or death between two systems and two women, one with a heart
+and the other without; and, as usual, the heartless won.</p>
+
+<p>English money and skill honeycombed Scottish loyalty. Darnley, vicious,
+vain, and passionate, was an easy prey to intrigue. The tools of England
+whispered in his ear that his wife was too intimate with the Italian
+secretary Rizzio, who had conducted the correspondence with the Catholic
+powers. Darnley, who had earned his wife's contempt already, was beside
+himself with jealousy, and himself led the Protestant conspirators and
+friends of England, who murdered Rizzio in the queen's presence at Holyrood
+(March 1566). From that hour Darnley's doom was sealed.</p>
+
+<p>He had thought to be king indeed now, but Mary outwitted him; for she
+recalled her exiled lords, welcomed her brother Murray, and threw herself
+into the arms of Darnley's Protestant foes, the very men who had risen in
+arms against the marriage. As she fled by night with Darnley after Rizzio's
+murder, to betray him, she swore over Rizzio's new-made grave that a
+"fatter one" than he should lie there ere long. Whether she knew of the
+plot of his foes to murder her husband is not proved, but she almost
+certainly did so, and welcomed the deed when it was done. She made no
+pretence of love for him after Rizzio's death, and her husband repaid her
+coldness by sulky loutishness and bursts of drunken violence. Mary's
+conduct toward Bothwell, too, began to arouse scandal. By November 1566,
+matters had reached a crisis, and Mary, at Kelso, said that unless she was
+freed from Darnley she would put an end to herself. She spoke not to deaf
+ears. Morton, and the rest of Rizzio's slayers and bitter enemies, were
+pardoned, and the deadly bond was signed.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Dire Infatuation</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On February 9, 1567, as the doomed consort lay sick and sorry outside
+Edinburgh at the lone house of Kirk o' Field, he was, done to death by
+Bothwell and the foes of the Lennoxes; and Mary Stuart's first true love
+affair was ended in tragedy. But already the second was in full blast.
+Bothwell had recently married; he was disliked by the Scottish nobles, and
+the queen's constant association with him had already brought discredit
+upon her. There had been a good political excuse for her union with
+Darnley, but Bothwell could bring no support to her cause; for his creed
+was doubtful, and he had no friends. Nothing, indeed, but the infatuation
+of an amorous woman for a brutally strong man could have so blinded her to
+her own great aims as to make her take Bothwell, the prime mover of
+Darnley's murder, for her husband.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the crime was known, all fingers were pointed to Bothwell and
+the queen as the murderers, and Protestants everywhere hastened to cast
+obloquy upon Mary for it. But for the nobles' jealousy of Bothwell, and the
+religious animus, probably Darnley's death would soon have been forgotten
+or condoned; but as it was, Scotland blazed out in denunciation of it, and
+though Bothwell was put upon a mock trial and acquitted, the hate against
+him grew, especially when he arranged to divorce his wife in April 1567,
+and, ostensibly by force, but clearly by Mary's connivance, abducted the
+queen and bore her off to his castle of Dunbar.</p>
+
+<p>On her return to Edinburgh a few weeks later Mary publicly married
+Bothwell--she swore afterwards against her will, but, in any case, to the
+anger and disgust of her subjects. She found her new husband an arrogant
+tyrant rather than her slave, and he watched her closely. The dire
+infatuation of the lovelorn woman soon wore off, and again she sighed to be
+free; but it was too late, for the Catholic powers stood aloof from her now
+that she had married a divorced man, and all her nobles had abandoned her.
+So Mary clung to Bothwell still, for he was strong, and all Scotland cried
+shame upon her.</p>
+
+<p>In June, Mary and her husband, fearing attack or treachery, fled from
+Edinburgh Castle, which at once opened its gates to Morton and the rebel
+lords. A parley was sent to Mary offering submission if she would leave
+Bothwell to his fate. She indignantly refused, for she feared the lords and
+hated Morton. Bothwell was strong, she thought, and he was the father of
+her unborn child; be might protect her. So by Bothwell's side she rode out
+at the head of the border clansmen, and met the rebel army at Carberry
+Hill, hard by Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>It was agreed that the dispute should be decided by the single combat
+between Bothwell and Lindsay, but before the duel began Mary's bordermen
+became disordered, and then she knew that all was lost. Kirkaldy of Grange
+came from her opponents to parley with her and offer safety for her, but
+not for Bothwell. Whilst they were speaking, Bothwell attempted to murder
+Grange; and when Mary forbade such treachery, he lost his nerve and began
+to whimper. In a moment the scales fell from Mary's eyes. This man was but
+a lath painted like steel. His strength was but a lie, and he was unworthy
+of her. She turned from him in contempt, and surrendered to the lords;
+while Bothwell fled, and unhappy Mary saw him no more.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Langside and After</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Cursed by crowds, who reviled her as a murderess and adulteress, Mary
+was led, a captive, to her capital. By night, to save her from the fury of
+the mob, she was smuggled out of Edinburgh and lodged, a prisoner, in the
+island fortress of Lochleven. During her long incarceration there the story
+of her wrongs and sufferings stirred the Catholics at home and abroad in
+her favour, and her friends and foes were again sharply divided according
+to their religious creeds. The rulers of Scotland, too, headed by her
+brother Murray, were far from easy; for the Catholics were strong, and
+foreign crowned heads looked black at those who kept a sovereign in
+durance. So attempts were made to conciliate her by proposing marriage with
+some harmless Scottish noble, conjoined with her abdication. But her heart
+was high still, and she would bate no jot of her queenship; rather would
+she exercise her glamour upon her gaolers and escape to power and
+sovereignty again. Her fascination was irresistible, and Murray's
+half-brother, young George Douglas, a mere lad, fell a victim to her
+smiles. Once more Mary fell in love, and proposed to marry the youth who
+had endeavoured to aid her escape.</p>
+
+<p>Murray was shocked, and had his brother expelled the castle; but in
+April 1568 the faithful George planned her evasion of the guard and
+joyfully welcomed her on the shore of the lake. To her standard flocked the
+Catholic lords, and, safe at Hamilton, Mary, again a queen, swore vengeance
+upon her foes. On her way with her army to Dumbarton she met Murray's force
+at Langside, near Glasgow. She had been strong at Carberry Hill with
+Bothwell at her side. Here she was weak, for no man of weight or character
+was with her, and as her men wavered she turned rein and fled.</p>
+
+<p>For sixty miles on bad roads she struggled on, almost without sleep, and
+living on beggar's fare. With no adviser or woman near her, in her panic
+and despair she took the fatal resolve and crossed the Solway into
+Elizabeth's realm, trusting to the magnanimity of the woman whom she had
+tried to ruin and supplant. Again her heart had deceived her. Elizabeth had
+no pity for a vanquished foe, and for the rest of her miserable life, well
+nigh a score of years, Mary Stuart was a prisoner. But in all those years
+she never ceased to plot and plan for the overthrow of Elizabeth and her
+own elevation to the Catholic throne of all Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst her many weapons, that of marriage and her personal fascination
+were not forgotten. Twice, at least, she tried to make her love affairs
+serve her political ambition. Poor, feckless Norfolk was drawn by his
+vanity and ambition into her net. Love epistles, breathing eternal
+devotion, passed between them, but murder was behind it all--the murder of
+Elizabeth, and the subjection of England to Spain to work Mary's vengeance
+on her foes, and Norfolk lost his head deservedly.</p>
+
+<p>Again she dreamed of marrying the Christian champion, Don Juan of
+Austria, and conquering and ruling over a Catholic England. But this plot,
+too, was discovered, and Don Juan, like all the rest of Mary's lovers, died
+miserably. Mary thenceforward was the centre of Spain's great conspiracy
+against England's queen, but she sought the end no more by love; for that
+had failed her every time she tried. She and her cause were beaten because
+her heart of fire was pitted against a heart of ice, and she lost all
+because she loved too much.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="WASHINGTON_IRVING"></a>WASHINGTON IRVING</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Christopher_Columbus"></a>Life of Christopher
+Columbus</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Washington Irving, American historian and essayist, was
+born on April 3, 1783, in New York, of a family which came originally from
+Scotland. He knew Europe well, and was equally at home in London, Paris,
+and Madrid; he held the offices, in 1829, of Secretary to the American
+Embassy in London, and, in 1842, of American Minister in Spain. He was
+deeply interested in Spanish history, and besides the "Life and Voyages of
+Christopher Columbus," he wrote "The Voyages of the Companions of
+Columbus," "The Conquest of Granada," "The Alhambra," and "Legends of the
+Conquest of Spain." He was an industrious man of letters, having an
+excellent style, wide knowledge, and pleasant humour. His chief work was
+the "Life of George Washington," of which we give an epitome elsewhere.
+Other writings include "A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,"
+the celebrated "Sketch Book," "Bracebridge Hall," "Tales of a Traveller,"
+and a "Life of Goldsmith." Irving did not marry, and died on November 28,
+1859, in his home at Sunnyside on the Hudson River, and is buried at
+Tarrytown. The "Life of Columbus" was published in 1828 and is now
+obtainable in a number of popular editions. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Years of Waiting</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa about 1435, of poor but reputable
+parents. He soon evinced a passion for geographical knowledge, and an
+irresistible inclination for the sea. We have but shadowy traces of his
+life till he took up his abode in Lisbon about 1470. His contemporaries
+describe him as tall and muscular; he was moderate and simple in diet and
+apparel, eloquent, engaging, and affable. At Lisbon he married a lady of
+rank, Do&ntilde;a Felipa. He supported his family by making maps and
+charts.</p>
+
+<p>Portugal was prosecuting modern discovery with great enthusiasm, seeking
+a route to India by the coast of Africa; Columbus's genius conceived the
+bold idea of seeking India across the Atlantic. He set it down that the
+earth was a terraqueous globe, which might be travelled round. The
+circumference he divided into twenty-four hours. Of these he imagined that
+fifteen hours had been known to the ancients; the Portguese had advanced
+the western frontier one hour more by the discovery of the Azores and the
+Cape de Verde Islands; still, about eight hours remained to be explored.
+This space he imagined to be occupied in great measure by the eastern
+regions of Asia. A navigator, therefore, pursuing a direct course from east
+to west, must arrive at Asia or discover intervening land.</p>
+
+<p>The work of Marco Polo is the key to many of the ideas of Columbus. The
+territories of the Great Khan were the object of his search in all his
+voyages. Much of the success of his enterprise rested on two happy errors;
+the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed smallness of the
+earth. Without these errors he would hardly have ventured into the
+immeasurable waste of waters of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>A deep religious sentiment mingled with his thoughts; he looked upon
+himself as chosen from among men, and he read of his discovery as foretold
+in Holy Writ. Navigation was still too imperfect for such an undertaking;
+mariners rarely ventured far out of sight of land. But knowledge was
+advancing, and the astrolabe, which has been modified into the modern
+quadrant, was being applied to navigation. This was the one thing wanting
+to free the mariner from his long bondage to the land.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus now laid his great project before the King of Portugal, but
+without success. Greatly disappointed, he sailed to Spain, hoping to
+receive the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was many months before
+he could even obtain a hearing; his means were exhausted, and he had to
+contend against ridicule and scorn, but the royal audience was at length
+obtained. Ferdinand assembled learned astronomers and cosmographers to hold
+a conference with Columbus. They assailed him with citations from the
+Bible. One objection advanced was, that should a ship ever succeed in
+reaching India, she could never come back, for the rotundity of the globe
+would present a mountain, up which it would be impossible to sail. Finally,
+after five years, the junta condemned the scheme as vain and
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus was on the point of leaving Spain, when the real grandeur of
+the subject broke at last on Isabella's mind, and she resolved to undertake
+the enterprise. Articles of agreement were drawn up and signed by Ferdinand
+and Isabella. Columbus and his heirs were to have the office of High
+Admiral in all the seas, lands, and continents he might discover, and he
+was to be viceroy over the said lands and continents. He was to have
+one-tenth of all profits, and contribute an eighth of the expense of
+expeditions. Columbus proposed that the profits from his discoveries should
+be consecrated to a crusade.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The First Voyage</i></h3>
+
+<h3>(August, 1492--March, 1493)</h3>
+
+
+<p>Columbus set out joyfully for Palos, where the expedition was to be
+fitted out. He had spent eighteen years in hopeless solicitation, amidst
+poverty, neglect, and ridicule. When the nature of the expedition was
+heard, the boldest seamen shrank from such a chimerical cruise, but at last
+every difficulty was vanquished, and the vessels were ready for sea. Two of
+them were light, half-decked caravels; the Santa Maria, on which Columbus
+hoisted his flag, was completely decked. The whole number of persons was
+one hundred and twenty.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492, steering for the Canary Islands.
+From there they were wafted gently over a tranquil sea by the trade wind,
+and for many days did not change a sail. The poor mariners gradually became
+uneasy at the length of the voyage. The sight of small birds, too feeble to
+fly far, cheered their hearts for a time, but again their impatience rose
+to absolute mutiny. Then new hopes diverted them. There was an appearance
+of land, and the ships altered their course and stood all night to the
+south-west, but the morning light put an end to their hopes; the fancied
+land proved to be an evening cloud.</p>
+
+<p>Again the seamen broke forth into loud clamours, and insisted on
+abandoning the voyage. Fortunately, the following day a branch with berries
+on it floated by; they picked up also a small board and a carved staff, and
+all murmuring was now at an end. Not an eye was closed that night. Columbus
+took his station on the top of the cabin. Suddenly, about ten o'clock, he
+beheld a light. At two in the morning the land was clearly seen, and they
+took in sail, waiting for the dawn. The great mystery of the ocean was
+revealed.</p>
+
+<p>When the day dawned, Columbus landed, threw himself upon his knees,
+kissed the earth, and returned thanks to God. Rising, he drew his sword,
+displayed the royal standard, and took possession in the names of the
+Castillian sovereigns, naming the island San Salvador. It is one of the
+Bahama Islands, and still retains that name, though also called Cat
+Island.</p>
+
+<p>The natives thought that the ships had descended from above on their
+ample wings, and that these marvellous beings were inhabitants of the
+skies. They appeared to be simple and artless people, and of gentle and
+friendly dispositions. As Columbus supposed that the island was at the
+extremity of India, he called them Indians. He understood them to say that
+a king of great wealth resided in the south. This, he concluded, could be
+no other than Cipango, or Japan. He now beheld a number of beautiful
+islands, green, level, and fertile; and supposed them to be the archipelago
+described by Marco Polo. He was enchanted by the lovely scenery, the
+singing of the birds, and the brilliantly colored fish, though disappointed
+in his hopes of finding gold or spice; but the natives continued to point
+to the south as the region of wealth, and spoke of an Island called
+Cuba.</p>
+
+<p>He set sail in search of it, and was struck with its magnitude, the
+grandeur of its mountains, its fertile valleys, sweeping plains, stately
+forests, and noble rivers. He explored the coast to the east end of Cuba,
+supposing it the extreme point of Asia, and then descried the mountains of
+Hayti to the south-east. In coasting along this island, which he named
+Hispaniola, his ship was carried by a current on a sandbank and lost. The
+admiral and crew took refuge in one of the caravels. The natives,
+especially the cacique Guacanagari, offered him every assistance. The
+Spanish mariners regarded with a wistful eye the easy and idle existence of
+these Indians, who seemed to live in a golden world without toil, and they
+entreated permission to remain.</p>
+
+<p>This suggested to Columbus the idea of forming the germ of a future
+colony. The cacique was overjoyed, and the natives helped to build a fort,
+thus assisting to place on their necks the yoke of slavery. The fortress
+and harbour were named La Navidad.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus chose thirty-nine of those who volunteered to remain, charged
+them to be circumspect and friendly with the natives, and set sail for
+Spain. He encountered violent tempests, his small and crazy vessels were
+little fitted for the wild storms of the Atlantic; the oldest mariners had
+never known so tempestuous a winter, and their preservation seemed
+miraculous. They were forced to run into Tagus for shelter. The King of
+Portugal treated Columbus with the most honourable attentions. When the
+weather had moderated he put to sea again, and arrived safely at Palos on
+March 15, having taken not quite seven months and a half to accomplish this
+most momentous of all maritime enterprises.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus landed and walked in procession to the church to return thanks
+to God. Bells were rung, the shops shut, and all business suspended. The
+sovereigns were dazzled by this easy acquisition of a new empire. They
+addressed Columbus as admiral and viceroy, and urged him to repair
+immediately to court to concert plans for a second expedition. His journey
+to Barcelona was like the progress of a sovereign, and his entrance into
+that city has been compared to a Roman triumph. On his approach the
+sovereigns rose and ordered him to seat himself in their presence. When
+Columbus had given an account of his voyage, the king and queen sank on
+their knees, and a <i>Te Deum</i> was chanted by the choir of the royal
+chapel. Such was the manner in which the brilliant court of Spain
+celebrated this sublime event.</p>
+
+<p>The whole civilised world was filled with wonder and delight, but no one
+had an idea of the real importance of the discovery. The opinion of
+Columbus was universally adopted that Cuba was the end of Asia; the islands
+were named the West Indies, and the vast region was called the New
+World.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Second Voyage</i></h3>
+
+<h3>(September, 1493--June, 1496)</h3>
+
+
+<p>Extraordinary excitement prevailed about the second expedition, and many
+hidalgos of high rank pressed into it. They sailed from Cadiz in September
+1493; all were full of animation, anticipating a triumphant return. When
+they reached La Navidad they found the fortress burnt. At length, from some
+natives they heard the story of the brawls of the colonists between
+themselves, and their surprise and destruction by unfriendly Indians.
+Columbus fixed upon a new site for his colony, which he named Isabella. Two
+small expeditions were sent inland to explore, and returned with
+enthusiastic accounts of the promise of the mountains, and Columbus sent to
+Spain a glowing report of the prospects of the colony.</p>
+
+<p>Soon, however, maladies made their appearance, provisions began to fail,
+and murmuring prevailed among the colonists. In truth, the fate of many of
+the young cavaliers, who had come out deluded by romantic dreams, was
+lamentable in the extreme. Columbus arranged for the government of the
+island, and set sail to explore the southern coast of Cuba, supposing it to
+be the extreme end of Asia. He had to contend with almost incredible
+perils, and was obliged to return. Had he continued for two or three days
+longer he would have passed round the extremity of Cuba; his illusion would
+have been dispelled, and a different course given to his subsequent
+discoveries.</p>
+
+<p>During his absence from Isabella the whole island had become a scene of
+violence and discord. Margarite, the general left in charge of the
+soldiers, and Friar Boyle, the apostolical vicar, formed a cabal of the
+discontented, took possession of certain ships, and set sail for Spain, to
+represent the disastrous state of the country, and to complain of the
+tyranny of Columbus. The soldiers indulged in all kinds of excesses, and
+the Indians were converted from gentle hosts into vindictive enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, a commissioner was sent out to inquire into the distress of
+the colony and the conduct of Columbus. He collected all complaints, and
+returned to Spain, Columbus sailing at the same time. Never did a more
+miserable crew return from a land of promise.</p>
+
+<p>The vessels anchored at Cadiz, and a feeble train of wretched men
+crawled forth, emaciated by diseases. Contrary to his anticipation,
+Columbus was received with distinguished favour. Thus encouraged, he
+proposed a further enterprise, and asked for eight ships, which were
+readily promised; but it was not until May 1498, that he again set
+sail.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Third Voyage</i></h3>
+
+<h3>(May, 1498--October, 1500)</h3>
+
+
+<p>From the Cape de Verde Islands, Columbus steered to the south-west,
+until he arrived at the fifth degree of north latitude. The air was like a
+furnace, the mariners lost all strength and spirit, and Columbus was
+induced to alter his course to the northwest. After sailing some distance
+they reached a genial region with a cooling breeze and serene and clear
+sky. They descried three mountains above the horizon; as they drew nearer,
+they proved to be united at the base, and Columbus, therefore, named this
+island La Trinidad. He coasted round Trinidad, and landed on the mainland,
+but mistook it for an island. He was astonished at the body of fresh water
+flowing into the Gulf of Paria, and came to the conclusion that it must be
+the outpouring of a great unknown continent stretching to the south, far
+beyond the equator. His supplies were now almost exhausted, and he
+determined to return to Hispaniola.</p>
+
+<p>He found the island in a lamentable situation. A conspiracy had been
+formed against his viceroy, and the Indians, perceiving the dissensions
+among the Spaniards, threw off their allegiance. After long negotiations
+Columbus was forced to sign a humiliating capitulation with the rebels.
+Meanwhile, every vessel that returned from the New World came freighted
+with complaints against Columbus. The support of the colony was an
+incessant drain upon the mother country. Was this compatible, it was asked,
+with the pictures he had drawn of the wealth of the island?</p>
+
+<p>Isabella herself at last began to entertain doubts about Columbus, and
+the sovereigns decided to send out Don Francisco del Bobadilla to
+investigate his conduct. This officer appears to have been needy,
+passionate, and ambitious. He acted as if he had been sent out to degrade
+the admiral, not to inquire into his conduct. He threw Columbus into irons,
+and seized his arms, gold, jewels, books, and most secret manuscripts.
+Columbus conducted himself with characteristic magnanimity, and bore all
+indignities in silence. Bobadilla collected testimony sufficient, as he
+thought, to ensure the condemnation of Columbus, and sent him a prisoner to
+Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, in chains, produced almost as great a
+sensation as his first triumphant return. A general burst of indignation
+arose. The sovereigns sent orders that he should be instantly set at
+liberty, and promised that Columbus should be reinstated in all his
+dignities. But Ferdinand repented having invested such great powers in any
+subject, and especially in a foreigner. Plausible reasons were given for
+delaying his reappointment, and meanwhile Don Nicholas de Ovando was sent
+out to supersede Bobadilla.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Fourth Voyage</i></h3>
+
+<h3>(May, 1502--November, 1504)</h3>
+
+
+<p>Columbus's thoughts were suddenly turned to a new enterprise. Vasco da
+Gama had recently reached India round the Cape of Good Hope, and immense
+wealth was poured by this route into Portugal. Columbus was persuaded that
+the currents of the Caribbean Sea must pass between Cuba and the land which
+he had discovered to the south, and that this route to India would be more
+easy and direct than that of Vasco da Gama. His plan was promptly adopted
+by the sovereigns, and he sailed in May 1502, on his last and most
+disastrous voyage. He steered to Hispaniola, but was not permitted to land,
+and then coasted along Honduras and down the Mosquito Coast to Costa Rica.
+Here he found gold among the natives, and heard rumours of Mexico. He
+continued beyond Cape Nombre de Dios in search for the imaginary strait,
+and then gave up all attempt to find it.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly he knew that another voyager, coasting from the eastward, had
+reached this point. He turned westward to search for the gold-mines of
+Veragua, and attempted unsuccessfully to found a settlement there. As his
+vessels were no longer capable of standing the sea, he ran them aground on
+Jamaica, fastened them together, and put the wreck in a state of defence.
+He dispatched canoes to Hispaniola, asking Ovando to send a ship to relieve
+him, but many months of suffering and difficulty elapsed before it
+came.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus returned to Spain in November 1504. Care and sorrow were
+destined to follow him; his finances were exhausted, and he was unable,
+from his infirmities, to go to court. The death of Isabella was a fatal
+blow to his fortunes. Many months were passed by him in painful and
+humiliating solicitation for the restitution of his high offices. At length
+he saw that further hope of redress from Ferdinand was vain. His illness
+increased, and he expired, with great resignation, on May 20, 1506.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus was a man of great and inventive genius, and his ambition was
+noble and lofty. Instead of ravaging the newly-found countries, he sought
+to found regular and prosperous enterprises. He was naturally irritable and
+impetuous, but, though continually outraged in his dignity, and foiled in
+his plans by turbulent and worthless men, he restrained his valiant and
+indignant spirit, and brought himself to forbear and reason, and even to
+supplicate. His piety was genuine and fervent, and diffused a sober dignity
+over his whole deportment.</p>
+
+<p>He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discovery. What visions
+of glory would have broken upon his mind could he have known that he had
+indeed discovered a new continent! And how would his spirit have been
+consoled, amidst the afflictions of age and the injustice of an ungrateful
+king, could he have anticipated the empires which would arise in the world
+he had discovered; and the nations, towns, and languages, which were to
+revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_George_Washington"></a>Life of George Washington</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> This great historical biography was Washington Irving's
+principal work. It was founded chiefly upon George Washington's
+correspondence, which is preserved in manuscript in the archives of the
+United States Government. Irving worked at it intermittently for many
+years; and it was published in successive sections during the last years of
+his life, 1855 to 1859, while he was living in retirement with his nieces
+at Sunnyside, on the Hudson River. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The De Wessyngton family, of the county of Durham, in feudal times,
+produced many men of mark in the field and in the cloister, and at a later
+period the Washingtons were intrepid supporters of the unfortunate House of
+Stuart. Compromised by this allegiance, two brothers, John and Andrew,
+uncles of Sir Henry Washington, the gallant defender of Worcester,
+emigrated to Virginia in 1657, and purchased lands in Westmoreland County,
+by the River Potomac. John, who became military leader of the Virginians
+against the Indians, was great-grandfather of the illustrious George
+Washington.</p>
+
+<p>George, born February 22, 1732, in a homestead on Bridges Creek, was the
+eldest son of Mary Ball, second wife of Augustine Washington. Two
+half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, survived from the first marriage;
+and Mary had three other sons and two daughters. George received his first
+education in an "old field school-house," taught by the parish sexton; but
+the chief influences of his boyhood were the morality of his home and the
+military ardour of the colonists against the Spanish and the French.
+Lawrence, his eldest brother, had a captaincy in the colonial regiment
+which fought for England in the West Indies, in 1740, and the boy's whole
+mind was turned to war.</p>
+
+<p>His father died when he was eleven years old, and George was sent to
+live with his married brother Augustine. Here he attended school, was eager
+in the acquirement of knowledge, and became expert in all athletic
+exercises. He very nearly entered on a naval career, but at his mother's
+earnest entreaty renounced the project, and returning to school, studied
+land-surveying.</p>
+
+<p>Lawrence, his brother, having married into the Fairfax family, George
+came under the notice of Lord Fairfax, owner of immense tracts of country,
+who was so pleased with the lad's character and accomplishments that he
+entrusted him with the task of surveying his possessions. At the age of
+sixteen George Washington set out into the wilderness, and acquitted
+himself so well that he was appointed public surveyor. He thus gained an
+intimate knowledge, and of the ways of the Indians.</p>
+
+<p>The English and French governments were at this time making conflicting
+claims to the Ohio valley, and their agents were treating with the various
+Indian tribes. At length the French prepared to enforce their claim by
+arms, and Washington received, in 1751, a commission as adjutant-general
+over a military district of Virginia. In October, 1753, he was sent by
+Governor Dinwiddie on a mission to the French commander, from which he
+returned in the following January; and his conduct on this occasion, when
+he had to traverse great distances of unknown forest at midwinter, and to
+cope with the craft of white men and savages alike, marked him out as a
+youth fitted for the most important civil and military trusts.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Conflicts with the French</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Washington was for the first time under fire in April, 1754, when he had
+been sent, as second in command of the colonial forces, to take charge of a
+fort on the Ohio. He fell in with a French party of spies, whom his small
+force, with Indian assistance, put to flight. His fort, named Fort
+Necessity, was defended by three hundred men, but was attacked in July by a
+greatly superior force of French and Indians, and Washington had to
+capitulate, marching out with the honours of war.</p>
+
+<p>When it was determined, the same autumn, by the Governor and the British
+Secretary of State, that the colonial troops should be reduced to
+independent companies, so that there should no longer be colonial officers
+above the rank of captain, Washington, in accordance with the dawning
+republicism of America, resigned his commission, and settling at Mount
+Vernon, prepared to devote himself to agriculture. But in 1755, General
+Braddock was sent out to undertake energetic operations against the French,
+and Washington accepted the General's offer of a position on his
+staff.</p>
+
+<p>It was now that the eminent Benjamin Franklin did such great service to
+the British arms by organizing transport, and listened with astonishment to
+Braddock's anticipations of easy victory. The young aide-de-camp also
+warned the English soldier in vain. On July 9 Braddock's force was utterly
+routed by the French and Indians, and the general himself was slain. This
+reverse did away with all belief, throughout the colonies, in the power of
+British arms, and prepared the way for the independence that was to
+follow.</p>
+
+<p>On August 14 George Washington was appointed to the supreme command of
+the Virginian forces, with his headquarters at Winchester, and was occupied
+in the defence of a wide frontier with an insufficient force, until the
+expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1758, when he planted the British flag
+on its smoking ruins, and put an end to the French domination of the
+Ohio.</p>
+
+<p>His marriage to Mrs. Martha Custis, a young and wealthy widow, was
+celebrated on January 6, 1759; he took his seat in the House of Burgesses
+at Williamsburg, and established himself at Mount Vernon to develop his
+estates. A large Virginia estate, in those days, was a little empire.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Dawn of Independence</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The definitive treaty of peace between France and England was signed at
+Fontainebleau in 1763; but the tranquility of the colonies was again broken
+by an Indian insurrection, known as Pontiac's war. Washington had no part
+in its suppression, but he was soon to be called again to the defence of
+his country.</p>
+
+<p>He was in his place in the House of Burgesses on May 29, 1765, when the
+claims of Britain to tax the colony were first repudiated, and it was
+declared that the General Assembly of Virginia had the exclusive right to
+tax the inhabitants, and that whoever maintained the contrary should be
+deemed an enemy to the colony. These resolutions were the signal for
+general applause throughout the continent.</p>
+
+<p>The repeal, in 1766, of the objectionable Stamp Act only postponed the
+crisis, which became acute when the port of Boston was closed by
+Parliament, because of the resistance of that city to the importation of
+East Indian tea. A General Congress of deputies from the several colonies
+was convened for September 5, 1773, at Philadelphia, in which Washington
+took part, and a Federal Union of the colonies was then established. The
+English commander, General Gage, struck the first blow against popular
+liberties, in the engagement at Lexington, April 18, 1775, and on June 15
+Washington was unanimously elected commander-in-chief of the American
+forces.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later was fought, outside Boston, the heroic battle of Bunker's
+Hill, and on the 21st Washington set out from Philadelphia to the seat of
+war, where he laid a strict siege about Boston, with a view to forcing the
+British to come out. An English ship having bombarded the American port of
+Falmouth, an act was passed by the General Court of Massachusetts,
+encouraging the fitting out of armed vessels to defend the coast of
+America, and granting letters of marque and reprisal. In October a
+conference of delegates was held, under Washington's presidency, of which
+Benjamin Franklin was a member, with regard to a new organisation of the
+army; and a new force of twenty-two thousand was formed, every soldier
+being enlisted for one year only.</p>
+
+<p>Montreal had been captured by an American expedition, and Washington was
+now looking forward to equal success in an expedition against Quebec. He
+was further encouraged by the capture, by one of his cruisers, of a
+brigantine laden with munitions of war, including a huge brass mortar. His
+wife joined the camp before Boston, and the eventful year was closed with
+festivities.</p>
+
+<p>But the gallant attempt on Quebec, in which Montgomery fell, was
+frustrated, and the siege of Boston dragged on uneventfully, until the
+Americans, in March, seized Dorchester Heights, and made the town no longer
+tenable. On the 17th there were in Boston Harbor seventy-eight ships and
+transports casting loose for sea, and twelve thousand soldiers, sailors and
+refugees, hurrying to embark. The flag of thirteen stripes, the standard of
+the Union, floated above the Boston forts, after ten tedious months of
+siege.</p>
+
+<p>The eminent services of Washington throughout this arduous period, his
+admirable management by which, in the course of a few months, an
+undisciplined band of husbandmen became soldiers, and were able to expel a
+brave army of veterans, commanded by the most experienced generals, won the
+enthusiastic applause of the nation. A unanimous vote of thanks was passed
+to him in Congress.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Declaration of Independence</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Despatches from Canada continued to be disastrous, and the evacuation of
+that country was determined on in June, 1776. The great aim of the British
+was now to get possession of New York and the Hudson, and to make them the
+basis of military operations. While danger was gathering round New York,
+and its inhabitants were in mute suspense and fearful anticipations, the
+General Congress at Philadelphia was discussing with closed doors the
+greatest question ever debated in America. A resolution was passed
+unanimously, on July 2, "that these United Colonies are, of right ought to
+be, free and independent States."</p>
+
+<p>The fourth of July is the day of national rejoicing, for on that day the
+"Declaration of Independence," that solemn and sublime document, was
+adopted. Tradition gives a dramatic effect to its announcement. It was
+known to be under discussion, but the closed doors of Congress excluded the
+populace. They awaited, in throngs, an appointed signal. In the steeple of
+the state-house was a bell, bearing the portentous text from Scripture,
+"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants
+thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the bill had been
+passed. It was the knell of British domination.</p>
+
+<p>Washington hailed the Declaration with joy. It was but a formal
+recognition of a state of things which had long existed, but it put an end
+to all those temporizing hopes of reconciliation which had clogged the
+military action of the country. On July 9, he caused it to be read at the
+head of each brigade of the army. "The general hopes," said he, "that this
+important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and
+soldier, to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that now the peace
+and safety of his country depend, under God, solely on the success of our
+arms; and that he is now in the service of a state possessed of sufficient
+power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest honours of a free
+country." and again: "The general hopes and trusts that every officer and
+man will endeavour so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier,
+defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Winning of Independence</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>But the exultation of the patriots of New York was soon overclouded.
+British warships, under Admiral Lord Howe, were in the harbour on July 12,
+and affairs now approached a crisis. Lord Howe came "as a mediator, not as
+a destroyer," and had prepared a declaration inviting communities as well
+as individuals to merit and receive pardon by a prompt return to their
+duty; it was a matter of sore regret to him that his call to loyalty had
+been forestalled by the Declaration of Independence.</p>
+
+<p>The British force in the neighbourhood of New York, under General Howe,
+brother of the Admiral, was about thirty thousand men; the Americans were
+only about twenty thousand, for the most part raw and undisciplined, and
+the sectional jealousies prevalent among them were more and more a subject
+of uneasiness to Washington. On August 27 the American force was defeated
+with great loss in the battle of Long Island, and was withdrawn from the
+island by a masterly night retreat; this led to the loss of New York and
+the Hudson River to the British. Reverse followed reverse; Washington was
+driven by the British arms from one point after another; many of the chief
+American cities were taken; and on September 26, 1777, General Sir William
+Howe marched into Philadelphia and thus occupied the capital of the
+confederacy. But Washington still maintained his characteristic equanimity.
+"I hope," he said, "that a little time will put our affairs in a more
+flourishing condition."</p>
+
+<p>This anticipation was soon to be fulfilled. General Burgoyne had been
+advancing from the north with a large force of British and Hessian troops,
+but was compelled by General Gates, with a superior American force, to
+capitulate on October 17,1777. By this capitulation the Americans gained a
+fine train of artillery, seven thousand stand of arms, and a great quantity
+of clothing, tents, and military stores of all kinds; and the surrender of
+Burgoyne struck dismay into the British army on the Hudson River.</p>
+
+<p>But the struggle for independence was still to continue for four years
+of incessant military operations, and it was not until the surrender of
+Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, by Lord Cornwallis, that Britain gave up
+hope of reducing her rebel colonies. When the redoubts of Yorktown were
+taken, Washington exclaimed, "The work is done, and well done!"</p>
+
+<p>A general treaty of peace was signed in Paris on January 20, 1783; and
+in March of that year Sir Guy Carleton informed Washington that he was
+ordered to proclaim a cessation of hostilities by sea and land. On April
+19, the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, thus completing the eighth
+year of the war, Washington issued a general order to the army in these
+terms--"The generous task for which we first flew to arms being
+accomplished, the liberties of our country being fully acknowledged and
+firmly secured, and the characters of those who have persevered through
+every extremity of hardship, suffering, and danger, being immortalised by
+the illustrious appellation of 'the patriot army,' nothing now remains but
+for the actors of this mighty scene to preserve a perfect, unvarying
+consistency of character through the very last act, to close the drama with
+applause, and to retire from the military theatre with the same approbation
+of angels and men which has crowned all their former virtuous actions."</p>
+
+<p>Writing, on June 8, to the Governors of the several States, he
+said--"The great object for which I had the honour to hold an appointment
+in the service of my country being accomplished, I am now preparing to
+return to that domestic retirement which, it is well known, I left with the
+greatest reluctance; a retirement for which I have never ceased to sigh,
+through a long and painful absence, and in which, remote from the noise and
+trouble of the world, I meditate to pass the remainder of life in a state
+of undisturbed repose."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Years of Peace</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Washington returned to Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve, 1783, and busied
+himself with the care of his estates. He had never ceased to be the
+agriculturist; through all his campaigns he had kept himself informed of
+the course of rural affairs at Mount Vernon. By means of maps on which
+every field was laid down and numbered, he was enabled to give directions
+for their several cultivation, and to receive accounts of their several
+crops. No hurry of affairs prevented a correspondence with his agent, and
+he exacted weekly reports. He now read much on agriculture and gardening,
+and corresponded with the celebrated Arthur Young, from whom he obtained
+seeds of all kinds, improved ploughs, plans for laying out farmyards, and
+advice on various parts of rural economy.</p>
+
+<p>His active day at Mount Vernon began some time before dawn. Much of his
+correspondence was despatched before breakfast, which took place at
+half-past seven. After breakfast he mounted his horse and rode off to
+various parts of his estate; dined at half-past two; if there was no
+company he would write until dark; and in the evening he read, or amused
+himself with a game of whist.</p>
+
+<p>The adoption of the Federal Constitution opened another epoch in the
+life of Washington. Before the official forms of an election could be
+carried into operation, a unanimous sentiment throughout the Union
+pronounced him the nation's choice to fill the presidential chair. The
+election took place, and Washington was chosen President for a term of four
+years from March 4, 1788. An entry in his diary, on March 16, says--"I bade
+adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity; and with
+a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words
+to express, set out for New York with the best disposition to render
+service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of
+answering its expectations."</p>
+
+<p>The weight and influence of his name and character were deemed all
+essential to complete his work; to set the new government in motion, and
+conduct it through its first perils and trials. He undertook the task, firm
+in the resolve in all things to act as his conscience told him was "right
+as it respected his God, his country, and himself." For he knew no divided
+fidelity, no separate obligation; his most sacred duty to himself was his
+highest duty to his country and his God.</p>
+
+<p>His death took place on December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p>The character of Washington may want some of the poetical elements which
+dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities and a
+rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man.
+Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgement, an
+immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never
+wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOSEPHUS"></a>JOSEPHUS</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Autobiography"></a>Autobiography</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Flavius Josephus was born in Jerusalem in 37 A.D. His
+father, Matthias, was a priest, and his mother belonged to the Asmonean
+princely family. So distinguished was he as a student that, at the age of
+twenty-six, he was chosen delegate to Nero. When the critical juncture
+arose for his nation, through the rebellion excited by the cruelties of
+Gessius Florus, the Roman procurator, Josephus was appointed governor of
+Galilee The insurrection proved fatal, for Vespasian by his invasion
+rendered resistance hopeless. Subsequently he lived in Rome, and the date
+of his death is unknown. The works of this writer are monumental. He wrote
+his vivid "Wars of the Jews" in both Hebrew and Greek. His "Antiquities of
+the Jews" traces the whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the
+great war. Scaliger, one of the acutest of mediaeval critics, declares that
+in his writings on the affairs of the Jews, and even on those of foreign
+nations, Josephus deserves more credit than all the Greek and Roman writers
+put together. His fidelity and veracity are as universally admitted as his
+direct and lucid style is generally admired. His account of his own life
+and career is a masterpiece in this category of literature, for it is
+written with blended modesty and na&iuml;vet&eacute;. In many passages of
+this "Autobiography" he does not hesitate to assume great credit for his
+own courage, probity, and skill, but in each case the justification is
+manifest, for he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous
+machinations of his virulent enemies. The "Autobiography" is from beginning
+to end a thrilling and wonderful romance of real life, for the hairbreadth
+escapes of this extraordinary man are among the most singular recitals in
+the whole world of adventure. The whole story is unique, as was the noble
+individuality of the man himself. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Priest of the Blood-Royal</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The family from which I, Flavius Josephus, am derived is not an ignoble
+one, but hath descended all along from the priests. I am not only sprung
+from a sacerdotal family in general, but from the first of the twenty-four
+courses of the Jewish priests, and I am of the chief family of that course
+also. With us, to be of the sacerdotal dignity is an indication of the
+splendour of a family. But, further, by my mother I am of the royal blood;
+for the children of Asmonaeus, from whom that family was derived, had both
+the office of the high-priesthood and the dignity of a king for a long time
+together.</p>
+
+<p>My father Matthias, to whom I was born in the first year of the reign of
+Gaius Caesar, was not only eminent in Jerusalem, our greatest city, on
+account of his nobility, but had a higher commendation on account of his
+righteousness. I was brought up with my brother Matthias. As a child I
+gained a great reputation through my love for learning, and, when I was
+about fourteen years of age, was frequently asked by the high-priests and
+chief men of the city my opinion about the accurate understanding of points
+of the law.</p>
+
+<p>In my twenty-sixth year I took a voyage to Rome. My object was to plead
+before Caesar the cause of certain excellent priests whom Felix, then
+procurator of Judaea, had put in bonds on a trivial pretext. I was desirous
+to procure deliverance for them, not only because they were of my own
+friends, but because I heard that they sustained their piety towards God
+under their afflictions, and that they simply subsisted on figs and
+nuts.</p>
+
+<p>Our voyage was an adventurous one, for the ship was wrecked in the
+Adriatic Sea, and we that were in it, being about six hundred in number,
+swam all night for our lives. I and about eighty others were saved by a
+ship of Cyrene. When I had thus escaped, and was come to Puteoli, I became
+acquainted with an actor named Alityrus, much beloved by Nero, but a Jew by
+birth. Through his interest I became known to Poppaea, Caesar's wife, and
+having, through her, procured the liberty of the priests, besides receiving
+from her many presents, I returned to Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>Now I perceived that many innovations were begun, and that many were
+cherishing hopes of a revolt from the Romans.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Prelude to the Great Crisis</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>So I retired to the inner court of the Temple. Yet I went out of the
+Temple again, after Menahem and the chief members of the band of robbers
+were put to death, and abode among the high-priests and the chief of the
+Pharisees. But no small fear seized upon us when we saw the people in arms,
+while we were not able to restrain the seditious. We hoped that Gessius
+Floras would speedily arrive with great forces. But on his arrival he was
+defeated with great loss.</p>
+
+<p>The disgrace that fell upon him became the calamity of our whole nation,
+for it elevated the hopes of conquering the Romans on the part of those who
+desired war. But another cause of the revolt arose in Syria from the cruel
+treatment of the Jews in many cities, where they showed not the least
+disposition towards rebellion. About 13,000 were treacherously slain in
+Scythopolis, and the Jews in Damascus underwent many miseries; but of these
+events accounts are given in the books of the Jewish War.</p>
+
+<p>I was now sent, together with two other priests, Joazar and Judas, by
+the principal men of Jerusalem, to Galilee, to persuade the ill men there
+to lay down their arms, and to teach them that it were better for us all to
+wait to see what the Romans would do. I came into Galilee, and found the
+people of Sepphoris in no small agony about their country, by reason that
+the Galileans had resolved to plunder it, because of their friendship with
+the Romans, and because they had made a league with Cestius Gallus, the
+president of Syria. But I quieted their fears. Yet I found the people of
+Tiberias ready to take arms, for there were three factions in that
+city.</p>
+
+<p>The first faction, with Julius Capellus for the head, was composed of
+men of worth and gravity, and advised the city to continue in allegiance to
+the Romans; the second faction, consisting of the most ignoble persons, was
+determined for war. But as for Justus, the head of the third faction,
+though he pretended to be doubtful about war, yet he was really desirous of
+innovation, as supposing that he should gain power by the change of
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>By his harangues Justus inflamed the minds of many of the people,
+persuading them to take arms, and then he went out and set fire to the
+villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos, on the border of Tiberias, and
+of the region of Scythopolis.</p>
+
+<p>Gamala persevered in its allegiance to the Romans, under the persuasion
+of Philip, the son of Jacimus, who was governor of the city under King
+Agrippa. He reminded the people of the benefits the king had bestowed on
+them, and pointed out how powerful the Romans were, and thus he restrained
+the zeal of the citizens.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as soon as I was come into Galilee, and had ascertained the state
+of affairs, I wrote to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem asking for their
+direction. They replied that I should remain there; and that, if my
+fellow-delegates were willing, I should join with them in the care of
+Galilee. But these my colleagues, having gotten great riches from those
+tithes which as priests were their dues, and were given to them, determined
+to return to their own country. Yet when I desired them to stay to settle
+public affairs, they complied, and we removed from Sepphoris to Bethmanus,
+a village four furlongs from Tiberias, whence I sent messengers to the
+senate of that city, asking that the principal men should come to me.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Governor of Galilee</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When the chief men of Tiberias were come, I told them I was sent as a
+legate from the people at Jerusalem, in order to persuade them to destroy
+that house which Herod the tetrarch had built in Tiberias, and which,
+contrary to our laws, contained the figures of living creatures. I desired
+that they would give us leave to do so; but for a good while they were
+unwilling, only being overcome by long persuasion. Then Jesus, son of
+Sapphias, one of the leaders of sedition, anticipated us and set the palace
+on fire, thinking that as some of the roofs were covered with gold, he
+should gain much money thereby. These incendiaries also plundered much
+furniture; then they slew all the Greeks who dwelt in Tiberias, and as many
+others as were their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>When I understood this state of things, I was greatly provoked, and went
+down to Tiberias and took care of all the royal furniture that could be
+recovered from such as had plundered it. Next I committed it to ten of the
+chief senators. From thence I and my fellow-delegates went to Gischala to
+John, to learn his designs, and soon discovered that he was for
+innovations, for he wished me to give him authority to carry off the corn
+that belonged to Caesar, and to lay it in the villages of Upper Galilee.
+Though I refused, he corrupted my colleagues with money, and so I, being
+out-voted, held my tongue. By various other cunning contrivances which I
+could not prevent, John gained vast sums of money. But when I had dismissed
+my fellow-delegates I took care to have arms provided and the cities
+fortified. My first care was to keep Galilee in peace, so I made friends of
+seventy of the principal men, and took them on my journeys as companions,
+and set them to judge causes.</p>
+
+<p>I was now about thirty years of age, in which time of life it is
+difficult to escape from the calumnies of the envious. Yet did I preserve
+every woman free from injury; I despised and refused presents; nor would I
+take the tithes due to me as a priest. When I twice took Sepphoris by
+force, and Tiberias four times, and Gadara once, and when I had subdued and
+captured John, who had laid treacherous snares for me, I did not punish
+with death either him or others. And on this account I suppose it was that
+God, Who is never unacquainted with those that do as they ought to do,
+delivered me still out of the hands of my enemies, and afterwards preserved
+me when I fell into many perils.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, when my abode was at Cana, a village of Galilee, John came
+to Tiberias and stirred a revolt against me, so that my life was in danger.
+I escaped only by fleeing down the lake in a ship to Taricheae, whence I
+proceeded to Sepphoris. John returned to Gischala, where he continued to
+cultivate bitter hatred against me. Through the machinations of himself and
+Simon, a chief man in Gadara, all Galilee was filled with rumours that
+their country was about to be betrayed by me to the Romans.</p>
+
+<p>Hereby I again incurred extreme peril, but I took a bold course. Dressed
+in a black garment, with my sword hung at my neck, I went to face, in the
+hippodrome, a multitude of the citizens of Taricheae, and addressed them in
+such terms that, though some wished to kill me, these were overcome by the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>Although the multitude returned to their homes, yet the robbers and
+other authors of the tumult, afraid lest I might punish them, took six
+hundred armed men and came to burn the house where I abode. Thinking it
+ignoble to run away, I resolved to expose myself to danger; so I shut
+myself up in an upper room, and asked that one of them should be sent up to
+me, by whom I would send out to them money from the spoils I had taken.</p>
+
+<p>When they had sent in one of their boldest, I had him whipped severely,
+and commanded one of his hands to be cut off and hung about his neck. In
+this case he was put out, and those who had sent him, affrighted at the
+supposition that I had more armed men about me than they had, immediately
+fled.</p>
+
+<p>I dealt in like manner with Clitus, a young man of Tiberias, who was the
+author of a fresh sedition in that city. Since I thought it not agreeable
+to piety to put one of my own people to death, I called to Clitus himself,
+and said to him, "Since thou deservest to lose both thy hands for thine
+ingratitude to me, be thou thine own executioner, lest by refusal to do so
+thou undergo a worse punishment."</p>
+
+<p>When he earnestly begged me to spare one of his hands, it was with
+difficulty that I granted it. So, in order to prevent the loss of both his
+hands, he willingly took his sword and cut off his own left hand; and this
+put an end to the sedition.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--The Failure of His Foes</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The people of Gamala wrote to me, asking that I would send them an armed
+force, and also workmen to raise up the walls of their city, and I acceded
+to each of their requests. I also built walls about many villages and
+cities in Upper and Lower Galilee, besides laying up in them much corn. But
+the hatred of John of Gischala grew more violent by reason of my
+prosperity. He sent his brother Simon to Jerusalem with a hundred armed men
+to induce the Sanhedrin to deprive me of my commission; but this was not an
+easy thing to do, for Ananus, one of the chief priests, demonstrated that
+many of the people bore witness that I had acted like an excellent
+general.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Ananus and some of his friends, corrupted by bribes, secretly agreed
+to expel me out of Galilee, without making the rest of the citizens
+acquainted with what they were doing. Accordingly they sent four men of
+distinction down to Galilee to seek to supersede me in ruling the
+province.</p>
+
+<p>These were to ask the people of Galilee what was their reason of their
+love to me. If the people alleged that it was because I was born at
+Jerusalem, that I was versed in the law, and that I was a priest, then they
+were to reply that they also were natives of Jerusalem, that they
+understood the law, and that two of them were priests. To Jonathan and his
+companion were given 40,000 drachmae out of the public money, and a large
+band of men was equipped with arms and money to accompany them.</p>
+
+<p>But wonderful was what I saw in a dream that very night. It seemed to me
+that a certain person stood by me, and said, "O Josephus, put away all
+fear, for what now afflicts thee will render thee most happy, and thou
+shalt overcome all difficulties! Be not cast down, but remember that thou
+art to fight the Romans."</p>
+
+<p>When I had seen this vision I arose, intending to go down to the plain
+to meet a great multitude who, I knew, would be assembled, for my friends,
+on my refusal had dispatched messengers all around to inform the people of
+Galilee of my purpose to depart. And when the great assembly of men, with
+their wives and children, saw me, they fell on their faces weeping, and
+besought me not to leave them to be exposed to their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>When I heard this, and saw what sorrow affected the people, I was moved
+with compassion, and promised that I would stay with them, thinking it
+became me to undergo manifold hazards for the sake of so great a multitude.
+So I ordered that five thousand of them should come to me armed, and that
+the rest should depart to their own homes.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before Vespasian landed at Tyre, and King Agrippa with
+him. How he then came into Galilee, and how he fought his first battle with
+me near Taricheae, and how, after the capture of Jotapata, I was taken
+alive and bound, and how I was afterward loosed, with all that was done by
+me in the Jewish war, and during the siege of Jerusalem, I have accurately
+related in the books concerning the "Wars of the Jews."</p>
+
+<p>When the siege of Jotapata was over, and I was among the Romans, I was
+kept with much care, by means of the great respect that Vespasian showed
+me. After being freed from my bonds I went to Alexandria, where I married.
+From thence I was sent, together with Titus, to the siege of Jerusalem, and
+was frequently in danger of being put to death. For the Jews desired to get
+me into their power to have me punished, and the Romans, whenever they were
+beaten, thought it was through my treachery. But Titus Caesar was well
+acquainted with the uncertain fortune of war, and returned no answer to the
+soldiers' solicitation against me.</p>
+
+<p>When Titus was going away to Rome he made choice of me to sail along
+with him, and paid me great respect And when we were come to Rome I had
+great care taken of me by Vespasian, for he gave me an apartment in his own
+house.</p>
+
+<p>When Vespasian was dead, Titus kept up the same kindness which his
+father had shown me, and Domitian, who succeeded, still augmented his
+respects to me; nay, Domitia, the wife of Caesar, continued to show me many
+kindnesses.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOHN_GIBSON_LOCKHART"></a>JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Sir_Walter_Scott"></a>Life of Sir Walter Scott</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> John Gibson Lockhart was born in Scotland in 1794. He
+received part of his education at Glasgow, part at Oxford, and in 1816 he
+became an advocate at the Scotch bar. As one of the chief supporters of
+Blackwood's Magazine, he began to exhibit that sharp, bitter wit which was
+his most salient characteristic. In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of
+Sir Walter Scott, and for this reason, perhaps no one has been better
+qualified to write the biography of the great novelist. Lockhart's "Life of
+Sir Walter Scott" is a biography in the best sense of the word--one which
+has been ranked even with Boswell's "Johnson." It reveals to the reader the
+inmost personality of the man himself, and no life from first to last could
+better afford such complete revelation. Moreover, the "Life" was a labour
+of love, Lockhart himself receiving not a fraction of its very considerable
+proceeds, but resigning them absolutely to Scott's creditors. Published in
+seven volumes in 1838, in every respect it is the greatest of all
+Lockhart's books. Lockhart died in 1854. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>Early Years</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Sir Walter Scott was distantly connected with ancient families both on
+his father's and his mother's side. His father, Walter Scott, a Writer to
+the Signet in Edinburgh, was a handsome, hospitable, shrewd and religious
+man, who married, in 1758, Anne, eldest daughter of Dr. John Rutherford,
+professor of medicine in Edinburgh University. The Scotts had twelve
+children, of whom only five survived early youth.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of this biography was born on August 15, 1771, in a house at
+the head of the College Wynd. He was a healthy child, but when eighteen
+months old was affected with a fever which left a permanent lameness in the
+right leg. With a view to curing this weakness he was sent to live with his
+paternal grandfather, at the farm house of Sandy-Knowe near Dryburgh Abbey,
+in the extreme south of Berwickshire.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in the country air, he became a sturdy boy, and his mind was
+stored with the old Broder tales and songs. In his fourth year he was taken
+to London by sea, and thence to Bath, where he remained about a year for
+the sake of the waters, became acquainted with the venerable John Home,
+author of "Douglas," and was introduced by his uncle, Capt. Robert Scott,
+to the delights of the theatre and "As You Like It."</p>
+
+<p>From his eighth year Scott lived at his father's house in George Square,
+Edinburgh. His lameness and solitary habits had made him a good reader, and
+he used to read aloud to his mother, Pope's translation of Homer and Allan
+Ramsay's "Evergreen;" his mother had the happiest of tempers and a good
+love of poetry. In the same year he was sent to the High School, Edinburgh,
+under the celebrated Dr. Adam, who made him sensible of the beauties of the
+Latin poets.</p>
+
+<p>After his school years, the lad, who had become delicate from rapid
+growth, spent half a year with an aunt, Miss Janet Scott, at Kelso. He had
+now awaked to the poetry of Shakespeare and of Spenser, and had acquired an
+ample and indiscriminate appetite for reading of all kinds. To this time at
+Kelso he also traced his earliest feeling for the beauties of natural
+objects. The love of Nature, especially when combined with ancient ruins,
+or remains of our forefathers' piety or splendour, became his insatiable
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>He was then sent to classes in the Faculty of Arts in Edinburgh
+University; and in 1785 was articled to his father and entered upon the
+wilderness of law. Though he disliked the drudgery of the office, he loved
+his father and was ambitious, and the allowance which he received afforded
+the pleasures of the circulating library and the theatre. His reading had
+now extended to the great writers in French, Spanish and Italian
+literature. Distant excursions on foot or on horseback formed his favorite
+amusement, undertaken for the pleasure of seeing romantic scenery and
+places distinguished by historic events.</p>
+
+<p>In 1790, Scott determined, in accordance with his father's wishes, to
+become an advocate, and assumed the gown on July 11, 1792. His personal
+appearance at this time was engaging. He had a fresh, brilliant complexion,
+his eyes were clear and radiant, and the noble expanse of his brow gave
+dignity to his whole aspect. His smile was always delightful, and there was
+a playful intermixture of tenderness and gravity well calculated to fix a
+lady's eye. His figure, except for the blemish in one limb, was eminently
+handsome, and much above the usual stature; and the whole outline was that
+of extraordinary vigour, without a touch of clumsiness.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Poet's Education</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I do not know when his first attachment began; its object was Margaret,
+daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belcher, of Invermay. But after
+Scott had for several years nourished the dream of union with this lady,
+his hopes terminated in her being married to the late Sir William Forbes,
+of Pitsligo, a gentleman of the highest character, who lived to act the
+part of a generous friend to his rival throughout the distresses of 1826
+and 1827.</p>
+
+<p>After being admitted an advocate, Scott undertook many excursions to
+various parts of Scotland, gaining that intimate knowledge of the country,
+and its people and traditions, which appears in his poems and novels. Thus,
+he visited Northumberland, and made a close inspection of the battle-field
+of Flodden, and on another journey studied the Saxon cathedral of Hexam.
+During seven successive years he made raids, as he called them, into the
+wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale, picking up the ancient
+"riding ballads" preserved among the descendants of the moss-troopers. To
+these rambles he owed much of the materials of his "Minstrelsy of the
+Border," and here he came to know Willie Elliot, the original of Dandie
+Dinmont. Another expedition, into Galloway, carried him into the scenery of
+Guy Mannering. Stirlingshire, Perthshire and Forfarshire became familiar
+ground to him, and the scenery of Loch Katrine especially was associated
+with many a merry expedition. His first appearance as counsel in a criminal
+court was at the Jedburgh assizes, where he helped a veteran poacher and
+sheep-stealer to escape through the meshes of the law.</p>
+
+<p>In June, 1795, Scott was appointed one of the curators of the Advocate's
+Library and became an adept in the deciphering of old manuscript. His
+highlands and border raids were constantly suggesting inquiries as to
+ancient local history and legend, which could nowhere else have been
+pursued with equal advantage.</p>
+
+<p>In the same year, a rhymed translation of Burger's "Lenore," from his
+pen, was shown by him to Miss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of Purgstall,
+who was delighted and astonished at it. "Upon my word," she wrote in a
+letter to a friend, "Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet--something of
+a cross I think between Burns and Gray." This lady had the ballad elegantly
+printed in April, 1796, and Scott thus made his first appearance as an
+author. In October, this translation, together with that of the "Wild
+Huntsman," also from Burger, was published anonymously in a thin quarto by
+Manners and Miller, of Edinburgh. The little volume found warm favour: its
+free, masculine and lively style revealing the hand of a poet.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Marriage</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In July, 1797, Scott set out on a tour to the English lakes, accompanied
+by his brother John and Adam Fergusson, visiting Tweeddale, Carlisle,
+Penrith, Ullswater and Windermere, and at length fixing their headquarters
+at Gilsland, a peaceful and sequestered little watering place.</p>
+
+<p>He was riding one day with Fergusson when they met, some miles away from
+home, a young lady on horseback, whose appearance instantly struck both of
+them so much, that they kept her in view until they had satisfied
+themselves that she was staying in Gilsland. The same evening there was a
+ball, at which Scott was introduced to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter.</p>
+
+<p>Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal
+attractions; a fairy-like form; a clear olive complexion; large, deep eyes
+of Italian brown; a profusion of silken tresses, raven-black; her address
+mingling the reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman with a certain natural
+archness and gaiety that suited well her French accent. A lovelier vision,
+as all who remember her youth have assured me, could hardly be imagined,
+and from that hour the fate of the poet was fixed.</p>
+
+<p>She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a devoted royalist,
+who died in the beginning of the Revolution; Madame Charpentier had died
+soon after bringing her children to London; and the Marquis of Downshire
+had become their guardian. Miss Charpentier was now making a summer
+excursion under the care of the lady who had superintended her
+education.</p>
+
+<p>In an affectionate and dutiful letter Scott acquainted his mother with
+his purpose of marriage, and Miss Carpenter remained at Carlisle until her
+destiny was settled. The lady had a considerable private income, amounting
+to about &pound;500 a year; the difficulties presented by the prudence and
+prejudices of family connections were soon overcome; and the marriage took
+place in St. Mary's, Carlisle, on December 24, 1797. Scott took his bride
+to a lodging in George Street, Edinburgh, the house which he had taken not
+being quite ready, and the first fortnight convinced her husband's family
+that she had the sterling qualities of a wife.</p>
+
+<p>Their house in South Castle Street, soon after exchanged for one in
+North Castle Street, which he inhabited down to 1826, became the centre of
+a highly agreeable circle; the evenings passed in a round of innocent
+gaiety; and they and their friends were passionately fond of the theatre.
+Perhaps nowhere else could have been formed a society on so small a scale
+as that of Edinburgh at this time, including more of vigorous intellect,
+varied information, elegant tastes, and real virtue, affection and mutual
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1798, Scott hired a cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk,
+about six miles from Edinburgh, having a garden with a most beautiful view.
+In this retreat they spent several happy summers, receiving the visits of
+their chosen friends from the neighbouring city, and wandering amidst some
+of the most romantic scenery of Scotland.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Early Poems</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In February, 1799, a London Bookseller named Bell, brought out Scott's
+version of Goethe's tragedy, "Goetz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand,"
+having purchased the copyright for twenty-five guineas. This was the first
+publication that bore Scott's name. In March of that year he took his wife
+to London, and met with some literary and fashionable society; but his
+chief object was to examine the antiquities of the Tower and Westminster,
+and to make researches among the manuscripts of the British Museum. He
+found his "Goetz" favourably spoken of by the critics, but it had not
+attracted general attention.</p>
+
+<p>About this time Scott wrote a play entitled "House of Aspen" which,
+having been read and commended by the celebrated actress, Mrs. Esten, was
+put in rehearsal by Kemble for the stage. But the notion was abandoned; and
+discovering the play thirty years after among his papers, Scott sent it to
+the "Keepsake" of 1829.</p>
+
+<p>His return to Scotland was hastened by the news of his father's death,
+and his mother and sister spent the following summer and autumn in his
+cottage at Lasswade. This summer produced his first serious attempt in
+verse, "Glenfinlas," which was followed by the noble ballads, "Eve of St.
+John," "The Grey Brother" and "Fire-King"; and it was in the course of this
+autumn that he first visited Bothwell Castle, the seat of Archibald, Lord
+Douglas, whose wife, and her companion, Lady Louisa Stuart, were among his
+dearest friends through life.</p>
+
+<p>During a visit to Kelso, before returning to Edinburgh for the winter,
+Scott renewed an acquaintance with a classfellow of his boyhood, Mr. James
+Ballantyne, who was now printer and editor of a weekly paper in his native
+town. Scott showed him some of his poems, expressed his wonder that his old
+friend did not try to get some bookseller's printing and suggested a
+collection of old Border ballads. Ballantyne printed for him a few
+specimens to show to the booksellers; and thus began an experiment which
+changed the fortunes of both Scott and Ballantyne.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the commencement of the Winter Session, the office of
+Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant, and the Duke of Buccleuch
+used his influence with Mr. Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville, to
+procure it for Scott. The appointment to the Sheriff ship was made on
+December 16, 1799. It brought him an annual salary of &pound;300; the
+duties of the office were far from heavy; the small pastoral territory was
+largely the property of the Duke of Buccleuch; and Scott turned with
+redoubled zeal to his project of editing the ballads, many of which belong
+to this district. In this design he found able assistants in Richard Heber
+and John Leyden. During the years 1800 and 1801, the "Minstrelsy" formed
+his chief occupation.</p>
+
+<p>The duties of the Sheriffship took him frequently to Ettrick Forest, and
+on such occasions he took up his lodging at the little inn at Clovenford, a
+favourite fishing station on the road from Edinburgh to Selkirk. Here he
+was within a few miles of the values of Yarrow and Ettrick. On one of his
+excursions here, penetrating beyond St Mary's Lake, he found hospitality at
+the farmhouse of William Laidlaw, through whom he came to know James Hogg,
+a brother poet hardly conscious of his powers.</p>
+
+<p>The first and second volumes of the "Minstrelsy" appeared in January,
+1802, from the house of Cadell and Davies in the Strand, and formed Scott's
+first introduction as an original writer to the English public. Their
+reception greatly elated Ballantyne, the printer, who looked on his
+connection with them as the most fortunate event in his life. The great
+bookseller, Longman, repaired to Scotland soon after this, and purchased
+the copyright of the "Minstrelsy," including the third volume; and not long
+afterwards James Ballantyne set up as a printer in Edinburgh, assisted by a
+liberal loan from Scott.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Scott's Chief Poems</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The "Edinburgh Review" was begun in 1802, and Scott soon became a
+contributor of critical articles for his friend Mr. Jeffrey, the elder. His
+chief work was now on "Sir Tristram," a romance ascribed to Thomas of
+Ercildoune; but "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was making progress in 1803,
+when Scott made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and his sister, under
+circumstances described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal. In the
+following May, he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel, with an adjoining
+farm, on the southern bank of the Tweed, a few miles from Selkirk; and in
+the same month "Sir Tristram" was published by Constable of Edinburgh.
+Captain Robert Scott, his uncle, died in June, leaving him the house of
+Rosebank near Kelso, which Scott sold for &pound;5000.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published in the first week of 1805,
+and its success at once decided that literature should form the main
+business of Scott's life. Its design arose originally from the suggestion
+of the lovely Countess of Dalkeith, who had heard a wild, rude legend of
+Border <i>diablerie</i>, and sportively asked him to make it the subject of
+a ballad. He cast about for a new variety of diction and rhyme, and having
+happened to hear a recitation of Coleridge's unpublished "Christabel"
+determined to adopt a similar cadence. The division into cantos was
+suggested by one of his friends, after the example of Spenser's "Faery
+Queen." The creation of the framework, the conception of the ancient
+harper, came last of all. Thus did "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" grow out
+of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." The publishers were Longman of
+London, and Constable of Edinburgh, and the author's share of profits came
+to &pound;769.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time that Scott took over a third share in Ballantyne's
+business, a commercial tie which bound him for twenty years. Its influence
+on his literary work and his fortunes was productive of much good and not a
+little evil. Meanwhile, he entered with the zest of an active partner into
+many publishing schemes, and exerted himself in the interests of many
+authors less fortunate than himself.</p>
+
+<p>With the desire of placing his financial position on a more substantial
+basis, Scott had solicited the office of Clerk of Session; and after some
+difficulties, during which he visited London and was received by the
+Princess of Wales, he was installed in that position on March 8, 1806, and
+continued to discharge its duties with exemplary regularity for twenty-five
+years.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of "Marmion" was further interrupted by Scott's appointment
+as secretary to a Commission for the improvement of Scottish Jurisprudence,
+but the poems appeared at last in February, 1808. It received only very
+qualified praise from Jeffrey, but I think it may be considered on the
+whole Scott's greatest poem, and its popularity was from the very first
+extraordinary.</p>
+
+<p>In April of the same year William Miller of Albemarle Street published
+Scott's great edition of Dryden, with a biography, in eighteen volumes; and
+the editor's industry and critical judgement were the subject of a
+laudatory article by Hallam in the "Edinburgh Review."</p>
+
+<p>Scott was now engaged in a vast multiplicity of business. He was
+preparing an edition of Swift for Constable, establishing his own partner
+as a publisher in Edinburgh under the title of "John Ballantyne and Co.,
+Booksellers," and was projecting a new periodical of sound constitutional
+principles, to be known as the "Quarterly Review," published by Murray in
+London and by Ballantyne in Edinburgh. In connection with the latter
+enterprise Scott and Mrs. Scott went up to London for two months in the
+Spring of 1809, and enjoyed the society of Coleridge, Canning, Croker, and
+Ellis. The first "Quarterly" appeared while he was in London, and contained
+three articles from his pen. At this time also he prevailed on Henry
+Siddons, the nephew of Kemble, to undertake the lease and management of the
+Edinburgh Theatre; and purchasing a share himself, became an acting
+trustee, and for many years took a lively concern in the Edinburgh
+company.</p>
+
+<p>Early in May, 1810, "The Lady of the Lake" came out, like her two elder
+sisters, in all the majesty of quarto, at the price of two guineas, the
+author receiving two thousand guineas for the copyright. The whole country
+rang with the praises of the poet, and crowds set off to view the scenery
+of Loch Katrine. The critics were in full harmony with one another and with
+the popular voice.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Waverley Novels</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On returning, in 1810, from an excursion to the Islands of the western
+Scottish coast, where he had been collecting impressions for "The Lord of
+the Isles," Scott was searching one morning for fishing-flies in an old
+desk at Ashestiel, when he came across a forgotten manuscript, written and
+abandoned five years before. It contained the first two chapters of
+"Waverley." He submitted it to Ballantyne, whose opinion was on the whole
+against completion of the novel, and it was again laid aside.</p>
+
+<p>Although his publishing venture had begun to wear a bad aspect, Scott
+was now in receipt of &pound;1300 a year as Clerk of Session, and when the
+lease of Ashestiel ran out in May, 1811, he felt justified in purchasing,
+for &pound;4000, a farm on the banks of the Tweed above Galafoot. This
+farm, then known as "Garty Holes," became "Abbotsford," so called because
+these lands had belonged of old to the great Abbey of Melrose; and in his
+own mind Scott became henceforth the "Laird of Abbotsford."</p>
+
+<p>The last days at Ashestiel were marked by a friendly interchange of
+letters with Lord Byron, whose "Childe Harold" had just come out, and with
+correspondence with Johanna Baillie and with Crabbe. At Whitsuntide the
+family, which included two boys and two girls, moved to their new
+possession, and structural alterations on the farmhouse began.</p>
+
+<p>The poem "Rokeby" appeared in January, 1813. A month or two later the
+crisis in the war affected credit aniversally, and many publishing firms,
+including that of the Ballantynes, were brought to extremity. The
+difficulty was relieved for a time by the sale of copyrights and much of
+the stock to Constable, on the understanding that the publishing concern
+should be wound up as soon as possible. But Scott was preparing fresh
+embarrassments for himself by the purchase of another parcel of land; a yet
+more acute crisis in the Ballantyne firm forced him to borrow from the Duke
+of Buccleuch; and when planning out his work for the purpose of retrieving
+his position he determined to complete the fragment of "Waverley."</p>
+
+<p>The offer of the post of poet-laureate was made to Scott at this time,
+but holding already two lucrative offices in the gift of the Crown, he
+declined the honour and suggested that it should be given to Southey, which
+was accordingly done. The "Swift" in nineteen volumes, appeared in July,
+1814, and had a moderate success.</p>
+
+<p>"Waverley," of which Scott was to receive half the profits, was
+published by Constable in July, 1814, without the author's name, and its
+great success with the public was assured from the first. None of Scott's
+intimate friends ever had, or could have, the slightest doubt as to its
+parentage, and when Mr. Jeffrey reviewed the book, doing justice to its
+substantial merits, he was at no pains to conceal his conviction of the
+authorship. With the single exception of the "Quarterly," the critics
+hailed it as a work of original creative genius, one of the masterpieces of
+prose fiction.</p>
+
+<p>From a voyage to the Hebrides with the Commissioners of the Northern
+Lighthouses, Scott returned in vigour to his desk at Abbotsford, where he
+worked at "The Lord of the Isles" and "Guy Mannering." The poem appeared in
+January and the novel in February, 1815. "The Lord of the Isles" never
+reached the same popularity as the earlier poems had enjoyed, but "Guy
+Mannering" was pronounced by acclamation to be fully worthy of the honours
+of "Waverley." In March, Scott went to London with his wife and daughter,
+met Byron almost daily in Murray's house, and was presented to the Prince
+Regent, who was enchanted with Scott, as Scott with him. A visit to Paris
+in July of the same year is commemorated in "Paul's Letters to His
+Kinsfolk." Scott's reputation had as yet made little way among the French,
+but the Duke of Wellington, then in Paris, treated him with kindness and
+confidence, and a few eminent Frenchmen vied with the enthusiastic Germans
+in their attentions to him.</p>
+
+<p>"The Antiquary" came out early in 1816, and was its author's favourite
+among all his novels. The "Tales of my Landlord," published by Murray and
+Blackwood, appeared in December, and though anonymous was at once
+recognized as Scott's. The four volumes included the "Black Dwarf" and "Old
+Mortality." A month later followed a poem, "Harold the Dauntless." The
+title of "Rob Roy" was suggested by Constable; and the novel was published
+on the last day of 1817.</p>
+
+<p>During this year the existing house of Abbotsford had been building, and
+Scott had added to his estate the lands of Toftfield, at a price of
+&pound;10,000. He was then thought to be consolidating a large fortune, for
+the annual profits of his novels alone had, for several years, been not
+less than the cost of Toftfield.</p>
+
+<p>Having been asked by the Ballantynes to contribute to the historical
+department of the "Annual Register," I often had occasion now to visit
+Scott in his house in Castle Street, where I usually found him working in
+his "den," a small room behind the dining parlour, in company with his dog,
+Maida. Besides his own huge elbow-chair, there were but two others in the
+room, and one of these was reserved for his amanuensis, a portrait of
+Claverhouse, over the chimneypiece, with a Highland target on either side
+and broadswords and dirks disposed star-fashion round them. A venerable
+cat, fat and sleek, watched the proceedings of his toaster <b>and</b> Maids
+with dignified equanimity.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Abbotsford</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The house of Abbotsford was not completed, and finally rid of carpenters
+and upholsterers, until Christmas, 1824; but the first time I saw it was in
+1818, and from that time onwards Scott's hospitality was extended freely
+not only to the proprietors and tenants of the surrounding district, but to
+a never-ending succession of visitors who came to Abbotsford as pilgrims.
+In the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his prosperity was at its
+height, he entertained under his roof as many persons of distinction in
+rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and in science, as the most
+princely nobleman of his age ever did in the like space of time. It is not
+beyond the mark to add that of the eminent foreigners who visited our
+Island within this period, a moiety crossed the Channel mainly in
+consequence of the interest in which his writings had invested Scotland,
+and that the hope of beholding the man under his own roof was the crowning
+motive with half that moiety. His rural neighbours were assembled
+principally at two annual festivals of sport; one was a solemn bout of
+salmon fishing for the neighbouring gentry, presided over by the Sheriff;
+and the other was the "Abbotsford Hunt," a coursing field on a large scale,
+including, with many of the young gentry, all Scott's personal favourites
+among the yeomen and farmers of the surrounding country.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding all his prodigious hospitality, his double official
+duties as Sheriff and Clerk of Session, the labours and anxieties in which
+the ill-directed and tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him, the keen
+interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the house and
+estate of Abbotsford, and finally, notwithstanding obstinate and agonizing
+attacks of internal cramp which were undermining his constitution, Scott
+continued to produce rapidly the wonderful series of the Waverley Novels.
+"The Bride of Lammermoor," "Legend of Montrose" and "Ivanhoe" appeared in
+1819, "The Monastery," "The Abbot" and "Kenilworth" in 1820, "The Pirate"
+in 1821, "The Fortunes of Nigel" in 1822, "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin
+Durward" and "St. Ronan's Well" in 1823, and "Redgauntlet" in 1824. His
+great literary reputation was acknowledged by a baronetcy conferred in
+1820, and by the most flattering condescensions on the part of King George
+IV on his visit to Edinburgh in 1822.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The End of All</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Scott's Diary from November, 1825, shows dear forebodings of the
+collapse of the houses of Constable and Ballantyne. In a time of universal
+confidence and prosperity, the banks had supported them to an extent quite
+unwarranted by their assets or their trade, and as soon as the banks began
+to doubt and to enquire, their fall was a foregone conclusion. In December,
+Scott borrowed &pound;10,000 on the lands of Abbotsford, and advanced that
+sum to the struggling houses; on January 16, 1826, their ruin, and Scott's
+with them, were complete. Scott immediately placed his whole affairs in the
+hands of three trustees, and by the 26th all his creditors had agreed to a
+private trust to which he mortgaged all his future literary labours.</p>
+
+<p>On March 15, he left for the last time his house in Castle Street; on
+April 3; "Woodstock" was sold for the creditors' behoof, realising
+&pound;8228; on May 15, Lady Scott died, after a short illness, at
+Abbotsford. "I think," writes Scott in his Diary, "my heart will break.
+Lonely, aged, deprived of all my family--all but poor Anne; an
+impoverished, embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and
+counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous
+apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her
+foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my
+weary self-reflections."</p>
+
+<p>An expedition to Paris, in October, to gather materials for his "Life of
+Napoleon." was a seasonable relief. On his return through London, the King
+undertook that his son, Charles Scott, then at Oxford, should be launched
+in the diplomatic service. The elder son, heir to the baronetcy, was now
+with his regiment in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The "Life of Buonaparte" was published in June, 1827, and secured high
+praise from many, among whom was Goethe. It realised &pound;18,000 for the
+creditors, and had health been spared him, Scott must soon have freed
+himself from all encumbrances. Before the close of 1829 he had published
+also the "Chronicles of the Canongate," "Tales of a Grandfather," "The Fair
+Maid of Perth" and "Anne of Geirstein," but he had been visited also by
+several threatenings of apoplexy, and on February 15, 1830, was prostrated
+by a serious attack. Recovering from this illness, Scott resigned his
+office as Clerk of Session, and during the rest of the year produced a
+great quantity of manuscript, including the "Letters on Demonology and
+Witchcraft," and the series of "Tales of a Grandfather" dealing with French
+history. April, 1831, brought with it a distinct stroke of paralysis, yet
+both "Castle Dangerous" and "Count Robert of Paris" were finished in the
+course of the year.</p>
+
+<p>Sailing in October, in the "Barham," Sir Walter Scott visited Malta and
+Naples, and came to Rome in April, 1832. In May he set out for home by
+Venice, Munich and the Rhine, but his companions could hardly prevail on
+him to look at the interesting objects by the way, and another serious
+attack fell upon him at Nimeguen. He reached London on June 13, and on July
+7 was carried on board the steamer for Leith, and was at Abbotsford by the
+11th. Here the remains of his strength gradually declined, and his mind was
+hopelessly obscured.</p>
+
+<p>As I was dressing on the morning of September 17, a servant came to tell
+me that his master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness, and
+wished to see me immediately. I found him entirely himself, though in the
+last extreme of feebleness. "Lockhart," he said "I may have no more than a
+minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man--be virtuous--be
+religious--be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you
+come to lie here." He scarcely afterwards gave any sign of consciousness,
+and breathed his last on September 21, in the presence of all his
+children.</p>
+
+<p>His funeral was unostentatious but the attendance was very great. He was
+laid in the Abbey of Dryburgh, by the side of his wife, in the sepulchre of
+his ancestors.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Life_of_Robert_Burns"></a>The Life of Robert Burns</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> John Gibson Lockhart was born, a son of the manse, at
+Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, on July 14, 1794. Receiving his early education
+in Glasgow, he went, at sixteen, with a scholarship to Balliol College,
+Oxford. In 1816 he was called to the Scottish Bar; but literature occupied
+him more than law, and as early as 1819 he wrote the once popular "Peter's
+Letters to his Kinsfolk." Next year he married Scott's eldest daughter,
+Sophia. Lockhart was a leading contributor to the early "Blackwood," where
+his fine translations of Spanish ballads first appeared, and he edited the
+"Quarterly Review" from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25,
+1854, and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's forte
+was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside Boswell's "Johnson."
+The "Life of Burns" was published first in Constable's "Miscellany" in
+1828, when the whole impression was exhausted in six weeks. It passed
+through five editions before the author's death. Though many lives of Burns
+have appeared since, with details unknown to Lockhart, his biography is in
+many respects the best we possess, and is never likely to be superseded.
+Even Mr. Henley is "glad to agree with Lockhart." It is this book that is
+the subject of Carlyle's famous essay on Burns. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Poet in the Making</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage at Alloway,
+two miles south of Ayr, and near the "auld brig o' Doon." His father,
+William Burnes, or Burness--for so he spelt his name--was from
+Kincardineshire. When Robert was born he had the lease of a seven-acre
+croft, and had intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He was a man
+of notable character and individuality, immortalised by his son as "the
+saint, the father, and the husband" of "The Cottar's Saturday Night." "I
+have met with few," said Burns, "who understood men, their manners, and
+their ways, equal to my father." Agnes Brown, the poet's mother, is
+described as a very sagacious woman, with an inexhaustible store of ballads
+and traditionary tales, upon which she nourished Robert's infant
+imagination, while her husband attended to "the weightier matters of the
+law."</p>
+
+<p>When Burns was between six and seven, his father removed to the farm of
+Mount Oliphant, two miles from the Brig o' Doon. But the soil was poor, and
+the factor--afterwards pictured in "The Twa Dogs"--so harsh and
+unreasonable, that the tenant was glad to quit. In 1777 he removed about
+ten miles to the larger and better farm of Lochlea, in the parish of
+Tarbolton. Here, after a short interval of prosperity, some trouble arose
+about the conditions of the lease. The dispute involved William Burnes in
+ruin, and he died broken-hearted in February, 1784.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, at the age of six, Robert, with his brother Gilbert, was
+learning to read, write, and sum under the direction of John Murdoch, an
+itinerant teacher, who has left an interesting description of his
+pupil.</p>
+
+<p>"Gilbert always appeared to me to possess a more lively imagination,"
+says Murdoch, "and to be more of the wit, than Robert. I attempted to teach
+them a little church-music. Here they were left far behind by all the rest
+of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably dull, and his
+voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to distinguish one
+tune from another. Robert's countenance was generally grave and expressive
+of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind. Gilbert's face said,
+'Mirth, with thee I mean to live;' and, certainly, if any person who knew
+the two boys had been asked which of them was the more likely to court the
+muses, he would never have guessed that Robert had a propensity of that
+kind."</p>
+
+<p>When Murdoch left the district, the father himself continued to instruct
+the boys; but when Robert was about thirteen he and Gilbert were sent,
+"week about, during a summer quarter," to the parish school of Dalrymple.
+The good man could not pay two fees, or his two boys could not be spared at
+the same time from the farm!</p>
+
+<p>"We lived very poorly," says the poet. "I was a dexterous ploughman for
+my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother [Gilbert], who could drive
+the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel-writer might
+perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I."
+Burns's person, inured to daily toil, and continually exposed to every
+variety of weather, presented, before the usual time, every characteristic
+of robust and vigorous manhood. He says himself that he never feared a
+competitor in any species of rural exertion; and Gilbert, a man of uncommon
+bodily strength, adds that neither he, nor any labourer he ever saw at
+work, was equal to him, either in the cornfield or on the
+thrashing-floor.</p>
+
+<p>Before his sixteenth year Burns had read a large amount of literature.
+But a collection of songs, he says significantly, "was my <i>vade
+mecum</i>. I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song
+by song, verse by verse; carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime
+from affectation or fustian." It was about this date that he "first
+committed the sin of rhyme." The subject was a "bewitching creature," a
+partner in the harvest field, and the song was that beginning "Once I loved
+a bonnie lass."</p>
+
+<p>After this, though much occupied with labour and love, he found leisure
+occasionally to clothe the various moods of his mind in verse. It was as
+early as seventeen that he wrote the stanzas which open beautifully, "I
+dream'd I lay where flowers were springing," and also the ballad, "My
+father was a farmer upon the Carrick border," which, years afterwards, he
+used to con over with delight, because of the faithfulness with which it
+recalled to him the circumstances and feelings of his opening manhood.
+These are the only two of his very early productions in which there is
+nothing expressly about love. The rest were composed to celebrate the
+charms of those rustic beauties who followed each other in the domain of
+his fancy, or shared the capacious throne between them. The excursions of
+the rural lover form the theme of almost all the songs which Burns is known
+to have produced about this period; and such of these juvenile performances
+as have been preserved are beautiful. They show how powerfully his boyish
+fancy had been affected by the old rural minstrelsy of his own country, and
+how easily his native taste caught the secret of its charm.</p>
+
+<p>In 1781, despairing of farming, he went to Irvine to learn flax-dressing
+with a relative. He was diligent at first, but misfortune soon overtook
+him. The shop where he was engaged caught fire, and he "was left, like a
+true poet, not worth a sixpence." Gilbert Burns dates a serious change in
+his character and conduct from this six months' residence in the seaport
+town. "He contracted," he says, "some acquaintance of a freer manner of
+thinking than he had been accustomed to, whose society prepared him for
+overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue which had hitherto restrained
+him."</p>
+
+<p>He had certainly not come unscathed out of the society of those persons
+of "liberal opinions" with whom he consorted in Irvine; and he expressly
+attributes to their lessons the scrape into which he fell soon after "he
+put his hand to plough again." He was compelled, according to the then all
+but universal custom of rural parishes in Scotland, to do penance in
+church, before the congregation, in consequence of the birth of an
+illegitimate child. But not the amours, or the tavern, or drudging manual
+labour could keep him long from his true calling. "Rhyme," he says, "I had
+given up [on going to Irvine], but meeting with Fergusson's 'Scottish
+Poems,' I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour." It
+was probably this accidental meeting with Fergusson that in a great measure
+finally determined the Scottish character of his poetry.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Loves of a Peasant Poet</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Just before their father's death, Robert and Gilbert took the cold and
+ungrateful farm of Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline, to which the
+family now removed. The four years of Burns's connection with this place
+were the most important of his life. It was then that his genius developed
+its highest energies; on the works produced in these years his fame was
+first established, and must ever continue mainly to rest; it was then also
+that his personal character came out in all its brightest lights, and in
+all but its darkest shadows; and indeed from the commencement of this
+period the history of the man may be traced, step by step, in his own
+immortal writings.</p>
+
+<p>Burns now began to know that Nature had meant him for a poet; and
+diligently, though as yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be his
+destined vocation. He was never more productive than at this time, when he
+wrote such skits on the kirk and its associates as "The Twa Herds"
+(pastors), "Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Holy Fair," and "The Ordination."
+"Hallowe'en," a descriptive poem, perhaps even more exquisitely wrought
+than "The Holy Fair," also belongs to the Mossgiel period, as does an even
+more notable effort.</p>
+
+<p>Burns had often remarked to his brother that there was something
+peculiarly venerable in the phrase, "Let us worship God," used by a decent,
+sober head of a family introducing family worship. To this sentiment we are
+indebted for "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the hint of the plan and title
+of which were taken from Fergusson's "Farmer's Ingle." It is, perhaps, of
+all Burns's pieces, the one whose exclusion from the collection, were such
+a thing possible nowadays, would be the most injurious, if not to the
+genius, at least to the character of the man. In spite of many feeble lines
+and some heavy stanzas, it appears to me that even his genius would suffer
+more in estimation by being contemplated in the absence of this poem than
+of any other single performance he has left us. Loftier flights he
+certainly has made, but in these he remained but a short while on the wing,
+and effort is too often perceptible; here the motion is easy, gentle,
+placidly undulating.</p>
+
+<p>Burns's art had now reached its climax; but it is time to revert more
+particularly to his personal history. In this his loves very nearly occupy
+the chief place. That they were many, his songs prove; for in those days he
+wrote no love-songs on imaginary heroines. "Mary Morison," "Behind yon
+hills where Lugar flows," and "On Cessnock banks there lives a lass,"
+belong to this date; and there are three or four inspired by Mary
+Campbell--"Highland Mary"--the object of by far the deepest passion Burns
+ever knew, a passion which he has immortalised in the noblest of his
+elegiacs, "To Mary in Heaven."</p>
+
+<p>Farming had, of course, to engage his attention as well as love-making,
+but he was less successful in the one than in the other. The first year of
+Mossgiel, from buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, he lost
+half his crops. In these circumstances, he thought of proceeding to the
+West Indies. Presently he had further cause for contemplating an escape
+from his native land. Among his "flames" was one Jean Armour, the daughter
+of a mason in Mauchline, where she was the reigning toast. Jean found
+herself "as ladies wish to be that love their lords." Burns's worldly
+circumstances were in a most miserable state when he was informed of her
+condition, and he was staggered. He saw nothing for it but to fly the
+country at once.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, meeting Jean, he yielded to her tears, and gave her a written
+acknowledgment of marriage, valid according to Scottish law. Her father's
+wrath was not appeased thereby. Burns, confessing himself unequal to the
+support of a family, proposed to go immediately to Jamaica in search of
+better fortunes. He offered, if this were rejected, to abandon his farm,
+already a hopeless concern, and earn at least bread for his wife and
+children as a day labourer at home. But nothing would satisfy Armour, who,
+in his indignation, made his daughter destroy the written evidence of her
+"marriage."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Burns at His Zenith</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Such was his poverty that he could not satisfy the parish officers; and
+the only alternative that presented itself to him was America or a gaol. A
+situation was obtained for him in Jamaica, but he had no money to pay his
+passage. It occurred to him that the money might be raised by publishing
+his poems; and a first edition, printed at Kilmarnock in 1786, brought him
+nearly &pound;20, out of which he paid for a steerage passage from the
+Clyde. "My chest was on the road to Greenock," he tells; "I had composed
+the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia, 'The gloomy night is
+gathering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine
+overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic
+ambition."</p>
+
+<p>Blacklock, the blind divine upon whom Johnson "looked with reverence,"
+had read the newly published poems, and it was his praise of them that
+directly prevented Burns from expatriating himself. "His opinion that I
+would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh fired me so much that away I
+posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of
+introduction. The baneful star that had so long shed its blasting influence
+in my zenith for once made a revolution to the nadir." In Edinburgh, which
+Burns reached in November, 1786, he was introduced by Blacklock to all the
+<i>literati</i>, and within a fortnight he was writing to a friend: "I am
+in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis or John Bunyan; and
+you may expect to see my birthday inscribed among the wonderful events in
+the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday and the
+Battle of Bothwell Bridge."</p>
+
+<p>But he bore his honours in a manner worthy of himself. "The attentions
+he received," says Dugald Stewart, "from all ranks and descriptions of
+persons were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot say
+that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his mind."
+Scott, then a lad of fifteen, met him, and wrote a vivid description of his
+appearance:</p>
+
+<p>"His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a
+sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its
+effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His
+features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys the
+idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective. I think his
+countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would
+have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious
+country farmer of the old Scotch school--<i>i.e.</i>, none of your modern
+agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the <i>douce
+gudeman</i> who held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense
+and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the
+poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which
+glowed (I say literally <i>glowed</i>) when he spoke with feeling or
+interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen
+the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect
+self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. He was like a farmer
+dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do not speak in <i>malam
+partem</i> when I say I never saw a man in company with his superiors in
+station and information more perfectly free from either the reality or the
+affectation of embarrassment. I was told that his address to females was
+extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or
+humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late
+Duchess of Gordon remark this."</p>
+
+<p>It needs no effort of imagination to conceive what the sensations of an
+isolated set of scholars, almost all either clergymen or professors, must
+have been in the presence of this big-boned, brawny stranger, with his
+great flashing eyes, who had forced his way among them from the plough-tail
+at a single stride; and it will always be a reflection in their honour that
+they suffered no pedantic prejudices to interfere with their reception of
+the poet.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after his arrival he arranged with Creech, the chief bookseller
+in Edinburgh, to undertake a second edition of his poems. This was
+published in March, 1787, the subscribers numbering over 1,500. Out of
+money thus derived, he provided a tombstone for the neglected grave of
+Robert Fergusson, his "elder brother in the muses," in the Canongate
+churchyard. Then he decided to visit some of the classic scenes of Scottish
+history and romance. He had as yet seen but a small part of his own
+country, and this by no means among the most interesting, until, indeed,
+his own poetry made it equal, on that score, to any other. Various tours
+were, in fact, undertaken, the chief being, however, in the Border district
+and in the Highlands. Usually he returned to Edinburgh, partly to be near
+his jovial intimates, and partly because, after the excitement attending
+his first appearance in the capital, he found himself incapable of settling
+down contentedly in the humble circle at Mossgiel.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--The Clarinda Romance</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>During the winter of 1787--1788, he had a little romance with Mrs.
+McLehose, the beautiful widow to whom he addressed the song, "Clarinda,
+mistress of my soul," and a series of letters which present more instances
+of bad taste, bombastic language, and fulsome sentiment than could be
+produced from all his writings besides. It was the same lady who inspired
+the lines which furnished Byron with a motto, and Scott declared to be
+"worth a thousand romances ":</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+Had we never loved so kindly<br />
+Had we never loved sae blindly,<br />
+Never met--or never parted,<br />
+We had ne'er been broken-hearted.<br />
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>At this time the publication of Johnson's "Scots Musical Museum" was
+going on in Edinburgh; and Burns, being enlisted as a contributor,
+furnished many of his best songs to that work. From his youth upwards he
+had been an enthusiastic lover of the old minstrelsy and music of his
+country; but he now studied both subjects with better opportunities and
+appliances than he could have commanded previously; and it is from this
+time that we must date his ambition to transmit his own poetry to
+posterity, in eternal association with those exquisite airs which had
+hitherto, in far too many instances, been married to verses that did not
+deserve to be immortal. Later, beginning in 1792, he wrote about sixty
+songs for George Thomson's collection, many of which, like "Auld Lang Syne"
+and "Scots Wha Hae," are in the front rank of popularity. The letters he
+addressed to Thomson are full of interesting detail of various kinds. In
+one he writes:</p>
+
+<p>"Until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing, such as it is,
+I can never compose for it. My way is this. I consider the poetic sentiment
+correspondent to my idea of the musical expression--then choose my
+theme--compose one stanza. When that is composed, which is generally the
+most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down now and then,
+look out for objects in Nature round me that are in unison or harmony with
+the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and
+then the air, with the verses I have framed. When I feel my muse beginning
+to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my
+effusions to paper; swinging at intervals on the hind legs of my
+elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my pen
+goes. Seriously this, at home, is almost invariably my way."</p>
+
+<p>But to return. During his second winter in Edinburgh, Burns met with a
+hackney coach accident which kept him to the house for six weeks. While in
+this state he learned from Mauchline that his intimacy with Jean Armour had
+again exposed her to the reproaches of her family. The father sternly
+turned her out of doors, and Burns had to arrange about a shelter for her
+and his children in a friend's house. In the meantime, through the
+influence of some sympathisers, he had been appointed an officer of excise.
+"I have chosen this," he wrote, "after mature deliberation. It is immediate
+bread, and, though poor in comparison of the last eighteen months of my
+existence, 'tis luxury in comparison of all my preceding life." However,
+when he settled finally with Creech about his poems, he found himself with
+between &pound;500 and &pound;600; and he retained his excise commission as
+a <i>dernier ressort</i>, to be used only if a reverse of fortune rendered
+it necessary.</p>
+
+<p>He decided now to exchange Mossgiel for Ellisland farm, about six miles
+from Dumfries. As soon as he was able to leave Edinburgh, he had hurried to
+Mossgiel and gone through a justice-of-peace marriage with Jean Armour.
+Burns, with all his faults, was an honest and a high-spirited man, and he
+loved the mother of his children. Had he hesitated to make her his wife, he
+must have sunk into the callousness of a ruffian, or that misery of
+miseries, the remorse of a poet.</p>
+
+<p>Some months later he writes that his marriage "was not, perhaps, in
+consequence of the attachment of romance, but I have no cause to repent it.
+If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I
+am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school
+affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the
+soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country." It was during
+the honeymoon, as he calls it, that he wrote the beautiful "O a' the airts
+the wind can blaw." He used to say that the happiest period of his life was
+the first winter at Ellisland, with wife and children around him. It was
+then that he wrote, among other songs, "John Anderson, my Jo," "Tarn Glen,"
+"My heart's in the Highlands," "Go fetch to me a pint of wine," and "Willie
+brewed a peck o' maut."</p>
+
+<p>But the "golden days" of Ellisland were short. Burns's farming
+speculations once more failed, and he had to take up his excise commission.
+"I am now," says he, "a poor rascally gauger, condemned to gallop two
+hundred miles every week to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty barrels." Both
+in prose and verse he has recorded the feelings with which he first
+followed his new vocation, and his jests on the subject are uniformly
+bitter. It was a vocation which exposed him to temptations of the kind he
+was least likely to resist. His extraordinary conversational powers led him
+into peril wherever he went. If he entered an inn at midnight, after all
+the inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circulated from the cellar
+to the garret; and ere ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his
+guests were assembled round the ingle; the largest punch-bowl was produced;
+and "Be ours this night--who knows what comes to-morrow?" was the language
+of every eye in the circle that welcomed him.</p>
+
+<p>At home, too, lion-gazers from all quarters beset him; they ate and
+drank at his cost, and often went away to criticise him and his fare, as if
+they had done Burns and his black bowl great honour in condescending to be
+entertained for a single evening with such company. Among others who called
+on him was Captain Grose, the antiquary, and it is to this acquaintance
+that we owe "Tam o' Shanter," which Burns believed to be the best of all
+his productions.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Closing Years of the Poet's Life</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Towards the close of 1791 he gave up his farm, and procuring an excise
+appointment to the Dumfries division, removed to the county town. His moral
+course from this time was downwards. "In Dumfries," says Heron, speaking
+from personal knowledge, "his dissipation became still more deeply
+habitual. He was here exposed more than in the country to be solicited to
+share the riot of the dissolute and idle." His intemperance was, as Heron
+says, in fits; his aberrations were occasional, not systematic; they were
+all to himself the sources of exquisite misery in the retrospect; they were
+the aberrations of a man whose moral sense was never deadened, of one who
+encountered more temptations from without and from within than the immense
+majority of mankind, far from having to contend against, are even able to
+imagine; of one, finally, who prayed for pardon, where alone effectual
+pardon could be found.</p>
+
+<p>In how far the "thoughtless follies" of the poet did actually hasten his
+end, it is needless to conjecture. They had their share, unquestionably,
+along with other influences which it would be inhuman to characterise as
+mere follies. In these closing years of his life he had to struggle
+constantly with pecuniary difficulties, than which nothing could have been
+more likely to pour bitterness intolerable into the cup of his existence.
+His lively imagination exaggerated to itself every real evil; and this
+among, and perhaps above, all the rest; at least, in many of his letters we
+find him alluding to the probability of his being arrested for debts, which
+we now know to have been of very trivial amount.</p>
+
+<p>In 1795 he was greatly upset by the death, in his absence, of his
+youngest child. Writing in January, 1796, he says: "I had scarcely begun to
+recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most severe
+rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful, until, after many weeks of
+a sick-bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl
+across my room, and once indeed have been before my own door in the
+street."</p>
+
+<p>But a few days after this Burns was so imprudent as to join a festive
+circle at a tavern dinner, where he remained till about three in the
+morning. The weather was severe, and he, being too much intoxicated, took
+no precaution in thus exposing his debilitated frame to its influence. It
+has been said that he fell asleep upon the snow on his way home. The result
+was an acute return of his rheumatism, and his health gradually got worse.
+He went to the Solway for sea-bathing, but came back to Dumfries "visibly
+changed in his looks, being with difficulty able to stand upright and reach
+his own door."</p>
+
+<p>It soon became known that he was dying, and the anxiety, not of the rich
+and the learned only, but of the mechanics and peasants, exceeded all
+belief. Wherever two or three people stood together their talk was solely
+of Burns. His good humour was unruffled, and his wit never forsook him; but
+he repressed with a smile the hopes of his friends, and told them he had
+lived long enough. The fever increased, and his strength diminished, and he
+died on July 21, 1796. His funeral, attended by ten or twelve thousand
+people, was an impressive and mournful sight. The grave was at first
+covered by a plain tombstone; but a costly mausoleum was subsequently
+erected on the most elevated site which the churchyard presented. Thither
+the remains of the poet were solemnly transferred on June 5, 1815.</p>
+
+<p>It requires a graver audacity of hypocrisy than falls to the share of
+most men to declaim against Burns's sensibility to the tangible cares and
+toils of his earthly condition; there are more who venture on broad
+denunciations of his sympathy with the joys of sense and passion.</p>
+
+<p>That some men in every age will comfort themselves in the practice of
+certain vices, by reference to particular passages both in the history and
+in the poetry of Burns, there is all reason to fear; but surely the general
+influence of both is calculated, and has been found, to produce far
+different effects. The universal popularity which his writings have all
+along enjoyed among one of the most virtuous of nations is of itself a
+decisive circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>On one point there can be no controversy; the poetry of Burns has had
+most powerful influence in reviving and strengthening the national feelings
+of his countrymen. Amidst penury and labour his youth fed on the old
+minstrelsy and traditional glories of his nation, and his genius divined
+that what he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might lie
+smothered around him, but could not be extinguished. Burns "knew his own
+worth, and reverenced the lyre." But he ever announced himself, as a
+peasant, the representative of his class, the painter of their manners,
+inspired by the same influences which ruled their bosoms; and whosoever
+sympathised with his verse had his soul opened for the moment to the whole
+family of man.</p>
+
+<p>Short and painful as were his years, Burns has left behind him a volume
+in which there is inspiration for every fancy and music for every mood;
+which lives, and will live in strength and vigour, "to soothe," as a
+generous lover of genius has said, "the sorrows of how many a lover, to
+inflame the patriotism of how many a soldier, to fan the fires of how many
+a genius, to disperse the gloom of solitude, appease the agonies of pain,
+encourage virtue, and show vice its ugliness." In this volume, centuries
+hence as now, wherever a Scotsman may wander he will find the dearest
+consolation of his exile.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MARTIN_LUTHER"></a>MARTIN LUTHER</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Table_Talk"></a>Table Talk</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Martin Luther, "the monk who shook the world," was born
+Nov. 10, 1483, at Eisleben, in Germany. In 1507 he was ordained a priest,
+and became popular almost immediately as a preacher. A visit to Rome
+shocked him, and in revolt against the practice of raising money by the
+sale of indulgences, he began his career as a reformer. In 1518 he was
+summoned to Rome to answer for his opinions, which now included a total
+denial of the right of the Pope to forgive sins. He proceeded to attack the
+whole doctrinal system of the Roman Catholic Church. For this he was
+denounced in a papal bull and his writings were condemned to be burned. In
+1525 he married an escaped nun. That Luther was a true child of his age may
+be seen in the selections made from his "Table Talk." His shrewdness,
+humour, plain bold speech, and his change of belief from an infallible
+Church to an infallible Bible there appear, as also do his narrowness of
+knowledge, asperity of temper, and susceptibility to superstition. He must
+be judged by the mind of his times, not by modern standards. We give some
+of his strong opinions that have not borne the wear and tear of later ages;
+but they are more than balanced by teaching what is beautiful, as well as
+true. Luther died on February 18, 1546. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>God's Word and Book</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>That the Bible is God's word and book I prove thus. Infinite potentates
+have raged against it, and sought to destroy and uproot it--King Alexander
+the Great, the princes of Egypt and Babylon, the monarchs of Persia, of
+Greece, and of Rome, the Emperors Julius and Augustus--but they nothing
+prevailed; they are all gone and vanished, while the book remains and will
+remain. Who has thus helped it? Who has thus protected it against such
+mighty forces? No one, surely, but God Himself, who is the Master of all
+things.</p>
+
+<p>The Holy Scriptures are full of divine gifts and virtues. The books of
+the heathen taught nothing of faith, hope, or charity; they present no idea
+of these things; they contemplate only the present, and that which man,
+with the use of his material reason, can grasp and comprehend. Look not
+therein for aught of hope and trust in God. But see how the Psalms and the
+Book of Job treat of faith, hope, resignation, and prayer; in a word, the
+Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under
+all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to
+comprehend faith, hope, and charity far otherwise than mere human reason
+can, and when evil oppresses us it teaches how these virtues throw light
+upon the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure or limit to
+the fever for writing. The Bible is now buried under so many commentaries
+that the text is nothing regarded. I could wish all my books were buried
+nine ells deep in the ground by reason of the ill example they will give. I
+would not have those who read my books, in these stormy times, devote one
+moment to them that they would otherwise have consecrated to the Bible
+itself.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>God's Dealing with Us</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>How should God deal with us? Good days we cannot bear, evil we cannot
+endure. Gives He riches unto us--then we are proud, so that no man can live
+by us in peace; nay, we will be carried on heads and shoulders, and will be
+adored as gods. Gives He poverty to us--then are we dismayed, impatient,
+and murmur against Him.</p>
+
+<p>God only, and not wealth, maintains the world; riches merely make people
+proud and lazy. Great wealth cannot still hunger, but rather occasions more
+dearth, for where rich people are there things are always dear. Moreover,
+money makes no man right merry, but much rather pensive and full of sorrow;
+for riches, says Christ, are thorns that prick people. Yet is the world so
+made that it sets therein all its joy and felicity, and we are such
+unthankful slovens that we give God not so much as a <i>Deo Gratias</i>,
+though we receive of Him overflowing benefits, merely out of His goodness
+and mercy. No man can estimate the great charge God is at only in
+maintaining birds and such creatures, comparatively nothing worth. I am
+persuaded that it costs Him yearly more to maintain only the sparrows than
+the revenue of the French king amounts to.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Points from "Popedom"</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I much marvel that the pope extols his church at Rome as the chief,
+whereas the church at Jerusalem is the mother; for there Christian doctrine
+was first revealed. Next was the church at Antioch, whence the Christians
+have their name. Thirdly, was the church at Alexandria; and still before
+the Romish were the churches of the Galatians, of the Corinthians,
+Ephesians, Philippians. Is it so great a matter that St. Peter was at Rome?
+Which, however, has never yet been proved, nor ever will be, whereas our
+blessed Saviour Christ Himself was at Jerusalem, where all the articles of
+our Christian faith were made.</p>
+
+<p>Prayer in popedom is mere tongue-threshing; not prayer but a work of
+obedience. Hence the confused sea of howling and babbling in cells and
+monasteries, where they read and sing the psalms and collects without any
+spiritual devotion. Though I had done no more but only freed people from
+that torment, they might well give me thanks for it.</p>
+
+<p>Kings and princes coin money only out of metals, but the pope coins
+money out of everything--indulgences, ceremonials, dispensations, pardons;
+'tis all fish comes to his net. 'Tis only baptism escapes him, for children
+come into the world without clothes to be stolen or teeth to be drawn.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Patristic Literature</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I will not presume to criticise too closely the writings of the fathers,
+seeing they are received of the church and have great applause, but whoso
+reads Chrysostom will find he digresses from the chief points, and proceeds
+on other matters, saying nothing, or very little, of that which pertains to
+the business. St. Jerome wrote upon Matthew, upon the Epistles to the
+Galatians, and Titus, but, alas, very coldly. Ambrose wrote six books upon
+the first book of Moses, but they are very poor.</p>
+
+<p>We must read the fathers cautiously, and lay them in the gold balance,
+for they often stumbled and went astray. Gregory expounds the five pounds
+mentioned in the Gospel, which the husbandman gave to his servant to put to
+use, to be the five senses, which the beasts also possess. The two pounds
+he construes to be the reason and understanding. Faithful Christians should
+heed only the embassy of our blessed Saviour Christ, and what He says.</p>
+
+<p>None of the fathers of the church made mention of original sin until
+Augustine came, who made a difference between original and actual sin,
+namely, that original sin is to covet, to lust, and to desire, which is the
+root and cause of actual sin.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Hints for Preachers</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The good preacher should know when to make an end. A preacher that will
+speak everything that comes into his mind is like a maid that goes to
+market, and, meeting another maid, makes a stand, and they hold together a
+goose-market.</p>
+
+<p>I would not have preachers in their sermons use Hebrew, Greek, or
+foreign languages, for in the church we ought to speak as we use to do at
+home, the plain mother tongue, which everyone is acquainted with. It may be
+allowed in courtiers, lawyers, advocates, etc., to use quaint, curious
+words. St. Paul never used such high and stately words as Demosthenes and
+Cicero used.</p>
+
+<p>Ambition is the rankest poison to the church when it possesses
+preachers. It is a consuming fire.</p>
+
+<p>When I preach I sink myself deep down. I regard neither doctors nor
+magistrates, of whom are here in this church above forty; but I have an eye
+to the multitude of young people, children, and servants, of whom are more
+than two thousand. I preach to those. Will not the rest hear me?</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Time's Forelock</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is said Occasion has a forelock, but it is bald behind. Our Lord has
+taught this by the course of nature. A farmer must sow his barley and oats
+about Easter; if he defer it till Michaelmas it were too late. When apples
+are ripe they must be plucked from the tree or they are spoiled.
+Procrastination is as bad as over-hastiness. There is my servant Wolf, when
+four or five birds fall upon the bird-net he will not draw it; but says,
+"Oh, I will stay until more come." Then they all fly away, and he gets
+none.</p>
+
+<p>Occasion is a great matter. Terence says well, "I came in time, which is
+the chief thing of all." Julius Caesar understood Occasion; Pompey and
+Hannibal did not. Boys at school understand it not, therefore they must
+have fathers and masters, with the rod, to hold them thereto, that they
+neglect not time and lose it. Many a young fellow has a school stipend for
+six or seven years, during which he ought diligently to study, but he
+thinks, "Oh, I have time enough yet." But I say, "No, fellow; what little
+Jack learns not great John learns not." Occasion salutes thee, and reaches
+out her forelock to thee, saying, "Here I am, take hold of me." Thou
+thinkest she will come again. Then says she, "Well, seeing thou wilt not
+take hold of my top, take hold of my tail," and therewith she flings
+away.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Modern Luxury</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Whereto serve or profit such superfluity, such show, such ostentation,
+such extraordinary luxurious kind of life as is now come upon us? If Adam
+were to return to earth, and see our mode of living, our food, drink, and
+dress, how would he marvel. He would say: "Surely this is not the world I
+was in?" For Adam drank water, ate fruit from the trees, and, if he had any
+house at all, 'twas a hut supported by four wooden forks; he had no knife
+or iron, and he wore simply a coat of skin. Now we spend immense sums in
+eating and drinking, now we raise sumptuous palaces, and decorate them with
+a luxury beyond all comparison. The ancient Israelites lived in great
+moderation and quiet. Boaz says: "Dip thy bread in vinegar and refresh
+thyself therewith."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Ministers and Matrimony</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I advise in everything that ministers interfere not in matrimonial
+questions. First, because we have enough to do in our own office; secondly,
+because these affairs concern not the church, but are temporal things,
+pertaining to temporal magistrates; thirdly, because such cases are in a
+manner innumerable; they are very high, broad, and deep, and produce many
+offences, which may tend to the shame and dishonour of the Gospel.
+Moreover, we are therein ill dealt with--they draw us into the business,
+and then, if the issue is evil, the blame is laid altogether upon us.
+Therefore, we will leave them to the lawyers and magistrates.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Miscellaneous Topics</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Philip Melancthon showing Luther a letter from Augsburg wherein he was
+informed that a very learned divine, a papist of that city, was converted,
+and had received the Gospel, Luther said, "I like best those that do not
+fall off suddenly, but ponder the case with considerate discretion, compare
+together the writing and arguments of both parties, and lay them on the
+gold balance, and in God's fear search after the upright truth; and of such
+fit people are made, able to stand in controversy. Such a man was St. Paul,
+who at first was a strict Pharisee and man of works, who stiffly and
+earnestly defended the law; but afterwards preached Christ in the best and
+purest manner against the whole nation of the Jews."</p>
+
+<p>As all people feel they must die, each seeks immortality here on earth,
+that he may be had in everlasting remembrance. Some great princes and kings
+seek it by raising great columns of stone and high pyramids, great
+churches, costly and glorious palaces and castles. Soldiers hunt after
+praise and honour by obtaining famous victories. The learned seek an
+everlasting name by writing books. With these and such like things people
+think to be immortal. But as to the true everlasting and incorruptible
+honour and eternity of God, no man thinks or looks after these things.</p>
+
+<p>When two goats meet on a narrow bridge over deep waters how do they
+behave? Neither of them can turn back again, and neither can pass the other
+because the bridge is too narrow. If they should thrust one another they
+might both fall into the water and be drowned. Nature, then, has taught
+them that if one lays himself down and permits the other to go over him
+both remain without hurt. Even so, people should endure to be trod upon
+rather than to fall into discord with one another.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Strong Opinions Outworn by Time</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I should have no compassion on witches; I would burn all of them. We
+read in the old law that the priests threw the first stone at such
+malefactors. Our ordinary sins offend and anger God. What then must be His
+wrath against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high treason
+against divine majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God. The
+maladies I suffer are not natural but devils' spells.</p>
+
+<p>Luther, taking up a caterpillar, said: "'Tis an emblem of the devil in
+its crawling, and bears his colours in its changing hue."</p>
+
+<p>The devil plagues and torments us in the place where we are most tender
+and weak. In Paradise he fell not upon Adam, but upon Eve. It commonly
+rains where it was wet enough before.</p>
+
+<p>The anabaptists pretend that children, not as yet having reason, ought
+not to receive baptism. I answer: That reason in no way contributes to
+faith. Nay, in that children are destitute of reason they are all the more
+fit and proper recipients of baptism. For reason is the greatest enemy that
+faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.</p>
+
+<p>I always loved music. A schoolmaster ought to have skill in music, or I
+would not regard him; neither should we ordain young men as preachers
+unless they have been well exercised in music.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the
+earth. He made several attempts to draw me into his snares, and I should
+have been in danger but that God lent me special aid. Erasmus was poisoned
+at Rome and at Venice with epicurean doctrines. His chief doctrine is that
+we must carry ourselves according to the time, or, as the proverb goes,
+hang the cloak according to the wind. I hold Erasmus to be Christ's most
+bitter enemy.</p>
+
+<p>I never work better than when I am inspired by anger. When I am angry I
+can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is
+quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and
+temptations depart.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Characteristic Sayings</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When the abbot throws the dice, the whole convent will play.</p>
+
+<p>When men blaspheme we should pray and be silent, and not carry wood to
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>When Jesus Christ utters a word, He opens His mouth so wide that it
+embraces all heaven and earth, even though that word be but in a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>When I lay sucking at my mother's breast I had no notion how I should
+afterwards eat, drink, and live. Even so we on the earth have no idea what
+the life to come will be.</p>
+
+<p>The two sins, hatred and pride, deck and trim themselves out as the
+devil clothed himself in the Godhead. Hatred will be godlike; pride will be
+truth. These two are right deadly sins; hatred is killing, pride is
+lying.</p>
+
+<p>A scorpion thinks that when his head lies hid under a leaf he cannot be
+seen; even so the hypocrites and false saints think, when they have hoisted
+up one or two good works, all their sins therewith are covered and hid.</p>
+
+<p>Luther, holding a rose in his hand, said, "'Tis a magnificent work of
+God. Could a man make but one such rose as this he would be thought worthy
+of all honour, but the manifold gifts of God lose their value in our eyes
+from their very infinity."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MIRABEAU"></a>MIRABEAU</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Memoirs1"></a>Memoirs</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Honor&eacute; Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, was born
+at Bignon, near Nemours, on March 9, 1749, and died at Paris on April 2,
+1791. His father was a most eccentric and tyrannical representative of the
+French aristocracy, and Honor&eacute;, a younger son, inherited something
+of his violent temperament, but was endowed with real genius. Entering the
+army, young Mirabeau soon displayed an erratic disposition by eloping with
+the young wife of an aged nobleman. He fled to Holland, but was captured
+and imprisoned. Being at length liberated, he turned to literature and
+politics, and soon gained celebrity in both. His magnificent oratorical
+powers brought him rapidly to the front in the period immediately anterior
+to the outbreak of the Revolution. Mirabeau's "Memoirs, by Himself, his
+Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son," published in eight volumes in
+1834, contain no original writings by Mirabeau himself, except in the shape
+of extracts from his speeches, letters, and pamphlets. The following
+epitome has been prepared from the French text. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--"The Hurricane"</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Marquis of Mirabeau, father of Honor&eacute; Gabriel, the subject of
+these memoirs, was endowed with a mind of great power, rendered fruitful by
+the best education. He had, however, become independent at too early an
+age, and this had brought into play his natural inordinate vanity.</p>
+
+<p>Honor&eacute; Gabriel, since so famous under the name of the Count of
+Mirabeau, was the fifth child of the marquis. Destined to be the most
+turbulent and active of youths, as well as the most eloquent of men and the
+greatest orator of his day, Gabriel was born with one foot twisted and his
+tongue tied, in addition to which his size and strength were extraordinary,
+and already two molars were formed in his jaw. At the age of three the boy
+nearly lost his life from small-pox, and was thus disfigured greatly for
+life; while the other children were, like the parents, gifted with
+wonderful beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Young Gabriel was a most precocious child, and he received an excellent
+education. At the age of seven he was confirmed by a cardinal, but his
+childhood was difficult of control, and chastisement from his father and
+tutor was continual. His inquisitiveness was irrepressible. He relates that
+at the family supper after his confirmation, "they explained to me that God
+could not make contradictions--for instance, a stick with only one end. I
+asked whether a stick which had but one end was not a miracle. My
+grandmother never forgave me."</p>
+
+<p>Placed under the kindly teaching of the Abb&eacute; Choquart in a
+military school of high repute in Paris, Gabriel made marvellously rapid
+progress, assiduously exercising his memory, which afterwards became a
+prodigious repository of the most diversified knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>On July 10, 1767, Gabriel entered the army, joining the Marquis of
+Lambert's regiment. The young volunteer, who was now eighteen, behaved
+well, and speedily gave evidence of the military talents he afterwards
+displayed. But a quarrel arose over a love affair, which led to harsh
+punishment by his colonel. The incident was bitterly resented by his
+father, who condemned him without hearing his side of the matter, and
+actually procured his imprisonment in the fortress of the Isle of
+Rh&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>When the young soldier came out of prison he unwittingly offended an
+officer at Rochelle, who had been dismissed the service. The result was a
+duel, in which the aggressor was wounded. Gabriel was appointed to service
+in Corsica, with the rank of second-lieutenant, and here he distinguished
+himself by his zeal, his military talents, and his constant
+application.</p>
+
+<p>Young Mirabeau was, in September, 1770, transferred to Limousin, in west
+Central France. Such was his energy that he was called "the hurricane." Now
+began a series of troubles caused by bitter quarrels between his parents,
+who were openly at variance. Each sought to gain an adherent in their son,
+who was condemned to witness the wickedness and folly of both in their
+ungovernable passion. The effect on the character of the young count was
+deplorable.</p>
+
+<p>Then ensued a singular episode. The marquis had determined that Gabriel
+should marry before the age of twenty-three, and had fixed on Mary Emily de
+Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, eighteen years of age,
+for his son's bride. She was plain, yet attractive, with a sweet smile,
+fine eyes, and beautiful hair, and was gay, lively, sensible, mild, and
+very amiable. Having been neglected by her father and ill-treated by her
+mother, she showed no disinclination to marriage, and in 1772 young
+Mirabeau obtained the hand of the wealthy heiress.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was the young count married than every attempt was made to
+ruin him. He received no property with his bride, and his avaricious father
+refused to advance him any money for necessary expenses. His father-in-law
+offered to lend him 60,000 livres, but his father's consent was
+indispensable, and this was sternly refused. Mirabeau, harassed by
+creditors, was dragged into lawsuits, and his embarrassments only set his
+father entirely against him. The marquis actually procured a <i>lettre de
+cachet</i>, obliging his son to leave the home he had set up, and to
+confine himself to the little town of Manosque.</p>
+
+<p>Here domestic sorrow and the most painful circumstances assailed the
+young exile. But these did not prevent him from pursuing serious studies
+and composing his first work, the "Essay on Despotism." Misfortunes
+accumulated. Chastising with a horsewhip a baron who grossly insulted him,
+the count was again imprisoned, this time in the Ch&acirc;teau d'If, a
+gloomy citadel on a barren rock near Marseilles.</p>
+
+<p>On May 25, 1770, Mirabeau was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near
+Pontarlier, where, on June 11, 1775, festivities were held, as at other
+places, to honour the coronation of Louis XVI. Here Mirabeau enjoyed a sort
+of half freedom, being allowed to visit in Pontarlier, and the event ensued
+which, it must sorrowfully be owned, tarnished his name. In a word, we see
+Mirabeau "ruin himself," by a fatal intimacy with the young wife of the
+aged Marquis of Monnier. The two fled to Dijon, where Mirabeau surrendered
+himself at the castle.</p>
+
+<p>He was released after a short time and went on to Geneva, nearly
+perishing in a storm on the lake. Returning to Pontarlier, he was joined by
+Sophie Monnier, and the two left for Holland, and arrived at Amsterdam on
+October 7, 1776. Mirabeau was naturally obliged to draw his principal means
+of subsistence from his literary labours, and this, perhaps, had been his
+motive for choosing Holland as his residence, for at that period the Dutch
+booksellers entered largely into literary speculations.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau and Sophie Monnier were arrested at Amsterdam on May 14, 1777.
+Both were brought to France. She was placed in a convent at Monilmontant,
+and Mirabeau was deposited on June 7 in the donjon of Vincennes, and was
+subjected to every sort of privation, remaining in confinement for
+forty-two months. His release marked the end of his private life; his
+public and political life was about to begin.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Into Political Life</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The "Essay on Despotism" had been the first sign of Mirabeau's political
+vocation, and the most singular instance, perhaps, of a war audaciously
+declared against despotism by a young man bearing its yoke. The keynote is
+that though the <i>natural</i> man may not be inclined to despotism, the
+<i>social</i> man assuredly is disposed to be a despot. This spirit,
+maintains Mirabeau, exists even in republics.</p>
+
+<p>In 1784 Mirabeau visited England. One of his motives was to collect
+materials for his "Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus," a treatise
+dealing with Washington and American independence. He was greatly delighted
+with English scenery. "It is here," he says, "that nature is improved, not
+forced. All tells me that here the people are something; that every man
+enjoys the development and free exercise of his faculties, and that I am in
+another order of things."</p>
+
+<p>But he proceeds: "I am not an enthusiast in favour of England, and I now
+know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution is the
+best known, the application of this constitution is the worst possible; and
+that if the Englishman is as a social man the most free in the world, the
+English people are the least free of any."</p>
+
+<p>He resided in England from August to February, 1785. During that brief
+period he began to write his "History of Geneva," and he showed his
+versatility by composing for a young refugee clergyman a sermon on the
+immortality of the soul. By the gift of this sermon he drew the exiled
+preacher from poverty, for it was the means of obtaining for him a
+lucrative appointment.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau sent forth from Paris several most able pamphlets on banking
+and on share companies. These were written with energy and often with
+violence. As they attacked many private interests they aroused against
+their author much hatred, insult, and calumny. He was accused of venality,
+though he was attacking and driving to despair powerful stock-jobbers, who
+would have paid him magnificently for silence, could he have been
+bought.</p>
+
+<p>In July, 1785, Mirabeau went to Berlin. It is a singular fact that in
+his various journeys some accident always befel him. On the way to Berlin
+an attempt was made to assassinate him by some unknown enemies, but he
+safely reached the German capital. King Frederick the Great, now very aged,
+no longer received foreigners, yet he replied to a letter from Mirabeau and
+fixed a day for seeing him at Potsdam.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau informed the king that he had come to seek permission to study
+the great military manoeuvres, and that he hoped to push on to Russia.
+During this period he worked like a labourer all day at his writings. Part
+of his time he spent at supper parties of the most tiresome etiquette. The
+same laborious habits attended him everywhere, in prison and in freedom, in
+his own country and in other lands. It was in Germany that he conceived the
+idea of his treatise on "The Reform of the Jews," which is acknowledged to
+be one of his best works.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick the Great died on August 17, 1786. Feeling that he could do
+nothing useful, Mirabeau resolved at the close of 1786 to quit Berlin. He
+was urged also by a special motive in which he took pride, and which he
+thus described in a letter: "My heart has not grown old, and if my
+enthusiasm is damped, it is not extinguished. I have fully experienced this
+to-day. I consider one of the best days of my life that on which I received
+an account of the convocation of the notables, which no doubt will not long
+precede that of the National Assembly. In this I see a new order of things
+which may regenerate the monarchy. I should deem myself a thousand times
+honoured in being even the junior secretary of this assembly, of which I
+had the happiness of giving the first idea."</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau was prodigiously occupied at Berlin. He often did not retire to
+rest till one in the morning, but regularly rose at five, even in the midst
+of severe winter. Without anything on but a simple quilted dressing-gown,
+without stockings or waistcoat, he worked away without even calling up his
+servant to light a fire. Besides his correspondence in cypher, which
+occupied him much, he worked assiduously at his "Prussian Monarchy," which
+was published in 1788.</p>
+
+<p>On departing from Berlin the count wrote a most eloquent letter of
+counsel to King Frederick William, appealing to him to cultivate peace,
+reminding him that his illustrious predecessor had conquered the admiration
+of mankind but never won their love, commending him not to extend the
+direct action of the royal power to matters which did not require it,
+advising him not to govern too much, and exhorting him to abolish military
+slavery; that is to say, the obligation then imposed on every Prussian to
+serve as a soldier from the age of eighteen to sixty or more, which forced
+men to go to the battle-field like cattle to the slaughterhouse.</p>
+
+<p>In the same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the
+harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the
+country. The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement
+protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of
+seizing the property of deceased foreigners, and demanded for burghers the
+freedom of purchasing the estates of nobles. He urged Frederick William to
+abolish the prerogatives claimed by nobles and the helotism of all who were
+not noble, and suggested that judges should be appointed for life and
+justice rendered free of expense.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--For King and People</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was chiefly the meeting of the notables which had hastened Mirabeau's
+return to Paris. He felt that his proper place was in the centre of the
+great events announced and begun by this convocation. After the undignified
+and inglorious prodigality of the previous reign, which had laid the
+foundation of serious financial vicissitudes, the young King Louis XVI. had
+brought with him to the throne the private virtues of a good and honest
+man, but not the qualities of a sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>Though economic to excess himself, he nevertheless suffered to exist and
+even to increase around him those dilapidations which at last ruined the
+resources of the state. He had no confidence in himself, and Mirabeau
+respectfully reproached him with his fatal timidity. Nothing was done
+either to increase revenue or diminish expenditure.</p>
+
+<p>The possessors of privilege and representatives of personal interest,
+the courtiers, the great lords, and the parliaments strenuously resisted
+all reforms and then drove from office the best intentioned, the most
+virtuous, and the ablest ministers whom the young king, in the sincerity of
+his patriotism, had chosen on his accession, in deference to public
+feeling. Among these ministers were Malesherbes, Turgot, Necker, and
+Calonne.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau returned to Paris on January 27, 1787. He at once published
+that famous "Address to the Notables," in which he denounced the whole
+corrupt system of finance and in which he demanded local provincial
+administrations. This and his "Denunciation of Stock-jobbing" made great
+impression on the public mind.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the "Denunciation" displeased the government, and the
+author was much persecuted. He learned that he was to be arrested and sent,
+not to the Bastille, but to a remote provincial fortress, where he would
+have been lost to public notice. So he escaped from Paris to Li&egrave;ge,
+whence he again attacked the administration of Calonne and the policy of
+Necker, declaring that loans should have been effected on methods less
+onerous for the state.</p>
+
+<p>His exile from Paris was of brief duration, for friends intervened. But
+Mirabeau returned only to renew and intensify his attacks. He remained,
+however, only for a short time, for on May 24, 1787, he set out on a third
+journey to Prussia, in order to complete his great work on the "Prussian
+Monarchy." Returning to France, he reached Paris in September. Five months
+had elapsed since the assembling of the notables. The eloquent Leominie de
+Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, had been the most brilliant figure in the
+conclave. The first assembly broke up on July 27, 1787. Though gathered by
+the privileged orders, patriotism had raised its voice within it, and the
+archbishop, as prime minister, had failed to direct the new current
+aright.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau disapproved of what had taken place in his absence, and
+declined to be employed by the administration, but he offered to undertake
+any foreign mission in the exercise of the king to which he might be
+appointed. The application was unsuccessful. The crisis approached nearer
+and nearer. Archbishop Brienne passed rapidly from violence to weakness.
+Mirabeau refused to countenance his plans for contracting a new loan of 420
+millions. The king was resisted by an almost unanimous opposition, headed
+by the Duke of Orleans, and the loan was refused at a memorable
+sitting.</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau exhorted the government to announce in precise and solemn terms
+the convocation of the States-General in 1789, that bankruptcy might be
+averted and the national honour saved. Said he: "The year in which the king
+assembles the nation will be the finest in his life. Everybody knows that
+he has been deceived, and could not help being so, and everybody will do
+justice to his intentions. The assembled nation has a right to vote a tax.
+In future the nation alone will raise up its political fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>Mirabeau saw that the nation ought to be trusted. He strenuously
+contended for a policy in accordance with this conviction. But he
+indefatigably continued his literary labours, sending forth pamphlet after
+pamphlet, one against the prison system in vogue, another demanding the
+liberty of the Press, in which he extolled the example of England. He
+became increasingly impatient with the ineptitude of the government, for
+the affairs of the state were lapsing into desperate disorder, and the
+public discontent was being steadily aggravated.</p>
+
+<p>The aim of Mirabeau was at one and the same time to support the monarchy
+and to subvert the influences by which the throne was environed. He was
+solicitous of securing popular freedom, but regarded the monarchy as the
+only form of rule suitable for France in that age, and was led to adopt
+that peculiar statesmanship identifying the royal interest with the popular
+cause. Though ready to give his life for the people, he did not hesitate to
+risk his popularity by his fidelity to the throne.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--President of the National Assembly</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The immediate causes of the Revolution were now in full operation.
+Mirabeau, attempting to practise his own doctrine of the freedom of the
+Press, turned journalist and brought out a gazette. The famous National
+Assembly opened on May 5, 1789. He then entered on a career of immense
+political energy, beginning by issuing a stirring and eloquent "Address to
+the French People." This was especially a reply to a reactionary protest on
+the part of the clergy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon there were disturbances everywhere. The Bastille was stormed by the
+furious Parisians and demolished. Just at this time Mirabeau lost his
+father, and the event overwhelmed him with grief. He refused to stand for
+election as mayor of Paris. But he brought about a constitutional
+organisation of the municipality, and delivered a splendid series of
+orations on various abuses, such as plural voting, iniquitous monopolies,
+etc. Yet he proved his studious moderation by strenuously declaiming
+against the famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man," pronouncing it
+inopportune and perilous. His heroic harangues provoked disorder in his
+audience dangerous to himself. But his courage was dauntless, for even when
+the king and his chief minister abandoned the royal prerogative, Mirabeau
+defended it.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the terrible events of 1789 Mirabeau was consistent as a
+loyalist and as a patriot. But disappointment awaited his generous
+illusions, for the vacillation of the king rendered the outlook
+hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of January, 1791, he was appointed president of the National
+Assembly, which, during the stormy period of its existence during
+twenty-one months, had already had forty-two presidents.</p>
+
+<p>He exercised his functions with consummate skill, but the end of his
+wonderful life was at hand. He had been in weak health from the very first
+sittings of the Assembly, his condition causing constant anxiety to his
+intimate friends and his admirers. He was depressed by sad presentiments,
+and was in constant apprehension of assassination, for it was well-known
+that there were plots against his life. After a brilliant oration, the
+great tribune went home exhausted, and, indeed, dying.</p>
+
+<p>One of his last experiences was a pathetic interview with Talleyrand,
+with whom he had often crossed swords in debate. His weakness dated from
+February, 1788, when he was attacked with violent internal pains, and was
+bled to such an extent by a surgeon that he never recovered his wonderful
+natural vitality. After much suffering, endured with the most heroic
+fortitude, he passed away as if in sleep, with a sweet smile on his
+features. France mourned the loss of the greatest orator that had ever
+graced her tribune. His funeral was celebrated at St. Genevieve with
+splendid ceremonial. The verdict of those best qualified to judge was that
+Mirabeau was the most remarkable man of the eighteenth century, and that
+his premature death, soon after the outbreak of the Revolution, led to the
+overthrow of a monarchy which he alone could have saved.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="THOMAS_MOORE"></a>THOMAS MOORE</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Byron"></a>Life of Byron</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, was born in Dublin on May 28,
+1779, was educated at Trinity College, and studied for the Bar at the
+Middle Temple. At twenty-one years of age he published a translation of
+Anacreon, and his reputation was further established by his love-poems,
+under the pseudonym of Thomas Little, in 1801. He received in 1803 an
+official post in Bermuda, but entrusted his duties there to a substitute,
+by whose defalcations he was later embarrassed. He was married at
+thirty-one to a beautiful and amiable actress, Bessy Dyke, and lived very
+happily for most of his life in Wiltshire, but with an interval of a few
+years in Paris. In 1835 he received a literary pension of &pound;300, to
+which a Civil List pension of &pound;100 was added in 1850. He died on
+February 25, 1852. Undoubtedly, Moore's most important contribution to
+prose literature was his "Letters and Journals of Lord Byron," published in
+1830, six years after the poet's death; as payment he received
+&pound;4,200. Although the work was frankly and even severely criticised in
+many quarters, it did a great deal to put Byron right with public opinion.
+Certainly no literary contemporary was better fitted to write the biography
+of his friend than Moore, who, moreover, had been marked for this work by a
+free gift of Byron's own memoirs. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Ancestors and Early Days</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It has been said of Lord Byron that he was prouder of being a descendant
+of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into
+England, than of having been the author of "Childe Harold." The remark is
+not altogether unfounded, for the pride of ancestry was a feature of his
+character; and justly so, for his line was honourably known on the fields
+of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor; and in the faithful royalist, Sir
+John Biron, afterwards Lord Biron, throughout the Civil Wars.</p>
+
+<p>In 1784, the father of the poet, Captain John Byron, nephew of the fifth
+Lord Byron, with the sole object of relieving his debts, married, as his
+second wife, Miss Catherine Gordon, a wealthy lady of illustrious Scottish
+ancestry. Her fortune was swallowed up, and she was reduced to &pound;150 a
+year, before she gave birth, on January 22, 1788, in Holles Street, London,
+to her first and only child, George Gordon Byron. The boy was somewhat
+deformed, one of his feet being twisted.</p>
+
+<p>In 1790, we find the unhappy parents living in separate lodgings in
+Aberdeen; and this estrangement was followed by complete separation, the
+worthless Captain Byron proceeding to France, where he died in the
+following year. The mother, a woman of the most passionate extremes, sent
+the boy to day school and grammar school. His schoolmates remember him as
+lively, warm-hearted, and more ready to give a blow than to take one. To
+summer excursions with his mother in the Highlands the poet traces his love
+of scenery and especially of mountainous countries; and he refers many
+years after, still with keen feeling, to a little girl, Mary Duff, for
+whom, in his eighth year, he cherished a consuming attachment. So early
+were his sensibilities dominant.</p>
+
+<p>On the death, in 1794, of the grandson of the old lord, little George
+stood in immediate succession to the peerage; in May, 1798, the fifth Lord
+Byron died at Newstead Abbey, and the boy's name was called in school with
+the title "Dominus." The Earl of Carlisle was appointed his guardian in
+chancery, and in the same summer, Lord Byron, in his eleventh year, took
+possession, with his mother, of the seat of his ancestors. The next year
+Mrs. Byron was placed on the Civil List for a pension of &pound;300 a year.
+Removing to London, she placed George at school with Dr. Glennie at
+Dulwich, but thwarted the progress of his education with her fondness and
+self-will, until Lord Carlisle gave up all hope of ruling her. It was at
+this period that a boyish love for Margaret Parker, his cousin, who died
+shortly after, led Byron into the practice of verse.</p>
+
+<p>From 1801 to 1805, from thirteen years of age to seventeen, George was
+at Harrow, where he sat beside Peel, the future statesman. This period of
+ardent friendship with his fellows includes also the romantic affection, in
+1803, for Miss Chaworth, heiress of Annesley, near Newstead, who looked on
+her admirer as the mere schoolboy that he was. Leaving Harrow with the
+reputation of an idler who would never learn, Byron was entered at Trinity
+College, Cambridge, in October, 1805. His vacations were spent with his
+mother at Southwell, and her explosions of temper, in which she would throw
+poker and tongs, alienated him increasingly. In vacation and in term alike
+he read with extraordinary avidity and variety, wrote a great deal of
+verse, and in November, 1806, printed a small volume of poems for private
+circulation.</p>
+
+<p>He was a frank and vivid correspondent; his letters to Miss Pigot, of
+Southwell, and others, are full of the liveliest descriptions of the
+Cambridge days. At this time Byron was painfully shy of new faces, and
+perpetually mortified on account of his poverty. He rose, and retired to
+rest, very late. He was very fond of the exercises of swimming, riding,
+shooting, fencing, and sparring; greatly devoted to his dogs, delighted in
+music, and was known as remarkably superstitious. Of his charity and
+kindheartedness there was no end. Always conscious of his deformity, and
+terribly afraid of becoming corpulent, he was sedulously careful of his
+person and dress.</p>
+
+<p>"Hours of Idleness," Byron's first published volume, came out while he
+was at the university, and was received by the "Edinburgh Review" with a
+contempt which stung him to the quick. With intervals of dissipation in
+London and at Brighton, Byron threw himself, at Newstead, into the
+preparation of a satirical revenge, training himself for it by a deep study
+of the writings of Pope. After his coming of age, in 1809, he went up to
+London with his satire, and on March 13 took his seat in the House of
+Lords. A few days later "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" was the talk
+of the town. Wild festivities at Newstead followed its publication, and on
+July 2 Byron sailed from Falmouth in the Lisbon packet.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Poet Finds Himself</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Lord Byron was absent from England for two years, and in the solitude of
+his nights at sea and in his lone wanderings through Greece he had leisure
+and seclusion to look within himself, and there catch the first glimpses of
+his glorious mind. His deep passion for solitude grew to full power; the
+varied excitement of his travels invigorated his character and stored his
+imagination with impressions, and his inborn sadness rose from a querulous
+bitterness to the grandeur of his later melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>His letters show him on Parnassus, where a flight of eagles seemed an
+omen of his destiny; at Athens, where he lodged with the mother of the
+"Maid of Athens"; standing among the ruins of Ephesus and the mounds of
+Troy; swimming the Hellespont in honour of Leander; at Constantinople,
+where the prospect of the Golden Horn seemed the fairest of all; at Patras,
+in the woeful debility of fever; and again at Athens, making acquaintance
+with Lady Hester Stanhope and "Abyssinian" Bruce. Through all these varied
+scenes his mind was brooding on the verses of the "Childe Harold."</p>
+
+<p>On Byron's return to England, in July, 1811, that poem was placed in Mr.
+Murray's hands, and thus was laid the foundation of a long connection
+between author and publisher. Mrs. Byron died on August 1. With all her
+faults she had loved her son deeply, and he could at least look back upon
+dutiful and kindly behaviour to her. It was in November that I first had
+the pleasure of meeting the poet at dinner, and what I chiefly remarked was
+the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his voice and
+manner, and his marked kindness. From our first meeting our acquaintance
+quickly ripened into friendship.</p>
+
+<p>On February 27, 1812, a day or two before the appearance of "Childe
+Harold," Byron made the first trial of his eloquence in the House of Lords,
+and it was on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Lord Holland.
+The subject of debate was the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill. Workmen were
+rioting and wrecking because their labour had been displaced by the
+introduction of machinery, and Byron's view was that "we must not allow
+mankind to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism"--"the maintenance of
+the industrious poor is of greater consequence than the enrichment of
+monopolists"--"I have seen the state of these miserable men, and it is a
+disgrace to a civilised country." The speech was well received. The
+impression produced two days later by Byron's "Childe Harold" was as
+instantaneous as it has proved deep and lasting. Even the dashes of
+scepticism, with which he darkened his strain, served only to heighten its
+success. The Prince Regent had the poet presented to him, and the author of
+"Marmion" offered his praise. In the following May appeared the wild and
+beautiful fragment, "The Giaour." This new offspring of his genius was
+hailed with wonder and delight, and on my rejoining him in town this
+spring, I found an intense enthusiasm for Byron throughout the literary and
+social world. But his mind was already turning to freedom and solitude, and
+his third and last speech in the House of Lords was made in June.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Byron's Unfortunate Marriage</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Byron's restlessness is reflected throughout his "Journal," which he
+began at this time. He had dreams of living in the Grecian Islands and of
+adopting an Eastern manner of life; but in December, 1813, when "The Bride
+of Abydos" was published, he was still feverishly dissipating himself in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>A significant entry in the "Journal" says: "A wife would be the
+salvation of me," and Lord Byron became a suitor for the hand of Miss
+Milbanke, a relative of Lady Melbourne. His proposal was not at first
+accepted, but a correspondence ensued between them, and in September, 1814,
+after the appearance of "The Corsair" and "Lara," they became formally
+affianced. I was much in his society at this time, and was filled with
+foreboding anxieties, which the unfortunate events that followed only too
+fully justified. At the end of December he set out for Seaham, the seat of
+Sir Ralph Milbanke, the lady's father, and on January 2, 1815, was married.
+On March 8, he wrote to me from Seaham: "Bell is in health, and unvaried
+good-humour and behaviour."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron's pecuniary embarrassments now accumulated upon him, and just
+a year after his marriage, and shortly after the birth of their daughter, I
+received a letter which breathed a profound melancholy, due partly to his
+difficulties, but more, I thought, to a return of the restless and roving
+spirit. I replied: "Do tell me you are happier than that letter has led me
+to fear, and I shall be satisfied." It was only a few weeks later that Lady
+Byron adopted the resolution of parting from him. She had left London in
+January on a visit to her father, and Byron was to follow her. They had
+parted in the utmost kindness; she wrote him a letter, full of playfulness
+and affection, on the road; but immediately on her arrival her father wrote
+to acquaint Lord Byron that she would return to him no more. At the time
+when he had to stand this unexpected shock, his financial troubles, which
+had led to eight or nine executions in his house within the year, had
+arrived at their utmost; and at a moment when, to use his own expression,
+he was "standing alone on his hearth, with his household gods shivered
+around him," he was also doomed to receive the startling intelligence that
+the wife who had just parted with him in kindness, had parted with him for
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>I must quote from a letter he wrote me in March: "The fault was not in
+my choice, unless in choosing at all; for I do not believe--and I must say
+it in the very dregs of all this bitter business--that there ever was a
+better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and agreeable being
+than Lady Byron. I never had any reproach to make her while with me. Where
+there is blame, it belongs to myself, and if I cannot redeem, I must bear
+it."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Wanderings and Work</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On April 25, 1816, being now twenty-eight years of age, Byron took final
+leave of England, and sailed with two servants for Ostend. His route, by
+Flanders and the Rhine, may be traced in his matchless verses. He settled
+in Geneva, where he met Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; they boated on the lake
+and walked together, and Byron's susceptible mind was deeply influenced by
+his mystical companion. We may discover traces of that vague sublimity in
+the third canto of "Childe Harold," and traces also of Mr. Wordsworth's
+mood which Byron absorbed from Shelley's favourite author.</p>
+
+<p>From November, 1816, his letters are dated from Venice. "This has always
+been, next to the East, the greenest island of my imagination, and it has
+not disappointed me." They are considerably taken up with love affairs of
+an irregular kind, and contain also many vivid pictures of Venetian society
+and manners. "Manfred" was completed in 1817, and was followed by the
+fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Margarita Cogni was the reigning favourite
+of Byron's unworthy harem at this time; and his poem of "Don Juan," now
+begun, most faithfully and lamentably reflects every whim and passion that,
+like the rack of autumn, swept across his mind.</p>
+
+<p>But April, 1819, brought a revulsion against all this libertine way of
+living, and brought also the dawn of the only real love of his whole life.
+Lord Byron had first met the Countess Guiccioli in the autumn of 1818, when
+she made her appearance, three days after her marriage, at the house of the
+Countess Albrizzi, in all the gaiety of bridal array, and the first delight
+of exchanging a convent for the world. She has given her impressions of
+their meeting: "His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the tone
+of his voice, his manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him,
+rendered him so superior a being to any whom I had hitherto seen, that it
+was impossible he should not have left the most profound impression upon
+me."</p>
+
+<p>In June, Byron joined her at Ravenna, and for the next three years
+remained devotedly attached to her. She struck me, during our first
+interview, when I visited them at La Mira, as a lady not only of a style of
+beauty singular in an Italian, as being fair-complexioned and delicate, but
+also as being highly intelligent and amiable.</p>
+
+<p>A letter to me from Pisa, dated August 27, 1822, has a mournful
+interest: "We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on the
+seashore. You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral
+pile has, with mountains in the background and the sea before." Another, of
+November 17, to Lady Byron, shows that if the author of it had not right on
+his side, he had at least most of those good feelings which generally
+accompany it. "I have to acknowledge the receipt of Ada's [their
+daughter's] hair; this note will reach you about her birthday.... We both
+made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and better so.... I assure you
+that I bear you now no resentment whatever.... Whether the offence has been
+solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to
+reflect on any but two things--that you are the mother of my child, and
+that we shall never meet again."</p>
+
+<p>Byron was thirty-five years old when from his exile at Genoa he turned
+his eyes to Greece, where a spirit was now rising such as he had imaged
+forth in dreams of song, but hardly could have dreamed that he should have
+lived to see it realised. He longed to witness, and very probably to share
+in, the present triumphs of liberty on those very fields where he had
+gathered for immortality such memorials of the liberty of the past. Lord
+Byron was in touch with the committee concerned with Grecian liberty in
+May, 1823, and two months later sailed with his party on July 14.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving at Cephalonia he made a journey to Ithaca for a few days. His
+confidence in the Greek cause was soon clouded; the people were grossly
+degenerate, and he saw that the work of regeneration must be slow. To
+convince the government and the chiefs of the paralysing effect of their
+dissensions, to inculcate the spirit of union, to endeavour to humanise the
+feelings of the belligerents on both sides, so as to take from the war the
+character of barbarism--these, with the generous aid of his money, were the
+objects of his interference.</p>
+
+<p>At length the time for action arrived, and, leaving Cephalonia, Byron
+landed at Missolonghi on January 4, 1824. He was welcomed with all honour,
+and at the end of the month received a formal commission from the
+government as commander of the expedition against Lepanto, a fortified
+town. This design was a failure, and Byron occupied himself with the
+fortification of Missolonghi, and with the formation of a brigade for the
+next campaign.</p>
+
+<p>But his health had lately been giving way; he was living in little
+better than a swamp; and one day, after exposure to a heavy shower, he was
+seized with acute pains. On April 11, the illness, now recognised as
+rheumatic fever, increased, and on the 19th he was no more. The funeral
+took place in the Church of St. Nicholas, Missolonghi, on April 22, and the
+remains were carried to England on the brig Florida, and buried, close to
+those of his mother, in the village church of Hucknall.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--A Bewildering Personality</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Can I clear away some of the mists that hang round my friend, and show
+him as worthy of love as he was of admiration? The task is not an easy one.
+In most minds some one influence governs, from which all secondary impulses
+are found to radiate, but this pivot of character was wanting to Lord
+Byron. Governed at different moments by totally different passions, and
+impelled sometimes, as in his excess of parsimony in Italy, by springs of
+action never before developed in his nature, he presents the strangest
+contradictions and inconsistencies, a bewildering complication of
+qualities.</p>
+
+<p>So various, indeed, were his moral and intellectual attributes, that he
+may be pronounced to have been not one, but many. It was this multiform
+aspect that led the world to compare him with a medley host of personages:
+"within nine years," as he playfully records, "to Rousseau, Goethe, Young,
+Aretino, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, Satan, Shakespeare, Buonaparte,
+Tiberius, &AElig;schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, Henry VIII.,
+Mirabeau, Michael Angelo, Diogenes, Milton, Alfieri, and many others."</p>
+
+<p>But this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix the
+fairy fabric of his character, is itself the clue to whatever was most
+dazzling in his might, or startling in his levity, or most attractive or
+most repellent in his life and genius. A variety of powers almost
+boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them; an unusual
+susceptibility and an uncontrolled impetuosity--such were the two great
+sources of all that varied spectacle of his life--unchecked feeling and
+dominant self-will.</p>
+
+<p>Great versatility of power will hardly be found without a tendency to
+versatility of principle. Byron was fully aware, not only of this
+characteristic quality of his nature, but also of its danger to singleness
+of character; and this consciousness had the effect of keeping him in a
+general line of consistency, throughout life, on certain great subjects,
+and helped him to preserve unbroken the greater number of his personal
+attachments. But, except in some few respects, he gave way to his versatile
+humour without scruple or check; and it was impossible but that such a
+range of will and power should be abused. Is it to be wondered at that in
+the works of one thus gifted and carried away we should find, without any
+design of corrupting on his side, evil too often invested with a grandeur
+which belongs intrinsically but to good?</p>
+
+<p>Nay, it will be found that even the strength and impressiveness of
+Byron's poetry is sometimes injured by a capricious and desultory quality
+due to this very pliancy of mind. It may be questioned whether a
+concentration of his powers would not have afforded a grander result. It
+may be that, if Lord Byron had not been so actively versatile, he would
+have been, not less wonderful, but more great.</p>
+
+<p>Again, this love of variety was one of the most pervading weaknesses,
+not only to his poetry, but of his life. The pride of personating every
+kind of character, evil as well as good, influenced his ambition and his
+conduct; and to such a perverse length did he carry this fancy for
+self-defamation that, if there was any tendency to mental derangement, it
+was in this point that it manifested itself. I have known him more than
+once, as we have sat together, to throw out dark hints of his past life
+with an air of gloom and mystery designed to awaken interest; and I have
+little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any
+crime so dark or so desperate of which, in the excitement of acting upon
+the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been
+guilty. It has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's
+separation from him may have been nothing more, after all, than some
+imposture of this kind, some dim confession of undefined horror.</p>
+
+<p>But the over-frankness with which he uttered every chance impression of
+the moment was by itself enough to bring his character unfavourably before
+the world. Which of us could bear to be judged by the unnumbered thoughts
+that course like waves of the sea through our minds and pass away unuttered
+and even unowned by ourselves? To such a test was Byron's character,
+throughout his life, exposed.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or
+lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed his personal
+fascination. His social intercourse was perfectly charming, because whoever
+was with him occupied for the moment all his thoughts and feelings. Even
+with the casual acquaintance of the hour his heart was on his lips, ready
+to give away every secret of his life.</p>
+
+<p>To my assertion that "at no time of his life was Lord Byron a confirmed
+unbeliever" it has been objected that his writings prove the direct
+contrary. But this is to confuse the words "unbeliever" and "sceptic," the
+former of which implies decision of opinion, and the latter only doubt.
+Many passages in his "Journal" show doubt strongly inclined to belief. "Of
+the immortality of the soul it appears to me there can be little doubt." "I
+have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could never bear
+its introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded
+upon the soul." Here are doubt and unrest, but not unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>And so I conclude my labours, undertaken at the wish of my friend, and
+leave his character to the judgement of the world. Let it be remembered
+that through life, with all his faults, he never lost a friend; that those
+about him in his youth, whether as companions, teachers, or servants,
+remained attached to him to the last; that the woman to whom he gave the
+love of his maturer years idolises his name; and that, with a single
+unhappy exception, those who were brought into relations of amity with him
+have felt towards him a kind regard in life, and retain a fondness for his
+memory.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JAMES_COTTER_MORISON"></a>JAMES COTTER MORISON</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_and_Times_of_St_Bernard"></a>Life and Times of St.
+Bernard</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> James Augustus Cotter Morison, English essayist and
+historian, was born in London on April 20, 1832, and was the son of the
+inventor and proprietor of "Morison's Pills." His first years were spent in
+Paris, where he laid the foundation of his intimate knowledge of the French
+people. After graduating at Oxford, he wrote for the "Saturday Review" and
+other papers, and in 1863 brought out his "Life and Times of Saint
+Bernard." His other chief work is entitled "The Service of Man: an Essay
+towards the Religion of the Future," published in 1886. He had projected an
+historical study of France under Louis XIV., but never completed it. He
+died on February 26, 1888. Morison was a Positivist, and had many friends
+in that group, and his rich mind and genial temper endeared him to several
+of the leading literary men of his time, such as George Meredith, Mark
+Pattison and Matthew Arnold. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Early Days of a Useful Life</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Saint Bernard was born in 1091, and died in 1153. His life thus almost
+coincides with the central portion of the Middle Ages. He saw the First and
+Second Crusades, the rising liberties of the communes, and the beginnings
+of scholasticism under Abelard. A large Church reformation and the noblest
+period of monasticism occurred in his day, and received deep marks of his
+genius.</p>
+
+<p>He was the son of Tesselin, a wealthy feudal baron of Burgundy,
+remarkable for his courage, piety, justice and modesty. Alith, his mother,
+was earnest, loving and devout, and full of humility and charity. His
+earliest years were passed amid the European fervour of the First Crusade;
+and as he grew from boyhood into youth--at which time his mother died--he
+made choice of the monastic profession. His friends vainly tried to tempt
+him aside into the pursuit of philosophy; but his commanding personal
+ascendancy brought his brothers and friends to follow him instead into the
+religious life. Having assembled a company of about thirty chosen spirits,
+he retired into seclusion with them for six months, and then, in 1113, at
+the age of twenty-two, led them within the gates of Citeaux.</p>
+
+<p>This community, founded fifteen years before, and now ruled by Stephen
+Harding, an Englishman from Dorsetshire, was exceedingly austere, keeping
+Saint Benedict's rule literally. Here Bernard's uncompromising
+self-mortification, and his love of, and communion with, Nature, showed
+themselves as the chief characteristics of his noble spirit. "Believe me,"
+he said to a pupil, "you will find something far greater in the woods than
+you will in books; stones and trees will teach you that which you will
+never learn from masters." The arrival of Bernard and his companions was a
+turning-point in the history of Citeaux; and the monastery had to send out
+two colonies, to La Fert&eacute; and Pontigny, and in 1115 a third, under
+Bernard himself, to Clairvaux. Here, in a deep umbrageous valley, traversed
+by a limpid stream, the thirteen pioneers built a house little better than
+a barn. Their privations were great. Beech-nuts and roots were at first
+their main support; but soon the sympathy of the surrounding country
+brought sufficiency for their frugal needs. Bernard was consecrated Abbot
+of Clairvaux by the Bishop of Chalons, the renowned William of Champeaux,
+with whom he established a deep friendship.</p>
+
+<p>His labours, anxieties and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to
+the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to Citeaux,
+and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and obtained leave
+to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young abbot obeyed his
+new director absolutely, and lived in a cottage apart from the monastery
+"at leisure for himself and God, and exulting, as it were, in the delights
+of Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>William of St. Thierry and other chroniclers, telling of Clairvaux at
+this time, are fervid in their reverence and praise. "Methought I saw a new
+heaven and a new earth" ... "the golden age seemed to have revisited the
+world" ... "as you descended the hill you could see it was a temple of God;
+the still, silent valley bespoke the unfeigned humility of Christ's poor.
+In this valley full of men, where one and all were occupied with their
+allotted tasks, a silence, deep as that of night, prevailed. The sounds of
+labour, or the chants of the brethren in the choral service, were the only
+exceptions. The order of this silence struck such a reverence even into
+secular persons that they dreaded breaking it even by pertinent
+remarks."</p>
+
+<p>Saint Benedict's rule had reference only to a single religious house;
+but Abbot Stephen of Citeaux united in one compact whole all the
+monasteries which sprang from the parent stock of Citeaux, and established
+an organised system of mutual supervision and control. A general chapter
+was held annually in September, and every Cistercian abbot whose monastery
+was in France, Italy or Germany was bound to attend every year; those from
+Spain, every two years; those from Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Portugal,
+every four years; those from Norway, every five years; and those from Syria
+and Palestine, every seven years. The "Charter of Charity," promulgated by
+this chapter for the guidance of the Cistercian Order, is a brief but
+pregnant document, which quite explains its success.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--A Great Preacher and Essayist</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>About 1119, Bernard, who had resumed the duties of abbot, began the
+career of literary and ecclesiastical activity--the wide and impassioned
+correspondence, the series of marvellous sermons--which have won for him
+the title of the Last of the Fathers. His early essays are vigorous, but
+lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed
+from the tender poetry of his later writings. Three years later we find
+Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry,
+who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his record
+of the saint. It was then regarded as natural that a man of eminent piety
+should work miracles; and we ought to accept these stories, in their native
+crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as significant. Belonging to the
+time, as much as feudal castles and mail armour do, they form part of a
+picture of it.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse, and of another to
+Paris, where he preached the "true philosophy" of poverty and contempt of
+the world to the schools distracted by scholastic puzzles, Bernard remained
+a secluded monk of a new and humble Order. But already, in his thirty-fifth
+year, the foundations had been laid of that authority which enabled him to
+quell a widespread schism, to oppose a formidable heretic, and to give the
+strongest impulse to the Second Crusade. His power was growing, chiefly by
+his voluminous correspondence. He wrote to persons of all classes on all
+subjects; his letters afford to the historian a wide repertory of
+indubitable facts, and show what was the part played at that time by the
+spiritual power--that of a divine morality and superior culture coming into
+conflict with, and strong enough to withstand, a vigorous barbarism. These
+epistles are full of commonsense and clear, practical advice, and often
+give us a glimpse of the human, as distinct from the ascetic, element in
+monastic life. They show how men could pass pleasant and thoughtful days
+amid the barbarism of the time.</p>
+
+<p>The feudal fighting, plundering and slaying seemed to spectators of that
+time, and doubtless to Bernard also, as fixed and unalterable, part of the
+nature of things. Louis VI., King of France, had spent his life in a
+succession of sieges, forays and devastations, as one feudal lord among
+others often more powerful than he. But generally he was in the right, and
+his enemies in the wrong; he generally fought for justice and mercy, and
+they for power and for plunder. The feudal aristocracy was now at the
+zenith of its power, and the peasant was oppressed by injustice, taxation
+and forced labour. Only the Church, and she only on grand occasions, could
+stand up for the poor; but now the royal power made common cause with
+Church and poor, and was rewarded by a gain in extent and in influence. Yet
+even Louis, whose whole life showed respect for the spiritual power, had
+some disagreement with the Bishop of Paris and with the Archbishop of Sens,
+so that the two ecclesiastics placed the kingdom under interdict, and fled
+to Citeaux. Thence Bernard, with an astonishing tone of authority, called
+upon his king to do justice; and Louis was on the point of restoring the
+stolen property. Pope Honorius, however, sent letters to the king, raising
+the interdict, and thereupon Bernard turned his fearless indignation upon
+the supreme pontiff himself. "We speak with sadness; the honour of the
+Church has been not a little blemished in the time of Honorius."</p>
+
+<p>The same intrepidity is shown in Bernard's controversy with the monks of
+Cluny, an abbey of pre-eminent power and moral authority, so that Louis had
+called it the "noblest member of his kingdom." Pontius, its abbot, having
+fallen into ways of pride and extortion, had been induced from Rome to
+resign his abbacy, and to promise a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; but soon
+afterwards he fell upon the monastery with an armed force, and ruled there
+like a robber chieftain. This scandalous outrage was soon reported at Rome,
+and the sacrilegious usurper was excommunicated and banished. Bernard
+seized the moment when laxity of observance of the rule had produced its
+bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and warnings, as well to his
+own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the decline of the genuine monastic
+spirit. The invective of what he calls his "Apology" spares neither the
+softness, nor the ostentation, nor the avarice, of religious houses. It
+condemns even their stately sanctuaries. "The walls of your church are
+resplendent, but the poor are not there." It recalls the erring monasteries
+to real mortification. In another early treatise, "The Degrees of Humility
+and of Pride," the modes of pride are exhibited forcibly, and with not a
+little humour. Curiosity, thoughtless mirth, mock humility, and other
+symptoms of the protean vice are painted by a master.</p>
+
+<p>But Bernard's period of retirement was drawing to a close; he was
+becoming indispensable to his contemporaries. In 1128 he was called to the
+Council of Troyes, at which the Order of Knights Templars was founded, and
+wrote a treatise in praise of the "new warfare," called the "Exhortation to
+the Knights of the Temple." He was brought, again, to the council convened
+by Louis VI. at &Eacute;tampes to decide between the claims of the rival
+Popes in the Papal schism. The council opened by unanimous consent that
+Bernard's judgement should decide their views; and without hesitation he
+pronounced Innocent II. the lawful Pope, and Peter Leonis, or Anacletus
+II., a vain pretender. He bore the same testimony, in the presence of
+Innocent, before Henry I. of England, at Chartres, and before Lotharius,
+the German Emperor, at Li&egrave;ge. The Pope visited Clairvaux, where he
+was moved to tears at the sight of the tattered flock of "Christ's poor,"
+then presided at the Council of Rheims, 1131, and continued his journey
+into Italy, still accompanied by the Abbot of Clairvaux. Bernard, convinced
+that the cause of Innocent was the cause of justice and religion, set no
+bounds to his advocacy of it in letters to kings, bishops and cities. Such
+was now the fame of his sanctity that on his approach to Milan the whole
+population came out to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to Clairvaux in 1135, where he found the community all
+living in Christian amity, and again retired to a cottage in the
+neighbourhood for rest and reflection. "Bernard was in the heavens," says
+Arnold of Bonnevaux; "but they compelled him to come down and listen to
+their sublunary business." The buildings were too small for their
+constantly growing numbers, and a convenient site had been found in an open
+plain farther down the valley. Bishops, barons and merchants came to the
+help of the good work; and the new abbey and church rose quickly.</p>
+
+<p>To Bernard's forty-fifth year belong the "Sermons on the Canticles." In
+the auditorium, or talking-room of the monastery, the abbot, surrounded by
+his white-cowled monks, delivered his spiritual discourses. A strange
+company it was: the old, stooping monk and the young beginner, the lord and
+the peasant, listening together to the man whose message they believed came
+from another world.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--St. Bernard and the Second Crusade</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the meanwhile, the affairs of the Papacy had not improved--Innocent
+was still an exile from his see. Worst of all, the monastery of Monte
+Casino, the head and type of Western monarchism, had declared for
+Anacletus, the anti-Pope; and in 1137 Bernard set out for Italy, visited
+Innocent at Viterbo, and proceeded to Rome. As he advanced, Anacletus was
+rapidly deserted by his supporters, and shortly afterwards solved the
+difficulty by his death. So ended the schism; and Bernard left Rome within
+five days after finishing his work. With broken health and depressed
+spirits he returned to Clairvaux. His brother Gerard, who had shared his
+journey, died soon after they reached home; and Bernard's discourse on that
+event is one of the most remarkable funeral sermons on record. The monk had
+not ceased to be a loving and impassioned man.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of 1139, the heresies of Peter Abelard, brought to his
+notice by William of St. Thierry, called the Abbot of Clairvaux again into
+public controversy. He implored Pope and cardinals to stay the progress of
+a second Arius. Abelard was at this time sixty-one years old, Bernard's
+senior by twelve years, and was without a rival in the schools. The two men
+were such that they could not but oppose one another; they looked at the
+shield from opposite sides; reconciliation, however desirable, could be
+only superficial. Bernard met Abelard, and "admonished him secretly." He
+well knew to what epoch this subtle mind, with its "human and philosophic
+reasons," was about to lead; his quick ear caught the distant thunder-roll
+of free inquiry. The heresies of Peter de Bruis and the rebellion of Arnold
+of Brescia had already marked the beginning of the great change. At last
+Bernard unwillingly yielded to Abelard's challenge to a public dispute at
+Sens; but his speech had hardly begun when Abelard rose in his place,
+refused to hear more, and appealed to Rome. He never reached Rome, but
+remained a penitent monk at Cluny, reconciled to his great antagonist.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard was fifty-five years of age, and old for his years, when the
+Pope delegated to him the office of preaching the Second Crusade. Pale and
+attenuated to a degree which seemed almost supernatural, his contemporaries
+discovered something in the mere glance of his eyes which filled them with
+wonder and awe. When his words of love, aspiration and sublime
+self-sacrifice reached their ears, they were no longer masters of
+themselves or of their feelings. A great meeting had been convened by Pope
+and king at V&eacute;zelay, on Easter, 1146. Bernard, attended by the king,
+spoke from a platform erected on a hill; there was a shout of "Crosses!
+Crosses!" and the preacher scattered a sheaf of these badges among the
+people. The spiritual mind of Europe had spoken through Bernard, and now
+the military mind spoke through Louis VII. He called upon France to destroy
+the enemies of God. Then Bernard preached the Crusade through France and
+Germany, welcomed everywhere by almost unparalleled enthusiasm and attended
+by miraculous signs.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard was shortly to die; but he had first to bear the trial of being
+reviled as the author of the calamities which had overtaken the Crusade.
+Why had he preached it and prophesied success if this was to be the event?
+A murmur of wrath against him was heard from the broad population of
+Europe. It was during this dark time that he began his largest literary
+work, the five books "De Consideratione," addressed to his disciple,
+Eugenius III., a powerful and elaborate plea against the excessive
+centralization of all administration and decisions into the hands of the
+Papal Court. Bernard called this period "the season of calamities." He
+discovered that his secretary had been forging his name and used his
+authority to recommend men and causes most unworthy of his patronage. His
+health was such that he could take no solid food; sleep had left him; his
+debility was extreme. Pope Eugenius died in July, 1153; and Bernard had no
+wish to stay behind. "I am no longer of this world," he said; and on August
+20 he passed away.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOHN_MORLEY"></a>JOHN MORLEY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Richard_Cobden"></a>Life of Richard Cobden</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> In an age when many have gained the double distinction of
+eminence in statesmanship and in letters, the name of Lord Morley stands
+out as that of a man so illustrious in both provinces that it is hard to
+decide in which he has earned the greater fame. We are here concerned with
+him as a brilliant English man of letters. The "Life of Cobden" was
+published in 1881, when John Morley was in the height of his literary
+activity. Born at Blackburn on December 24, 1838, and educated at
+Cheltenham and Oxford, he had entered journalism, had edited the "Pall Mall
+Gazette" and the "Fortnightly Review," and had followed up his first
+book--a monograph on Burke--by a remarkable study of Voltaire, and by his
+work entitled "On Compromise." Political preoccupations drew him somewhat
+away from literature after 1881; but in 1901 he published his book on
+Cromwell, which was followed two years later by the monumental "Life of
+Gladstone." </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--On the Road</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Heyshott is a hamlet in a sequestered corner of West Sussex, not many
+miles from the Hampshire border. Here, in an old farmhouse, known as
+Dunford, Richard Cobden was born on June 3, 1804. His ancestors were yeomen
+of the soil, and, it is said, with every appearance of truth, that the name
+can be traced in the annals of the district as far back as the fourteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>Cobden's father, a man of soft and affectionate disposition, but wholly
+without the energy of affairs, met with financial disaster in 1814, and
+relatives charged themselves with the maintenance of his dozen children.
+Richard was sent by his mother's brother-in-law, a merchant in London, to a
+school in Yorkshire. Here he remained for five years, a grim and desolate
+time, of which he could never afterwards endure to speak. In 1819 he was
+received as a clerk in his uncle's warehouse in Old Change; and at the age
+of twenty-one he was advanced from the drudgery of the warehouse to the
+glories of the road. What made the life of a traveller specially welcome to
+Cobden was the gratification that it offered to the master-passion of his
+life, an insatiable desire to know the affairs of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In 1826, his employer failed, and for some months Cobden had to take
+unwelcome holiday. In September he found a situation, and again set out on
+the road with his samples of muslin and calico prints. Two years
+afterwards, in 1828, he and two friends determined to begin business on
+their own account. They arranged with a firm of Manchester calico-printers
+to sell goods on commission; and so profitable was the enterprise that in
+1831 the partners determined to print their own goods, and took an old
+factory at Sabden in Lancashire.</p>
+
+<p>Cobden's imagination was struck by the busy life of the county with
+which his name was destined to be so closely bound up. "Manchester," he
+writes with enthusiasm, "is the place for all men of bargain and business."
+His pen acquires a curiously exulting animation as he describes the bustle
+of its streets, the quaintness of its dialect, the abundance of its
+capital, and the sturdy veterans with a hundred thousand pounds in each
+pocket, who might be seen in the evening smoking clay pipes and calling for
+brandy-and-water in the bar-parlours of homely taverns. He prospered
+rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but it is at Sabden, not at
+Manchester, that we see the first monument of his public spirit--a little
+stone school-house, built as the result of an agitation led by him with as
+much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw afterwards into great affairs of
+state.</p>
+
+<p>Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with
+surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and
+wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide
+interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. His first motion
+was towards his own intellectual improvement, and early in life he
+perceived that for his purposes no preparation could be so effective as
+that of travel. In 1833 and 1834 he visited the Continent; in 1835, the
+United States; and in 1836 and 1837 he travelled to Egypt, the Levant, and
+Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>In the interval between the two latter journeys he made what was
+probably his first public speech, at a meeting to further the demand of a
+corporation for Manchester. The speech is described as a signal failure.
+"He was nervous," says the chronicler, "confused, and in fact practically
+broke down, and the chairman had to apologise for him."</p>
+
+<p>He was much more successful in two pamphlets he published at this time,
+"England, Ireland, and America," and "Russia," in which he opened the long
+struggle he was to wage against the restriction of commerce, and the policy
+of intervention in European feuds. It is no strained pretension to say that
+already Richard Cobden, the Manchester manufacturer, was fully possessed of
+the philosophic gift of feeling about society as a whole, and thinking
+about the problems of society in an ordered connection.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Corn Laws</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In 1837, Cobden was invited to become candidate for the borough of
+Stockport. Although he threw himself into the struggle with all his energy,
+on the day of election he was found to be at the bottom of the poll. Four
+years later he was returned for Stockport by a triumphant majority. But in
+1841 he was no longer a rising young politician; he had become the leading
+spirit of a national agitation.</p>
+
+<p>In October, 1838, a band of seven men met at an hotel in Manchester, and
+formed a new Anti-Corn-Law Association. They were speedily joined by
+others, including Cobden, who from this moment began to take a prominent
+part in all counsel and action. The abolition of the duties on corn was the
+single object of Cobden's political energy during the seven years that
+followed, and their destruction was the one finished triumph with which his
+name is associated.</p>
+
+<p>After the rejection in the following year by a large majority of Mr.
+Villiers' motion that the House of Commons should consider the act
+regulating the importation of corn, the association developed into a League
+of Federated Anti-Corn-Law Associations in different towns and districts.
+The repealers began the work of propagandism by sending out a band of
+economic missionaries, who were not long in discovering how hardly an old
+class interest dies. In many districts neither law nor equity gave them
+protection. The members of the league were described in the London Press as
+unprincipled schemers, as commercial and political swindlers, and as
+revolutionary emissaries, whom all well-disposed persons ought to assist
+the authorities in putting down.</p>
+
+<p>Before he entered Parliament, Cobden re-settled his business by entering
+into partnership with his brother Frederick, and married (May, 1840) a
+young Welsh lady, Miss Catherine Ann Williams. In Parliament Cobden was
+instantly successful. His early speeches produced that singular and
+profound effect which is perceived in English deliberative assemblies when
+a speaker leaves party recriminations, abstract argument, and commonplaces
+of sentiment, in order to inform his hearers of telling facts in the
+condition of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>But Cobden's parliamentary work was at this time less important than his
+work as an agitator. If in one sense the Corn Laws did not seem a promising
+theme for a popular agitation, they were excellently fitted to bring out
+Cobden's peculiar strength. It was not passion, but persuasiveness, to
+which we must look for the secret of his oratorical success. Cobden made
+his way to men's hearts by the union which they saw in him of simplicity,
+earnestness, and conviction, with a singular facility of exposition. Then
+men were attracted by his mental alacrity, by the instant readiness with
+which he turned round to grapple with a new objection.</p>
+
+<p>His patience in acquiring and shaping matter for argument was surpassed
+by his inexhaustible patience in dealing with the mental infirmities of
+those whom it was his business to persuade. He was wholly free from the
+unmeasured anger against human stupidity which is itself one of the most
+provoking forms of that stupidity.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Cobden and Bright</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1841, Cobden and Bright made that solemn compact which
+was the beginning of an affectionate and noble friendship that lasted
+without a cloud or a jar until Cobden's death.</p>
+
+<p>"On the day when Mr. Cobden called upon me," said Bright, "I was in the
+depths of grief, I might almost say of despair; for the light and sunshine
+of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth of my young
+wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too brief happiness, was
+lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden called upon me as
+a friend, and addressed me, as you might suppose, with words of condolence.
+After a time he looked up, and said, 'There are thousands of houses in
+England at this moment where wives, mothers, and children are dying of
+hunger. Now,' he said, 'when the first paroxysm of your grief is past, I
+would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the Corn Law
+is repealed.' I accepted his invitation."</p>
+
+<p>Although the agitation for repeal was in Cobden's mind only a part of
+the broad aims of peace and social and moral progress for which he strove,
+he was too practical to put forth his thoughts on too many subjects at
+once. He confined his enthusiasm to repeal until repeal was accomplished.
+But his efforts left him no time to attend to his own business, which was
+falling to pieces under the management of his brother Frederick. In the
+autumn of 1845 he felt compelled to give up his work as an agitator on
+account of his private affairs, but Bright and one or two friends procured
+the money that sufficed to tide over the emergency.</p>
+
+<p>The cause was now on the eve of victory. The autumn of 1845 was the
+wettest in the memory of man. For long the downpour never ceased by night
+or by day; it was the rain that rained away the Corn Laws. The bad harvest
+and the Irish potato famine brought the long hesitation of Sir Robert Peel
+to an end. Soon after the opening of the session of 1846, he announced his
+proposals.</p>
+
+<p>The repeal of the Corn Laws was to be total, but not immediate. For
+three years there was to be a lowered duty on a sliding scale, and then the
+ports were to be opened entirely. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" wrote Cobden to his
+wife on June 26, "the Corn Bill is law, and now my work is done!"</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--In the Cause of Peace</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Cobden was now absent from England for fourteen months, travelling on
+the Continent. His reception was everywhere that of a great discoverer in a
+science which interests the bulk of mankind much more keenly than any
+other, the science of wealth. People looked on him as a man who had found
+out a momentous secret. He had interviews with the Pope, with three or four
+kings, with ambassadors, and with all the prominent statesmen. He never
+lost an opportunity of speaking a word in season. They were not all
+converted, but they all listened to him; and they all taught him something,
+whether they chose to learn anything from him in return or not.</p>
+
+<p>On his return he joined with Bright in an agitation for financial and
+parliamentary reform. While he believed in an extension of the franchise as
+a means of attaining the objects he had in view, he was essentially an
+economical, a moral, and a social reformer. He was never an enthusiast for
+mere reform in the machinery. He made it his special mission to advocate
+financial reform, and left the advocacy for franchise extension very
+largely to his colleague.</p>
+
+<p>Retrenchment was the keynote of the financial reform urged by Cobden;
+and retrenchment involved the furtherance of international peace and the
+reduction of British armaments by means of the abandonment of the policy of
+intervention in European disputes and the policy of "clinging to colonies,"
+with the consequent expenditure upon colonial defence. From 1846 to 1851
+Lord Palmerston was at the Foreign Office, and was incessantly active in
+the affairs of half the countries of Europe. To this policy of interference
+Cobden offered resolute opposition. He was especially energetic in
+protesting against the lending to Austria and Russia of money that was in
+effect borrowed to repay the cost of the oppressive war against Hungary. It
+is impossible not to admire the courage, the sound sense, and the elevation
+with which Cobden thus strove to diffuse the doctrine of moral
+responsibility in connection with the use of capital.</p>
+
+<p>In 1852, a Protectionist Ministry under Lord Derby came into power, and
+the Anti-Corn Law League was revived. The danger, however, soon passed
+away; the Derby Ministry made no attempt to interfere with freedom of
+trade, and ere the year ended gave place to the Aberdeen Ministry. Cobden's
+policy of peace and retrenchment, however, became more and more unpopular.
+Cobden's urgent feeling about war was not in any degree sentimental. He
+opposed war because war and the preparation for it consumed the resources
+which were required for the improvement of the temporal condition of the
+population. But in the inflamed condition of public opinion his arguments
+were powerless.</p>
+
+<p>The invasion panic of 1853 was followed in 1854 by the Crimean War, and
+in opposing that war Cobden and Bright found themselves absolutely
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>"The British nation," said Lord Palmerston, "is unanimous in this
+matter. I say unanimous, for I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright, and Co. for
+anything." His estimate was perfectly correct; Cobden and Bright had the
+whole world against them. The moral fortitude, like the political wisdom,
+of these two strong men, stands out with a splendour that already recalls
+the great historic types of statesmanship and patriotism.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Cobden as Treaty-Maker</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In 1857, Cobden was compelled to retire for a time from politics. He
+vigorously opposed the Chinese War, and succeeded in defeating Lord
+Palmerston's Government in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, with his
+usual acuteness and courage, at once dissolved parliament, and in the
+General Election his victory was complete. The Manchester School was
+routed. Cobden, who contested Huddersfield, was heavily beaten; and at
+Manchester itself Bright was at the bottom of the poll. Cobden went to his
+home at Dunford, in Sussex, and remained there nearly two years. Once more
+he was afflicted with financial trouble. An unfortunate land speculation at
+Manchester, and certain investments in American railroads, had again
+brought him into difficulties, from which he was ultimately rescued by a
+munificent gift of &pound;40,000 from subscribers whose names he never
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>The General Election of 1859 was held while Cobden was absent in the
+United States, and on his return he found that he had been chosen member
+for Rochdale. To his surprise, he also received from his old enemy,
+Palmerston, an offer of the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Cobden, who
+had consistently refrained from accepting any office, courteously
+declined.</p>
+
+<p>But he was none the less able to render a great service to the new
+Government. Mr. Bright, in a parliamentary speech, incidentally asked why,
+instead of lavishing the national substance in armaments, they did not go
+to the French Emperor and attempt to persuade him to allow his people to
+trade freely with ours. The idea of a commercial treaty occurred to M.
+Chevalier on reading the speech, and he wrote in this sense to Cobden, who
+was strongly impressed by the notion. He opened his mind to Gladstone, who
+was then Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, as the outcome, Cobden went to
+Paris in the autumn of 1859 as unofficial negotiator of a treaty.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiation was long and tedious. Cobden had to convert the emperor
+to his views, and to await the reconciliation of the various French
+interests that were opposed to freedom of trade. It was not until November,
+1860, that Cobden's labours were concluded. England cleared her tariff of
+protection, and reduced the duties which were retained for revenue on the
+two French staples of wine and brandy. France, on her part, replaced
+prohibition by a series of moderate duties.</p>
+
+<p>Palmerston offered Cobden a choice between a baronetcy and a Privy
+Councillorship as a reward for his services. He replied begging permission
+most respectfully to deny himself the honour. "An indisposition to accept a
+title," he wrote, "being in my case rather an affair of feeling than of
+reason, I will not dwell further on the subject."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>VI.--The Last Days of Cobden</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When Cobden returned to England his public position had more than
+recovered the authority and renown which had been seriously impaired by his
+unpopular attitude on the Russian war. But he and Bright were soon involved
+in an almost angrier conflict than before with the upper and middle
+classes, on account of their championship of the North in the American
+Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining years of his life were largely spent in systematic
+onslaughts upon the policy of Lord Palmerston, and in opposition to
+military expenditure. It was with the purpose of resisting a Canadian
+fortification scheme that he made his last journey to London in March,
+1865. On his arrival he was seized by a sharp attack of asthma; bronchitis
+supervened, and it became evident that he would not recover. On the morning
+of Sunday, April 2, Bright took his place by the side of the dying man. As
+the bells were ringing for the morning service the mists of death began to
+settle heavily on his brow, and his ardent, courageous, and brotherly
+spirit soon passed tranquilly away.</p>
+
+<p>He was buried by the side of his son in the little churchyard at
+Lavington, on the slope of the hill among the pine-woods. "Before we left
+the house," Bright has told us, "standing by me, and leaning on the coffin,
+was his sorrowing daughter, one whose attachment to her father seems to
+have been a passion scarcely equalled among daughters. She said, 'My father
+used to like me very much to read to him the Sermon on the Mount. His own
+life was, to a large, extent, a sermon based upon that best, that greatest
+of all sermons. His was a life of perpetual self-sacrifice.'"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="SAMUEL_PEPYS"></a>SAMUEL PEPYS</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Diary"></a>Diary</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Samuel Pepys, author of the incomparable "Diary," was born
+either in London or at Brampton, Huntingdonshire, on February 23, 1632-3,
+son of John Pepys, a London tailor. By the influence of the Earl of
+Sandwich, he was entered in the public service. Beginning as a clerk in the
+Exchequer, he was soon transferred to the Naval Department, and rose to the
+high office of secretary to the Admiralty. His services were interrupted
+for a time, on the baseless suspicion that he was a Catholic, during the
+panic about the supposed "Popish Plot," but he was returned to his charge,
+and held it until the accession of William and Mary. Pepys was a man of
+very wide interests. He was a member of parliament, and became president of
+the Royal Society. He was an accomplished musician and a keen critic of
+painting, architecture, and the drama. But it is as a connoisseur of human
+nature that Pepys is known to-day. The "Diary" extended over the ten years,
+January, 1659-60, to May, 1669; it closed when he was thirty-seven years
+old, and he lived thirty-four years afterwards. The manuscript, written in
+shorthand, fills six volumes, which repose at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
+It was deciphered in 1825, when it was published as "Memoirs of Samuel
+Pepys, comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. J.
+Smith, and a Selection of his Private Correspondence, edited by Lord
+Braybrooke." Pepys died on May 26, 1703. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--"God Bless King Charles"</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>January</i> 1, 1659-60. Blessed be God, at the end of last year I was
+in very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of
+cold. I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife and servant, Jane, and no other
+in family than us three.</p>
+
+<p>The condition of the state was thus: the Rump, after being disturbed by
+my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again. The officers of the army
+all forced to yield. Lawson still lies in the river, and Monk is with his
+army in Scotland. The New Common Council of the City do speak very high;
+and had sent to Monk their sword-bearer, to acquaint him with their desires
+for a free and full parliament, which is at present the desires, and the
+hopes, and the expectations of all. My own private condition very handsome,
+and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor; besides my goods of my house, and
+my office, which at present is somewhat certain.</p>
+
+<p><i>March 9, 1660.</i> To my lord at his lodging, and came to Westminster
+with him in the coach; and I telling him that I was willing and ready to go
+with him to sea, he agreed that I should. I hear that it is resolved
+privately that a treaty be offered with the king.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 1.</i> To-day I hear they were very merry at Deal, setting up the
+king's flag upon one of their maypoles, and drinking his health upon their
+knees in the streets, and firing the guns, which the soldiers of the castle
+threatened, but durst not oppose.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 2.</i> Welcome news of the parliament's votes yesterday, which
+will be remembered for the happiest May-day that hath been many a year to
+England. The king's letter was read in the house, wherein he submits
+himself and all things to them. The house, upon reading the letter, ordered
+&pound;50,000 to be forthwith provided to send to his majesty for his
+present supply. The City of London have put out a declaration, wherein they
+do disclaim their owning any other government but that of a king, lords,
+and commons.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 3.</i> This morning my lord showed me the king's declaration to
+be communicated to the fleet. I went up to the quarter-deck with my lord
+and the commanders, and there read the papers; which done, the seamen did
+all of them cry out, "God bless King Charles!" with the greatest joy
+imaginable. After dinner to the rest of the ships quite through the
+fleet.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 11.</i> This morning we began to pull down all the state's arms
+in the fleet, having first sent to Dover for painters to come and set up
+the king's. After dinner we set sail from the Downs, but dropped anchor
+again over against Dover Castle.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 12.</i> My lord gave order for weighing anchor, which we did, and
+sailed all day.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 14.</i> In the morning the Hague was clearly to be seen by us.
+The weather bad; we were sadly washed when we come near the shore, it being
+very hard to land there.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 23.</i> Come infinity of people on board from the king to go
+along with him. The king, with the two dukes and Queen of Bohemia, Princess
+Royal, and Prince of Orange, come on board, where I, in their coming in,
+kissed the king's, queen's, and princess's hands, having done the other
+before. Infinite shooting of the runs, and that in a disorder on purpose,
+which was better than if it had been otherwise. We weighed anchor, and with
+a fresh gale and most happy weather we set sail for England.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 24.</i> Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the
+stockings on and wide canons that I bought at Hague. Extraordinary press of
+noble company, and great mirth all day.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 25.</i> By the morning we were come close to the land, and
+everybody made ready to get on shore. I spoke to the Duke of York about
+business, who called me Pepys by name, and upon my desire did promise me
+his future favour. The king went in my lord's barge with the two dukes, and
+was received by General Monk with all love and respect at his entrance upon
+the land of Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>1660-1661. At the end of the last and the beginning of this year, I do
+live in one of the houses belonging to the Navy Office, as one of the
+principal officers; my family being myself, my wife, Jane, Will Hewer, and
+Wayneman, my girl's brother. Myself in constant good health, and in a most
+handsome and thriving condition. Blessed be God for it. The king settled,
+and loved of all.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Plague</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>July 31, 1665.</i> I ended this month with the greatest joy that I
+ever did any in my life, because I have spent the greatest part of it with
+abundance of joy, and honour, and pleasant journeys, and brave
+entertainments, and without cost of money. We end this month after the
+greatest glut of content that ever I had, only under some difficulty
+because of the plague, which grows mightily upon us, the last week being
+about 1,700 or 1,800 of the plague. My Lord Sandwich at sea with a fleet of
+about one hundred sail, to the northward, expecting De Ruyter, or the Dutch
+East India fleet.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 8.</i> To my office a little, and then to the Duke of
+Albemarle's about some business. The streets empty all the way now, even in
+London, which is a sad sight. To Westminster Hall, where talking, hearing
+very sad stories. So home through the City again, wishing I may have taken
+no ill in going; but I will go, I think, no more thither. The news of De
+Ruyter's coming home is certain, and told to the great disadvantage of our
+fleet; but it cannot be helped.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 10.</i> To the office, where we sat all morning; in great
+trouble to see the bill this week rise so high, to above 4,000 in all, and
+of them above 3,000 of the plague. Home to draw over anew my will, which I
+had bound myself by oath to dispatch by to-morrow night; the town growing
+so unhealthy that a man cannot depend upon living two days.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 12.</i> The people die so that now it seems they are fain to
+carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it
+in. And my lord mayor commands people to be within at nine at night, that
+the sick may have liberty to go abroad for air. There is one also dead out
+of one of our ships at Deptford, which troubles us mightily. I am told,
+too, that a wife of one of the grooms at court is dead at Salisbury, so
+that the king and queen are speedily to be all gone to Milton. So God
+preserve us!</p>
+
+<p><i>August 16.</i> To the Exchange, where I have not been in a great
+while. But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people,
+and very few upon the 'Change. Jealous of every door that one sees shut up
+lest it should be the plague; and about two shops in three, if not more,
+generally shut up.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 22.</i> I walked to Greenwich, in my way seeing a coffin with
+a dead body therein, dead of the plague, which was carried out last night,
+and the parish have not appointed anybody to bury it; but only set a watch
+there all day and night, that nobody should go thither or come thence, this
+disease making us more cruel to one another than we are to dogs.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 25.</i> This day I am told that Dr. Burnett, my physician, is
+this morning dead of the plague, which is strange, his man dying so long
+ago, and his house this month open again. Now himself dead. Poor,
+unfortunate man!</p>
+
+<p><i>August 30.</i> I went forth and walked towards Moorfields to see (God
+forgive my presumption!) whether I could see any dead corpse going to the
+grave. But, Lord! how everybody looks, and discourse in the street is of
+death and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the town is
+like a place distressed and forsaken.</p>
+
+<p><i>September 3 (Lord's Day).</i> Up; and put on my coloured silk suit
+very fine, and my new periwig, bought a good while since, but durst not
+wear, because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a
+wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwigs,
+for nobody will dare to buy any hair, for fear of the infection, that it
+has been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague. My Lord Brouncker,
+Sir J. Minnes, and I up to the vestry at the desire of the justices of the
+peace, in order to the doing something for the keeping of the plague from
+growing; but, Lord! to consider the madness of the people of the town, who
+will, because they are forbid, come in crowds along with the dead corpses
+to see them buried.</p>
+
+<p><i>September 6.</i> To London, to pack up more things; and there I saw
+fires burning in the streets, as it is through the whole city, by the lord
+mayor's order.</p>
+
+<p><i>September 14.</i> To the Duke of Albemarle, where I find a letter
+from my Lord Sandwich, of the fleet's meeting with about eighteen more of
+the Dutch fleet, and his taking of most of them; and the messenger says
+they had taken three after the letter was sealed, which being twenty-one,
+and those took the other day, is forty-five sail, some of which are good,
+and others rich ships. Having taken a copy of my lord's letter, I away
+toward the 'Change, the plague being all thereabouts. Here my news was
+highly welcome, and I did wonder to see the 'Change so full--I believe two
+hundred people. And, Lord! to see how I did endeavour to talk with as few
+as I could, there being now no shutting up of houses infected, that to be
+sure we do converse and meet with people that have the plague upon them. I
+spent some thought on the occurrences of this day, giving matter for as
+much content on one hand and melancholy on another, as any day in all my
+life. For the first, the finding of my money and plate all safe at London;
+the hearing of this good news after so great a despair of my lord's doing
+anything this year; and the decrease of 500 and more, which is the first
+decrease we have yet had in the sickness since it begun. Then, on the other
+side, my finding that though the bill in general is abated, yet in the City
+within the walls it is increased; my meeting dead corpses, carried close to
+me at noonday in Fenchurch Street.</p>
+
+<p>One of my own watermen, that carried me daily, fell sick as soon as he
+had landed me on Friday last, when I had been all night upon the water, and
+is now dead of the plague. And, lastly, that both my servants, W. Hewer and
+Tom Edwards, have lost their fathers of the plague this week, do put me
+into great apprehension of melancholy, and with good reason.</p>
+
+<p><i>November 15.</i> The plague, blessed be God! is decreased 400, making
+the whole this week but 1,300 and odd, for which the Lord be praised!</p>
+
+<p><i>December 25 (Christmas Day).</i> To church in the morning, and there
+saw a wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day, and the
+young people so merry with one another, and strange to see what delight we
+married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition,
+every man and woman gazing and smiling at them.</p>
+
+<p><i>December 31.</i> Thus ends this year, to my great joy, in this
+manner. I have raised my estate from &pound;1,300 in this year to
+&pound;4,400. I have got myself greater interest, I think, by my diligence,
+and my employments increased by that of treasurer for Tangier and surveyor
+of the victuals. It is true we have gone through great melancholy because
+of the plague, and I put to great charges by it, by keeping my family long
+at Woolwich, and myself and my clerks at Greenwich, and a maid at London;
+but I hope the king will give us some satisfaction for that. But now the
+plague is abated almost to nothing, and I intending to get to London as
+fast as I can. To our great joy the town fills apace, and shops begin to be
+open again.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--The Great Fire</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>September 2, 1666.</i> Some of our maids sitting up late last night
+to get things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three
+in the morning to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose,
+and slipped on my nightgown, and went to her window, and thought it to be
+on the back side of Mark Lane at the farthest, and so went to bed again.
+About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at the window,
+and saw the fire not so much as it was, and further off. By-and-by Jane
+comes and tells me that above 300 houses have been burned down, and that it
+is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge. So I made myself
+ready, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high
+places; and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on
+fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side of the bridge.
+So down with my heart full of trouble to the lieutenant of the Tower, who
+tells me that it begun this morning in the king's baker's house in Pudding
+Lane.</p>
+
+<p>So I down to the waterside, and there got a boat, and through bridge,
+and there saw a lamentable fire. Everybody endeavouring to remove their
+goods, and flinging into the river, or bringing them into lighters that lay
+off; poor people staying in their houses till the very fire touched them,
+and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stairs by the
+waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive,
+were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and
+balconies till they burned their wings and fell down. Having staid, and in
+an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my sight,
+endeavouring to quench it, I to White Hall, and there up to the king's
+closet in the chapel, where people come about me, and I did give them an
+account which dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the king.</p>
+
+<p>So I was called for, and did tell the king and Duke of York what I saw,
+and that unless his majesty did command houses to be pulled down, nothing
+could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the king commanded me
+to go to my lord mayor from him and command him to spare no houses, but to
+pull down before the fire every way. Meeting with Captain Cocke, I in his
+coach, which he lent me, to Paul's, and there walked along Watling Street,
+as well as I could, every creature coming away loaded with goods to save,
+and here and there sick people carried away in beds. At last met my lord
+mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent. To the king's message, he cried,
+like a fainting woman, "Lord! what can I do? I am spent; people will not
+obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster
+than we can do it." So I walked home, seeing people almost all distracted,
+and no manner of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very
+thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tar in
+Thames Street, and warehouses of oil and wines and brandy.</p>
+
+<p>Soon as I dined, I away, and walked through the City, the streets full
+of people, and horses and carts loaden with goods. To Paul's Wharf, where I
+took boat, and saw the fire was now got further, both below and above
+bridge, and no likelihood of stopping it. Met with the king and Duke of
+York in their barge. Their order was only to pull down houses apace; but
+little was or could be done, the fire coming so fast. Having seen as much
+as I could, I away to White Hall by appointment, and there walked to St.
+James's Park, and there met my wife, and Creed and Wood and his wife, and
+walked to my boat; and upon the water again, and to the fire, still
+increasing, and the wind great. So near the fire as we could for smoke, and
+all over the Thames you were almost burned with a shower of fire-drops.</p>
+
+<p>When you could endure no more upon the water, we to a little ale-house
+on the Bankside, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire
+grow; and as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and
+upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up
+the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like
+the fine flame of an ordinary fire. We stayed till, it being darkish, we
+saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of
+the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long; it
+made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming
+at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at
+their ruin. So home with a sad heart.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Of the Badness of the Government</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>April 26, 1667.</i> To White Hall, and there saw the Duke of
+Albemarle, who is not well, and do grow crazy. Then I took a turn with Mr.
+Evelyn, with whom I walked two hours; talking of the badness of the
+government, where nothing but wickedness, and wicked men and women command
+the king; that it is not in his nature to gainsay anything that relates to
+his pleasures; that much of it arises from the sickliness of our ministers
+of state, who cannot be about him as the idle companions are, and therefore
+he gives way to the young rogues; and then from the negligence of the
+clergy, that a bishop shall never be seen about him, as the King of France
+hath always; that the king would fain have some of the same gang to be lord
+treasurer, which would be yet worse.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the court
+lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's
+coming in. He tells me that now the Countess Castlemaine do carry all
+before her. He did tell me of the ridiculous humour of our king and knights
+of the Garter the other day, who, whereas heretofore their robes were only
+to be worn during their ceremonies, these, as proud of their coats, did
+wear them all day till night, and then rode in the park with them on. Nay,
+he tells me he did see my Lord Oxford and Duke of Monmouth in a hackney
+coach with two footmen in the park, with their robes on, which is a most
+scandalous thing, so as all gravity may be said to be lost among us.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--The End of the Diary</i></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>November 30, 1668.</i> My wife after dinner went the first time
+abroad in her coach, calling on Roger Pepys, and visiting Mrs. Creed and my
+cousin Turner. Thus endeth this month with very good content, but most
+expenseful to my purse on things of pleasure, having furnished my wife's
+closet and the best chamber, and a coach and horses that ever I knew in the
+world; and I am put into the greatest condition of outward state that ever
+I was in, or hoped ever to be. But my eyes are come to that condition that
+I am not able to work. God do His will in it!</p>
+
+<p><i>December 2.</i> Abroad with my wife, the first time that ever I rode
+in my own coach, which do make my heart rejoice and praise God. So she and
+I to the king's playhouse, and there saw "The Usurper," a pretty good play.
+Then we to White Hall; where my wife stayed while I up to the duchess, to
+speak with the Duke of York; and here saw all the ladies, and heard the
+silly discourse of the king with his people about him.</p>
+
+<p><i>December 21.</i> To the Duke's playhouse, and saw "Macbeth." The king
+and court there, and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine. And my
+wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never
+thought so much before, and so did Talbot and W. Hewer. The king and Duke
+of York minded me, and smiled upon me; but it vexed me to see Moll Davis in
+the box over the king and my Lady Castlemaine, look down upon the king, and
+he up to her. And so did my Lady Castlemaine once; but when she saw Moll
+Davis she looked like fire, which troubled me.</p>
+
+<p><i>May 31, 1669.</i> Up very betimes, and continued all the morning
+examining my accounts, in order to the fitting myself to go abroad beyond
+sea, which the ill-condition of my eyes and my neglect hath kept me
+behindhand in. Had another meeting with the Duke of York at White Hall on
+yesterday's work, and made a good advance; and so being called by my wife,
+we to the park, Mary Batelier and a Dutch gentleman, a friend of hers,
+being with us. Thence to "The World's End," a drinking house by the park;
+and there merry, and so home late.</p>
+
+<p>And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own
+eyes in the keeping of my journal, having done now so long as to undo my
+eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore resolve,
+from this time forward to have it kept by my people in longhand, and must
+be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to
+know. And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to
+see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will
+accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me! S. P.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="PLINY_THE_YOUNGER"></a>PLINY THE YOUNGER</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Letters1"></a>Letters</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, or Pliny the Younger, was
+born in 62 A.D. at Novum Comum, in the neighbourhood of Lake Como, in the
+north of Italy. His family was honourable, wealthy, and able, and his
+uncle, Pliny the Elder, was the encyclopaedic student and author of the
+famous "Natural History." On his father's death, young Pliny, a boy of
+nine, was adopted by the elder Pliny, educated in literary studies and as
+an advocate, and was a notable pleader before his twentieth year. Through a
+succession of offices he rose to the consulship in the year 100, and
+afterwards continued to hold important appointments. He was twice married,
+but left no children. The date of his death is unknown. The "Letters of
+Pliny the Younger" are valuable as throwing light upon the life of the
+Roman people; but they are also models of Latin style, and have all the
+charm of their author's upright, urbane, and tolerant character. His
+epistle to the Emperor Trajan with regard to the Christians is of peculiar
+interest. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Cornelius Tacitus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>You will certainly laugh, and well may you laugh, when I tell you that
+your old friend has turned sportsman, and has captured three magnificent
+boars. "What," you say, "Pliny?" Yes, I myself, though without giving up my
+much loved inactivity. While I sat at the nets, you might have found me
+holding, not a spear, but my pen. I was resolved, if I returned with my
+hands empty, at least to bring home my tablets full. This open-air way of
+studying is not at all to be despised. The activity and the scene stimulate
+the imagination; and there is something in the solemnity and solitude of
+the woods, and in the expectant silence of the chase, that greatly promotes
+meditation. I advise you whenever you hunt in future to take your tablets
+with you as well as your basket and flask. You will find that Minerva, as
+well as Diana, haunts these hills.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Minucius Fundanus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>When I consider how the days pass with us at Rome, I am surprised to
+find that any single day taken by itself is spent reasonably enough, or at
+least seems to be so, and yet when I add up many days together the
+impression is quite otherwise. If you ask anyone what he has been doing
+to-day, he will tell you perhaps that he has been attending the ceremony of
+a youth's coming of age; he has assisted at a wedding, been present at the
+hearing of a lawsuit, witnessed a will, or taken part in a consultation.
+These occupations seem very necessary while one is engaged in them; and
+yet, looking back at leisure upon the many hours we have thus employed, we
+cannot but consider them mere frivolities. Looking back especially on town
+life from a country retreat, one is inclined to regret how much of life has
+been spent in these wretched trifles.</p>
+
+<p>This reflection is one which often occurs to me at my place at
+Laurentum, when I am immersed in studies or invigorating my bodily health.
+In that peaceful home I neither hear nor say anything which needs to be
+repented of. There is no one there who speaks evil of anyone; and I have
+not to complain of any man, except sometimes of myself when I am
+dissatisfied with my work. There I live undisturbed by rumours, free from
+the vicissitudes of hope and fear, conversing only with myself and my
+books. What a true and genuine life it is; what a delightful and honest
+repose--surely more to be desired than the highest employments. O sea and
+solitary shore, secret haunt of the Muses, with how many noble thoughts
+have you inspired me! Do you then, my friend, take the first opportunity of
+leaving the noisy town with all its empty pursuits, and devote your days to
+study or leisure. For, as Attilius well says, it is better to have nothing
+to do than to be doing of nothing.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Septicius Clarus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>How did it happen, my friend, that you failed to keep your engagement to
+dine with me? I shall expect you to repay me what I spent on the
+festival--no small sum, I can assure you. I had prepared for each of us,
+you must know, a lettuce, three snails, two eggs, and a barley cake served
+with sweet wine and snow; the snow most certainly I shall charge to your
+account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots, gourds, onions,
+and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard a comedian, or the
+reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you had liked, all three,
+such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies and Spanish dancing girls
+at some other house were more to your taste. I shall have my revenge of
+you, depend upon it, but I won't say how. Indeed, it was not kind thus to
+mortify your friend--I had almost said yourself; for how delightfully we
+should have passed the evening in jests and laughter, and in deeper talk!
+It is true you may dine at many houses more sumptuously than at mine but
+nowhere will you find more unconstrained gaiety, simplicity and freedom.
+Only make the experiment, and if you do not ever afterwards prefer my table
+to any other, never favour me with your company again.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Avitus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It would be a long story, and of no great importance, if I were to tell
+you by what accident I dined lately with a man who, in his own opinion,
+entertained us with great splendour and economy, but in my opinion with
+meanness combined with extravagance. He and a few of his guests enjoyed
+some very excellent dishes indeed, but the fare placed before the rest of
+the company was of the most inferior kind. There were three kinds of wine
+in small bottles, but it was not intended that the guests should take their
+choice at all. The best was for himself and for us; another vintage was for
+his friends of a lower order--for you must know he divides his friends into
+classes--and the third kind was for his own and his guests freed-men. My
+neighbor noticed this, and asked me if I approved of it. "Not at all," I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"What then," said he, "is your custom in entertaining?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mine," said I, "is to offer the same fare to everybody. I invite my
+friends to dinner without separating them into classes. Everyone who comes
+to my table is equal, and even my freed-men are then my guests just as much
+as anyone else."</p>
+
+<p>He asked me if I did not find this very expensive. I assured him that it
+was not so at all, and that the whole secret lay in drinking no better wine
+myself that I gave to others. If a man is wise enough to moderate his own
+luxury, he will not find it very expensive to entertain all his visitors on
+equal terms. Restrain your own tastes if you would really economise. This
+is a better way of saving expense than making these insulting distinctions
+between guests.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a pity if a man of your excellent disposition should be
+imposed upon by the immoderate ostentation which prevails at some tables
+under the guise of frugality. I tell you of this as an example of what you
+ought to shun. Nothing is to be more avoided than this preposterous
+association of extravagance and meanness--defects which are unpleasant
+enough when found separately, but are particularly detestable when
+combined.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Baebius Macer</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I am glad to hear that you are so great an admirer of my Uncle Pliny's
+works as to wish to have a complete collection of them. You will wonder how
+a man so much occupied as he was could find time to write so many books,
+some of them upon very difficult subjects. You will be still more surprised
+when you hear that for a considerable time he practised at the bar, that he
+died in his fifty-sixth year, and that from the time of his retirement from
+the bar to his death he was employed in some of the highest offices of
+state, and in the immediate service of the emperors. But he had a very
+quick intelligence, an incredible power of application, and an unusual
+faculty of doing without sleep. In summer he used to begin to work at
+midnight; in winter, generally at one in the morning, or two at the latest,
+and often at midnight. But he would often, without leaving his studies,
+refresh himself by a short sleep. Before daybreak he used to wait upon the
+Emperor Vespasian, who also was a night worker, and after that attended to
+his official duties. Having taken a light meal at noon, after the custom of
+our ancestors, he would in summer, if unoccupied, lie down in the sun,
+while a book was read to him from which he made extracts and notes. Indeed
+he never read without making extracts; he used to say that no book was so
+bad as not to teach one at least something. After this reading he usually
+took a cold bath, then a light refreshment, and went to sleep for a little
+while. Then, as if beginning a new day, he resumed his studies until
+dinner, when a book was again read to him, upon which he would make passing
+comments. I remember once, when his reader had pronounced a word wrongly,
+someone at the table made him repeat it again; upon which my uncle asked
+his friend if he had not understood it. He admitted that the word was clear
+enough. "Why did you stop him then?" asked my uncle; "we have lost more
+than ten lines by this interruption of yours." Even so parsimonious was he
+of every moment of time! In summer he always rose from dinner by daylight,
+and in winter as soon as it was dark; this was an invariable law with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Such was his life amidst the noise and bustle of the city; but when he
+was in the country his whole time, without exception, was given to study
+except when he bathed. And by this exception I mean only the time when he
+was actually in the bath, for all the time when he was being rubbed and
+dried he was read to, or was himself dictating. Again, when travelling he
+gave his whole time to study; a secretary constantly attended him with
+books and tablets, and in winter wore very warm gloves so that the cold
+weather might not interrupt my uncle's work; and, for the same reason, when
+in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I remember he once reproved me
+for going for a walk, saying that I might have used the hours to greater
+advantage; for he thought all time was lost which was not given to study.
+It was by this extraordinary application that he found time to write so
+many volumes, besides a hundred and sixty books of extracts which he left
+me, written on both sides in an extremely small hand, so that their number
+might be reckoned considerably greater.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Cornelius Tacitus</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I understand you wish to hear about the earthquake at Misenum. After my
+uncle had left us on that day, I went on with my studies until it was time
+to bathe; then I had supper and went to bed. But my sleep was broken and
+disturbed. There had been many slight shocks, which were very frequent in
+Campania, but on this night they were so violent that it seemed as though
+everything must be overthrown. My mother ran into my room, and we went out
+into a small court which separated our house from the sea. I do not know
+whether to call it courage or rashness on my part, as I was only eighteen
+years old; but I took up Livy and read and made extracts from him. When
+morning came the light was faint and sickly; the buildings around us were
+tottering to their fall, and there was great and unavoidable danger in
+remaining where we were. We resolved to leave the town. The people followed
+us in consternation, and pressed in great crowds about us on our way out.
+Having gone a good distance from the house, we stood still in the midst of
+a dreadful scene. The carriages for which we had sent, though standing upon
+level ground, were being thrown from side to side, and could not be kept
+still even when supported by large stones. The sea appeared to roll back
+upon itself, driven from its shores by the convulsive movements of the
+earth; a large portion of the sea-bottom was uncovered, and many marine
+animals were left exposed. Landward, a black and dreadful cloud was rolling
+down, broken by great flashes of forked lightning, and divided by long
+trains of flame which resembled lightning but were much larger.</p>
+
+<p>Soon afterwards the clouds seemed to descend and cover the whole surface
+of the ocean, hiding the island of Capri altogether and blotting out the
+promontory of Misenum. My mother implored me earnestly to make my escape,
+saying that her age and frame made it impossible for her to get away, but
+that she would willingly meet her death if she could know that she had not
+been the cause of mine. But I absolutely refused to forsake her, and
+seizing her hand I led her on. The ashes now began to fall upon us, though
+as yet in no great quantity. I looked back and saw behind us a dense cloud
+which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed that while we still
+had life we should turn out of the high road, lest she should be trampled
+to death in the dark by the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>We had scarcely sat down when darkness closed in upon us, not like the
+darkness of a moonless night, or of a night obscured by clouds, but the
+darkness of a closed room where all the lights have been put out. We heard
+the shrieks of women, the cries of children, and the shouts of men; some
+were calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their
+husbands or wives, and recognising one another through the darkness by
+their voices. Some were calling for death through very fear of death;
+others raised their hands to the gods; but most imagined that the last
+eternal night had come, and that the gods and the world were being
+destroyed together. Among these were some who added imaginary terrors to
+the real danger, and persuaded the terror-stricken multitude that Misenum
+was in flames. At last a glimmer of light appeared which we imagined to be
+a sign of approaching flames, as in truth it was; but the fire fell at a
+considerable distance from us, and again we were immersed in darkness. A
+heavy shower of ashes now rained upon us, so that we were obliged from time
+to time to shake them off, or we should have been crushed and buried in the
+heap. I might congratulate myself that during all this horror not a sigh or
+expression of fear escaped me, if it had not been that I then believed
+myself to be perishing with the world itself, and that all mankind were
+involved in the same calamity--a miserable consolation indeed, but a
+powerful one.</p>
+
+<p>At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees like a cloud of
+smoke; real day returned, and even the sun appeared, though very faintly as
+he appears during an eclipse. Everything before our trembling eyes was
+changed, being covered over with white ashes as with deep snow. We returned
+to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could and passed an
+anxious night between hope and fear. There was more fear than hope,
+however; for the earthquake still continued and many crazy people were
+running about predicting awful horrors.</p>
+
+<p>You must read my story without any view of writing about it in your
+history, of which it is quite unworthy; indeed, my only excuse for writing
+it in a letter is that you have asked for it.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Calpurnia, His Wife</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is incredible how impatiently I wish for your return, such is the
+tenderness of my love for you, and so unaccustomed are we to separation. I
+lie awake great part of the nights thinking of you; and in the day my feet
+carry me of their own accord to your room at the hours when I used to see
+you, but not finding you there I go away as sorrowful and disappointed as
+an excluded lover. The only time when I am free from this distress is when
+I am in the forum busy with the lawsuits of my friends. You may judge how
+wretched my life is when I find my repose only in labour and my consolation
+in miseries and cares.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To Germinius</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>You must very well know the kind of people who, though themselves slaves
+to every passion, are mightily indignant at the vices of others, and most
+severe against those whom they most closely resemble. Surely leniency is
+the most becoming of all virtues, even in persons who have least need of
+anyone's indulgence. The highest of all characters, in my estimation, is
+that of a man who is as ready to pardon human errors as though he were
+every day himself guilty of them, and who yet abstains from faults as
+though he never forgave them. Let us observe this rule, both in our public
+and in our private relations--to be inexorable to ourselves, but to treat
+the rest of the world with tenderness, including even those who forgive
+only themselves. Let us always remember the saying of that most humane and
+therefore very great Thrasea: "He who hates vices, hates mankind."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you will ask who it is that has moved me to these reflections?
+There was a certain person lately--But I will tell you of that when we
+meet. No; on second thoughts I will not tell you even then, lest by
+condemning him and exposing his conduct I should be violating the principle
+which I have just condemned. So, whoever he is, and whatever he may be, the
+matter shall remain unspoken; since to expose him would be of no advantage
+for the purpose of example; but to hide his fault will be of great
+advantage to good nature.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To the Emperor Trajan</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is my rule, to refer to you all matters about which I have any doubt.
+For who can be more capable of removing my scruples or of instructing my
+ignorance?</p>
+
+<p>I have never been present at any trials of Christians, and am,
+therefore, ignorant of the reasons for which punishment is inflicted, as
+well as of the examinations which it is proper to make of their guilt. As
+to whether any difference is usually made with respect to the ages of the
+guilty, or whether no distinction is to be observed between the young and
+the old; whether repentance entitles them to a pardon, or whether it is of
+no advantage to a man who has once been a Christian that he has ceased to
+be one; whether the very profession of Christianity unattended by any
+criminal act, or only the crimes that are inherent in the profession are
+punishable--in all these points I am very doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, the method which I have observed towards those who have
+been brought before me as Christians is this. I have interrogated them as
+to whether they were Christians; if they confessed I repeated the question
+twice again, adding threats at the same time; and if they still persevered
+I ordered them to execution. For I was persuaded that whatever the nature
+of their opinions might be, their pertinacity and inflexible obstinacy
+ought certainly to be punished. Others also were brought before me
+possessed by the same madness, but as they were Roman citizens I ordered
+them to be sent to Rome. As this crime spread while it was actually under
+prosecution, many fresh cases were brought up. An anonymous paper was given
+me containing a charge against many persons. Those who denied that they
+were Christians, or that they had ever been so, repeated after me an
+invocation to the gods, offered wine and incense before your statue, which
+for this purpose I had ordered to be placed among the statues of the gods,
+and even reviled the name of Christ; and so, as it is impossible to force
+those who are really Christians to do any of these things, I thought it
+proper to dismiss them. Others who had been accused confessed themselves at
+first to be Christians, but immediately afterwards denied it; and others
+owned that they had formerly been of that number, but had now forsaken
+their error. All these worshipped your statue and the images of the gods,
+at the same time reviling the name of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>They affirmed that the whole of their guilt, or their error, had been as
+follows. They met on a stated day before sunrise and addressed a form of
+invocation to Christ as to a God; they also bound themselves by an oath,
+not for any wicked purpose but never to commit thefts, robberies, or
+adulteries, never to break their word, nor to deny a trust when they should
+be called upon to deliver it up. After this had been done they used to
+separate, and then reassemble to partake in common of an innocent meal.
+They had desisted, however, from this custom, after the publication of my
+edict, by which, in accordance with your orders, I had forbidden
+fraternities to exist. Having received this account I thought it all the
+more necessary to make sure of the real truth by putting two slave-girls,
+who were said to have taken part in their religious functions, to the
+torture; but I could discover nothing more than an absurd and extravagant
+superstition.</p>
+
+<p>I have, therefore, adjourned all further proceedings in the affair in
+order to consult with you. It appears to be a matter highly deserving your
+consideration, especially as very many persons are involved in the danger
+of these prosecutions; for the inquiry has already extended and is likely
+further to extend to persons of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes. This
+contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread
+its infection among the villages and country districts as well; and it
+seems impossible to cure this evil or to restrain its progress. It is true
+that the temples which were once almost deserted have lately been
+frequented, and that the religious rites which had been interrupted are
+again revived; and there is a general demand for animals for sacrificial
+victims, which for some time past have met with few purchasers. From all
+this it is easy to imagine what numbers might be reclaimed from this error
+if pardon were granted to those who may repent of it.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="CARDINAL_RICHELIEU"></a>CARDINAL RICHELIEU</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Political_Testament"></a>Political Testament</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the great French
+cardinal-statesman, was born in Paris on September 5, 1585, of a noble
+family, and was at first educated for the profession of arms, but entered
+the Church in order to become Bishop of Lu&ccedil;on in 1606. Having come
+up to Paris to make his way in the world, he was appointed almoner to the
+young queen Anne of Austria, and rose in 1616 to be Secretary of State for
+War and for Foreign Affairs. He received the cardinal's hat in 1622, and
+for a period of eighteen years, from 1624 to 1642, he was, in everything
+but name, the Majesty of France. His mind was bold, unscrupulous,
+remorseless, and inscrutable. Yet it was always noble--the minister who
+sent so many to the scaffold could truly say that in his vast labours he
+had but one pleasure, to know that so many honest folk slept in security
+while he watched night after night. He was a friend to literature, was
+founder of the Academy, and was himself a considerable author in history
+and theology. His greatest work, "Testament Politique du Cardinal de
+Richelieu," which was published in 1764, and in which is embodied his
+counsel in statecraft, is a literary achievement of no small importance,
+exhibiting as it does not only a political acumen of a very high order but
+an acute faculty for literary expression. Richelieu died on December 4,
+1642. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>Retrospect</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>At the time when your majesty admitted me to your counsels and confided
+to me the direction of public affairs I may say with truth that the
+Huguenots divided the state with your majesty, the great families behaved
+as though they had no sovereign, and the governor of provinces as if they
+had been sovereigns themselves. Every man took his own audacity to be the
+measure of his merit, so that the most presumptious were considered the
+wisest, and proved often the most fortunate. Abroad the friendship of
+France was despised. At home private interests were preferred to the
+general advantage. The dignity of the throne had so far declined, through
+the fault of my predecessors in office, that it was almost unrecognisable.
+To have continued to entrust to their hands the helm of the state would
+have led to irremediable disaster; yet, on the other hand, too swift and
+too great a change would have been fraught with dangers of its own. In that
+emergency the wisest considered that it was hardly possible to pass without
+shipwreck through the reefs and shoals, and there were many who had
+foretold my fall even before your majesty had raised me to power.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, knowing what kings may do when they make good use of their power, I
+was able to promise your majesty that your prudence and firmness, with the
+blessing of God, would give new health to this kingdom. I promised to
+devote all my labours, and all the authority with which I might be clothed,
+to procuring the ruin of the Huguenot party, to humbling the pride of the
+great, to reducing all your subjects to their duty, and to elevating your
+majesty's name among foreign nations to its rightful reputation.</p>
+
+<p>I asked, to that end, your majesty's entire confidence, and assured you
+that my policy would be the direct contrary of that of my predecessors,
+inasmuch as, instead of removing the queen, your mother, from your
+majesty's counsels, I would leave nothing undone to promote the closest
+union between you, to the great advantage and honour of the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>The success which has followed the good intentions which it has pleased
+God to give me for the administration of this state will justify, to the
+ages to come, the constancy with which I have pursued this design--that the
+union which exists between your majesties in nature, may be completed also
+between you in grace. And if, after many years, this purpose by the malice
+of your enemies, has been defeated, it is my consolation to remember how
+often your majesty has been heard to say that when I was working most for
+the honour of the queen, your mother, she was conspiring for my ruin.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Of Education</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Letters are one of the greatest ornaments of states, and their
+cultivation is necessary to the commonwealth. Yet it is certain that they
+should not be taught indiscriminately to every one. A nation whose every
+subject should be educated would be as monstrous as a body having eyes in
+every part; pride and presumption would be general, and obedience almost
+disappear.</p>
+
+<p>Unrestrained trade in knowledge must banish that trade in merchandise to
+which states owe their wealth; ruin husbandry, the true mother and nurse of
+peoples; and destroy our source of soldiery, which springs up in rustic
+ignorance rather than from the forcing-ground of culture and the sciences.
+It would fill France with half-taught fellows, minds formed only to
+<i>chicane</i>, men who might ruin families and trouble public peace, but
+could not be of any service to the state. There would be more people
+capable of doubts than capable of resolving them; more intelligences fitted
+to oppose than to defend the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, when I consider the great number who make a profession of
+teaching, and the crowds of children who are taught, I seem to see an
+infinite multitude of weaklings and diseased, who, having no other desire
+than to drink pure water for their healing, are urged by an inordinate
+thirst to drink all that is offered them, though it is mostly impure and
+often poisoned, whereby their thirst and their malady are equally
+aggravated.</p>
+
+<p>Two principal evils arise from the great number of colleges established
+in every district: there are not sufficient worthy teachers to supply them;
+and many children of little aptitude are compelled by their parents to
+study. In the result, almost all the pupils leave with but a smattering of
+learning, some because they have been badly taught, others because they
+have been incapable of more. The remedy that I propose is this. Let the
+colleges in all towns which are not of metropolitan rank be reduced to two
+or three classes, sufficient to raise the young out of gross ignorance,
+such as is harmful even to those who are destined for military service or
+for trade. Then, before the children are determined to any special line of
+life, two are three years will reveal their dispositions and their
+capacities; and the more promising children, who will then be sent on to
+the metropolitan colleges, will succeed far better; for they will have
+minds suited for education and will be placed in the hands of the best
+teachers.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, let care be taken that the colleges shall not all come under
+the same hands. The universities, on the one hand, the Jesuits on the
+other, tend towards a monopoly of education. Let their emulation increase
+their virtues and efficiency; but let neither party be deprived of the
+instruction of youth; let neither secure a monopoly.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Of the Nobility</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The nobility, which is one of the principal nerves of the state, may
+contribute much to its consolidation and power, but it has been for some
+time past greatly depreciated by the large number of officials whom the
+misfortunes of our age have raised up to its prejudice. It must be
+supported against the enterprises of people of that kind, whose wealth and
+pride overwhelmed the nobles, who are rich only in courage.</p>
+
+<p>But as the nobility must be defended from their oppressors, so also must
+they be strictly prevented from oppressing those who are below them, whom
+God has armed to labour but not to self-defence. Uncompromisingly justice
+must ensure security, under shelter of your laws, to the least and feeblest
+of your subjects.</p>
+
+<p>Those nobles who do not serve the state are a charge upon it; and, like
+a paralysed limb, are a burden where they should be a defence and a
+comfort. As men of gentle birth should be well treated so long as they
+deserve it, so they should be checked severely when they are found wanting
+to the obligations of their birth; and I have no hesitation in advising
+that those who have so degenerated from the virtues of their fathers as to
+avoid the service of the crown with their swords and with their lives,
+deserve to be degraded from their hereditary honours and advantages, and
+should be reduced to take part in bearing the burdens of the people.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Of the Disorders of Justice</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is much easier to recognise the defects of justice than to prescribe
+the remedy. Certain it is that they have arrived at such a point that they
+could hardly be graver; yet I know that it is your majesty's desire that
+the administration of justice should be as pure as the imperfections and
+corruptions of mankind will permit.</p>
+
+<p>In the opinion of the great majority of the people, the sovereign remedy
+consists in suppressing venality, in doing away with the hereditary
+principle in judicial offices, and in giving their positions gratuitously
+to men of such well-known probity and capacity that not even envy itself
+can contest their merit. But as it would be difficult to follow this
+counsel at any time, and is quite impossible to follow it here and now, it
+is useless to propose means calculated to secure that end.</p>
+
+<p>Although it is always dangerous to hold a view which others do not
+share, I must boldly say that in my opinion, in the present state of
+affairs and in any that one can foresee, it is better to suffer venality
+and hereditary offices to continue than to change, from top to bottom, your
+majesty's judicial establishment. The present abuses are great; but I
+believe that a system under which the offices of justice should be
+appointed by nomination by the king would lead to even greater abuses. The
+distribution of these important charges would, in effect, depend on the
+favour and intrigue of the courtiers who might at the time have most power
+with the king, or on whose reports he must base his nominations.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly venality and heredity in this matter are evils, but they are
+evils of long standing. We have only to look back to the reigns of St.
+Louis, when offices were already paid for, and of the great Francis, who
+erected the principle into a regular traffic, to see that so inveterate a
+custom is not easily to be eradicated. Our aim should be to turn the minds
+of men gently and continuously to better ways, and not to pass suddenly
+from one extreme to the other. The architect whose skill is able to correct
+the weakness of an ancient building, and to bring it into some degree of
+symmetry without first pulling it down, deserves far greater praise than
+the man who must throw it into ruins in order to construct something
+entirely new. It is difficult to change the established order without
+changing the hearts of those who possess it, and it is often prudent to
+weaken one's remedies in order that they may have the greater effect.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>To the Officers of Finance</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>These form a class of men who are prejudicial to the state, yet are
+necessary to and we can only hope to reduce their power within tolerable
+limits. At present, their excesses and irregularities are intolerable; and
+it is impossible that they should further increase their wealth and their
+power without ruining the state, and themselves with it.</p>
+
+<p>I do not advise the general confiscation of their gains, although the
+excessive wealth which they amass in a short time, easily proved by the
+difference between their possessions on entering office and what they own
+at present, must often be the result of thefts and extortions. Confiscation
+may be made, in its turn, the greatest of injustice and violence. Yet I do
+not think that anyone could complain if the more flagrant offenders were
+chastised. Otherwise, they will, as I have said, ruin the kingdom, which
+bears on its face the marks of their frauds.</p>
+
+<p>The gold with which they have gorged themselves has opened to them
+alliances with the most ancient families, whose blood and character are
+thereby so far debased that their representatives resemble their ancestors
+no more in the generosity of their motives than they do in the purity of
+their features.</p>
+
+<p>I can advise nothing but a great reduction in the number of these
+officials, a reform which might be easily accomplished; and the
+appointment, in times to come, only of substantial men, of character and
+position suitable to this responsibility. As for the plan of squeezing
+these financiers like a sponge, or of making treaties and compositions with
+them, it is a remedy worse than the disorder; it is as much as to teach
+them that peculation is their business and their right.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Of the People</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>All statesmen agree that if the people were in too easy a condition it
+would be impossible to restrain them within the limits of their duty.
+Having less knowledge and cultivation than those in other ranks of the
+state, they would not easily follow the rules prescribed by reason and by
+law, unless bound thereto by a certain degree of necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Reason does not permit us to exempt them from all taxation, lest, having
+lost the symbol of their subjection, they should forget their legitimate
+condition, and, being free from tribute, should think themselves free from
+obedience also.</p>
+
+<p>Mules accustomed to a load suffer more from a long rest than they do
+from work; but, on the other hand, their work must be moderate and the load
+proportionate to their strength. So it is with the taxation of the people,
+which becomes unjust if it is not moderated at the point at which it is
+useful to the public.</p>
+
+<p>There is a sense in which the tribute which kings draw from the people
+returns to the people again, in the enjoyment of peace and in the security
+of their life and possessions; for these cannot be safeguarded unless
+contribution be made to the state. I know of several princes who have lost
+their kingdoms and their subjects by letting their strength decay through
+fear of taxing them; and subjects have before now fallen into servitude to
+their enemies, through wishing too much liberty under their natural
+sovereign. The proportion between the burden and the strength of those who
+have to support it ought to be even religiously observed; a prince cannot
+be considered good if he draws more than he ought from his subjects; yet
+the best princes are not always those who never levy more than is
+necessary.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Reason and Government</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Man, having been made a rational creature, ought to do nothing except by
+reason; for, otherwise he acts against nature, and so against the Author of
+nature. Again, the greater a man is, and the higher his position, the more
+strictly is he bound to follow reason. It follows that if he is sovereignly
+rational, he is bound to make reason reign; that is to say, it is his duty
+to make all those who are under his authority revere and obey reason
+religiously. Love is the most potent motive for obedience; and it is
+impossible that subjects should not love their prince if they know that
+reason is the guide of all his actions.</p>
+
+<p>Since reason should be the guide of princes, passion, which is of all
+things the most incompatible with reason, should be allowed no influence on
+their actions. Passion can only blind them; make them take the shadow for
+the substance; and win for them odium in the place of affection.</p>
+
+<p>Government requires a masculine virtue and an immovable firmness; for
+softness exposes those in whom it is found to the machinations of their
+enemies. Though there have been notable exceptions, their softness and
+their passions have generally made women unfit for rule.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Public Interests First</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The public advantage should be the single object of the king and his
+counsellors, or should at least be preferred to every private interest. It
+is impossible to estimate the good which a prince and his ministers may do
+if they religiously follow this principle, or to estimate the disasters
+which must fall upon the state whose public interests are ruled by private
+considerations. True philosophy, the Christian law, and the art of
+statesmanship, unite to teach this truth.</p>
+
+<p>The prosperity which Spain has enjoyed for several centuries has been
+due to no other cause than that her council has consistently preferred the
+interests of the state to all others, and most of the calamities which have
+visited France have been due to the preference of private advantage.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy for princes to consent to the general regulations of their
+state, because in making them they have only reason and justice before
+their eyes, and men willingly embrace reason and justice when there are no
+obstacles to turn them from the right path. But when occasions arise for
+putting these regulations into practice, we do not find that princes always
+show the same firmness, for then the interests of factions and of
+minorities are pressed upon them; pity, sympathy, favour, and importunities
+solicit them and oppose their just designs; and they have not always
+strength enough to conquer themselves and to despise these partial
+considerations, which ought to have no weight at all in the affairs of the
+commonwealth.</p>
+
+<p>It is on these occasions that they must gather up all their strength
+against their weakness, and remember that God has placed them there to
+safeguard the public interest.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Power of Kingship</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Power is one of the most necessary conditions of the greatness of kings
+and of the happiness of their government, and those who have to do with the
+conduct of a state should omit nothing which may enhance the authority of
+their master and the respect in which he is held by all the world.</p>
+
+<p>As goodness is the object of love, power is the cause of fear; and fear,
+founded in esteem and reverence, makes dutiful conduct the interest of
+every subject, and warns all foreigners not to offend a prince who can harm
+them if he will.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that the power of which I speak must be founded on esteem,
+and I will add that if it be otherwise founded it is dangerous in the
+extreme. Princes are never in a more perilous position than when they are
+the objects of hatred or aversion rather than of a reasonable fear.</p>
+
+<p>That kingly power which causes princes to be feared with esteem and
+love, includes within it different elements of power; it is a tree with
+several branches, which draw their nourishment from common Stock. Thus, the
+prince must be powerful by his reputation. Secondly, by a reasonable number
+of soldiers, continually maintained. Thirdly, by a notable reserve, in
+gold, in his coffers, ready for the unforeseen occasions which arise when
+least expected. And, lastly, by the possession of the hearts of his people.
+If the finances be considerately adjusted on the principles which I have
+advised the people will find entire relief, and the king will base his
+power on the possession of the hearts of his subjects. They will know that
+they are his care, and their own interests will lead them to love him.</p>
+
+<p>The kings of old thought so highly of this foundation of kingship that
+some of them held it worthier to be King of the French than King of France.
+Indeed, this nation was in old time illustrious for passionate attachment
+to its princes; and under the earlier kings, until Philip the Fair, the
+treasure of hearts was the sole public treasure that was maintained in this
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>I know that we cannot judge of the present altogether by the past, and
+that what was good in one century is not always possible in another. Yet,
+though the treasure of hearts may not suffice to-day, it is quite certain
+that without it the treasure of gold is almost worthless; without that
+treasure of hearts we shall be bankrupt in the midst of abundance.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Whole Duty of Princes</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In conclusion, as kings are obliged to do many more things as sovereigns
+than they do in their private capacity, they are liable to be guilty of far
+more faults by omission than those of which a private person could be
+guilty by commission. Considered as men, they are subject to the same
+faults as all other men; but considered as charged with the welfare of the
+public, they are subject also to many duties which they cannot omit without
+sin.</p>
+
+<p>If princes neglect to do all that they can to rule the various orders of
+their state; if they are careless in the choice of good advisers, or
+despise their salutary counsels; if they fail to make their own example a
+speaking voice; if they are idle in the establishment of the reign of God,
+and of reason, and of justice; if they fail to protect the innocent, to
+reward public services, and to chastise the guilty and disobedient; if they
+are not solicitous to foresee and to provide for the troubles which may
+arise, or to turn aside, by careful diplomacy, the storms which darken the
+horizon; if favour rather than merit dictates their choice of ministers for
+the high offices of the kingdom; if they do not immovably establish the
+state in its rightful power; if they do not on all occasions prefer public
+interests to private interests; then, however upright their life may
+otherwise be, they will be found far more guilty than those who actively
+transgress the commandments and the laws of God. And if kings or
+magistrates make use of their power to commit any injustice or violence
+which they cannot commit as private persons, they commit a king's or a
+magistrate's sin, which has its source in their authority, and one for
+which the King of Kings will doubtless demand a searching account on the
+day of judgement.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JEAN_JACQUES_ROUSSEAU"></a>JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Confessions"></a>Confessions</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Rousseau's "Confessions" were written in England at
+Wootton, in Staffordshire, where he had taken refuge after his
+revolutionary ideas incurred the displeasure of the authorities in France.
+They were first published in 1782. From this refuge he was pursued from
+place to place by his delusions through miserable years, until he died,
+near Paris, on July 2, 1778. In no circumstances or relation of his life
+was Rousseau a pleasant spectacle. The "Confessions," unexpurgated, are
+often revolting to any sane mind, and have been proved to be untrustworthy
+even as a record of fact. But almost incredible baseness was coupled with
+extraordinary gifts, and it is impossible to overestimate Rousseau's
+influence upon the modern world, and upon its literature and its whole
+point of view and way of thinking. (Rousseau, biography: see FICTION.)
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>I am undertaking a task for which there is no example, and one which
+will find no imitator. It is to exhibit a man in the whole truth of nature;
+and the man whom I shall reveal is myself. Myself alone; for I verily
+believe I am like no other living man. In this book I have hidden nothing
+evil and added nothing good; and I challenge any man to say, having
+unveiled his heart with equal sincerity, "I am better than he."</p>
+
+<p>I was born at Geneva in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau, watchmaker, and of
+Susanne, his wife. My birth, the first of my misfortunes, cost my mother
+her life, and I came into the world so weakly that I was not expected to
+live. My father's sister lavished on me the tenderest care, and he,
+disconsolate, loved me with extreme affection.</p>
+
+<p>Like all children, but even more than others, I felt before I thought;
+and my consciousness was first awakened by reading stories with my father.
+Sometimes we read together until the birds were singing in the morning
+light. These tales gave me a most precocious insight into human passions,
+and the confused emotions which swept through me brought with them the
+queerest and most romantic views of life. But when I was seven we came to
+the end of my mother's old stock of romances, and we fell back on Bossuet,
+Moli&egrave;re, Plutarch, Ovid, and the like. Plutarch went far to cure me
+of novels; indeed, his "Lives" were the means of forming that free and
+republican spirit, intolerant of servitude, which has been my torment. To
+my aunt, who knew endless songs, and used to chant them with a sweet, tiny
+thread of a voice, I owe my passion for music.</p>
+
+<p>These, then, were my first affections. These formed that heart of mine,
+so proud yet so tender; they fashioned that effeminate yet untamable
+character, which has ever drifted between weakness and virtue. For I have
+been in contradiction with myself, in such a way that abstinence and
+fruition, pleasure and wisdom, have escaped me equally.</p>
+
+<p>My father having left Geneva, I remained under the care of my uncle
+Bernard, and was placed, with his son of my own age, in the house of M.
+Lambercier, protestant minister at Bossey, to learn all the trivialities
+that are called education. Here I gained my keen love of country pleasures,
+and tasted, with my cousin, the delights of simple friendship. But a cruel
+punishment for a fault which I had not committed, put an end to my childish
+simplicity, and soon I left Bossey without regret. There followed two or
+three years of indolence at Geneva.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief and luckless trial of a notary's office I was apprenticed
+to an engraver, a petty tyrant, whose injustice taught me to lie and to
+steal. Restless, dissatisfied, and in perpetual terror of my master's
+savagery, I here reached my sixteenth year. But one day, finding the city
+gates closed on my return from a country excursion, I determined, rather
+than face the inevitable thrashing, to seek my fortune in the unknown
+world.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Madame de Warens</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>How fair were the illusions of freedom and of the future! I asked
+little--only a manor where I should be the favourite of the lord of the
+land, his daughter's lover, her brother's friend, and protector of the
+neighbourhood. I roamed the countryside, sleeping at nights in hospitable
+cottages, and on arriving at Confignon I called, out of curiosity, on M. de
+Ponteverre, the parish priest. He gave me a dinner which convinced me, even
+more than his arguments, of the advantages of the catholic faith; and I was
+willing enough to set off, with his introduction, to Annecy. Here I was to
+seek Mme. de Warens, a recent convert, who was in receipt of a pension from
+the King of Sardinia. I was assured that her benevolence would support me
+for the present. Three days later I was at Annecy.</p>
+
+<p>This introduction fixed my character and destiny. I was now in my
+sixteenth year, doubtless of engaging though not striking appearance; I had
+the timidity of a loving nature, always afraid of giving offence; and I was
+quite without knowledge of the world or of manners. I arrived on Palm
+Sunday, 1728. Mme. de Warens had left the house for church; I ran after
+her, saw her, spoke to her--how well do I remember the place, so often in
+later days wet with my tears and covered with kisses!</p>
+
+<p>I saw an enchanting form, a countenance full of graciousness, a dazzling
+colour, blue eyes beaming kindness; you may imagine that my conversion was
+from that moment decided. Smiling, she read the good priest's letter, and
+sent me back to the house for breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Louise &Eacute;l&eacute;onore de Warens, daughter of a noble family of
+Vevai, in the Vaud country, had early married M. de Warens, of Lausanne.
+The marriage was childless and otherwise unfortunate; and the young wife,
+exasperated by some domestic difficulty, had abandoned her husband and her
+country, and crossing the lake, had thrown herself at the feet of the king.
+He took her under his protection, gave her a moderate pension, and for fear
+of scandal sent her to Annecy, where she renounced her errors at the
+Convent of the Visitation.</p>
+
+<p>She had been six years at Annecy when I met her, and was now
+twenty-eight years of age. Her beauty was still in its first radiance, and
+her smile was angelic. She was short of stature, but it was impossible to
+imagine more beautiful features or hands. Her education had been very
+desultory; she had learned more from lovers than from teachers. She had a
+strong taste for empirical medicine and for alchemy, and was always
+compounding elixirs, tinctures and balms, some of which she regarded as
+valuable secrets. So it was that charlatans, trading on her weakness, made
+her consume, amid drugs and furnaces, a talent and a spirit which might
+have distinguished her in the highest societies. Yet her loving and sweet
+character, her compassion for the unhappy, her inexhaustible goodness and
+her open and gay humour never changed; and even when old age was coming on,
+in the midst of poverty and varied misfortunes, her inward serenity
+preserved to the end the charming gaiety of her youth. All her mistakes
+arose from a restless activity which demanded incessant occupation. She
+thirsted, not for intrigues, but for enterprises.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the first sight of Mme. de Warens inspired me not only with the
+liveliest attachment, but with an entire trust which was never
+disappointed. Her presence filled my whole being with peace and
+confidence.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Three Years in Turin</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>My situation was discussed with the Bishop, and it was decided that I
+should go to Turin and remain for a time at an institution devoted to the
+instruction of catechumens. Thither I went, regarding myself as the pupil,
+the friend, and almost the lover, of Mme. de Warens. The great doors closed
+upon me, and here I was instructed for several weeks in very indifferent
+company. At length, having been received into the church, I found myself in
+the street with twenty francs in my pocket, and the counsel that I should
+be a good Christian.</p>
+
+<p>I took a lodging in Turin, and was presently introduced, by the kindness
+of my hostess, to the service of a countess. But this lady died shortly
+afterwards, and I left her house bearing with me lasting remorse for an
+atrocious action: I had accused a fellow-servant of a theft which I had
+myself committed, and thus may very well have caused the poor child's
+ruin.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to my old lodging, I spent my days in wandering about town,
+often offending the public by my depravities. But I had kept certain
+acquaintances made during my situation with the countess, and one of these,
+a M. Gaime, whom I sometimes visited, gave me most valuable instructions in
+the principles of morals. He was a priest, and one of the most honest men I
+have known. I had cherished false ideas of life; he gave me a true picture
+of it, and showed me that happiness depends only on wisdom, and that wisdom
+is to be found in every rank. He used to say that if everyone could read
+the hearts of others, most would wish to descend in the social scale. This
+M. Gaime is the original, in large part, of my vicar of Savoy.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed a new situation in the house of the Count de Gouvon,
+where, nominally a footman, I was soon treated more as a pupil or even as a
+favourite. His son, a priest, did his best to teach me Latin, and I have
+since realised that it was the purpose of this noble family, who had
+considerable political ambition, to train a talented dependent who might
+serve them in offices of great responsibility. But my fatal inconstancy
+frustrated this good fortune, my flagrant disobediences led to my
+dismissal, and presently I was on the road to Geneva with a gay lad from
+thence who had found me out in Turin.</p>
+
+<p>I happened to own a mechanical toy, a little fountain, and our mad
+project was nothing less than to pay our way throughout the world by
+showing its performances in every village. We started in the highest
+spirits, but the fountain was never remunerative, and soon its works went
+wrong. This threw no gloom over our merry, fantastic journey, and it was
+only when Annecy was near that I became a little thoughtful, for my
+benefactress supposed that my last place had established me for life.</p>
+
+<p>We entered the little town and parted, and I came trembling to her door.
+The adorable woman showed little surprise, and no sorrow. I told her my
+story, and was forgiven. Henceforth her home was mine.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Seeking a Career</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The house was an old one, but spacious and comfortable, and the window
+of my room looked out, over garden and stream, to the open country. The
+m&eacute;nage was by no means magnificent, but was abundant in a
+patriarchal way; Madame de Warens had no idea of economy, and with her
+hospitalities and speculations was ever running more deeply into debt. The
+household, besides herself and me, consisted of housemaid, cook, and a
+footman named Claude Anet.</p>
+
+<p>From the first day, the sweetest familiarity reigned our intercourse.
+She called me "Little one," I called her my little mother, and these names
+express the relation of our hearts. She sought always my good, never her
+own pleasure; she was deeply attached to me, and lavished on me her
+maternal caresses. I was now about nineteen years old, but was only
+occupied about the house in writing for her, or in helping her in her
+pharmaceutical experiments.</p>
+
+<p>But madame was thinking of my future, and sent me on some pretext to see
+M. d'Aubonne, a relative of hers, to find out what might be made of me. His
+report of me was, that I was a poor-spirited creature, narrow, ignorant,
+and clownish, and that the career of village priest was the best that could
+be hoped for. Once more, therefore, I was set to Latin at the seminary; but
+after some months I was returned by the bishop and the rector as incapable
+of learning, though a passably well-conducted youth. In the meantime I had
+been taken with a strong taste for music, and it was arranged that I should
+spend the winter at the house of M. le Maitre, director of music at the
+cathedral; he was a young man of great talent and of high spirits, and
+lived only twenty paces from my little mother. There I spent one of the
+most pleasant times of my life. But it was cut short by a quarrel between
+Le Maitre and the cathedral chapter, who had, as he thought, put a slight
+upon him. His revenge was to desert his post on the eve of the elaborate
+Easter services, and madame desired me to assist him in his flight. I was
+to attend him to Lyons, and remain with him as long as he should need me.
+Her purpose was, as I have since learned, to detach me from a plausible
+adventurer, M. Venture, a man of great musical talent who had turned up at
+Annecy, and had engaged my fancy. Our flight was successful. But on the
+second day after our arrival at Lyons Le Maitre fell ill with a sudden
+seizure in the street, and I, after telling the bystanders the name of his
+inn, and begging them to carry him thither, slipped round the nearest
+corner and disappeared. Le Maitre was deserted at his worst need by the
+only friend on whom he had to count. I returned at once to Annecy, only to
+find that madame had left for Paris.</p>
+
+<p>M. Venture, however, was still there, and had turned the heads of all
+the ladies in the place, and for a time I shared his lodging. Then, after
+travelling with Merceret, the housemaid, as far as her home at Fribourg-for
+she had to return thither and could find no other attendant--I turned aside
+to Lausanne, with the idea of seeing the lake. I arrived here without a
+penny, and it occurred to me to play Venture's game on my own account. I
+took a false name, called myself a Parisian, and having secured a lodging,
+set up as a teacher of music, though I knew next to nothing of the art.
+There was a professor of law in the town who was an amateur of music, and
+held concert parties in his house; to this man I had the effrontry to
+propose a symphony of my own. I worked a fortnight at this production,
+wrote out the instrumental parts, and on the appointed evening stood up
+before the orchestra and audience, tapped my desk, raised by baton,
+and--never since music began has there been such an orgy of discords. The
+musicians could hardly sit in their chairs for laughing, yet played even
+louder and louder as the fun took hold of them; the audience sought to stop
+their ears; and I, sweat pouring down my face, conducted this atrocity to
+the end. But the end was a little minuet which Venture had taught me; I had
+appended it to my symphony, calling it my own work. Its magic put the whole
+room in good humour, and I was feliciated on my taste in melody. Next day
+one of my orchestra came to see me, and in my despair and broken spirit I
+told him my whole story. By nightfall it was known to all Lausanne. But at
+Neufch&acirc;tel, through the next winter, I gradually learned music by
+teaching it.</p>
+
+<p>My next occupation was that of interpreter to a Greek prelate and
+archimandrite of Jerusalem, whom I met when dining in a little restaurant.
+He was collecting money throughout Europe for the restoration of the Holy
+Sepulchre; and accompanying him from city to city, I was of much service to
+him, even addressing the Senate at Berne on behalf of his project.
+Unfortunately for my employer, he addressed himself to the Marquis de
+Bonac, who had been ambassador to the Porte, and knew all about the Holy
+Sepulchre. I don't know what passed at their interview, but the
+archimandrite disappeared and I was detained. In my desolation I told the
+marquis the history of my life, and by him was sent to Paris, with plenty
+of money in my pocket, to enter the service of a young friend of his in the
+army. My first sight of the city was a disappointment which I have never
+got over, and the proposed engagement fell through. Coming to the end of my
+resources, I set out by way of Lyons, where I suffered the extremity of
+poverty, to find Mme. de Warens, who was now, as I learned, at
+Chamb&eacute;ri. I came to her house and found the intendant-general with
+her. Without addressing me, she said, "Here, sir, he is; protect him as
+long as he deserves it, and his future is assured." And to me, "My child,
+you belong to the king." And thus I became a secretary in the ordnance
+survey. After five years of follies and sufferings since I had left Geneva,
+I began to earn an honest living.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Our Little Circle</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was in 1732, and I was nearly twenty-one years old, when I began the
+life of the office. I lived with the little mother in a dismal house, which
+she rented because it belonged to the financial secretary who controlled
+her pension. The faithful Claude Anet was still with her, and shortly after
+my return I learned accidentally that their relation was closer than I had
+ever dreamed of. In a fit of temper his mistress had taunted him
+outrageously. The poor fellow, in despair, had taken laudanum; and madame,
+in her terror and distress, told me the whole story. We brought him round,
+and things went on as before, but it was hard to me to know that anyone was
+more intimate with her than myself.</p>
+
+<p>My passion for music increased this year until I could hardly take
+interest in anything else, and at last the work at the office grew so
+intolerable to me that I determined to resign my place. I extorted an
+unwilling permission from madame, said good-bye to my chief, and threw
+myself into the teaching of music.</p>
+
+<p>I soon had as many pupils as I needed, and the constant intercourse with
+these ladies was very pleasant to me. But from the stories which I carried
+home of our interviews the little mother apprehended dangers of which I was
+not at that time conscious. The course which she took was a singular one.
+She had rented a little garden outside the town, and here she invited me to
+spend the day with her. Thither we went, and from the drift of her
+conversation, which was full of good sense and kindliest warnings, I
+gradually perceived the degree of her goodness towards me. The compact
+involved conditions, and my answer was to be given on that day week.</p>
+
+<p>Thus was established among the three of us a society to which there is
+perhaps no parallel. All our wishes, our cares, our interests were in
+common. If one of us was missing from the dinner-table, or a fourth was
+present, all seemed out of order. But our little circle was broken all too
+soon. Claude Anet, on a botanical excursion, fell a victim to pleurisy, and
+died, notwithstanding all her care. He had been a most watchful economist
+of her pension and a restraint on her enterprises, and his loss was felt
+not only in our diminished party, but also in the wasting of her resources.
+For the next three years these went from bad to worse. Unfortunately, the
+life to which I had taken, of drifting from one interest to another--now
+literature, now chess, now a journey, now music--brought in nothing and
+cost a good deal; and to complete our anxieties, I fell ill nearly to
+death. Her care and utter devotion saved me, and from that time our very
+existence was in common.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Les Charmettes</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I was ordered to the country. We found near Chamb&eacute;ri a little
+house, Les Charmettes, set in a garden among trees, as retired and solitary
+a home as if it had been a hundred miles from the town. There we took up a
+new life towards the autumn of 1736; there began the brief happiness of my
+existence. We were all in all to one another; together we roamed the
+country, worked in the garden, gathered fruit and flowers, lay under the
+trees and listened to the birds. Golden hours, your memory is my only
+treasure!</p>
+
+<p>Even a sudden illness, which affected my heart so that its pulse has
+from that time incessantly throbbed like a drum in my ears, and has made me
+a constant sufferer from insomnia, turned out to be a heavenly blessing.
+Thinking myself a dead man, I only then began to live, and applied myself
+very eagerly to learning. With my little mother as my teacher, I turned to
+the study of religion. I sought books, and philosophy, the sciences, and
+Latin followed in their turn. Nature, learning, leisure, and our ineffably
+sweet companionship--I thought, poor fool, that these joys would be with me
+to the end. It was otherwise decreed.</p>
+
+<p>My bodily condition has become pitiable, and it was determined that I
+should go to Montpellier to consult a physician. I fell in, on the way
+thither, with the Marquis de Torignan and his party, who were travelling in
+the same direction. We struck up acquaintance, and I joined them, taking an
+assumed name, and giving myself out for an Englishman. Becoming intimate
+with a Madame de Larnage, who was among them, I continued to travel with
+her day by day, after the others had reached their destination. She was a
+woman of infinite charm. Mme. de Warens was forgotten utterly, and I
+willingly agreed to settle down in her vicinity, after fulfilling the
+purpose of my journey to Montpellier. However, after two pleasurable months
+in that city, when I found myself at the stage where the road divided--one
+road going to Mme. de Larnage, the other to Les Charmettes--I balanced love
+against pleasure, and finding an equipoise, I decided by reason.</p>
+
+<p>The little mother knew by my letter at what hour I should arrive. I came
+to the garden; no one came out to meet me. I entered; the servants seemed
+surprised to see me. I ran upstairs and found her; her welcome was
+restrained and cold. The truth burst upon me. My place was taken!</p>
+
+<p>Darkness flooded my soul, and from that moment onward my sensibilities
+have been but half-alive. I took a situation as tutor in a private family,
+but all my thoughts were of Charmettes and of our innocent life together,
+now gone for ever. O dreadful illusion of human destiny!</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Gathering Gloom</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I take up my pen again, after an interval of two years, to add a sequel
+to my confessions. How different is the picture now! For thirty years fate
+had favoured my inclinations, but for the second thirty, which I must try
+to sketch, she has ground me in the mortar of the most appalling
+afflictions.</p>
+
+<p>This second part must inevitably be inferior, in every respect, to the
+first. For I wrote, before, with pleasure and at ease; but now my decaying
+memory and enfeebled brain have made me almost incapable of work, and I
+have nothing to tell of but treacheries, perfidies, and torturing memories.
+The walls around me have ears; I am encompassed by spies and vigilant
+enemies. Racked with anxiety and fear, I scribble page after page without
+revising them. An immense conspiracy surrounds me....</p>
+
+<p>[These delusions of suspicion are perhaps the most characteristic
+symptoms of insanity. They colour so deeply the entire texture of
+Rousseau's prolix second part as to make it not only unreliable, but almost
+unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first part; from the
+second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy creature,
+besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman; and this
+morbid condition had been aggravated by years of brooding rancour before he
+wrote this miserable indictment of men who had done their best to befriend
+him.--ED.]</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="LA_ROCHEFOUCAULD"></a>LA ROCHEFOUCAULD</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Memoirs2"></a>Memoirs</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, was born in Paris on
+September 15, 1613. Sprung from one of the noblest families of France,
+handsome, winning, and brave to recklessness, he intrigued and fought
+against Richelieu and Mazarin, and was one of the leaders in the civil war
+of La Fronde. But though marked by birth and talent for a high position in
+the state, he failed in nearly everything he undertook, owing to his
+extraordinary indolence of mind, and in the prime of his life he became a
+rather embittered spectator of a world in which he was not able to make his
+way. The "Memoirs," with their studied tone of historical coldness, present
+a striking contrast to the brilliant vivacity of the "Maxims." This, in all
+probability, is due to the fact that while the latter were frequently added
+to and edited during their author's lifetime, no such fate befell the
+"Memoirs," of which the first edition, published without La Rochefoucauld's
+authority, appeared in 1662. Barely a third of them could be attributed to
+their reputed author, the work being compiled mainly from various
+commonplace books. In spite of La Rochefoucauld's protests, the pirated
+"Memoirs" continued to be printed, and it was not until very many years
+after his death, in 1817, that an authentic edition made its appearance.
+The "Memoirs" are of great literary value, yielding in interest to no
+memoirs of the time. La Rochefoucauld died in Paris on March 17, 1680.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>Court Intrigues</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>King Louis XIII. was of feeble constitution, further impaired by
+over-exertion in hunting. His temperament was severe and solitary; he
+wished to be governed, but was sometimes impatient of government. His mind
+took note only of details, and his knowledge of war was fit rather for a
+subordinate officer than for a king. Cardinal Richelieu, who owed all his
+elevation to the queen-mother, Marie de M&eacute;dicis, was ruler of the
+state. His vast and penetrating mind formed projects as bold as he was
+personally timid. His policy was to establish the king's authority and his
+own, by the ruin of the Huguenots and of the great houses of the kingdom,
+and then to attack the house of Austria, a power most redoubtable to
+France. He stuck at nothing, either to advance his satellites or to destroy
+his enemies. The passion which he had long cherished for the queen had
+changed to dislike, and she had an aversion for Richelieu. The king was
+embittered against her by jealousy and by the sterility of their marriage.
+The queen was an amiable woman, without falsity of any kind, and with many
+virtues; her intimate friend was Madame de Chevreuse, who was of her own
+age and of kindred sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>But Madame de Chevreuse almost always brought misfortune to those whom
+she interested in her projects. She had much spirit, ambition, and beauty,
+and made full use of her charms to forward these enterprises of hers.
+Already Cardinal Richelieu had accused the queen and her of complicity in
+Chalais's plot against the king's life--for Chalais had been her warm
+admirer--and the king believed in their guilt to the end of his days.
+Again, when the young and handsome Lord Holland came to France to arrange
+the marriage of the King of England to the sister of the King of France,
+and quickly won the affection of Madame de Chevreuse, the two lovers
+thought fit to celebrate their attachment by inspiring a similar intrigue
+between the French queen and the Duke of Buckingham, who had not so much as
+met one another. This astonishing undertaking was successful. Buckingham
+came over to wed madame in the name of his master, and his ardent love for
+the queen, which she fully returned, deeply wounded both the king and
+Richelieu. The cardinal sought his revenge through Lady Carlisle. That
+haughty and jealous woman, to whom Buckingham had long been attached,
+noticed one night at a ball in England that he was wearing diamonds which
+she had not seen before, and contrived, unobserved, to detach them, in
+order that she might send them to Richelieu. These diamonds had been the
+gift of the King of France to his queen, and it was intended that the
+cardinal, by showing them to the king, should prove the queen's weakness.
+But the Duke of Buckingham discovered his loss the same night, and at once
+suspected Lady Carlisle's design. He issued an immediate order that the
+English ports should be closed, and that no one should be permitted, under
+whatever pretext, to leave the country; and then, having had exactly
+similar jewels prepared, he sent them to the Queen of France, with an
+account of the whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time that the cardinal formed the project of the
+destruction of the Huguenot party, and of laying siege to La Rochelle. The
+Duke of Buckingham came with a powerful fleet to aid La Rochelle, but in
+vain; the fortress was taken, and the duke was assassinated in England.
+This murder gave the cardinal an inhuman joy; he jested at the queen's
+sorrows, and began to hope again.</p>
+
+<p>After the ruin of the Huguenots I returned from the army to court, being
+now seventeen years old, and began to notice the state of affairs. The
+queen-mother and the cardinal were at enmity, and though everyone saw that
+something would come of it, no one could foretell what would happen. The
+cardinal's situation was precarious, the king had learned of his love for
+the queen, and was quite ready to disgrace him, and even asked the
+queen-mother to nominate someone to replace him. She hesitated, and that
+hesitation was her ruin and saved the cardinal.</p>
+
+<p>The reversal of the situation took place on the famous "day of dupes,"
+on which the queen-mother, presuming too much on her power, challenged the
+cardinal, in the king's presence, with his ingratitude and treacheries. No
+one doubted but that Richelieu's day was over, and the whole court crowded
+to the queen-mother to share her imaginary triumph. But the king went the
+same day to Versailles, and the cardinal followed him; the queen, fearing
+that she would find Versailles dull and uncomfortable, remained behind; and
+the wily statesman made such good use of his opportunity that the king's
+consent was won to the downfall of his mother. She was soon arrested, and
+her sorrows lasted as long as her life.</p>
+
+<p>Many were implicated in her ruin, and were exiled or thrown into the
+Bastille, or brought to the scaffold; and so much bloodshed and so many
+fortunes reversed brought odium on the name of Richelieu. The mild regency
+of Marie de M&eacute;dicis was remembered, and all the great families
+lamented that liberty was a thing of the past.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, I thought that the queen's cause was the only one, which an
+honourable man could follow. She was unhappy; the cardinal was rather her
+tyrant than her lover; she had been good to me, and had trusted me;
+Mademoiselle d'Hautefort, with whom I had great friendship, was her friend,
+too--sufficient reasons, these, to dazzle a youth who had seen almost
+nothing of the world, and to turn his steps in a direction quite contrary
+to his interests. King and cardinal alike soon came to detest me, and my
+life thenceforth was troubled by the visitations of their displeasure. In
+recording the scenes in which I have had a part, I have no intention of
+writing history, but only of touching on a few personal episodes.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Richelieu's Death</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>War was declared in 1635 against the King of Spain, and I accompanied
+the French army of twenty thousand men which marched to the support of the
+Prince of Orange in Flanders. During neither this nor the following winter
+was I allowed at court. Madame de Chevreuse, who had been sent to Tours on
+the occasion of Richelieu's triumph had heard a good account of me from the
+queen, and invited me to see her; we soon struck up a very great
+friendship, and I came to be a confidential intermediary between the queen
+and her, and was often entrusted by one or other of them with most perilous
+commissions.</p>
+
+<p>When I was at last readmitted to court in 1637, I found the queen in
+great trouble. She had been accused of a crime against the state, a
+treasonable understanding with the Spanish minister; some of her servants
+were arrested; the chancellor examined her like a criminal; it was even
+proposed to seclude her at Havre, annul her marriage, and repudiate her
+altogether. In this extremity, abandoned by all the world, she proposed
+that I should kidnap her and Mademoiselle d'Hautefort and carry them off to
+Brussels. Difficult and dangerous as this project was, it gave me greater
+joy than any I had known, for I was at an age when a man likes to engage in
+dashing and heroic feats. Happily, however, the chancellor's investigations
+proved her majesty not guilty.</p>
+
+<p>But an unfortunate series of accidents led to my imprisonment for a week
+in the Bastille. A signal had been agreed upon between the queen and Madame
+de Chevreuse during the recent trouble. If all went well, Madame de
+Chevreuse was to receive a prayer-book bound in green, but a red binding
+was to indicate disaster. I never knew which of the two ladies made the
+mistake, but when the queen was acquitted Madame de Chevreuse received what
+she took to be the signal of misfortune; concluded that both she and the
+queen were undone, and disguising herself as a man, she fled to Spain. This
+escapade, so surprising at the very moment when the Queen's troubles had
+come to an end, inspired the king and the cardinal with the gravest
+suspicions that they had not, after all, fathomed her majesty's treachery.
+The cardinal summoned me to Paris, and hinted at unpleasant consequences if
+I did not reveal all I knew. I knew nothing; and as my manner seemed more
+reserved and dry than he was accustomed to, I was sent to the Bastille.</p>
+
+<p>The little time that I spent there showed me more vividly than anything
+I had yet seen the picture of vengeance. I saw there men of great names and
+of great merits, an infinite number of men and women of all ranks in life,
+all unhappy in the affliction of long and cruel incarceration. The sight of
+so many pitiable creatures did much to increase my natural hatred for
+Cardinal Richelieu's administration. I was released in eight days, and
+thought myself very fortunate to escape at a period when none others were
+set at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>But my disgrace was well repaid. The queen showed herself gratefully
+aware of all that I had suffered in her service; Mademoiselle d'Hautefort
+gave full expression to her esteem and friendship; and Madame de Chevreuse
+was not less gracious. I enjoyed not only the favour of those to whom I was
+attached, but also a certain approval which the world is not slow to give
+to the unfortunate whose conduct has not really been disgraceful. Under
+these conditions an exile of two or three years from court was not
+intolerable. I was young; the king and the cardinal were failing in health;
+I had everything to hope for from a change. I was happy in my family, and
+enjoyed all the pleasures of country life, and the neighbouring provinces
+were full of other exiles.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal Richelieu died on December 4, 1642. Although his enemies could
+only rejoice at finding themselves free at last from so many persecutions,
+the event has shown that the state could ill spare him. He had made so many
+changes in public affairs that he alone was able to direct them safely. No
+one before Richelieu had known all the power of the kingdom, or had been
+able to gather it all up into the hands of the sovereign. The severity of
+his adminstration had cost many lives; the nobility had been humbled, and
+the common people had been loaded with taxes; but the grandeur of his
+political designs, such as the taking of La Rochelle, the destruction of
+the Huguenot party, and the weakening of the house of Austria, no less than
+his intrepidity in carrying them out, have secured for his memory a
+justly-merited fame.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Under Mazarin's Rule</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I returned to Paris immediately after the death of Richelieu, thinking
+that I might have occasion to serve the queen. In accordance with the late
+cardinal's will, Cardinal Mazarin succeeded to his powers. The king's state
+of health went from bad to worse, and the court was filled with intrigues
+with regard to the regency which must so soon be appointed. His death took
+place on May 14, 1643. The queen at once brought her little son, Louis
+XIV., to Paris; two days later she was declared regent in parliament; and
+the same evening, to the amazement of his enemies, she appointed Cardinal
+Mazarin chief of the council.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin's mind was great, industrious, insinuating, and artful, and his
+character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he
+had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest
+projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his
+temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A
+pretended moderation veiled his ambition and his avarice; he said he wanted
+nothing for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The court was now divided between the Duke of Beaufort and the cardinal,
+and it was expected that the return of Madame de Chevreuse would incline
+the queen to the former party. But the queen was in no hurry for that
+lady's return, knowing well what turmoils she was apt to bring in her
+train. Perhaps I urged her recall more boldly than was wise; at any rate, I
+won my point, and her majesty sent me to form Madame de Chevreuse for her
+appearance at court under the new conditions.</p>
+
+<p>I represented to her how indispensable Cardinal Mazarin was to the
+state; that he was accused of no crime, and was guiltless of Richelieu's
+oppressions; and that the most fatal course she could take would be to
+attempt to govern the queen. Madame de Chevreuse promised to follow my
+advice, and came up to court, but her old instincts of domination were too
+much for her, and she soon declared herself openly against the minister who
+enjoyed all the queen's confidence. She even attempted his overthrow, and
+for that purpose united herself to the party known as the
+"<i>Importans</i>," which was led by the Duke of Beaufort.</p>
+
+<p>After various manoeuvres on the part of the cardinal and of Madame de
+Chevreuse to get the upper hand, Mazarin discovered a plot against his
+life, in which the Duke of Beaufort was implicated, and had the duke
+arrested and imprisoned. At the same time Madame de Chevreuse was sent away
+to Tours, and as I was unwilling to promise that I would have no more to do
+with her, I lost the favour of the queen, provoked the cardinal's
+displeasure, and soon found that Madame de Chevreuse herself was forgetful
+of all I had done for her.</p>
+
+<p>Kept in idleness, tantalised by promises of office which were never
+fulfilled, and forbidden even to follow the wars, my wretched position led
+me at last to seek some way of showing my resentment at the treatment I had
+received from the queen and cardinal. The means were at hand. Like many
+others, I had come under the spell of the beauty and charm of Madame de
+Longueville, and thus come gradually into association with the party of the
+Fronde. I followed the Duke of Enghien, her brother, to the attack on
+Courtray, then to Mardick, where I was wounded; and this time of military
+service united me more closely to his later interests.</p>
+
+<p>By the year 1647 everyone was weary of Mazarin's rule. His bad faith,
+his weakness, and his trickiness were becoming known, provinces and towns
+alike were groaning under taxation, and the citizens of Paris were reduced
+to mere despair. Parliament tried respectful remonstrances in vain; the
+cardinal thought himself safe in the servility of the nation. But the great
+majority in France desired a change, and then smouldering discontent soon
+burst into a flame.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of Enghien, who had become, by the death of his father, Prince
+of Cond&eacute;, had gained in 1648 a great victory in Flanders, and a
+solemn thanksgiving was held in Notre Dame to celebrate it. Mazarin chose
+this moment for the arrest of Broussel and other members of parliament who
+had voiced most urgently the public distress. The action roused Paris to a
+fury which astonished him; the people sought him to tear him to pieces;
+barricades were erected in the streets, and the king and queen were
+besieged in the royal palace. Resistance to the parliament's demands were
+at the moment impossible; the prisoners had to be released.</p>
+
+<p>I was at this time absent from Paris, having been sent down by the queen
+to my government at Poitou, which I had purchased; the province was almost
+in insurrection and I had to pacify it. I happened to be deeply wounded by
+a new slight which Cardinal Mazarin had put upon me, when Madame de
+Longueville sent for me to come to Paris, informing me that the whole plan
+for a civil war had been drawn up, and asking for my counsel in the matter.
+The news delighted me, and I arrived at the capital eager for my revenge on
+the queen and the cardinal.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin, on the other hand, had formed his plan. Realising that Paris
+was unsafe, he determined to leave it, to place the king at Saint-Germain,
+and to lay siege to the city, which would soon be reduced to famine and
+dissensions. Their escape was made at midnight on the eve of Epiphany,
+1649, all the court following in great disorder.</p>
+
+<p>The city was for a time in much perplexity, but the arrival of the Duke
+of Beaufort, who had broken prison at Vincennes, put heart into the people,
+who took him for their liberator. Other great personages threw in their lot
+with the popular cause; a large war-chest was quickly raised and troops
+were levied, and the parliament of Paris put itself into communication with
+the other parliaments of the kingdom. All preparations were made for a
+civil war, the real basis of which was a general hatred of Cardinal
+Mazarin, which was common to both parties. In an early engagement outside
+the city I was so gravely wounded as to see no more of this war, the events
+of which are hardly worth narrating. On April 1, 1649, the Parliament
+received an amnesty from the king. Neither party had vanquished the other;
+the cardinal and the parliament were each as strong as before, but everyone
+was glad to be rid, for the time, of the horrors of civil war.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Wars of the Fronde</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Prince of Cond&eacute;, who had great influence in the council,
+showed himself so contemptuous to Mazarin, and became so inconvenient to
+the queen by his arrogance that she decided to arrest him, and to involve
+Madame de Longueville, the duke, her husband, and the Prince of Conti in
+the same disgrace. Accordingly, on January 18, 1650, the Prince of
+Cond&eacute;, the Duke of Longueville, and the Prince of Conti were seized
+and imprisoned at Vincennes, and the order was given at the same time to
+arrest Madame de Longueville and myself. But we succeeded in escaping
+together to Dieppe, where we were forced to separate; Madame de Longueville
+found refuge at Stenay, where she met with Turenne, and I returned to my
+government of Poitou and formed an alliance there with the Duke of
+Bouillon, Turenne's brother. Together the duke and I matured designs which
+led to the civil war in the south.</p>
+
+<p>My father having died at Verteuil in March, 1650, I succeeded to the
+title of Duke of La Rochefoucauld. I invited a large number of nobles and
+gentlemen of that region to the funeral ceremonies; our plans were put
+before them; though some of them held back, most were favourable; and I
+soon found myself at the head of a force of two thousand horse and eight
+hundred foot. The Duke of Bouillon and I were joined by the young Princess
+of Cond&eacute;, with her son the Duke of Enghien; we gathered more troops
+at Turenne, and marched upon Bordeaux. After overcoming some opposition,
+the princess entered that city in triumph on May 31, 1650, and we joined
+her a few days later.</p>
+
+<p>The grievance of the princess and the presence of her son excited the
+liveliest enthusiasm, and the party opposed to Mazarin had entire mastery
+of the town. The revolt of Bordeaux carried with it almost all Guienne, and
+Mazarin determined to crush it before it should extend to the neighbouring
+provinces. A royal army of veterans was sent down, Bordeaux was closely
+invested, an obstinate defence was made, but the town had to capitulate on
+September 28, on the condition of an amnesty to the princess and her
+adherents.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Turenne, with a Spanish force, had made a vain attempt to
+rescue the captive princes, and Mazarin had removed them to Havre, where
+the government was devoted to him. There was now such general dread and
+hatred of the cardinal, that people were willing to unite with those whom
+they had considered their mortal enemies in order to secure his ruin. In
+the early days of 1651 I was summoned to Paris by the Princess Palatine,
+who united a taste for gallantry with a remarkable talent for intrigue, and
+remained for some time hidden in her house, where I was witness to many
+consultations for the removal of Mazarin from power. I even made a last
+attempt to persuade the cardinal himself to release the princes; in four
+nocturnal interviews I tried to show him how all parties were uniting to
+compass his ruin, but was unable to convince him without betraying secrets
+which were not my own. Mazarin gave me no hope of their liberation.</p>
+
+<p>Then arose a general storm against the minister, and he made his escape
+on the night of February 7. The queen would have followed him with her son,
+but the Frondeurs and the partisans of the princes kept her prisoner in her
+palace. Without any hope of assistance, and daunted day and night by an
+infuriated populate, she sent for me and gave me an order to the governor
+of Havre to release the princes immediately. I warned the leaders of the
+Fronde that her sincerity was not above suspicion, and that all depended
+upon her close imprisonment, and so set out along the northern road upon my
+mission. But the cardinal had been beforehand with me, the princes were at
+liberty, and on February 16 they entered Paris in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Mazarin, who had fled to Cologne, whence he continued to direct the
+queen's cabinet, returned to France at the head of a small army in January,
+1652, and arrived at Poitiers without meeting any resistance. The party
+opposed to him was rent by faction and strife, but the Prince of
+Cond&eacute; united it, and fought an indecisive engagement with the royal
+troops on April 8. On the 11th the prince and I were well received in
+Paris, but it was evident that the citizens were weary of all these
+troubles, desired nothing so much as the king's return, and detested the
+ambition of the leaders of faction. Indeed, the magistrates were
+negotiating with Mazarin, and declared the city neutral. On July 2 the
+Prince of Cond&eacute; was marching his force from Saint-Cloud to Charenton
+when he was attacked by Turenne; and in the sanguinary combat which
+followed, and in which I was fighting beside the prince, I received a wound
+in the head which prevented my taking any further part in these
+disturbances.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly afterwards, the Prince of Cond&eacute;, his popularity wholly
+gone, took service under the King of Spain; King Louis XIV., amid general
+acclamations, returned to Paris on October 21; and Cardinal Mazarin, having
+overcome all his enemies, entered the capital in a veritable triumph, in
+February, 1653.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MADAME_DE_SEVIGNE"></a>MADAME DE S&Eacute;VIGN&Eacute;</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Letters2"></a>Letters</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, who became Madame de
+S&eacute;vign&eacute;, was born at Paris on February 6, 1626. Her father
+and mother died during her childhood and Marie was left to the care of her
+uncle, priest of Coulanges; she received an admirable education and became
+a great lover of history and of classical literature. At eighteen years of
+age she married the Marquis Henri de S&eacute;vign&eacute;, who was killed
+in a duel in 1651, and thenceforth Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute; gave
+herself up altogether to the care of her two children. Her wit, her
+kindliness, and happiness, her charity and fidelity, and especially a
+certain rare genius for friendship, won for her the warm devotion of many
+great people of that brilliant age. Her daughter was married in 1669 to the
+Comte de Grignan, a great official, lieutenant-general of Languedoc and
+then of Provence, a man of honour, but accustomed to the most lavish
+expenditure, which burdened his life with enormous debts. The famous
+"Letters" of Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute; numbering over 1,000 were
+written over a period of twenty-five years, chiefly to this daughter,
+Madame de Grignan. They are valued for their vivacious and graceful style,
+the light which they throw upon the thoughts and movements of her time, but
+especially for their revelation of a wonderfully sweet and gracious
+personality. Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute; died on April 18, 169696.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>Love for her Daughter</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>My dear child: I have been here but three hours, and already take my pen
+to talk to you. I left Paris with the Abb&eacute;, H&eacute;l&egrave;ne,
+H&eacute;bert and Marphise, so that I might get away from the noise and
+bustle of the town until Thursday evening. I want to have perfect
+quietness, in which to reflect. I intend to fast for many good reasons, and
+to walk much to make up for the long time I have spent in my room; and
+above all, I want to discipline myself for the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>But, my dear daughter, what I shall do more than all this, will be to
+think of you. I have not ceased to do so since I arrived here; and being
+quite unable to restrain my feelings, I have betaken myself to the little
+shady walk you so loved, to write to you, and am sitting on the mossy bank
+where you so often used to lie. But, my dear, where in this place have I
+not seen you? Do not thoughts of you haunt my heart everywhere I turn?--in
+the house, in the church, in the field, in the garden--every spot speaks to
+me of you. You are in my thoughts all the time, and my heart cries out for
+you again and again. I search in vain for the dear, dear child I love so
+passionately; but she is 600 miles away, and I cannot call her to my side.
+My tears fall, and I cannot stop them. I know it is weak, but this
+tenderness for you is right and natural and I cannot be strong.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder what your mood will be when you receive this letter; perhaps at
+that moment you will not be touched with the emotions I now feel so
+poignantly, and then you may not read it in the spirit in which it was
+written. But against that I cannot guard, and the act of writing relieves
+my feelings at the moment--that is at least what I ask of it. You would not
+believe the condition into which this place has thrown me.</p>
+
+<p>Do not refer to my weakness, I beg of you; but you must love me, and
+have respect for my tears, since they flow from a heart which is full of
+you.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Brinvilliers Affair</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Brinvilliers affair is still the only thing talked of in Paris. The
+Marquise confessed to having poisoned her father, her brothers, and one of
+her children. The Chevalier Duget had been one of those who had partaken of
+a poisoned dish of pigeon-pie; and when the Brinvilliers was told three
+years later that he was still alive, her only remark was "that man surely
+has an excellent constitution." It seems she fell deeply in love with
+Sainte Croix, an officer in the regiment of her husband, the Marquis, who
+lived in their house. Believing that Sainte Croix would marry her if she
+were free, she attempted to poison her husband. Sainte Croix, not
+reciprocating her desire, administered an antidote, and thus saved the poor
+Marquis's life.</p>
+
+<p>And now, all is over. The Brinvilliers is no more. Judgment was given
+yesterday and this morning her sentence was read to her--she was to make a
+public confession in front of Notre Dame, after which she was to be
+executed, her body burnt and her ashes scattered to the winds. She was
+threatened with torture, but said it was unnecessary and that she would
+tell all. Accordingly she recounted the history of her whole life, which
+was even more horrible than anyone had imagined, and I could not hear of it
+without shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>At six in the morning she was led out, barefoot, and clad only in one
+loose garment, with a halter round her neck. From Notre Dame she was
+carried back in the same Tumbril, in which I saw her lying on straw, with
+the Doctor on one side of her and the executioner on the other; the sight
+of her struck me with horror. I am told that she mounted the scaffold with
+a firm step, and died as she had lived, resolutely, and without fear or
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>She asked her confessor to place the executioner so that she need not
+gaze on Degrais, who, you <i>will remember</i>, tracked her to England, and
+ultimately arrested her at Li&egrave;ge. After she had mounted the ladder
+to the scaffold she was exposed to the public for a quarter of an hour,
+while the executioner arranged her for execution. This raised a murmur of
+disapproval among the people, and it was a great cruelty. It seems that
+some say she was a saint; and after her body had been burned, the people
+crowded near to search for bones as relics, but little was to be found, as
+her ashes were thrown into the fire. And, it may be supposed, that we now
+inhale what remains of her. It is to be hoped that we shall not inhale her
+murderous instincts also.</p>
+
+<p>She had two confessors, of whom one counselled her to tell everything,
+the other nothing. She laughed, and said, "I may in conscience do what
+pleases me best."</p>
+
+<p>I was pleased to hear what you think of this horrible woman; it is not
+possible that she should be in Paradise; her vile soul must be separated
+from others.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Devotion</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>You ask me if I am devout. Alas! No, which is a sorrow to me; but I am
+in a way detached from what is called the world. Old age, and a little
+sickness give one time to reflect. But, my dear child, what I do not give
+to the world, I give to you; so that I hardly advance in the region of
+detachment; and you know the true way towards a devout life lies in some
+degree of effacement, first of all, of that which our heart holds
+dearest.</p>
+
+<p>One of my great desires is to become devout. Every day I am tormented by
+this idea. I do not belong to God, neither do I belong to the Devil; this
+indecision is a perpetual torment to me, although between ourselves, I
+believe this state to be a most natural one. One does not belong to the
+Devil, because one fears God: also, one does not belong to God, because His
+law is hard, and one does not like to renounce oneself. These are the
+luke-warm, and their great number does not surprise me at all; I can enter
+into their reasonings; but God hates them; therefore we must cease to serve
+in this state--and there is the difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>I am overwhelmed by the death of M. du Mans; I had never thought of
+death in connection with him. Yet he has died of a trifling fever, without
+having had time to think either of heaven or of earth. Providence sometimes
+shows its authority by sudden visitations, from which we should profit.</p>
+
+<p>What you say as to the anxieties which we so often and so naturally feel
+about the future, and as to how our inclinations are insensibly changed by
+necessity, is a subject worthy of a book like Pascal's; nothing is so
+satisfying, nothing so useful as meditations of this kind. But how many
+people of your age think this? I know of none; and I honour your sound
+reasoning and courage. With me it is not so, especially when my heart
+afflicts me; my words are indifferently good; I write as those who speak
+well; but the depth of my feeling kills me. This I feel when I write to you
+of the pain of separation. I have not myself found the proverb true, "To
+cloak oneself according to the cold." I have no cloak against cold like
+this. Yet I manage to find occupation, and the time passes somehow. But in
+general it is true that our thoughts and inclinations turn into other
+channels, and our sorrows cease to be such.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Love of Life</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>You ask me, dear child, if I am still in love with life. I must confess
+that I find its sorrows grievous, but my distaste for death is even
+stronger. It is sad to think I must finish my life with death, and if it
+were possible I would retrace my steps. I find myself embarked on life
+without my consent, and am in a perplexing situation. I shall have to take
+leave of life, and the fact overwhelms me: for how, or by what gate, shall
+I pass away? When will death come, and in what disposition will it find me?
+Shall I suffer a thousand pains which will make me die in despair? Shall I
+die in a transport of joy? Shall I die of an accident? How shall I stand
+before God? What shall I have to offer Him? Shall I return to Him in fear
+and necessity, and be conscious of no other feeling but terror? What can I
+hope for? Am I worthy of Paradise? Or worthy only of Hell? What an
+alternative! What perplexity! Nothing is so mad as to leave one's safety
+thus in uncertainty; but nothing is more natural; and the foolish life I
+lead is perfectly easy to understand. I plunge myself into these thoughts;
+and I find death so terrible, that I hate life more because it leads to
+death, than because it leads me through troublesome places. You will say I
+wish to live for ever. Not at all; but if I had been asked, I would
+willingly have died in my nurse's arms, for I should thus have avoided many
+sorrows and would have secured heaven with certainty and ease.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Order of God</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Providence wills order; but if order is nothing other than the will of
+God, almost all that occurs is done against His will: all the persecutions,
+for instance, against St. Athanasius; all the prosperity of ill-doers and
+tyrants--all this is against order and therefore against the will of God.
+We must surely hold to what St. Augustine says, that God permits all these
+things so that he may manifest His glory by means that are unknown to us.
+St. Augustine knows no rule nor order but the will of God. If we did not
+follow this doctrine, we should be forced to conclude that almost
+everything is contrary to the will of Him who made it, and this seems to me
+a dreadful conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to complain to Father Malebranche about the mice which eat
+everything here; is that in order? Sugar, fruit, preserves, everything is
+devoured by them. And was it order last year, that miserable caterpillars
+destroyed the leaves of our forest-trees and gardens, and all the fruit in
+the country-side? Father Payen, most peaceable of men, has his head broken;
+is that order? Yes, Father, all that is doubtless good. God knows how to
+dispose of it to His glory, though we know not how. We must take it as
+true, for if we do not regard the will of God as equivalent to all law and
+order, we fall into great difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>You are such a philosopher, my very dear child, that there is no way of
+being happy with you. Your mind runs on beyond our hopes to picture to
+itself the loss of all we hope for; and you see, in our meetings, the
+inevitable separation that is to follow. Surely that is not the way to deal
+with the good things Providence prepares for us; we should rather husband
+and enjoy them. But after having made this little reproach, I must confess
+in all honesty that I deserve it just as much as you. No one can be more
+daunted than I am by the flight of time, nor feel more keenly beforehand
+the griefs which ordinarily follow pleasures. Indeed, my daughter, life
+mingles its good and ill: when one has what one desires, one is all the
+nearer to losing it; when it is further from us, we dream of finding it. So
+we must just take things as God sends them. For my part, I would cherish
+the hope of seeing you without mixing in with other feelings; and look
+forward to holding you in my arms next month. I wish to believe God will
+allow us this perfect joy, although it would be the easiest thing in the
+world to mix it with bitterness, if we so desired. All that remains, my
+very dear one, is to breathe and to live.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Prince of Orange and England</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Prince of Orange has declared himself protector of the religion of
+England, and has asked to have charge of the education of the young Prince.
+It is a bold step, and several of the English nobility have joined him. We
+are all hoping that the Prince of Orange has made a mistake, and that King
+James II. will give him a good beating. He has received the Milords,
+confirmed the attachment of those most devoted to him, and has declared
+entire liberty of conscience. But we understand that the King of England
+has united all his people round him, by affording a greater degree of
+religious liberty.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>What shall we say of this English nation? Its customs and manners go
+from bad to worse. The King of England has escaped from London, apparently
+by kind permission of the Prince of Orange; the Queen will arrive at St.
+Germain in a day or two. It is quite certain that war will be declared
+against us soon, if indeed we are not the first to declare it. We are
+sending the Abb&eacute; Testu to St. Germain to help in establishing there
+the King and Queen of England and the Prince of Wales. Our King of France
+has behaved quite divinely to these Majesties of England; for to comfort
+and sustain, as he has done, a betrayed and abandoned king, is to act in
+the image of the Almighty.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It is good news that the King of England has left this morning for
+Ireland, where they are anxiously awaiting him. He will be better there
+than here. He is travelling through Brittany like lightning, and at Brest
+he will find Marshall d'Estr&eacute;e with transport and frigates ready. He
+carries large treasure, and the King has given him arms for ten thousand
+men; as his Majesty of England was saying good-bye, he said, laughing, that
+he had forgotten arms for himself, and our King gave him his own. Our
+heroes of romance have done nothing more gallant. What will not this brave
+and unfortunate King accomplish with these ever victorious weapons? He goes
+forth with the helmet and cuirass of Renaud, Amadis, and our most
+illustrious paladins, supported by unexampled generosity and
+magnanimity.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Old Age</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>So you have been struck by Madame de la Fayette's words, inspired by so
+much friendliness. I never let myself forget the fact that I am growing
+old; but I must confess that I was simply astonished at what she said,
+because I do not yet feel any infirmity to keep me in mind of my advancing
+years. I think of them, however, and find that life offers us hard
+conditions: here have I been led, in spite of myself, to the fatal period
+at which one must die--old age. I see it; old age has stolen upon me; and
+my only desire is to go no further. I do not want to travel along that road
+of infirmities, pains, the loss of memory, the disfigurements to which I
+look forward as an outrage; yet I hear a voice saying in my ear--"You must
+pass down that road, whether you like it or not, or else you must die"; and
+this second alternative is as repugnant to nature as the first. This is the
+inevitable lot of whoever advances too far along the course of life. Yet, a
+return to God's will, and submission to that universal law which has
+condemned us all to death, is enough to seat reason again on her throne,
+and to give us patience. Do you too have patience, my darling; don't let
+your love, too tender, cause you tears which your reason must condemn.</p>
+
+<p>Your brother has come under the Empire of Ninon de Lenclos; I fear it
+will bring evil; she ruined his father. We must recommend him to God.
+Christian women, or at least who wish to be so, cannot see disorder like
+his without sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>But what a dangerous person this Ninon is! She finds that your brother
+has the simplicity of a dove, and is like his mother; it is Madame de
+Grignan who has all the salt of the family, and is not so simple as to be
+ruled. Someone, meaning to take your part, tried to correct her notion of
+you, but Ninon contradicted him and said she knew you better. What a
+corrupt creature! Because you are beautiful and spirited she must needs add
+to you another quality without which, on her principles, you cannot be
+perfect. I have been deeply troubled by the harm she is doing to my son.
+But do not speak of the matter to him; Madame de la Fayette and I are doing
+our best to extricate him from his perilous attachment.</p>
+
+<p>We have been reading for our amusement those little Provincial Letters.
+Heavens, what charm they have! How eagerly my son reads them! I always
+think of my daughter, and how worthy of her is the incomparable justice of
+their reasoning; but your brother says that you complain that the writer is
+always saying the same thing. Well, well; all the better! Is it possible
+that there should be a more perfect style, or a finer, more delicate or
+more natural raillery? Could anything be more worthy of comparison with
+Plato's "Dialogues"? But after the first ten letters, what earnestness,
+solidity, force and eloquence! What love for God and for truth, what
+exquisite skill in maintaining it and making it understood, characterise
+these eight last letters with their so different tone! I understand that
+you have read them only hurriedly, enjoying the more amusing passages; but
+that is not how one reads them at leisure.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="ROBERT_SOUTHEY"></a>ROBERT SOUTHEY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Life_of_Nelson"></a>The Life of Nelson</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Robert Southey, man of letters and poet-laureate, was born
+at Bristol on August 12, 1774, and received at various schools a desultory
+education, which he completed by an idle year at Oxford. Here he became
+acquainted with Coleridge; and Southey, who had practised verse from early
+boyhood, and acquired a strong taste for the drama, being also an ardent
+republican and romanticist, was easily enlisted by the elder poet in his
+scheme for a model republic, or "Pantisocracy," in the wilds of America.
+They married two sisters, the Misses Fricker, and a third sister married
+Robert Lovel, also a poet. The experiment of pantisocracy was fortunately
+never carried out, and Southey's career for the next eight years was
+exceedingly fragmentary; but in 1803 there was a reunion of the three
+sisters at Keswick, though one of the husbands, Lovel, was dead. Here
+Southey entered steadily and industriously on the life of an author for
+livelihood; it was by no means unremunerative. Southey's output of work,
+both prose and verse, was very voluminous, and its quality could not but
+suffer. He was appointed poet-laureate in 1813; and received a government
+pension of &pound;160 a year from 1807, which was increased by &pound;300 a
+year in 1835. He died on March 21, 1843. In a prefatory note to that
+peerless model of short biographies, the "Life of Nelson," which appeared
+in 1813, and is considered his most important work, Southey describes it as
+"clear and concise enough to become a manual for the young sailor, which he
+may carry about with him till he has treasured up the example in his memory
+and in his heart." </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--A Captain at Twenty</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Horatio, son of Edmund and Catherine Nelson, was born on September 29,
+1758, in the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, a Norfolk village, where his
+father was rector. His mother's maiden name was Suckling; her grandmother
+was an elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, and this child was named after
+his godfather, the first Lord Walpole. Mrs. Nelson died in 1767, leaving
+eight children, and her brother, Captain Maurice Suckling, R.N., visited
+the widower, and promised to take care of one of the boys.</p>
+
+<p>Three years later, when Horatio was twelve years old, he read in the
+newspaper that his uncle was appointed to the Raisonnable, and urged his
+father to let him go to sea with his Uncle Maurice.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was never strong, but he had already given proofs of a resolute
+heart and a noble mind. Captain Suckling took an interest in him, and sent
+him on a first voyage in a merchant ship to the West Indies, and then, as
+coxswain, with the Arctic expedition of 1773, when Horatio showed his
+courage by attacking a Polar bear.</p>
+
+<p>A voyage to the East Indies followed, and gave him the rank of
+midshipman. But the tropical climate reduced him almost to a skeleton; he
+lost for a time the use of his limbs, and was sent home as his only chance
+of life. He returned under great depression of spirits. In later years he
+related how the despair was cleared away by a glow of patriotism, in which
+his king and country came vividly before his mind. "Well, then," he
+exclaimed, "I will be a hero, and, confiding in Providence, I will brave
+every danger!"</p>
+
+<p>On April 8, 1777, he passed his examination for a lieutenancy, and was
+appointed to the Lowestoft frigate, Captain Locker, then fitting out for
+Jamaica. Privateers under American colours were harassing British trade in
+the West Indies, and Nelson saw much active service. He was removed to the
+Bristol flagship, then to the command of the Badger, then to the
+Hinchinbrook, and before the age of twenty-one he had gained a rank which
+brought all the honours of the service within his reach.</p>
+
+<p>An expedition was at this time projected to seize the region of Lake
+Nicaragua, and thus to cut the communication of the Spaniards between their
+northern and southern possessions; and in pursuit of this policy Nelson was
+sent with a small force, early in 1780, to Honduras. Here, after deeds of
+great gallantry, his command was almost annihilated by the deadly climate,
+and he himself was so reduced by dysentery that he was compelled to return
+to England.</p>
+
+<p>His next ship was the Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, in which he was
+kept, to his great annoyance, in the North Sea for the whole winter of
+1781-2, and was sent in the spring to Quebec. The Albemarle then served on
+the West Indian station until tidings came that the preliminaries of peace
+had been signed, and she returned to England, and was paid off in 1783.</p>
+
+<p>"I have closed the war," said Nelson, in one of his letters, "without a
+fortune; but there is not a speck on my character. True honour, I hope,
+predominated in my mind far above riches." He did not apply for a ship,
+because he was not wealthy enough to live on board in the manner which was
+then customary.</p>
+
+<p>But, after living for a time in lodgings in St. Omer's in France, he was
+appointed to the Boreas, going to the Leeward Islands, and on his arrival
+in the West Indies in 1784, found himself senior captain, and therefore
+second in command on that station.</p>
+
+<p>The Americans were at this time trading with our islands, taking
+advantage of the register of their ships, which had been issued while they
+were British subjects. Nelson knew that, by the Navigation Act, no
+foreigners, directly or indirectly, were permitted to carry on any trade
+with these possessions; and also that the Americans had made themselves
+foreigners with regard to England.</p>
+
+<p>Contrary to the orders both of the admiral and of the governor, he
+insisted that our ships of war were not sent abroad to make a show of, and
+seized four American vessels at Nevis; and when the matter was brought into
+court at that place he pleaded his own cause, and the ships were
+condemned.</p>
+
+<p>While the lawsuit was proceeding, Nelson formed an attachment to a young
+widow, Mrs. Nisbet, niece of the President of Nevis, and was married to her
+on March 11, 1787. She was then in her eighteenth year, and had one child,
+a son, Josiah, who was three years old. They returned together to England
+and took up their abode at the old parsonage, where Nelson amused himself
+with farming and country sports, and continued a relentless campaign
+against the speculators and fraudulent contractors attached to the naval
+service in the West Indies. After many vain attempts to secure a ship, he
+was at last appointed, on January 30, 1793, to the Agamemnon, sixty-four
+guns.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--In the Mediterranean</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The Agamemnon was ordered to the Mediterranean under Lord Hood, and
+Nelson was sent with despatches to Sir William Hamilton, our envoy to the
+court of Naples. Sir William, after his first interview with him, told Lady
+Hamilton that he was about to introduce a little man to her who could not
+boast of being very handsome, but who would one day astonish the world.
+Thus that acquaintance began which ended in the destruction of Nelson's
+domestic happiness, though it threatened no such consequences then. Here
+also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan court which led to the
+only blot on Nelson's public character.</p>
+
+<p>Having accomplished this mission, Nelson was sent to join Commodore
+Linzee at Tunis, and shortly afterwards to co-operate with General Paoli
+and the Anti-Gallican party in Corsica. At this time, 1794, Nelson was able
+to say, "My seamen are now what British seamen ought to be, almost
+invincible. They really mind shot no more than peas." And again, after
+capturing Bastia, "I am all astonishment when I reflect on what we have
+achieved! I was always of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never had
+any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen."
+The Agamemnon was then dispatched to co-operate in the siege of Calvi with
+General Sir Charles Stuart, at which Nelson lost the sight of one eye; and
+later played a glorious part in the attack by Admiral Hotham's squadron on
+the French fleet. This action saved Corsica for the time.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson was made colonel of marines in 1795, a mark of approbation which
+he had long wished for; and the Agamemnon was ordered to Genoa, to
+co-operate with the Austrian and Sardinian forces. The incapacity and
+misconduct of the Austrian General de Vins, however, gave the enemy
+possession of the Genoese coast. The Agamemnon, therefore, could no longer
+be useful on this station, and Nelson sailed for Leghorn to refit, and then
+joined the Mediterranean fleet under Sir John Jervis.</p>
+
+<p>England at that time depended too much on the rotten governments of the
+Continent, and too little upon itself. Corsica was therefore abandoned by
+Britain, and Nelson, after superintending the evacuation of Corsica, was
+ordered to hoist his broad pennant on board the Minerva frigate. He then
+sailed for Gibraltar, and proceeded westward in search of the admiral.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--St. Vincent and the Nile</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Off the mouth of the Straits of Gilbraltar he fell in with the Spanish
+fleet; and on February 13, 1797, reaching the station off Cape St. Vincent,
+he communicated this intelligence to Sir John Jervis, and was directed to
+shift his broad pennant on board the Captain. On the following morning was
+fought the battle of Cape St. Vincent. The British had only fifteen ships
+of the line against twenty-seven Spanish ships, but Britain, largely
+through Nelson's intrepidity, secured an overwhelming victory. The
+commander-in-chief was rewarded with the title of Earl St. Vincent, and
+Nelson was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral and received the Order of
+the Bath.</p>
+
+<p>Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson was now removed to the Theseus, and was
+employed in the blockade of Cadiz, where he went through the most perilous
+action in which he was ever engaged. Making a night attack upon the Spanish
+gunboats, his barge, carrying twelve men, was attacked by an armed launch
+carrying twenty-six men; the admiral was only saved by the heroic devotion
+of his coxswain; but eighteen of the enemy were killed, the rest wounded,
+and their launch taken.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve days later Nelson sailed at the head of an expedition against
+Teneriffe, and on the night of July 24, 1797, made a boat attack on the
+port of Santa Cruz. On this occasion he was wounded in the right elbow, and
+the arm had to be amputated. The small force, which had made its way into
+the town, capitulated on honourable terms, and the Spanish governor
+distinguished himself by the most humane and generous conduct to his
+enemies. There is no doubt that Nelson's life was saved by the careful
+attentions of his stepson, Nisbet, who was with him in the boat.</p>
+
+<p>Nisbet was immediately promoted, and honours awaited Nelson in England.
+The freedom of the cities of Bristol and London were conferred on him, and
+he received a pension of &pound;1,000 a year. He had performed an
+extraordinary series of services during the war; including four actions
+with the fleets of the enemy, three actions with boats employed in cutting
+out of harbour, and in taking three towns; he had commanded the batteries
+at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi, he had assisted at the capture of
+twenty-eight ships of war, and had taken and destroyed nearly fifty
+merchant vessels; and had been engaged against the enemy upwards of a
+hundred and twenty times, in which service he had lost his right eye and
+right arm.</p>
+
+<p>Early in 1789, Sir Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and
+left England to rejoin Earl St. Vincent. He was dispatched to the
+Mediterranean, to ascertain the object of Bonaparte's great expedition,
+then fitting out at Toulon; and sailed from Gibraltar on May 9 with three
+ships of the line, four frigates, and a sloop. The Vanguard was dismantled
+in a storm, but was refitted in the Sardinian harbour of St. Pietro, and
+was joined by a reinforcement of eleven ships from Earl St. Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>The first news of the enemy's armament was that it had surprised Malta,
+but Nelson soon heard that they had left that island on June 16, and judged
+that Egypt was their destination. He arrived off Alexandria on the 28th,
+but did not find them; returned by a circuitous course to Sicily, then
+sailed to the Morea, where he gained news of the French, and on August I
+came in sight of Alexandria and the French fleet. "Before this time
+to-morrow," he said to his officers, "I shall have gained a peerage or
+Westminster Abbey."</p>
+
+<p>Bonaparte's ships of war, under Admiral Brueys, were moored in Aboukir
+Bay in a strong line of battle; and the advantage of numbers, both in
+ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. Yet only four French
+ships out of seventeen escaped, and the victory was the most complete and
+glorious in the annals of naval history.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson was now at the summit of his glory; and congratulations, rewards,
+and honours were showered upon him by all the states, princes, and powers
+to whom his victory had given respite. He was created Baron Nelson of the
+Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, with a pension of &pound;2,000 a year for his
+own life, and those of his successors; a grant of &pound;10,000 was voted
+to him by the East India Company; and the King of Naples made him Duke of
+Bronte.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Lady Hamilton</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>As soon as his shattered frame had sufficiently recovered, Nelson was
+called to services of greater importance than any one in which he had been
+hitherto employed.</p>
+
+<p>The kindest attentions and warmest affection were awaiting him at
+Naples; the king, the queen, and Lady Hamilton, who was the queen's
+constant favourite, welcomed their hero and deliverer with the most
+splendid festivities. General Mack, with whom Nelson was to co-operate, was
+at the head of the Neapolitan troops; and while he marched with 32,000 men
+into the Roman state, 5,000 Neapolitans were embarked on the British and
+Portuguese squadron to take possession of Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson's fears of the result were soon verified. "The Neapolitan
+officers," he said, "did not lose much honour, for God knows they had not
+much to lose--but they lost all they had." The French in the Roman State
+routed the cowardly Neapolitans. There was a strong revolutionary party in
+Naples itself; and it was agreed that the royal family must seek safety in
+flight. Their secret escape, with much treasure, on board the Vanguard, was
+conducted with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton, and Nelson conveyed
+them through a wild storm to Palermo.</p>
+
+<p>He had by this time formed an infatuated attachment for Lady Hamilton,
+which totally weaned his affections from his wife. He was dissatisfied with
+himself and weary of the world. But, in accordance with his principle of
+duty "to assist in driving the French to the devil and in restoring peace
+and happiness to mankind," he at length expelled the French from Naples and
+restored Ferdinand to his throne. Weak in health, dispirited, and smarting
+under a censure from the Admiralty for a disobedience to orders, Nelson
+resigned his command, and reached England in November 1800, having
+travelled with Sir William and Lady Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>The great admiral was welcomed to England with every mark of popular
+honour; but he had forfeited domestic happiness for ever. Before he had
+been three months at home, he separated from Lady Nelson, vowing that there
+was nothing in her or in her conduct that he could have wished
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>In January 1801 he was sent to the Baltic as second in command under Sir
+Hyde Parker. Russia, Denmark, and Sweden had founded a confederacy for
+making England resign her naval rights, and the British Cabinet decided
+instantly to crush it. The fleet sailed on March 12; Nelson represented to
+Sir Hyde Parker the necessity of attacking Copenhagen; and on April 2 the
+British vessels opened fire on the Danish fleet and land batteries. The
+Danes, in return, fought their guns manfully, and at one o'clock, after
+three hours' endurance, Sir Hyde Parker gave the signal for discontinuing
+action. Nelson ordered that signal to be acknowledged, but continued to fly
+the signal for close action. "You know, Foley," he said, turning to the
+captain of the ship, "I have only one eye; I have a right to be blind
+sometimes!" Then, putting the glass to his blind eye, in the mood that
+sports with bitterness, he exclaimed, "I really do not see the signal. Keep
+mine for closer battle flying! That's the way I answer such signals. Nail
+mine to that mast!" Admiral Graves disobeyed in like manner, and the other
+ships of the line also continued the action. The victory was soon complete,
+and Sir Hyde Parker heartily expressed his satisfaction and gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>For the battle of Copenhagen, Nelson was raised to the rank of viscount.
+Had he lived long enough, he would have fought his way up to a dukedom.</p>
+
+<p>After holding a command in the English Channel, to watch the
+preparations which were being made at Boulogne for an invasion of England,
+Nelson retired on the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens to his estate at
+Merton, in Surrey, meaning to pass his days there in the society of Sir
+William and Lady Hamilton. Sir William died early in 1803, and, as the
+government would do nothing for her, Nelson settled on Lady Hamilton a sum
+equal to the pension of &pound;1,200 a year which her husband had enjoyed.
+A few weeks after this event the war was renewed, and the day after his
+majesty's message to parliament, Nelson departed to take command of the
+Mediterranean fleet.</p>
+
+<p>He took his station immediately off Toulon, and there, with incessant
+vigilance, waited for the coming out of the enemy. From May 1803 to August
+1805 he left the Victory only three times, each time upon the king's
+service, and on no occasion for more than an hour.</p>
+
+<p>War having been declared between England and Spain, the Toulon fleet,
+having the Spaniards to co-operate with them, put to sea on January 18,
+1804. Nelson, who was off Sardinia when he heard the news the next day,
+sought them in vain through the Mediterranean, until he heard that they had
+been dispersed by a gale, and had returned to Toulon. On March 31 they
+emerged again, and passed out of the Straits of Gibraltar, but the British
+fleet was kept by adverse winds from reaching the Atlantic till April
+5.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy had thirty-five days start on their run to the West Indies,
+and Nelson, misled by false information, sought them among the islands,
+until he learned at Antigua on June 9 that they had sailed again for
+Europe. He made all speed across the Atlantic, and again sought the enemy
+vainly, until he joined Admiral Cornwallis off Ushant on August 15. The
+same evening he was ordered to proceed with the Victory and Superb to
+Portsmouth.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Trafalgar</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Here, at last, he heard news of the combined fleets; Sir Robert Calder
+had fallen in with them near Finisterre and had fought an indecisive
+engagement.</p>
+
+<p>On September 14, 1805, he passed through the crowds at Portsmouth, many
+of whom were in tears, many kneeling and blessing him as he passed. He
+arrived off Cadiz on September 29 with twenty-three ships, and on October 9
+he sent Collingwood his plan of attack--what he called "the Nelson-touch."
+These tactics consisted in cutting through the line of the enemy in three
+places.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the 19th the enemy came out of the port of Cadiz, and
+all that day and night, and the next day, the British pursued them. At
+daybreak of the 21st, the combined fleets were distinctly seen from the
+Victory, about twelve miles to leeward. Signal was made to bear down on the
+enemy in two lines, and all sail was set, the Victory leading.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson now retired to his cabin and wrote in his diary a prayer
+committing himself and the British cause to Heaven, and then wrote a
+memorial setting forth Lady Hamilton's services to Britain, and leaving her
+and her daughter Horatia as a legacy to his country.</p>
+
+<p>Villeneuve, commanding the enemy, was a skilful seaman, and his plan of
+defence was as original as the plan of attack. He formed the fleet in a
+double line, every alternate ship being a cable's length to windward of her
+second ahead and astern. Nelson, certain of triumph, issued his last
+signal: "England expects every man to do his duty," which was received
+throughout the fleet with acclamations.</p>
+
+<p>The English lines, led by Nelson and by Collingwood, swept down upon the
+hostile fleet, the Victory steering for the bow of the Santissima Trinidad.
+At four minutes after twelve she opened fire, and almost immediately ran
+against the Redoubtable. Four ships, two British and two French, formed as
+compact a tier as if they had been moored together, their heads all lying
+the same way.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter past one, a ball fired from the mizzen-top of the
+Redoubtable struck Nelson on the left shoulder, and he fell on his face.
+"They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said; "my backbone is shot
+through." He was carried below, laid on a pallet in the midshipmen's berth,
+and insisted that the surgeon should leave him--"for you can do nothing for
+me." He was in great pain, and expressed much anxiety for the event of the
+action, until Captain Hardy was able to tell him that fifteen of the enemy
+had been taken. Repeating that he left Lady Hamilton and Horatia as a
+legacy to his country, and exclaiming, "Thank God, I have done my duty!"
+Nelson expired.</p>
+
+<p>He cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="MADAME_DE_STAAL"></a>MADAME DE STAAL</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Memoirs3"></a>Memoirs</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Marguerite Jeanne de Launay, Baronne de Staal, was born in
+Paris on May 30, 1684. Her father was a painter of the name of Cordier who
+was in England when his daughter was born; and the name by which she was
+known, de Launay, was that of her mother's family. Her story is told by
+herself, with admirable sincerity, in these Memoirs, which follow her life
+until the year 1735, when, at the age of fifty-one, she married Baron de
+Staal, a widower and an officer in the Guard. Her death took place in Paris
+on June 16, 1750. Her Memoirs, first published in 1755, are among the most
+interesting records of that period, and though their historical accuracy
+has been doubted, her portraits of persons are vivid and convincing. Her
+style has been highly commended by Sainte-Beuve and other French literary
+critics. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>A Convent Child</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>If I write the record of my life, it is not because it deserves
+attention, but in order to amuse myself by my recollections. My story is
+just the opposite of the ordinary romance, wherein a girl brought up as a
+peasant becomes an illustrious princess; for I was treated in childhood as
+a person of distinction, and had to find out later that I was a nobody and
+owned nothing in the world. And so, not having been trained from the first
+to ill fortune, my spirit has always rebelled against the servitude in
+which I have had to live.</p>
+
+<p>My father, for some reason that I never knew, had to leave France and
+live in England; and my mother, alone in Paris and without resources, took
+me with her as an infant to find a refuge in the abbey of Saint-Sauveur
+d'Evreux in Normandy, where Madame de La Rochefoucauld, the abbess,
+received us free of charge.</p>
+
+<p>There was at that time a lengthy disagreement between King Louis XIV.
+and the Pope with regard to the nomination of abbesses, in consequence of
+which two ladies Mesdames de Grieu, having been disappointed of an expected
+establishment, retired to Saint-Sauveur, where they formed a great
+friendship with my mother, and became devoted to her two-year-old child. I
+was naturally very popular in the convent, and having a bright disposition
+I was educated with the utmost care.</p>
+
+<p>Chiefly with a view to giving me greater advantage, the elder Madame de
+Grieu sought and at length obtained the Priory of Saint-Louis at Rouen, and
+took me thither with the consent of my mother. Saint-Louis was like a
+little kingdom, where I reigned as a sovereign; the abbess and her sister
+had no thought but to satisfy my every fancy, and the whole convent was
+forced to pay court to me. All that was done for me cost me so little that
+it seemed a matter of course that I should be flattered and served, and at
+an early age I had contracted all the defects which I have since had to
+allow for in the great.</p>
+
+<p>This extreme indulgence would have turned my defects into vices, if
+devotion had not ruled my passions from the first. Religion was the one
+great object before my eyes; I had been well instructed in it; I read
+continually the devotional books in the convent library, and passed much of
+my time in prayer and meditation. Yet my early desire to become a nun
+passed gradually away, until I thought of it no more.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle de Silly, an amiable and cultivated young lady whose
+actions were ruled by principles rather than by feelings, came to live at
+Saint-Louis, and I was soon attached to her with all the ardour of a girl's
+affection; her tastes became mine, and I used to read all day beside her.
+She was then studying the philosophy of Descartes, and I became absorbed in
+questions of that kind to the neglect of everything else, until, fearing
+lest they might disturb my faith, I resolutely banished them from my
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>I was about fourteen years old when the convent of Saint-Louis fell into
+great poverty owing to a famine which was desolating France, and the
+disaffection of the nuns was centred on me as a chief cause of unnecessary
+expense. Their complaints came to the archbishop of Rouen, and abbess had
+difficulty in keeping me with her. My helpless condition began to force
+itself on my attention; and I realised that if the abbess were to die I was
+alone and without support in the world.</p>
+
+<p>An unexpected event now drew me closer to Mademoiselle de Silly. Her
+mother, having come to Rouen, took her home to Silly, and invited me to
+accompany her. I accepted joyfully, and spent several months in the
+solitary and melancholy old castle. The Marquis was extremely economical,
+the Marquise very devout, and we saw few people. One visitor from the
+neighborhood, however, attracted me strongly; and as he came often and
+stayed long, my friend and I agreed that one of us had pleased him. When he
+had declared his affection, and it was not for me, I learned what jealousy
+is--a kind of horror like that of falling down through a fathomless
+abyss.</p>
+
+<p>During the next visit to Silly in the following year the son of the
+house arrived, and at first kept very much to himself and to his books. But
+having heard his sister and myself complaining of these unsociable ways, he
+frankly confessed his fault and amended it, and from that day we spent
+every hour together. His mind and his manner was infinitely agreeable; and
+in my successive visits to Silly we formed a delightful friendship which
+was never interrupted by more ardent feelings.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Thrown on the World</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>At length my dear abbess fell so dangerously ill that I saw I was about
+to lose her; and I became desolately aware that I owed her all, and that
+her death would not only leave me absolutely helpless, but would also
+deprive me of my best friend. I never knew anyone else so abundant in
+goodness, with so much sweetness, attention for others and forgetfulness of
+self, nor with such exact regard for every duty. Her death came soon, and
+it was evident that neither her sister nor I could remain at the convent.
+Several generous helpers came forward with offers of support, but in my
+uncertain position I judged it better to refuse them all. I was resolved to
+suffer any misery and servitude rather than sacrifice my independence, and
+only accepted a small loan sufficient to take me to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>I was soon in the great city, looking out for a situation as children's
+governess; fortunately, I had a taste for that occupation, and imagined
+that taste for it meant talent. I had a sister, in the household of the
+Duchess de La Fert&eacute;, and found her very amiable and helpful. With
+her assistance I went to board at a cheap rate in the convent of the
+Presentation, and she succeeded in inspiring her mistress with so elevated
+an idea of my attainments that the Duchess soon afterwards sent for me.
+After showing me off as a prodigy of learning to all her friends, the
+Duchess de La Fert&eacute;, a voluble and enthusiastic woman, conceived a
+violent affection for me, and projected innumerable schemes for my
+advancement, which ended in my being received into her own household as her
+secretary.</p>
+
+<p>I should have been delighted with this position if I had not remembered
+how my sister, who had gone there as her favourite, had fallen to the
+situation of chambermaid, and if I had not realised that my mistress's
+affection would probably be as short-lived as it was intemperate. It proved
+to be so indeed; it was succeeded by a hatred as violent as her attachment
+had been; and after subjecting me to every indignity she finally disposed
+of me by placing me in the household of the Duchess of Maine, at
+Sceaux.</p>
+
+<p>Here I inhabited a tiny room, without windows or fireplace, and so low
+that it was impossible to stand upright. I was given sewing to do, but my
+first piece of work proved my incapacity, and my extremely short-sight made
+me equally helpless in waiting on the Duchess. I was astonished at the
+patience with which she bore my awkwardness, but my fellow-servants, with
+whom I was most unpopular, were less merciful. The hard and thankless
+existence, so different from anything which I had been accustomed, threw me
+into a profound depression, until I began to cherish the idea of taking
+leave of life.</p>
+
+<p>But gradually my situation altered for the better. Her Serene Highness
+the Duchess began to take notice of me, and became accustomed to speak to
+me and to take interest and pleasure in my replies. She had now succeeded
+in raising her family to rank equal to her own, and by a famous edict her
+children and their descendants had been brought within the succession to
+the crown. Her delight in amusements and in pageants was now at its
+highest, and it happened that the Abb&eacute; de Vaubrun, designing a
+spectacular piece in honor of Night, confided to me the task of writing and
+delivering an epilogue in that character. My stage-fright spoiled my
+elocution, but from that day I was entrusted with the organisation of these
+magnificent entertainments, and the last of them was entirely designed and
+written by myself. By this means I came to take a quite different place in
+the household.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Political Intrigues</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>King Louis XIV. had been failing for some time, though every one
+pretended not to notice it; and the Duchess of Maine, ever anxious for the
+greatness of her family, was very eager to know his testamentary
+intentions. Enough was ascertained, by the help of Madame de Maintenon, to
+show that the King's dispositions were in favour of the Duke of Orleans,
+and the mistake was made of confiding to the Duke his future advantage. As
+the illness progressed, a council of regency was formed with the Duke of
+Orleans at its head, and when the King died the Duke was appointed Regent
+by Parliament, and the Duke of Maine was entrusted with the education of
+the young King.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Maine, who had come up to Paris for this anxious time,
+suffered a good deal from insomnia, and now called me in to read to her
+every night. But there was more conversation than reading, and she poured
+out to me in entire confidence all her secrets, projects, complaints and
+regrets. This touching confidence made me very deeply attached to her; and
+when she and her husband removed to the Tuilleries to superintend the
+King's education, they took me with them.</p>
+
+<p>In defence of the interests of her family in the succession to the
+Crown, which were threatened by the Duke of Orleans, Cardinal Polignac and
+others undertook the preparation of a very learned memoir, based on a great
+mass of historical and legal precedents; the Duchess threw herself into the
+most laborious researches to assist them, and I was set to study ancient
+volumes and to correspond with all kinds of authorities. The great work was
+finished at last; it was a fine, well-written production; but it did not
+repay the trouble it had cost. The question was decided against the family
+of Maine, the edict conferring on them the succession to the Crown was
+revoked, and the rank of princes of the blood was taken from them.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to describe the sorrow of my mistress at this sudden
+overthrow of the fortunes of her family. She was wholly unable to acquiesce
+in it, and her illtreatment in France suggested to her the idea of seeking
+help from the King of Spain. The Baron de Walef, who was going to that
+court, undertook to represent her case there, and the Duchess of Maine held
+secret interviews with the Spanish ambassador in Paris. Several other
+persons became implicated in these intrigues; the Duchess became more
+deeply compromised than she had at first intended; and her interests became
+interwoven with other chimerical projects, including the restoration of the
+Pretender in England. These movements became known to the Duke of Orleans,
+and my mistress's intrigues were soon brought to an end.</p>
+
+<p>On December 9, 1718, we were informed that the house of the Spanish
+Ambassador was surrounded by troops, and a day or two later we learned that
+our arrest, on the charge of inciting to revolution, might be expected at
+any moment. On the 29th, we were awakened early in the morning to find the
+house full of soldiers; the Duchess was carried off to imprisonment at
+Dijon, and the Duke of Maine was immured in the citadel of Dourlans in
+Picardy.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>In the Bastille</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I was taken in a carriage with three musketeers, to a little bridge
+before a wall, and delivered to the governor of the Bastille, who sent me
+to a large empty room, the walls of which were covered with charcoal
+drawings executed by former prisoners. A little chair was brought me, a
+bundle of wood was lighted on the hearth, one small candle was fixed to the
+wall, and I heard half a dozen locks and bolts closing the door that shut
+me off from mankind. The first hour, which I spent gazing at my crackling
+fire, was the most desolate of all my imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>Then the governor appeared, with my attendant Mademoiselle Rondel; I was
+rejoiced to find that she was to relieve my solitude, and to hear from her
+that she had managed to hide all my papers after my capture. Our room was
+presently furnished with beds, table and chairs; on the following day we
+were given books and a pack of cards; our meals were tolerable, and except
+for our captivity we were comfortable enough.</p>
+
+<p>The two judges charged with the interrogation of the prisoners in our
+affair, of whom there seemed to be a considerable number, came daily, and
+held their interviews in a room immediately below ours; so that Rondel
+could see through the window one of our acquaintances after another being
+brought across the court to be examined. My time did not come for many
+days, and I spent long hours racking my brain for the answers which I ought
+to give. The fear of the questions by torture began to force itself on my
+mind; and though I thought I could face pain or even death I was doubtful
+whether I should be able to keep silence under that dreadful ordeal.</p>
+
+<p>After these weeks of suspense I was called before the judges, and was
+asked whether the Duchess of Maine had not great confidence in me and
+whether I had not been aware of her treasonable correspondence and
+intrigues. The line I took was to represent my services to my mistress as
+having been of a very humble nature; I insisted that I knew nothing of her
+private affairs, and had seen and heard nothing that could at all
+compromise her loyalty to the Government. This appeared to satisfy them for
+the present, and after enquiring whether I was well treated in prison they
+dismissed me.</p>
+
+<p>I did not suffer from ennui in the Bastille; I devised for myself many
+little occupations; and soon a surreptitious correspondence with the
+Chevalier de Menil, who had been imprisoned for participation in our
+affair, gave interest to the days. We were even permitted occasional
+interviews by favour of one of the subordinate officials, and before we
+regained our liberty I had promised to be his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The Regent at last became anxious to bring to an end the whole episode
+of the Duchess of Maine's intrigue; but he wished first to secure a full
+admission of guilt from the principal actors in it. The Duchess was
+promised her complete liberty if she would send him a frank confession in
+writing, which should be seen by no one but himself. Finding herself in a
+position to secure the freedom of all those whom she had imperilled, she
+sent the Duke of Orleans the required paper, in which she disclosed
+everything in detail and with entire sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>I was examined again without making any disclosure, but after receiving
+the written command of the Duchess I wrote out a declaration of all that I
+knew and was a few days later set at liberty, after two years of captivity.
+I went down at once to Sceaux, where I was affectionately received by my
+mistress.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to Paris two days later, to fetch my things from the Bastille,
+I called at the Convent of the Presentation, and found in the parlour the
+Chevalier de Menil. I was astonished at his manner, no less than by what he
+said; it was evidently that his only desire was to break his engagement
+with me. I realised that the man was without honour or kindness, and yet it
+was difficult to detach my affections from him.</p>
+
+<p>It was about a year later that M. Dacier was introduced to me, after the
+death of his wife, by the Duchess de La Fert&eacute;, and an ardent desire
+for liberty from my condition of servitude led me to accept his proposal of
+marriage, subject only to be the permission of my Duchess. This she was
+reluctant to give, and the matter was still under discussion when we heard
+of M. Dacier's sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of my life, though it has been a long one, contains little of
+interest. I found myself without any object to live for, and a strange
+deadness of feeling came over me, harder to bear than illness or death. I
+had a distaste for existence and a horror of the world, and desired nothing
+more than to hide myself away. A little pension had been secured for me; my
+mistress had fallen dangerously ill; I wished to leave Sceaux in order to
+run away from a new attachment which was gaining power over me; and the
+thought of entering a Carmelite house became a settled project. But I was
+refused even this last refuge; the prioress deciding that I had no vocation
+for the religious life.</p>
+
+<p>I spent several years without coming to any harmony either with myself
+or with fortune. Several offers of marriage were made to me, but I could
+not bring myself to accept any of them, until a sudden fancy for the sweet
+simplicities of country life led me to agree to a marriage with M. de
+Staal.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after my marriage I heard of the death of the Duchess of
+Maine. I never knew a more perfectly reasonable woman. She was all feeling;
+even her thoughts were really sentiments; she was lively without moodiness,
+impassioned without violence, always animated; sweet and sensible. There
+was a vivid warmth about her, that made her a perfectly gracious
+friend.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="EARL_STANHOPE"></a>EARL STANHOPE</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_William_Pitt"></a>Life of William Pitt</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> The biographer of Pitt was a grandson of the Lord Mahon,
+afterwards Earl of Stanhope, who married, in 1774, the great statesman's
+eldest sister. Philip Henry Stanhope was born at Walmer on January 30,
+1805, and entered the House of Commons as Lord Mahon in 1831. He took a
+prominent part in the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, and the
+Historical Manuscripts Commission, and the promotion of successful
+archaeological investigations on the site of Troy. His literary labours
+were considerable and important. Chief among them were the "History of
+England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," the "History
+of Queen Anne's Reign," and the "Life of the Right Honourable William
+Pitt." The last named, published in 1861-2, is one of the most
+authoritative of political biographies, compiled with a gravity and care
+characteristic of its author, and of abiding value as a standard book of
+reference for one of the greatest personalities and one of the most
+stirring periods of English history. Earl Stanhope died on December 24,
+1875. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Boy Statesman</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>William Pitt, the elder, afterwards Earl of Chatham, married in 1754
+Lady Hester Grenville. William Pitt, their second son, was born on May 28,
+1759, at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent.</p>
+
+<p>In his boyhood, from the earliest years, William Pitt evinced to all
+around him many tokens of intellectual promise and ambition; but his
+parents were frequently distressed by his delicate health. It was no doubt
+on this account that he was not sent to any public or private school. Lord
+Chatham was extremely careful of the education of his family; and, without
+any disparagement to young William's tutor, it was certainly from his
+father that he profited most.</p>
+
+<p>William was at fourteen so forward in his studies that he was sent to
+Cambridge, commencing his residence at Pembroke Hall in October 1773. His
+health at this period gave cause for great alarm. A serious illness at
+Cambridge, however, proved a turning-point; for long afterwards he enjoyed
+fairly good health. Early hours, daily exercise on horseback, and liberal
+potations of port wine--his elixir of strength at this time, although it
+helped in later years to undermine his constitution--made him far stronger
+after his illness than before it.</p>
+
+<p>In 1778, after the death of his father, he was entered at Lincoln's Inn,
+and was called to the Bar in 1780. But he had little opportunity of
+practising as a barrister, for his parliamentary ambitions were soon
+fulfilled. In the autumn of 1780 he was an unsuccessful candidate for
+Cambridge University; but through the influence of Sir James Lowther he was
+returned in the same year for Appleby, and took his seat in the Commons on
+January 23, 1781.</p>
+
+<p>Lord North was still at the head of affairs, and the Opposition
+consisted of two parties: the aristocratic Whigs, whose leader was the
+Marquis of Rockingham, but whose true guiding spirit was Charles James Fox;
+and a smaller band of the old adherents of Lord Chatham, under Lord
+Shelburne. To this party Pitt, as a matter of course, attached himself. His
+first speech was made on February 26, in support of Burke's bill for
+economical reform. He completely fulfilled the high expectations that had
+been formed of the son of so illustrious a father. Not only did he please,
+it may be said that he astonished the House.</p>
+
+<p>Two speeches later in the session confirmed the distinction of the young
+orator. In 1782, after a long series of Opposition attacks, Lord North
+resigned; but in the new arrangements Pitt was not included. He had
+determined that he would serve his sovereign as a cabinet minister, or not
+at all. For a time he devoted his efforts, without success, to the reform
+of the representation of the House of Commons. But in July 1782 Lord
+Rockingham died; there was a cabinet split, due to a quarrel between Fox
+and Shelburne; the latter became First Lord of the Treasury, and Pitt, at
+the age of twenty-three, was offered and accepted the post of Chancellor of
+the Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>The newly-formed ministry was soon exposed to hot attacks by the
+coalition of the parties of Fox and North, and Pitt, in attacking this
+"baneful alliance," made one of the greatest speeches of his career. But
+the ministry was defeated; Lord Shelburne resigned; and the king, advised
+by Shelburne, invited Pitt to become Prime Minister. After anxious
+consideration he refused.</p>
+
+<p>The Fox and North coalition now assumed office. This union of extremes
+was unpopular in the country, although powerful in parliamentary strength.
+Pitt tried once more to pass a measure of parliamentary reform; and during
+the recess he paid a visit to France--the one foreign journey of his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>When parliament resumed its sittings, in the autumn of 1783, Fox's India
+Bill was passed by the Commons, but rejected by the Lords. The king, who
+was vehemently opposed to the bill, demanded the resignation of Fox and
+North, and on December 19 invited Pitt, now aged twenty-four, to become
+Prime Minister. This time the invitation was not refused.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt had great difficulty in forming a cabinet, and was the only cabinet
+minister in the Commons. His main support in that house was Henry Dundas,
+treasurer of the navy--his life-long friend. On facing parliament at the
+opening of 1784, Pitt's purpose was to delay a dissolution until the
+coalition's unpopularity in the country had reached its height, and with
+this end he patiently endured defeat after defeat. In March he deemed that
+the right moment had come, and his judgement was rewarded at the General
+Election by a triumphant majority.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the
+Treasury, and during the years of peace that followed, his successes were
+largely financial. He established a series of financial reforms that not
+only increased the favour in which his ministry was held, but undoubtedly
+enabled the country to bear the terrible strain that was afterwards to be
+placed upon it. In his attempt to adjust commercial relations with Ireland
+he was less successful; he was obliged, besides, to abandon his schemes of
+parliamentary reform, and his exertions, in concert with his friend
+Wilberforce, to destroy the slave traffic ended in disappointment--even
+although in this he had the hearty support of his rival, Fox.</p>
+
+<p>Young as he was, and victorious as he had become, he was never tempted
+to presume upon his genius, or relax in his application. He allowed himself
+but little holiday. He spent a good deal of such time as he could spare at
+Holwood, a property he had bought near Bromley; and occasional visits to
+Brighton, and to his mother's residence at Burton Pynsent, in
+Somersetshire, made up the greater part of his travels.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--The Regency Problem</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Not only had Pitt's administration rehabilitated English finances; it
+had gained for England a strong measure of European support. In 1788 there
+was concluded what was virtually a triple defensive alliance with Prussia
+and Holland; and with France herself, should she be willing to remain at
+peace, there was a treaty of commerce to engage her in more friendly
+relations.</p>
+
+<p>But towards the end of the year Pitt was confronted with what seemed a
+certainty of loss of office. King George III., after a long period of ill
+health, was found to be definitely suffering from mental alienation. A
+regency became necessary, and the person clearly marked out for the office
+was the Prince of Wales. But the prince was the political associate of Fox,
+and there was no doubt that his first step on accession to power would be
+the dismissal of Pitt.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt saw the prospect before him, and did not attempt to shirk it. But
+he did propose certain restrictions on the regency in order that the king,
+should he recover his reason, might without difficulty resume his
+power.</p>
+
+<p>When parliament assembled in December, Fox declared boldly that the
+prince had as much right to assume sovereignty during the king's incapacity
+as he would have in the event of the king's death. Pitt, exulting in his
+rival's indiscreet departure from Whig principles, retorted that the
+assertion of such a right, independent of the decision of the two houses,
+was little less than treason to the constitution. Fox's attitude was
+unpopular, and Pitt's resolutions, and the Regency Bill that followed, were
+carried through the Commons.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of February, the third reading of the Regency Bill was
+impending in the Lords. Pitt had proposed that the difficulty about
+procuring the royal assent to the measure should be overcome by empowering
+the chancellor by a joint vote of both houses to put the Great Seal to a
+commission for giving the assent. But this expedient was unnecessary. By
+February 22 the king was completely recovered. The Regency Bill fell to the
+ground, and all the hopes which the Opposition had reared upon it.</p>
+
+<p>The day of thanksgiving for the king's recovery is regarded by Lord
+Macaulay as the zenith in Pitt's political life. "To such a height of power
+and glory," he says, "had this extraordinary man risen at twenty-nine years
+of age. And now," he adds, perhaps less justly, "the tide was on the
+turn."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--The Struggle with France</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Pitt was able to declare, in the session that preceded the dissolution
+of 1790, that "we are adding daily to our strength, wealth, and
+prosperity," and, as a result of the elections, his parliamentary majority
+was more than confirmed.</p>
+
+<p>But symptoms of the coming stress were already manifest. The minister
+was anxiously watching the course of the revolution in France; and, while
+far from sharing the enthusiasm of Fox for the new principles, he did not
+endorse the fierce hostility of Burke.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot regard with envious eyes," he said, "any approximation in
+neighbouring states to those sentiments which are the characteristics of
+every British subject."</p>
+
+<p>But the development of events soon made it clear that the new France had
+become a danger to the peace of Europe. As long as possible Pitt avoided
+war, which was ultimately forced upon him in 1793 by France's attack upon
+Holland, to which we were bound by treaty obligations.</p>
+
+<p>From that time, until the peace in 1802, English naval enterprises were
+generally successful, and English military enterprises generally failed.
+Pitt has often been blamed for the faults of his country's generals; but it
+is assuredly true that he did all that a civilian could do to secure
+success in the field.</p>
+
+<p>The heavy cost of the war, increased as it was by the subsidies paid to
+Austria, and afterwards to Russia, compelled an entire departure from
+Pitt's old financial methods. Each year brought an increase of taxation and
+an increase of debt; and at the beginning of 1797 the directors of the Bank
+of England, in dire perplexity, told Pitt that the state, for all his
+expedients, was threatened with insolvency. Pitt did not falter. An order
+in council was issued, suspending cash payments at the bank. Thus was
+established a gigantic system of paper credit, giving us power to cope with
+no less gigantic foes. Cash payments were not resumed until 1819.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt had not only to cope with enemies without, but with sedition
+within. Societies formed for propagating the principles of the revolution
+advocated the subversion of the constitution under the pretence of
+parliamentary reform; the populace, angered by the privations caused by the
+clearness of food, listened readily to the agitators; riots were frequent,
+but the most mischievous form taken by sedition was that of armed
+conspiracy. Against these evils Pitt contended by royal proclamations,
+prosecutions, and, above all, by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act.
+In his firm suppression of disorder Pitt was loyally supported by large
+majorities in both houses, and the country generally was on his side. But
+his domestic policy, his foreign policy, and his finance were unsparingly
+attacked by Fox and a small band of devoted followers--followers who did
+not abate in their resolution when their leader, weary of the unequal
+conflict, retired for a time from public life.</p>
+
+<p>In the busy and anxious year 1796, there was a report that Pitt was on
+the point of marriage. During his short intervals of leisure at Holwood, he
+often visited his neighbour, Lord Auckland, at Beckenham, and was much
+attracted by Lord Auckland's eldest daughter, the Hon. Eleanor Eden. This
+strong attachment did not proceed to a proposal and a marriage. Pitt wrote
+to Lord Auckland avowing his affection, but explaining that in the
+circumstances of pecuniary difficulty in which he was involved, he would
+not presume to make the lady an offer. Lord Auckland acknowledged the
+explanation as adequate, and thus honourably ended the only "love-passage"
+in the life of Pitt.</p>
+
+<p>Considering that Pitt's income as minister was &pound;6,000 a year, and
+that he derived an additional &pound;3,000 a year from the Lord Wardenship
+of the Cinque Ports, his pecuniary troubles may seem hard to explain. He
+had no family, and no expensive tastes. But he was so intent upon the
+national exchequer that he neglected his private accounts, with the
+consequence that he was plundered by his domestics. His expenses were not
+checked, and his debts continued to grow.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Resignation</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the year 1800 Pitt was able to achieve a momentous change in the
+affairs of Ireland. The chronic discontent of that country, largely due to
+the resentment of the Catholics at their exclusion from the rights of
+citizenship, had been fanned by the importation of revolutionary ideas; and
+there were hopes, once or twice on the point of realisation, of a French
+invasion of the island. In 1798 a rebellion broke out, but was suppressed
+with promptness, and, it must be added, in many instances with cruelty. But
+to Pitt the suppression of the insurrection was only the first part of his
+duty. He thought that to revert to the old system would be a most shallow
+policy. A new, and comprehensive, and healing method must be tried--an Act
+of Union, which should raise the minds of Irishmen from local to imperial
+aims--which should blend the two legislatures, and, if possible, also the
+two nations, in one.</p>
+
+<p>In 1800 the project was fulfilled--not without fierce resistance in the
+Irish Parliament, and not without a certain distribution of favours to
+those for whose support the government was anxious; although the
+allegations made on this subject seem to be exaggerated. Having
+accomplished the union, Pitt laid plans for a further reform which led,
+early in the following year, to his retirement from office.</p>
+
+<p>He proposed the emancipation of the Catholics by the substitution of a
+political for the religious test of fitness for citizenship. Although the
+Anglican bishops and clergy and many laymen were strongly opposed to
+Catholic emancipation, Pitt would probably have been able to carry his
+scheme had it not been for royal antagonism. The king believed, erroneously
+but passionately, that by consenting to such a measure he would violate his
+coronation oath.</p>
+
+<p>His majesty expressed his opinions on the subject so publicly and so
+vehemently that on January 31, 1801, Pitt felt compelled to ask leave to
+resign unless he were allowed to pursue his course on the Catholic
+question. The king required the abandonment of the scheme, and on February
+3 Pitt resigned office. Thus abruptly ended his renowned administration of
+more than seventeen years.</p>
+
+<p>The new Prime Minister was Mr. Addington, formerly Speaker of the
+Commons. Several of Pitt's colleagues remained in the ministry, although
+others withdrew from it; and Pitt himself gave general support to the
+government--support which was offered with especial warmth, and possessed
+especial value, during the hotly criticised peace negotiations with the
+First Consul Bonaparte in 1801 and 1802. Although Pitt had been obliged
+when in office to refuse several inadequate offers of peace, he had always
+been prepared to end the war under honourable conditions. The distinction
+of ending the war did not fall to his share; but his services were not
+forgotten. On May 7, 1802, the House of Commons carried by overwhelming
+numbers a motion, "That the Right Hon. William Pitt has rendered great and
+important services to his country, and especially deserves the gratitude of
+this house." And on May 28, 1802, Pitt's birthday, more than 800 persons
+assembled at a memorable banquet in honour of "the pilot that weathered the
+storm."</p>
+
+<p>Until the renewal of war in 1803 Pitt took little-part in public
+affairs. Most of his time was spent at Walmer Castle, with occasional
+visits to Bath for the sake of his health, which had been uncertain since
+an attack of serious illness in 1797. He remained in constant communication
+with his political friends, and sometimes during the earlier part of his
+retirement aided the ministry with his advice. But with the progress of
+time he found himself less and less able to support Addington and his
+colleagues.</p>
+
+<p>In May 1803 the uneasy peace came to an end. The constant aggressions of
+Bonaparte and his dominating tone made friendly relations impossible. There
+was a widespread feeling in the country that now that the storm had
+recommenced the old pilot should be called to the helm. Pitt returned to
+the Commons after the declaration of war, and forcibly criticised some of
+the financial and defensive measures of the ministry.</p>
+
+<p>In 1804 the ministry showed itself wholly unequal to the strain upon it;
+and the situation was complicated by a temporary return of the king's
+malady. Pitt not only renewed his opposition to Addington, but made it
+plain that he was prepared to take part in a strong and comprehensive
+administration, including even Fox, that should be formed to rescue the
+crown and country from the dangers to which they were exposed under the
+Addington ministry.</p>
+
+<p>A series of combined attacks was directed against the government during
+the month of April. Although Addington was not defeated in the Commons, he
+saw his majority steadily diminish; and on April 26 he resolved to resign.
+On the 30th, the Lord Chancellor intimated to Pitt his majesty's desire to
+receive the plan of a new administration.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--The Last Ministry</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The king's opposition made the inclusion of Fox in the new ministry
+impossible. His hostility to Fox, however, was not simply on political
+grounds; he believed him to be responsible for the excesses of the Prince
+of Wales. Pitt was in consequence obliged to be content with a restricted
+choice of ministers, and had to face a powerful opposition in parliament.
+Addington was persuaded to join the ministry early in 1805.</p>
+
+<p>During the summer of 1804 Bonaparte and his host lay menacingly at
+Boulogne, awaiting that command of the channel "for six hours," which the
+great warrior recognised as essential to his plans. Meanwhile, Pitt
+laboured to form another coalition, and, at the cost of heavy subsidies,
+was successful. Russia, Austria, and Sweden joined in the league against
+Napoleon; Prussia still hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1805 Napoleon was again at Boulogne, but his plan of
+invasion was wrecked by the failure of the French fleet to reach the
+Channel. When Napoleon learned that the fleet had gone south, and that the
+attack upon England had been thwarted, he straightway marched his army to
+mid-Europe. Pitt had staked everything on the new coalition, and the
+surrender of the Austrians at Ulm was news of the utmost bitterness to him.
+But a splendid corrective came soon afterwards in the crowning naval
+victory of Trafalgar. Although the nation's feelings were divided between
+joy at the triumph and grief at the death of the illustrious victor, Pitt's
+popularity, which had been somewhat uncertain, was enormously enhanced by
+the event. The Lord Mayor proposed his health as "the saviour of
+Europe."</p>
+
+<p>Pitt's reply was nearly as follows: "I return you many thanks for the
+honour you have done me, but Europe is not to be saved by any single man.
+England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, I trust, save Europe
+by her example." With only these two sentences the minister sat down. They
+were the last words that Pitt ever spoke in public.</p>
+
+<p>He was suffering much at this time from gout, and his general health was
+undermined by anxiety. In December he journeyed to Bath, and at Bath there
+reached him the news of the destruction of his coalition at Austerlitz. The
+battle was the cause of his death. He was struck down by a severe internal
+malady and he was in a state of extreme debility when on January 11, 1806,
+he returned home to the house he had taken on Putney Heath. It is said that
+as he passed along to his bedroom, he observed a map of Europe hanging on
+the wall, upon which he turned to his niece and mournfully said: "Roll up
+that map. It will not be wanted these ten years."</p>
+
+<p>For a few days the doctors had hopes that he might recover, but on the
+22nd it became evident that he could not live for twenty-four hours. Early
+in the morning of the 23rd he died.</p>
+
+<p>"At about half-past two," wrote the Hon. James Hamilton Stanhope, who
+was at his bedside, "Mr. Pitt ceased moaning, and did not make the
+slightest sound for some time. Shortly afterwards, in a tone I never shall
+forget, he exclaimed: 'Oh, my country! How I love my country!' From that
+time he never spoke or moved, and at half-past four expired without a groan
+or struggle. His strength being quite exhausted, his life departed like a
+candle burning out."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="ARTHUR_PENRHYN_STANLEY"></a>ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Life_of_Thomas_Arnold_DD"></a>The Life of Thomas Arnold,
+D.D.</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born at Alderley Rectory,
+Cheshire, on December 13, 1815. He was educated at Rugby under Arnold, and
+at Oxford, where Tait, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, was his tutor.
+Entering holy orders, he was appointed select preacher in 1845; became
+Canon of Canterbury in 1851; and in 1863 succeeded Trench as Dean of
+Westminster. He died on July 18, 1881, and by Queen Victoria's commands his
+remains were laid beside those of his wife, Lady Augusta Bruce, in Henry
+VII.'s Chapel, Westminster. Of all his works, perhaps his most important
+contribution to English literature is the "Life of Arnold," which was
+published two years after the death of the famous master of Rugby. To the
+task of writing the book Stanley devoted all his energies, steering clear,
+however, of any attempt to form an opinion of his own upon Arnold's life
+and character, while achieving a result that not only assured his own
+position at Oxford, but brought him well into the front rank of
+contemporary writers. The religious animosity at Oxford was uncongenial to
+Stanley, and it was only the prospect of Dr. Arnold occupying the Chair of
+Modern History that reconciled him to his surroundings. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Youth and Early Manhood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Thomas Arnold, seventh child and youngest son of William and Martha
+Arnold, was born June 13, 1795, at East Cowes, Isle of Wight, where his
+father was collector of customs. His early education was undertaken by a
+sister; and in 1803 he was sent to Warminister School, in Wiltshire. In
+1807 he went to Winchester, where, having entered as a commoner and
+afterwards become a scholar of the college, he remained till 1811. In after
+life he always cherished a strong Wykehamist feeling, and, during his
+headmastership at Rugby, often recurred to his knowledge there first
+acquired, of the peculiar constitution of a public school.</p>
+
+<p>He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring disposition; but his
+manner as a child, and till his entrance at Oxford, was marked by a
+stiffness and formality, the very reverse of the joyousness and simplicity
+of his later years. He was unlike those of his own age, with pursuits
+peculiar to himself; and the tone and style of his early letters are such
+as might have been produced by living chiefly with his elders, and reading,
+or hearing read, books suited to a more advanced age. Both as boy and young
+man he was remarkable for a difficulty in early rising amounting almost to
+a constitutional infirmity; and though in after life this was overcome by
+habit, he often said that early rising was a daily effort to him.</p>
+
+<p>The beginning of some of his later interests may be traced in his
+earlier amusements and occupations. He never lost the recollection of the
+impression produced upon him by the excitement of naval and military
+affairs, of which he naturally saw and heard much by living at Cowes in the
+time of the Napoleonic war; and with his playmates he would sail rival toy
+fleets or act the battles of the Homeric heroes with improvised spears and
+shields. He was extremely fond of ballad poetry, and his earliest
+compositions all ran in that direction. At Winchester he was noted for his
+forwardness in history and geography; and there also he gave indications of
+that mnemonic faculty which in later years showed itself in minute details,
+extending to the exact state of the weather on particular days, or the
+exact words or passages he had not seen for twenty years. The period of his
+home and school education was too short to exercise much influence on his
+after life, but he always looked back upon it with tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>In 1811 he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; in
+1814 he took a first class in classics; in 1815 he was made a Fellow of
+Oriel; and he gained the Chancellor's prizes for the Latin and English
+essays in 1815 and 1817. During his later time at Oxford he took private
+pupils and read extensively in the libraries. Meanwhile, he had been led
+gradually to fix on his future life course. In December, 1818, he was
+ordained deacon and next year settled at Laleham, where, in August, 1820,
+he married Mary Penrose, daughter of the rector of Fledborough, Notts.</p>
+
+<p>At Laleham he remained for nine years, coaching private pupils for the
+universities. Here were born six of his nine children; the youngest three,
+besides one who died in infancy, were born at Rugby. During this period an
+essential change and growth of Arnold's character became manifest. The warm
+feelings of his youth gave place to the fixed earnestness and devotion
+which henceforth took possession of him. His former indolent habits, his
+morbid restlessness and occasional weariness of duty, indulgence of vague
+schemes without definite purpose, intellectual doubts as to accepted
+religious beliefs--all seem to have vanished for ever.</p>
+
+<p>It was now that the religious aspect of his character came to be
+emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of his
+religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is impossible to
+understand his religious belief except through the knowledge of his life
+and writings on ordinary subjects, it is impossible on the other hand, to
+understand his life and writings without bearing in mind how vivid was his
+realisation of those truths of religion on which he most habitually dwelt.
+It was this which enabled him to undertake labours which, without such a
+power, must have crushed or enfeebled the spiritual growth which in him
+they seemed only to foster. His letters at this time show better than
+anything else how he was, though unconsciously to himself, maturing for the
+arduous duties he afterwards undertook. It was now, too, that he first
+became acquainted with Niebuhr's "History of Rome," which revolutionised
+his views of history, and, later, served as a model for his own "History of
+Rome."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Headmaster of Rugby</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Arnold was not without his visions of ambition and extensive influence
+from the first, but he liked Laleham, and always looked back with fond
+regret to his time there. "I have always thought," he wrote in 1823, "with
+regard to ambition, that I should like to be <i>aut Caesar aut nullus;</i>
+and as it is pretty well settled for me that I shall not be Caesar, I am
+quite content to live in peace as <i>nullus</i>." But the fates had ordered
+it otherwise. Friends had long been urging him to seek a larger sphere of
+usefulness; and when, in August, 1827, the headmastership of Rugby became
+vacant, he applied for the post.</p>
+
+<p>He had himself little hope of success. The testimonials he sent in were
+few, but all spoke strongly of his qualifications. Among them was a letter
+from Dr. Hawkins, the future Provost of Oriel, in which the prediction was
+made that if Arnold were elected he would change the face of education
+throughout the public schools of England. The impression produced upon the
+trustees by this letter and by the other testimonials was such that Arnold
+was immediately appointed. In June, 1828, he received priest's orders; in
+April and November of the same year took his degrees of B.D. and D.D., and
+in August entered on his new office.</p>
+
+<p>The post was in many respects suited to his natural tastes--to his love
+of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him that he declared
+sometimes that he could hardly live without such employment; to the vigour
+and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than the old; to
+the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting things secular
+with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest principles of action
+into regions comparatively uncongenial to their reception. He had not,
+however, accepted it without grave doubts about his fitness. In a private
+letter he says:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p> I confess that I should very much object to undertake a
+charge in which I was not invested with pretty full discretion. According
+to my notions of what large schools are, founded on all I know and all I
+have ever heard of them, expulsion should be practised much oftener than it
+is. Now, I know that trustees, in general, are averse to this plan, because
+it has a tendency to lessen the numbers of the school, and they regard
+quantity more than quality. In fact, my opinions on this point might,
+perhaps, generally be considered as disqualifying me for the situation of
+master of a great school; yet I could not consent to tolerate much that I
+know is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should not like to enter on
+an office which I could not discharge according to my own views of what is
+right. </p></blockquote>
+
+<p>At Rugby, Arnold from the first maintained that in the actual working of
+the school he must be completely independent, and that the remedy of the
+trustees, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but dismissal.
+It was on this condition that he took the post; and any attempt to control
+either the administration of the school or his own private occupations he
+felt bound to resist as a duty not only to himself but the master of every
+foundation school in England. The remonstrances which he encountered,
+particularly from his fixed determination always to get rid of unpromising
+subjects, were vehement and numerous; but he repeatedly declared that on no
+other conditions could he hold his appointment, or justify the existence of
+the public school system in a Christian country.</p>
+
+<p>"My object," he wrote, just before taking up duty, "will be, if
+possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to
+make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they are
+not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development upon
+their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many
+respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in
+what I consider the boyhood of the human race."</p>
+
+<p>This is the keynote of his whole system. As he put it, what he looked
+for in the school was, first, religious and moral principles; second,
+gentlemanly conduct; and third, intellectual ability. Intellectual training
+was never for a moment underrated, but he always thought first of his
+charges as schoolboys who must grow up to be Christian men. His education,
+in short, "was not based upon religion, but was itself <i>religious</i>."
+For cleverness as such, Arnold had no regard. "Mere intellectual
+acuteness," he used to say, "divested as it is, in too many cases, of all
+that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more revolting than the
+most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like the spirit of
+Mephistopheles." Often when this intellectual cleverness was seen in union
+with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its existence
+altogether.</p>
+
+<p>A mere plodding boy was, above all others, encouraged by him. At Laleham
+he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this
+kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you speak
+angrily, sir? Indeed, I am doing the best that I can." Years afterwards he
+used to tell the story to his children, and said, "I never felt so much
+ashamed in my life--that look and that speech I have never forgotten." And
+though it would, of course, happen that clever boys, from a greater
+sympathy with his understanding, would be brought into closer intercourse
+with him, this did not affect his feeling of respect, and even of
+reverence, for those who, without ability, were distinguished for high
+principle and industry. "If there be one thing on earth which is truly
+admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural
+powers where they have been honestly, truly and zealously cultivated."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--As Teacher and Preacher</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Arnold had always been painfully impressed by the evils of the public
+school system, according to which a number of boys are left to form an
+independent society of their own, in which the influence they exert over
+each other is far greater than that exerted by the masters. He writes, in
+1837:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p> Of all the painful things connected with my employment,
+nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy come to school innocent and
+promising, and tracing the corruption of his character from the influence
+of the temptations around him, in the very place which ought to have
+strengthened and improved it. But in most cases those who come with a
+character of positive good are benefited; it is the neutral and indecisive
+characters which are apt to be decided for evil by schools, as they would
+be, in fact, by any other temptation. </p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This very feeling led him to catch with eagerness at every means by
+which the trial might be shortened or alleviated. He believed that the
+change from childhood to manhood might be hastened without prematurely
+exhausting the faculties of body and mind; and it was on this principle
+that he chiefly acted. He desired the boys to cultivate true manliness as
+the only step to something higher. He treated them as gentlemen, and
+appealed and trusted to their common sense and conscience.</p>
+
+<p>Lying to the masters he made a grave offence. He placed implicit
+confidence in a boy's assertion, and then, if a falsehood were discovered,
+punished it severely. In the higher forms any attempt at further proof of
+an assertion was immediately checked. "If you say so, that is quite enough;
+of course, I believe your word"; and there grew up in consequence a general
+feeling that "it was a shame to tell Arnold a lie: he always believed you."
+Few scenes can be recorded more characteristic of him than when, in
+consequence of a disturbance, he had been obliged to send away several
+boys, and when, in the midst of the general spirit of discontent which this
+excited, he stood in his place before the assembled school and said, "It is
+<i>not</i> necessary that this should be a school of three hundred, or one
+hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school
+of Christian gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>Arnold's method of teaching was founded on the principle of awakening
+the intellect of every individual boy. Hence it was his practice to teach
+by questioning. As a general rule, he never gave information, except as a
+kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld it altogether, or checked
+himself in the very act of uttering it, from a sense that those whom he was
+addressing had not sufficient interest or sympathy to receive it. His
+explanations were at short as possible--enough to dispose of the difficulty
+and no more; and his questions were of a kind to call the attention of the
+boys to the real point of every subject and to disclose to them the exact
+boundaries of what they knew or did not know. With regard to the younger
+boys, he said: "It is a great mistake to think that they should
+<i>understand</i> all they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the
+memory should act vigorously, independent of the understanding--whereas a
+man cannot usually recollect a thing unless he understands it."</p>
+
+<p>At Rugby he made it an essential part of the headmaster's office to
+preach a sermon every Sunday in the school chapel. "The veriest stranger,"
+he said, "who ever attends service in this chapel does well to feel
+something more than common interest in the sight of the congregation here
+assembled. But if the sight so interests a mere stranger, what should it be
+to ourselves, both to you and to me?" More than either matter or manner of
+his preaching was the impression of himself. Even the mere readers of his
+sermons will derive from them the history of his whole mind, and of his
+whole management of the school. But to his hearers it was more than this.
+It was the man himself, there more than in any other place, concentrating
+all his various faculties and feelings on one sole object, combating face
+to face the evil which, directly or indirectly, he was elsewhere
+perpetually struggling.</p>
+
+<p>His personal interest in the boys was always strong. "Do you see," he on
+one occasion said to an assistant-master who had recently come, "those two
+boys walking together? I never saw them together before; you should make an
+especial point of observing the company they keep; nothing so tells the
+changes in a boy's character."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Influence of the Great Teacher</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>But the impression which Arnold produced upon the boys was derived not
+so much from any immediate intercourse or conversation with them as from
+the general influence of his whole character, displayed consistently
+whenever he appeared before them. This influence, with its consequent
+effects, was gradually on the increase during the whole of his stay. From
+the earliest period, indeed, the boys were conscious of something unlike
+what they had been taught to imagine of a schoolmaster, and by many a
+lasting regard was contracted for him. In the higher forms, at least, it
+became the fashion, so to speak, to think and talk of him with pride and
+affection. As regards the permanent effects of his whole system, it may be
+said that not so much among his own pupils, or in the scene of his actual
+labours, as in every public school throughout England is to be sought the
+chief and enduring monument of Arnold's headmastership at Rugby.</p>
+
+<p>Of Arnold's general life at Rugby there is no need to say much; for
+although the school did not occupy his whole energies, it is almost solely
+by his school work that he is remembered. He took a not unimportant part in
+the political and theological discussions of his time, and various literary
+enterprises also engaged his attention. In theology he entertained very
+broad views. One great principle he advocated with intense earnestness was
+that a Christian people and a Christian Church should be synonymous. That
+use of the word "Church" which limits it to the clergy, or which implies in
+the clergy any particular sacredness, he entirely repudiated.</p>
+
+<p>He was convinced that the founders of our constitution in Church and
+State did truly consider them to be identical; the Christian nation of
+England to be the Church of England; the head of that nation to be, for
+that very reason, the head of the Church. This view placed him in
+antagonism to the High Church party; but, as a matter of fact, he neither
+belonged, nor felt himself to belong, to any section of the English clergy.
+Politically, he held himself to be a strong Whig; but that he was not, in
+the common sense of the word, a member of any party is shown by the
+readiness with which all parties alike, according to the fashion of the
+time, claimed or renounced him as an associate.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold did not like the flat scenery of Warwickshire He described
+himself as "in it like a plant sunk in the ground in a pot." His holidays
+were always spent away from Rugby, either on the Continent, or, in later
+years, at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a small estate between Rydal and
+Ambleside, which he purchased in 1832. He was just about to leave Rugby for
+Fox How when his life was mournfully and suddenly ended by an attack of
+angina pectoris, on June 12, 1842. Only the year before he had been
+appointed by Lord Melbourne Regius Professor of Modern History at
+Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold's principal works are six volumes of sermons, a three-volume
+edition of Thucydides, the Oxford "Lectures on Modern History," and the
+three-volume "History of Rome," which, by his unfortunate death, was broken
+off at the Second Punic War. To the last-named he looked as the chief
+monument of his historical fame.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="AGNES_STRICKLAND"></a>AGNES STRICKLAND</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Life_of_Queen_Elizabeth"></a>Life of Queen Elizabeth</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Agnes Strickland, born in London on August 19, 1796, with
+her sister Elizabeth began in 1840 the publication of the immense series of
+historical biographies of which the "Lives of the Queens of England" formed
+the first and most important group. In that group the "Elizabeth" is
+recognised as holding the highest rank. It is an essentially feminine study
+of one of the most remarkable of women; not a history, for historical
+events are treated as of infinitely less importance than picturesque
+personal details and miscellaneous gossip, but presenting altogether an
+admirable picture of the outward seeming of those spacious days, and a
+discriminating and judicious portrait of the maiden queen herself. The
+author's views, however, would not always be endorsed by a masculine
+critic. Agnes Strickland died on July 13, 1874. The literature relating to
+the life and times of Queen Elizabeth would form a library of contemporary
+records. Many volumes of state papers have been published: Camden's "Annals
+of Elizabeth" is the classical account of her. Creighton's "Queen
+Elizabeth" and volumes VII. to XII. of Froude's "History of England" are
+the leading modern works; and no one who wishes to know anything of the
+great queen can afford to neglect Hume's "Courtships of Queen Elizabeth,"
+which will also be found in these pages (see Hume). </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Lady Elizabeth</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Queen Elizabeth first saw the light at Greenwich Palace, where, says
+Heywood, "she was born on the eve of the Virgin's nativity, and died on the
+eve of the Virgin's annunciation." The christening ceremony was gorgeous
+and elaborate, but, with the downfall of her mother, Anne Boleyn, she
+ceased to be treated as a princess. She seems to have owed much to the
+judicious training of Lady Margaret Bryan, in whose charge she was. Later,
+she was associated with Prince Edward, four years her junior; both
+displayed an extraordinary precocity and capacity for learning.</p>
+
+<p>On Henry's death, she resided with his widow, Catharine Parr, who
+married the Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour. That ambitious nobleman, brother
+of the Protector, certainly designed, when Catharine died, to marry
+Elizabeth; an intention which was among the causes of his execution under
+attainder. His relations with her had already been unduly familiar, but
+there was no warrant for the scandalous stories that were repeated; and
+although Elizabeth all her life was naturally disposed to an excessive
+freedom of manners, she now became a pattern of decorum. But she was
+probably more in love with Seymour, as a girl of fifteen, than with anyone
+else in after life; though, on his death, she called him "a man of much wit
+and very little judgement."</p>
+
+<p>Ascham is full of praises of her learning and her wide reading, both in
+Greek and Latin, which is displayed somewhat pedantically in her letters;
+her propriety and simplicity of apparel in these days is in curious
+contrast to the extravagances of her wardrobe in later life.</p>
+
+<p>Mary treated her conspicuously as a sister; she refused, however, to
+abjure her Protestantism. Her position became extremely difficult, as the
+French, the Spaniards, and the Protestant party each sought to involve her
+in plots for their own ends. These culminated in Wyat's rebellion. The
+inevitable suspicions attaching to her caused her to be lodged in the
+Tower; but, in spite of the machinations of the Spanish party and the
+distrust of Mary, the evidence produced failed to warrant her
+condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she was kept in rigorous confinement, her life continuing to be in
+danger for a month after Wyat himself had been executed. She was then
+removed to Richmond, but refused to purchase liberty at the price of
+marriage to a foreign prince, Philibert of Savoy--a scheme intended as a
+cover for Mary's determination to marry Philip, the Prince of Spain.
+Finally, she was transferred to Woodstock, where she was held a close
+prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>Policy now led her to profess acceptance of the Roman religion, but in
+very ambiguous fashion. Probably it was through the intercession of
+Philip--now her brother-in-law, whose policy at this time was to conciliate
+the English people--that she was set at liberty and readmitted to court at
+Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the next year Elizabeth was at Hatfield, under the gentle
+surveillance of Sir Thomas Pope. She continued to be involved in grave
+dangers by perpetual plots, in which she was far too shrewd to let herself
+be implicated; and she guarded herself by a continued profession of
+Romanism to the hour of her accession on her sister's death.</p>
+
+<p>As the hour of Mary's death approached, there was no doubt of
+Elizabeth's succession, though there was alarm as to possible
+complications. On November 17, 1558, the Chancellor announced to Parliament
+that Mary was dead, and Elizabeth queen. She held her first council at
+Hatfield two days later, when William Cecil took his place as her chief
+counsellor; on her entry into London, the position which was to be occupied
+by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, was already
+conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>The coronation, which took place in January, was a magnificent pageant,
+in which Elizabeth openly courted the favour and affection of her subjects;
+and it became at once apparent that the breach with Rome was reopened. The
+supremacy of the crown was reasserted, the all but empty bench of bishops
+was filled up with reformers; and, in answer to the Commons, Elizabeth very
+clearly implied her intention of reigning a virgin queen. She had already
+declined Philip of Spain's offer of his widowed hand; and now the fact that
+Mary Stuart stood next in the succession--with a better title than
+Elizabeth's own, if her legitimacy were challenged--became of immense
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, an express declaration of her legitimate right to the
+throne was procured from Parliament. For some time pageants and popular
+displays were the order of the day. But, in spite of Elizabeth's own
+declarations, all her council were convinced that the safety of the realm
+demanded her marriage; and suitors began to abound. Arran appears--who now
+stood very near the throne of Scotland. Pickering, Arundel, Dudley, all
+seemed possible aspirants. The Austrian Archduke Charles, cousin of Philip
+of Spain, and Eric of Norway, were candidates. She played with them all,
+and the play was made more grim by the tragic death of Dudley's wife, Amy
+Robsart.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Mary Stuart and Saint Bartholomew</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The proposals for Elizabeth's own hand were now diversified by her
+interest in those for the hand of the Queen of Scots; for it was of immense
+importance to the Queen of England that Mary should not wed a foreign
+prince who might support her claim to the English throne. Mary professed
+willingness to be guided by her "sister," but was insulted by Elizabeth's
+offer of her own favourite, Dudley, who was made Earl of Leicester.
+Melville, the courtly Scots ambassador, had much ado to answer Elizabeth's
+questions about his mistress's beauty and accomplishments in a manner
+agreeable to the English queen. Mary solved her own problem, only to create
+a new one, by marrying her cousin, Lord Darnley. Elizabeth was bitterly
+aggrieved when a son--afterwards James I.--was born to them. She herself
+continued to agitate Cecil and the council by the favours she lavished on
+Leicester. But the renewed entreaties of Parliament, that steps might be
+taken to secure the succession, led to what threatened to be a serious
+quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst these high matters, the records of her majesty's wardrobe, and
+the interests of Cecil in capturing for her service a tailor employed by
+Catherine de Medici, form an entertaining interlude. But tragedy was at
+hand; the murder of Darnley, Mary's marriage to the murderer Bothwell, her
+imprisonment at Loch Leven, Elizabeth's perturbation--for she was sincere
+in her fear of encouraging subjects to control monarchs by force of
+arms--was diversified by a last negotiation for her marriage with the
+Archduke Charles, which broke down over his refusal to abjure his
+religion.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a turn of the wheel; Mary escaped from Loch Leven, her
+followers were dispersed at Langside, and she fled across the Solway to
+throw herself on Elizabeth's protection and find herself Elizabeth's
+prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>The Scottish queen was consigned to Bolton; an investigation was held at
+York, when Mary's accusers were allowed to produce, and Mary's friends were
+not allowed to test, their evidence of her complicity in Darnley's murder.
+At that stage the investigations were stopped; but the Duke of Norfolk, the
+head of the commission, was not deterred from pressing the design of
+marrying Mary himself. Mary was placed in the charge of Shrewsbury and his
+termagant spouse, Bess of Hardwick.</p>
+
+<p>From this time for fifteen years, Elizabeth was perpetually playing at
+proposals for her own marriage with one or other of the French King's
+brothers, to keep the French court from a <i>rapprochement</i> with Spain.
+Suspicions of Norfolk's intentions led to his arrest, and this precipitated
+the rising in favour of Mary under the Catholic northern earls of
+Northumberland and Westmoreland; an insurrection promptly and cruelly
+crushed. In the spring of 1570 the Pope issued a bull of deposition; and
+the plots on behalf of Mary as Catholic claimant to the throne
+thickened.</p>
+
+<p>In 1571 it appeared that Elizabeth was set on the marriage with Henry of
+Anjou, nineteen years her junior, the brother who stood next in succession
+to the throne of Charles IX. of France--a marriage not at all approved by
+her council, and very little to Henry's own taste. It was at this time that
+the conduct of negotiations in Paris was entrusted to Francis
+Walsingham.</p>
+
+<p>The relations between the queen and the Commons were exemplified by her
+attempt to exclude an obnoxious member, Strickland, met by the successful
+assertion of their privileges on the part of the House.</p>
+
+<p>In this year the plot known as Ridolfi's was discovered, and it is to be
+noted that Elizabeth herself ordered the rack to be used to extort
+information. The result was condemnation of Norfolk to the block. The
+recalcitrance of Henry of Anjou led to his definitely withdrawing from his
+courtship, while the young Alen&ccedil;on became the new subject of
+matrimonial negotiation.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth played with the new proposal, as usual, relying always on her
+ability to back out of the negotiations, as in previous cases, by demanding
+of her suitor a more uncompromising acceptance of Protestantism than could
+be admitted. The whole affair, however, was apparently brought to a check
+by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with the perpetration of which it
+seemed impossible for the most powerful of Protestant monarchs to associate
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>Cecil--now Lord Burleigh--would have used the occasion for the
+destruction of Mary Stuart; but the device for doing so irreproachably by
+handing her over to her own rebels, was frustrated--though Elizabeth
+concurred--by the refusal of the Scots lords to play the part which was
+assigned to them. The Alen&ccedil;on affair was soon in full swing again,
+the young prince writing love-letters to the lady whom he had not seen.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--The Hour of Mary's Doom</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Elizabeth's fondness for pageantry--partly out of a personal delight in
+it, partly from a politic appreciation of its value in making her
+popular--especially pageantry at some one else's expense, was illustrated
+in the gorgeous doings at Kenilworth, depicted (with sundry anachronisms)
+in Scott's novel.</p>
+
+<p>These gaieties were the embroidery on more serious matters, for the
+Netherlands had for some time been engaged in their apparently desperate
+struggle with the power of Spain, and now actually invited the Queen of
+England to assume sovereignty over them--an offer which she was too acute
+to accept.</p>
+
+<p>Yet we cannot pass over a highly characteristic incident. When the
+queen's majesty had a bad toothache, the protestations of her whole council
+failed to persuade her to face the extraction of the tooth, till the Bishop
+of London invited the surgeon to operate first on him in her presence, with
+satisfactory results. We must also record how the ugly little
+Alen&ccedil;on, or Anjou as he was now called, arrived unexpectedly to woo
+her in person, charmed her by his chivalrous audacity in doing so, and won
+from her the appropriate name of "Little Frog."</p>
+
+<p>Whether she really wished to marry her "frog" is extremely doubtful. She
+made all the more parade of her desire to do so, since the extreme
+antipathy of the council and the nation to the project would secure her a
+retreat to the last. The expectation of the marriage caused the
+Netherlanders to offer Anjou the sovereignty which she had rejected; with
+the idea of thus securing the united support of England and France. But
+when matters reached the point of negotiation for an Anglo-French league,
+with the marriage as one of the articles, Elizabeth, of course, could not
+be brought to a definite answer, and after long delay Anjou found himself
+obliged to return to the Netherlands, neither accepted nor rejected. His
+subsequent death put an end to this, her last, matrimonial comedy.</p>
+
+<p>At last an English force was actually sent to help the Netherlanders,
+under the command of Leicester. His conduct there led to his recall.
+Another favourite stood high in the queen's good graces--Walter Raleigh.
+Probably it was with a view to ousting this rival that Leicester brought
+his stepson Essex into the queen's notice.</p>
+
+<p>But now the hour of Mary's doom was approaching. A plot was set on foot
+for the assassination of Elizabeth, into which Anthony Babington, whose
+name it bears, was drawn. Walsingham, possessed of complete information
+from the beginning, through his spies, nursed the plot carefully; letters
+from Mary were systematically intercepted and copied till the moment came
+for striking; the conspirators were arrested, and suffered the extreme
+penalty of the treason laws; and Elizabeth consented to have Mary herself
+at last brought to trial. She was refused counsel; the commission condemned
+her. Parliament demanded the execution of the death sentence. Elizabeth had
+her own misgivings.</p>
+
+<p>She was afraid of the responsibility. Leicester suggested poison, but
+Burleigh and Walsingham stood by the law. A special embassy of remonstrance
+came from France; Mary wrote a dignified letter, not an appeal for her
+life, which moved the queen to tears; protests from the King of Scotland
+only aroused indignation; Elizabeth was frightened by rumours of fresh
+plots and of a French invasion.</p>
+
+<p>At last she signed the death warrant, brought to her by Secretary
+Davison; the Chancellor's seal was attached, and the council, fearing some
+evasion on Elizabeth's part, issued the commission for Mary's execution
+without further reference to the queen; she was kept in ignorance of the
+fact till the tragedy was completed. She was furious with the council, but
+powerless against their unanimity. She could venture to make a scapegoat of
+Davison, and made a vain attempt to clear herself of responsibility in a
+letter to James, which failed to soothe the burst of indignation with which
+the news was received in Scotland. But the one thing she feared--a
+coalition of France, Spain, and Scotland--was made impossible by the
+antagonisms of the former and the weakness of the last.</p>
+
+<p>Another crisis was at hand. Philip of Spain, claiming the throne of
+England as a descendant of John of Gaunt, was preparing the great Armada;
+Pope Sixtus V. was proclaiming a crusade against the heretic queen. Drake
+sailed into Cadiz harbour, and "singed the don's whiskers," but the vast
+preparations went on. A lofty spirit animated the queen and the people.
+London undertook to provide double the number of ships and men demanded
+from her. The militia was gathered at Tilbury, under Leicester. Howard of
+Effingham was Lord Admiral, with Drake as vice-admiral; in the enthusiasm
+of the moment, Elizabeth bestowed knighthood on a valorous lady, Mary, the
+wife of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley.</p>
+
+<p>A report that the Armada had been destroyed by a gale, which actually
+drove it into Corunna for repairs, caused Elizabeth, with her usual
+parsimony, to order four great vessels to be dismantled; Howard retained
+them instead, at his own charges. On July 19, 1588, the Armada was sighted
+off the Lizard, and for eighteen days the naval heroes were grappling with
+that "invincible" fleet. Elizabeth herself visited the camp at Tilbury,
+rode through the lines, wearing a corselet and a farthingale of amazing
+dimensions, while a page bore her helmet, and addressed her soldiers in
+stirring words.</p>
+
+<p>The victory was celebrated by medals bearing the device of a fleet in
+full sail, with the words <i>Venit, vidit, fugit</i> ("it came, it saw, it
+fled"), and of the dispersal by fireships with the words, <i>Dux femina
+facti</i> ("a woman led the movement").</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Elizabeth's Closing Years</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The defeat of the Armada was followed by an expedition to Lisbon, to
+wrest Portugal from Spain; owing to inadequate equipment it failed, after a
+promising beginning, the Portuguese lending no help. Essex managed to
+escape from court and join the expedition, messengers ordering him to
+return being too late. For this he was forgiven; but when he secretly
+married the widow of Sidney, and daughter of Walsingham, Elizabeth was
+furiously angry.</p>
+
+<p>Not Essex, but Norris was sent to command a force dispatched to the aid
+of Henry of Navarre, who was now fighting for the crown of France. Essex,
+however, was subsequently sent, at Henry's own request. His absence was
+utilised by Burleigh to secure the advancement of his own astute son,
+Robert Cecil, who secured the royal favour by the ingenuity of his
+flattery.</p>
+
+<p>When Essex finally returned from France, he was received with the utmost
+favour; but in the interval he had been transformed into an intriguing
+politician. Parliament, which had not been called for four years, met in
+1593, and there was an immediate collision with the Crown. Elizabeth's tone
+was much more despotic than of old. Petitions for the settlement of the
+succession were met by the arbitrary imprisonment of Wentworth and other
+members.</p>
+
+<p>Essex favoured the popular party, but had not the courage to head it; he
+was moved not by patriotism, but by jealousy of the Cecil ascendancy. The
+queen, when she had passed the age of sixty, was as determined as ever to
+pose as a youthful beauty, and her courtiers had no reluctance in assuming
+the tone of despairing lovers. No one played this part more persistently
+than Raleigh, who, when relegated to the Tower for marrying, proclaimed his
+misery, not at being separated from his bride, but at being shut out of the
+radiant presence of the queen.</p>
+
+<p>Essex and Raleigh were associated in two expeditions, one directed with
+complete success against Cadiz, the other being a complete failure. The
+Burleigh faction succeeded in getting for Raleigh whatever credit there was
+in both cases, though Essex was better entitled to it.</p>
+
+<p>But it was Ireland that wrought the ruin of Essex. A dispute in the
+council on the subject caused the queen to box the favourite's ears, which
+caused him to retire in resentment for many months. Soon after his return
+to court, he brought upon himself his own appointment to the
+lord-deputyship of Ireland. His conduct there displeased her; from her
+scolding letters, he concluded that his enemies in the council were
+undermining his position in his absence. He deserted his post, hurried to
+London, and burst, travel-stained as he was, into Elizabeth's chamber. For
+the moment she appeared disposed to forgive him, but was not long in
+deciding that his insolence must be punished, and he was placed in
+confinement.</p>
+
+<p>So he continued for about a year, in spite of appeals to the queen. The
+adverse party in the council had the predominance. At last, however, he was
+granted a degree of liberty, and Francis Bacon tried to conciliate
+Elizabeth towards her former favourite. But the unfortunate man allowed his
+resentment to carry him into dangerous courses. His house became a
+rendezvous of the discontented. Finally, a futile attempt on his part to
+raise the citizens of London in his favour consummated his ruin. He was
+soon a prisoner; his condemnation was now a foregone conclusion; Elizabeth
+signed the warrant with fingers which did not tremble; and, to the
+universal astonishment, the favourite was executed.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth's meeting with her last parliament displays in a marked degree
+the tact which never deserted her when she thought fit to employ it. Their
+protest against the practice of monopolies, instead of rousing her ire,
+brought from her a notably gracious promise to redress the grievances
+complained of. This was in 1601. In the next year, when she became
+sixty-nine, there was no relaxation in her gaieties; but under the surface,
+Elizabeth was old and sad.</p>
+
+<p>Her popularity had never been the same since the death of Essex; and the
+memory of the man she had cherished and finally sent to his doom,
+well-deserved as that was, was a perpetual source of grief to her. In March
+1603, she was stricken with her last fatal illness. Yet she would not go to
+bed. At last she gave in; she knew herself dying long before she admitted
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It was uncertain whether even in her last moments she would acknowledge
+the right of any successor to her throne, but a gesture was interpreted as
+favouring the King of Scots. Finally, she sank into a sleep from which she
+never awoke. So passed away England's Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JONATHAN_SWIFT"></a>JONATHAN SWIFT</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Journal_to_Stella"></a>Journal to Stella</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> The "Journal to Stella," which extends over the years 1710
+to 1713, was first published in 1766 and has often been republished since.
+The manuscripts are preserved in the British Museum. It was at Sir William
+Temple's home, Moor Park in Surrey, that Swift came to know Esther Johnson,
+or "Stella," who was fourteen years younger than himself. In 1699 Temple
+died, and Stella, with her friend, Rebecca Dingley, came to Ireland at
+Swift's request. Their relation has been made a great mystery. It will
+perhaps always be doubtful whether he was nominally married to her
+secretly; the evidence is on the whole against the existence of such a
+bond. But to the further question--why did he not take her to live as his
+wife--a sufficient reply may be found in his abnormal nature. In the
+"Journal" the word "Presto" refers to Swift himself (see FICTION); "MD" to
+Stella. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, Sept. 9, 1710.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I got here last Thursday, after five days' travelling, weary the first,
+almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest; and
+am now glad of the fatigue, which has served for exercise; and I am at
+present well enough. The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay hold
+on me as a twig while they are drowning, and the great men making me their
+clumsy apologies, etc. But my Lord Treasurer received me with a great deal
+of coldness, which has enraged me so, I am almost vowing revenge. I have
+not yet gone half my circle; but I find all my acquaintance just as I left
+them. Everything is turning upside down; every Whig in great office will,
+to a man, be infallibly put out; and we shall have such a winter as hath
+not been seen in England.</p>
+
+<p>The Tatler expects every day to be turned out of his employment; and the
+Duke of Ormond, they say, will be Lieutenant of Ireland. I hope you are now
+peaceably in Presto's lodgings; but I resolve to turn you out by Christmas;
+in which time I shall either have done my business, or find it not to be
+done. Pray be at Trim by the time this letter comes to you; and ride little
+Johnson, who must needs be now in good case. I have begun this letter
+unusually, on the post-night, and have already written to the Archbishop;
+and cannot lengthen this. Henceforth I will write something every day to
+MD, and make it a sort of journal; and when it is full, I will send it,
+whether MD writes or no; and so that will be pretty: and I shall always be
+in conversation with MD, and MD with Presto; and so farewell.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, NOV. 11, 1710.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I dined to-day in the City, and then went to christen Will Frankland's
+child; Lady Falconbridge was one of the godmothers; this is a daughter of
+Oliver Cromwell, and extremely like him by the picture I have seen. My
+business in the City was to thank Stratford for a kindness he has done me.
+I found Bank stock fallen thirty-four to the hundred, and was mighty
+desirous to buy it. I had three hundred pounds in Ireland, and I desired
+Stratford to buy me three hundred pounds in Bank stock and that he keep the
+papers, and that I would be bound to pay him for them; and, if it should
+rise or fall, I should take my chance and pay him interest in the meantime.
+I was told money was so hard to get here, and no one would do this for me.
+However, Stratford, one of the most generous men alive, has done this for
+me: so that three hundred pounds cost me three hundred pounds and thirty
+shillings. This was done a week ago, and I can have five pounds for my
+bargain already. I writ to your Mother to desire Lady Giffard would do the
+same with what she owes me, but she tells your mother she has no money. I
+would to God, all you had in the world was there. Whenever you lend money,
+take this rule, to have two people bound, who have both visible fortunes;
+for they will hardly die together; and, when one dies, you fall upon the
+other, and make him add another security. So, ladies, enough of business
+for one night. Paaaaast twelve o'clock; nite, nite deelest MD. I must only
+add, that, after a long fit of rainy weather, it has been fair two or three
+days, and is this day grown cold and frosty; so you must give poor little
+Presto leave to have a fire in his chamber morning and evening too; and he
+will do as much for you. Shall I send this to-morrow? Well I will, to
+oblige MD. 'Tis late, so I bid you good-night.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHELSEA, June, 1711.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I went at noon to see Mr. Secretary at his office, and there was Lord
+Treasurer; so I killed two birds, etc., and we were glad to see one another
+and so forth. And the Secretary and I dined at Sir William Wyndam's, who
+married Lady Catherine Seymour, your acquaintance, I suppose. There were
+ten of us at dinner. It seems, in my absence, they had erected a Club, and
+made me one; and we made some laws to-day, which I am to digest and add to,
+against next meeting. Our meetings are to be every Thursday. We are yet but
+twelve; Lord Keeper and Lord Treasurer were proposed; but I was against
+them, and so was Mr. Secretary, though their sons are of it, and so they
+are excluded; but we design to admit the Duke of Shrewsbury. The end of our
+Club is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward deserving
+persons with our interest and recommendation. We take in none but men of
+wit or men of interest; and if we go on as we begin, no other Club in this
+town will be worth talking of. This letter will come three weeks after the
+last, so there is a week lost; but that is owing to my being out of
+town.</p>
+
+<p>Well, but I must answer this letter of our MD's. Saturday approaches,
+and I han't written down this side. Oh, faith, Presto has been a sort of
+lazy fellow: but Presto will remove to town this day se'night: the
+Secretary has commanded me to do so: and I believe he and I shall go some
+days to Windsor, where he will have leisure to mind some business we have
+together. To-day our Society (it must not be called a Club) dined at Mr.
+Secretary's: we were but eight. We made some laws, and then I went to take
+my leave of Lady Ashburnham, who goes out of town to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Steele has had the assurance to write to me that I would engage my Lord
+Treasurer to keep a friend of his in an employment. I believe I told you
+how he and Addison served me for my good offices in Steele's behalf; and I
+promised Lord Treasurer never to speak for either of them again.</p>
+
+<p>We have plays acted in our town; and Patrick was at one of them, oh, oh.
+He was damnably mauled one day when he was drunk, by a brother-footman, who
+dragged him along the floor on his face, which looked for a week after as
+if he had the leprosy, and I was glad enough to see it. I have been ten
+times sending him back to you; yet now he has new clothes and a laced hat,
+which the hatter brought by his orders, and he offered to pay for the lace
+out of his wages.</p>
+
+<p>I must rise now and shave, and walk to town, unless I go with the Dean
+in his chariot at twelve: and I have not seen that Lord Peterborough yet.
+The Duke of Shrewsbury is almost well again, but what care you? You do not
+care for my friends. Farewell, my dearest lives and delights: I love you
+better than ever, if possible, as hope saved, I do, and ever will. God
+almighty bless you ever, and make us happy together! I pray for this twice
+every day; and I hope God will hear my poor hearty prayers. Remember, if I
+am used ill and ungratefully, as I have formerly been, 'tis what I am
+prepared for, and I shall not wonder at it. Yet I am now envied, and
+thought in high favour, and have every day numbers of considerable men
+teasing me to solicit for them. And the Ministry all use me perfectly well;
+and all that know them say they love me. Yet I can count upon nothing, nor
+will, but upon MD's love and kindness. They think me useful; they pretended
+they were afraid of none but me, and that they resolved to have me; they
+have often confessed this: yet all this makes little impression on me--Pox
+of these speculations! They give me the spleen; a disease I was not born
+to. Let me alone, sirrahs, and be satisfied: I am, as long as MD and Presto
+are well. Little wealth, and much health, and a life by stealth: that is
+all we want; and so farewell, dearest MD; Stella, Dingley, Presto, all
+together; now and for ever all together. Farewell again and again.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, July, 1711.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I have just sent my 26th, and have nothing to say, because I have other
+letters to write (pshaw, I began too high) but to-morrow I will say more,
+and fetch up this line to be straight This is enough at present for two
+dear saucy naughty girls.</p>
+
+<p>Morning. It is a terrible rainy day. Patrick lay out all last night, and
+is not yet returned: faith, poor Presto is a desolate creature; neither
+servant, nor linen, nor anything.</p>
+
+<p>I was at Court and Church to-day: I am acquainted with about thirty in
+the drawing-room, and I am so proud I make all the Lords come up to me; one
+passes half an hour pleasant enough. We had a dunce to preach before the
+queen to-day, which often happens. Windsor is a delicious situation, but
+the town is scoundrel. The Duke of Hamilton would needs be witty, and hold
+up my train as I walked upstairs. It is an ill circumstance that on Sundays
+much company always meet at the great tables. The Secretary showed me his
+bill of fare, to encourage me to dine with him. "Poh," said I, "show me a
+bill of company, for I value not your dinner."</p>
+
+<p>In my conscience. I fear I shall have the gout. I sometimes feel pains
+about my feet and toes: I never drank till within these two years, and I
+did it to cure my head. I often sit evenings with some of these people, and
+drink in my turn; but I am resolved to drink ten times less than before;
+but they advise me to let what I drink be all wine, and not to put water in
+it. Tooke and the printer stayed to-day to finish their affair. Then I went
+to see Lord Treasurer, and chid him for not taking notice of me at Windsor.
+He said he kept a place for me yesterday at dinner, and expected me there;
+but I was glad I did not go, because the Duke of Buckingham was there, and
+that would have made us acquainted; which I have no mind to.</p>
+
+<p>I have sent a noble haunch of venison this afternoon to Mrs. Vanhomrigh;
+I wish you had it sirrahs. I dined gravely with my landlord, the Secretary.
+The queen was abroad to-day to hunt; but finding it disposed to rain, she
+kept in her coach, which she drives herself, and drives furiously, like
+Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod. Dingley has heard of Nimrod, but
+not Stella, for it is in the Bible. Mr. Secretary has given me a warrant
+for a buck; I can't sent it to MD. It is a sad thing, faith, considering
+how Presto loves MD, and how MD would love Presto's venison for Presto's
+sake. God bless the two dear Wexford girls!</p>
+
+<p>There was a drawing-room to-day at Court; but so few company, that the
+queen sent for us into her bedchamber, where we made our bows, and stood
+about twenty of us round the room, while she looked at us round with her
+fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that
+were nearest to her, and then she was told dinner was ready, and went
+out.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, Dec. 1, 1711.</h3>
+
+
+<p>To-morrow is the fatal day for the Parliament meeting, and we are full
+of hopes and fears. We reckon we have a majority of ten on our side in the
+House of Lords; yet I observe Mrs. Masham a little uneasy. The Duke of
+Marlborough has not seen the queen for some days past; Mrs. Masham is glad
+of it, because she says he tells a hundred lies to his friends of what she
+says to him: he is one day humble, and the next day on the high ropes.</p>
+
+<p>This being the day Parliament was to meet, and the great question to be
+determined, I went with Dr. Freind to dine in the City, on purpose to be
+out of the way, and we sent our printer to see what was our fate; but he
+gave us a most melancholy account of things. The Earl of Nottingham began
+and spoke against a peace, and desired that in their address they might put
+in a clause to advise the queen not to make a peace without Spain; which
+was debated, and carried by the Whigs by about six voices: and this has
+happened entirely by my Lord Treasurer's neglect, who did not take timely
+care to make up his strength, although every one of us gave him caution
+enough. Nottingham has certainly been bribed. The question is yet only
+carried in the Committee of the whole House, and we hope when it is
+reported to the House to-morrow, we shall have a majority.</p>
+
+<p>This is a day that may produce great alterations and hazard the ruin of
+England. The Whigs are all in triumph; they foretold how all this would be,
+but we thought it boasting. Nay, they said the Parliament should be
+dissolved before Christmas, and perhaps it may: this is all your d----d
+Duchess of Somerset's doings. I warned them of this nine months ago, and a
+hundred times since. I told Lord Treasurer I should have the advantage of
+him; for he would lose his head, and I should only be hanged, and so carry
+my body entire to the grave.</p>
+
+<p>I was this morning with Mr. Secretary: we are both of opinion that the
+queen is false. He gave me reasons to believe the whole matter is settled
+between the queen and the Whigs. Things are now in a crisis, and a day or
+two will determine. I have desired him to engage Lord Treasurer to send, me
+abroad as Queen's Secretary somewhere or other, where I will remain till
+the new Ministers recall me; and then I will be sick for five or six
+months, till the storm has spent itself. I hope he will grant me this; for
+I should hardly trust myself to the mercy of my enemies while their anger
+is fresh.</p>
+
+<p>Morning. They say the Occasional Bill is brought to-day into the House
+of Lords; but I know not. I will now put an end to my letter, and give it
+into the post-house with my own fair hands. This will be a memorable
+letter, and I shall sigh to see it some years hence. Here are the first
+steps towards the ruin of an excellent Ministry; for I look upon them as
+certainly ruined; and God knows what may be the consequence.--I now bid my
+dearest MD farewell; for company is coming, and I must be at Lord
+Dartmouth's office by noon. Farewell, dearest MD; I wish you a merry
+Christmas; I believe you will have this about that time. Love Presto, who
+loves MD above all things a thousand times. Farewell again, dearest MD.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, Dec. 20, 1711.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was with the Secretary this morning, and, for aught I can see, we
+shall have a languishing death: I can know nothing, nor themselves neither.
+I dined, you know, with our Society, and that odious Secretary would make
+me President next week; so I must entertain them this day se'night at the
+Thatched House Tavern: it will cost me five or six pounds; yet the
+Secretary says he will give me wine.</p>
+
+<p>Saturday night. I have broken open my letter, and tore it into the
+bargain, to let you know that we are all safe: the queen has made no less
+than twelve Lords to have a majority; nine new ones, the other three peers'
+sons; and has turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is awaked at last, and
+so is Lord Treasurer: I want nothing now but to see the Duchess out. But we
+shall do without her. We are all extremely happy. Give me joy, sirrahs.
+This is written in a coffee-house.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, Feb. 26, 1712.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was again busy with the Secretary. I dined with him, and we were to do
+more business after dinner; but after dinner is after dinner--an old saying
+and a true, "much drinking, little thinking." We had company with us, and
+nothing could be done, so I am to go there again to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>To-day in the morning I visited upwards: first I saw the Duke of Ormond
+below stairs, and gave him joy of being declared General in Flanders; then
+I went up one pair of stairs, and sat with the duchess; then I went up
+another pair of stairs, and paid a visit to Lady Betty; and then desired
+her woman to go up to the garret, that I might pass half an hour with her,
+for she was young and handsome, but she would not.</p>
+
+<p>Tell Walls that I spoke to the Duke of Ormond about his friend's
+affairs. I likewise mentioned his own affair to Mr. Southwell. But oo must
+not know zees sings, zey are secrets; and we must keep them flom nauty
+dallars. I was with Lord Treasurer to-day, and hat care oo for zat? Monday
+is parson's holiday, and oo lost oo money at cards; ze devil's device.
+Nite, nite, my two deelest logues.</p>
+
+
+<h3>LONDON, April 6, 1713</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was this morning at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called
+"Cato," which is to be acted on Friday. There were not above half a score
+of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough to see
+the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them; and the drab
+that acts Cato's daughter, in the midst of a passionate part, calling out
+"What's next?" I went back and dined with Mr. Addison.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing new to-day; so I'll seal up this to-night. Pray write soon....
+Farewell, deelest MD, MD, MD. Love Presto.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="LYOF_N_TOLSTOY"></a>LYOF N. TOLSTOY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Childhood_Boyhood_Youth"></a>Childhood, Boyhood, Youth</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth
+(1855-57)--Tolstoy's first literary efforts--may be regarded as
+semi-autobiographical studies; if not in detail, at least in the wider
+sense that all his books contain pictures more or less accurate of himself
+and his own experiences. No plot runs through them; they simply analyse and
+describe with extraordinary minuteness the feelings of a nervous and morbid
+boy--a male Marie Bashkirtseff. They are tales rather of the developments
+of the thoughts, than of the life of a child, with a pale background of men
+and events. The distinct charm lies in the sincerity with which this
+development is represented. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Childhood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>August 12, 18--, was the third day after my tenth birthday anniversary.
+Wonderful presents had been given me. My tutor, Karl Ivanitch, roused me at
+seven by striking at a fly directly over my head with a flapper made of
+sugar paper fastened to a stick. He generally spoke in German, and in his
+kindly voice exclaimed, "Auf, Kinder, auf; es ist Zeit. Die Mutter ist
+schon im Saal." ("Get up, children, it is time. Your Mother is already in
+the drawing-room.")</p>
+
+<p>Dyadka Nikolai, the valet of us children, a neat little man, brought in
+the clothes for me and Volodya, who was imitating my sister's governess,
+Marya Ivanova, in mocking, merry laughter. Somewhat sternly presently Karl
+Ivanitch called from the schoolroom to know if we were nearly ready to
+begin our lessons.</p>
+
+<p>In the schoolroom, on one shelf was our promiscuous assortment of books,
+on another, the still more miscellaneous collection which our dear old
+tutor was pleased to call his library. I remember that it included a German
+treatise on cabbage gardens, a history of the Seven Years' War, and a work
+on hydrostatic. Karl Ivanitch spent all his spare time in reading his
+beloved books, but he never read anything beyond these and the Northern
+Bee. After early lessons our tutor conducted us downstairs to greet
+Mamma.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting in the parlour, in front of the samovar, pouring out
+tea. To the left of the divan was the old English grand piano, on which my
+dark-complexioned sister, Liubotchka, eleven years old, was painfully
+practising Clementi's exercises. Near her Marya Ivanova, with scowls on her
+face, was loudly counting, and beating time with her foot. She frowned
+still more disagreeably at Karl as he entered, but he appeared to ignore
+this and kissed my mother's hand with a German salutation. After mutually
+affectionate greetings Mamma told us to go to our father and to ask him to
+come to her before he went to the threshing floor.</p>
+
+<p>We found Papa angrily discussing business affairs with Yakov Mikhailof,
+the chief concern being apparently about money from Mamma's estate at
+Khabarovka, her native village. A large sum was due to the council, and
+Yakov pleaded that it would be difficult to raise it from the sale of hay
+and the proceeds of the mill. "For example," said he, "the miller has been
+twice to ask me for delay, swearing by Christ the Lord that he has no
+money. What little cash he had he put into the dam."</p>
+
+<p>Yakov was a serf, and was a most devoted and assiduous man, excessively
+economical in managing his master's affairs, and constantly worried himself
+over the increase of his master's property at the expense of that of his
+mistress.</p>
+
+<p>For some days we had been expecting something unusual, from preparations
+which we saw going on for some journey, but an announcement from Papa at
+length surprised us terribly. He greeted us one morning with the remark
+that it was time to put an end to our idleness, and that as he was going
+that evening to Moscow, we were to go with him and to live there with our
+grandmother, Mamma remaining on the estate with the girls.</p>
+
+<p>My thoughts were mingled, for I was very grieved for the sake of Mamma,
+yet I felt pleasure at the idea that we were grown up. For poor Karl
+Ivanitch I was extremely sorry, as he would be discharged. On my way
+upstairs I saw Papa's favourite greyhound, Milka, basking in the sunshine
+on the terrace, and ran out, kissed her on the nose and caressed her,
+saying, "Farewell, Milotchka. We shall never see each other again." Then,
+altogether overcome with emotion, I burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>My father was a chivalrous character of the last century, who regarded
+with contempt the people of the present century. His two chief passions
+were cards and women. He was tall and commanding, bald, with small eyes
+ever twinkling vivaciously, and a lisping utterance. He knew how to
+exercise a spell over people of every grade, and in the highest society he
+was held in great esteem. He seemed born to shine in his brilliant
+position, and was an expert in the management of all things that could
+conduce to comfort and pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>A lover of music, he sang to his own piano accompaniment operatic songs,
+but had no liking for Beethoven's sonatas and other scientific
+compositions. His principles grew more fixed as years rolled on; he judged
+actions as being good or bad accordingly as they procured him happiness and
+pleasure, or otherwise; he talked persuasively; and he could represent the
+same deed as either an innocent piece of playfulness or of abominable
+villainy.</p>
+
+<p>Happy days of childhood that can never be recalled! What memories I yet
+cherish of them. I see Mamma just as plainly as when she so long since was
+talking to some one at the tea-table, while I, in my high chair, grew
+drowsy. Presently she stroked my hair with her soft hand, saying, "Get up,
+my darling, it is time to go to bed. Get up, my angel."</p>
+
+<p>I spring up and embrace her, and exclaim, "Dear, dear Mamma, how I love
+you!" With her sad and fascinating smile she places me on her knees, is
+silent awhile, and then speaks. "So you love me very much? Love me always
+and never forget me. If you lose your Mamma, Nikolinka, you will not forget
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>She kisses me still more lovingly, and I cry with tears of love and
+rapture flooding my face, "Oh, do not say that, my darling, my precious
+one." Will that freshness, that happy carelessness, that thirst for love
+which made life's only requirements, ever return? Where are those pure
+tears of tenderest emotion? The angel of consolation came and wiped them
+away. Do the memories alone abide?</p>
+
+<p>About a month after we had removed to Moscow, Grandmamma received a
+visit from Princess Kornakova, a woman of forty-five, with disagreeable
+gray-green eyes, but sweetly curved lips, bright red hair, and insalubrious
+face. In spite of these peculiarities her aspect was noble. I took a
+dislike to her because I found from her talk that she was given to beating
+her own children, and thought that other people's children, especially
+boys, needed to be whipped.</p>
+
+<p>Another visitor was Prince Ivan Ivanitch, distinguished for his noble
+character, handsome person, splendid bravery and extraordinary good
+fortune. He belonged to a powerful family, and lived in accordance with
+principles of the strictest religion and morality. Though somewhat reserved
+and haughty, in demeanour, he was full of kindly feeling. Prince Ivan
+Ivanitch was a highly cultured man of most versatile accomplishments. Our
+Grandmamma was evidently delighted to see him, and his magnificent aspect
+and her liking for him inspired me with unbounded admiration and
+reverence.</p>
+
+<p>He asked why Mamma had not come to Moscow. "Ah," was the reply, "she
+would have come if possible, but they have no income this year."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand," replied the Prince. "Her Khabarovka is a
+wonderful estate, and it must always bring in a fine revenue."</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you," said Grandmamma, sadly. "It seems to me that all the
+pretexts are made simply to enable him to live a gay life here, while she,
+angel of goodness that she is, suspects nothing. She believes him in
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>This conversation should not have been overheard by me, but, having
+overheard it, I crept out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>On the 16th of April, nearly six months later, serious news came from
+Mamma. She wrote to Papa that she had contracted a chill, which had caused
+a fever, that this was over, but had left her in such utter weakness that
+she would never rise from her bed again, although those about her were not
+aware of such a condition. She wished him to come to her at once and to
+bring her two boys with him. She prayed that God's holy will might be
+done.</p>
+
+<p>On April 25th we reached our Petrovskoe home. Papa had been very sad and
+thoughtful during the journey. We at once learned from the steward that
+Mamma had not left her room for six days. I shall never forget what I saw
+when we entered Mamma's room. She was unconscious. Her eyes were open, but
+she saw nothing. We were led away. Mamma soon passed away.</p>
+
+<p>She was dead, the funeral obsequies took place, and then our life went
+on much as before. We rose, had our repasts, and retired to rest at the
+same hours. Three days after the funeral the whole household removed to
+Moscow. Grandmamma only learned what had happened when we arrived, and her
+grief was terrible. She lay unconscious for a week, and the doctor feared
+for her life, for she would not eat, speak, or take medicine. When she
+recovered somewhat, her first thought was of us children. She cried softly,
+spoke of Mamma, and tenderly caressed us.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Boyhood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On our arrival in Moscow a change had taken place in my views of things.
+My sentiment of reverence for Grandmamma had changed to one of sympathy. As
+she covered my cheeks with kisses I realised that each kiss expressed the
+thought "She is gone; I shall never see her more." Papa had very little to
+do with us in Moscow, coming to us only at dinner time, and lost much in my
+eyes, with his ostentatious dress, his stewards, his clerks, and his
+hunting and business expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>Between us and the girls also an invisible barrier seemed to rise. We
+were proud of our trousers and straps, and they of their petticoats, which
+increased in length. Their showier Sunday dress made it manifest that we
+were no longer in the country. But soon commenced a period of my life of
+which it is difficult to trace a record. Rarely during memories of it do I
+find moments of the genuine warmth of feeling which so frequently illumined
+the earliest years of my life.</p>
+
+<p>Vivid is the recollection of Volodya's entrance at the university. He
+was barely two years my senior in age. The day of his first examination
+arrived, and he presented a handsome appearance in his blue uniform with
+brass buttons and lacquered boots. The examination lasted ten days, and
+Volodya, having passed brilliantly, returned on the last day no longer in
+blue coat and grey cap, but in student uniform, with blue embroidered
+collar, three-cornered hat, and a gilt dagger by his side. Joy and
+excitement reigned in the whole household. For the first time since Mamma's
+death, Grandmamma drank champagne, and weeps with joy as she looks at
+Volodya, who henceforth rode in his own equipage, receives friends in his
+own rooms, smokes tobacco, goes to balls.</p>
+
+<p>But soon another incident happened which is engraven on memory. The dear
+old Grandmamma was growing daily weaker, and one morning the announcement
+thrilled us that she was dead. Again, the house was full of mourning. In a
+few months I should be preparing to enter the university. I was by degrees
+emerging from my boyish moods, with the exception of one--a tendency to
+metaphysical dreaminess, which was fated to do me much injury in after
+years.</p>
+
+<p>At this period an intimacy commenced between me and a very remarkable
+man, Prince Dmitri Nekhliudoff. He was a tall and commanding figure, with
+an extraordinary intellect. Whenever he found me alone, we seated ourselves
+in some secluded corner and found mutual delight in metaphysical
+discussions. With ecstasy in those moments I soared higher and higher into
+the realms of thought. This strange friendship grew. We agreed to confess
+everything to each other, and thus we should really know each other and not
+be ashamed; but, in order that we should not be in any fear of strangers,
+we vowed never to say anything to anybody else about each other. And we
+kept the vow. As may be imagined, the influence of my friend over me was
+greater than mine over him. I adopted his fervent ideas, which included
+lofty aspirations for the reformation of all mankind.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Youth</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I was nearly sixteen, and from that time I date the beginning of youth.
+Under various professors I studied, though by no means willingly, to
+prepare for the university. At length, on April 16, I went for the first
+time to the great hall of the university. For the first time in my life I
+wore a dress coat. The bright hall was filled with a brilliant crowd of
+hundreds of young men in gymnasium costumes and dress coats, stately
+professors moving freely about among the tables. On that day I was examined
+in history and answered questions in Russian history in brilliant style,
+for I knew the subject well. I received five marks. Similar success
+rewarded my efforts at the examination in mathematics, for the professor
+told me I had answered even better than was required, and on this occasion
+I received five points.</p>
+
+<p>Everything went splendidly till I came to the Latin examination. The
+Latin professor was spoken of in accents of terror, for he had the
+reputation of taking a fierce delight in plucking candidates. My success so
+far had made me feel proudly confident, and as I could translate Cicero and
+Horace without the lexicon and was proficient in Zumpt's Grammar, I thought
+I might equal the rest. But not so. The professor amicably passed one of my
+young acquaintances, although the youth was palpably deficient in his
+answers. I afterwards learned that he was the student's protector.</p>
+
+<p>When my turn came, immediately afterwards, the professor turned on me in
+truly savage demeanour. "That is not it; that is not it at all," exclaimed
+he. "This is not the way to prepare for higher education. You only want to
+wear the uniform and to boast of being first."</p>
+
+<p>The demeanour of this professor so affected me that my confusion was
+complete. I only received two marks, and the injustice so depressed me that
+I lost all ambition and allowed the remaining examinations to proceed
+without making any effort. I made up my mind that it was unwise to aim at
+being first, and I resolved to adhere to this sentiment in the
+university.</p>
+
+<p>My father married again. He was forty-eight when he took Avdotya
+Epifanova as his second wife. She was a beautiful woman, whom Mamma used to
+call Dunitchka. But I had suspected nothing until Papa actually announced
+to us that he was going to marry her. The wedding was to take place in a
+fortnight. I and Volodya returned to Moscow at the beginning of September,
+and on the following day I went to the university for my first lecture.</p>
+
+<p>It was a magnificent, sunny day, and as I entered the auditorium I felt
+lost in the throng of gay youths flitting about through the doors and among
+the corridors. Belonging to no particular group I felt isolated, and then
+even angry, and I remember in my heart that this first day was a dismal
+occasion for me. I looked at the professor with an ironical feeling, for he
+commenced his lecture with an introduction which, to my mind, was without
+sense. I decided at this first lecture that there was no need to write down
+everything that each professor said, and to this principle I adhered.</p>
+
+<p>Though during my course I made many pleasant acquaintances, and so felt
+less isolated than at first, I indulged in little real comradeship. But
+during the winter my attention was much engrossed with affairs of the
+heart, for I was in love three times. Yet I was overwhelmed with shyness,
+fearing that my love should be discovered by its object. With two of the
+young ladies, indeed, I had already been in love previously. Of one of them
+I was now enamoured for the third time. But I knew that Volodya also
+regarded her with passionate ecstasy. I felt that it would certainly not be
+agreeable to him to learn that two brothers were in love with the same
+young woman.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I said nothing to him of my love. But great satisfaction was
+afforded to my mind by the fact that our love was so pure, and that each
+would be ready, if needful, to make a sacrifice for the sake of the other.
+But that self-abnegation did not, after all, extend to Volodya, for when he
+heard that a certain diplomat was to marry the girl, he was disposed to
+slap his face and to challenge him to a duel. It happened that I had only
+spoken once to the young lady, and my love passed away in a week, as I made
+no effort to perpetuate it.</p>
+
+<p>During that winter I was quite disenchanted with the social pleasures to
+which I had looked forward when I entered the university, in imitation of
+my brother Volodya. He danced a great deal, and Papa also went with his
+young wife to balls. But at the first one which I attended I was so shy
+that I declined the invitation of the Princess Kornakova to dance,
+declaring that I did not dance, though I had come to her evening party with
+the express intention of dancing a great deal. I remained silently in one
+place the whole evening.</p>
+
+<p>Avdotya's passionate love for Papa was evident in every word, look, and
+action. We were always hypocritically polite to her, called her
+<i>ch&egrave;re maman</i>, and noted that at first she was fond of calling
+herself stepmother, and that she plainly felt the unpleasantness of her
+position. Her disposition was very amiable and she was in no way
+exacting.</p>
+
+<p>My first examination at length arrived. It was on differential and
+integral calculus. I was indifferent and abstracted, but a feeling of some
+dread passed over me when the same young professor who had questioned me at
+the entrance examination looked me in the face. I answered so badly that he
+looked at me compassionately, and said quietly but firmly that as I should
+not pass in the second class I had better not present myself for
+examination. I went home and remained weeping in my room for three days
+over my failure. I even looked out my pistols, in order that they might be
+at hand if I should feel a wish to shoot myself. Finally, I saw my father
+and begged him to permit me to enter the hussars, or to go to the
+Caucasus.</p>
+
+<p>Though he was not pleased, yet, when he saw how deep was my grief he
+sought to comfort me by saying that it was not so very bad, and that
+arrangements might be made for a different course of study. After a few
+days I became composed, but did not leave the house till we departed for
+the country. I may some day relate the sequel in the happier half of my
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>[Tolstoy has never published the continuation, but it is generally
+considered that he represents himself in Constantine Levin, the hero of the
+greatest of his stories, and that thus we gain an insight into his mature
+thoughts.]</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><a name="My_Confession"></a>My Confession</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Count Lyof N. Tolstoy in writing this work expressed
+himself in such independent terms that it could not be published in Russia,
+but was issued in Geneva in 1888, by the firm of Elpidine, who had printed
+in 1886 his "What is my Life," and in 1892 brought out his "Walk in the
+Light." The books thus issued in the original Russian version outside of
+the famous author's native land are all purely spiritual, and are written
+in the most elevated tone. But Tolstoy's mode of interpreting the
+Scriptures is not approved by the Holy Synod of the Eastern Orthodox
+Church, or Russo-Greek Communion, and thus most of his treatises which come
+within the strictly religious category are classed amongst the "Forbidden
+Books" of modern Russian literature. In this "Confession" Tolstoy
+emphatically strikes the keynote which is the <i>motif</i> of all his
+didactic writings. It is an affirmation of the principle that the pure
+spirit of religion, apart from external dogma, is the really precious
+factor of life. He follows the same strain in his "What I Believe," and his
+"Christianity of Christ." The following synopsis is translated and
+summarised from the original Russian. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--Evil Early Years</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Though reared in the faith of the Orthodox Eastern, or Russo-Greek
+Church, I had by the time when, at the age of eighteen, I left the
+university ceased to believe what I had been taught. My faith could never
+have been well grounded in conviction. I not only ceased to pray, but also
+to attend the services and to fast. Without denying the existence of God,
+yet I cherished no ideas either as to the nature of God or the teaching of
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>I found that my wish to become a good and virtuous man, whenever the
+aspiration was in any way expressed, simply exposed me to ridicule; while I
+instantly gained praise for any vicious behaviour. Even my excellent aunt
+declared that she wished two things for me. One was that I should form a
+liaison with some married lady; the other that I should become an adjutant
+to the Tsar.</p>
+
+<p>I look back with horror on the years of my young manhood, for I was
+guilty of slaying men in battle, of gambling, of riotous squandering of
+substance gained by the toil of serfs, of deceit, and of profligacy. That
+course of life lasted ten years. Then I took to writing, but the motive was
+grovelling, for I aimed at gaining money and flattery.</p>
+
+<p>My aims were gratified, for, coming to St. Petersburg at the age of 26,
+I secured the flattering reception I had coveted from the authors most in
+repute. The war, about which I had written much from the field of conflict,
+had just closed. I found that a theory prevailed amongst the
+"Intelligentia" that the function of writers, thinkers, and poets was to
+teach; they were to teach not because they knew or understood, but
+unconsciously and intuitively. Acting on this philosophy, I, as a thinker
+and poet, wrote and taught I knew not what, received large remuneration for
+my efforts with the pen, and lived loosely, gaily, and extravagantly.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I was one of the hierarchs of the literary faith, and for a
+considerable time was undisturbed by any doubts as to its soundness; but
+when three years had been thus spent, serious suspicions entered my mind. I
+noted that the devotees of this apparently infallible principle were at
+variance amongst themselves, for they disputed, deceived, abused, and
+swindled each other. And many were grossly selfish, and most immoral.</p>
+
+<p>Disgust supervened, both with myself and with mankind in general. My
+error now was that though my eyes were opened to the vanity and delusion of
+the position, yet I retained it, imagining that I, as thinker, poet,
+teacher, could teach other men while not at all knowing what to teach. To
+my other faults an inordinate pride had been added by my intercourse with
+these <i>litterateurs</i>. That period viewed retrospectively seems to me
+like one of a kind of madness. Hundreds of us wrote to teach the people,
+while we all abused and confuted one another. We could teach nothing, yet
+we sent millions of pages all over Russia, and we were unspeakably vexed
+that we seemed to gain no attention whatever, for nobody appeared to listen
+to us.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--Groping in Darkness</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>I travelled in Europe at this period, before my marriage, still
+cherishing in my mind the idea of general perfectibility, which was so
+popular at that time with the "Intelligentia." Cultured circles clung to
+the theory of what we call "progress," vague though are the notions
+attaching to the term. I was horrified with the spectacle of an execution
+in Paris, and my eyes were opened to the fallacy underlying the theory of
+human wisdom. The doctrine of "progress" I now felt to be a mere
+superstition, and I was further confirmed in my conviction by the sad death
+of my brother after a painful illness of a whole year.</p>
+
+<p>My brother was kind, amiable, clever, and serious; but he passed away
+without ever knowing why he had lived or what his death meant for him. All
+theories were futile in the face of this tragedy. Returning to Russia I
+settled in my rural home and began to organise schools for the peasants,
+feeling real enthusiasm for the enterprise. For I still clung to a great
+extent to the idea of progress by development. I thought that though highly
+cultured men all thought and taught differently and agreed about nothing,
+yet in the case of the children of the mujiks the difficulty could easily
+be surmounted by permitting the children to learn what they liked.</p>
+
+<p>I also tried through my own newspaper to indoctrinate the people, but my
+mind grew more and more embarrassed. At length I fell sick, rather mentally
+than physically. I went off to the Steppes to breathe the pure air and to
+take mare's milk and to live the simple life. I married soon after my
+return to my estate. As time passed on I became happily absorbed in the
+interests of wife and children, largely forgetting during a happy interval
+of fifteen years the old anxiety for individual perfection. For this desire
+was superseded by that of promoting the welfare of my family.</p>
+
+<p>All this time, however, I was writing busily, and was gaining much money
+as well as winning great applause. And in everything I wrote I persistently
+taught what was for me the sole truth--that our chief object in life should
+be to secure our own happiness and that of our family. Then, five years
+ago, supervened a mood of mental lethargy. I grew despondent; my perplexity
+increased, and I was tormented by the constant recurrence of such questions
+as--"Why?" and "What afterwards?" And by degrees the questions took a more
+concrete form. "I now possess six thousand 'desyatins' of land in the
+government of Samara, and three hundred horses--what then?" I could find no
+answer. Then came the question, "What if I could excel Shakespeare, and
+Moli&egrave;re, and Gogol, and become the most celebrated the world has
+ever seen--what then?" Answer, there was none; yet I felt that I must find
+one in order to go on living.</p>
+
+<p>Life had now lost its meaning, and was no longer real to me. I was a
+healthy and happy man, and yet so empty did life seem to me that I was
+afraid of being tempted to commit suicide, even though I had not the
+slightest intention to perpetrate such a deed. But, fearing lest the
+temptation might come upon me I hid a rope away out of my sight, and ceased
+carrying a gun in my walks.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--The Spirit of Despair</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was in my 50th year that the question "What is life" had reduced me
+to utter despair. Various queries clustered round this central
+interrogation. "Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there any
+signification in life that can overcome inevitable death?" I found that in
+human knowledge no real answer was forthcoming to such yearnings. None of
+the theories of the philosophers gave any satisfaction. In my search for a
+solution of life's problem I felt like a traveller lost in a forest, out of
+which he can find no issue.</p>
+
+<p>I found that not only did Solomon declare that he hated life, for all is
+vanity and vexation of spirit; but that Sakya Muni, the Indian sage,
+equally decided that life was a great evil; while Socrates and Schopenhauer
+agree that annihilation is the only thing to be wished for. But neither
+these testimonies of great minds nor my own reasoning could induce me to
+destroy myself. For a force within me, combined with an instinctive
+consciousness of life, counteracted the feeling of despair and drew me out
+of my misery of soul. I felt that I must study life not merely as it was
+amongst those like myself, but as it was amongst the millions of the common
+people. I reflected that knowledge based on reason, the knowledge of the
+cultured, imparted no meaning to life, but that, on the other hand, amongst
+the masses of the common people there was an unreasoning consciousness of
+life which gave it a significance.</p>
+
+<p>This unreasoning knowledge was the very faith which I was rejecting. It
+was faith in things I could not understand; in God, one yet three; in the
+creation of devils and angels. Such things seemed utterly contrary to
+reason. So I began to reflect that perhaps what I considered reasonable was
+after all not so, and what appeared unreasonable might not really be
+so.</p>
+
+<p>I discovered one great error that I had perpetrated. I had been
+comparing life with life, that is, the finite with the finite, and the
+infinite with the infinite. The process was vain. It was like comparing
+force with force, matter with matter, nothing with nothing. It was like
+saying in mathematics that A equals A, or O equals O. Thus the only answer
+was "identity."</p>
+
+<p>Now I saw that scientific knowledge would give no reply to my questions.
+I began to comprehend that though faith seemed to give unreasonable
+answers, these answers certainly did one important thing. They did at least
+bring in the relation of the finite to the infinite. I came to feel that in
+addition to the reasoning knowledge which I once reckoned to be the sole
+true knowledge, there was in every man also an unreasoning species of
+knowledge which makes life possible. That unreasoning knowledge is
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>What is this faith? It is not only belief in God and in things unseen,
+but it is the apprehension of life's meaning. It is the force of life. I
+began to understand that the deepest source of human wisdom was to be found
+in the answers given by faith, that I had no reasonable right to reject
+them, and that they alone solved the problem of life.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Mistakes Apprehended</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Nevertheless my heart was not lightened. I studied the writings of
+Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. I also studied actual religious life by
+turning to the orthodox, the monks, and the Evangelicals who preach
+salvation through faith in a Redeemer. I asked what meaning was given for
+them to life by what they believed. But I could not accept the faith of any
+of these men, because I saw that it did not explain the meaning of life,
+but only obscured it. So I felt a return of the terrible feeling of
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>Being unable to believe in the sincerity of men who did not live
+consistently with the doctrines they professed, and feeling that they were
+self-deceived, and, like myself, were satisfied with the lusts of the
+flesh, I began to draw near to the believers amongst the poor, simple, and
+ignorant, the pilgrims, monks, and peasants. I found that though their
+faith was mingled with much superstition, yet with them the whole life was
+a confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith gave them.</p>
+
+<p>The more I contemplated the lives of these simple folk, the more deeply
+was I convinced of the reality of their faith, which I perceived to be a
+necessity for them, for it alone gave life a meaning and made it worth
+living. This was in direct opposition to what I saw in my own circle, where
+I marked the possibility of living without faith, for not one in a thousand
+professed to be a believer, while amongst the poorer classes not one in
+thousands was an unbeliever. The contradiction was extreme. In my class a
+tranquil death, without terror or despair, is rare; in that lower class, an
+uneasy death is a rare exception. I found that countless numbers in that
+lower mass of humanity had so understood the meaning of life that they were
+able both to live bearing contentedly the burdens of life, and to die
+peacefully.</p>
+
+<p>The more I learned of these men of faith the more I liked them, and the
+easier I felt it so to live. For two years I lived in their fashion. Then
+the life of my own wealthy and cultured class became repellent to me, for
+it had lost all meaning whatever. It seemed like empty child's play, while
+the life of the working classes appeared to me in its true
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>Now I began to apprehend where I had judged wrongly. My mistake was that
+I had applied an answer to my question concerning life which only concerned
+my own life, to life in general. My life had been but one long indulgence
+of my passions. It was evil and meaningless. Therefore such an answer had
+no application to life at large, but only to my individual life.</p>
+
+<p>I understood the truth which the Gospel subsequently taught me more
+fully, that men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
+evil. I understood that for the comprehension of life, it was essential
+that life should be something more than an evil and meaningless thing
+revealed by reason. Life must be considered as a whole, not merely in its
+parasitic excrescences. I felt that to be good was more important than to
+believe. I loved good men. I hated myself. I accepted truth. I understood
+that we were all more or less mad with the love of evil.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the animals, saw the birds building nests, living only to
+fly and to subsist. I saw how the goat, hare, and wolf live, but to feed
+and to nurture their young, and are contented and happy. Their life is a
+reasonable one. And man must gain his living like the animals do, only with
+this great difference, that if he should attempt this alone, he will
+perish. So he must labour for the good of all, not merely for himself.</p>
+
+<p>I had not helped others. My life for thirty years had been that of a
+mere parasite. I had been contented to remain ignorant of the reason why I
+lived at all.</p>
+
+<p>There is a supreme will in the universe. Some one makes the universal
+life his secret care. To know what that supreme will is, we must obey it
+implicitly. No reproaches against their masters come from the simple
+workers who do just what is required of them, though we are in the habit of
+regarding them as brutes. We, on the contrary, who think ourselves wise,
+consume the goods of our master while we do nothing willingly that he
+prescribes. We think that it would be stupid for us to do so.</p>
+
+<p>What does such conduct imply? Simply that our master is stupid, or that
+we have no master.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--Feeling Versus Reason</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Thus I was led at last to the conclusion that knowledge based on reason
+is fallacious, and that the knowledge of truth can be secured only by
+living. I had come to feel that I must live a real, not a parasitical life,
+and that the meaning of life could be perceived only by observation of the
+combined lives of the great human community.</p>
+
+<p>The feelings of my mind during all these experiences and observations
+were mingled with a heart-torment which I can only describe as a searching
+after God. This search was a feeling rather than a course of reasoning. For
+it came from my heart, and was actually opposed to my way of thinking. Kant
+had shown the impossibility of proving the existence of God, yet I still
+hoped to find Him, and I still addressed Him in prayer. Yet I did not find
+Him whom I sought.</p>
+
+<p>At times I contended against the reasoning of Kant and Schopenhauer, and
+argued that causation is not in the same category with thought and space
+and time. I argued that if I existed, there was a cause of my being, and
+that cause was the cause of all causes. Then I pondered the idea that the
+cause of all things is what is called God, and with all my powers I strove
+to attain a sense of the presence of this cause.</p>
+
+<p>Directly I became conscious of a power over me I felt a possibility of
+living. Then I asked myself what was this cause, and what was my relation
+to what I called God? Simply the old familiar answer occurred to me, that
+God is the creator, the giver of all. Yet I was dissatisfied and fearful,
+and the more I prayed, the more convinced I was that I was not heard. In my
+despair I cried aloud for mercy, but no one had mercy on me, and I felt as
+if life stagnated within me.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the conviction kept recurring that I must have appeared in this
+world with some motive on the part of some one who had sent me into it. If
+I had been sent here, who sent me? I had not been like a fledgling flung
+out of a nest to perish. Some one had cared for me, had loved me. Who was
+it? Again came the same answer, God. He knew and saw my fear, my despair,
+and so I passed from the consideration of the existence of God, which was
+proved, on to that of our relation towards him as our Redeemer through His
+Son. But I felt this to be a thing apart from me and from the world, and
+this God vanished like melting ice from my eyes. Again I was left in
+despair. I felt there was nothing left but to put an end to my life; yet I
+knew that I should never do this.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did moods of joy and despair come and go, till one day, when I was
+listening to the sounds in a forest, and was still on that day in the early
+springtide seeking after God in my thoughts, a flash of joy illumined my
+soul. I realised that the conception of God was not God Himself. I felt
+that I had only truly lived when I believed in God. God is life. Live to
+seek God and life will not be without Him. The light that then shone never
+left me. Thus I was saved from self-destruction. Gradually I felt the glow
+and strength of life return to me. I renounced the life of my own class,
+because it was unreal, and its luxurious superfluity rendered comprehension
+of life impossible. The simple men around me, the working classes, were the
+real Russian people. To them I turned. They made the meaning of life clear.
+It may thus be expressed:--</p>
+
+<p>Each of us is so created by God that he may ruin or save his soul. To
+save his soul, a man must live after God's word by humility, charity, and
+endurance, while renouncing all the pleasures of life. This is for the
+common people the meaning of the whole system of faith, traditionally
+delivered to them from the past and administered to them by the pastors of
+the Church.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="PASQUALE_VILLARI"></a>PASQUALE VILLARI</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="The_Life_of_Girolamo_Savonarola"></a>The Life of Girolamo
+Savonarola</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> Pasquale Villari was born October 3, 1827, at Naples. At
+the age of twenty he produced his first literary effort, a Liberal
+manifesto against Neapolitan Bourbonism, which necessitated his flight from
+his native city. He retreated to Florence and there wrote his work on
+"Savonarola," which at once achieved fame and was translated into French,
+German, and English. His next great book was his "Macchiavelli." Villari
+had been appointed Professor of History at Nice, but left that city for a
+similar position at Florence. He entered political life in 1862, and has
+sat as a Parliamentary Deputy several times. In 1884 he was made senator,
+and in 1891 he was minister of public instruction in the Rudini Cabinet.
+Villari's essays on Dante are much esteemed. His treatise on "The First Two
+Centuries of Florentine History" is considered a standard work. All his
+books have been translated into our language by his English wife, Linda
+Villari, who is herself an accomplished authoress. </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--1452-1494</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>The House of Savonarola derived its ancient origin from the city of
+Padua. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the family removed to
+Ferrara where, on September 21, 1452, the subject of this biography,
+Girolamo Savonarola, first saw the light. He was the third of seven
+children of his parents. The lad became the favourite of his grandfather,
+Michele, who wished to see him become a great physician, and devoted most
+assiduous care on the task of training his intellect. But unfortunately the
+grandfather soon passed away, and Girolamo's studies were then directed by
+his father, who began to instruct him in philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>The natural sciences were then only branches of philosophy, and the
+latter, though employed as preliminary to the study of medicine, was purely
+scholastic. The books which came into the hands of the young Savonarola
+were the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Arabic commentaries on
+Aristotle. He was specially fascinated with the works of St. Thomas, but
+besides literature he studied music. He also composed verses.</p>
+
+<p>All particulars, however, of Savonarola's boyhood are unfortunately
+lacking. But we can form a vivid idea of the surroundings which must have
+influenced him. Ferrara was then the splendid capital of the House of Este,
+with 100,000 inhabitants and a court which was one of the first in Italy,
+and was continually visited by princes, emperors, and popes. The lad must
+have witnessed gorgeous pageants, like the two which occurred on visits of
+Pope Pius II., in 1459 and 1460. But during all this period Savonarola was
+entirely absorbed in studying the Scriptures and St. Thomas Aquinas,
+allowing himself no recreation save playing sad music on his lute, or
+writing verses expressing, not without force and simplicity, the griefs of
+his heart.</p>
+
+<p>The contrasts that the youth witnessed between the magnificence
+ostentatiously displayed and the evidences of tyranny in palaces and
+castles in whose dungeons were immured numerous victims, clanking their
+chains, made indelible impressions on his mind. Conducted once by his
+parents to the ducal palace at Ferrara, he firmly refused ever to enter its
+doors again. With singular spiritual fervour in one so young, Savonarola
+surrendered his whole heart and soul to religious sentiments and exercises.
+To him worldly life, as he saw all Ferrara absorbed in its gaieties, became
+utterly repellent, and a sermon to which he listened from an Augustinian
+friar determined him to adopt the monastic life.</p>
+
+<p>April 24, 1475, when his parents were absent from home attending the
+festival of St. George, he ran away to Bologna and presented himself at the
+Monastery of St. Dominic, begging that he might be admitted for the most
+menial service. He was instantly received, and at once began to prepare for
+his novitiate. In this retreat he submitted himself to the severest
+penances and discipline and displayed such excessive zeal and devotion as
+to win the admiration of the monks, who at times believed him to be rapt in
+a holy trance.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II.--1475-1481</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Savonarola's sojourn at Bologna in the Dominican Monastery lasted for
+seven years, during which his spirit was occupied not only with faith and
+prayer, but with deep meditation on the miserable condition of the Church.
+His soul was stirred to wrathful indignation. The shocking corruption of
+the Papacy, dating from the death of Pius II. in 1464, was to reach its
+climax under Alexander VI. The avarice of Paul II. was soon noted by all
+the world, and so boundless was the profligacy of his successor, Sixtus
+IV., that no deed was too scandalous for him to commit.</p>
+
+<p>The state of Italy as well as of the Church was miserable, and the soul
+of the young monk was filled with horror-stricken grief, relieved only by
+study and prayer. He had been much occupied in instructing the novices, but
+now he was promoted to the function of preacher. In 1481 he was sent by his
+superiors to preach in Ferrara. Nothing is known of the effect of the
+sermons he delivered at that time and place. Savonarola had not yet
+developed his gifts of oratory. He was driven from Ferrara by an outbreak
+of war with the Venetians, and repaired to Florence, where, in the
+Monastery of St. Mark the brightest as well as the saddest years of his
+life were to be spent. The Monastery contained the first public library
+established in Italy, which was kept in excellent order by the monks.</p>
+
+<p>Savonarola was half intoxicated with joy during his first days in
+Florence. He was charmed by the soft lines of the Tuscan hills and the
+beauty of the Tuscan speech. Lorenzo the Magnificent had been ruling
+Florence for many years and was then at the climacteric of his fame. Under
+his sway everything appeared to prosper. Enemies had been imprisoned or
+banished, and factions had ceased to distract the city. Lorenzo's shameless
+licentiousness was condoned by reason of his brilliancy, his patronage of
+art and literature, and his lavish public entertainments.</p>
+
+<p>Greek scholars, driven westward by the fall of Constantinople, sought
+refuge at the Florentine court. The fine arts flourished and a Platonic
+Academy was established. It was even proposed that the Pope should canonise
+Plato as a saint. In fact that period witnessed the inauguration of modern
+culture.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--1481-1490</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>After the first few days in Florence, Savonarola again began to
+experience the feeling of isolation. For he speedily detected the unbelief
+and frivolity under the surface of the intellectual culture of the people.
+Even in St. Mark's Monastery there was no real religion. Savonarola was
+soon invited to preach the Lenten sermons in St. Lorenzo. His discourses
+produced no special effect, for the Florentines preferred preachers who
+indulged in Pagan quotations and rhetorical elegancies rather than in
+expatiating in the precepts of Christianity. But a stirring event was at
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Savonarola was sent by his superiors to Reggio to attend a Chapter of
+the Dominicans. During the discussion he was suddenly impelled to rise to
+his feet and to plunge into a powerful declamation against the corruptions
+of the Church and the clergy which transfixed his hearers with
+astonishment. This outburst was a revelation of his extraordinary powers.
+It instantly secured his fame and from that moment many sought his
+acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>Savonarola's mind from that moment became strangely excited and it is
+not surprising that he should have seen many visions. He on one occasion
+saw the heavens open. A panorama of the calamities of the Church passed
+before him and he heard a voice charging him to proclaim them to the
+people. In that year, 1484, Pope Sixtus died. The election of his
+successor, Innocent VIII. destroyed the hopes of honest men. For the new
+Pope no longer disguised his children under the appellation of nephews, but
+openly acknowledged them as his sons, conferring on them the title of
+princes.</p>
+
+<p>We may imagine the storms of emotion excited in the soul of Savonarola.
+Fortunately, he was sent to preach Lenten sermons at San Gimignano, the
+"City of the Grey Towers" in the Siennese hills. Here he found his true
+vocation. His words flowed freely and were eloquent and effective. Next he
+was sent to Brescia, where his predictions of coming terrors and his
+exhortations to repentance produced a profound impression. During the sack
+of that same city in 1512 by the fierce soldiers of Gaston de Foix, when
+6,000 citizens were slain, the stricken people vividly remembered the
+Apocalyptic denunciations and predictions of the preacher from Ferrara.</p>
+
+<p>Through the wonderful success of these Lenten sermons the name of
+Savonarola became known throughout Italy, and he no longer felt uncertain
+as to his proper mission. Yet, the more popular he became the greater was
+his humility and the more ardent was his devotion to prayer. He seemed when
+engaged in prayer frequently to lapse into a trance, and tradition even
+alleges that at such times a bright halo was seen to encircle his head.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--1491</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Returning to Florence, Savonarola by his Lenten sermons in 1491 drew
+immense crowds to the Duomo. From that moment he became the paramount power
+in the pulpit. His vivid imagery and his predictions of coming troubles
+seemed to produce a magical effect on the minds of the people. But this
+growing influence was a source of considerable vexation to Lorenzo de'
+Medici and his friends. Savonarola vehemently denounced the greed of the
+clergy and their neglect of spiritual life for the sake of mere external
+ceremonialism, and he with equal insistence inveighed against the
+corruption of public manners. As Lorenzo was already considered a tyrant by
+many of the citizens, and as he was universally charged with having
+corrupted the magistrates and appropriated the public and private funds, it
+was generally inferred that Savonarola had had the audacity to make
+allusion to him.</p>
+
+<p>This only enhanced the Friar's reputation and in July, 1491, he was
+elected Prior of St. Mark's. The office made him both more prominent than
+before and also more independent. He showed this to be the case by at once
+refusing to go according to custom to do homage to the Magnificent,
+declaring that he owed his election to God alone, and to God only would he
+vow obedience. Lorenzo was deeply offended, yet he judged it discreet
+rather to win the new Prior over by kindness than to wage war with him.</p>
+
+<p>The Seignior only deepened Savonarola's contempt by sending rich gifts
+to the convent and by sending five of the chief citizens to him in order to
+induce him to modify the strain of his preaching. The gifts were
+immediately distributed among the poor, and Savonarola in a pulpit allusion
+observed that a faithful dog does not cease barking in his master's defence
+because a bone is flung him. To the five citizens, who hinted to the Prior
+that he might be sent into exile, he replied that they should bid Lorenzo
+do penance for his sins, for God was no respecter of persons and did not
+spare the princes of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful was the effect of Savonarola's preaching on the corrupt and
+pagan society of Florence. His natural, spontaneous, heart-stirring
+eloquence, with its exalted imagery and outbursts of righteous indignation,
+was entirely unprecedented in that era of pedantry and simulation of the
+classic and heathen oratory. The scholastic jargon indulged in by the
+preachers of the time was utterly unintelligible to the common people.
+Savonarola's voice was the only one that addressed the multitude in
+familiar and fascinating tones and in an accent that evinced true affection
+for the people. They knew that he alone fought for truth and was fervently
+devoted to goodness. Thus he was the one truly eloquent preacher of the
+time, who restored pulpit preaching to its pristine honour, and he well
+deserves to be styled the first orator of modern times.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>V.--1492-1494</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>A wasting disease from which Lorenzo suffered had by the beginning of
+April, 1492, made such inroads as to end all hopes of his recovery. The
+Magnificent turned his thoughts to religion and suddenly asked to confess
+to Savonarola. Though astonished at the request, the Prior acceded to it
+and found Lorenzo in great agitation, which he sought to calm by reminding
+the sick man of the goodness and mercy of God.</p>
+
+<p>A painful scene ensued. Savonarola added that three things were needful.
+First, a living faith in God's mercy. Secondly, Lorenzo must restore all
+his ill-gotten wealth, or at least command his sons to do it in his name.
+Lastly, he must restore liberty to the people of Florence. The sick man,
+collecting all his remaining strength, angrily turned his back on his
+Confessor, who at once left his presence. On April 8, 1492, the
+Magnificent, in an agony of remorse, breathed his last. On July 25 of the
+same year Pope Innocent VIII. expired.</p>
+
+<p>The next Pope, Alexander VI., was notorious for his avarice and his
+profligacy. The announcement of his elevation to the papal chair was
+received throughout Italy with dismay. The worst apprehensions were soon
+fulfilled, for the Pope proved to be guilty of shocking extortion, the
+object of which was to provide more lavishly for his dissolute
+children.</p>
+
+<p>This deplorable state of things caused men to look wistfully to
+Savonarola. The times he had foretold seemed to be at hand, and the
+excitement was intensified by two visions which he declared had been
+manifested to him as celestial revelations. He had seen a sword in the sky
+and had heard voices proclaiming mercy to the righteous and retribution to
+the wicked.</p>
+
+<p>In the other vision a black cross hung over the city of Rome, stretching
+its arms over the whole earth. On it was written, "The Cross of God's
+wrath." But from Jerusalem rose a golden cross, inscribed, "The Cross of
+God's compassion." Discontent was growing in Florence. The insolence and
+the rapacity of Pietro de' Medici increased. In the autumn of that year
+Savonarola delivered a famous course of sermons on Noah's Ark, warning all
+to take refuge from the coming flood in the mystical Ark of mercy. The
+flood came indeed, for suddenly all Florence was startled as if by a
+thunderclap by the news that a foreign army was pouring over the Alps for
+the conquest of Italy. The terror was overwhelming. Italy was unprepared,
+for the princes had no efficient armies for resistance.</p>
+
+<p>The invader was the new King of France, the young and adventurous
+Charles VIII. His army was a model to all Europe in the art of war. It
+possessed weapons of the latest invention and its main strength lay in its
+splendid infantry. Florence was entered without a blow, and King Charles
+demanded as a ransom a far larger sum than the Republic could pay. He
+remained day after day in the city, showing no inclination to depart. Then
+was manifested a proof of the wonderful influence of Savonarola's
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>The Prior being earnestly entreated by the citizens to ask the French
+king to depart, he readily undertook the mission and presented himself to
+Charles, who, surrounded by his barons, received him cordially and listened
+graciously to his proposal. Savonarola admonished him not to bring ruin on
+the city and the anger of the Lord on himself.</p>
+
+<p>The Prior's overtures were completely successful, for on November 28,
+the king departed with his army. And now all was changed in Florence. The
+partisans of the Medici had vanished magically and Savonarola ruled the
+city at the head of the popular party. He speedily proposed a new form of
+government suggesting as the best model, a Grand Council like that of
+Venice. The new Government was formed of a Grand Council and a Council of
+Eighty answering to an Assembly of the People and a Senate. All the
+proposals of the Prior were adopted, and laws were framed almost in his own
+words.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>VI.--1495-1497</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Germs of civil discord were not lacking, and these soon developed so as
+to divide Florence into factions, the two chief of these being the Whites,
+who were favourable to popular liberty, and the Greys, who were adherents
+of the Medici. The latter were dangerous and treacherous enemies of
+Savonarola and of the Republic. For a time the Prior's preaching confounded
+his foes, for it completely changed the aspect of the city. The women cast
+off their jewels and dressed simply; young profligates were transformed
+into sober, religious men, the churches were filled with people at prayer,
+and the Bible was diligently read.</p>
+
+<p>Now came danger from without. The departure of the French had endangered
+the security of Florence. The Pope and Venice desired the reinstatement of
+the fallen tyrant Pietro de' Medici, and he prepared to attack the city.
+But he was foiled by the energy to which the Prior roused the Florentines
+for measures of defence. Meantime, Savonarola once more displayed his noble
+independence by spurning the offer on the part of the Pope of a Cardinal's
+hat. And terrible in their vehemence and audacity were his denunciations
+against the vices of Rome, delivered in his Lenten sermons of 1496.</p>
+
+<p>In his usual strain, but with increasing power, Savonarola graphically
+and vividly described the woes of Italy, as though he were gifted with
+prophetic vision. One of his sermons was interdicted by the Pope, but the
+preacher modified nothing and defied the Vatican. And now, while the
+enthusiasm of his followers was developing into fanaticism, the hatred of
+his enemies was approaching a climax, and the war was waxing furious.</p>
+
+<p>The fame of this marvellous preacher was now extending throughout the
+world by means of his printed sermons. Even the Sultan of Turkey commanded
+them to be translated into Turkish for his own study. Of course the
+individual aim of Savonarola was simply to be the regenerator of religion.
+The Florentines, however, adulated him as the real founder of the free
+Republic. Hence they displayed immense ardour in defending him against the
+Pope, seeing that thus they were upholding their own freedom, because the
+Pope was aiming at reinstating the Medici in Florence.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope had hoped that the Prior would moderate his tone, but this was
+only more aggressive than ever, and threatening messages arrived from the
+Vatican. Attempts by his friends, some of them of high and influential
+position, to defend him, only the more enraged Pope Alexander Borgia. He
+summoned a consistory of fourteen Dominican theologians who were ordered to
+investigate Savonarola's conduct and doctrine. The strange issue was he was
+charged with having been the cause of all the misfortunes that had befallen
+Pietro de' Medici.</p>
+
+<p>After Lent the Prior went to preach a course of sermons at Prato, and on
+his return to Florence he delivered a sermon in the Hall of the Greater
+Council in the presence of all the magistrates and leading citizens of the
+city, in which he openly and courageously defied all the wrath of Alexander
+Borgia. Then he once more set himself to the work of serving the Republic,
+though, as the sequel shows, he was fated to meet with a base reward.</p>
+
+<p>Commerce and industry had been paralysed in Florence by the incessant
+commotions of past years. The immense sums paid to the French king had
+together with sums spent on war drained the public resources and lowered
+the credit of the Republic. And now famine was threatened, for the people
+in the rural districts were pinched with hunger. The starving peasantry
+began to flock in great numbers into the city, so that the misery
+increased. Terror was occasioned by a few cases of death from plague.
+Florence was at war with Pisa, but without success, for many of her
+mercenary soldiers were deserting and the forces besieging Pisa were
+dwindling for lack of supplies.</p>
+
+<p>Fresh adversities were in store for the Florentines. Though the rumours
+of a second invasion of Italy by King Charles proved unfounded, for he
+renounced all idea of returning, new enemies arose. The Emperor Maximilian
+was marching towards the frontier, and the Pope felt encouraged to enter
+into open war with the Florentines. His forces and the troops from Sienna
+actually attempted an incursion into the territories of the Republic, but
+they suffered repeated repulses, and at length were put to flight. But this
+conflict weakened still more the forces before Pisa, at which city
+Maximilian arrived with 1,000 foot soldiers, receiving a cordial welcome
+from the Pisans.</p>
+
+<p>The Florentines did not quail before the storm. Their courage never
+failed. They collected fresh stores and sent abundant provisions to the
+camp. But the hatred of the Pope grew more intense, especially against
+Savonarola, who, however, had not returned to the pulpit, being actuated by
+a wish not to accentuate the situation. For the general misery in Florence
+daily increased and the plague was extending its ravages. The hospitals
+were full. And the faction against Savonarola, named the Arrabbiati, seemed
+positively to regard the distress with glee, for these fanatics went about
+crying aloud, "At last we can all perceive how we have been deceived! This
+is the happiness that the Friar predicted for Florence!" Moreover they
+proclaimed that now was the time to overthrow the Government.</p>
+
+<p>But the Seigniory entreated Savonarola to come forth again from his
+retirement. He entered the pulpit on October 28, but only to look on people
+whose faces were marked by distress and terror. Yet his sermons
+administered such comfort to the citizens who in the majority still adhered
+to him, though the Arrabbiati mocked at his words. Temporary relief was at
+hand, for suddenly, as if by a miracle, ships arrived from Marseilles
+bringing long-expected reinforcements and supplies of corn. The people were
+frantic with joy and solemn thanksgivings were offered in the churches.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope was now designing measures to entrap the Prior. A new
+Vicar-General was appointed with power which would invest him with such
+authority over Savonarola that the latter would lose his independence. But
+he displayed no disposition to yield to Rome. On the contrary, he delivered
+in the Duomo those eight magnificent, fearless, and immortal sermons which
+intensified the bitter struggle with Rome, while for the time being they
+made the great Reformer's name and authority again ascendant, and rendered
+the popular party once more master of the situation, notwithstanding the
+strategy of the Pope and the machinations of the factions.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>VII.--1497-1498</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>During Lent, 1497, Savonarola continued his course of sermons on
+Ezekiel, and in these discourses he said much that bore on the conflict
+with Rome, now daily growing more virulent. He inveighed against the
+temporal wealth of the Church and launched many accusations against Rome.
+The impression produced was the deeper because of the general presentiment
+in men's minds of the coming uprising of Christendom against the
+abominations of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Savonarola now daily expected to be excommunicated and he was determined
+to defy the Pope. The plague increased in Florence and the Seigniory
+prohibited preaching in the churches for a time, but Savonarola persisted
+in preaching on Ascension Day. The factions were infuriated. They denied
+the pulpit with filth and draped it with the skin of an ass, and threatened
+the life of the Prior. His friends implored him not to preach at the risk
+of his life. He refused to yield, but a fearful riot took place in the
+church which was talked of through all Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The storm was now gathering. The fury of the factions increased, as also
+did the wrath of the Pope. At length, on May 13, the excommunicatory brief
+was despatched from Rome, directed against a "certain Fra Girolamo
+Savonarola who had disseminated pernicious doctrines to the scandal and
+grief of simple souls." The event threw all Florence into confusion. The
+Arrabbiati were triumphant. But the city was filled with lamentation and
+disorder. The rabble rejoiced. The churches were quickly deserted; the
+taverns were filled; immorality returned as if magically; and again women
+attired in dazzling finery paraded the streets. In less than a month, so
+rapid was the transformation, Florence seemed to have relapsed into the
+days of the Magnificent, and piety and patriotism were alike forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, the Prior was calm and composed and took measures for his
+defence. He wrote an Epistle against surreptitious excommunication,
+addressed to all Christians beloved of God. He followed it by a second
+letter, also breathing courage and defiance. A conflict ensued. The
+Arrabbiati sent accusations against the Prior to Rome, while the Seigniory
+sought to vindicate him, most of the members, newly elected, being his
+friends. The plague grew so terrible that on some days there were a hundred
+deaths. In the autumn it abated, and gradually disappeared. Savonarola's
+energy in fighting the pestilence was unwearied throughout.</p>
+
+<p>The Prior soon commenced to preach again. On Christmas Day he put an end
+to all suspense as to his policy by thrice performing high mass, afterwards
+leading his monks in solemn procession through St. Mark's Square. He
+continued to issue new tracts and to preach regularly. But on February 26
+the Pope announced that Savonarola's preaching should be tolerated no
+longer. The Prior was conscious that the end was near. His last sermon was
+delivered, after he had preached in Florence for eight years, on March 18,
+1498. His adherents were terrified, and seemed to vanish.</p>
+
+<p>On April 8, Palm Sunday, the Arrabbiati attacked St. Mark's Convent.
+Savonarola was seized and bound by a brutal rabble, and he and two of his
+monks were lodged in prison. Cruel proceedings followed. For a whole month
+he was brought day after day to examination and he was repeatedly subjected
+to torture. The Pope's Commissioners were never able to extract from him
+any confession of guilt. Savonarola was from first to last unflinchingly
+consistent with himself.</p>
+
+<p>On May 22 sentence of death was passed on Savonarola, on Fra Silvestro,
+and on Fra Domenico. They prepared to face death firmly and well. The
+tragedy was enacted next morning. Three platforms had been erected on the
+steps of the Ringhiera, on which sat the Bishop of Vasona, the Apostolic
+Commissioners, and the Gonfaliero with the Council of Eight. On a gibbet in
+the form of a cross hung three chains, and combustibles were piled beneath.
+Sad and solemn was the silence of the vast throng assembled in the Piazza,
+excepting where members of the factions were raging like wild beasts and
+venting indecent blasphemies.</p>
+
+<p>The three friars were publicly stripped of their monkish robes and
+degraded. Tranquilly they mounted the scaffold, the dregs of the populace
+assailing them with vile words. But silence reigned at the moment of the
+execution. As soon as life was extinct the flames were kindled beneath the
+bodies of the three victims. The tragic and awful spectacle elicited bitter
+grief amongst the people on the one side, while cries of wild exultation
+were raised on the other.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOHN_WESLEY"></a>JOHN WESLEY</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Journal1"></a>Journal</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> John Wesley, who was born June 17, 1703, at Epworth, and
+who died in London March 2, 1791, was the son of a Lincolnshire rector. His
+history covers practically the whole of the eighteenth century, of which he
+was one of the most typical personalities, as he was certainly the most
+strenuous figure. His career was absolutely without parallel, for John
+Wesley, as an itinerating clergyman, and as the propagator of that mission
+of Methodism which he founded, travelled on his preaching tours for forty
+years, mostly on horseback. He paid more turnpike fees than any man that
+ever bestrode a horse, and 8,000 miles constituted his annual record for
+many a year, during each of which he preached on the average 5,000 times.
+John Wesley received a classical education at Charterhouse and Christ
+Church, Oxford, and all through his wonderful life of endurance and
+adventure, of devotion and consecration, remained a scholar and a
+gentleman. His "Journal" is valuable for its pictures of the England of his
+day, as well as for his own simple and unpretending record of his
+experiences. Wesley made religion his business and incorporated it into the
+national life. Of him Mr. Augustine Birrell says:--"No man lived nearer the
+centre than John Wesley. Neither Clive nor Pitt, neither Mansfield nor
+Johnson. You cannot cut him out of our national life. No single figure
+influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts. No other
+man did such a life's work for England." </p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Holy Club</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>In November 1729, at which time I came to reside at Oxford, Mr. Morgan,
+my brother, myself, and one more, agreed to spend three or four evenings in
+a week together. Our design was to read over the classics, which we had
+before read in private, on common nights, and on Sunday some book in
+divinity. In the summer following, Mr. M. told me he had called at the
+gaol, to see a man who was condemned for killing his wife; and that, from
+the talk he had with one of the debtors, he verily believed it would do
+much good, if any one would be at the pains of now and then speaking with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>This he so frequently repeated, that on August 24, 1730, my brother and
+I walked with him to the castle. We were so well satisfied with our
+conversation there, that we agreed to go thither once or twice a week;
+which we had not done long, before he desired me to go with him to see a
+poor sick woman in the town.</p>
+
+<p>I next proposed to Mr. Gerard, the Bishop of Oxford's chaplain, who took
+care of any prisoners condemned to die, that I intended to preach in the
+prison once a month, if the bishop approved. Our design was approved and
+permission was granted. Soon after a gentleman of Merton College, who was
+one of our little company, now consisting of five persons, acquainted us
+that he had been much rallied the day before for being a member of the Holy
+Club, and that it was become a common topic of mirth at his college, where
+they had found out several of our customs, to which we were ourselves utter
+strangers.</p>
+
+<p>I corresponded with my father, and from him received encouragement, so
+that we still continued to meet as usual, and to do what service we could
+to the prisoners, and to two or three poor families in the town.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>A Missioner to Georgia</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1735. Oct. 14. Mr. Benjamin Ingham, of Queen's College, Oxford; Mr.
+Charles Delamotte, son of a London merchant, my brother Charles, and
+myself, took boat for Gravesend, in order to embark for Georgia. Our end in
+leaving our country was singly this, to save our souls; to live wholly to
+the glory of God. In the afternoon we found the "Simmonds" off Gravesend,
+and immediately went on board.</p>
+
+<p>Oct. 17. I began to learn German, in order to converse with the 26
+Germans on board. On Sunday I preached extempore and then administered the
+Lord's supper to seven communicants.</p>
+
+<p>Oct. 20. Believing the denying ourselves might be helpful, we wholly
+left off the use of flesh and wine, and confined ourselves to vegetable
+food, chiefly rice and biscuit.</p>
+
+<p>1736. Feb. 5. After a passage in which storms were frequent, between two
+and three in the afternoon, God brought us all safe into the Savannah
+river. We cast anchor near Tybee Island, where the groves of pines along
+the shore made an agreeable prospect, showing, as it were, the bloom of
+spring in the depth of winter.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday, March 7. I entered upon my ministry at Savannah. I do here bear
+witness against myself, that when I saw the number of people crowding into
+the church, the deep attention with which they received the word, and the
+seriousness that sat on all their faces, I could hardly believe that the
+greater part of them would hereafter trample under foot that word, and say
+all manner of evil falsely against him that spake it.</p>
+
+<p>March 30. Mr. Delamotte and I began to try, whether life might not be as
+well sustained by one sort as by a variety of food. We chose to make the
+experiment with bread, and were never more vigorous and healthy than while
+we tasted nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>June 30. I hoped a door was opened for my main design, which was to
+preach the gospel to the Indians, and I purposed to go immediately to the
+Choctaws, the least polished, that is, the least corrupted of the tribes.
+On my informing Lieutenant-Governor Oglethorpe of our wish, he objected,
+alleging not only danger from the French, but also the inexpediency of
+leaving Savannah without a minister. These objections I related to our
+brethren, who were all of opinion, "We ought not to go yet."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Warrant for Wesley's Arrest</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>July 3. Preaching at Charlestown, immediately after communion I
+mentioned to Mrs. Williamson (Mr. Causton's niece) some things I thought
+reprovable in her behaviour. At this she appeared extremely angry.</p>
+
+<p>Aug. 7. I repelled Mrs. Williamson from the holy communion. And next day
+Mr. Recorder, of Savannah, issued out a warrant for my arrest. Mr. Jones,
+the constable, served the warrant, and carried me before Mr. Bailiff Parker
+and Mr. Recorder. I was told that I must appear at the next court. Mr.
+Causton came to my house and declared that the affront had been offered to
+him; that he espoused the cause of his niece; that he was ill-used, and
+that he would have satisfaction if it was to be had in this world.</p>
+
+<p>To many persons Mr. Causton declared that "Mr. Wesley had repelled Sophy
+from holy communion purely out of revenge, because he had made proposals of
+marriage to her which she had rejected, and married Mr. Williamson." But
+when the case came on the grand jury, having heard the charge, declared
+themselves thoroughly persuaded that it was an artifice of Mr. Causton's
+designed "rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley, than to free the
+colony from religious tyranny, as he had been pleased to term it."</p>
+
+<p>Oct. 7. I consulted my friends whether God did not call me to return to
+England. I had found no possibility of instructing the Indians. They were
+unanimous that I ought to go, but not yet. But subsequently they agreed
+with me that the time was come.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>In London Again</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1738. Feb. 1. Landed at Deal. It is now two years and almost four months
+since I left my native country. After reading prayers and explaining a
+portion of Scripture to a large company at the inn, I left Deal, and came
+in the evening to Feversham. I here read prayers and explained the second
+lesson to a few of those who were called Christians, but were indeed more
+savage in their behaviour than the wildest Indians I have yet met with.</p>
+
+<p>Feb. 26. Sunday. I preached at six in the morning at St. Lawrence's,
+London; at ten, in St. Catherine Cree's; and in the afternoon at St.
+John's, Wapping. I believe it pleased God to bless the first sermon most,
+because it gave most offence.</p>
+
+<p>March 4. I found my brother at Oxford, and with him Peter B&ouml;hler;
+by whom, in the great hand of God, I was, on Sunday, the 5th, clearly
+convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are
+saved. Immediately it struck into my mind, "Leave off preaching. How can
+you preach to others who have not faith yourself?" I asked B&ouml;hler
+whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered, "By no
+means." I asked, "But what can I preach?" He said, "Preach faith till you
+have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, Monday, 6, I began preaching this new doctrine, though my
+soul started back from the work. The first person to whom I offered
+salvation through faith alone, was a prisoner under sentence of death.</p>
+
+<p>On Tuesday 25, I spoke clearly and fully at Blendon to Mr. Delamotte's
+family of the nature and fruits of faith. Mr. Broughton and my brother were
+there. Mr. Broughton's great objection was, he could never think that I had
+not faith, who had done and suffered such things. My brother was very
+angry, and told me I did not know what mischief I had done by talking thus.
+And, indeed, it did please God to kindle a fire which I trust shall never
+be extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>On May 1 our little society began, which afterwards met in Fetter Lane.
+May 3. My brother had a long and particular conversation with Peter
+B&ouml;hler. And it now pleased God to open his eyes; so that he also saw
+clearly what was the nature of that one true living faith, thereby alone,
+"through grace we are saved."</p>
+
+<p>Sunday 7. I preached at St. Lawrence's in the morning; and afterwards at
+St. Catherine Cree's. I was enabled to speak strong words at both; and was
+therefore the less surprised at being informed I was not to preach any more
+in either of those churches. I was likewise after preaching the next Sunday
+at St. Ann's, Aldersgate, and the following Sunday at St. John's, Wapping
+and at St. Bennett's, Paul's Wharf, that at these churches I must preach no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>1739. March 28. A letter from Mr. Whitefield, and another from Mr.
+Seward, pressed me to come to Bristol. I reached Bristol March 31 and met
+Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarcely at first reconcile myself to the
+strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me the example, for
+all my life I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it
+had not been done in a church; but I now proclaimed in the highways the
+glad tidings of salvation speaking in the open air to about three thousand
+people.</p>
+
+<p>May 9. We took possession of a piece of ground in the Horse Fair,
+Bristol, where it was designed to build a room large enough to contain both
+the societies of Nicholas and Baldwin Street; and on May 12 the first stone
+was laid with thanksgiving. The responsibility of payment I took entirely
+on myself. Money I had not, it is true, nor any human prospect of procuring
+it; but I knew "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Beau Nash Argues with Wesley</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>June 5. There was great expectation at Bath of what a noted man was to
+do to me there. Many appeared surprised and were sinking apace into
+seriousness when their champion came up to me and asked by what authority I
+did these things. I replied, "By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to
+me by the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his hands on me." He said,
+"This is contrary to the Act of Parliament; this is a conventicle. Besides,
+your preaching frightens people out of their wits."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me leave, Sir, to ask, is not your name Nash?" "My name is Nash."
+An old woman said to him, "You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we take
+care of our souls; and for the food of our souls we come here." He replied
+not a word, but walked away.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>"All the World My Parish"</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>All this time I had many thoughts concerning my manner of ministering;
+but after frequently laying it before the Lord, I could not but adhere to
+what I had some time since written to a friend--"I look on all the world as
+my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part I am of it, I judge it
+meet to declare to all who are willing to hear, the glad tidings of
+salvation."</p>
+
+<p>June 14. I went with Mr. Whitefield to Blackheath, where were, I
+believe, 12,000 people. He a little surprised me by desiring me to preach
+in his stead; and I was greatly moved with compassion for the rich that
+were there, to whom I made a particular application. Some of them seemed to
+attend, while others drove away their coaches from so uncouth a
+preacher.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday 24. As I was riding to Rose Green, near Bristol, my horse
+suddenly pitched on his head, and rolled over and over. I received no other
+hurt than a little bruise on my side; which for the present I felt not, but
+preached without pain to seven thousand people.</p>
+
+<p>Sept. 16. I preached at Moorfields to about ten thousand, and at
+Kennington Common to near twenty thousand. At both places I described the
+real difference between what is generally called Christianity and the real
+old Christianity, which under the new name of Methodism is now everywhere
+spoken against.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The Colliers of Kingswood</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Nov. 27. Few persons have lived in the west of England who have not
+heard of the colliers of Kingswood, famous for neither regarding God nor
+man. The scene is changed. Kingswood does not now, as a year ago, resound
+with cursing and blasphemy. Peace and love reign there since the preaching
+of the Gospel in the spring. Great numbers of the people are gentle, mild,
+and easy to be entreated.</p>
+
+<p>1745. July 3. At Gwennap, in Cornwall, I was seized for a soldier. As I
+was reading my text a man rode up and cried "Seize the preacher for his
+Majesty's service." As the people would not do it, he leaped off his horse,
+and caught hold of my cassock, crying, "I take you to serve his Majesty."
+He walked off with me and talked with me for some time, but then let me
+go.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>In Ireland</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1748. April 9. I preached in Connaught, a few miles from Athlone. Many
+heard, but, I doubt, felt nothing. The Shannon comes within a mile of the
+house where I preached. I think there is not such another river in Europe.
+It is here ten miles wide, though only thirty miles from its source. There
+are many islands in it, once well inhabited, but now mostly desolate. In
+almost every one is a ruined church; in one, the remains of no fewer than
+seven.</p>
+
+<p>1750. May 21. At Bandon the mob burnt me in effigy. Yet, though Dr. B.
+tried to stir up the people against me more and more, and a clergyman, said
+to be in drink, opposed me, and some young gentlemen came on the scene with
+pistols in their hands, I was enabled to preach. God gave me great peace in
+Bandon, in spite of these efforts against me.</p>
+
+<p>May 31. I rode to Rathcormuck. There being a great burying in the
+afternoon, to which people came from all parts, I preached after Mr. Lloyd
+had read the service. I was exceedingly shocked at (what I had only heard
+of before) the Irish howl which followed. It was not a song, as I supposed,
+but a dismal, inarticulate yell, set up at the grave by four shrill-voiced
+women, hired for the purpose. But I saw not one that shed a tear; for that,
+it seems, was not in their bargain.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Clothing French Prisoners</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1759. Oct. 1. At Bristol. I had ridden in about seven months not less
+than 2,400 miles. On Monday, Oct. 15, I went to Knowle, a mile from
+Bristol, to see the French prisoners. About 1,100 were there confined, with
+only a little dirty straw to lie on, so that they died like rotten sheep. I
+was much affected, and after I had preached the sum of &pound;18 was
+contributed immediately, which next day we made up to &pound;24. With this
+we bought linen and woollen cloth, and this was made up into clothing for
+the prisoners. Presently after, the Corporation of Bristol sent a large
+quantity of mattresses and blankets. And it was not long before
+contributions were set on foot in London, and other parts of the country;
+so that I believe that from this time they were pretty well provided with
+the necessaries of life.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Gwennap's Famous Amphitheatre</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1766. Sept. 14. I preached in the natural amphitheatre at Gwennap; far
+the finest I know in the kingdom. It is a round, green hollow, gently
+shelving down, about 50 feet deep; but I suppose it is 200 feet across one
+way, and nearly 300 the other. I believe there were full 20,000 people;
+and, the evening being calm, all could hear.</p>
+
+<p>1770. April 21. I rode slowly on this and the following days through
+Staffordshire and Cheshire to Manchester. In this journey, as well as in
+many others, I observed a mistake that almost universally prevails; and I
+desire all travellers to take good notice of it, which may save them from
+both trouble and danger. Near 30 years ago I was thinking, "How is it that
+no horse ever stumbles while I am reading?" (History, poetry, and
+philosophy I commonly read on horseback, having other employment at other
+times.) No account can possibly be given but this: because then I throw the
+reins on his neck. I then set myself to observe; and I aver, that in riding
+above 100,000 miles I scarce ever remember my horse (except two, that would
+fall head over heels anyway) to fall, or make a considerable stumble, while
+I rode with a slack rein. To fancy, therefore, that a tight rein prevents
+stumbling, is a capital blunder.</p>
+
+<p>1771. Jan. 23. For what cause I know not to this day, my wife set out
+for Newcastle, purposing "never to return." <i>Non eam reliqui: non dimisi:
+non revocabo.</i> (I did not desert her: I did not send her away: I will
+not recall her.)</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>The American War</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1775. In November I published the following letter in Lloyd's "Evening
+Post":</p>
+
+<p>"Sir--I have been seriously asked from what motive I published my
+<i>Calm Address to the American Colonies</i>? I seriously answer, Not to
+get money; not to get preferment; not to please any man living; least of
+all to inflame any; just the contrary. I contributed my mite towards
+putting out the flame that rages. This I have more opportunity to see than
+any man in England. I see with pain to what a height this already rises, in
+every part of the nation. And I see many pouring oil into the flame, by
+crying out, 'How unjustly, how cruelly, the King is using the poor
+Americans; who are only contending for their liberty, and for their legal
+privileges.'</p>
+
+<p>"Now there is no possible way to put out this flame, or hinder its
+rising higher and higher, but to show that the Americans are not used
+either cruelly or unjustly; that they are not injured at all, seeing they
+are not contending for liberty (this they had, even in its full extent,
+both civil and religious); neither for any legal privileges; for they enjoy
+all that their charters grant. But what they contend for is, the illegal
+privilege of being exempt from parliamentary taxation. A privilege this,
+which no charter ever gave to any American colony yet; which no charter can
+give, unless it be confirmed both by King, Lords, and Commons; which in
+fact our Colonies never had; which they never claimed till the present
+reign; and probably they would not have claimed now, had they not been
+incited thereto by letters from England. One of these was read, according
+to the desire of the writer, not only at the Continental Congress but
+likewise in many congregations throughout the Combined Provinces. It
+advised them to seize upon all the King's officers; and exhorted them,
+'Stand valiantly, only for six months, and in that time there will be such
+commotions in England that you may have your own terms.' This being the
+real state of the question, without any colouring or exaggeration, what
+impartial man can either blame the King, or commend the Americans? With
+this view, to quench the fire, by laying the blame where it was due, the
+'Calm Address' was written.</p>
+
+<p>Your humble servant,</p>
+
+<p>JOHN WESLEY."</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>City Road Chapel Begun</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1777. April 21. The day appointed for laying the foundation of the new
+chapel. The rain befriended us much, by keeping away thousands who proposed
+to be there. But there were still such multitudes, that it was with great
+difficulty I got through them, to lay the first stone. Upon this was a
+plate of brass (covered with another stone) on which was engraved, "This
+was laid by Mr. John Wesley, on April 21, 1777." Probably this will be seen
+no more, by any human eye; but will remain there, till the earth and the
+works thereof are burned up.</p>
+
+<p>1778. Dec. 17. Having been many times desired, for near forty years, to
+publish a magazine, I at length complied, and now began to collect
+materials for it. If it once begin, I incline to think it will not end but
+with my life. Just at this time there was a combination among many of the
+postchaise drivers on the Bath road, especially those that drove in the
+night, to deliver their passengers into each other's hands. One driver
+stopped at the spot they had appointed, when another waited to attack the
+chaise. In consequence of this many were robbed; but I had a good Protector
+still. I have travelled all roads, by day and by night, for these forty
+years, and never was interrupted yet.</p>
+
+<p>June 28. I am this day 75 years old; and I do not find myself, blessed
+be God, any weaker than I was at 25. This also hath God wrought.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Attended by Felons</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1779. July 21. When I came to Coventry, I found notice had been given
+for my preaching in the park; but the heavy rain prevented. I sent to the
+Mayor, desiring the use of the town-hall. He refused; but the same day gave
+the use of it to a dancing-master. I then went to the women's market. Many
+soon gathered together and listened with all seriousness. I preached there
+again the next morning, and again in the evening. Then I took coach for
+London. I was nobly attended: behind the coach were ten convicted felons,
+loudly blaspheming and rattling their chains; by my side sat a man with a
+loaded blunderbuss, and another upon the coach.</p>
+
+<p>1780. May 20. In Scotland. I took one more walk through Holyrood House,
+the mansion of ancient kings. But how melancholy an appearance does it make
+now! The stately rooms are dirty as stables; the colours of the tapestry
+are quite faded; several of the pictures are cut and defaced. The roof of
+the royal chapel is fallen in; and the bones of James V., and the once
+beautiful Lord Dankley, are scattered about like those of sheep or oxen.
+Such is human greatness. Is not "a living dog better than a dead lion?"</p>
+
+<p>1782. May 14. Some years ago four factories were set up at Epworth. In
+these a large number of young women and boys and girls were employed. The
+whole conversation of these was profane and loose to the last degree. But
+some of them stumbling in at the prayermeeting were suddenly cut to the
+heart. These never rested till they had gained their companions. The whole
+scene was changed. In three of the factories no more lewdness was found:
+for God had put a new song in their mouth, and blasphemies were turned to
+praise. Those three I visited to-day, and found religion had taken deep
+root in them. No trifling word was heard among them, and they watch over
+each other in love.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>Enters His 80th Year</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>June 26. I preached at Thirsk; 27, at York. Friday, 28, I entered my
+80th year; but, blessed be God, my strength is not "labour and sorrow." I
+find no more pain or bodily infirmities than at 25. This I still impute, 1.
+To the power of God, fitting me for what He calls me to. 2. To my still
+travelling four or five thousand miles a year. 3. To my still sleeping,
+night or day, whenever I want it. 4. To my rising at a set hour. And 5. To
+my constant preaching, particularly in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>1783. Dec. 18. I spent two hours with that great man, Dr. Johnson, who
+is sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.</p>
+
+<p>1784. June 28 (Epworth). To-day I entered on my 82nd year, and found
+myself just as strong to labour, and as fit for any exercise of body and
+mind, as I was 40 years ago. I am as strong at 81 as I was at 21; but
+abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the headache, toothache, and
+other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth.</p>
+
+<p>1785. Jan. 25. I spent two or three hours in the House of Lords. I had
+frequently heard that this was the most venerable assembly in England. But
+how I was disappointed! What is a lord, but a sinner, born to die!</p>
+
+<p>1786. Jan. 24. I was desired to go and hear the King deliver his speech
+in the House of Lords. But how agreeably I was surprised. He pronounced
+every word with exact propriety. I doubt whether there be any other King in
+Europe, that is so just and natural a speaker.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>His 86th Christmas</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>1789. Dec 25. Being Christmas Day, we began the service in the new
+chapel at four in the morning, as usual, where I preached again in the
+evening after having officiated in West Street at the common hour. Sunday,
+27, I preached in St. Luke's, our parish church, to a very numerous
+congregation. So are the tables turned that I have now more invitations to
+preach in churches than I can accept.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h1><a name="JOHN_WOOLMAN"></a>JOHN WOOLMAN</h1>
+
+
+<h2><a name="Journal2"></a>Journal</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p> John Woolman, American Quaker evangelist, author of this
+autobiography, was born in West Jersey in 1720 and followed the trade of a
+tailor. But all his interests lay in the practice of piety, and in the
+uncompromising application of religious Principles to the problems of
+social life. He advocated incessantly two principal reforms--that members
+of the Society of Friends should separate utterly from the possession of
+slaves, and that they should return to their primitive simplicity and
+moderation in the use of worldly things. Like many economists before and
+after him, he saw in luxury, extravagance and ostentation, the true cause
+of all poverty and oppression; and a tract of his entitled "A Word of
+Remembrance and Caution to the Rich," first published in 1793, was
+republished a hundred years later by the Fabian Society. His most important
+treatise, published in 1754, entitled "Some Considerations on the Keeping
+of Negroes," was one of the earliest indications of the growing
+Abolitionist feeling in New England. His voyage across the Atlantic in May
+and Tune, 1772, to visit the English Quakers, was followed by his death
+from small-pox, in the city of York, on October 7 in the same year. The
+"Journal," which is marked by great simplicity and sincerity, was published
+shortly afterwards and has been issued in many subsequent editions.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<h3><i>I.--The Curse of Slavery</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Having reached manhood, I wrought at my trade as a tailor; carefully
+attended meetings for worship and discipline; and found an enlargement of
+gospel love in my mind, and therein a concern to visit friends in the
+settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia and other parts. I expressed it to my
+beloved friend, Isaac Andrews, who then told me that he had drawings to the
+same places. I opened the case in our monthly meeting, and friends
+expressing their unity therewith, we obtained certificates to travel as
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>Two things were remarkable to me in this journey. First, in regard to my
+entertainment; when I ate, drank and lodged free of cost with people who
+lived in ease on the hard labour of their slaves, I felt uneasy, and this
+uneasiness returned upon me, at times, through the whole visit. Secondly,
+this trade of importing slaves from their native country being much
+encouraged among them, and the white people and their children so generally
+living without much labour, was frequently the subject of my serious
+thoughts. And I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and
+corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it appeared
+to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land; and though now many
+willingly run into it, yet in future the consequence will be grievous to
+posterity.</p>
+
+<p>About this time, believing it good for me to settle, and thinking
+seriously about a companion, my heart was turned to the Lord and He was
+pleased to give me a well-inclined damsel, Sarah Ellis, to whom I was
+married the 18th day of the 8th month, in the year 1749.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>II--Among the Indians</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Having many years felt love in my heart towards the natives of this
+land, who dwell far back in the wilderness, whose ancestors were the owners
+of the land where we dwell, and being at Philadelphia in 1761, I fell in
+company with some of those natives who live on the east branch of the river
+Susquehannah, at an Indian town called Wehaloosing, 200 miles from
+Philadelphia; and in conversation with them by an interpreter, as also by
+observations on their character and conduct, I believed some of them were
+acquainted with that divine power which subjects the rough and froward will
+of the creature.</p>
+
+<p>At times I felt inward drawings toward a visit to that place, and laid
+it before friends at our monthly and quarterly, and afterwards at our
+general spring meeting; and having the unity of friends, I agreed to join
+certain Indians, in 1763, on their return to their town. So I took leave of
+my family and neighbours, and with my friend Benjamin Parvin, met the
+Indians.</p>
+
+<p>About four miles from Fort Allen we met with an Indian trader, lately
+come from Wyoming; and in conversation with him I perceived that many white
+people do often sell rum to the Indians, which is a great evil: first,
+their being thereby deprived of the use of their reason, and their spirits
+being violently agitated, quarrels often arise which end in mischief; again
+their skins and furs, gotten through much fatigue in hunting, with which
+they intended to buy clothing, when they become intoxicated, they often
+sell at a low rate for more rum, and afterwards are angry with those who,
+for the sake of gain, took advantage of their weakness. To sell to people
+that which we know does them harm, manifests a hardened and corrupt
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>We crossed the western branch of the Delaware, having laboured hard over
+the mountains called the Blue Ridge, and pitched our tent near the banks of
+the river. Near our tent, on the sides of large trees peeled for that
+purpose, were various representations of men going to, and returning from
+the wars, and of some killed in battle, this being a path used by warriors.
+As I walked about viewing those Indian histories, painted in red and in
+black; and thinking on the innumerable afflictions which the proud, fierce
+spirit produceth in the world; thinking on the toils and fatigues of
+warriors, travelling over mountains and deserts; and of their restless,
+unquiet state of mind, who live in this spirit, and of the hatred which
+mutually grows up in the minds of the children of those nations engaged in
+war; during these meditations, the desire to cherish the spirit of love and
+peace among these people arose very fresh in me.</p>
+
+<p>As I rode, day after day, over the barren hills, my thoughts were on the
+alterations of the circumstances of the natives since the coming of the
+English. The lands near the sea are conveniently situated for fishing; the
+lands near the rivers are in many places fertile and not mountainous. Those
+natives have, in some places, for trifling considerations, sold their
+inheritance so favourably situated; and in other places, have been driven
+back by superior force. By the extending of English settlements, and partly
+by English hunters, the wild beasts they chiefly depend upon for a
+subsistence are not so plentiful as they were; and people too often open a
+door for them to waste their furs, in purchasing a liquor which tends to
+the ruin of them and their families.</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>III.--Across the Atlantic</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>Having been for some time under a religious concern to cross the seas,
+in order to visit friends in England, after weighty consideration I thought
+it expedient to inform friends, at our monthly meeting at Burlington, of
+it; who, having unity with me therein, gave me a certificate; and I
+afterwards communicated the same to our general meeting, and they likewise
+signified their unity by a certificate, dated the 24th day of the third
+month, 1772, directed to friends in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>I was informed that my beloved friend Samuel Emlen, intended to go to
+London, and had taken a passage in the cabin of the ship called Mary and
+Elizabeth; and I, feeling a draft in my mind towards the steerage of the
+same ship, went and opened to Samuel the feeling I had concerning it. My
+beloved friend wept when I spake to him; and he offering to go with me, we
+went on board, first into the cabin, a commodious room, and then into the
+steerage, where we sat down on a chest and the owner of the ship came and
+sat down with us. I made no agreement as to a passage in the ship; but on
+the next morning I went with Samuel to the house of the owner, to whom I
+opened my exercise in relation to a scruple I felt with regard to a passage
+in the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>I told the owner that on the outside of that part of the ship where the
+cabin was, I observed sundry sorts of carved work and imagery; and that in
+the cabin I observed some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts; and
+that the monies received from the passengers are calculated to answer the
+expense of these superfluities; and that I felt a scruple with regard to
+paying my money to defray such expenses. After this, I agreed for a passage
+in the steerage, and went on board with Samuel Emlen on the first day of
+the fifth month.</p>
+
+<p>My lodging in the steerage afforded me opportunities of seeing, hearing
+and feeling, with respect to the life and spirit of many poor sailors; and
+an inward exercise of soul hath attended me, in regard to placing out
+children and youth where they may be exampled and instructed in the fear of
+the Lord. Now, concerning lads being trained up as seamen, I believe a
+communication from one part of the world to some other parts of it, by sea,
+is at times consistent with the will of our heavenly Father; and to educate
+some youth in the practice of sailing, I believe may be right. But how
+lamentable is the present corruption of the world! How impure are the
+channels through which trade hath a conveyance! How great is that danger to
+which poor lads are now exposed, when placed on shipboard to learn the art
+of sailing!</p>
+
+
+<h3><i>IV.--Prices, Wages, and Religion</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>On landing at London I went straight to the yearly meeting of ministers
+and elders, which, by adjournments, continued near a week. I then went to
+quarterly meetings at Hertford, Sherrington, Northampton, Banbury and
+Shipston, and visited other meetings at Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick,
+Nottingham, Sheffield, Settle, and other places.</p>
+
+<p>On inquiry, I found the price of rye about five shillings, wheat about
+eight shillings, per bushel; mutton threepence to fivepence per pound;
+bacon from sevenpence to ninepence; cheese from fourpence to sixpence;
+butter from eightpence to tenpence; house-rent, for a poor man, from
+twenty-five shillings to forty shillings per year, to be paid weekly; wood
+for fire very scarce and dear; coal in some places two shillings and
+sixpence per hundredweight but near the pits not a quarter so much. O may
+the wealthy consider the poor!</p>
+
+<p>The wages of labouring men, in several counties toward London, is
+tenpence per day in common business; the employer finds small beer and the
+labourer finds his own food; but in harvest and hay times wages are about
+one shilling per day and the labourer hath all his diet. In the north of
+England poor labouring men do rather better than nearer London. Industrious
+women who spin in the factories get some fourpence, some fivepence, and so
+on to tenpence per day, and find their own house-room and diet. Great
+numbers of poor people live chiefly on bread and water, and there are many
+poor children not even taught to read. May those, who have plenty, lay
+these things to heart!</p>
+
+<p>Stage coaches frequently go upwards of an hundred miles in twenty-four
+hours; and I have heard friends say, in several places, that it is common
+for horses to be killed with hard driving. Post-boys pursue their business,
+each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some boys, who ride
+long stages, suffer greatly on winter nights, and at several places I have
+heard of their being frozen to death. So great is the hurry in the spirit
+in this world, that in aiming to do business quickly, and to gain wealth,
+the creation, at this day doth loudly groan!</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol X, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS, VOL X ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12572-h.htm or 12572-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/7/12572/
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/old/12572.txt b/old/12572.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a294de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12572.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12029 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The World's Greatest Books, Vol X, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The World's Greatest Books, Vol X
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 10, 2004 [EBook #12572]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS, VOL X ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS
+
+JOINT EDITORS
+
+ARTHUR MEE Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge
+
+J.A. HAMMERTON Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
+
+VOL. X LIVES AND LETTERS
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Table of Contents
+
+    HUGO, VICTOR
+     Deeds and Words
+
+    HUME, MARTIN
+     Courtships of Elizabeth
+     Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots
+
+    IRVING, WASHINGTON
+     Life of Christopher Columbus
+     Life of George Washington
+
+    JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS
+     Autobiography
+
+    LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: See ROCHEFOUCAULD
+
+    LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON
+     Life of Sir Walter Scott
+     Life of Robert Burns
+
+    LUTHER, MARTIN
+     Table Talk
+
+    MIRABEAU, COMTE DE
+     Memoirs
+
+    MOORE, THOMAS
+     Life of Byron
+
+    MORISON, J.A.C.
+     Life of St. Bernard
+
+    MORLEY, JOHN
+     Life of Cobden
+
+    PEPYS, SAMUEL
+     Diary
+
+    PLINY THE YOUNGER
+      Letters
+
+    RICHELIEU, CARDINAL
+      Political Testament
+
+    ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES
+      Confessions
+
+    ROCHEFOUCAULD, FRANCOIS DUC de LA
+       Memoirs
+
+    SEVIGNE, Mme. de
+      Letters
+
+    SOUTHEY, ROBERT
+      Life of Nelson
+
+    STAAL, Mme. de
+      Memoirs
+
+    STANHOPE, EARL
+      Life of Pitt
+
+    STANLEY, A.P.
+      Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D.
+
+    STRICKLAND, AGNES
+      Life of Queen Elizabeth
+
+    SWIFT, JONATHAN
+      Journal to Stella
+
+    TOLSTOY, COUNT LYOF N.
+      Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
+      My Confession
+
+    VILLARI, PASQUALE
+      Life of Girolamo Savanarola
+
+    WESLEY, JOHN
+      Journal
+
+    WOOLMAN, JOHN
+      Journal
+
+A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
+of Volume XX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_Acknowledgement_
+
+     Acknowledgement and thanks for permitting the use of the
+     following selections in this volume, viz., "The Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," and "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of
+     Scots," by Major Martin Hume, are herewith tendered to
+     Everleigh Nash, of London, England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+VICTOR HUGO
+
+
+Deeds and Words
+
+
+     "Deeds and Words" ("Actes et Paroles"), which is dated June,
+     1875, is the record of Victor Hugo's public life, speeches and
+     letters, down to the year of his death, which occurred on May
+     32, 1885; but it is most important as a defence of his
+     political career from 1848 onwards. It does not, however, tell
+     us how changeable his opinions had actually been. His
+     inconstant attachments are thus summed up by Dr. Brandes: "He
+     warmly supports the candidacy of Louis Napoleon for the post
+     of President of the Republic ... lends him his support when he
+     occupies that post, and is even favourable to the idea of an
+     empire, until the feeling that he is despised as a politician
+     estranges him from the Prince-President, and resentment at the
+     coup d'etat drives him into the camp of the extreme
+     Republicans. His life may be said to mirror the political
+     movements of France during the first half of the century."
+     (See FICTION.)
+
+
+_I.--Right and Law_
+
+
+All human eloquence, among all peoples and in all times, may be summed
+up as the quarrel of Right against Law.
+
+But this quarrel tends ever to decrease, and therein lies the whole of
+progress. On the day when it has disappeared, civilisation will have
+attained its highest point; that which ought to be will have become one
+with that which is; there will be an end of catastrophes, and even, so
+to speak, of events; and society will develop majestically according to
+nature. There will be no more disputes nor factions; no longer will laws
+be made, they will only be discovered. Education will have taken the
+place of war, and by means of universal suffrage there will be chosen a
+parliament of intellect.
+
+In that serene and glorious age there will be no more warriors, but
+workers only; creators in the place of exterminators. The civilisation
+of action will have passed away, and that of thought will have
+succeeded. The masterpieces of art and of literature will be the great
+events.
+
+Frontiers will disappear; and France, which is destined to die as the
+gods die, by transfiguration, will become Europe. For the Revolution of
+France will be known as the evolution of the peoples. France has
+laboured not for herself alone, but has aroused world-wide hopes, and is
+herself the representative of all human good-will.
+
+Right and Law are the two great forces whose harmony gives birth to
+order, but their antagonism is the source of all catastrophe. Right is
+the divine truth, and Law is the earthly reality; liberty is Right and
+society is Law. Wherefore there are two tribunes, one of the men of
+ideas, the other of the men of facts; and between these two the
+consciences of most still vacillate. Not yet is there harmony between
+the immutable and the variable power; Right and Law are in ceaseless
+conflict.
+
+To Right belong the inviolability of human life, liberty, peace; and
+nothing that is indissoluble, irrevocable, or irreparable. To Law belong
+the scaffold, sword, and sceptre; war itself; and every kind of yoke,
+from divorceless marriage in the family to the state of siege in the
+city. Right is to come and go, buy, sell, exchange; Law has its
+frontiers and its custom-houses. Right would have free and compulsory
+education, without encroaching on young consciences; that is to say, lay
+instruction; Law would have the teaching of ignorant friars. Right
+demands liberty of belief, but Law establishes the state religions.
+Universal suffrage and universal jury belong to Right, but restricted
+franchise and packed juries are creatures of the Law.
+
+What a difference there is! And let it be understood that all social
+agitation arises from the persistence of Right against the obstinacy of
+Law. The keynote of the present writer's public life has been "_Pro jure
+contra legem"_--for the Right which makes men, against the Law which men
+have made. He believes that liberty is the highest expression of Right,
+and that the republican formula, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,"
+leaves nothing to be added or to be taken away. For Liberty is Right,
+Equality is Fact, and Fraternity is Duty. The whole of man is there. We
+are brothers in our life, equal in birth and death, free in soul.
+
+
+_II.--Days of Childhood_
+
+
+At the beginning of this nineteenth century there was a child who lived
+in a great house, surrounded by a large garden, in the most deserted
+part of Paris. He lived with his mother, two brothers, and a venerable
+and worthy priest, who was his only tutor, and taught him much Latin, a
+little Greek, and no history at all. Here, at the time of the First
+Empire, the three boys played and worked, watched the clouds and trees
+and listened to the birds, under the sweet influence of their mother's
+smile.
+
+It was the child's misfortune, though no one's fault, that he was taught
+by a priest. What can be more terrible than a system of untruth,
+sincerely believed? For a priest teaches falsehoods, ignorant of the
+truth, and thinks he does well; everything he does for the child is done
+against the child, making crooked that which nature has made straight;
+his teaching poisons the young mind with aged prejudices, drawing
+evening twilight, like a curtain, over the dawn.
+
+That ancient, solitary house and garden, formerly a convent and then the
+home of his childhood, is still in his old age a dear and religious
+memory, though its site is now profaned by a modern street He sees it in
+a romantic atmosphere, in which, amid sunbeams and roses, his spirit
+opened into flower. What a stillness was in its vast rooms and
+cloisters. Only at long intervals was the silence broken by the return
+of a plumed and sabred general, his father, from the wars. That child,
+already thoughtful, was myself.
+
+One night--it was some great festival of the empire, and all Paris was
+illumined--my mother was walking in the garden with three of my father's
+comrades, and I was following them, when we saw a tall figure in the
+gloom of the trees. It was the proscribed Victor du Lahorie, my
+godfather. He was even then conspiring against Bonaparte in the cause of
+liberty, and was shortly after executed. I remember his saying, "If Rome
+had kept her kings, she had not been Rome," and then, looking on me,
+"Child, put liberty first of all!" That one word outweighed my whole
+education.
+
+
+_III.--Before the Exile_
+
+
+It was not until the writer saw, in 1848, the triumph of all the enemies
+of progress that he knew in the depths of his heart that he belonged,
+not to the conquerors, but to the vanquished. The Republic lay
+inanimate; but, gazing on her form, he saw that she was liberty, and not
+even the sure fore-knowledge of the ruin and exile that must follow
+could prevent his espousal with the dead. On June 15 he made his protest
+from the tribune, and from that day he fought relentless battle for
+liberty and the republic. And on December 2, 1851, he received what he
+had expected--twenty years of exile. That is the history of what has
+been called his apostasy.
+
+Throughout that strange period before his exile, the frightful phantom
+of the past was all-powerful with men. Every kind of question was
+debated--national independence, individual liberty, liberty of
+conscience, of thought, of speech, and of the Press; questions of
+marriage, of education, of the right to work, of the right to one's
+fatherland as against exile, of the right to life as against penal law,
+of the separation of Church and state, of the federation of Europe, of
+frontiers to be wiped out, and of custom-houses to be done away--all
+these questions were proposed, debated, and sometimes settled.
+
+In these debates the author of this memoir took his part and did his
+duty, and was repaid with insults. He remembers interjecting, when they
+were insisting on parental rights, that the children had rights, too. He
+astounded the assembly by asserting that it was possible to do away with
+misery. On July 17, 1851, he denounced the conspiracy of Louis
+Bonaparte, unveiling the project of the president to become emperor. On
+another day he pronounced from the tribune a phrase which had never yet
+been uttered--"The United States of Europe." Contempt and calumny were
+poured upon him, but what of that? They called George Washington a
+pickpocket.
+
+These men of the old majority, who were doing all the evil that they
+could--did they mean to do evil? Not a bit of it. They deceived
+themselves, thinking that they had the truth, and they lied in the
+service of the truth. Their pity for society was pitiless for the
+people, whence arose so many laws, so many actions, that were blindly
+ferocious. They were rather a mob than a senate, and were led by the
+worst of their number. Let us be indulgent, and let night hide the men
+of night.
+
+What do our labours and our troubles and our exiles matter if they have
+been for the general good; if the human race be indeed passing from
+December to its April; if the winter of tyrannies and of wars indeed be
+finished; if superstitions and prejudices no longer fall on our heads
+like snow; and if, after so many clouds of empire and of carnage have
+rolled away, we at last descry upon the horizon the rosy dawn of
+universal peace?
+
+O my brothers, let us be reconciled! Let us set out on the immense
+highway of peace. Surely there has been enough of hatred. When will you
+understand that we are all together on the same ship, and that the
+immense menace of the sea is for all of us together? Our solidarity is
+terrible, but brotherhood is sweet.
+
+
+_IV.--Republican Principles_
+
+
+The sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, and the liberty of
+the Press are all the same thing under three different names. The three
+together constitute the whole of our public right; the first is its
+principle, the second its manner, and the third its expression. The
+three principles are indissoluble from one another. The sovereignty of
+the people is the life-giving soul of the nation, universal suffrage its
+government, the Press its illumination; but they are all really one, and
+that unity is the republic. It is curious to notice how these principles
+appear again in the watchword of the republic; for the sovereignty of
+the people creates liberty, universal suffrage creates equality, and the
+Press, which enlightens the general mind, creates fraternity.
+
+Wherever these three great principles exist in their powers and
+plenitude there is the republic, even though it be known as monarchy.
+Wherever, on the other hand, they are betrayed, hindered, or oppressed,
+the actual state is a monarchy or an oligarchy, even though it goes
+under the name of a republic. In the latter case we see the monstrous
+phenomenon of a government betrayed by its proper guardians, and it is
+this phenomenon that makes the stoutest hearts begin to be doubtful of
+revolutions. For revolutions are vast, ill-guided movements, which bring
+forth out of the darkness at one and the same time the greatest of ideas
+and the smallest of men; they are movements which we welcome as salutary
+when we look at their principles, but which we can only call
+catastrophes when he consider the character of their leaders.
+
+Let us never forget that our three first principles live with a common
+life, and mutually defend one another. If the Liberty of the Press is in
+danger, the suffrages of the people arise and protect it; and, again, if
+the franchise is threatened, it is safeguarded by the freedom of the
+Press. Any attempt against either of them is a treachery to the
+sovereignty of the people.
+
+The movement of this great nineteenth century is the movement not of one
+people only, but of all. France leads, and the nations follow. We are
+passing from the old world to the new, and our governors attempt in vain
+to arrest ideas by laws. There is in France and in Europe a party
+inspired by fear, which is not to be accounted the party of order; and
+its incessant question is: Who is to blame?
+
+In the crisis through which we are passing, though it is a salutary
+crisis which will lead only to good, everyone exclaims at the dreadful
+moral disorder and the imminent social danger. Who, then, is guilty of
+these ravages? Whom shall we punish? Throughout Europe, the party of
+fear answers "France." Throughout France, it answers "Paris." In Paris,
+it blames the Press. But every thoughtful man must see that it is none
+of these, but is the human spirit.
+
+It is the human spirit that has made the nations what they are. From the
+beginning, through infinite debate and contradiction, it has sought,
+unresting, to solve the problem eternally placed before the creature by
+his Creator. It is the human spirit which takes from age to age the form
+of the great revolts of history; it has been in turn, and sometimes
+altogether, error, illusion, heresy, schism, protest, and the truth. The
+human spirit is ever the great shepherd of the generations, proceeding
+always towards the just, the beautiful, and the true, enlightening the
+multitude, ennobling souls, directing the mind of man towards God.
+
+Let the party of fear throughout Europe consider the magnitude of the
+task which they have undertaken. When they have destroyed the Press,
+they have yet to destroy Paris. When Paris is fallen, there remains
+France. Let France be annihilated, there still remains the human
+spirit--a thing intangible as the light, inaccessible as the sun.
+
+
+_V.--In Exile_
+
+
+Nothing is more terrible than exile. I do not say for him who suffers,
+but for the tyrant who inflicts it. A solitary figure paces a distant
+shore, or rises in the morning to his philosophic labours, or calls on
+God among the rocks and trees; his hairs become grey, and then white, in
+the slow passing of the years and in his longing for home; his lot is a
+sorrowful one; but his innocence is terrible to the crowned miscreant
+who sent him there. From 1852 to 1870 I was in exile.
+
+How pleasant are those islands of the Channel, and how like France!
+Jersey, perhaps, more charming than Guernsey, prettier if less imposing;
+in Jersey the forest has become a garden; the island is like a bouquet
+of flowers, of the size of London, a smiling land, an idyll set in the
+midst of the sea.
+
+The exile soon learns that, though the tyrant has placed him afar, he
+does not release his hold. Many and ingenious are the snares laid for
+the banished. A prince calls on you, but though he is of royal blood, he
+is also a detective of police. A grave professor stays at your house,
+and you surprise him searching your papers. Everything is permitted
+against you; you are outside the law, outside of common justice, outside
+of respect. They will say that they have your authority to publish your
+conversations, and will attribute to you words that you have never
+spoken and actions that you have never done. Never write to your
+friends--your letters are opened on the way. Beware of all who are
+kindly to you in exile; they are ruining you in Paris. You are isolated
+as a leper. A mysterious stranger whispers in your ear that he can
+procure the assassination of Bonaparte; it is Bonaparte offering to kill
+himself. Every day of your life is a new outrage. Only one thing is open
+to the exile; it is to turn his thought to other subjects.
+
+He is at least beside the sea; let its infinity bring him wisdom. The
+eternal rioting of the surges against the rocks is as the agitation of
+impostures against the truth. It is a vain convulsion; the foam gains
+nothing by it, the granite loses nothing, and only sparkles the more
+bravely in the sun.
+
+But exile has this great advantage--one is free to contemplate, to
+think, to suffer. To be alone, and yet to feel that one is with all
+humanity; to consolidate oneself as a citizen, and to purify oneself as
+a philosopher; to be poor, and begin again to work for one's living, to
+meditate on what is good and to contrive for what is better; to be angry
+in the public cause, but to crush all personal enmity; to breathe the
+vast, living winds of the solitudes; to compose a deeper indignation
+with a profounder peace--these are the opportunities of exile. I
+accustomed myself to say, "If, after a revolution, Bonaparte should
+knock at my door and ask shelter, let never a hair of his head be
+injured."
+
+Yes, an exile becomes a well-wisher. He loves the roses, and the birds'
+nests, and the flitting hither and thither of the butterflies. He
+mingles with the sweet joys of the creatures, and learns a changeless
+faith in some secret and infinite goodness. The green glades are his
+chosen dwelling and his life is April; he reclines amazed at the
+mysteries of a tuft of grass; he studies the ant-hills of tiny
+republicans; he learns to know the birds by their songs; he watches the
+children playing barefoot in the edge of the sea.
+
+Against this dangerous man governments are taking the most strenuous
+precautions. Victoria offers to hand over the exiles to Napoleon, and
+messages of compliment are passed from one throne to the other. But that
+gift did not take place. The English royalist Press applauded, but the
+people of London would have none of it. The great city muttered thunder.
+Majesty clothed in probity--that is the character of the English nation.
+That good and proud people showed their indignation, and Palmerston and
+Bonaparte had to be content with the expulsion of the exiles.
+
+During the whole long night of my exile I never lost Paris from my view.
+When Europe and even France were in darkness, Paris was never hidden.
+That is because Paris is the frontier of the future, the visible
+frontier of the unknown. All of to-morrow that can be seen to-day is in
+Paris. The eyes that are searching for progress come to rest on Paris,
+for Paris is the city of light.
+
+
+_VI.--After the Exile_
+
+
+This triology, "Before, During, and After the Exile," is no work of
+mine, it is the doing of Napoleon III. He it is who has divided my life
+in this way, observing, as one might say, the rules of art. Returning to
+my country on September 5, 1870, I found the sky more gloomy and my duty
+more clamant than ever.
+
+Though it is sad to leave the fatherland, to return to it is sometimes
+sadder still; and there is no Frenchman who would not have preferred a
+life-long banishment, to seeing France ground beneath the Prussian heel,
+and the loss of Metz and Strasburg. This was an invasion of barbarians;
+but there is another menace that is not less formidable. I mean the
+invasion of our land by darkness, an invasion of the nineteenth century
+by the middle ages. After the emperor, the pope; after Berlin, Rome;
+after the triumph of the sword, the triumph of night. For the light of
+civilisation may be extinguished in either of two ways, by a military or
+by a clerical invasion. The former threatens our mother, France; the
+latter our child, the future.
+
+A double inviolability is the most precious possession of a civilised
+people--the inviolability of territory and the inviolability of
+conscience; and as the soldier violates the first, so does the priest
+violate the other. Yet the soldier does but obey his orders and the
+priest his dogmas, so that there are only two who are ultimately
+culpable--Caesar, who slays, and Peter, who lies. There is no religion
+which has not as its aim to seize forcibly the human soul, and it is to
+attempts of this kind that France is given up to-day.
+
+One may say, indeed, that in our age there are two schools, and that
+these two schools sum up in themselves the two opposed currents which
+draw civilisation, the one towards the future and the other towards the
+past. One of these schools is called Paris and the other Rome. Each of
+them has its book; the one has the "Declaration of the Rights of Man,"
+the other has the "Syllabus"; and the first of these books says "Yes" to
+progress, but the second of them says "No." Yet progress is the footstep
+of God.
+
+Paris means Montaigne, Rabelais, Pascal, Corneille, Moliere,
+Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Danton. Rome, on the
+other hand, means Innocent III., Pius V., Alexander VI., Urban VIII.,
+Arbuez, Cisneros, Lainez, Guillandus, Ignatius.
+
+To educate is nothing less than to govern; and clerical education means
+a clerical government, with a despotism as its summit and ignorance as
+its foundation.
+
+Rome already holds Belgium, and would now seize Paris. We are witnesses
+of a struggle to the death. Against us is all that manifold power which
+emerges from the past, the spirit of monarchy, of superstition, of the
+barrack and of the convent; we have against us temerity, effrontery,
+audacity, and fear. On our side there is nothing but the light. That is
+why the victory will be with us. For to enlighten is to deliver. Every
+increase in liberty involves increased responsibility. Nothing is graver
+than freedom; liberty has burdens of her own, and lays on the conscience
+all the chains which she unshackles from the limbs. We find rights
+transforming themselves into duties. Let us therefore take heed to what
+we are doing; we live in a difficult time and are answerable at once to
+the past and to the future. The time has come, in this year 1876, to
+replace commotions by concessions. That is how civilisation advances.
+For progress is nothing other than revolution effected amicably.
+
+Therefore, legislators and citizens, let us redouble our good-will. Let
+all wounds be healed, all animosities extinguished; by overcoming hatred
+we shall overcome war; let no disturbance that may come be due to our
+fault. Our task of entering into the unknown is difficult enough without
+angers and bitterness. I am one of those who hope from that unknown
+future, but only on condition that we make use from the first of every
+means of pacification that is in our power. Let us act with the virile
+kindness of the strong.
+
+Let us then calm the nations by peace, and the hearts of men by
+brotherhood, and let us never forget that we are ourselves responsible
+for this last half of the nineteenth century, and that we are placed
+between a great past, the Revolution of France, and a great future, the
+Revolution of Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MARTIN HUME
+
+
+The Courtships of Elizabeth
+
+
+     Major Martin Andrew Hume, born in London on December 8, 1847,
+     and educated at Madrid, comes of an English family, the
+     members of which have resided in Spain for a hundred years. He
+     began life in the British Army, from which he retired with the
+     rank of major. Major Hume was appointed editor of the Spanish
+     state papers published by the Record Office; he is also
+     lecturer in Spanish History and Literature at Cambridge, and
+     examiner and lecturer in Spanish at the Birmingham University.
+     He has written numerous works on the history of Spain; but
+     perhaps he is best known for his historical studies of the
+     Tudor period, of which may be mentioned "The Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots,"
+     and "The Wives of Henry VIII." In the first-named work,
+     published in 1896, Major Hume has presented an exceedingly
+     interesting human document, and classified a tangled mass of
+     material. The epitome here presented has been prepared for THE
+     WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS by the author himself.
+
+
+_I.--Foreign Philandering_
+
+
+The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world's chessboard was
+that consummate succession of intrigues which, for nearly half a
+century, was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the
+object of playing off one great Continental power against another for
+the benefit of England and Protestantism, with which the interests of
+the queen were inextricably involved. Those in the midst of the strife
+worked mostly for immediate aims, and neither saw, nor cared, for the
+ultimate results; but we, looking back, see that out of that tangle of
+duplicity there emerged a new era of civilisation and a host of vigorous
+impulses which move us to this hour.
+
+The victory of England in that struggle meant the dominance of modern
+ideas of liberty and of the imperial destiny of our race, and it seems
+as if the result could only have been attained in the peculiar
+combination of circumstances and persons then existing. Elizabeth
+triumphed as much by her weakness as by her strength. Honest Cecil kept
+his hand upon the helm so long because the only alternative to him was
+the greedy crew of councillors eager for foreign bribes. Without
+Leicester as a permanent matrimonial possibility, the queen could never
+have held the balance between her foreign suitors; and, but for the
+follies of Mary Stuart, the English Catholics would not have been
+subjected so easily, whilst the religious dissensions in France and the
+character of Philip II. aided Elizabeth's diplomacy. Elizabeth was more
+than once betrothed in her childhood to aid her father's policy, but
+when Henry died, in 1547, his younger daughter was unbetrothed.
+
+During her residence with the Queen-Dowager, Catharine Parr, who soon
+married Thomas, Lord Seymour, the fourteen-year-old girl was exposed to
+peril from the designs of the ambitious Seymour. The indecorous romping,
+perhaps innocent at first, that took place between her and her married
+host provided grave scandal which touched even the honour of the girl,
+and her keen wits alone saved her on this occasion from disgrace. Her
+crafty reticence served her well, when the intrigues of Wyat, Courtenay,
+and the French party threatened Mary's throne; but when Mary was
+married, the Spanish party at once became interested in securing
+Elizabeth to their side by her marriage. Mary's jealousy, and
+Elizabeth's own determination not to be made a tool, frustrated Philip's
+attempt to marry the princess to his cousin, the Duke of Savoy; and when
+the Protestant Swedes clandestinely offered her the hand of Prince Eric,
+her discreet wariness again protected her from the dangerous proposal.
+
+When Mary lay dying, Feria, the Spanish ambassador, hurried to Hatfield
+to salute the rising sun, and hinted even thus early that Elizabeth
+might marry her powerful Spanish brother-in-law. But she resented his
+patronage, and though she coquetted, as usual, with the proposal of
+marriage, she took care not to pledge herself or submit England to
+foreign dictation. To Spain it was vital that England should be at her
+bidding. If the queen could not marry Philip, surely she could only wed
+one of his Austrian cousins; or, if not, then England must be conquered
+by the sword. All that Elizabeth wanted was time, and tardy Philip
+played into her hands. One English noble after the other was taken up
+and dropped, in the intervals of foreign philandering. Lord Arundel,
+foolish, old, and vain, had high hopes; Sir William Pickering's chances
+looked bright, and France and Spain sought to patronise each English
+candidate in his turn, especially Lord Robert Dudley, the queen's friend
+from childhood, though he was already married to Amy Robsart.
+
+At length, after many days of dallying, great Philip decided to
+sacrifice himself for Spain and marry his enigmatical sister-in-law. She
+must, of course, renounce Protestantism and all the laws that made her
+legally a queen; which was absurd, as Feria soon saw, and frankly told
+his master. So then Philip half-heartedly patronised the suit of his
+Austrian cousin, the Archduke Charles. If the latter would be an
+obedient Spanish instrument he could have Philip's support; but German
+Lutherans and English Protestants had also to be considered, and
+Elizabeth's court was divided into those who feared any consort not
+wholly Protestant and those who were eager for any marriage that
+shielded England from Spanish attack.
+
+Elizabeth thought she could avoid the latter danger without marriage at
+all, so she dexterously played with all her suitors, English and
+foreign, while strengthening her position and gaining popularity.
+Sometimes she swore she would never marry, and the next day would grow
+sentimental over the archduke, or flirted with Dudley--keeping them all
+in suspense and afraid of offending her. The French, having no
+marriageable prince of their own, supported Dudley, or any other English
+candidate whom they could use against Spain; whilst Dudley himself
+pretended to favour the archduke, till matters looked serious, and then
+found means of frustrating him, often to Elizabeth's rage, for she
+wished to play her own deep game unhampered. She knew she could always
+choke off the Austrian when she wished by making fresh religious
+demands. The English nobles were furious at Dudley's selfish manoeuvres
+to keep the queen unwed till he was free, and they planned to marry the
+queen to Arran, the next heir of Scotland. This looked promising for
+months, but Dudley and his sister, Lady Sidney, checked the plan.
+
+
+_II.--The Nine Years' Comedy_
+
+
+In September, 1559, Dudley and his sister warmly took up the archduke's
+cause, and assured Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, that if the suitor
+would flatter the queen by coming to England on chance, she would marry
+him. But Elizabeth and Cecil, though they hinted much, would not clearly
+confirm Dudley's promise, and Philip and the emperor dared not expose
+the archduke to the risk of being repulsed. The English nobles, in good
+faith, urged the archduke's suit, and said that Dudley was plotting to
+kill his wife and marry the queen; but they and the Spanish ambassador
+were outwitted at every point by Elizabeth's diplomacy, and through 1559
+and 1560 all the rivals were kept between hope and fear.
+
+Then, in September 1560, the long-predicted murder of Amy Robsart set
+Dudley free, and made the nobles and Cecil more anxious than ever that
+the archduke should be bold, take the risk, and come to England. The
+queen, to weaken the new friendship between France and Spain, herself
+again pretended eagerness for the Austrian's coming; but the trick was
+stale now, and neither Philip nor the emperor believed her. To checkmate
+Dudley the Protestants were actively urging the suit of Eric of Sweden,
+when, in January 1561, the former made a bold bid for Spanish support.
+He was, he said, quite innocent of his wife's death, and he promised
+Quadra that if the King of Spain would urge his (Dudley's) suit upon the
+queen, England should send envoys to the Council of Trent, receive a
+papal legate, and become practically Catholic. He might promise, but
+such a thing was impossible, and Cecil, when he learnt of the intrigue,
+promptly embroiled matters and spoilt the plan.
+
+Elizabeth, too, saw whither she was drifting, and by pretended levity
+turned it into a joke. At one time she invited the old Spanish bishop to
+marry her to Dudley, and next day said she would never marry at all. But
+she never ceased to flirt with Dudley, who, when his intrigue with Spain
+fell through, cynically appealed to the French Protestants for support.
+They were in no position to help him, and by January 1562, he was
+cringing to Spain, and pretending to be Catholic. But English Catholics
+hated him, and he was now no fit instrument for Philip.
+
+In her own court it was firmly believed that Elizabeth was secretly
+married to Dudley--it was high time, said the gossips; but in truth the
+international importance of her marriage was now (1562-63) partially
+obscured by that of the widowed Mary Queen of Scots. Before the latter
+were dangled Eric of Sweden, the Archduke Charles, the Earl of Arran,
+and Darnley; but the match which Mary most wished for, and the most
+threatening to Elizabeth, was that with the vicious young lunatic, Don
+Carlos, the heir of Philip of Spain. The match with Darnley, too, as he
+was in the English succession, was distasteful to Elizabeth; but in
+order to divert the Spanish match--which, really, though she knew it
+not, was out of the question--she pretended to favour Darnley's suit at
+first.
+
+In order still more to avert the Catholic alliance, Elizabeth sent
+active help to the French Huguenots, and drew closer to the Protestants
+of Germany and Holland, where distrust of their Spanish sovereign was
+already brewing. In these circumstances, Elizabeth for the first time
+could defy Spain, and Quadra, accused of conspiring against the queen,
+was expelled the country. When the Darnley match for Mary Stuart looked
+too serious, Elizabeth diverted it for a time by proposing that
+Dudley--now Earl of Leicester--should marry Mary. It was, of course, but
+a trick, through which the Scottish queen saw, with the object of
+preventing the Darnley marriage and discrediting Mary in the eyes of
+foreign princes; but it served its turn for a time.
+
+In July 1564, when the league of France and Spain again menaced her,
+Elizabeth set her cap at the boy Don Carlos, and even swore to the
+Spanish ambassador that she was really a Catholic.
+
+The further to alienate the Catholic powers from each other, she
+simultaneously approached the emperor to revive the proposal of marriage
+with the Archduke Charles, and to Catherine de Medici to drop a hint
+that she--Elizabeth--might marry the young King of France, Charles IX.,
+a youth barely half her age--anything to prevent a combination against
+her and the marriage of Don Carlos with Mary Stuart. Catherine de Medici
+had her own reasons at the time for smiling upon Elizabeth's suggestion.
+She did not wish to be bound too tightly to Spain and the Catholics, for
+fear of the Huguenots; and in February 1565, she wrote to Elizabeth,
+saying that she would be the happiest of mothers if she could see her
+dearly beloved sister of England married to her son, Charles IX.
+
+Elizabeth was full of maidenly hesitation. She was too old for him;
+perhaps he would not think her beautiful, and so on; but she took care
+to say that there was no one else she could marry, as she would not wed
+a subject. The Huguenots actively pushed the proposal, and Leicester
+pretended to favour it, though Cecil was against it on many grounds. But
+it was never seriously meant. It brought the Huguenots to Catherine's
+side on the eve of her voyage to renew the Catholic league with Philip,
+and it brought the Archduke Charles once more forward as a suitor for
+Elizabeth's hand. When it had thus served its purpose, the idea of the
+mature English queen marrying the boy Charles IX. was dropped.
+
+The Austrian's new advances were looked upon somewhat askance by Spain,
+until his attitude towards religion was assured, and, to have a second
+string, the Spanish ambassador, Guzman, affected to favour Leicester's
+suit. Cecil and the conservative nobles were sincere now in their
+advocacy of the archduke, and between the two parties Elizabeth steered
+coquettishly and diplomatically, modestly urging the archduke's coming,
+and yet flirting desperately with Leicester. The breach between the
+English nobles was profound, as all but Leicester wished the question of
+the queen's marriage and succession to be settled; and Leicester's
+chances were stronger than ever when it became clear, late in 1565, that
+the archduke would not come to England without a firm pledge. The French
+played off Leicester, too, against the archduke; sometimes even again
+suggesting their own king when Leicester's star waxed pale.
+
+Later, in 1566, the Lords and Commons urged the queen to marry, even
+Leicester joining in the remonstrance. But Elizabeth wished to play the
+game in her own way, and soundly scolded them. She did not mean to marry
+the archduke, or perhaps anyone, but whilst she kept him dangling, she
+knew she need not fear the Catholic combination. Soon all danger from
+that quarter disappeared for a time. Philip was in death struggle with
+his Protestant subjects in Holland; civil war was again raging in
+France, and Mary Stuart was a disgraced prisoner in the hands of her
+enemies. In the nine years that Elizabeth had carried on the marriage
+comedy she had kept the balance whilst England was growing stronger.
+Now, in 1568, she could afford to rest from her labours until danger
+from abroad again loomed.
+
+
+_III.--Catholics and Heretics_
+
+
+The peace of St. Germain in 1570 ended the long religious war in France,
+and the Guises and Catholics there, free from the strife, planned the
+rescue of the imprisoned Mary Stuart by force, and her marriage with the
+Duke of Anjou, the heir and brother of Charles IX. This was a danger
+both to Elizabeth and to the Huguenots, and was at once counteracted by
+their bringing forward the suggestion that the Queen of England might
+marry Anjou. He was, it is true, a fanatical Catholic, but the Huguenots
+thought that with England as a bait, and the powerful mind of Elizabeth
+to guide him, the youth might change his views. Leicester offered his
+help--for he knew the match was unlikely--and soon Catherine de Medici's
+agents were busy by Elizabeth's side. Elizabeth, as usual, was coy and
+maidenly. She was too old, she said, the thought of marriage was
+shocking to her; but, withal, the courtship went on actively. Anjou's
+charms and rumoured gallantries were the staple gossip at her court, and
+Elizabeth never tired of hearing praises of her young suitor.
+
+But soon the Guises and the Catholic League took fright, and urged Anjou
+not to be drawn into a match with a heretic too old for him. Better,
+said they, win England by force and marry Mary. To England the marriage,
+or a similar one, seemed really necessary. The Catholics at home and
+abroad were busily plotting against Elizabeth. Philip and Alba were
+ready to connive at her murder; the Protestants in Holland and France
+were powerless, and this match with Anjou seemed the only way to meet
+the danger. Anjou, under Catholic influence, was scornful, whilst
+Catherine, anxious for the greatness of her favourite son, was in
+despair at his "assottedness."
+
+Lord Buckhurst went, as ambassador to Paris, to forward the match in
+March 1571; but it soon became evident that Elizabeth could never
+concede the terms demanded by the French on religion. For many months
+the Huguenots, and Walsingham, as Elizabeth's ambassador, tried to
+reconcile the differences; and Catherine's agents in England laboured
+hard in the same cause. Elizabeth herself was ambiguous, though loving,
+and sometimes even Anjou was almost persuaded by his mother to accept
+the English crown matrimonial at the price demanded. For Elizabeth it
+was necessary to keep up the pretence at all costs, for the Spaniards
+were plotting her murder; and to split the Catholic party whilst
+secretly aiding the rebel Netherlanders seemed her only chance of
+safety. On one occasion, when Spain and France drew together, Elizabeth
+professed to be willing to marry Anjou on his own terms; but the prince
+grew ever more opposed to the match, and in January 1572, Catherine
+suddenly suggested that, as Anjou was so bigoted on religion, her
+youngest son, Alencon, might marry Elizabeth on any conditions she
+liked.
+
+The lad was but seventeen--a swarthy, pock-marked youth--and Elizabeth
+was inclined at first to resent the way in which Anjou had flouted her.
+She was thirty-nine, and her vanity was wounded; but yet the friendship
+or neutrality of France was vital to her. "How tall is he?" she asked
+Cecil. "About as tall as I am," replied the elderly minister. "As tall
+as your grandson, you mean!" snapped the queen. But Walsingham, Smith,
+and the French envoys plied her busily with descriptions of Alencon's
+manly charms, and a treaty between France and England was settled by
+which the Huguenots for a time became paramount in France conjointly
+with the marriage of the Huguenot Henry of Navarre with Margaret, the
+king's sister. Feasts and cordiality were the rules on both sides of the
+Channel now, and the Huguenot leaders urged the Alencon match with
+Elizabeth with all their force. In reply to all these offers, Elizabeth
+replied that, though the discrepancy of age was a great drawback, yet
+the pock-marks on the suitor's face were a greater objection still; yet
+if he would let her see him, without a pledge, she might like him. She
+would never, she said, marry a man she had not seen.
+
+But already Charles IX. and his mother were chafing under the Huguenot
+yoke and cooling towards England. They were determined not to be drawn
+by their new treaty with England into war with Spain; so, under the
+pretence of keeping up the negotiations for the Alencon match, they sent
+the youth La Mole to England in the autumn of 1572, really for the
+purpose of dissociating France from the Huguenot-English aid to the
+Protestant Netherlanders. La Mole was a gallant young lover, with whom
+Elizabeth was charmed, and when he played the vicarious wooer for
+Alencon, she could not make enough of him. But whilst he was
+philandering with her at Kenilworth, and she was losing patience at his
+political mission, there fell like a thunderbolt the awful news of the
+massacre of St. Bartholomew at Navarre's fatal wedding. At once the
+scene changed. La Mole and the French envoy hurried away amidst curses
+upon all false Frenchmen. Elizabeth, in a panic, smiled upon Spaniards
+again, and, for a time, the project of a French consort for her slept.
+
+But not for long. Alencon had no part in the massacre, and was known to
+favour Huguenots. He wrote a fervent love-letter to Elizabeth, and
+proposed to escape to England; whilst his agent Maisonfleur joined with
+Mauvissiere, the official French ambassador, in wooing Elizabeth anew
+for Alencon and for France. Gradually the parties drew together again,
+for Catherine was already alarmed at the effect of St. Bartholomew. All
+the Protestant world was arming, the English ports were full of
+privateers to attack Catholic shipping, and aid in plenty was being sent
+from England to the Huguenots of Rochelle and the rebel Dutchmen.
+
+France could therefore not afford to quarrel with England, but Anjou and
+Charles IX. took care to hold Alencon tight, that he might not escape
+and strengthen the Protestant cause in union with Elizabeth, whilst they
+still kept up the appearance of marriage negotiations. Elizabeth was
+ever on the alert to serve her cause, and in March 1573, said she would
+go no further in the Alencon match unless the Protestants in Rochelle
+were allowed fair terms and the siege raised. Anjou, already tired of
+the war, consented, and soon afterwards Catherine asked whether
+Elizabeth would now proceed with the Alencon plan. The lad had grown
+much, she said, and his budding beard covered some of his facial
+imperfections. It was settled that the prince should make a flying visit
+to Dover, but soon Catherine began to make fresh conditions. It would be
+such a shame to them, she said, if her son went and returned unmarried.
+
+
+_IV.--The Lovelorn Alencon_
+
+
+In the meanwhile, Alencon's love-letters to his mature flame grew
+warmer; but much as Elizabeth liked such attentions, she dreaded to go
+too far. Charles IX. was sinking fast, and the next heir was Anjou. With
+Alencon for heir-presumptive of France, the position would be changed;
+and once more the queen began to get doubtful about those unfortunate
+pock-marks on her lover's face. Once Alencon planned with Henry of
+Navarre to escape from his mother's custody and make a dash for England
+on his own account, but Catherine held him firmly.
+
+Both the Huguenots and the French king wished for the marriage, but each
+party frustrated the other because their objects were different. When
+the French ambassador, therefore, asked Elizabeth when Alencon might
+come to see her, she refused to name a time, because she knew secretly
+that a great Huguenot movement in France was pending, and she wished
+Alencon to be there as figurehead at the time--the very thing that the
+official French Government wished to avoid. The projected movement was
+betrayed and suppressed, and Alencon's life was for a time in danger;
+but when Henry III. (Anjou) was seated on the throne, Alencon kept
+openly a rival court to that of his brother, and the Huguenots around
+the prince were at deadly feud with the minions of the king.
+
+At last the crisis came. Alencon escaped from Paris in disguise, pursued
+by his mother, and, joining the Huguenots in arms, defied the king and
+the Guises. France was not big enough to hold both brothers in peace,
+and Catherine told Alencon that as Elizabeth seemed so ready to help him
+and his Huguenots, he ought to reopen the marriage negotiations. But
+Alencon was useless to England as a counterbalance to Spain unless
+France herself could be pledged as well, and Elizabeth considered it
+safest for the time, since that could not be done, to feign a new
+cordiality with Philip.
+
+The Catholic party in France was again paramount, and by bribery and
+Catherine's diplomacy, Alencon and his friends were bought over. For the
+next three years the young prince held aloof from affairs, but in 1578
+the hollow truce ended; he was suspected and placed under arrest, all
+his friends being cast into the Bastille. In February, 1578, Alencon
+broke his prison and fled, and all France was plunged into turmoil.
+Elizabeth was profoundly moved. The keynote of English policy was the
+exclusion of France from Flanders, and if Alencon was secretly supported
+in his action by his brother, then Elizabeth must oppose to the death
+any interference in Flanders.
+
+And so began the long and clever juggle by which she used Alencon's
+ambition to wed her as a means to compass her ends without marrying him.
+Huguenots flocked to Alencon's standard, whilst he sent by every post
+love-lorn epistles to Elizabeth, praying her to aid him to free Flanders
+from the bloodthirsty Spaniards. On July 7, 1578, Alencon entered
+Flanders with his army, and Elizabeth, still full of distrust of
+Frenchmen, feigned to Spaniards her deep disapproval, whilst she took
+care that many English and Germans in her pay slipped into Flanders at
+the same time, to prevent any French national domination. Presently,
+persuaded that Alencon had no secret pact with his brother, Elizabeth
+took Alencon and the Flemish revolt into her own hands, and effusively
+welcomed Alencon's envoys who came to promote his love suit.
+
+He chose for his emissary one Jehan Simier, an experienced gallant, who
+soon wooed Elizabeth to such good purpose that she fell violently in
+love with the messenger, as well as with his absent master. Protestant
+England took fright at the pending marriage of the queen with a papist
+of half her age. Simier, whom she called her "monkey," had bewitched
+her, said the courtiers, and remonstrances from all sides came to the
+queen.
+
+
+_V.--The Battle of Wits_
+
+
+Alencon's demands were high, but Elizabeth seems really for once to have
+lost her head, and but for the strong opposition of her Council, might
+have been drawn into the marriage. Simier, seeing the deadlock, decided
+to bring Alencon over at all risks. Leicester, deadly jealous, tried to
+assassinate Simier, who revenged himself by divulging to the queen
+Leicester's secret marriage. Elizabeth was beside herself with rage, and
+more in love than ever with Alencon and his envoy. At length, in August
+1579, the young French prince, in disguise, suddenly appeared at
+Greenwich. The queen's vanity was flattered, and though the visit was
+supposed to be secret, she hardly left her young lover, whilst he, to
+judge by his letters, was as badly smitten as she. But though she
+promised him marriage, he had to return with little else, and as soon as
+he had gone she found many good reasons for delay and hesitation.
+
+In October 1580, a new Catholic combination forced Elizabeth's hands,
+and she promised greater help to Alencon's project, whilst trying to
+draw France also into open war with Spain. The combat of wits was keen
+and cynical, each party trying to pledge the other and to keep free
+himself. A great French embassy came to England in April 1581, to
+negotiate an alliance and the queen's marriage with Alencon, who had now
+re-entered Flanders and was immersed in the struggle against the
+Spaniards. The discussions in England were becoming interminable, for
+the French ambassadors asked hard terms, when Alencon, in June 1581,
+losing patience, suddenly rushed over to England to plead his own cause
+independently of his brother's envoys, whom he distrusted with good
+reason. This suited Elizabeth, for it made Alencon more dependent upon
+her, and again she sent her lover back full of great promises to help
+him.
+
+In August Alencon again entered Flanders, depending entirely upon
+Elizabeth for support, and thenceforward he looked alone to his marriage
+with her for his salvation. She was sparing, and the poor prince retired
+to France in September. In desperation he came to England again to press
+for money and marriage in November 1581; and for months the love-making
+was fast and furious. Frantic prayers, sighs, and tears on his part were
+answered by kisses and promises on hers, but she gave as little money as
+would serve to get rid of him. On February 1, 1582, Alencon sailed for
+Holland to Elizabeth's professed grief and real joy; and thenceforward
+the prince, first in Flanders as sovereign, and afterwards in France a
+fugitive, supplicated and threatened his betrothed for money, and ever
+more money. But Elizabeth had now taken the Netherlands revolt into her
+own hands, and thenceforward her French lover was useless to her there.
+So, though she still kept up the pretence of her willingness to marry
+him on impossible conditions, and drove the poor creature to love-lorn
+despair, Alencon had served his matrimonial purpose before he died, in
+1584, and Elizabeth's courtships with a political object came to an end.
+She and England were strong enough now to face her possible foes without
+fear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots
+
+
+     Mary Queen of Scots was one of the most remarkable women who
+     ever presided over the destinies of a nation. She was born at
+     Linlithgow on December 8, 1542, a few days before the death of
+     her father, James V., thus becoming a queen before she was a
+     week old. Her complex personality and varied accomplishments
+     have inspired many and various historians, but it has remained
+     for Major Martin Hume to demonstrate the historical fatality
+     of Mary's love affairs. In "The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of
+     Scots," published in 1903, Major Hume gives a convincing and
+     logical reason for Mary's political failure, inasmuch as it
+     did not spring from her goodness or badness as a woman, but
+     from a certain weakness of character. This epitome has been
+     prepared by Major Hume himself.
+
+
+_I.--Betrothed in her Cradle_
+
+
+When in the great hall at Worms, on that ever-memorable April day in
+1521, before the panic-stricken princes, Luther insolently flung at the
+emperor his defiance of the mediaeval church, the crash, though all
+unheard by the ears of men, shook to their base the crumbling
+foundations upon which, for hundreds of years, the institutions of
+Europe had rested. The sixteenth century thenceforward was a period of
+disintegration and reconstruction, in which fresh lines of cleavage
+between old political associates were opened, new affinities were
+formed, and the international balance re-adjusted.
+
+In the long struggle of the house of Aragon, and its successor, Charles
+V., with France for the domination of Italy, the only effectual
+guarantee against England's actively aiding its traditional ally, the
+ruler of Spain and Flanders, against its traditional enemy, France, was
+for the latter country to keep a tight hold of its alliance with
+Scotland, by means of which English force might be diverted at any time.
+The existence of the Scottish "back door" to England, with the ever
+probable enemy behind it, had long been a check upon English power, and
+a humiliation to English kings in their efforts to hold the balance
+between the Continental rivals. But with the spread of Lutheranism in
+Germany and Henry VIII.'s defiance of the Papacy, the Catholic powers,
+drawn together in the face of common danger, found a fresh bond of union
+in their orthodoxy which partially superseded old rivalries.
+
+In these circumstances the English policy, which had aimed at the
+control of Scottish foreign relations to the exclusion of French
+influence, became not only desirable as it always had been, but vitally
+necessary to preserve England's independence.
+
+Henry VIII.'s policy towards Scotland had been that of _divide et
+impera_, and a series of royal minorities and the greed and poverty of
+the semi-independent Scottish nobles had aided him. The rout of the
+Scots at Solway Moss, and the pathetic passing of the gallant James V.,
+leaving his new-born daughter, Mary, as queen (December 1542), seemed at
+length to place Scotland in England's power. The murder of Cardinal
+Beaton, the bribery of the Douglases, and the marriage of Lennox with
+Henry's sister were all subsequent moves in the same game. Mary was
+betrothed in her cradle to the heir of England, and France, whose sheet
+anchor for centuries had been the "auld alliance" with the Scots,
+appeared to be helpless against a coalition of England and the emperor.
+
+Thenceforward, England's main object was to keep a tight grip upon
+Scotland by religion or otherwise, while at first France, and
+subsequently the Catholic league, strove ceaselessly, with the help of
+Mary Stuart, to free Scotland from English influence. The marriage
+juggle of Elizabeth was largely inspired by her Scottish aims, and if
+the fortuitous adjustment of her qualities kept England Protestant, and
+France wavering for all those critical years, if she secured the
+inactivity of Spain, the resistance of Protestant Holland, and the
+freedom of navigation by her skilful statecraft, her rival Mary Stuart
+was a hardly less powerful factor in the final triumph of England by
+reason of certain defects in her character, the consequences of which
+are dealt with in this book.
+
+Mary possessed a finer and nobler nature than Elizabeth; she was a woman
+of higher courage and greater conviction, more generous, magnanimous,
+and confiding, and, apart from her incomparably greater beauty and
+fascination, she possessed mental endowments fully equal to those of the
+English queen. But, whilst caution and love of mastery in Elizabeth
+always saved her from her weakness at the critical moment, Mary Stuart
+possessed no such safeguards, and was periodically swept along
+helplessly by the irresistible rush of her amorous passion.
+
+French intrigue and money, aided by the queen-regent of Scotland, Mary
+of Guise, succeeded, after Henry's death and Somerset's invasion of
+Scotland, in gaining firm hold upon Scotland, and Mary, as the betrothed
+wife of the dauphin Francis, was carried to France in 1548, at the age
+of six, to be reared by her cunning kinsmen of Lorraine, and made, as it
+was hoped, a future powerful instrument to aid Catholic French objects
+against England, and the reformation in France and elsewhere. As she
+grew towards womanhood in the bravest and most amorous court in Europe,
+the queen-dauphiness became a paragon of beauty, charm, accomplishments,
+the theme of poets, the despair of lovers innumerable worshipping her
+from afar.
+
+The boy Francis de Valois, to whom she was affianced, was a poor,
+bilious, degenerate weakling, stunted in figure, uncomely of face. He
+was shy and timid, shunning active exercises, and though at the time of
+his marriage (1558) he was too young to have been actively engaged in
+the vices of the outwardly devout court, he appears to have been fully
+alive to the desirability of his bride. Mary was precocious and
+ambitious; she was surrounded by profligates, male and female, and,
+though she can hardly have been in love with her young husband, she
+appears to have been fully reconciled to the union.
+
+With unsurpassed magnificence the wedding of Mary and Francis took place
+in Paris, but it signified to the world much more than the wedding of a
+boy and girl. So far as men could see, it meant the triumph of the papal
+Guises in France, and a death-blow to Protestant hopes of ranging
+Scotland on the side of the reformation.
+
+
+_II.--Intrigue, Plot, and Intrigue_
+
+
+Francis died after sixteen months reign, and Mary Stuart and her Guisan
+uncles, hated jealously by the queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, and by
+the reforming Bourbons, fell, for a time, into the background. Mary can
+hardly have loved her puny boy husband, but she nursed him night and day
+in his long sickness and his death so affected her that "she would not
+receive any consolation, but, brooding over her disasters with constant
+tears and passionate, doleful lamentations, she universally inspired
+deep pity." She had, indeed, lost much besides her royal husband; and in
+a poem written by her afterwards, the waste of her youth in widowhood,
+the loss of her great position as Queen of France, and her powerlessness
+any longer to enforce her rule in Scotland by French power, are the main
+burden of her complaints against Providence, not pity for the husband
+she had lost.
+
+The Guises were loath to surrender power without a struggle, and as soon
+as Francis died they sought to sell their niece in marriage again. Their
+first idea was for her to marry her child-brother-in-law, the new King
+Charles IX., but Catharine de Medici at once stopped that plan, though
+the boy himself was anxious for it and Mary was not averse. That
+failing, Cardinal Lorraine turned to the heir of Spain, Don Carlos, as a
+husband for her. This would have been a death-blow to Elizabeth, and
+Philip feigned to listen to it; but all the strength and cunning of
+Huguenots and Protestants, joined by those of Catharine and Elizabeth,
+were brought into play against this threatening move, and Mary went to
+Scotland with a sinking, sad, and angry heart in 1561, fearing her
+uncouth subjects, foreign to her now, vexed with the Protestant party
+for standing in the way of her ambitious marriage, and determined to
+oppose Elizabeth to the utmost in her designs against the independence
+of Scotland.
+
+With these views, gay and winsome though she was, it was not long before
+Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman,
+John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and
+Secretary Lethington that a _modus vivendi_ might be found by persuading
+Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she herself
+died childless, on the undertaking of Mary that her marriage and policy
+should be dictated by England; but it was not Elizabeth's plan to pledge
+the future of England, and her nimble evasiveness drove the Scottish
+statesmen to despair.
+
+Brawls and bitterness grew in Mary's court around the Catholicism of the
+queen, and English money and intrigue were freely lavished to set
+Scotland by the ears. Half the nobles were disaffected, and Murray and
+Lethington, having failed to secure Scottish interests by moderate
+counsels and the conciliation of Elizabeth, were forced to take a strong
+course. Of foreign suitors Mary had many, some promoted by the
+Protestants, some by the Pope and the Guises, while the Catholics of
+England were secretly intriguing to force Elizabeth's hand by arranging
+Mary's marriage with young Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, eldest son of
+Margaret, Countess of Lennox, niece of Henry VIII., who lived at
+Elizabeth's court. Cecil's spies were everywhere, and the plot was soon
+known and stopped by Elizabeth, violently angry with her kinswoman for
+listening to such a scheme.
+
+But Murray and Lethington, in desperation, were aiming at higher game
+even than this. They were Protestant, they had tried their best to win
+Elizabeth's recognition; but they were Scotsmen first, and if their
+country was to be independent it must have a great ally behind it.
+France was out of the question while the Guises were in the shade and
+Catharine was queen-mother. So the ministers of Mary turned their eyes
+to the Protestant heir of the Catholic king. Elizabeth soon heard of
+this, too, and suddenly pretended to be in favour of the Darnley match
+for Mary, while she developed the most cordial friendship for Mary
+herself; for the Guises had again become paramount in France, and
+Elizabeth could not afford to flout all the Catholic interests at once.
+
+That danger soon passed, for the Huguenots flew to arms, and Guise was
+murdered, Mary losing thus her principal prop abroad. And Lethington now
+pushed vigorously what seemed to be Scotland's only chance of
+safety--the marriage of Mary with the semi-idiot heir of Spain.
+
+The English Catholics were drawn into the plot. "Only let Mary marry the
+heir of Spain, and we will salute her as our leader," said they. But
+Elizabeth soon gained wind of it, as usual, and was ready with her
+antidote--a most extraordinary one--the proposal that Mary should wed
+her own lover, Lord Robert Dudley, with the assurance of the English
+succession after Elizabeth's death without issue. It was a mere feint,
+of course, but it divided Scotland, and unsettled Mary herself.
+
+Meanwhile, Philip, with his leaden methods, was pondering and seeking
+fresh pledges and guarantees from the English Catholics. Before his
+temporising answer came Elizabeth had frightened Mary's advisers into
+doubt, while she was holding the English Catholics in check by dangling
+Darnley and Dudley before Mary's eyes, and swearing deadly vengeance if
+she married the Spaniard.
+
+Elizabeth's first aim was to embroil Mary's prospects by discrediting
+her in the eyes of foreign powers. To this end was directed the offer
+alternately of Dudley and Darnley as a husband, and Elizabeth's pretence
+of shocked reprobation of Mary in connection with Chastelard's escapade.
+It must be confessed that Mary's imprudence aided Elizabeth's object,
+and the sour bigotry of Knox, which looked upon all gaiety as a sin,
+served the same purpose. All this drove the unhappy queen more and more
+into the arms of the Catholic party as her only means of defence.
+
+
+_III.--Prudence Overcome by Passion_
+
+
+The intrigue to wed Mary to the Spanish prince was met by Elizabeth
+cordially taking up Lady Lennox, and her son, Darnley, who by many was
+now regarded as the intended heir of England, and was held out to Mary
+as an ideal husband for her. So long as she had hopes of the Spanish
+prince she gave but evasive answers; but late in 1564 the cunning
+diplomacy of Catharine and the falseness of Cardinal Lorraine had
+diverted that danger; and Philip gave Mary to understand that the match
+with his son was impossible, Mary's great hope had been founded upon
+this marriage. Unless she could have a foreign Catholic husband strong
+enough to defy Elizabeth she knew that she must make terms with
+Elizabeth's enemies, the English Catholics, and thus bring pressure to
+bear upon her by internal dissensions.
+
+It was a dangerous game to play, for it meant conspiracy; and so long as
+the Lennoxes and their effeminate, lanky son were basking in Elizabeth's
+favour, the English queen held her trump card. But Lady Lennox was
+intriguing and ambitious, the head of English Catholic disaffection, and
+could only be held to Elizabeth's side by delusive hopes of the English
+succession for her son. Lennox himself, with some misgiving, was allowed
+to go to Scotland to claim his forfeited estates, and there, to
+Elizabeth's anger, was received with marked respect, which made the
+English queen hold Darnley and his mother more firmly than ever, and
+again push forward Dudley as a suitor for Mary's hand. Anxious to get
+Darnley to Scotland, not necessarily to marry him, but as a useful
+instrument, Mary feigned willingness to accept Dudley; and, in face of
+this, Elizabeth was induced to allow young Darnley to go to Scotland for
+a short time, ostensibly on business of the family estates.
+
+In February 1565, Darnley, aged nineteen, crossed the border, to the
+dismay of the English agents in Scotland. It was soon after Mary had
+received news that the Spanish match was at an end, and she was ready
+for a new plan to circumvent Elizabeth. Darnley as a husband would bring
+to her the support of English Catholics, and a new claim to the English
+crown. So when her eyes first lit upon the fair stripling at Wemyss
+Castle, she looked upon him with favour as "the properest tall man she
+ever saw." He was on his best behaviour, and danced delightfully with
+the queen. Up to this time Mary had played her game with self-command
+and policy, but now for the first time her heart ran away with her, and
+she took a false step.
+
+To have married Darnley as part of a transaction with Elizabeth, and
+with the approval of her own Protestant subjects, would have been a
+master-stroke. But she fell in love with the "long lad," and could not
+wait for negotiation; so she at once sent off to pray King Philip to
+support her with money and men against England and the Protestants if
+she married Darnley and became the tool of Spain. Philip, nothing loth,
+consented, and welcomed the coming union as a Catholic alliance and a
+powerful weapon against Elizabeth. Mary thus made herself the head of a
+vast Catholic conspiracy looking to Spain for support, and Elizabeth was
+furious both with Mary and Darnley for having apparently beaten her at
+her own cunning game.
+
+How Elizabeth sought a diversion, at first by new matrimonial schemes of
+her own, has been told elsewhere, but her more effectual weapon was to
+arouse the fears of Scottish Protestants, and breed dissension in Mary's
+realm. "The young fool," Darnley, insolent and proud of his new
+greatness, offended all the nobles, whilst Mary grew daily more
+infatuated with him. They were married in July 1565, and the great
+conspiracy against Elizabeth and Protestantism was complete. Already the
+Scottish Protestant lords were in a panic, and after an abortive rising,
+they fled before Mary's bold attack, taking refuge in England.
+
+The queen herself led her forces, armed and mounted, with her stripling
+husband by her side; but she was followed close by the shaggy, stern,
+martial figure of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, just returned from
+exile to serve her; and upon him she looked with kindling eyes as a
+stouter man than the fribble she had wed. Mary had now apparently
+triumphed by her Darnley marriage, but the avalanche was gathering to
+crush her. She looked mainly to Spain and the Pope for help, and had all
+Protestantism against her, led by Elizabeth, whose hate and fury knew no
+bounds. It was a duel now of life or death between two systems and two
+women, one with a heart and the other without; and, as usual, the
+heartless won.
+
+English money and skill honeycombed Scottish loyalty. Darnley, vicious,
+vain, and passionate, was an easy prey to intrigue. The tools of England
+whispered in his ear that his wife was too intimate with the Italian
+secretary Rizzio, who had conducted the correspondence with the Catholic
+powers. Darnley, who had earned his wife's contempt already, was beside
+himself with jealousy, and himself led the Protestant conspirators and
+friends of England, who murdered Rizzio in the queen's presence at
+Holyrood (March 1566). From that hour Darnley's doom was sealed.
+
+He had thought to be king indeed now, but Mary outwitted him; for she
+recalled her exiled lords, welcomed her brother Murray, and threw
+herself into the arms of Darnley's Protestant foes, the very men who had
+risen in arms against the marriage. As she fled by night with Darnley
+after Rizzio's murder, to betray him, she swore over Rizzio's new-made
+grave that a "fatter one" than he should lie there ere long. Whether she
+knew of the plot of his foes to murder her husband is not proved, but
+she almost certainly did so, and welcomed the deed when it was done. She
+made no pretence of love for him after Rizzio's death, and her husband
+repaid her coldness by sulky loutishness and bursts of drunken violence.
+Mary's conduct toward Bothwell, too, began to arouse scandal. By
+November 1566, matters had reached a crisis, and Mary, at Kelso, said
+that unless she was freed from Darnley she would put an end to herself.
+She spoke not to deaf ears. Morton, and the rest of Rizzio's slayers and
+bitter enemies, were pardoned, and the deadly bond was signed.
+
+
+_IV.--Dire Infatuation_
+
+
+On February 9, 1567, as the doomed consort lay sick and sorry outside
+Edinburgh at the lone house of Kirk o' Field, he was, done to death by
+Bothwell and the foes of the Lennoxes; and Mary Stuart's first true love
+affair was ended in tragedy. But already the second was in full blast.
+Bothwell had recently married; he was disliked by the Scottish nobles,
+and the queen's constant association with him had already brought
+discredit upon her. There had been a good political excuse for her union
+with Darnley, but Bothwell could bring no support to her cause; for his
+creed was doubtful, and he had no friends. Nothing, indeed, but the
+infatuation of an amorous woman for a brutally strong man could have so
+blinded her to her own great aims as to make her take Bothwell, the
+prime mover of Darnley's murder, for her husband.
+
+As soon as the crime was known, all fingers were pointed to Bothwell and
+the queen as the murderers, and Protestants everywhere hastened to cast
+obloquy upon Mary for it. But for the nobles' jealousy of Bothwell, and
+the religious animus, probably Darnley's death would soon have been
+forgotten or condoned; but as it was, Scotland blazed out in
+denunciation of it, and though Bothwell was put upon a mock trial and
+acquitted, the hate against him grew, especially when he arranged to
+divorce his wife in April 1567, and, ostensibly by force, but clearly by
+Mary's connivance, abducted the queen and bore her off to his castle of
+Dunbar.
+
+On her return to Edinburgh a few weeks later Mary publicly married
+Bothwell--she swore afterwards against her will, but, in any case, to
+the anger and disgust of her subjects. She found her new husband an
+arrogant tyrant rather than her slave, and he watched her closely. The
+dire infatuation of the lovelorn woman soon wore off, and again she
+sighed to be free; but it was too late, for the Catholic powers stood
+aloof from her now that she had married a divorced man, and all her
+nobles had abandoned her. So Mary clung to Bothwell still, for he was
+strong, and all Scotland cried shame upon her.
+
+In June, Mary and her husband, fearing attack or treachery, fled from
+Edinburgh Castle, which at once opened its gates to Morton and the rebel
+lords. A parley was sent to Mary offering submission if she would leave
+Bothwell to his fate. She indignantly refused, for she feared the lords
+and hated Morton. Bothwell was strong, she thought, and he was the
+father of her unborn child; be might protect her. So by Bothwell's side
+she rode out at the head of the border clansmen, and met the rebel army
+at Carberry Hill, hard by Edinburgh.
+
+It was agreed that the dispute should be decided by the single combat
+between Bothwell and Lindsay, but before the duel began Mary's bordermen
+became disordered, and then she knew that all was lost. Kirkaldy of
+Grange came from her opponents to parley with her and offer safety for
+her, but not for Bothwell. Whilst they were speaking, Bothwell attempted
+to murder Grange; and when Mary forbade such treachery, he lost his
+nerve and began to whimper. In a moment the scales fell from Mary's
+eyes. This man was but a lath painted like steel. His strength was but a
+lie, and he was unworthy of her. She turned from him in contempt, and
+surrendered to the lords; while Bothwell fled, and unhappy Mary saw him
+no more.
+
+
+_V.--Langside and After_
+
+
+Cursed by crowds, who reviled her as a murderess and adulteress, Mary
+was led, a captive, to her capital. By night, to save her from the fury
+of the mob, she was smuggled out of Edinburgh and lodged, a prisoner, in
+the island fortress of Lochleven. During her long incarceration there
+the story of her wrongs and sufferings stirred the Catholics at home and
+abroad in her favour, and her friends and foes were again sharply
+divided according to their religious creeds. The rulers of Scotland,
+too, headed by her brother Murray, were far from easy; for the Catholics
+were strong, and foreign crowned heads looked black at those who kept a
+sovereign in durance. So attempts were made to conciliate her by
+proposing marriage with some harmless Scottish noble, conjoined with her
+abdication. But her heart was high still, and she would bate no jot of
+her queenship; rather would she exercise her glamour upon her gaolers
+and escape to power and sovereignty again. Her fascination was
+irresistible, and Murray's half-brother, young George Douglas, a mere
+lad, fell a victim to her smiles. Once more Mary fell in love, and
+proposed to marry the youth who had endeavoured to aid her escape.
+
+Murray was shocked, and had his brother expelled the castle; but in
+April 1568 the faithful George planned her evasion of the guard and
+joyfully welcomed her on the shore of the lake. To her standard flocked
+the Catholic lords, and, safe at Hamilton, Mary, again a queen, swore
+vengeance upon her foes. On her way with her army to Dumbarton she met
+Murray's force at Langside, near Glasgow. She had been strong at
+Carberry Hill with Bothwell at her side. Here she was weak, for no man
+of weight or character was with her, and as her men wavered she turned
+rein and fled.
+
+For sixty miles on bad roads she struggled on, almost without sleep, and
+living on beggar's fare. With no adviser or woman near her, in her panic
+and despair she took the fatal resolve and crossed the Solway into
+Elizabeth's realm, trusting to the magnanimity of the woman whom she had
+tried to ruin and supplant. Again her heart had deceived her. Elizabeth
+had no pity for a vanquished foe, and for the rest of her miserable
+life, well nigh a score of years, Mary Stuart was a prisoner. But in all
+those years she never ceased to plot and plan for the overthrow of
+Elizabeth and her own elevation to the Catholic throne of all Britain.
+
+Amidst her many weapons, that of marriage and her personal fascination
+were not forgotten. Twice, at least, she tried to make her love affairs
+serve her political ambition. Poor, feckless Norfolk was drawn by his
+vanity and ambition into her net. Love epistles, breathing eternal
+devotion, passed between them, but murder was behind it all--the murder
+of Elizabeth, and the subjection of England to Spain to work Mary's
+vengeance on her foes, and Norfolk lost his head deservedly.
+
+Again she dreamed of marrying the Christian champion, Don Juan of
+Austria, and conquering and ruling over a Catholic England. But this
+plot, too, was discovered, and Don Juan, like all the rest of Mary's
+lovers, died miserably. Mary thenceforward was the centre of Spain's
+great conspiracy against England's queen, but she sought the end no more
+by love; for that had failed her every time she tried. She and her cause
+were beaten because her heart of fire was pitted against a heart of ice,
+and she lost all because she loved too much.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+Life of Christopher Columbus
+
+
+     Washington Irving, American historian and essayist, was born
+     on April 3, 1783, in New York, of a family which came
+     originally from Scotland. He knew Europe well, and was equally
+     at home in London, Paris, and Madrid; he held the offices, in
+     1829, of Secretary to the American Embassy in London, and, in
+     1842, of American Minister in Spain. He was deeply interested
+     in Spanish history, and besides the "Life and Voyages of
+     Christopher Columbus," he wrote "The Voyages of the Companions
+     of Columbus," "The Conquest of Granada," "The Alhambra," and
+     "Legends of the Conquest of Spain." He was an industrious man
+     of letters, having an excellent style, wide knowledge, and
+     pleasant humour. His chief work was the "Life of George
+     Washington," of which we give an epitome elsewhere. Other
+     writings include "A History of New York, by Diedrich
+     Knickerbocker," the celebrated "Sketch Book," "Bracebridge
+     Hall," "Tales of a Traveller," and a "Life of Goldsmith."
+     Irving did not marry, and died on November 28, 1859, in his
+     home at Sunnyside on the Hudson River, and is buried at
+     Tarrytown. The "Life of Columbus" was published in 1828 and is
+     now obtainable in a number of popular editions.
+
+
+_The Years of Waiting_
+
+
+Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa about 1435, of poor but reputable
+parents. He soon evinced a passion for geographical knowledge, and an
+irresistible inclination for the sea. We have but shadowy traces of his
+life till he took up his abode in Lisbon about 1470. His contemporaries
+describe him as tall and muscular; he was moderate and simple in diet
+and apparel, eloquent, engaging, and affable. At Lisbon he married a
+lady of rank, Dona Felipa. He supported his family by making maps and
+charts.
+
+Portugal was prosecuting modern discovery with great enthusiasm, seeking
+a route to India by the coast of Africa; Columbus's genius conceived the
+bold idea of seeking India across the Atlantic. He set it down that the
+earth was a terraqueous globe, which might be travelled round. The
+circumference he divided into twenty-four hours. Of these he imagined
+that fifteen hours had been known to the ancients; the Portguese had
+advanced the western frontier one hour more by the discovery of the
+Azores and the Cape de Verde Islands; still, about eight hours remained
+to be explored. This space he imagined to be occupied in great measure
+by the eastern regions of Asia. A navigator, therefore, pursuing a
+direct course from east to west, must arrive at Asia or discover
+intervening land.
+
+The work of Marco Polo is the key to many of the ideas of Columbus. The
+territories of the Great Khan were the object of his search in all his
+voyages. Much of the success of his enterprise rested on two happy
+errors; the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed
+smallness of the earth. Without these errors he would hardly have
+ventured into the immeasurable waste of waters of the Atlantic.
+
+A deep religious sentiment mingled with his thoughts; he looked upon
+himself as chosen from among men, and he read of his discovery as
+foretold in Holy Writ. Navigation was still too imperfect for such an
+undertaking; mariners rarely ventured far out of sight of land. But
+knowledge was advancing, and the astrolabe, which has been modified into
+the modern quadrant, was being applied to navigation. This was the one
+thing wanting to free the mariner from his long bondage to the land.
+
+Columbus now laid his great project before the King of Portugal, but
+without success. Greatly disappointed, he sailed to Spain, hoping to
+receive the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was many months
+before he could even obtain a hearing; his means were exhausted, and he
+had to contend against ridicule and scorn, but the royal audience was at
+length obtained. Ferdinand assembled learned astronomers and
+cosmographers to hold a conference with Columbus. They assailed him with
+citations from the Bible. One objection advanced was, that should a ship
+ever succeed in reaching India, she could never come back, for the
+rotundity of the globe would present a mountain, up which it would be
+impossible to sail. Finally, after five years, the junta condemned the
+scheme as vain and impossible.
+
+Columbus was on the point of leaving Spain, when the real grandeur of
+the subject broke at last on Isabella's mind, and she resolved to
+undertake the enterprise. Articles of agreement were drawn up and signed
+by Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus and his heirs were to have the
+office of High Admiral in all the seas, lands, and continents he might
+discover, and he was to be viceroy over the said lands and continents.
+He was to have one-tenth of all profits, and contribute an eighth of the
+expense of expeditions. Columbus proposed that the profits from his
+discoveries should be consecrated to a crusade.
+
+
+_The First Voyage_
+
+(August, 1492--March, 1493)
+
+
+Columbus set out joyfully for Palos, where the expedition was to be
+fitted out. He had spent eighteen years in hopeless solicitation, amidst
+poverty, neglect, and ridicule. When the nature of the expedition was
+heard, the boldest seamen shrank from such a chimerical cruise, but at
+last every difficulty was vanquished, and the vessels were ready for
+sea. Two of them were light, half-decked caravels; the Santa Maria, on
+which Columbus hoisted his flag, was completely decked. The whole number
+of persons was one hundred and twenty.
+
+Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492, steering for the Canary Islands.
+From there they were wafted gently over a tranquil sea by the trade
+wind, and for many days did not change a sail. The poor mariners
+gradually became uneasy at the length of the voyage. The sight of small
+birds, too feeble to fly far, cheered their hearts for a time, but again
+their impatience rose to absolute mutiny. Then new hopes diverted them.
+There was an appearance of land, and the ships altered their course and
+stood all night to the south-west, but the morning light put an end to
+their hopes; the fancied land proved to be an evening cloud.
+
+Again the seamen broke forth into loud clamours, and insisted on
+abandoning the voyage. Fortunately, the following day a branch with
+berries on it floated by; they picked up also a small board and a carved
+staff, and all murmuring was now at an end. Not an eye was closed that
+night. Columbus took his station on the top of the cabin. Suddenly,
+about ten o'clock, he beheld a light. At two in the morning the land was
+clearly seen, and they took in sail, waiting for the dawn. The great
+mystery of the ocean was revealed.
+
+When the day dawned, Columbus landed, threw himself upon his knees,
+kissed the earth, and returned thanks to God. Rising, he drew his sword,
+displayed the royal standard, and took possession in the names of the
+Castillian sovereigns, naming the island San Salvador. It is one of the
+Bahama Islands, and still retains that name, though also called Cat
+Island.
+
+The natives thought that the ships had descended from above on their
+ample wings, and that these marvellous beings were inhabitants of the
+skies. They appeared to be simple and artless people, and of gentle and
+friendly dispositions. As Columbus supposed that the island was at the
+extremity of India, he called them Indians. He understood them to say
+that a king of great wealth resided in the south. This, he concluded,
+could be no other than Cipango, or Japan. He now beheld a number of
+beautiful islands, green, level, and fertile; and supposed them to be
+the archipelago described by Marco Polo. He was enchanted by the lovely
+scenery, the singing of the birds, and the brilliantly colored fish,
+though disappointed in his hopes of finding gold or spice; but the
+natives continued to point to the south as the region of wealth, and
+spoke of an Island called Cuba.
+
+He set sail in search of it, and was struck with its magnitude, the
+grandeur of its mountains, its fertile valleys, sweeping plains, stately
+forests, and noble rivers. He explored the coast to the east end of
+Cuba, supposing it the extreme point of Asia, and then descried the
+mountains of Hayti to the south-east. In coasting along this island,
+which he named Hispaniola, his ship was carried by a current on a
+sandbank and lost. The admiral and crew took refuge in one of the
+caravels. The natives, especially the cacique Guacanagari, offered him
+every assistance. The Spanish mariners regarded with a wistful eye the
+easy and idle existence of these Indians, who seemed to live in a golden
+world without toil, and they entreated permission to remain.
+
+This suggested to Columbus the idea of forming the germ of a future
+colony. The cacique was overjoyed, and the natives helped to build a
+fort, thus assisting to place on their necks the yoke of slavery. The
+fortress and harbour were named La Navidad.
+
+Columbus chose thirty-nine of those who volunteered to remain, charged
+them to be circumspect and friendly with the natives, and set sail for
+Spain. He encountered violent tempests, his small and crazy vessels were
+little fitted for the wild storms of the Atlantic; the oldest mariners
+had never known so tempestuous a winter, and their preservation seemed
+miraculous. They were forced to run into Tagus for shelter. The King of
+Portugal treated Columbus with the most honourable attentions. When the
+weather had moderated he put to sea again, and arrived safely at Palos
+on March 15, having taken not quite seven months and a half to
+accomplish this most momentous of all maritime enterprises.
+
+Columbus landed and walked in procession to the church to return thanks
+to God. Bells were rung, the shops shut, and all business suspended. The
+sovereigns were dazzled by this easy acquisition of a new empire. They
+addressed Columbus as admiral and viceroy, and urged him to repair
+immediately to court to concert plans for a second expedition. His
+journey to Barcelona was like the progress of a sovereign, and his
+entrance into that city has been compared to a Roman triumph. On his
+approach the sovereigns rose and ordered him to seat himself in their
+presence. When Columbus had given an account of his voyage, the king and
+queen sank on their knees, and a _Te Deum_ was chanted by the choir of
+the royal chapel. Such was the manner in which the brilliant court of
+Spain celebrated this sublime event.
+
+The whole civilised world was filled with wonder and delight, but no one
+had an idea of the real importance of the discovery. The opinion of
+Columbus was universally adopted that Cuba was the end of Asia; the
+islands were named the West Indies, and the vast region was called the
+New World.
+
+
+_The Second Voyage_
+
+(September, 1493--June, 1496)
+
+
+Extraordinary excitement prevailed about the second expedition, and many
+hidalgos of high rank pressed into it. They sailed from Cadiz in
+September 1493; all were full of animation, anticipating a triumphant
+return. When they reached La Navidad they found the fortress burnt. At
+length, from some natives they heard the story of the brawls of the
+colonists between themselves, and their surprise and destruction by
+unfriendly Indians. Columbus fixed upon a new site for his colony, which
+he named Isabella. Two small expeditions were sent inland to explore,
+and returned with enthusiastic accounts of the promise of the mountains,
+and Columbus sent to Spain a glowing report of the prospects of the
+colony.
+
+Soon, however, maladies made their appearance, provisions began to fail,
+and murmuring prevailed among the colonists. In truth, the fate of many
+of the young cavaliers, who had come out deluded by romantic dreams, was
+lamentable in the extreme. Columbus arranged for the government of the
+island, and set sail to explore the southern coast of Cuba, supposing it
+to be the extreme end of Asia. He had to contend with almost incredible
+perils, and was obliged to return. Had he continued for two or three
+days longer he would have passed round the extremity of Cuba; his
+illusion would have been dispelled, and a different course given to his
+subsequent discoveries.
+
+During his absence from Isabella the whole island had become a scene of
+violence and discord. Margarite, the general left in charge of the
+soldiers, and Friar Boyle, the apostolical vicar, formed a cabal of the
+discontented, took possession of certain ships, and set sail for Spain,
+to represent the disastrous state of the country, and to complain of the
+tyranny of Columbus. The soldiers indulged in all kinds of excesses, and
+the Indians were converted from gentle hosts into vindictive enemies.
+
+Meanwhile, a commissioner was sent out to inquire into the distress of
+the colony and the conduct of Columbus. He collected all complaints, and
+returned to Spain, Columbus sailing at the same time. Never did a more
+miserable crew return from a land of promise.
+
+The vessels anchored at Cadiz, and a feeble train of wretched men
+crawled forth, emaciated by diseases. Contrary to his anticipation,
+Columbus was received with distinguished favour. Thus encouraged, he
+proposed a further enterprise, and asked for eight ships, which were
+readily promised; but it was not until May 1498, that he again set sail.
+
+
+_The Third Voyage_
+
+(May, 1498--October, 1500)
+
+
+From the Cape de Verde Islands, Columbus steered to the south-west,
+until he arrived at the fifth degree of north latitude. The air was like
+a furnace, the mariners lost all strength and spirit, and Columbus was
+induced to alter his course to the northwest. After sailing some
+distance they reached a genial region with a cooling breeze and serene
+and clear sky. They descried three mountains above the horizon; as they
+drew nearer, they proved to be united at the base, and Columbus,
+therefore, named this island La Trinidad. He coasted round Trinidad, and
+landed on the mainland, but mistook it for an island. He was astonished
+at the body of fresh water flowing into the Gulf of Paria, and came to
+the conclusion that it must be the outpouring of a great unknown
+continent stretching to the south, far beyond the equator. His supplies
+were now almost exhausted, and he determined to return to Hispaniola.
+
+He found the island in a lamentable situation. A conspiracy had been
+formed against his viceroy, and the Indians, perceiving the dissensions
+among the Spaniards, threw off their allegiance. After long negotiations
+Columbus was forced to sign a humiliating capitulation with the rebels.
+Meanwhile, every vessel that returned from the New World came freighted
+with complaints against Columbus. The support of the colony was an
+incessant drain upon the mother country. Was this compatible, it was
+asked, with the pictures he had drawn of the wealth of the island?
+
+Isabella herself at last began to entertain doubts about Columbus, and
+the sovereigns decided to send out Don Francisco del Bobadilla to
+investigate his conduct. This officer appears to have been needy,
+passionate, and ambitious. He acted as if he had been sent out to
+degrade the admiral, not to inquire into his conduct. He threw Columbus
+into irons, and seized his arms, gold, jewels, books, and most secret
+manuscripts. Columbus conducted himself with characteristic magnanimity,
+and bore all indignities in silence. Bobadilla collected testimony
+sufficient, as he thought, to ensure the condemnation of Columbus, and
+sent him a prisoner to Spain.
+
+The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, in chains, produced almost as great a
+sensation as his first triumphant return. A general burst of indignation
+arose. The sovereigns sent orders that he should be instantly set at
+liberty, and promised that Columbus should be reinstated in all his
+dignities. But Ferdinand repented having invested such great powers in
+any subject, and especially in a foreigner. Plausible reasons were given
+for delaying his reappointment, and meanwhile Don Nicholas de Ovando was
+sent out to supersede Bobadilla.
+
+
+_The Fourth Voyage_
+
+(May, 1502--November, 1504)
+
+
+Columbus's thoughts were suddenly turned to a new enterprise. Vasco da
+Gama had recently reached India round the Cape of Good Hope, and immense
+wealth was poured by this route into Portugal. Columbus was persuaded
+that the currents of the Caribbean Sea must pass between Cuba and the
+land which he had discovered to the south, and that this route to India
+would be more easy and direct than that of Vasco da Gama. His plan was
+promptly adopted by the sovereigns, and he sailed in May 1502, on his
+last and most disastrous voyage. He steered to Hispaniola, but was not
+permitted to land, and then coasted along Honduras and down the Mosquito
+Coast to Costa Rica. Here he found gold among the natives, and heard
+rumours of Mexico. He continued beyond Cape Nombre de Dios in search for
+the imaginary strait, and then gave up all attempt to find it.
+
+Possibly he knew that another voyager, coasting from the eastward, had
+reached this point. He turned westward to search for the gold-mines of
+Veragua, and attempted unsuccessfully to found a settlement there. As
+his vessels were no longer capable of standing the sea, he ran them
+aground on Jamaica, fastened them together, and put the wreck in a state
+of defence. He dispatched canoes to Hispaniola, asking Ovando to send a
+ship to relieve him, but many months of suffering and difficulty elapsed
+before it came.
+
+Columbus returned to Spain in November 1504. Care and sorrow were
+destined to follow him; his finances were exhausted, and he was unable,
+from his infirmities, to go to court. The death of Isabella was a fatal
+blow to his fortunes. Many months were passed by him in painful and
+humiliating solicitation for the restitution of his high offices. At
+length he saw that further hope of redress from Ferdinand was vain. His
+illness increased, and he expired, with great resignation, on May 20,
+1506.
+
+Columbus was a man of great and inventive genius, and his ambition was
+noble and lofty. Instead of ravaging the newly-found countries, he
+sought to found regular and prosperous enterprises. He was naturally
+irritable and impetuous, but, though continually outraged in his
+dignity, and foiled in his plans by turbulent and worthless men, he
+restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, and brought himself to
+forbear and reason, and even to supplicate. His piety was genuine and
+fervent, and diffused a sober dignity over his whole deportment.
+
+He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discovery. What visions
+of glory would have broken upon his mind could he have known that he had
+indeed discovered a new continent! And how would his spirit have been
+consoled, amidst the afflictions of age and the injustice of an
+ungrateful king, could he have anticipated the empires which would arise
+in the world he had discovered; and the nations, towns, and languages,
+which were to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Life of George Washington
+
+
+     This great historical biography was Washington Irving's
+     principal work. It was founded chiefly upon George
+     Washington's correspondence, which is preserved in manuscript
+     in the archives of the United States Government. Irving worked
+     at it intermittently for many years; and it was published in
+     successive sections during the last years of his life, 1855 to
+     1859, while he was living in retirement with his nieces at
+     Sunnyside, on the Hudson River.
+
+
+The De Wessyngton family, of the county of Durham, in feudal times,
+produced many men of mark in the field and in the cloister, and at a
+later period the Washingtons were intrepid supporters of the unfortunate
+House of Stuart. Compromised by this allegiance, two brothers, John and
+Andrew, uncles of Sir Henry Washington, the gallant defender of
+Worcester, emigrated to Virginia in 1657, and purchased lands in
+Westmoreland County, by the River Potomac. John, who became military
+leader of the Virginians against the Indians, was great-grandfather of
+the illustrious George Washington.
+
+George, born February 22, 1732, in a homestead on Bridges Creek, was the
+eldest son of Mary Ball, second wife of Augustine Washington. Two
+half-brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, survived from the first marriage;
+and Mary had three other sons and two daughters. George received his
+first education in an "old field school-house," taught by the parish
+sexton; but the chief influences of his boyhood were the morality of his
+home and the military ardour of the colonists against the Spanish and
+the French. Lawrence, his eldest brother, had a captaincy in the
+colonial regiment which fought for England in the West Indies, in 1740,
+and the boy's whole mind was turned to war.
+
+His father died when he was eleven years old, and George was sent to
+live with his married brother Augustine. Here he attended school, was
+eager in the acquirement of knowledge, and became expert in all athletic
+exercises. He very nearly entered on a naval career, but at his mother's
+earnest entreaty renounced the project, and returning to school, studied
+land-surveying.
+
+Lawrence, his brother, having married into the Fairfax family, George
+came under the notice of Lord Fairfax, owner of immense tracts of
+country, who was so pleased with the lad's character and accomplishments
+that he entrusted him with the task of surveying his possessions. At the
+age of sixteen George Washington set out into the wilderness, and
+acquitted himself so well that he was appointed public surveyor. He thus
+gained an intimate knowledge, and of the ways of the Indians.
+
+The English and French governments were at this time making conflicting
+claims to the Ohio valley, and their agents were treating with the
+various Indian tribes. At length the French prepared to enforce their
+claim by arms, and Washington received, in 1751, a commission as
+adjutant-general over a military district of Virginia. In October, 1753,
+he was sent by Governor Dinwiddie on a mission to the French commander,
+from which he returned in the following January; and his conduct on this
+occasion, when he had to traverse great distances of unknown forest at
+midwinter, and to cope with the craft of white men and savages alike,
+marked him out as a youth fitted for the most important civil and
+military trusts.
+
+
+_Conflicts with the French_
+
+
+Washington was for the first time under fire in April, 1754, when he had
+been sent, as second in command of the colonial forces, to take charge
+of a fort on the Ohio. He fell in with a French party of spies, whom his
+small force, with Indian assistance, put to flight. His fort, named Fort
+Necessity, was defended by three hundred men, but was attacked in July
+by a greatly superior force of French and Indians, and Washington had to
+capitulate, marching out with the honours of war.
+
+When it was determined, the same autumn, by the Governor and the British
+Secretary of State, that the colonial troops should be reduced to
+independent companies, so that there should no longer be colonial
+officers above the rank of captain, Washington, in accordance with the
+dawning republicism of America, resigned his commission, and settling at
+Mount Vernon, prepared to devote himself to agriculture. But in 1755,
+General Braddock was sent out to undertake energetic operations against
+the French, and Washington accepted the General's offer of a position
+on his staff.
+
+It was now that the eminent Benjamin Franklin did such great service to
+the British arms by organizing transport, and listened with astonishment
+to Braddock's anticipations of easy victory. The young aide-de-camp also
+warned the English soldier in vain. On July 9 Braddock's force was
+utterly routed by the French and Indians, and the general himself was
+slain. This reverse did away with all belief, throughout the colonies,
+in the power of British arms, and prepared the way for the independence
+that was to follow.
+
+On August 14 George Washington was appointed to the supreme command of
+the Virginian forces, with his headquarters at Winchester, and was
+occupied in the defence of a wide frontier with an insufficient force,
+until the expedition against Fort Duquesne in 1758, when he planted the
+British flag on its smoking ruins, and put an end to the French
+domination of the Ohio.
+
+His marriage to Mrs. Martha Custis, a young and wealthy widow, was
+celebrated on January 6, 1759; he took his seat in the House of
+Burgesses at Williamsburg, and established himself at Mount Vernon to
+develop his estates. A large Virginia estate, in those days, was a
+little empire.
+
+
+_The Dawn of Independence_
+
+
+The definitive treaty of peace between France and England was signed at
+Fontainebleau in 1763; but the tranquility of the colonies was again
+broken by an Indian insurrection, known as Pontiac's war. Washington had
+no part in its suppression, but he was soon to be called again to the
+defence of his country.
+
+He was in his place in the House of Burgesses on May 29, 1765, when the
+claims of Britain to tax the colony were first repudiated, and it was
+declared that the General Assembly of Virginia had the exclusive right
+to tax the inhabitants, and that whoever maintained the contrary should
+be deemed an enemy to the colony. These resolutions were the signal for
+general applause throughout the continent.
+
+The repeal, in 1766, of the objectionable Stamp Act only postponed the
+crisis, which became acute when the port of Boston was closed by
+Parliament, because of the resistance of that city to the importation of
+East Indian tea. A General Congress of deputies from the several
+colonies was convened for September 5, 1773, at Philadelphia, in which
+Washington took part, and a Federal Union of the colonies was then
+established. The English commander, General Gage, struck the first blow
+against popular liberties, in the engagement at Lexington, April 18,
+1775, and on June 15 Washington was unanimously elected
+commander-in-chief of the American forces.
+
+Two days later was fought, outside Boston, the heroic battle of Bunker's
+Hill, and on the 21st Washington set out from Philadelphia to the seat
+of war, where he laid a strict siege about Boston, with a view to
+forcing the British to come out. An English ship having bombarded the
+American port of Falmouth, an act was passed by the General Court of
+Massachusetts, encouraging the fitting out of armed vessels to defend
+the coast of America, and granting letters of marque and reprisal. In
+October a conference of delegates was held, under Washington's
+presidency, of which Benjamin Franklin was a member, with regard to a
+new organisation of the army; and a new force of twenty-two thousand was
+formed, every soldier being enlisted for one year only.
+
+Montreal had been captured by an American expedition, and Washington was
+now looking forward to equal success in an expedition against Quebec. He
+was further encouraged by the capture, by one of his cruisers, of a
+brigantine laden with munitions of war, including a huge brass mortar.
+His wife joined the camp before Boston, and the eventful year was closed
+with festivities.
+
+But the gallant attempt on Quebec, in which Montgomery fell, was
+frustrated, and the siege of Boston dragged on uneventfully, until the
+Americans, in March, seized Dorchester Heights, and made the town no
+longer tenable. On the 17th there were in Boston Harbor seventy-eight
+ships and transports casting loose for sea, and twelve thousand
+soldiers, sailors and refugees, hurrying to embark. The flag of thirteen
+stripes, the standard of the Union, floated above the Boston forts,
+after ten tedious months of siege.
+
+The eminent services of Washington throughout this arduous period, his
+admirable management by which, in the course of a few months, an
+undisciplined band of husbandmen became soldiers, and were able to expel
+a brave army of veterans, commanded by the most experienced generals,
+won the enthusiastic applause of the nation. A unanimous vote of thanks
+was passed to him in Congress.
+
+
+_Declaration of Independence_
+
+
+Despatches from Canada continued to be disastrous, and the evacuation of
+that country was determined on in June, 1776. The great aim of the
+British was now to get possession of New York and the Hudson, and to
+make them the basis of military operations. While danger was gathering
+round New York, and its inhabitants were in mute suspense and fearful
+anticipations, the General Congress at Philadelphia was discussing with
+closed doors the greatest question ever debated in America. A resolution
+was passed unanimously, on July 2, "that these United Colonies are, of
+right ought to be, free and independent States."
+
+The fourth of July is the day of national rejoicing, for on that day the
+"Declaration of Independence," that solemn and sublime document, was
+adopted. Tradition gives a dramatic effect to its announcement. It was
+known to be under discussion, but the closed doors of Congress excluded
+the populace. They awaited, in throngs, an appointed signal. In the
+steeple of the state-house was a bell, bearing the portentous text from
+Scripture, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the
+inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the
+bill had been passed. It was the knell of British domination.
+
+Washington hailed the Declaration with joy. It was but a formal
+recognition of a state of things which had long existed, but it put an
+end to all those temporizing hopes of reconciliation which had clogged
+the military action of the country. On July 9, he caused it to be read
+at the head of each brigade of the army. "The general hopes," said he,
+"that this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every
+officer and soldier, to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that
+now the peace and safety of his country depend, under God, solely on the
+success of our arms; and that he is now in the service of a state
+possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to
+the highest honours of a free country." and again: "The general hopes
+and trusts that every officer and man will endeavour so to live and act
+as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and
+liberties of his country."
+
+
+_The Winning of Independence_
+
+
+But the exultation of the patriots of New York was soon overclouded.
+British warships, under Admiral Lord Howe, were in the harbour on July
+12, and affairs now approached a crisis. Lord Howe came "as a mediator,
+not as a destroyer," and had prepared a declaration inviting communities
+as well as individuals to merit and receive pardon by a prompt return to
+their duty; it was a matter of sore regret to him that his call to
+loyalty had been forestalled by the Declaration of Independence.
+
+The British force in the neighbourhood of New York, under General Howe,
+brother of the Admiral, was about thirty thousand men; the Americans
+were only about twenty thousand, for the most part raw and
+undisciplined, and the sectional jealousies prevalent among them were
+more and more a subject of uneasiness to Washington. On August 27 the
+American force was defeated with great loss in the battle of Long
+Island, and was withdrawn from the island by a masterly night retreat;
+this led to the loss of New York and the Hudson River to the British.
+Reverse followed reverse; Washington was driven by the British arms from
+one point after another; many of the chief American cities were taken;
+and on September 26, 1777, General Sir William Howe marched into
+Philadelphia and thus occupied the capital of the confederacy. But
+Washington still maintained his characteristic equanimity. "I hope," he
+said, "that a little time will put our affairs in a more flourishing
+condition."
+
+This anticipation was soon to be fulfilled. General Burgoyne had been
+advancing from the north with a large force of British and Hessian
+troops, but was compelled by General Gates, with a superior American
+force, to capitulate on October 17,1777. By this capitulation the
+Americans gained a fine train of artillery, seven thousand stand of
+arms, and a great quantity of clothing, tents, and military stores of
+all kinds; and the surrender of Burgoyne struck dismay into the British
+army on the Hudson River.
+
+But the struggle for independence was still to continue for four years
+of incessant military operations, and it was not until the surrender of
+Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, by Lord Cornwallis, that Britain gave up
+hope of reducing her rebel colonies. When the redoubts of Yorktown were
+taken, Washington exclaimed, "The work is done, and well done!"
+
+A general treaty of peace was signed in Paris on January 20, 1783; and
+in March of that year Sir Guy Carleton informed Washington that he was
+ordered to proclaim a cessation of hostilities by sea and land. On April
+19, the anniversary of the battle of Lexington, thus completing the
+eighth year of the war, Washington issued a general order to the army in
+these terms--"The generous task for which we first flew to arms being
+accomplished, the liberties of our country being fully acknowledged and
+firmly secured, and the characters of those who have persevered through
+every extremity of hardship, suffering, and danger, being immortalised
+by the illustrious appellation of 'the patriot army,' nothing now
+remains but for the actors of this mighty scene to preserve a perfect,
+unvarying consistency of character through the very last act, to close
+the drama with applause, and to retire from the military theatre with
+the same approbation of angels and men which has crowned all their
+former virtuous actions."
+
+Writing, on June 8, to the Governors of the several States, he
+said--"The great object for which I had the honour to hold an
+appointment in the service of my country being accomplished, I am now
+preparing to return to that domestic retirement which, it is well known,
+I left with the greatest reluctance; a retirement for which I have never
+ceased to sigh, through a long and painful absence, and in which, remote
+from the noise and trouble of the world, I meditate to pass the
+remainder of life in a state of undisturbed repose."
+
+
+_The Years of Peace_
+
+
+Washington returned to Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve, 1783, and busied
+himself with the care of his estates. He had never ceased to be the
+agriculturist; through all his campaigns he had kept himself informed of
+the course of rural affairs at Mount Vernon. By means of maps on which
+every field was laid down and numbered, he was enabled to give
+directions for their several cultivation, and to receive accounts of
+their several crops. No hurry of affairs prevented a correspondence with
+his agent, and he exacted weekly reports. He now read much on
+agriculture and gardening, and corresponded with the celebrated Arthur
+Young, from whom he obtained seeds of all kinds, improved ploughs, plans
+for laying out farmyards, and advice on various parts of rural economy.
+
+His active day at Mount Vernon began some time before dawn. Much of his
+correspondence was despatched before breakfast, which took place at
+half-past seven. After breakfast he mounted his horse and rode off to
+various parts of his estate; dined at half-past two; if there was no
+company he would write until dark; and in the evening he read, or amused
+himself with a game of whist.
+
+The adoption of the Federal Constitution opened another epoch in the
+life of Washington. Before the official forms of an election could be
+carried into operation, a unanimous sentiment throughout the Union
+pronounced him the nation's choice to fill the presidential chair. The
+election took place, and Washington was chosen President for a term of
+four years from March 4, 1788. An entry in his diary, on March 16,
+says--"I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic
+felicity; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful
+sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York with the
+best disposition to render service to my country in obedience to its
+call, but with less hope of answering its expectations."
+
+The weight and influence of his name and character were deemed all
+essential to complete his work; to set the new government in motion, and
+conduct it through its first perils and trials. He undertook the task,
+firm in the resolve in all things to act as his conscience told him was
+"right as it respected his God, his country, and himself." For he knew
+no divided fidelity, no separate obligation; his most sacred duty to
+himself was his highest duty to his country and his God.
+
+His death took place on December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon.
+
+The character of Washington may want some of the poetical elements which
+dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities
+and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one
+man. Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgement,
+an immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never
+wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOSEPHUS
+
+
+Autobiography
+
+
+     Flavius Josephus was born in Jerusalem in 37 A.D. His father,
+     Matthias, was a priest, and his mother belonged to the
+     Asmonean princely family. So distinguished was he as a student
+     that, at the age of twenty-six, he was chosen delegate to
+     Nero. When the critical juncture arose for his nation, through
+     the rebellion excited by the cruelties of Gessius Florus, the
+     Roman procurator, Josephus was appointed governor of Galilee
+     The insurrection proved fatal, for Vespasian by his invasion
+     rendered resistance hopeless. Subsequently he lived in Rome,
+     and the date of his death is unknown. The works of this writer
+     are monumental. He wrote his vivid "Wars of the Jews" in both
+     Hebrew and Greek. His "Antiquities of the Jews" traces the
+     whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the great
+     war. Scaliger, one of the acutest of mediaeval critics,
+     declares that in his writings on the affairs of the Jews, and
+     even on those of foreign nations, Josephus deserves more
+     credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put together. His
+     fidelity and veracity are as universally admitted as his
+     direct and lucid style is generally admired. His account of
+     his own life and career is a masterpiece in this category of
+     literature, for it is written with blended modesty and
+     naivete. In many passages of this "Autobiography" he does not
+     hesitate to assume great credit for his own courage, probity,
+     and skill, but in each case the justification is manifest, for
+     he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous
+     machinations of his virulent enemies. The "Autobiography" is
+     from beginning to end a thrilling and wonderful romance of
+     real life, for the hairbreadth escapes of this extraordinary
+     man are among the most singular recitals in the whole world of
+     adventure. The whole story is unique, as was the noble
+     individuality of the man himself.
+
+
+_I.--Priest of the Blood-Royal_
+
+
+The family from which I, Flavius Josephus, am derived is not an ignoble
+one, but hath descended all along from the priests. I am not only sprung
+from a sacerdotal family in general, but from the first of the
+twenty-four courses of the Jewish priests, and I am of the chief family
+of that course also. With us, to be of the sacerdotal dignity is an
+indication of the splendour of a family. But, further, by my mother I am
+of the royal blood; for the children of Asmonaeus, from whom that family
+was derived, had both the office of the high-priesthood and the dignity
+of a king for a long time together.
+
+My father Matthias, to whom I was born in the first year of the reign of
+Gaius Caesar, was not only eminent in Jerusalem, our greatest city, on
+account of his nobility, but had a higher commendation on account of his
+righteousness. I was brought up with my brother Matthias. As a child I
+gained a great reputation through my love for learning, and, when I was
+about fourteen years of age, was frequently asked by the high-priests
+and chief men of the city my opinion about the accurate understanding of
+points of the law.
+
+In my twenty-sixth year I took a voyage to Rome. My object was to plead
+before Caesar the cause of certain excellent priests whom Felix, then
+procurator of Judaea, had put in bonds on a trivial pretext. I was
+desirous to procure deliverance for them, not only because they were of
+my own friends, but because I heard that they sustained their piety
+towards God under their afflictions, and that they simply subsisted on
+figs and nuts.
+
+Our voyage was an adventurous one, for the ship was wrecked in the
+Adriatic Sea, and we that were in it, being about six hundred in number,
+swam all night for our lives. I and about eighty others were saved by a
+ship of Cyrene. When I had thus escaped, and was come to Puteoli, I
+became acquainted with an actor named Alityrus, much beloved by Nero,
+but a Jew by birth. Through his interest I became known to Poppaea,
+Caesar's wife, and having, through her, procured the liberty of the
+priests, besides receiving from her many presents, I returned to
+Jerusalem.
+
+Now I perceived that many innovations were begun, and that many were
+cherishing hopes of a revolt from the Romans.
+
+
+_II.--The Prelude to the Great Crisis_
+
+
+So I retired to the inner court of the Temple. Yet I went out of the
+Temple again, after Menahem and the chief members of the band of robbers
+were put to death, and abode among the high-priests and the chief of the
+Pharisees. But no small fear seized upon us when we saw the people in
+arms, while we were not able to restrain the seditious. We hoped that
+Gessius Floras would speedily arrive with great forces. But on his
+arrival he was defeated with great loss.
+
+The disgrace that fell upon him became the calamity of our whole nation,
+for it elevated the hopes of conquering the Romans on the part of those
+who desired war. But another cause of the revolt arose in Syria from the
+cruel treatment of the Jews in many cities, where they showed not the
+least disposition towards rebellion. About 13,000 were treacherously
+slain in Scythopolis, and the Jews in Damascus underwent many miseries;
+but of these events accounts are given in the books of the Jewish War.
+
+I was now sent, together with two other priests, Joazar and Judas, by
+the principal men of Jerusalem, to Galilee, to persuade the ill men
+there to lay down their arms, and to teach them that it were better for
+us all to wait to see what the Romans would do. I came into Galilee, and
+found the people of Sepphoris in no small agony about their country, by
+reason that the Galileans had resolved to plunder it, because of their
+friendship with the Romans, and because they had made a league with
+Cestius Gallus, the president of Syria. But I quieted their fears. Yet I
+found the people of Tiberias ready to take arms, for there were three
+factions in that city.
+
+The first faction, with Julius Capellus for the head, was composed of
+men of worth and gravity, and advised the city to continue in allegiance
+to the Romans; the second faction, consisting of the most ignoble
+persons, was determined for war. But as for Justus, the head of the
+third faction, though he pretended to be doubtful about war, yet he was
+really desirous of innovation, as supposing that he should gain power by
+the change of affairs.
+
+By his harangues Justus inflamed the minds of many of the people,
+persuading them to take arms, and then he went out and set fire to the
+villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos, on the border of Tiberias,
+and of the region of Scythopolis.
+
+Gamala persevered in its allegiance to the Romans, under the persuasion
+of Philip, the son of Jacimus, who was governor of the city under King
+Agrippa. He reminded the people of the benefits the king had bestowed on
+them, and pointed out how powerful the Romans were, and thus he
+restrained the zeal of the citizens.
+
+Now, as soon as I was come into Galilee, and had ascertained the state
+of affairs, I wrote to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem asking for their
+direction. They replied that I should remain there; and that, if my
+fellow-delegates were willing, I should join with them in the care of
+Galilee. But these my colleagues, having gotten great riches from those
+tithes which as priests were their dues, and were given to them,
+determined to return to their own country. Yet when I desired them to
+stay to settle public affairs, they complied, and we removed from
+Sepphoris to Bethmanus, a village four furlongs from Tiberias, whence I
+sent messengers to the senate of that city, asking that the principal
+men should come to me.
+
+
+_III.--Governor of Galilee_
+
+
+When the chief men of Tiberias were come, I told them I was sent as a
+legate from the people at Jerusalem, in order to persuade them to
+destroy that house which Herod the tetrarch had built in Tiberias, and
+which, contrary to our laws, contained the figures of living creatures.
+I desired that they would give us leave to do so; but for a good while
+they were unwilling, only being overcome by long persuasion. Then Jesus,
+son of Sapphias, one of the leaders of sedition, anticipated us and set
+the palace on fire, thinking that as some of the roofs were covered with
+gold, he should gain much money thereby. These incendiaries also
+plundered much furniture; then they slew all the Greeks who dwelt in
+Tiberias, and as many others as were their enemies.
+
+When I understood this state of things, I was greatly provoked, and went
+down to Tiberias and took care of all the royal furniture that could be
+recovered from such as had plundered it. Next I committed it to ten of
+the chief senators. From thence I and my fellow-delegates went to
+Gischala to John, to learn his designs, and soon discovered that he was
+for innovations, for he wished me to give him authority to carry off the
+corn that belonged to Caesar, and to lay it in the villages of Upper
+Galilee. Though I refused, he corrupted my colleagues with money, and so
+I, being out-voted, held my tongue. By various other cunning
+contrivances which I could not prevent, John gained vast sums of money.
+But when I had dismissed my fellow-delegates I took care to have arms
+provided and the cities fortified. My first care was to keep Galilee in
+peace, so I made friends of seventy of the principal men, and took them
+on my journeys as companions, and set them to judge causes.
+
+I was now about thirty years of age, in which time of life it is
+difficult to escape from the calumnies of the envious. Yet did I
+preserve every woman free from injury; I despised and refused presents;
+nor would I take the tithes due to me as a priest. When I twice took
+Sepphoris by force, and Tiberias four times, and Gadara once, and when I
+had subdued and captured John, who had laid treacherous snares for me, I
+did not punish with death either him or others. And on this account I
+suppose it was that God, Who is never unacquainted with those that do as
+they ought to do, delivered me still out of the hands of my enemies, and
+afterwards preserved me when I fell into many perils.
+
+At this time, when my abode was at Cana, a village of Galilee, John came
+to Tiberias and stirred a revolt against me, so that my life was in
+danger. I escaped only by fleeing down the lake in a ship to Taricheae,
+whence I proceeded to Sepphoris. John returned to Gischala, where he
+continued to cultivate bitter hatred against me. Through the
+machinations of himself and Simon, a chief man in Gadara, all Galilee
+was filled with rumours that their country was about to be betrayed by
+me to the Romans.
+
+Hereby I again incurred extreme peril, but I took a bold course. Dressed
+in a black garment, with my sword hung at my neck, I went to face, in
+the hippodrome, a multitude of the citizens of Taricheae, and addressed
+them in such terms that, though some wished to kill me, these were
+overcome by the rest.
+
+Although the multitude returned to their homes, yet the robbers and
+other authors of the tumult, afraid lest I might punish them, took six
+hundred armed men and came to burn the house where I abode. Thinking it
+ignoble to run away, I resolved to expose myself to danger; so I shut
+myself up in an upper room, and asked that one of them should be sent up
+to me, by whom I would send out to them money from the spoils I had
+taken.
+
+When they had sent in one of their boldest, I had him whipped severely,
+and commanded one of his hands to be cut off and hung about his neck. In
+this case he was put out, and those who had sent him, affrighted at the
+supposition that I had more armed men about me than they had,
+immediately fled.
+
+I dealt in like manner with Clitus, a young man of Tiberias, who was the
+author of a fresh sedition in that city. Since I thought it not
+agreeable to piety to put one of my own people to death, I called to
+Clitus himself, and said to him, "Since thou deservest to lose both thy
+hands for thine ingratitude to me, be thou thine own executioner, lest
+by refusal to do so thou undergo a worse punishment."
+
+When he earnestly begged me to spare one of his hands, it was with
+difficulty that I granted it. So, in order to prevent the loss of both
+his hands, he willingly took his sword and cut off his own left hand;
+and this put an end to the sedition.
+
+
+_IV.--The Failure of His Foes_
+
+
+The people of Gamala wrote to me, asking that I would send them an armed
+force, and also workmen to raise up the walls of their city, and I
+acceded to each of their requests. I also built walls about many
+villages and cities in Upper and Lower Galilee, besides laying up in
+them much corn. But the hatred of John of Gischala grew more violent by
+reason of my prosperity. He sent his brother Simon to Jerusalem with a
+hundred armed men to induce the Sanhedrin to deprive me of my
+commission; but this was not an easy thing to do, for Ananus, one of the
+chief priests, demonstrated that many of the people bore witness that I
+had acted like an excellent general.
+
+Yet Ananus and some of his friends, corrupted by bribes, secretly agreed
+to expel me out of Galilee, without making the rest of the citizens
+acquainted with what they were doing. Accordingly they sent four men of
+distinction down to Galilee to seek to supersede me in ruling the
+province.
+
+These were to ask the people of Galilee what was their reason of their
+love to me. If the people alleged that it was because I was born at
+Jerusalem, that I was versed in the law, and that I was a priest, then
+they were to reply that they also were natives of Jerusalem, that they
+understood the law, and that two of them were priests. To Jonathan and
+his companion were given 40,000 drachmae out of the public money, and a
+large band of men was equipped with arms and money to accompany them.
+
+But wonderful was what I saw in a dream that very night. It seemed to me
+that a certain person stood by me, and said, "O Josephus, put away all
+fear, for what now afflicts thee will render thee most happy, and thou
+shalt overcome all difficulties! Be not cast down, but remember that
+thou art to fight the Romans."
+
+When I had seen this vision I arose, intending to go down to the plain
+to meet a great multitude who, I knew, would be assembled, for my
+friends, on my refusal had dispatched messengers all around to inform
+the people of Galilee of my purpose to depart. And when the great
+assembly of men, with their wives and children, saw me, they fell on
+their faces weeping, and besought me not to leave them to be exposed to
+their enemies.
+
+When I heard this, and saw what sorrow affected the people, I was moved
+with compassion, and promised that I would stay with them, thinking it
+became me to undergo manifold hazards for the sake of so great a
+multitude. So I ordered that five thousand of them should come to me
+armed, and that the rest should depart to their own homes.
+
+It was not long before Vespasian landed at Tyre, and King Agrippa with
+him. How he then came into Galilee, and how he fought his first battle
+with me near Taricheae, and how, after the capture of Jotapata, I was
+taken alive and bound, and how I was afterward loosed, with all that was
+done by me in the Jewish war, and during the siege of Jerusalem, I have
+accurately related in the books concerning the "Wars of the Jews."
+
+When the siege of Jotapata was over, and I was among the Romans, I was
+kept with much care, by means of the great respect that Vespasian showed
+me. After being freed from my bonds I went to Alexandria, where I
+married. From thence I was sent, together with Titus, to the siege of
+Jerusalem, and was frequently in danger of being put to death. For the
+Jews desired to get me into their power to have me punished, and the
+Romans, whenever they were beaten, thought it was through my treachery.
+But Titus Caesar was well acquainted with the uncertain fortune of war,
+and returned no answer to the soldiers' solicitation against me.
+
+When Titus was going away to Rome he made choice of me to sail along
+with him, and paid me great respect And when we were come to Rome I had
+great care taken of me by Vespasian, for he gave me an apartment in his
+own house.
+
+When Vespasian was dead, Titus kept up the same kindness which his
+father had shown me, and Domitian, who succeeded, still augmented his
+respects to me; nay, Domitia, the wife of Caesar, continued to show me
+many kindnesses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
+
+
+Life of Sir Walter Scott
+
+
+     John Gibson Lockhart was born in Scotland in 1794. He received
+     part of his education at Glasgow, part at Oxford, and in 1816
+     he became an advocate at the Scotch bar. As one of the chief
+     supporters of Blackwood's Magazine, he began to exhibit that
+     sharp, bitter wit which was his most salient characteristic.
+     In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott,
+     and for this reason, perhaps no one has been better qualified
+     to write the biography of the great novelist. Lockhart's "Life
+     of Sir Walter Scott" is a biography in the best sense of the
+     word--one which has been ranked even with Boswell's "Johnson."
+     It reveals to the reader the inmost personality of the man
+     himself, and no life from first to last could better afford
+     such complete revelation. Moreover, the "Life" was a labour of
+     love, Lockhart himself receiving not a fraction of its very
+     considerable proceeds, but resigning them absolutely to
+     Scott's creditors. Published in seven volumes in 1838, in
+     every respect it is the greatest of all Lockhart's books.
+     Lockhart died in 1854.
+
+
+_Early Years_
+
+
+Sir Walter Scott was distantly connected with ancient families both on
+his father's and his mother's side. His father, Walter Scott, a Writer
+to the Signet in Edinburgh, was a handsome, hospitable, shrewd and
+religious man, who married, in 1758, Anne, eldest daughter of Dr. John
+Rutherford, professor of medicine in Edinburgh University. The Scotts
+had twelve children, of whom only five survived early youth.
+
+The subject of this biography was born on August 15, 1771, in a house at
+the head of the College Wynd. He was a healthy child, but when eighteen
+months old was affected with a fever which left a permanent lameness in
+the right leg. With a view to curing this weakness he was sent to live
+with his paternal grandfather, at the farm house of Sandy-Knowe near
+Dryburgh Abbey, in the extreme south of Berwickshire.
+
+Here, in the country air, he became a sturdy boy, and his mind was
+stored with the old Broder tales and songs. In his fourth year he was
+taken to London by sea, and thence to Bath, where he remained about a
+year for the sake of the waters, became acquainted with the venerable
+John Home, author of "Douglas," and was introduced by his uncle, Capt.
+Robert Scott, to the delights of the theatre and "As You Like It."
+
+From his eighth year Scott lived at his father's house in George Square,
+Edinburgh. His lameness and solitary habits had made him a good reader,
+and he used to read aloud to his mother, Pope's translation of Homer and
+Allan Ramsay's "Evergreen;" his mother had the happiest of tempers and a
+good love of poetry. In the same year he was sent to the High School,
+Edinburgh, under the celebrated Dr. Adam, who made him sensible of the
+beauties of the Latin poets.
+
+After his school years, the lad, who had become delicate from rapid
+growth, spent half a year with an aunt, Miss Janet Scott, at Kelso. He
+had now awaked to the poetry of Shakespeare and of Spenser, and had
+acquired an ample and indiscriminate appetite for reading of all kinds.
+To this time at Kelso he also traced his earliest feeling for the
+beauties of natural objects. The love of Nature, especially when
+combined with ancient ruins, or remains of our forefathers' piety or
+splendour, became his insatiable passion.
+
+He was then sent to classes in the Faculty of Arts in Edinburgh
+University; and in 1785 was articled to his father and entered upon the
+wilderness of law. Though he disliked the drudgery of the office, he
+loved his father and was ambitious, and the allowance which he received
+afforded the pleasures of the circulating library and the theatre. His
+reading had now extended to the great writers in French, Spanish and
+Italian literature. Distant excursions on foot or on horseback formed
+his favorite amusement, undertaken for the pleasure of seeing romantic
+scenery and places distinguished by historic events.
+
+In 1790, Scott determined, in accordance with his father's wishes, to
+become an advocate, and assumed the gown on July 11, 1792. His personal
+appearance at this time was engaging. He had a fresh, brilliant
+complexion, his eyes were clear and radiant, and the noble expanse of
+his brow gave dignity to his whole aspect. His smile was always
+delightful, and there was a playful intermixture of tenderness and
+gravity well calculated to fix a lady's eye. His figure, except for the
+blemish in one limb, was eminently handsome, and much above the usual
+stature; and the whole outline was that of extraordinary vigour, without
+a touch of clumsiness.
+
+
+_The Poet's Education_
+
+
+I do not know when his first attachment began; its object was Margaret,
+daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belcher, of Invermay. But
+after Scott had for several years nourished the dream of union with this
+lady, his hopes terminated in her being married to the late Sir William
+Forbes, of Pitsligo, a gentleman of the highest character, who lived to
+act the part of a generous friend to his rival throughout the distresses
+of 1826 and 1827.
+
+After being admitted an advocate, Scott undertook many excursions to
+various parts of Scotland, gaining that intimate knowledge of the
+country, and its people and traditions, which appears in his poems and
+novels. Thus, he visited Northumberland, and made a close inspection of
+the battle-field of Flodden, and on another journey studied the Saxon
+cathedral of Hexam. During seven successive years he made raids, as he
+called them, into the wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale,
+picking up the ancient "riding ballads" preserved among the descendants
+of the moss-troopers. To these rambles he owed much of the materials of
+his "Minstrelsy of the Border," and here he came to know Willie Elliot,
+the original of Dandie Dinmont. Another expedition, into Galloway,
+carried him into the scenery of Guy Mannering. Stirlingshire, Perthshire
+and Forfarshire became familiar ground to him, and the scenery of Loch
+Katrine especially was associated with many a merry expedition. His
+first appearance as counsel in a criminal court was at the Jedburgh
+assizes, where he helped a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape
+through the meshes of the law.
+
+In June, 1795, Scott was appointed one of the curators of the Advocate's
+Library and became an adept in the deciphering of old manuscript. His
+highlands and border raids were constantly suggesting inquiries as to
+ancient local history and legend, which could nowhere else have been
+pursued with equal advantage.
+
+In the same year, a rhymed translation of Burger's "Lenore," from his
+pen, was shown by him to Miss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of
+Purgstall, who was delighted and astonished at it. "Upon my word," she
+wrote in a letter to a friend, "Walter Scott is going to turn out a
+poet--something of a cross I think between Burns and Gray." This lady
+had the ballad elegantly printed in April, 1796, and Scott thus made his
+first appearance as an author. In October, this translation, together
+with that of the "Wild Huntsman," also from Burger, was published
+anonymously in a thin quarto by Manners and Miller, of Edinburgh. The
+little volume found warm favour: its free, masculine and lively style
+revealing the hand of a poet.
+
+
+_Marriage_
+
+
+In July, 1797, Scott set out on a tour to the English lakes, accompanied
+by his brother John and Adam Fergusson, visiting Tweeddale, Carlisle,
+Penrith, Ullswater and Windermere, and at length fixing their
+headquarters at Gilsland, a peaceful and sequestered little watering
+place.
+
+He was riding one day with Fergusson when they met, some miles away from
+home, a young lady on horseback, whose appearance instantly struck both
+of them so much, that they kept her in view until they had satisfied
+themselves that she was staying in Gilsland. The same evening there was
+a ball, at which Scott was introduced to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter.
+
+Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal
+attractions; a fairy-like form; a clear olive complexion; large, deep
+eyes of Italian brown; a profusion of silken tresses, raven-black; her
+address mingling the reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman with a
+certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well her French accent.
+A lovelier vision, as all who remember her youth have assured me, could
+hardly be imagined, and from that hour the fate of the poet was fixed.
+
+She was the daughter of Jean Charpentier, of Lyons, a devoted royalist,
+who died in the beginning of the Revolution; Madame Charpentier had died
+soon after bringing her children to London; and the Marquis of Downshire
+had become their guardian. Miss Charpentier was now making a summer
+excursion under the care of the lady who had superintended her
+education.
+
+In an affectionate and dutiful letter Scott acquainted his mother with
+his purpose of marriage, and Miss Carpenter remained at Carlisle until
+her destiny was settled. The lady had a considerable private income,
+amounting to about L500 a year; the difficulties presented by the
+prudence and prejudices of family connections were soon overcome; and
+the marriage took place in St. Mary's, Carlisle, on December 24, 1797.
+Scott took his bride to a lodging in George Street, Edinburgh, the house
+which he had taken not being quite ready, and the first fortnight
+convinced her husband's family that she had the sterling qualities of a
+wife.
+
+Their house in South Castle Street, soon after exchanged for one in
+North Castle Street, which he inhabited down to 1826, became the centre
+of a highly agreeable circle; the evenings passed in a round of innocent
+gaiety; and they and their friends were passionately fond of the
+theatre. Perhaps nowhere else could have been formed a society on so
+small a scale as that of Edinburgh at this time, including more of
+vigorous intellect, varied information, elegant tastes, and real virtue,
+affection and mutual confidence.
+
+In the summer of 1798, Scott hired a cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk,
+about six miles from Edinburgh, having a garden with a most beautiful
+view. In this retreat they spent several happy summers, receiving the
+visits of their chosen friends from the neighbouring city, and wandering
+amidst some of the most romantic scenery of Scotland.
+
+
+_Early Poems_
+
+
+In February, 1799, a London Bookseller named Bell, brought out Scott's
+version of Goethe's tragedy, "Goetz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand,"
+having purchased the copyright for twenty-five guineas. This was the
+first publication that bore Scott's name. In March of that year he took
+his wife to London, and met with some literary and fashionable society;
+but his chief object was to examine the antiquities of the Tower and
+Westminster, and to make researches among the manuscripts of the British
+Museum. He found his "Goetz" favourably spoken of by the critics, but it
+had not attracted general attention.
+
+About this time Scott wrote a play entitled "House of Aspen" which,
+having been read and commended by the celebrated actress, Mrs. Esten,
+was put in rehearsal by Kemble for the stage. But the notion was
+abandoned; and discovering the play thirty years after among his papers,
+Scott sent it to the "Keepsake" of 1829.
+
+His return to Scotland was hastened by the news of his father's death,
+and his mother and sister spent the following summer and autumn in his
+cottage at Lasswade. This summer produced his first serious attempt in
+verse, "Glenfinlas," which was followed by the noble ballads, "Eve of
+St. John," "The Grey Brother" and "Fire-King"; and it was in the course
+of this autumn that he first visited Bothwell Castle, the seat of
+Archibald, Lord Douglas, whose wife, and her companion, Lady Louisa
+Stuart, were among his dearest friends through life.
+
+During a visit to Kelso, before returning to Edinburgh for the winter,
+Scott renewed an acquaintance with a classfellow of his boyhood, Mr.
+James Ballantyne, who was now printer and editor of a weekly paper in
+his native town. Scott showed him some of his poems, expressed his
+wonder that his old friend did not try to get some bookseller's printing
+and suggested a collection of old Border ballads. Ballantyne printed for
+him a few specimens to show to the booksellers; and thus began an
+experiment which changed the fortunes of both Scott and Ballantyne.
+
+Soon after the commencement of the Winter Session, the office of
+Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant, and the Duke of Buccleuch
+used his influence with Mr. Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville,
+to procure it for Scott. The appointment to the Sheriff ship was made on
+December 16, 1799. It brought him an annual salary of L300; the duties
+of the office were far from heavy; the small pastoral territory was
+largely the property of the Duke of Buccleuch; and Scott turned with
+redoubled zeal to his project of editing the ballads, many of which
+belong to this district. In this design he found able assistants in
+Richard Heber and John Leyden. During the years 1800 and 1801, the
+"Minstrelsy" formed his chief occupation.
+
+The duties of the Sheriffship took him frequently to Ettrick Forest, and
+on such occasions he took up his lodging at the little inn at
+Clovenford, a favourite fishing station on the road from Edinburgh to
+Selkirk. Here he was within a few miles of the values of Yarrow and
+Ettrick. On one of his excursions here, penetrating beyond St Mary's
+Lake, he found hospitality at the farmhouse of William Laidlaw, through
+whom he came to know James Hogg, a brother poet hardly conscious of his
+powers.
+
+The first and second volumes of the "Minstrelsy" appeared in January,
+1802, from the house of Cadell and Davies in the Strand, and formed
+Scott's first introduction as an original writer to the English public.
+Their reception greatly elated Ballantyne, the printer, who looked on
+his connection with them as the most fortunate event in his life. The
+great bookseller, Longman, repaired to Scotland soon after this, and
+purchased the copyright of the "Minstrelsy," including the third volume;
+and not long afterwards James Ballantyne set up as a printer in
+Edinburgh, assisted by a liberal loan from Scott.
+
+
+_Scott's Chief Poems_
+
+
+The "Edinburgh Review" was begun in 1802, and Scott soon became a
+contributor of critical articles for his friend Mr. Jeffrey, the elder.
+His chief work was now on "Sir Tristram," a romance ascribed to Thomas
+of Ercildoune; but "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was making progress in
+1803, when Scott made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and his sister,
+under circumstances described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal. In
+the following May, he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel, with an
+adjoining farm, on the southern bank of the Tweed, a few miles from
+Selkirk; and in the same month "Sir Tristram" was published by Constable
+of Edinburgh. Captain Robert Scott, his uncle, died in June, leaving him
+the house of Rosebank near Kelso, which Scott sold for L5000.
+
+"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published in the first week of 1805,
+and its success at once decided that literature should form the main
+business of Scott's life. Its design arose originally from the
+suggestion of the lovely Countess of Dalkeith, who had heard a wild,
+rude legend of Border _diablerie_, and sportively asked him to make it
+the subject of a ballad. He cast about for a new variety of diction and
+rhyme, and having happened to hear a recitation of Coleridge's
+unpublished "Christabel" determined to adopt a similar cadence. The
+division into cantos was suggested by one of his friends, after the
+example of Spenser's "Faery Queen." The creation of the framework, the
+conception of the ancient harper, came last of all. Thus did "The Lay of
+the Last Minstrel" grow out of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border."
+The publishers were Longman of London, and Constable of Edinburgh, and
+the author's share of profits came to L769.
+
+It was at this time that Scott took over a third share in Ballantyne's
+business, a commercial tie which bound him for twenty years. Its
+influence on his literary work and his fortunes was productive of much
+good and not a little evil. Meanwhile, he entered with the zest of an
+active partner into many publishing schemes, and exerted himself in the
+interests of many authors less fortunate than himself.
+
+With the desire of placing his financial position on a more substantial
+basis, Scott had solicited the office of Clerk of Session; and after
+some difficulties, during which he visited London and was received by
+the Princess of Wales, he was installed in that position on March 8,
+1806, and continued to discharge its duties with exemplary regularity
+for twenty-five years.
+
+The progress of "Marmion" was further interrupted by Scott's appointment
+as secretary to a Commission for the improvement of Scottish
+Jurisprudence, but the poems appeared at last in February, 1808. It
+received only very qualified praise from Jeffrey, but I think it may be
+considered on the whole Scott's greatest poem, and its popularity was
+from the very first extraordinary.
+
+In April of the same year William Miller of Albemarle Street published
+Scott's great edition of Dryden, with a biography, in eighteen volumes;
+and the editor's industry and critical judgement were the subject of a
+laudatory article by Hallam in the "Edinburgh Review."
+
+Scott was now engaged in a vast multiplicity of business. He was
+preparing an edition of Swift for Constable, establishing his own
+partner as a publisher in Edinburgh under the title of "John Ballantyne
+and Co., Booksellers," and was projecting a new periodical of sound
+constitutional principles, to be known as the "Quarterly Review,"
+published by Murray in London and by Ballantyne in Edinburgh. In
+connection with the latter enterprise Scott and Mrs. Scott went up to
+London for two months in the Spring of 1809, and enjoyed the society of
+Coleridge, Canning, Croker, and Ellis. The first "Quarterly" appeared
+while he was in London, and contained three articles from his pen. At
+this time also he prevailed on Henry Siddons, the nephew of Kemble, to
+undertake the lease and management of the Edinburgh Theatre; and
+purchasing a share himself, became an acting trustee, and for many years
+took a lively concern in the Edinburgh company.
+
+Early in May, 1810, "The Lady of the Lake" came out, like her two elder
+sisters, in all the majesty of quarto, at the price of two guineas, the
+author receiving two thousand guineas for the copyright. The whole
+country rang with the praises of the poet, and crowds set off to view
+the scenery of Loch Katrine. The critics were in full harmony with one
+another and with the popular voice.
+
+
+_The Waverley Novels_
+
+
+On returning, in 1810, from an excursion to the Islands of the western
+Scottish coast, where he had been collecting impressions for "The Lord
+of the Isles," Scott was searching one morning for fishing-flies in an
+old desk at Ashestiel, when he came across a forgotten manuscript,
+written and abandoned five years before. It contained the first two
+chapters of "Waverley." He submitted it to Ballantyne, whose opinion was
+on the whole against completion of the novel, and it was again laid
+aside.
+
+Although his publishing venture had begun to wear a bad aspect, Scott
+was now in receipt of L1300 a year as Clerk of Session, and when the
+lease of Ashestiel ran out in May, 1811, he felt justified in
+purchasing, for L4000, a farm on the banks of the Tweed above Galafoot.
+This farm, then known as "Garty Holes," became "Abbotsford," so called
+because these lands had belonged of old to the great Abbey of Melrose;
+and in his own mind Scott became henceforth the "Laird of Abbotsford."
+
+The last days at Ashestiel were marked by a friendly interchange of
+letters with Lord Byron, whose "Childe Harold" had just come out, and
+with correspondence with Johanna Baillie and with Crabbe. At Whitsuntide
+the family, which included two boys and two girls, moved to their new
+possession, and structural alterations on the farmhouse began.
+
+The poem "Rokeby" appeared in January, 1813. A month or two later the
+crisis in the war affected credit aniversally, and many publishing
+firms, including that of the Ballantynes, were brought to extremity. The
+difficulty was relieved for a time by the sale of copyrights and much of
+the stock to Constable, on the understanding that the publishing concern
+should be wound up as soon as possible. But Scott was preparing fresh
+embarrassments for himself by the purchase of another parcel of land; a
+yet more acute crisis in the Ballantyne firm forced him to borrow from
+the Duke of Buccleuch; and when planning out his work for the purpose of
+retrieving his position he determined to complete the fragment of
+"Waverley."
+
+The offer of the post of poet-laureate was made to Scott at this time,
+but holding already two lucrative offices in the gift of the Crown, he
+declined the honour and suggested that it should be given to Southey,
+which was accordingly done. The "Swift" in nineteen volumes, appeared in
+July, 1814, and had a moderate success.
+
+"Waverley," of which Scott was to receive half the profits, was
+published by Constable in July, 1814, without the author's name, and its
+great success with the public was assured from the first. None of
+Scott's intimate friends ever had, or could have, the slightest doubt as
+to its parentage, and when Mr. Jeffrey reviewed the book, doing justice
+to its substantial merits, he was at no pains to conceal his conviction
+of the authorship. With the single exception of the "Quarterly," the
+critics hailed it as a work of original creative genius, one of the
+masterpieces of prose fiction.
+
+From a voyage to the Hebrides with the Commissioners of the Northern
+Lighthouses, Scott returned in vigour to his desk at Abbotsford, where
+he worked at "The Lord of the Isles" and "Guy Mannering." The poem
+appeared in January and the novel in February, 1815. "The Lord of the
+Isles" never reached the same popularity as the earlier poems had
+enjoyed, but "Guy Mannering" was pronounced by acclamation to be fully
+worthy of the honours of "Waverley." In March, Scott went to London with
+his wife and daughter, met Byron almost daily in Murray's house, and was
+presented to the Prince Regent, who was enchanted with Scott, as Scott
+with him. A visit to Paris in July of the same year is commemorated in
+"Paul's Letters to His Kinsfolk." Scott's reputation had as yet made
+little way among the French, but the Duke of Wellington, then in Paris,
+treated him with kindness and confidence, and a few eminent Frenchmen
+vied with the enthusiastic Germans in their attentions to him.
+
+"The Antiquary" came out early in 1816, and was its author's favourite
+among all his novels. The "Tales of my Landlord," published by Murray
+and Blackwood, appeared in December, and though anonymous was at once
+recognized as Scott's. The four volumes included the "Black Dwarf" and
+"Old Mortality." A month later followed a poem, "Harold the Dauntless."
+The title of "Rob Roy" was suggested by Constable; and the novel was
+published on the last day of 1817.
+
+During this year the existing house of Abbotsford had been building, and
+Scott had added to his estate the lands of Toftfield, at a price of
+L10,000. He was then thought to be consolidating a large fortune, for
+the annual profits of his novels alone had, for several years, been not
+less than the cost of Toftfield.
+
+Having been asked by the Ballantynes to contribute to the historical
+department of the "Annual Register," I often had occasion now to visit
+Scott in his house in Castle Street, where I usually found him working
+in his "den," a small room behind the dining parlour, in company with
+his dog, Maida. Besides his own huge elbow-chair, there were but two
+others in the room, and one of these was reserved for his amanuensis, a
+portrait of Claverhouse, over the chimneypiece, with a Highland target
+on either side and broadswords and dirks disposed star-fashion round
+them. A venerable cat, fat and sleek, watched the proceedings of his
+toaster AND Maids with dignified equanimity.
+
+
+_Abbotsford_
+
+
+The house of Abbotsford was not completed, and finally rid of carpenters
+and upholsterers, until Christmas, 1824; but the first time I saw it was
+in 1818, and from that time onwards Scott's hospitality was extended
+freely not only to the proprietors and tenants of the surrounding
+district, but to a never-ending succession of visitors who came to
+Abbotsford as pilgrims. In the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his
+prosperity was at its height, he entertained under his roof as many
+persons of distinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and
+in science, as the most princely nobleman of his age ever did in the
+like space of time. It is not beyond the mark to add that of the eminent
+foreigners who visited our Island within this period, a moiety crossed
+the Channel mainly in consequence of the interest in which his writings
+had invested Scotland, and that the hope of beholding the man under his
+own roof was the crowning motive with half that moiety. His rural
+neighbours were assembled principally at two annual festivals of sport;
+one was a solemn bout of salmon fishing for the neighbouring gentry,
+presided over by the Sheriff; and the other was the "Abbotsford Hunt," a
+coursing field on a large scale, including, with many of the young
+gentry, all Scott's personal favourites among the yeomen and farmers of
+the surrounding country.
+
+Notwithstanding all his prodigious hospitality, his double official
+duties as Sheriff and Clerk of Session, the labours and anxieties in
+which the ill-directed and tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him,
+the keen interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the
+house and estate of Abbotsford, and finally, notwithstanding obstinate
+and agonizing attacks of internal cramp which were undermining his
+constitution, Scott continued to produce rapidly the wonderful series of
+the Waverley Novels. "The Bride of Lammermoor," "Legend of Montrose" and
+"Ivanhoe" appeared in 1819, "The Monastery," "The Abbot" and
+"Kenilworth" in 1820, "The Pirate" in 1821, "The Fortunes of Nigel" in
+1822, "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward" and "St. Ronan's Well" in
+1823, and "Redgauntlet" in 1824. His great literary reputation was
+acknowledged by a baronetcy conferred in 1820, and by the most
+flattering condescensions on the part of King George IV on his visit to
+Edinburgh in 1822.
+
+
+_The End of All_
+
+
+Scott's Diary from November, 1825, shows dear forebodings of the
+collapse of the houses of Constable and Ballantyne. In a time of
+universal confidence and prosperity, the banks had supported them to an
+extent quite unwarranted by their assets or their trade, and as soon as
+the banks began to doubt and to enquire, their fall was a foregone
+conclusion. In December, Scott borrowed L10,000 on the lands of
+Abbotsford, and advanced that sum to the struggling houses; on January
+16, 1826, their ruin, and Scott's with them, were complete. Scott
+immediately placed his whole affairs in the hands of three trustees, and
+by the 26th all his creditors had agreed to a private trust to which he
+mortgaged all his future literary labours.
+
+On March 15, he left for the last time his house in Castle Street; on
+April 3; "Woodstock" was sold for the creditors' behoof, realising
+L8228; on May 15, Lady Scott died, after a short illness, at Abbotsford.
+"I think," writes Scott in his Diary, "my heart will break. Lonely,
+aged, deprived of all my family--all but poor Anne; an impoverished,
+embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who
+could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which
+break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of
+service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my weary
+self-reflections."
+
+An expedition to Paris, in October, to gather materials for his "Life of
+Napoleon." was a seasonable relief. On his return through London, the
+King undertook that his son, Charles Scott, then at Oxford, should be
+launched in the diplomatic service. The elder son, heir to the
+baronetcy, was now with his regiment in Ireland.
+
+The "Life of Buonaparte" was published in June, 1827, and secured high
+praise from many, among whom was Goethe. It realised L18,000 for the
+creditors, and had health been spared him, Scott must soon have freed
+himself from all encumbrances. Before the close of 1829 he had published
+also the "Chronicles of the Canongate," "Tales of a Grandfather," "The
+Fair Maid of Perth" and "Anne of Geirstein," but he had been visited
+also by several threatenings of apoplexy, and on February 15, 1830, was
+prostrated by a serious attack. Recovering from this illness, Scott
+resigned his office as Clerk of Session, and during the rest of the year
+produced a great quantity of manuscript, including the "Letters on
+Demonology and Witchcraft," and the series of "Tales of a Grandfather"
+dealing with French history. April, 1831, brought with it a distinct
+stroke of paralysis, yet both "Castle Dangerous" and "Count Robert of
+Paris" were finished in the course of the year.
+
+Sailing in October, in the "Barham," Sir Walter Scott visited Malta and
+Naples, and came to Rome in April, 1832. In May he set out for home by
+Venice, Munich and the Rhine, but his companions could hardly prevail on
+him to look at the interesting objects by the way, and another serious
+attack fell upon him at Nimeguen. He reached London on June 13, and on
+July 7 was carried on board the steamer for Leith, and was at Abbotsford
+by the 11th. Here the remains of his strength gradually declined, and
+his mind was hopelessly obscured.
+
+As I was dressing on the morning of September 17, a servant came to tell
+me that his master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness,
+and wished to see me immediately. I found him entirely himself, though
+in the last extreme of feebleness. "Lockhart," he said "I may have no
+more than a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man--be
+virtuous--be religious--be a good man. Nothing else will give you any
+comfort when you come to lie here." He scarcely afterwards gave any sign
+of consciousness, and breathed his last on September 21, in the presence
+of all his children.
+
+His funeral was unostentatious but the attendance was very great. He was
+laid in the Abbey of Dryburgh, by the side of his wife, in the sepulchre
+of his ancestors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Life of Robert Burns
+
+
+     John Gibson Lockhart was born, a son of the manse, at
+     Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, on July 14, 1794. Receiving his
+     early education in Glasgow, he went, at sixteen, with a
+     scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1816 he was called
+     to the Scottish Bar; but literature occupied him more than
+     law, and as early as 1819 he wrote the once popular "Peter's
+     Letters to his Kinsfolk." Next year he married Scott's eldest
+     daughter, Sophia. Lockhart was a leading contributor to the
+     early "Blackwood," where his fine translations of Spanish
+     ballads first appeared, and he edited the "Quarterly Review"
+     from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25, 1854,
+     and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's
+     forte was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside
+     Boswell's "Johnson." The "Life of Burns" was published first
+     in Constable's "Miscellany" in 1828, when the whole impression
+     was exhausted in six weeks. It passed through five editions
+     before the author's death. Though many lives of Burns have
+     appeared since, with details unknown to Lockhart, his
+     biography is in many respects the best we possess, and is
+     never likely to be superseded. Even Mr. Henley is "glad to
+     agree with Lockhart." It is this book that is the subject of
+     Carlyle's famous essay on Burns.
+
+
+_I.--The Poet in the Making_
+
+
+Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage at Alloway,
+two miles south of Ayr, and near the "auld brig o' Doon." His father,
+William Burnes, or Burness--for so he spelt his name--was from
+Kincardineshire. When Robert was born he had the lease of a seven-acre
+croft, and had intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He was a
+man of notable character and individuality, immortalised by his son as
+"the saint, the father, and the husband" of "The Cottar's Saturday
+Night." "I have met with few," said Burns, "who understood men, their
+manners, and their ways, equal to my father." Agnes Brown, the poet's
+mother, is described as a very sagacious woman, with an inexhaustible
+store of ballads and traditionary tales, upon which she nourished
+Robert's infant imagination, while her husband attended to "the
+weightier matters of the law."
+
+When Burns was between six and seven, his father removed to the farm of
+Mount Oliphant, two miles from the Brig o' Doon. But the soil was poor,
+and the factor--afterwards pictured in "The Twa Dogs"--so harsh and
+unreasonable, that the tenant was glad to quit. In 1777 he removed about
+ten miles to the larger and better farm of Lochlea, in the parish of
+Tarbolton. Here, after a short interval of prosperity, some trouble
+arose about the conditions of the lease. The dispute involved William
+Burnes in ruin, and he died broken-hearted in February, 1784.
+
+Meanwhile, at the age of six, Robert, with his brother Gilbert, was
+learning to read, write, and sum under the direction of John Murdoch, an
+itinerant teacher, who has left an interesting description of his pupil.
+
+"Gilbert always appeared to me to possess a more lively imagination,"
+says Murdoch, "and to be more of the wit, than Robert. I attempted to
+teach them a little church-music. Here they were left far behind by all
+the rest of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably
+dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to
+distinguish one tune from another. Robert's countenance was generally
+grave and expressive of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind.
+Gilbert's face said, 'Mirth, with thee I mean to live;' and, certainly,
+if any person who knew the two boys had been asked which of them was the
+more likely to court the muses, he would never have guessed that Robert
+had a propensity of that kind."
+
+When Murdoch left the district, the father himself continued to instruct
+the boys; but when Robert was about thirteen he and Gilbert were sent,
+"week about, during a summer quarter," to the parish school of
+Dalrymple. The good man could not pay two fees, or his two boys could
+not be spared at the same time from the farm!
+
+"We lived very poorly," says the poet. "I was a dexterous ploughman for
+my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother [Gilbert], who could
+drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A
+novel-writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some
+satisfaction, but so did not I." Burns's person, inured to daily toil,
+and continually exposed to every variety of weather, presented, before
+the usual time, every characteristic of robust and vigorous manhood. He
+says himself that he never feared a competitor in any species of rural
+exertion; and Gilbert, a man of uncommon bodily strength, adds that
+neither he, nor any labourer he ever saw at work, was equal to him,
+either in the cornfield or on the thrashing-floor.
+
+Before his sixteenth year Burns had read a large amount of literature.
+But a collection of songs, he says significantly, "was my _vade mecum_.
+I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song,
+verse by verse; carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime from
+affectation or fustian." It was about this date that he "first committed
+the sin of rhyme." The subject was a "bewitching creature," a partner in
+the harvest field, and the song was that beginning "Once I loved a
+bonnie lass."
+
+After this, though much occupied with labour and love, he found leisure
+occasionally to clothe the various moods of his mind in verse. It was as
+early as seventeen that he wrote the stanzas which open beautifully, "I
+dream'd I lay where flowers were springing," and also the ballad, "My
+father was a farmer upon the Carrick border," which, years afterwards,
+he used to con over with delight, because of the faithfulness with which
+it recalled to him the circumstances and feelings of his opening
+manhood. These are the only two of his very early productions in which
+there is nothing expressly about love. The rest were composed to
+celebrate the charms of those rustic beauties who followed each other in
+the domain of his fancy, or shared the capacious throne between them.
+The excursions of the rural lover form the theme of almost all the songs
+which Burns is known to have produced about this period; and such of
+these juvenile performances as have been preserved are beautiful. They
+show how powerfully his boyish fancy had been affected by the old rural
+minstrelsy of his own country, and how easily his native taste caught
+the secret of its charm.
+
+In 1781, despairing of farming, he went to Irvine to learn flax-dressing
+with a relative. He was diligent at first, but misfortune soon overtook
+him. The shop where he was engaged caught fire, and he "was left, like a
+true poet, not worth a sixpence." Gilbert Burns dates a serious change
+in his character and conduct from this six months' residence in the
+seaport town. "He contracted," he says, "some acquaintance of a freer
+manner of thinking than he had been accustomed to, whose society
+prepared him for overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue which had
+hitherto restrained him."
+
+He had certainly not come unscathed out of the society of those persons
+of "liberal opinions" with whom he consorted in Irvine; and he expressly
+attributes to their lessons the scrape into which he fell soon after "he
+put his hand to plough again." He was compelled, according to the then
+all but universal custom of rural parishes in Scotland, to do penance in
+church, before the congregation, in consequence of the birth of an
+illegitimate child. But not the amours, or the tavern, or drudging
+manual labour could keep him long from his true calling. "Rhyme," he
+says, "I had given up [on going to Irvine], but meeting with Fergusson's
+'Scottish Poems,' I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating
+vigour." It was probably this accidental meeting with Fergusson that in
+a great measure finally determined the Scottish character of his poetry.
+
+
+_II.--The Loves of a Peasant Poet_
+
+
+Just before their father's death, Robert and Gilbert took the cold and
+ungrateful farm of Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline, to which the
+family now removed. The four years of Burns's connection with this place
+were the most important of his life. It was then that his genius
+developed its highest energies; on the works produced in these years his
+fame was first established, and must ever continue mainly to rest; it
+was then also that his personal character came out in all its brightest
+lights, and in all but its darkest shadows; and indeed from the
+commencement of this period the history of the man may be traced, step
+by step, in his own immortal writings.
+
+Burns now began to know that Nature had meant him for a poet; and
+diligently, though as yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be
+his destined vocation. He was never more productive than at this time,
+when he wrote such skits on the kirk and its associates as "The Twa
+Herds" (pastors), "Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Holy Fair," and "The
+Ordination." "Hallowe'en," a descriptive poem, perhaps even more
+exquisitely wrought than "The Holy Fair," also belongs to the Mossgiel
+period, as does an even more notable effort.
+
+Burns had often remarked to his brother that there was something
+peculiarly venerable in the phrase, "Let us worship God," used by a
+decent, sober head of a family introducing family worship. To this
+sentiment we are indebted for "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the hint of
+the plan and title of which were taken from Fergusson's "Farmer's
+Ingle." It is, perhaps, of all Burns's pieces, the one whose exclusion
+from the collection, were such a thing possible nowadays, would be the
+most injurious, if not to the genius, at least to the character of the
+man. In spite of many feeble lines and some heavy stanzas, it appears to
+me that even his genius would suffer more in estimation by being
+contemplated in the absence of this poem than of any other single
+performance he has left us. Loftier flights he certainly has made, but
+in these he remained but a short while on the wing, and effort is too
+often perceptible; here the motion is easy, gentle, placidly undulating.
+
+Burns's art had now reached its climax; but it is time to revert more
+particularly to his personal history. In this his loves very nearly
+occupy the chief place. That they were many, his songs prove; for in
+those days he wrote no love-songs on imaginary heroines. "Mary Morison,"
+"Behind yon hills where Lugar flows," and "On Cessnock banks there lives
+a lass," belong to this date; and there are three or four inspired by
+Mary Campbell--"Highland Mary"--the object of by far the deepest passion
+Burns ever knew, a passion which he has immortalised in the noblest of
+his elegiacs, "To Mary in Heaven."
+
+Farming had, of course, to engage his attention as well as love-making,
+but he was less successful in the one than in the other. The first year
+of Mossgiel, from buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, he
+lost half his crops. In these circumstances, he thought of proceeding to
+the West Indies. Presently he had further cause for contemplating an
+escape from his native land. Among his "flames" was one Jean Armour, the
+daughter of a mason in Mauchline, where she was the reigning toast. Jean
+found herself "as ladies wish to be that love their lords." Burns's
+worldly circumstances were in a most miserable state when he was
+informed of her condition, and he was staggered. He saw nothing for it
+but to fly the country at once.
+
+Meanwhile, meeting Jean, he yielded to her tears, and gave her a written
+acknowledgment of marriage, valid according to Scottish law. Her
+father's wrath was not appeased thereby. Burns, confessing himself
+unequal to the support of a family, proposed to go immediately to
+Jamaica in search of better fortunes. He offered, if this were rejected,
+to abandon his farm, already a hopeless concern, and earn at least bread
+for his wife and children as a day labourer at home. But nothing would
+satisfy Armour, who, in his indignation, made his daughter destroy the
+written evidence of her "marriage."
+
+
+_III.--Burns at His Zenith_
+
+
+Such was his poverty that he could not satisfy the parish officers; and
+the only alternative that presented itself to him was America or a gaol.
+A situation was obtained for him in Jamaica, but he had no money to pay
+his passage. It occurred to him that the money might be raised by
+publishing his poems; and a first edition, printed at Kilmarnock in
+1786, brought him nearly L20, out of which he paid for a steerage
+passage from the Clyde. "My chest was on the road to Greenock," he
+tells; "I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia,
+'The gloomy night is gathering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock
+to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects
+to my poetic ambition."
+
+Blacklock, the blind divine upon whom Johnson "looked with reverence,"
+had read the newly published poems, and it was his praise of them that
+directly prevented Burns from expatriating himself. "His opinion that I
+would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh fired me so much that away I
+posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter
+of introduction. The baneful star that had so long shed its blasting
+influence in my zenith for once made a revolution to the nadir." In
+Edinburgh, which Burns reached in November, 1786, he was introduced by
+Blacklock to all the _literati_, and within a fortnight he was writing
+to a friend: "I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas a
+Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect to see my birthday inscribed
+among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks,
+along with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge."
+
+But he bore his honours in a manner worthy of himself. "The attentions
+he received," says Dugald Stewart, "from all ranks and descriptions of
+persons were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot
+say that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his
+mind." Scott, then a lad of fifteen, met him, and wrote a vivid
+description of his appearance:
+
+"His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a
+sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its
+effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His
+features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys
+the idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective. I think his
+countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I
+would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very
+sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school--_i.e._, none of your
+modern agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the
+_douce gudeman_ who held his own plough. There was a strong expression
+of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think,
+indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a
+dark cast, which glowed (I say literally _glowed_) when he spoke with
+feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head,
+though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His
+conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest
+presumption. He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the
+laird. I do not speak in _malam partem_ when I say I never saw a man in
+company with his superiors in station and information more perfectly
+free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was
+told that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always
+with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their
+attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark
+this."
+
+It needs no effort of imagination to conceive what the sensations of an
+isolated set of scholars, almost all either clergymen or professors,
+must have been in the presence of this big-boned, brawny stranger, with
+his great flashing eyes, who had forced his way among them from the
+plough-tail at a single stride; and it will always be a reflection in
+their honour that they suffered no pedantic prejudices to interfere with
+their reception of the poet.
+
+Shortly after his arrival he arranged with Creech, the chief bookseller
+in Edinburgh, to undertake a second edition of his poems. This was
+published in March, 1787, the subscribers numbering over 1,500. Out of
+money thus derived, he provided a tombstone for the neglected grave of
+Robert Fergusson, his "elder brother in the muses," in the Canongate
+churchyard. Then he decided to visit some of the classic scenes of
+Scottish history and romance. He had as yet seen but a small part of his
+own country, and this by no means among the most interesting, until,
+indeed, his own poetry made it equal, on that score, to any other.
+Various tours were, in fact, undertaken, the chief being, however, in
+the Border district and in the Highlands. Usually he returned to
+Edinburgh, partly to be near his jovial intimates, and partly because,
+after the excitement attending his first appearance in the capital, he
+found himself incapable of settling down contentedly in the humble
+circle at Mossgiel.
+
+
+_IV.--The Clarinda Romance_
+
+
+During the winter of 1787--1788, he had a little romance with Mrs.
+McLehose, the beautiful widow to whom he addressed the song, "Clarinda,
+mistress of my soul," and a series of letters which present more
+instances of bad taste, bombastic language, and fulsome sentiment than
+could be produced from all his writings besides. It was the same lady
+who inspired the lines which furnished Byron with a motto, and Scott
+declared to be "worth a thousand romances ":
+
+    Had we never loved so kindly
+    Had we never loved sae blindly,
+    Never met--or never parted,
+    We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
+
+At this time the publication of Johnson's "Scots Musical Museum" was
+going on in Edinburgh; and Burns, being enlisted as a contributor,
+furnished many of his best songs to that work. From his youth upwards he
+had been an enthusiastic lover of the old minstrelsy and music of his
+country; but he now studied both subjects with better opportunities and
+appliances than he could have commanded previously; and it is from this
+time that we must date his ambition to transmit his own poetry to
+posterity, in eternal association with those exquisite airs which had
+hitherto, in far too many instances, been married to verses that did not
+deserve to be immortal. Later, beginning in 1792, he wrote about sixty
+songs for George Thomson's collection, many of which, like "Auld Lang
+Syne" and "Scots Wha Hae," are in the front rank of popularity. The
+letters he addressed to Thomson are full of interesting detail of
+various kinds. In one he writes:
+
+"Until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing, such as it is,
+I can never compose for it. My way is this. I consider the poetic
+sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression--then
+choose my theme--compose one stanza. When that is composed, which is
+generally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down
+now and then, look out for objects in Nature round me that are in unison
+or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom,
+humming every now and then the air, with the verses I have framed. When
+I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of
+my study, and there commit my effusions to paper; swinging at intervals
+on the hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own
+critical strictures, as my pen goes. Seriously this, at home, is almost
+invariably my way."
+
+But to return. During his second winter in Edinburgh, Burns met with a
+hackney coach accident which kept him to the house for six weeks. While
+in this state he learned from Mauchline that his intimacy with Jean
+Armour had again exposed her to the reproaches of her family. The father
+sternly turned her out of doors, and Burns had to arrange about a
+shelter for her and his children in a friend's house. In the meantime,
+through the influence of some sympathisers, he had been appointed an
+officer of excise. "I have chosen this," he wrote, "after mature
+deliberation. It is immediate bread, and, though poor in comparison of
+the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison of
+all my preceding life." However, when he settled finally with Creech
+about his poems, he found himself with between L500 and L600; and he
+retained his excise commission as a _dernier ressort_, to be used only
+if a reverse of fortune rendered it necessary.
+
+He decided now to exchange Mossgiel for Ellisland farm, about six miles
+from Dumfries. As soon as he was able to leave Edinburgh, he had hurried
+to Mossgiel and gone through a justice-of-peace marriage with Jean
+Armour. Burns, with all his faults, was an honest and a high-spirited
+man, and he loved the mother of his children. Had he hesitated to make
+her his wife, he must have sunk into the callousness of a ruffian, or
+that misery of miseries, the remorse of a poet.
+
+Some months later he writes that his marriage "was not, perhaps, in
+consequence of the attachment of romance, but I have no cause to repent
+it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable
+dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of
+boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the
+sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the
+country." It was during the honeymoon, as he calls it, that he wrote the
+beautiful "O a' the airts the wind can blaw." He used to say that the
+happiest period of his life was the first winter at Ellisland, with wife
+and children around him. It was then that he wrote, among other songs,
+"John Anderson, my Jo," "Tarn Glen," "My heart's in the Highlands," "Go
+fetch to me a pint of wine," and "Willie brewed a peck o' maut."
+
+But the "golden days" of Ellisland were short. Burns's farming
+speculations once more failed, and he had to take up his excise
+commission. "I am now," says he, "a poor rascally gauger, condemned to
+gallop two hundred miles every week to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty
+barrels." Both in prose and verse he has recorded the feelings with
+which he first followed his new vocation, and his jests on the subject
+are uniformly bitter. It was a vocation which exposed him to temptations
+of the kind he was least likely to resist. His extraordinary
+conversational powers led him into peril wherever he went. If he entered
+an inn at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of his
+arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere ten minutes
+had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were assembled round the
+ingle; the largest punch-bowl was produced; and "Be ours this night--who
+knows what comes to-morrow?" was the language of every eye in the circle
+that welcomed him.
+
+At home, too, lion-gazers from all quarters beset him; they ate and
+drank at his cost, and often went away to criticise him and his fare, as
+if they had done Burns and his black bowl great honour in condescending
+to be entertained for a single evening with such company. Among others
+who called on him was Captain Grose, the antiquary, and it is to this
+acquaintance that we owe "Tam o' Shanter," which Burns believed to be
+the best of all his productions.
+
+
+_V.--Closing Years of the Poet's Life_
+
+
+Towards the close of 1791 he gave up his farm, and procuring an excise
+appointment to the Dumfries division, removed to the county town. His
+moral course from this time was downwards. "In Dumfries," says Heron,
+speaking from personal knowledge, "his dissipation became still more
+deeply habitual. He was here exposed more than in the country to be
+solicited to share the riot of the dissolute and idle." His intemperance
+was, as Heron says, in fits; his aberrations were occasional, not
+systematic; they were all to himself the sources of exquisite misery in
+the retrospect; they were the aberrations of a man whose moral sense was
+never deadened, of one who encountered more temptations from without and
+from within than the immense majority of mankind, far from having to
+contend against, are even able to imagine; of one, finally, who prayed
+for pardon, where alone effectual pardon could be found.
+
+In how far the "thoughtless follies" of the poet did actually hasten his
+end, it is needless to conjecture. They had their share, unquestionably,
+along with other influences which it would be inhuman to characterise as
+mere follies. In these closing years of his life he had to struggle
+constantly with pecuniary difficulties, than which nothing could have
+been more likely to pour bitterness intolerable into the cup of his
+existence. His lively imagination exaggerated to itself every real evil;
+and this among, and perhaps above, all the rest; at least, in many of
+his letters we find him alluding to the probability of his being
+arrested for debts, which we now know to have been of very trivial
+amount.
+
+In 1795 he was greatly upset by the death, in his absence, of his
+youngest child. Writing in January, 1796, he says: "I had scarcely begun
+to recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most
+severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful, until, after
+many weeks of a sick-bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am
+beginning to crawl across my room, and once indeed have been before my
+own door in the street."
+
+But a few days after this Burns was so imprudent as to join a festive
+circle at a tavern dinner, where he remained till about three in the
+morning. The weather was severe, and he, being too much intoxicated,
+took no precaution in thus exposing his debilitated frame to its
+influence. It has been said that he fell asleep upon the snow on his way
+home. The result was an acute return of his rheumatism, and his health
+gradually got worse. He went to the Solway for sea-bathing, but came
+back to Dumfries "visibly changed in his looks, being with difficulty
+able to stand upright and reach his own door."
+
+It soon became known that he was dying, and the anxiety, not of the rich
+and the learned only, but of the mechanics and peasants, exceeded all
+belief. Wherever two or three people stood together their talk was
+solely of Burns. His good humour was unruffled, and his wit never
+forsook him; but he repressed with a smile the hopes of his friends, and
+told them he had lived long enough. The fever increased, and his
+strength diminished, and he died on July 21, 1796. His funeral, attended
+by ten or twelve thousand people, was an impressive and mournful sight.
+The grave was at first covered by a plain tombstone; but a costly
+mausoleum was subsequently erected on the most elevated site which the
+churchyard presented. Thither the remains of the poet were solemnly
+transferred on June 5, 1815.
+
+It requires a graver audacity of hypocrisy than falls to the share of
+most men to declaim against Burns's sensibility to the tangible cares
+and toils of his earthly condition; there are more who venture on broad
+denunciations of his sympathy with the joys of sense and passion.
+
+That some men in every age will comfort themselves in the practice of
+certain vices, by reference to particular passages both in the history
+and in the poetry of Burns, there is all reason to fear; but surely the
+general influence of both is calculated, and has been found, to produce
+far different effects. The universal popularity which his writings have
+all along enjoyed among one of the most virtuous of nations is of itself
+a decisive circumstance.
+
+On one point there can be no controversy; the poetry of Burns has had
+most powerful influence in reviving and strengthening the national
+feelings of his countrymen. Amidst penury and labour his youth fed on
+the old minstrelsy and traditional glories of his nation, and his genius
+divined that what he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might
+lie smothered around him, but could not be extinguished. Burns "knew his
+own worth, and reverenced the lyre." But he ever announced himself, as a
+peasant, the representative of his class, the painter of their manners,
+inspired by the same influences which ruled their bosoms; and whosoever
+sympathised with his verse had his soul opened for the moment to the
+whole family of man.
+
+Short and painful as were his years, Burns has left behind him a volume
+in which there is inspiration for every fancy and music for every mood;
+which lives, and will live in strength and vigour, "to soothe," as a
+generous lover of genius has said, "the sorrows of how many a lover, to
+inflame the patriotism of how many a soldier, to fan the fires of how
+many a genius, to disperse the gloom of solitude, appease the agonies of
+pain, encourage virtue, and show vice its ugliness." In this volume,
+centuries hence as now, wherever a Scotsman may wander he will find the
+dearest consolation of his exile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MARTIN LUTHER
+
+
+Table Talk
+
+
+     Martin Luther, "the monk who shook the world," was born Nov.
+     10, 1483, at Eisleben, in Germany. In 1507 he was ordained a
+     priest, and became popular almost immediately as a preacher. A
+     visit to Rome shocked him, and in revolt against the practice
+     of raising money by the sale of indulgences, he began his
+     career as a reformer. In 1518 he was summoned to Rome to
+     answer for his opinions, which now included a total denial of
+     the right of the Pope to forgive sins. He proceeded to attack
+     the whole doctrinal system of the Roman Catholic Church. For
+     this he was denounced in a papal bull and his writings were
+     condemned to be burned. In 1525 he married an escaped nun.
+     That Luther was a true child of his age may be seen in the
+     selections made from his "Table Talk." His shrewdness, humour,
+     plain bold speech, and his change of belief from an infallible
+     Church to an infallible Bible there appear, as also do his
+     narrowness of knowledge, asperity of temper, and
+     susceptibility to superstition. He must be judged by the mind
+     of his times, not by modern standards. We give some of his
+     strong opinions that have not borne the wear and tear of later
+     ages; but they are more than balanced by teaching what is
+     beautiful, as well as true. Luther died on February 18, 1546.
+
+
+_God's Word and Book_
+
+
+That the Bible is God's word and book I prove thus. Infinite potentates
+have raged against it, and sought to destroy and uproot it--King
+Alexander the Great, the princes of Egypt and Babylon, the monarchs of
+Persia, of Greece, and of Rome, the Emperors Julius and Augustus--but
+they nothing prevailed; they are all gone and vanished, while the book
+remains and will remain. Who has thus helped it? Who has thus protected
+it against such mighty forces? No one, surely, but God Himself, who is
+the Master of all things.
+
+The Holy Scriptures are full of divine gifts and virtues. The books of
+the heathen taught nothing of faith, hope, or charity; they present no
+idea of these things; they contemplate only the present, and that which
+man, with the use of his material reason, can grasp and comprehend. Look
+not therein for aught of hope and trust in God. But see how the Psalms
+and the Book of Job treat of faith, hope, resignation, and prayer; in a
+word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in
+comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel,
+to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity far otherwise than
+mere human reason can, and when evil oppresses us it teaches how these
+virtues throw light upon the darkness.
+
+The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure or limit to
+the fever for writing. The Bible is now buried under so many
+commentaries that the text is nothing regarded. I could wish all my
+books were buried nine ells deep in the ground by reason of the ill
+example they will give. I would not have those who read my books, in
+these stormy times, devote one moment to them that they would otherwise
+have consecrated to the Bible itself.
+
+
+_God's Dealing with Us_
+
+
+How should God deal with us? Good days we cannot bear, evil we cannot
+endure. Gives He riches unto us--then we are proud, so that no man can
+live by us in peace; nay, we will be carried on heads and shoulders, and
+will be adored as gods. Gives He poverty to us--then are we dismayed,
+impatient, and murmur against Him.
+
+God only, and not wealth, maintains the world; riches merely make people
+proud and lazy. Great wealth cannot still hunger, but rather occasions
+more dearth, for where rich people are there things are always dear.
+Moreover, money makes no man right merry, but much rather pensive and
+full of sorrow; for riches, says Christ, are thorns that prick people.
+Yet is the world so made that it sets therein all its joy and felicity,
+and we are such unthankful slovens that we give God not so much as a
+_Deo Gratias_, though we receive of Him overflowing benefits, merely out
+of His goodness and mercy. No man can estimate the great charge God is
+at only in maintaining birds and such creatures, comparatively nothing
+worth. I am persuaded that it costs Him yearly more to maintain only the
+sparrows than the revenue of the French king amounts to.
+
+
+_Points from "Popedom"_
+
+
+I much marvel that the pope extols his church at Rome as the chief,
+whereas the church at Jerusalem is the mother; for there Christian
+doctrine was first revealed. Next was the church at Antioch, whence the
+Christians have their name. Thirdly, was the church at Alexandria; and
+still before the Romish were the churches of the Galatians, of the
+Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians. Is it so great a matter that St.
+Peter was at Rome? Which, however, has never yet been proved, nor ever
+will be, whereas our blessed Saviour Christ Himself was at Jerusalem,
+where all the articles of our Christian faith were made.
+
+Prayer in popedom is mere tongue-threshing; not prayer but a work of
+obedience. Hence the confused sea of howling and babbling in cells and
+monasteries, where they read and sing the psalms and collects without
+any spiritual devotion. Though I had done no more but only freed people
+from that torment, they might well give me thanks for it.
+
+Kings and princes coin money only out of metals, but the pope coins
+money out of everything--indulgences, ceremonials, dispensations,
+pardons; 'tis all fish comes to his net. 'Tis only baptism escapes him,
+for children come into the world without clothes to be stolen or teeth
+to be drawn.
+
+
+_Patristic Literature_
+
+
+I will not presume to criticise too closely the writings of the fathers,
+seeing they are received of the church and have great applause, but
+whoso reads Chrysostom will find he digresses from the chief points, and
+proceeds on other matters, saying nothing, or very little, of that which
+pertains to the business. St. Jerome wrote upon Matthew, upon the
+Epistles to the Galatians, and Titus, but, alas, very coldly. Ambrose
+wrote six books upon the first book of Moses, but they are very poor.
+
+We must read the fathers cautiously, and lay them in the gold balance,
+for they often stumbled and went astray. Gregory expounds the five
+pounds mentioned in the Gospel, which the husbandman gave to his servant
+to put to use, to be the five senses, which the beasts also possess. The
+two pounds he construes to be the reason and understanding. Faithful
+Christians should heed only the embassy of our blessed Saviour Christ,
+and what He says.
+
+None of the fathers of the church made mention of original sin until
+Augustine came, who made a difference between original and actual sin,
+namely, that original sin is to covet, to lust, and to desire, which is
+the root and cause of actual sin.
+
+
+_Hints for Preachers_
+
+
+The good preacher should know when to make an end. A preacher that will
+speak everything that comes into his mind is like a maid that goes to
+market, and, meeting another maid, makes a stand, and they hold together
+a goose-market.
+
+I would not have preachers in their sermons use Hebrew, Greek, or
+foreign languages, for in the church we ought to speak as we use to do
+at home, the plain mother tongue, which everyone is acquainted with. It
+may be allowed in courtiers, lawyers, advocates, etc., to use quaint,
+curious words. St. Paul never used such high and stately words as
+Demosthenes and Cicero used.
+
+Ambition is the rankest poison to the church when it possesses
+preachers. It is a consuming fire.
+
+When I preach I sink myself deep down. I regard neither doctors nor
+magistrates, of whom are here in this church above forty; but I have an
+eye to the multitude of young people, children, and servants, of whom
+are more than two thousand. I preach to those. Will not the rest hear
+me?
+
+
+_Time's Forelock_
+
+
+It is said Occasion has a forelock, but it is bald behind. Our Lord has
+taught this by the course of nature. A farmer must sow his barley and
+oats about Easter; if he defer it till Michaelmas it were too late. When
+apples are ripe they must be plucked from the tree or they are spoiled.
+Procrastination is as bad as over-hastiness. There is my servant Wolf,
+when four or five birds fall upon the bird-net he will not draw it; but
+says, "Oh, I will stay until more come." Then they all fly away, and he
+gets none.
+
+Occasion is a great matter. Terence says well, "I came in time, which is
+the chief thing of all." Julius Caesar understood Occasion; Pompey and
+Hannibal did not. Boys at school understand it not, therefore they must
+have fathers and masters, with the rod, to hold them thereto, that they
+neglect not time and lose it. Many a young fellow has a school stipend
+for six or seven years, during which he ought diligently to study, but
+he thinks, "Oh, I have time enough yet." But I say, "No, fellow; what
+little Jack learns not great John learns not." Occasion salutes thee,
+and reaches out her forelock to thee, saying, "Here I am, take hold of
+me." Thou thinkest she will come again. Then says she, "Well, seeing
+thou wilt not take hold of my top, take hold of my tail," and therewith
+she flings away.
+
+
+_Modern Luxury_
+
+
+Whereto serve or profit such superfluity, such show, such ostentation,
+such extraordinary luxurious kind of life as is now come upon us? If
+Adam were to return to earth, and see our mode of living, our food,
+drink, and dress, how would he marvel. He would say: "Surely this is not
+the world I was in?" For Adam drank water, ate fruit from the trees,
+and, if he had any house at all, 'twas a hut supported by four wooden
+forks; he had no knife or iron, and he wore simply a coat of skin. Now
+we spend immense sums in eating and drinking, now we raise sumptuous
+palaces, and decorate them with a luxury beyond all comparison. The
+ancient Israelites lived in great moderation and quiet. Boaz says: "Dip
+thy bread in vinegar and refresh thyself therewith."
+
+
+_Ministers and Matrimony_
+
+
+I advise in everything that ministers interfere not in matrimonial
+questions. First, because we have enough to do in our own office;
+secondly, because these affairs concern not the church, but are temporal
+things, pertaining to temporal magistrates; thirdly, because such cases
+are in a manner innumerable; they are very high, broad, and deep, and
+produce many offences, which may tend to the shame and dishonour of the
+Gospel. Moreover, we are therein ill dealt with--they draw us into the
+business, and then, if the issue is evil, the blame is laid altogether
+upon us. Therefore, we will leave them to the lawyers and magistrates.
+
+
+_Miscellaneous Topics_
+
+
+Philip Melancthon showing Luther a letter from Augsburg wherein he was
+informed that a very learned divine, a papist of that city, was
+converted, and had received the Gospel, Luther said, "I like best those
+that do not fall off suddenly, but ponder the case with considerate
+discretion, compare together the writing and arguments of both parties,
+and lay them on the gold balance, and in God's fear search after the
+upright truth; and of such fit people are made, able to stand in
+controversy. Such a man was St. Paul, who at first was a strict Pharisee
+and man of works, who stiffly and earnestly defended the law; but
+afterwards preached Christ in the best and purest manner against the
+whole nation of the Jews."
+
+As all people feel they must die, each seeks immortality here on earth,
+that he may be had in everlasting remembrance. Some great princes and
+kings seek it by raising great columns of stone and high pyramids, great
+churches, costly and glorious palaces and castles. Soldiers hunt after
+praise and honour by obtaining famous victories. The learned seek an
+everlasting name by writing books. With these and such like things
+people think to be immortal. But as to the true everlasting and
+incorruptible honour and eternity of God, no man thinks or looks after
+these things.
+
+When two goats meet on a narrow bridge over deep waters how do they
+behave? Neither of them can turn back again, and neither can pass the
+other because the bridge is too narrow. If they should thrust one
+another they might both fall into the water and be drowned. Nature,
+then, has taught them that if one lays himself down and permits the
+other to go over him both remain without hurt. Even so, people should
+endure to be trod upon rather than to fall into discord with one
+another.
+
+
+_Strong Opinions Outworn by Time_
+
+
+I should have no compassion on witches; I would burn all of them. We
+read in the old law that the priests threw the first stone at such
+malefactors. Our ordinary sins offend and anger God. What then must be
+His wrath against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high treason
+against divine majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God. The
+maladies I suffer are not natural but devils' spells.
+
+Luther, taking up a caterpillar, said: "'Tis an emblem of the devil in
+its crawling, and bears his colours in its changing hue."
+
+The devil plagues and torments us in the place where we are most tender
+and weak. In Paradise he fell not upon Adam, but upon Eve. It commonly
+rains where it was wet enough before.
+
+The anabaptists pretend that children, not as yet having reason, ought
+not to receive baptism. I answer: That reason in no way contributes to
+faith. Nay, in that children are destitute of reason they are all the
+more fit and proper recipients of baptism. For reason is the greatest
+enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things.
+
+I always loved music. A schoolmaster ought to have skill in music, or I
+would not regard him; neither should we ordain young men as preachers
+unless they have been well exercised in music.
+
+Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the
+earth. He made several attempts to draw me into his snares, and I should
+have been in danger but that God lent me special aid. Erasmus was
+poisoned at Rome and at Venice with epicurean doctrines. His chief
+doctrine is that we must carry ourselves according to the time, or, as
+the proverb goes, hang the cloak according to the wind. I hold Erasmus
+to be Christ's most bitter enemy.
+
+I never work better than when I am inspired by anger. When I am angry I
+can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is
+quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and
+temptations depart.
+
+
+_Characteristic Sayings_
+
+
+When the abbot throws the dice, the whole convent will play.
+
+When men blaspheme we should pray and be silent, and not carry wood to
+the fire.
+
+When Jesus Christ utters a word, He opens His mouth so wide that it
+embraces all heaven and earth, even though that word be but in a
+whisper.
+
+When I lay sucking at my mother's breast I had no notion how I should
+afterwards eat, drink, and live. Even so we on the earth have no idea
+what the life to come will be.
+
+The two sins, hatred and pride, deck and trim themselves out as the
+devil clothed himself in the Godhead. Hatred will be godlike; pride will
+be truth. These two are right deadly sins; hatred is killing, pride is
+lying.
+
+A scorpion thinks that when his head lies hid under a leaf he cannot be
+seen; even so the hypocrites and false saints think, when they have
+hoisted up one or two good works, all their sins therewith are covered
+and hid.
+
+Luther, holding a rose in his hand, said, "'Tis a magnificent work of
+God. Could a man make but one such rose as this he would be thought
+worthy of all honour, but the manifold gifts of God lose their value in
+our eyes from their very infinity."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MIRABEAU
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, was born at Bignon,
+     near Nemours, on March 9, 1749, and died at Paris on April 2,
+     1791. His father was a most eccentric and tyrannical
+     representative of the French aristocracy, and Honore, a
+     younger son, inherited something of his violent temperament,
+     but was endowed with real genius. Entering the army, young
+     Mirabeau soon displayed an erratic disposition by eloping with
+     the young wife of an aged nobleman. He fled to Holland, but
+     was captured and imprisoned. Being at length liberated, he
+     turned to literature and politics, and soon gained celebrity
+     in both. His magnificent oratorical powers brought him rapidly
+     to the front in the period immediately anterior to the
+     outbreak of the Revolution. Mirabeau's "Memoirs, by Himself,
+     his Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son," published in
+     eight volumes in 1834, contain no original writings by
+     Mirabeau himself, except in the shape of extracts from his
+     speeches, letters, and pamphlets. The following epitome has
+     been prepared from the French text.
+
+
+_I.--"The Hurricane"_
+
+
+The Marquis of Mirabeau, father of Honore Gabriel, the subject of these
+memoirs, was endowed with a mind of great power, rendered fruitful by
+the best education. He had, however, become independent at too early an
+age, and this had brought into play his natural inordinate vanity.
+
+Honore Gabriel, since so famous under the name of the Count of Mirabeau,
+was the fifth child of the marquis. Destined to be the most turbulent
+and active of youths, as well as the most eloquent of men and the
+greatest orator of his day, Gabriel was born with one foot twisted and
+his tongue tied, in addition to which his size and strength were
+extraordinary, and already two molars were formed in his jaw. At the age
+of three the boy nearly lost his life from small-pox, and was thus
+disfigured greatly for life; while the other children were, like the
+parents, gifted with wonderful beauty.
+
+Young Gabriel was a most precocious child, and he received an excellent
+education. At the age of seven he was confirmed by a cardinal, but his
+childhood was difficult of control, and chastisement from his father and
+tutor was continual. His inquisitiveness was irrepressible. He relates
+that at the family supper after his confirmation, "they explained to me
+that God could not make contradictions--for instance, a stick with only
+one end. I asked whether a stick which had but one end was not a
+miracle. My grandmother never forgave me."
+
+Placed under the kindly teaching of the Abbe Choquart in a military
+school of high repute in Paris, Gabriel made marvellously rapid
+progress, assiduously exercising his memory, which afterwards became a
+prodigious repository of the most diversified knowledge.
+
+On July 10, 1767, Gabriel entered the army, joining the Marquis of
+Lambert's regiment. The young volunteer, who was now eighteen, behaved
+well, and speedily gave evidence of the military talents he afterwards
+displayed. But a quarrel arose over a love affair, which led to harsh
+punishment by his colonel. The incident was bitterly resented by his
+father, who condemned him without hearing his side of the matter, and
+actually procured his imprisonment in the fortress of the Isle of Rhe.
+
+When the young soldier came out of prison he unwittingly offended an
+officer at Rochelle, who had been dismissed the service. The result was
+a duel, in which the aggressor was wounded. Gabriel was appointed to
+service in Corsica, with the rank of second-lieutenant, and here he
+distinguished himself by his zeal, his military talents, and his
+constant application.
+
+Young Mirabeau was, in September, 1770, transferred to Limousin, in west
+Central France. Such was his energy that he was called "the hurricane."
+Now began a series of troubles caused by bitter quarrels between his
+parents, who were openly at variance. Each sought to gain an adherent in
+their son, who was condemned to witness the wickedness and folly of both
+in their ungovernable passion. The effect on the character of the young
+count was deplorable.
+
+Then ensued a singular episode. The marquis had determined that Gabriel
+should marry before the age of twenty-three, and had fixed on Mary Emily
+de Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, eighteen years of
+age, for his son's bride. She was plain, yet attractive, with a sweet
+smile, fine eyes, and beautiful hair, and was gay, lively, sensible,
+mild, and very amiable. Having been neglected by her father and
+ill-treated by her mother, she showed no disinclination to marriage, and
+in 1772 young Mirabeau obtained the hand of the wealthy heiress.
+
+No sooner was the young count married than every attempt was made to
+ruin him. He received no property with his bride, and his avaricious
+father refused to advance him any money for necessary expenses. His
+father-in-law offered to lend him 60,000 livres, but his father's
+consent was indispensable, and this was sternly refused. Mirabeau,
+harassed by creditors, was dragged into lawsuits, and his embarrassments
+only set his father entirely against him. The marquis actually procured
+a _lettre de cachet_, obliging his son to leave the home he had set up,
+and to confine himself to the little town of Manosque.
+
+Here domestic sorrow and the most painful circumstances assailed the
+young exile. But these did not prevent him from pursuing serious studies
+and composing his first work, the "Essay on Despotism." Misfortunes
+accumulated. Chastising with a horsewhip a baron who grossly insulted
+him, the count was again imprisoned, this time in the Chateau d'If, a
+gloomy citadel on a barren rock near Marseilles.
+
+On May 25, 1770, Mirabeau was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near
+Pontarlier, where, on June 11, 1775, festivities were held, as at other
+places, to honour the coronation of Louis XVI. Here Mirabeau enjoyed a
+sort of half freedom, being allowed to visit in Pontarlier, and the
+event ensued which, it must sorrowfully be owned, tarnished his name. In
+a word, we see Mirabeau "ruin himself," by a fatal intimacy with the
+young wife of the aged Marquis of Monnier. The two fled to Dijon, where
+Mirabeau surrendered himself at the castle.
+
+He was released after a short time and went on to Geneva, nearly
+perishing in a storm on the lake. Returning to Pontarlier, he was joined
+by Sophie Monnier, and the two left for Holland, and arrived at
+Amsterdam on October 7, 1776. Mirabeau was naturally obliged to draw his
+principal means of subsistence from his literary labours, and this,
+perhaps, had been his motive for choosing Holland as his residence, for
+at that period the Dutch booksellers entered largely into literary
+speculations.
+
+Mirabeau and Sophie Monnier were arrested at Amsterdam on May 14, 1777.
+Both were brought to France. She was placed in a convent at
+Monilmontant, and Mirabeau was deposited on June 7 in the donjon of
+Vincennes, and was subjected to every sort of privation, remaining in
+confinement for forty-two months. His release marked the end of his
+private life; his public and political life was about to begin.
+
+
+_II.--Into Political Life_
+
+
+The "Essay on Despotism" had been the first sign of Mirabeau's political
+vocation, and the most singular instance, perhaps, of a war audaciously
+declared against despotism by a young man bearing its yoke. The keynote
+is that though the _natural_ man may not be inclined to despotism, the
+_social_ man assuredly is disposed to be a despot. This spirit,
+maintains Mirabeau, exists even in republics.
+
+In 1784 Mirabeau visited England. One of his motives was to collect
+materials for his "Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus," a
+treatise dealing with Washington and American independence. He was
+greatly delighted with English scenery. "It is here," he says, "that
+nature is improved, not forced. All tells me that here the people are
+something; that every man enjoys the development and free exercise of
+his faculties, and that I am in another order of things."
+
+But he proceeds: "I am not an enthusiast in favour of England, and I now
+know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution is
+the best known, the application of this constitution is the worst
+possible; and that if the Englishman is as a social man the most free in
+the world, the English people are the least free of any."
+
+He resided in England from August to February, 1785. During that brief
+period he began to write his "History of Geneva," and he showed his
+versatility by composing for a young refugee clergyman a sermon on the
+immortality of the soul. By the gift of this sermon he drew the exiled
+preacher from poverty, for it was the means of obtaining for him a
+lucrative appointment.
+
+Mirabeau sent forth from Paris several most able pamphlets on banking
+and on share companies. These were written with energy and often with
+violence. As they attacked many private interests they aroused against
+their author much hatred, insult, and calumny. He was accused of
+venality, though he was attacking and driving to despair powerful
+stock-jobbers, who would have paid him magnificently for silence, could
+he have been bought.
+
+In July, 1785, Mirabeau went to Berlin. It is a singular fact that in
+his various journeys some accident always befel him. On the way to
+Berlin an attempt was made to assassinate him by some unknown enemies,
+but he safely reached the German capital. King Frederick the Great, now
+very aged, no longer received foreigners, yet he replied to a letter
+from Mirabeau and fixed a day for seeing him at Potsdam.
+
+Mirabeau informed the king that he had come to seek permission to study
+the great military manoeuvres, and that he hoped to push on to Russia.
+During this period he worked like a labourer all day at his writings.
+Part of his time he spent at supper parties of the most tiresome
+etiquette. The same laborious habits attended him everywhere, in prison
+and in freedom, in his own country and in other lands. It was in Germany
+that he conceived the idea of his treatise on "The Reform of the Jews,"
+which is acknowledged to be one of his best works.
+
+Frederick the Great died on August 17, 1786. Feeling that he could do
+nothing useful, Mirabeau resolved at the close of 1786 to quit Berlin.
+He was urged also by a special motive in which he took pride, and which
+he thus described in a letter: "My heart has not grown old, and if my
+enthusiasm is damped, it is not extinguished. I have fully experienced
+this to-day. I consider one of the best days of my life that on which I
+received an account of the convocation of the notables, which no doubt
+will not long precede that of the National Assembly. In this I see a new
+order of things which may regenerate the monarchy. I should deem myself
+a thousand times honoured in being even the junior secretary of this
+assembly, of which I had the happiness of giving the first idea."
+
+Mirabeau was prodigiously occupied at Berlin. He often did not retire to
+rest till one in the morning, but regularly rose at five, even in the
+midst of severe winter. Without anything on but a simple quilted
+dressing-gown, without stockings or waistcoat, he worked away without
+even calling up his servant to light a fire. Besides his correspondence
+in cypher, which occupied him much, he worked assiduously at his
+"Prussian Monarchy," which was published in 1788.
+
+On departing from Berlin the count wrote a most eloquent letter of
+counsel to King Frederick William, appealing to him to cultivate peace,
+reminding him that his illustrious predecessor had conquered the
+admiration of mankind but never won their love, commending him not to
+extend the direct action of the royal power to matters which did not
+require it, advising him not to govern too much, and exhorting him to
+abolish military slavery; that is to say, the obligation then imposed on
+every Prussian to serve as a soldier from the age of eighteen to sixty
+or more, which forced men to go to the battle-field like cattle to the
+slaughterhouse.
+
+In the same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the
+harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the
+country. The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement
+protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of
+seizing the property of deceased foreigners, and demanded for burghers
+the freedom of purchasing the estates of nobles. He urged Frederick
+William to abolish the prerogatives claimed by nobles and the helotism
+of all who were not noble, and suggested that judges should be appointed
+for life and justice rendered free of expense.
+
+
+_III.--For King and People_
+
+
+It was chiefly the meeting of the notables which had hastened Mirabeau's
+return to Paris. He felt that his proper place was in the centre of the
+great events announced and begun by this convocation. After the
+undignified and inglorious prodigality of the previous reign, which had
+laid the foundation of serious financial vicissitudes, the young King
+Louis XVI. had brought with him to the throne the private virtues of a
+good and honest man, but not the qualities of a sovereign.
+
+Though economic to excess himself, he nevertheless suffered to exist and
+even to increase around him those dilapidations which at last ruined the
+resources of the state. He had no confidence in himself, and Mirabeau
+respectfully reproached him with his fatal timidity. Nothing was done
+either to increase revenue or diminish expenditure.
+
+The possessors of privilege and representatives of personal interest,
+the courtiers, the great lords, and the parliaments strenuously resisted
+all reforms and then drove from office the best intentioned, the most
+virtuous, and the ablest ministers whom the young king, in the sincerity
+of his patriotism, had chosen on his accession, in deference to public
+feeling. Among these ministers were Malesherbes, Turgot, Necker, and
+Calonne.
+
+Mirabeau returned to Paris on January 27, 1787. He at once published
+that famous "Address to the Notables," in which he denounced the whole
+corrupt system of finance and in which he demanded local provincial
+administrations. This and his "Denunciation of Stock-jobbing" made great
+impression on the public mind.
+
+Nevertheless, the "Denunciation" displeased the government, and the
+author was much persecuted. He learned that he was to be arrested and
+sent, not to the Bastille, but to a remote provincial fortress, where he
+would have been lost to public notice. So he escaped from Paris to
+Liege, whence he again attacked the administration of Calonne and the
+policy of Necker, declaring that loans should have been effected on
+methods less onerous for the state.
+
+His exile from Paris was of brief duration, for friends intervened. But
+Mirabeau returned only to renew and intensify his attacks. He remained,
+however, only for a short time, for on May 24, 1787, he set out on a
+third journey to Prussia, in order to complete his great work on the
+"Prussian Monarchy." Returning to France, he reached Paris in September.
+Five months had elapsed since the assembling of the notables. The
+eloquent Leominie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, had been the most
+brilliant figure in the conclave. The first assembly broke up on July
+27, 1787. Though gathered by the privileged orders, patriotism had
+raised its voice within it, and the archbishop, as prime minister, had
+failed to direct the new current aright.
+
+Mirabeau disapproved of what had taken place in his absence, and
+declined to be employed by the administration, but he offered to
+undertake any foreign mission in the exercise of the king to which he
+might be appointed. The application was unsuccessful. The crisis
+approached nearer and nearer. Archbishop Brienne passed rapidly from
+violence to weakness. Mirabeau refused to countenance his plans for
+contracting a new loan of 420 millions. The king was resisted by an
+almost unanimous opposition, headed by the Duke of Orleans, and the loan
+was refused at a memorable sitting.
+
+Mirabeau exhorted the government to announce in precise and solemn terms
+the convocation of the States-General in 1789, that bankruptcy might be
+averted and the national honour saved. Said he: "The year in which the
+king assembles the nation will be the finest in his life. Everybody
+knows that he has been deceived, and could not help being so, and
+everybody will do justice to his intentions. The assembled nation has a
+right to vote a tax. In future the nation alone will raise up its
+political fortunes."
+
+Mirabeau saw that the nation ought to be trusted. He strenuously
+contended for a policy in accordance with this conviction. But he
+indefatigably continued his literary labours, sending forth pamphlet
+after pamphlet, one against the prison system in vogue, another
+demanding the liberty of the Press, in which he extolled the example of
+England. He became increasingly impatient with the ineptitude of the
+government, for the affairs of the state were lapsing into desperate
+disorder, and the public discontent was being steadily aggravated.
+
+The aim of Mirabeau was at one and the same time to support the monarchy
+and to subvert the influences by which the throne was environed. He was
+solicitous of securing popular freedom, but regarded the monarchy as the
+only form of rule suitable for France in that age, and was led to adopt
+that peculiar statesmanship identifying the royal interest with the
+popular cause. Though ready to give his life for the people, he did not
+hesitate to risk his popularity by his fidelity to the throne.
+
+
+_IV.--President of the National Assembly_
+
+
+The immediate causes of the Revolution were now in full operation.
+Mirabeau, attempting to practise his own doctrine of the freedom of the
+Press, turned journalist and brought out a gazette. The famous National
+Assembly opened on May 5, 1789. He then entered on a career of immense
+political energy, beginning by issuing a stirring and eloquent "Address
+to the French People." This was especially a reply to a reactionary
+protest on the part of the clergy.
+
+Soon there were disturbances everywhere. The Bastille was stormed by the
+furious Parisians and demolished. Just at this time Mirabeau lost his
+father, and the event overwhelmed him with grief. He refused to stand
+for election as mayor of Paris. But he brought about a constitutional
+organisation of the municipality, and delivered a splendid series of
+orations on various abuses, such as plural voting, iniquitous
+monopolies, etc. Yet he proved his studious moderation by strenuously
+declaiming against the famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man,"
+pronouncing it inopportune and perilous. His heroic harangues provoked
+disorder in his audience dangerous to himself. But his courage was
+dauntless, for even when the king and his chief minister abandoned the
+royal prerogative, Mirabeau defended it.
+
+Throughout the terrible events of 1789 Mirabeau was consistent as a
+loyalist and as a patriot. But disappointment awaited his generous
+illusions, for the vacillation of the king rendered the outlook
+hopeless.
+
+At the end of January, 1791, he was appointed president of the National
+Assembly, which, during the stormy period of its existence during
+twenty-one months, had already had forty-two presidents.
+
+He exercised his functions with consummate skill, but the end of his
+wonderful life was at hand. He had been in weak health from the very
+first sittings of the Assembly, his condition causing constant anxiety
+to his intimate friends and his admirers. He was depressed by sad
+presentiments, and was in constant apprehension of assassination, for it
+was well-known that there were plots against his life. After a brilliant
+oration, the great tribune went home exhausted, and, indeed, dying.
+
+One of his last experiences was a pathetic interview with Talleyrand,
+with whom he had often crossed swords in debate. His weakness dated from
+February, 1788, when he was attacked with violent internal pains, and
+was bled to such an extent by a surgeon that he never recovered his
+wonderful natural vitality. After much suffering, endured with the most
+heroic fortitude, he passed away as if in sleep, with a sweet smile on
+his features. France mourned the loss of the greatest orator that had
+ever graced her tribune. His funeral was celebrated at St. Genevieve
+with splendid ceremonial. The verdict of those best qualified to judge
+was that Mirabeau was the most remarkable man of the eighteenth century,
+and that his premature death, soon after the outbreak of the Revolution,
+led to the overthrow of a monarchy which he alone could have saved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THOMAS MOORE
+
+
+Life of Byron
+
+
+     Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, was born in Dublin on May 28,
+     1779, was educated at Trinity College, and studied for the Bar
+     at the Middle Temple. At twenty-one years of age he published
+     a translation of Anacreon, and his reputation was further
+     established by his love-poems, under the pseudonym of Thomas
+     Little, in 1801. He received in 1803 an official post in
+     Bermuda, but entrusted his duties there to a substitute, by
+     whose defalcations he was later embarrassed. He was married at
+     thirty-one to a beautiful and amiable actress, Bessy Dyke, and
+     lived very happily for most of his life in Wiltshire, but with
+     an interval of a few years in Paris. In 1835 he received a
+     literary pension of L300, to which a Civil List pension of
+     L100 was added in 1850. He died on February 25, 1852.
+     Undoubtedly, Moore's most important contribution to prose
+     literature was his "Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,"
+     published in 1830, six years after the poet's death; as
+     payment he received L4,200. Although the work was frankly and
+     even severely criticised in many quarters, it did a great deal
+     to put Byron right with public opinion. Certainly no literary
+     contemporary was better fitted to write the biography of his
+     friend than Moore, who, moreover, had been marked for this
+     work by a free gift of Byron's own memoirs.
+
+
+_I.--Ancestors and Early Days_
+
+
+It has been said of Lord Byron that he was prouder of being a descendant
+of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into
+England, than of having been the author of "Childe Harold." The remark
+is not altogether unfounded, for the pride of ancestry was a feature of
+his character; and justly so, for his line was honourably known on the
+fields of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor; and in the faithful
+royalist, Sir John Biron, afterwards Lord Biron, throughout the Civil
+Wars.
+
+In 1784, the father of the poet, Captain John Byron, nephew of the fifth
+Lord Byron, with the sole object of relieving his debts, married, as his
+second wife, Miss Catherine Gordon, a wealthy lady of illustrious
+Scottish ancestry. Her fortune was swallowed up, and she was reduced to
+L150 a year, before she gave birth, on January 22, 1788, in Holles
+Street, London, to her first and only child, George Gordon Byron. The
+boy was somewhat deformed, one of his feet being twisted.
+
+In 1790, we find the unhappy parents living in separate lodgings in
+Aberdeen; and this estrangement was followed by complete separation, the
+worthless Captain Byron proceeding to France, where he died in the
+following year. The mother, a woman of the most passionate extremes,
+sent the boy to day school and grammar school. His schoolmates remember
+him as lively, warm-hearted, and more ready to give a blow than to take
+one. To summer excursions with his mother in the Highlands the poet
+traces his love of scenery and especially of mountainous countries; and
+he refers many years after, still with keen feeling, to a little girl,
+Mary Duff, for whom, in his eighth year, he cherished a consuming
+attachment. So early were his sensibilities dominant.
+
+On the death, in 1794, of the grandson of the old lord, little George
+stood in immediate succession to the peerage; in May, 1798, the fifth
+Lord Byron died at Newstead Abbey, and the boy's name was called in
+school with the title "Dominus." The Earl of Carlisle was appointed his
+guardian in chancery, and in the same summer, Lord Byron, in his
+eleventh year, took possession, with his mother, of the seat of his
+ancestors. The next year Mrs. Byron was placed on the Civil List for a
+pension of L300 a year. Removing to London, she placed George at school
+with Dr. Glennie at Dulwich, but thwarted the progress of his education
+with her fondness and self-will, until Lord Carlisle gave up all hope of
+ruling her. It was at this period that a boyish love for Margaret
+Parker, his cousin, who died shortly after, led Byron into the practice
+of verse.
+
+From 1801 to 1805, from thirteen years of age to seventeen, George was
+at Harrow, where he sat beside Peel, the future statesman. This period
+of ardent friendship with his fellows includes also the romantic
+affection, in 1803, for Miss Chaworth, heiress of Annesley, near
+Newstead, who looked on her admirer as the mere schoolboy that he was.
+Leaving Harrow with the reputation of an idler who would never learn,
+Byron was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October, 1805. His
+vacations were spent with his mother at Southwell, and her explosions of
+temper, in which she would throw poker and tongs, alienated him
+increasingly. In vacation and in term alike he read with extraordinary
+avidity and variety, wrote a great deal of verse, and in November, 1806,
+printed a small volume of poems for private circulation.
+
+He was a frank and vivid correspondent; his letters to Miss Pigot, of
+Southwell, and others, are full of the liveliest descriptions of the
+Cambridge days. At this time Byron was painfully shy of new faces, and
+perpetually mortified on account of his poverty. He rose, and retired to
+rest, very late. He was very fond of the exercises of swimming, riding,
+shooting, fencing, and sparring; greatly devoted to his dogs, delighted
+in music, and was known as remarkably superstitious. Of his charity and
+kindheartedness there was no end. Always conscious of his deformity, and
+terribly afraid of becoming corpulent, he was sedulously careful of his
+person and dress.
+
+"Hours of Idleness," Byron's first published volume, came out while he
+was at the university, and was received by the "Edinburgh Review" with a
+contempt which stung him to the quick. With intervals of dissipation in
+London and at Brighton, Byron threw himself, at Newstead, into the
+preparation of a satirical revenge, training himself for it by a deep
+study of the writings of Pope. After his coming of age, in 1809, he went
+up to London with his satire, and on March 13 took his seat in the House
+of Lords. A few days later "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" was the
+talk of the town. Wild festivities at Newstead followed its publication,
+and on July 2 Byron sailed from Falmouth in the Lisbon packet.
+
+
+_II.--The Poet Finds Himself_
+
+
+Lord Byron was absent from England for two years, and in the solitude of
+his nights at sea and in his lone wanderings through Greece he had
+leisure and seclusion to look within himself, and there catch the first
+glimpses of his glorious mind. His deep passion for solitude grew to
+full power; the varied excitement of his travels invigorated his
+character and stored his imagination with impressions, and his inborn
+sadness rose from a querulous bitterness to the grandeur of his later
+melancholy.
+
+His letters show him on Parnassus, where a flight of eagles seemed an
+omen of his destiny; at Athens, where he lodged with the mother of the
+"Maid of Athens"; standing among the ruins of Ephesus and the mounds of
+Troy; swimming the Hellespont in honour of Leander; at Constantinople,
+where the prospect of the Golden Horn seemed the fairest of all; at
+Patras, in the woeful debility of fever; and again at Athens, making
+acquaintance with Lady Hester Stanhope and "Abyssinian" Bruce. Through
+all these varied scenes his mind was brooding on the verses of the
+"Childe Harold."
+
+On Byron's return to England, in July, 1811, that poem was placed in Mr.
+Murray's hands, and thus was laid the foundation of a long connection
+between author and publisher. Mrs. Byron died on August 1. With all her
+faults she had loved her son deeply, and he could at least look back
+upon dutiful and kindly behaviour to her. It was in November that I
+first had the pleasure of meeting the poet at dinner, and what I chiefly
+remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his
+voice and manner, and his marked kindness. From our first meeting our
+acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship.
+
+On February 27, 1812, a day or two before the appearance of "Childe
+Harold," Byron made the first trial of his eloquence in the House of
+Lords, and it was on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Lord
+Holland. The subject of debate was the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill.
+Workmen were rioting and wrecking because their labour had been
+displaced by the introduction of machinery, and Byron's view was that
+"we must not allow mankind to be sacrificed to improvements in
+mechanism"--"the maintenance of the industrious poor is of greater
+consequence than the enrichment of monopolists"--"I have seen the state
+of these miserable men, and it is a disgrace to a civilised country."
+The speech was well received. The impression produced two days later by
+Byron's "Childe Harold" was as instantaneous as it has proved deep and
+lasting. Even the dashes of scepticism, with which he darkened his
+strain, served only to heighten its success. The Prince Regent had the
+poet presented to him, and the author of "Marmion" offered his praise.
+In the following May appeared the wild and beautiful fragment, "The
+Giaour." This new offspring of his genius was hailed with wonder and
+delight, and on my rejoining him in town this spring, I found an intense
+enthusiasm for Byron throughout the literary and social world. But his
+mind was already turning to freedom and solitude, and his third and last
+speech in the House of Lords was made in June.
+
+
+_III.--Byron's Unfortunate Marriage_
+
+
+Byron's restlessness is reflected throughout his "Journal," which he
+began at this time. He had dreams of living in the Grecian Islands and
+of adopting an Eastern manner of life; but in December, 1813, when "The
+Bride of Abydos" was published, he was still feverishly dissipating
+himself in England.
+
+A significant entry in the "Journal" says: "A wife would be the
+salvation of me," and Lord Byron became a suitor for the hand of Miss
+Milbanke, a relative of Lady Melbourne. His proposal was not at first
+accepted, but a correspondence ensued between them, and in September,
+1814, after the appearance of "The Corsair" and "Lara," they became
+formally affianced. I was much in his society at this time, and was
+filled with foreboding anxieties, which the unfortunate events that
+followed only too fully justified. At the end of December he set out for
+Seaham, the seat of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the lady's father, and on
+January 2, 1815, was married. On March 8, he wrote to me from Seaham:
+"Bell is in health, and unvaried good-humour and behaviour."
+
+Lord Byron's pecuniary embarrassments now accumulated upon him, and just
+a year after his marriage, and shortly after the birth of their
+daughter, I received a letter which breathed a profound melancholy, due
+partly to his difficulties, but more, I thought, to a return of the
+restless and roving spirit. I replied: "Do tell me you are happier than
+that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied." It was only a
+few weeks later that Lady Byron adopted the resolution of parting from
+him. She had left London in January on a visit to her father, and Byron
+was to follow her. They had parted in the utmost kindness; she wrote him
+a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; but
+immediately on her arrival her father wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that
+she would return to him no more. At the time when he had to stand this
+unexpected shock, his financial troubles, which had led to eight or nine
+executions in his house within the year, had arrived at their utmost;
+and at a moment when, to use his own expression, he was "standing alone
+on his hearth, with his household gods shivered around him," he was also
+doomed to receive the startling intelligence that the wife who had just
+parted with him in kindness, had parted with him for ever.
+
+I must quote from a letter he wrote me in March: "The fault was not in
+my choice, unless in choosing at all; for I do not believe--and I must
+say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business--that there ever
+was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and
+agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had any reproach to make her
+while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself, and if I
+cannot redeem, I must bear it."
+
+
+_IV.--Wanderings and Work_
+
+
+On April 25, 1816, being now twenty-eight years of age, Byron took final
+leave of England, and sailed with two servants for Ostend. His route, by
+Flanders and the Rhine, may be traced in his matchless verses. He
+settled in Geneva, where he met Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; they boated on
+the lake and walked together, and Byron's susceptible mind was deeply
+influenced by his mystical companion. We may discover traces of that
+vague sublimity in the third canto of "Childe Harold," and traces also
+of Mr. Wordsworth's mood which Byron absorbed from Shelley's favourite
+author.
+
+From November, 1816, his letters are dated from Venice. "This has always
+been, next to the East, the greenest island of my imagination, and it
+has not disappointed me." They are considerably taken up with love
+affairs of an irregular kind, and contain also many vivid pictures of
+Venetian society and manners. "Manfred" was completed in 1817, and was
+followed by the fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Margarita Cogni was the
+reigning favourite of Byron's unworthy harem at this time; and his poem
+of "Don Juan," now begun, most faithfully and lamentably reflects every
+whim and passion that, like the rack of autumn, swept across his mind.
+
+But April, 1819, brought a revulsion against all this libertine way of
+living, and brought also the dawn of the only real love of his whole
+life. Lord Byron had first met the Countess Guiccioli in the autumn of
+1818, when she made her appearance, three days after her marriage, at
+the house of the Countess Albrizzi, in all the gaiety of bridal array,
+and the first delight of exchanging a convent for the world. She has
+given her impressions of their meeting: "His noble and exquisitely
+beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice, his manners, the thousand
+enchantments that surrounded him, rendered him so superior a being to
+any whom I had hitherto seen, that it was impossible he should not have
+left the most profound impression upon me."
+
+In June, Byron joined her at Ravenna, and for the next three years
+remained devotedly attached to her. She struck me, during our first
+interview, when I visited them at La Mira, as a lady not only of a style
+of beauty singular in an Italian, as being fair-complexioned and
+delicate, but also as being highly intelligent and amiable.
+
+A letter to me from Pisa, dated August 27, 1822, has a mournful
+interest: "We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on
+the seashore. You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a
+funeral pile has, with mountains in the background and the sea before."
+Another, of November 17, to Lady Byron, shows that if the author of it
+had not right on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings
+which generally accompany it. "I have to acknowledge the receipt of
+Ada's [their daughter's] hair; this note will reach you about her
+birthday.... We both made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and
+better so.... I assure you that I bear you now no resentment
+whatever.... Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or
+reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect on any but two
+things--that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never
+meet again."
+
+Byron was thirty-five years old when from his exile at Genoa he turned
+his eyes to Greece, where a spirit was now rising such as he had imaged
+forth in dreams of song, but hardly could have dreamed that he should
+have lived to see it realised. He longed to witness, and very probably
+to share in, the present triumphs of liberty on those very fields where
+he had gathered for immortality such memorials of the liberty of the
+past. Lord Byron was in touch with the committee concerned with Grecian
+liberty in May, 1823, and two months later sailed with his party on July
+14.
+
+Arriving at Cephalonia he made a journey to Ithaca for a few days. His
+confidence in the Greek cause was soon clouded; the people were grossly
+degenerate, and he saw that the work of regeneration must be slow. To
+convince the government and the chiefs of the paralysing effect of their
+dissensions, to inculcate the spirit of union, to endeavour to humanise
+the feelings of the belligerents on both sides, so as to take from the
+war the character of barbarism--these, with the generous aid of his
+money, were the objects of his interference.
+
+At length the time for action arrived, and, leaving Cephalonia, Byron
+landed at Missolonghi on January 4, 1824. He was welcomed with all
+honour, and at the end of the month received a formal commission from
+the government as commander of the expedition against Lepanto, a
+fortified town. This design was a failure, and Byron occupied himself
+with the fortification of Missolonghi, and with the formation of a
+brigade for the next campaign.
+
+But his health had lately been giving way; he was living in little
+better than a swamp; and one day, after exposure to a heavy shower, he
+was seized with acute pains. On April 11, the illness, now recognised as
+rheumatic fever, increased, and on the 19th he was no more. The funeral
+took place in the Church of St. Nicholas, Missolonghi, on April 22, and
+the remains were carried to England on the brig Florida, and buried,
+close to those of his mother, in the village church of Hucknall.
+
+
+_V.--A Bewildering Personality_
+
+
+Can I clear away some of the mists that hang round my friend, and show
+him as worthy of love as he was of admiration? The task is not an easy
+one. In most minds some one influence governs, from which all secondary
+impulses are found to radiate, but this pivot of character was wanting
+to Lord Byron. Governed at different moments by totally different
+passions, and impelled sometimes, as in his excess of parsimony in
+Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, he
+presents the strangest contradictions and inconsistencies, a bewildering
+complication of qualities.
+
+So various, indeed, were his moral and intellectual attributes, that he
+may be pronounced to have been not one, but many. It was this multiform
+aspect that led the world to compare him with a medley host of
+personages: "within nine years," as he playfully records, "to Rousseau,
+Goethe, Young, Aretino, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, Satan,
+Shakespeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
+Harlequin, Henry VIII., Mirabeau, Michael Angelo, Diogenes, Milton,
+Alfieri, and many others."
+
+But this very versatility, which renders it so difficult to fix the
+fairy fabric of his character, is itself the clue to whatever was most
+dazzling in his might, or startling in his levity, or most attractive or
+most repellent in his life and genius. A variety of powers almost
+boundless, and a pride no less vast in displaying them; an unusual
+susceptibility and an uncontrolled impetuosity--such were the two great
+sources of all that varied spectacle of his life--unchecked feeling and
+dominant self-will.
+
+Great versatility of power will hardly be found without a tendency to
+versatility of principle. Byron was fully aware, not only of this
+characteristic quality of his nature, but also of its danger to
+singleness of character; and this consciousness had the effect of
+keeping him in a general line of consistency, throughout life, on
+certain great subjects, and helped him to preserve unbroken the greater
+number of his personal attachments. But, except in some few respects, he
+gave way to his versatile humour without scruple or check; and it was
+impossible but that such a range of will and power should be abused. Is
+it to be wondered at that in the works of one thus gifted and carried
+away we should find, without any design of corrupting on his side, evil
+too often invested with a grandeur which belongs intrinsically but to
+good?
+
+Nay, it will be found that even the strength and impressiveness of
+Byron's poetry is sometimes injured by a capricious and desultory
+quality due to this very pliancy of mind. It may be questioned whether a
+concentration of his powers would not have afforded a grander result. It
+may be that, if Lord Byron had not been so actively versatile, he would
+have been, not less wonderful, but more great.
+
+Again, this love of variety was one of the most pervading weaknesses,
+not only to his poetry, but of his life. The pride of personating every
+kind of character, evil as well as good, influenced his ambition and his
+conduct; and to such a perverse length did he carry this fancy for
+self-defamation that, if there was any tendency to mental derangement,
+it was in this point that it manifested itself. I have known him more
+than once, as we have sat together, to throw out dark hints of his past
+life with an air of gloom and mystery designed to awaken interest; and I
+have little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly
+any crime so dark or so desperate of which, in the excitement of acting
+upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had
+been guilty. It has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of
+his lady's separation from him may have been nothing more, after all,
+than some imposture of this kind, some dim confession of undefined
+horror.
+
+But the over-frankness with which he uttered every chance impression of
+the moment was by itself enough to bring his character unfavourably
+before the world. Which of us could bear to be judged by the unnumbered
+thoughts that course like waves of the sea through our minds and pass
+away unuttered and even unowned by ourselves? To such a test was Byron's
+character, throughout his life, exposed.
+
+Yet, to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or
+lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed his personal
+fascination. His social intercourse was perfectly charming, because
+whoever was with him occupied for the moment all his thoughts and
+feelings. Even with the casual acquaintance of the hour his heart was on
+his lips, ready to give away every secret of his life.
+
+To my assertion that "at no time of his life was Lord Byron a confirmed
+unbeliever" it has been objected that his writings prove the direct
+contrary. But this is to confuse the words "unbeliever" and "sceptic,"
+the former of which implies decision of opinion, and the latter only
+doubt. Many passages in his "Journal" show doubt strongly inclined to
+belief. "Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me there can be
+little doubt." "I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy,
+but could never bear its introduction into Christianity, which appears
+to me essentially founded upon the soul." Here are doubt and unrest, but
+not unbelief.
+
+And so I conclude my labours, undertaken at the wish of my friend, and
+leave his character to the judgement of the world. Let it be remembered
+that through life, with all his faults, he never lost a friend; that
+those about him in his youth, whether as companions, teachers, or
+servants, remained attached to him to the last; that the woman to whom
+he gave the love of his maturer years idolises his name; and that, with
+a single unhappy exception, those who were brought into relations of
+amity with him have felt towards him a kind regard in life, and retain a
+fondness for his memory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JAMES COTTER MORISON
+
+
+Life and Times of St. Bernard
+
+
+     James Augustus Cotter Morison, English essayist and historian,
+     was born in London on April 20, 1832, and was the son of the
+     inventor and proprietor of "Morison's Pills." His first years
+     were spent in Paris, where he laid the foundation of his
+     intimate knowledge of the French people. After graduating at
+     Oxford, he wrote for the "Saturday Review" and other papers,
+     and in 1863 brought out his "Life and Times of Saint Bernard."
+     His other chief work is entitled "The Service of Man: an Essay
+     towards the Religion of the Future," published in 1886. He had
+     projected an historical study of France under Louis XIV., but
+     never completed it. He died on February 26, 1888. Morison was
+     a Positivist, and had many friends in that group, and his rich
+     mind and genial temper endeared him to several of the leading
+     literary men of his time, such as George Meredith, Mark
+     Pattison and Matthew Arnold.
+
+
+_I.--The Early Days of a Useful Life_
+
+
+Saint Bernard was born in 1091, and died in 1153. His life thus almost
+coincides with the central portion of the Middle Ages. He saw the First
+and Second Crusades, the rising liberties of the communes, and the
+beginnings of scholasticism under Abelard. A large Church reformation
+and the noblest period of monasticism occurred in his day, and received
+deep marks of his genius.
+
+He was the son of Tesselin, a wealthy feudal baron of Burgundy,
+remarkable for his courage, piety, justice and modesty. Alith, his
+mother, was earnest, loving and devout, and full of humility and
+charity. His earliest years were passed amid the European fervour of the
+First Crusade; and as he grew from boyhood into youth--at which time his
+mother died--he made choice of the monastic profession. His friends
+vainly tried to tempt him aside into the pursuit of philosophy; but his
+commanding personal ascendancy brought his brothers and friends to
+follow him instead into the religious life. Having assembled a company
+of about thirty chosen spirits, he retired into seclusion with them for
+six months, and then, in 1113, at the age of twenty-two, led them within
+the gates of Citeaux.
+
+This community, founded fifteen years before, and now ruled by Stephen
+Harding, an Englishman from Dorsetshire, was exceedingly austere,
+keeping Saint Benedict's rule literally. Here Bernard's uncompromising
+self-mortification, and his love of, and communion with, Nature, showed
+themselves as the chief characteristics of his noble spirit. "Believe
+me," he said to a pupil, "you will find something far greater in the
+woods than you will in books; stones and trees will teach you that which
+you will never learn from masters." The arrival of Bernard and his
+companions was a turning-point in the history of Citeaux; and the
+monastery had to send out two colonies, to La Ferte and Pontigny, and in
+1115 a third, under Bernard himself, to Clairvaux. Here, in a deep
+umbrageous valley, traversed by a limpid stream, the thirteen pioneers
+built a house little better than a barn. Their privations were great.
+Beech-nuts and roots were at first their main support; but soon the
+sympathy of the surrounding country brought sufficiency for their frugal
+needs. Bernard was consecrated Abbot of Clairvaux by the Bishop of
+Chalons, the renowned William of Champeaux, with whom he established a
+deep friendship.
+
+His labours, anxieties and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to
+the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to
+Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and
+obtained leave to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young
+abbot obeyed his new director absolutely, and lived in a cottage apart
+from the monastery "at leisure for himself and God, and exulting, as it
+were, in the delights of Paradise."
+
+William of St. Thierry and other chroniclers, telling of Clairvaux at
+this time, are fervid in their reverence and praise. "Methought I saw a
+new heaven and a new earth" ... "the golden age seemed to have revisited
+the world" ... "as you descended the hill you could see it was a temple
+of God; the still, silent valley bespoke the unfeigned humility of
+Christ's poor. In this valley full of men, where one and all were
+occupied with their allotted tasks, a silence, deep as that of night,
+prevailed. The sounds of labour, or the chants of the brethren in the
+choral service, were the only exceptions. The order of this silence
+struck such a reverence even into secular persons that they dreaded
+breaking it even by pertinent remarks."
+
+Saint Benedict's rule had reference only to a single religious house;
+but Abbot Stephen of Citeaux united in one compact whole all the
+monasteries which sprang from the parent stock of Citeaux, and
+established an organised system of mutual supervision and control. A
+general chapter was held annually in September, and every Cistercian
+abbot whose monastery was in France, Italy or Germany was bound to
+attend every year; those from Spain, every two years; those from
+Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Portugal, every four years; those from
+Norway, every five years; and those from Syria and Palestine, every
+seven years. The "Charter of Charity," promulgated by this chapter for
+the guidance of the Cistercian Order, is a brief but pregnant document,
+which quite explains its success.
+
+
+_II.--A Great Preacher and Essayist_
+
+
+About 1119, Bernard, who had resumed the duties of abbot, began the
+career of literary and ecclesiastical activity--the wide and impassioned
+correspondence, the series of marvellous sermons--which have won for him
+the title of the Last of the Fathers. His early essays are vigorous, but
+lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed
+from the tender poetry of his later writings. Three years later we find
+Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry,
+who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his
+record of the saint. It was then regarded as natural that a man of
+eminent piety should work miracles; and we ought to accept these
+stories, in their native crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as
+significant. Belonging to the time, as much as feudal castles and mail
+armour do, they form part of a picture of it.
+
+With the exception of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse, and of another to
+Paris, where he preached the "true philosophy" of poverty and contempt
+of the world to the schools distracted by scholastic puzzles, Bernard
+remained a secluded monk of a new and humble Order. But already, in his
+thirty-fifth year, the foundations had been laid of that authority which
+enabled him to quell a widespread schism, to oppose a formidable
+heretic, and to give the strongest impulse to the Second Crusade. His
+power was growing, chiefly by his voluminous correspondence. He wrote to
+persons of all classes on all subjects; his letters afford to the
+historian a wide repertory of indubitable facts, and show what was the
+part played at that time by the spiritual power--that of a divine
+morality and superior culture coming into conflict with, and strong
+enough to withstand, a vigorous barbarism. These epistles are full of
+commonsense and clear, practical advice, and often give us a glimpse of
+the human, as distinct from the ascetic, element in monastic life. They
+show how men could pass pleasant and thoughtful days amid the barbarism
+of the time.
+
+The feudal fighting, plundering and slaying seemed to spectators of that
+time, and doubtless to Bernard also, as fixed and unalterable, part of
+the nature of things. Louis VI., King of France, had spent his life in a
+succession of sieges, forays and devastations, as one feudal lord among
+others often more powerful than he. But generally he was in the right,
+and his enemies in the wrong; he generally fought for justice and mercy,
+and they for power and for plunder. The feudal aristocracy was now at
+the zenith of its power, and the peasant was oppressed by injustice,
+taxation and forced labour. Only the Church, and she only on grand
+occasions, could stand up for the poor; but now the royal power made
+common cause with Church and poor, and was rewarded by a gain in extent
+and in influence. Yet even Louis, whose whole life showed respect for
+the spiritual power, had some disagreement with the Bishop of Paris and
+with the Archbishop of Sens, so that the two ecclesiastics placed the
+kingdom under interdict, and fled to Citeaux. Thence Bernard, with an
+astonishing tone of authority, called upon his king to do justice; and
+Louis was on the point of restoring the stolen property. Pope Honorius,
+however, sent letters to the king, raising the interdict, and thereupon
+Bernard turned his fearless indignation upon the supreme pontiff
+himself. "We speak with sadness; the honour of the Church has been not a
+little blemished in the time of Honorius."
+
+The same intrepidity is shown in Bernard's controversy with the monks of
+Cluny, an abbey of pre-eminent power and moral authority, so that Louis
+had called it the "noblest member of his kingdom." Pontius, its abbot,
+having fallen into ways of pride and extortion, had been induced from
+Rome to resign his abbacy, and to promise a pilgrimage to the Holy Land;
+but soon afterwards he fell upon the monastery with an armed force, and
+ruled there like a robber chieftain. This scandalous outrage was soon
+reported at Rome, and the sacrilegious usurper was excommunicated and
+banished. Bernard seized the moment when laxity of observance of the
+rule had produced its bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and
+warnings, as well to his own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the
+decline of the genuine monastic spirit. The invective of what he calls
+his "Apology" spares neither the softness, nor the ostentation, nor the
+avarice, of religious houses. It condemns even their stately
+sanctuaries. "The walls of your church are resplendent, but the poor are
+not there." It recalls the erring monasteries to real mortification. In
+another early treatise, "The Degrees of Humility and of Pride," the
+modes of pride are exhibited forcibly, and with not a little humour.
+Curiosity, thoughtless mirth, mock humility, and other symptoms of the
+protean vice are painted by a master.
+
+But Bernard's period of retirement was drawing to a close; he was
+becoming indispensable to his contemporaries. In 1128 he was called to
+the Council of Troyes, at which the Order of Knights Templars was
+founded, and wrote a treatise in praise of the "new warfare," called the
+"Exhortation to the Knights of the Temple." He was brought, again, to
+the council convened by Louis VI. at Etampes to decide between the
+claims of the rival Popes in the Papal schism. The council opened by
+unanimous consent that Bernard's judgement should decide their views;
+and without hesitation he pronounced Innocent II. the lawful Pope, and
+Peter Leonis, or Anacletus II., a vain pretender. He bore the same
+testimony, in the presence of Innocent, before Henry I. of England, at
+Chartres, and before Lotharius, the German Emperor, at Liege. The Pope
+visited Clairvaux, where he was moved to tears at the sight of the
+tattered flock of "Christ's poor," then presided at the Council of
+Rheims, 1131, and continued his journey into Italy, still accompanied by
+the Abbot of Clairvaux. Bernard, convinced that the cause of Innocent
+was the cause of justice and religion, set no bounds to his advocacy of
+it in letters to kings, bishops and cities. Such was now the fame of his
+sanctity that on his approach to Milan the whole population came out to
+meet him.
+
+He returned to Clairvaux in 1135, where he found the community all
+living in Christian amity, and again retired to a cottage in the
+neighbourhood for rest and reflection. "Bernard was in the heavens,"
+says Arnold of Bonnevaux; "but they compelled him to come down and
+listen to their sublunary business." The buildings were too small for
+their constantly growing numbers, and a convenient site had been found
+in an open plain farther down the valley. Bishops, barons and merchants
+came to the help of the good work; and the new abbey and church rose
+quickly.
+
+To Bernard's forty-fifth year belong the "Sermons on the Canticles." In
+the auditorium, or talking-room of the monastery, the abbot, surrounded
+by his white-cowled monks, delivered his spiritual discourses. A strange
+company it was: the old, stooping monk and the young beginner, the lord
+and the peasant, listening together to the man whose message they
+believed came from another world.
+
+
+_III.--St. Bernard and the Second Crusade_
+
+
+In the meanwhile, the affairs of the Papacy had not improved--Innocent
+was still an exile from his see. Worst of all, the monastery of Monte
+Casino, the head and type of Western monarchism, had declared for
+Anacletus, the anti-Pope; and in 1137 Bernard set out for Italy, visited
+Innocent at Viterbo, and proceeded to Rome. As he advanced, Anacletus
+was rapidly deserted by his supporters, and shortly afterwards solved
+the difficulty by his death. So ended the schism; and Bernard left Rome
+within five days after finishing his work. With broken health and
+depressed spirits he returned to Clairvaux. His brother Gerard, who had
+shared his journey, died soon after they reached home; and Bernard's
+discourse on that event is one of the most remarkable funeral sermons on
+record. The monk had not ceased to be a loving and impassioned man.
+
+Towards the end of 1139, the heresies of Peter Abelard, brought to his
+notice by William of St. Thierry, called the Abbot of Clairvaux again
+into public controversy. He implored Pope and cardinals to stay the
+progress of a second Arius. Abelard was at this time sixty-one years
+old, Bernard's senior by twelve years, and was without a rival in the
+schools. The two men were such that they could not but oppose one
+another; they looked at the shield from opposite sides; reconciliation,
+however desirable, could be only superficial. Bernard met Abelard, and
+"admonished him secretly." He well knew to what epoch this subtle mind,
+with its "human and philosophic reasons," was about to lead; his quick
+ear caught the distant thunder-roll of free inquiry. The heresies of
+Peter de Bruis and the rebellion of Arnold of Brescia had already marked
+the beginning of the great change. At last Bernard unwillingly yielded
+to Abelard's challenge to a public dispute at Sens; but his speech had
+hardly begun when Abelard rose in his place, refused to hear more, and
+appealed to Rome. He never reached Rome, but remained a penitent monk at
+Cluny, reconciled to his great antagonist.
+
+Bernard was fifty-five years of age, and old for his years, when the
+Pope delegated to him the office of preaching the Second Crusade. Pale
+and attenuated to a degree which seemed almost supernatural, his
+contemporaries discovered something in the mere glance of his eyes which
+filled them with wonder and awe. When his words of love, aspiration and
+sublime self-sacrifice reached their ears, they were no longer masters
+of themselves or of their feelings. A great meeting had been convened by
+Pope and king at Vezelay, on Easter, 1146. Bernard, attended by the
+king, spoke from a platform erected on a hill; there was a shout of
+"Crosses! Crosses!" and the preacher scattered a sheaf of these badges
+among the people. The spiritual mind of Europe had spoken through
+Bernard, and now the military mind spoke through Louis VII. He called
+upon France to destroy the enemies of God. Then Bernard preached the
+Crusade through France and Germany, welcomed everywhere by almost
+unparalleled enthusiasm and attended by miraculous signs.
+
+Bernard was shortly to die; but he had first to bear the trial of being
+reviled as the author of the calamities which had overtaken the Crusade.
+Why had he preached it and prophesied success if this was to be the
+event? A murmur of wrath against him was heard from the broad population
+of Europe. It was during this dark time that he began his largest
+literary work, the five books "De Consideratione," addressed to his
+disciple, Eugenius III., a powerful and elaborate plea against the
+excessive centralization of all administration and decisions into the
+hands of the Papal Court. Bernard called this period "the season of
+calamities." He discovered that his secretary had been forging his name
+and used his authority to recommend men and causes most unworthy of his
+patronage. His health was such that he could take no solid food; sleep
+had left him; his debility was extreme. Pope Eugenius died in July,
+1153; and Bernard had no wish to stay behind. "I am no longer of this
+world," he said; and on August 20 he passed away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN MORLEY
+
+
+Life of Richard Cobden
+
+
+     In an age when many have gained the double distinction of
+     eminence in statesmanship and in letters, the name of Lord
+     Morley stands out as that of a man so illustrious in both
+     provinces that it is hard to decide in which he has earned the
+     greater fame. We are here concerned with him as a brilliant
+     English man of letters. The "Life of Cobden" was published in
+     1881, when John Morley was in the height of his literary
+     activity. Born at Blackburn on December 24, 1838, and educated
+     at Cheltenham and Oxford, he had entered journalism, had
+     edited the "Pall Mall Gazette" and the "Fortnightly Review,"
+     and had followed up his first book--a monograph on Burke--by a
+     remarkable study of Voltaire, and by his work entitled "On
+     Compromise." Political preoccupations drew him somewhat away
+     from literature after 1881; but in 1901 he published his book
+     on Cromwell, which was followed two years later by the
+     monumental "Life of Gladstone."
+
+
+_I.--On the Road_
+
+
+Heyshott is a hamlet in a sequestered corner of West Sussex, not many
+miles from the Hampshire border. Here, in an old farmhouse, known as
+Dunford, Richard Cobden was born on June 3, 1804. His ancestors were
+yeomen of the soil, and, it is said, with every appearance of truth,
+that the name can be traced in the annals of the district as far back as
+the fourteenth century.
+
+Cobden's father, a man of soft and affectionate disposition, but wholly
+without the energy of affairs, met with financial disaster in 1814, and
+relatives charged themselves with the maintenance of his dozen children.
+Richard was sent by his mother's brother-in-law, a merchant in London,
+to a school in Yorkshire. Here he remained for five years, a grim and
+desolate time, of which he could never afterwards endure to speak. In
+1819 he was received as a clerk in his uncle's warehouse in Old Change;
+and at the age of twenty-one he was advanced from the drudgery of the
+warehouse to the glories of the road. What made the life of a traveller
+specially welcome to Cobden was the gratification that it offered to the
+master-passion of his life, an insatiable desire to know the affairs of
+the world.
+
+In 1826, his employer failed, and for some months Cobden had to take
+unwelcome holiday. In September he found a situation, and again set out
+on the road with his samples of muslin and calico prints. Two years
+afterwards, in 1828, he and two friends determined to begin business on
+their own account. They arranged with a firm of Manchester
+calico-printers to sell goods on commission; and so profitable was the
+enterprise that in 1831 the partners determined to print their own
+goods, and took an old factory at Sabden in Lancashire.
+
+Cobden's imagination was struck by the busy life of the county with
+which his name was destined to be so closely bound up. "Manchester," he
+writes with enthusiasm, "is the place for all men of bargain and
+business." His pen acquires a curiously exulting animation as he
+describes the bustle of its streets, the quaintness of its dialect, the
+abundance of its capital, and the sturdy veterans with a hundred
+thousand pounds in each pocket, who might be seen in the evening smoking
+clay pipes and calling for brandy-and-water in the bar-parlours of
+homely taverns. He prospered rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but
+it is at Sabden, not at Manchester, that we see the first monument of
+his public spirit--a little stone school-house, built as the result of
+an agitation led by him with as much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw
+afterwards into great affairs of state.
+
+Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with
+surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and
+wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide
+interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. His first
+motion was towards his own intellectual improvement, and early in life
+he perceived that for his purposes no preparation could be so effective
+as that of travel. In 1833 and 1834 he visited the Continent; in 1835,
+the United States; and in 1836 and 1837 he travelled to Egypt, the
+Levant, and Turkey.
+
+In the interval between the two latter journeys he made what was
+probably his first public speech, at a meeting to further the demand of
+a corporation for Manchester. The speech is described as a signal
+failure. "He was nervous," says the chronicler, "confused, and in fact
+practically broke down, and the chairman had to apologise for him."
+
+He was much more successful in two pamphlets he published at this time,
+"England, Ireland, and America," and "Russia," in which he opened the
+long struggle he was to wage against the restriction of commerce, and
+the policy of intervention in European feuds. It is no strained
+pretension to say that already Richard Cobden, the Manchester
+manufacturer, was fully possessed of the philosophic gift of feeling
+about society as a whole, and thinking about the problems of society in
+an ordered connection.
+
+
+_II.--The Corn Laws_
+
+
+In 1837, Cobden was invited to become candidate for the borough of
+Stockport. Although he threw himself into the struggle with all his
+energy, on the day of election he was found to be at the bottom of the
+poll. Four years later he was returned for Stockport by a triumphant
+majority. But in 1841 he was no longer a rising young politician; he had
+become the leading spirit of a national agitation.
+
+In October, 1838, a band of seven men met at an hotel in Manchester, and
+formed a new Anti-Corn-Law Association. They were speedily joined by
+others, including Cobden, who from this moment began to take a prominent
+part in all counsel and action. The abolition of the duties on corn was
+the single object of Cobden's political energy during the seven years
+that followed, and their destruction was the one finished triumph with
+which his name is associated.
+
+After the rejection in the following year by a large majority of Mr.
+Villiers' motion that the House of Commons should consider the act
+regulating the importation of corn, the association developed into a
+League of Federated Anti-Corn-Law Associations in different towns and
+districts. The repealers began the work of propagandism by sending out a
+band of economic missionaries, who were not long in discovering how
+hardly an old class interest dies. In many districts neither law nor
+equity gave them protection. The members of the league were described in
+the London Press as unprincipled schemers, as commercial and political
+swindlers, and as revolutionary emissaries, whom all well-disposed
+persons ought to assist the authorities in putting down.
+
+Before he entered Parliament, Cobden re-settled his business by entering
+into partnership with his brother Frederick, and married (May, 1840) a
+young Welsh lady, Miss Catherine Ann Williams. In Parliament Cobden was
+instantly successful. His early speeches produced that singular and
+profound effect which is perceived in English deliberative assemblies
+when a speaker leaves party recriminations, abstract argument, and
+commonplaces of sentiment, in order to inform his hearers of telling
+facts in the condition of the nation.
+
+But Cobden's parliamentary work was at this time less important than his
+work as an agitator. If in one sense the Corn Laws did not seem a
+promising theme for a popular agitation, they were excellently fitted to
+bring out Cobden's peculiar strength. It was not passion, but
+persuasiveness, to which we must look for the secret of his oratorical
+success. Cobden made his way to men's hearts by the union which they saw
+in him of simplicity, earnestness, and conviction, with a singular
+facility of exposition. Then men were attracted by his mental alacrity,
+by the instant readiness with which he turned round to grapple with a
+new objection.
+
+His patience in acquiring and shaping matter for argument was surpassed
+by his inexhaustible patience in dealing with the mental infirmities of
+those whom it was his business to persuade. He was wholly free from the
+unmeasured anger against human stupidity which is itself one of the most
+provoking forms of that stupidity.
+
+
+_III.--Cobden and Bright_
+
+
+In the autumn of 1841, Cobden and Bright made that solemn compact which
+was the beginning of an affectionate and noble friendship that lasted
+without a cloud or a jar until Cobden's death.
+
+"On the day when Mr. Cobden called upon me," said Bright, "I was in the
+depths of grief, I might almost say of despair; for the light and
+sunshine of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth
+of my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too brief
+happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden
+called upon me as a friend, and addressed me, as you might suppose, with
+words of condolence. After a time he looked up, and said, 'There are
+thousands of houses in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and
+children are dying of hunger. Now,' he said, 'when the first paroxysm of
+your grief is past, I would advise you to come with me, and we will
+never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.' I accepted his invitation."
+
+Although the agitation for repeal was in Cobden's mind only a part of
+the broad aims of peace and social and moral progress for which he
+strove, he was too practical to put forth his thoughts on too many
+subjects at once. He confined his enthusiasm to repeal until repeal was
+accomplished. But his efforts left him no time to attend to his own
+business, which was falling to pieces under the management of his
+brother Frederick. In the autumn of 1845 he felt compelled to give up
+his work as an agitator on account of his private affairs, but Bright
+and one or two friends procured the money that sufficed to tide over the
+emergency.
+
+The cause was now on the eve of victory. The autumn of 1845 was the
+wettest in the memory of man. For long the downpour never ceased by
+night or by day; it was the rain that rained away the Corn Laws. The bad
+harvest and the Irish potato famine brought the long hesitation of Sir
+Robert Peel to an end. Soon after the opening of the session of 1846, he
+announced his proposals.
+
+The repeal of the Corn Laws was to be total, but not immediate. For
+three years there was to be a lowered duty on a sliding scale, and then
+the ports were to be opened entirely. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" wrote Cobden to
+his wife on June 26, "the Corn Bill is law, and now my work is done!"
+
+
+_IV.--In the Cause of Peace_
+
+
+Cobden was now absent from England for fourteen months, travelling on
+the Continent. His reception was everywhere that of a great discoverer
+in a science which interests the bulk of mankind much more keenly than
+any other, the science of wealth. People looked on him as a man who had
+found out a momentous secret. He had interviews with the Pope, with
+three or four kings, with ambassadors, and with all the prominent
+statesmen. He never lost an opportunity of speaking a word in season.
+They were not all converted, but they all listened to him; and they all
+taught him something, whether they chose to learn anything from him in
+return or not.
+
+On his return he joined with Bright in an agitation for financial and
+parliamentary reform. While he believed in an extension of the franchise
+as a means of attaining the objects he had in view, he was essentially
+an economical, a moral, and a social reformer. He was never an
+enthusiast for mere reform in the machinery. He made it his special
+mission to advocate financial reform, and left the advocacy for
+franchise extension very largely to his colleague.
+
+Retrenchment was the keynote of the financial reform urged by Cobden;
+and retrenchment involved the furtherance of international peace and the
+reduction of British armaments by means of the abandonment of the policy
+of intervention in European disputes and the policy of "clinging to
+colonies," with the consequent expenditure upon colonial defence. From
+1846 to 1851 Lord Palmerston was at the Foreign Office, and was
+incessantly active in the affairs of half the countries of Europe. To
+this policy of interference Cobden offered resolute opposition. He was
+especially energetic in protesting against the lending to Austria and
+Russia of money that was in effect borrowed to repay the cost of the
+oppressive war against Hungary. It is impossible not to admire the
+courage, the sound sense, and the elevation with which Cobden thus
+strove to diffuse the doctrine of moral responsibility in connection
+with the use of capital.
+
+In 1852, a Protectionist Ministry under Lord Derby came into power, and
+the Anti-Corn Law League was revived. The danger, however, soon passed
+away; the Derby Ministry made no attempt to interfere with freedom of
+trade, and ere the year ended gave place to the Aberdeen Ministry.
+Cobden's policy of peace and retrenchment, however, became more and more
+unpopular. Cobden's urgent feeling about war was not in any degree
+sentimental. He opposed war because war and the preparation for it
+consumed the resources which were required for the improvement of the
+temporal condition of the population. But in the inflamed condition of
+public opinion his arguments were powerless.
+
+The invasion panic of 1853 was followed in 1854 by the Crimean War, and
+in opposing that war Cobden and Bright found themselves absolutely
+alone.
+
+"The British nation," said Lord Palmerston, "is unanimous in this
+matter. I say unanimous, for I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright, and Co. for
+anything." His estimate was perfectly correct; Cobden and Bright had the
+whole world against them. The moral fortitude, like the political
+wisdom, of these two strong men, stands out with a splendour that
+already recalls the great historic types of statesmanship and
+patriotism.
+
+
+_V.--Cobden as Treaty-Maker_
+
+
+In 1857, Cobden was compelled to retire for a time from politics. He
+vigorously opposed the Chinese War, and succeeded in defeating Lord
+Palmerston's Government in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, with
+his usual acuteness and courage, at once dissolved parliament, and in
+the General Election his victory was complete. The Manchester School was
+routed. Cobden, who contested Huddersfield, was heavily beaten; and at
+Manchester itself Bright was at the bottom of the poll. Cobden went to
+his home at Dunford, in Sussex, and remained there nearly two years.
+Once more he was afflicted with financial trouble. An unfortunate land
+speculation at Manchester, and certain investments in American
+railroads, had again brought him into difficulties, from which he was
+ultimately rescued by a munificent gift of L40,000 from subscribers
+whose names he never knew.
+
+The General Election of 1859 was held while Cobden was absent in the
+United States, and on his return he found that he had been chosen member
+for Rochdale. To his surprise, he also received from his old enemy,
+Palmerston, an offer of the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Cobden,
+who had consistently refrained from accepting any office, courteously
+declined.
+
+But he was none the less able to render a great service to the new
+Government. Mr. Bright, in a parliamentary speech, incidentally asked
+why, instead of lavishing the national substance in armaments, they did
+not go to the French Emperor and attempt to persuade him to allow his
+people to trade freely with ours. The idea of a commercial treaty
+occurred to M. Chevalier on reading the speech, and he wrote in this
+sense to Cobden, who was strongly impressed by the notion. He opened his
+mind to Gladstone, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, as the
+outcome, Cobden went to Paris in the autumn of 1859 as unofficial
+negotiator of a treaty.
+
+The negotiation was long and tedious. Cobden had to convert the emperor
+to his views, and to await the reconciliation of the various French
+interests that were opposed to freedom of trade. It was not until
+November, 1860, that Cobden's labours were concluded. England cleared
+her tariff of protection, and reduced the duties which were retained for
+revenue on the two French staples of wine and brandy. France, on her
+part, replaced prohibition by a series of moderate duties.
+
+Palmerston offered Cobden a choice between a baronetcy and a Privy
+Councillorship as a reward for his services. He replied begging
+permission most respectfully to deny himself the honour. "An
+indisposition to accept a title," he wrote, "being in my case rather an
+affair of feeling than of reason, I will not dwell further on the
+subject."
+
+
+_VI.--The Last Days of Cobden_
+
+
+When Cobden returned to England his public position had more than
+recovered the authority and renown which had been seriously impaired by
+his unpopular attitude on the Russian war. But he and Bright were soon
+involved in an almost angrier conflict than before with the upper and
+middle classes, on account of their championship of the North in the
+American Civil War.
+
+The remaining years of his life were largely spent in systematic
+onslaughts upon the policy of Lord Palmerston, and in opposition to
+military expenditure. It was with the purpose of resisting a Canadian
+fortification scheme that he made his last journey to London in March,
+1865. On his arrival he was seized by a sharp attack of asthma;
+bronchitis supervened, and it became evident that he would not recover.
+On the morning of Sunday, April 2, Bright took his place by the side of
+the dying man. As the bells were ringing for the morning service the
+mists of death began to settle heavily on his brow, and his ardent,
+courageous, and brotherly spirit soon passed tranquilly away.
+
+He was buried by the side of his son in the little churchyard at
+Lavington, on the slope of the hill among the pine-woods. "Before we
+left the house," Bright has told us, "standing by me, and leaning on the
+coffin, was his sorrowing daughter, one whose attachment to her father
+seems to have been a passion scarcely equalled among daughters. She
+said, 'My father used to like me very much to read to him the Sermon on
+the Mount. His own life was, to a large, extent, a sermon based upon
+that best, that greatest of all sermons. His was a life of perpetual
+self-sacrifice.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+SAMUEL PEPYS
+
+
+Diary
+
+
+     Samuel Pepys, author of the incomparable "Diary," was born
+     either in London or at Brampton, Huntingdonshire, on February
+     23, 1632-3, son of John Pepys, a London tailor. By the
+     influence of the Earl of Sandwich, he was entered in the
+     public service. Beginning as a clerk in the Exchequer, he was
+     soon transferred to the Naval Department, and rose to the high
+     office of secretary to the Admiralty. His services were
+     interrupted for a time, on the baseless suspicion that he was
+     a Catholic, during the panic about the supposed "Popish Plot,"
+     but he was returned to his charge, and held it until the
+     accession of William and Mary. Pepys was a man of very wide
+     interests. He was a member of parliament, and became president
+     of the Royal Society. He was an accomplished musician and a
+     keen critic of painting, architecture, and the drama. But it
+     is as a connoisseur of human nature that Pepys is known
+     to-day. The "Diary" extended over the ten years, January,
+     1659-60, to May, 1669; it closed when he was thirty-seven
+     years old, and he lived thirty-four years afterwards. The
+     manuscript, written in shorthand, fills six volumes, which
+     repose at Magdalene College, Cambridge. It was deciphered in
+     1825, when it was published as "Memoirs of Samuel Pepys,
+     comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev.
+     J. Smith, and a Selection of his Private Correspondence,
+     edited by Lord Braybrooke." Pepys died on May 26, 1703.
+
+
+_I.--"God Bless King Charles"_
+
+
+_January_ 1, 1659-60. Blessed be God, at the end of last year I was in
+very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of
+cold. I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife and servant, Jane, and no
+other in family than us three.
+
+The condition of the state was thus: the Rump, after being disturbed by
+my Lord Lambert, was lately returned to sit again. The officers of the
+army all forced to yield. Lawson still lies in the river, and Monk is
+with his army in Scotland. The New Common Council of the City do speak
+very high; and had sent to Monk their sword-bearer, to acquaint him with
+their desires for a free and full parliament, which is at present the
+desires, and the hopes, and the expectations of all. My own private
+condition very handsome, and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor;
+besides my goods of my house, and my office, which at present is
+somewhat certain.
+
+_March 9, 1660._ To my lord at his lodging, and came to Westminster with
+him in the coach; and I telling him that I was willing and ready to go
+with him to sea, he agreed that I should. I hear that it is resolved
+privately that a treaty be offered with the king.
+
+_May 1._ To-day I hear they were very merry at Deal, setting up the
+king's flag upon one of their maypoles, and drinking his health upon
+their knees in the streets, and firing the guns, which the soldiers of
+the castle threatened, but durst not oppose.
+
+_May 2._ Welcome news of the parliament's votes yesterday, which will be
+remembered for the happiest May-day that hath been many a year to
+England. The king's letter was read in the house, wherein he submits
+himself and all things to them. The house, upon reading the letter,
+ordered L50,000 to be forthwith provided to send to his majesty for his
+present supply. The City of London have put out a declaration, wherein
+they do disclaim their owning any other government but that of a king,
+lords, and commons.
+
+_May 3._ This morning my lord showed me the king's declaration to be
+communicated to the fleet. I went up to the quarter-deck with my lord
+and the commanders, and there read the papers; which done, the seamen
+did all of them cry out, "God bless King Charles!" with the greatest joy
+imaginable. After dinner to the rest of the ships quite through the
+fleet.
+
+_May 11._ This morning we began to pull down all the state's arms in the
+fleet, having first sent to Dover for painters to come and set up the
+king's. After dinner we set sail from the Downs, but dropped anchor
+again over against Dover Castle.
+
+_May 12._ My lord gave order for weighing anchor, which we did, and
+sailed all day.
+
+_May 14._ In the morning the Hague was clearly to be seen by us. The
+weather bad; we were sadly washed when we come near the shore, it being
+very hard to land there.
+
+_May 23._ Come infinity of people on board from the king to go along
+with him. The king, with the two dukes and Queen of Bohemia, Princess
+Royal, and Prince of Orange, come on board, where I, in their coming in,
+kissed the king's, queen's, and princess's hands, having done the other
+before. Infinite shooting of the runs, and that in a disorder on
+purpose, which was better than if it had been otherwise. We weighed
+anchor, and with a fresh gale and most happy weather we set sail for
+England.
+
+_May 24._ Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the stockings on
+and wide canons that I bought at Hague. Extraordinary press of noble
+company, and great mirth all day.
+
+_May 25._ By the morning we were come close to the land, and everybody
+made ready to get on shore. I spoke to the Duke of York about business,
+who called me Pepys by name, and upon my desire did promise me his
+future favour. The king went in my lord's barge with the two dukes, and
+was received by General Monk with all love and respect at his entrance
+upon the land of Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past
+imagination.
+
+1660-1661. At the end of the last and the beginning of this year, I do
+live in one of the houses belonging to the Navy Office, as one of the
+principal officers; my family being myself, my wife, Jane, Will Hewer,
+and Wayneman, my girl's brother. Myself in constant good health, and in
+a most handsome and thriving condition. Blessed be God for it. The king
+settled, and loved of all.
+
+
+_II.--The Plague_
+
+
+_July 31, 1665._ I ended this month with the greatest joy that I ever
+did any in my life, because I have spent the greatest part of it with
+abundance of joy, and honour, and pleasant journeys, and brave
+entertainments, and without cost of money. We end this month after the
+greatest glut of content that ever I had, only under some difficulty
+because of the plague, which grows mightily upon us, the last week being
+about 1,700 or 1,800 of the plague. My Lord Sandwich at sea with a fleet
+of about one hundred sail, to the northward, expecting De Ruyter, or the
+Dutch East India fleet.
+
+_August 8._ To my office a little, and then to the Duke of Albemarle's
+about some business. The streets empty all the way now, even in London,
+which is a sad sight. To Westminster Hall, where talking, hearing very
+sad stories. So home through the City again, wishing I may have taken no
+ill in going; but I will go, I think, no more thither. The news of De
+Ruyter's coming home is certain, and told to the great disadvantage of
+our fleet; but it cannot be helped.
+
+_August 10._ To the office, where we sat all morning; in great trouble
+to see the bill this week rise so high, to above 4,000 in all, and of
+them above 3,000 of the plague. Home to draw over anew my will, which I
+had bound myself by oath to dispatch by to-morrow night; the town
+growing so unhealthy that a man cannot depend upon living two days.
+
+_August 12._ The people die so that now it seems they are fain to carry
+the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in.
+And my lord mayor commands people to be within at nine at night, that
+the sick may have liberty to go abroad for air. There is one also dead
+out of one of our ships at Deptford, which troubles us mightily. I am
+told, too, that a wife of one of the grooms at court is dead at
+Salisbury, so that the king and queen are speedily to be all gone to
+Milton. So God preserve us!
+
+_August 16._ To the Exchange, where I have not been in a great while.
+But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people, and
+very few upon the 'Change. Jealous of every door that one sees shut up
+lest it should be the plague; and about two shops in three, if not more,
+generally shut up.
+
+_August 22._ I walked to Greenwich, in my way seeing a coffin with a
+dead body therein, dead of the plague, which was carried out last night,
+and the parish have not appointed anybody to bury it; but only set a
+watch there all day and night, that nobody should go thither or come
+thence, this disease making us more cruel to one another than we are to
+dogs.
+
+_August 25._ This day I am told that Dr. Burnett, my physician, is this
+morning dead of the plague, which is strange, his man dying so long ago,
+and his house this month open again. Now himself dead. Poor, unfortunate
+man!
+
+_August 30._ I went forth and walked towards Moorfields to see (God
+forgive my presumption!) whether I could see any dead corpse going to
+the grave. But, Lord! how everybody looks, and discourse in the street
+is of death and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the
+town is like a place distressed and forsaken.
+
+_September 3 (Lord's Day)._ Up; and put on my coloured silk suit very
+fine, and my new periwig, bought a good while since, but durst not wear,
+because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a
+wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwigs,
+for nobody will dare to buy any hair, for fear of the infection, that it
+has been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague. My Lord
+Brouncker, Sir J. Minnes, and I up to the vestry at the desire of the
+justices of the peace, in order to the doing something for the keeping
+of the plague from growing; but, Lord! to consider the madness of the
+people of the town, who will, because they are forbid, come in crowds
+along with the dead corpses to see them buried.
+
+_September 6._ To London, to pack up more things; and there I saw fires
+burning in the streets, as it is through the whole city, by the lord
+mayor's order.
+
+_September 14._ To the Duke of Albemarle, where I find a letter from my
+Lord Sandwich, of the fleet's meeting with about eighteen more of the
+Dutch fleet, and his taking of most of them; and the messenger says they
+had taken three after the letter was sealed, which being twenty-one, and
+those took the other day, is forty-five sail, some of which are good,
+and others rich ships. Having taken a copy of my lord's letter, I away
+toward the 'Change, the plague being all thereabouts. Here my news was
+highly welcome, and I did wonder to see the 'Change so full--I believe
+two hundred people. And, Lord! to see how I did endeavour to talk with
+as few as I could, there being now no shutting up of houses infected,
+that to be sure we do converse and meet with people that have the plague
+upon them. I spent some thought on the occurrences of this day, giving
+matter for as much content on one hand and melancholy on another, as any
+day in all my life. For the first, the finding of my money and plate all
+safe at London; the hearing of this good news after so great a despair
+of my lord's doing anything this year; and the decrease of 500 and more,
+which is the first decrease we have yet had in the sickness since it
+begun. Then, on the other side, my finding that though the bill in
+general is abated, yet in the City within the walls it is increased; my
+meeting dead corpses, carried close to me at noonday in Fenchurch
+Street.
+
+One of my own watermen, that carried me daily, fell sick as soon as he
+had landed me on Friday last, when I had been all night upon the water,
+and is now dead of the plague. And, lastly, that both my servants, W.
+Hewer and Tom Edwards, have lost their fathers of the plague this week,
+do put me into great apprehension of melancholy, and with good reason.
+
+_November 15._ The plague, blessed be God! is decreased 400, making the
+whole this week but 1,300 and odd, for which the Lord be praised!
+
+_December 25 (Christmas Day)._ To church in the morning, and there saw a
+wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day, and the young
+people so merry with one another, and strange to see what delight we
+married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition,
+every man and woman gazing and smiling at them.
+
+_December 31._ Thus ends this year, to my great joy, in this manner. I
+have raised my estate from L1,300 in this year to L4,400. I have got
+myself greater interest, I think, by my diligence, and my employments
+increased by that of treasurer for Tangier and surveyor of the victuals.
+It is true we have gone through great melancholy because of the plague,
+and I put to great charges by it, by keeping my family long at Woolwich,
+and myself and my clerks at Greenwich, and a maid at London; but I hope
+the king will give us some satisfaction for that. But now the plague is
+abated almost to nothing, and I intending to get to London as fast as I
+can. To our great joy the town fills apace, and shops begin to be open
+again.
+
+
+_III.--The Great Fire_
+
+
+_September 2, 1666._ Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get
+things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three in
+the morning to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose,
+and slipped on my nightgown, and went to her window, and thought it to
+be on the back side of Mark Lane at the farthest, and so went to bed
+again. About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at
+the window, and saw the fire not so much as it was, and further off.
+By-and-by Jane comes and tells me that above 300 houses have been burned
+down, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge.
+So I made myself ready, and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon
+one of the high places; and there I did see the houses at that end of
+the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other
+side of the bridge. So down with my heart full of trouble to the
+lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the
+king's baker's house in Pudding Lane.
+
+So I down to the waterside, and there got a boat, and through bridge,
+and there saw a lamentable fire. Everybody endeavouring to remove their
+goods, and flinging into the river, or bringing them into lighters that
+lay off; poor people staying in their houses till the very fire touched
+them, and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stairs
+by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I
+perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows
+and balconies till they burned their wings and fell down. Having staid,
+and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my
+sight, endeavouring to quench it, I to White Hall, and there up to the
+king's closet in the chapel, where people come about me, and I did give
+them an account which dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the
+king.
+
+So I was called for, and did tell the king and Duke of York what I saw,
+and that unless his majesty did command houses to be pulled down,
+nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the king
+commanded me to go to my lord mayor from him and command him to spare no
+houses, but to pull down before the fire every way. Meeting with Captain
+Cocke, I in his coach, which he lent me, to Paul's, and there walked
+along Watling Street, as well as I could, every creature coming away
+loaded with goods to save, and here and there sick people carried away
+in beds. At last met my lord mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent.
+To the king's message, he cried, like a fainting woman, "Lord! what can
+I do? I am spent; people will not obey me. I have been pulling down
+houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." So I walked
+home, seeing people almost all distracted, and no manner of means used
+to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full
+of matter for burning, as pitch and tar in Thames Street, and warehouses
+of oil and wines and brandy.
+
+Soon as I dined, I away, and walked through the City, the streets full
+of people, and horses and carts loaden with goods. To Paul's Wharf,
+where I took boat, and saw the fire was now got further, both below and
+above bridge, and no likelihood of stopping it. Met with the king and
+Duke of York in their barge. Their order was only to pull down houses
+apace; but little was or could be done, the fire coming so fast. Having
+seen as much as I could, I away to White Hall by appointment, and there
+walked to St. James's Park, and there met my wife, and Creed and Wood
+and his wife, and walked to my boat; and upon the water again, and to
+the fire, still increasing, and the wind great. So near the fire as we
+could for smoke, and all over the Thames you were almost burned with a
+shower of fire-drops.
+
+When you could endure no more upon the water, we to a little ale-house
+on the Bankside, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the
+fire grow; and as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners
+and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could
+see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame,
+not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. We stayed till, it being
+darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to
+the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of
+above a mile long; it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and
+all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and
+the cracking of houses at their ruin. So home with a sad heart.
+
+
+_IV.--Of the Badness of the Government_
+
+
+_April 26, 1667._ To White Hall, and there saw the Duke of Albemarle,
+who is not well, and do grow crazy. Then I took a turn with Mr. Evelyn,
+with whom I walked two hours; talking of the badness of the government,
+where nothing but wickedness, and wicked men and women command the king;
+that it is not in his nature to gainsay anything that relates to his
+pleasures; that much of it arises from the sickliness of our ministers
+of state, who cannot be about him as the idle companions are, and
+therefore he gives way to the young rogues; and then from the negligence
+of the clergy, that a bishop shall never be seen about him, as the King
+of France hath always; that the king would fain have some of the same
+gang to be lord treasurer, which would be yet worse.
+
+And Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the court
+lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's
+coming in. He tells me that now the Countess Castlemaine do carry all
+before her. He did tell me of the ridiculous humour of our king and
+knights of the Garter the other day, who, whereas heretofore their robes
+were only to be worn during their ceremonies, these, as proud of their
+coats, did wear them all day till night, and then rode in the park with
+them on. Nay, he tells me he did see my Lord Oxford and Duke of Monmouth
+in a hackney coach with two footmen in the park, with their robes on,
+which is a most scandalous thing, so as all gravity may be said to be
+lost among us.
+
+
+_V.--The End of the Diary_
+
+
+_November 30, 1668._ My wife after dinner went the first time abroad in
+her coach, calling on Roger Pepys, and visiting Mrs. Creed and my cousin
+Turner. Thus endeth this month with very good content, but most
+expenseful to my purse on things of pleasure, having furnished my wife's
+closet and the best chamber, and a coach and horses that ever I knew in
+the world; and I am put into the greatest condition of outward state
+that ever I was in, or hoped ever to be. But my eyes are come to that
+condition that I am not able to work. God do His will in it!
+
+_December 2._ Abroad with my wife, the first time that ever I rode in my
+own coach, which do make my heart rejoice and praise God. So she and I
+to the king's playhouse, and there saw "The Usurper," a pretty good
+play. Then we to White Hall; where my wife stayed while I up to the
+duchess, to speak with the Duke of York; and here saw all the ladies,
+and heard the silly discourse of the king with his people about him.
+
+_December 21._ To the Duke's playhouse, and saw "Macbeth." The king and
+court there, and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine. And my
+wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never
+thought so much before, and so did Talbot and W. Hewer. The king and
+Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me; but it vexed me to see Moll
+Davis in the box over the king and my Lady Castlemaine, look down upon
+the king, and he up to her. And so did my Lady Castlemaine once; but
+when she saw Moll Davis she looked like fire, which troubled me.
+
+_May 31, 1669._ Up very betimes, and continued all the morning examining
+my accounts, in order to the fitting myself to go abroad beyond sea,
+which the ill-condition of my eyes and my neglect hath kept me
+behindhand in. Had another meeting with the Duke of York at White Hall
+on yesterday's work, and made a good advance; and so being called by my
+wife, we to the park, Mary Batelier and a Dutch gentleman, a friend of
+hers, being with us. Thence to "The World's End," a drinking house by
+the park; and there merry, and so home late.
+
+And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own
+eyes in the keeping of my journal, having done now so long as to undo my
+eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore
+resolve, from this time forward to have it kept by my people in
+longhand, and must be contented to set down no more than is fit for them
+and all the world to know. And so I betake myself to that course, which
+is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all
+the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare
+me! S.P.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PLINY THE YOUNGER
+
+
+Letters
+
+
+     Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, or Pliny the Younger, was
+     born in 62 A.D. at Novum Comum, in the neighbourhood of Lake
+     Como, in the north of Italy. His family was honourable,
+     wealthy, and able, and his uncle, Pliny the Elder, was the
+     encyclopaedic student and author of the famous "Natural
+     History." On his father's death, young Pliny, a boy of nine,
+     was adopted by the elder Pliny, educated in literary studies
+     and as an advocate, and was a notable pleader before his
+     twentieth year. Through a succession of offices he rose to the
+     consulship in the year 100, and afterwards continued to hold
+     important appointments. He was twice married, but left no
+     children. The date of his death is unknown. The "Letters of
+     Pliny the Younger" are valuable as throwing light upon the
+     life of the Roman people; but they are also models of Latin
+     style, and have all the charm of their author's upright,
+     urbane, and tolerant character. His epistle to the Emperor
+     Trajan with regard to the Christians is of peculiar interest.
+
+
+_To Cornelius Tacitus_
+
+
+You will certainly laugh, and well may you laugh, when I tell you that
+your old friend has turned sportsman, and has captured three magnificent
+boars. "What," you say, "Pliny?" Yes, I myself, though without giving up
+my much loved inactivity. While I sat at the nets, you might have found
+me holding, not a spear, but my pen. I was resolved, if I returned with
+my hands empty, at least to bring home my tablets full. This open-air
+way of studying is not at all to be despised. The activity and the scene
+stimulate the imagination; and there is something in the solemnity and
+solitude of the woods, and in the expectant silence of the chase, that
+greatly promotes meditation. I advise you whenever you hunt in future to
+take your tablets with you as well as your basket and flask. You will
+find that Minerva, as well as Diana, haunts these hills.
+
+
+_To Minucius Fundanus_
+
+
+When I consider how the days pass with us at Rome, I am surprised to
+find that any single day taken by itself is spent reasonably enough, or
+at least seems to be so, and yet when I add up many days together the
+impression is quite otherwise. If you ask anyone what he has been doing
+to-day, he will tell you perhaps that he has been attending the ceremony
+of a youth's coming of age; he has assisted at a wedding, been present
+at the hearing of a lawsuit, witnessed a will, or taken part in a
+consultation. These occupations seem very necessary while one is engaged
+in them; and yet, looking back at leisure upon the many hours we have
+thus employed, we cannot but consider them mere frivolities. Looking
+back especially on town life from a country retreat, one is inclined to
+regret how much of life has been spent in these wretched trifles.
+
+This reflection is one which often occurs to me at my place at
+Laurentum, when I am immersed in studies or invigorating my bodily
+health. In that peaceful home I neither hear nor say anything which
+needs to be repented of. There is no one there who speaks evil of
+anyone; and I have not to complain of any man, except sometimes of
+myself when I am dissatisfied with my work. There I live undisturbed by
+rumours, free from the vicissitudes of hope and fear, conversing only
+with myself and my books. What a true and genuine life it is; what a
+delightful and honest repose--surely more to be desired than the highest
+employments. O sea and solitary shore, secret haunt of the Muses, with
+how many noble thoughts have you inspired me! Do you then, my friend,
+take the first opportunity of leaving the noisy town with all its empty
+pursuits, and devote your days to study or leisure. For, as Attilius
+well says, it is better to have nothing to do than to be doing of
+nothing.
+
+
+_To Septicius Clarus_
+
+
+How did it happen, my friend, that you failed to keep your engagement to
+dine with me? I shall expect you to repay me what I spent on the
+festival--no small sum, I can assure you. I had prepared for each of us,
+you must know, a lettuce, three snails, two eggs, and a barley cake
+served with sweet wine and snow; the snow most certainly I shall charge
+to your account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots,
+gourds, onions, and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard
+a comedian, or the reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you
+had liked, all three, such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies
+and Spanish dancing girls at some other house were more to your taste. I
+shall have my revenge of you, depend upon it, but I won't say how.
+Indeed, it was not kind thus to mortify your friend--I had almost said
+yourself; for how delightfully we should have passed the evening in
+jests and laughter, and in deeper talk! It is true you may dine at many
+houses more sumptuously than at mine but nowhere will you find more
+unconstrained gaiety, simplicity and freedom. Only make the experiment,
+and if you do not ever afterwards prefer my table to any other, never
+favour me with your company again.
+
+
+_To Avitus_
+
+
+It would be a long story, and of no great importance, if I were to tell
+you by what accident I dined lately with a man who, in his own opinion,
+entertained us with great splendour and economy, but in my opinion with
+meanness combined with extravagance. He and a few of his guests enjoyed
+some very excellent dishes indeed, but the fare placed before the rest
+of the company was of the most inferior kind. There were three kinds of
+wine in small bottles, but it was not intended that the guests should
+take their choice at all. The best was for himself and for us; another
+vintage was for his friends of a lower order--for you must know he
+divides his friends into classes--and the third kind was for his own and
+his guests freed-men. My neighbor noticed this, and asked me if I
+approved of it. "Not at all," I said.
+
+"What then," said he, "is your custom in entertaining?"
+
+"Mine," said I, "is to offer the same fare to everybody. I invite my
+friends to dinner without separating them into classes. Everyone who
+comes to my table is equal, and even my freed-men are then my guests
+just as much as anyone else."
+
+He asked me if I did not find this very expensive. I assured him that it
+was not so at all, and that the whole secret lay in drinking no better
+wine myself that I gave to others. If a man is wise enough to moderate
+his own luxury, he will not find it very expensive to entertain all his
+visitors on equal terms. Restrain your own tastes if you would really
+economise. This is a better way of saving expense than making these
+insulting distinctions between guests.
+
+It would be a pity if a man of your excellent disposition should be
+imposed upon by the immoderate ostentation which prevails at some tables
+under the guise of frugality. I tell you of this as an example of what
+you ought to shun. Nothing is to be more avoided than this preposterous
+association of extravagance and meanness--defects which are unpleasant
+enough when found separately, but are particularly detestable when
+combined.
+
+
+_To Baebius Macer_
+
+
+I am glad to hear that you are so great an admirer of my Uncle Pliny's
+works as to wish to have a complete collection of them. You will wonder
+how a man so much occupied as he was could find time to write so many
+books, some of them upon very difficult subjects. You will be still more
+surprised when you hear that for a considerable time he practised at the
+bar, that he died in his fifty-sixth year, and that from the time of his
+retirement from the bar to his death he was employed in some of the
+highest offices of state, and in the immediate service of the emperors.
+But he had a very quick intelligence, an incredible power of
+application, and an unusual faculty of doing without sleep. In summer he
+used to begin to work at midnight; in winter, generally at one in the
+morning, or two at the latest, and often at midnight. But he would
+often, without leaving his studies, refresh himself by a short sleep.
+Before daybreak he used to wait upon the Emperor Vespasian, who also was
+a night worker, and after that attended to his official duties. Having
+taken a light meal at noon, after the custom of our ancestors, he would
+in summer, if unoccupied, lie down in the sun, while a book was read to
+him from which he made extracts and notes. Indeed he never read without
+making extracts; he used to say that no book was so bad as not to teach
+one at least something. After this reading he usually took a cold bath,
+then a light refreshment, and went to sleep for a little while. Then, as
+if beginning a new day, he resumed his studies until dinner, when a book
+was again read to him, upon which he would make passing comments. I
+remember once, when his reader had pronounced a word wrongly, someone at
+the table made him repeat it again; upon which my uncle asked his friend
+if he had not understood it. He admitted that the word was clear enough.
+"Why did you stop him then?" asked my uncle; "we have lost more than ten
+lines by this interruption of yours." Even so parsimonious was he of
+every moment of time! In summer he always rose from dinner by daylight,
+and in winter as soon as it was dark; this was an invariable law with
+him.
+
+Such was his life amidst the noise and bustle of the city; but when he
+was in the country his whole time, without exception, was given to study
+except when he bathed. And by this exception I mean only the time when
+he was actually in the bath, for all the time when he was being rubbed
+and dried he was read to, or was himself dictating. Again, when
+travelling he gave his whole time to study; a secretary constantly
+attended him with books and tablets, and in winter wore very warm gloves
+so that the cold weather might not interrupt my uncle's work; and, for
+the same reason, when in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I
+remember he once reproved me for going for a walk, saying that I might
+have used the hours to greater advantage; for he thought all time was
+lost which was not given to study. It was by this extraordinary
+application that he found time to write so many volumes, besides a
+hundred and sixty books of extracts which he left me, written on both
+sides in an extremely small hand, so that their number might be reckoned
+considerably greater.
+
+
+_To Cornelius Tacitus_
+
+
+I understand you wish to hear about the earthquake at Misenum. After my
+uncle had left us on that day, I went on with my studies until it was
+time to bathe; then I had supper and went to bed. But my sleep was
+broken and disturbed. There had been many slight shocks, which were very
+frequent in Campania, but on this night they were so violent that it
+seemed as though everything must be overthrown. My mother ran into my
+room, and we went out into a small court which separated our house from
+the sea. I do not know whether to call it courage or rashness on my
+part, as I was only eighteen years old; but I took up Livy and read and
+made extracts from him. When morning came the light was faint and
+sickly; the buildings around us were tottering to their fall, and there
+was great and unavoidable danger in remaining where we were. We resolved
+to leave the town. The people followed us in consternation, and pressed
+in great crowds about us on our way out. Having gone a good distance
+from the house, we stood still in the midst of a dreadful scene. The
+carriages for which we had sent, though standing upon level ground, were
+being thrown from side to side, and could not be kept still even when
+supported by large stones. The sea appeared to roll back upon itself,
+driven from its shores by the convulsive movements of the earth; a large
+portion of the sea-bottom was uncovered, and many marine animals were
+left exposed. Landward, a black and dreadful cloud was rolling down,
+broken by great flashes of forked lightning, and divided by long trains
+of flame which resembled lightning but were much larger.
+
+Soon afterwards the clouds seemed to descend and cover the whole surface
+of the ocean, hiding the island of Capri altogether and blotting out the
+promontory of Misenum. My mother implored me earnestly to make my
+escape, saying that her age and frame made it impossible for her to get
+away, but that she would willingly meet her death if she could know that
+she had not been the cause of mine. But I absolutely refused to forsake
+her, and seizing her hand I led her on. The ashes now began to fall upon
+us, though as yet in no great quantity. I looked back and saw behind us
+a dense cloud which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed
+that while we still had life we should turn out of the high road, lest
+she should be trampled to death in the dark by the crowd.
+
+We had scarcely sat down when darkness closed in upon us, not like the
+darkness of a moonless night, or of a night obscured by clouds, but the
+darkness of a closed room where all the lights have been put out. We
+heard the shrieks of women, the cries of children, and the shouts of
+men; some were calling for their children, others for their parents,
+others for their husbands or wives, and recognising one another through
+the darkness by their voices. Some were calling for death through very
+fear of death; others raised their hands to the gods; but most imagined
+that the last eternal night had come, and that the gods and the world
+were being destroyed together. Among these were some who added imaginary
+terrors to the real danger, and persuaded the terror-stricken multitude
+that Misenum was in flames. At last a glimmer of light appeared which we
+imagined to be a sign of approaching flames, as in truth it was; but the
+fire fell at a considerable distance from us, and again we were immersed
+in darkness. A heavy shower of ashes now rained upon us, so that we were
+obliged from time to time to shake them off, or we should have been
+crushed and buried in the heap. I might congratulate myself that during
+all this horror not a sigh or expression of fear escaped me, if it had
+not been that I then believed myself to be perishing with the world
+itself, and that all mankind were involved in the same calamity--a
+miserable consolation indeed, but a powerful one.
+
+At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees like a cloud of
+smoke; real day returned, and even the sun appeared, though very faintly
+as he appears during an eclipse. Everything before our trembling eyes
+was changed, being covered over with white ashes as with deep snow. We
+returned to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could
+and passed an anxious night between hope and fear. There was more fear
+than hope, however; for the earthquake still continued and many crazy
+people were running about predicting awful horrors.
+
+You must read my story without any view of writing about it in your
+history, of which it is quite unworthy; indeed, my only excuse for
+writing it in a letter is that you have asked for it.
+
+
+_To Calpurnia, His Wife_
+
+
+It is incredible how impatiently I wish for your return, such is the
+tenderness of my love for you, and so unaccustomed are we to separation.
+I lie awake great part of the nights thinking of you; and in the day my
+feet carry me of their own accord to your room at the hours when I used
+to see you, but not finding you there I go away as sorrowful and
+disappointed as an excluded lover. The only time when I am free from
+this distress is when I am in the forum busy with the lawsuits of my
+friends. You may judge how wretched my life is when I find my repose
+only in labour and my consolation in miseries and cares.
+
+
+_To Germinius_
+
+
+You must very well know the kind of people who, though themselves slaves
+to every passion, are mightily indignant at the vices of others, and
+most severe against those whom they most closely resemble. Surely
+leniency is the most becoming of all virtues, even in persons who have
+least need of anyone's indulgence. The highest of all characters, in my
+estimation, is that of a man who is as ready to pardon human errors as
+though he were every day himself guilty of them, and who yet abstains
+from faults as though he never forgave them. Let us observe this rule,
+both in our public and in our private relations--to be inexorable to
+ourselves, but to treat the rest of the world with tenderness, including
+even those who forgive only themselves. Let us always remember the
+saying of that most humane and therefore very great Thrasea: "He who
+hates vices, hates mankind."
+
+Perhaps you will ask who it is that has moved me to these reflections?
+There was a certain person lately--But I will tell you of that when we
+meet. No; on second thoughts I will not tell you even then, lest by
+condemning him and exposing his conduct I should be violating the
+principle which I have just condemned. So, whoever he is, and whatever
+he may be, the matter shall remain unspoken; since to expose him would
+be of no advantage for the purpose of example; but to hide his fault
+will be of great advantage to good nature.
+
+
+_To the Emperor Trajan_
+
+
+It is my rule, to refer to you all matters about which I have any doubt.
+For who can be more capable of removing my scruples or of instructing my
+ignorance?
+
+I have never been present at any trials of Christians, and am,
+therefore, ignorant of the reasons for which punishment is inflicted, as
+well as of the examinations which it is proper to make of their guilt.
+As to whether any difference is usually made with respect to the ages of
+the guilty, or whether no distinction is to be observed between the
+young and the old; whether repentance entitles them to a pardon, or
+whether it is of no advantage to a man who has once been a Christian
+that he has ceased to be one; whether the very profession of
+Christianity unattended by any criminal act, or only the crimes that are
+inherent in the profession are punishable--in all these points I am very
+doubtful.
+
+In the meantime, the method which I have observed towards those who have
+been brought before me as Christians is this. I have interrogated them
+as to whether they were Christians; if they confessed I repeated the
+question twice again, adding threats at the same time; and if they still
+persevered I ordered them to execution. For I was persuaded that
+whatever the nature of their opinions might be, their pertinacity and
+inflexible obstinacy ought certainly to be punished. Others also were
+brought before me possessed by the same madness, but as they were Roman
+citizens I ordered them to be sent to Rome. As this crime spread while
+it was actually under prosecution, many fresh cases were brought up. An
+anonymous paper was given me containing a charge against many persons.
+Those who denied that they were Christians, or that they had ever been
+so, repeated after me an invocation to the gods, offered wine and
+incense before your statue, which for this purpose I had ordered to be
+placed among the statues of the gods, and even reviled the name of
+Christ; and so, as it is impossible to force those who are really
+Christians to do any of these things, I thought it proper to dismiss
+them. Others who had been accused confessed themselves at first to be
+Christians, but immediately afterwards denied it; and others owned that
+they had formerly been of that number, but had now forsaken their error.
+All these worshipped your statue and the images of the gods, at the same
+time reviling the name of Christ.
+
+They affirmed that the whole of their guilt, or their error, had been as
+follows. They met on a stated day before sunrise and addressed a form of
+invocation to Christ as to a God; they also bound themselves by an oath,
+not for any wicked purpose but never to commit thefts, robberies, or
+adulteries, never to break their word, nor to deny a trust when they
+should be called upon to deliver it up. After this had been done they
+used to separate, and then reassemble to partake in common of an
+innocent meal. They had desisted, however, from this custom, after the
+publication of my edict, by which, in accordance with your orders, I had
+forbidden fraternities to exist. Having received this account I thought
+it all the more necessary to make sure of the real truth by putting two
+slave-girls, who were said to have taken part in their religious
+functions, to the torture; but I could discover nothing more than an
+absurd and extravagant superstition.
+
+I have, therefore, adjourned all further proceedings in the affair in
+order to consult with you. It appears to be a matter highly deserving
+your consideration, especially as very many persons are involved in the
+danger of these prosecutions; for the inquiry has already extended and
+is likely further to extend to persons of all ranks and ages, and of
+both sexes. This contagious superstition is not confined to the cities
+only, but has spread its infection among the villages and country
+districts as well; and it seems impossible to cure this evil or to
+restrain its progress. It is true that the temples which were once
+almost deserted have lately been frequented, and that the religious
+rites which had been interrupted are again revived; and there is a
+general demand for animals for sacrificial victims, which for some time
+past have met with few purchasers. From all this it is easy to imagine
+what numbers might be reclaimed from this error if pardon were granted
+to those who may repent of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CARDINAL RICHELIEU
+
+
+Political Testament
+
+
+     Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the great French
+     cardinal-statesman, was born in Paris on September 5, 1585, of
+     a noble family, and was at first educated for the profession
+     of arms, but entered the Church in order to become Bishop of
+     Lucon in 1606. Having come up to Paris to make his way in the
+     world, he was appointed almoner to the young queen Anne of
+     Austria, and rose in 1616 to be Secretary of State for War and
+     for Foreign Affairs. He received the cardinal's hat in 1622,
+     and for a period of eighteen years, from 1624 to 1642, he was,
+     in everything but name, the Majesty of France. His mind was
+     bold, unscrupulous, remorseless, and inscrutable. Yet it was
+     always noble--the minister who sent so many to the scaffold
+     could truly say that in his vast labours he had but one
+     pleasure, to know that so many honest folk slept in security
+     while he watched night after night. He was a friend to
+     literature, was founder of the Academy, and was himself a
+     considerable author in history and theology. His greatest
+     work, "Testament Politique du Cardinal de Richelieu," which
+     was published in 1764, and in which is embodied his counsel in
+     statecraft, is a literary achievement of no small importance,
+     exhibiting as it does not only a political acumen of a very
+     high order but an acute faculty for literary expression.
+     Richelieu died on December 4, 1642.
+
+
+_Retrospect_
+
+
+At the time when your majesty admitted me to your counsels and confided
+to me the direction of public affairs I may say with truth that the
+Huguenots divided the state with your majesty, the great families
+behaved as though they had no sovereign, and the governor of provinces
+as if they had been sovereigns themselves. Every man took his own
+audacity to be the measure of his merit, so that the most presumptious
+were considered the wisest, and proved often the most fortunate. Abroad
+the friendship of France was despised. At home private interests were
+preferred to the general advantage. The dignity of the throne had so far
+declined, through the fault of my predecessors in office, that it was
+almost unrecognisable. To have continued to entrust to their hands the
+helm of the state would have led to irremediable disaster; yet, on the
+other hand, too swift and too great a change would have been fraught
+with dangers of its own. In that emergency the wisest considered that it
+was hardly possible to pass without shipwreck through the reefs and
+shoals, and there were many who had foretold my fall even before your
+majesty had raised me to power.
+
+Yet, knowing what kings may do when they make good use of their power, I
+was able to promise your majesty that your prudence and firmness, with
+the blessing of God, would give new health to this kingdom. I promised
+to devote all my labours, and all the authority with which I might be
+clothed, to procuring the ruin of the Huguenot party, to humbling the
+pride of the great, to reducing all your subjects to their duty, and to
+elevating your majesty's name among foreign nations to its rightful
+reputation.
+
+I asked, to that end, your majesty's entire confidence, and assured you
+that my policy would be the direct contrary of that of my predecessors,
+inasmuch as, instead of removing the queen, your mother, from your
+majesty's counsels, I would leave nothing undone to promote the closest
+union between you, to the great advantage and honour of the kingdom.
+
+The success which has followed the good intentions which it has pleased
+God to give me for the administration of this state will justify, to the
+ages to come, the constancy with which I have pursued this design--that
+the union which exists between your majesties in nature, may be
+completed also between you in grace. And if, after many years, this
+purpose by the malice of your enemies, has been defeated, it is my
+consolation to remember how often your majesty has been heard to say
+that when I was working most for the honour of the queen, your mother,
+she was conspiring for my ruin.
+
+
+_Of Education_
+
+
+Letters are one of the greatest ornaments of states, and their
+cultivation is necessary to the commonwealth. Yet it is certain that
+they should not be taught indiscriminately to every one. A nation whose
+every subject should be educated would be as monstrous as a body having
+eyes in every part; pride and presumption would be general, and
+obedience almost disappear.
+
+Unrestrained trade in knowledge must banish that trade in merchandise to
+which states owe their wealth; ruin husbandry, the true mother and nurse
+of peoples; and destroy our source of soldiery, which springs up in
+rustic ignorance rather than from the forcing-ground of culture and the
+sciences. It would fill France with half-taught fellows, minds formed
+only to _chicane_, men who might ruin families and trouble public peace,
+but could not be of any service to the state. There would be more people
+capable of doubts than capable of resolving them; more intelligences
+fitted to oppose than to defend the truth.
+
+Indeed, when I consider the great number who make a profession of
+teaching, and the crowds of children who are taught, I seem to see an
+infinite multitude of weaklings and diseased, who, having no other
+desire than to drink pure water for their healing, are urged by an
+inordinate thirst to drink all that is offered them, though it is mostly
+impure and often poisoned, whereby their thirst and their malady are
+equally aggravated.
+
+Two principal evils arise from the great number of colleges established
+in every district: there are not sufficient worthy teachers to supply
+them; and many children of little aptitude are compelled by their
+parents to study. In the result, almost all the pupils leave with but a
+smattering of learning, some because they have been badly taught, others
+because they have been incapable of more. The remedy that I propose is
+this. Let the colleges in all towns which are not of metropolitan rank
+be reduced to two or three classes, sufficient to raise the young out of
+gross ignorance, such as is harmful even to those who are destined for
+military service or for trade. Then, before the children are determined
+to any special line of life, two are three years will reveal their
+dispositions and their capacities; and the more promising children, who
+will then be sent on to the metropolitan colleges, will succeed far
+better; for they will have minds suited for education and will be placed
+in the hands of the best teachers.
+
+Finally, let care be taken that the colleges shall not all come under
+the same hands. The universities, on the one hand, the Jesuits on the
+other, tend towards a monopoly of education. Let their emulation
+increase their virtues and efficiency; but let neither party be deprived
+of the instruction of youth; let neither secure a monopoly.
+
+
+_Of the Nobility_
+
+
+The nobility, which is one of the principal nerves of the state, may
+contribute much to its consolidation and power, but it has been for some
+time past greatly depreciated by the large number of officials whom the
+misfortunes of our age have raised up to its prejudice. It must be
+supported against the enterprises of people of that kind, whose wealth
+and pride overwhelmed the nobles, who are rich only in courage.
+
+But as the nobility must be defended from their oppressors, so also must
+they be strictly prevented from oppressing those who are below them,
+whom God has armed to labour but not to self-defence. Uncompromisingly
+justice must ensure security, under shelter of your laws, to the least
+and feeblest of your subjects.
+
+Those nobles who do not serve the state are a charge upon it; and, like
+a paralysed limb, are a burden where they should be a defence and a
+comfort. As men of gentle birth should be well treated so long as they
+deserve it, so they should be checked severely when they are found
+wanting to the obligations of their birth; and I have no hesitation in
+advising that those who have so degenerated from the virtues of their
+fathers as to avoid the service of the crown with their swords and with
+their lives, deserve to be degraded from their hereditary honours and
+advantages, and should be reduced to take part in bearing the burdens of
+the people.
+
+
+_Of the Disorders of Justice_
+
+
+It is much easier to recognise the defects of justice than to prescribe
+the remedy. Certain it is that they have arrived at such a point that
+they could hardly be graver; yet I know that it is your majesty's desire
+that the administration of justice should be as pure as the
+imperfections and corruptions of mankind will permit.
+
+In the opinion of the great majority of the people, the sovereign remedy
+consists in suppressing venality, in doing away with the hereditary
+principle in judicial offices, and in giving their positions
+gratuitously to men of such well-known probity and capacity that not
+even envy itself can contest their merit. But as it would be difficult
+to follow this counsel at any time, and is quite impossible to follow it
+here and now, it is useless to propose means calculated to secure that
+end.
+
+Although it is always dangerous to hold a view which others do not
+share, I must boldly say that in my opinion, in the present state of
+affairs and in any that one can foresee, it is better to suffer venality
+and hereditary offices to continue than to change, from top to bottom,
+your majesty's judicial establishment. The present abuses are great; but
+I believe that a system under which the offices of justice should be
+appointed by nomination by the king would lead to even greater abuses.
+The distribution of these important charges would, in effect, depend on
+the favour and intrigue of the courtiers who might at the time have most
+power with the king, or on whose reports he must base his nominations.
+
+Certainly venality and heredity in this matter are evils, but they are
+evils of long standing. We have only to look back to the reigns of St.
+Louis, when offices were already paid for, and of the great Francis, who
+erected the principle into a regular traffic, to see that so inveterate
+a custom is not easily to be eradicated. Our aim should be to turn the
+minds of men gently and continuously to better ways, and not to pass
+suddenly from one extreme to the other. The architect whose skill is
+able to correct the weakness of an ancient building, and to bring it
+into some degree of symmetry without first pulling it down, deserves far
+greater praise than the man who must throw it into ruins in order to
+construct something entirely new. It is difficult to change the
+established order without changing the hearts of those who possess it,
+and it is often prudent to weaken one's remedies in order that they may
+have the greater effect.
+
+
+_To the Officers of Finance_
+
+
+These form a class of men who are prejudicial to the state, yet are
+necessary to and we can only hope to reduce their power within tolerable
+limits. At present, their excesses and irregularities are intolerable;
+and it is impossible that they should further increase their wealth and
+their power without ruining the state, and themselves with it.
+
+I do not advise the general confiscation of their gains, although the
+excessive wealth which they amass in a short time, easily proved by the
+difference between their possessions on entering office and what they
+own at present, must often be the result of thefts and extortions.
+Confiscation may be made, in its turn, the greatest of injustice and
+violence. Yet I do not think that anyone could complain if the more
+flagrant offenders were chastised. Otherwise, they will, as I have said,
+ruin the kingdom, which bears on its face the marks of their frauds.
+
+The gold with which they have gorged themselves has opened to them
+alliances with the most ancient families, whose blood and character are
+thereby so far debased that their representatives resemble their
+ancestors no more in the generosity of their motives than they do in the
+purity of their features.
+
+I can advise nothing but a great reduction in the number of these
+officials, a reform which might be easily accomplished; and the
+appointment, in times to come, only of substantial men, of character and
+position suitable to this responsibility. As for the plan of squeezing
+these financiers like a sponge, or of making treaties and compositions
+with them, it is a remedy worse than the disorder; it is as much as to
+teach them that peculation is their business and their right.
+
+
+_Of the People_
+
+
+All statesmen agree that if the people were in too easy a condition it
+would be impossible to restrain them within the limits of their duty.
+Having less knowledge and cultivation than those in other ranks of the
+state, they would not easily follow the rules prescribed by reason and
+by law, unless bound thereto by a certain degree of necessity.
+
+Reason does not permit us to exempt them from all taxation, lest, having
+lost the symbol of their subjection, they should forget their legitimate
+condition, and, being free from tribute, should think themselves free
+from obedience also.
+
+Mules accustomed to a load suffer more from a long rest than they do
+from work; but, on the other hand, their work must be moderate and the
+load proportionate to their strength. So it is with the taxation of the
+people, which becomes unjust if it is not moderated at the point at
+which it is useful to the public.
+
+There is a sense in which the tribute which kings draw from the people
+returns to the people again, in the enjoyment of peace and in the
+security of their life and possessions; for these cannot be safeguarded
+unless contribution be made to the state. I know of several princes who
+have lost their kingdoms and their subjects by letting their strength
+decay through fear of taxing them; and subjects have before now fallen
+into servitude to their enemies, through wishing too much liberty under
+their natural sovereign. The proportion between the burden and the
+strength of those who have to support it ought to be even religiously
+observed; a prince cannot be considered good if he draws more than he
+ought from his subjects; yet the best princes are not always those who
+never levy more than is necessary.
+
+
+_Reason and Government_
+
+
+Man, having been made a rational creature, ought to do nothing except by
+reason; for, otherwise he acts against nature, and so against the Author
+of nature. Again, the greater a man is, and the higher his position, the
+more strictly is he bound to follow reason. It follows that if he is
+sovereignly rational, he is bound to make reason reign; that is to say,
+it is his duty to make all those who are under his authority revere and
+obey reason religiously. Love is the most potent motive for obedience;
+and it is impossible that subjects should not love their prince if they
+know that reason is the guide of all his actions.
+
+Since reason should be the guide of princes, passion, which is of all
+things the most incompatible with reason, should be allowed no influence
+on their actions. Passion can only blind them; make them take the shadow
+for the substance; and win for them odium in the place of affection.
+
+Government requires a masculine virtue and an immovable firmness; for
+softness exposes those in whom it is found to the machinations of their
+enemies. Though there have been notable exceptions, their softness and
+their passions have generally made women unfit for rule.
+
+
+_Public Interests First_
+
+
+The public advantage should be the single object of the king and his
+counsellors, or should at least be preferred to every private interest.
+It is impossible to estimate the good which a prince and his ministers
+may do if they religiously follow this principle, or to estimate the
+disasters which must fall upon the state whose public interests are
+ruled by private considerations. True philosophy, the Christian law, and
+the art of statesmanship, unite to teach this truth.
+
+The prosperity which Spain has enjoyed for several centuries has been
+due to no other cause than that her council has consistently preferred
+the interests of the state to all others, and most of the calamities
+which have visited France have been due to the preference of private
+advantage.
+
+It is easy for princes to consent to the general regulations of their
+state, because in making them they have only reason and justice before
+their eyes, and men willingly embrace reason and justice when there are
+no obstacles to turn them from the right path. But when occasions arise
+for putting these regulations into practice, we do not find that princes
+always show the same firmness, for then the interests of factions and of
+minorities are pressed upon them; pity, sympathy, favour, and
+importunities solicit them and oppose their just designs; and they have
+not always strength enough to conquer themselves and to despise these
+partial considerations, which ought to have no weight at all in the
+affairs of the commonwealth.
+
+It is on these occasions that they must gather up all their strength
+against their weakness, and remember that God has placed them there to
+safeguard the public interest.
+
+
+_The Power of Kingship_
+
+
+Power is one of the most necessary conditions of the greatness of kings
+and of the happiness of their government, and those who have to do with
+the conduct of a state should omit nothing which may enhance the
+authority of their master and the respect in which he is held by all the
+world.
+
+As goodness is the object of love, power is the cause of fear; and fear,
+founded in esteem and reverence, makes dutiful conduct the interest of
+every subject, and warns all foreigners not to offend a prince who can
+harm them if he will.
+
+I have said that the power of which I speak must be founded on esteem,
+and I will add that if it be otherwise founded it is dangerous in the
+extreme. Princes are never in a more perilous position than when they
+are the objects of hatred or aversion rather than of a reasonable fear.
+
+That kingly power which causes princes to be feared with esteem and
+love, includes within it different elements of power; it is a tree with
+several branches, which draw their nourishment from common Stock. Thus,
+the prince must be powerful by his reputation. Secondly, by a reasonable
+number of soldiers, continually maintained. Thirdly, by a notable
+reserve, in gold, in his coffers, ready for the unforeseen occasions
+which arise when least expected. And, lastly, by the possession of the
+hearts of his people. If the finances be considerately adjusted on the
+principles which I have advised the people will find entire relief, and
+the king will base his power on the possession of the hearts of his
+subjects. They will know that they are his care, and their own interests
+will lead them to love him.
+
+The kings of old thought so highly of this foundation of kingship that
+some of them held it worthier to be King of the French than King of
+France. Indeed, this nation was in old time illustrious for passionate
+attachment to its princes; and under the earlier kings, until Philip the
+Fair, the treasure of hearts was the sole public treasure that was
+maintained in this kingdom.
+
+I know that we cannot judge of the present altogether by the past, and
+that what was good in one century is not always possible in another.
+Yet, though the treasure of hearts may not suffice to-day, it is quite
+certain that without it the treasure of gold is almost worthless;
+without that treasure of hearts we shall be bankrupt in the midst of
+abundance.
+
+
+_The Whole Duty of Princes_
+
+
+In conclusion, as kings are obliged to do many more things as sovereigns
+than they do in their private capacity, they are liable to be guilty of
+far more faults by omission than those of which a private person could
+be guilty by commission. Considered as men, they are subject to the same
+faults as all other men; but considered as charged with the welfare of
+the public, they are subject also to many duties which they cannot omit
+without sin.
+
+If princes neglect to do all that they can to rule the various orders of
+their state; if they are careless in the choice of good advisers, or
+despise their salutary counsels; if they fail to make their own example
+a speaking voice; if they are idle in the establishment of the reign of
+God, and of reason, and of justice; if they fail to protect the
+innocent, to reward public services, and to chastise the guilty and
+disobedient; if they are not solicitous to foresee and to provide for
+the troubles which may arise, or to turn aside, by careful diplomacy,
+the storms which darken the horizon; if favour rather than merit
+dictates their choice of ministers for the high offices of the kingdom;
+if they do not immovably establish the state in its rightful power; if
+they do not on all occasions prefer public interests to private
+interests; then, however upright their life may otherwise be, they will
+be found far more guilty than those who actively transgress the
+commandments and the laws of God. And if kings or magistrates make use
+of their power to commit any injustice or violence which they cannot
+commit as private persons, they commit a king's or a magistrate's sin,
+which has its source in their authority, and one for which the King of
+Kings will doubtless demand a searching account on the day of judgement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
+
+
+Confessions
+
+
+     Rousseau's "Confessions" were written in England at Wootton,
+     in Staffordshire, where he had taken refuge after his
+     revolutionary ideas incurred the displeasure of the
+     authorities in France. They were first published in 1782. From
+     this refuge he was pursued from place to place by his
+     delusions through miserable years, until he died, near Paris,
+     on July 2, 1778. In no circumstances or relation of his life
+     was Rousseau a pleasant spectacle. The "Confessions,"
+     unexpurgated, are often revolting to any sane mind, and have
+     been proved to be untrustworthy even as a record of fact. But
+     almost incredible baseness was coupled with extraordinary
+     gifts, and it is impossible to overestimate Rousseau's
+     influence upon the modern world, and upon its literature and
+     its whole point of view and way of thinking. (Rousseau,
+     biography: see FICTION.)
+
+
+I am undertaking a task for which there is no example, and one which
+will find no imitator. It is to exhibit a man in the whole truth of
+nature; and the man whom I shall reveal is myself. Myself alone; for I
+verily believe I am like no other living man. In this book I have hidden
+nothing evil and added nothing good; and I challenge any man to say,
+having unveiled his heart with equal sincerity, "I am better than he."
+
+I was born at Geneva in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau, watchmaker, and of
+Susanne, his wife. My birth, the first of my misfortunes, cost my mother
+her life, and I came into the world so weakly that I was not expected to
+live. My father's sister lavished on me the tenderest care, and he,
+disconsolate, loved me with extreme affection.
+
+Like all children, but even more than others, I felt before I thought;
+and my consciousness was first awakened by reading stories with my
+father. Sometimes we read together until the birds were singing in the
+morning light. These tales gave me a most precocious insight into human
+passions, and the confused emotions which swept through me brought with
+them the queerest and most romantic views of life. But when I was seven
+we came to the end of my mother's old stock of romances, and we fell
+back on Bossuet, Moliere, Plutarch, Ovid, and the like. Plutarch went
+far to cure me of novels; indeed, his "Lives" were the means of forming
+that free and republican spirit, intolerant of servitude, which has been
+my torment. To my aunt, who knew endless songs, and used to chant them
+with a sweet, tiny thread of a voice, I owe my passion for music.
+
+These, then, were my first affections. These formed that heart of mine,
+so proud yet so tender; they fashioned that effeminate yet untamable
+character, which has ever drifted between weakness and virtue. For I
+have been in contradiction with myself, in such a way that abstinence
+and fruition, pleasure and wisdom, have escaped me equally.
+
+My father having left Geneva, I remained under the care of my uncle
+Bernard, and was placed, with his son of my own age, in the house of M.
+Lambercier, protestant minister at Bossey, to learn all the trivialities
+that are called education. Here I gained my keen love of country
+pleasures, and tasted, with my cousin, the delights of simple
+friendship. But a cruel punishment for a fault which I had not
+committed, put an end to my childish simplicity, and soon I left Bossey
+without regret. There followed two or three years of indolence at
+Geneva.
+
+After a brief and luckless trial of a notary's office I was apprenticed
+to an engraver, a petty tyrant, whose injustice taught me to lie and to
+steal. Restless, dissatisfied, and in perpetual terror of my master's
+savagery, I here reached my sixteenth year. But one day, finding the
+city gates closed on my return from a country excursion, I determined,
+rather than face the inevitable thrashing, to seek my fortune in the
+unknown world.
+
+
+_Madame de Warens_
+
+
+How fair were the illusions of freedom and of the future! I asked
+little--only a manor where I should be the favourite of the lord of the
+land, his daughter's lover, her brother's friend, and protector of the
+neighbourhood. I roamed the countryside, sleeping at nights in
+hospitable cottages, and on arriving at Confignon I called, out of
+curiosity, on M. de Ponteverre, the parish priest. He gave me a dinner
+which convinced me, even more than his arguments, of the advantages of
+the catholic faith; and I was willing enough to set off, with his
+introduction, to Annecy. Here I was to seek Mme. de Warens, a recent
+convert, who was in receipt of a pension from the King of Sardinia. I
+was assured that her benevolence would support me for the present. Three
+days later I was at Annecy.
+
+This introduction fixed my character and destiny. I was now in my
+sixteenth year, doubtless of engaging though not striking appearance; I
+had the timidity of a loving nature, always afraid of giving offence;
+and I was quite without knowledge of the world or of manners. I arrived
+on Palm Sunday, 1728. Mme. de Warens had left the house for church; I
+ran after her, saw her, spoke to her--how well do I remember the place,
+so often in later days wet with my tears and covered with kisses!
+
+I saw an enchanting form, a countenance full of graciousness, a dazzling
+colour, blue eyes beaming kindness; you may imagine that my conversion
+was from that moment decided. Smiling, she read the good priest's
+letter, and sent me back to the house for breakfast.
+
+Louise Eleonore de Warens, daughter of a noble family of Vevai, in the
+Vaud country, had early married M. de Warens, of Lausanne. The marriage
+was childless and otherwise unfortunate; and the young wife, exasperated
+by some domestic difficulty, had abandoned her husband and her country,
+and crossing the lake, had thrown herself at the feet of the king. He
+took her under his protection, gave her a moderate pension, and for fear
+of scandal sent her to Annecy, where she renounced her errors at the
+Convent of the Visitation.
+
+She had been six years at Annecy when I met her, and was now
+twenty-eight years of age. Her beauty was still in its first radiance,
+and her smile was angelic. She was short of stature, but it was
+impossible to imagine more beautiful features or hands. Her education
+had been very desultory; she had learned more from lovers than from
+teachers. She had a strong taste for empirical medicine and for alchemy,
+and was always compounding elixirs, tinctures and balms, some of which
+she regarded as valuable secrets. So it was that charlatans, trading on
+her weakness, made her consume, amid drugs and furnaces, a talent and a
+spirit which might have distinguished her in the highest societies. Yet
+her loving and sweet character, her compassion for the unhappy, her
+inexhaustible goodness and her open and gay humour never changed; and
+even when old age was coming on, in the midst of poverty and varied
+misfortunes, her inward serenity preserved to the end the charming
+gaiety of her youth. All her mistakes arose from a restless activity
+which demanded incessant occupation. She thirsted, not for intrigues,
+but for enterprises.
+
+Well, the first sight of Mme. de Warens inspired me not only with the
+liveliest attachment, but with an entire trust which was never
+disappointed. Her presence filled my whole being with peace and
+confidence.
+
+
+_Three Years in Turin_
+
+
+My situation was discussed with the Bishop, and it was decided that I
+should go to Turin and remain for a time at an institution devoted to
+the instruction of catechumens. Thither I went, regarding myself as the
+pupil, the friend, and almost the lover, of Mme. de Warens. The great
+doors closed upon me, and here I was instructed for several weeks in
+very indifferent company. At length, having been received into the
+church, I found myself in the street with twenty francs in my pocket,
+and the counsel that I should be a good Christian.
+
+I took a lodging in Turin, and was presently introduced, by the kindness
+of my hostess, to the service of a countess. But this lady died shortly
+afterwards, and I left her house bearing with me lasting remorse for an
+atrocious action: I had accused a fellow-servant of a theft which I had
+myself committed, and thus may very well have caused the poor child's
+ruin.
+
+Returning to my old lodging, I spent my days in wandering about town,
+often offending the public by my depravities. But I had kept certain
+acquaintances made during my situation with the countess, and one of
+these, a M. Gaime, whom I sometimes visited, gave me most valuable
+instructions in the principles of morals. He was a priest, and one of
+the most honest men I have known. I had cherished false ideas of life;
+he gave me a true picture of it, and showed me that happiness depends
+only on wisdom, and that wisdom is to be found in every rank. He used to
+say that if everyone could read the hearts of others, most would wish to
+descend in the social scale. This M. Gaime is the original, in large
+part, of my vicar of Savoy.
+
+Then followed a new situation in the house of the Count de Gouvon,
+where, nominally a footman, I was soon treated more as a pupil or even
+as a favourite. His son, a priest, did his best to teach me Latin, and I
+have since realised that it was the purpose of this noble family, who
+had considerable political ambition, to train a talented dependent who
+might serve them in offices of great responsibility. But my fatal
+inconstancy frustrated this good fortune, my flagrant disobediences led
+to my dismissal, and presently I was on the road to Geneva with a gay
+lad from thence who had found me out in Turin.
+
+I happened to own a mechanical toy, a little fountain, and our mad
+project was nothing less than to pay our way throughout the world by
+showing its performances in every village. We started in the highest
+spirits, but the fountain was never remunerative, and soon its works
+went wrong. This threw no gloom over our merry, fantastic journey, and
+it was only when Annecy was near that I became a little thoughtful, for
+my benefactress supposed that my last place had established me for life.
+
+We entered the little town and parted, and I came trembling to her door.
+The adorable woman showed little surprise, and no sorrow. I told her my
+story, and was forgiven. Henceforth her home was mine.
+
+
+_Seeking a Career_
+
+
+The house was an old one, but spacious and comfortable, and the window
+of my room looked out, over garden and stream, to the open country. The
+menage was by no means magnificent, but was abundant in a patriarchal
+way; Madame de Warens had no idea of economy, and with her hospitalities
+and speculations was ever running more deeply into debt. The household,
+besides herself and me, consisted of housemaid, cook, and a footman
+named Claude Anet.
+
+From the first day, the sweetest familiarity reigned our intercourse.
+She called me "Little one," I called her my little mother, and these
+names express the relation of our hearts. She sought always my good,
+never her own pleasure; she was deeply attached to me, and lavished on
+me her maternal caresses. I was now about nineteen years old, but was
+only occupied about the house in writing for her, or in helping her in
+her pharmaceutical experiments.
+
+But madame was thinking of my future, and sent me on some pretext to see
+M. d'Aubonne, a relative of hers, to find out what might be made of me.
+His report of me was, that I was a poor-spirited creature, narrow,
+ignorant, and clownish, and that the career of village priest was the
+best that could be hoped for. Once more, therefore, I was set to Latin
+at the seminary; but after some months I was returned by the bishop and
+the rector as incapable of learning, though a passably well-conducted
+youth. In the meantime I had been taken with a strong taste for music,
+and it was arranged that I should spend the winter at the house of M. le
+Maitre, director of music at the cathedral; he was a young man of great
+talent and of high spirits, and lived only twenty paces from my little
+mother. There I spent one of the most pleasant times of my life. But it
+was cut short by a quarrel between Le Maitre and the cathedral chapter,
+who had, as he thought, put a slight upon him. His revenge was to desert
+his post on the eve of the elaborate Easter services, and madame desired
+me to assist him in his flight. I was to attend him to Lyons, and remain
+with him as long as he should need me. Her purpose was, as I have since
+learned, to detach me from a plausible adventurer, M. Venture, a man of
+great musical talent who had turned up at Annecy, and had engaged my
+fancy. Our flight was successful. But on the second day after our
+arrival at Lyons Le Maitre fell ill with a sudden seizure in the street,
+and I, after telling the bystanders the name of his inn, and begging
+them to carry him thither, slipped round the nearest corner and
+disappeared. Le Maitre was deserted at his worst need by the only friend
+on whom he had to count. I returned at once to Annecy, only to find that
+madame had left for Paris.
+
+M. Venture, however, was still there, and had turned the heads of all
+the ladies in the place, and for a time I shared his lodging. Then,
+after travelling with Merceret, the housemaid, as far as her home at
+Fribourg-for she had to return thither and could find no other
+attendant--I turned aside to Lausanne, with the idea of seeing the lake.
+I arrived here without a penny, and it occurred to me to play Venture's
+game on my own account. I took a false name, called myself a Parisian,
+and having secured a lodging, set up as a teacher of music, though I
+knew next to nothing of the art. There was a professor of law in the
+town who was an amateur of music, and held concert parties in his house;
+to this man I had the effrontry to propose a symphony of my own. I
+worked a fortnight at this production, wrote out the instrumental parts,
+and on the appointed evening stood up before the orchestra and audience,
+tapped my desk, raised by baton, and--never since music began has there
+been such an orgy of discords. The musicians could hardly sit in their
+chairs for laughing, yet played even louder and louder as the fun took
+hold of them; the audience sought to stop their ears; and I, sweat
+pouring down my face, conducted this atrocity to the end. But the end
+was a little minuet which Venture had taught me; I had appended it to my
+symphony, calling it my own work. Its magic put the whole room in good
+humour, and I was feliciated on my taste in melody. Next day one of my
+orchestra came to see me, and in my despair and broken spirit I told him
+my whole story. By nightfall it was known to all Lausanne. But at
+Neufchatel, through the next winter, I gradually learned music by
+teaching it.
+
+My next occupation was that of interpreter to a Greek prelate and
+archimandrite of Jerusalem, whom I met when dining in a little
+restaurant. He was collecting money throughout Europe for the
+restoration of the Holy Sepulchre; and accompanying him from city to
+city, I was of much service to him, even addressing the Senate at Berne
+on behalf of his project. Unfortunately for my employer, he addressed
+himself to the Marquis de Bonac, who had been ambassador to the Porte,
+and knew all about the Holy Sepulchre. I don't know what passed at their
+interview, but the archimandrite disappeared and I was detained. In my
+desolation I told the marquis the history of my life, and by him was
+sent to Paris, with plenty of money in my pocket, to enter the service
+of a young friend of his in the army. My first sight of the city was a
+disappointment which I have never got over, and the proposed engagement
+fell through. Coming to the end of my resources, I set out by way of
+Lyons, where I suffered the extremity of poverty, to find Mme. de
+Warens, who was now, as I learned, at Chamberi. I came to her house and
+found the intendant-general with her. Without addressing me, she said,
+"Here, sir, he is; protect him as long as he deserves it, and his future
+is assured." And to me, "My child, you belong to the king." And thus I
+became a secretary in the ordnance survey. After five years of follies
+and sufferings since I had left Geneva, I began to earn an honest
+living.
+
+
+_Our Little Circle_
+
+
+It was in 1732, and I was nearly twenty-one years old, when I began the
+life of the office. I lived with the little mother in a dismal house,
+which she rented because it belonged to the financial secretary who
+controlled her pension. The faithful Claude Anet was still with her, and
+shortly after my return I learned accidentally that their relation was
+closer than I had ever dreamed of. In a fit of temper his mistress had
+taunted him outrageously. The poor fellow, in despair, had taken
+laudanum; and madame, in her terror and distress, told me the whole
+story. We brought him round, and things went on as before, but it was
+hard to me to know that anyone was more intimate with her than myself.
+
+My passion for music increased this year until I could hardly take
+interest in anything else, and at last the work at the office grew so
+intolerable to me that I determined to resign my place. I extorted an
+unwilling permission from madame, said good-bye to my chief, and threw
+myself into the teaching of music.
+
+I soon had as many pupils as I needed, and the constant intercourse with
+these ladies was very pleasant to me. But from the stories which I
+carried home of our interviews the little mother apprehended dangers of
+which I was not at that time conscious. The course which she took was a
+singular one. She had rented a little garden outside the town, and here
+she invited me to spend the day with her. Thither we went, and from the
+drift of her conversation, which was full of good sense and kindliest
+warnings, I gradually perceived the degree of her goodness towards me.
+The compact involved conditions, and my answer was to be given on that
+day week.
+
+Thus was established among the three of us a society to which there is
+perhaps no parallel. All our wishes, our cares, our interests were in
+common. If one of us was missing from the dinner-table, or a fourth was
+present, all seemed out of order. But our little circle was broken all
+too soon. Claude Anet, on a botanical excursion, fell a victim to
+pleurisy, and died, notwithstanding all her care. He had been a most
+watchful economist of her pension and a restraint on her enterprises,
+and his loss was felt not only in our diminished party, but also in the
+wasting of her resources. For the next three years these went from bad
+to worse. Unfortunately, the life to which I had taken, of drifting from
+one interest to another--now literature, now chess, now a journey, now
+music--brought in nothing and cost a good deal; and to complete our
+anxieties, I fell ill nearly to death. Her care and utter devotion saved
+me, and from that time our very existence was in common.
+
+
+_Les Charmettes_
+
+
+I was ordered to the country. We found near Chamberi a little house, Les
+Charmettes, set in a garden among trees, as retired and solitary a home
+as if it had been a hundred miles from the town. There we took up a new
+life towards the autumn of 1736; there began the brief happiness of my
+existence. We were all in all to one another; together we roamed the
+country, worked in the garden, gathered fruit and flowers, lay under the
+trees and listened to the birds. Golden hours, your memory is my only
+treasure!
+
+Even a sudden illness, which affected my heart so that its pulse has
+from that time incessantly throbbed like a drum in my ears, and has made
+me a constant sufferer from insomnia, turned out to be a heavenly
+blessing. Thinking myself a dead man, I only then began to live, and
+applied myself very eagerly to learning. With my little mother as my
+teacher, I turned to the study of religion. I sought books, and
+philosophy, the sciences, and Latin followed in their turn. Nature,
+learning, leisure, and our ineffably sweet companionship--I thought,
+poor fool, that these joys would be with me to the end. It was otherwise
+decreed.
+
+My bodily condition has become pitiable, and it was determined that I
+should go to Montpellier to consult a physician. I fell in, on the way
+thither, with the Marquis de Torignan and his party, who were travelling
+in the same direction. We struck up acquaintance, and I joined them,
+taking an assumed name, and giving myself out for an Englishman.
+Becoming intimate with a Madame de Larnage, who was among them, I
+continued to travel with her day by day, after the others had reached
+their destination. She was a woman of infinite charm. Mme. de Warens was
+forgotten utterly, and I willingly agreed to settle down in her
+vicinity, after fulfilling the purpose of my journey to Montpellier.
+However, after two pleasurable months in that city, when I found myself
+at the stage where the road divided--one road going to Mme. de Larnage,
+the other to Les Charmettes--I balanced love against pleasure, and
+finding an equipoise, I decided by reason.
+
+The little mother knew by my letter at what hour I should arrive. I came
+to the garden; no one came out to meet me. I entered; the servants
+seemed surprised to see me. I ran upstairs and found her; her welcome
+was restrained and cold. The truth burst upon me. My place was taken!
+
+Darkness flooded my soul, and from that moment onward my sensibilities
+have been but half-alive. I took a situation as tutor in a private
+family, but all my thoughts were of Charmettes and of our innocent life
+together, now gone for ever. O dreadful illusion of human destiny!
+
+
+_The Gathering Gloom_
+
+
+I take up my pen again, after an interval of two years, to add a sequel
+to my confessions. How different is the picture now! For thirty years
+fate had favoured my inclinations, but for the second thirty, which I
+must try to sketch, she has ground me in the mortar of the most
+appalling afflictions.
+
+This second part must inevitably be inferior, in every respect, to the
+first. For I wrote, before, with pleasure and at ease; but now my
+decaying memory and enfeebled brain have made me almost incapable of
+work, and I have nothing to tell of but treacheries, perfidies, and
+torturing memories. The walls around me have ears; I am encompassed by
+spies and vigilant enemies. Racked with anxiety and fear, I scribble
+page after page without revising them. An immense conspiracy surrounds
+me....
+
+[These delusions of suspicion are perhaps the most characteristic
+symptoms of insanity. They colour so deeply the entire texture of
+Rousseau's prolix second part as to make it not only unreliable, but
+almost unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first
+part; from the second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy
+creature, besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman;
+and this morbid condition had been aggravated by years of brooding
+rancour before he wrote this miserable indictment of men who had done
+their best to befriend him.--ED.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, was born in Paris on
+     September 15, 1613. Sprung from one of the noblest families of
+     France, handsome, winning, and brave to recklessness, he
+     intrigued and fought against Richelieu and Mazarin, and was
+     one of the leaders in the civil war of La Fronde. But though
+     marked by birth and talent for a high position in the state,
+     he failed in nearly everything he undertook, owing to his
+     extraordinary indolence of mind, and in the prime of his life
+     he became a rather embittered spectator of a world in which he
+     was not able to make his way. The "Memoirs," with their
+     studied tone of historical coldness, present a striking
+     contrast to the brilliant vivacity of the "Maxims." This, in
+     all probability, is due to the fact that while the latter were
+     frequently added to and edited during their author's lifetime,
+     no such fate befell the "Memoirs," of which the first edition,
+     published without La Rochefoucauld's authority, appeared in
+     1662. Barely a third of them could be attributed to their
+     reputed author, the work being compiled mainly from various
+     commonplace books. In spite of La Rochefoucauld's protests,
+     the pirated "Memoirs" continued to be printed, and it was not
+     until very many years after his death, in 1817, that an
+     authentic edition made its appearance. The "Memoirs" are of
+     great literary value, yielding in interest to no memoirs of
+     the time. La Rochefoucauld died in Paris on March 17, 1680.
+
+
+_Court Intrigues_
+
+
+King Louis XIII. was of feeble constitution, further impaired by
+over-exertion in hunting. His temperament was severe and solitary; he
+wished to be governed, but was sometimes impatient of government. His
+mind took note only of details, and his knowledge of war was fit rather
+for a subordinate officer than for a king. Cardinal Richelieu, who owed
+all his elevation to the queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, was ruler of
+the state. His vast and penetrating mind formed projects as bold as he
+was personally timid. His policy was to establish the king's authority
+and his own, by the ruin of the Huguenots and of the great houses of the
+kingdom, and then to attack the house of Austria, a power most
+redoubtable to France. He stuck at nothing, either to advance his
+satellites or to destroy his enemies. The passion which he had long
+cherished for the queen had changed to dislike, and she had an aversion
+for Richelieu. The king was embittered against her by jealousy and by
+the sterility of their marriage. The queen was an amiable woman, without
+falsity of any kind, and with many virtues; her intimate friend was
+Madame de Chevreuse, who was of her own age and of kindred sentiments.
+
+But Madame de Chevreuse almost always brought misfortune to those whom
+she interested in her projects. She had much spirit, ambition, and
+beauty, and made full use of her charms to forward these enterprises of
+hers. Already Cardinal Richelieu had accused the queen and her of
+complicity in Chalais's plot against the king's life--for Chalais had
+been her warm admirer--and the king believed in their guilt to the end
+of his days. Again, when the young and handsome Lord Holland came to
+France to arrange the marriage of the King of England to the sister of
+the King of France, and quickly won the affection of Madame de
+Chevreuse, the two lovers thought fit to celebrate their attachment by
+inspiring a similar intrigue between the French queen and the Duke of
+Buckingham, who had not so much as met one another. This astonishing
+undertaking was successful. Buckingham came over to wed madame in the
+name of his master, and his ardent love for the queen, which she fully
+returned, deeply wounded both the king and Richelieu. The cardinal
+sought his revenge through Lady Carlisle. That haughty and jealous
+woman, to whom Buckingham had long been attached, noticed one night at a
+ball in England that he was wearing diamonds which she had not seen
+before, and contrived, unobserved, to detach them, in order that she
+might send them to Richelieu. These diamonds had been the gift of the
+King of France to his queen, and it was intended that the cardinal, by
+showing them to the king, should prove the queen's weakness. But the
+Duke of Buckingham discovered his loss the same night, and at once
+suspected Lady Carlisle's design. He issued an immediate order that the
+English ports should be closed, and that no one should be permitted,
+under whatever pretext, to leave the country; and then, having had
+exactly similar jewels prepared, he sent them to the Queen of France,
+with an account of the whole matter.
+
+It was at this time that the cardinal formed the project of the
+destruction of the Huguenot party, and of laying siege to La Rochelle.
+The Duke of Buckingham came with a powerful fleet to aid La Rochelle,
+but in vain; the fortress was taken, and the duke was assassinated in
+England. This murder gave the cardinal an inhuman joy; he jested at the
+queen's sorrows, and began to hope again.
+
+After the ruin of the Huguenots I returned from the army to court, being
+now seventeen years old, and began to notice the state of affairs. The
+queen-mother and the cardinal were at enmity, and though everyone saw
+that something would come of it, no one could foretell what would
+happen. The cardinal's situation was precarious, the king had learned of
+his love for the queen, and was quite ready to disgrace him, and even
+asked the queen-mother to nominate someone to replace him. She
+hesitated, and that hesitation was her ruin and saved the cardinal.
+
+The reversal of the situation took place on the famous "day of dupes,"
+on which the queen-mother, presuming too much on her power, challenged
+the cardinal, in the king's presence, with his ingratitude and
+treacheries. No one doubted but that Richelieu's day was over, and the
+whole court crowded to the queen-mother to share her imaginary triumph.
+But the king went the same day to Versailles, and the cardinal followed
+him; the queen, fearing that she would find Versailles dull and
+uncomfortable, remained behind; and the wily statesman made such good
+use of his opportunity that the king's consent was won to the downfall
+of his mother. She was soon arrested, and her sorrows lasted as long as
+her life.
+
+Many were implicated in her ruin, and were exiled or thrown into the
+Bastille, or brought to the scaffold; and so much bloodshed and so many
+fortunes reversed brought odium on the name of Richelieu. The mild
+regency of Marie de Medicis was remembered, and all the great families
+lamented that liberty was a thing of the past.
+
+For my part, I thought that the queen's cause was the only one, which an
+honourable man could follow. She was unhappy; the cardinal was rather
+her tyrant than her lover; she had been good to me, and had trusted me;
+Mademoiselle d'Hautefort, with whom I had great friendship, was her
+friend, too--sufficient reasons, these, to dazzle a youth who had seen
+almost nothing of the world, and to turn his steps in a direction quite
+contrary to his interests. King and cardinal alike soon came to detest
+me, and my life thenceforth was troubled by the visitations of their
+displeasure. In recording the scenes in which I have had a part, I have
+no intention of writing history, but only of touching on a few personal
+episodes.
+
+
+_Richelieu's Death_
+
+
+War was declared in 1635 against the King of Spain, and I accompanied
+the French army of twenty thousand men which marched to the support of
+the Prince of Orange in Flanders. During neither this nor the following
+winter was I allowed at court. Madame de Chevreuse, who had been sent to
+Tours on the occasion of Richelieu's triumph had heard a good account of
+me from the queen, and invited me to see her; we soon struck up a very
+great friendship, and I came to be a confidential intermediary between
+the queen and her, and was often entrusted by one or other of them with
+most perilous commissions.
+
+When I was at last readmitted to court in 1637, I found the queen in
+great trouble. She had been accused of a crime against the state, a
+treasonable understanding with the Spanish minister; some of her
+servants were arrested; the chancellor examined her like a criminal; it
+was even proposed to seclude her at Havre, annul her marriage, and
+repudiate her altogether. In this extremity, abandoned by all the world,
+she proposed that I should kidnap her and Mademoiselle d'Hautefort and
+carry them off to Brussels. Difficult and dangerous as this project was,
+it gave me greater joy than any I had known, for I was at an age when a
+man likes to engage in dashing and heroic feats. Happily, however, the
+chancellor's investigations proved her majesty not guilty.
+
+But an unfortunate series of accidents led to my imprisonment for a week
+in the Bastille. A signal had been agreed upon between the queen and
+Madame de Chevreuse during the recent trouble. If all went well, Madame
+de Chevreuse was to receive a prayer-book bound in green, but a red
+binding was to indicate disaster. I never knew which of the two ladies
+made the mistake, but when the queen was acquitted Madame de Chevreuse
+received what she took to be the signal of misfortune; concluded that
+both she and the queen were undone, and disguising herself as a man, she
+fled to Spain. This escapade, so surprising at the very moment when the
+Queen's troubles had come to an end, inspired the king and the cardinal
+with the gravest suspicions that they had not, after all, fathomed her
+majesty's treachery. The cardinal summoned me to Paris, and hinted at
+unpleasant consequences if I did not reveal all I knew. I knew nothing;
+and as my manner seemed more reserved and dry than he was accustomed to,
+I was sent to the Bastille.
+
+The little time that I spent there showed me more vividly than anything
+I had yet seen the picture of vengeance. I saw there men of great names
+and of great merits, an infinite number of men and women of all ranks in
+life, all unhappy in the affliction of long and cruel incarceration. The
+sight of so many pitiable creatures did much to increase my natural
+hatred for Cardinal Richelieu's administration. I was released in eight
+days, and thought myself very fortunate to escape at a period when none
+others were set at liberty.
+
+But my disgrace was well repaid. The queen showed herself gratefully
+aware of all that I had suffered in her service; Mademoiselle
+d'Hautefort gave full expression to her esteem and friendship; and
+Madame de Chevreuse was not less gracious. I enjoyed not only the favour
+of those to whom I was attached, but also a certain approval which the
+world is not slow to give to the unfortunate whose conduct has not
+really been disgraceful. Under these conditions an exile of two or three
+years from court was not intolerable. I was young; the king and the
+cardinal were failing in health; I had everything to hope for from a
+change. I was happy in my family, and enjoyed all the pleasures of
+country life, and the neighbouring provinces were full of other exiles.
+
+Cardinal Richelieu died on December 4, 1642. Although his enemies could
+only rejoice at finding themselves free at last from so many
+persecutions, the event has shown that the state could ill spare him. He
+had made so many changes in public affairs that he alone was able to
+direct them safely. No one before Richelieu had known all the power of
+the kingdom, or had been able to gather it all up into the hands of the
+sovereign. The severity of his adminstration had cost many lives; the
+nobility had been humbled, and the common people had been loaded with
+taxes; but the grandeur of his political designs, such as the taking of
+La Rochelle, the destruction of the Huguenot party, and the weakening of
+the house of Austria, no less than his intrepidity in carrying them out,
+have secured for his memory a justly-merited fame.
+
+
+_Under Mazarin's Rule_
+
+
+I returned to Paris immediately after the death of Richelieu, thinking
+that I might have occasion to serve the queen. In accordance with the
+late cardinal's will, Cardinal Mazarin succeeded to his powers. The
+king's state of health went from bad to worse, and the court was filled
+with intrigues with regard to the regency which must so soon be
+appointed. His death took place on May 14, 1643. The queen at once
+brought her little son, Louis XIV., to Paris; two days later she was
+declared regent in parliament; and the same evening, to the amazement of
+his enemies, she appointed Cardinal Mazarin chief of the council.
+
+Mazarin's mind was great, industrious, insinuating, and artful, and his
+character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he
+had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest
+projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his
+temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A
+pretended moderation veiled his ambition and his avarice; he said he
+wanted nothing for himself.
+
+The court was now divided between the Duke of Beaufort and the cardinal,
+and it was expected that the return of Madame de Chevreuse would incline
+the queen to the former party. But the queen was in no hurry for that
+lady's return, knowing well what turmoils she was apt to bring in her
+train. Perhaps I urged her recall more boldly than was wise; at any
+rate, I won my point, and her majesty sent me to form Madame de
+Chevreuse for her appearance at court under the new conditions.
+
+I represented to her how indispensable Cardinal Mazarin was to the
+state; that he was accused of no crime, and was guiltless of Richelieu's
+oppressions; and that the most fatal course she could take would be to
+attempt to govern the queen. Madame de Chevreuse promised to follow my
+advice, and came up to court, but her old instincts of domination were
+too much for her, and she soon declared herself openly against the
+minister who enjoyed all the queen's confidence. She even attempted his
+overthrow, and for that purpose united herself to the party known as the
+"_Importans_," which was led by the Duke of Beaufort.
+
+After various manoeuvres on the part of the cardinal and of Madame de
+Chevreuse to get the upper hand, Mazarin discovered a plot against his
+life, in which the Duke of Beaufort was implicated, and had the duke
+arrested and imprisoned. At the same time Madame de Chevreuse was sent
+away to Tours, and as I was unwilling to promise that I would have no
+more to do with her, I lost the favour of the queen, provoked the
+cardinal's displeasure, and soon found that Madame de Chevreuse herself
+was forgetful of all I had done for her.
+
+Kept in idleness, tantalised by promises of office which were never
+fulfilled, and forbidden even to follow the wars, my wretched position
+led me at last to seek some way of showing my resentment at the
+treatment I had received from the queen and cardinal. The means were at
+hand. Like many others, I had come under the spell of the beauty and
+charm of Madame de Longueville, and thus come gradually into association
+with the party of the Fronde. I followed the Duke of Enghien, her
+brother, to the attack on Courtray, then to Mardick, where I was
+wounded; and this time of military service united me more closely to his
+later interests.
+
+By the year 1647 everyone was weary of Mazarin's rule. His bad faith,
+his weakness, and his trickiness were becoming known, provinces and
+towns alike were groaning under taxation, and the citizens of Paris were
+reduced to mere despair. Parliament tried respectful remonstrances in
+vain; the cardinal thought himself safe in the servility of the nation.
+But the great majority in France desired a change, and then smouldering
+discontent soon burst into a flame.
+
+The Duke of Enghien, who had become, by the death of his father, Prince
+of Conde, had gained in 1648 a great victory in Flanders, and a solemn
+thanksgiving was held in Notre Dame to celebrate it. Mazarin chose this
+moment for the arrest of Broussel and other members of parliament who
+had voiced most urgently the public distress. The action roused Paris to
+a fury which astonished him; the people sought him to tear him to
+pieces; barricades were erected in the streets, and the king and queen
+were besieged in the royal palace. Resistance to the parliament's
+demands were at the moment impossible; the prisoners had to be released.
+
+I was at this time absent from Paris, having been sent down by the queen
+to my government at Poitou, which I had purchased; the province was
+almost in insurrection and I had to pacify it. I happened to be deeply
+wounded by a new slight which Cardinal Mazarin had put upon me, when
+Madame de Longueville sent for me to come to Paris, informing me that
+the whole plan for a civil war had been drawn up, and asking for my
+counsel in the matter. The news delighted me, and I arrived at the
+capital eager for my revenge on the queen and the cardinal.
+
+Mazarin, on the other hand, had formed his plan. Realising that Paris
+was unsafe, he determined to leave it, to place the king at
+Saint-Germain, and to lay siege to the city, which would soon be reduced
+to famine and dissensions. Their escape was made at midnight on the eve
+of Epiphany, 1649, all the court following in great disorder.
+
+The city was for a time in much perplexity, but the arrival of the Duke
+of Beaufort, who had broken prison at Vincennes, put heart into the
+people, who took him for their liberator. Other great personages threw
+in their lot with the popular cause; a large war-chest was quickly
+raised and troops were levied, and the parliament of Paris put itself
+into communication with the other parliaments of the kingdom. All
+preparations were made for a civil war, the real basis of which was a
+general hatred of Cardinal Mazarin, which was common to both parties. In
+an early engagement outside the city I was so gravely wounded as to see
+no more of this war, the events of which are hardly worth narrating. On
+April 1, 1649, the Parliament received an amnesty from the king. Neither
+party had vanquished the other; the cardinal and the parliament were
+each as strong as before, but everyone was glad to be rid, for the time,
+of the horrors of civil war.
+
+
+_Wars of the Fronde_
+
+
+The Prince of Conde, who had great influence in the council, showed
+himself so contemptuous to Mazarin, and became so inconvenient to the
+queen by his arrogance that she decided to arrest him, and to involve
+Madame de Longueville, the duke, her husband, and the Prince of Conti in
+the same disgrace. Accordingly, on January 18, 1650, the Prince of
+Conde, the Duke of Longueville, and the Prince of Conti were seized and
+imprisoned at Vincennes, and the order was given at the same time to
+arrest Madame de Longueville and myself. But we succeeded in escaping
+together to Dieppe, where we were forced to separate; Madame de
+Longueville found refuge at Stenay, where she met with Turenne, and I
+returned to my government of Poitou and formed an alliance there with
+the Duke of Bouillon, Turenne's brother. Together the duke and I matured
+designs which led to the civil war in the south.
+
+My father having died at Verteuil in March, 1650, I succeeded to the
+title of Duke of La Rochefoucauld. I invited a large number of nobles
+and gentlemen of that region to the funeral ceremonies; our plans were
+put before them; though some of them held back, most were favourable;
+and I soon found myself at the head of a force of two thousand horse and
+eight hundred foot. The Duke of Bouillon and I were joined by the young
+Princess of Conde, with her son the Duke of Enghien; we gathered more
+troops at Turenne, and marched upon Bordeaux. After overcoming some
+opposition, the princess entered that city in triumph on May 31, 1650,
+and we joined her a few days later.
+
+The grievance of the princess and the presence of her son excited the
+liveliest enthusiasm, and the party opposed to Mazarin had entire
+mastery of the town. The revolt of Bordeaux carried with it almost all
+Guienne, and Mazarin determined to crush it before it should extend to
+the neighbouring provinces. A royal army of veterans was sent down,
+Bordeaux was closely invested, an obstinate defence was made, but the
+town had to capitulate on September 28, on the condition of an amnesty
+to the princess and her adherents.
+
+Meanwhile Turenne, with a Spanish force, had made a vain attempt to
+rescue the captive princes, and Mazarin had removed them to Havre, where
+the government was devoted to him. There was now such general dread and
+hatred of the cardinal, that people were willing to unite with those
+whom they had considered their mortal enemies in order to secure his
+ruin. In the early days of 1651 I was summoned to Paris by the Princess
+Palatine, who united a taste for gallantry with a remarkable talent for
+intrigue, and remained for some time hidden in her house, where I was
+witness to many consultations for the removal of Mazarin from power. I
+even made a last attempt to persuade the cardinal himself to release the
+princes; in four nocturnal interviews I tried to show him how all
+parties were uniting to compass his ruin, but was unable to convince him
+without betraying secrets which were not my own. Mazarin gave me no hope
+of their liberation.
+
+Then arose a general storm against the minister, and he made his escape
+on the night of February 7. The queen would have followed him with her
+son, but the Frondeurs and the partisans of the princes kept her
+prisoner in her palace. Without any hope of assistance, and daunted day
+and night by an infuriated populate, she sent for me and gave me an
+order to the governor of Havre to release the princes immediately. I
+warned the leaders of the Fronde that her sincerity was not above
+suspicion, and that all depended upon her close imprisonment, and so set
+out along the northern road upon my mission. But the cardinal had been
+beforehand with me, the princes were at liberty, and on February 16 they
+entered Paris in triumph.
+
+Mazarin, who had fled to Cologne, whence he continued to direct the
+queen's cabinet, returned to France at the head of a small army in
+January, 1652, and arrived at Poitiers without meeting any resistance.
+The party opposed to him was rent by faction and strife, but the Prince
+of Conde united it, and fought an indecisive engagement with the royal
+troops on April 8. On the 11th the prince and I were well received in
+Paris, but it was evident that the citizens were weary of all these
+troubles, desired nothing so much as the king's return, and detested the
+ambition of the leaders of faction. Indeed, the magistrates were
+negotiating with Mazarin, and declared the city neutral. On July 2 the
+Prince of Conde was marching his force from Saint-Cloud to Charenton
+when he was attacked by Turenne; and in the sanguinary combat which
+followed, and in which I was fighting beside the prince, I received a
+wound in the head which prevented my taking any further part in these
+disturbances.
+
+Shortly afterwards, the Prince of Conde, his popularity wholly gone,
+took service under the King of Spain; King Louis XIV., amid general
+acclamations, returned to Paris on October 21; and Cardinal Mazarin,
+having overcome all his enemies, entered the capital in a veritable
+triumph, in February, 1653.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MADAME DE SEVIGNE
+
+
+Letters
+
+
+     Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, who became Madame de Sevigne, was
+     born at Paris on February 6, 1626. Her father and mother died
+     during her childhood and Marie was left to the care of her
+     uncle, priest of Coulanges; she received an admirable
+     education and became a great lover of history and of classical
+     literature. At eighteen years of age she married the Marquis
+     Henri de Sevigne, who was killed in a duel in 1651, and
+     thenceforth Madame de Sevigne gave herself up altogether to
+     the care of her two children. Her wit, her kindliness, and
+     happiness, her charity and fidelity, and especially a certain
+     rare genius for friendship, won for her the warm devotion of
+     many great people of that brilliant age. Her daughter was
+     married in 1669 to the Comte de Grignan, a great official,
+     lieutenant-general of Languedoc and then of Provence, a man of
+     honour, but accustomed to the most lavish expenditure, which
+     burdened his life with enormous debts. The famous "Letters" of
+     Madame de Sevigne numbering over 1,000 were written over a
+     period of twenty-five years, chiefly to this daughter, Madame
+     de Grignan. They are valued for their vivacious and graceful
+     style, the light which they throw upon the thoughts and
+     movements of her time, but especially for their revelation of
+     a wonderfully sweet and gracious personality. Madame de
+     Sevigne died on April 18, 169696.
+
+
+_Love for her Daughter_
+
+
+My dear child: I have been here but three hours, and already take my pen
+to talk to you. I left Paris with the Abbe, Helene, Hebert and Marphise,
+so that I might get away from the noise and bustle of the town until
+Thursday evening. I want to have perfect quietness, in which to reflect.
+I intend to fast for many good reasons, and to walk much to make up for
+the long time I have spent in my room; and above all, I want to
+discipline myself for the love of God.
+
+But, my dear daughter, what I shall do more than all this, will be to
+think of you. I have not ceased to do so since I arrived here; and being
+quite unable to restrain my feelings, I have betaken myself to the
+little shady walk you so loved, to write to you, and am sitting on the
+mossy bank where you so often used to lie. But, my dear, where in this
+place have I not seen you? Do not thoughts of you haunt my heart
+everywhere I turn?--in the house, in the church, in the field, in the
+garden--every spot speaks to me of you. You are in my thoughts all the
+time, and my heart cries out for you again and again. I search in vain
+for the dear, dear child I love so passionately; but she is 600 miles
+away, and I cannot call her to my side. My tears fall, and I cannot stop
+them. I know it is weak, but this tenderness for you is right and
+natural and I cannot be strong.
+
+I wonder what your mood will be when you receive this letter; perhaps at
+that moment you will not be touched with the emotions I now feel so
+poignantly, and then you may not read it in the spirit in which it was
+written. But against that I cannot guard, and the act of writing
+relieves my feelings at the moment--that is at least what I ask of it.
+You would not believe the condition into which this place has thrown me.
+
+Do not refer to my weakness, I beg of you; but you must love me, and
+have respect for my tears, since they flow from a heart which is full of
+you.
+
+
+_The Brinvilliers Affair_
+
+
+The Brinvilliers affair is still the only thing talked of in Paris. The
+Marquise confessed to having poisoned her father, her brothers, and one
+of her children. The Chevalier Duget had been one of those who had
+partaken of a poisoned dish of pigeon-pie; and when the Brinvilliers was
+told three years later that he was still alive, her only remark was
+"that man surely has an excellent constitution." It seems she fell
+deeply in love with Sainte Croix, an officer in the regiment of her
+husband, the Marquis, who lived in their house. Believing that Sainte
+Croix would marry her if she were free, she attempted to poison her
+husband. Sainte Croix, not reciprocating her desire, administered an
+antidote, and thus saved the poor Marquis's life.
+
+And now, all is over. The Brinvilliers is no more. Judgment was given
+yesterday and this morning her sentence was read to her--she was to make
+a public confession in front of Notre Dame, after which she was to be
+executed, her body burnt and her ashes scattered to the winds. She was
+threatened with torture, but said it was unnecessary and that she would
+tell all. Accordingly she recounted the history of her whole life, which
+was even more horrible than anyone had imagined, and I could not hear of
+it without shuddering.
+
+At six in the morning she was led out, barefoot, and clad only in one
+loose garment, with a halter round her neck. From Notre Dame she was
+carried back in the same Tumbril, in which I saw her lying on straw,
+with the Doctor on one side of her and the executioner on the other; the
+sight of her struck me with horror. I am told that she mounted the
+scaffold with a firm step, and died as she had lived, resolutely, and
+without fear or emotion.
+
+She asked her confessor to place the executioner so that she need not
+gaze on Degrais, who, you _will remember_, tracked her to England, and
+ultimately arrested her at Liege. After she had mounted the ladder to
+the scaffold she was exposed to the public for a quarter of an hour,
+while the executioner arranged her for execution. This raised a murmur
+of disapproval among the people, and it was a great cruelty. It seems
+that some say she was a saint; and after her body had been burned, the
+people crowded near to search for bones as relics, but little was to be
+found, as her ashes were thrown into the fire. And, it may be supposed,
+that we now inhale what remains of her. It is to be hoped that we shall
+not inhale her murderous instincts also.
+
+She had two confessors, of whom one counselled her to tell everything,
+the other nothing. She laughed, and said, "I may in conscience do what
+pleases me best."
+
+I was pleased to hear what you think of this horrible woman; it is not
+possible that she should be in Paradise; her vile soul must be separated
+from others.
+
+
+_Devotion_
+
+
+You ask me if I am devout. Alas! No, which is a sorrow to me; but I am
+in a way detached from what is called the world. Old age, and a little
+sickness give one time to reflect. But, my dear child, what I do not
+give to the world, I give to you; so that I hardly advance in the region
+of detachment; and you know the true way towards a devout life lies in
+some degree of effacement, first of all, of that which our heart holds
+dearest.
+
+One of my great desires is to become devout. Every day I am tormented by
+this idea. I do not belong to God, neither do I belong to the Devil;
+this indecision is a perpetual torment to me, although between
+ourselves, I believe this state to be a most natural one. One does not
+belong to the Devil, because one fears God: also, one does not belong to
+God, because His law is hard, and one does not like to renounce oneself.
+These are the luke-warm, and their great number does not surprise me at
+all; I can enter into their reasonings; but God hates them; therefore we
+must cease to serve in this state--and there is the difficulty.
+
+I am overwhelmed by the death of M. du Mans; I had never thought of
+death in connection with him. Yet he has died of a trifling fever,
+without having had time to think either of heaven or of earth.
+Providence sometimes shows its authority by sudden visitations, from
+which we should profit.
+
+What you say as to the anxieties which we so often and so naturally feel
+about the future, and as to how our inclinations are insensibly changed
+by necessity, is a subject worthy of a book like Pascal's; nothing is so
+satisfying, nothing so useful as meditations of this kind. But how many
+people of your age think this? I know of none; and I honour your sound
+reasoning and courage. With me it is not so, especially when my heart
+afflicts me; my words are indifferently good; I write as those who speak
+well; but the depth of my feeling kills me. This I feel when I write to
+you of the pain of separation. I have not myself found the proverb true,
+"To cloak oneself according to the cold." I have no cloak against cold
+like this. Yet I manage to find occupation, and the time passes somehow.
+But in general it is true that our thoughts and inclinations turn into
+other channels, and our sorrows cease to be such.
+
+
+_Love of Life_
+
+
+You ask me, dear child, if I am still in love with life. I must confess
+that I find its sorrows grievous, but my distaste for death is even
+stronger. It is sad to think I must finish my life with death, and if it
+were possible I would retrace my steps. I find myself embarked on life
+without my consent, and am in a perplexing situation. I shall have to
+take leave of life, and the fact overwhelms me: for how, or by what
+gate, shall I pass away? When will death come, and in what disposition
+will it find me? Shall I suffer a thousand pains which will make me die
+in despair? Shall I die in a transport of joy? Shall I die of an
+accident? How shall I stand before God? What shall I have to offer Him?
+Shall I return to Him in fear and necessity, and be conscious of no
+other feeling but terror? What can I hope for? Am I worthy of Paradise?
+Or worthy only of Hell? What an alternative! What perplexity! Nothing is
+so mad as to leave one's safety thus in uncertainty; but nothing is more
+natural; and the foolish life I lead is perfectly easy to understand. I
+plunge myself into these thoughts; and I find death so terrible, that I
+hate life more because it leads to death, than because it leads me
+through troublesome places. You will say I wish to live for ever. Not at
+all; but if I had been asked, I would willingly have died in my nurse's
+arms, for I should thus have avoided many sorrows and would have secured
+heaven with certainty and ease.
+
+
+_The Order of God_
+
+
+Providence wills order; but if order is nothing other than the will of
+God, almost all that occurs is done against His will: all the
+persecutions, for instance, against St. Athanasius; all the prosperity
+of ill-doers and tyrants--all this is against order and therefore
+against the will of God. We must surely hold to what St. Augustine says,
+that God permits all these things so that he may manifest His glory by
+means that are unknown to us. St. Augustine knows no rule nor order but
+the will of God. If we did not follow this doctrine, we should be forced
+to conclude that almost everything is contrary to the will of Him who
+made it, and this seems to me a dreadful conclusion.
+
+I should like to complain to Father Malebranche about the mice which eat
+everything here; is that in order? Sugar, fruit, preserves, everything
+is devoured by them. And was it order last year, that miserable
+caterpillars destroyed the leaves of our forest-trees and gardens, and
+all the fruit in the country-side? Father Payen, most peaceable of men,
+has his head broken; is that order? Yes, Father, all that is doubtless
+good. God knows how to dispose of it to His glory, though we know not
+how. We must take it as true, for if we do not regard the will of God as
+equivalent to all law and order, we fall into great difficulties.
+
+You are such a philosopher, my very dear child, that there is no way of
+being happy with you. Your mind runs on beyond our hopes to picture to
+itself the loss of all we hope for; and you see, in our meetings, the
+inevitable separation that is to follow. Surely that is not the way to
+deal with the good things Providence prepares for us; we should rather
+husband and enjoy them. But after having made this little reproach, I
+must confess in all honesty that I deserve it just as much as you. No
+one can be more daunted than I am by the flight of time, nor feel more
+keenly beforehand the griefs which ordinarily follow pleasures. Indeed,
+my daughter, life mingles its good and ill: when one has what one
+desires, one is all the nearer to losing it; when it is further from us,
+we dream of finding it. So we must just take things as God sends them.
+For my part, I would cherish the hope of seeing you without mixing in
+with other feelings; and look forward to holding you in my arms next
+month. I wish to believe God will allow us this perfect joy, although it
+would be the easiest thing in the world to mix it with bitterness, if we
+so desired. All that remains, my very dear one, is to breathe and to
+live.
+
+
+_The Prince of Orange and England_
+
+
+The Prince of Orange has declared himself protector of the religion of
+England, and has asked to have charge of the education of the young
+Prince. It is a bold step, and several of the English nobility have
+joined him. We are all hoping that the Prince of Orange has made a
+mistake, and that King James II. will give him a good beating. He has
+received the Milords, confirmed the attachment of those most devoted to
+him, and has declared entire liberty of conscience. But we understand
+that the King of England has united all his people round him, by
+affording a greater degree of religious liberty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What shall we say of this English nation? Its customs and manners go
+from bad to worse. The King of England has escaped from London,
+apparently by kind permission of the Prince of Orange; the Queen will
+arrive at St. Germain in a day or two. It is quite certain that war will
+be declared against us soon, if indeed we are not the first to declare
+it. We are sending the Abbe Testu to St. Germain to help in establishing
+there the King and Queen of England and the Prince of Wales. Our King of
+France has behaved quite divinely to these Majesties of England; for to
+comfort and sustain, as he has done, a betrayed and abandoned king, is
+to act in the image of the Almighty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is good news that the King of England has left this morning for
+Ireland, where they are anxiously awaiting him. He will be better there
+than here. He is travelling through Brittany like lightning, and at
+Brest he will find Marshall d'Estree with transport and frigates ready.
+He carries large treasure, and the King has given him arms for ten
+thousand men; as his Majesty of England was saying good-bye, he said,
+laughing, that he had forgotten arms for himself, and our King gave him
+his own. Our heroes of romance have done nothing more gallant. What will
+not this brave and unfortunate King accomplish with these ever
+victorious weapons? He goes forth with the helmet and cuirass of Renaud,
+Amadis, and our most illustrious paladins, supported by unexampled
+generosity and magnanimity.
+
+
+_Old Age_
+
+
+So you have been struck by Madame de la Fayette's words, inspired by so
+much friendliness. I never let myself forget the fact that I am growing
+old; but I must confess that I was simply astonished at what she said,
+because I do not yet feel any infirmity to keep me in mind of my
+advancing years. I think of them, however, and find that life offers us
+hard conditions: here have I been led, in spite of myself, to the fatal
+period at which one must die--old age. I see it; old age has stolen upon
+me; and my only desire is to go no further. I do not want to travel
+along that road of infirmities, pains, the loss of memory, the
+disfigurements to which I look forward as an outrage; yet I hear a voice
+saying in my ear--"You must pass down that road, whether you like it or
+not, or else you must die"; and this second alternative is as repugnant
+to nature as the first. This is the inevitable lot of whoever advances
+too far along the course of life. Yet, a return to God's will, and
+submission to that universal law which has condemned us all to death, is
+enough to seat reason again on her throne, and to give us patience. Do
+you too have patience, my darling; don't let your love, too tender,
+cause you tears which your reason must condemn.
+
+Your brother has come under the Empire of Ninon de Lenclos; I fear it
+will bring evil; she ruined his father. We must recommend him to God.
+Christian women, or at least who wish to be so, cannot see disorder like
+his without sorrow.
+
+But what a dangerous person this Ninon is! She finds that your brother
+has the simplicity of a dove, and is like his mother; it is Madame de
+Grignan who has all the salt of the family, and is not so simple as to
+be ruled. Someone, meaning to take your part, tried to correct her
+notion of you, but Ninon contradicted him and said she knew you better.
+What a corrupt creature! Because you are beautiful and spirited she must
+needs add to you another quality without which, on her principles, you
+cannot be perfect. I have been deeply troubled by the harm she is doing
+to my son. But do not speak of the matter to him; Madame de la Fayette
+and I are doing our best to extricate him from his perilous attachment.
+
+We have been reading for our amusement those little Provincial Letters.
+Heavens, what charm they have! How eagerly my son reads them! I always
+think of my daughter, and how worthy of her is the incomparable justice
+of their reasoning; but your brother says that you complain that the
+writer is always saying the same thing. Well, well; all the better! Is
+it possible that there should be a more perfect style, or a finer, more
+delicate or more natural raillery? Could anything be more worthy of
+comparison with Plato's "Dialogues"? But after the first ten letters,
+what earnestness, solidity, force and eloquence! What love for God and
+for truth, what exquisite skill in maintaining it and making it
+understood, characterise these eight last letters with their so
+different tone! I understand that you have read them only hurriedly,
+enjoying the more amusing passages; but that is not how one reads them
+at leisure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+
+The Life of Nelson
+
+
+     Robert Southey, man of letters and poet-laureate, was born at
+     Bristol on August 12, 1774, and received at various schools a
+     desultory education, which he completed by an idle year at
+     Oxford. Here he became acquainted with Coleridge; and Southey,
+     who had practised verse from early boyhood, and acquired a
+     strong taste for the drama, being also an ardent republican
+     and romanticist, was easily enlisted by the elder poet in his
+     scheme for a model republic, or "Pantisocracy," in the wilds
+     of America. They married two sisters, the Misses Fricker, and
+     a third sister married Robert Lovel, also a poet. The
+     experiment of pantisocracy was fortunately never carried out,
+     and Southey's career for the next eight years was exceedingly
+     fragmentary; but in 1803 there was a reunion of the three
+     sisters at Keswick, though one of the husbands, Lovel, was
+     dead. Here Southey entered steadily and industriously on the
+     life of an author for livelihood; it was by no means
+     unremunerative. Southey's output of work, both prose and
+     verse, was very voluminous, and its quality could not but
+     suffer. He was appointed poet-laureate in 1813; and received a
+     government pension of L160 a year from 1807, which was
+     increased by L300 a year in 1835. He died on March 21, 1843.
+     In a prefatory note to that peerless model of short
+     biographies, the "Life of Nelson," which appeared in 1813, and
+     is considered his most important work, Southey describes it as
+     "clear and concise enough to become a manual for the young
+     sailor, which he may carry about with him till he has
+     treasured up the example in his memory and in his heart."
+
+
+_I.--A Captain at Twenty_
+
+
+Horatio, son of Edmund and Catherine Nelson, was born on September 29,
+1758, in the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, a Norfolk village, where his
+father was rector. His mother's maiden name was Suckling; her
+grandmother was an elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, and this child
+was named after his godfather, the first Lord Walpole. Mrs. Nelson died
+in 1767, leaving eight children, and her brother, Captain Maurice
+Suckling, R.N., visited the widower, and promised to take care of one of
+the boys.
+
+Three years later, when Horatio was twelve years old, he read in the
+newspaper that his uncle was appointed to the Raisonnable, and urged his
+father to let him go to sea with his Uncle Maurice.
+
+The boy was never strong, but he had already given proofs of a resolute
+heart and a noble mind. Captain Suckling took an interest in him, and
+sent him on a first voyage in a merchant ship to the West Indies, and
+then, as coxswain, with the Arctic expedition of 1773, when Horatio
+showed his courage by attacking a Polar bear.
+
+A voyage to the East Indies followed, and gave him the rank of
+midshipman. But the tropical climate reduced him almost to a skeleton;
+he lost for a time the use of his limbs, and was sent home as his only
+chance of life. He returned under great depression of spirits. In later
+years he related how the despair was cleared away by a glow of
+patriotism, in which his king and country came vividly before his mind.
+"Well, then," he exclaimed, "I will be a hero, and, confiding in
+Providence, I will brave every danger!"
+
+On April 8, 1777, he passed his examination for a lieutenancy, and was
+appointed to the Lowestoft frigate, Captain Locker, then fitting out for
+Jamaica. Privateers under American colours were harassing British trade
+in the West Indies, and Nelson saw much active service. He was removed
+to the Bristol flagship, then to the command of the Badger, then to the
+Hinchinbrook, and before the age of twenty-one he had gained a rank
+which brought all the honours of the service within his reach.
+
+An expedition was at this time projected to seize the region of Lake
+Nicaragua, and thus to cut the communication of the Spaniards between
+their northern and southern possessions; and in pursuit of this policy
+Nelson was sent with a small force, early in 1780, to Honduras. Here,
+after deeds of great gallantry, his command was almost annihilated by
+the deadly climate, and he himself was so reduced by dysentery that he
+was compelled to return to England.
+
+His next ship was the Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, in which he was
+kept, to his great annoyance, in the North Sea for the whole winter of
+1781-2, and was sent in the spring to Quebec. The Albemarle then served
+on the West Indian station until tidings came that the preliminaries of
+peace had been signed, and she returned to England, and was paid off in
+1783.
+
+"I have closed the war," said Nelson, in one of his letters, "without a
+fortune; but there is not a speck on my character. True honour, I hope,
+predominated in my mind far above riches." He did not apply for a ship,
+because he was not wealthy enough to live on board in the manner which
+was then customary.
+
+But, after living for a time in lodgings in St. Omer's in France, he was
+appointed to the Boreas, going to the Leeward Islands, and on his
+arrival in the West Indies in 1784, found himself senior captain, and
+therefore second in command on that station.
+
+The Americans were at this time trading with our islands, taking
+advantage of the register of their ships, which had been issued while
+they were British subjects. Nelson knew that, by the Navigation Act, no
+foreigners, directly or indirectly, were permitted to carry on any trade
+with these possessions; and also that the Americans had made themselves
+foreigners with regard to England.
+
+Contrary to the orders both of the admiral and of the governor, he
+insisted that our ships of war were not sent abroad to make a show of,
+and seized four American vessels at Nevis; and when the matter was
+brought into court at that place he pleaded his own cause, and the ships
+were condemned.
+
+While the lawsuit was proceeding, Nelson formed an attachment to a young
+widow, Mrs. Nisbet, niece of the President of Nevis, and was married to
+her on March 11, 1787. She was then in her eighteenth year, and had one
+child, a son, Josiah, who was three years old. They returned together to
+England and took up their abode at the old parsonage, where Nelson
+amused himself with farming and country sports, and continued a
+relentless campaign against the speculators and fraudulent contractors
+attached to the naval service in the West Indies. After many vain
+attempts to secure a ship, he was at last appointed, on January 30,
+1793, to the Agamemnon, sixty-four guns.
+
+
+_II.--In the Mediterranean_
+
+
+The Agamemnon was ordered to the Mediterranean under Lord Hood, and
+Nelson was sent with despatches to Sir William Hamilton, our envoy to
+the court of Naples. Sir William, after his first interview with him,
+told Lady Hamilton that he was about to introduce a little man to her
+who could not boast of being very handsome, but who would one day
+astonish the world. Thus that acquaintance began which ended in the
+destruction of Nelson's domestic happiness, though it threatened no such
+consequences then. Here also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan
+court which led to the only blot on Nelson's public character.
+
+Having accomplished this mission, Nelson was sent to join Commodore
+Linzee at Tunis, and shortly afterwards to co-operate with General Paoli
+and the Anti-Gallican party in Corsica. At this time, 1794, Nelson was
+able to say, "My seamen are now what British seamen ought to be, almost
+invincible. They really mind shot no more than peas." And again, after
+capturing Bastia, "I am all astonishment when I reflect on what we have
+achieved! I was always of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never
+had any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three
+Frenchmen." The Agamemnon was then dispatched to co-operate in the siege
+of Calvi with General Sir Charles Stuart, at which Nelson lost the sight
+of one eye; and later played a glorious part in the attack by Admiral
+Hotham's squadron on the French fleet. This action saved Corsica for the
+time.
+
+Nelson was made colonel of marines in 1795, a mark of approbation which
+he had long wished for; and the Agamemnon was ordered to Genoa, to
+co-operate with the Austrian and Sardinian forces. The incapacity and
+misconduct of the Austrian General de Vins, however, gave the enemy
+possession of the Genoese coast. The Agamemnon, therefore, could no
+longer be useful on this station, and Nelson sailed for Leghorn to
+refit, and then joined the Mediterranean fleet under Sir John Jervis.
+
+England at that time depended too much on the rotten governments of the
+Continent, and too little upon itself. Corsica was therefore abandoned
+by Britain, and Nelson, after superintending the evacuation of Corsica,
+was ordered to hoist his broad pennant on board the Minerva frigate. He
+then sailed for Gibraltar, and proceeded westward in search of the
+admiral.
+
+
+_III.--St. Vincent and the Nile_
+
+
+Off the mouth of the Straits of Gilbraltar he fell in with the Spanish
+fleet; and on February 13, 1797, reaching the station off Cape St.
+Vincent, he communicated this intelligence to Sir John Jervis, and was
+directed to shift his broad pennant on board the Captain. On the
+following morning was fought the battle of Cape St. Vincent. The British
+had only fifteen ships of the line against twenty-seven Spanish ships,
+but Britain, largely through Nelson's intrepidity, secured an
+overwhelming victory. The commander-in-chief was rewarded with the title
+of Earl St. Vincent, and Nelson was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral
+and received the Order of the Bath.
+
+Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson was now removed to the Theseus, and was
+employed in the blockade of Cadiz, where he went through the most
+perilous action in which he was ever engaged. Making a night attack upon
+the Spanish gunboats, his barge, carrying twelve men, was attacked by an
+armed launch carrying twenty-six men; the admiral was only saved by the
+heroic devotion of his coxswain; but eighteen of the enemy were killed,
+the rest wounded, and their launch taken.
+
+Twelve days later Nelson sailed at the head of an expedition against
+Teneriffe, and on the night of July 24, 1797, made a boat attack on the
+port of Santa Cruz. On this occasion he was wounded in the right elbow,
+and the arm had to be amputated. The small force, which had made its way
+into the town, capitulated on honourable terms, and the Spanish governor
+distinguished himself by the most humane and generous conduct to his
+enemies. There is no doubt that Nelson's life was saved by the careful
+attentions of his stepson, Nisbet, who was with him in the boat.
+
+Nisbet was immediately promoted, and honours awaited Nelson in England.
+The freedom of the cities of Bristol and London were conferred on him,
+and he received a pension of L1,000 a year. He had performed an
+extraordinary series of services during the war; including four actions
+with the fleets of the enemy, three actions with boats employed in
+cutting out of harbour, and in taking three towns; he had commanded the
+batteries at the sieges of Bastia and Calvi, he had assisted at the
+capture of twenty-eight ships of war, and had taken and destroyed nearly
+fifty merchant vessels; and had been engaged against the enemy upwards
+of a hundred and twenty times, in which service he had lost his right
+eye and right arm.
+
+Early in 1789, Sir Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and
+left England to rejoin Earl St. Vincent. He was dispatched to the
+Mediterranean, to ascertain the object of Bonaparte's great expedition,
+then fitting out at Toulon; and sailed from Gibraltar on May 9 with
+three ships of the line, four frigates, and a sloop. The Vanguard was
+dismantled in a storm, but was refitted in the Sardinian harbour of St.
+Pietro, and was joined by a reinforcement of eleven ships from Earl St.
+Vincent.
+
+The first news of the enemy's armament was that it had surprised Malta,
+but Nelson soon heard that they had left that island on June 16, and
+judged that Egypt was their destination. He arrived off Alexandria on
+the 28th, but did not find them; returned by a circuitous course to
+Sicily, then sailed to the Morea, where he gained news of the French,
+and on August I came in sight of Alexandria and the French fleet.
+"Before this time to-morrow," he said to his officers, "I shall have
+gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey."
+
+Bonaparte's ships of war, under Admiral Brueys, were moored in Aboukir
+Bay in a strong line of battle; and the advantage of numbers, both in
+ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. Yet only four French
+ships out of seventeen escaped, and the victory was the most complete
+and glorious in the annals of naval history.
+
+Nelson was now at the summit of his glory; and congratulations, rewards,
+and honours were showered upon him by all the states, princes, and
+powers to whom his victory had given respite. He was created Baron
+Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, with a pension of L2,000 a
+year for his own life, and those of his successors; a grant of L10,000
+was voted to him by the East India Company; and the King of Naples made
+him Duke of Bronte.
+
+
+_IV.--Lady Hamilton_
+
+
+As soon as his shattered frame had sufficiently recovered, Nelson was
+called to services of greater importance than any one in which he had
+been hitherto employed.
+
+The kindest attentions and warmest affection were awaiting him at
+Naples; the king, the queen, and Lady Hamilton, who was the queen's
+constant favourite, welcomed their hero and deliverer with the most
+splendid festivities. General Mack, with whom Nelson was to co-operate,
+was at the head of the Neapolitan troops; and while he marched with
+32,000 men into the Roman state, 5,000 Neapolitans were embarked on the
+British and Portuguese squadron to take possession of Leghorn.
+
+Nelson's fears of the result were soon verified. "The Neapolitan
+officers," he said, "did not lose much honour, for God knows they had
+not much to lose--but they lost all they had." The French in the Roman
+State routed the cowardly Neapolitans. There was a strong revolutionary
+party in Naples itself; and it was agreed that the royal family must
+seek safety in flight. Their secret escape, with much treasure, on board
+the Vanguard, was conducted with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton,
+and Nelson conveyed them through a wild storm to Palermo.
+
+He had by this time formed an infatuated attachment for Lady Hamilton,
+which totally weaned his affections from his wife. He was dissatisfied
+with himself and weary of the world. But, in accordance with his
+principle of duty "to assist in driving the French to the devil and in
+restoring peace and happiness to mankind," he at length expelled the
+French from Naples and restored Ferdinand to his throne. Weak in health,
+dispirited, and smarting under a censure from the Admiralty for a
+disobedience to orders, Nelson resigned his command, and reached England
+in November 1800, having travelled with Sir William and Lady Hamilton.
+
+The great admiral was welcomed to England with every mark of popular
+honour; but he had forfeited domestic happiness for ever. Before he had
+been three months at home, he separated from Lady Nelson, vowing that
+there was nothing in her or in her conduct that he could have wished
+otherwise.
+
+In January 1801 he was sent to the Baltic as second in command under Sir
+Hyde Parker. Russia, Denmark, and Sweden had founded a confederacy for
+making England resign her naval rights, and the British Cabinet decided
+instantly to crush it. The fleet sailed on March 12; Nelson represented
+to Sir Hyde Parker the necessity of attacking Copenhagen; and on April 2
+the British vessels opened fire on the Danish fleet and land batteries.
+The Danes, in return, fought their guns manfully, and at one o'clock,
+after three hours' endurance, Sir Hyde Parker gave the signal for
+discontinuing action. Nelson ordered that signal to be acknowledged, but
+continued to fly the signal for close action. "You know, Foley," he
+said, turning to the captain of the ship, "I have only one eye; I have a
+right to be blind sometimes!" Then, putting the glass to his blind eye,
+in the mood that sports with bitterness, he exclaimed, "I really do not
+see the signal. Keep mine for closer battle flying! That's the way I
+answer such signals. Nail mine to that mast!" Admiral Graves disobeyed
+in like manner, and the other ships of the line also continued the
+action. The victory was soon complete, and Sir Hyde Parker heartily
+expressed his satisfaction and gratitude.
+
+For the battle of Copenhagen, Nelson was raised to the rank of viscount.
+Had he lived long enough, he would have fought his way up to a dukedom.
+
+After holding a command in the English Channel, to watch the
+preparations which were being made at Boulogne for an invasion of
+England, Nelson retired on the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens to his
+estate at Merton, in Surrey, meaning to pass his days there in the
+society of Sir William and Lady Hamilton. Sir William died early in
+1803, and, as the government would do nothing for her, Nelson settled on
+Lady Hamilton a sum equal to the pension of L1,200 a year which her
+husband had enjoyed. A few weeks after this event the war was renewed,
+and the day after his majesty's message to parliament, Nelson departed
+to take command of the Mediterranean fleet.
+
+He took his station immediately off Toulon, and there, with incessant
+vigilance, waited for the coming out of the enemy. From May 1803 to
+August 1805 he left the Victory only three times, each time upon the
+king's service, and on no occasion for more than an hour.
+
+War having been declared between England and Spain, the Toulon fleet,
+having the Spaniards to co-operate with them, put to sea on January 18,
+1804. Nelson, who was off Sardinia when he heard the news the next day,
+sought them in vain through the Mediterranean, until he heard that they
+had been dispersed by a gale, and had returned to Toulon. On March 31
+they emerged again, and passed out of the Straits of Gibraltar, but the
+British fleet was kept by adverse winds from reaching the Atlantic till
+April 5.
+
+The enemy had thirty-five days start on their run to the West Indies,
+and Nelson, misled by false information, sought them among the islands,
+until he learned at Antigua on June 9 that they had sailed again for
+Europe. He made all speed across the Atlantic, and again sought the
+enemy vainly, until he joined Admiral Cornwallis off Ushant on August
+15. The same evening he was ordered to proceed with the Victory and
+Superb to Portsmouth.
+
+
+_V.--Trafalgar_
+
+
+Here, at last, he heard news of the combined fleets; Sir Robert Calder
+had fallen in with them near Finisterre and had fought an indecisive
+engagement.
+
+On September 14, 1805, he passed through the crowds at Portsmouth, many
+of whom were in tears, many kneeling and blessing him as he passed. He
+arrived off Cadiz on September 29 with twenty-three ships, and on
+October 9 he sent Collingwood his plan of attack--what he called "the
+Nelson-touch." These tactics consisted in cutting through the line of
+the enemy in three places.
+
+On the morning of the 19th the enemy came out of the port of Cadiz, and
+all that day and night, and the next day, the British pursued them. At
+daybreak of the 21st, the combined fleets were distinctly seen from the
+Victory, about twelve miles to leeward. Signal was made to bear down on
+the enemy in two lines, and all sail was set, the Victory leading.
+
+Nelson now retired to his cabin and wrote in his diary a prayer
+committing himself and the British cause to Heaven, and then wrote a
+memorial setting forth Lady Hamilton's services to Britain, and leaving
+her and her daughter Horatia as a legacy to his country.
+
+Villeneuve, commanding the enemy, was a skilful seaman, and his plan of
+defence was as original as the plan of attack. He formed the fleet in a
+double line, every alternate ship being a cable's length to windward of
+her second ahead and astern. Nelson, certain of triumph, issued his last
+signal: "England expects every man to do his duty," which was received
+throughout the fleet with acclamations.
+
+The English lines, led by Nelson and by Collingwood, swept down upon the
+hostile fleet, the Victory steering for the bow of the Santissima
+Trinidad. At four minutes after twelve she opened fire, and almost
+immediately ran against the Redoubtable. Four ships, two British and two
+French, formed as compact a tier as if they had been moored together,
+their heads all lying the same way.
+
+At a quarter past one, a ball fired from the mizzen-top of the
+Redoubtable struck Nelson on the left shoulder, and he fell on his face.
+"They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said; "my backbone is shot
+through." He was carried below, laid on a pallet in the midshipmen's
+berth, and insisted that the surgeon should leave him--"for you can do
+nothing for me." He was in great pain, and expressed much anxiety for
+the event of the action, until Captain Hardy was able to tell him that
+fifteen of the enemy had been taken. Repeating that he left Lady
+Hamilton and Horatia as a legacy to his country, and exclaiming, "Thank
+God, I have done my duty!" Nelson expired.
+
+He cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MADAME DE STAAL
+
+
+Memoirs
+
+
+     Marguerite Jeanne de Launay, Baronne de Staal, was born in
+     Paris on May 30, 1684. Her father was a painter of the name of
+     Cordier who was in England when his daughter was born; and the
+     name by which she was known, de Launay, was that of her
+     mother's family. Her story is told by herself, with admirable
+     sincerity, in these Memoirs, which follow her life until the
+     year 1735, when, at the age of fifty-one, she married Baron de
+     Staal, a widower and an officer in the Guard. Her death took
+     place in Paris on June 16, 1750. Her Memoirs, first published
+     in 1755, are among the most interesting records of that
+     period, and though their historical accuracy has been doubted,
+     her portraits of persons are vivid and convincing. Her style
+     has been highly commended by Sainte-Beuve and other French
+     literary critics.
+
+
+_A Convent Child_
+
+
+If I write the record of my life, it is not because it deserves
+attention, but in order to amuse myself by my recollections. My story is
+just the opposite of the ordinary romance, wherein a girl brought up as
+a peasant becomes an illustrious princess; for I was treated in
+childhood as a person of distinction, and had to find out later that I
+was a nobody and owned nothing in the world. And so, not having been
+trained from the first to ill fortune, my spirit has always rebelled
+against the servitude in which I have had to live.
+
+My father, for some reason that I never knew, had to leave France and
+live in England; and my mother, alone in Paris and without resources,
+took me with her as an infant to find a refuge in the abbey of
+Saint-Sauveur d'Evreux in Normandy, where Madame de La Rochefoucauld,
+the abbess, received us free of charge.
+
+There was at that time a lengthy disagreement between King Louis XIV.
+and the Pope with regard to the nomination of abbesses, in consequence
+of which two ladies Mesdames de Grieu, having been disappointed of an
+expected establishment, retired to Saint-Sauveur, where they formed a
+great friendship with my mother, and became devoted to her two-year-old
+child. I was naturally very popular in the convent, and having a bright
+disposition I was educated with the utmost care.
+
+Chiefly with a view to giving me greater advantage, the elder Madame de
+Grieu sought and at length obtained the Priory of Saint-Louis at Rouen,
+and took me thither with the consent of my mother. Saint-Louis was like
+a little kingdom, where I reigned as a sovereign; the abbess and her
+sister had no thought but to satisfy my every fancy, and the whole
+convent was forced to pay court to me. All that was done for me cost me
+so little that it seemed a matter of course that I should be flattered
+and served, and at an early age I had contracted all the defects which I
+have since had to allow for in the great.
+
+This extreme indulgence would have turned my defects into vices, if
+devotion had not ruled my passions from the first. Religion was the one
+great object before my eyes; I had been well instructed in it; I read
+continually the devotional books in the convent library, and passed much
+of my time in prayer and meditation. Yet my early desire to become a nun
+passed gradually away, until I thought of it no more.
+
+Mademoiselle de Silly, an amiable and cultivated young lady whose
+actions were ruled by principles rather than by feelings, came to live
+at Saint-Louis, and I was soon attached to her with all the ardour of a
+girl's affection; her tastes became mine, and I used to read all day
+beside her. She was then studying the philosophy of Descartes, and I
+became absorbed in questions of that kind to the neglect of everything
+else, until, fearing lest they might disturb my faith, I resolutely
+banished them from my mind.
+
+I was about fourteen years old when the convent of Saint-Louis fell into
+great poverty owing to a famine which was desolating France, and the
+disaffection of the nuns was centred on me as a chief cause of
+unnecessary expense. Their complaints came to the archbishop of Rouen,
+and abbess had difficulty in keeping me with her. My helpless condition
+began to force itself on my attention; and I realised that if the abbess
+were to die I was alone and without support in the world.
+
+An unexpected event now drew me closer to Mademoiselle de Silly. Her
+mother, having come to Rouen, took her home to Silly, and invited me to
+accompany her. I accepted joyfully, and spent several months in the
+solitary and melancholy old castle. The Marquis was extremely
+economical, the Marquise very devout, and we saw few people. One visitor
+from the neighborhood, however, attracted me strongly; and as he came
+often and stayed long, my friend and I agreed that one of us had pleased
+him. When he had declared his affection, and it was not for me, I
+learned what jealousy is--a kind of horror like that of falling down
+through a fathomless abyss.
+
+During the next visit to Silly in the following year the son of the
+house arrived, and at first kept very much to himself and to his books.
+But having heard his sister and myself complaining of these unsociable
+ways, he frankly confessed his fault and amended it, and from that day
+we spent every hour together. His mind and his manner was infinitely
+agreeable; and in my successive visits to Silly we formed a delightful
+friendship which was never interrupted by more ardent feelings.
+
+
+_Thrown on the World_
+
+
+At length my dear abbess fell so dangerously ill that I saw I was about
+to lose her; and I became desolately aware that I owed her all, and that
+her death would not only leave me absolutely helpless, but would also
+deprive me of my best friend. I never knew anyone else so abundant in
+goodness, with so much sweetness, attention for others and forgetfulness
+of self, nor with such exact regard for every duty. Her death came soon,
+and it was evident that neither her sister nor I could remain at the
+convent. Several generous helpers came forward with offers of support,
+but in my uncertain position I judged it better to refuse them all. I
+was resolved to suffer any misery and servitude rather than sacrifice my
+independence, and only accepted a small loan sufficient to take me to
+Paris.
+
+I was soon in the great city, looking out for a situation as children's
+governess; fortunately, I had a taste for that occupation, and imagined
+that taste for it meant talent. I had a sister, in the household of the
+Duchess de La Ferte, and found her very amiable and helpful. With her
+assistance I went to board at a cheap rate in the convent of the
+Presentation, and she succeeded in inspiring her mistress with so
+elevated an idea of my attainments that the Duchess soon afterwards sent
+for me. After showing me off as a prodigy of learning to all her
+friends, the Duchess de La Ferte, a voluble and enthusiastic woman,
+conceived a violent affection for me, and projected innumerable schemes
+for my advancement, which ended in my being received into her own
+household as her secretary.
+
+I should have been delighted with this position if I had not remembered
+how my sister, who had gone there as her favourite, had fallen to the
+situation of chambermaid, and if I had not realised that my mistress's
+affection would probably be as short-lived as it was intemperate. It
+proved to be so indeed; it was succeeded by a hatred as violent as her
+attachment had been; and after subjecting me to every indignity she
+finally disposed of me by placing me in the household of the Duchess of
+Maine, at Sceaux.
+
+Here I inhabited a tiny room, without windows or fireplace, and so low
+that it was impossible to stand upright. I was given sewing to do, but
+my first piece of work proved my incapacity, and my extremely
+short-sight made me equally helpless in waiting on the Duchess. I was
+astonished at the patience with which she bore my awkwardness, but my
+fellow-servants, with whom I was most unpopular, were less merciful. The
+hard and thankless existence, so different from anything which I had
+been accustomed, threw me into a profound depression, until I began to
+cherish the idea of taking leave of life.
+
+But gradually my situation altered for the better. Her Serene Highness
+the Duchess began to take notice of me, and became accustomed to speak
+to me and to take interest and pleasure in my replies. She had now
+succeeded in raising her family to rank equal to her own, and by a
+famous edict her children and their descendants had been brought within
+the succession to the crown. Her delight in amusements and in pageants
+was now at its highest, and it happened that the Abbe de Vaubrun,
+designing a spectacular piece in honor of Night, confided to me the task
+of writing and delivering an epilogue in that character. My stage-fright
+spoiled my elocution, but from that day I was entrusted with the
+organisation of these magnificent entertainments, and the last of them
+was entirely designed and written by myself. By this means I came to
+take a quite different place in the household.
+
+
+_Political Intrigues_
+
+
+King Louis XIV. had been failing for some time, though every one
+pretended not to notice it; and the Duchess of Maine, ever anxious for
+the greatness of her family, was very eager to know his testamentary
+intentions. Enough was ascertained, by the help of Madame de Maintenon,
+to show that the King's dispositions were in favour of the Duke of
+Orleans, and the mistake was made of confiding to the Duke his future
+advantage. As the illness progressed, a council of regency was formed
+with the Duke of Orleans at its head, and when the King died the Duke
+was appointed Regent by Parliament, and the Duke of Maine was entrusted
+with the education of the young King.
+
+The Duchess of Maine, who had come up to Paris for this anxious time,
+suffered a good deal from insomnia, and now called me in to read to her
+every night. But there was more conversation than reading, and she
+poured out to me in entire confidence all her secrets, projects,
+complaints and regrets. This touching confidence made me very deeply
+attached to her; and when she and her husband removed to the Tuilleries
+to superintend the King's education, they took me with them.
+
+In defence of the interests of her family in the succession to the
+Crown, which were threatened by the Duke of Orleans, Cardinal Polignac
+and others undertook the preparation of a very learned memoir, based on
+a great mass of historical and legal precedents; the Duchess threw
+herself into the most laborious researches to assist them, and I was set
+to study ancient volumes and to correspond with all kinds of
+authorities. The great work was finished at last; it was a fine,
+well-written production; but it did not repay the trouble it had cost.
+The question was decided against the family of Maine, the edict
+conferring on them the succession to the Crown was revoked, and the rank
+of princes of the blood was taken from them.
+
+It is impossible to describe the sorrow of my mistress at this sudden
+overthrow of the fortunes of her family. She was wholly unable to
+acquiesce in it, and her illtreatment in France suggested to her the
+idea of seeking help from the King of Spain. The Baron de Walef, who was
+going to that court, undertook to represent her case there, and the
+Duchess of Maine held secret interviews with the Spanish ambassador in
+Paris. Several other persons became implicated in these intrigues; the
+Duchess became more deeply compromised than she had at first intended;
+and her interests became interwoven with other chimerical projects,
+including the restoration of the Pretender in England. These movements
+became known to the Duke of Orleans, and my mistress's intrigues were
+soon brought to an end.
+
+On December 9, 1718, we were informed that the house of the Spanish
+Ambassador was surrounded by troops, and a day or two later we learned
+that our arrest, on the charge of inciting to revolution, might be
+expected at any moment. On the 29th, we were awakened early in the
+morning to find the house full of soldiers; the Duchess was carried off
+to imprisonment at Dijon, and the Duke of Maine was immured in the
+citadel of Dourlans in Picardy.
+
+
+_In the Bastille_
+
+
+I was taken in a carriage with three musketeers, to a little bridge
+before a wall, and delivered to the governor of the Bastille, who sent
+me to a large empty room, the walls of which were covered with charcoal
+drawings executed by former prisoners. A little chair was brought me, a
+bundle of wood was lighted on the hearth, one small candle was fixed to
+the wall, and I heard half a dozen locks and bolts closing the door that
+shut me off from mankind. The first hour, which I spent gazing at my
+crackling fire, was the most desolate of all my imprisonment.
+
+Then the governor appeared, with my attendant Mademoiselle Rondel; I was
+rejoiced to find that she was to relieve my solitude, and to hear from
+her that she had managed to hide all my papers after my capture. Our
+room was presently furnished with beds, table and chairs; on the
+following day we were given books and a pack of cards; our meals were
+tolerable, and except for our captivity we were comfortable enough.
+
+The two judges charged with the interrogation of the prisoners in our
+affair, of whom there seemed to be a considerable number, came daily,
+and held their interviews in a room immediately below ours; so that
+Rondel could see through the window one of our acquaintances after
+another being brought across the court to be examined. My time did not
+come for many days, and I spent long hours racking my brain for the
+answers which I ought to give. The fear of the questions by torture
+began to force itself on my mind; and though I thought I could face pain
+or even death I was doubtful whether I should be able to keep silence
+under that dreadful ordeal.
+
+After these weeks of suspense I was called before the judges, and was
+asked whether the Duchess of Maine had not great confidence in me and
+whether I had not been aware of her treasonable correspondence and
+intrigues. The line I took was to represent my services to my mistress
+as having been of a very humble nature; I insisted that I knew nothing
+of her private affairs, and had seen and heard nothing that could at all
+compromise her loyalty to the Government. This appeared to satisfy them
+for the present, and after enquiring whether I was well treated in
+prison they dismissed me.
+
+I did not suffer from ennui in the Bastille; I devised for myself many
+little occupations; and soon a surreptitious correspondence with the
+Chevalier de Menil, who had been imprisoned for participation in our
+affair, gave interest to the days. We were even permitted occasional
+interviews by favour of one of the subordinate officials, and before we
+regained our liberty I had promised to be his wife.
+
+The Regent at last became anxious to bring to an end the whole episode
+of the Duchess of Maine's intrigue; but he wished first to secure a full
+admission of guilt from the principal actors in it. The Duchess was
+promised her complete liberty if she would send him a frank confession
+in writing, which should be seen by no one but himself. Finding herself
+in a position to secure the freedom of all those whom she had
+imperilled, she sent the Duke of Orleans the required paper, in which
+she disclosed everything in detail and with entire sincerity.
+
+I was examined again without making any disclosure, but after receiving
+the written command of the Duchess I wrote out a declaration of all that
+I knew and was a few days later set at liberty, after two years of
+captivity. I went down at once to Sceaux, where I was affectionately
+received by my mistress.
+
+Returning to Paris two days later, to fetch my things from the Bastille,
+I called at the Convent of the Presentation, and found in the parlour
+the Chevalier de Menil. I was astonished at his manner, no less than by
+what he said; it was evidently that his only desire was to break his
+engagement with me. I realised that the man was without honour or
+kindness, and yet it was difficult to detach my affections from him.
+
+It was about a year later that M. Dacier was introduced to me, after the
+death of his wife, by the Duchess de La Ferte, and an ardent desire for
+liberty from my condition of servitude led me to accept his proposal of
+marriage, subject only to be the permission of my Duchess. This she was
+reluctant to give, and the matter was still under discussion when we
+heard of M. Dacier's sudden death.
+
+The rest of my life, though it has been a long one, contains little of
+interest. I found myself without any object to live for, and a strange
+deadness of feeling came over me, harder to bear than illness or death.
+I had a distaste for existence and a horror of the world, and desired
+nothing more than to hide myself away. A little pension had been secured
+for me; my mistress had fallen dangerously ill; I wished to leave Sceaux
+in order to run away from a new attachment which was gaining power over
+me; and the thought of entering a Carmelite house became a settled
+project. But I was refused even this last refuge; the prioress deciding
+that I had no vocation for the religious life.
+
+I spent several years without coming to any harmony either with myself
+or with fortune. Several offers of marriage were made to me, but I could
+not bring myself to accept any of them, until a sudden fancy for the
+sweet simplicities of country life led me to agree to a marriage with M.
+de Staal.
+
+A few days after my marriage I heard of the death of the Duchess of
+Maine. I never knew a more perfectly reasonable woman. She was all
+feeling; even her thoughts were really sentiments; she was lively
+without moodiness, impassioned without violence, always animated; sweet
+and sensible. There was a vivid warmth about her, that made her a
+perfectly gracious friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+EARL STANHOPE
+
+
+Life of William Pitt
+
+
+     The biographer of Pitt was a grandson of the Lord Mahon,
+     afterwards Earl of Stanhope, who married, in 1774, the great
+     statesman's eldest sister. Philip Henry Stanhope was born at
+     Walmer on January 30, 1805, and entered the House of Commons
+     as Lord Mahon in 1831. He took a prominent part in the
+     foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, and the
+     Historical Manuscripts Commission, and the promotion of
+     successful archaeological investigations on the site of Troy.
+     His literary labours were considerable and important. Chief
+     among them were the "History of England from the Peace of
+     Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," the "History of Queen
+     Anne's Reign," and the "Life of the Right Honourable William
+     Pitt." The last named, published in 1861-2, is one of the most
+     authoritative of political biographies, compiled with a
+     gravity and care characteristic of its author, and of abiding
+     value as a standard book of reference for one of the greatest
+     personalities and one of the most stirring periods of English
+     history. Earl Stanhope died on December 24, 1875.
+
+
+_I.--The Boy Statesman_
+
+
+William Pitt, the elder, afterwards Earl of Chatham, married in 1754
+Lady Hester Grenville. William Pitt, their second son, was born on May
+28, 1759, at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent.
+
+In his boyhood, from the earliest years, William Pitt evinced to all
+around him many tokens of intellectual promise and ambition; but his
+parents were frequently distressed by his delicate health. It was no
+doubt on this account that he was not sent to any public or private
+school. Lord Chatham was extremely careful of the education of his
+family; and, without any disparagement to young William's tutor, it was
+certainly from his father that he profited most.
+
+William was at fourteen so forward in his studies that he was sent to
+Cambridge, commencing his residence at Pembroke Hall in October 1773.
+His health at this period gave cause for great alarm. A serious illness
+at Cambridge, however, proved a turning-point; for long afterwards he
+enjoyed fairly good health. Early hours, daily exercise on horseback,
+and liberal potations of port wine--his elixir of strength at this time,
+although it helped in later years to undermine his constitution--made
+him far stronger after his illness than before it.
+
+In 1778, after the death of his father, he was entered at Lincoln's Inn,
+and was called to the Bar in 1780. But he had little opportunity of
+practising as a barrister, for his parliamentary ambitions were soon
+fulfilled. In the autumn of 1780 he was an unsuccessful candidate for
+Cambridge University; but through the influence of Sir James Lowther he
+was returned in the same year for Appleby, and took his seat in the
+Commons on January 23, 1781.
+
+Lord North was still at the head of affairs, and the Opposition
+consisted of two parties: the aristocratic Whigs, whose leader was the
+Marquis of Rockingham, but whose true guiding spirit was Charles James
+Fox; and a smaller band of the old adherents of Lord Chatham, under Lord
+Shelburne. To this party Pitt, as a matter of course, attached himself.
+His first speech was made on February 26, in support of Burke's bill for
+economical reform. He completely fulfilled the high expectations that
+had been formed of the son of so illustrious a father. Not only did he
+please, it may be said that he astonished the House.
+
+Two speeches later in the session confirmed the distinction of the young
+orator. In 1782, after a long series of Opposition attacks, Lord North
+resigned; but in the new arrangements Pitt was not included. He had
+determined that he would serve his sovereign as a cabinet minister, or
+not at all. For a time he devoted his efforts, without success, to the
+reform of the representation of the House of Commons. But in July 1782
+Lord Rockingham died; there was a cabinet split, due to a quarrel
+between Fox and Shelburne; the latter became First Lord of the Treasury,
+and Pitt, at the age of twenty-three, was offered and accepted the post
+of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
+
+The newly-formed ministry was soon exposed to hot attacks by the
+coalition of the parties of Fox and North, and Pitt, in attacking this
+"baneful alliance," made one of the greatest speeches of his career. But
+the ministry was defeated; Lord Shelburne resigned; and the king,
+advised by Shelburne, invited Pitt to become Prime Minister. After
+anxious consideration he refused.
+
+The Fox and North coalition now assumed office. This union of extremes
+was unpopular in the country, although powerful in parliamentary
+strength. Pitt tried once more to pass a measure of parliamentary
+reform; and during the recess he paid a visit to France--the one foreign
+journey of his life.
+
+When parliament resumed its sittings, in the autumn of 1783, Fox's India
+Bill was passed by the Commons, but rejected by the Lords. The king, who
+was vehemently opposed to the bill, demanded the resignation of Fox and
+North, and on December 19 invited Pitt, now aged twenty-four, to become
+Prime Minister. This time the invitation was not refused.
+
+Pitt had great difficulty in forming a cabinet, and was the only cabinet
+minister in the Commons. His main support in that house was Henry
+Dundas, treasurer of the navy--his life-long friend. On facing
+parliament at the opening of 1784, Pitt's purpose was to delay a
+dissolution until the coalition's unpopularity in the country had
+reached its height, and with this end he patiently endured defeat after
+defeat. In March he deemed that the right moment had come, and his
+judgement was rewarded at the General Election by a triumphant majority.
+
+Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the
+Treasury, and during the years of peace that followed, his successes
+were largely financial. He established a series of financial reforms
+that not only increased the favour in which his ministry was held, but
+undoubtedly enabled the country to bear the terrible strain that was
+afterwards to be placed upon it. In his attempt to adjust commercial
+relations with Ireland he was less successful; he was obliged, besides,
+to abandon his schemes of parliamentary reform, and his exertions, in
+concert with his friend Wilberforce, to destroy the slave traffic ended
+in disappointment--even although in this he had the hearty support of
+his rival, Fox.
+
+Young as he was, and victorious as he had become, he was never tempted
+to presume upon his genius, or relax in his application. He allowed
+himself but little holiday. He spent a good deal of such time as he
+could spare at Holwood, a property he had bought near Bromley; and
+occasional visits to Brighton, and to his mother's residence at Burton
+Pynsent, in Somersetshire, made up the greater part of his travels.
+
+
+_II.--The Regency Problem_
+
+
+Not only had Pitt's administration rehabilitated English finances; it
+had gained for England a strong measure of European support. In 1788
+there was concluded what was virtually a triple defensive alliance with
+Prussia and Holland; and with France herself, should she be willing to
+remain at peace, there was a treaty of commerce to engage her in more
+friendly relations.
+
+But towards the end of the year Pitt was confronted with what seemed a
+certainty of loss of office. King George III., after a long period of
+ill health, was found to be definitely suffering from mental alienation.
+A regency became necessary, and the person clearly marked out for the
+office was the Prince of Wales. But the prince was the political
+associate of Fox, and there was no doubt that his first step on
+accession to power would be the dismissal of Pitt.
+
+Pitt saw the prospect before him, and did not attempt to shirk it. But
+he did propose certain restrictions on the regency in order that the
+king, should he recover his reason, might without difficulty resume his
+power.
+
+When parliament assembled in December, Fox declared boldly that the
+prince had as much right to assume sovereignty during the king's
+incapacity as he would have in the event of the king's death. Pitt,
+exulting in his rival's indiscreet departure from Whig principles,
+retorted that the assertion of such a right, independent of the decision
+of the two houses, was little less than treason to the constitution.
+Fox's attitude was unpopular, and Pitt's resolutions, and the Regency
+Bill that followed, were carried through the Commons.
+
+Towards the end of February, the third reading of the Regency Bill was
+impending in the Lords. Pitt had proposed that the difficulty about
+procuring the royal assent to the measure should be overcome by
+empowering the chancellor by a joint vote of both houses to put the
+Great Seal to a commission for giving the assent. But this expedient was
+unnecessary. By February 22 the king was completely recovered. The
+Regency Bill fell to the ground, and all the hopes which the Opposition
+had reared upon it.
+
+The day of thanksgiving for the king's recovery is regarded by Lord
+Macaulay as the zenith in Pitt's political life. "To such a height of
+power and glory," he says, "had this extraordinary man risen at
+twenty-nine years of age. And now," he adds, perhaps less justly, "the
+tide was on the turn."
+
+
+_III.--The Struggle with France_
+
+
+Pitt was able to declare, in the session that preceded the dissolution
+of 1790, that "we are adding daily to our strength, wealth, and
+prosperity," and, as a result of the elections, his parliamentary
+majority was more than confirmed.
+
+But symptoms of the coming stress were already manifest. The minister
+was anxiously watching the course of the revolution in France; and,
+while far from sharing the enthusiasm of Fox for the new principles, he
+did not endorse the fierce hostility of Burke.
+
+"I cannot regard with envious eyes," he said, "any approximation in
+neighbouring states to those sentiments which are the characteristics of
+every British subject."
+
+But the development of events soon made it clear that the new France had
+become a danger to the peace of Europe. As long as possible Pitt avoided
+war, which was ultimately forced upon him in 1793 by France's attack
+upon Holland, to which we were bound by treaty obligations.
+
+From that time, until the peace in 1802, English naval enterprises were
+generally successful, and English military enterprises generally failed.
+Pitt has often been blamed for the faults of his country's generals; but
+it is assuredly true that he did all that a civilian could do to secure
+success in the field.
+
+The heavy cost of the war, increased as it was by the subsidies paid to
+Austria, and afterwards to Russia, compelled an entire departure from
+Pitt's old financial methods. Each year brought an increase of taxation
+and an increase of debt; and at the beginning of 1797 the directors of
+the Bank of England, in dire perplexity, told Pitt that the state, for
+all his expedients, was threatened with insolvency. Pitt did not falter.
+An order in council was issued, suspending cash payments at the bank.
+Thus was established a gigantic system of paper credit, giving us power
+to cope with no less gigantic foes. Cash payments were not resumed until
+1819.
+
+Pitt had not only to cope with enemies without, but with sedition
+within. Societies formed for propagating the principles of the
+revolution advocated the subversion of the constitution under the
+pretence of parliamentary reform; the populace, angered by the
+privations caused by the clearness of food, listened readily to the
+agitators; riots were frequent, but the most mischievous form taken by
+sedition was that of armed conspiracy. Against these evils Pitt
+contended by royal proclamations, prosecutions, and, above all, by the
+suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. In his firm suppression of disorder
+Pitt was loyally supported by large majorities in both houses, and the
+country generally was on his side. But his domestic policy, his foreign
+policy, and his finance were unsparingly attacked by Fox and a small
+band of devoted followers--followers who did not abate in their
+resolution when their leader, weary of the unequal conflict, retired for
+a time from public life.
+
+In the busy and anxious year 1796, there was a report that Pitt was on
+the point of marriage. During his short intervals of leisure at Holwood,
+he often visited his neighbour, Lord Auckland, at Beckenham, and was
+much attracted by Lord Auckland's eldest daughter, the Hon. Eleanor
+Eden. This strong attachment did not proceed to a proposal and a
+marriage. Pitt wrote to Lord Auckland avowing his affection, but
+explaining that in the circumstances of pecuniary difficulty in which he
+was involved, he would not presume to make the lady an offer. Lord
+Auckland acknowledged the explanation as adequate, and thus honourably
+ended the only "love-passage" in the life of Pitt.
+
+Considering that Pitt's income as minister was L6,000 a year, and that
+he derived an additional L3,000 a year from the Lord Wardenship of the
+Cinque Ports, his pecuniary troubles may seem hard to explain. He had no
+family, and no expensive tastes. But he was so intent upon the national
+exchequer that he neglected his private accounts, with the consequence
+that he was plundered by his domestics. His expenses were not checked,
+and his debts continued to grow.
+
+
+_IV.--Resignation_
+
+
+In the year 1800 Pitt was able to achieve a momentous change in the
+affairs of Ireland. The chronic discontent of that country, largely due
+to the resentment of the Catholics at their exclusion from the rights of
+citizenship, had been fanned by the importation of revolutionary ideas;
+and there were hopes, once or twice on the point of realisation, of a
+French invasion of the island. In 1798 a rebellion broke out, but was
+suppressed with promptness, and, it must be added, in many instances
+with cruelty. But to Pitt the suppression of the insurrection was only
+the first part of his duty. He thought that to revert to the old system
+would be a most shallow policy. A new, and comprehensive, and healing
+method must be tried--an Act of Union, which should raise the minds of
+Irishmen from local to imperial aims--which should blend the two
+legislatures, and, if possible, also the two nations, in one.
+
+In 1800 the project was fulfilled--not without fierce resistance in the
+Irish Parliament, and not without a certain distribution of favours to
+those for whose support the government was anxious; although the
+allegations made on this subject seem to be exaggerated. Having
+accomplished the union, Pitt laid plans for a further reform which led,
+early in the following year, to his retirement from office.
+
+He proposed the emancipation of the Catholics by the substitution of a
+political for the religious test of fitness for citizenship. Although
+the Anglican bishops and clergy and many laymen were strongly opposed to
+Catholic emancipation, Pitt would probably have been able to carry his
+scheme had it not been for royal antagonism. The king believed,
+erroneously but passionately, that by consenting to such a measure he
+would violate his coronation oath.
+
+His majesty expressed his opinions on the subject so publicly and so
+vehemently that on January 31, 1801, Pitt felt compelled to ask leave to
+resign unless he were allowed to pursue his course on the Catholic
+question. The king required the abandonment of the scheme, and on
+February 3 Pitt resigned office. Thus abruptly ended his renowned
+administration of more than seventeen years.
+
+The new Prime Minister was Mr. Addington, formerly Speaker of the
+Commons. Several of Pitt's colleagues remained in the ministry, although
+others withdrew from it; and Pitt himself gave general support to the
+government--support which was offered with especial warmth, and
+possessed especial value, during the hotly criticised peace negotiations
+with the First Consul Bonaparte in 1801 and 1802. Although Pitt had been
+obliged when in office to refuse several inadequate offers of peace, he
+had always been prepared to end the war under honourable conditions. The
+distinction of ending the war did not fall to his share; but his
+services were not forgotten. On May 7, 1802, the House of Commons
+carried by overwhelming numbers a motion, "That the Right Hon. William
+Pitt has rendered great and important services to his country, and
+especially deserves the gratitude of this house." And on May 28, 1802,
+Pitt's birthday, more than 800 persons assembled at a memorable banquet
+in honour of "the pilot that weathered the storm."
+
+Until the renewal of war in 1803 Pitt took little-part in public
+affairs. Most of his time was spent at Walmer Castle, with occasional
+visits to Bath for the sake of his health, which had been uncertain
+since an attack of serious illness in 1797. He remained in constant
+communication with his political friends, and sometimes during the
+earlier part of his retirement aided the ministry with his advice. But
+with the progress of time he found himself less and less able to support
+Addington and his colleagues.
+
+In May 1803 the uneasy peace came to an end. The constant aggressions of
+Bonaparte and his dominating tone made friendly relations impossible.
+There was a widespread feeling in the country that now that the storm
+had recommenced the old pilot should be called to the helm. Pitt
+returned to the Commons after the declaration of war, and forcibly
+criticised some of the financial and defensive measures of the ministry.
+
+In 1804 the ministry showed itself wholly unequal to the strain upon it;
+and the situation was complicated by a temporary return of the king's
+malady. Pitt not only renewed his opposition to Addington, but made it
+plain that he was prepared to take part in a strong and comprehensive
+administration, including even Fox, that should be formed to rescue the
+crown and country from the dangers to which they were exposed under the
+Addington ministry.
+
+A series of combined attacks was directed against the government during
+the month of April. Although Addington was not defeated in the Commons,
+he saw his majority steadily diminish; and on April 26 he resolved to
+resign. On the 30th, the Lord Chancellor intimated to Pitt his majesty's
+desire to receive the plan of a new administration.
+
+
+_V.--The Last Ministry_
+
+
+The king's opposition made the inclusion of Fox in the new ministry
+impossible. His hostility to Fox, however, was not simply on political
+grounds; he believed him to be responsible for the excesses of the
+Prince of Wales. Pitt was in consequence obliged to be content with a
+restricted choice of ministers, and had to face a powerful opposition in
+parliament. Addington was persuaded to join the ministry early in 1805.
+
+During the summer of 1804 Bonaparte and his host lay menacingly at
+Boulogne, awaiting that command of the channel "for six hours," which
+the great warrior recognised as essential to his plans. Meanwhile, Pitt
+laboured to form another coalition, and, at the cost of heavy subsidies,
+was successful. Russia, Austria, and Sweden joined in the league against
+Napoleon; Prussia still hesitated.
+
+In the summer of 1805 Napoleon was again at Boulogne, but his plan of
+invasion was wrecked by the failure of the French fleet to reach the
+Channel. When Napoleon learned that the fleet had gone south, and that
+the attack upon England had been thwarted, he straightway marched his
+army to mid-Europe. Pitt had staked everything on the new coalition, and
+the surrender of the Austrians at Ulm was news of the utmost bitterness
+to him. But a splendid corrective came soon afterwards in the crowning
+naval victory of Trafalgar. Although the nation's feelings were divided
+between joy at the triumph and grief at the death of the illustrious
+victor, Pitt's popularity, which had been somewhat uncertain, was
+enormously enhanced by the event. The Lord Mayor proposed his health as
+"the saviour of Europe."
+
+Pitt's reply was nearly as follows: "I return you many thanks for the
+honour you have done me, but Europe is not to be saved by any single
+man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, I trust, save
+Europe by her example." With only these two sentences the minister sat
+down. They were the last words that Pitt ever spoke in public.
+
+He was suffering much at this time from gout, and his general health was
+undermined by anxiety. In December he journeyed to Bath, and at Bath
+there reached him the news of the destruction of his coalition at
+Austerlitz. The battle was the cause of his death. He was struck down by
+a severe internal malady and he was in a state of extreme debility when
+on January 11, 1806, he returned home to the house he had taken on
+Putney Heath. It is said that as he passed along to his bedroom, he
+observed a map of Europe hanging on the wall, upon which he turned to
+his niece and mournfully said: "Roll up that map. It will not be wanted
+these ten years."
+
+For a few days the doctors had hopes that he might recover, but on the
+22nd it became evident that he could not live for twenty-four hours.
+Early in the morning of the 23rd he died.
+
+"At about half-past two," wrote the Hon. James Hamilton Stanhope, who
+was at his bedside, "Mr. Pitt ceased moaning, and did not make the
+slightest sound for some time. Shortly afterwards, in a tone I never
+shall forget, he exclaimed: 'Oh, my country! How I love my country!'
+From that time he never spoke or moved, and at half-past four expired
+without a groan or struggle. His strength being quite exhausted, his
+life departed like a candle burning out."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY
+
+
+The Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D.
+
+
+     Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born at Alderley Rectory, Cheshire,
+     on December 13, 1815. He was educated at Rugby under Arnold,
+     and at Oxford, where Tait, the future Archbishop of
+     Canterbury, was his tutor. Entering holy orders, he was
+     appointed select preacher in 1845; became Canon of Canterbury
+     in 1851; and in 1863 succeeded Trench as Dean of Westminster.
+     He died on July 18, 1881, and by Queen Victoria's commands his
+     remains were laid beside those of his wife, Lady Augusta
+     Bruce, in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster. Of all his works,
+     perhaps his most important contribution to English literature
+     is the "Life of Arnold," which was published two years after
+     the death of the famous master of Rugby. To the task of
+     writing the book Stanley devoted all his energies, steering
+     clear, however, of any attempt to form an opinion of his own
+     upon Arnold's life and character, while achieving a result
+     that not only assured his own position at Oxford, but brought
+     him well into the front rank of contemporary writers. The
+     religious animosity at Oxford was uncongenial to Stanley, and
+     it was only the prospect of Dr. Arnold occupying the Chair of
+     Modern History that reconciled him to his surroundings.
+
+
+_I.--Youth and Early Manhood_
+
+
+Thomas Arnold, seventh child and youngest son of William and Martha
+Arnold, was born June 13, 1795, at East Cowes, Isle of Wight, where his
+father was collector of customs. His early education was undertaken by a
+sister; and in 1803 he was sent to Warminister School, in Wiltshire. In
+1807 he went to Winchester, where, having entered as a commoner and
+afterwards become a scholar of the college, he remained till 1811. In
+after life he always cherished a strong Wykehamist feeling, and, during
+his headmastership at Rugby, often recurred to his knowledge there first
+acquired, of the peculiar constitution of a public school.
+
+He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring disposition; but his
+manner as a child, and till his entrance at Oxford, was marked by a
+stiffness and formality, the very reverse of the joyousness and
+simplicity of his later years. He was unlike those of his own age, with
+pursuits peculiar to himself; and the tone and style of his early
+letters are such as might have been produced by living chiefly with his
+elders, and reading, or hearing read, books suited to a more advanced
+age. Both as boy and young man he was remarkable for a difficulty in
+early rising amounting almost to a constitutional infirmity; and though
+in after life this was overcome by habit, he often said that early
+rising was a daily effort to him.
+
+The beginning of some of his later interests may be traced in his
+earlier amusements and occupations. He never lost the recollection of
+the impression produced upon him by the excitement of naval and military
+affairs, of which he naturally saw and heard much by living at Cowes in
+the time of the Napoleonic war; and with his playmates he would sail
+rival toy fleets or act the battles of the Homeric heroes with
+improvised spears and shields. He was extremely fond of ballad poetry,
+and his earliest compositions all ran in that direction. At Winchester
+he was noted for his forwardness in history and geography; and there
+also he gave indications of that mnemonic faculty which in later years
+showed itself in minute details, extending to the exact state of the
+weather on particular days, or the exact words or passages he had not
+seen for twenty years. The period of his home and school education was
+too short to exercise much influence on his after life, but he always
+looked back upon it with tenderness.
+
+In 1811 he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; in
+1814 he took a first class in classics; in 1815 he was made a Fellow of
+Oriel; and he gained the Chancellor's prizes for the Latin and English
+essays in 1815 and 1817. During his later time at Oxford he took private
+pupils and read extensively in the libraries. Meanwhile, he had been led
+gradually to fix on his future life course. In December, 1818, he was
+ordained deacon and next year settled at Laleham, where, in August,
+1820, he married Mary Penrose, daughter of the rector of Fledborough,
+Notts.
+
+At Laleham he remained for nine years, coaching private pupils for the
+universities. Here were born six of his nine children; the youngest
+three, besides one who died in infancy, were born at Rugby. During this
+period an essential change and growth of Arnold's character became
+manifest. The warm feelings of his youth gave place to the fixed
+earnestness and devotion which henceforth took possession of him. His
+former indolent habits, his morbid restlessness and occasional weariness
+of duty, indulgence of vague schemes without definite purpose,
+intellectual doubts as to accepted religious beliefs--all seem to have
+vanished for ever.
+
+It was now that the religious aspect of his character came to be
+emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of
+his religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is
+impossible to understand his religious belief except through the
+knowledge of his life and writings on ordinary subjects, it is
+impossible on the other hand, to understand his life and writings
+without bearing in mind how vivid was his realisation of those truths of
+religion on which he most habitually dwelt. It was this which enabled
+him to undertake labours which, without such a power, must have crushed
+or enfeebled the spiritual growth which in him they seemed only to
+foster. His letters at this time show better than anything else how he
+was, though unconsciously to himself, maturing for the arduous duties he
+afterwards undertook. It was now, too, that he first became acquainted
+with Niebuhr's "History of Rome," which revolutionised his views of
+history, and, later, served as a model for his own "History of Rome."
+
+
+_II.--Headmaster of Rugby_
+
+
+Arnold was not without his visions of ambition and extensive influence
+from the first, but he liked Laleham, and always looked back with fond
+regret to his time there. "I have always thought," he wrote in 1823,
+"with regard to ambition, that I should like to be _aut Caesar aut
+nullus;_ and as it is pretty well settled for me that I shall not be
+Caesar, I am quite content to live in peace as _nullus_." But the fates
+had ordered it otherwise. Friends had long been urging him to seek a
+larger sphere of usefulness; and when, in August, 1827, the
+headmastership of Rugby became vacant, he applied for the post.
+
+He had himself little hope of success. The testimonials he sent in were
+few, but all spoke strongly of his qualifications. Among them was a
+letter from Dr. Hawkins, the future Provost of Oriel, in which the
+prediction was made that if Arnold were elected he would change the face
+of education throughout the public schools of England. The impression
+produced upon the trustees by this letter and by the other testimonials
+was such that Arnold was immediately appointed. In June, 1828, he
+received priest's orders; in April and November of the same year took
+his degrees of B.D. and D.D., and in August entered on his new office.
+
+The post was in many respects suited to his natural tastes--to his love
+of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him that he declared
+sometimes that he could hardly live without such employment; to the
+vigour and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than
+the old; to the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting
+things secular with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest
+principles of action into regions comparatively uncongenial to their
+reception. He had not, however, accepted it without grave doubts about
+his fitness. In a private letter he says:
+
+     I confess that I should very much object to undertake a charge
+     in which I was not invested with pretty full discretion.
+     According to my notions of what large schools are, founded on
+     all I know and all I have ever heard of them, expulsion should
+     be practised much oftener than it is. Now, I know that
+     trustees, in general, are averse to this plan, because it has
+     a tendency to lessen the numbers of the school, and they
+     regard quantity more than quality. In fact, my opinions on
+     this point might, perhaps, generally be considered as
+     disqualifying me for the situation of master of a great
+     school; yet I could not consent to tolerate much that I know
+     is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should not like to
+     enter on an office which I could not discharge according to my
+     own views of what is right.
+
+At Rugby, Arnold from the first maintained that in the actual working of
+the school he must be completely independent, and that the remedy of the
+trustees, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but
+dismissal. It was on this condition that he took the post; and any
+attempt to control either the administration of the school or his own
+private occupations he felt bound to resist as a duty not only to
+himself but the master of every foundation school in England. The
+remonstrances which he encountered, particularly from his fixed
+determination always to get rid of unpromising subjects, were vehement
+and numerous; but he repeatedly declared that on no other conditions
+could he hold his appointment, or justify the existence of the public
+school system in a Christian country.
+
+"My object," he wrote, just before taking up duty, "will be, if
+possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope
+to make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they
+are not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development
+upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many
+respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in
+what I consider the boyhood of the human race."
+
+This is the keynote of his whole system. As he put it, what he looked
+for in the school was, first, religious and moral principles; second,
+gentlemanly conduct; and third, intellectual ability. Intellectual
+training was never for a moment underrated, but he always thought first
+of his charges as schoolboys who must grow up to be Christian men. His
+education, in short, "was not based upon religion, but was itself
+_religious_." For cleverness as such, Arnold had no regard. "Mere
+intellectual acuteness," he used to say, "divested as it is, in too many
+cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more
+revolting than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like
+the spirit of Mephistopheles." Often when this intellectual cleverness
+was seen in union with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its
+existence altogether.
+
+A mere plodding boy was, above all others, encouraged by him. At Laleham
+he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this
+kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you speak
+angrily, sir? Indeed, I am doing the best that I can." Years afterwards
+he used to tell the story to his children, and said, "I never felt so
+much ashamed in my life--that look and that speech I have never
+forgotten." And though it would, of course, happen that clever boys,
+from a greater sympathy with his understanding, would be brought into
+closer intercourse with him, this did not affect his feeling of respect,
+and even of reverence, for those who, without ability, were
+distinguished for high principle and industry. "If there be one thing on
+earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an
+inferiority of natural powers where they have been honestly, truly and
+zealously cultivated."
+
+
+_III.--As Teacher and Preacher_
+
+
+Arnold had always been painfully impressed by the evils of the public
+school system, according to which a number of boys are left to form an
+independent society of their own, in which the influence they exert over
+each other is far greater than that exerted by the masters. He writes,
+in 1837:
+
+     Of all the painful things connected with my employment,
+     nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy come to school
+     innocent and promising, and tracing the corruption of his
+     character from the influence of the temptations around him, in
+     the very place which ought to have strengthened and improved
+     it. But in most cases those who come with a character of
+     positive good are benefited; it is the neutral and indecisive
+     characters which are apt to be decided for evil by schools, as
+     they would be, in fact, by any other temptation.
+
+This very feeling led him to catch with eagerness at every means by
+which the trial might be shortened or alleviated. He believed that the
+change from childhood to manhood might be hastened without prematurely
+exhausting the faculties of body and mind; and it was on this principle
+that he chiefly acted. He desired the boys to cultivate true manliness
+as the only step to something higher. He treated them as gentlemen, and
+appealed and trusted to their common sense and conscience.
+
+Lying to the masters he made a grave offence. He placed implicit
+confidence in a boy's assertion, and then, if a falsehood were
+discovered, punished it severely. In the higher forms any attempt at
+further proof of an assertion was immediately checked. "If you say so,
+that is quite enough; of course, I believe your word"; and there grew up
+in consequence a general feeling that "it was a shame to tell Arnold a
+lie: he always believed you." Few scenes can be recorded more
+characteristic of him than when, in consequence of a disturbance, he had
+been obliged to send away several boys, and when, in the midst of the
+general spirit of discontent which this excited, he stood in his place
+before the assembled school and said, "It is _not_ necessary that this
+should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys;
+but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen."
+
+Arnold's method of teaching was founded on the principle of awakening
+the intellect of every individual boy. Hence it was his practice to
+teach by questioning. As a general rule, he never gave information,
+except as a kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld it
+altogether, or checked himself in the very act of uttering it, from a
+sense that those whom he was addressing had not sufficient interest or
+sympathy to receive it. His explanations were at short as
+possible--enough to dispose of the difficulty and no more; and his
+questions were of a kind to call the attention of the boys to the real
+point of every subject and to disclose to them the exact boundaries of
+what they knew or did not know. With regard to the younger boys, he
+said: "It is a great mistake to think that they should _understand_ all
+they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the memory should act
+vigorously, independent of the understanding--whereas a man cannot
+usually recollect a thing unless he understands it."
+
+At Rugby he made it an essential part of the headmaster's office to
+preach a sermon every Sunday in the school chapel. "The veriest
+stranger," he said, "who ever attends service in this chapel does well
+to feel something more than common interest in the sight of the
+congregation here assembled. But if the sight so interests a mere
+stranger, what should it be to ourselves, both to you and to me?" More
+than either matter or manner of his preaching was the impression of
+himself. Even the mere readers of his sermons will derive from them the
+history of his whole mind, and of his whole management of the school.
+But to his hearers it was more than this. It was the man himself, there
+more than in any other place, concentrating all his various faculties
+and feelings on one sole object, combating face to face the evil which,
+directly or indirectly, he was elsewhere perpetually struggling.
+
+His personal interest in the boys was always strong. "Do you see," he on
+one occasion said to an assistant-master who had recently come, "those
+two boys walking together? I never saw them together before; you should
+make an especial point of observing the company they keep; nothing so
+tells the changes in a boy's character."
+
+
+_IV.--Influence of the Great Teacher_
+
+
+But the impression which Arnold produced upon the boys was derived not
+so much from any immediate intercourse or conversation with them as from
+the general influence of his whole character, displayed consistently
+whenever he appeared before them. This influence, with its consequent
+effects, was gradually on the increase during the whole of his stay.
+From the earliest period, indeed, the boys were conscious of something
+unlike what they had been taught to imagine of a schoolmaster, and by
+many a lasting regard was contracted for him. In the higher forms, at
+least, it became the fashion, so to speak, to think and talk of him with
+pride and affection. As regards the permanent effects of his whole
+system, it may be said that not so much among his own pupils, or in the
+scene of his actual labours, as in every public school throughout
+England is to be sought the chief and enduring monument of Arnold's
+headmastership at Rugby.
+
+Of Arnold's general life at Rugby there is no need to say much; for
+although the school did not occupy his whole energies, it is almost
+solely by his school work that he is remembered. He took a not
+unimportant part in the political and theological discussions of his
+time, and various literary enterprises also engaged his attention. In
+theology he entertained very broad views. One great principle he
+advocated with intense earnestness was that a Christian people and a
+Christian Church should be synonymous. That use of the word "Church"
+which limits it to the clergy, or which implies in the clergy any
+particular sacredness, he entirely repudiated.
+
+He was convinced that the founders of our constitution in Church and
+State did truly consider them to be identical; the Christian nation of
+England to be the Church of England; the head of that nation to be, for
+that very reason, the head of the Church. This view placed him in
+antagonism to the High Church party; but, as a matter of fact, he
+neither belonged, nor felt himself to belong, to any section of the
+English clergy. Politically, he held himself to be a strong Whig; but
+that he was not, in the common sense of the word, a member of any party
+is shown by the readiness with which all parties alike, according to the
+fashion of the time, claimed or renounced him as an associate.
+
+Arnold did not like the flat scenery of Warwickshire He described
+himself as "in it like a plant sunk in the ground in a pot." His
+holidays were always spent away from Rugby, either on the Continent, or,
+in later years, at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a small estate
+between Rydal and Ambleside, which he purchased in 1832. He was just
+about to leave Rugby for Fox How when his life was mournfully and
+suddenly ended by an attack of angina pectoris, on June 12, 1842. Only
+the year before he had been appointed by Lord Melbourne Regius Professor
+of Modern History at Oxford.
+
+Arnold's principal works are six volumes of sermons, a three-volume
+edition of Thucydides, the Oxford "Lectures on Modern History," and the
+three-volume "History of Rome," which, by his unfortunate death, was
+broken off at the Second Punic War. To the last-named he looked as the
+chief monument of his historical fame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+AGNES STRICKLAND
+
+
+Life of Queen Elizabeth
+
+
+     Agnes Strickland, born in London on August 19, 1796, with her
+     sister Elizabeth began in 1840 the publication of the immense
+     series of historical biographies of which the "Lives of the
+     Queens of England" formed the first and most important group.
+     In that group the "Elizabeth" is recognised as holding the
+     highest rank. It is an essentially feminine study of one of
+     the most remarkable of women; not a history, for historical
+     events are treated as of infinitely less importance than
+     picturesque personal details and miscellaneous gossip, but
+     presenting altogether an admirable picture of the outward
+     seeming of those spacious days, and a discriminating and
+     judicious portrait of the maiden queen herself. The author's
+     views, however, would not always be endorsed by a masculine
+     critic. Agnes Strickland died on July 13, 1874. The literature
+     relating to the life and times of Queen Elizabeth would form a
+     library of contemporary records. Many volumes of state papers
+     have been published: Camden's "Annals of Elizabeth" is the
+     classical account of her. Creighton's "Queen Elizabeth" and
+     volumes VII. to XII. of Froude's "History of England" are the
+     leading modern works; and no one who wishes to know anything
+     of the great queen can afford to neglect Hume's "Courtships of
+     Queen Elizabeth," which will also be found in these pages (see
+     Hume).
+
+
+_I.--The Lady Elizabeth_
+
+
+Queen Elizabeth first saw the light at Greenwich Palace, where, says
+Heywood, "she was born on the eve of the Virgin's nativity, and died on
+the eve of the Virgin's annunciation." The christening ceremony was
+gorgeous and elaborate, but, with the downfall of her mother, Anne
+Boleyn, she ceased to be treated as a princess. She seems to have owed
+much to the judicious training of Lady Margaret Bryan, in whose charge
+she was. Later, she was associated with Prince Edward, four years her
+junior; both displayed an extraordinary precocity and capacity for
+learning.
+
+On Henry's death, she resided with his widow, Catharine Parr, who
+married the Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour. That ambitious nobleman,
+brother of the Protector, certainly designed, when Catharine died, to
+marry Elizabeth; an intention which was among the causes of his
+execution under attainder. His relations with her had already been
+unduly familiar, but there was no warrant for the scandalous stories
+that were repeated; and although Elizabeth all her life was naturally
+disposed to an excessive freedom of manners, she now became a pattern of
+decorum. But she was probably more in love with Seymour, as a girl of
+fifteen, than with anyone else in after life; though, on his death, she
+called him "a man of much wit and very little judgement."
+
+Ascham is full of praises of her learning and her wide reading, both in
+Greek and Latin, which is displayed somewhat pedantically in her
+letters; her propriety and simplicity of apparel in these days is in
+curious contrast to the extravagances of her wardrobe in later life.
+
+Mary treated her conspicuously as a sister; she refused, however, to
+abjure her Protestantism. Her position became extremely difficult, as
+the French, the Spaniards, and the Protestant party each sought to
+involve her in plots for their own ends. These culminated in Wyat's
+rebellion. The inevitable suspicions attaching to her caused her to be
+lodged in the Tower; but, in spite of the machinations of the Spanish
+party and the distrust of Mary, the evidence produced failed to warrant
+her condemnation.
+
+Yet she was kept in rigorous confinement, her life continuing to be in
+danger for a month after Wyat himself had been executed. She was then
+removed to Richmond, but refused to purchase liberty at the price of
+marriage to a foreign prince, Philibert of Savoy--a scheme intended as a
+cover for Mary's determination to marry Philip, the Prince of Spain.
+Finally, she was transferred to Woodstock, where she was held a close
+prisoner.
+
+Policy now led her to profess acceptance of the Roman religion, but in
+very ambiguous fashion. Probably it was through the intercession of
+Philip--now her brother-in-law, whose policy at this time was to
+conciliate the English people--that she was set at liberty and
+readmitted to court at Christmas.
+
+At the end of the next year Elizabeth was at Hatfield, under the gentle
+surveillance of Sir Thomas Pope. She continued to be involved in grave
+dangers by perpetual plots, in which she was far too shrewd to let
+herself be implicated; and she guarded herself by a continued profession
+of Romanism to the hour of her accession on her sister's death.
+
+As the hour of Mary's death approached, there was no doubt of
+Elizabeth's succession, though there was alarm as to possible
+complications. On November 17, 1558, the Chancellor announced to
+Parliament that Mary was dead, and Elizabeth queen. She held her first
+council at Hatfield two days later, when William Cecil took his place as
+her chief counsellor; on her entry into London, the position which was
+to be occupied by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, was
+already conspicuous.
+
+The coronation, which took place in January, was a magnificent pageant,
+in which Elizabeth openly courted the favour and affection of her
+subjects; and it became at once apparent that the breach with Rome was
+reopened. The supremacy of the crown was reasserted, the all but empty
+bench of bishops was filled up with reformers; and, in answer to the
+Commons, Elizabeth very clearly implied her intention of reigning a
+virgin queen. She had already declined Philip of Spain's offer of his
+widowed hand; and now the fact that Mary Stuart stood next in the
+succession--with a better title than Elizabeth's own, if her legitimacy
+were challenged--became of immense importance.
+
+Accordingly, an express declaration of her legitimate right to the
+throne was procured from Parliament. For some time pageants and popular
+displays were the order of the day. But, in spite of Elizabeth's own
+declarations, all her council were convinced that the safety of the
+realm demanded her marriage; and suitors began to abound. Arran
+appears--who now stood very near the throne of Scotland. Pickering,
+Arundel, Dudley, all seemed possible aspirants. The Austrian Archduke
+Charles, cousin of Philip of Spain, and Eric of Norway, were candidates.
+She played with them all, and the play was made more grim by the tragic
+death of Dudley's wife, Amy Robsart.
+
+
+_II.--Mary Stuart and Saint Bartholomew_
+
+
+The proposals for Elizabeth's own hand were now diversified by her
+interest in those for the hand of the Queen of Scots; for it was of
+immense importance to the Queen of England that Mary should not wed a
+foreign prince who might support her claim to the English throne. Mary
+professed willingness to be guided by her "sister," but was insulted by
+Elizabeth's offer of her own favourite, Dudley, who was made Earl of
+Leicester. Melville, the courtly Scots ambassador, had much ado to
+answer Elizabeth's questions about his mistress's beauty and
+accomplishments in a manner agreeable to the English queen. Mary solved
+her own problem, only to create a new one, by marrying her cousin, Lord
+Darnley. Elizabeth was bitterly aggrieved when a son--afterwards James
+I.--was born to them. She herself continued to agitate Cecil and the
+council by the favours she lavished on Leicester. But the renewed
+entreaties of Parliament, that steps might be taken to secure the
+succession, led to what threatened to be a serious quarrel.
+
+Amongst these high matters, the records of her majesty's wardrobe, and
+the interests of Cecil in capturing for her service a tailor employed by
+Catherine de Medici, form an entertaining interlude. But tragedy was at
+hand; the murder of Darnley, Mary's marriage to the murderer Bothwell,
+her imprisonment at Loch Leven, Elizabeth's perturbation--for she was
+sincere in her fear of encouraging subjects to control monarchs by force
+of arms--was diversified by a last negotiation for her marriage with the
+Archduke Charles, which broke down over his refusal to abjure his
+religion.
+
+Then came a turn of the wheel; Mary escaped from Loch Leven, her
+followers were dispersed at Langside, and she fled across the Solway to
+throw herself on Elizabeth's protection and find herself Elizabeth's
+prisoner.
+
+The Scottish queen was consigned to Bolton; an investigation was held at
+York, when Mary's accusers were allowed to produce, and Mary's friends
+were not allowed to test, their evidence of her complicity in Darnley's
+murder. At that stage the investigations were stopped; but the Duke of
+Norfolk, the head of the commission, was not deterred from pressing the
+design of marrying Mary himself. Mary was placed in the charge of
+Shrewsbury and his termagant spouse, Bess of Hardwick.
+
+From this time for fifteen years, Elizabeth was perpetually playing at
+proposals for her own marriage with one or other of the French King's
+brothers, to keep the French court from a _rapprochement_ with Spain.
+Suspicions of Norfolk's intentions led to his arrest, and this
+precipitated the rising in favour of Mary under the Catholic northern
+earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; an insurrection promptly and
+cruelly crushed. In the spring of 1570 the Pope issued a bull of
+deposition; and the plots on behalf of Mary as Catholic claimant to the
+throne thickened.
+
+In 1571 it appeared that Elizabeth was set on the marriage with Henry of
+Anjou, nineteen years her junior, the brother who stood next in
+succession to the throne of Charles IX. of France--a marriage not at all
+approved by her council, and very little to Henry's own taste. It was at
+this time that the conduct of negotiations in Paris was entrusted to
+Francis Walsingham.
+
+The relations between the queen and the Commons were exemplified by her
+attempt to exclude an obnoxious member, Strickland, met by the
+successful assertion of their privileges on the part of the House.
+
+In this year the plot known as Ridolfi's was discovered, and it is to be
+noted that Elizabeth herself ordered the rack to be used to extort
+information. The result was condemnation of Norfolk to the block. The
+recalcitrance of Henry of Anjou led to his definitely withdrawing from
+his courtship, while the young Alencon became the new subject of
+matrimonial negotiation.
+
+Elizabeth played with the new proposal, as usual, relying always on her
+ability to back out of the negotiations, as in previous cases, by
+demanding of her suitor a more uncompromising acceptance of
+Protestantism than could be admitted. The whole affair, however, was
+apparently brought to a check by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with
+the perpetration of which it seemed impossible for the most powerful of
+Protestant monarchs to associate herself.
+
+Cecil--now Lord Burleigh--would have used the occasion for the
+destruction of Mary Stuart; but the device for doing so irreproachably
+by handing her over to her own rebels, was frustrated--though Elizabeth
+concurred--by the refusal of the Scots lords to play the part which was
+assigned to them. The Alencon affair was soon in full swing again, the
+young prince writing love-letters to the lady whom he had not seen.
+
+
+_III.--The Hour of Mary's Doom_
+
+
+Elizabeth's fondness for pageantry--partly out of a personal delight in
+it, partly from a politic appreciation of its value in making her
+popular--especially pageantry at some one else's expense, was
+illustrated in the gorgeous doings at Kenilworth, depicted (with sundry
+anachronisms) in Scott's novel.
+
+These gaieties were the embroidery on more serious matters, for the
+Netherlands had for some time been engaged in their apparently desperate
+struggle with the power of Spain, and now actually invited the Queen of
+England to assume sovereignty over them--an offer which she was too
+acute to accept.
+
+Yet we cannot pass over a highly characteristic incident. When the
+queen's majesty had a bad toothache, the protestations of her whole
+council failed to persuade her to face the extraction of the tooth, till
+the Bishop of London invited the surgeon to operate first on him in her
+presence, with satisfactory results. We must also record how the ugly
+little Alencon, or Anjou as he was now called, arrived unexpectedly to
+woo her in person, charmed her by his chivalrous audacity in doing so,
+and won from her the appropriate name of "Little Frog."
+
+Whether she really wished to marry her "frog" is extremely doubtful. She
+made all the more parade of her desire to do so, since the extreme
+antipathy of the council and the nation to the project would secure her
+a retreat to the last. The expectation of the marriage caused the
+Netherlanders to offer Anjou the sovereignty which she had rejected;
+with the idea of thus securing the united support of England and France.
+But when matters reached the point of negotiation for an Anglo-French
+league, with the marriage as one of the articles, Elizabeth, of course,
+could not be brought to a definite answer, and after long delay Anjou
+found himself obliged to return to the Netherlands, neither accepted nor
+rejected. His subsequent death put an end to this, her last, matrimonial
+comedy.
+
+At last an English force was actually sent to help the Netherlanders,
+under the command of Leicester. His conduct there led to his recall.
+Another favourite stood high in the queen's good graces--Walter Raleigh.
+Probably it was with a view to ousting this rival that Leicester brought
+his stepson Essex into the queen's notice.
+
+But now the hour of Mary's doom was approaching. A plot was set on foot
+for the assassination of Elizabeth, into which Anthony Babington, whose
+name it bears, was drawn. Walsingham, possessed of complete information
+from the beginning, through his spies, nursed the plot carefully;
+letters from Mary were systematically intercepted and copied till the
+moment came for striking; the conspirators were arrested, and suffered
+the extreme penalty of the treason laws; and Elizabeth consented to have
+Mary herself at last brought to trial. She was refused counsel; the
+commission condemned her. Parliament demanded the execution of the death
+sentence. Elizabeth had her own misgivings.
+
+She was afraid of the responsibility. Leicester suggested poison, but
+Burleigh and Walsingham stood by the law. A special embassy of
+remonstrance came from France; Mary wrote a dignified letter, not an
+appeal for her life, which moved the queen to tears; protests from the
+King of Scotland only aroused indignation; Elizabeth was frightened by
+rumours of fresh plots and of a French invasion.
+
+At last she signed the death warrant, brought to her by Secretary
+Davison; the Chancellor's seal was attached, and the council, fearing
+some evasion on Elizabeth's part, issued the commission for Mary's
+execution without further reference to the queen; she was kept in
+ignorance of the fact till the tragedy was completed. She was furious
+with the council, but powerless against their unanimity. She could
+venture to make a scapegoat of Davison, and made a vain attempt to clear
+herself of responsibility in a letter to James, which failed to soothe
+the burst of indignation with which the news was received in Scotland.
+But the one thing she feared--a coalition of France, Spain, and
+Scotland--was made impossible by the antagonisms of the former and the
+weakness of the last.
+
+Another crisis was at hand. Philip of Spain, claiming the throne of
+England as a descendant of John of Gaunt, was preparing the great
+Armada; Pope Sixtus V. was proclaiming a crusade against the heretic
+queen. Drake sailed into Cadiz harbour, and "singed the don's whiskers,"
+but the vast preparations went on. A lofty spirit animated the queen and
+the people. London undertook to provide double the number of ships and
+men demanded from her. The militia was gathered at Tilbury, under
+Leicester. Howard of Effingham was Lord Admiral, with Drake as
+vice-admiral; in the enthusiasm of the moment, Elizabeth bestowed
+knighthood on a valorous lady, Mary, the wife of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley.
+
+A report that the Armada had been destroyed by a gale, which actually
+drove it into Corunna for repairs, caused Elizabeth, with her usual
+parsimony, to order four great vessels to be dismantled; Howard retained
+them instead, at his own charges. On July 19, 1588, the Armada was
+sighted off the Lizard, and for eighteen days the naval heroes were
+grappling with that "invincible" fleet. Elizabeth herself visited the
+camp at Tilbury, rode through the lines, wearing a corselet and a
+farthingale of amazing dimensions, while a page bore her helmet, and
+addressed her soldiers in stirring words.
+
+The victory was celebrated by medals bearing the device of a fleet in
+full sail, with the words _Venit, vidit, fugit_ ("it came, it saw, it
+fled"), and of the dispersal by fireships with the words, _Dux femina
+facti_ ("a woman led the movement").
+
+
+_IV.--Elizabeth's Closing Years_
+
+
+The defeat of the Armada was followed by an expedition to Lisbon, to
+wrest Portugal from Spain; owing to inadequate equipment it failed,
+after a promising beginning, the Portuguese lending no help. Essex
+managed to escape from court and join the expedition, messengers
+ordering him to return being too late. For this he was forgiven; but
+when he secretly married the widow of Sidney, and daughter of
+Walsingham, Elizabeth was furiously angry.
+
+Not Essex, but Norris was sent to command a force dispatched to the aid
+of Henry of Navarre, who was now fighting for the crown of France.
+Essex, however, was subsequently sent, at Henry's own request. His
+absence was utilised by Burleigh to secure the advancement of his own
+astute son, Robert Cecil, who secured the royal favour by the ingenuity
+of his flattery.
+
+When Essex finally returned from France, he was received with the utmost
+favour; but in the interval he had been transformed into an intriguing
+politician. Parliament, which had not been called for four years, met in
+1593, and there was an immediate collision with the Crown. Elizabeth's
+tone was much more despotic than of old. Petitions for the settlement of
+the succession were met by the arbitrary imprisonment of Wentworth and
+other members.
+
+Essex favoured the popular party, but had not the courage to head it; he
+was moved not by patriotism, but by jealousy of the Cecil ascendancy.
+The queen, when she had passed the age of sixty, was as determined as
+ever to pose as a youthful beauty, and her courtiers had no reluctance
+in assuming the tone of despairing lovers. No one played this part more
+persistently than Raleigh, who, when relegated to the Tower for
+marrying, proclaimed his misery, not at being separated from his bride,
+but at being shut out of the radiant presence of the queen.
+
+Essex and Raleigh were associated in two expeditions, one directed with
+complete success against Cadiz, the other being a complete failure. The
+Burleigh faction succeeded in getting for Raleigh whatever credit there
+was in both cases, though Essex was better entitled to it.
+
+But it was Ireland that wrought the ruin of Essex. A dispute in the
+council on the subject caused the queen to box the favourite's ears,
+which caused him to retire in resentment for many months. Soon after his
+return to court, he brought upon himself his own appointment to the
+lord-deputyship of Ireland. His conduct there displeased her; from her
+scolding letters, he concluded that his enemies in the council were
+undermining his position in his absence. He deserted his post, hurried
+to London, and burst, travel-stained as he was, into Elizabeth's
+chamber. For the moment she appeared disposed to forgive him, but was
+not long in deciding that his insolence must be punished, and he was
+placed in confinement.
+
+So he continued for about a year, in spite of appeals to the queen. The
+adverse party in the council had the predominance. At last, however, he
+was granted a degree of liberty, and Francis Bacon tried to conciliate
+Elizabeth towards her former favourite. But the unfortunate man allowed
+his resentment to carry him into dangerous courses. His house became a
+rendezvous of the discontented. Finally, a futile attempt on his part to
+raise the citizens of London in his favour consummated his ruin. He was
+soon a prisoner; his condemnation was now a foregone conclusion;
+Elizabeth signed the warrant with fingers which did not tremble; and, to
+the universal astonishment, the favourite was executed.
+
+Elizabeth's meeting with her last parliament displays in a marked degree
+the tact which never deserted her when she thought fit to employ it.
+Their protest against the practice of monopolies, instead of rousing her
+ire, brought from her a notably gracious promise to redress the
+grievances complained of. This was in 1601. In the next year, when she
+became sixty-nine, there was no relaxation in her gaieties; but under
+the surface, Elizabeth was old and sad.
+
+Her popularity had never been the same since the death of Essex; and the
+memory of the man she had cherished and finally sent to his doom,
+well-deserved as that was, was a perpetual source of grief to her. In
+March 1603, she was stricken with her last fatal illness. Yet she would
+not go to bed. At last she gave in; she knew herself dying long before
+she admitted it.
+
+It was uncertain whether even in her last moments she would acknowledge
+the right of any successor to her throne, but a gesture was interpreted
+as favouring the King of Scots. Finally, she sank into a sleep from
+which she never awoke. So passed away England's Elizabeth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JONATHAN SWIFT
+
+
+Journal to Stella
+
+
+     The "Journal to Stella," which extends over the years 1710 to
+     1713, was first published in 1766 and has often been
+     republished since. The manuscripts are preserved in the
+     British Museum. It was at Sir William Temple's home, Moor Park
+     in Surrey, that Swift came to know Esther Johnson, or
+     "Stella," who was fourteen years younger than himself. In 1699
+     Temple died, and Stella, with her friend, Rebecca Dingley,
+     came to Ireland at Swift's request. Their relation has been
+     made a great mystery. It will perhaps always be doubtful
+     whether he was nominally married to her secretly; the evidence
+     is on the whole against the existence of such a bond. But to
+     the further question--why did he not take her to live as his
+     wife--a sufficient reply may be found in his abnormal nature.
+     In the "Journal" the word "Presto" refers to Swift himself
+     (see FICTION); "MD" to Stella.
+
+
+LONDON, Sept. 9, 1710.
+
+
+I got here last Thursday, after five days' travelling, weary the first,
+almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest;
+and am now glad of the fatigue, which has served for exercise; and I am
+at present well enough. The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay
+hold on me as a twig while they are drowning, and the great men making
+me their clumsy apologies, etc. But my Lord Treasurer received me with a
+great deal of coldness, which has enraged me so, I am almost vowing
+revenge. I have not yet gone half my circle; but I find all my
+acquaintance just as I left them. Everything is turning upside down;
+every Whig in great office will, to a man, be infallibly put out; and we
+shall have such a winter as hath not been seen in England.
+
+The Tatler expects every day to be turned out of his employment; and the
+Duke of Ormond, they say, will be Lieutenant of Ireland. I hope you are
+now peaceably in Presto's lodgings; but I resolve to turn you out by
+Christmas; in which time I shall either have done my business, or find
+it not to be done. Pray be at Trim by the time this letter comes to you;
+and ride little Johnson, who must needs be now in good case. I have
+begun this letter unusually, on the post-night, and have already written
+to the Archbishop; and cannot lengthen this. Henceforth I will write
+something every day to MD, and make it a sort of journal; and when it is
+full, I will send it, whether MD writes or no; and so that will be
+pretty: and I shall always be in conversation with MD, and MD with
+Presto; and so farewell.
+
+
+LONDON, NOV. 11, 1710.
+
+
+I dined to-day in the City, and then went to christen Will Frankland's
+child; Lady Falconbridge was one of the godmothers; this is a daughter
+of Oliver Cromwell, and extremely like him by the picture I have seen.
+My business in the City was to thank Stratford for a kindness he has
+done me. I found Bank stock fallen thirty-four to the hundred, and was
+mighty desirous to buy it. I had three hundred pounds in Ireland, and I
+desired Stratford to buy me three hundred pounds in Bank stock and that
+he keep the papers, and that I would be bound to pay him for them; and,
+if it should rise or fall, I should take my chance and pay him interest
+in the meantime. I was told money was so hard to get here, and no one
+would do this for me. However, Stratford, one of the most generous men
+alive, has done this for me: so that three hundred pounds cost me three
+hundred pounds and thirty shillings. This was done a week ago, and I can
+have five pounds for my bargain already. I writ to your Mother to desire
+Lady Giffard would do the same with what she owes me, but she tells your
+mother she has no money. I would to God, all you had in the world was
+there. Whenever you lend money, take this rule, to have two people
+bound, who have both visible fortunes; for they will hardly die
+together; and, when one dies, you fall upon the other, and make him add
+another security. So, ladies, enough of business for one night. Paaaaast
+twelve o'clock; nite, nite deelest MD. I must only add, that, after a
+long fit of rainy weather, it has been fair two or three days, and is
+this day grown cold and frosty; so you must give poor little Presto
+leave to have a fire in his chamber morning and evening too; and he will
+do as much for you. Shall I send this to-morrow? Well I will, to oblige
+MD. 'Tis late, so I bid you good-night.
+
+
+CHELSEA, June, 1711.
+
+
+I went at noon to see Mr. Secretary at his office, and there was Lord
+Treasurer; so I killed two birds, etc., and we were glad to see one
+another and so forth. And the Secretary and I dined at Sir William
+Wyndam's, who married Lady Catherine Seymour, your acquaintance, I
+suppose. There were ten of us at dinner. It seems, in my absence, they
+had erected a Club, and made me one; and we made some laws to-day, which
+I am to digest and add to, against next meeting. Our meetings are to be
+every Thursday. We are yet but twelve; Lord Keeper and Lord Treasurer
+were proposed; but I was against them, and so was Mr. Secretary, though
+their sons are of it, and so they are excluded; but we design to admit
+the Duke of Shrewsbury. The end of our Club is to advance conversation
+and friendship, and to reward deserving persons with our interest and
+recommendation. We take in none but men of wit or men of interest; and
+if we go on as we begin, no other Club in this town will be worth
+talking of. This letter will come three weeks after the last, so there
+is a week lost; but that is owing to my being out of town.
+
+Well, but I must answer this letter of our MD's. Saturday approaches,
+and I han't written down this side. Oh, faith, Presto has been a sort of
+lazy fellow: but Presto will remove to town this day se'night: the
+Secretary has commanded me to do so: and I believe he and I shall go
+some days to Windsor, where he will have leisure to mind some business
+we have together. To-day our Society (it must not be called a Club)
+dined at Mr. Secretary's: we were but eight. We made some laws, and then
+I went to take my leave of Lady Ashburnham, who goes out of town
+to-morrow.
+
+Steele has had the assurance to write to me that I would engage my Lord
+Treasurer to keep a friend of his in an employment. I believe I told you
+how he and Addison served me for my good offices in Steele's behalf; and
+I promised Lord Treasurer never to speak for either of them again.
+
+We have plays acted in our town; and Patrick was at one of them, oh, oh.
+He was damnably mauled one day when he was drunk, by a brother-footman,
+who dragged him along the floor on his face, which looked for a week
+after as if he had the leprosy, and I was glad enough to see it. I have
+been ten times sending him back to you; yet now he has new clothes and a
+laced hat, which the hatter brought by his orders, and he offered to pay
+for the lace out of his wages.
+
+I must rise now and shave, and walk to town, unless I go with the Dean
+in his chariot at twelve: and I have not seen that Lord Peterborough
+yet. The Duke of Shrewsbury is almost well again, but what care you? You
+do not care for my friends. Farewell, my dearest lives and delights: I
+love you better than ever, if possible, as hope saved, I do, and ever
+will. God almighty bless you ever, and make us happy together! I pray
+for this twice every day; and I hope God will hear my poor hearty
+prayers. Remember, if I am used ill and ungratefully, as I have formerly
+been, 'tis what I am prepared for, and I shall not wonder at it. Yet I
+am now envied, and thought in high favour, and have every day numbers of
+considerable men teasing me to solicit for them. And the Ministry all
+use me perfectly well; and all that know them say they love me. Yet I
+can count upon nothing, nor will, but upon MD's love and kindness. They
+think me useful; they pretended they were afraid of none but me, and
+that they resolved to have me; they have often confessed this: yet all
+this makes little impression on me--Pox of these speculations! They give
+me the spleen; a disease I was not born to. Let me alone, sirrahs, and
+be satisfied: I am, as long as MD and Presto are well. Little wealth,
+and much health, and a life by stealth: that is all we want; and so
+farewell, dearest MD; Stella, Dingley, Presto, all together; now and for
+ever all together. Farewell again and again.
+
+
+LONDON, July, 1711.
+
+
+I have just sent my 26th, and have nothing to say, because I have other
+letters to write (pshaw, I began too high) but to-morrow I will say
+more, and fetch up this line to be straight This is enough at present
+for two dear saucy naughty girls.
+
+Morning. It is a terrible rainy day. Patrick lay out all last night, and
+is not yet returned: faith, poor Presto is a desolate creature; neither
+servant, nor linen, nor anything.
+
+I was at Court and Church to-day: I am acquainted with about thirty in
+the drawing-room, and I am so proud I make all the Lords come up to me;
+one passes half an hour pleasant enough. We had a dunce to preach before
+the queen to-day, which often happens. Windsor is a delicious situation,
+but the town is scoundrel. The Duke of Hamilton would needs be witty,
+and hold up my train as I walked upstairs. It is an ill circumstance
+that on Sundays much company always meet at the great tables. The
+Secretary showed me his bill of fare, to encourage me to dine with him.
+"Poh," said I, "show me a bill of company, for I value not your dinner."
+
+In my conscience. I fear I shall have the gout. I sometimes feel pains
+about my feet and toes: I never drank till within these two years, and I
+did it to cure my head. I often sit evenings with some of these people,
+and drink in my turn; but I am resolved to drink ten times less than
+before; but they advise me to let what I drink be all wine, and not to
+put water in it. Tooke and the printer stayed to-day to finish their
+affair. Then I went to see Lord Treasurer, and chid him for not taking
+notice of me at Windsor. He said he kept a place for me yesterday at
+dinner, and expected me there; but I was glad I did not go, because the
+Duke of Buckingham was there, and that would have made us acquainted;
+which I have no mind to.
+
+I have sent a noble haunch of venison this afternoon to Mrs. Vanhomrigh;
+I wish you had it sirrahs. I dined gravely with my landlord, the
+Secretary. The queen was abroad to-day to hunt; but finding it disposed
+to rain, she kept in her coach, which she drives herself, and drives
+furiously, like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod. Dingley has
+heard of Nimrod, but not Stella, for it is in the Bible. Mr. Secretary
+has given me a warrant for a buck; I can't sent it to MD. It is a sad
+thing, faith, considering how Presto loves MD, and how MD would love
+Presto's venison for Presto's sake. God bless the two dear Wexford
+girls!
+
+There was a drawing-room to-day at Court; but so few company, that the
+queen sent for us into her bedchamber, where we made our bows, and stood
+about twenty of us round the room, while she looked at us round with her
+fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that
+were nearest to her, and then she was told dinner was ready, and went
+out.
+
+
+LONDON, Dec. 1, 1711.
+
+
+To-morrow is the fatal day for the Parliament meeting, and we are full
+of hopes and fears. We reckon we have a majority of ten on our side in
+the House of Lords; yet I observe Mrs. Masham a little uneasy. The Duke
+of Marlborough has not seen the queen for some days past; Mrs. Masham is
+glad of it, because she says he tells a hundred lies to his friends of
+what she says to him: he is one day humble, and the next day on the high
+ropes.
+
+This being the day Parliament was to meet, and the great question to be
+determined, I went with Dr. Freind to dine in the City, on purpose to be
+out of the way, and we sent our printer to see what was our fate; but he
+gave us a most melancholy account of things. The Earl of Nottingham
+began and spoke against a peace, and desired that in their address they
+might put in a clause to advise the queen not to make a peace without
+Spain; which was debated, and carried by the Whigs by about six voices:
+and this has happened entirely by my Lord Treasurer's neglect, who did
+not take timely care to make up his strength, although every one of us
+gave him caution enough. Nottingham has certainly been bribed. The
+question is yet only carried in the Committee of the whole House, and we
+hope when it is reported to the House to-morrow, we shall have a
+majority.
+
+This is a day that may produce great alterations and hazard the ruin of
+England. The Whigs are all in triumph; they foretold how all this would
+be, but we thought it boasting. Nay, they said the Parliament should be
+dissolved before Christmas, and perhaps it may: this is all your d----d
+Duchess of Somerset's doings. I warned them of this nine months ago, and
+a hundred times since. I told Lord Treasurer I should have the advantage
+of him; for he would lose his head, and I should only be hanged, and so
+carry my body entire to the grave.
+
+I was this morning with Mr. Secretary: we are both of opinion that the
+queen is false. He gave me reasons to believe the whole matter is
+settled between the queen and the Whigs. Things are now in a crisis, and
+a day or two will determine. I have desired him to engage Lord Treasurer
+to send, me abroad as Queen's Secretary somewhere or other, where I will
+remain till the new Ministers recall me; and then I will be sick for
+five or six months, till the storm has spent itself. I hope he will
+grant me this; for I should hardly trust myself to the mercy of my
+enemies while their anger is fresh.
+
+Morning. They say the Occasional Bill is brought to-day into the House
+of Lords; but I know not. I will now put an end to my letter, and give
+it into the post-house with my own fair hands. This will be a memorable
+letter, and I shall sigh to see it some years hence. Here are the first
+steps towards the ruin of an excellent Ministry; for I look upon them as
+certainly ruined; and God knows what may be the consequence.--I now bid
+my dearest MD farewell; for company is coming, and I must be at Lord
+Dartmouth's office by noon. Farewell, dearest MD; I wish you a merry
+Christmas; I believe you will have this about that time. Love Presto,
+who loves MD above all things a thousand times. Farewell again, dearest
+MD.
+
+
+LONDON, Dec. 20, 1711.
+
+
+I was with the Secretary this morning, and, for aught I can see, we
+shall have a languishing death: I can know nothing, nor themselves
+neither. I dined, you know, with our Society, and that odious Secretary
+would make me President next week; so I must entertain them this day
+se'night at the Thatched House Tavern: it will cost me five or six
+pounds; yet the Secretary says he will give me wine.
+
+Saturday night. I have broken open my letter, and tore it into the
+bargain, to let you know that we are all safe: the queen has made no
+less than twelve Lords to have a majority; nine new ones, the other
+three peers' sons; and has turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is
+awaked at last, and so is Lord Treasurer: I want nothing now but to see
+the Duchess out. But we shall do without her. We are all extremely
+happy. Give me joy, sirrahs. This is written in a coffee-house.
+
+
+LONDON, Feb. 26, 1712.
+
+
+I was again busy with the Secretary. I dined with him, and we were to do
+more business after dinner; but after dinner is after dinner--an old
+saying and a true, "much drinking, little thinking." We had company with
+us, and nothing could be done, so I am to go there again to-morrow.
+
+To-day in the morning I visited upwards: first I saw the Duke of Ormond
+below stairs, and gave him joy of being declared General in Flanders;
+then I went up one pair of stairs, and sat with the duchess; then I went
+up another pair of stairs, and paid a visit to Lady Betty; and then
+desired her woman to go up to the garret, that I might pass half an hour
+with her, for she was young and handsome, but she would not.
+
+Tell Walls that I spoke to the Duke of Ormond about his friend's
+affairs. I likewise mentioned his own affair to Mr. Southwell. But oo
+must not know zees sings, zey are secrets; and we must keep them flom
+nauty dallars. I was with Lord Treasurer to-day, and hat care oo for
+zat? Monday is parson's holiday, and oo lost oo money at cards; ze
+devil's device. Nite, nite, my two deelest logues.
+
+
+LONDON, April 6, 1713
+
+
+I was this morning at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called
+"Cato," which is to be acted on Friday. There were not above half a
+score of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough
+to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them;
+and the drab that acts Cato's daughter, in the midst of a passionate
+part, calling out "What's next?" I went back and dined with Mr. Addison.
+
+Nothing new to-day; so I'll seal up this to-night. Pray write soon....
+Farewell, deelest MD, MD, MD. Love Presto.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+LYOF N. TOLSTOY
+
+
+Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
+
+
+     Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth
+     (1855-57)--Tolstoy's first literary efforts--may be regarded
+     as semi-autobiographical studies; if not in detail, at least
+     in the wider sense that all his books contain pictures more or
+     less accurate of himself and his own experiences. No plot runs
+     through them; they simply analyse and describe with
+     extraordinary minuteness the feelings of a nervous and morbid
+     boy--a male Marie Bashkirtseff. They are tales rather of the
+     developments of the thoughts, than of the life of a child,
+     with a pale background of men and events. The distinct charm
+     lies in the sincerity with which this development is
+     represented.
+
+
+_I.--Childhood_
+
+
+August 12, 18--, was the third day after my tenth birthday anniversary.
+Wonderful presents had been given me. My tutor, Karl Ivanitch, roused me
+at seven by striking at a fly directly over my head with a flapper made
+of sugar paper fastened to a stick. He generally spoke in German, and in
+his kindly voice exclaimed, "Auf, Kinder, auf; es ist Zeit. Die Mutter
+ist schon im Saal." ("Get up, children, it is time. Your Mother is
+already in the drawing-room.")
+
+Dyadka Nikolai, the valet of us children, a neat little man, brought in
+the clothes for me and Volodya, who was imitating my sister's governess,
+Marya Ivanova, in mocking, merry laughter. Somewhat sternly presently
+Karl Ivanitch called from the schoolroom to know if we were nearly ready
+to begin our lessons.
+
+In the schoolroom, on one shelf was our promiscuous assortment of books,
+on another, the still more miscellaneous collection which our dear old
+tutor was pleased to call his library. I remember that it included a
+German treatise on cabbage gardens, a history of the Seven Years' War,
+and a work on hydrostatic. Karl Ivanitch spent all his spare time in
+reading his beloved books, but he never read anything beyond these and
+the Northern Bee. After early lessons our tutor conducted us downstairs
+to greet Mamma.
+
+She was sitting in the parlour, in front of the samovar, pouring out
+tea. To the left of the divan was the old English grand piano, on which
+my dark-complexioned sister, Liubotchka, eleven years old, was painfully
+practising Clementi's exercises. Near her Marya Ivanova, with scowls on
+her face, was loudly counting, and beating time with her foot. She
+frowned still more disagreeably at Karl as he entered, but he appeared
+to ignore this and kissed my mother's hand with a German salutation.
+After mutually affectionate greetings Mamma told us to go to our father
+and to ask him to come to her before he went to the threshing floor.
+
+We found Papa angrily discussing business affairs with Yakov Mikhailof,
+the chief concern being apparently about money from Mamma's estate at
+Khabarovka, her native village. A large sum was due to the council, and
+Yakov pleaded that it would be difficult to raise it from the sale of
+hay and the proceeds of the mill. "For example," said he, "the miller
+has been twice to ask me for delay, swearing by Christ the Lord that he
+has no money. What little cash he had he put into the dam."
+
+Yakov was a serf, and was a most devoted and assiduous man, excessively
+economical in managing his master's affairs, and constantly worried
+himself over the increase of his master's property at the expense of
+that of his mistress.
+
+For some days we had been expecting something unusual, from preparations
+which we saw going on for some journey, but an announcement from Papa at
+length surprised us terribly. He greeted us one morning with the remark
+that it was time to put an end to our idleness, and that as he was going
+that evening to Moscow, we were to go with him and to live there with
+our grandmother, Mamma remaining on the estate with the girls.
+
+My thoughts were mingled, for I was very grieved for the sake of Mamma,
+yet I felt pleasure at the idea that we were grown up. For poor Karl
+Ivanitch I was extremely sorry, as he would be discharged. On my way
+upstairs I saw Papa's favourite greyhound, Milka, basking in the
+sunshine on the terrace, and ran out, kissed her on the nose and
+caressed her, saying, "Farewell, Milotchka. We shall never see each
+other again." Then, altogether overcome with emotion, I burst into
+tears.
+
+My father was a chivalrous character of the last century, who regarded
+with contempt the people of the present century. His two chief passions
+were cards and women. He was tall and commanding, bald, with small eyes
+ever twinkling vivaciously, and a lisping utterance. He knew how to
+exercise a spell over people of every grade, and in the highest society
+he was held in great esteem. He seemed born to shine in his brilliant
+position, and was an expert in the management of all things that could
+conduce to comfort and pleasure.
+
+A lover of music, he sang to his own piano accompaniment operatic songs,
+but had no liking for Beethoven's sonatas and other scientific
+compositions. His principles grew more fixed as years rolled on; he
+judged actions as being good or bad accordingly as they procured him
+happiness and pleasure, or otherwise; he talked persuasively; and he
+could represent the same deed as either an innocent piece of playfulness
+or of abominable villainy.
+
+Happy days of childhood that can never be recalled! What memories I yet
+cherish of them. I see Mamma just as plainly as when she so long since
+was talking to some one at the tea-table, while I, in my high chair,
+grew drowsy. Presently she stroked my hair with her soft hand, saying,
+"Get up, my darling, it is time to go to bed. Get up, my angel."
+
+I spring up and embrace her, and exclaim, "Dear, dear Mamma, how I love
+you!" With her sad and fascinating smile she places me on her knees, is
+silent awhile, and then speaks. "So you love me very much? Love me
+always and never forget me. If you lose your Mamma, Nikolinka, you will
+not forget her?"
+
+She kisses me still more lovingly, and I cry with tears of love and
+rapture flooding my face, "Oh, do not say that, my darling, my precious
+one." Will that freshness, that happy carelessness, that thirst for love
+which made life's only requirements, ever return? Where are those pure
+tears of tenderest emotion? The angel of consolation came and wiped them
+away. Do the memories alone abide?
+
+About a month after we had removed to Moscow, Grandmamma received a
+visit from Princess Kornakova, a woman of forty-five, with disagreeable
+gray-green eyes, but sweetly curved lips, bright red hair, and
+insalubrious face. In spite of these peculiarities her aspect was noble.
+I took a dislike to her because I found from her talk that she was given
+to beating her own children, and thought that other people's children,
+especially boys, needed to be whipped.
+
+Another visitor was Prince Ivan Ivanitch, distinguished for his noble
+character, handsome person, splendid bravery and extraordinary good
+fortune. He belonged to a powerful family, and lived in accordance with
+principles of the strictest religion and morality. Though somewhat
+reserved and haughty, in demeanour, he was full of kindly feeling.
+Prince Ivan Ivanitch was a highly cultured man of most versatile
+accomplishments. Our Grandmamma was evidently delighted to see him, and
+his magnificent aspect and her liking for him inspired me with unbounded
+admiration and reverence.
+
+He asked why Mamma had not come to Moscow. "Ah," was the reply, "she
+would have come if possible, but they have no income this year."
+
+"I do not understand," replied the Prince. "Her Khabarovka is a
+wonderful estate, and it must always bring in a fine revenue."
+
+"I will tell you," said Grandmamma, sadly. "It seems to me that all the
+pretexts are made simply to enable him to live a gay life here, while
+she, angel of goodness that she is, suspects nothing. She believes him
+in everything."
+
+This conversation should not have been overheard by me, but, having
+overheard it, I crept out of the room.
+
+On the 16th of April, nearly six months later, serious news came from
+Mamma. She wrote to Papa that she had contracted a chill, which had
+caused a fever, that this was over, but had left her in such utter
+weakness that she would never rise from her bed again, although those
+about her were not aware of such a condition. She wished him to come to
+her at once and to bring her two boys with him. She prayed that God's
+holy will might be done.
+
+On April 25th we reached our Petrovskoe home. Papa had been very sad and
+thoughtful during the journey. We at once learned from the steward that
+Mamma had not left her room for six days. I shall never forget what I
+saw when we entered Mamma's room. She was unconscious. Her eyes were
+open, but she saw nothing. We were led away. Mamma soon passed away.
+
+She was dead, the funeral obsequies took place, and then our life went
+on much as before. We rose, had our repasts, and retired to rest at the
+same hours. Three days after the funeral the whole household removed to
+Moscow. Grandmamma only learned what had happened when we arrived, and
+her grief was terrible. She lay unconscious for a week, and the doctor
+feared for her life, for she would not eat, speak, or take medicine.
+When she recovered somewhat, her first thought was of us children. She
+cried softly, spoke of Mamma, and tenderly caressed us.
+
+
+_II.--Boyhood_
+
+
+On our arrival in Moscow a change had taken place in my views of things.
+My sentiment of reverence for Grandmamma had changed to one of sympathy.
+As she covered my cheeks with kisses I realised that each kiss expressed
+the thought "She is gone; I shall never see her more." Papa had very
+little to do with us in Moscow, coming to us only at dinner time, and
+lost much in my eyes, with his ostentatious dress, his stewards, his
+clerks, and his hunting and business expeditions.
+
+Between us and the girls also an invisible barrier seemed to rise. We
+were proud of our trousers and straps, and they of their petticoats,
+which increased in length. Their showier Sunday dress made it manifest
+that we were no longer in the country. But soon commenced a period of my
+life of which it is difficult to trace a record. Rarely during memories
+of it do I find moments of the genuine warmth of feeling which so
+frequently illumined the earliest years of my life.
+
+Vivid is the recollection of Volodya's entrance at the university. He
+was barely two years my senior in age. The day of his first examination
+arrived, and he presented a handsome appearance in his blue uniform with
+brass buttons and lacquered boots. The examination lasted ten days, and
+Volodya, having passed brilliantly, returned on the last day no longer
+in blue coat and grey cap, but in student uniform, with blue embroidered
+collar, three-cornered hat, and a gilt dagger by his side. Joy and
+excitement reigned in the whole household. For the first time since
+Mamma's death, Grandmamma drank champagne, and weeps with joy as she
+looks at Volodya, who henceforth rode in his own equipage, receives
+friends in his own rooms, smokes tobacco, goes to balls.
+
+But soon another incident happened which is engraven on memory. The dear
+old Grandmamma was growing daily weaker, and one morning the
+announcement thrilled us that she was dead. Again, the house was full of
+mourning. In a few months I should be preparing to enter the university.
+I was by degrees emerging from my boyish moods, with the exception of
+one--a tendency to metaphysical dreaminess, which was fated to do me
+much injury in after years.
+
+At this period an intimacy commenced between me and a very remarkable
+man, Prince Dmitri Nekhliudoff. He was a tall and commanding figure,
+with an extraordinary intellect. Whenever he found me alone, we seated
+ourselves in some secluded corner and found mutual delight in
+metaphysical discussions. With ecstasy in those moments I soared higher
+and higher into the realms of thought. This strange friendship grew. We
+agreed to confess everything to each other, and thus we should really
+know each other and not be ashamed; but, in order that we should not be
+in any fear of strangers, we vowed never to say anything to anybody else
+about each other. And we kept the vow. As may be imagined, the influence
+of my friend over me was greater than mine over him. I adopted his
+fervent ideas, which included lofty aspirations for the reformation of
+all mankind.
+
+
+_III.--Youth_
+
+
+I was nearly sixteen, and from that time I date the beginning of youth.
+Under various professors I studied, though by no means willingly, to
+prepare for the university. At length, on April 16, I went for the first
+time to the great hall of the university. For the first time in my life
+I wore a dress coat. The bright hall was filled with a brilliant crowd
+of hundreds of young men in gymnasium costumes and dress coats, stately
+professors moving freely about among the tables. On that day I was
+examined in history and answered questions in Russian history in
+brilliant style, for I knew the subject well. I received five marks.
+Similar success rewarded my efforts at the examination in mathematics,
+for the professor told me I had answered even better than was required,
+and on this occasion I received five points.
+
+Everything went splendidly till I came to the Latin examination. The
+Latin professor was spoken of in accents of terror, for he had the
+reputation of taking a fierce delight in plucking candidates. My success
+so far had made me feel proudly confident, and as I could translate
+Cicero and Horace without the lexicon and was proficient in Zumpt's
+Grammar, I thought I might equal the rest. But not so. The professor
+amicably passed one of my young acquaintances, although the youth was
+palpably deficient in his answers. I afterwards learned that he was the
+student's protector.
+
+When my turn came, immediately afterwards, the professor turned on me in
+truly savage demeanour. "That is not it; that is not it at all,"
+exclaimed he. "This is not the way to prepare for higher education. You
+only want to wear the uniform and to boast of being first."
+
+The demeanour of this professor so affected me that my confusion was
+complete. I only received two marks, and the injustice so depressed me
+that I lost all ambition and allowed the remaining examinations to
+proceed without making any effort. I made up my mind that it was unwise
+to aim at being first, and I resolved to adhere to this sentiment in the
+university.
+
+My father married again. He was forty-eight when he took Avdotya
+Epifanova as his second wife. She was a beautiful woman, whom Mamma used
+to call Dunitchka. But I had suspected nothing until Papa actually
+announced to us that he was going to marry her. The wedding was to take
+place in a fortnight. I and Volodya returned to Moscow at the beginning
+of September, and on the following day I went to the university for my
+first lecture.
+
+It was a magnificent, sunny day, and as I entered the auditorium I felt
+lost in the throng of gay youths flitting about through the doors and
+among the corridors. Belonging to no particular group I felt isolated,
+and then even angry, and I remember in my heart that this first day was
+a dismal occasion for me. I looked at the professor with an ironical
+feeling, for he commenced his lecture with an introduction which, to my
+mind, was without sense. I decided at this first lecture that there was
+no need to write down everything that each professor said, and to this
+principle I adhered.
+
+Though during my course I made many pleasant acquaintances, and so felt
+less isolated than at first, I indulged in little real comradeship. But
+during the winter my attention was much engrossed with affairs of the
+heart, for I was in love three times. Yet I was overwhelmed with
+shyness, fearing that my love should be discovered by its object. With
+two of the young ladies, indeed, I had already been in love previously.
+Of one of them I was now enamoured for the third time. But I knew that
+Volodya also regarded her with passionate ecstasy. I felt that it would
+certainly not be agreeable to him to learn that two brothers were in
+love with the same young woman.
+
+Therefore I said nothing to him of my love. But great satisfaction was
+afforded to my mind by the fact that our love was so pure, and that each
+would be ready, if needful, to make a sacrifice for the sake of the
+other. But that self-abnegation did not, after all, extend to Volodya,
+for when he heard that a certain diplomat was to marry the girl, he was
+disposed to slap his face and to challenge him to a duel. It happened
+that I had only spoken once to the young lady, and my love passed away
+in a week, as I made no effort to perpetuate it.
+
+During that winter I was quite disenchanted with the social pleasures to
+which I had looked forward when I entered the university, in imitation
+of my brother Volodya. He danced a great deal, and Papa also went with
+his young wife to balls. But at the first one which I attended I was so
+shy that I declined the invitation of the Princess Kornakova to dance,
+declaring that I did not dance, though I had come to her evening party
+with the express intention of dancing a great deal. I remained silently
+in one place the whole evening.
+
+Avdotya's passionate love for Papa was evident in every word, look, and
+action. We were always hypocritically polite to her, called her _chere
+maman_, and noted that at first she was fond of calling herself
+stepmother, and that she plainly felt the unpleasantness of her
+position. Her disposition was very amiable and she was in no way
+exacting.
+
+My first examination at length arrived. It was on differential and
+integral calculus. I was indifferent and abstracted, but a feeling of
+some dread passed over me when the same young professor who had
+questioned me at the entrance examination looked me in the face. I
+answered so badly that he looked at me compassionately, and said quietly
+but firmly that as I should not pass in the second class I had better
+not present myself for examination. I went home and remained weeping in
+my room for three days over my failure. I even looked out my pistols, in
+order that they might be at hand if I should feel a wish to shoot
+myself. Finally, I saw my father and begged him to permit me to enter
+the hussars, or to go to the Caucasus.
+
+Though he was not pleased, yet, when he saw how deep was my grief he
+sought to comfort me by saying that it was not so very bad, and that
+arrangements might be made for a different course of study. After a few
+days I became composed, but did not leave the house till we departed for
+the country. I may some day relate the sequel in the happier half of my
+youth.
+
+[Tolstoy has never published the continuation, but it is generally
+considered that he represents himself in Constantine Levin, the hero of
+the greatest of his stories, and that thus we gain an insight into his
+mature thoughts.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+My Confession
+
+
+     Count Lyof N. Tolstoy in writing this work expressed himself
+     in such independent terms that it could not be published in
+     Russia, but was issued in Geneva in 1888, by the firm of
+     Elpidine, who had printed in 1886 his "What is my Life," and
+     in 1892 brought out his "Walk in the Light." The books thus
+     issued in the original Russian version outside of the famous
+     author's native land are all purely spiritual, and are written
+     in the most elevated tone. But Tolstoy's mode of interpreting
+     the Scriptures is not approved by the Holy Synod of the
+     Eastern Orthodox Church, or Russo-Greek Communion, and thus
+     most of his treatises which come within the strictly religious
+     category are classed amongst the "Forbidden Books" of modern
+     Russian literature. In this "Confession" Tolstoy emphatically
+     strikes the keynote which is the _motif_ of all his didactic
+     writings. It is an affirmation of the principle that the pure
+     spirit of religion, apart from external dogma, is the really
+     precious factor of life. He follows the same strain in his
+     "What I Believe," and his "Christianity of Christ." The
+     following synopsis is translated and summarised from the
+     original Russian.
+
+
+_I.--Evil Early Years_
+
+
+Though reared in the faith of the Orthodox Eastern, or Russo-Greek
+Church, I had by the time when, at the age of eighteen, I left the
+university ceased to believe what I had been taught. My faith could
+never have been well grounded in conviction. I not only ceased to pray,
+but also to attend the services and to fast. Without denying the
+existence of God, yet I cherished no ideas either as to the nature of
+God or the teaching of Christ.
+
+I found that my wish to become a good and virtuous man, whenever the
+aspiration was in any way expressed, simply exposed me to ridicule;
+while I instantly gained praise for any vicious behaviour. Even my
+excellent aunt declared that she wished two things for me. One was that
+I should form a liaison with some married lady; the other that I should
+become an adjutant to the Tsar.
+
+I look back with horror on the years of my young manhood, for I was
+guilty of slaying men in battle, of gambling, of riotous squandering of
+substance gained by the toil of serfs, of deceit, and of profligacy.
+That course of life lasted ten years. Then I took to writing, but the
+motive was grovelling, for I aimed at gaining money and flattery.
+
+My aims were gratified, for, coming to St. Petersburg at the age of 26,
+I secured the flattering reception I had coveted from the authors most
+in repute. The war, about which I had written much from the field of
+conflict, had just closed. I found that a theory prevailed amongst the
+"Intelligentia" that the function of writers, thinkers, and poets was to
+teach; they were to teach not because they knew or understood, but
+unconsciously and intuitively. Acting on this philosophy, I, as a
+thinker and poet, wrote and taught I knew not what, received large
+remuneration for my efforts with the pen, and lived loosely, gaily, and
+extravagantly.
+
+Thus I was one of the hierarchs of the literary faith, and for a
+considerable time was undisturbed by any doubts as to its soundness; but
+when three years had been thus spent, serious suspicions entered my
+mind. I noted that the devotees of this apparently infallible principle
+were at variance amongst themselves, for they disputed, deceived,
+abused, and swindled each other. And many were grossly selfish, and most
+immoral.
+
+Disgust supervened, both with myself and with mankind in general. My
+error now was that though my eyes were opened to the vanity and delusion
+of the position, yet I retained it, imagining that I, as thinker, poet,
+teacher, could teach other men while not at all knowing what to teach.
+To my other faults an inordinate pride had been added by my intercourse
+with these _litterateurs_. That period viewed retrospectively seems to
+me like one of a kind of madness. Hundreds of us wrote to teach the
+people, while we all abused and confuted one another. We could teach
+nothing, yet we sent millions of pages all over Russia, and we were
+unspeakably vexed that we seemed to gain no attention whatever, for
+nobody appeared to listen to us.
+
+
+_II.--Groping in Darkness_
+
+
+I travelled in Europe at this period, before my marriage, still
+cherishing in my mind the idea of general perfectibility, which was so
+popular at that time with the "Intelligentia." Cultured circles clung to
+the theory of what we call "progress," vague though are the notions
+attaching to the term. I was horrified with the spectacle of an
+execution in Paris, and my eyes were opened to the fallacy underlying
+the theory of human wisdom. The doctrine of "progress" I now felt to be
+a mere superstition, and I was further confirmed in my conviction by the
+sad death of my brother after a painful illness of a whole year.
+
+My brother was kind, amiable, clever, and serious; but he passed away
+without ever knowing why he had lived or what his death meant for him.
+All theories were futile in the face of this tragedy. Returning to
+Russia I settled in my rural home and began to organise schools for the
+peasants, feeling real enthusiasm for the enterprise. For I still clung
+to a great extent to the idea of progress by development. I thought that
+though highly cultured men all thought and taught differently and agreed
+about nothing, yet in the case of the children of the mujiks the
+difficulty could easily be surmounted by permitting the children to
+learn what they liked.
+
+I also tried through my own newspaper to indoctrinate the people, but my
+mind grew more and more embarrassed. At length I fell sick, rather
+mentally than physically. I went off to the Steppes to breathe the pure
+air and to take mare's milk and to live the simple life. I married soon
+after my return to my estate. As time passed on I became happily
+absorbed in the interests of wife and children, largely forgetting
+during a happy interval of fifteen years the old anxiety for individual
+perfection. For this desire was superseded by that of promoting the
+welfare of my family.
+
+All this time, however, I was writing busily, and was gaining much money
+as well as winning great applause. And in everything I wrote I
+persistently taught what was for me the sole truth--that our chief
+object in life should be to secure our own happiness and that of our
+family. Then, five years ago, supervened a mood of mental lethargy. I
+grew despondent; my perplexity increased, and I was tormented by the
+constant recurrence of such questions as--"Why?" and "What afterwards?"
+And by degrees the questions took a more concrete form. "I now possess
+six thousand 'desyatins' of land in the government of Samara, and three
+hundred horses--what then?" I could find no answer. Then came the
+question, "What if I could excel Shakespeare, and Moliere, and Gogol,
+and become the most celebrated the world has ever seen--what then?"
+Answer, there was none; yet I felt that I must find one in order to go
+on living.
+
+Life had now lost its meaning, and was no longer real to me. I was a
+healthy and happy man, and yet so empty did life seem to me that I was
+afraid of being tempted to commit suicide, even though I had not the
+slightest intention to perpetrate such a deed. But, fearing lest the
+temptation might come upon me I hid a rope away out of my sight, and
+ceased carrying a gun in my walks.
+
+
+_III.--The Spirit of Despair_
+
+
+It was in my 50th year that the question "What is life" had reduced me
+to utter despair. Various queries clustered round this central
+interrogation. "Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there
+any signification in life that can overcome inevitable death?" I found
+that in human knowledge no real answer was forthcoming to such
+yearnings. None of the theories of the philosophers gave any
+satisfaction. In my search for a solution of life's problem I felt like
+a traveller lost in a forest, out of which he can find no issue.
+
+I found that not only did Solomon declare that he hated life, for all is
+vanity and vexation of spirit; but that Sakya Muni, the Indian sage,
+equally decided that life was a great evil; while Socrates and
+Schopenhauer agree that annihilation is the only thing to be wished for.
+But neither these testimonies of great minds nor my own reasoning could
+induce me to destroy myself. For a force within me, combined with an
+instinctive consciousness of life, counteracted the feeling of despair
+and drew me out of my misery of soul. I felt that I must study life not
+merely as it was amongst those like myself, but as it was amongst the
+millions of the common people. I reflected that knowledge based on
+reason, the knowledge of the cultured, imparted no meaning to life, but
+that, on the other hand, amongst the masses of the common people there
+was an unreasoning consciousness of life which gave it a significance.
+
+This unreasoning knowledge was the very faith which I was rejecting. It
+was faith in things I could not understand; in God, one yet three; in
+the creation of devils and angels. Such things seemed utterly contrary
+to reason. So I began to reflect that perhaps what I considered
+reasonable was after all not so, and what appeared unreasonable might
+not really be so.
+
+I discovered one great error that I had perpetrated. I had been
+comparing life with life, that is, the finite with the finite, and the
+infinite with the infinite. The process was vain. It was like comparing
+force with force, matter with matter, nothing with nothing. It was like
+saying in mathematics that A equals A, or O equals O. Thus the only
+answer was "identity."
+
+Now I saw that scientific knowledge would give no reply to my questions.
+I began to comprehend that though faith seemed to give unreasonable
+answers, these answers certainly did one important thing. They did at
+least bring in the relation of the finite to the infinite. I came to
+feel that in addition to the reasoning knowledge which I once reckoned
+to be the sole true knowledge, there was in every man also an
+unreasoning species of knowledge which makes life possible. That
+unreasoning knowledge is faith.
+
+What is this faith? It is not only belief in God and in things unseen,
+but it is the apprehension of life's meaning. It is the force of life. I
+began to understand that the deepest source of human wisdom was to be
+found in the answers given by faith, that I had no reasonable right to
+reject them, and that they alone solved the problem of life.
+
+
+_IV.--Mistakes Apprehended_
+
+
+Nevertheless my heart was not lightened. I studied the writings of
+Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. I also studied actual religious life
+by turning to the orthodox, the monks, and the Evangelicals who preach
+salvation through faith in a Redeemer. I asked what meaning was given
+for them to life by what they believed. But I could not accept the faith
+of any of these men, because I saw that it did not explain the meaning
+of life, but only obscured it. So I felt a return of the terrible
+feeling of despair.
+
+Being unable to believe in the sincerity of men who did not live
+consistently with the doctrines they professed, and feeling that they
+were self-deceived, and, like myself, were satisfied with the lusts of
+the flesh, I began to draw near to the believers amongst the poor,
+simple, and ignorant, the pilgrims, monks, and peasants. I found that
+though their faith was mingled with much superstition, yet with them the
+whole life was a confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith
+gave them.
+
+The more I contemplated the lives of these simple folk, the more deeply
+was I convinced of the reality of their faith, which I perceived to be a
+necessity for them, for it alone gave life a meaning and made it worth
+living. This was in direct opposition to what I saw in my own circle,
+where I marked the possibility of living without faith, for not one in a
+thousand professed to be a believer, while amongst the poorer classes
+not one in thousands was an unbeliever. The contradiction was extreme.
+In my class a tranquil death, without terror or despair, is rare; in
+that lower class, an uneasy death is a rare exception. I found that
+countless numbers in that lower mass of humanity had so understood the
+meaning of life that they were able both to live bearing contentedly the
+burdens of life, and to die peacefully.
+
+The more I learned of these men of faith the more I liked them, and the
+easier I felt it so to live. For two years I lived in their fashion.
+Then the life of my own wealthy and cultured class became repellent to
+me, for it had lost all meaning whatever. It seemed like empty child's
+play, while the life of the working classes appeared to me in its true
+significance.
+
+Now I began to apprehend where I had judged wrongly. My mistake was that
+I had applied an answer to my question concerning life which only
+concerned my own life, to life in general. My life had been but one long
+indulgence of my passions. It was evil and meaningless. Therefore such
+an answer had no application to life at large, but only to my individual
+life.
+
+I understood the truth which the Gospel subsequently taught me more
+fully, that men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds
+were evil. I understood that for the comprehension of life, it was
+essential that life should be something more than an evil and
+meaningless thing revealed by reason. Life must be considered as a
+whole, not merely in its parasitic excrescences. I felt that to be good
+was more important than to believe. I loved good men. I hated myself. I
+accepted truth. I understood that we were all more or less mad with the
+love of evil.
+
+I looked at the animals, saw the birds building nests, living only to
+fly and to subsist. I saw how the goat, hare, and wolf live, but to feed
+and to nurture their young, and are contented and happy. Their life is a
+reasonable one. And man must gain his living like the animals do, only
+with this great difference, that if he should attempt this alone, he
+will perish. So he must labour for the good of all, not merely for
+himself.
+
+I had not helped others. My life for thirty years had been that of a
+mere parasite. I had been contented to remain ignorant of the reason why
+I lived at all.
+
+There is a supreme will in the universe. Some one makes the universal
+life his secret care. To know what that supreme will is, we must obey it
+implicitly. No reproaches against their masters come from the simple
+workers who do just what is required of them, though we are in the habit
+of regarding them as brutes. We, on the contrary, who think ourselves
+wise, consume the goods of our master while we do nothing willingly that
+he prescribes. We think that it would be stupid for us to do so.
+
+What does such conduct imply? Simply that our master is stupid, or that
+we have no master.
+
+
+_V.--Feeling Versus Reason_
+
+
+Thus I was led at last to the conclusion that knowledge based on reason
+is fallacious, and that the knowledge of truth can be secured only by
+living. I had come to feel that I must live a real, not a parasitical
+life, and that the meaning of life could be perceived only by
+observation of the combined lives of the great human community.
+
+The feelings of my mind during all these experiences and observations
+were mingled with a heart-torment which I can only describe as a
+searching after God. This search was a feeling rather than a course of
+reasoning. For it came from my heart, and was actually opposed to my way
+of thinking. Kant had shown the impossibility of proving the existence
+of God, yet I still hoped to find Him, and I still addressed Him in
+prayer. Yet I did not find Him whom I sought.
+
+At times I contended against the reasoning of Kant and Schopenhauer, and
+argued that causation is not in the same category with thought and space
+and time. I argued that if I existed, there was a cause of my being, and
+that cause was the cause of all causes. Then I pondered the idea that
+the cause of all things is what is called God, and with all my powers I
+strove to attain a sense of the presence of this cause.
+
+Directly I became conscious of a power over me I felt a possibility of
+living. Then I asked myself what was this cause, and what was my
+relation to what I called God? Simply the old familiar answer occurred
+to me, that God is the creator, the giver of all. Yet I was dissatisfied
+and fearful, and the more I prayed, the more convinced I was that I was
+not heard. In my despair I cried aloud for mercy, but no one had mercy
+on me, and I felt as if life stagnated within me.
+
+Yet the conviction kept recurring that I must have appeared in this
+world with some motive on the part of some one who had sent me into it.
+If I had been sent here, who sent me? I had not been like a fledgling
+flung out of a nest to perish. Some one had cared for me, had loved me.
+Who was it? Again came the same answer, God. He knew and saw my fear, my
+despair, and so I passed from the consideration of the existence of God,
+which was proved, on to that of our relation towards him as our Redeemer
+through His Son. But I felt this to be a thing apart from me and from
+the world, and this God vanished like melting ice from my eyes. Again I
+was left in despair. I felt there was nothing left but to put an end to
+my life; yet I knew that I should never do this.
+
+Thus did moods of joy and despair come and go, till one day, when I was
+listening to the sounds in a forest, and was still on that day in the
+early springtide seeking after God in my thoughts, a flash of joy
+illumined my soul. I realised that the conception of God was not God
+Himself. I felt that I had only truly lived when I believed in God. God
+is life. Live to seek God and life will not be without Him. The light
+that then shone never left me. Thus I was saved from self-destruction.
+Gradually I felt the glow and strength of life return to me. I renounced
+the life of my own class, because it was unreal, and its luxurious
+superfluity rendered comprehension of life impossible. The simple men
+around me, the working classes, were the real Russian people. To them I
+turned. They made the meaning of life clear. It may thus be expressed:--
+
+Each of us is so created by God that he may ruin or save his soul. To
+save his soul, a man must live after God's word by humility, charity,
+and endurance, while renouncing all the pleasures of life. This is for
+the common people the meaning of the whole system of faith,
+traditionally delivered to them from the past and administered to them
+by the pastors of the Church.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PASQUALE VILLARI
+
+
+The Life of Girolamo Savonarola
+
+
+     Pasquale Villari was born October 3, 1827, at Naples. At the
+     age of twenty he produced his first literary effort, a Liberal
+     manifesto against Neapolitan Bourbonism, which necessitated
+     his flight from his native city. He retreated to Florence and
+     there wrote his work on "Savonarola," which at once achieved
+     fame and was translated into French, German, and English. His
+     next great book was his "Macchiavelli." Villari had been
+     appointed Professor of History at Nice, but left that city for
+     a similar position at Florence. He entered political life in
+     1862, and has sat as a Parliamentary Deputy several times. In
+     1884 he was made senator, and in 1891 he was minister of
+     public instruction in the Rudini Cabinet. Villari's essays on
+     Dante are much esteemed. His treatise on "The First Two
+     Centuries of Florentine History" is considered a standard
+     work. All his books have been translated into our language by
+     his English wife, Linda Villari, who is herself an
+     accomplished authoress.
+
+
+_I.--1452-1494_
+
+
+The House of Savonarola derived its ancient origin from the city of
+Padua. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the family removed to
+Ferrara where, on September 21, 1452, the subject of this biography,
+Girolamo Savonarola, first saw the light. He was the third of seven
+children of his parents. The lad became the favourite of his
+grandfather, Michele, who wished to see him become a great physician,
+and devoted most assiduous care on the task of training his intellect.
+But unfortunately the grandfather soon passed away, and Girolamo's
+studies were then directed by his father, who began to instruct him in
+philosophy.
+
+The natural sciences were then only branches of philosophy, and the
+latter, though employed as preliminary to the study of medicine, was
+purely scholastic. The books which came into the hands of the young
+Savonarola were the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Arabic
+commentaries on Aristotle. He was specially fascinated with the works of
+St. Thomas, but besides literature he studied music. He also composed
+verses.
+
+All particulars, however, of Savonarola's boyhood are unfortunately
+lacking. But we can form a vivid idea of the surroundings which must
+have influenced him. Ferrara was then the splendid capital of the House
+of Este, with 100,000 inhabitants and a court which was one of the first
+in Italy, and was continually visited by princes, emperors, and popes.
+The lad must have witnessed gorgeous pageants, like the two which
+occurred on visits of Pope Pius II., in 1459 and 1460. But during all
+this period Savonarola was entirely absorbed in studying the Scriptures
+and St. Thomas Aquinas, allowing himself no recreation save playing sad
+music on his lute, or writing verses expressing, not without force and
+simplicity, the griefs of his heart.
+
+The contrasts that the youth witnessed between the magnificence
+ostentatiously displayed and the evidences of tyranny in palaces and
+castles in whose dungeons were immured numerous victims, clanking their
+chains, made indelible impressions on his mind. Conducted once by his
+parents to the ducal palace at Ferrara, he firmly refused ever to enter
+its doors again. With singular spiritual fervour in one so young,
+Savonarola surrendered his whole heart and soul to religious sentiments
+and exercises. To him worldly life, as he saw all Ferrara absorbed in
+its gaieties, became utterly repellent, and a sermon to which he
+listened from an Augustinian friar determined him to adopt the monastic
+life.
+
+April 24, 1475, when his parents were absent from home attending the
+festival of St. George, he ran away to Bologna and presented himself at
+the Monastery of St. Dominic, begging that he might be admitted for the
+most menial service. He was instantly received, and at once began to
+prepare for his novitiate. In this retreat he submitted himself to the
+severest penances and discipline and displayed such excessive zeal and
+devotion as to win the admiration of the monks, who at times believed
+him to be rapt in a holy trance.
+
+
+_II.--1475-1481_
+
+
+Savonarola's sojourn at Bologna in the Dominican Monastery lasted for
+seven years, during which his spirit was occupied not only with faith
+and prayer, but with deep meditation on the miserable condition of the
+Church. His soul was stirred to wrathful indignation. The shocking
+corruption of the Papacy, dating from the death of Pius II. in 1464, was
+to reach its climax under Alexander VI. The avarice of Paul II. was soon
+noted by all the world, and so boundless was the profligacy of his
+successor, Sixtus IV., that no deed was too scandalous for him to
+commit.
+
+The state of Italy as well as of the Church was miserable, and the soul
+of the young monk was filled with horror-stricken grief, relieved only
+by study and prayer. He had been much occupied in instructing the
+novices, but now he was promoted to the function of preacher. In 1481 he
+was sent by his superiors to preach in Ferrara. Nothing is known of the
+effect of the sermons he delivered at that time and place. Savonarola
+had not yet developed his gifts of oratory. He was driven from Ferrara
+by an outbreak of war with the Venetians, and repaired to Florence,
+where, in the Monastery of St. Mark the brightest as well as the saddest
+years of his life were to be spent. The Monastery contained the first
+public library established in Italy, which was kept in excellent order
+by the monks.
+
+Savonarola was half intoxicated with joy during his first days in
+Florence. He was charmed by the soft lines of the Tuscan hills and the
+beauty of the Tuscan speech. Lorenzo the Magnificent had been ruling
+Florence for many years and was then at the climacteric of his fame.
+Under his sway everything appeared to prosper. Enemies had been
+imprisoned or banished, and factions had ceased to distract the city.
+Lorenzo's shameless licentiousness was condoned by reason of his
+brilliancy, his patronage of art and literature, and his lavish public
+entertainments.
+
+Greek scholars, driven westward by the fall of Constantinople, sought
+refuge at the Florentine court. The fine arts flourished and a Platonic
+Academy was established. It was even proposed that the Pope should
+canonise Plato as a saint. In fact that period witnessed the
+inauguration of modern culture.
+
+
+_III.--1481-1490_
+
+
+After the first few days in Florence, Savonarola again began to
+experience the feeling of isolation. For he speedily detected the
+unbelief and frivolity under the surface of the intellectual culture of
+the people. Even in St. Mark's Monastery there was no real religion.
+Savonarola was soon invited to preach the Lenten sermons in St. Lorenzo.
+His discourses produced no special effect, for the Florentines preferred
+preachers who indulged in Pagan quotations and rhetorical elegancies
+rather than in expatiating in the precepts of Christianity. But a
+stirring event was at hand.
+
+Savonarola was sent by his superiors to Reggio to attend a Chapter of
+the Dominicans. During the discussion he was suddenly impelled to rise
+to his feet and to plunge into a powerful declamation against the
+corruptions of the Church and the clergy which transfixed his hearers
+with astonishment. This outburst was a revelation of his extraordinary
+powers. It instantly secured his fame and from that moment many sought
+his acquaintance.
+
+Savonarola's mind from that moment became strangely excited and it is
+not surprising that he should have seen many visions. He on one occasion
+saw the heavens open. A panorama of the calamities of the Church passed
+before him and he heard a voice charging him to proclaim them to the
+people. In that year, 1484, Pope Sixtus died. The election of his
+successor, Innocent VIII. destroyed the hopes of honest men. For the new
+Pope no longer disguised his children under the appellation of nephews,
+but openly acknowledged them as his sons, conferring on them the title
+of princes.
+
+We may imagine the storms of emotion excited in the soul of Savonarola.
+Fortunately, he was sent to preach Lenten sermons at San Gimignano, the
+"City of the Grey Towers" in the Siennese hills. Here he found his true
+vocation. His words flowed freely and were eloquent and effective. Next
+he was sent to Brescia, where his predictions of coming terrors and his
+exhortations to repentance produced a profound impression. During the
+sack of that same city in 1512 by the fierce soldiers of Gaston de Foix,
+when 6,000 citizens were slain, the stricken people vividly remembered
+the Apocalyptic denunciations and predictions of the preacher from
+Ferrara.
+
+Through the wonderful success of these Lenten sermons the name of
+Savonarola became known throughout Italy, and he no longer felt
+uncertain as to his proper mission. Yet, the more popular he became the
+greater was his humility and the more ardent was his devotion to prayer.
+He seemed when engaged in prayer frequently to lapse into a trance, and
+tradition even alleges that at such times a bright halo was seen to
+encircle his head.
+
+
+_IV.--1491_
+
+
+Returning to Florence, Savonarola by his Lenten sermons in 1491 drew
+immense crowds to the Duomo. From that moment he became the paramount
+power in the pulpit. His vivid imagery and his predictions of coming
+troubles seemed to produce a magical effect on the minds of the people.
+But this growing influence was a source of considerable vexation to
+Lorenzo de' Medici and his friends. Savonarola vehemently denounced the
+greed of the clergy and their neglect of spiritual life for the sake of
+mere external ceremonialism, and he with equal insistence inveighed
+against the corruption of public manners. As Lorenzo was already
+considered a tyrant by many of the citizens, and as he was universally
+charged with having corrupted the magistrates and appropriated the
+public and private funds, it was generally inferred that Savonarola had
+had the audacity to make allusion to him.
+
+This only enhanced the Friar's reputation and in July, 1491, he was
+elected Prior of St. Mark's. The office made him both more prominent
+than before and also more independent. He showed this to be the case by
+at once refusing to go according to custom to do homage to the
+Magnificent, declaring that he owed his election to God alone, and to
+God only would he vow obedience. Lorenzo was deeply offended, yet he
+judged it discreet rather to win the new Prior over by kindness than to
+wage war with him.
+
+The Seignior only deepened Savonarola's contempt by sending rich gifts
+to the convent and by sending five of the chief citizens to him in order
+to induce him to modify the strain of his preaching. The gifts were
+immediately distributed among the poor, and Savonarola in a pulpit
+allusion observed that a faithful dog does not cease barking in his
+master's defence because a bone is flung him. To the five citizens, who
+hinted to the Prior that he might be sent into exile, he replied that
+they should bid Lorenzo do penance for his sins, for God was no
+respecter of persons and did not spare the princes of the earth.
+
+Wonderful was the effect of Savonarola's preaching on the corrupt and
+pagan society of Florence. His natural, spontaneous, heart-stirring
+eloquence, with its exalted imagery and outbursts of righteous
+indignation, was entirely unprecedented in that era of pedantry and
+simulation of the classic and heathen oratory. The scholastic jargon
+indulged in by the preachers of the time was utterly unintelligible to
+the common people. Savonarola's voice was the only one that addressed
+the multitude in familiar and fascinating tones and in an accent that
+evinced true affection for the people. They knew that he alone fought
+for truth and was fervently devoted to goodness. Thus he was the one
+truly eloquent preacher of the time, who restored pulpit preaching to
+its pristine honour, and he well deserves to be styled the first orator
+of modern times.
+
+
+_V.--1492-1494_
+
+
+A wasting disease from which Lorenzo suffered had by the beginning of
+April, 1492, made such inroads as to end all hopes of his recovery. The
+Magnificent turned his thoughts to religion and suddenly asked to
+confess to Savonarola. Though astonished at the request, the Prior
+acceded to it and found Lorenzo in great agitation, which he sought to
+calm by reminding the sick man of the goodness and mercy of God.
+
+A painful scene ensued. Savonarola added that three things were needful.
+First, a living faith in God's mercy. Secondly, Lorenzo must restore all
+his ill-gotten wealth, or at least command his sons to do it in his
+name. Lastly, he must restore liberty to the people of Florence. The
+sick man, collecting all his remaining strength, angrily turned his back
+on his Confessor, who at once left his presence. On April 8, 1492, the
+Magnificent, in an agony of remorse, breathed his last. On July 25 of
+the same year Pope Innocent VIII. expired.
+
+The next Pope, Alexander VI., was notorious for his avarice and his
+profligacy. The announcement of his elevation to the papal chair was
+received throughout Italy with dismay. The worst apprehensions were soon
+fulfilled, for the Pope proved to be guilty of shocking extortion, the
+object of which was to provide more lavishly for his dissolute children.
+
+This deplorable state of things caused men to look wistfully to
+Savonarola. The times he had foretold seemed to be at hand, and the
+excitement was intensified by two visions which he declared had been
+manifested to him as celestial revelations. He had seen a sword in the
+sky and had heard voices proclaiming mercy to the righteous and
+retribution to the wicked.
+
+In the other vision a black cross hung over the city of Rome, stretching
+its arms over the whole earth. On it was written, "The Cross of God's
+wrath." But from Jerusalem rose a golden cross, inscribed, "The Cross of
+God's compassion." Discontent was growing in Florence. The insolence and
+the rapacity of Pietro de' Medici increased. In the autumn of that year
+Savonarola delivered a famous course of sermons on Noah's Ark, warning
+all to take refuge from the coming flood in the mystical Ark of mercy.
+The flood came indeed, for suddenly all Florence was startled as if by a
+thunderclap by the news that a foreign army was pouring over the Alps
+for the conquest of Italy. The terror was overwhelming. Italy was
+unprepared, for the princes had no efficient armies for resistance.
+
+The invader was the new King of France, the young and adventurous
+Charles VIII. His army was a model to all Europe in the art of war. It
+possessed weapons of the latest invention and its main strength lay in
+its splendid infantry. Florence was entered without a blow, and King
+Charles demanded as a ransom a far larger sum than the Republic could
+pay. He remained day after day in the city, showing no inclination to
+depart. Then was manifested a proof of the wonderful influence of
+Savonarola's personality.
+
+The Prior being earnestly entreated by the citizens to ask the French
+king to depart, he readily undertook the mission and presented himself
+to Charles, who, surrounded by his barons, received him cordially and
+listened graciously to his proposal. Savonarola admonished him not to
+bring ruin on the city and the anger of the Lord on himself.
+
+The Prior's overtures were completely successful, for on November 28,
+the king departed with his army. And now all was changed in Florence.
+The partisans of the Medici had vanished magically and Savonarola ruled
+the city at the head of the popular party. He speedily proposed a new
+form of government suggesting as the best model, a Grand Council like
+that of Venice. The new Government was formed of a Grand Council and a
+Council of Eighty answering to an Assembly of the People and a Senate.
+All the proposals of the Prior were adopted, and laws were framed almost
+in his own words.
+
+
+_VI.--1495-1497_
+
+
+Germs of civil discord were not lacking, and these soon developed so as
+to divide Florence into factions, the two chief of these being the
+Whites, who were favourable to popular liberty, and the Greys, who were
+adherents of the Medici. The latter were dangerous and treacherous
+enemies of Savonarola and of the Republic. For a time the Prior's
+preaching confounded his foes, for it completely changed the aspect of
+the city. The women cast off their jewels and dressed simply; young
+profligates were transformed into sober, religious men, the churches
+were filled with people at prayer, and the Bible was diligently read.
+
+Now came danger from without. The departure of the French had endangered
+the security of Florence. The Pope and Venice desired the reinstatement
+of the fallen tyrant Pietro de' Medici, and he prepared to attack the
+city. But he was foiled by the energy to which the Prior roused the
+Florentines for measures of defence. Meantime, Savonarola once more
+displayed his noble independence by spurning the offer on the part of
+the Pope of a Cardinal's hat. And terrible in their vehemence and
+audacity were his denunciations against the vices of Rome, delivered in
+his Lenten sermons of 1496.
+
+In his usual strain, but with increasing power, Savonarola graphically
+and vividly described the woes of Italy, as though he were gifted with
+prophetic vision. One of his sermons was interdicted by the Pope, but
+the preacher modified nothing and defied the Vatican. And now, while the
+enthusiasm of his followers was developing into fanaticism, the hatred
+of his enemies was approaching a climax, and the war was waxing furious.
+
+The fame of this marvellous preacher was now extending throughout the
+world by means of his printed sermons. Even the Sultan of Turkey
+commanded them to be translated into Turkish for his own study. Of
+course the individual aim of Savonarola was simply to be the regenerator
+of religion. The Florentines, however, adulated him as the real founder
+of the free Republic. Hence they displayed immense ardour in defending
+him against the Pope, seeing that thus they were upholding their own
+freedom, because the Pope was aiming at reinstating the Medici in
+Florence.
+
+The Pope had hoped that the Prior would moderate his tone, but this was
+only more aggressive than ever, and threatening messages arrived from
+the Vatican. Attempts by his friends, some of them of high and
+influential position, to defend him, only the more enraged Pope
+Alexander Borgia. He summoned a consistory of fourteen Dominican
+theologians who were ordered to investigate Savonarola's conduct and
+doctrine. The strange issue was he was charged with having been the
+cause of all the misfortunes that had befallen Pietro de' Medici.
+
+After Lent the Prior went to preach a course of sermons at Prato, and on
+his return to Florence he delivered a sermon in the Hall of the Greater
+Council in the presence of all the magistrates and leading citizens of
+the city, in which he openly and courageously defied all the wrath of
+Alexander Borgia. Then he once more set himself to the work of serving
+the Republic, though, as the sequel shows, he was fated to meet with a
+base reward.
+
+Commerce and industry had been paralysed in Florence by the incessant
+commotions of past years. The immense sums paid to the French king had
+together with sums spent on war drained the public resources and lowered
+the credit of the Republic. And now famine was threatened, for the
+people in the rural districts were pinched with hunger. The starving
+peasantry began to flock in great numbers into the city, so that the
+misery increased. Terror was occasioned by a few cases of death from
+plague. Florence was at war with Pisa, but without success, for many of
+her mercenary soldiers were deserting and the forces besieging Pisa were
+dwindling for lack of supplies.
+
+Fresh adversities were in store for the Florentines. Though the rumours
+of a second invasion of Italy by King Charles proved unfounded, for he
+renounced all idea of returning, new enemies arose. The Emperor
+Maximilian was marching towards the frontier, and the Pope felt
+encouraged to enter into open war with the Florentines. His forces and
+the troops from Sienna actually attempted an incursion into the
+territories of the Republic, but they suffered repeated repulses, and at
+length were put to flight. But this conflict weakened still more the
+forces before Pisa, at which city Maximilian arrived with 1,000 foot
+soldiers, receiving a cordial welcome from the Pisans.
+
+The Florentines did not quail before the storm. Their courage never
+failed. They collected fresh stores and sent abundant provisions to the
+camp. But the hatred of the Pope grew more intense, especially against
+Savonarola, who, however, had not returned to the pulpit, being actuated
+by a wish not to accentuate the situation. For the general misery in
+Florence daily increased and the plague was extending its ravages. The
+hospitals were full. And the faction against Savonarola, named the
+Arrabbiati, seemed positively to regard the distress with glee, for
+these fanatics went about crying aloud, "At last we can all perceive how
+we have been deceived! This is the happiness that the Friar predicted
+for Florence!" Moreover they proclaimed that now was the time to
+overthrow the Government.
+
+But the Seigniory entreated Savonarola to come forth again from his
+retirement. He entered the pulpit on October 28, but only to look on
+people whose faces were marked by distress and terror. Yet his sermons
+administered such comfort to the citizens who in the majority still
+adhered to him, though the Arrabbiati mocked at his words. Temporary
+relief was at hand, for suddenly, as if by a miracle, ships arrived from
+Marseilles bringing long-expected reinforcements and supplies of corn.
+The people were frantic with joy and solemn thanksgivings were offered
+in the churches.
+
+The Pope was now designing measures to entrap the Prior. A new
+Vicar-General was appointed with power which would invest him with such
+authority over Savonarola that the latter would lose his independence.
+But he displayed no disposition to yield to Rome. On the contrary, he
+delivered in the Duomo those eight magnificent, fearless, and immortal
+sermons which intensified the bitter struggle with Rome, while for the
+time being they made the great Reformer's name and authority again
+ascendant, and rendered the popular party once more master of the
+situation, notwithstanding the strategy of the Pope and the machinations
+of the factions.
+
+
+_VII.--1497-1498_
+
+
+During Lent, 1497, Savonarola continued his course of sermons on
+Ezekiel, and in these discourses he said much that bore on the conflict
+with Rome, now daily growing more virulent. He inveighed against the
+temporal wealth of the Church and launched many accusations against
+Rome. The impression produced was the deeper because of the general
+presentiment in men's minds of the coming uprising of Christendom
+against the abominations of Rome.
+
+Savonarola now daily expected to be excommunicated and he was determined
+to defy the Pope. The plague increased in Florence and the Seigniory
+prohibited preaching in the churches for a time, but Savonarola
+persisted in preaching on Ascension Day. The factions were infuriated.
+They denied the pulpit with filth and draped it with the skin of an ass,
+and threatened the life of the Prior. His friends implored him not to
+preach at the risk of his life. He refused to yield, but a fearful riot
+took place in the church which was talked of through all Italy.
+
+The storm was now gathering. The fury of the factions increased, as also
+did the wrath of the Pope. At length, on May 13, the excommunicatory
+brief was despatched from Rome, directed against a "certain Fra Girolamo
+Savonarola who had disseminated pernicious doctrines to the scandal and
+grief of simple souls." The event threw all Florence into confusion. The
+Arrabbiati were triumphant. But the city was filled with lamentation and
+disorder. The rabble rejoiced. The churches were quickly deserted; the
+taverns were filled; immorality returned as if magically; and again
+women attired in dazzling finery paraded the streets. In less than a
+month, so rapid was the transformation, Florence seemed to have relapsed
+into the days of the Magnificent, and piety and patriotism were alike
+forgotten.
+
+Meantime, the Prior was calm and composed and took measures for his
+defence. He wrote an Epistle against surreptitious excommunication,
+addressed to all Christians beloved of God. He followed it by a second
+letter, also breathing courage and defiance. A conflict ensued. The
+Arrabbiati sent accusations against the Prior to Rome, while the
+Seigniory sought to vindicate him, most of the members, newly elected,
+being his friends. The plague grew so terrible that on some days there
+were a hundred deaths. In the autumn it abated, and gradually
+disappeared. Savonarola's energy in fighting the pestilence was
+unwearied throughout.
+
+The Prior soon commenced to preach again. On Christmas Day he put an end
+to all suspense as to his policy by thrice performing high mass,
+afterwards leading his monks in solemn procession through St. Mark's
+Square. He continued to issue new tracts and to preach regularly. But on
+February 26 the Pope announced that Savonarola's preaching should be
+tolerated no longer. The Prior was conscious that the end was near. His
+last sermon was delivered, after he had preached in Florence for eight
+years, on March 18, 1498. His adherents were terrified, and seemed to
+vanish.
+
+On April 8, Palm Sunday, the Arrabbiati attacked St. Mark's Convent.
+Savonarola was seized and bound by a brutal rabble, and he and two of
+his monks were lodged in prison. Cruel proceedings followed. For a whole
+month he was brought day after day to examination and he was repeatedly
+subjected to torture. The Pope's Commissioners were never able to
+extract from him any confession of guilt. Savonarola was from first to
+last unflinchingly consistent with himself.
+
+On May 22 sentence of death was passed on Savonarola, on Fra Silvestro,
+and on Fra Domenico. They prepared to face death firmly and well. The
+tragedy was enacted next morning. Three platforms had been erected on
+the steps of the Ringhiera, on which sat the Bishop of Vasona, the
+Apostolic Commissioners, and the Gonfaliero with the Council of Eight.
+On a gibbet in the form of a cross hung three chains, and combustibles
+were piled beneath. Sad and solemn was the silence of the vast throng
+assembled in the Piazza, excepting where members of the factions were
+raging like wild beasts and venting indecent blasphemies.
+
+The three friars were publicly stripped of their monkish robes and
+degraded. Tranquilly they mounted the scaffold, the dregs of the
+populace assailing them with vile words. But silence reigned at the
+moment of the execution. As soon as life was extinct the flames were
+kindled beneath the bodies of the three victims. The tragic and awful
+spectacle elicited bitter grief amongst the people on the one side,
+while cries of wild exultation were raised on the other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN WESLEY
+
+
+Journal
+
+
+     John Wesley, who was born June 17, 1703, at Epworth, and who
+     died in London March 2, 1791, was the son of a Lincolnshire
+     rector. His history covers practically the whole of the
+     eighteenth century, of which he was one of the most typical
+     personalities, as he was certainly the most strenuous figure.
+     His career was absolutely without parallel, for John Wesley,
+     as an itinerating clergyman, and as the propagator of that
+     mission of Methodism which he founded, travelled on his
+     preaching tours for forty years, mostly on horseback. He paid
+     more turnpike fees than any man that ever bestrode a horse,
+     and 8,000 miles constituted his annual record for many a year,
+     during each of which he preached on the average 5,000 times.
+     John Wesley received a classical education at Charterhouse and
+     Christ Church, Oxford, and all through his wonderful life of
+     endurance and adventure, of devotion and consecration,
+     remained a scholar and a gentleman. His "Journal" is valuable
+     for its pictures of the England of his day, as well as for his
+     own simple and unpretending record of his experiences. Wesley
+     made religion his business and incorporated it into the
+     national life. Of him Mr. Augustine Birrell says:--"No man
+     lived nearer the centre than John Wesley. Neither Clive nor
+     Pitt, neither Mansfield nor Johnson. You cannot cut him out of
+     our national life. No single figure influenced so many minds,
+     no single voice touched so many hearts. No other man did such
+     a life's work for England."
+
+
+_The Holy Club_
+
+
+In November 1729, at which time I came to reside at Oxford, Mr. Morgan,
+my brother, myself, and one more, agreed to spend three or four evenings
+in a week together. Our design was to read over the classics, which we
+had before read in private, on common nights, and on Sunday some book in
+divinity. In the summer following, Mr. M. told me he had called at the
+gaol, to see a man who was condemned for killing his wife; and that,
+from the talk he had with one of the debtors, he verily believed it
+would do much good, if any one would be at the pains of now and then
+speaking with them.
+
+This he so frequently repeated, that on August 24, 1730, my brother and
+I walked with him to the castle. We were so well satisfied with our
+conversation there, that we agreed to go thither once or twice a week;
+which we had not done long, before he desired me to go with him to see a
+poor sick woman in the town.
+
+I next proposed to Mr. Gerard, the Bishop of Oxford's chaplain, who took
+care of any prisoners condemned to die, that I intended to preach in the
+prison once a month, if the bishop approved. Our design was approved and
+permission was granted. Soon after a gentleman of Merton College, who
+was one of our little company, now consisting of five persons,
+acquainted us that he had been much rallied the day before for being a
+member of the Holy Club, and that it was become a common topic of mirth
+at his college, where they had found out several of our customs, to
+which we were ourselves utter strangers.
+
+I corresponded with my father, and from him received encouragement, so
+that we still continued to meet as usual, and to do what service we
+could to the prisoners, and to two or three poor families in the town.
+
+
+_A Missioner to Georgia_
+
+
+1735. Oct. 14. Mr. Benjamin Ingham, of Queen's College, Oxford; Mr.
+Charles Delamotte, son of a London merchant, my brother Charles, and
+myself, took boat for Gravesend, in order to embark for Georgia. Our end
+in leaving our country was singly this, to save our souls; to live
+wholly to the glory of God. In the afternoon we found the "Simmonds" off
+Gravesend, and immediately went on board.
+
+Oct. 17. I began to learn German, in order to converse with the 26
+Germans on board. On Sunday I preached extempore and then administered
+the Lord's supper to seven communicants.
+
+Oct. 20. Believing the denying ourselves might be helpful, we wholly
+left off the use of flesh and wine, and confined ourselves to vegetable
+food, chiefly rice and biscuit.
+
+1736. Feb. 5. After a passage in which storms were frequent, between two
+and three in the afternoon, God brought us all safe into the Savannah
+river. We cast anchor near Tybee Island, where the groves of pines along
+the shore made an agreeable prospect, showing, as it were, the bloom of
+spring in the depth of winter.
+
+Sunday, March 7. I entered upon my ministry at Savannah. I do here bear
+witness against myself, that when I saw the number of people crowding
+into the church, the deep attention with which they received the word,
+and the seriousness that sat on all their faces, I could hardly believe
+that the greater part of them would hereafter trample under foot that
+word, and say all manner of evil falsely against him that spake it.
+
+March 30. Mr. Delamotte and I began to try, whether life might not be as
+well sustained by one sort as by a variety of food. We chose to make the
+experiment with bread, and were never more vigorous and healthy than
+while we tasted nothing else.
+
+June 30. I hoped a door was opened for my main design, which was to
+preach the gospel to the Indians, and I purposed to go immediately to
+the Choctaws, the least polished, that is, the least corrupted of the
+tribes. On my informing Lieutenant-Governor Oglethorpe of our wish, he
+objected, alleging not only danger from the French, but also the
+inexpediency of leaving Savannah without a minister. These objections I
+related to our brethren, who were all of opinion, "We ought not to go
+yet."
+
+
+_Warrant for Wesley's Arrest_
+
+
+July 3. Preaching at Charlestown, immediately after communion I
+mentioned to Mrs. Williamson (Mr. Causton's niece) some things I thought
+reprovable in her behaviour. At this she appeared extremely angry.
+
+Aug. 7. I repelled Mrs. Williamson from the holy communion. And next day
+Mr. Recorder, of Savannah, issued out a warrant for my arrest. Mr.
+Jones, the constable, served the warrant, and carried me before Mr.
+Bailiff Parker and Mr. Recorder. I was told that I must appear at the
+next court. Mr. Causton came to my house and declared that the affront
+had been offered to him; that he espoused the cause of his niece; that
+he was ill-used, and that he would have satisfaction if it was to be had
+in this world.
+
+To many persons Mr. Causton declared that "Mr. Wesley had repelled Sophy
+from holy communion purely out of revenge, because he had made proposals
+of marriage to her which she had rejected, and married Mr. Williamson."
+But when the case came on the grand jury, having heard the charge,
+declared themselves thoroughly persuaded that it was an artifice of Mr.
+Causton's designed "rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley, than
+to free the colony from religious tyranny, as he had been pleased to
+term it."
+
+Oct. 7. I consulted my friends whether God did not call me to return to
+England. I had found no possibility of instructing the Indians. They
+were unanimous that I ought to go, but not yet. But subsequently they
+agreed with me that the time was come.
+
+
+_In London Again_
+
+
+1738. Feb. 1. Landed at Deal. It is now two years and almost four months
+since I left my native country. After reading prayers and explaining a
+portion of Scripture to a large company at the inn, I left Deal, and
+came in the evening to Feversham. I here read prayers and explained the
+second lesson to a few of those who were called Christians, but were
+indeed more savage in their behaviour than the wildest Indians I have
+yet met with.
+
+Feb. 26. Sunday. I preached at six in the morning at St. Lawrence's,
+London; at ten, in St. Catherine Cree's; and in the afternoon at St.
+John's, Wapping. I believe it pleased God to bless the first sermon
+most, because it gave most offence.
+
+March 4. I found my brother at Oxford, and with him Peter Boehler; by
+whom, in the great hand of God, I was, on Sunday, the 5th, clearly
+convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are
+saved. Immediately it struck into my mind, "Leave off preaching. How can
+you preach to others who have not faith yourself?" I asked Boehler
+whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered, "By no
+means." I asked, "But what can I preach?" He said, "Preach faith till
+you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith."
+
+Accordingly, Monday, 6, I began preaching this new doctrine, though my
+soul started back from the work. The first person to whom I offered
+salvation through faith alone, was a prisoner under sentence of death.
+
+On Tuesday 25, I spoke clearly and fully at Blendon to Mr. Delamotte's
+family of the nature and fruits of faith. Mr. Broughton and my brother
+were there. Mr. Broughton's great objection was, he could never think
+that I had not faith, who had done and suffered such things. My brother
+was very angry, and told me I did not know what mischief I had done by
+talking thus. And, indeed, it did please God to kindle a fire which I
+trust shall never be extinguished.
+
+On May 1 our little society began, which afterwards met in Fetter Lane.
+May 3. My brother had a long and particular conversation with Peter
+Boehler. And it now pleased God to open his eyes; so that he also saw
+clearly what was the nature of that one true living faith, thereby
+alone, "through grace we are saved."
+
+Sunday 7. I preached at St. Lawrence's in the morning; and afterwards at
+St. Catherine Cree's. I was enabled to speak strong words at both; and
+was therefore the less surprised at being informed I was not to preach
+any more in either of those churches. I was likewise after preaching the
+next Sunday at St. Ann's, Aldersgate, and the following Sunday at St.
+John's, Wapping and at St. Bennett's, Paul's Wharf, that at these
+churches I must preach no more.
+
+1739. March 28. A letter from Mr. Whitefield, and another from Mr.
+Seward, pressed me to come to Bristol. I reached Bristol March 31 and
+met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarcely at first reconcile myself to
+the strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me the
+example, for all my life I should have thought the saving of souls
+almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church; but I now proclaimed
+in the highways the glad tidings of salvation speaking in the open air
+to about three thousand people.
+
+May 9. We took possession of a piece of ground in the Horse Fair,
+Bristol, where it was designed to build a room large enough to contain
+both the societies of Nicholas and Baldwin Street; and on May 12 the
+first stone was laid with thanksgiving. The responsibility of payment I
+took entirely on myself. Money I had not, it is true, nor any human
+prospect of procuring it; but I knew "the earth is the Lord's and the
+fulness thereof."
+
+
+_Beau Nash Argues with Wesley_
+
+
+June 5. There was great expectation at Bath of what a noted man was to
+do to me there. Many appeared surprised and were sinking apace into
+seriousness when their champion came up to me and asked by what
+authority I did these things. I replied, "By the authority of Jesus
+Christ, conveyed to me by the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his
+hands on me." He said, "This is contrary to the Act of Parliament; this
+is a conventicle. Besides, your preaching frightens people out of their
+wits."
+
+"Give me leave, Sir, to ask, is not your name Nash?" "My name is Nash."
+An old woman said to him, "You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body; we
+take care of our souls; and for the food of our souls we come here." He
+replied not a word, but walked away.
+
+
+_"All the World My Parish"_
+
+
+All this time I had many thoughts concerning my manner of ministering;
+but after frequently laying it before the Lord, I could not but adhere
+to what I had some time since written to a friend--"I look on all the
+world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part I am of it,
+I judge it meet to declare to all who are willing to hear, the glad
+tidings of salvation."
+
+June 14. I went with Mr. Whitefield to Blackheath, where were, I
+believe, 12,000 people. He a little surprised me by desiring me to
+preach in his stead; and I was greatly moved with compassion for the
+rich that were there, to whom I made a particular application. Some of
+them seemed to attend, while others drove away their coaches from so
+uncouth a preacher.
+
+Sunday 24. As I was riding to Rose Green, near Bristol, my horse
+suddenly pitched on his head, and rolled over and over. I received no
+other hurt than a little bruise on my side; which for the present I felt
+not, but preached without pain to seven thousand people.
+
+Sept. 16. I preached at Moorfields to about ten thousand, and at
+Kennington Common to near twenty thousand. At both places I described
+the real difference between what is generally called Christianity and
+the real old Christianity, which under the new name of Methodism is now
+everywhere spoken against.
+
+
+_The Colliers of Kingswood_
+
+
+Nov. 27. Few persons have lived in the west of England who have not
+heard of the colliers of Kingswood, famous for neither regarding God nor
+man. The scene is changed. Kingswood does not now, as a year ago,
+resound with cursing and blasphemy. Peace and love reign there since the
+preaching of the Gospel in the spring. Great numbers of the people are
+gentle, mild, and easy to be entreated.
+
+1745. July 3. At Gwennap, in Cornwall, I was seized for a soldier. As I
+was reading my text a man rode up and cried "Seize the preacher for his
+Majesty's service." As the people would not do it, he leaped off his
+horse, and caught hold of my cassock, crying, "I take you to serve his
+Majesty." He walked off with me and talked with me for some time, but
+then let me go.
+
+
+_In Ireland_
+
+
+1748. April 9. I preached in Connaught, a few miles from Athlone. Many
+heard, but, I doubt, felt nothing. The Shannon comes within a mile of
+the house where I preached. I think there is not such another river in
+Europe. It is here ten miles wide, though only thirty miles from its
+source. There are many islands in it, once well inhabited, but now
+mostly desolate. In almost every one is a ruined church; in one, the
+remains of no fewer than seven.
+
+1750. May 21. At Bandon the mob burnt me in effigy. Yet, though Dr. B.
+tried to stir up the people against me more and more, and a clergyman,
+said to be in drink, opposed me, and some young gentlemen came on the
+scene with pistols in their hands, I was enabled to preach. God gave me
+great peace in Bandon, in spite of these efforts against me.
+
+May 31. I rode to Rathcormuck. There being a great burying in the
+afternoon, to which people came from all parts, I preached after Mr.
+Lloyd had read the service. I was exceedingly shocked at (what I had
+only heard of before) the Irish howl which followed. It was not a song,
+as I supposed, but a dismal, inarticulate yell, set up at the grave by
+four shrill-voiced women, hired for the purpose. But I saw not one that
+shed a tear; for that, it seems, was not in their bargain.
+
+
+_Clothing French Prisoners_
+
+
+1759. Oct. 1. At Bristol. I had ridden in about seven months not less
+than 2,400 miles. On Monday, Oct. 15, I went to Knowle, a mile from
+Bristol, to see the French prisoners. About 1,100 were there confined,
+with only a little dirty straw to lie on, so that they died like rotten
+sheep. I was much affected, and after I had preached the sum of L18 was
+contributed immediately, which next day we made up to L24. With this we
+bought linen and woollen cloth, and this was made up into clothing for
+the prisoners. Presently after, the Corporation of Bristol sent a large
+quantity of mattresses and blankets. And it was not long before
+contributions were set on foot in London, and other parts of the
+country; so that I believe that from this time they were pretty well
+provided with the necessaries of life.
+
+
+_Gwennap's Famous Amphitheatre_
+
+
+1766. Sept. 14. I preached in the natural amphitheatre at Gwennap; far
+the finest I know in the kingdom. It is a round, green hollow, gently
+shelving down, about 50 feet deep; but I suppose it is 200 feet across
+one way, and nearly 300 the other. I believe there were full 20,000
+people; and, the evening being calm, all could hear.
+
+1770. April 21. I rode slowly on this and the following days through
+Staffordshire and Cheshire to Manchester. In this journey, as well as in
+many others, I observed a mistake that almost universally prevails; and
+I desire all travellers to take good notice of it, which may save them
+from both trouble and danger. Near 30 years ago I was thinking, "How is
+it that no horse ever stumbles while I am reading?" (History, poetry,
+and philosophy I commonly read on horseback, having other employment at
+other times.) No account can possibly be given but this: because then I
+throw the reins on his neck. I then set myself to observe; and I aver,
+that in riding above 100,000 miles I scarce ever remember my horse
+(except two, that would fall head over heels anyway) to fall, or make a
+considerable stumble, while I rode with a slack rein. To fancy,
+therefore, that a tight rein prevents stumbling, is a capital blunder.
+
+1771. Jan. 23. For what cause I know not to this day, my wife set out
+for Newcastle, purposing "never to return." _Non eam reliqui: non
+dimisi: non revocabo._ (I did not desert her: I did not send her away: I
+will not recall her.)
+
+
+_The American War_
+
+
+1775. In November I published the following letter in Lloyd's "Evening
+Post":
+
+"Sir--I have been seriously asked from what motive I published my _Calm
+Address to the American Colonies_? I seriously answer, Not to get money;
+not to get preferment; not to please any man living; least of all to
+inflame any; just the contrary. I contributed my mite towards putting
+out the flame that rages. This I have more opportunity to see than any
+man in England. I see with pain to what a height this already rises, in
+every part of the nation. And I see many pouring oil into the flame, by
+crying out, 'How unjustly, how cruelly, the King is using the poor
+Americans; who are only contending for their liberty, and for their
+legal privileges.'
+
+"Now there is no possible way to put out this flame, or hinder its
+rising higher and higher, but to show that the Americans are not used
+either cruelly or unjustly; that they are not injured at all, seeing
+they are not contending for liberty (this they had, even in its full
+extent, both civil and religious); neither for any legal privileges; for
+they enjoy all that their charters grant. But what they contend for is,
+the illegal privilege of being exempt from parliamentary taxation. A
+privilege this, which no charter ever gave to any American colony yet;
+which no charter can give, unless it be confirmed both by King, Lords,
+and Commons; which in fact our Colonies never had; which they never
+claimed till the present reign; and probably they would not have claimed
+now, had they not been incited thereto by letters from England. One of
+these was read, according to the desire of the writer, not only at the
+Continental Congress but likewise in many congregations throughout the
+Combined Provinces. It advised them to seize upon all the King's
+officers; and exhorted them, 'Stand valiantly, only for six months, and
+in that time there will be such commotions in England that you may have
+your own terms.' This being the real state of the question, without any
+colouring or exaggeration, what impartial man can either blame the King,
+or commend the Americans? With this view, to quench the fire, by laying
+the blame where it was due, the 'Calm Address' was written.
+
+Your humble servant,
+
+JOHN WESLEY."
+
+
+_City Road Chapel Begun_
+
+
+1777. April 21. The day appointed for laying the foundation of the new
+chapel. The rain befriended us much, by keeping away thousands who
+proposed to be there. But there were still such multitudes, that it was
+with great difficulty I got through them, to lay the first stone. Upon
+this was a plate of brass (covered with another stone) on which was
+engraved, "This was laid by Mr. John Wesley, on April 21, 1777."
+Probably this will be seen no more, by any human eye; but will remain
+there, till the earth and the works thereof are burned up.
+
+1778. Dec. 17. Having been many times desired, for near forty years, to
+publish a magazine, I at length complied, and now began to collect
+materials for it. If it once begin, I incline to think it will not end
+but with my life. Just at this time there was a combination among many
+of the postchaise drivers on the Bath road, especially those that drove
+in the night, to deliver their passengers into each other's hands. One
+driver stopped at the spot they had appointed, when another waited to
+attack the chaise. In consequence of this many were robbed; but I had a
+good Protector still. I have travelled all roads, by day and by night,
+for these forty years, and never was interrupted yet.
+
+June 28. I am this day 75 years old; and I do not find myself, blessed
+be God, any weaker than I was at 25. This also hath God wrought.
+
+
+_Attended by Felons_
+
+
+1779. July 21. When I came to Coventry, I found notice had been given
+for my preaching in the park; but the heavy rain prevented. I sent to
+the Mayor, desiring the use of the town-hall. He refused; but the same
+day gave the use of it to a dancing-master. I then went to the women's
+market. Many soon gathered together and listened with all seriousness. I
+preached there again the next morning, and again in the evening. Then I
+took coach for London. I was nobly attended: behind the coach were ten
+convicted felons, loudly blaspheming and rattling their chains; by my
+side sat a man with a loaded blunderbuss, and another upon the coach.
+
+1780. May 20. In Scotland. I took one more walk through Holyrood House,
+the mansion of ancient kings. But how melancholy an appearance does it
+make now! The stately rooms are dirty as stables; the colours of the
+tapestry are quite faded; several of the pictures are cut and defaced.
+The roof of the royal chapel is fallen in; and the bones of James V.,
+and the once beautiful Lord Dankley, are scattered about like those of
+sheep or oxen. Such is human greatness. Is not "a living dog better than
+a dead lion?"
+
+1782. May 14. Some years ago four factories were set up at Epworth. In
+these a large number of young women and boys and girls were employed.
+The whole conversation of these was profane and loose to the last
+degree. But some of them stumbling in at the prayermeeting were suddenly
+cut to the heart. These never rested till they had gained their
+companions. The whole scene was changed. In three of the factories no
+more lewdness was found: for God had put a new song in their mouth, and
+blasphemies were turned to praise. Those three I visited to-day, and
+found religion had taken deep root in them. No trifling word was heard
+among them, and they watch over each other in love.
+
+
+_Enters His 80th Year_
+
+
+June 26. I preached at Thirsk; 27, at York. Friday, 28, I entered my
+80th year; but, blessed be God, my strength is not "labour and sorrow."
+I find no more pain or bodily infirmities than at 25. This I still
+impute, 1. To the power of God, fitting me for what He calls me to. 2.
+To my still travelling four or five thousand miles a year. 3. To my
+still sleeping, night or day, whenever I want it. 4. To my rising at a
+set hour. And 5. To my constant preaching, particularly in the morning.
+
+1783. Dec. 18. I spent two hours with that great man, Dr. Johnson, who
+is sinking into the grave by a gentle decay.
+
+1784. June 28 (Epworth). To-day I entered on my 82nd year, and found
+myself just as strong to labour, and as fit for any exercise of body and
+mind, as I was 40 years ago. I am as strong at 81 as I was at 21; but
+abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the headache, toothache,
+and other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth.
+
+1785. Jan. 25. I spent two or three hours in the House of Lords. I had
+frequently heard that this was the most venerable assembly in England.
+But how I was disappointed! What is a lord, but a sinner, born to die!
+
+1786. Jan. 24. I was desired to go and hear the King deliver his speech
+in the House of Lords. But how agreeably I was surprised. He pronounced
+every word with exact propriety. I doubt whether there be any other King
+in Europe, that is so just and natural a speaker.
+
+
+_His 86th Christmas_
+
+
+1789. Dec 25. Being Christmas Day, we began the service in the new
+chapel at four in the morning, as usual, where I preached again in the
+evening after having officiated in West Street at the common hour.
+Sunday, 27, I preached in St. Luke's, our parish church, to a very
+numerous congregation. So are the tables turned that I have now more
+invitations to preach in churches than I can accept.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+JOHN WOOLMAN
+
+
+Journal
+
+
+     John Woolman, American Quaker evangelist, author of this
+     autobiography, was born in West Jersey in 1720 and followed
+     the trade of a tailor. But all his interests lay in the
+     practice of piety, and in the uncompromising application of
+     religious Principles to the problems of social life. He
+     advocated incessantly two principal reforms--that members of
+     the Society of Friends should separate utterly from the
+     possession of slaves, and that they should return to their
+     primitive simplicity and moderation in the use of worldly
+     things. Like many economists before and after him, he saw in
+     luxury, extravagance and ostentation, the true cause of all
+     poverty and oppression; and a tract of his entitled "A Word of
+     Remembrance and Caution to the Rich," first published in 1793,
+     was republished a hundred years later by the Fabian Society.
+     His most important treatise, published in 1754, entitled "Some
+     Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes," was one of the
+     earliest indications of the growing Abolitionist feeling in
+     New England. His voyage across the Atlantic in May and Tune,
+     1772, to visit the English Quakers, was followed by his death
+     from small-pox, in the city of York, on October 7 in the same
+     year. The "Journal," which is marked by great simplicity and
+     sincerity, was published shortly afterwards and has been
+     issued in many subsequent editions.
+
+
+_I.--The Curse of Slavery_
+
+
+Having reached manhood, I wrought at my trade as a tailor; carefully
+attended meetings for worship and discipline; and found an enlargement
+of gospel love in my mind, and therein a concern to visit friends in the
+settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia and other parts. I expressed it to
+my beloved friend, Isaac Andrews, who then told me that he had drawings
+to the same places. I opened the case in our monthly meeting, and
+friends expressing their unity therewith, we obtained certificates to
+travel as companions.
+
+Two things were remarkable to me in this journey. First, in regard to my
+entertainment; when I ate, drank and lodged free of cost with people who
+lived in ease on the hard labour of their slaves, I felt uneasy, and
+this uneasiness returned upon me, at times, through the whole visit.
+Secondly, this trade of importing slaves from their native country being
+much encouraged among them, and the white people and their children so
+generally living without much labour, was frequently the subject of my
+serious thoughts. And I saw in these southern provinces so many vices
+and corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it
+appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land; and though
+now many willingly run into it, yet in future the consequence will be
+grievous to posterity.
+
+About this time, believing it good for me to settle, and thinking
+seriously about a companion, my heart was turned to the Lord and He was
+pleased to give me a well-inclined damsel, Sarah Ellis, to whom I was
+married the 18th day of the 8th month, in the year 1749.
+
+
+_II--Among the Indians_
+
+
+Having many years felt love in my heart towards the natives of this
+land, who dwell far back in the wilderness, whose ancestors were the
+owners of the land where we dwell, and being at Philadelphia in 1761, I
+fell in company with some of those natives who live on the east branch
+of the river Susquehannah, at an Indian town called Wehaloosing, 200
+miles from Philadelphia; and in conversation with them by an
+interpreter, as also by observations on their character and conduct, I
+believed some of them were acquainted with that divine power which
+subjects the rough and froward will of the creature.
+
+At times I felt inward drawings toward a visit to that place, and laid
+it before friends at our monthly and quarterly, and afterwards at our
+general spring meeting; and having the unity of friends, I agreed to
+join certain Indians, in 1763, on their return to their town. So I took
+leave of my family and neighbours, and with my friend Benjamin Parvin,
+met the Indians.
+
+About four miles from Fort Allen we met with an Indian trader, lately
+come from Wyoming; and in conversation with him I perceived that many
+white people do often sell rum to the Indians, which is a great evil:
+first, their being thereby deprived of the use of their reason, and
+their spirits being violently agitated, quarrels often arise which end
+in mischief; again their skins and furs, gotten through much fatigue in
+hunting, with which they intended to buy clothing, when they become
+intoxicated, they often sell at a low rate for more rum, and afterwards
+are angry with those who, for the sake of gain, took advantage of their
+weakness. To sell to people that which we know does them harm, manifests
+a hardened and corrupt heart.
+
+We crossed the western branch of the Delaware, having laboured hard over
+the mountains called the Blue Ridge, and pitched our tent near the banks
+of the river. Near our tent, on the sides of large trees peeled for that
+purpose, were various representations of men going to, and returning
+from the wars, and of some killed in battle, this being a path used by
+warriors. As I walked about viewing those Indian histories, painted in
+red and in black; and thinking on the innumerable afflictions which the
+proud, fierce spirit produceth in the world; thinking on the toils and
+fatigues of warriors, travelling over mountains and deserts; and of
+their restless, unquiet state of mind, who live in this spirit, and of
+the hatred which mutually grows up in the minds of the children of those
+nations engaged in war; during these meditations, the desire to cherish
+the spirit of love and peace among these people arose very fresh in me.
+
+As I rode, day after day, over the barren hills, my thoughts were on the
+alterations of the circumstances of the natives since the coming of the
+English. The lands near the sea are conveniently situated for fishing;
+the lands near the rivers are in many places fertile and not
+mountainous. Those natives have, in some places, for trifling
+considerations, sold their inheritance so favourably situated; and in
+other places, have been driven back by superior force. By the extending
+of English settlements, and partly by English hunters, the wild beasts
+they chiefly depend upon for a subsistence are not so plentiful as they
+were; and people too often open a door for them to waste their furs, in
+purchasing a liquor which tends to the ruin of them and their families.
+
+
+_III.--Across the Atlantic_
+
+
+Having been for some time under a religious concern to cross the seas,
+in order to visit friends in England, after weighty consideration I
+thought it expedient to inform friends, at our monthly meeting at
+Burlington, of it; who, having unity with me therein, gave me a
+certificate; and I afterwards communicated the same to our general
+meeting, and they likewise signified their unity by a certificate, dated
+the 24th day of the third month, 1772, directed to friends in Great
+Britain.
+
+I was informed that my beloved friend Samuel Emlen, intended to go to
+London, and had taken a passage in the cabin of the ship called Mary and
+Elizabeth; and I, feeling a draft in my mind towards the steerage of the
+same ship, went and opened to Samuel the feeling I had concerning it. My
+beloved friend wept when I spake to him; and he offering to go with me,
+we went on board, first into the cabin, a commodious room, and then into
+the steerage, where we sat down on a chest and the owner of the ship
+came and sat down with us. I made no agreement as to a passage in the
+ship; but on the next morning I went with Samuel to the house of the
+owner, to whom I opened my exercise in relation to a scruple I felt with
+regard to a passage in the cabin.
+
+I told the owner that on the outside of that part of the ship where the
+cabin was, I observed sundry sorts of carved work and imagery; and that
+in the cabin I observed some superfluity of workmanship of several
+sorts; and that the monies received from the passengers are calculated
+to answer the expense of these superfluities; and that I felt a scruple
+with regard to paying my money to defray such expenses. After this, I
+agreed for a passage in the steerage, and went on board with Samuel
+Emlen on the first day of the fifth month.
+
+My lodging in the steerage afforded me opportunities of seeing, hearing
+and feeling, with respect to the life and spirit of many poor sailors;
+and an inward exercise of soul hath attended me, in regard to placing
+out children and youth where they may be exampled and instructed in the
+fear of the Lord. Now, concerning lads being trained up as seamen, I
+believe a communication from one part of the world to some other parts
+of it, by sea, is at times consistent with the will of our heavenly
+Father; and to educate some youth in the practice of sailing, I believe
+may be right. But how lamentable is the present corruption of the world!
+How impure are the channels through which trade hath a conveyance! How
+great is that danger to which poor lads are now exposed, when placed on
+shipboard to learn the art of sailing!
+
+
+_IV.--Prices, Wages, and Religion_
+
+
+On landing at London I went straight to the yearly meeting of ministers
+and elders, which, by adjournments, continued near a week. I then went
+to quarterly meetings at Hertford, Sherrington, Northampton, Banbury and
+Shipston, and visited other meetings at Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick,
+Nottingham, Sheffield, Settle, and other places.
+
+On inquiry, I found the price of rye about five shillings, wheat about
+eight shillings, per bushel; mutton threepence to fivepence per pound;
+bacon from sevenpence to ninepence; cheese from fourpence to sixpence;
+butter from eightpence to tenpence; house-rent, for a poor man, from
+twenty-five shillings to forty shillings per year, to be paid weekly;
+wood for fire very scarce and dear; coal in some places two shillings
+and sixpence per hundredweight but near the pits not a quarter so much.
+O may the wealthy consider the poor!
+
+The wages of labouring men, in several counties toward London, is
+tenpence per day in common business; the employer finds small beer and
+the labourer finds his own food; but in harvest and hay times wages are
+about one shilling per day and the labourer hath all his diet. In the
+north of England poor labouring men do rather better than nearer London.
+Industrious women who spin in the factories get some fourpence, some
+fivepence, and so on to tenpence per day, and find their own house-room
+and diet. Great numbers of poor people live chiefly on bread and water,
+and there are many poor children not even taught to read. May those, who
+have plenty, lay these things to heart!
+
+Stage coaches frequently go upwards of an hundred miles in twenty-four
+hours; and I have heard friends say, in several places, that it is
+common for horses to be killed with hard driving. Post-boys pursue their
+business, each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some
+boys, who ride long stages, suffer greatly on winter nights, and at
+several places I have heard of their being frozen to death. So great is
+the hurry in the spirit in this world, that in aiming to do business
+quickly, and to gain wealth, the creation, at this day doth loudly
+groan!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol X, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS, VOL X ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12572.txt or 12572.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/7/12572/
+
+Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
diff --git a/old/12572.zip b/old/12572.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1581f23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12572.zip