Demonax replied to Admetus, a bad poet, who showed him an epitaph he had written upon himself in one verse, "It is so pretty, I wish it were there already!" The manners of the great Condé partook more of the camp than of the court. One day the son of the Duc d'Epernon spoke several times of his own father, prefixing in each case the word "Monsieur." Disgusted by so unnecessary a use of titles, Condé called out, "Monsieur the master of horse, tell monsieur my coachman to harness messieurs my horses to my carriage" (M. l'écuyer, allez dire à M. mon cocher qu'il mette MM. mes chevaux à mon carosse). Boileau, who used great freedom with Louis XIV., quailed before Condé. "I can argue before the king," he said, "but am silent before Condé;" and on another occasion he referred to the tone of a victorious general which the hero of Nordlingen carried into literary circles: "Henceforth I shall agree with M. le prince, especially when he is wrong." Condé and Turenne were opposed to one another during the troubles of the Fronde; and Condé was asked why he did not take his antagonist prisoner, he was near him so often. "I am afraid he'll take me," was the frank reply. Your majesty is the master, but I pray him to make me the janitor. When the king claimed a right to the prince's château of Chantilly, under the treaty with Spain, which country Condé had supported. Louis XIV. understood the answer to his question what the price of it was, and dropped the subject. The estate is now owned by the Duc d'Aumale, son of Louis Philippe. When asked in his last days to write his memoirs, the prince replied, "All that I have done is worthy only of oblivion: write the king's history, then all other memoirs will be superfluous." CONFUCIUS. [The Chinese philosopher; born 551 B.C.; at twenty-two came forward as a public teacher; one of the chief ministers of the king, 499, and, later, minister of justice; spent the rest of his life, after retiring from public affairs, in travel, inculcating his doctrines; died Those who have been united in life should not be parted after death. Causing the remains of his mother to be buried beside those of his father. "Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided" (1 Sam. i. 23). He said of a woman whose father-in-law, husband, and son had been killed by tigers, but who preferred to remain where she was, because the government was not oppressive, "Oppressive government is more cruel than a tiger." He told one of his disciples to take a horse from his carriage, and present it in payment of the funeral expenses of a friend, with whose family he had been condoling while on a journey. "I dislike," he said, "the thought of my tears not being followed by any thing." He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north-pole star, which keeps its place, and all the other stars turn towards it. This and the following are from the "Analects," or "Table Talk," London, 1867 : When I have presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson. In the book of poetry are three hundred pieces; but the design of them all may be embraced in that one sentence, "Have no depraved thoughts." [Socrates said, "I pray thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within."] Learning without thought is labor lost: thought without learning is perilous. "A little learning is a dangerous thing." POPE: Essay on Criticism. Gravity is only the bark of wisdom's tree, but it preserves it. La Rochefoucauld defined gravity as a mystery of matter invented to conceal faults of mind (un mystère de corps inventé pour dissimuler les défauts de l'esprit). He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray. When we see men of worth, we should think of becoming like them: when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inward and examine ourselves. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others. [A negative form of the Golden Rule.] I am not concerned that I have no office: I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known: I seek to be worthy to be known. When the accomplishments and solid qualities are equally blended, we then have the man of complete virtue. The superior man thinks of virtue: the small man thinks of comfort. The superior man thinks of the sanctions of law: the small man thinks of the favors which he may receive. The superior man is affable, but not adulatory: the mean man is adulatory, but not affable. I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or one who hated what was not virtuous. [In the discouragement of his latter days.] What the superior man seeks is in himself: what the small man seeks is in others. A poor man who does not flatter, and a rich man who is not proud, are passable characters; but they are not equal to the poor who are cheerful, and the rich who yet love the rules of propriety. Extravagance leads to insubordination, and parsimony to meanness. It is better to be mean than insubordinate. A man can enlarge his principles: principles do not enlarge ⚫ the man. The cautious seldom err. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. [The first Christian emperor of Rome, born 272 A.D.; proclaimed emperor at York, 306; defeated Maximian and Maxentius, 312, and became supreme in the West; by the defeat of Licinius near Byzantium, was sole emperor; assembled the Council of Nicæa, 325, which condemned Arianism, and adopted the Nicene creed; transferred his court to Byzantium, 328; died at Nicomedia, 337, being baptized just before his death.] In hoc signo vinces (Conquer by this sign). In his march towards Rome, either at Autun in Gaul, or near Andernach on the Rhine, he is said to have seen in the sky the luminous cross surmounted by the words which he placed upon the Labarum, or standard of Rome, over the monogram of Christ, after his defeat of Maxentius, at Saxa Rubra, near Rome, Oct. 27, 312. Feeling of his head, when urged to punish the Arians, who had broken his statues because he would not declare for them, he said, "I feel no wound." GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE. [Second son of the Emperor Paul of Russia; born at St. Petersburg, 1779; served at Austerlitz, and in subsequent campaigns; governor of Poland, 1814; on the death of Alexander I., renounced his right to the throne in favor of his younger brother Nicholas; viceroy of Poland; died 1831.] I hate war: it spoils armies (Je déteste la guerre: elle gâte les armées). CHARLOTTE CORDAY. [Marie Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armans, born in Normandy, 1768, was a descendant of Corneille; adopted the principles of the Revolution, and sympathized with the proscribed Girondists; having resolved to sacrifice herself by the death of Marat, she came to Paris, May, 1793, and, pretending to be the bearer of important information from the provinces, penetrated to his chamber, and stabbed him in the bath; executed the following July.] The crime makes the shame, not the scaffold. In a letter to her father after the murder of Marat, she quoted a line of her ancestor Thomas Corneille ("Comte d'Essex," IV. 3): "C'est le crime qui fait la honte, et non pas l'échafaud." As in her mind there was no crime, so there was no shame. Napoleon once said, "It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr." That Charlotte Corday's thoughts were early given to the condition of France, is indicated by her scornful remark to some inhabitants of Caen, who were playing cards before their door: "You play, and the country is dying." It was of such persons that she wrote to Barbaroux: "What a miserable people to found a republic!" (Quel triste peuple pour fonder une république !) She bore her trial with the utmost composure. "I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand," she declared; "a deformed wretch, to save the innocent; a ferocious monster, to procure peace to my country. I was a republican before the Revolution, and I never lacked energy." "The Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor, suggested that she must have practised much to give Marat such a blow. monster!" she exclaimed, "he takes me for an assassin!" When asked by her judge after the trial, what she had to say: "Nothing, but that I have succeeded." In reply to the question if she thought she had slain all the Marats: "Since he is dead, perhaps the others will tremble." It is the toilet of death, but it leads to immortality. As the executioner was preparing her for the guillotine. "She destroys us," said Vergniaud, alluding to her sympathy for Barbaroux and the other Girondists, who were compromised by her act, "but she teaches us how to die" (Elle nous tue, mais elle nous apprend à mourir). CORNELIA. [A Roman matron, eminent for her virtues and mental cultiva tion; the daughter of P. Scipio Africanus, and wife of T. Sempronius Gracchus.] These are my jewels! To a Campanian lady, who, on a visit to the mother of the Gracchi, displayed her jewels somewhat ostentatiously, and wished to see those of Cornelia; the latter turned the conversation until her sons had returned from school, and then presented them. "Pointing to such, well might Cornelia say, ROGERS: Human Life. |