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would have been known as an easy writer in a comic vein of not a high tone, and would have left nothing to after-times. The reading public merely knew that there was such a struggling writer, when the first number of his Vanity Fair came out, in February, 1847; it was completed in seventeen numbers. Indifference gave way to interest; interest was succeeded by enthusiasm: it was an immense success. Becky Sharp and Amelia Osborn, Rawdon Crawley and the marquis of Steyne, were on every tongue. Thackeray was a famous man. Could he live up to his fame? Besides some Christmas books-which were, of course, received with favor-he came out in 1849 with Pendennis, which even increased his reputation. In 1851 he lectured in England and America on "The English Humorists," and was very successful. In 1852 appeared his greatest work-considered from the point of view of literary criticism-Henry Esmond, so thoroughly conceived in the spirit and expressed in the language of Queen Anne's time that the illusion is perfect; the reader joins the crowds and ranks and courts of which he reads, and assists in the historic mise en scène. The Virginians, the sequel to Esmond, does not approach it in excellence. In 1855 appeared his most popular novel, The Newcomes, read with avidity by average people who find Henry Esmond a little too historical, and enjoyed by all. In 1856 he delivered his lectures on "The Four Georges" in America, and afterward in England. Never did royal sin and royal bestiality receive so scathing a punishment; for him there is no royal immunity, and the house of Hanover, reft of crown and sceptre, stands at the touch of his magic wand fit

names and figures for the Newgate Calendar. In 1857 he stood for Oxford, but was defeated by a slight vote.

In 1860 the Cornhill Magazine was started, with Thackeray as editor; it had an immense subscription-list, but it was soon manifest to himself that he was not the person for such an undertaking, and so before long he retired from the post, but continued to write for it. In that appeared his "Roundabout Papers" and "The Adventures of Philip in his Way through the World." In 1862 he took a long lease of a house at Kensington, near the palace, intending to repair it, but, instead, he pulled it down and rebuilt it. It was finishedspacious and beautiful: he might hope for great comfort under the protection of his household gods. He had started a new novel in serial numbers, which had already progressed to four numbers. On Wednesday morning, December 23, 1863, he said he did not feel well. His valet, Charles Sargent, tended him during the day, and left him at eleven at night. The next morning he was found dead in his bed, of an effusion on the brain. He was buried at Kensal Green on the 30th of December, leaving no one behind him to fill his place.

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come to nothing, had turned to Sickingen, and sought to obtain from chivalry what had been refused him by the empire. Sickingen, as the leading man among the feudal nobility, had acted a great part in Germany, but ere long the princes besieged him in his castle of Landstein, and those new arms, cannons and cannon-balls, brought tumbling down those ancient battlements that had been used to blows of a different kind. The taking of Landstein proved the final downfall of chivalry, the decisive victory of artillery over lances and bucklers, the triumph of modern times over the Middle Ages. Thus was the last effort of expiring chivalry to be in favor of the Reformation, the first effort of the new system of warfare to be against it. The mail-clad men who fell beneath the unlooked-for shot, and who lay dead or dying amid the ruins of Landstein, were superseded by a different kind of knights.

All Hütten's hopes fell with the fall of Landstein and of chivalry. Over the dead body of Sickingen he bade farewell to the glorious days which his imagination had fondly pictured to him, and, renouncing all trust in man, he now only looked for a little obscurity and repose. He repaired to the small island of Ufnau, on the Lake of Zurich. It was in that peaceful and obscure retreat, after a life of great agitation, that Ulrich von Hütten, one of the most remarkable geniuses of the sixteenth century, died unnoticed, about the end of August, 1523. 1523. With him chivalry may be said to have breathed its last. He left behind him neither money, books nor furniture, except ing only a pen.

JEAN HENRI MERLE D'AUBIGNÉ.

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THE parrot, which is said to have been

first introduced into Europe by Alexander the Great, is the best known among us of all foreign birds, as it unites the greatest beauty with the greatest docility. But its chief attraction is to be found in its ability to utter articulate sounds-a gift which it possesses in far greater perfection than any other bird. Its voice, also, is more like a man's than any other: the raven is too hoarse and the jay and magpie too shrill to resemble the truth, but the parrot's note is of the true pitch and capable of a variety of modulations. For this it is indebted to the form of its bill, tongue and head: "Its bill, round on the outside and hollow within, has in some degree the capacity of a mouth and allows the tongue to play freely, and the sound, striking against the circular border of the lower mandible, is there modified as on a row of teeth, while the concavity of the upper mandible reflects it like a palate; hence the animal does not utter a whistling sound, but a full articulation. The tongue, which modulates all sounds, is proportionably larger than in man, and would be more voluble were it not harder than flesh and invested with a strong horny membrane." In addition to the talent of speech, the parrot is endowed with a strong memory, and with more sagacity than is the lot of most other birds.

The ease with which this bird is taught to speak and the great number of words. which it is capable of repeating are equally surprising. We are assured by a grave

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writer that one of these was taught to repeat a whole sonnet from Petrarch; and that I may not be wanting in my instance," says a late writer, "I have seen a parrot belonging to a distiller who had suffered pretty largely in his circumstances from an informer who lived opposite him very ridiculously employed. This bird was taught to pronounce the ninth commandment, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,' with a very clear, loud, articulate voice. The bird was generally placed in its cage over against the informer's house, and delighted the whole neighborhood with its persevering exhorta

tions."

Willoughby tells a story of a parrot which is not so dull as those usually brought up when this bird's facility of talking happens to be the subject. A parrot belonging to King Henry VII., who then resided at Westminster, in his palace by the river Thames, had learned to talk many words from the passengers as they happened to take water. One day, sporting on its perch, the poor bird fell into the water, at the same time crying out as loud as he could, "A boat! Twenty pound for a boat!" A waterman who happened to be near, hearing the cry, made to the place where the parrot was floating, and, taking him up, restored him to the king. As it seems the bird was a favorite, the man insisted that he ought to have a reward rather equal to his service than his trouble, and, as the parrot had cried "Twenty pounds," he said the king was bound in honor to grant it. The king at last agreed to leave it to the parrot's own determination; which the bird hearing, cried out, "Give the knave a groat."

The sagacity which parrots show in a domestic state seems also natural to them in their native residence among the woods. They live together in flocks and mutually assist each other against other animals, either by their courage or their notes of warning. They generally breed in hollow trees, where they make a round hole, and do not line their nest within. If they find any part of a tree beginning to rot from the breaking off of a branch or any such accident, this they take care to scoop, and to make the hole sufficiently wide and convenient; but it sometimes happens that they are content with the hole which a woodpecker has wrought out with greater ease before them, and in this they prepare to hatch and bring up their young. The female lays two or three eggs about the size of those of a pigeon and marked with little specks. The natives are very assiduous in seeking their nests, and usually take them by cutting down the tree. By this means, indeed, the young parrots are liable to be killed; but if one of them survive, it is considered as a sufficient recompense. The old ones are shot with heavy arrows headed with cotton, which knock them down without killing them. The food commonly given to these birds consists of hempseed, nuts, fruits of every kind and bread soaked in wine; they wine; they would prefer meat, but that kind of aliment has been found to make them dull and heavy, and to cause their feathers to drop off after some time. It has been observed that they keep their food in a kind of pouch, from which they afterward throw it up in the same manner as ruminating animals.

Translation of JOHN WRIGHT.

THE PUNISHMENT.

FROM THE GREEK DRAMA OF EURIPIDES.

ADMUS. Unmeasurable grief! | Behold this manly branch which sprung

This is a sight

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sprung from thee Murdered most vilely and most shamefully, To whom all looked with reverence. Thou,

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His mother's manners 'midst the Theban No more thy hand shall stroke this beard, youth

When ardent he pursues the savage beast!
But he alone dares fight against the god :
He must be warned of this by thee, my
father,

And me, nor pride him in pernicious wisdom.
Where is he? To my presence who will call

him,

That he may see me happy in my prize?

CAD. He was like you, and reverenced not the god,

no more

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Who therefore bound us all in the same Thy mother sinks beneath her misery,

chain

Of ruin-him and you to desolate

The house, and me, who, destitute of sons,

And her unhappy sisters. If there be
A man whose impious pride contemns the

gods,

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Shall wear a dragon's savage form. With To lead a mixed barbaric host to Greece;

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Harmonia, too, my wife, the child of Mars.
Changed to a dragon's savage form, myself
A dragon, to the altars, to the tombs,
Of Greece, a chief with many a ported

spear

Shall I lead back, and never shall my toils Know respite, never shall I pass the stream Of Acheron below and there find rest.

AGA. Hence, reft of thee, my father, will

I fly.

CAD. Why, my unhappy daughter, on my hand

Thus dost thou hang as if the silver swan Should fly for refuge to the useless drone? AGA. A wretched outcast, which way shall I fly?

CAD. I know not, child; small aid thy father gives.

AGA. Farewell, my royal mansion, and farewell,

Thou city of my fathers; I will leave thee, Through grief in exile from my nuptial bed. CAD. Go now, my child, to Aristaus go. AGA. I am bereaved of thee, my father. CAD.

Thine,

My daughter, and thy sisters' woes I wail. AGA. Severely-most severely-hath the

god

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