ever figured on the scene of European story. He had visited, with a victorious army, almost every capital of the Continent, and dictated the terms of peace to their astonished princes. He had consolidated under his immediate dominion a territory and population apparently sufficient to meet the combination of all that it did not include, and interwoven himself with the government of almost all that was left. He had cast down and erected thrones at his pleasure, and surrounded himself with tributary kings and principalities of his own creation. He had connected himself by marriage with the proudest of the ancient sovereigns, and was at the head of the largest and the finest army that was ever assembled to desolate or dispose of the world. Had he known where to stop in his aggressions upon the peace and independence of mankind, it seems as if this terrific sovereignty might have been permanently established in his person. But the demon by whom he was possessed urged him on to his fate. He could not bear that any power should exist which did not confess its dependence on him. Without a pretext for quarrel, he attacked Russia, insulted Austria, trod contemptuously on the fallen fortunes of Prussia, and, by new aggressions, and the menace of more intolerable evils, drove them into that league which rolled back the tide of ruin on himself, and ultimately hurled him into the insignificance from which he originally sprung.-Jeffrey.

113. FRENCH.

If you take with you a friend who is 'up to the language, and all that sort of thing,' be sure he is up to it. What quacks we all are in this matter! I shame to think of the many people I have taken in with Stratford French. Every one of us pretends to know all about the French language, and so few of us do. It is not alone in the café or on the boulevard that you find the Englishman who calls moi 'moa,' and thinks that 'postman' is the literal translation of homme de lettres. Go to the private houses, where Wigley the barrister, on Continental circuit, meets Syntax the parson on his tour; where men who have been at Cambridge meet men who have been at Oxford; where the author and the painter slide side by side over the polished floors; and you shall hear very painful French-French that would,

perhaps, be more comprehensible to Rabelais than to Lamartine. 'Oh, the language!' as a certain youth about town of my acquaintance used to say. You see, we are all of us obliged to affect to understand it; not to know it would show we hadn't travelled, hadn't read, hadn't been rightly educated, perhaps. One may say one doesn't care about Italian, or even German literature; doesn't like the people; but in the matter of French such pleas are not admitted. 'If you please, I haven't a taste for music-I like the sewing-machine better.' What young lady would dare say so if you asked her to run over Mr. Godfrey's last waltz? The same moral cowardice makes me, on returning from my travels, say to my friends, ‘I had a long conversation with General Jumbo's aide-de-camp, and found him a very pleasant fellow.' I tell no fib, for I did speak to the aide-decamp, and the aide-de-camp smiled, and what he said in reply seemed to be excessively good-natured, so he must have been a very pleasant fellow.

Half of the art of war lies in the management of retreats. When my cousin from rural Dorsetshire comes to Paris, and asks me to take charge of him for the language, I accept the office with the best grace in the world, trusting to my own readiness to get me out of possible scrapes. I take him to dinner, and run over the carte with an air, rapidly translating as I go. 'Veau marengo,' I say, 'that's stewed veal. Bœuf braisé, pommes-that's beef and potatoes, you know; haricot de mouton, that's mutton, with beans.' Ah, I guessed that,' says he, quietly; and what's that?' pointing to vol au vent financière, That?' says I. 'Yes,' says he. 'Oh !' says I, 'that?—that -why, that's rare rubbish, you know-I'm certain you won't like it a bit.' 'Yes, but what is it?' says he. (Country people are all like that.) 'Why,' says I, sparring a bit for wind, 'haven't you ever heard of that before?' 'No,' says he. 'Oh !' says I. 'You don't eat such things in Dorsetshire.' 'No,' says he, 'but what ?' 'It wouldn't suit old Peter, eh?' I dash in rapidly. By the way, how is the poor old boy? I remember the last time I was down -'Oh, Peter's well enough,' he says; but you haven't told me what that is. Do'ee know thyself?' he asks bluntly, boorishly, brutally. (But they are all like that.) 'Know!' I laughed hysterically-'know! ha, ha, that's capital. I ought to know, I think. Look here-vol, you know,

6

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is "robbery," and vent's "wind," and financière's "financier ; like Gladstone, you know, and Dizzy-Chancellor of the Exchequer and all that. It means, there's a financial robbery in the wind, and you'll be the victim of it if you order this stuff. It's their funny way of putting things-they're very witty, you know; almost irreverent. No organ of veneration. Dare say you've heard.'

"They be great fools,' says he. And we dine. I think he thinks I understood it. I hope he does; but where should I have been without my ready wit?

If a person addresses me, and I don't understand him, I find out that he's a Gascon, and tell my cousin so. 'Mere dialect, you know; same relation to French as Welsh to English.' Ten to one my cousin will believe me.-' Readings by Starlight, in the Evening Star.

114. STORMING THE TEMPLE OF MEXICO.

Cortès, having cleared a way for the assault, sprung up the lower stairway, followed by Alvarado, Sandoval, Ordaz, and the other gallant cavaliers of his little band, leaving a file of arquebusiers and a strong corps of Indian allies to hold the enemy in check at the foot of the monument. On the first landing, as well as on the several galleries above, and on the summit, the Aztec warriors were drawn up to dispute his passage. From their elevated position they showered down volleys of lighter missiles, together with heavy stones, beams, and burning rafters, which, thundering along the stairway, overturned the ascending Spaniards, and carried desolation through their ranks. The more fortunate, eluding or springing over these obstacles, succeeded in gaining the first terrace, where, throwing themselves on their enemies, they compelled them, after a short resistance, to fall back. The assailants pressed on, effectually supported by a brisk fire of the musketeers from below, which so much galled the Mexicans in their exposed situation, that they were glad to take shelter on the broad summit of the teocalli.

Cortès and his comrades were close upon their rear, and the two parties soon found themselves face to face on this aërial battle-field, engaged in mortal combat in presence of the whole city, as well as of the troops in the courtyard, who paused, as if

by mutual consent, from their own hostilities, gazing in silent expectation on the issue of those above. The area, though somewhat smaller than the base of the teocalli, was large enough to afford a fair field of fight for a thousand combatants. It was paved with broad flat stones. No impediment occurred over its surface, except the huge sacrificial block and the temples of stone, which rose to the height of forty feet, at the farther extremity of the arena. One of these had been consecrated to the cross; the other was still occupied by the Mexican war-god. The Christian and the Aztec contended for their religions under the very shadow of their respective shrines, while the Indian priests, running to and fro, with their hair wildly streaming over their sable mantles, seemed hovering in mid-air, like so many demons of darkness urging on the work of slaughter.

The parties closed with the desperate fury of men who had no hope but in victory. Quarter was neither asked nor given ; and to fly was impossible. The edge of the area was unprotected by parapet or battlement. The least slip would be fatal; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. Cortès himself is said to have had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate. Two warriors, of strong, muscular frames, seized upon him, and were dragging him violently towards the brink of the pyramid. Aware of their intention, he struggled with all his force, and, before they could accomplish their purpose, succeeded in tearing himself from their grasp, and hurling one of them over the walls with his own arm. The story is not improbable in itself, for Cortès was a man of uncommon agility and strength. It has been often repeated, but not by contemporary history.

The battle lasted with unintermitting fury for three hours. The number of the enemy was double that of the Christians, and it seemed as if it were a contest which must be determined by numbers and brute force, rather than by superior science. But it was not so. The invulnerable armour of the Spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use of it gave him advantages which far outweighed the odds of physical strength and numbers. After doing all that the courage of despair could enable men to do, resistance grew fainter and fainter on the side of the Aztecs. One after another they had

fallen. Two or three priests only survived to be led away in triumph by the victors. Every other combatant was stretched a corpse on the bloody arena, or had been hurled from the giddy heights. Yet the loss of the Spaniards was not inconsiderable: it amounted to forty-five of their best men; and nearly all the remainder were more or less injured in the desperate conflict.

The victorious cavaliers now rushed towards the sanctuaries. The lower story was of stone, the two upper were of wood. Penetrating into their recesses, they had the mortification to find the image of the Virgin and Cross removed. But in the other edifice they still beheld the grim figure of Huitzilopotchli, with his censer of smoking hearts, and the walls of his oratory reeking with gore-not improbably of their own countrymen. With shouts of triumph the Christians tore the uncouth monster from his niche, and tumbled him, in the presence of the horrorstruck Aztecs, down the steps of the teocalli. They then set fire to the accursed building. The flame speedily ran up the slender towers, sending forth an ominous light over city, lake, and valley, to the remotest hut among the mountains. It was the funeral pyre of paganism, and proclaimed the fall of that sanguinary religion which had so long hung like a dark cloud over the fair regions of Anahuac.-W. H. Prescott.

115. THE DERBY.

The Derby is a national institution, in honour of which the Premier proposes a holiday for the House of Commons. The Derby eclipses elections and openings of Parliaments. No true Englishman ever gets tired of speaking of the Derby, going to the Derby, looking back upon the Derby. The day is always greeted with a hearty welcome, and the seventyeighth anniversary had still a charm of ever-recurring novelty about it, though the performance is much the same, year after

year.

The Derby has become a part of our own Constitution.' On that grand day

Rome n'est plus dans Rome; elle est

at Epsom. The whole population-since the wretches who are