gging friar,
No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire,
Cameronian never, nor Methodist,
Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist.

And would you know who his hearers must be?
I tell you just what my guide told me:
Excellent teaching men have, day and night,
From two earnest friars, a black and a white,
The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life;
And between these two there is never strife,
For each has his separate office and station,
And each his own work in the congregation;
Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears,
And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears,
Awake in his coffin must wait and wait,
In that blackness of darkness that means _too late_,
And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls,
As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls,
To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine
Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine.

* * * * *

FOUQUET THE MAGNIFICENT.

Modern times began in France with the death of Mazarin. Spain, Austria,
and Italy no longer led the world in politics, literature, and
refinement. The _grande nation_, delivered from _Ligue_ and _Fronde_,
took her position with England at the head of civilized Europe. This
great change had been going on during eighty years of battle, murder,
anarchy, and confusion. As always, the new grew up unnoticed, until it
overtopped the old. The transformation was complete in 1661, when Louis
XIV. appeared upon the scene, and gave his name to this brilliant
period, with not much better claim to the distinction than had Vespucci
to America.

There had been a prodigious yield of brains in France. A host of clever
men developed the new ideas in every direction. Philosophy and science,
literature and language, manners, habits, dress, assumed the forms with
which we are so familiar. Then commenced the _grand siecle_, the era
Frenchmen date from. They look upon those gallant ancestors almost as
contemporaries, and still admire their feats in war, and laugh over
their strokes of wit. The books they wrote became classics, and were in
all hands until within the last twenty or thirty years. Latterly,
indeed, they have been less read, for thought is turning to fresh
fields, and society seems to be entering upon a new era.

No man more fully recognized the great change that was going on, or did
more to help it forward, than Nicolas Fouquet, Vicomte de Vaux, and
Ma