abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion of those with whom he lived during the last twenty years of his life, a complete original. An original he was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed full information concerning those who shared his early hardships, we should probably find that what we call his singularities of manner were, for the most part, failings which he had in common with the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show his ragged clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should eat, who, during a great part of his life, had passed the morning in doubt whether he should have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early life had accustomed him to bear privation with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. He could fast; but when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine, but when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms of that same moral disease which raged with such deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. The roughness and violence which he showed in society were to be expected from a man whose temper, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calamities, by the want of meat, of fire, and of clothes, by the importunity of creditors, by the insolence of patrons, by that bread which is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope which makes the heart sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence and command. It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, he should be the more austere because he had himself endured; that, though his heart was undoubtedly generous and humane, his demeanour in society should be harsh and despotic. For severe distress he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent relief. But for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon a delicate mind he had no pity; for it was a kind of suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He would carry home on his shoulders a sick and starving girl froin the streets.

He turned his house into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no other asylum; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the pangs of a wounded vanity seemed to him ridiculous; and he scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for the pangs of wounded affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations; and he seemed to think that everybody ought to be as much hardened to these vexations as himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining of a headache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These were, in his phrase, foppish lamentations,' which people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow.

Review of Croker's Boswell, reprinted in Essays.

The Battle of Ivry.a

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!
And glory to our Sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre!
Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,
Through thy corn-fields green and sunny vines, oh pleasant land
of France!

A

The progress of the Reformation in France, in the sixteenth century, led ultimately to massacres and civil wars. The Huguenots, as the Protestants were termed in the reign of Charles IX., were driven to insurrection, by the evident designs for their destruction formed by the infamous Queen Mother Catherine de Medici and the Duke of Guise. treacherous proposal of pacification, to be cemented by the marriage of Margaret of France with Henry de Bourbon, Prince of Navarre (one of the near heirs of the French throne, whose family was the chief support of the Protestant party), allured the Huguenot leaders to Paris, only to be massacred on the eve of St. Bartholomew's day (Sept. 5) 1572. Henry of Navarre and his relative the Prince of Condé escaped only by apparently acceding to the demand to change their religion. Freed from his thraldom, Henry of Navarre headed his party, whom the massacre had irritated rather than crushed or intimidated; and

a new proposed pacification caused the formation, under the auspices of Guise, of a Holy Catholic League' for the extirpation of heresy. This confederacy the king Henry III. was forced to act with, though he saw that the ambition of the house of Guise was dangerous to his throne. Both parties sought the aid of foreign alliances, the Protestants Elizabeth of England and the Protestant German princes; the Catholics that of Philip II. of Spain: Swiss auxiliaries served in both armies. The king at length refusing to follow the dangerous measures of the League, an assembly of that body proposed his deposition, and the election of the Cardinal de Bourbon to the throne. In these circumstances, the king resolved to extricate himself by treacherously procuring the assassination of Guise and his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine. The other brothers of the duke escaped to head their party with increased hatred. The king threw himself, for protection and

And thou Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters. As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,

For cold and stiff, and still, are they who wrought thy walls

annoy.

Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war,
Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre!

Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array;
With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
And Appenzell's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears.
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land:
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand :
And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled
flood,

e

And good Coligni's hoary hair, all dabbled with his blood;
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
To fight for his own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.

The king is come to marshal us, all in his armour drest,
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;

He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.

aid, into the arms of his opponent Henry of Navarre. Both princes marched to besiege Parts, now garrisoned by the Duke of Mayenne, the brother of the murdered Guise. During the siege the French king was assassinated by the monk Jaques Clement (1589), it is supposed at the instigation of the Guise party, and Henry of Navarre was now the legal sovereign of France. The Catholics refused to acknowledge him, and the war in the neighbourhood of Paris continued. The Duke of Mayenne was at length totally defeated (1590) at Ivry, a village a few miles from Paris, near the junction of the Seine and Marne. The king renewed the siege of the capital; and eventually ascended the throne only by the sacrifice of his religion.

Rochelle was viewed as the Protestant capital; its capture in the next century (1628) by Cardinal Richelieu totally crushed the Huguenots as a political party.

The clergy were, as might have been expected, peculiarly violent against a Huguenot king; the pulpits of Paris rung with denunciations against the 'Man of Bearn;' the same epithet was applied to Charles 1. of England.

e Swiss Catholic mercenaries were in the camp of the League; Count Egmont had brought from the Spanish Low Countries, shortly before the battle, considerable reinforcements to Mayenne. d See note preceding page.

• The venerable Admiral of France, who perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, Down all our line, a deafening shout, 'God save our Lord the King;'

And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,

For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of

war,

And be your Oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.

Hurrah! the foes are moving! Hark to the mingled din,
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.
The fiery Duke is pricking fast across Saint André's plain,
With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.
Now by the lips of those ye love, fair Gentlemen of France,
Charge for the Golden Lilies,-upon them with the lance.
A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white

crest:

And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding

star,

Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

Now, God be praised! the day is ours-Mayenne hath turned his rein

D'Aumale hath cried for quarter-the Flemish Count is slain. Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale; The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.

• The Oriflamme (golden-flame) was a red taffeta banner cut into three points, each adorned with a green silk tassel.' It was always displayed in the crisis of the battle. The proper royal standard of France was white with embroidered lilies; used immemorially, till Charles VI. substi tuted a blue flag with a white cross; this banner was employed till Charles rx. resumed the White and Lilies. The revolutionary Tricolor united these three historical colours, red, blue, and white red was the Burgundian, Parisian, and Oriflamme colour; blue was the colour of the Chape' of St. Martin of Tours; white, the royal colour, and

that of Our Lady.' The white was resumed by the Bourbons in 1815. Fouché's remark to Louis XVIII. has been verified by subsequent history: The Tricolor Flag,' said he, 'is to your majesty what the Mass was to King Henry IV.;' implying that anything like a return to the ancient regime, even in symbols of the old monarchy, would cause a second expulsion of the Bourbon race from the throne.

The name of the battle-field.

The Catholic German powers, and especially Austria, from her Spanish connections, supported the League. Almayne (Germany), from the ancient confederacy of tribes, Allemanni.

And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van,
'Remember Saint Bartholomew,' was passed from man to man.
But out spake gentle Henry, 'No Frenchman is my foe:
Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go.'
Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,
As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the Soldier of Navarre!
Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne ;b

Weep, weep and rend your hair for those who never shall return. Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,

That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls.

Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright; Ho! burghers of saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night, For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave!

And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valour of the brave.

Then glory to his holy name, from whom all glories are;
And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre.
From SCRYMGEOUR's English Poetry.

The New Zealander.

She (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigour, when some traveller from New Zealand, in the midst of a vast solitude, takes his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.

MACAULAY-Ranke's History of the Popes.

241. Hugh Miller, 1802-1856. (Handbook, par. 457.)
The Young Geologist.

My advice to young working men desirous of bettering their circumstances, and adding to the amount of their enjoyment, is a very simple one: Do not seek happiness in what is misnamed pleasure; seek it rather in what is termed study. Keep your consciences clear, your curiosity fresh, and embrace every oppor tunity of cultivating your minds. . . .

a See note, p. 646.

b See note c, p. 645.

• St. Genevieve is the patron Saint of

Paris: the citizens were warm partizane of the Guise faction,