gives a humorous turn to the idea: "The historian is a sort of talking ghost from out the past" (eine Art redendes Gespenst aus der Vorzeit). - Doge and Dogaressa.

If a throne crumbles of itself, I will not try to raise it. This remark, made just before the revolution of 1848, shows the change of sentiment which the son of a royalist officer and an original partisan of the house of Orleans had experienced.

The Spanish marriages," so called, or the union in Spain of the Orleans and Bourbon families, by the marriage of a son of Louis Philippe to a Spanish infanta, proved of great unpopularity; it covered its promoter, Guizot, with obloquy, and contributed to the overthrow of Louis Philippe. Lamartine expressed the views of liberal Frenchmen by predicting from it a great calamity: "The House of Orleans will have ceased to reign in France from having wished also to reign in Spain."

The want of France is a Washington.

The existence of the republic, which took the place of the monarchy of July, was imperilled by a want of sympathy between the provisional government and the Paris workmen, and by demands of the latter for "national workshops," which the government opposed on principle. It was at this decisive juncture that the patriot turned to the hero of the American contest, where, as Lafayette said, "Humanity has won its suit, so that liberty would nevermore be without an asylum." Unwilling to yield to demands which were based on communistic ideas, Lamartine declared, "You might place me before the muzzle of those guns before you would make me sign these two words associated together, Organization of Labor.'" But his greatest triumph was a refusal to adopt the red flag which the workmen, then organized into an armed force, wished to impose upon France as the sign of successful revolution. With their guns pointed at his breast, he uttered the following words at the close of an impassioned address that carried every thing before it: “I will refuse, even to the death, this flag of blood; and you should repudiate it still more than I! for the red flag which you offer us has only made the tour of the Champs de Mars, drawn through the blood of the people in '91 and '93; while the tricolored

banner has made the circuit of the world, with the name, the glory, and the liberty of the country!"

The last years of Lamartine's life were imbittered by poverty and neglect. "I no longer live," he once said: "I only assist at life" (Je ne vis plus: j'assiste à la vie). Thus the young and beautiful Mme. d'Houdetot, being asked of what she was dreaming, when found during her last illness in a pensive mood, replied: "I am regretting myself!" (Je me regrette !)

CHARLES LAMB.

[An English essayist; born in London, February, 1775; entered the service of the East-India Company, 1792; retired, 1825; published "Essays of Elia," 1830; died 1834.]

It is better, at any rate, than always aiming at dulness.

When some one said to him, “You are always aiming at wit." On Crabb Robinson's telling him, soon after being called to the bar, that he had a case in the King's Bench, Lamb replied, "I suppose you addressed Milton's line to it: Thou first best cause, least understood.'" The story is probably incorrectly

told, as the line is from Pope's "Universal Prayer: "—

"Thou Great First Cause, least understood."

An old lady complained that Lamb did not seem to be hearing what she was saying. "I cannot say that I am," was his answer: "but perhaps the lady on the other side of me is; for it goes in at one ear, and out of the other."

If dirt were trumps, what a hand you would hold!

To a slovenly whist-player.

When told that eight persons had dined together on the top of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, he remarked, "They must have been very sharp set!"

When reminded by a superior at India House that he came very late to the office, Lamb replied with the most innocent manner in the world, "Yes, sir; but you must remember that I go away early."

A gentleman looked into a crowded coach with the question, "All full inside?" to which Lamb replied, "I don't know how

it may be with the other passengers, but that last piece of oysterpie did the business for me!"

The first water-cure was the flood, and it killed more than it cured.

He said of mixing brandy and water, "It spoils two good things."

When Wordsworth said, if he had a mind, he could write like Shakespeare, Lamb suggested, "It is only the mind which is wanting."

"Charles Lamb's sayings," said Hazlitt, "are generally like women's letters, all the pith is in the postscript."

MADAME DE LA MEILLERAYE.

[Marie Ruzé d'Effiat, Marquise de la Meilleraye; a cousin of Cardinal Richelieu; her son married a niece of Cardinal Mazarin.]

God will think twice before damning a gentleman of his quality (Quand il s'agit des gens de cette qualité, Dieu y regarde bien à deux fois pour les damner).

Of the Chevalier de Savoie, a brother of Prince Eugene, a man of high birth but vicious life. The same remark was made of himself by the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre: "God will never dare to damn a duke and peer" (Le bon Dieu n'aura jamais le cœur de damner un duc et pair).

HUGH LATIMER.

[An English reformer; born in Leicestershire about 1472; graduated from Cambridge; chaplain to Anne Boleyn, and Bishop of Worcester, 1535-39, when he resigned, and was imprisoned until the death of Henry VIII.; burned at the stake, 1555.]

Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

To Bishop Nicholas Ridley, who was burned with him, Oct. 16, 1555, after having taken part at Oxford in a disputation on the religious questions of the day.

CAPTAIN JAMES LAWRENCE.{

[An American naval officer; born at Burlington, N.J., 1781; served with Decatur in the Mediterranean; captured "The Peacock" from the British, 1813; encountered "The Shannon," in "The Chesapeake," near Boston, where he was mortally wounded, and the vessel taken by the English, June 1, 1813.]

Don't give up the ship!

The shorter form of the last words of the rash but intrepid Lawrence, as he was carried below after his second and mortal wound. The surgeon's mate, Dr. John Dix, testified on the trial of Lieut. Cox, April 14, 1814, that Capt. Lawrence "ordered me to go on deck, and tell the men to fire faster, and not to give up the ship." He had been in command of the "Chesapeake "but a few days, and was a stranger to the crew, who were not well disciplined.

The laconic form of the order floated at the mast-head of Commodore Perry's flag-ship, "The Lawrence," during the battle of Lake Erie, Sept. 10, 1813. Perry had said, "If a victory is to be gained, I'll gain it!" and in his despatch to Gen. Harrison he announced the result with a brevity worthy of Cæsar: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours!"

Another saying in this war became proverbial. When, during the battle of Lundy's Lane, July 25, 1814, Gen. Brown noticed the fire of a British battery on a hiil in the enemy's centre, and saw that unless it were stopped it would destroy the whole American force, or compel it to fall back, he asked Col. James Miller, commanding the Twenty-first Regiment, if he could silence it. "I'll try, sir," was the modest but unflinching reply. Ascending the hill by a flank movement, the regiment poured one volley into the battery; his men moved forward with the bayonet, the hill was immediately cleared, and the battery captured.

Franklin recommended Kosciusko, a young Polish officer, to Washington; who asked him, when he offered his services, "What can you do?". "Try me," was the laconic answer. Washington made him his aide-de-camp; and he superintended the construction of the works at West Point, where a monument was afterwards erected to his memory.

SIR AUSTEN H. LAYARD.

[An English Orientalist and politician; born in Paris, of English parents, March, 1817; discovered the ruins of Nineveh, 1840; made excavations at Nimroud, and sent many memorials of early civilization to the British Museum; member of Parliament, 1852; under secretary of state for foreign affairs, 1861-66; commissioner of public works, 1868; has been minister to Spain and Turkey.]

The right man in the right place.

In a speech in the House of Commons, on the Administration Reform Association, Jan. 15, 1855, Mr. Layard said, “I have always believed that success would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place."

Sydney Smith said, "You will generally see in human life the round man and the angular man planted in the wrong hole; but the bishop of ——, being a round man, has fallen into a triangular hole, and is far better off than many triangular men who have fallen into round holes."- Memoirs, p. 308.

Talleyrand has observed that "the art of putting the right man in the right place is perhaps the first in the science of government, but the art of finding a satisfactory position for the discontented is the most difficult."

NINON DE L'ENCLOS.

[A French courtesan, celebrated for her wit, beauty, and literary taste; born in Paris, 1616; the friend of Mme. de Maintenon, and often consulted by Molière; died 1706.]

The fine promise I made La Châtre! (Ah, le bon billet qu'a La Châtre !)

Her exclamation when taking another lover, and thinking of the note she had given the Marquis de La Châtre, promising to be faithful to him in his absence. "It became," says SainteBeuve, "a proverb upon empty assurances." Thus a French paper, commenting upon the declaration of M. de Freycinet in announcing his policy after the dissolution of the Gambetta ministry in January, 1882, said that "the propitious moment" in which the new premier promised to bring forward the revision