he attended the execution: "No," answered the latter, "I make it a point never to attend rehearsals." During the trials of Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino, rebels of 1745, Selwyn saw Mrs. Bethell, who had a "hatchet face," looking intently at them; and, alluding to the custom of turning the edge of the axe towards prisoners while sentence is being pronounced, said, "What a shame it is to turn her face to the prisoners before they are condemned!"

He was reproached for witnessing the execution of Lord Lovat, who lost his head after the Jacobite rebellion; and defended himself by saying, "I am going to make amends by seeing it sewn on again at the undertaker's." It was in reference to this passion of Selwyn's, which once caused him in Paris to be taken for an executioner on a vacation, that Lord Holland said on his death-bed, "If Mr. Selwyn calls, let him in if I am alive I shall be very glad to see him, and if I am dead he will be very glad to see me."

I am tired of seeing low life above stairs.

Saying he was going to see the new farce, "High Life below Stairs."

When Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, who was thought to draw heavily on the credulity of his hearers, was asked at a dinner-party what musical instruments were used in that country, he replied after a moment's hesitation, "I think I saw one lyre there."—"Yes," remarked Selwyn, "and there is one less since he left the country."

SENECA.

[Lucius Annæus Seneca, a Roman philosopher and moralist; born at Corduba, Spain, about 5 B.C.; educated at Rome; appointed tutor to Nero, to whom he dedicated his treatise on Clemency; accused of conspiracy with Piso; was ordered to put himself to death, which he did by opening his veins in the bath, A.D. 65.]

All I require of myself is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad.

"Beneath the good how far

but far above the great."

GRAY: Progress of Poesy, III. 3, 16.

How great would be the peril if our slaves began to number us! (Quantum periculum immineret, si servi nostri nos numerare cœpissent!)

If the slaves discovered how many they were in comparison with their masters.

It is for young men to gather knowledge, and for old men to use it.

To Seneca is attributed the warning to Nero, "How many men soever you slay, you will never kill your successor." Caligula said of Seneca's style, "His language is nothing but sand without lime."

An absence of desires is the greatest wealth (summæ opes inopia cupididatum).

Seneca, in his 29th Epistle, anticipates Regnard, a French dramatist (1655-1709), who says in the "Joueur,” IV. 13, “To know how to do without is to possess” (C'est posséder les biens que savoir s'en passer). Vigée, a less-known poet, brother of the painter Mme. Le Brun, follows Regnard closely: "I am rich in wealth I know how to do without" (Je suis riche des biens dont je sais me passer).

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Another thought of this heathen-Christian runs through the centuries. He wrote in the 107th Epistle, “ Fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling" (Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt). He drew it, however, from the fatalist Plutarch ("Life of Camillus "): “Destiny leads him who follows it, and drags him who resists it." Montaigne is the first to give a French version: Il [le destin] meine ceulx qui suyvent, ceulx qui ne le suyvent pas, il les entraisne ("Essays,” II. 38). Fénelon found the same thought in the maxim of "The Imitation of Christ," " Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit" (Man proposes, but God disposes); and said in his Epiphany Sermon, 1685, "God gives to human passions, even when they seem to decide every thing, only what they need in order to be the instruments of his designs: so, while man moves himself, God leads him” (ainsi, l'homme s'agite, mais Dieu le mène). Balzac (1594-1654) says in his "Christian Socrates," "God is the poet, men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven."

MADAME DE sévigné.

[Marie de Rabutin-Chantal; born in Burgundy about 1626; married the Marquis de Sévigné, 1644, who was killed in a duel, 1651; refused all subsequent offers of marriage; was a member of the circle of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and celebrated for her epistolary powers; died 1696.]

Racine will go out of fashion like coffee.

"How is it," asks a French writer, "that this judgment became a proverb?" He himself answers the question, by telling the following interesting history of a literary transformation. Mme. de Sévigné wrote, March 16, 1672: "Racine makes comedies for La Champneslé [a celebrated actress, who created many of Racine's rôles, and to whom he was much attached]; his work is not for posterity . . . vive our old friend Corneille!" Four years afterwards, March 10, 1676, she wrote to her daughter: "So you have recovered from your liking for coffee: Mlle. de Méri has also given it up. After such a double disgrace, can its fortune be considered secure?" For eighty years these two expressions reposed in the Correspondence of Mme. de Sévigné, at a respectful distance from each other, each in its place and neighborhood, until Voltaire brought them together, and altered them at the same time: "Mme. de Sévigné still believes that Racine has no future before him (n'ira pas loin); she judges of him as of coffee, of which she said that people would soon rid themselves" (qu'on se désabuserait bientôt). — GÉRUZEZ: Essais d'Histoire Littéraire). Finally Voltaire remarked, in a letter to the Academy, which serves as a preface to his "Irene:" "We have been provoked with Mme. de Sévigné, who wrote so well, and judged so badly. . . . We revolted against that miserable party spirit, against that blind prejudice, which made her say, 'The fashion of liking Racine will pass away like that of coffee " (La mode d'aimer Racine passera comme la mode du café). La Harpe, the celebrated critic and dramatist (1739-1803), then reduced the mot to its present form: "Racine passera comme le café." Not the least singular part of the history is, that in reality Mme. de Sévigné praised Racine with enthusiasm, as in a letter dated Feb. 20, 1689, and that to her we owe the first use of café au lait. Letters, Jan. 29, 1690.

God fights on the side of the heaviest battalions.

Mme. de Sévigné wrote to her daughter: "La fortune est toujours pour les gros bataillons." In the form of the mot first given, it is attributed by Alison to Gen. Moreau, by others to Napoleon, and by Irving ("Life of Washington ") to Gen. Charles Lee. It is quoted as an on dit by Voltaire, in a letter to Riche, Feb. 6, 1770. It is also found in a French epigram :—

"J'ai toujours vu Dieu, dans la guerre,

Du coté des gros bataillons."

And again: "Un prince veut faire la guerre en croyant que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons." When Anne of Austria said to Marshal de la Ferté that the enemy were too strong that year, but they themselves had God and justice on their side; "Don't be too sure,” he replied, “j'ai toujours vu Dieu du coté des gros bataillons.”

Gibbon says, "The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators." - Decline and Fall, chap. lxviii. When some one wrote in a German album, during the Seven Years' War: "If God be for us, who can be against us?" Voltaire replied underneath, "The big Prussian battalions."

These French maxims are forms of the proverb that "God helps them that help themselves; " which is found in Sir Philip Sidney's "Discourse Concerning Government," chap. ii.; and which, in a negative form, is as old as Sophocles: "Heaven never helps the men who will not act."— Fragments. Pliny the Elder made use of it as he undertook the observation of the eruption of Vesuvius, August, A.D. 79, which proved fatal to him: "Fortune favors the brave" (Fortes fortuna adjuvat). Other forms of the expression in Latin are found in Claudian, Fors juvat audentes; in Ennius, VI. 6, quoted by Macrobius, Fortibus est fortuna viris data; in Terence, "Phormio," I. 4, as it was used by Pliny. It is alluded to as a proverb both by Cicero and Livy; Virgil ("Eneid," x. 284) has it, Audentes fortuna juvat; and Ovid ("Metamorphoses,” x. 586), Audentes Deus ipse juvat.

Schiller employs the proverb in "William Tell," I. 2, where Gertrude says to Stauffacher, "God helps the brave!" (Dem muthigen hilft Gott!) The last part of the line of Claudian,

"Fors juvat audentes, Cei sententia vatis,"

refers the origin of the maxim to Simonides, the Greek lyric poet, who was born in Ceos, flourished in the time of the Persian invasion, and wrote the epitaph of the Spartans who fell at Thermopyla (v. Leonidas, p. 330). To Simonides is attributed the remark, that he "never felt sorry for having held his tongue;" anticipating Carlyle's "Silence is golden."

The poor woman cannot so close up her ranks, as to fill this vacant place.

Of Mme. de La Fayette, after the death of her friend the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, author of the "Maxims." Àpropos of these literary celebrities, Fournier calls attention to the change of meaning a mistake of punctuation may cause, with the consequent perversion of a well-established mot. Thus, in one volume of French Ana, we find: "Mme. de La Fayette,' said M. de La Rochefoucauld, 'has given me wit, but I have reformed her heart' (Mme. de La Fayette, disoit M. de La Rochefoucauld, m'a donné de l'esprit, mais j'ai réformé son cœur). The change of a comma should make Mme. de La Fayette the speaker: 'Mme. de La Fayette disoit, M. de La Rochefoucauld m'a donné de l'esprit, mais j'ai réformé son cœur.'" L'Esprit, 330, note.

Such a mistake might have cost the Abbé Sieyès his life. He was correcting, during the Terror, the proof of a panegyric, in which he defended his political career. What was his astonishment at finding himself saying, “I have abjured (abjure') the Republic," for, "I have adjured (adjuré) the Republic "! "Miserable man!" he exclaimed to the printer, "do you wish to send me to the guillotine?"

It was Mme. de La Fayette who said, "If I had a lover who wanted to hear from me every day, I would break with him." I should like Provence, were there no Provençaux.

Of a country more interesting than its inhabitants. Horace Walpole once wrote: "I should like my country well enough if it were not for my countrymen."

The value of all pleasures or blessings depends upon the state of our mind when we receive them.

Want of reason offends me: want of faith hurts me.