But

would create many enemies and conciliate few friends. the shaft was shot, the alarm was sounded, and I could only rejoice that if the voice of our priests was clamorous and bitter, their hands were disarmed from the powers of persecution...

Before I could apply for a seat at the general election, the list was already full; but Lord North's promise was sincere, his recommendation was effectual, and I was soon chosen on a vacancy for the borough of Lymington in Hampshire. In the first session of the new Parliament, administration stood their ground; their final overthrow was reserved for the second. The American war had once been the favorite of the country: the pride of England was irritated by the resistance of her colonies, and the executive power was driven by national clamor into the most vigorous and coercive measures. But the length of a fruitless contest, the loss of armies, the accumulation of debt and taxes, and the hostile confederacy of France, Spain, and Holland, indisposed the public to the American war and the persons by whom it was conducted; the representatives of the people followed, at a slow distance, the changes of their opinion; and the ministers, who refused to bend, were broken by the tempest. As soon as Lord North had lost, or was about to lose, a majority in the House of Commons, he surrendered his office, and retired to a private station, with the tranquil assurance of a clear conscience and a cheerful temper the old fabric was dissolved, and the posts of government were occupied by the victorious and veteran troops of opposition. The Lords of Trade were not immediately dismissed, but the board itself was abolished by Mr. Burke's bill, which decency had compelled the patriots to revive; and I was stripped of a convenient salary, after having enjoyed it about three years.

So flexible is the title of my History, that the final era might be fixed at my own choice; and I long hesitated whether I should be content with the three volumes, the Fall of the Western Empire, which fulfilled my first engagement with the public. In this interval of suspense, nearly a twelvemonth, I returned by a natural impulse to the Greek authors of antiquity; I read with new pleasure the Iliad and the Odyssey, the histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, a large portion of the tragic and comic theater of Athens, and many interesting dialogues of the Socratic school. Yet in the luxury of freedom I began to wish for the daily task, the active pur

suit, which gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry the preface of a new edition announced my design, and I dropped without reluctance from the age of Plato to that of Justinian. The original texts of Procopius and Agathias supplied the events and even the characters of his reign; but a laborious winter was devoted to the codes, the pandects, and the modern interpreters, before I presumed to form an abstract of the civil law. My skill was improved by practice, my diligence perhaps was quickened by the loss of office; and, excepting the last chapter, I had finished the fourth volume before I sought a retreat on the banks of the Leman lake. . . .

In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the Empire and the world are most rapid, various, and instructive; and the Greek or Roman historians are checked by the hostile narratives of the barbarians of the East and the West.

It was not till after many designs, and many trials, that I preferred, as I still prefer, the method of grouping my picture by nations; and the seeming neglect of chronological order is surely compensated by the superior merits of interest and perspicuity. The style of the first volume is, in my opinion, somewhat crude and elaborate; in the second and third it is ripened into ease, correctness, and numbers; but in the three last I may have been seduced by the facility of my pen, and the constant habit of speaking one language and writing another may have infused some mixture of Gallic idioms. Happily for my eyes, I have always closed my studies with the day, and commonly with the morning; and a long but temperate labor has been accomplished without fatiguing either the mind or body; but when I computed the remainder of my time and my task, it was apparent that, according to the season of publication, the delay of a month would be productive of that of a year. I was now straining for the goal, and in the last winter many evenings were borrowed from the social pleasures of Lausanne. I could now wish that a pause, an interval, had been allowed for a serious revisal.

I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake,

and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

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CAGLIOSTRO'S PREDICTIONS.

BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PÈRE.

(From "The Queen's Necklace.")

[ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PÈRE, French novelist and dramatist, was born July 24, 1803; his grandmother was a Haytian negress. His youth was roving and dissipated; the few years after he became of age were spent in Paris experimenting in literary forms; at twenty-six he took the public by storm with his play Henry III. and his Court." He was probably the most prolific great writer that ever lived, his works singly and in collaboration amounting to over two thousand volumes; he had some ninety collaborators, few of whom ever did successful independent work. A catalogue of his productions would fill many pages of this work. The most popular of his novels are: "The Three Musketeers " series (including "Twenty Years After" and "The Viscount de Bragelonne ") and "The Count of Monte Cristo." He died December 5, 1870.]

MONSIEUR DE RICHELIEU was the first who broke the silence, by saying to the guest on his right hand, "But, count, you drink nothing.'

This was addressed to a man about thirty-eight years of age, short, fair-haired, and with high shoulders; his eye a clear blue, now bright, but oftener with a pensive expression; and with nobility stamped unmistakably on his open and manly forehead.

“I only drink water, marshal,” he replied.

"Excepting with Louis XV.," returned the marshal; “I had the honor of dining at his table with you, and you deigned that day to drink wine."

Count Haga raised his glass and looked through it. The wine sparkled in the light like liquid rubies. "It is true," said he; "marshal, I thank you."

These words were uttered in a manner so noble, that the guests, as if by a common impulse, rose, and cried :

"Yes," said Count Haga, "long live his Majesty the King of France. What say you, Monsieur de la Pérouse?"

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Monseigneur," replied the captain, with that tone, at once flattering and respectful, common to those accustomed to address crowned heads, "I have just left the king, and his Majesty has shown me so much kindness, that no one will more willingly cry Long live the king!' than I. Only, as in another hour I must leave you to join the two ships which his Majesty has put at my disposal, once out of this house I shall take the liberty of saying, 'Long life to another king,' whom I should be proud to serve, had I not already so good a master.' And raising his glass, he bowed respectfully to the Count de Haga. "This health that you propose," said Madame Dubarry, who sat on the marshal's left hand, "we are all ready to drink, but the oldest of us should take the lead."

"Is it you that that concerns, or me, Taverney?" said the marshal, laughing.

"I do not believe," said another on the opposite side, “that Monsieur de Richelieu is the senior of our party."

"Then it is you, Taverney," said the duke.

"No, I am eight years younger than you. I was born in 1704," returned he.

"How rude," said the marshal, "to expose my eighty-eight years!"

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Impossible, duke, that you are eighty-eight!" said Monsieur de Condorcet.

"It is, however, but too true; it is a calculation easy to make, and therefore unworthy of an algebraist like you, marquis. I am of the last century, the great century, as we call it. My date is 1696."

"Impossible!" cried De Launay.

"Oh, if your father were here, he would not say impossible, he who, when governor of the Bastille, had me for a lodger in 1714."

"The senior in age, here, however," said Monsieur de Favras, "is the wine Count Haga is now drinking."

"You are right, Monsieur de Favras; this wine is a hundred and twenty years old; to the wine, then, belongs the honor of proposing the health of the king."

"One moment, gentlemen," said Cagliostro, raising his eyes, beaming with intelligence and vivacity; "I claim the precedence."

"You claim precedence over the tokay!" exclaimed all the guests in chorus.

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'Assuredly," returned Cagliostro, calmly; "since it was I who bottled it."

"You?"

"Yes, I; on the day of the victory won by Montecuculli over the Turks in 1664."

A burst of laughter followed these words, which Cagliostro had pronounced with perfect gravity.

"By this calculation, you would be something like one hundred and thirty years old," said Madame Dubarry; "for you must have been at least ten years old when you bottled the wine."

"I was more than ten when I performed that operation, madame, as on the following day I had the honor of being deputed by his Majesty the Emperor of Austria to congratulate Montecuculli, who, by the victory of Saint-Gothard, had avenged the day at Especk, in Sclavonia, in which the infidels treated the imperialists so roughly, who were my friends and companions in arms in 1536."

"Oh," said Count Haga, as coolly as Cagliostro himself, "you must have been at least ten years old when you were at that memorable battle."

"A terrible defeat, count," returned Cagliostro.

"Less terrible than Crécy, however," said Condorcet, smiling.

"True, monsieur, for at the battle of Crécy, it was not only an army, but all France, that was beaten; but then this defeat was scarcely a fair victory to the English; for King Edward had cannon, a circumstance of which Philippe de Valois was ignorant, or rather, which he would not believe, although I warned him that I had with my own eyes seen four pieces of artillery which Edward had bought from the Venetians."

"Ah!" said Madame Dubarry; "you knew Philippe de Valois?"

"Madame, I had the honor to be one of the five lords who escorted him off the field of battle; I came to France with the poor old King of Bohemia, who was blind, and who threw away his life when he heard that the battle was lost."