It is instructive to note in the memoirs of Gabriel Naudé, that great scholar’s exultant anticipation of the public opening of the library he had mainly helped to form. He must have reckoned on that day as a _beau jour_ for him, the happiest day of his life; and he arranged a fête accordingly, to be celebrated with his most intimate friends. But that very day broke out the public troubles of the Fronde; and barricades in the streets of Paris ill accorded with Gabriel Naudé’s cherished hopes. “Ainsi vont les projets humains sous l’œil d’en haut qui les déjoue.” The Scotch ploughman-poet, eyeing the mouse and its “wee bit housie, too, in ruin,” as turned up by his plough, gave racy utterance to but a trite reflection, when, apostrophising the “wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,” he thus moralised his song:— “But, mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley, And leave us nought but grief an’ pain, For promised joy.” As the good friar in Shakspeare has it,— “A greater power than we can contradict Hath thwarted our intents,” well laid and discreetly devised as they seemed to be. And as with the seemingly laudable plans of the prudent, so with the arrogant designs of the self-confident. The enemy said, “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.” Thus said the enemy, even Pharaoh’s host, on the shores of the Red Sea. But then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord: “Thou didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” It is but an emphasised reading of the standard text, that the Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought, and maketh the devices of the people of none effect, and casteth out the counsel of princes. Whereas, turning from man proposing to God disposing, “The counsel of the Lord shall endure for ever, and the thoughts of His heart from generation to generation.” The same is He of whom it is written that He turneth wise men backwards, and maketh their knowledge foolish. Wordsworth, ever a moralist, moralised his song when, at a critical juncture in the legend of the “White Doe of Rylstone,” he interposed this reflection:— “But quick the turns of chance and change, And knowledge has a narrow range; Whence idle fears, and needless pain, And wishes blind, and efforts vain.” For a closing variation on the present theme, a worse might be found than this from the play within the play of “Hamlet:”— “But, orderly to end where I begun,— Our wills, our fates, do so contrary run, That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”