lord ?" "Why, here is set down how Aristotle brought up and instructed Alexander the Great in all the rudiments and principles belonging to a prince." And under the persons of Aristotle and Alexander, the marquess read the king such a lesson that all the standers-by were amazed at his boldness.

The king asked whether he had his lesson by heart, or spake out of the book. "Sir, if you would read my heart, it may be that you might find it there; or if your Majesty pleased to get it by heart, I will lend you my book." The king accepted the offer.

Some of the new-made lords fretted and bit their thumbs at certain passages in the marquess's discourse; and some protested that no man was so much for the absolute power of a king as Aristotle. The marquess told the king that he would indeed show him one remarkable passage to that purpose; and turning to the place read:

"A king can kill, a king can save;

A king can make a lord a knave,

And of a knave a lord also."

66

On this several new-made lords shrank out of the room, which the king observing told the marquess, My lord, at this rate you will drive away all my nobility."-Disraeli's Amenities of Literature.

GREAT MEN'S LOVE FOR CATS.

CHAMPFLEURY has one interesting chapter on the love of distinguished characters for cats. Tasso addressed the finest of his sonnets to his cat; Petrarch had his favourite cat embalmed in the Egyptian style ; Cardinal Wolsey gave audience with his cat seated beside him. There is or was a statue in a niche of the ancient prison of Newgate, representing the famous Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, with his right hand resting on a cat. Mahomet on one occasion cut off the skirt of his robe, so that he might rise without disturbing his cat, which was sleeping on it. Cardinal Richelieu, the great prime minister of France, always kept a number of kittens in his cabinet, to amuse him with their pranks. Chateaubriand loved cats all his life; and his passion for them was so notorious, that when he was ambassador at Rome, the Pope made him a present of one. Michelet, the historian, and the essayist on Love and Women, is so fond of these animals that he will even pet a deformed one, and will not allow it to be molested. Moncrif, a clever French writer and member of the Academy, was another cat lover, and author of Les Lettres sur les Chats. Then come the German story-writer, Hoffman, the French poets Baudelaire, Gautier, and Victor Hugo, the historian Mérimée, and our own Edgar Poe, besides a well-known list of English writers. On the whole, the cats have no reason to be ashamed of their intimates. There have been artists who have loved this creature well enough to do much good work in drawing and painting him. Champfleury's book is illustrated by eighty excellent wood-cuts, which give us at least a hint of what has been done in this line by the Egyptians, the Romans, the Japanese; by the German Gotfried Mind,

lord ?" "Why, here is set down how Aristotle brought up and instructed Alexander the Great in all the rudiments and principles belonging to a prince." And under the persons of Aristotle and Alexander, the marquess read the king such a lesson that all the standers-by were amazed at his boldness.

The king asked whether he had his lesson by heart, or spake out of the book. "Sir, if you would read my heart, it may be that you might find it there; or if your Majesty pleased to get it by heart, I will lend you my book." The king accepted the offer.

Some of the new-made lords fretted and bit their thumbs at certain passages in the marquess's discourse; and some protested that no man was so much for the absolute power of a king as Aristotle. The marquess told the king that he would indeed show him one remarkable passage to that purpose; and turning to the place read:

"A king can kill, a king can save;

A king can make a lord a knave,
And of a knave a lord also."

On this several new-made lords shrank out of the room, which the king observing told the marquess, "My lord, at this rate you will drive away all my nobility."-Disraeli's Amenities of Literature.

GREAT MEN'S LOVE FOR CATS.

CHAMPFLEURY has one interesting chapter on the love of distinguished characters for cats. Tasso addressed the finest of his sonnets to his cat; Petrarch had his favourite cat embalmed in the Egyptian style ; Cardinal Wolsey gave audience with his cat seated beside him. There is or was a statue in a niche of the ancient prison of Newgate, representing the famous Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, with his right hand resting on a cat. Mahomet on one occasion cut off the skirt of his robe, so that he might rise without disturbing his cat, which was sleeping on it. Cardinal Richelieu, the great prime minister of France, always kept a number of kittens in his cabinet, to amuse him with their pranks. Chateaubriand loved cats all his life; and his passion for them was so notorious, that when he was ambassador at Rome, the Pope made him a present of one. Michelet, the historian, and the essayist on Love and Women, is so fond of these animals that he will even pet a deformed one, and will not allow it to be molested. Moncrif, a clever French writer and member of the Academy, was another cat lover, and author of Les Lettres sur les Chats. Then come the German story-writer, Hoffman, the French poets Baudelaire, Gautier, and Victor Hugo, the historian Mérimée, and our own Edgar Poe, besides a well-known list of English writers. On the whole, the cats have no reason to be ashamed Their intimates. There have been artists who have loved this creawell enough to do much good work in drawing and painting him. npfleury's book is illustrated by eighty excellent wood-cuts, which us at least a hint of what has been done in this line by the tians, the Romans, the Japanese; by the German Gotfried Mind,

"the Raphael of cats ;" by the Dutch Cornelius Wischer; by the Frenchmen, Grandville, Rouvière, and Delacroix; by the English Burbank, and several others. It is remarkable that one of the very best of these limners of the feline race is the Japanese Hok'sai, or Fo-KoaSay, an artist of really distinguished merit, who died some fifty years since, leaving a prodigious number of sketches, many of which have reached Paris. The cats of Hok'sai are so plump and smooth and gracious, that you feel a desire to catch and fondle them. They are even more like nature than the best work of Delacroix, and they are hardly surpassed by the highly finished pieces of Mind and Wischer and Burbank.-Atlantic Monthly.

ADVENTURE OF KING JAMES V. OF SCOTLAND.

BEING once benighted when out hunting and separated from his attendants, he happened to enter a cottage in the midst of a moor, at the foot of the Ochil Hills, near Alloa, where, unknown, he was kindly received. In order to regale their unexpected guest, the "gudeman (i.e. landlord, farmer) desired the "gudewife" to fetch the hen that roosted nearest the cock, which is always the plumpest, for the stranger's supper. The king, highly pleased with his night's lodging and hospitable entertainment, told mine host at parting, that he should be glad to return his civility, and requested that the first time he came to Stirling, he would call at the castle, and inquire for the "Gudeman of Ballengeich." Donaldson, the landlord, did not fail to call on the "Gudeman of Ballengeich," when his astonishment at finding that the king had been his guest, afforded no small amusement to the merry monarch and his courtiers; and, to carry on the pleasantry, he was thenceforth designated by James with the title of King of the Moors, which name and designation have descended from father to son ever since, and they have continued in possession of the identical spot till very lately.-Campbell's Statistical Account of Scotland.

A GEM.

ACCEPT, dear maid, this beauteous rose,

To deck thy breast so fair;

Observe its hue, nor wonder why

It blushes to be there!

DRINKING.

THREE cups of wine a prudent man may take :
The first of these, for constitution's sake;

The second, to the girl he loves the best;
The third and last, to lull him to his rest;
Then home to bed. But if a fourth he pours,
That is the cup of folly, and not ours:
Loud, noisy talking on the fifth attends ;

The sixth breeds feuds and falling out of friends;

Seven begets blows and faces stained with gore;
Eight, and the watch patrol breaks ope the door;
Mad with the ninth, another cup goes round,
And the swelled sot drops senseless on the ground.

HENRY VIII. AND THE ABBOT OF READING.

A CURIOUS story is told in Fuller's Church History, which records a memorable visit of "bluff King Hal" to Reading Abbey:

As King Henry VIII. was hunting in Windsor Forest, he either casually lost, or probably wilfully losing himself, struck down, about dinner time, to the Abbey of Reading, where, disguising himself (much for delight, much for discovery unseen), he was invited to the abbot's table, and passed for one of the king's guard, a place to which the proportion of his person might properly entitle him. A sirloin of beef was set before him (so knighted, saith tradition, by this Henry), on which the king laid on lustily, not disgracing one of that place for whom he was mistaken. "Well fare thy heart (quoth the Abbot), and here in a cup of sack I remember his grace your master. I would give an hundred pounds on the condition I could feed as lustily on beef as you do. Alas! my weak and squeezie stomach will hardly digest the wing of a small chicken or rabbit." The king pleasantly pledged him, and heartily thanked him for his good cheer; after which he departed as undiscovered as he came thither. Some weeks after, the abbot was sent for by a pursuivant, brought up to London, clapt in the Tower, kept close prisoner, and fed for a short time with bread and water; yet not so empty his body of food, as his mind was filled with fears, creating many suspicions to himself, when and how he had incurred the king's displeasure. At last a sirloin of beef was set before him, of which the abbot fed as the farmer of his grange, and verified the proverb, that two hungry meals make the third a glutton. In springs King Henry out of a private lobby, where he had placed himself, the invisible spectator of the abbot's behaviour. "My lord (quoth the king), presently deposit your hundred pounds in gold, or else no going hence all the days of your life. I have been your physician, to cure you of your squeezie stomach, and here, as I deserve, I demand my fee for the same." The abbot down with his dust, and glad he had escaped so, returned to Reading as somewhat lighter in purse, so much more merry in heart, than when he came thence.

THE GAME OF CHESS.

A SECRET many yeares unseene,
In play at chess, who knowes the game,
First of the King, and then the Queene,
Knight, Bishop, Rooke, and so by name,
Of everie Pawne I will descrie
The nature with the qualitie.