"Master, nothing that is not very natural. The hour is approaching; the moment is at hand.'

"And which—?'

"Can't you guess? Heaven had accorded you sixty years of life; you had had thirty when I began to obey you.'

Yago!' I cried in terror, are you speaking seriously?' "Yes, master; in five years you have expended in glory twenty-five years of existence. You gave them to me. belong to me, and will now be added to mine.'

<<<What! That was the price of your services?'

They

"Others have paid still more; for example, Fabert, whom also I protected.'

"Be quiet! Be quiet!' I said to him. It isn't true!'

"This isn't possible.

"As you will: but prepare yourself; for you have only half an hour to live.'

"You are mocking me; you are deceiving me!'

"Not at all. Calculate it yourself. Thirty-five years which you have really lived, and twenty-five that you have lost! Total, sixty. That is your account. To every one his own!'

"And he wanted to go-and I felt myself growing weaker; I felt life escaping from me.

"Yago! Yago! Give me a few hours. a few hours more!' "No, no,' he answered. 'That would shorten my account, and I know better than you the price of life. There is no treasure worth two hours of existence.'

"And I could scarcely speak; my eyes were clouding, the coldness of death was chilling my veins.

"Ah! I said with an effort, 'take back the gifts for which I have sacrificed everything. For four hours more I will renounce my gold and all the opulence I so desired.'

"So be it. You have been a good master, and I will grant you that.'

"I felt my strength coming back; and I cried, Four hours. is so little! Yago! Yago! grant me four more, and I will give up my literary fame, and all the works which placed me so high in the esteem of the world.'

«Four hours for that!' said the negro disdainfully. 'It is a great deal. Never mind: I will not refuse this last grace.'

"No, not the last,' I said clasping my hands. Yago! Yago! I implore you, give me until evening,-the entire day, and let

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my exploits and victories, my military fame, be forever effaced from the memory of men! This day, Yago, this whole day, and I will be content!'

"You abuse my goodness,' he answered; 'and I am making a foolish bargain. But never mind again. You shall live till sunset. Ask no more. Then good-by until evening! I will come for you.'

"And he went away," continued the unknown despairingly, "and this day is the last which remains to me!" Then approaching the glass door which opened upon the park, he cried: "I shall no longer see this beautiful sky, these green lawns, this sparkling water; I shall no longer breathe the air fragrant with spring! Fool that I was! For twenty-five years longer I might still enjoy the good things which God bestows upon all, and whose sweetness I appreciate now for the first time! And I have exhausted my days! I have sacrificed them to a vain chimera, to a sterile fame, which did not make me happy, and which is dead before me! See-see » he said, pointing to the peasants who were singing as they crossed the park to their work: "what would I not give to share their labor and poverty! But I have no longer anything to give nor anything to hope, here below-not even unhappiness!"

At that moment a ray of sun, of the sun of May, lighted up his pale distracted features. He seized my arm with a kind of delirium and said:

«Seesee them! How beautiful the sun is! How beautiful the country is! I must leave all that! Ah, at least let me enjoy it once more! Let me catch the full savor of this pure beautiful day: for me there will be no morrow!"

He rushed out into the park, and disappeared down a winding path before I could stop him.

In truth I had not strength to do it. I had fallen back on the sofa, overcome with what I had seen and heard. I rose and walked, to assure myself that I was not dreaming. Then the door opened, and a servant said to me:

"Here is my master, the Duke de C. ”

A man of about sixty, of distinguished appearance, came forward, offering me his hand, and apologizing for keeping me waiting.

"I was not at home," he said. "I have just come from town, where I have been seeking advice upon the health of my younger brother."

"Is his life in danger?" I exclaimed.

"No, monsieur, thank Heaven," answered the duke: "but in his youth, thoughts of glory and ambition exalted his imagination; and recently a severe illness has left him prey to a kind of delusion, in which he is constantly convinced that he has only one day longer to live. It is his mania."

All was explained!

"Now as to you, young man," continued the duke: "we must see what we can do to advance you. We will start for Versailles at the end of the month. I will present you."

"I know your kind disposition toward me, monsieur, and wish to thank you; but-"

"What! you have not renounced the court, and the advantages which await you there?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"But remember that with my help you can make your way rapidly; and that with a little patience and perseverance you can in ten years—"

"Ten lost years!" I exclaimed.

"But then," he continued in astonishment, "is that too dear a price for glory and fortune and honors? Come, come, young man, we will go to Versailles."

"No, duke: I am going back to Bretagne; and once more I beg you to receive my thanks, and those of my family."

"It is madness!" exclaimed the duke.

And thinking of what I had seen and heard, I said to myself. "It is wisdom!"

The next day I started; and with what delight I saw again my noble castle of Roche-Bernard, the old trees of my park, the glorious Bretagne sun! I had recovered my vassals, my sisters, my mother and happiness! which has never deserted me since; for one week later I married Henrietta.

JOHN SELDEN

(1584-1654)

F SELDEN, Milton wrote, "The chief of learned men reputed in this land, John Selden." So our own Sumner: "John Selden, unsurpassed for learning and ability in the whole splendid history of the English bar." And Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon: "Mr. Selden was a person whom no character can flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit and virtue." Selden was the writer of many learned books: books upon the law, books upon the customs of the Hebrews, books upon all manner of abstruse subjects, books in English and in

Latin; that which remains of him is a book which he neither published nor wrote. Like White's Natural History of Selborne,' and not a few other books which "were not born to die," Selden's Table-Talk' was a work which came without observation. Much of his deliberate work is dry as dry could be. Aubrey, who is relied upon in some measure for his biography, says that he was a poet, and quotes Sir John Suckling as authority; nothing would seem more improbable from what he has to say upon poetry: "Tis a fine thing for Children to learn to make Verse; but when they come to be men they must speak like other men, or else they will be laught at. 'Tis ridiculous to speak, or write, or preach in Verse. As 'tis good to learn to dance, a man may learn his Leg, learn to go handsomely; but 'tis ridiculous for him to dance when he should go."

JOHN SELDEN

His father was "a sufficient plebeian," of the village of Salvington in Sussex, and proficient in music; by which he is said to have won his wife, who was of somewhat higher station in life. John was born in his cottage at Salvington, December 16th, 1584, in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and died, a man of great distinction and wealth, at Whitefriars in London, November 30th, 1654, in the sixth year of the Commonwealth. It was a rich period in English literature; the period of Shakespeare and Bacon and Milton and Jonson and their companions. And it was a stirring period in history,

covering as it did the reigns of James I. and Charles I., the trial and beheading of the latter, and the ascendency of Cromwell and the Puritans. The boy John Selden, educated at the Free School in Chichester, and at Hart Hall, Oxford, had hardly more than settled himself at the Inner Temple and reached man's estate, when he had "not only run through the whole body of the law, but become a prodigy in most parts of learning; especially in those which were not common, or little frequented or regarded by the generality of students of his time. So that in a few years his name was wonderfully advanced, not only at home, but in foreign countries; and was usually styled the great dictator of learning of the English nation."

In 1618, after issuing several other works, he published a 'History of Tithes,' which had been licensed without question by the censor, but nevertheless excited such an outcry that its author was summoned before the King, and subsequently before the High Commission Court, and forced to recant. He acknowledged the error that he had committed in publishing the book, but appears not to have acknowledged any error in the book. The book was suppressed, and afterward "confuted" by Dr. Montagu; and King James told Selden, "If you or your friends write anything against his confutation, I will throw you into prison." He soon had an opportunity to test the King's prisons for other reasons. He was incarcerated for five weeks in 1621, for his share in the protest of the House of Commons in respect to the rights and privileges of the members; and again in 1629 he was imprisoned in the Tower for many months on the charge of sedition. He entered Parliament in 1624, and with the exception of Charles's first Parliament, and the Short Parliament, he appears to have been a member until his death. In the Long Parliament he represented Oxford University, being returned without opposition.

Selden was always a conservative, not so much in the political as in the natural, the literal, sense. During the earlier years of the long contest between the King and the Commons, he leaned toward the latter; but in after years his attitude was less satisfactory to them. He was the arch-supporter of the law,- of human law: for the Higher Law-at all events for the Jus Divinum as interpreted by the clergy- he had slight esteem as against the law of the land. In this he represented to the full one side of the shield: the other, that which exhibits the supreme inner right of the individual, he seemed sometimes wholly to ignore.

His reputation was so great that his support was sought on all sides; but his independence caused him to reject some overtures, while it prevented others. King Charles thought to make him Keeper of the Great Seal; but was dissuaded on the ground that "he would absolutely refuse the place if it were offered to him." In 1647 he