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, I have known nobody comparable to him, But nothing of his has remained except this treatise,and that only by chance, for I believe that he never saw it after it got away from him,and some remarks on that January edict, famous through our civil wars, which shall perhaps still find a place somewhere. That is all I have been able to recover of his remains, I whom he left, with so loving a charge, death between his teeth, heir by will to his library and his papers, besides the little book of his works which I have had brought out. And I am moreover particularly obliged to this piece, in that it served as the means for our first being acquainted; for it was shown to me a long while before I ever saw him, and gave me my first knowledge of his name, thus starting that friendship, which, between us, we cherished, while God willed, so complete and so perfect, that certainly there are not many similar to be read of, and among our men of to-day no trace of them is seen in practice. So many things must come together to build one, that it is a good deal if destiny manages it once in three centuries.

There is nothing to which nature seems more