lying dead on the open road you shall have left behind you! To me the painful duty will, I trust, be spared: I am advanced in age; you are a child.

Fontanges. Oh, no! I am seventeen. Bossuet. I should have supposed you younger by two years at least. But do you collect nothing from your own reflection, which raises so many in my breast? You think it possible that I, aged as I am, may preach a sermon on your funeral. We say that our days are few; and saying it, we say too much. Marie Angélique, we have but one: the past are not ours, and who can promise us the future? This in which we live is ours only while we live in it; the next moment may strike it off from us; the next sentence I would utter may be broken and fall between us.1 The beauty that has made a thousand hearts to beat at one instant, at the succeeding has been without pulse and colour, without admirer, friend, companion, follower. She by whose eyes the march of victory shall have been directed, whose name shall have animated armies at the extremities of the earth, drops into one of its crevices and mingles with its dust. Duchess de Fontanges! think on this! Lady! so live as to think on it undisturbed!

Fontanges. O God! I am quite alarmed. Do not talk thus gravely. It is in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice. I am frightened even at the rattle of the beads about my neck: take them off, and let us talk on other things. What was it that dropped on the floor as

1 Though Bossuet was capable of uttering and even of feeling such a sentiment, his conduct towards Fénélon, the fairest apparition that Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust.

While the diocese of Cambray was ravaged by Louis, it was spared by Marlborough, who said to the Archbishop that, if he was sorry he had not taken Cambray, it was chiefly because he lost for a time the pleasure of visiting so great a man. Peterborough, the next of our generals in glory, paid his respects to him some years afterward.

you were speaking? It seemed to shake the room, though it sounded like a pin or button.

Bossuet. Leave it there!

Fontanges. Your ring fell from your hand, my Lord Bishop! How quick you are!

trusted me to pick it up?

Could not you have

Bossuet. Madame is too condescending: had this happened, I should have been overwhelmed with confusion. My hand is shrivelled: the ring has ceased to fit it. A mere accident may draw us into perdition; a mere accident may bestow on us the means of grace. A pebble has moved you more than my words.

Fontanges. It pleases me vastly: I admire rubies. I will ask the King for one exactly like it. This is the time he usually comes from the chase. I am sorry you cannot be present to hear how prettily I shall ask him: but that is impossible, you know; for I shall do it just when I am certain he would give me anything. He said so himself; he said but yesterday

'Such a sweet creature is worth a world":

and no actor on the stage was more like a king than His Majesty was when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on. And yet you know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a monarch; and his eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him, he looks so close at things.

Bossuet. Mademoiselle, such is the duty of a prince who desires to conciliate our regard and love.

Fontanges. Well, I think so too, though I did not like it in him at first. I am sure he will order the ring for me, and I will confess to you with it upon my finger. But first I must be cautious and particular to know of him how much it is his royal will that I should say.

GEORGE, LORD BYRON.
(1788-1824-)

LVIII. THE VISION OF JUDGMENT.

The Vision of Judgment appeared in 1822, and created a great sensation owing to its terrible attack on George III., as well as its ridicule of Southey, of whose long-forgotten Vision of Judgment this is a parody.

I.

SAINT PETER sat by the celestial gate;

His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull,
So little trouble had been given of late:
Not that the place by any means was full,
But since the Gallic era "eighty-eight",
The devils had ta'en a longer, stronger pull,
And "a pull all together", as they say
At sea-which drew most souls another way.

II.

The angels all were singing out of tune,

And hoarse with having little else to do,
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon,

Or curb a runaway young star or two,
Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon

Broke out of bounds o'er the ethereal blue,
Splitting some planet with its playful tail,
As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.

III.

The guardian seraphs had retired on high,

Finding their charges past all care below;
Terrestrial business fill'd nought in the sky

Save the recording angel's black bureau;
Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply
With such rapidity of vice and woe,
That he had stripp'd off both his wings in quills,
And yet was in arrear of human ills.

IV.

His business so augmented of late years,

That he was forced, against his will no doubt
(Just like those cherubs, earthly ministers),
For some resource to turn himself about,
And claim the help of his celestial peers,

To aid him ere he should be quite worn out
By the increased demand for his remarks:

Six angels and twelve saints were named his clerks.

V.

This was a handsome board—at least for heaven;
And yet they had even then enough to do,
So many conquerors' cars were daily driven,
So many kingdoms fitted up anew;
Each day, too, slew its thousands six or seven,
Till at the crowning carnage, Waterloo,

They threw their pens down in divine disgust,
The page was so besmear'd with blood and dust.

VI.

This by the way; 't is not mine to record

very

devil

What angels shrink from: even the On this occasion his own work abhorr'd, So surfeited with the infernal revel: Though he himself had sharpen'd every sword, It almost quench'd his innate thirst of evil. (Here Satan's sole good work deserves insertion— 'T is that he has both generals in reversion.)

VII.

Let's skip a few short years of hollow peace,
Which peopled earth no better, hell as wont,
And heaven none-they form the tyrant's lease,

With nothing but new names subscribed upon 't:

'T will one day finish: meantime they increase,

"With seven heads and ten horns", and all in front, Like Saint John's foretold beast; but ours are born Less formidable in the head than horn.

VIII.

In the first year of freedom's second dawn
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun:
A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!
He died-but left his subjects still behind,
One half as mad-and t' other no less blind.

IX.

He died! his death made no great stir on earth:
His burial made some pomp: there was profusion
Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great dearth

Of aught but tears-save those shed by collusion.
For these things may be bought at their true worth;
Of elegy there was the due infusion-

Bought also; and the torches, cloaks, and banners,
Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners,

X.

Form'd a sepulchral melodrame. Of all

The fools who flock'd to swell or see the show, Who cared about the corpse? The funeral

Made the attraction, and the black the woe, There throbb'd not there a thought which pierced the pall; And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,

It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold

The rottenness of eighty years in gold.