DEATH OF PALISSY. 77 "My poor Master Bernard." said the King, "I am so pressed by the Guise party and my people, that I have been compelled, in spite of myself, to imprison these two poor women and you. They must be burnt to-morrow; and you too, if you will not be converted." "Sire," replied the fearless old man, "you have often said that you feel pity for me; but it is I who pity you; who have said, "I am compelled." That is not speaking like a king! These girls and I, who have part in the kingdom of heaven; we will teach you to talk royally. The Guisarts, all your people, and yourself, cannot compel a potter to bow down to images of clay !" Not many months afterwards, the two fair girls, were led to the stake, singing praises to God, as they received their crowns of martyrdom. A year later, in 1559, in his eighty-first year, Bernard Palissy, the Potter, died in the Bastille. MACAULAY, THE GREAT HISTORIAN. THERE are many ways of doing our best, as the reader of this volume will know; one man struggles against the adverse circumstances of his birth-poverty and early neglect; another cultivates his mind, in spite of a meagre education, a want of books, or the necessity of devoting most of his time to earning his daily bread; a cobbler has worked mathematical problems on strips of leather, while employed on his last; a ploughman, treading the heavy furrow and pressing the share into the bosom of the earth, has meditated on the heavenly bodies, and prepared himself to become a great astronomer; other men have combated the temptations of their natural characters, or broken boldly away from evil associations, to prove in time the upright and zealous servants of God their maker. But there are some, who, with every apparent advantage of birth and endowment of nature, have resisted the voice of mere ambition, and confined themselves to the work in which they could be most useful to mankind. Doubtless, G |