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                           HISTORIC BUBBLES

                                  BY

                            FREDERIC LEAKE.

                       [Illustration: colophon]

               _The earth has bubbles as the water has,
                And these are of them._--BANQUO.

                  _Mais les ouvrages les plus courts
                    Sont toujours les meilleurs._--LA FONTAINE.

                            ALBANY, N. Y.:
                   RIGGS PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO.,
                                 1896.


                            COPYRIGHT, 1896

                                  BY

                 RIGGS PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY




CONTENTS


                                                  PAGE

Duke of Berwick,                                     7

Captivity of Babylon,                               45

The Second House of Burgundy,                       75

Two Jaquelines,                                    115

Hoche,                                             152

An Interesting Ancestor of Queen Victoria,         185

John Wiclif,                                       201




PREFACE


Once upon a time I was a member of that arch-erudite body, the Faculty
of Williams College, and I took my turn in putting forth lectures
tending or pretending to edification. I was not to the manner born,
and had indulged even to indigestion, in the reading of history. These
ebullitions are what came of that intemperance.

The manuscripts were lying harmless in a bureau drawer, under gynæcian
strata, when, last summer, a near and rummaging relative, a printer,
unearthed them, read them, and asked leave to publish