ODD BITS OF HISTORY BEING SHORT CHAPTERS INTENDED TO FILL SOME BLANKS BY HENRY W. WOLFF LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. AND NEW-YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1894. (All rights reserved.)...

The chapters composing this book appeared originally in the shape of review articles. I owe acknowledgments to the Editors of Blackwood's Magazine , the National Review and the Gentleman's Magazine for the permission kindly accorded me to republish them. To my regret I find, on receiving the clean sheets, that pressure of time and a rather troublesome nervous affection of one eye have led me to overlook a few printer's errors, such as: p. 70, occassion for occasion ; p. 137, Fuensaldana for Fuen

"The Pretender Charles Edward resided here three years in a house which is still pointed out." So you may read in "Murray," under the head of "Bar-le-Duc." The information, which is apt to suggest inquiry to those who, like myself, are fond of picking up a little bit of neglected history on their travels, is, as it happens, not altogether accurate. For, in the first place, the "Pretender" who "resided" at Bar was not "Charles Edward" at all— could not have been "Charles Edward," who was not born

English visitors at Metz—there ought to be more, for there is not a little that is interesting to be seen in and around the old imperial city—are likely to have pointed out to them some venerable house or other, which, their guides will tell them, was nearly four hundred years ago the residence of a great English noble, a pretender to the crown, and the terror of Henry VIII.—the "Duke of Suffolk." Some guides may even style him "The King of England," since their distinguished townsman, Philippe

Thanks to Cook, thanks to our all-reporting newspaper-press, and thanks, not least, to our truly Athenian craving continually for "some new thing," Ammergau has become almost a household word among us. Everybody has heard of its "Passion Play." Every tenth year sees Britons rushing in shoals to the picturesque banks of the Ammer, to witness there, while it may be witnessed, the last surviving specimen of that popular religious drama which in bygone times helped the Church so materially, and over

In Windsor Castle, in the Vandyke Room, there is a portrait which has puzzled a good many visitors. It is an undoubted Vandyke; it shows a pretty face—a trifle sensual, perhaps—but who the lady may have been whose features it immortalises, nobody seems to be able to tell. "Somebody"—"Somebody connected with Charles II."—"Some French lady"—are guesses rather than information offered. "Murray" used to call the lady by her right name. But lately, for some reason or other, she has in his description

Modern History is, in its rapid march onward, making sad havoc of old races. New nations are rising up; but only like new banks and headlands on our coast, by the accumulation of drifted shingle, which the very same tide is washing away from wasting older rocks. A generation or two hence, in the making of a new German people, the last remnant will have finally disappeared of an interesting race, which historians and archæologists alike, to whom it is known, will be loth to miss. There are probab

One can scarcely help wondering that among all the books written about Voltaire and his varied experiences, there should be practically not one which treats of that brief but eventful period during which, in company with the " sublime Emilie ," the great writer found himself the guest of hospitable King Stanislas—"le philosophe-roi chez le roi-philosophe." To Voltaire himself that was one of the most memorable episodes in his long and changeful life. It left on his mind memories which lasted til

"Quarum virtutum laude hominum animas, dum in hac urbe morabaris, mirifice Tibi devinxisti."— Address of the Senate of Bonn to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, January, 28, 1840. There are incidents in a man's life—sometimes important, sometimes insignificant—which impress themselves upon his mind as if graven in "with a pen of iron." Thirty-two years have now passed away, but I remember, as if it had happened only a few weeks ago, old "Senius" putting his weather-worn face into my bedroom at

When Judas Iscariot, as the legend has it, prompted by a presumptuous ambition to emulate Our Saviour in the performance of a miracle similar to that of Cana, spoke his cabalistic words over the water which he desired to make potable, it may be argued that a worse product might have resulted from the process than beer—at any rate from a non-teetotal point of view. According to another legend, of wider currency, the inventor of beer was not the apostate apostle, but a more or less mythical king o