Et ne les régle point dessus nos sentiments.”
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