leaped upon his back, pushed him to a full gallop, and returned safely, Philip cried, "Seek another kingdom, my son, that may be worthy of thy abilities; for Macedonia is too small for thee."- Life.

When Philip stumbled from the effect of passion and wine, at the festival of his second marriage, Alexander exclaimed, "Men of Macedon, what a fine hero the states of Greece have to lead their armies from Europe to Asia! he is not able to pass from one table to another without falling!"- Ibid.

Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

Because when he came to converse with the cynic philosopher at Corinth, he was so struck with his life and learning that he said, "Had I not been a philosopher in deeds, I would have devoted myself to the study of words." PLUTARCH: Fortune of Alexander the Great. It was at this interview that Alexander, asking Diogenes what he could do for him, was told, "Only stand a little out of my sunshine." Napoleon, speaking in 1814 of the Macedonian's Russian namesake, said, "If I were not Napoleon, I would be Alexander."

When he divided his revenues among his friends, while preparing his Asian campaign, and Perdiccas asked him what he retained for himself, he answered, "Hope." "If hope is sufficient for Alexander," replied his general, "it is sufficient for Perdiccas."

At the tomb of Achilles, Alexander exclaimed, “O fortunate youth, who found a Homer to proclaim thy valor!" which Cicero quotes in the oration for the poet Archias: "O fortunate adolescens, qui tuæ virtutis Homerum præconem inveneris!" When asked at Ilium if he would like to see the lyre of Paris, he replied, "I would rather see the lyre of Achilles," preferring that to which the warrior had sung the glorious actions of the brave. - Life.

He always travelled with a copy of the Iliad, which he called a portable treasure of military knowledge; and after the defeat of Darius he put it into a rich casket found among the spoil of the Persian camp, saying, "Darius used to keep his ointments in it; but I, who have no time to anoint myself, will convert it to a nobler use.". Ibid.

So would I, if I were Parmenio.

To Parmenio, who said that if he were Alexander, he would accept the offer of Darius to pay him ten thousand talents, to cede to him all the countries west of the Euphrates, and to give him his daughter in marriage. - PLUTARCH: Life. Thus when Lysander was offered a bribe of fifty talents, and Cleander said he would take it, were he Lysander; "So would I," replied the latter, "were I Cleander."

Alexander declined the proposition of Darius, saying, "Heaven cannot support two suns, nor earth two masters; " or, as Plutarch has it in his "Apothegms," "nor Asia two kings." Thus it was said by Eteocles, of Lysander, who allowed himself to be influenced by the resentments of his friends, "Greece cannot bear two Lysanders."-Ibid. When the conduct of Alcibiades was considered an insult to the laws of Athens, Archestratus observed, "Greece cannot bear another Alcibiades." - Life of Alcibiades. Peter the Great exclaimed after a severe defeat by Charles XII. of Sweden, at Narva, 1700, “My brother Charles affects to play the Alexander, but he shall not find in me a Darius."

Being advised by Parmenio not to cross the Granicus, of the depth of which they were ignorant, so late in the day, Alexander said, "The Hellespont would blush, if, after having passed it, I should be afraid of the Granicus." He refused to attack Darius at Arbela in the night; saying, "I will not steal a victory."-Life.

A wound which he received in the ankle gave him an opportunity of rebuking those who were wont to call him a god. “That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith,

'Such humor as distils from blessed gods.'"'— Iliad, V. 340. PLUTARCH: Apothegms.

When the mother of Darius threw herself at Hephaistion's feet, thinking him to be Alexander from his superior height and more magnificent dress, the king raised her, saying, “You have not deceived yourself, my mother: he also is Alexander!" Antipater wrote the king a letter full of complaints against the

latter's mother, who was not allowed to interfere as she would have liked in state affairs: his reply was, " Antipater knows not that one tear of a mother can blot out a thousand such complaints."

Craterus is the friend of the king, but Hephaistion is the friend of Alexander.

Appearing to respect Craterus, but to love Hephaistion. The former was a distinguished general, who, on the death of Alexander, received the government of Macedonia and Greece in common with Antipater. Hephaistion was brought up with Alexander: he died at Ecbatana, after an illness of seven days, 325 B.C., and was mourned extravagantly by the king.

When his friends became so devoted to the luxury of Asia that they considered long marches and campaigns as a burden, and by degrees spoke ill of him, Alexander said to them, "There is something noble in hearing myself ill spoken of, when I am doing well;" or, as it is given in the " Apothegms," ""To do good, and be evil spoken of, is kingly," which Carlyle saw written in Latin on the town-hall of Zittau, in Saxony,- Bene facere et male audire regium est. — Frederick the Great, XV. 13. Voltaire said, “It is a noble thing to make ingrates."

When Antipater was commended for not degenerating into Persian luxury in the use of purple, Alexander remarked, “Outwardly Antipater wears white clothes, but within he is all purple."

Taxiles, whose dominions in India were said to be as large as Egypt, asked Alexander why there should be any conflict between them. "If," he said, "I am richer than you, I am willing to oblige you with part: if I am poorer, I have no objection to sharing your bounty." Charmed with his frankness, Alexander took his hand, saying, "You are much deceived if you expect to escape without a conflict. I will dispute it with you to the last, but it shall be in favors and benefits; for I will not have you exceed me in generosity." He thereupon gave him a thousand talents. — PLUTARCH: Life.

Clitus had saved Alexander's life at the battle of the Granicus, but provoked the king's anger by insolent language at a banquet,

when both were heated with wine. Striking him down with his javelin, Alexander exclaimed, "Go, then, and join Philip and Parmenio." He was, however, on coming to himself, inconsolable at his friend's death. Parmenio had been put to death on a charge, preferred by his own son, of plotting against the king's life.

He refused his assent to a proposal to carve Mount Athos into the figure of a man, in imitation of the attempt of Xerxes to cut a road through it; saying, "Mount Athos is already the monument of one king's folly: I will not make it that of another."

To his soldiers, disaffected after their long campaigns, he exclaimed, "Go home, and tell them that you left Alexander to conquer the world alone."

He said to a young Macedonian named Alexander, who was about to attack, with others, a fort at the top of a steep height, "You must behave gallantly, my young friend, to do justice to your name."

At the passage of the Indus in face of the army of Porus, having always in mind the praises he envied of Athens, he exclaimed, "O Athenians! how much it costs to be praised by you!"

To the most worthy.

When asked to whom he left his empire. Thus Thiers, in answer to the question in 1871, to whom supreme power should be given in France, replied, "To the wisest " (Au plus sage).

Napoleon said of Alexander, "He commenced his career with the mind of Trajan, but he closed it with the heart of Nero and the morals of Heliogabalus."

ALEXANDER I.

[Emperor of Russia, born 1777; succeeded his father, Paul, 1801; joined Austria against Napoleon, 1804, and took part in the coalitions until his overthrow; entered Paris with the allied armies, July, 1815; formed the holy alliance with the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia; died at Taganrog, Dec. 1, 1825.]

I am, then, only a happy accident.

In conversing with Madame de Staël, in Paris, upon the form of government to take the place of the empire, she said to him with characteristic enthusiasm, "Sire, your character is a constitution!" His reply referred to the temporary and accidental expedients, which, from the time of Sieyès, the French had dignified with the name of constitutions. Napoleon's opinion of the czar was less flattering than Madame de Staël's. He said to O'Meara at St. Helena, Dec. 5, 1816, "He is an extremely hypocritical man; a Greek of the lower empire" (C'est un homme extrêmement faux; un Grec du bas empire). What more could he have said if he had foreseen that the liberal emperor was to form an alliance with two despotic sovereigns which should be for thirty years the bulwark of reactionary ideas?

Disraeli said of Lord Palmerston, "He has the smartness of an attorney's clerk, and the intrigues of a Greek of the lower empire."— Runnymede Letters, 1836.

After Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, in 1812, the Russian and Prussian sovereigns met in Breslau, where Frederick William III. was moved to tears in speaking of the losses his kingdom had suffered by being obliged to furnish a contingent to the French expedition. "Courage, brother," said Alexander to him: "these are the last tears Napoleon shall draw from you." The next year saw the opening of the "War of Liberation.”

The Dardanelles are the key of my house. Let me get possession of them, and my power is irresistible.

Thus Napoleon said, "Constantinople is an empire in itself;" and Francis I. of France declared that if he became emperor of Germany, he would be in Constantinople in three years, or would die upon the road.

ALFONSO X.

[King of Leon and Castile, surnamed "The Wise; born 1226; succeeded to the throne, 1252; bore a high reputation for learning and eloquence, and was distinguished for his patronage of science and literature; gave Europe the Alphonsine astronomical tables; died