BY F R E D E R I C   L E A K E.   ALBANY, N. Y.: RIGGS PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO., 1896. Copyright , 1896 BY Riggs Printing and Publishing Company    ...

Once upon a time I was a member of that arch-erudite body, the Faculty of Williams College, and I took my turn in putting forth lectures tending or pretending to edification. I was not to the manner born, and had indulged even to indigestion, in the reading of history. These ebullitions are what came of that intemperance. The manuscripts were lying harmless in a bureau drawer, under gynæcian strata, when, last summer, a near and rummaging relative, a printer, unearthed them, read them, and asked

I N the north-east corner of the map of England, or, if you are a Scotchman, in the south-east corner of the map of Scotland, you will find the town of Berwick. That town was held first to belong to Scotland, and then to England. Then the lawyers tried their hand at it, and made out that it belonged to neither—that a writ issued either in England or Scotland, would not run in Berwick-on-Tweed. So an act of Parliament was passed in the reign of George II., to extend the authority of the British r

P ETRARCH who lived in the fourteenth century, gave the name of the Captivity of Babylon to the condition of the Church of Rome which was then in exile. No longer on the banks of the Tiber she held her seat, but on the banks of the Rhone; and Avignon not Rome was the assumed mistress of the world. Petrarch did not live to see the end, but in one respect the appellation was a prophecy: the Captivity lasted seventy-two years; and the name is often applied to that period, especially by Roman Cathol

F ROUDE in his history, calls the kings of Spain the house of Burgundy. They were properly Hapsburgs and of the eldest branch. At the same time they were descended from Mary of Burgundy; and it shows how deeply the career of her ducal ancestors had impressed itself on the mind of the historian, that he would fain continue the name beyond conventional usage. There were but four of those dukes, and they flourished a century only; but they made changes which greatly moulded the polity of Europe. En

Madame de Sévigné said that Providence favors the best battalions. It was she who was the author of that remark, and not Frederick-the-great nor Napoleon nor others to whom it is attributed. It has not always proved true. Henry V., ablest of the Plantagenets, at the head of the best armies then existing, tried to wrest the sceptre of France from the palsied hand of Charles VI., and perished in the attempt. From the loins of that crazy monarch and his worse than crazy queen, came forth that House

(The italics mark the line of descent.) Charles-le-temeraire , Charles-the-rash, miscalled by the English, Charles-the-bold, was the last Valois duke of Burgundy. He left an only child Mary of Burgundy who married Maximilian of Hapsburg , afterward emperor. Their son was the Archduke Philip who is counted as Philip the first of Spain though he never reigned. Philip married Joanna daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella , and sister of Catharine of Aragon wife of Henry VIII. The son of Philip and Joan

M ANY years ago I knew a Frenchman whose father a captain of infantry, had been killed in La Vendée fighting under Hoche. He had many things to tell me about Hoche which interested me in his career, and led me to treasure up in my memory whatever I came across afterwards concerning him. There was a certain confidential air about the communications of my French friend, which leads me to say to the reader that I trust to his honor not to divulge what I say to him touching the warrior in question.

I N the fourteenth century the Spanish peninsula was divided into five kingdoms: four Christian and one Mahometan or Mohametan or Mohamedan. The reader will take his choice. Wars were constant between the two faiths. This was a blessing, at least for the Christians, for if they had not been kept always shoulder to shoulder against the Moor, they would have been less usefully busy cutting each other’s throats. Nobody in the middle ages abstained from the vice of fighting. Bishops in panoply led t

I T has been said that three men struck telling blows at the Roman hierarchy: Philip the fourth, John Wiclif and Martin Luther: a Frenchman, an Englishman and a German. The first opened the way for the other two. Philip IV. called the fair, that is the handsome, was the greatest of the Capetien kings, but his greatness was intellectual only. If he contributed largely to lead mankind out of the bog of superstition in which they were swamped, he did it simply to gratify his own rapacity and ambiti