Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) HISTORIC BUBBLES BY FREDERIC LEAKE. [Illustration: colophon] _The earth has bubbles as the water has, And these are of them._--BANQUO. _Mais les ouvrages les plus courts Sont toujours les meilleurs._--LA FONTAINE. ALBANY, N. Y.: RIGGS PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO., 1896. COPYRIGHT, 1896 BY RIGGS PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY CONTENTS PAGE Duke of Berwick, 7 Captivity of Babylon, 45 The Second House of Burgundy, 75 Two Jaquelines, 115 Hoche, 152 An Interesting Ancestor of Queen Victoria, 185 John Wiclif, 201 PREFACE Once upon a time I was a member of that arch-erudite body, the Faculty of Williams College, and I took my turn in putting forth lectures tending or pretending to edification. I was not to the manner born, and had indulged even to indigestion, in the reading of history. These ebullitions are what came of that intemperance. The manuscripts were lying harmless in a bureau drawer, under gynæcian strata, when, last summer, a near and rummaging relative, a printer, unearthed them, read them, and asked leave to publish them. I refused; but after conventional hesitation, I--still vowing I would ne’er consent--consented. With this diagnosis, I abandon them to the printer and the public. Those who read them will form opinions of them, and some who read them not, will do the same thing in accordance with a tempting canon of criticism. F. L. WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS., 1896. The Duke of Berwick In the north-east corner of the map of England, or, if you are a Scotchman, in the south-east corner of the map of Scotland, you will find the town of Berwick. That town was held first to belong to Scotland, and then to England. Then the lawyers tried their hand at it, and made out that it belonged to neither--that a writ issued either in England or Scotland, would not run in Berwick-on-Tweed. So an act of Parliament was passed in the reign of George II., to extend the authority of the British realm to that evasive municipality.