I have made thee one ache from the sole to the | Talk of Nature's wise laws, learn from Nature's

crown,

And the recompense? Priceless: Renown.

THE BODY.

Hang renown! Horrid thing, more malign to a
Body

Than that other strong poison you offered me-
toddy.

By renown in my teens I was snatched from my
cricket,

To be sent to the wars, where I served as a wicket.
And there your first step in renown crippled me,
By the ball you invited to fracture my knee.

THE MIND.

Well, I cannot expect you to sympathize much
With the Mind's noble longings

THE BODY.

excesses,

All its short life exposed to heat, cold, wounds,
and slaughter,

To limp on a crutch? Its march into Ind-not a drop of good water;
Its enlargement of spleen-shown by rages at

When the wine was indeed the Unbinder of Care;
In which Genius and Wisdom, invited by Mirth;
Laid aside their grand titles as rulers of earth;
And, contented awhile our familiars to sit,
Genius came but as Humor, and Wisdom as Wit?
Becall'st thou those nights?

THE BODY.

Well recall them I may ! Yes, the nights might be pleasant; but thentheir Next Day;

And, as Humor and Wit should have long since found out,

table,

Till it fell, easy prey, to malaria at Babel ;-
Could his mind come to earth, its old pranks to

repeat

Once more, as that plague, Alexander the Great,
And in want of a body propose to take me,
My strength rebestowed and my option left free,
I should say, as a body of blood, flesh, and bones,
Enough! to a mortal no curse like renown!
Before I'd be his, I'd be that of John Jones.

Here, shifting his flannels, he groaned and sank down.

Now, on hearing the Body complain in this fashion,

The Mind became seized with fraternal compas-
sion;

And although at that moment he felt very keenly
The sting of his pride to be rated so meanly,
So much had been said which he felt to be true
In a common-sense, bodily, plain point of view,
That it seemed not beneath him to meet the com-
plaint

The Unbinder of Care is the Giver of Gout.
Yet you've injured me less with good wine and By confessing his sins-in the tone of a saint.

good cooks

Than with those horrid banquets you made upon

books.

Every hint my poor nerves could convey to you scorning,

Interdicted from sleep till past three in the morning,

While you were devouring the trash of a college, And my blood was made thin with crude apples of knowledge.

To dry morsels of Kant, undigested, I trace Through the maze of my ganglions the tic in my face:

And however renowned your new theory on Light is,

Its effect upon me was my chronic gastritis.

THE MIND.

Yes, I cannot deny that I merit your blame-
I have sinned against you in my ardor for fame;
Yet even such sins you would see, my poor Body,
In a much milder light had you taken that toddy.
But are all of my acts to be traced to one cause?
Have I strained your quick nerves for no end but
applause?

Do not all sages say that the Mind cannot hurt
you

If it follow the impulse unerring of virtue?
And how oft, when most lazy, I've urged you to

step on,

And attain the pure air of the moral TO PREPON!

Let such thoughts send your blood with more | Then the Body let fall the two words, in men's warmth through its channels,

Wrap yourself in my virtues, and spurn those And men's language the fullest of sorrow-"Too moist flannels!

The parent and queen of all virtues-Humanity. And the murmur, "There goes the Great Man,"

That black box but contains my lumbago and | Every moment from light gaining strength more gout.

Thus the Mind. While the Body, as if for pre-head a little and quickly said, 'Adsum!' and fell

From The Reader. MR. KIRK'S HISTORY OF CHARLES THE BOLD.

History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. By John Foster Kirk. Two Volumes. Murray.*

rue où il n'y eut des meurtres; les cadavres gisaient en tas dans la boue. Le Dimanche, 29 Mai, seulement, 522 hommes trouvèrent une mort violente dans les rues, sans compter ceux tués dans les maisons." Famine soon followed war, and both generated pestilence. THE most prominent character of the fif- These dramatic scenes, and the assassination teenth century, and perhaps, indeed, of the of John the Fearless on the bridge of MonteMiddle Ages since Charlemagne, is Charles reau, twelve years after the murder of the the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Had not death Duke of Orleans, are powerfully narrated by put an early end to his career, history would the author. At length Philip the Good, faprobably have immortalized him as the found- ther of Charles the Bold, made peace with er of a powerful empire. The attention of France, and the king, for the restoration of posterity has been so attracted to the roman-order and discipline, created, for the first time tic side of his life that we have not until now in Europe, a standing army. possessed a standard history of his eventful reign. Philippe de Commines, Gachard, Michelet, and many others, have failed to grasp the entire ensemble of the life of this hero of his age.

The difficulty of unravelling the accumulation of documentary evidence, and of examining the fruits of critical researches, has become very considerable. Mr. John Foster Kirk has therefore undertaken no easy task in preparing a complete history of Charles the Bold. His rivalry with Louis XI. formed one of the most conspicuous features of his career, requiring much patient investigation on the part of the historian. It was a contest such as writers of romance delight in depicting. At every wily endeavor to seize the reins of power, the French monarch found himself confronted by the mailed figure of his haughty vassal; and, on the other hand, wherever the daring projects of Charles were at work, there was he sure to feel the undermining and counteracting influence of his enemy.

In 1433 our hero was born at Dijon, and exhibited, even in infancy, the violence and impetuosity of his temper. He received a princely education, and acquired a much larger share of learning than usually falls to the lot of his equals in rank. We are glad to observe that Mr. Kirk, in this part of his work, takes the opportunity of exposing the deviations from the truth, and even the distortion of historical facts, of which Sir Walter Scott is guilty in his novel of "Quentin Durward," where he attributes to Charles the Bold precisely those vices from which he was altogether free, and gives a false coloring to the whole period.

Two years after the marriage of Charles the Bold with Isabella of Bourbon, there arrived at the court of Brussels (1456) a fugitive from France, barely seventeen years of age, who was afterwards to be Louis XI. and the bitterest enemy of the Duke of Burgundy, upon whose bounty he now lived for five years. At the death of Charles VII., the duke accompanied the new King of France, Mr. Kirk opens his narrative with an im- with a triumphal procession of three thousand pressive description of the disastrous results or four thousand men, to Rheims, where of the murder of the Duke of Orleans by John Louis was to be crowned. Philip the Good, the Fearless, and of the civil war between the with his son Charles, and the nobles of the Burgundians and the Armagnacs-or, rather, court, appeared in great splendor, preceded we may say, the total anarchy which drove and followed by pages, archers, and men-atthe peasantry in despair to seek refuge in the arms, all in gorgeous costumes and blazing forests, exclaiming that "surely the devil was with jewelry. The coronation, and the taking possession of the earth." Not only festivities that followed, read more like a were the villages and lands almost depopu- fairy tale than a page of history; but the lated, but the desolation in the towns was author is careful to refer us continually to even greater. An eye-witness states that, in his authorities. A visit made somewhat the summer of 1418, the Armagnacs having later by the King of France to Philip, at his been defeated in Paris, "il n'y avait pas de castle of Hesden, affords a very amusing picPublished by J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadel-ture of that favorite residence of the Burgundian sovereign.

phia.

In the first four chapters of the second

acter.

"By a stranger who accidentally found | in Christendom. This closes the first book of himself within its walls it might have been Mr. Kirk's History, replete with details of mistaken for the haunt of whimsical and ma- the highest interest, drawn from sources very licious genii. Its principal gallery was a com- little known to English readers. plete museum of diableries, being secretly surrounded by ingenious mechanical contrivances for putting into operation the broadest book, after having given a long and vivid possible jokes. The unsuspicious visitor description of the prosperity of the country, found himself performing, quite involunta- the author rivets the attention by pictures of rily, the part of Pantaloon. If he laid his the court and household of Charles of Burhand upon any article of furniture he was gundy-his mode of government, and the desaluted with a shower of spray, besmeared velopment of his stern and implacable charwith soot, bepowdered with flour. When a numerous company was assembled, the ceiling, painted and gilded in imitation of the A little more than a year had elapsed since starry sky, would be suddenly overcast; a the death of Philip when Charles solemnized snow-storm followed, or a torrent of rain, his marriage at Bruges with the Princess accompanied by thunder and lightning. The Margaret of York. She arrived at the Flemwater even ascended by fountains through ish port of Sluys with a fleet of sixteen vesthe floor for the especial discomfort of the sels, commanded by the Lord High Admiral ladies. The guests, attempting to escape, of England. only plunged into fresh embarrassments. If The marriage was celebrated they sought egress by the door, they had to with extraordinary splendor, and the festivicross a trap which, being suddenly with- ties were kept up for more than a week with drawn, dropped them into a bath, or into a unabated vivacity. The alliance by marriage large sack filled with feathers. If they with England was ominous to the French opened a window, they were blinded with king, who made an appeal to the nation, and jets of water, and the aperture closed again for the first time in France summoned the with a violent noise. Meanwhile they were pursued by masked figures who pelted them representatives of the different classes of his with little balls, or belabored them with sticks. A full description of these ouvrages de joyeuseté et plaisance, as they are termed, have been given by the inventor himself, Colart le Voleur."

subjects, with the intent of submitting his measures for their deliberation and advice. With the duplicity natural to his character, Louis, while he accepted an interview with the Duke Charles at Peroune, plotted against In June, 1467, the Duke Philip the Good him at Liège. This so enraged Charles that breathed his last, after having raised the the king was momentarily kept in captivity, Netherlands to a height of prosperity that and his fate was in suspense for many days. was the envy of the world. His remains The duke at last, however, decided upon the were deposited in the church of Saint Dona- measure which was at once the most politic tus at Bruges. Thither they were borne at and the least criminal. The famous treaty night amid the blaze of sixteen hundred of Peroune was signed by both parties, and torches. More than a score of prelates offici- the two princes set out together to crush the ated at the obsequics. The heralds broke rebellion at Liège. The fate of the city was their batons above the bier, and proclaimed appalling. The inhabitants were massacred in doleful tones that Philip, duke of four without pity-no lives were spared. With duchies, count of seven counties, lord of in- the exception of churches and monasteries, numerable lordships, was dead. Then, rais- the whole town was destroyed by fire, and ing their voices to the loftiest pitch, they the ruins levelled with the ground. cried, "Long live Charles, Duke of Burgun- chastisement of the rebels of Liège was foldy, of Brabant, of Limbourg, and of Luxem-lowed by the punishment of the citizens of bourg; Count of Flanders, of Artois, of Bur- Ghent, who had mortally offended the duke gundy, of Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand, on the occasion of his Joyous entry into their and of Namur; Marquis of the Holy Empire, Lord of Friesland," etc., etc. The multitude that thronged the church responded with a jubilant acclaim. Thus, at the age of thirtythree, Charles the Bold came into possession of an inheritance unsurpassed by any prince

town.

The

These severe measures produced a deep im. pression on the people, and made them look upon the new sovereign as the most powerful and the most redoubtable in Christendom The reign of Charles the Bold divides itself