"If he despises all men, it is because he has thoroughly studied himself" (S'il méprise tous les hommes, c'est qu'il s'est beaucoup étudié). Of Talleyrand's manner of negotiating treaties, Chateaubriand said, "When he is not conspiring, he is selling himself" (Quand M. de Talleyrand ne conspire pas, il trafique); which verdict was confirmed by Napoleon at St. Helena, "Talleyrand was always in a state of treason, but it was complicity with fortune." The emperor used a classic mot in speaking of him at another time: "Talleyrand treats his enemies as if they were one day to become his friends, and his friends as if they were to become his enemies."- O'MEARA: Napoleon in Exile, November, 1816. This is derived from the Greek philosopher Bias: "Love as if you should hereafter hate, and hate as if you should hereafter love." Laberius (107-43 B. C.) expresses it in Latin: "Amicum ita habeas, posse ut fieri hunc inimicum scias" (Treat your friend as if you knew that he will one day become your enemy)."

The Earl of Lauderdale, minister to France in 1806, called Talleyrand “mud in a silk stocking;" and Mme. de Staël happily characterized his return to favor, after the Restoration: "Our good Maurice resembles the toy-men whose heads are of cork and their legs of lead: throw them how you will, they always fall upon their feet." James I. said of Sir Edward Coke, "Whatever way that man falls, he is sure to alight on his legs."

JOSIAH TATNALL.

[An American naval officer; borr in Georgia; entered the navy about 1810; commanded a squadron in the East Indies from 1856 to 1859; having joined the Confederates, destroyed the ironclad "Merrimac," in 1862, to prevent her falling into the hands of the Unionists; died 1871.]

Blood is thicker than water.

A proverb which Commodore Tatnall made use of in a despatch to the Navy Department, in June, 1859, to justify his assistance of the British fleet in the Peiho. Provision had been made in the treaty of Tien-tsin, between Great Britain and China, for the establishment of a permanent British embassy at Pekin. Notwithstanding this, the Chinese government showed such

unwillingness to receive the British ambassador, that the English admiral in command of the fleet containing the British and French legations determined to pass the forts of the Peiho, and land the embassy under the guns of his ships. He was received, however, with so murderous a fire from the forts, that he was obliged to retire; an attempt to silence the forts by land being equally unsuccessful. A note to the narrative of the action in "The Annual Register" for 1859 mentions "the friendly conduct of an American steamer during the conflict, which towed up several of our boats, carried away men from the disabled vessels, and rendered every assistance to the wounded, sending presents of fresh meat and vegetables.".

Commodore Tatnall did not, however, originate the expression with which his name is often connected. It is found in Ray's "Collection of English Proverbs," published in 1672; and Bohn's Handbook, including the collections of Ray and others, classes it with Scotch proverbs. Sir Walter Scott makes Dandie Dinmont say, "Weel, blude's thicker than water: she's welcome to the cheeses and hams just the same." The Germans have a similar proverb, "Blut ist dicker als Wasser.”

THEMISTOCLES.

[A celebrated Athenian statesman and general; born about 574 B. C.; commanded the Athenians after the victory of Salamis, 480; banished, 471; was kindly treated by Artaxerxes, king of Persia, where he died, or killed himself, about 449.]

The trophies of Miltiades will not suffer me to sleep.

When asked why he did not join in the exultation at the victory of Miltiades over the Persians at Marathon, 490 B. C. His life had hitherto been devoted to pleasure; but now, seized with an insatiable ambition, he prepared himself and the Athenians for the struggle with Persia he saw approaching. — PLUTARCH: Life.

When asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer; "And pray," he replied, "which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier who proclaims who are conquerors?"— Ibid.. Apothegms.

Themistocles opposed the proposition of Eurybiades, the Athe

nian naval commander, to sail for the Isthmus, rather than await the Persian attack in the straits of Salamis: Eurybiades raising his stick, Themistocles exclaimed, "Strike, but hear me !" The latter's counsels prevailed, and the victory of Salamis was the result.

He preferred an honest man that wooed his daughter, to a rich man. "I would rather," he said, "have a man that wants money, than money that wants a man."

When told that he would govern the Athenians well, if he ruled without respect of persons, Themistocles replied, "May I never sit on a tribunal where my friends shall not find more favor from me than strangers."

Seeing a number of bracelets and golden chains upon some dead bodies cast up by the sea, he said to a friend, "Take them : you are not Themistocles."— Ibid: Life.

To him is attributed a mot which in an English form reads, "If one showed me two roads, one leading to the Devil, and the other to Parliament, I should choose the former."

When asked to touch a lute, Themistocles replied, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a small town into a great state."

THIERS.

[Louis Adolphe Thiers, a French historian and statesman; born at Marseilles, April 16, 1797; settled in Paris as a lawyer and journalist, 1821; councillor of state, 1830; member of the Chamber of Deputies; minister of the interior, 1832; member of the Academy; minister for foreign affairs, 1836 and 1840; acted with the opposition during the Second Empire; president of the French Republic, 1871-73; died 1877.]

The king reigns, but does not govern (Le roi règne, il ne gouverne pas).

This was said in Latin, the language of the Polish and Hungarian diets, as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, by Jan Zamoyski, in the Polish parliament: "Rex regnat, sed non gubernat." President Hénault ("Memoirs," 161) remarked of Mme. des Ursins, who was "the power behind the throne" of Philip V. of Spain, "She governed, but did not reign" (Elle gouvernait, mais elle ne régnait pas). Thiers, however, gave the

aphorism its greatest celebrity, by placing it as the maxim of constitutional government in an early number of the newspaper, "The National," which appeared under the direction of himself and his political friends six months before the dissolution of a monarchy whose principle was that the king both reigned and governed. As developed under the liberal monarchy which succeeded Charles X., it signified that a responsible ministry should relieve the sovereign of that personal intervention in government which had hitherto characterized the French monarchy. Thiers elsewhere expressed it, "The king is the country made man" (Le roi, c'est le pays fait homme). Coleridge advanced the same idea in his Table-Talk:" "A nation is the unity of a people. King and parliament are the unity made visible."

In a debate on the budget in the German Reichstag, Jan. 24, 1882, during a discussion of a rescript which asserted the right of the emperor, as king of Prussia, to personally direct the policy of the kingdom under the constitution, and which required all officials to hold aloof during elections from agitations against the government and its candidates, Prince Bismarck declared that the maxim, "The king reigns, but does not govern" (in German, Der König herrscht aber er regiert nicht), did not apply to Germany, and that the expression "ministerial responsibility" was equally absurd.

Alphonse Karr paraphrased the maxim: "The king reigns like the cornice round the room."

We are the young guard.

At his first meeting with Charles de Rémusat, who became his intimate friend and political associate, and, as secretary for foreign affairs in 1871-72, aided him in the liberation of French territory from German occupation. The advice of Talleyrand to the young and ambitious Thiers was, "You wish to rise: make enemies." He was perhaps thinking of the saying of Socrates, "Every man in his life has need of a faithful friend and a bitter enemy, the one to advise him, the other to make him look about him." Chesterfield wrote to his son, in whose political advancement he took a strong interest: "You have a surer way of rising, and which is wholly in your power: make yourself necessary."- Letters, Feb. 9, 1748. When an article on

M. Montausier by young Thiers appeared in 1827, Talleyrand exclaimed, "He is not a parvenu: he is an arrivé!" and in another version is said to have added, "who will go farther than any of us."

"The man that makes a character makes foes."

YOUNG: Epistles to Pope, I. 28.

The determination of Thiers to enter public life was made early. Even in the law-school at Aix, where party politics ran high, and he and Mignet were the leaders of the ultra-liberal side, the former was wont to exclaim, when the practicability of his doctrines was disputed, "Wait until we are ministers" (quand nous serons ministres). He made use in 1835 of the distinction, "I am not liberal, but national." He was at this time an admirer of the English as opposed to the American form of government, and used to say, "We must cross the Channel, that we may not be obliged some day to cross the Atlantic" (Il faut franchir la manche pour n'avoir pas un jour à franchir l'Atlantique). When the government party, near the end of the reign of Charles X., complained of the strained interpretation of the charter, and cried out, "Legality is killing us!" Thiers met them with a counter-cry, "We will kill you with legality!" In a short time a three-days' revolution overthrew the Bourbons.

The Republic divides us the least.

Passing over the Second Empire, which was for Thiers a time of study rather than of action, he appears as the advocate of a republican form of government. This change of views was rather a development of ideas by the force of circumstances, than a change of theoretic opinions.

With a republic itself he had originally no sympathy; for he said, "It is always destined to end in imbecility or blood" (La république est destinée toujours à finir par l'imbécillité ou dans le sang). After the revolution of 1848 he seemed to despair of the future. "It only remains for us," he said, "to make ourselves forgotten" (Il ne nous reste plus qu'à nous faire oublier). looked upon events, however, with his usual perspicacity; and after a review of troops at Satory, near Paris, by the PrincePresident in 1851, a short time before the coup d'état, he remarked

He