"Cid," will ever remain on the French stage, a fine monument of his genius. Corneille was indebted to his genius alone for what he became. But Louis XIV., Colbert, Sophocles, and Euripides, all contributed to form Racine. In the knowledge of the passions he left both Greeks and Corneille far behind him: he carried the sweet harmony of poetry, as well as the gracefulness of eloquence, to the highest point they can attain. His "Athalie," the masterpiece of the stage, was represented for the first time in 1702. Those men taught the French nation how to think, how to feel, and how to express themselves.

207. It was the destiny of that age that Molière should be contemporary of Corneille and Racine. It is a received opinion that his comedies surpass the best performances of that kind among the ancients; and Voltaire calls him the best comic poet that ever existed.-Molière was, we may almost say, the legislator of decorum. Boileau came to place himself on a level with these great men: he instructed posterity by his beautiful epistles, and especially by his "Art Poétique."-La Fontaine, much less correct in his style, but unique in his naïveté, and in a graceful turn peculiar to himself, came, with his fables, to rank himself with sublime geniuses. Every one of these great men was known and protected by Louis XIV.

208. Connect now so many glorious actions, such memorable success, states invaded, provinces conquered and retained, fleets victorious, great monuments raised; and, in spite of some lamentable reverses, a descendant of Louis XIV. placed on a foreign throne (Spain). See the crowd of skilful generals, statesmen, and men of genius, succeeding each other without interruption during half a century. Turenne and Condé had protected his infancy; Villars and Vendôme supported his old age; Vauban fortifies his towns; Colbert administers his finances ; Bossuet and Fénélon educate his sons, and his sons' sons. During a long prosperity, he is great by the glory of his subjects; and when fortune abandons

him, when his supports fail, when his race is on the point of becoming extinct, he exhibits the soul of a hero, bears with firmness the weight both of his empire and of losses, and dies, the last of the illustrious men of his reign, as if announcing that the great age had ended. Louis has given his name to his age for ever; and posterity will always say, "The Age of Louis XIV.," as it still does, after two thousand years, "The Age of Augustus."

NEWTON.

209. Isaac Newton was born on Christmas-day, 1642, at Woolsthorpe, a hamlet in the parish of Colsterworth, in Lincolnshire. His education was commenced at the parish school, and at the age of twelve he was sent to Grantham for classical instruction. At first he was idle, but soon rose to the head of the school. The peculiar bent of his mind soon showed itself in his recreations. He was fond of drawing, and sometimes wrote verses; but he chiefly amused himself with mechanical contrivances. Among these was a model of a windmill, turned either by the wind, or by a mouse enclosed in it, which he called the miller; a mechanical carriage moved by the person who sat in it; and a water-clock, which was long used by a family at Grantham. This was not his only method of measuring time: the house at Woolsthorpe, whither he returned at the age of fifteen, still contains dials made by him during his

residence there.

210. The 5th of June, 1660, he was admitted as a sizer into Trinity College, Cambridge. He applied himself eagerly to the study of mathematics, and mastered its difficulties with an ease and rapidity which he was afterwards inclined almost to regret, from an opinion that a closer attention to its elementary parts would have improved the elegance of his own methods of demonstration. In 1664 he became

a scholar of his college, and in 1667 was elected to a fellowship, which he retained beyond the regular time of its expiration in 1675, by a special dispensation authorising him to hold it without taking orders. On quitting Cambridge, Newton retired to Woolsthorpe, where his mind was principally employed upon the system of the world. The theory of Copernicus and the discoveries of Galileo and Kepler had at length furnished the materials from which the true system was to be deduced.

211. Newton made many discoveries of the greatest importance: among others the celebrated Binomial Theorem; the demonstration of a central force; the construction of reflecting telescopes. In January, 1672, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and immediately on his election he communicated to the society the particulars of his theory of light. In 1699 he was elected one of the first foreign associates of the Académie des Sciences at Paris; and in 1703 he was chosen President of the Royal Society, which office he held till his death. Newton's life in London was one of much dignity and comfort. He was courted by the distinguished of all ranks, and particularly by the Princess of Wales, who derived much pleasure from her intercourse both with him and the celebrated Leibnitz. Newton died on the 20th of March, 1727. His sufferings were severe, but his temper was never soured, nor the benevolence of his nature obscured. Indeed, his moral was not less admirable than his intellectual character, and it was guided and supported by that religion which he had studied not from speculative curiosity, but with the serious application of a mind habitually occupied with its duties, and earnestly desirous of its advancement. He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, where there is a monument to his memory, erected by his relations.

WASHINGTON.

212. May the United States for ever bear in grateful and reverential memory the names of the leaders of the generation which conquered their independence, and founded their government! Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Henry, Mason, Greene, Knox, Morris, Pinkney, Clinton, Trumbull, Rutledge. All I cannot name, for at the time when the quarrel began, in every colony, and almost in every county of every colony, there were some already honoured by their fellow-citizens, already tried in the defence of public liberty, influential by their fortune, their talents, or their character; faithful to the pristine virtues, yet adhering to the enlightened principles of modern society; not insensible to the display of modern civilisation, yet fond of simplicity of manners; high in heart, yet in mind modest; at once ambitious and prudent in their desires for their country: men of that singular quality, that they relied much on human nature, without presuming on themselves, and wished for their country far more than their country could confer upon them after their triumph. To them, with the protection of God and the assistance of the people, that triumph was due. Their leader was WASHINGTON.

213. Washington, born in Virginia, on the 22nd of February, 1732, was young, still extremely young, when great expectations were already formed of him. When employed as an officer in the militia, in some expeditions on the western frontier of Virginia, against the French and Indians, he attracted the attention of his superior officers and of his comrades, of the English governor, and the American population. The former wrote to London to recommend him to the notice of the King; the latter, assembled in their churches to invoke the blessing of heaven upon their arms, listened with pride to the eloquence with which Samuel Davies, a celebrated preacher, enlarged upon

the courage of the Virginians. "As a remarkable instance of this," said he, "I may point out to the public that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country."

214. There is another tradition also worthy of notice, which rests on the authority of one of the most intimate friends of Washington from his boyhood to his death, who was with him at the battle of the Monongahela. Fifteen years after that event, they travelled together on an expedition to the western country, with a party of woodmen, for the purpose of exploring wild lands. While near the junction of the great Kenawha and Ohio rivers, a company of Indians came to them with an interpreter, at the head of whom was an aged and venerable chief. This personage made known to them, by the interpreter, that, hearing Colonel Washington was in that region, he had come a long way to visit him, adding, that during the battle of Monongahela, he had singled him out as a conspicuous object, fired his rifle at him many times, and directed his young warriors to do the same; but, to his utter astonishment, none of their balls took effect. He was then persuaded that the youthful hero was under the special guardianship of the Great Spirit, and ceased to fire at him any longer. He was now come to pay homage to the man who was the particular favourite of heaven, and who could never die in battle.

215. Washington was a planter, a man of family and taste, devoted to those interests, habits, and pursuits of agricultural life which constituted the principal vigour of American society. From the age of twenty, Washington considered agriculture as his chief business, and thus his life was spent in the closest sympathy with the prevailing propensities and the good sturdy habits of his country. Journeys, fieldsports, the exploring of remote hunting-grounds, and intercourse, whether friendly or hostile, with the In