opinions of the two seem to have sympathized in an extraordinary degree. La Boëtie died young, but his friend’s affection survived: a chapter of the Essays is devoted to his memory, and in other parts of Montaigne’s writings we find frequent recurrence to the same subject. Montaigne married Françoise de la Chassaigne when he was thirty-three years of age; and this he did, as he says, in consequence of external persuasions, and in order to please his friends rather than himself, for he was not inclined to a married life; “but once married, although he had been till then considered a licentious man, he observed the conjugal laws more strictly than he had himself expected.” On succeeding to the family estate, on which he generally resided, he took the management of it into his own hands; and although his father, judging from his habits of abstraction and seeming carelessness of worldly objects, had foretold that he would ruin his patrimony, Montaigne, at his death, left the property if not much better, certainly not worse than he found it. He was not rich, for we are told, by Balzac, that his income did not exceed 6000 livres, which was no great revenue for a country gentleman even at that time. In 1569 he translated into French a Latin work of Sebonde or Sebon, in defence of the mysteries and doctrines of the Church of Rome, against Luther and other Protestant writers. France was at that time desolated by civil and religious war. Montaigne, although he evidently disapproved of the conduct of the Court towards the Protestants, yet remained loyal to the King. He lived in retirement, and took no part in public affairs, except by exhorting both parties to moderation and mutual charity. By this conduct he became, as it generally happens, obnoxious to both factions, and he incurred some danger in consequence. The massacre of St. Bartholomew plunged him into a deep melancholy. He detested cruelty and the shedding of blood, and in several passages of his Essays has animadverted in strong terms upon the atrocities committed against the Protestants. It was about this dismal epoch of 1572, when, solitude and melancholy urging him to the task, he began to write that celebrated work, of which we shall presently speak more at length. It was first published in March, 1580; and had great success. After some time, Montaigne printed a new edition of it, with additions; but without making any alterations in the part which had appeared before. The popularity of the book was such that in a few years there was hardly a man of education in France who had not a copy of it.