EUCLID.

[The Greek geometer of Alexandria; taught mathematics in the reign of the first Ptolemy, 323 B.C.]

There is no royal road to geometry.

When asked by Ptolemy if the science could not be mastered by some easier method than the ordinary one. Dr. Johnson said, "I hate by-roads in education."- BOSWELL: Life, 1775. It was a maxim of Dr. Parr's, "Greek and Latin are consecrated temples which are only to be entered through the vestibule." Plato wrote over the entrance to the Academy, "He who is ignorant of geometry may remain outside;" which led Goethe to call it "the door of philosophy."

EMPRESS EUGÉNIE.

[Eugénie Marie de Montijo; born at Grenada, Spain, May 5, 1826; educated in France and England; attracted, by her beauty and graces, the attention of Napoleon III., to whom she was married January, 1852; after the fall of the empire resided in England.]

No, sire: it is French which has taught me love (c'est le Français qui m'appris l'amour).

When asked by Louis Napoleon, when Prince President, if love had taught her French.

She made another graceful answer when visiting the hospital of Amiens during the cholera, in 1866: "It is our manner of going under fire.”

Seeing that the victory of Prussia over Austria in 1866 threatened to destroy the prestige of France, the Empress exclaimed, pointing to the Prince Imperial, "That child will never reign, if nothing be done to efface Sadowa." She is therefore supposed to have urged the declaration of war by France against Prussia in 1870, and even to have said of it, "This is my war” (C'est ma guerre à moi). When the early victories of the German army made it probable that Italy would seize the opportunity to enter Rome, and deprive the Pope of his temporal power, the exclamation is attributed to the Empress, "Better the Prussians in Paris, than the Italians in Rome!"

That the French were deceived in supposing their army ready

for a campaign, is beyond a doubt. No one rests under a greater responsibility for this deception, than Marshal Leboeuf, who declared, when asked in June, 1870, of the state of the French forces, "We are so well equipped, that, if the war were to last ten years, we should not have to buy the button of a soldier's gaiter" (Nous sommes tellement prêts, que si la guerre durait dix ans, nous n'aurions pas même à acheter un bouton de guêtre). Émile Ollivier, the pseudo-liberal prime minister of the decadence of the second empire, on the announcement of the declaration of war, said, July 15, " From this day a great responsibility weighs upon my colleagues and myself: we accept it with a light heart" (De ce jour commence pour mes collègues et pour moi une grande responsibilité: nous l'acceptons d'un cœur léger).

FAVORINUS.

[A philosopher and sophist in the reign of Hadrian; a native of Arles, in Gaul; resided in Rome, Greece, and Asia Minor, and obtained high distinction.]

It is ill arguing with the master of thirty legions. Yielding to Hadrian in a rhetorical argument, when he probably remained of his original opinion.

"He that complies against his will
Is of the same opinion still."

Hudibras, III. 3, 547.

Selden expressed a similar thought during the Civil War: 'Tis not seasonable to call a man traitor that has an army at his heels."-Table-Talk (Traitor).

JULES FAVRE.

[A French politician and advocate; born at Lyons, 1809; secretarygeneral of the ministry of the interior of the republic of 1848; member of the Constituent Assembly of that year, and of the Corps Législatif, 1858 and 1869, where he opposed the second empire; member of the Academy; of the Committee of National Defence, 1870, where he held the department of foreign affairs, and arranged with Bismarck the capitulation of Paris; member of the National Assembly, and senator; died 1880.]

We will not cede either an inch of our territory or a stone of our fortresses (Nous ne céderons ni un pouce de terrain ni une pierre de nos forteresses).

From a circular to the diplomatic representatives of France abroad, Sept. 6, 1870, immediately after the battle of Sedan and the fall of the empire.

FÉNELON.

[François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, a French prelate and author; born in Perigord, Aug. 6, 1651; preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy, 1689; admitted to the Academy, 1693; archbishop of Cambrai, 1695; denounced by Bossuet for sharing the mystical sentiments of Mme. Guyon, and dismissed from court; wrote "Télémaque," 1699; died Jan. 7, 1715.]

I am more of a Frenchman than a Fénelon, and more a man than a Frenchman.

He also said, "I love my country better than my family, but I love human nature better than my country." This is an echo of the reply of Chremes when asked if he had time enough to interest himself in the affairs of others:

"Homo sum; humani nihil ame alienum puto."

(I am a man, and nothing which relates to man can be a matter of unconcern to me.)- TERENCE: Heauton. I. 1.

Socrates said, "I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world." He was the first cosmopolitan, though he had never been out of Attica.

When Rousseau was walking one day on Mont Valérien, near Paris, with Bernardin de St. Pierre, the author of "Paul et Virginie," and expressed his pleasure at the chanting of the monks established there, Bernardin said, "If Fénelon were alive you would be a Catholic to-morrow."-"Ah!" replied Rousseau with emotion, "if he were alive, I would seek to be his lackey in order to deserve to become his valet-de-chambre" (s'il vivait, je chercherais à être son laquais, pour mériter d'être son valet-de-chambre). Voltaire said, "I do not know whether Fénelon be a heretic for saying that God should be loved for himself, but I know that Fénelon should be."

Fénelon showed his liberal feelings by his manner of speaking of his opponents: "We Catholics go too slow, and our brothers the Protestants go too fast." He could not convert heretics by a dragonnade; and on his return from an unsuccessful attempt to bring over by peaceful arguments the Protestants of Poitou, Harlay, the Archbishop of Paris, said to him, "It seems, M. l'abbé, that you wish to be forgotten, and you shall be " (vous roulez être oublié, vous le serez). It was a sentence of banish

ment.

When Louis XIV. asked Bossuet what he would do if his outcry against Fénelon's "Maximes des Saints were not supported by the king, he replied, "Sire, my cry would be still louder" (Je hausserais la voix davantage). Of this contest between Bossuet and the supporters of views considered Jansenist and heretical, which finally drove Fénelon into the obscurity of his bishopric of Cambrai, Pope Innocent XII. said that the latter "sinned by excessive love of God, Bossuet by insufficient love of his neighbor;" and of Fénelon's book, that its maxims had less scandalized him than the conduct of his adversaries. Bossuet said of Fénelon at this time, "That man made me pass many a wakeful night,”—a remark also attributed to Philip IV. of Spain, of Turenne.

Two sayings of Fénelon illustrate his views of royal interference in matters of religion. He advised the Pretender, son of James II. of England, to practise religious toleration in case he came to the throne. "No human power," he declared, “can force the intrenchments of the human mind: compulsion never persuades, it only makes hypocrites;" and again to the same prince, "When kings interfere in matters of religion, they enslave instead of protecting it."

A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick.

Letter upon eloquence.

St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) has three maxims on the same subject:

"The test of the worth of a preacher is when his congregation go away saying, not' What a beautiful sermon !' but I will do something.""

"The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit."

"When a sermon is too long, the end makes one forget the middle, and the middle the beginning."

Our best friends are the source of our greatest sorrow and bitterness (Les vrais amis font toute la douleur et toute l'amertume de la vie).

Letter to M. Destouches on hearing of the death of the Duc de Beauvilliers, Aug. 13, 1714.

JULES FERRY.

[A French statesman; born at St. Dié, April 5, 1832; admitted to the bar of Paris; elected to the Corps Législatif, 1863, and opposed the second empire; member of the government of National Defence, 1870, and administered the Department of the Seine; member of the Assembly; minister of public instruction, 1879 and 1882; prime minister, 1880-81.]

Ni révision, ni division.

An expression first used in a speech at Epinal as the motto of the administration or moderate wing of the republican party in the legislative elections of 1881, neither a revision of the constitution, nor a division of the party. The result of the elections, although favorable to the republicans, did not secure a majority to the Ferry cabinet, which resigned in November of that year.

A similarly alliterative expression may be found in the mot d'ordre given by Pope Pius IX. to the Italian clericals: "Nè elettori nè eletti" (Neither electors nor elected); in other words, the supporters of the temporal power of the Pope should not recognize the Italian government after the occupation of Rome in 1870, by voting in the municipal and parliamentary elections, or being candidates for office. The prohibition, so far as municipal elections were concerned, was relaxed in 1881.

FONTENELLE.

[Bernard le Bavier-Fontenelle, a celebrated French author; born at Rouen, Feb. 11, 1657; was a nephew of Corneille; published a "Discourse on the Plurality of Worlds," 1686; member of the Academy; perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, 1699; died January, 1757, just failing to complete his one-hundredth year.]