THE ICONOCLAST ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 308, 14 March 1879, Page 7

THE ICONOCLAST ABROAD.

Professor Wheeler, of Yale College, lately read a paper before the Alumni Association of New York, in which he exploded a number of popular historical tales. The famous saying attributed to Louis the Fourteenth of France, " ISetat, e'est mot,'' according to Professor Wheeler, was never uttered by Louis at all, but was said by Mazarin twenty years before Louis came to the throne, and said before Mazarin by Queen Elizabeth. Sappho never killed herself by jumping from a rock, but died a natural death. Leonidas foi ght at Thermopylae, not with only three hundred at his back, but with seven thousand. The philosopher Diogenes never lived in a tub. The story of the virtues of the Roman matron Lucretia must be rejected, while the story of Horatii and Curatii is worse than doubtful. The sons of Brutus were not the victims of their father's firmness, but of his brutality. It was utterly impossible for Hannibal to have followed up his victory at Cannaj, and the story of his using vinegar to cleave the rocks of the Alps is absurd. So, too, is the story of Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in a goblet of vinegar and drinking up a fortuiu at one draught. Archimedes never said : " Give me a lever long enough and I will move tbe world;" nor did he cry out •' Eureka 1" at any known period of his life or discoveries. Alexandria was never visited by Omar, nor was the Alexandrian library burnt, No more did Galileo say, " And yet it moves for all that 1" since it is proved from authentic documents that he did not dare to. That Columbus broke the end of an egg aud thus confuted his mockers is fabulous, as also is the story that he encouraged his followers with brave words when the shores of San Salvador were still out of sight. Richard the ThiTd of England did not kill his brother Clarence, and the story about a butt of Malmsey arose from the fact that the body of Clarence, who died a natural death, was transported from Calais to England in a wine-butt. Charles the Second never had the body of Cromwell taken from Westminster Abbey and hanged at Tyburn, for the daughter of Cromwell, apprehensive of some such ill-treatment, had her father's corpse secretly removed from the abbey and buried in a quiet churchyard. Milton's daughters could not have consoled their father in his blindness by reading passages from the old authors, for the best of reasons — they did not know how to read. Almost the only story which Professor Wheeler did not demolish was thti one "about Washington and his hatchet. — Springfield Rt-jiuhllcan.