himself to person d it from his youth up he was cessors for foLEOPATRA BEFORE CAESAR. But although emperor master of hFrom a painting by Jean Leon Jerome. public and private re, y On the most somn occas no other dress than the roses. which he exercised. He w as " himself to personal danger, he prudently declined to allow a comparison to be instituted between himself and rivals whom he could not hope to equal. Thus necessarily thrown back upon other resources, he trusted to caution and circumspection, first to preserve his own life, and afterward to obtain the splendid prizes which had hitherto been carried off by daring adventure and the good fortune which is so often its attendant. His contest, therefore, with Antoninus and Sextus Pompeius was the contest of cunning with bravery. But from his youth up he was accustomed to overreach not the bold and reckless only, but the most considerate and wily of his contemporaries, such as Cicero and Cleopatra. He succeeded in the end in deluding the Senate and the people of Rome in the establishment of his tyranny; and finally deceived the expectations of the world, and falsified the lessons of the Republican history, in reigning forty years in disguise, and leaving a throne to be claimed without a challenge by his successors for fourteen centuries. But although emperor in name, and in fact absolute master of his people, the manners of the Cæsar, both in public and private life, were those of a simple citizen. On the most solemn occasion he was distinguished by no other dress than the robes and insignia of the offices which he exercised. He was attended by no other guards than those which his consular dignity rendered customary and decent. In his court there was none of the etiquette of modern monarchies to be recognized; and it was only by slow and gradual encroachment that it came to prevail in that of his successors.-History of the Romans Under the Empire. MERLE D'AUBIGNÉ, JEAN HENRI, a Swiss clergyman and ecclesiastical historian, born near Geneva, August 16, 1794; died at Geneva, October 20, 1872. The name of his paternal grandmother was D'Aubigné, and he appended this to his own patronymic. Hence he is not unfrequently spoken of as " Aubigné " or " D'Aubigné.” After studying at Geneva and Berlin, he was ordained in 1817, and for the ensuing six years was pastor of the French Calvinistic Church at Hamburg. In 1823 he removed to Brussels, where he was for seven years pastor of a Protestant congregation. In 1830 he returned to Geneva, accepting the chair of Professor of Ecclesiastical History in a theological institution recently founded in that city, where the remaining years of his life were mainly passed, although he made several visits to Great Britain. Merle d'Aubigné's principal work is the Histoire de la Reformation au XVI Siècle (1835-53), which was soon translated into several languages, and attained a wide estimation, especially in several English versions. This work dwelt mainly upon what may be called "The Lutheran Refor mation;" and he purposed to follow it by a similar work, upon a still larger scale, on "The Calvinistic Reformation." This work was unfinished at his death, although five volumes of it were pub lished at Paris (1852-68) under the title Histoire de la Reformation au Temps de Calvin. The other notable works of Merle d'Aubigné are Le Protecteur, la République d'Angleterre aux Jours de Cromwell (1848); Germany, England, and Scotland, or Recollections of a Swiss Minister (1848); Trois Siècles de Luttes en Ecosse (1850); Le Concile et l'Infaillibilité (1870). THE DOWNFALL OF WOLSEY. Whilst pious Christians were being cast into the prisons of England the great antagonist of the Reformation was disappearing from the stage of the world. The Cardinal, who had been confined at Esher, fallen from the height of his greatness, was seized with panicterror, which men who in their day of power have made a whole people tremble have often felt after their fall. He fancied he saw an assassin behind every door. Last night," he wrote one day to Thomas Cromwell, "I was nearly dead. Ah! if I could, I would go to London, were it even on foot, so much do I want to speak to you. Gain Anne Boleyn's favor by every imaginable means." Consequently Cromwell, a couple of days after his entry into Parliament, hastened off to Esher, and Wolsey, trembling from head to foot, grasped his hand, and told him his fears. "Norfolk, Suffolk, Lady Anne, perhaps, desire his death. Did not Thomas à Becketarchbishop like himself-did not his blood stain the altar-steps?" Cromwell reassured him, and, touched by the old man's fears, he asked Henry VIII., and obtained from him an order for Wolsey's protection. Wolsey's enemies did in fact desire his death; but it was from a decree of the Three Estates, and not from an assassin's dagger, that they demanded it. The House of Lords commissioned Sir Thomas More, Norfolk, Suffolk, and fourteen others of its members, to proceed against the Cardinal-legate on the charge of high-treason. They forgot nothing: the proud formu |