The rest is known to all students of history—­how Cambyses, with the help of Phanes, defeated Psamtik’s host at Pelusium and took possession of the whole Egyptian Empire; how, given more and more to drink and fearful excesses, he set up a rule of untold terror, had his brother Bartja murdered in another fit of jealousy, and finally suffered defeat at the hands of the Ethiopians.  They will also know how, on his death, Gaumata, the “pseudo-Smerdis” of the Greeks, was urged by his ambitious brother, Oropastes, to seize the throne by impersonating the dead Bartja; how, finally, the pretender was defeated and had to pay for his attempt with his life; and how Persia rose again to unity and greatness under the rule of the noble Darius, Bartja’s faithful kinsman and friend.

* * * * *

MARIA EDGEWORTH

Belinda

Maria Edgeworth was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, England, Jan. 1, 1767, and eleven years later her father removed to Ireland and settled on his own estate at Edgeworthstown.  “Belinda,” published in 1801, is Maria Edgeworth’s one early example of a novel not placed in Irish surroundings, but dealing with fashionable life.  Issued just a year after the appearance of her first Irish tale, “Castle Rackrent,” it betrays entirely the influence of the novelist’s autocratic and eccentric father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, with whom the daughter had been previously collaborating.  No one could be less suited than he to advise about fiction, yet to his daughter his advice was almost the equivalent of a command.  The story is interesting as an example of literary workmanship outside of the scenes in which special success had been achieved.  Miss Edgeworth died at Edgeworthstown on May 22, 1849.

I.—­A Match-Maker’s Handicap

Mrs. Stanhope, a well-bred woman, accomplished in the art of rising in the world, had, with but a small fortune, contrived to live in the highest company.  She prided herself upon having established half a dozen nieces most happily—­that is to say, upon having married them to men of fortunes far superior to their own.  One niece still remained unmarried, Belinda Portman, of whom she determined to get rid with all convenient expedition; but finding that, owing to declining health, she could not go out with her as much as she wished, she succeeded in fastening her upon the fashionable Lady Delacour for a winter in London.

“Nothing, to my mind, can be more miserable than the situation of a poor girl who fails in her matrimonial expectations (as many do merely from not beginning to speculate in time),” she wrote from Bath.  “She finds herself at five or six-and-thirty a burden to her friends, destitute of the means of rendering herself independent—­for the girls I speak of never think of learning to play cards—­de trop in society, yet obliged to hang upon all her acquaintances, who wish her in