How they were discovered there by Aigueline, the cruel daughter of the
Sea, and sole inhabitant of the island; how the heart of Jerzual
fluctuated in the terrible dilemma between his present good fortune and
his duty to the Princess; how staunch and uplifted poor Bellardian was,
and how strange and pitiful his fate; how the enchantments of Aigueline
were broken at last; and how, when the disillusioned Jerzual walked in
frenzy upon the sands of the island shore, he saw the shallop of the
Princess of Avigorre sail by, with banners flying from it which were not
his, but those of his rival, Ellerion, Prince of Argilea; this, and much
more, and all of it equally gorgeous and convincing, must be read in the
delightful pages of M. Mockel's _Contes pour les Enfants d'hier_.
SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF LORD WOLSELEY
There is at present no record of Lord Wolseley, who died just too
recently to be included in the latest Supplement of the _Dictionary of
National Biography_. His memory loiters in the limbo which always
surrounds the famous dead for a few years after their decease. Then
follow, in due course, the official Life and the selected
correspondence; and so finally the monument is unveiled for the pigeons
of the Press to perch upon. To my friends, Sir Frederick Maurice and Sir
George Arthur, have been entrusted the duty of arranging the memoirs of
our greatest modern soldier, and their work will be formidable, for the
Great War, of which Wolseley, in flashes of genius, had prescience, has
swept over us, and has confused the landmarks of our memories. I feel
sure that they will bring judgment and discretion to their task, which
is a noble one. But they will certainly, and properly, be inclined to
concentrate their effort on the military aspects of their subject, since
Lord Wolseley was a soldier before everything else, and so completely a
soldier that other aspects must be dwarfed in contemplation of his
military glory. These may easily, indeed, be excluded altogether, and I
therefore venture to recall, before it is too late, certain scenes which
I observed during a prolonged and delighted acquaintanceship, in which
the sword ceased to be "vambrashed," as the Elizabethans used to say,
and in which the great general was simply an amateur of letters, eager
to talk about books and even ambitious to write them. I shall not fall
into the error of describing him as a great author, but I think that it
may be amusing to preserve some intellectual sketch of a character
essentially imposing in very different surroundings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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