You see now that I didn't tell you lies | from the cabaret, and, with finger on when I said that I had always, always been trigger, stole along stealthily, looking hungry." along the road, which showed white in the moonlight. The young duke had a good heart; and listening to this terrible lament told him by a man like himself, by a soldier whose uniform made him his equal, he felt himself profoundly stirred. "Jean Victor," he said, ceasing in his turn, by a delicate instinct, to tutoyer the foundling, "if we both survive this frightful war we shall see more of each other, and I hope I shall be of use to you. But just now, as there is no other baker at the outposts but the corporal of the commissariat, and as my ration of bread is twice too much for my small appetite - it is understood, is it not? - we will share like good comrades." A hearty shake of the hand was exchanged between the two men; and as night was falling, and they were being harassed by watches and alarms, they reentered the cabaret, where a dozen soldiers lay sleeping upon the straw, and throwing themselves down side by side, they sank into a heavy sleep. Towards midnight Jean Victor awoke; he was probably hungry. The wind had blown away the clouds, and a moonbeam, shining into the room through the rent in the roof, lit up the charming fair head of the young duke, sleeping like an Endymion. Still touched by the kindness of his comrade, Jean Victor was looking at him with naïve admiration, when the sergeant of the platoon opened the door to call the five men who were to relieve the sentinels at the outposts. The duke was of the number, but when his name was called he did not awake. "Hardimont, get up," repeated the ser geant. "If you will be good enough to let me, sergeant," said Jean Victor, rising, "I'll mount guard for him, he's so fast asleep; and he's my comrade." "As thou choosest." And the five men gone, the snoring began again. But half an hour after the sound of firing, sharp and very near, broke in upon the night. In an instant they had all sprung to their feet; the men hastened "But what o'clock is it?" asked the duke. "I was to have been on guard." Some one answered him: "Jean Victor has gone in your place." At that moment a soldier came running along the road. "What's happened?" they asked, as he stopped breathless. "The Prussians are attacking — we must fall back on the redoubt." "And our comrades?" "They're coming-all but that poor Jean Victor." "What?" cried the duke. "Killed dead on the spot, with a ball through his head - he hadn't time to say, 'Ouf!'" One night last winter, towards two o'clock in the morning, the Duc de Hardimont was leaving the club with his neighbor the Count de Saulnes; he had lost a few hundred louis, and felt something of a headache. I "If you don't mind, André,” he said to his companion, "we will walk home. want some fresh air." "As you like, cher ami, although the pavement is horribly bad." They sent away their broughams, turned up the collars of their fur coats, and walked towards the Madeleine. Presently the duke sent rolling something which he had struck with the toe of his boot; it was a large crust of bread, all covered with mud. Then, to his amazement, M. de Saulnes saw the Duc de Hardimont pick up the lump of bread, carefully wipe it with his crest-embroidered handkerchief, and place it on a bench of the boulevard, under the light of a gas lamp, where it could well be seen. "But what on earth is it you are doing?" said the count, bursting into a laugh. "Are you mad?" It is in memory of a poor man who died for me," replied the duke, his voice slightly trembling. "Don't laugh, mon cher; you hurt me!" LOUISA PARR. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 centa. We went; ne'er asking which was best or first, Unknowing envy, jealousy, or strife, Grateful I listen to the generous strain Of praise and grief, that through the whole world rings, But ah! what hand like thine will wake again THE WHITE MOTH. "IF a leaf rustled she would start; How had so trail a thing the heart And yet she died a year ago. To journey when she feared so? And do they turn and turn in fright, Those little feet, in so much night?" The light above the poet's head Streamed on the page and on the cloth, And twice and thrice there buffeted On the black pane a white-winged moth, 'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside And "Open, open, open!" cried: "I could not find the way to God: Led over wastes where millions "O, it was easy then! I knew Your window and no star beside. Sure of each other through the best and Look up, and take me back to you!" worst. He rose and thrust the window wide. 'Twas but because his brain was hot With rhyming; for he heard her not. But poets polishing a phrase And as she blundered in the blaze But NEVER before, not even in the days of St. Augustine himself, did circumstances conspire with greater force than they do now to show how essentially "we are a race curious to know the lives of others." Whether I should finish the sentence and add "though careless to amend our own,"* I do not claim the knowledge, as, perhaps, I should not have the heart, to say. I can say and do say that for fruitfulness and usefulness it would be difficult to surpass or even to match in the past the results of such - often questionable-inquisitiveness as are to be found in the historical literature of this century; especially in that section of it that deals with what may be called the Tudor cycle, centring or culminating in the long, disastrous reign of Henry the Eighth. And, however true, with certain limitations, the dictum that individuals are important in history in proportion not to their intrinsic merit, but to their relation to the State, and history is not concerned with them except in their capacity of members of a State,† the fact that the chief interest of this literature lies in a very great degree in its intense personal character in no wise detracts from its genuine historical value, since the great English revolution of the sixteenth century in its social, political, moral, and religious effects was the outcome of and inseparable from the moral and intellectual character and individual action of a mere handful of men. women be beguiled into believing the strange travesties they have hitherto received as authentic; and received in spite of the fascinating author's bold assertion that history after all" is only a child's box of letters from which you have but to select such facts as suit you, leave alone those which do not, and, let your theory of history be what it will, you can find no difficulty in providing facts to prove it."* So great is the ascendency of a brilliant writer affluent in the magic of style, a picturesque imagination, and inexhaustible ingenuity! What, for example, could be more impressive, more interestingly instructive than Professor Brewer's picture of Henry the Eighth, an idolized sovereign in the full glory of his youthful beauty of mind and body, contrasted with that other picture of him reproduced by Mr. Friedmann from the vivid pen of the imperial ambassador, Chapuys, which shows the hardened man of middle age in the revolting guise of a reveller decked out in gorgeous apparel, all in yellow from top to toe except for the white feather in his cap, dandling his little bastard daughter and dancing with the gayest of the gay at a court ball the very day after the news reached him that his persecuted, strong-hearted wife was dead-and dead, if not of a broken heart, in all probability through poison And a marvellous gallery of portraits administered at the instigation, or with historians such as Professor Brewer, Mr. | the connivance, of himself and his paraGairdner, Dr. Stubbs, Mr. Friedmann, Dr. Gasquet, and Father Bridgett have given us. And, moreover, portraits so true, in some cases so courageously true, that never again can educated men and To know truly the character of these men is to have floods of light thrown into the dark places of our history. St. Augustine, Confessions, Bk. x., c. 3. ↑ Professor Seeley, The Expansion of England. mour? Or, again, that view of Henry's court, with the coarse, ambitious, and relentless Anne Boleyn for its centre, which we owe to the same author; and which finds its dark pendant in the pages of Dr. Gasquet * J. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects. where he depicts the man that, as the deeds of persecution - falsely attributed king's right hand, more than any other to him as we to-day know for certain — human being has justified the saying, because, "in the face of evidence unfor"Inglese italianato è diavolo incarnato"? tunately all but overwhelming, it remains Surely, after the facts brought together extremely difficult, through the force of and set forth out of the depths of our the general current of the testimony of national records by Dr. Gasquet, such his nature to believe aught to his dis phrases as "the truly noble nature," "the credit." integrity," and "the fidelity" of Thomas Cromwell become meaningless, are blotted out forever; and the most vehement Protestantism, so far from thinking it a pity that we can only piece together such a scanty biography of him,† will, on the contrary, lament that we know so much! But it was not for all or any of these that, except incidentally, I would win attention just now; but for the latest contribution to the Tudor cycle. And, narrowing my limits still more, for only one phase of that work; a work that will have a wider and a higher popular interest in England than either of those already named. And the phrase I would choose is the one that appeals to our national character with greater force than all the rest of the book put together, incalculably valuable though that is. I mean Father Bridgett's "Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More;" and that portion of it that treats of his private life-his domestic and social life. But strong and deep as this traditional and personal feeling is, it has certainly been due rather to "the force of the general current of the testimony of his nature" than to a detailed acquaintance with his character and the varied features, facts, and episodes of his busy life. The best of all the later lives that we have hitherto had of him, Sir James Mackintosh's, is a little volume of only two hundred pages, published more than half a century ago before the great historical treasures of the Record Office were practically available to the historian, so that a really accurate knowledge of the full beauty of his life was unattainable to the general reader. And wonderfully beautiful it is, as we can see it now, in its multiform harmonies of inward and outward graces forming one exquisitely harmonious whole. No statesman has ever before been so completely revealed in thought, word, and deed to the outer world. We have the innermost life of the man characThe traditional love of Sir Thomas terized by a seriousness and depth of More is so strong, so intensely and pro- thought, prayer, stern self-discipline, and foundly rooted in the hearts of English-strenuous mortification that few would men and English women, that the gravest have looked to find underlying the gaiety, and bitterest of animosities, religious ani- the sparkling wit, the merry humor, the mosity itself, has never been able to shake unrivalled conversational gifts that made it. And when a little while since the him the first in courtly circles and the head of Christendom proclaimed the beat- cherished companion of sovereigns; ification of our great chancellor, the lead- whilst, to the superficial observer, these ing exponent of public opinion rightly extremes of severity and light-heartedness gauged English feeling in hailing the oc- are found knit together by an insatiable casion as an opportunity that would be love of learning that made him the dear welcome to every Englishman, whatever friend of those who stood foremost in Euhis religious views, "for recalling to the ropean fame for letters, law, and science; world the fame of one whose reputation is and tempered with a charity and unfailing dear to all" of us. Nay, it could even in sympathy that made him as judge and these days of religious toleration, with a chancellor revered by all and trusted with generosity for which happily there is no absolute trust by the lowly and desolate. longer any need, safely plead excuse for J. A. Froude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. ↑ Ibid. And the effect of all this, in contrast to the life of the monarch that so long threaded or mingled with his, is precisely The Times, January 7, 1887. |