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Diocletian retired into his native province, and there amused himself with building, planting, and gardening. His answer to Maximian is deservedly celebrated. He was solicited by that restless old man to reassume the reins of government and the imperial purple. He rejected the temptation with a smile of pity, calmly observing, "that if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he had planted with his own bands at Salona, he should no longer be urged to relinquish the enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power."

author:Edward Gibbon, ii. 175.

When the emperor Charles V. had executed his memorable resolution, and had set out for the monastery of St. Justus, he stopped a few days at Ghent, says his historian, to indulge, that tender and pleasant melancholy which arises in the mind of every man in the decline of life, on visiting the place of his nativity, and viewing the scenes and objects familiar to him in his early youth.

The memory of the horse forms the groundwork of a pleasing little romance of the twelfth century, entitled, "Lai du Palefroi vair." See Fabliaux ou Contes du XII et du XIII Siecle, iv. 195.

Ariosto likewise introduces it in a passage full of truth and nature. When Bayardo meets Angelica in the forest,

During the siege of Harlem, when that city was reduced to the last extremity, and on the point of opening its gates to a base and