[Footnote 25: Hans Christian Andersen was one of the most gifted of modern authors. In his story entitled "Only a Fiddler," he has given many striking pictures from the experience of his own life. His best books are his fairy-tales, of which he has published several volumes.] [Footnote 26: Any one who could place the tragedy of "Cleone" before that of "Venice Preserved," by Otway, in point of merit, must have been singularly prejudiced.] [Footnote 27: Thackeray says: "He was lazy, kindly, uncommonly idle; rather slovenly, forever eating and saying good things. A little French abbé of a man, sleek, soft-handed, and soft-hearted." A Mr. Rich was the manager of the theatre in which Gay's "Beggar's Opera" was brought out. Its unprecedented success suggested the epigram that "it made Rich gay, and Gay rich."] [Footnote 28: Among his liberal bequests were four hundred thousand dollars for the establishment of a public library in New York, to which his son, William B. Astor, subsequently added as much more. The Astor Library is therefore one of the best endowed institutions of the kind in America.] [Footnote 29: Webster, when told that there was no room for new lawyers in a profession already overcrowded, answered, with the proud consciousness of genius and character, "There is always room at the top."] [Footnote 30: Charles XII. put his whole soul into the cause of Sweden at the time when she was threatened with extinction by her enemies. He fought all Europe,--Danes, Russians, Poles, Germans,--and gave away a kingdom before he was twenty. At his coronation at Upsala, he snatched the crown from the hands of the archbishop and set it proudly on his head with his own hands.] [Footnote 31: Whipple speaks of three characters "who seem to have been statesmen from the nursery." These were: "Octavius Cæsar, more successful in the arts of policy than even the great Julius, never guilty of youthful indiscretion, or, we are sorry to say, of youthful virtue; Maurice of Saxony, the preserver of the Reformed religion in Germany, in that memorable contest in which his youthful sagacity proved more than a match for the veteran craft of Charles V.; and the second William of Orange, the preserver of the liberties of Europe against the ambition of Louis XIV., who, as a child, may be said to have prattled treaties and lisped despatches."] [Footnote 32: Nothing is so beneficial to a young author as the advice of a man whose judgment stands constitutionally at the freezing point.--_Douglas Jerrold._] [Footnote 33: The life of Jeanne d'Arc is like a legend in the midst of history.--_Waller._] [Footnote 34: After a couple of years Hall was restored to the full possession of his faculties, and for twenty years thereafter maintained his high reputation as a pulpit orator. He died in 1831.]