Morning journal and courier., 1881-07-18
Price Four Cents.

seemed we'll nigh stricken uuto death Even Catharine H-profoundly suspicious of Pots dam after the scandal about Queen Eliza beth arefully examined her husbands S cor respondence before she concluded an alli- ance with the royal letter writer It is hard
 ly forty years since Louis Philippe threat ened war against the Texan republic because an irate citizen had shot the trespassing pigs of the French ambassador. As it was he pre- vented the Lone Star sovereignty from float ing their European loan, and thus the king
 and the pigs combined hastened the annexa- tion of Texas to the United States The
 Dutch are said to have s'jockeyed'' us out of
 Malacca in exchange for Java by represent
 ing on the map, which our simple envoys
 took for granted, the one territory as large
 and the other as small, and among the most
 firmly rooted traditions of American diplo-
 macy is one which represents the English
 commissioner as agreeing to the surrender of
 Oregon, "because country in which sal
 mon does not rise to the fly cannot be worth
 much" Laws have been altered through
 accidents before the queens printers boy
 forgot to deliver Lord Beaeonsfield's amend
 ment to bill
 But if trifles have determined the fate of laws and nations, accidents equally small
 have determined men to follow pur- suits the results of which have been not much less momentous to. culture and civilization
 Father Malebranche devoted himself to phi losophy after reading Descartes' ssL'Homme D Cowley became poet owing to his perusal of Spencer's ''Faery Queen" and Sir Joshua Reynolds had never thought of painting until
 Richardson's "Treatise'' fell into his hands
 Shakespeare might have ended his life as A prosperous wool-comber had he been pru- dent young tradesman; CorneiIle showed no liking for any literature except the law until he fell in love and felt himself compelled to tell the lady so in poetry; and Mo Here might have remained making tapestry had not his grandmother nettled his pride by wishing that he could be an actor like Montrose. Balbo might never have discovered the Pacific had he not been unsuccessful as 8 shopkeeper in Hispaniola, and found it necessary to flee to the mainland, concealed from his creditors in a cask on board Ensisco's vessel; and it is certain that had Cortez become a ell-briefed lawyer in Salamanca he would never have lived to proudly tell Charles V. that he had given him more provinces than his father had left him cities. Ignatius Loyola was sol dier, and the order of Jesuits might never have been founded had he not accidentally beguiled the tedium of inaction necessitated by a wound by reading '"rhe Lives of the Saints" Gibbon determined to write his famous work after listening to the monks singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter at Rome and La Fontaine was stimulated to cultivate literature after hearing some verses of Malesherbes.
 Faraday might have remained journey man bookbinder had not kindly Mir Dance invited him to hear Sir Humphrey Davy lec- ture, and Vaucanson only took to studying the mechanism of clocks to beguiIe the weary hours which he had to pass while attending his mother at confession.
 Had Sir James Simpson been successful in his candidacy for the post of highland par ish doctor, the world might have lost the in boon of chloroform for many or16k ko fhA xrico College of Surgeons exercised in refusing their diploma to Oliver Goldsmith, we owe the Vicar of Wakefield" and the Deserted Village"