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"You enjoyed yourself, of course?" continues Dora. "Everyone raved about you. You made at least a dozen conquests; one or half a one " with a careful hesitation in her manner intended to impress her listener "is as much as poor little insignificant me can expect." Florence looks at her questioningly. "I think one really honest lover is worth a dozen others," she says, her voice trembling.

These conquests and acquisitions are real, are practical; machinery over life, the triumph of physical forces, dominion over waves and winds, these are the great victories which consummate the happiness of man; and these are they which flow from the philosophy which Bacon taught.

Commendation is sweet to all; but it is just as permissible for a belle to boast her conquests in the ballroom; the lawyer to inform judge and jury what his fellow-disciples of Blackstone think of him; the scholar to parade his erudition or the merchant his integrity, as for an editor to reproduce in his own paper fulsome compliments paid him for no other purpose under Heaven than to get a puff in return.

The tales in this book are of many kinds of wonder; of black magic, white magic and gray; ranging from the recital of strange and supernatural deeds and experiences to those that fore-shadow modern conquests of nature and those that utilize the marvellous to teach a moral lesson.

How did the alliance between the Lombards and Avars injure the former people? Where was the kingdom of the Lombards established? What is told respecting the Slavi? Who were the Normans? What is the history of the Bulgarians? What great conquests were achieved by the Arabs under Mohammed and his successors? By whom was the Saracenic career of victory checked?

The third letter is from Marmirolo, and shows that Bonaparte, notwithstanding his constant changes of position, had taken the precautions that Josephine's letters should everywhere follow him; for in Marmirolo he received one, and this tender letter filled him with so much joy, thanks, and longings, that, in virtue of it, he forgets conquests and triumphs entirely, and is only the longing, tender lover.

From this began a series of wars which continued at intervals for four centuries, and which ended only with the Mahometan conquests that overwhelmed Roman and Persian power alike.

Endowed with a different brain, naturally clearer, more exacting, more logical, less credulous, more practical, closer to realities, more attentive to details, but with the scientific side of his intelligence uncultivated, would he have gone astray or would he have met the truths which we are still seeking and which may well be more important than all our material conquests.

What to them were the mythical deeds of Rama and of Krishna; what to them the marches of Semiramis and Sesostris, or the conquests of Alexander, or the fate and fortunes of the ancient kingdoms of the Deccan and Hindostan? They cared nothing for the spread of Mahommedan influence and authority, the glories of the Mogul Empire, the fate of Tamerlane, the fame of Aurungzebe.

On the wall opposite the dais, between two ranges of narrow Venetian windows, looking into the court-yard, hangs the historic portrait of Castruccio Castracani degli Antimelli, the Napoleon of the middle ages, whose rapid conquests raised Lucca to a sovereign state. A gleam of ruddy light strikes through a crevice in a red curtain opposite; it falls full upon the chair of state.