The return of Zingis was signalized by the overthrow of the rebellious or independent kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the fulness of years and glory, with his last breath exhorting and instructing his sons to achieve the conquest of the Chinese Empire. SIMON DE MONTFORT, EARL OF LEICESTER. BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN. [A valiant soldier, astute politician, and public-spirited reformer of the thirteenth century, born about 1200, died 1265. The son of that De Montfort who led the cruel crusade against the Albigenses of southern France, Simon became in early life an English subject, received the highest honors from Henry III, and also secured the hand of his sister in marriage. He sympathized with and became a leader of the English barons in demanding the necessary concessions to complete and enforce that great charter wrung from King John at Runnymede; and finally took up arms to constrain Henry. In the civil war which ensued Simon of Montfort was for the most part victorious, but finally found himself forsaken by the fickle baronage whose cause he had espoused. He was obliged to throw himself on the support of the people. In the last Parliament he convoked, in the year of his death, he summoned knights and burgesses to sit by the side of the barons and bishops, thus creating a new force in the English constitution, which wrought a great change in the political system of the country. He was slain and his army defeated some months later at the battle of Evesham by Prince Edward.] When a thunderstorm once forced the king, as he was rowing on the Thames, to take refuge at the palace of the Bishop of Durham, Earl Simon of Montfort, who was a guest of the prelate, met the royal barge with assurances that the storm was drifting away, and that there was nothing to fear. Henry’s petulant wit broke out in his reply: “If I fear the thunder,” said the king, “I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world.”