of his domestics, and was printed long says Yarico, wilt thou sell me, when I after the master's death. am with child by thee? With child! reThe Menagiana, revised by La Mon-plied the English merchant ; so much the noye, is the only one that contains any- better, I shall get more for thee! thing instructive.

The

And this is given us as a true story, Nothing is more cominon than to find and as the origin of a long war. in our new miscellanies old bon-mots at- speech of a woman of Boston to her tributed to our contemporaries, or in-judges, who condemned her to the house scriptions and epigrams, written on cer- of correction, for the fifth time, for having tain princes, applied to others. brought to bed a fifth child, was a pleaWe are told in the Histoire Philoso-santry of the illustrious Franklin; yet it phique et Politique du Commerce dans les is related in the same work as an authendeur Indes (the Philosophical and Politi-tic occurrence. How many tales have cal History of the Commerce of the embellished and disfigured every history? two Indies,) that the Dutch having driven An author, who has thought more corthe Portuguese from Malacca, the Dutch rectly than he has quoted, asserts that the captain asked the Portuguese commander following epitaph was made for Cromwhen he should return; to which he replied, well: when your sins are greater than ours. This answer had before been attributed to an Englishman in the time of Charles VII. of France, and before them to a Saracen emir in Sicily; after all, it is the answer rather of a Capuchin than of a politician; it was not because the French were greater sinners than the English, that the latter deprived them of Canada.

The author of this same history relates, in a serious manner, a little story invented by Steele, and inserted in the Spectator; and would make it pass for one of the real causes of war between the English and the savages. The tale which Steele opposes to the much pleasanter story of the Widow of Ephesus, is as follows. It is designed to prove that men are not more constant than women but, in Petronius, the Ephesian matron exhibits only an amusing and pardonable weakness; while the merchant Inkle, in the Spectator, is guilty of the most frightful ingratitude.

This yong traveller Inkle is on the point of being taken by the Caribbees on the continent of America, without it being said at what place, or on what occasion. Yarico, a pretty Caribbee, saves his life, and at length flies with him to Barbadoes. As soon as they arrive, Inkle goes and sells his benefactress in the slavemarket. Ungrateful and barbarous man

{

Ci git le destructeur d'un pouvoir légitime,
Jusque'a son dernier jour favorisé des cieux,
Dont les vertus méritaient mieux

Que le sceptre acquis par un crime.
Par quel destin faut-il, par quel étrange loi

Qu'à tous ceux qui sont ns pour porter la couronne
E'exemple des vertus que doit avoir un Roi?

Ce soit l'Usurpateur qui doune

Here lies the nan who trod on rightful power,
Favoured by Heaven to his latest hour;
Whose virtues merited a nobler fate
Than that of ruling criminally great.
What wondrous destiny can so ordain,
That among all whose fortune is to reign,
The usurper only to his sceptre brings
The virtues vainly sought in lawful kings.

These verses were never made for Cromwell, but for King William. They are not an epitaph; but were written under a portrait of that monarch. Instead of Ci gît (Here lies), it was,

Tel fut le destructeur d'un pouvoir légitime.
Such was the man who trod on rightful power.

No one in France was ever so stupid as to say, that Cromwell had ever set an example of virtue. It is granted that he had valour and genius; but the title of virtuous was not his due.

A thousand stories-a thousand facetiæ, have been travelling about the world for the last thirty centuries. Our books are stuffed with maxims which come forth as new, but are to be found in Plutarch, in Athenæus, in Seneca, in Plautus, in all the ancients.

These are only mistakes, as innocent as

ANECDOTES.

they are common: but wilful falsehoods -historical lies, which attack the glory of princes and the reputation of private individuals, are serious offences.

always kept him at a distance. Charles VIII. did not resemble Louis XI., either in body or in mind; but dissimilarity between fathers and their children is still less a proof of illegitimacy than resemblance is a proof of the contrary. That

to no conclusion; so bad a son might well be a bad father. Though ten Ďu Haillans should tell me that Charles VIII. sprung from some other than Louis XI.,

Of all the books that are swelled with false anecdotes, that in which the most absurd and impudent lies are crowded to-Louis XI. hated Charles VIII. brings us gether, is the pretended Mémoires de Mudame de Maintenon. The foundation of it was true: the author had several of that lady's letters, which had been communicated to him by a person of consequence { I ought not to believe him implicitly. Í at St. Cyr; but this small quantity of truth is lost in a romance of seven volumes.

think a prudent reader should pronounce as the judges do-Pater est is quem nuptie demonstrant.

Did Charles V. intrigue with his sister Margaret, who governed the Low Countries? Was it by her that he had Don John of Austria, the intrepid brother of We have no the prudent Philip II.? more proof of this than we have of the secrets of Charlemagne's bed, who is said to have made free with all his daughters. If the Holy Scriptures did not assure me that Lot's daughters had children by their own father, and Tamar by her father-inlaw, I should hesitate to accuse them of

In this work, the author shows us Louis XIV. supplanted by one of his valets-de-chambre. It supposes letters from Mdlle. Mancini (afterwards Madame Colonne) to Louis XIV., in one of which he makes this niece of Cardinal Mazarin say to the king-"You obey a priest-you are unworthy of me if you submit to serve another.-I love you as I love the light of heaven, but I love your glory still better." Most certainly the author had not the original of this letter. "Mdlle. de la Vallière," he says, init: one cannot be too discreet. It has been written that the Duchess another place," had thrown herself on a sofa, in a light dishabille her thoughts De Montpensier bestowed her favours on employed on her lover. Often did the the monk Jacques Clement, in order to dawn of day find her still seated in a encourage him to assassinate his sovereign. chair, her arm resting on a table, her eye It would have been more politic to have fixed, her soul constantly attached to the promised them than to have given them. same object, in the extacy of love. The But a fanatical or parricide priest is not king alone occupied her mind; perhaps incited in this way; heaven is held out to His prior Bourat that moment she was inwardly com- him, and not a woman. plaining of the vigilance of the spies of going had much greater power in deterHenriette, or the severity of the queen-mining him to any act, than the greatest mother. A slight noise aroused her from beauty upon earth. When he killed the her reverie-she shrunk back with sur-king, he had in his pocket no love-letters, prise and dread ;-Louis was at her feet but the stories of Judith and Ehud, quite -she would have fled-he stopped her; dog-eared and worn out with thumbing. she threatened-he pacified; she weptbe wiped away her tears." scription would not now be tolerated in one of our most insipid novels.

Jean Châtel and Ravaillac had no acSuch a de-complices; their crime was that of the age; their only accomplice was the cry of religion. It has been repeatedly asserted, that Ravaillac had taken a journey to Naples, and that the jesuit Alagona had, in Naples, predicted the death of the {king. The jesuits never were prophets :

Du Haillan asserts, in one of his small works, that Charles VIII. was not the son of Louis XI. This would account for Louis having neglected his education, and

had they been so, they would have fore-> told their own destination; but, on the contrary, they, poor men! always positively declared, that they should endure to the end of time. We should never be too sure of anything.

It is in vain that the jesuit Daniel tells me, in his very dry and very defective History of France, that Henry IV. was a Catholic long before his abjuration. I will rather believe Henry IV. himself than the jesuit Daniel. His letter to La Belle Gabrielle "C'est demain que je fais le saut perilleux," (To-morrow I take the fatal leap,) proves, at least, that something different from Catholicism was still in his heart. Had his great soul been long penetrated by the efficacy of grace, he would perhaps have said to his mistress, "These bishops edify me;" but he says, Ces gens la m'ennuient, (These people weary me.) Are these the words of a good catechumen?

Another modern historian accuses the Duke of Lerma of the murder of Henry IV. "This," says he, " is the best established ́opinion.' This opinion is evidently the worst established. It has never been heard of in Spain; and in France, the continuator of De Thou is the only one who has given any credit to these vague and ridiculous suspicions. If the Duke of Lerma, prime minister, employed Ravaillac, he payed him very ill; for when the unfortunate man was seized, he was almost without money. If the Duke of Lerma either prompted him or caused him to be prompted to the commission of the act, by the promise of a reward proportioned to the attempt, Ravaillac would assuredly have named both him and his emissaries, if only to revenge himself. He named the jesuit D'Aubigny, to whom he had only shown a knifewhy, then, should he spare the Duke of Lerma? It is very strange obstinacy not to believe what Ravaillac himself declared when put to the torture. Is a great Spa

Et voila justement comme on écrit l'histoire.

(Yet thus is history written.) The Spanish nation is not accustomed to resort to shameful crimes; and the Spanish grandees have always possessed a generous pride, which has prevented them from acting so basely. If Philip II. set a price on the head of the Prince of Orange, he had, at least, the pretext of punishing a rebellious subject, as the parliament or Paris had when they set fifty thousand crowns on the head of Admiral Coligni, and afterwards on that of Cardinal Mazarin. These political proscriptions partook of the horror of the civil wars; but how can it be supposed that the Duke of Lerma had secret communications with a poor wretch like Ravaillac ?

This great man's letters to Corisande d'Andouin, Countess of Grammont, are not a matter of doubt; they still exist innish family to be insulted without the the originals. The author of the Essai least shadow of proof? sur les Maurs et l'Esprit des Nations, (Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations,) gives several of these interesting letters, in which there are the following curious passages. Tous ces empoisonneurs sont tous Papistes. J'ai decouvert un tueur pour moi.-. Les prêcheurs Romains prêchent tout-haut qu'il n'y a plus qu'une mort à voir; ils admonestent tout bon Catholique de prendre exemple.-Et vous êtes de cette religion! Si je n'étais Huquenot, je me ferais Turc. (These poisoners are all Papists.-I have discovered an executioner for myself. The Roman preachers exclaim aloud, that there is only one more death to be looked for; they admonish all good Catholics to profit by the example (of the poisoning of the Prince of Condé.)-And you are of this religion! If I were not a Hugonot, I would turn Turk.) It is difficult, after seeing these testimonials in Henry IV.'s own hand, to become firmly persuaded that he was a Catholic in his heart.

The same author says, that Marshal D'Ancre and his wife were struck, as it were, by a thunderbolt. The truth is, that the one was struck by pistel-balls, and the other burned as a witch. An assassination and a sentence of death

passed on the wife of a marshal of France, an attendant on the queen, as a reputed sorceress, do very little honour either to the chivalry or to the jurisprudence of that day. But I know not why the historian makes use of these words:-" If these two wretches were not accomplices in the king's death, they at least deserved the most rigorous chastisement: it is certain that, even during the king's life, Concini and his wife had connections with Spain in opposition to the king's designs."

nation. When a few sparks from the fire that keeps their superstitious heads aboiling, fall on some violent and wicked spirit-when some ignorant and furious man thinks he is initating Phineas, Ehud, Judith, and other such personages, he has more accomplices than he is aware of. Many incite to murder without knowing it. Some individuals drop a few indiscreet and violent words; a servant repeats them, with additions and embellishments; a Châtel, a Ravaillac, or a Damiens listens to them, while they who pronounced them little think what mischief they have done; they are involun

been either plot or instigation. In short, he knows little of the human mind, who does not know that fanaticism renders the populace capable of anything.

The author of the Siècle de Louis XIV. (Age of Louis the Fourteenth), is the first who has spoken of the MAN IN THE IRON MASK, in any authentic history. He was

This is not at all certain, nor is it even likely. They were Florentines; the Grand Duke of Florence was the first to acknowledge Henry IV., and feared no-tary accomplices, without there having thing so much as the power of Spain in Italy. Concini and his wife had no influence in the time of Henry IV.; if they intrigued with the court of Madrid, it could only be through the queen, who must, therefore, have betrayed her husband. Besides, let it once more be ob- { served, that we are not at liberty to bring forward such accusations without proofs. What! shall a writer pronounce a defa-well acquainted with this circumstance, mation from his garret, which the most enlightened judges in the kingdom would tremble to hear in a court of justice?-Why are a marshal of France and his wife, one of the queen's attendants, to be called two wretches? Does Marshal D'Ancre, who raised an army against the rebels at his own expense, merit an epithet suitable only to Ravaillac or Cartouche to public robbers, or public calumniators?

which is the astonishment of the present age, and will be that of posterity, but which is only too true. He had been deceived respecting the time of the death of this unknown and singularly unfortunate person, who was interred, at the church of St. Paul, 3rd of March, 1703, and not in 1704.

He was first confined at Pignerol, before he was sent to the Isles of Ste. Marguerite, and afterwards to the Bastille, always under the care of the same man,

Griffet, a jesuit, has communicated to the public the journal of the Bastille, which certifies the dates. He had no difficulty in obtaining this journal, since he exercised the delicate office of confessor to the prisoners confined in the Bastille.

It is but too true, that one fanatic is sufficient for the commission of a parri-that St. Marc, who saw him die. Father cide, without any accomplice. Damiens had none; he repeated four times, in the course of his interrogatory, that he committed his crime solely through a principle of religion. Having been in the way of knowing the convulsionaries, I may say that I have seen twenty of them capable of any act equally horrid, so excessive has been their infatuation Religion, ill-understood, is a fever, which the smallest occurrence raises to frenzy. It is the property of fanaticism to heat the imagi

The Man in the Iron Mask is an enigma, which each one attempts to solve.{Some have said that he was the Duke of Beaufort; but the Duke of Beaufort was killed by the Turks in the detence of Candia, in 1669, and the Man in the

never his face. As for his age, he himself told the apothecary of the Bastille, a little before his death, that he believed he was about sixty: the apothecary's son-in

Iron Mask was at Pignerol in 1662. Besides, how should the Duke of Beaufort have been arrested in the midst of his army? how could he have been transferred to France without some one's know-law, Marsolam, surgeon to Marshal De ing something about it? and why should he have been imprisoned? and why masked?

Others have imagined that he was Count Vermandois, natural son to Louis XIV., who, it is well known, died of the smallpox when with the army in 1683, and was buried in the town of Arras.

Richelieu, and afterwards to the Duke of Orleans the regent, has repeated this to me several times. To conclude; why was an Italian name given to him? he was always called Marchiali. The writer of this article, perhaps, knows more on the subject than Father Griffet, though he will not say more.

It has since been supposed that the It is true that Nicholas Fouquet, suDuke of Monmouth, who was publicly perintendant of the finances, had many beheaded by order of King James in friends in his disgrace, and that they per1685, was the Man in the Iron Mask. { severed even until judgment was passed But either the duke must have come to on him. It is true that the chancellor, life again, and afterwards have changed who presided at that judgment, treated the order of time, putting the year 1662 the illustrious captive with too much rifor the year 1685; or King James, who gour. But it was not Michel le Tellier, never pardoned any one, and therefore as stated in some editions of the Siècle de merited all his misfortunes, must have Louis XIV.; it was Pierre Seguier.pardoned the Duke of Monmouth, and This inadvertency, of having placed one put to death in his stead some one who for the other, is a fault which must be perfectly resembled him. In the latter corrected. case, a person must have been found kind enough to have his head publicly cut off to save the Duke of Monmouth; all England must have been deceived in the person; then King James must have begged of Louis XIV. that he would be so good as to become his gaoler. Louis XIV. having granted King James this small favour, could not have refused to show the same regard for King William and Queen Anne, with whom he was at war; but would have been careful to maintain the dignity of gaoler, with which King James had honoured him, to the end of the chapter.

It is very remarkable that no one knows where this celebrated minister died; not that it is of any importance to know it, for his death, not having led to any event whatever, is like all other indifferent occurrences; but this serves to prove how completely he was forgotten towards the close of life-how worthless that worldly consideration is which is so anxiously sought for-and how happy they are who have no higher ambition than to live and die unknown. This knowledge is far more useful than that of dates.

Father Griffet does his utmost to perAll these illusions being dissipated, it suade us that Cardinal Richelieu wrote a remains to be known who this constantly- bad book. Well! many statesmen have masked prisoner was, at what age he died, done the same. But it is very fine to see and under what name he was buried. It him strive so hard to prove that, accord. is clear that, if he was not allowed to walking to Cardinal Richelieu, “our allies, in the court of the Bastille, nor to see his physician, except in a mask, it was for fear that some very striking resemblance would be discovered in his features. He was permitted to show his tongue, but

the Spaniards," so happily governed by a Bourbon, "are tributary to hell, and make the Indies tributary to hell!"Cardinal Richelieu's POLITICAL TESTAMENT is not that of a polite man.