his country. In one of his letters he uses these remarkable expressions:
"I am ending the course of my life; the world will witness how I have
loved my country. I have returned not only to die in her bosom, but to
die with her."

Henrietta, daughter of Henry IV. of France, and wife of Charles I. of
England, was reduced to the utmost poverty; and her daughter, afterwards
married to a brother of Louis XIV., is said to have lain in bed for want
of coals to keep her warm. Pennant relates a melancholy fact of fallen
majesty in the person of Mary d'Este, the unhappy queen of James II.,
who, flying with her infant prince from the ruin impending over their
house, after crossing the Thames from abdicated Whitehall, took shelter
beneath the ancient walls of Lambeth church a whole hour, from the rain
of the inclement night of December 6th, 1688. Here she waited with
aggravated misery till a common coach, procured from the next inn,
arrived, and conveyed her to Gravesend, from whence she sailed, and bid
adieu to this kingdom.

Pascal, one of the greatest geniuses and best men that ever lived,
entertained a notion that God made men miserable here in order to their
being happy hereafter; and in consequence of this notion, he imposed
upon himself the most painful mortification. He even ordered a wall to
be built before a window in his study, which afforded him too agreeable
a prospect. He had also a girdle full of sharp points next his skin; and
while he was eating or drinking any thing that was grateful to his
palate, he was constantly pricking himself, that he might not be
sensible of any pleasure. The virtuous Fenelon submitted without reserve
to the arbitrary sentence of the pope, when he condemned a book which he
had published, and even preached in condemnation of his own book,
forbidding his friends to defend it. "What gross and humiliating