How they were discovered there by Aigueline, the cruel daughter of the Sea, and sole inhabitant of the island; how the heart of Jerzual fluctuated in the terrible dilemma between his present good fortune and his duty to the Princess; how staunch and uplifted poor Bellardian was, and how strange and pitiful his fate; how the enchantments of Aigueline were broken at last; and how, when the disillusioned Jerzual walked in frenzy upon the sands of the island shore, he saw the shallop of the Princess of Avigorre sail by, with banners flying from it which were not his, but those of his rival, Ellerion, Prince of Argilea; this, and much more, and all of it equally gorgeous and convincing, must be read in the delightful pages of M. Mockel's _Contes pour les Enfants d'hier_.
There is at present no record of Lord Wolseley, who died just too recently to be included in the latest Supplement of the _Dictionary of National Biography_. His memory loiters in the limbo which always surrounds the famous dead for a few years after their decease. Then follow, in due course, the official Life and the selected correspondence; and so finally the monument is unveiled for the pigeons of the Press to perch upon. To my friends, Sir Frederick Maurice and Sir George Arthur, have been entrusted the duty of arranging the memoirs of our greatest modern soldier, and their work will be formidable, for the Great War, of which Wolseley, in flashes of genius, had prescience, has swept over us, and has confused the landmarks of our memories. I feel sure that they will bring judgment and discretion to their task, which is a noble one. But they will certainly, and properly, be inclined to concentrate their effort on the military aspects of their subject, since Lord Wolseley was a soldier before everything else, and so completely a soldier that other aspects must be dwarfed in contemplation of his military glory. These may easily, indeed, be excluded altogether, and I therefore venture to recall, before it is too late, certain scenes which I observed during a prolonged and delighted acquaintanceship, in which the sword ceased to be "vambrashed," as the Elizabethans used to say, and in which the great general was simply an amateur of letters, eager to talk about books and even ambitious to write them. I shall not fall into the error of describing him as a great author, but I think that it may be amusing to preserve some intellectual sketch of a character essentially imposing in very different surroundings.
