very hard worker, both as a lawyer and as an author. He has published biographies of the Lord Chancellors of England and of the Chief Justices of the same country.

LORD ELLENBOROUGH, Chief Justice of the English court of King's Bench, was born in 1750, and died in 1818.

OVID was a Roman poet who lived in the time of the Emperor Augustus. His Latin name was Publius Ovidius Naso. Boys now study some of his works as a part of their classical education. He died A. D. 18.

LORD MACAULAY. See Note on Selection LXXV., p. 349.

JAMES ANTONY FROUDE, an English historian, was born in 1818. His "History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth" is a very able and original work. He makes Henry VIII.a much better man than he is generally considered to be.

CHAT MOSS is a morass in Lancashire, England, over which George Stephenson, the celebrated engineer, succeeded in carrying the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, when every other engineer declared the feat impossible. Mr. Stephenson was born in 1781, and died in 1848. In early life, he was very poor; and at eighteen, he did not know his letters. The railway over Chat Moss was built between 1826 and 1830, and was the first on which locomotives were ever used.

SIR CHARLES JAMES NAPIER, an English General, was born in 1782, and died in 1853. His greatest military successes were achieved in the conquest of Sinde, in Western Hindostan, in 1843.

JOHN FOSTER, an English essayist, was born in 1770, and died in 1843. He was an earnest and powerful writer, and labored by his works to improve the condition of the common people in England.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, an English poet and philosopher, was born in 1772, and died in 1834 He was a profound thinker and a poet of great imaginative power; but his indolence and want of will prevented him from finishing many of the literary enterprises which he undertook. Christabel, a poem, was one of his finest productions, but was never finished.

CHARLES KINGSLEY, an English clergyman and author, was born in 1819. He is an energetic and voluminous writer, possessing a vivid imagination and a powerful and philosophical reach of thought. In all social discussions his sympathies are strongly on the side of the common people.

He was

ARISTOTLE was a philosopher of ancient Greece. born in Macedonia in 384 B. C. He was a disciple of Plato, but differed from his master in devoting himself to the study of the natural world and of practical affairs, rather than to that of pure

idealities.

He wrote books or logic, natural history, politics, and

other topics. Many of these are studied to this day.

SELECTION XCVI.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. See Note on Selection LXXIV., page 347.

SELECTION XCVIII.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, an English poet, was born in 1809, and died in 1861. She was educated in a rigorous and severe manner, and began to write early in life. Her poetry is highly imaginative, and possesses great power and energy. Aurora Leigh is, by most persons, considered her highest effort. She combines in a wonderful degree the vigor of the masculine intellect and the sensibility of the feminine. She spent many years in Italy, and died there; and some of her poems express the aspirations of the patriots of that country for liberty.

SELECTION XCIX.

THOMAS WOLSEY, an English statesman and prelate, was born in 1471, and died in 1530. He was a man of excellent abilities, but unscrupulous. His skill as a diplomatist was very great, and became known on his being sent to the Continent by Henry VII. But he achieved his greatest success under Henry VIII., whose prime minister he became. No other English subject was ever so distinguished for his wealth and magnificence. But on the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn, who was Wolsey's enemy, he soon fell into disgrace, and finally died of a broken heart.

THOMAS CROMWELL, a friend of Wolsey, and, after some time, his successor in the favor of Henry VIII., was born about the year 1500, and died in 1540. For a few years he wielded a mighty power in England, and used it for the overthrow of the Catholic influence in that country. His measures have shaped the permanent policy of the government. But after about eight years of prosperity he fell under the displeasure of the king and was beheaded.

SELECTION CI.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, an American essayist and novelist, was born in 1804, and died in 1864. He struggled for a long time in poverty and obscurity, but his later years were spent in the serene enjoyment of affluence and an extended popularity as a writer. Most of his stories have a weird and ghostly character; and yet, mingled with this, are constant indications of the most genial and kindly nature. Mr. Hawthorne, in the course of his

life, held several offices under the U. S. Government. Among these the most important and lucrative was the consulate to Liverpool, which he filled from 1853 to 1857.

JOHN ENDICOTT, Governor of Massachusetts, was born in England in 1589, and died in Boston in 1665. He was an energetic and sincere, but somewhat bigoted man, and devoted himself with much zeal to the good of the colony.

FRANCIS HIGGINSON, an English clergyman, was born in England in 1587, and died in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1630. He was rector of a parish in Leicestershire, England, but was silenced on account of his nonconformity, or want of agreement with the established church. He was the first preacher, or "teacher," of the church established in Salem.

SELECTION CIV.

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, an American artist and poet, was born in 1822. He has resided in Cincinnati, in Philadelphia, and in Florence in Italy. He has written some very meritorious pieces on subjects relating to the civil war of 1861-5, the most spirited and popular of which is Sheridan's Ride.

SELECTION CVI.

ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC, Queen of Spain, was born in 1451, and died in 1504. She was a vigorous, earnest, pure-minded, sagacious, and brave woman. Spain, when she came to the throne of Castile, was broken into a large number of small states; at her death it was one compact and powerful kingdom. She was the patron of Columbus, and but for her zeal in his behalf, he would never have received the help of the Spanish government in his discovery of the New World. She gave her support to two measures, alike impolitic and inhuman,—the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and the establishment of the Inquisition; but almost every act of her administration was dictated by humanity, and marked by the highest wisdom. The Inquisition is an arbitrary court for trying and punishing heretics.

GRANADA was a Moorish Kingdom, in the southern part of the Spanish Peninsula. Its chief city, Granada, was taken in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella, and the kingdom became a part of the Spanish monarchy.

ALHAMBRA is a suburb of Granada, containing the remains of an exceedingly beautiful Moorish palace, whose architecture, of a peculiarly light, delicate, and graceful style, is the admiration of all cultivated travelers.

CASTILE was one of the mediæval kingdoms of Spain, and

was united with Aragon by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was situated in the central part of the Peninsula, and was divided into Old Castile and New Castile. The former was the more northerly.

JOANNA was a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the wife of Philip, Archduke of Austria. She became insane, and her son, Charles, afterwards Charles V., Emperor of Germany, succeeded to the Spanish throne in 1516, at the age of sixteen.

FRANCISCO XIMENES (ZIME NEZ), a Spanish statesman and prelate, was born in 1436, and died in 1517. He was a man of great vigor and power, and, on the whole, eminently successful as a practical statesman. He reformed the manners and lives of the Spanish clergy. He founded universities which by his wise energy he filled with students, and to which he imparted an efficiency that other institutions had been able to acquire only by centuries of effort. All his noble designs were effectually seconded by Queen Isabella.

SELECTION CVII.

PETER MARTYR, an Italian historian, was born in 1455, and died in 1526. He spent many years in Spain, and was employed by both Isabella and Ferdinand. Charles V., their grandson, gave him an important place in the church. He wrote accurate accounts of the events that occurred during his stay in Spain.

SELECTION CX.

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, the most eminent of English dramatists, was born in 1564, and died in 1616. He was educated in a country school, and his acquirements were limited. At about twenty-five years of age, he went to London, and joined himself to a theater as a subordinate. But his talents were not hidden. It was found that he had the power of remodeling old plays so as to give them a new power, and the result was a large demand for his labors. And his reputation has never waned; but on the contrary has grown bright with every century since his death. His works are eminently worthy of careful study.

NORTHAMPTON is the shire-town of Northampton county in England. During the reigns of the earlier Plantagenets, parliaments were often held here, and the kings abode in the castle.

ARTHUR, Duke of Brittany, was a prince of the royal family of England, though living in France. He was the true heir to the English throne, and his usurping uncle King John, wished on that account to put him to death This, it is usually supposed, was accomplished by John's own hand, who is said to have thrown the young prince into the Seine, in the night.