8133 7845 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICK NOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 678115 UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., OOR La Fontaine ! Racine took him one evening during Holy Week to church. "Le bon homme," as his friends called him, was not at all learned, nor was religion, in the old sense of the word, one of his prominent characteristics; therefore he grew horribly weary with the length of the services. To occupy him, Racine gave him a Bible which contained the Minor Prophets. La Fontaine opened it at the prayer of the Jews in Baruch. Struck with the sublime fulness of this grand diapason of supplication, he could not control his surprise and delight, and commenced elbowing Racine restlessly. "O my friend," he whispered, eagerly, "what a fine genius this Baruch had! But tell me, who was he?" And for some time after he was so full of Baruch that every friend he met in the streets of Paris was greeted with the question, "Avez-vous lu Baruch? Ah, c'était par ma foi un beau génie." Poor great La Fontaine ! I have often thought during my journey in South |