MOLIÈRE.
It was in the bright twilight of a late day in August that the Class mounted the cliffs and overlooked the sea, whose waves still reflected the vermilion of the sky. The boys were sober at the thought that this was their last day in Europe, and that they were now to return to the set tasks of the school-room.
THE READING OF “PAUL AND VIRGINIA.”
“These cliffs,” said Master Lewis, “were the favorite haunts of the author of ‘Paul and Virginia.’ He was a mere theorist, a daydreamer; and here he loved to gaze on the bright sea, and plan [!-- original location of 'The reading of Paul and Virginia' --] [!-- blank page --] expeditions of republican colonists to such lands as he paints in his novels. His expeditions ended in the air. But he himself went to Mauritius, where he lived three years. On his return to Paris, while the brightness of tropical scenery still haunted him, he wrote ‘Paul and Virginia.’”
RACINE.
“When Corneille, the great Corneille, as the popular dramatist came to be called, read his masterpiece, Polyeucte, to a party of fashionable literary people in Paris, it was coolly received on account of the fine Christian sentiments it contained. The criticism was that the religion of the stage should be that, not of God, but of the gods. Even a bishop present took this view.