Charles IX. and the Queen-mother produced nothing but a confused mass of orders and counter-orders, affirmations and denials, words and actions incoherent and contradictory, all caused by the habit of lying, and the desire of escaping from the peril or embarrassment of the moment. On the very first day of the massacre, about midday, the provost of tradesmen and the sheriffs, who had not taken part in the "Paris matins," came complaining to the King "of the pillage, sack, and murder which were being committed by many belonging to the suite of his Majesty, as well as to those of the princes, princesses, and lords of the Court, by noblemen, archers, and soldiers of the guard, as well as by all sorts of gentry and people mixed with them and under their wing." Charles ordered them "to get on horseback, take with them all the forces in the city, and keep their eyes open day and night to put a stop to the sad murder, pillage, and sedition arising because of the rivalry between the houses of Guise and Chatillon, and because they of Guise had been threatened by the Admiral's friends, who suspected them of being at the bottom of the hurt inflicted upon him." The same day he addressed to the Governors of the provinces a letter in which he invested the disturbance with the same character, and gave the same explanation of it. The Guises complained violently of being thus disavowed by the King, who had the face to throw upon them alone the odium of the massacre which he had ordered.

Next day, August 25th, the King wrote to all his agents, at home and abroad, another letter affirming that "what had happened at Paris had been done solely to prevent the execution of an accursed conspiracy that the Admiral and his allies had concocted against him, his mother and his brothers ;" and on the 25th of August he went with his own brothers to hold in state a "bed of justice," and make to the Parliament the same declaration against Coligny and his party. "He could not," he said, "have parried so fearful a blow but by another very violent one; and he wished all the world to know that what had happened at Paris had been done not only with his consent, but by his express command." Whereupon, says De Thou, it was enjoined upon the court "to cause investigation to be made as to the conspiracy of Coligny, and to decree what it should consider proper, conformably with the law and with justice." The next day but one-August 28th-appeared a royal manifesto running: The king willeth and intendeth that all noblemen and

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others whatsoever of the religion styled Reformed be empowered to live and abide in all security and liberty, with their wives, children, and families, in their houses, as they have heretofore done, and were empowered to do by the edicts of pacification. And nevertheless, for to obviate the troubles, scandals, suspicion, and distrust which might arise by reason of the services and assemblies that might take place both in the houses of the said noblemen and elsewhere as is permitted by the said edicts of pacification, his Majesty doth lay very express inhibitions and prohibitions upon all the said noblemen and others of the said. religion against holding assemblies, on any account whatsoever, until that by the said lord and king, after having provided for the tranquillity of his kingdom, it be otherwise ordained. And that on pain of confiscation of body and goods, in case of disobedience."

These tardy and lying accusations officially brought against Coligny and his friends these promises of liberty and security for the Protestants, renewed in the terms of the edicts, and in point of fact annulled at the very moment at which they were being renewed the massacre continuing here and there in France, at one time with the secret connivance, and at another notwithstanding the publicly given word of the King and the Queenmother all this policy, at one and the same time violent and timorous, incoherent and stubborn, produced amongst the Protestants two contrary effects: some grew frightened, others angry. At court, under the direct influence of the King and his surroundings," submission to the powers that be" prevailed. Many fled; others, without injuring their religion, abjured their party. The two Reformed princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry de Condé, attended Mass on the 29th of September, and on the 3d of October wrote to the Pope, deploring their errors and giving hopes of their conversion. Far away from Paris, in the mountains of the Pyrenees and Languedoc, in the towns where the Reformed were numerous and confident- at Sancerre, at Montauban, at Nîmes, at La Rochelle the spirit of resistance carried the day. An assembly, meeting at Milhau, drew up a provisional ordinance for the Government of the Reformed Church, "until it please God, who has the hearts of kings in his keeping, to change that of King Charles IX., and restore the State of France to good order, or to raise up such neighboring prince as is manifestly marked out, by his virtue and by distinguishing signs, for to be the liberator of this poor and afflicted

people." In November, 1592, the fourth religious war broke out. The siege of La Rochelle was its only important event. Charles IX., and his counsellors exerted themselves in vain to avoid it. There was everything to disgust them in this enterprise: so sudden a revival of the religious war after the grand blow they had just struck, the passionate energy manifested by the Protestants in asylum of La Rochelle, and the help they had been led to hope for from Queen Elizabeth, whom England would never have forgiven for indifference in this cause.

In the spring of 1574, at the age of twenty-three years and eleven months, and after a reign of eleven years and six months, Charles IX. was attacked by an inflammatory malady which brought on violent hemorrhage; he was revisited in his troubled sleep by the same bloody vision about which, after the St. Bartholomew, he had spoken to Ambrose Paré. He no longer retained in his room anybody but two of his servants and his nurse, "of whom he was very fond, although she was a Huguenot," says the contemporary chronicler, Peter de l'Estoile. "When she had lain down upon a chest and was just beginning to doze, hearing the King moaning, weeping, and sighing, she went full gently up to his bed. Ah! nurse, nurse,' said the King, what bloodshed and what murder! Ah! what evil counsel have I followed! Oh my God, forgive me for them, and have mercy upon me, if it may please Thee! I know not what hath come to me, so bewildered and agitated do they make me. What will be the end of it all? What shall I do? I am lost; I see it well!' Then said the nurse to him, Sire, the murders be on the heads of those who made you do them! Of yourself, Sire, you never could; and since you were not consenting thereto, and are sorry therefor, believe that God will not put them down to your account, and will hide them with the cloak of justice of His Son, to whom alone you must have recourse. But, for God's sake, let your Majesty cease weeping!" And thereupon, having been to fetch him a pocket-handkerchief, because his own was soaked with tears, after that the King had taken it from her hand he signed her to go away and leave him to rest."

On Whitsunday, May 30, 1574, about three in the afternoon, Charles IX, expired, after having signed an ordinance conferring the regency upon his mother, Catherine," who accepted it,"such was the expression in the letters-patent" at the request of the Duke of Alençon, the King of Navarre, and other princes

and peers of France." According to D'Aubigné, Charles used often to say of his brother Henry, that "when he had a kingdom on his hands the administration would find him out, and that he would disappoint those who had hope of him." The last words he said were, "that he was glad not to have left any young child to succeed him, very well knowing that France needs a man, and that with a child the king and the reign are unhappy."

THE EXAMPLE OF SHAKESPEARE.

(From "Shakespeare and his Times.")

DOUBTLESS stopped in its course by the conditions of the age, the full severity of which will only be revealed to the talent that can comply with them, dramatic art, even in England, where under the protection of Shakespeare it would have liberty to attempt anything, scarcely ventures at the present day even to try timidly to follow him. Meanwhile England, France, and the whole of Europe demand of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to exist. The Classical system had its origin. in the life of its time: that time has passed; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its works, but can no more be reproduced. Near the monuments of past ages, the monuments of another age are now beginning to arise. What will be their form? I cannot tell; but the ground upon which their foundations may rest is already perceptible. The ground is not the ground of Corneille and Racine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; but Shakespeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social conditions and all those general or diverse feelings, the simultaneous conjunction and activity of which constitute for us at the present day the spectacle of human things. Witnesses during thirty years of the greatest revolutions of society, we shall no longer willingly confine the movement of our mind within the narrow space of some family event, or the agitations of a purely individual passion. The nature and destiny of man have appeared to us under their most striking and their simplest aspect, in all their extent and in all their variableness. We require pictures in which this spectacle is reproduced, in which man is displayed in his completeness and excites our entire sympathy.

VOL. X.-25

ERNST HEINRICH HAECKEL.

HAECKEL, ERNST HEINRICH, a distinguished German naturalist and philosopher; born at Potsdam, Prussia, February 16, 1834. He studied at Wurzburg, Berlin, and Vienna, and spent the years of 1859-60 in zoölogical study in Naples and Messina. In 1862 he was appointed Professor of Zoology at Jena. Between that year and 1822 he visited Lisbon, Madeira, Teneriffe, Norway, Syria, Egypt, Corsica, Sardinia, and India for the purpose of scientific observation. He is an extreme supporter of the theory of evolu tion. Among his works are "General Morphology of Organisms' (1866); "Natural History of Creation" (7th ed., 1879); "On the Origin and Genealogy of the Human Race" (3d ed., 1873); "On the Division of Labor in Nature and Human Life" (1869); "Life in the Greatest Depths of the Ocean" (1870); "The Origin of Man; a History of the Development of Mankind" (3d ed., 1877); "The Aims and Methods of the Contemporary History of Development' (1875); "The Theory of Development in its Relation to General Science" (1877); "Free Science and Free Teaching," and "Collected Popular Essays on the Theory of Development" (1878); "The Evolution of Man" (1879); "Letters and Travels through India" (1884); "Souvenirs of Algeria" (1890); "Plankton Studies" (1893); "Monoism as Connected with Religion and Science" (1894). His scientific works have been translated into many languages.

CHANGE OF CLIMATE, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON LIFE.

(From "History of Creation.")

THERE is yet another important circumstance to be mentioned here which is likewise of great importance for a complete explanation of this varied geographical picture, and which throws light upon many very obscure facts, which, without its help, we should not be able to comprehend. I mean the gradual change of climate which has taken place during the long course of the organic history of the earth. As we saw in our last chapter, at the beginning of organic life on the earth a much higher and more equal temperature must have generally pre