effect of long fasting and grief, that it was with the greatest difficulty I could support myself standing. I was obliged to have recourse to the liquors which I had brought with me, and these restored sufficient strength to enable me to set about my last sad office. From the sandy nature of the soil there was little trouble in opening the ground. I broke my sword and used it for the purpose; but my bare hands were of greater service. I dug a deep grave, and there deposited the idol of my heart, after having wrapped around her my clothes to prevent the sand from touching her. I kissed her ten thousand times with all the ardor of the most glowing love, before I laid her in this melancholy bed. I sat for some time upon the bank intently gazing on her, and could not command fortitude enough to close the grave over her. At length, feeling that my strength was giving way, and apprehensive of its being entirely exhausted before the completion of my task, I committed to the earth all that it had ever contained most perfect and peerless. I then laid myself with my face down upon the grave; and closing my eyes with the determination never again to open them, I invoked the mercy of Heaven, and ardently prayed for death.

You will find it difficult to believe that during the whole time of this protracted and distressing ceremony, not a tear or a sigh escaped to relieve my agony. The state of profound affliction in which I was, and the deep settled resolution I had taken to die, had silenced the sighs of despair, and effectually dried up the ordinary channels of grief. It was thus impossible for me, in this posture upon the grave, to continue for any time in possession of my faculties.

After what you have listened to, the remainder of my own history would ill repay the attention you seem inclined to bestow upon it. Synnelet having been carried into the town and skillfully examined, it was found that so far from being dead, he was not even dangerously wounded. He informed his uncle of the manner in which the affray had occurred between us, and he generously did justice to my conduct on the occasion. I was sent for; and as neither of us could be found, our flight was immediately suspected. It was then too late to attempt to trace me, but the next day and the following one were employed in the pursuit.

I was found, without any appearance of life, upon the grave of Manon; and the persons who discovered me in this situation,

seeing that I was almost naked, and bleeding from my wounds, naturally supposed that I had been robbed and assassinated.

The motion restored me to my opening my eyes and finding showed that I was not beyond

They carried me into the town. senses. The sighs I heaved on myself still amongst the living, the reach of art: they were but too successful in its application. I was immediately confined as a close prisoner. My trial was ordered; and as Manon was not forthcoming, I was accused of having murdered her from rage and jealousy. I naturally related all that had occurred. Synnelet, though bitterly grieved and disappointed by what he heard, had the generosity to solicit my pardon: he obtained it.

I was so reduced that they were obliged to carry me from the prison to my bed, and there I suffered for three long months under severe illness. My aversion from life knew no diminution. I continually prayed for death, and obstinately for some time. refused every remedy. But Providence, after having punished me with atoning rigor, saw fit to turn to my own use its chastisements and the memory of my multiplied sorrows.

WILLIAM COWPER PRIME

(1825-)

HE PRIME family in this country have always been prominent in scholarship and patriotism, distinguished in several professions for great intellectual virility and high character. William Cowper Prime was born in Cambridge, New York, October 31st, 1825. His father, Benjamin Young, was a physician in Huntington, Long Island, who had graduated at Princeton and finished his medical training at Leyden; was an unusual linguist, a finished classical scholar, and master of several modern languages which he spoke fluently. During the Revolutionary War

he was distinguished by his patriotic zeal; and aided the cause by vigorous songs and ballads, which were widely circulated. His grandfather, Ebenezer, a Presbyterian clergyman at Huntington, Long Island, -a man of powerful mind and a preacher of renown, -suffered greatly during the early years of the war for his principles; at the age of seventy-eight he was driven from his home by British troops and Tories, who burned his church, occupied his house, and destroyed his library. He was pursued with hatred for his attachment to the cause of liberty even after his death: toward the close of the war a band of British under command of Colonel William Thompson (afterwards Count Rumford) heaped insults upon the grave of the "old rebel.»

WILLIAM C. PRIME

Mr. Prime inherited the aptness for scholarship and the linguistic ability of his ancestors. He was graduated at Princeton in 1843; studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practiced his profession in New York City with success and distinction, until he became one of the owners and the editor of the Journal of Commerce in 1861. His active editorship of the Journal continued till 1869, and his proprietorship till 1893. But even while he was a law student, and in active practice of his profession, he had obeyed the instincts of his family for literature. A series of country letters written to the Journal were afterwards collected in volumes, - 'The Owl Creek Letters'

(1848), The Old House by the River' (1853), and 'Later Years (1854). These papers are among the first of American essays which mingled the zest of the true sportsman with love of nature and human sympathy with her moods. They had a wide popularity, and were the forerunner of those charming books which so truly interpret New England,-'I Go A-Fishing' (1893), Along New England Roads' (1892), and 'Among the North Hills' (1895). In these books are the refined sentiment and keen observation of a lifetime.

In 1855-56 Mr. Prime made an extended tour in Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land, and another in 1869-70. The fruits of the first visit were 'Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia,' and 'Tent Life in the Holy Land' (1857); volumes which had great popularity, and were distinguished by fine descriptive quality, a philosophic temper, and profound sentiment. But foreign travel opened the door to still wider activities; namely, in the fields of art and archæology, both classic and mediæval. Mr. Prime's career is typically American in the variety of its interests, though it is rare in the virility and success with which he has pursued so many branches of literature and art. Blessed with an exceptional memory to utilize his quick acquisitions, he speedily became an authority in several specialties. His library of wood engraving and illustration is, historically, the most valuable in the country. His interest in this began with the study of Albrecht Dürer, and his monograph on the 'Little Passion' (1868) is the earliest in English on this subject. Among the monographs showing his wide and exact scholarship are O Mother Dear, Jerusalem' (1865), and Holy Cross; a Study' (1877).

Becoming interested in ceramics through the enthusiasm of his wife for this study, he laid aside his own specialty after her death, and devoted himself to the completion of her collection. It is deposited at Princeton in a museum erected for the purpose. It was by his influence that a department of Art History was established at this college, which had given him the degree of LL. D. in 1875, and now made him the first professor and lecturer in the new study. One of the most useful and successful books in any language on this topic was his 'Pottery and Porcelain of all Times and Nations' (1878).

This sketch does not at all give the measure of Mr. Prime's fertile literary activity during his professional life. No man has been 'more ready with his vigorous and lucid pen, and more adequate to all the demands on it. Besides his editorial work and his published volumes, there have been hundreds of sketches, essays, and short stories from time to time; and for years he was the legal and literary adviser of a great publishing house. In 1886, as literary executor of General George B. McClellan, he edited 'McClellan's Own Story.'

Perhaps Mr. Prime's greatest service to the public has been in connection with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a director, vice-president, and for many years acting president, he brought to the building-up of this institution, qualities indispensable to such an enterprise, wide classic, art, and archæological knowledge, enthusiasm, the perfection of organizing and business methods, and sound common-sense. He gave to the work time without stint, and the experience of the scholar and the man of affairs. It is not too much to say that the great success of this splendid enterprise is largely due to the wise guidance of Dr. Prime.

As a writer Mr. Prime is always interesting, vigorous, lucid, convincing, equally facile in condensation and amplification, with a style that is marked by simplicity, and often rises to the charm of melodious periods. His versatility is shown in the rare combination of sentiment with the most practical and clear view of affairs.

THE OLD MAN AT THE WATER-WHEEL

From Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia. Copyright 1857, by Harper &

Brothers

IFE in such a country has no great amount of variety, as one might well imagine.

L

There was an old man that I found one day on shore as I walked by the boat, whose history was strange and worth the hearing.

He was a puny, dried-up old fellow, whose weight, I think, might come within seventy pounds. He sat on the end of the pole of the water-wheel, immediately behind the tails of the bullocks, and followed them around the little circle which they walked, his knees up to his chin, which was buried between them, and his blear eyes gazing listlessly on the cattle and the outer wall of the sakea,- for it was inclosed in a stone-and-mud wall. The everlasting creaking of the wheels-that strange sound that no other machinery on earth emits seemed, and was to him, the familiar music of his life.

I questioned him, and his story was simply this: He was born just there. It was long before the days of Mohammed Ali, when Hassan Kasheef was king, that he was a boy, sitting on the pole of the sakea and following the bullocks around. He sat there more years than he knew anything about, and grew to be a man. Life was to him still the same round. His view was bounded by