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When he was passing through the country men and women would come three or four leagues to see him. "This good king," they said, "maintains justice and lets us live in peace. He has abolished the pillaging of the soldiery, and is better than any other king in existence. Pray God give him prosperous and long life." When the States-General assembled in 1506, —

his character, which rendered him one of | boise, Tours, and everywhere else, men and the most popular and best-beloved mon-women were seen going barefooted to the archs of his nation, and which earned for churches and holy places to pray the divine him the title of "Father of his People." clemency for the restoration of health and This king, so evil and harsh abroad, was a fear to lose, as if he had been each one's convalescence to him they had such a great just and gentle ruler at home. Upon coming to the throne he had reduced all the imposts which pressed hardly upon the people, and never throughout the long and costly wars which he waged did he increase their burdens; neither did he contract any debts, but by the strictest attention to economy contrived to discharge all expenses out of the funds he possessed, or at the worst sequestered some portion of the crown lands to meet extraordinary demands. A measure even more beneficial was the rigid discipline he caused to be enforced upon the soldiery, who had in previous reigns pillaged their own country-people with as little remorse as they did the foe; by paying the troops regularly, and mercilessly punishing every such act of violence committed by them, he entirely suppressed these abuses. He also made great reforms in the administration of justice, taking it entirely out of the hands of the men of the sword, and entrusting it solely to men of letters versed in the law. He would frequently repair to the palais unattended, and seat himself beside the judges to hear the causes. He created the Parlement of Rouen and Aix, and abolished sanctuaries; under his equitable rule commerce, agriculture, and every kind of industry largely increased, and, as a natural sequence, the national wealth.

He was most tolerant in all things, even when they affected his own person and dignity:

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There was so much liberty among French [says a contemporary chronicler] that the comedians represented the king upon the stage, sick and pale with his head wrapped up, crying loudly for drink, but refusing all drink save potable gold; and Louis, far from being angry or punishing them, laughed heartily and praised the liberty of the people.

"I prefer to see my courtiers laugh at my avarice, than my people weep at my extravagance," he said. When in 1504 he lay at the point of death, for his health during some years was very feeble, St. Gelais, a contemporary historian, tells us :

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It would be an incredible thing to write or recount the laments and regrets which were made throughout the kingdom of France for the illness of the good king. At Blois, Am

*The strict economy which he was obliged to practise caused the courtiers to accuse him of avarice.

It resembled [to quote the same chronicler] none that had been previously seen in France, for instead of, as in all others, the orator being charged to carry to the king the griefs and sufferings of the nation, he was charged only to draw a picture of the benefits he had conferred, and to pay him in the name of the nation a just tribute of praises. It was at this assembly that Bricot, the canon of Nôtreconsent the title of "Father of his People." Dame, first bestowed upon him by universal

Contemporary historians devoted their attention so exclusively to the Italian wars that they sadly neglected the chronicles of their own country; thus our knowledge of this reign is singularly meagre. Still we obtain such occasional glimpses of the social relations of the king as will suffice us to form a tolerably accurate picture o the whole. Louis and his queen seem to have lived together in an almost bourgeois domesticity. There was a strong attachment, at least upon his part, and he seems to have given up all the wild courses for which he had been notorious as Duc d'Or

léans, and yielded to her arrogant disposition with an uxoriousness not to be commended. Her vindictive temper frequently compelled him to commit acts of injustice, as the following anecdote will show. Her predilections were all with the house of Austria, and her great desire was to unite her daughter Claude to the grandson of Maximilian, afterwards Charles the Fifth. Such a contract was entered into by the treaty of Blois, but, happily for France and Europe, Louis afterwards annulled an obligation which would have reduced his rial crown and given to Charles the empire country to a mere appanage of the Impeof the world. The queen especially hated the young Count d'Angoulême, the presumptive heir to the throne, regarding him as the obstacle which stood between her daughter and the succession. During the

king's great illness at Blois, to which reference has been already made, although she tended him with a great show of affection, the chroniclers tell us that she made every preparation to assert her independence as duchess of Brittany in the event of his death, and that all her valuables were already stored away in ships upon the Loire ready to be conveyed, together with her daughter, to Nantes. The Maréchal de Gié, who had the care of D'Angoulême's person, fearing she might at tempt to get possession of his charge, refused passage to these vessels, and even went so far as to seize upon them. All this was done purely from a sense of the duty he owed his sovereign and his country. Nevertheless, the queen, who was furious against him, so harassed the king that she compelled him to bring the maréchal to trial and strip him of all his offices. After her death this daughter was married to D'Angoulême.

they had any daughters, and what they were, and demanded them of them." She had also her own guard of a hundred gentlemen of Brittany, who always attended her wherever she went.

Louis the Twelfth had a truer and more earnest taste for literature than his successor, who has gained the title of "the Father of Letters. He brought with him from Italy some of its most distinguished savans to teach Latin and Greek in the French universities, treating them with great liberality and distinguished favor. He also enriched the royal library with many valuable works. His own favorite author was Cicero; his model, Trajan. Many of the authors who are the glory of the reign of Francis began to write under his; Rabelais was over thirty years old when Louis died; Jean Marot was the poet of his time; Clement Marot was born; Commines, St. Gelais, De Seyssel, wrote their histories; les Enfans sans Souci had developed the moralities and mysteries into a rude Aristophanic drama, and laid the foundations of modern satire and comedy.

It is quite refreshing to pause for a time upon this picture of simple court life, almost realizing the old fairy-tales of kings and queens, which stands so uniquely between the savage turmoils of medievalism and the licentious magnificence of Francis the First. A happy and contented people loving their sovereign, a king who is as faithful to his spouse as though he were a vulgar citizen, a court handsome and pleasant without luxurious extravagance. Why it reads like a story of the golden age. And yet this monarch, so estimable at home, was carrying fire, sword, and famine, through an unoffending land, and countenancing atrocities that would have disgraced savages.

The great influence which Anne of Brittany wielded over the king was the commencement of a new era in the history of French women. Under the régime of chivalry and feudalism their position, spite of the adoration and servility they won from poets and chevaliers, was a degraded one; in girlhood woman was a toy, in maturity she sank into a mere drone, who seldom stirred beyond the gloomy walls of her husband's castle, her only occupation the superintendence of the household, her amusements spinning or working tapestry, while her husband was either hunting or fighting. War being the all-absorbing occupation of man, there could never be, in any true sense, a bond of union between husband and wife. The position of royal pairs was precisely similar. The queens. had their own apartments in the palace, where certain ladies attended them; but they were really apart from State life, save Weakly as was his health, and freat times of feasts and fêtes, the monarch quently as his life had been despaired of, being too much occupied with wars and he yet survived his haughty queen, and councils of war, and disputes with his sub- took another, Henry of England's sister jects, to give any time to their society. Mary, then only fifteen years of age. Again, the wives and daughters of the This marriage brought about a great nobles were kept at home, and seldom change at court, for the young queen was stirred beyond their husband's or father's fond of gaiety and magnificence, and bandomains. It was Anne of Brittany who quets and fêtes were given to please her; first brought the influence of women to and "the good king," we are told in the bear upon court life; it was she who insti- " History of Bayard," "for the sake of his tuted the order of dames and filles d'hon-wife, totally altered his manner of living. neur, and who, Brantôme tells us, first be- Whereas before he used to dine at eight gan to train the "grande cour des dames; o'clock in the morning, he now did not for," he adds, "she had a very great suite dine till noon. He had also been accusof ladies and maids, and never refused tomed to go to bed at six in the evening, any, but always inquired of the gentlemen, and he now frequently sat up till midnight." their fathers, who were at court, whether | Even during the marriage festivities he

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was carried about on a litter, and these | The foreign sojourner in distant China, completed the dissolution of a frame al- with half the globe between him and his ready worn out by disease. Three months Western home, hails with delight the adafter her espousals the young queen was a vent of a more sober season. Having widow. He died while meditating a new passed over vast and stormy seas, he has descent upon Italy; the past had not changed not only climate, but his mind taught him wisdom any more than did at least in this. The stifling heat and the failures of his two predecessors prove heavy rains of July and August. have a lesson to the next king. The follies of passed away. The fiery fierceness of the others never do, for each man considers summer sun is no longer to be dreaded, himself to be free from the faults of his nor the sweltering temperature of a cloudy fellows, and so much wiser than they, afternoon. Cool mornings and delicious that the story of their errors can never evenings, with noons not too sultry, make be applicable to himself. up the early autumn day. A delicate. azure, broken by the white of fleecy clouds, replaces the brazen ardor of the summer sky, or the heavy fall of cloud and mist of the rainy months. The soft moisture of the oppressive south-west wind is dispelled, and the reviving breezes of the north-east monsoon blow gaily.

Very little can be added to what has been already said in the course of this article upon the character of this king. It was not marked by any grand or statesmanlike qualities; but, even after making all allowance for acts committed by his representatives during his absence from the seat of war, and for the difficulty of restraining the brutal ferocity of the mercenaries of that age, it was disfigured by much perfidy and cruelty. On the other hand he was undoubtedly one of the best and gentlest kings that ever ruled over France; his reign was wholly free from bloody executions and internal dissensions; only once, and that during his last years, did a foreign invader set foot in his kingdom; next to his ambition, the happiness of his subjects was the great object of his life, and under his rule they enjoyed a freedom and a prosperity which they had never before experienced, and which well entitled him to the epithet with which his name is coupled in history FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE."

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In the foreign settlements life enters upon a new phase. It is as though limbs were stretched and exercised after an interval of enforced repose. The Western stranger bethinks him of the sports and pastimes of his countrymen in their own land. The stable regains its interest; the race-committee is elected; the walls of the club-house display notices of the "autumn meeting," and lists of the eventsof the approaching race-week. On roads, and on open ground near the settlement, Chinese grooms- quaint objects, clad, but for the incongruous exception of the strange head-gear of their nation, in strict equestrian costume- -are Countered leading out to exercise the "entries" for these events; diminutive steeds as carefully enveloped in the regu

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Two months afterwards she married her former lation clothing, as though just arrived lover, Charles Brandon, Earl of Suffolk.

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from Eltham or the Wolds. But there are no such costly imports into China now. The golden age of foreign commerce, when the trade lay in the hands of a few princely firms, has gone, and with it many extravagances. The senior and junior messes at the Hongs, with their bounteous table and ever-flowing wines, have disappeared, and no cracks come from Europe to dispute the prizes of the Chinese turf with the native princes.

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IN Western lands the most welcome and most joyous of the seasons is the spring. In all ages poets have hymned its arrival, or invoked its approach. From sunny Italy to the chill and brumal north, As autumn comes on, sportsmen look they have sung the grateful change to their guns. The flight of birds moving wrought upon the face of nature by the southward is noted at seaports farther Favonian breeze, and the ethereal mild- north, and the house-boat-most commoness of gentle spring. Its smiling sun- dious of river conveyances — is prepared. light and fertilizing showers, its promise On all sides there are symptoms of a of a warmer and more productive time, cooler air. The punkah is unhooked have excited the imaginations of many from the ceiling, the punkah-coolie is paid more than poets, and have enriched the off, and fireplaces and stoves are set in speech of nations with pleasing metaphors. I order. Even the mosquito-curtain disap

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pears from the bedroom, this last being on either side are low and uniformly flat. perhaps the most welcome of all the signs The entrance to the river from the wide of autumn. Summer migrants from embouchure of the great Yang-tze recalls Shang-bai to cooler and more salubrious the lower Scheldt. Indeed, not in the spots -to the heights and baths of Ha- configuration of the ground alone can a kone, and the sea-bathing of Chefoo re- resemblance be traced to the Low Counturn home. Passengers begin to arrive | tries of western Europe. A fleet of highfrom Europe, and homeward-bound steam- sterned craft, such as Vandervelde might ers carry but few away. Foreign admirals have painted, is working up the river with come in their flag-ships, mustering their a favorable tide. Clumps of green popsquadrons in the Woo-Sung River, and lars break the sky-line, and diversify the announce their arrival by thundering sa- dead level of the scene. Beneath their lutes. The anchorage is filled with steam-shade here and there come down to slake ers and stately clipper ships. The streets their thirst in the river, groups of cattle, of the foreign settlement are crowded recalling the canvas of Cuyp. Berghem with a busy population, foreign and or Hobbema might have painted such Chinese officers, merchants, sailors on landscapes as those on which the eye can shore from the ships, braves from the rest on either side. camp outside the south gate of the native The prospect of a stay of some weeks at city, Chinese coolies and servants, jostle Woo-Sung gave promise to the writer of but each other in a living stream as wide as a dreary time. Cut off by the twelve miles that which flows through Cheapside at of steam-the regular highway from the noon. On the Bund the wide esplanade pleasures and conveniences of Shang-hai, that embanks the river pass and repass, Occidentals, doomed to loiter below the in endless ebb and flow, handsome equi- bar, might well be forgiven their grumpages, in which ride fashionably-dressed blings at the dulness of the place. The European ladies, jin-rik-shas, or man-shooting-season had not yet begun, or at power carriages, and the high-wheeled any rate had hardly begun in these thickly barrows, the hackney-coach of eastern populated plains. That unfailing reChina. The Bund itself is a scene worth source of the sailor on shore-riding on notice: a few years ago it was a foul, un- horseback was denied in this roadless wholesome marsh, scoured with runlets district. A whirling current and muddy made by the receding tide. Now it rivals fore-shores precluded all hope of that most the of Paris. Well-kept and pret- cheerful of naval recreations quays - hauling tily laid-out gardens adorn its widest part. the seine. Kicking a football about the It is edged with bungalows embowered in narrow strip of meadow that intervened shrubs and flowers, spacious consular res- between the embankment and the stream, idences, and imposing buildings, the prem- or attempting sphairistiké on a polygonal ises of banks and great public companies, scrap of rugged lawn, would inevitably thronged with Western clerks and native grow tiresome when the ball in one case shroffs and compradores. The styles of was being perpetually kicked into the architecture are various some stately, river, or in the other being knocked into a some fantastic. The prevailing style in- fetid drain. Resignation came at length, clines to the classical, and is, according to and was in some sort a solace; and a the local jest, not Doric, but compradoric. conscientious attempt was make to take But the whole is not without a certain advantage of whatsoever was interesting grandeur and an air of wealth. and novel in the surrounding scene.

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Twelve miles lower down the Wong-pu - the branch of the Yang-tze which flows past Shang-hai the stream is crossed by a bar of mud and silt, which precludes the approach to the city of heavy vessels. Therefore the huge ironclads and great frigates of the Western admirals lie moored below it, off the village of WooSung. Their presence imparts liveliness to a usually dreary spot. Abreast of where they lie stand but three houses of European build, of which one is deserted; another is the office of the Great Northern Telegraph Company, the pioneer of telegraph enterprise in China. The banks

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To some at least the attempt turned out to be by no means unsuccessful. There was an air of strangeness about all that was seen and heard about place, people, and occupations which long retained its freshness and the pleasure-giving faculty of a new sensation. There was thing almost startling in the obtrusive contact daily, nay, hourly, observed between ancient habits and the most recent phases of modern civilization. A mile farther down the stream, the brilliant flame of a Western lighthouse of the newest pattern gleamed throughout the night. A long line of telegraph posts stood

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there were numerous smooth but narrow paths on which pedestrians could walk easily and comfortably in Indian file. The top of the embankment of the river offered a convenient, but rather roundabout way to Shang-hai. The path which ran along its summit for some seven or eight English miles met, six miles below the city, the broad and well-kept esplanade, known as the Point road, one of several handsome drives, constructed by the municipal council of the foreign settlement. A little farther inland was a. broad strip of uncultivated land reserved, and in some shape actually put in order, for what will be the first railway in China. But that this is crossed in several places by broad canals, it would soon become the high-road between Woo-Sung and the city. As it was, our road the usual one

gauntly up from the level fields. An end- | river, stretched the wide level of a vast less succession of steamers provided alluvial plain, which in less than a thouwith the latest improvements in construc- sand years has grown up between the tion and equipment-passed and repassed, city of Shang-hai and the sea. Roads bound up or down the Yang-tze, or to or there were none, but between the fields from the coast-ports north and south of the great river. Whilst within a stone's throw of the water's edge slumbered, as it were, in perfect unconsciousness of all these symptoms of progress, the China of Confucius. On the water the vivacity of was heightened by depth of contrast. Huge river steamers, such as ascend the St. Lawrence or crowd the leveés at New Orleans, were constantly going to, or returning from, Hankow, six hundred miles above the mouth of the great stream, their decks crowded with natives of the middle kingdom, and their names inscribed in Chinese characters on their paddle-boxes. A whole fleet of trading vessels of recent European type plied between Shang-hai and the other ports, bearing the dragon flag, which it has become a convention of the sea to recognize as the ensign of China. Trim ships of the Peninsular and Oriental Company and the statelier vessels of the Messageries Maritimes threaded their way amidst fleets of junks of a form so ancient as to have been familiar in these waters before the alluvial flats on either hand were laid down. The stillness of the early autumn morning air was perpetually broken by a The whole surface of the plain was covnoisy concert of sailors' voices. The ered with the autumn cotton-crop still deep song of the Western leadsmen call-standing. The economic husbandry of ing the soundings, and the sharp orders of China lays hold of every bit of ground, the European pilots, mingled with the and not a single rood was lying fallow. In chant of the Chinese mariners, hoisting the spring this vast extent of cotton-covthe sails of mat, or celebrating their re- ered ground, now a snowy expanse of turn from the open sea by the loud fleecy bolls, starred here and there with crackle of fireworks exploded in sacrifice bright sulphur-yellow blossom, had been to the river-god. Smart pilot-schooners, one huge field of waving corn. During trim and saucy as Solent yachts, skimmed the rainy months, such is the fertility of lightly over the smooth surface of the the rich alluvial soil, it had produced its stream. Whilst the lumbering junks of third crop — namely, rice. There was an Amoy and Ningpo, with their multiplicity air of quiet, of peace and plenty, pervadof masts and towering poops, dropped ing the whole district. Its denizens slowly down to run home again before the seemed neither to heed nor to require the monsoon, which, with Oriental patience, products of other lands. Villages there had been awaited for nigh six months. were none to be seen. The inhabitants dwelt in single homesteads, or in snug cottages, collected in little groups, like tiny hamlets, of three or four. These pleasantly diversified the landscape. Clumps of trees from between which peered out the quaint, curved roof, so marked a feat

Once landed on the river-shore, the stranger left behind him almost all trace of Western intrusion, save indeed when an occasional backward glance revealed above the trees the tall masts of foreign vessels, or a black cloud of coal-smoke from the funnel of a steamer. The landscape was as strange and foreign as were the inhabitants and their customs. For many miles to the right and to the left, to the front and on the other side of the

wound in its greater length between fields and farmhouses, through villages, and past temples in the most perplexing meanderings. Canals and streams had to be crossed on bridges of long slabs of stone, sometimes double, but often only single, and so narrow as to make crossing a somewhat precarious undertaking.

"The custom-house officer was in A.D. 10 ordered to remove to Shang-hai, which then became the seaport, and rapidly increased in importance.". "Shang-hai Considered Socially." By H. Lang. zud edit., p. 5. Shanghai, 1875.

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