I carry in my heart the death-dirge of the French monarchy.

In taking leave of Dumont, who left France for Switzerland in January, 1791, Mirabeau, then President of the Assembly, said, "I shall die at the stake; and we shall never, perhaps, meet again. That base faction whom I now overawe [the Jacobins] will again be let loose upon the country." Hearing the discharge of cannon during his last illness, he asked, "Have we the funeral of Achilles already?" The sun was shining brightly in at the window. "If that is not God,” he said, "it is at least his cousin german" (Si ce n'est pas là, Dieu, c'est du moins son cousin germain). Calling for pen and paper, he writes his demand for opium, to end his agonies. The doctor shakes his head: "To sleep with" (Dormir), writes the other. The next morning he was dead. - CARLYLE: French Revolution. The theatrical expressions attributed to Mirabeau by Alison ("History of Europe") are not given by Dumont, and are now discredited: "Remove from the bed all that sad apparatus. Instead of these useless precautions, surround me by the perfumes and the flowers of spring; dress my hair with care; let me fall asleep amid the sound of harmonious music."

MOHAMMED.

[Born at Mecca about 570 A.D.; began to preach his doctrines after his fortieth year; fled to Medina, July 16, 622; defended and then propagated his system by the sword; while fitting out a second expedition against Syria, died of a fever in the spring of 632.]

There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.

The watchword of his career. That it was his exclamation on entering the world, is not asserted in the earlier accounts of his life," and is clearly the invention of a later age."

When advised by his uncle to abandon a cause so bitterly opposed by the Koreishites, the powerful tribe to which he belonged, Mohammed replied, "O uncle! I swear that if they put the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left, I will not renounce the career I have entered upon until God gives me success, or I perish."

During a harangue to his followers, he called upon a neighboring mountain to advance, in token of the authority of his words. It remained motionless; and Mohammed exclaimed, "If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain." All the people followed him, and the majestic tone of his voice supplied the place of a miracle.

His last words were: "Yes, I come; among the glorious associates of paradise!"

MOLIÈRE.

[Originally Jean Baptiste Poquelin, a French actor and dramatist; born in Paris, Jan. 15, 1622; adopted the stage, with a change of name, 1644; opened a theatre in Paris under royal patronage, 1658; produced "Les Précieuses Ridicules," 1659; "Tartuffe," 1667; “Le Malade Imaginaire," 1673, in which year he died.]

I recover my property wherever I find it.

A translation of the principle of the civil law, Ubi rem meam invenio, ibi vindico. Molière applied it to the case of the appropriation by his early friend, Cyrano de Bergerac, of a scene which was confidentially communicated to him, and which he incorporated, during Molière's absence in the provinces, in the "Pédant Joué," II. 4. It contains the celebrated question, “Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?" (What the devil was he doing in that galley?) asked of the result of any incautious manœuvre. Molière, on his return to Paris, took possession of his stolen property, in writing "Les Fourberies de Scapin," where Geronte asks several times the question just quoted. To justify his action Molière said, "Je reprends mon bien où je le trouve.” Emerson ("Letters and Social Aims ") refers the mot to Marmontel, and quoting it, "I pounce on what is mine, wherever I find it,' argues in favor of the assimilation by authors of the literary ideas of other people. The word prends (take) has sometimes been used for reprends (recover). Goethe says, "My work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature: it bears the name of Goethe." But Molière, instead of giving a right of conquest of others' property, which would easily become a right of pillage, cried, in effect, "Stop thief!" when he used the expression so singularly transformed by dropping a syllable.

One of Voltaire's literary maxims was, "Originality is nothing but judicious imitation."

We chat together: he gives me his prescriptions; I never follow them, and so I get well.

When asked what use he had of a physician, since he was an habitual valetudinarian, who relied on the temperance of his diet. Being asked by his doctor if he had followed his prescription, "Beau" Nash replied, “If I had, I should have broken my neck; for I threw it out of the second-story window." When Molière had been sick for some days, his servant announced the visit of a physician: "Tell him," answered the dramatist, "that I am ill, and see no one."

Because it is more difficult to rule a wife than a kingdom.

In answer to the question, why in some kingdoms the king was of age at fourteen years, but could not marry until eighteen.

MOLTKE.

[Helmuth, Count von Moltke, a Prussian general and strategist; born in Mecklenburg, 1800; as chief of staff planned the campaign against Austria, 1866, and the operations of the German armies in the war against France, 1870.]

The Prussian schoolmaster won the battle of Sadowa (Der preussische Schulmeister hat die Schlacht bei Sadowa gewonnen).

Moltke made the remark in the session of the German Reichstag of Feb. 16, 1874: “It is said the schoolmaster has won our battles." Lehnert, under-secretary of state, declared in the Prussian House of Delegates, Jan. 25, 1868: "The Prussian school-system has been brought to such perfection that it was admitted on all sides after Sadowa, that not merely the needlegun, but the schools, had won the battle." The expression occurs for the first time, however, in an article by the late Privy Councillor, Peschel, in No. 29 of "Ausland," July 17, 1866, on the "Lesson of the Last Campaign," where the author proposes to prove that "the victory of the Prussians over the Austrians was a victory of the Prussian over the Austrian schoolmaster."

MONTESQUIEU.

[Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu; a French author; born near Bordeaux, Jan. 18, 1689; president of the Parliament of Bordeaux, 1716; admitted to the Academy, 1728; published "The Spirit of Laws," 1748; died in Paris, February, 1755.]

He has too much wit to understand me (Il a trop d'esprit pour m'entendre).

A paradox à la française, said of Voltaire and "The Spirit of Laws" (L'Esprit des Lois), where the pun is upon the word esprit.

When a tedious speaker cried to Montesquieu during a debate, "I will bet my head that you are wrong,"—"I accept it," was the answer: "the smallest trifle has its value among friends."

Being asked on his death-bed if he were conscious of the greatness of God; "Yes, and of the littleness of man," he replied (Oui, et combien les hommes sont petits). — MARTIN: History of France, XV. Bk. 95. Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia, the grandmother of Frederick the Great, once wrote: "Leibnitz talked to me of the infinitely little, mon Dieu! as if I did not know enough of that!"-CARLYLE: Frederick the Great, I. 4. Leibnitz said of his philosophical discussions with her, that "she always wanted to know the why of the why;" and on her deathbed she said she was going to satisfy herself on many points on which Leibnitz could tell her nothing. Luther would have called her eagerness as a pupil dangerous: "That same why has done a great deal of harm. It was the cause of Adam's destruction."

THOMAS MOORE.

[An Irish poet; born in Dublin, 1779; translated the Odes of Anacreon, 1801; visited the United States, 1804; published "Lalla Rookh," 1812; "The Life of Byron," 1830; died 1852.]

Because it shoots from the eyes.

When asked at dinner why love was like a potato. Byron's answer was, "Because it becomes less by pairing."

When told that Byron's friend, Lady Caroline Lamb, had knocked down a page in a fit of passion, Moore remarked,

"Nothing is more natural than for a literary lady to double down a page."

SIR THOMAS MORE.

[An English philosopher and statesman; born in London, 1480; educated at Oxford; elected to Parliament, 1504; wrote "Utopia," 1516; lord chancellor, 1529-32; committed to the Tower for refusing to acknowledge the validity of the king's marriage to Anne Boleyn; beheaded for treason, July 6, 1534.]

If my head would win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go.

Of Henry VIII., at the time of More's highest favor at court. Being appointed on an embassy to Francis I. by Henry, he feared that the French king might order him to be beheaded, if the message did not suit him. "If he does that," said Henry, “I will make every Frenchman in my realm a head shorter.". "But I am afraid," rejoined More, "that none of those heads would fit my shoulders."

On meeting Erasmus for the first time, who said to him, "Aut tu es Morus aut nullus" (You are More or nobody), More replied, "Aut tu es Erasmus aut Diabolus" (You are Erasmus or the Devil."

"To aim at honor in this world," he was wont to say, "is to set a coat-of-arms over a prison-gate."

When a man asked for a long day in which to pay a just debt to a widow, More, then lord chancellor, replied, "Monday next is St. Bartholomew's Day, which is the longest in the year. Pay it on that day, or you shall kiss the Fleet."

A woman, who had a suit at court, presented him with a pair of gloves containing £40. He took the gloves, and returned the money, saying, "I prefer my gloves without lining."

I pray God to spare my friends from a similar clemency.

When told that the king, to show his clemency, had changed the sentence of death pronounced upon More to simple decapitation.

More gave a curious example of his wit at his own execution.