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93. AN ANECDOTE ON LOUIS XVIII.

After the Restoration in 1814, among the titled followers of Napoleon who were the most anxious to obtain employment at the court of Louis XVIII., none showed more servility or assiduity to accomplish his purpose than Fouché, Duc d'Otrante. He at last had a private interview with the king, when he expressed his desire to dedicate his life to his service.

Louis replied: 'You have occupied under Bonaparte a situation of great trust, which must have given you opportunities of knowing everything that passed, and of gaining an insight into the characters of men in public life, which could not easily occur to others. Were I to decide on attaching you to my person, I should previously expect that you would frankly inform me what were the measures, and who were the men that you employed in those days to obtain your information. I do not allude to my stay at Verona or Mittau-I was then surrounded by numerous adherents; but at Hartwell, for instance -were you then well acquainted with what passed under my roof?' 'Yes, sire, every day the motions of your Majesty were made known to me.' 'Eh! what! surrounded as I was by trusted friends, who could have betrayed me? Who thus abused my confidence? I insist on your naming him immediately.' 'Sire, you urge me to say what must wound your Majesty's heart.' 'Speak, sir; kings are but too subject to be deceived.' 'If you command it, sire, I must own that I was in correspondence with the Duc d'Aumont.' 'What! De Pienne, who possessed my entire confidence? I must acknowledge,' added the king, with a malicious smile, 'he was very poor, he had many expenses, and living is very dear in England. Well, Mr. Fouché, it was I that dictated to him those letters which you received every week, and gave up to him twelve thousand out of the forty-eight thousand francs which you so regularly remitted to obtain an account of all that was passing in my family.'-Memoirs of Thomas Raikes, Esq.

94. MY OWN HEAD FITS BEST.

Henry VIII. being at odds with Francis I., king of France, resolved to send an ambassador with a very haughty and threat

ening message; for that purpose he made choice of Bishop Bonner, in whom he reposed great confidence. The bishop told him that his life would be in great danger if he should use such language to so high-spirited a king as Francis I. 'Be not afraid!' said Henry; 'for if the King of France were to put you to death, I would take off many a head of those Frenchmen who are here in my power.' 'I believe so,' answered the bishop; 'but of all those heads none would fit so well as my own!'—The Laughing Philosopher.

95. THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE.

The long ascendancy which Louis XIV. had enjoyed, and the eminent merit of the tragic and comic dramatists, of the satirists, and of the preachers who had flourished under that magnificent prince, had made the French language predominant in Europe. Even in countries which had a national literature, and which could boast of names greater than those of Racine, of Molière, and of Massillon, in the country of Dante, in the country of Cervantes, in the country of Shakspeare and Milton, the intellectual fashions of Paris had been to a great extent adopted. Germany had not yet produced a single masterpiece of poetry or eloquence. In Germany, therefore, the French taste reigned without rival and without limit. Every youth of rank was taught to speak and write French. That he should speak and write his own tongue with politeness, or even with accuracy and facility, was regarded as comparatively an unimportant object.-Macaulay.

96. POWER SHOWS THE MAN.

Plutarch raises the question without settling it, whether change of fortune really changes a man's temper, or whether power merely discovers the bad qualities which have hitherto been concealed. The answer to the question is not difficult; most men, nearly all, are capable of crimes under certain circumstances. Fortunately for the world, opportunity does not come to all. Experience shows that power, place, opportunity, prosperity, and temptation discover in a man qualities unknown to others, and not suspected even by himself. Sometimes the

man becomes great and noble; sometimes mean, cruel, and contemptible. It is power which gives the greatest opportunity for the display of bad qualities. . . . A Greek said truly that power shows the man.-Long's Decline of the Roman Republic.

97. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

His is one of those mixed characters which it is difficult to praise or blame without the risk of doing them more or less than justice. He has talents which the event has proved to be sufficient to make him the second (and, now that Napoleon has gone, the first) general of the age, but which could not make him a tolerable minister. Confident, presumptuous, and dictatorial, but frank, open, and good-humoured, he contrived to rule in the Cabinet without mortifying his colleagues, and he has brought it to ruin without forfeiting their regard. Choosing with a very slender stock of knowledge to take upon himself the sole direction of every department of Government, he completely sank under the burden. Originally imbued with the principles of Lord Castlereagh and the Holy Alliance, he brought all those predilections with him into office. Incapable of foreseeing the mighty events with which the future was big, and of comprehending the prodigious alteration which the moral character of Europe had undergone, he pitted himself against Canning in the Cabinet, and stood up as the assertor of maxims both of foreign and domestic policy which that great statesman saw were no longer fitted for the times we live in.-Greville's Sketches.

98. DEATH OF HENRY VIII.

The king was now approaching fast towards his end; and fearing lest Norfolk should escape him, he sent a message to the Commons, by which he desired them to hasten the bill, on pretence that Norfolk enjoyed the dignity of earl marshal, and it was necessary to appoint another, who might officiate at the ensuing ceremony of installing his son Prince of Wales. The obsequious Commons obeyed his directions, though founded on so frivolous a pretence; and the king, having affixed the royal assent to the bill by commissioners, issued orders for the execution of Norfolk on the morning of the 29th of January. But news being carried to the Tower, that the king himself had expired that night, the

lieutenant deferred obeying the warrant ; and it was not thought advisable by the Council to begin a new reign by the death of the greatest nobleman in the kingdom, who had been condemned by a sentence so unjust and tyrannical.

The king's health had long been in a declining state; but for several days all those near him plainly saw his end approaching. He was become so froward, that no one durst inform him of his condition; and as some persons during this reign had suffered as traitors for foretelling the king's death, everyone was afraid lest in the transports of his fury he might on this pretence punish capitally the author of such friendly intelligence. At last Sir Anthony Denny ventured to disclose to him the fatal secret, and exhorted him to prepare for the fate which was awaiting him. He expressed his resignation, and desired that Cranmer might be sent for; but before the prelate arrived he was speechless, though he still seemed to retain his senses. Cranmer desired him to give some sign of his dying in the faith of Christ he squeezed the prelate's hand, and immediately expired, after a reign of thirty-seven years and nine months, and in the fifty-sixth year of his age.-Hume.

99. THE RHINOCEROS-BIRD.

Before I could reach the proper distance to fire, several rhinoceros-birds, by which he was attended, warned him of his impending danger by sticking their bills into his ear, and uttering their harsh, grating cry. Thus roused he suddenly sprang to his feet, and crashed away through the jungle at a rapid trot and I saw no more of him.

These rhinoceros-birds are constant attendants upon the hippopotamus and the four varieties of rhinoceros, their object being to feed upon the ticks and other parasitic insects that swarm upon these animals. They are of a greyish colour, and are nearly as large as a common thrush; their voice is very similar to that of the mistletoe thrush. Many a time have these ever-watchful birds disappointed me in my stalk, and tempted me to invoke an anathema upon their devoted heads. They are the best friends the rhinoceros has, and rarely fail to awaken him, even in his soundest nap. 'Chukuroo' perfectly understands their warning, and, springing to his feet, he generally

first looks about him in every direction, after which he invariably makes off.-Gordon Cumming.

100. VAN AMBURGH.

A lion and tiger were, with one or two other animals, occupying one den, and had begun to scuffle and claw one another, when Van Amburgh opened the door at the back of the den, stepped in, seized each combatant by the neck, and threw them with extraordinary strength to opposite sides of the cage. The lion crouched down immediately, and ceased all resistance; but the tiger, who was a later importation, and had not yet been quite subdued, put his ears back, flattened himself against the floor, and was evidently about to spring. There was fierce instinctive rage in the whole demeanour of the animal. Van Amburgh, however, was not a man to approve of instinct, and he soon put a stop to its display by dealing such a terrific blow with a short iron bar on the tiger's nose, that the vanquished animal rolled on the floor, and could do nothing but moan and rub its nose for the rest of the performance.-Wood (Anecdotes of Animal Life).

IOI. INDUSTRY, MECHANIC ART, AND SCIENCE IN THE

ANIMAL CREATION.

The busy hive of human industry, whether in the department of the mechanic arts, or in the more subtle investigations of pure science, has its counterpart in the several classes of the subordinate creation. An ingenious writer thus attempts their analogy: Spiders are geometricians, as are also bees, whose cells are so constructed as, with the least quantity of material, to have the largest-sized spaces and the least possible loss of interstices; the mole is a meteorologist; the nautilus is a navigator, for he raises and lowers his sails, casts and weighs anchor, and performs other nautical evolutions; while the whole tribe of birds are musicians. The beaver may be called a builder or architect; the marmot is a civil engineer, for he not only constructs houses and aqueducts, but also drains to keep them dry; caterpillars are silk-spinners; wasps are papermanufacturers; the indefatigable ants are day-labourers; the

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