ACT V--SCENE III

_Moonlight. A wild path in a wood, shaded with trees. Enter _De Montfort_, with a strong expression of disquiet, mixed with fear, upon his face, looking behind him, and bending his ear to the ground, as if he listened to something._

De Montfort--How hollow groans the earth beneath my tread: Is there an echo here? Methinks it sounds As though some heavy footsteps followed me. I will advance no farther. Deep settled shadows rest across the path, And thickly-tangled boughs o'erhang this spot. O that a tenfold gloom did cover it, That 'mid the murky darkness I might strike! As in the wild confusion of a dream, Things horrid, bloody, terrible do pass, As though they passed not; nor impress the mind With the fixed clearness of reality.

[_An owl is heard screaming near him._]

[_Starting._] What sound is that?

[_Listens, and the owl cries again._]

It is the screech-owl's cry. Foul bird of night! What spirit guides thee here? Art thou instinctive drawn to scenes of horror? I've heard of this. [_Pauses and listens._] How those fallen leaves so rustle on the path, With whispering noise, as though the earth around me Did utter secret things. The distant river, too, bears to mine ear A dismal wailing. O mysterious night! Thou art not silent; many tongues hast thou. A distant gathering blast sounds through the wood, And dark clouds fleetly hasten o'er the sky; Oh that a storm would rise, a raging storm; Amidst the roar of warring elements I'd lift my hand and strike! but this pale light, The calm distinctness of each stilly thing, Is terrible.--[_Starting._] Footsteps, and near me, too! He comes! he comes! I'll watch him farther on-- I cannot do it here. [_Exit._]

_Enter_ Rezenvelt, _and continues his way slowly from the bottom of the stage; as he advances to the front, the owl screams, he stops and listens, and the owl screams again._

_Rezenvelt_--Ha! does the night-bird greet me on my way? How much his hooting is in harmony With such a scene as this! I like it well. Oft when a boy, at the still twilight hour, I've leant my back against some knotted oak, And loudly mimicked him, till to my call He answer would return, and through the gloom We friendly converse held. Between me and the star-bespangled sky, Those aged oaks their crossing branches wave, And through them looks the pale and placid moon. How like a crocodile, or winged snake, Yon sailing cloud bears on its dusky length! And now transformed by the passing wind, Methinks it seems a flying Pegasus. Ay, but a shapeless band of blacker hue Comes swiftly after.-- A hollow murm'ring wind sounds through the trees; I hear it from afar; this bodes a storm. I must not linger here--

[_A bell heard at some distance._] The convent bell. 'Tis distant still: it tells their hour of prayer. It sends a solemn sound upon the breeze, That, to a fearful, superstitious mind, In such a scene, would like a death-knell come. [_Exit._]

TO MRS. SIDDONS

Gifted of heaven! who hast, in days gone by, Moved every heart, delighted every eye; While age and youth, of high and low degree, In sympathy were joined, beholding thee, As in the Drama's ever-changing scene Thou heldst thy splendid state, our tragic queen! No barriers there thy fair domains confined, Thy sovereign sway was o'er the human mind; And in the triumph of that witching hour, Thy lofty bearing well became thy power.

The impassioned changes of thy beauteous face, Thy stately form, and high imperial grace; Thine arms impetuous tossed, thy robe's wide flow, And the dark tempest gathered on thy brow; What time thy flashing eye and lip of scorn Down to the dust thy mimic foes have borne; Remorseful musings, sunk to deep dejection, The fixed and yearning looks of strong affection; The active turmoil a wrought bosom rending, When pity, love, and honor, are contending;-- They who beheld all this, right well, I ween, A lovely, grand, and wondrous sight have seen.

Thy varied accents, rapid, fitful, slow, Loud rage, and fear's snatched whisper, quick and low; The burst of stifled love, the wail of grief, And tones of high command, full, solemn, brief; The change of voice, and emphasis that threw Light on obscurity, and brought to view Distinctions nice, when grave or comic mood, Or mingled humors, terse and new, elude Common perception, as earth's smallest things To size and form the vesting hoar-frost brings, That seemed as if some secret voice, to clear The raveled meaning, whispered in thine ear, And thou hadst e'en with him communion kept, Who hath so long in Stratford's chancel slept; Whose lines, where nature's brightest traces shine, Alone were worthy deemed of powers like thine;-- They who have heard all this, have proved full well Of soul-exciting sound the mightiest spell. But though time's lengthened shadows o'er thee glide, And pomp of regal state is cast aside, Think not the glory of thy course is spent, There's moonlight radiance to thy evening lent, That to the mental world can never fade, Till all who saw thee, in the grave are laid. Thy graceful form still moves in nightly dreams, And what thou wast, to the lulled sleeper seems; While feverish fancy oft doth fondly trace Within her curtained couch thy wondrous face. Yea; and to many a wight, bereft and lone, In musing hours, though all to thee unknown, Soothing his earthly course of good and ill, With all thy potent charm, thou actest still. And now in crowded room or rich saloon, Thy stately presence recognized, how soon On thee the glance of many an eye is cast, In grateful memory of pleasures past! Pleased to behold thee, with becoming grace, Take, as befits thee well, an honored place; Where blest by many a heart, long mayst thou stand, Among the virtuous matrons of our land!

A SCOTCH SONG

The gowan glitters on the sward, The lavrock's in the sky, And collie on my plaid keeps ward, And time is passing by. Oh no! sad and slow And lengthened on the ground, The shadow of our trysting bush It wears so slowly round!

My sheep-bell tinkles frae the west, My lambs are bleating near, But still the sound that I lo'e best, Alack! I canna' hear. Oh no! sad and slow, The shadow lingers still, And like a lanely ghaist I stand And croon upon the hill.

I hear below the water roar, The mill wi' clacking din, And Lucky scolding frae her door, To ca' the bairnies in. Oh no! sad and slow, These are na' sounds for me, The shadow of our trysting bush, It creeps so drearily!

I coft yestreen, frae Chapman Tarn, A snood of bonny blue, And promised when our trysting cam', To tie it round her brow. Oh no! sad and slow, The mark it winna' pass; The shadow of that weary thorn Is tethered on the grass.

Oh, now I see her on the way, She's past the witch's knowe, She's climbing up the Browny's brae, My heart is in a lowe! Oh no! 'tis no' so, 'Tis glam'rie I have seen; The shadow of that hawthorn bush Will move na' mair till e'en.

My book o' grace I'll try to read, Though conn'd wi' little skill, When collie barks I'll raise my head, And find her on the hill. Oh no! sad and slow, The time will ne'er be gane, The shadow of the trysting bush Is fixed like ony stane.

SONG, 'POVERTY PARTS GOOD COMPANY'

For an old Scotch Air

When my o'erlay was white as the foam o' the lin, And siller was chinkin my pouches within, When my lambkins were bleatin on meadow and brae, As I went to my love in new cleeding sae gay, Kind was she, and my friends were free, But poverty parts good company.

How swift passed the minutes and hours of delight, When piper played cheerly, and crusie burned bright, And linked in my hand was the maiden sae dear, As she footed the floor in her holyday gear! Woe is me; and can it then be, That poverty parts sic company?

We met at the fair, and we met at the kirk, We met i' the sunshine, we met i' the mirk; And the sound o' her voice, and the blinks o' her een, The cheerin and life of my bosom hae been. Leaves frae the tree at Martinmass flee, And poverty parts sweet company.

At bridal and infare I braced me wi' pride, The broose I hae won, and a kiss o' the bride; And loud was the laughter good fellows among, As I uttered my banter or chorused my song; Dowie and dree are jestin and glee, When poverty spoils good company.

Wherever I gaed, kindly lasses looked sweet, And mithers and aunties were unco discreet; While kebbuck and bicker were set on the board: But now they pass by me, and never a word! Sae let it be, for the worldly and slee Wi' poverty keep nae company.

But the hope of my love is a cure for its smart, And the spae-wife has tauld me to keep up my heart; For, wi' my last saxpence, her loof I hae crost, And the bliss that is fated can never be lost, Though cruelly we may ilka day see How poverty parts dear company.

THE KITTEN

Wanton droll, whose harmless play Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When, drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged crone and thoughtless lout, And child upon his three-foot stool, Waiting until his supper cool, And maid whose cheek outblooms the rose, As bright the blazing fagot glows, Who, bending to the friendly light, Plies her task with busy sleight, Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces: Backward coiled and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe, The housewife's spindle whirling round, Or thread or straw that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly Held out to lure thy roving eye; Then stealing onward, fiercely spring Upon the tempting, faithless thing. Now, wheeling round with bootless skill, Thy bo-peep tail provokes thee still, As still beyond thy curving side Its jetty tip is seen to glide; Till from thy centre starting far, Thou sidelong veer'st with rump in air Erected stiff, and gait awry, Like madam in her tantrums high; Though ne'er a madam of them all, Whose silken kirtle sweeps the hall, More varied trick and whim displays To catch the admiring stranger's gaze. Doth power in measured verses dwell, All thy vagaries wild to tell? Ah, no! the start, the jet, the bound, The giddy scamper round and round, With leap and toss and high curvet, And many a whirling somerset, (Permitted by the modern muse Expression technical to use)--These mock the deftest rhymester's skill, But poor in art, though rich in will.

The featest tumbler, stage bedight, To thee is but a clumsy wight, Who every limb and sinew strains To do what costs thee little pains; For which, I trow, the gaping crowd Requite him oft with plaudits loud.

But, stopped the while thy wanton play, Applauses too thy pains repay: For then, beneath some urchin's hand With modest pride thou takest thy stand, While many a stroke of kindness glides Along thy back and tabby sides. Dilated swells thy glossy fur, And loudly croons thy busy purr, As, timing well the equal sound, Thy clutching feet bepat the ground, And all their harmless claws disclose Like prickles of an early rose, While softly from thy whiskered cheek Thy half-closed eyes peer, mild and meek.

But not alone by cottage fire Do rustics rude thy feats admire. The learned sage, whose thoughts explore The widest range of human lore, Or with unfettered fancy fly Through airy heights of poesy, Pausing smiles with altered air To see thee climb his elbow-chair, Or, struggling on the mat below, Hold warfare with his slippered toe. The widowed dame or lonely maid, Who, in the still but cheerless shade Of home unsocial, spends her age, And rarely turns a lettered page, Upon her hearth for thee lets fall The rounded cork or paper ball, Nor chides thee on thy wicked watch, The ends of raveled skein to catch, But lets thee have thy wayward will, Perplexing oft her better skill.

E'en he whose mind, of gloomy bent, In lonely tower or prison pent, Reviews the coil of former days, And loathes the world and all its ways, What time the lamp's unsteady gleam Hath roused him from his moody dream, Feels, as thou gambol'st round his seat, His heart of pride less fiercely beat, And smiles, a link in thee to find That joins it still to living kind.

Whence hast thou then, thou witless puss! The magic power to charm us thus? Is it that in thy glaring eye And rapid movements we descry-- Whilst we at ease, secure from ill, The chimney corner snugly fill-- A lion darting on his prey, A tiger at his ruthless play? Or is it that in thee we trace, With all thy varied wanton grace, An emblem, viewed with kindred eye Of tricky, restless infancy? Ah! many a lightly sportive child, Who hath like thee our wits beguiled, To dull and sober manhood grown, With strange recoil our hearts disown.

And so, poor kit! must thou endure, When thou becom'st a cat demure, Full many a cuff and angry word, Chased roughly from the tempting board. But yet, for that thou hast, I ween, So oft our favored playmate been, Soft be the change which thou shalt prove! When time hath spoiled thee of our love, Still be thou deemed by housewife fat A comely, careful, mousing cat, Whose dish is, for the public good, Replenished oft with savory food, Nor, when thy span of life is past, Be thou to pond or dung-hill cast, But, gently borne on goodman's spade, Beneath the decent sod be laid; And children show with glistening eyes The place where poor old pussy lies.

HENRY MARTYN BAIRD

(1832-)

That stirring period of the history of France which in certain of its features has been made so familiar by Dumas through the 'Three Musketeers' series and others of his fascinating novels, is that which has been the theme of Dr. Baird in the substantial work to which so many years of his life have been devoted. It is to the elucidation of one portion only of the history of this period that he has given himself; but although in this, the story of the Huguenots, nominally only a matter of religious belief was involved, it in fact embraced almost the entire internal politics of the nation, and the struggles for supremacy of its ambitious families, as well as the effort to achieve religious freedom.

In these separate but related works the incidents of the whole Protestant movement have been treated. The first of these, 'The History of the Rise of the Huguenots in France' (1879), carries the story to the time of Henry of Valois (1574), covering the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the second, 'The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre' (1886), covers the Protestant ascendancy and the Edict of Nantes, and ends with the assassination of Henry in 1610; and the third, 'The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes' (1895), completes the main story, and indeed brings the narrative down to a date much later than the title seems to imply.

It may be said, perhaps, that Dr. Baird holds a brief for the plaintiff in the case; but his work does not produce the impression of being that of a violently prejudiced, although an interested, writer. He is cool and careful, writing with precision, and avoiding even the effects which the historian may reasonably feel himself entitled to produce, and of which the period naturally offers so many.

Henry Martyn Baird was born in Philadelphia, January 17th, 1832, and was educated at the University of the City of New York and the University of Athens, and at Union and Princeton Theological Seminaries. In 1855 he became a tutor at Princeton; and in the following year he published an interesting volume on 'Modern Greece, a Narrative of Residence and Travel.' In 1859 he was appointed to the chair of Greek Language and Literature in the University of the City of New York.

In addition to the works heretofore named, he is the author of a biography of his father, Robert Baird, D.D.

THE BATTLE OF IVRY

From 'The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre': Charles Scribner's Sons.

The battle began with a furious cannonade from the King's artillery, so prompt that nine rounds of shot had been fired before the enemy were ready to reply, so well directed that great havoc was made in the opposing lines. Next, the light horse of M. de Rosne, upon the extreme right of the Leaguers, made a dash upon Marshal d'Aumont, but were valiantly received. Their example was followed by the German reiters, who threw themselves upon the defenders of the King's artillery and upon the light horse of Aumont, who came to their relief; then, after their customary fashion, wheeled around, expecting to pass easily through the gaps between the friendly corps of Mayenne and Egmont, and to reload their firearms at their leisure in the rear, by way of preparation for a second charge.

Owing to the blunder of Tavannes, however, they met a serried line of horse where they looked for an open field; and the Walloon cavalry found themselves compelled to set their lances in threatening position to ward off the dangerous onset of their retreating allies. Another charge, made by a squadron of the Walloon lancers themselves, was bravely met by Baron Biron. His example was imitated by the Duke of Montpensier farther down the field. Although the one leader was twice wounded, and the other had his horse killed under him, both ultimately succeeded in repulsing the enemy.

It was about this time that the main body of Henry's horse became engaged with the gallant array of cavalry in their front. Mayenne had placed upon the left of his squadron a body of four hundred mounted carabineers. These, advancing first, rode rapidly toward the King's line, took aim, and discharged their weapons with deadly effect within twenty-five paces. Immediately afterward the main force of eighteen hundred lancers presented themselves. The King had fastened a great white plume to his helmet, and had adorned his horse's head with another, equally conspicuous. "Comrades!" he now exclaimed to those about him, "Comrades! God is for us! There are his enemies and ours! If you lose sight of your standards, rally to my white plume; you will find it on the road to victory and to honor." The Huguenots had knelt after their fashion; again Gabriel d'Amours had offered for them a prayer to the God of battles: but no Joyeuse dreamed of suspecting that they were meditating surrender or flight. The King, with the brave Huguenot minister's prediction of victory still ringing in his ears, plunged into the thickest of the fight, two horses' length ahead of his companions. That moment he forgot that he was King of France and general-in-chief, both in one, and fought as if he were a private soldier. It was indeed a bold venture. True, the enemy, partly because of the confusion induced by the reiters, partly from the rapidity of the King's movements, had lost in some measure the advantage they should have derived from their lances, and were compelled to rely mainly upon their swords, as against the firearms of their opponents. Still, they outnumbered the knights of the King's squadron more than as two to one. No wonder that some of the latter flinched and actually turned back; especially when the standard-bearer of the King, receiving a deadly wound in the face, lost control of his horse, and went riding aimlessly about the field, still grasping the banner in grim desperation. But the greater number emulated the courage of their leader. The white plume kept them in the road to victory and to honor. Yet even this beacon seemed at one moment to fail them. Another cavalier, who had ostentatiously decorated his helmet much after the same fashion as the King, was slain in the hand-to-hand conflict, and some, both of the Huguenots and of their enemies, for a time supposed the great Protestant champion himself to have fallen.

But although fiercely contested, the conflict was not long. The troopers of Mayenne wavered, and finally fled. Henry of Navarre emerged from the confusion, to the great relief of his anxious followers, safe and sound, covered with dust and blood not his own. More than once he had been in great personal peril. On his return from the melée, he halted, with a handful of companions, under the pear-trees indicated beforehand as a rallying-point, when he was descried and attacked by three bands of Walloon horse that had not yet engaged in the fight. Only his own valor and the timely arrival of some of his troops saved the imprudent monarch from death or captivity.

The rout of Mayenne's principal corps was quickly followed by the disintegration of his entire army. The Swiss auxiliaries of the League, though compelled to surrender their flags, were, as ancient allies of the crown, admitted to honorable terms of capitulation. To the French, who fell into the King's hands, he was equally clement. Indeed, he spared no efforts to save their lives. But it was otherwise with the German lansquenets. Their treachery at Arques, where they had pretended to come over to the royal side only to turn upon those who had believed their protestations and welcomed them to their ranks, was yet fresh in the memory of all. They received no mercy at the King's hands.

Gathering his available forces together, and strengthened by the accession of old Marshal Biron, who had been compelled, much against his will, to remain a passive spectator while others fought, Henry pursued the remnants of the army of the League many a mile to Mantes and the banks of the Seine. If their defeat by a greatly inferior force had been little to the credit of either the generals or the troops of the League, their precipitate flight was still less decorous. The much-vaunted Flemish lancers distinguished themselves, it was said, by not pausing until they found safety beyond the borders of France; and Mayenne, never renowned for courage, emulated or surpassed them in the eagerness he displayed, on reaching the little town from which the battle took its name, to put as many leagues as possible between himself and his pursuers. "The enemy thus ran away," says the Englishman William Lyly, who was an eye-witness of the battle; "Mayenne to Ivry, where the Walloons and reiters followed so fast that there standing, hasting to draw breath, and not able to speak, he was constrained to draw his sword to strike the flyers to make place for his own flight."

The battle had been a short one. Between ten and eleven o'clock the first attack was made; in less than an hour the army of the League was routed. It had been a glorious action for the King and his old Huguenots, and not less for the loyal Roman Catholics who clung to him. None seemed discontented but old Marshal Biron, who, when he met the King coming out of the fray with battered armor and blunted sword, could not help contrasting the opportunity his Majesty had enjoyed to distinguish himself with his own enforced inactivity, and exclaimed, "Sire, this is not right! You have to-day done what Biron ought to have done, and he has done what the King should have done." But even Biron was unable to deny that the success of the royal arms surpassed all expectation, and deserved to rank among the wonders of history. The preponderance of the enemy in numbers had been great. There was no question that the impetuous attacks of their cavalry upon the left wing of the King were for a time almost successful. The official accounts might conveniently be silent upon the point, but the truth could not be disguised that at the moment Henry plunged into battle a part of his line was grievously shaken, a part was in full retreat, and the prospect was dark enough. Some of his immediate followers, indeed, at this time turned countenance and were disposed to flee, whereupon he recalled them to their duty with the words, "Look this way, in order that if you will not fight, at least you may see me die." But the steady and determined courage of the King, well seconded by soldiers not less brave, turned the tide of battle. "The enemy took flight," says the devout Duplessis Mornay, "terrified rather by God than by men; for it is certain that the one side was not less shaken than the other." And with the flight of the cavalry, Mayenne's infantry, constituting, as has been seen, three-fourths of his entire army, gave up the day as lost, without striking a blow for the cause they had come to support. How many men the army of the League lost in killed and wounded it is difficult to say. The Prince of Parma reported to his master the loss of two hundred and seventy of the Flemish lancers, together with their commander, the Count of Egmont. The historian De Thou estimates the entire number of deaths on the side of the League, including the combatants that fell in the battle and the fugitives drowned at the crossing of the river Eure, by Ivry, at eight hundred. The official account, on the other hand, agrees with Marshal Biron, in stating that of the cavalry alone more than fifteen hundred died, and adds that four hundred were taken prisoners; while Davila swells the total of the slain to the incredible sum of upward of six thousand men.

SIR SAMUEL WHITE BAKER

(1821-1893)

The Northwest Passage, the Pole itself, and the sources of the Nile--how many have struggled through ice and snow, or burned themselves with tropic heat, in the effort to penetrate these secrets of the earth! And how many have left their bones to whiten on the desert or lie hidden beneath icebergs at the end of the search!

Of the fortunate ones who escaped after many perils, Baker was one of the most fortunate. He explored the Blue and the White Nile, discovered at least one of the reservoirs from which flows the great river of Egypt, and lived to tell the tale and to receive due honor, being knighted by the Queen therefor, fêted by learned societies, and sent subsequently by the Khedive at the head of a large force with commission to destroy the slave trade. In this he appears to have been successful for a time, but for a time only.

Baker was born in London, June 8th, 1821, and died December 30th, 1893. With his brother he established, in 1847, a settlement in the mountains of Ceylon, where he spent several years. His experiences in the far East appear in books entitled 'The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon' and 'Eight Years Wandering in Ceylon.' In 1861, accompanied by his young wife and an escort, he started up the Nile, and three years later, on the 14th of March, 1864, at length reached the cliffs overlooking the Albert Nyanza, being the first European to behold its waters. Like most Englishmen, he was an enthusiastic sportsman, and his manner of life afforded him a great variety of unusual experiences. He visited Cyprus in 1879, after the execution of the convention between England and Turkey, and subsequently he traveled to Syria, India, Japan, and America. He kept voluminous notes of his various journeys, which he utilized in the preparation of numerous volumes:--'The Albert Nyanza'; 'The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia'; 'Ismäilia,' a narrative of the expedition under the auspices of the Khedive; 'Cyprus as I Saw It in 1879'; together with 'Wild Beasts and Their Ways,' 'True Tales for My Grandsons,' and a story entitled 'Cast Up by the Sea,' which was for many years a great favorite with the boys of England and America. They are all full of life and incident. One of the most delightful memories of them which readers retain is the figure of his lovely wife, so full of courage, loyalty, buoyancy, and charm. He had that rarest of possibilities, spirit-stirring adventure and home companionship at once.

HUNTING IN ABYSSINIA

From 'The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia'

On arrival at the camp, I resolved to fire the entire country on the following day, and to push still farther up the course of the Settite to the foot of the mountains, and to return to this camp in about a fortnight, by which time the animals that had been scared away by the fire would have returned. Accordingly, on the following morning, accompanied by a few of the aggageers, I started upon the south bank of the river, and rode for some distance into the interior, to the ground that was entirely covered with high withered grass. We were passing through a mass of kittar thorn bush, almost hidden by the immensely high grass, when, as I was ahead of the party, I came suddenly upon the tracks of rhinoceros; these were so unmistakably recent that I felt sure we were not far from the animals themselves. As I had wished to fire the grass, I was accompanied by my Tokrooris, and my horse-keeper, Mahomet No. 2. It was difficult ground for the men, and still more unfavorable for the horses, as large disjointed masses of stone were concealed in the high grass.

We were just speculating as to the position of the rhinoceros, and thinking how uncommonly unpleasant it would be should he obtain our wind, when whiff! whiff! whiff! We heard the sharp whistling snort, with a tremendous rush through the high grass and thorns close to us; and at the same moment two of these determined brutes were upon us in full charge. I never saw such a scrimmage; _sauve qui peut_! There was no time for more than one look behind. I dug the spurs into Aggahr's flanks, and clasping him round the neck, I ducked my head down to his shoulder, well protected with my strong hunting cap, and I kept the spurs going as hard as I could ply them, blindly trusting to Providence and my good horse, over big rocks, fallen trees, thick kittar thorns, and grass ten feet high, with the two infernal animals in full chase only a few feet behind me. I heard their abominable whiffing close to me, but so did my horse also, and the good old hunter flew over obstacles that I should have thought impossible, and he dashed straight under the hooked thorn bushes and doubled like a hare. The aggageers were all scattered; Mahomet No. 2 was knocked over by a rhinoceros; all the men were sprawling upon the rocks with their guns, and the party was entirely discomfited. Having passed the kittar thorn, I turned, and seeing that the beasts had gone straight on, I brought Aggahr's head round, and tried to give chase, but it was perfectly impossible; it was only a wonder that the horse had escaped in ground so difficult for riding. Although my clothes were of the strongest and coarsest Arab cotton cloth, which seldom tore, but simply lost a thread when caught in a thorn, I was nearly naked. My blouse was reduced to shreds; as I wore sleeves only half way from the shoulder to the elbow, my naked arms were streaming with blood; fortunately my hunting cap was secured with a chin strap, and still more fortunately I had grasped the horse's neck, otherwise I must have been dragged out of the saddle by the hooked thorns. All the men were cut and bruised, some having fallen upon their heads among the rocks, and others had hurt their legs in falling in their endeavors to escape. Mahomet. No. 2, the horse-keeper, was more frightened than hurt, as he had been knocked down by the shoulder, and not by the horn of the rhinoceros, as the animal had not noticed him: its attention was absorbed by the horse.

I determined to set fire to the whole country immediately, and descending the hill toward the river to obtain a favorable wind, I put my men in a line, extending over about a mile along the river's bed, and they fired the grass in different places. With a loud roar, the flame leaped high in air and rushed forward with astonishing velocity; the grass was as inflammable as tinder, and the strong north wind drove the long line of fire spreading in every direction through the country.

We now crossed to the other side of the river to avoid the flames, and we returned toward the camp. On the way I made a long shot and badly wounded a tétel, but lost it in thick thorns; shortly after, I stalked a nellut _(A. Strepsiceros_), and bagged it with the Fletcher rifle.

We arrived early in camp, and on the following day we moved sixteen miles farther up stream, and camped under a tamarind-tree by the side of the river. No European had ever been farther than our last camp, Delladilla, and that spot had only been visited by Johann Schmidt and Florian. In the previous year, my aggageers had sabred some of the Basé at this very camping-place; they accordingly requested me to keep a vigilant watch during the night, as they would be very likely to attack us in revenge, unless they had been scared by the rifles and by the size of our party. They advised me not to remain long in this spot, as it would be very dangerous for my wife to be left almost alone during the day, when we were hunting, and that the Basé would be certain to espy us from the mountains, and would most probably attack and carry her off when they were assured of our departure. She was not very nervous about this, but she immediately called the dragoman, Mahomet, who knew the use of a gun, and she asked him if he would stand by her in case they were attacked in my absence; the faithful servant replied, "Mahomet fight the Basé? No, Missus; Mahomet not fight; if the Basé come, Missus fight; Mahomet run away; Mahomet not come all the way from Cairo to get him killed by black fellers; Mahomet will run--Inshallah!" (Please God.)

This frank avowal of his military tactics was very reassuring. There was a high hill of basalt, something resembling a pyramid, within a quarter of a mile of us; I accordingly ordered some of my men every day to ascend this look-out station, and I resolved to burn the high grass at once, so as to destroy all cover for the concealment of an enemy. That evening I very nearly burned our camp; I had several times ordered the men to clear away the dry grass for about thirty yards from our resting-place; this they had neglected to obey. We had been joined a few days before by a party of about a dozen Hamran Arabs, who were hippopotami hunters; thus we mustered very strong, and it would have been the work of about half an hour to have cleared away the grass as I had desired.

The wind was brisk, and blew directly toward our camp, which was backed by the river. I accordingly took a fire-stick, and I told my people to look sharp, as they would not clear away the grass. I walked to the foot of the basalt hill, and fired the grass in several places. In an instant the wind swept the flame and smoke toward the camp. All was confusion; the Arabs had piled the camel-saddles and all their corn and effects in the high grass about twenty yards from the tent; there was no time to remove all these things; therefore, unless they could clear away the grass so as to stop the fire before it should reach the spot, they would be punished for their laziness by losing their property. The fire traveled quicker than I had expected, and, by the time I had hastened to the tent, I found the entire party working frantically; the Arabs were slashing down the grass with their swords, and sweeping it away with their shields, while my Tokrooris were beating it down with long sticks and tearing it from its withered and fortunately tinder-rotten roots, in desperate haste. The flames rushed on, and we already felt the heat, as volumes of smoke enveloped us; I thought it advisable to carry the gunpowder (about 20 lbs.) down to the river, together with the rifles; while my wife and Mahomet dragged the various articles of luggage to the same place of safety. The fire now approached within about sixty yards, and dragging out the iron pins, I let the tent fall to the ground. The Arabs had swept a line like a high-road perfectly clean, and they were still tearing away the grass, when they were suddenly obliged to rush back as the flames arrived.

Almost instantaneously the smoke blew over us, but the fire had expired upon meeting the cleared ground. I now gave them a little lecture upon obedience to orders; and from that day, their first act upon halting for the night was to clear away the grass, lest I should repeat the entertainment. In countries that are covered with dry grass, it should be an invariable rule to clear the ground around the camp before night; hostile natives will frequently fire the grass to windward of a party, or careless servants may leave their pipes upon the ground, which fanned by the wind would quickly create a blaze. That night the mountain afforded a beautiful appearance as the flames ascended the steep sides, and ran flickering up the deep gullies with a brilliant light.

We were standing outside the tent admiring the scene, which perfectly illuminated the neighborhood, when suddenly an apparition of a lion and lioness stood for an instant before us at about fifteen yards distance, and then disappeared over the blackened ground before I had time to snatch a rifle from the tent. No doubt they had been disturbed from the mountain by the fire, and had mistaken their way in the country so recently changed from high grass to black ashes. In this locality I considered it advisable to keep a vigilant watch during the night, and the Arabs were told off for that purpose.

A little before sunrise I accompanied the howartis, or hippopotamus hunters, for a day's sport. There were numbers of hippos in this part of the river, and we were not long before we found a herd. The hunters failed in several attempts to harpoon them, but they succeeded in stalking a crocodile after a most peculiar fashion. This large beast was lying upon a sandbank on the opposite margin of the river, close to a bed of rushes.

The howartis, having studied the wind, ascended for about a quarter of a mile, and then swam across the river, harpoon in hand. The two men reached the opposite bank, beneath which they alternately waded or swam down the stream toward the spot upon which the crocodile was lying. Thus advancing under cover of the steep bank, or floating with the stream in deep places, and crawling like crocodiles across the shallows, the two hunters at length arrived at the bank or rushes, on the other side of which the monster was basking asleep upon the sand. They were now about waist-deep, and they kept close to the rushes with their harpoons raised, ready to cast the moment they should pass the rush bed and come in view of the crocodile. Thus steadily advancing, they had just arrived at the corner within about eight yards of the crocodile, when the creature either saw them, or obtained their wind; in an instant it rushed to the water; at the same moment, the two harpoons were launched with great rapidity by the hunters. One glanced obliquely from the scales; the other stuck fairly in the tough hide, and the iron, detached from the bamboo, held fast, while the ambatch float, running on the surface of the water, marked the course of the reptile beneath.

The hunters chose a convenient place, and recrossed the stream to our side, apparently not heeding the crocodiles more than we should pike when bathing in England. They would not waste their time by securing the crocodile at present, as they wished to kill a hippopotamus; the float would mark the position, and they would be certain to find it later. We accordingly continued our search for hippopotami; these animals appeared to be on the _qui vive_, and, as the hunters once more failed in an attempt, I made a clean shot behind the ear of one, and killed it dead. At length we arrived at a large pool, in which were several sandbanks covered with rushes, and many rocky islands. Among these rocks were a herd of hippopotami, consisting of an old bull and several cows; a young hippo was standing, like an ugly little statue, on a protruding rock, while another infant stood upon its mother's back that listlessly floated on the water.

This was an admirable place for the hunters. They desired me to lie down, and they crept into the jungle out of view of the river; I presently observed them stealthily descending the dry bed about two hundred paces above the spot where the hippos were basking behind the rocks. They entered the river, and swam down the centre of the stream toward the rock. This was highly exciting:--the hippos were quite unconscious of the approaching danger, as, steadily and rapidly, the hunters floated down the strong current; they neared the rock, and both heads disappeared as they purposely sank out of view; in a few seconds later they reappeared at the edge of the rock upon which the young hippo stood. It would be difficult to say which started first, the astonished young hippo into the water, or the harpoons from the hands of the howartis! It was the affair of a moment; the hunters dived directly they had hurled their harpoons, and, swimming for some distance under water, they came to the surface, and hastened to the shore lest an infuriated hippopotamus should follow them. One harpoon had missed; the other had fixed the bull of the herd, at which it had been surely aimed. This was grand sport! The bull was in the greatest fury, and rose to the surface, snorting and blowing in his impotent rage; but as the ambatch float was exceedingly large, and this naturally accompanied his movements, he tried to escape from his imaginary persecutor, and dived constantly, only to find his pertinacious attendant close to him upon regaining the surface. This was not to last long; the howartis were in earnest, and they at once called their party, who, with two of the aggageers, Abou Do and Suleiman, were near at hand; these men arrived with the long ropes that form a portion of the outfit for hippo hunting.

The whole party now halted on the edge of the river, while two men swam across with one end of the long rope. Upon gaining the opposite bank, I observed that a second rope was made fast to the middle of the main line; thus upon our side we held the ends of two ropes, while on the opposite side they had only one; accordingly, the point of junction of the two ropes in the centre formed an acute angle. The object of this was soon practically explained. Two men upon our side now each held a rope, and one of these walked about ten yards before the other. Upon both sides of the river the people now advanced, dragging the rope on the surface of the water until they reached the ambatch float that was swimming to and fro, according to the movements of the hippopotamus below. By a dexterous jerk of the main line, the float was now placed between the two ropes, and it was immediately secured in the acute angle by bringing together the ends of these ropes on our side.

The men on the opposite bank now dropped their line, and our men hauled in upon the ambatch float that was held fast between the ropes. Thus cleverly made sure, we quickly brought a strain upon the hippo, and, although I have had some experience in handling big fish, I never knew one pull so lustily as the amphibious animal that we now alternately coaxed and bullied. He sprang out of the water, gnashed his huge jaws, snorted with tremendous rage, and lashed the river into foam; he then dived, and foolishly approached us beneath the water. We quickly gathered in the slack line, and took a round turn upon a large rock, within a few feet of the river. The hippo now rose to the surface, about ten yards from the hunters, and, jumping half out of the water, he snapped his great jaws together, endeavoring to catch the rope, but at the same instant two harpoons were launched into his side. Disdaining retreat and maddened with rage, the furious animal charged from the depths of the river, and, gaining a footing, he reared his bulky form from the surface, came boldly upon the sandbank, and attacked the hunters open-mouthed. He little knew his enemy; they were not the men to fear a pair of gaping jaws, armed with a deadly array of tusks, but half a dozen lances were hurled at him, some entering his mouth from a distance of five or six paces, at the same time several men threw handfuls of sand into his enormous eyes. This baffled him more than the lances; he crunched the shafts between his powerful jaws like straws, but he was beaten by the sand, and, shaking his huge head, he retreated to the river. During his sally upon the shore, two of the hunters had secured the ropes of the harpoons that had been fastened in his body just before his charge; he was now fixed by three of these deadly instruments, but suddenly one rope gave way, having been bitten through by the enraged beast, who was still beneath the water. Immediately after this he appeared on the surface, and, without a moment's hesitation, he once more charged furiously from the water straight at the hunters, with his huge mouth open to such an extent that he could have accommodated two inside passengers. Suleiman was wild with delight, and springing forward lance in hand, he drove it against the head of the formidable animal, but without effect. At the same time, Abou Do met the hippo sword in hand, reminding me of Perseus slaying the sea-monster that would devour Andromeda, but the sword made a harmless gash, and the lance, already blunted against the rocks, refused to penetrate the tough hide; once more handfuls of sand were pelted upon his face, and again repulsed by this blinding attack, he was forced to retire to his deep hole and wash it from his eyes. Six times during the fight the valiant bull hippo quitted his watery fortress, and charged resolutely at his pursuers; he had broken several of their lances in his jaws, other lances had been hurled, and, falling upon the rocks, they were blunted, and would not penetrate. The fight had continued for three hours, and the sun was about to set, accordingly the hunters begged me to give him the _coup de grace_, as they had hauled him close to the shore, and they feared he would sever the rope with his teeth. I waited for a good opportunity, when he boldly raised his head from water about three yards from the rifle, and a bullet from the little Fletcher between the eyes closed the last act.

THE SOURCES OF THE NILE

From 'The Albert Nyanza'

The name of this village was Parkani. For several days past our guides had told us that we were very near to the lake, and we were now assured that we should reach it on the morrow. I had noticed a lofty range of mountains at an immense distance west, and I had imagined that the lake lay on the other side of this chain; but I was now informed that those mountains formed the western frontier of the M'wootan N'zigé, and that the lake was actually within a march of Parkani. I could not believe it possible that we were so near the object of our search. The guide Rabonga now appeared, and declared that if we started early on the following morning we should be able to wash in the lake by noon!

That night I hardly slept. For years I had striven to reach the "sources of the Nile." In my nightly dreams during that arduous voyage I had always failed, but after so much hard work and perseverance the cup was at my very lips, and I was to drink at the mysterious fountain before another sun should set--at that great reservoir of Nature that ever since creation had baffled all discovery.

I had hoped, and prayed, and striven through all kinds of difficulties, in sickness, starvation, and fatigue, to reach that hidden source; and when it had appeared impossible, we had both determined to die upon the road rather than return defeated. Was it possible that it was so near, and that to-morrow we could say, "the work is accomplished"?

The 14th March. The sun had not risen when I was spurring my ox after the guide, who, having been promised a double handful of beads on arrival at the lake, had caught the enthusiasm of the moment. The day broke beautifully clear, and having crossed a deep valley between the hills, we toiled up the opposite slope. I hurried to the summit. The glory of our prize burst suddenly upon me! There, like a sea of quicksilver, lay far beneath the grand expanse of water,--a boundless sea horizon on the south and southwest, glittering in the noonday sun; and on the west at fifty or sixty miles distance blue mountains rose from the bosom of the lake to a height of about 7,000 feet above its level.

It is impossible to describe the triumph of that moment;--here was the reward for all our labor--for the years of tenacity with which we had toiled through Africa. England had won the sources of the Nile! Long before I reached this spot I had arranged to give three cheers with all our men in English style in honor of the discovery, but now that I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. I was about 1,500 feet above the lake, and I looked down from the steep granite cliff upon those welcome waters--upon that vast reservoir which nourished Egypt and brought fertility where all was wilderness--upon that great source so long hidden from mankind; that source of bounty and of blessings to millions of human beings; and as one of the greatest objects in nature, I determined to honor it with a great name. As an imperishable memorial of one loved and mourned by our gracious Queen and deplored by every Englishman, I called this great lake "the Albert Nyanza." The Victoria and the Albert lakes are the two sources of the Nile.

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR

(1848-)

Although the prominence of Arthur James Balfour in English contemporary life is in the main that of a statesman, he has a high place as a critic of philosophy, especially in its relation to religion. During the early part of his life his interests were entirely those of a student. He was born in 1848, a member of the Cecil family, and a nephew of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. His tastes were those of a retired thinker. He cared for literature, music, and philosophy, but very little for the political world; so little that he never read the newspapers. This tendency was increased by his delicate health. When, therefore, as a young man in the neighborhood of thirty, he was made Secretary for Scotland, people laughed. His uncle's choice proved to be a wise one, however; and he later, in 1886, gave his nephew the very important position of Irish Secretary, at a time when some of the ablest and most experienced statesmen had failed. Mr. Balfour won an unexpected success and a wide reputation, and from that time on he developed rapidly into one of the most skillful statesmen of the Conservative party. By tradition and by temperament he is an extreme Tory; and it is in the opposition, as a skillful fencer in debate and a sharp critic of pretentious schemes, that he has been most admired and most feared. However, he is kept from being narrowly confined to the traditional point of view by the philosophic interests and training of his mind, which he has turned into practical fairness. Some of his speeches are most original in suggestion, and all show a literary quality of a high order. His writings on other subjects are also broad, scholarly, and practical. 'A Defense of Philosophic Doubt' is thought by some philosophers to be the ablest work of destructive criticism since Hume. 'The Foundations of Belief' covers somewhat the same ground and in more popular fashion. 'Essays and Addresses' is a collection of papers on literature and sociology.

THE PLEASURES OF READING

From his Rectorial Address before the University of Glasgow

I confess to have been much perplexed in my search for a topic on which I could say something to which you would have patience to listen, or on which I might find it profitable to speak. One theme however there is, not inappropriate to the place in which I stand, nor I hope unwelcome to the audience which I address. The youngest of you have left behind that period of youth during which it seems inconceivable that any book should afford recreation except a story-book. Many of you are just reaching the period when, at the end of your prescribed curriculum, the whole field and compass of literature lies outspread before you; when, with faculties trained and disciplined, and the edge of curiosity not dulled or worn with use, you may enter at your leisure into the intellectual heritage of the centuries.

Now the question of how to read and what to read has of late filled much space in the daily papers, if it cannot strictly speaking be said to have profoundly occupied the public mind. But you need be under no alarm. I am not going to supply you with a new list of the hundred books most worth reading, nor am I about to take the world into my confidence in respect of my "favorite passages from the best authors." Nor again do I address myself to the professed student, to the fortunate individual with whom literature or science is the business as well as the pleasure of life. I have not the qualifications which would enable me to undertake such a task with the smallest hope of success. My theme is humble, though the audience to whom I desire to speak is large: for I speak to the ordinary reader with ordinary capacities and ordinary leisure, to whom reading is, or ought to be, not a business but a pleasure; and my theme is the enjoyment--not, mark you, the improvement, nor the glory, nor the profit, but the _enjoyment_--which may be derived by such an one from books.

It is perhaps due to the controversial habits engendered by my unfortunate profession, that I find no easier method of making my own view clear than that of contrasting with it what I regard as an erroneous view held by somebody else; and in the present case the doctrine which I shall choose as a foil to my own, is one which has been stated with the utmost force and directness by that brilliant and distinguished writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison. He has, as many of you know, recently given us, in a series of excellent essays, his opinion on the principles which should guide us in the choice of books. Against that part of his treatise which is occupied with specific recommendations of certain authors I have not a word to say. He has resisted all the temptations to eccentricity which so easily beset the modern critic. Every book which he praises deserves his praise, and has long been praised by the world at large. I do not, indeed, hold that the verdict of the world is necessarily binding on the individual conscience. I admit to the full that there is an enormous quantity of hollow devotion, of withered orthodoxy divorced from living faith, in the eternal chorus of praise which goes up from every literary altar to the memory of the immortal dead. Nevertheless every critic is bound to recognize, as Mr. Harrison recognizes, that he must put down to individual peculiarity any difference he may have with the general verdict of the ages; he must feel that mankind are not likely to be in a conspiracy of error as to the kind of literary work which conveys to them the highest literary enjoyment, and that in such cases at least _securus judicat orbis terrarum_.

But it is quite possible to hold that any work recommended by Mr. Harrison is worth repeated reading, and yet to reject utterly the theory of study by which these recommendations are prefaced. For Mr. Harrison is a ruthless censor. His _index expurgatorius_ includes, so far as I can discover, the whole catalogue of the British Museum, with the exception of a small remnant which might easily be contained in about thirty or forty volumes. The vast remainder he contemplates with feelings apparently not merely of indifference, but of active aversion. He surveys the boundless and ever-increasing waste of books with emotions compounded of disgust and dismay. He is almost tempted to say in his haste that the invention of printing has been an evil one for humanity. In the habits of miscellaneous reading, born of a too easy access to libraries, circulating and other, he sees many soul-destroying tendencies; and his ideal reader would appear to be a gentleman who rejects with a lofty scorn all in history that does not pass for being first-rate in importance, and all in literature that is not admitted to be first-rate in quality.

Now, I am far from denying that this theory is plausible. Of all that has been written, it is certain that the professed student can master but an infinitesimal fraction. Of that fraction the ordinary reader can master but a very small part. What advice, then, can be better than to select for study the few masterpieces that have come down to us, and to treat as non-existent the huge but undistinguished remainder? We are like travelers passing hastily through some ancient city; filled with memorials of many generations and more than one great civilization. Our time is short. Of what may be seen we can only see at best but a trifling fragment. Let us then take care that we waste none of our precious moments upon that which is less than the most excellent. So preaches Mr. Frederic Harrison; and when a doctrine which put thus may seem not only wise but obvious, is further supported by such assertions that habits of miscellaneous reading "close the mind to what is spiritually sustaining" by "stuffing it with what is simply curious," or that such methods of study are worse than no habits of study at all because they "gorge and enfeeble" the mind by "excess in that which cannot nourish," I almost feel that in venturing to dissent from it, I may be attacking not merely the teaching of common sense but the inspirations of a high morality.

Yet I am convinced that for most persons the views thus laid down by Mr. Harrison are wrong; and that what he describes, with characteristic vigor, as "an impotent voracity for desultory information," is in reality a most desirable and a not too common form of mental appetite. I have no sympathy whatever with the horror he expresses at the "incessant accumulation of fresh books." I am never tempted to regret that Gutenberg was born into the world. I care not at all though the "cataract of printed stuff," as Mr. Harrison calls it, should flow and still flow on until the catalogues of our libraries should make libraries themselves. I am prepared, indeed, to express sympathy almost amounting to approbation for any one who would check all writing which was _not_ intended for the printer. I pay no tribute of grateful admiration to those who have oppressed mankind with the dubious blessing of the penny post. But the ground of the distinction is plain. We are always obliged to read our letters, and are sometimes obliged to answer them. But who obliges us to wade through the piled-up lumber of an ancient library, or to skim more than we like off the frothy foolishness poured forth in ceaseless streams by our circulating libraries? Dead dunces do not importune us; Grub Street does not ask for a reply by return of post. Even their living successors need hurt no one who possesses the very moderate degree of social courage required to make the admission that he has not read the last new novel or the current number of a fashionable magazine.

But this is not the view of Mr. Harrison. To him the position of any one having free access to a large library is fraught with issues so tremendous that, in order adequately to describe it, he has to seek for parallels in two of the most highly-wrought episodes in fiction: the Ancient Mariner, becalmed and thirsting on the tropic ocean; Bunyan's Christian in the crisis of spiritual conflict. But there is here, surely, some error and some exaggeration. Has miscellaneous reading all the dreadful consequences which Mr. Harrison depicts? Has it any of them? His declaration about the intellect being "gorged and enfeebled" by the absorption of too much information, expresses no doubt with great vigor an analogy, for which there is high authority, between the human mind and the human stomach; but surely it is an analogy which may be pressed too far. I have often heard of the individual whose excellent natural gifts have been so overloaded with huge masses of undigested and indigestible learning that they have had no chance of healthy development. But though I have often heard of this personage, I have never met him, and I believe him to be mythical. It is true, no doubt, that many learned people are dull; but there is no indication whatever that they are dull because they are learned. True dullness is seldom acquired; it is a natural grace, the manifestations of which, however modified by education, remain in substance the same. Fill a dull man to the brim with knowledge, and he will not become less dull, as the enthusiasts for education vainly imagine; but neither will he become duller, as Mr. Harrison appears to suppose. He will remain in essence what he always has been and always must have been. But whereas his dullness would, if left to itself, have been merely vacuous, it may have become, under cureful cultivation, pretentious and pedantic.

I would further point out to you that while there is no ground in experience for supposing that a keen interest in those facts which Mr. Harrison describes as "merely curious" has any stupefying effect upon the mind, or has any tendency to render it insensible to the higher things of literature and art, there is positive evidence that many of those who have most deeply felt the charm of these higher things have been consumed by that omnivorous appetite for knowledge which excites Mr. Harrison's especial indignation. Dr. Johnson, for instance, though deaf to some of the most delicate harmonies of verse, was without question a very great critic. Yet in Dr. Johnson's opinion, literary history, which is for the most part composed of facts which Mr. Harrison would regard as insignificant, about authors whom he would regard as pernicious, was the most delightful of studies. Again, consider the case of Lord Macaulay. Lord Macaulay did everything Mr. Harrison says he ought not to have done. From youth to age he was continuously occupied in "gorging and enfeebling" his intellect, by the unlimited consumption of every species of literature, from the masterpieces of the age of Pericles to the latest rubbish from the circulating library. It is not told of him that his intellect suffered by the process; and though it will hardly be claimed for him that he was a great critic, none will deny that he possessed the keenest susceptibilities for literary excellence in many languages and in every form. If Englishmen and Scotchmen do not satisfy you, I will take a Frenchman. The most accomplished critic whom France has produced is, by general admission, Ste.-Beuve. His capacity for appreciating supreme perfection in literature will be disputed by none; yet the great bulk of his vast literary industry was expended upon the lives and writings of authors whose lives Mr. Harrison would desire us to forget, and whose writings almost wring from him the wish that the art of printing had never been discovered.

I am even bold enough to hazard the conjecture (I trust he will forgive me) that Mr. Harrison's life may be quoted against Mr. Harrison's theory. I entirely decline to believe, without further evidence, that the writings whose vigor of style and of thought have been the delight of us all are the product of his own system. I hope I do him no wrong, but I cannot help thinking that if we knew the truth, we should find that he followed the practice of those worthy physicians who, after prescribing the most abstemious diet to their patients, may be seen partaking freely, and to all appearances safely, of the most succulent and the most unwholesome of the forbidden dishes.

It has to be noted that Mr. Harrison's list of the books which deserve perusal would seem to indicate that in his opinion, the pleasures to be derived from literature are chiefly pleasures of the imagination. Poets, dramatists, and novelists form the chief portion of the somewhat meagre fare which is specifically permitted to his disciples. Now, though I have already stated that the list is not one of which any person is likely to assert that it contains books which ought to be excluded, yet, even from the point of view of what may be termed aesthetic enjoyment, the field in which we are allowed to take our pleasures seems to me unduly restricted.

Contemporary poetry, for instance, on which Mr. Harrison bestows a good deal of hard language, has and must have, for the generation which produces it, certain qualities not likely to be possessed by any other. Charles Lamb has somewhere declared that a pun loses all its virtues as soon as the momentary quality of the intellectual and social atmosphere in which it was born has changed its character. What is true of this, the humblest effort of verbal art, is true in a different measure and degree of all, even of the highest, forms of literature. To some extent every work requires interpretation to generations who are separated by differences of thought or education from the age in which it was originally produced. That this is so with every book which depends for its interest upon feelings and fashions which have utterly vanished, no one will be disposed, I imagine, to deny. Butler's 'Hudibras,' for instance, which was the delight of a gay and witty society, is to me at least not unfrequently dull. Of some works, no doubt, which made a noise in their day it seems impossible to detect the slightest race of charm. But this is not the case with 'Hudibras.' Its merits are obvious. That they should have appealed to a generation sick of the reign of the "Saints" is precisely what we should have expected. But to us, who are not sick of the reign of the Saints, they appeal but imperfectly. The attempt to reproduce artificially the frame of mind of those who first read the poem is not only an effort, but is to most people, at all events, an unsuccessful effort. What is true of 'Hudibras' is true also, though in an inconceivably smaller degree, of those great works of imagination which deal with the elemental facts of human character and human passion. Yet even on these, time does, though lightly, lay his hand. Wherever what may be called "historic sympathy" is required, there will be some diminution of the enjoyment which those must have felt who were the poet's contemporaries. We look, so to speak, at the same splendid landscape as they, but distance has made it necessary for us to aid our natural vision with glasses, and some loss of light will thus inevitably be produced, and some inconvenience from the difficulty of truly adjusting the focus. Of all authors, Homer would, I suppose, be thought to suffer least from such drawbacks. But yet in order to listen to Homer's accents with the ears of an ancient Greek, we must be able, among other things, to enter into a view about the gods which is as far removed from what we should describe as religious sentiment, as it is from the frigid ingenuity of those later poets who regarded the deities of Greek mythology as so many wheels in the supernatural machinery with which it pleased them to carry on the action of their pieces. If we are to accept Mr. Herbert Spencer's views as to the progress of our species, changes of sentiment are likely to occur which will even more seriously interfere with the world's delight in the Homeric poems. When human beings become so nicely "adjusted to their environment" that courage and dexterity in battle will have become as useless among civic virtues as an old helmet is among the weapons of war; when fighting gets to be looked upon with the sort of disgust excited in us by cannibalism; and when public opinion shall regard a warrior much in the same light that we regard a hangman,--I do not see how any fragment of that vast and splendid literature which depends for its interest upon deeds of heroism and the joy of battle is to retain its ancient charm.

About these remote contingencies, however, I am glad to think that neither you nor I need trouble our heads; and if I parenthetically allude to them now, it is merely as an illustration of a truth not always sufficiently remembered, and as an excuse for those who find in the genuine, though possibly second-rate, productions of their own age, a charm for which they search in vain among the mighty monuments of the past.

But I leave this train of thought, which has perhaps already taken me too far, in order to point out a more fundamental error, as I think it, which arises from regarding literature solely from this high aesthetic standpoint. The pleasures of imagination, derived from the best literary models, form without doubt the most exquisite portion of the enjoyment which we may extract from books; but they do not, in my opinion, form the largest portion if we take into account mass as well as quality in our calculation. There is the literature which appeals to the imagination or the fancy, some stray specimens of which Mr. Harrison will permit us to peruse; but is there not also the literature which satisfies the curiosity? Is this vast storehouse of pleasure to be thrown hastily aside because many of the facts which it contains are alleged to be insignificant, because the appetite to which they minister is said to be morbid? Consider a little. We are here dealing with one of the strongest intellectual impulses of rational beings. Animals, as a rule, trouble themselves but little about anything unless they want either to eat it or to run away from it. Interest in and wonder at the works of nature and the doings of man are products of civilization, and excite emotions which do not diminish but increase with increasing knowledge and cultivation. Feed them and they grow; minister to them and they will greatly multiply. We hear much indeed of what is called "idle curiosity"; but I am loth to brand any form of curiosity as necessarily idle. Take, for example, one of the most singular, but in this age one of the most universal, forms in which it is accustomed to manifest itself: I mean that of an exhaustive study of the contents of the morning and evening papers. It is certainly remarkable that any person who has nothing to get by it should destroy his eyesight and confuse his brain by a conscientious attempt to master the dull and doubtful details of the European diary daily transmitted to us by "Our Special Correspondent." But it must be remembered that this is only a somewhat unprofitable exercise of that disinterested love of knowledge which moves men to penetrate the Polar snows, to build up systems of philosophy, or to explore the secrets of the remotest heavens. It has in it the rudiments of infinite and varied delights. It _can_ be turned, and it _should_ be turned into a curiosity for which nothing that has been done, or thought, or suffered, or believed, no law which governs the world of matter or the world of mind, can be wholly alien or uninteresting.

Truly it is a subject for astonishment that, instead of expanding to the utmost the employment of this pleasure-giving faculty, so many persons should set themselves to work to limit its exercise by all kinds of arbitrary regulations. Some there are, for example, who tell us that the acquisition of knowledge is all very well, but that it must be _useful_ knowledge; meaning usually thereby that it must enable a man to get on in a profession, pass an examination, shine in conversation, or obtain a reputation for learning. But even if they mean something higher than this, even if they mean that knowledge to be worth anything must subserve ultimately if not immediately the material or spiritual interests of mankind, the doctrine is one which should be energetically repudiated. I admit, of course, at once, that discoveries the most apparently remote from human concerns have often proved themselves of the utmost commercial or manufacturing value. But they require no such justification for their existence, nor were they striven for with any such object. Navigation is not the final cause of astronomy, nor telegraphy of electro-dynamics, nor dye-works of chemistry. And if it be true that the desire of knowledge for the sake of knowledge was the animating motive of the great men who first wrested her secrets from nature, why should it not also be enough for us, to whom it is not given to discover, but only to learn as best we may what has been discovered by others?

Another maxim, more plausible but equally pernicious, is that superficial knowledge is worse than no knowledge at all. That "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" is a saying which has now got currency as a proverb stamped in the mint of Pope's versification; of Pope, who with the most imperfect knowledge of Greek translated Homer, with the most imperfect knowledge of the Elizabethan drama edited Shakespeare, and with the most imperfect knowledge of philosophy wrote the 'Essay on Man.' But what is this "little knowledge" which is supposed to be so dangerous? What is it "little" in relation to? If in relation to what there is to know, then all human knowledge is little. If in relation to what actually is known by somebody, then we must condemn as "dangerous" the knowledge which Archimedes possessed of mechanics, or Copernicus of astronomy; for a shilling primer and a few weeks' study will enable any student to outstrip in mere information some of the greatest teachers of the past. No doubt, that little knowledge which thinks itself to be great may possibly be a dangerous, as it certainly is a most ridiculous thing. We have all suffered under that eminently absurd individual who on the strength of one or two volumes, imperfectly apprehended by himself, and long discredited in the estimation of everyone else, is prepared to supply you on the shortest notice with a dogmatic solution of every problem suggested by this "unintelligible world" or the political variety of the same pernicious genus, whose statecraft consists in the ready application to the most complex question of national interest of some high-sounding commonplace which has done weary duty on a thousand platforms, and which even in its palmiest days was never fit for anything better than a peroration. But in our dislike of the individual, do not let us mistake the diagnosis of his disease. He suffers not from ignorance but from stupidity. Give him learning and you make him not wise, but only more pretentious in his folly.

I say then that so far from a little knowledge being undesirable, a little knowledge is all that on most subjects any of us can hope to attain; and that, as a source not of worldly profit but of personal pleasure, it may be of incalculable value to its possessor. But it will naturally be asked, "How are we to select from among the infinite number of things which may be known, those which it is best worth while for us to know?" We are constantly being told to concern ourselves with learning what is important, and not to waste our energies upon what is insignificant. But what are the marks by which we shall recognize the important, and how is it to be distinguished from the insignificant. A precise and complete answer to this question which shall be true for all men cannot be given. I am considering knowledge, recollect, as it ministers to enjoyment; and from this point of view each unit of information is obviously of importance in proportion as it increases the general sum of enjoyment which we obtain, or expect to obtain, from knowledge. This, of course, makes it impossible to lay down precise rules which shall be an equally sure guide to all sorts and conditions of men; for in this, as in other matters, tastes must differ, and against real difference of taste there is no appeal.

There is, however, one caution which it may be worth your while to keep in view:--Do not be persuaded into applying any general proposition on this subject with a foolish impartiality to every kind of knowledge. There are those who tell you that it is the broad generalities and the far-reaching principles which govern the world, which are alone worthy of your attention. A fact which is not an illustration of a law, in the opinion of these persons appears to lose all its value. Incidents which do not fit into some great generalization, events which are merely picturesque, details which are merely curious, they dismiss as unworthy the interest of a reasoning being. Now, even in science this doctrine in its extreme form does not hold good. The most scientific of men have taken profound interest in the investigation of facts from the determination of which they do not anticipate any material addition to our knowledge of the laws which regulate the Universe. In these matters, I need hardly say that I speak wholly without authority. But I have always been under the impression that an investigation which has cost hundreds of thousands of pounds; which has stirred on three occasions the whole scientific community throughout the civilized world; on which has been expended the utmost skill in the construction of instruments and their application to purposes of research (I refer to the attempts made to determine the distance of the sun by observation of the transit of Venus),--would, even if they had been brought to a successful issue, have furnished mankind with the knowledge of no new astronomical principle. The laws which govern the motions of the solar system, the proportions which the various elements in that system bear to one another, have long been known. The distance of the sun itself is known within limits of error relatively speaking not very considerable. Were the measuring rod we apply to the heavens based on an estimate of the sun's distance from the earth which was wrong by (say) three per cent., it would not to the lay mind seem to affect very materially our view either of the distribution of the heavenly bodies or of their motions. And yet this information, this piece of celestial gossip, would seem to have been the chief astronomical result expected from the successful prosecution of an investigation in which whole nations have interested themselves.

But though no one can, I think, pretend that science does not concern itself, and properly concern itself, with facts which are not to all appearance illustrations of law, it is undoubtedly true that for those who desire to extract the greatest pleasure from science, a knowledge, however elementary, of the leading principles of investigation and the larger laws of nature, is the acquisition most to be desired. To him who is not a specialist, a comprehension of the broad outlines of the universe as it presents itself to his scientific imagination is the thing most worth striving to attain. But when we turn from science to what is rather vaguely called history, the same principles of study do not, I think, altogether apply, and mainly for this reason: that while the recognition of the reign of law is the chief amongst the pleasures imparted by science, our inevitable ignorance makes it the least among the pleasures imparted by history.

It is no doubt true that we are surrounded by advisers who tell us that all study of the past is barren, except in so far as it enables us to determine the principles by which the evolution of human societies is governed. How far such an investigation has been up to the present time fruitful in results, it would be unkind to inquire. That it will ever enable us to trace with accuracy the course which States and nations are destined to pursue in the future, or to account in detail for their history in the past, I do not in the least believe. We are borne along like travelers on some unexplored stream. We may know enough of the general configuration of the globe to be sure that we are making our way towards the ocean. We may know enough, by experience or theory, of the laws regulating the flow of liquids, to conjecture how the river will behave under the varying influences to which it may be subject. More than this we cannot know. It will depend largely upon causes which, in relation to any laws which we are even likely to discover may properly be called accidental, whether we are destined sluggishly to drift among fever-stricken swamps, to hurry down perilous rapids, or to glide gently through fair scenes of peaceful cultivation.

But leaving on one side ambitious sociological speculations, and even those more modest but hitherto more successful investigations into the causes which have in particular cases been principally operative in producing great political changes, there are still two modes in which we can derive what I may call "spectacular" enjoyment from the study of history. There is first the pleasure which arises from the contemplation of some great historic drama, or some broad and well-marked phase of social development. The story of the rise, greatness, and decay of a nation is like some vast epic which contains as subsidiary episodes the varied stories of the rise, greatness, and decay of creeds, of parties, and of statesmen. The imagination is moved by the slow unrolling of this great picture of human mutability, as it is moved by the contrasted permanence of the abiding stars. The ceaseless conflict, the strange echoes of long-forgotten controversies, the confusion of purpose, the successes in which lay deep the seeds of future evils, the failures that ultimately divert the otherwise inevitable danger, the heroism which struggles to the last for a cause foredoomed to defeat, the wickedness which sides with right, and the wisdom which huzzas at the triumph of folly,--fate, meanwhile, amidst this turmoil and perplexity, working silently towards the predestined end,--all these form together a subject the contemplation of which need surely never weary.

But yet there is another and very different species of enjoyment to be derived from the records of the past, which requires a somewhat different method of study in order that it may be fully tasted. Instead of contemplating as it were from a distance the larger aspects of the human drama, we may elect to move in familiar fellowship amid the scenes and actors of special periods. We may add to the interest we derive from the contemplation of contemporary politics, a similar interest derived from a not less minute, and probably more accurate, knowledge of some comparatively brief passage in the political history of the past. We may extend the social circle in which we move, a circle perhaps narrowed and restricted through circumstances beyond our control, by making intimate acquaintances, perhaps even close friends, among a society long departed, but which, when we have once learnt the trick of it, we may, if it so pleases us, revive.

It is this kind of historical reading which is usually branded as frivolous and useless; and persons who indulge in it often delude themselves into thinking that the real motive of their investigation into bygone scenes and ancient scandals is philosophic interest in an important historical episode, whereas in truth it is not the philosophy which glorifies the details, but the details which make tolerable the philosophy. Consider, for example, the case of the French Revolution. The period from the taking of the Bastile to the fall of Robespierre is about the same as that which very commonly intervenes between two of our general elections. On these comparatively few months, libraries have been written. The incidents of every week are matters of familiar knowledge. The character and the biography of every actor in the drama has been made the subject of minute study; and by common admission there is no more fascinating page in the history of the world. But the interest is not what is commonly called philosophic, it is personal. Because the Revolution is the dominant fact in modern history, therefore people suppose that the doings of this or that provincial lawyer, tossed into temporary eminence and eternal infamy by some freak of the revolutionary wave, or the atrocities committed by this or that mob, half drunk with blood, rhetoric, and alcohol, are of transcendent importance. In truth their interest is great, but their importance is small. What we are concerned to know as students of the philosophy of history is, not the character of each turn and eddy in the great social cataract, but the manner in which the currents of the upper stream drew surely in towards the final plunge, and slowly collected themselves after the catastrophe again, to pursue at a different level their renewed and comparatively tranquil course.

Now, if so much of the interest of the French Revolution depends upon our minute knowledge of each passing incident, how much more necessary is such knowledge when we are dealing with the quiet nooks and corners of history; when we are seeking an introduction, let us say, into the literary society of Johnson, or the fashionable society of Walpole. Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without intimacy, and no intimacy without interest in trifles which I fear Mr. Harrison would describe as "merely curious." If we would feel at our ease in any company, if we wish to find humor in its jokes, and point in its repartees, we must know something of the beliefs and the prejudices of its various members, their loves and their hates, their hopes and their fears, their maladies, their marriages, and their flirtations. If these things are beneath our notice, we shall not be the less qualified to serve our Queen and country, but need make no attempt to extract pleasure from one of the most delightful departments of literature.

That there is such a thing as trifling information I do not of course question; but the frame of mind in which the reader is constantly weighing the exact importance to the universe at large of each circumstance which the author presents to his notice, is not one conducive to the true enjoyment of a picture whose effect depends upon a multitude of slight and seemingly insignificant touches, which impress the mind often without remaining in the memory. The best method of guarding against the danger of reading what is useless is to read only what is interesting; a truth which will seem a paradox to a whole class of readers, fitting objects of our commiseration, who may be often recognized by their habit of asking some adviser for a list of books, and then marking out a scheme of study in the course of which all are to be conscientiously perused. These unfortunate persons apparently read a book principally with the object of getting to the end of it. They reach the word _Finis_ with the same sensation of triumph as an Indian feels who strings a fresh scalp to his girdle. They are not happy unless they mark by some definite performance each step in the weary path of self-improvement. To begin a volume and not to finish it would be to deprive themselves of this satisfaction; it would be to lose all the reward of their earlier self-denial by a lapse from virtue at the end. To skip, according to their literary code, is a species of cheating; it is a mode of obtaining credit for erudition on false pretenses; a plan by which the advantages of learning are surreptitiously obtained by those who have not won them by honest toil. But all this is quite wrong. In matters literary, works have no saving efficacy. He has only half learnt the art of reading who has not added to it the even more refined accomplishments of skipping and of skimming; and the first step has hardly been taken in the direction of making literature a pleasure until interest in the subject, and not a desire to spare (so to speak) the author's feelings, or to accomplish an appointed task, is the prevailing motive of the reader.

I have now reached, not indeed the end of my subject, which I have scarcely begun, but the limits inexorably set by the circumstances under which it is treated. Yet I am unwilling to conclude without meeting an objection to my method of dealing with it, which has I am sure been present to the minds of not a few who have been good enough to listen to me with patience. It will be said that I have ignored the higher functions of literature; that I have degraded it from its rightful place, by discussing only certain ways in which it may minister to the entertainment of an idle hour, leaving wholly out of sight its contributions to what Mr. Harrison calls our "spiritual sustenance." Now, this is partly because the first of these topics and not the second was the avowed subject of my address; but it is partly because I am deliberately of opinion that it is the pleasures and not the profits, spiritual or temporal, of literature which most require to be preached in the ear of the ordinary reader. I hold indeed the faith that all such pleasures minister to the development of much that is best in man--mental and moral; but the charm is broken and the object lost if the remote consequence is consciously pursued to the exclusion of the immediate end. It will not, I suppose, be denied that the beauties of nature are at least as well qualified to minister to our higher needs as are the beauties of literature. Yet we do not say we are going to walk to the top of such and such a hill in order to drink in "spiritual sustenance." We say we are going to look at the view. And I am convinced that this, which is the natural and simple way of considering literature as well as nature, is also the true way. The habit of always requiring some reward for knowledge beyond the knowledge itself, be that reward some material prize or be it what is vaguely called self-improvement, is one with which I confess I have little sympathy, fostered though it is by the whole scheme of our modern education. Do not suppose that I desire the impossible. I would not if I could destroy the examination system. But there are times, I confess, when I feel tempted somewhat to vary the prayer of the poet, and to ask whether Heaven has not reserved, in pity to this much-educating generation, some peaceful desert of literature as yet unclaimed by the crammer or the coach; where it might be possible for the student to wander, even perhaps to stray, at his own pleasure without finding every beauty labeled, every difficulty engineered, every nook surveyed, and a professional cicerone standing at every corner to guide each succeeding traveler along the same well-worn round. If such a wish were granted, I would further ask that the domain of knowledge thus "neutralized" should be the literature of our own country. I grant to the full that the systematic study of _some_ literature must be a principal element in the education of youth. But why should that literature be our own? Why should we brush off the bloom and freshness from the works to which Englishmen and Scotchmen most naturally turn for refreshment,--namely, those written in their own language? Why should we associate them with the memory of hours spent in weary study; in the effort to remember for purposes of examination what no human being would wish to remember for any other; in the struggle to learn something, not because the learner desires to know it, because he desires some one else to know that he knows it? This is the dark side of the examination system; a system necessary and therefore excellent, but one which does, through the very efficiency and thoroughness of the drill by which it imparts knowledge, to some extent impair the most delicate pleasures by which the acquisition of knowledge should be attended.

How great those pleasures may be, I trust there are many here who can testify. When I compare the position of the reader of to-day with that of his predecessor of the sixteenth century. I am amazed at the ingratitude of those who are tempted even for a moment to regret the invention of printing and the multiplication of books. There is now no mood of mind to which a man may not administer the appropriate nutriment or medicine at the cost of reaching down a volume from his bookshelf. In every department of knowledge infinitely more is known, and what is known is incomparably more accessible, than it was to our ancestors. The lighter forms of literature, good, bad, and indifferent, which have added so vastly to the happiness of mankind, have increased beyond powers of computation; nor do I believe that there is any reason to think that they have elbowed out their more serious and important brethren. It is perfectly possible for a man, not a professed student, and who only gives to reading the leisure hours of a business life, to acquire such a general knowledge of the laws of nature and the facts of history that every great advance made in either department shall be to him both intelligible and interesting; and he may besides have among his familiar friends many a departed worthy whose memory is embalmed in the pages of memoir or biography. All this is ours for the asking. All this we shall ask for, if only it be our happy fortune to love for its own sake the beauty and the knowledge to be gathered from books. And if this be our fortune, the world may be kind or unkind, it may seem to us to be hastening on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an imminent millennium, or it may weigh us down with the sense of insoluble difficulty and irremediable wrong; but whatever else it be, so long as we have good health and a good library, it can hardly be dull.

THE BALLAD

(Popular or Communal)

BY F.B. GUMMERE

The popular ballad, as it is understood for the purpose of these selections, is a narrative in lyric form, with no traces of individual authorship, and is preserved mainly by oral tradition. In its earliest stages it was meant to be sung by a crowd, and got its name from the dance to which it furnished the sole musical accompaniment. In these primitive communities the ballad was doubtless chanted by the entire folk, in festivals mainly of a religious character. Explorers still meet something of the sort in savage tribes: and children's games preserve among us some relics of this protoplasmic form of verse-making, in which the single poet or artist was practically unknown, and spontaneous, improvised verses arose out of the occasion itself; in which the whole community took part; and in which the beat of foot--along with the gesture which expressed narrative elements of the song--was inseparable from the words and the melody. This native growth of song, in which the chorus or refrain, the dance of a festal multitude, and the spontaneous nature of the words, were vital conditions, gradually faded away before the advance of cultivated verse and the vigor of production in what one may call poetry of the schools. Very early in the history of the ballad, a demand for more art must have called out or at least emphasized the artist, the poet, who chanted new verses while the throng kept up the refrain or burden. Moreover, as interest was concentrated upon the words or story, people began to feel that both dance and melody were separable if not alien features; and thus they demanded the composed and recited ballad, to the harm and ultimate ruin of that spontaneous song for the festal, dancing crowd. Still, even when artistry had found a footing in ballad verse, it long remained mere agent and mouthpiece for the folk; the communal character of the ballad was maintained in form and matter. Events of interest were sung in almost contemporary and entirely improvised verse; and the resulting ballads, carried over the borders of their community and passed down from generation to generation, served as newspaper to their own times and as chronicle to posterity. It is the kind of song to which Tacitus bears witness as the sole form of history among the early Germans; and it is evident that such a stock of ballads must have furnished considerable raw material to the epic. Ballads, in whatever original shape, went to the making of the English 'Béowulf,' of the German 'Nibelungenlied.' Moreover, a study of dramatic poetry leads one back to similar communal origins. What is loosely called a "chorus,"--originally, as the name implies, a dance--out of which older forms of the drama were developed, could be traced back to identity with primitive forms of the ballad. The purely lyrical ballad, even, the _chanson_ of the people, so rare in English but so abundant among other races, is evidently a growth from the same root.

If, now, we assume for this root the name of communal poem, and if we bear in mind the dominant importance of the individual, the artist, in advancing stages of poetry, it is easy to understand why for civilized and lettered communities the ballad has ceased to have any vitality whatever. Under modern conditions the making of ballads is a closed account. For our times poetry means something written by a poet, and not something sung more or less spontaneously by a dancing throng. Indeed, paper and ink, the agents of preservation in the case of ordinary verse, are for ballads the agents of destruction. The broadside press of three centuries ago, while it rescued here and there a genuine ballad, poured out a mass of vulgar imitations which not only displaced and destroyed the ballad of oral tradition, but brought contempt upon good and bad alike. Poetry of the people, to which our ballad belongs, is a thing of the past. Even rude and distant communities, like those of Afghanistan, cannot give us the primitive conditions. The communal ballad is rescued, when rescued at all, by the fragile chances of a written copy or of oral tradition; and we are obliged to study it under terms of artistic poetry,--that is, we are forced to take through the eye and the judgment what was meant for the ear and immediate sensation. Poetry _for_ the people, however, "popular poetry" in the modern phrase, is a very different affair. Street songs, vulgar rhymes, or even improvisations of the concert-halls, tawdry and sentimental stuff,--these things are sundered by the world's width from poetry _of_ the people, from the folk in verse, whether it echo in a great epos which chants the clash of empires or linger in a ballad of the countryside sung under the village linden. For this ballad is a part of the poetry which comes from the people as a whole, from a homogeneous folk, large or small; while the song of street or concert-hall is deliberately composed for a class, a section, of the community. It would therefore be better to use some other term than "popular" when we wish to specify the ballad of tradition, and so avoid all taint of vulgarity and the trivial. Nor must we go to the other extreme. Those high-born people who figure in traditional ballads--Childe Waters, Lady Maisry, and the rest--do not require us to assume composition in aristocratic circles; for the lower classes of the people in ballad days had no separate literature, and a ballad of the folk belonged to the community as a whole. The same habit of thought, the same standard of action, ruled alike the noble and his meanest retainer. Oral transmission, the test of the ballad, is of course nowhere possible save in such an unlettered community. Since all critics are at one in regard to this homogeneous character of the folk with whom and out of whom these songs had their birth, one is justified in removing all doubt from the phrase by speaking not of the popular ballad but of the communal ballad, the ballad of a community.

With regard to the making of a ballad, one must repeat a caution, hinted already, and made doubly important by a vicious tendency in the study of all phases of culture. It is a vital mistake to explain primitive conditions by exact analogy with conditions of modern savagery and barbarism. Certain conclusions, always guarded and cautious to a degree, may indeed be drawn; but it is folly to insist that what now goes on among shunted races, belated detachments in the great march of culture, must have gone on among the dominant and mounting peoples who had reached the same external conditions of life. The homogeneous and unlettered state of the ballad-makers is not to be put on a level with the ignorance of barbarism, nor explained by the analogy of songs among modern savage tribes. Fortunately we have better material. The making of a ballad by a community can be illustrated from a case recorded by Pastor Lyngbye in his invaluable account of life on the Faroe Islands a century ago. Not only had the islanders used from most ancient times their traditional and narrative songs as music for the dance, but they had also maintained the old fashion of making a ballad. In the winter, says Lyngbye, dancing is their chief amusement and is an affair of the entire community. At such a dance, one or more persons begin to sing; then all who are present join in the ballad, or at least in the refrain. As they dance, they show by their gestures and expression that they follow with eagerness the course of the story which they are singing. More than this, the ballad is often a spontaneous product of the occasion. A fisherman, who has had some recent mishap with his boat, is pushed by stalwart comrades into the middle of the throng, while the dancers sing verses about him and his lack of skill,--verses improvised on the spot and with a catching and clamorous refrain. If these verses win favor, says Lyngbye, they are repeated from year to year, with slight additions or corrections, and become a permanent ballad. Bearing in mind the extraordinary readiness to improvise shown even in these days by peasants in every part of Europe, we thus gain some definite notion about the spontaneous and communal elements which went to the making of the best type of primitive verse; for these Faroe islanders were no savages, but simply a homeogeneous and isolated folk which still held to the old ways of communal song.

Critics of the ballad, moreover, agree that it has little or no subjective traits,--an easy inference from the conditions just described. There is no individuality lurking behind the words of the ballad, and above all, no evidence of that individuality in the form of sentiment. Sentiment and individuality are the very essence of modern poetry, and the direct result of individualism in verse. Given a poet, sentiment--and it may be noble and precious enough--is sure to follow. But the ballad, an epic in little, forces one's attention to the object, the scene, the story, and away from the maker.

"The king sits in Dumferling town."

begins one of the noblest of all ballads; while one of the greatest of modern poems opens with something personal and pathetic, key-note to all that follows:--

"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense ..."

Even when a great poet essays the ballad, either he puts sentiment into it, or else he keeps sentiment out of it by a _tour de force_. Admirable and noble as one must call the conclusion of an artistic ballad such as Tennyson's 'Revenge,' it is altogether different from the conclusion of such a communal ballad as 'Sir Patrick Spens.' That subtle quality of the ballad which lies in solution with the story and which--as in 'Child Maurice' or 'Babylon' or 'Edward'--compels in us sensations akin to those called out by the sentiment of the poet, is a wholly impersonal if strangely effective quality, far removed from the corresponding elements of the poem of art. At first sight, one might say that Browning's dramatic lyrics had this impersonal quality. But compare the close of 'Give a Rouse,' chorus and all, with the close of 'Child Maurice,' that swift and relentless stroke of pure tragedy which called out the enthusiasm of so great a critic as Gray.

The narrative of the communal ballad is full of leaps and omissions; the style is simple to a fault; the diction is spontaneous and free. Assonance frequently takes the place of rhyme, and a word often rhymes with itself. There is a lack of poetic adornment in the style quite as conspicuous as the lack of reflection and moralizing in the matter. Metaphor and simile are rare and when found are for the most part standing phrases common to all the ballads; there is never poetry for poetry's sake. Iteration is the chief mark of ballad style; and the favorite form of this effective figure is what one may call incremental repetition. The question is repeated with the answer; each increment in a series of related facts has a stanza for itself, identical, save for the new fact, with the other stanzas. 'Babylon' furnishes good instances of this progressive iteration. Moreover, the ballad differs from earlier English epics in that it invariably has stanzas and rhyme; of the two forms of stanza, the two-line stanza with a refrain is probably older than the stanza with four or six lines.

This necessary quality of the stanza points to the origin of the ballad in song; but longer ballads, such as those that make up the 'Gest of Robin Hood,' an epic in little, were not sung as lyrics or to aid the dance, but were either chanted in a monotonous fashion or else recited outright. Chappell, in his admirable work on old English music ('Music of the Olden Time,' ii. 790), names a third class of "characteristic airs of England,"--the "historical and very long ballads, ... invariably of simple construction, usually plaintive.... They were rarely if ever used for dancing." Most of the longer ballads, however, were doubtless given by one person in a sort of recitative; this is the case with modern ballads of Russia and Servia, where the bystanders now and then join in a chorus. Precisely in the same way ballads were divorced from the dance, originally their vital condition; but in the refrain, which is attached to so many ballads, one finds an element which has survived from those earliest days of communal song.

Of oldest communal poetry no actual ballad has come down to us. Hints and even fragments, however, are pointed out in ancient records, mainly as the material of chronicle or legend. In the Bible (Numbers xxi. 17), where "Israel sang this song," we are not going too far when we regard the fragment as part of a communal ballad. "Spring up, O well: sing ye unto it: the princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves." Deborah's song has something of the communal note; and when Miriam dances and sings with her maidens, one is reminded of the many ballads made by dancing and singing bands of women in mediæval Europe,--for instance, the song made in the seventh century to the honor of St. Faro, and "sung by the women as they danced and clapped their hands." The question of ancient Greek ballads, and their relation to the epic, is not to be discussed here; nor can we make more than an allusion to the theory of Niebuhr that the early part of Livy is founded on, old Roman ballads. A popular discussion of this matter may be found in Macaulay's preface to his own 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' The ballads of modern Europe are a survival of older communal poetry, more or less influenced by artistic and individual conditions of authorship, but wholly impersonal, and with an appeal to our interest which seems to come from a throng and not from the solitary poet. Attention was early called to the ballads of Spain; printed at first as broadsides, they were gathered into a volume as early as 1550. On the other hand, ballads were neglected in France until very recent times; for specimens of the French ballad, and for an account of it, the reader should consult Professor Crane's 'Chansons Populaires de France,' New York, 1891. It is with ballads of the Germanic race, however, that we are now concerned. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, the Faroe Islands; Scotland and England; the Netherlands and Germany: all of these countries offer us admirable specimens of the ballad. Particularly, the great collections of Grundtvig ('Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser') for Denmark, and of Child ('The English and Scottish Popular Ballads') for our own tongue, show how common descent or borrowing connects the individual ballads of these groups. "Almost every Norwegian, Swedish, or Icelandic ballad," says Grundtvig, "is found in a Danish version of Scandinavian ballads; moreover, a larger number can be found in English and Scottish versions than in German or Dutch versions." Again, we find certain national preferences in the character of the ballads which have come down to us. Scandinavia kept the old heroic lays (Kaempeviser); Germany wove them into her epic, as witness the Nibelungen Lay; but England and Scotland have none of them in any shape. So, too, the mythic ballad, scantily represented in English, and practically unknown in Germany, abounds in Scandinavian collections. The Faroe Islands and Norway, as Grundtvig tells us, show the best record for ballads preserved by oral tradition; while noble ladies of Denmark, three or four centuries ago, did high service to ballad literature by making collections in manuscript of the songs current then in the castle as in the cottage.

For England, one is compelled to begin the list of known ballads with the thirteenth century. 'The Battle of Maldon,' composed in the last decade of the tenth century, though spirited enough and full of communal vigor, has no stanzaic structure, follows in metre and style the rules of the Old English epic, and is only a ballad by courtesy; about the ballads used a century or two later by historians of England, we can do nothing but guess; and there is no firm ground under the critic's foot until he comes to the Robin Hood ballads, which Professor Child assigns to the thirteenth century. 'The Battle of Otterburn' (1388) opens a series of ballads based on actual events and stretching into the eighteenth century. Barring the Robin Hood cycle,--an epic constructed from this attractive material lies before us in the famous 'Gest of Robin Hood,' printed as early as 1489,--the chief sources of the collector are the Percy Manuscript, "written just before 1650,"--on which, not without omissions and additions, the bishop based his 'Reliques,' first published in 1765,--and the oral traditions of Scotland, which Professor Child refers to "the last one hundred and thirty years." Information about the individual ballads, their sources, history, literary connections, and above all, their varying texts, must be sought in the noble work of Professor F.J. Child. For present purposes, a word or two of general information must suffice. As to origins, there is a wide range. The church furnished its legend, as in 'St. Stephen'; romance contributed the story of 'Thomas Rymer'; and the light, even cynical _fabliau_ is responsible for 'The Boy and the Mantle.' Ballads which occur in many tongues either may have a common origin or else may owe their manifold versions, as in the case of popular tales, to a love of borrowing; and here, of course, we get the hint of wider issues. For the most part, however, a ballad tells some moving story, preferably of fighting and of love. Tragedy is the dominant note; and English ballads of the best type deal with those elements of domestic disaster so familiar in the great dramas of literature, in the story of Orestes, or of Hamlet, or of the Cid. Such are 'Edward,' 'Lord Randal,' 'The Two Brothers,' 'The Two Sisters,' 'Child Maurice,' 'Bewick and Graham,' 'Clerk Colven,' 'Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard,' 'Glasgerion,' and many others. Another group of ballads, represented by the 'Baron of Brackley' and 'Captain Car,' give a faithful picture of the feuds and ceaseless warfare in Scotland and on the border. A few fine ballads--'Sweet William's Ghost,' 'The Wife of Usher's Well'--touch upon the supernatural. Of the romantic ballads, 'Childe Waters' shows us the higher, and 'Young Beichan' the lower, but still sound and communal type. Incipient dramatic tendencies mark 'Edward' and 'Lord Randal'; while, on the other hand, a lyric note almost carries 'Bonnie George Campbell' out of balladry. Finally, it is to be noted that in the 'Nut-Brown Maid,' which many would unhesitatingly refer to this class of poetry, we have no ballad at all, but a dramatic lyric, probably written by a woman, and with a special plea in the background.

ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE[8]

1. When shawes[9] beene sheene[10], and shradds[11] full fayre, And leeves both large and longe, It is merry, walking in the fayre forrest, To heare the small birds' songe.

2. The woodweele[12] sang, and wold not cease, Amongst the leaves a lyne[13]; And it is by two wight[14] yeomen, By deare God, that I meane.

* * * * *

3. "Me thought they[15] did me beate and binde, And tooke my bow me fro; If I bee Robin alive in this lande, I'll be wrocken[16] on both them two."

4. "Sweavens[17] are swift, master," quoth John, "As the wind that blowes ore a hill; For if it be never soe lowde this night, To-morrow it may be still."

5. "Buske ye, bowne ye[18], my merry men all, For John shall go with me; For I'll goe seeke yond wight yeomen In greenwood where they bee."

6. They cast on their gowne of greene, A shooting gone are they, Until they came to the merry greenwood, Where they had gladdest bee; There were they ware of a wight yeoman, His body leaned to a tree.

7. A sword and a dagger he wore by his side, Had beene many a man's bane[19], And he was cladd in his capull-hyde[20], Topp, and tayle, and mayne.

8. "Stand you still, master," quoth Litle John, "Under this trusty tree, And I will goe to yond wight yeoman, To know his meaning trulye."

9. "A, John, by me thou setts noe store, And that's a farley[21] thinge; How offt send I my men before, And tarry myselfe behinde?"

10. "It is noe cunning a knave to ken, And a man but heare him speake; And it were not for bursting of my bowe, John, I wold thy head breake."

11. But often words they breeden bale, That parted Robin and John; John is gone to Barnesdale, The gates[22] he knowes eche one.

12. And when hee came to Barnesdale, Great heavinesse there hee hadd; He found two of his fellowes Were slaine both in a slade[23],

13. And Scarlett a foote flyinge was, Over stockes and stone, For the sheriffe with seven score men Fast after him is gone.

14. "Yet one shoote I'll shoote," sayes Litle John, "With Crist his might and mayne; I'll make yond fellow that flyes soe fast To be both glad and faine."

15. John bent up a good veiwe bow[24], And fetteled[25] him to shoote; The bow was made of a tender boughe, And fell downe to his foote.

16. "Woe worth[26] thee, wicked wood," sayd Litle John, "That ere thou grew on a tree! For this day thou art my bale, My boote[27] when thou shold bee!"

17. This shoote it was but looselye shott, The arrowe flew in vaine, And it mett one of the sheriffe's men; Good William a Trent was slaine.

18. It had beene better for William a Trent To hange upon a gallowe Then for to lye in the greenwoode, There slaine with an arrowe.

19. And it is sayed, when men be mett, Six can doe more than three: And they have tane Litle John, And bound him fast to a tree.

20. "Thou shalt be drawen by dale and downe," quoth the sheriffe[28], "And hanged hye on a hill:" "But thou may fayle," quoth Litle John "If it be Christ's owne will."

21. Let us leave talking of Litle John, For hee is bound fast to a tree, And talke of Guy and Robin Hood In the green woode where they bee.

22. How these two yeomen together they mett, Under the leaves of lyne, To see what marchandise they made Even at that same time.

23. "Good morrow, good fellow," quoth Sir Guy; "Good morrow, good fellow," quoth hee; "Methinkes by this bow thou beares in thy hand, A good archer thou seems to bee."

24. "I am wilfull of my way[29]," quoth Sir Guy, "And of my morning tyde:" "I'll lead thee through the wood," quoth Robin, "Good fellow, I'll be thy guide."

25. "I seeke an outlaw," quoth Sir Guy, "Men call him Robin Hood; I had rather meet with him upon a day Then forty pound of golde."

26. "If you tow mett, it wold be seene whether were better Afore yee did part awaye; Let us some other pastime find, Good fellow, I thee pray."

27. "Let us some other masteryes make, And we will walke in the woods even; Wee may chance meet with Robin Hood At some unsett steven[30]."

28. They cutt them downe the summer shroggs[31] Which grew both under a bryar, And sett them three score rood in twinn[32], To shoote the prickes[33] full neare.

29. "Leade on, good fellow," sayd Sir Guye, "Leade on, I doe bidd thee:" "Nay, by my faith," quoth Robin Hood, "The leader thou shalt bee."

30. The first good shoot that Robin ledd, Did not shoote an inch the pricke froe, Guy was an archer good enoughe, But he could neere shoote soe.

31. The second shoote Sir Guy shott, He shott within the garlande[34], But Robin Hoode shott it better than hee, For he clove the good pricke-wande.

32. "God's blessing on thy heart!" sayes Guye, "Goode fellow, thy shooting is goode; For an thy hart be as good as thy hands, Thou were better than Robin Hood."

33. "Tell me thy name, good fellow," quoth Guye, "Under the leaves of lyne:" "Nay, by my faith," quoth good Robin, "Till thou have told me thine."

34. "I dwell by dale and downe," quoth Guye, "And I have done many a curst turne; And he that calles me by my right name, Calles me Guye of good Gysborne."

35. "My dwelling is in the wood," sayes Robin; "By thee I set right nought; My name is Robin Hood of Barnesdale, A fellow thou hast long sought."

36. He that had neither beene a kithe nor kin Might have seene a full fayre sight. To see how together these yeomen went, With blades both browne and bright.

37. To have seene how these yeomen together fought Two howers of a summer's day; It was neither Guy nor Robin Hood That fettled them to flye away.

38. Robin was reacheles[35] on a roote, And stumbled at that tyde, And Guy was quicke and nimble with-all, And hitt him ore the left side.

39. "Ah, deere Lady!" sayd Robin Hoode, "Thou art both mother and may[36]! I thinke it was never man's destinye To dye before his day."

40. Robin thought on Our Lady deere, And soone leapt up againe, And thus he came with an awkwarde[37] stroke; Good Sir Guy hee has slayne.

41. He tooke Sir Guy's head by the hayre, And sticked it on his bowe's end: "Thou has beene traytor all thy life, Which thing must have an ende."

42. Robin pulled forth an Irish kniffe, And nicked Sir Guy in the face, That he was never on[38] a woman borne Could tell who Sir Guye was.

43. Saies, Lye there, lye there, good Sir Guye, And with me not wrothe; If thou have had the worse stroakes at my hand, Thou shalt have the better cloathe.

44. Robin did off his gowne of greene, Sir Guye he did it throwe; And he put on that capull-hyde That clad him topp to toe.

45. "Tis bowe, the arrowes, and litle horne, And with me now I'll beare; For now I will goe to Barnesdale, To see how my men doe fare."

46. Robin sett Guye's horne to his mouth, A lowd blast in it he did blow; That beheard the sheriffe of Nottingham, As he leaned under a lowe[39].

47. "Hearken! hearken!" sayd the sheriffe, "I heard noe tydings but good; For yonder I heare Sir Guye's horne blowe, For he hath slaine Robin Hoode."

48. "For yonder I heare Sir Guye's horne blowe, It blowes soe well in tyde, For yonder conies that wighty yeoman Cladd in his capull-hyde."

49. "Come hither, thou good Sir Guy, Aske of mee what thou wilt have:" "I'll none of thy gold," sayes Robin Hood, "Nor I'll none of it have."

50. "But now I have slaine the master," he sayd, "Let me goe strike the knave; This is all the reward I aske, Nor noe other will I have."

51. "Thou art a madman," said the sheriffe, "Thou sholdest have had a knight's fee; Seeing thy asking hath beene soe badd, Well granted it shall be."

52. But Litle John heard his master speake, Well he knew that was his steven[40]; "Now shall I be loset," quoth Litle John, "With Christ's might in heaven."

53. But Robin hee hyed him towards Litle John, Hee thought hee wold loose him belive; The sheriffe and all his companye Fast after him did drive.

54. "Stand abacke! stand abacke!" sayd Robin; "Why draw you mee soe neere? It was never the use in our countrye One's shrift another should heere."

55. But Robin pulled forth an Irysh kniffe, And losed John hand and foote, And gave him Sir Guye's bow in his hand, And bade it be his boote.

56. But John tooke Guye's bow in his hand (His arrowes were rawstye[41] by the roote); The sherriffe saw Litle John draw a bow And fettle him to shoote.

57. Towards his house in Nottingham He fled full fast away, And so did all his companye, Not one behind did stay.

58. But he cold neither soe fast goe, Nor away soe fast runn, But Litle John, with an arrow broade, Did cleave his heart in twinn.

[Footnote 8: This ballad is a good specimen of the Robin Hood Cycle, and is remarkable for its many proverbial and alliterative phrases. A few lines have been lost between stanzas 2 and 3. Gisborne is a "market-town in the West Riding of the County of York, on the borders of Lancashire." For the probable tune of the ballad, see Chappell's 'Popular Music of the Olden Time,' ii. 397.]

[Footnote 9: Woods, groves.--This touch of description at the outset is common in our old ballads, as well as in the mediæval German popular lyric, and may perhaps spring from the old "summer-lays" and chorus of pagan times.]

[Footnote 10: Beautiful; German, _schön_.]

[Footnote 11: Coppices or openings in a wood.]

[Footnote 12: In some glossaries the woodpecker, but here of course a song-bird,--perhaps, as Chappell suggests, the woodlark.]

[Footnote 13: _A_, on; _lyne_, lime or linden.]

[Footnote 14: Sturdy, brave.]

[Footnote 15: Robin now tells of a dream in which "they" (=the two "wight yeomen," who are Guy and, as Professor Child suggests, the Sheriff of Nottingham) maltreat him; and he thus foresees trouble "from two quarters."]

[Footnote 16: Revenged.]

[Footnote 17: Dreams.]

[Footnote 18: Tautological phrase,--"prepare and make ready."]

[Footnote 19: Murder, destruction.]

[Footnote 20: Horse's hide.]

[Footnote 21: Strange.]

[Footnote 22: Paths.]

[Footnote 23: Green valley between woods.]

[Footnote 24: Perhaps the yew-bow.]

[Footnote 25: Made ready.]

[Footnote 26: "Woe be to thee." _Worth_ is the old subjunctive present of an exact English equivalent to the modern German _werden_.]

[Footnote 27: Note these alliterative phrases. _Boote_, remedy.]

[Footnote 28: As Percy noted, this "quoth the sheriffe," was probably added by some explainer. The reader, however, must remember the license of slurring or contracting the syllables of a word, as well as the opposite freedom of expansion. Thus in the second line of stanza 7, _man's_ is to be pronounced _man-ës._]

[Footnote 29: I have lost my way.]

[Footnote 30: At some unappointed time,--by chance.]

[Footnote 31: Stunted shrubs.]

[Footnote 32: Apart.]

[Footnote 33: "_Prickes_ seem to have been the long-range targets, _butts_ the near."--Furnivall.]

[Footnote 34: _Garlande_, perhaps "the ring within which the prick was set"; and the _pricke-wande_ perhaps a pole or stick. The terms are not easy to understand clearly.]

[Footnote 35: Reckless, careless.]

[Footnote 36: Maiden.]

[Footnote 37: Dangerous, or perhaps simply backward, backhanded.]

[Footnote 38: _On_ is frequently used for _of_.]

[Footnote 39: Hillock.]

[Footnote 40: Voice.]

[Footnote 41: Rusty]

THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT

[This is the older and better version of the famous ballad. The younger version was the subject of Addison's papers in the Spectator.]

1. The Percy out of Northumberlande, and a vowe to God mayd he That he would hunte in the mountayns of Cheviot within days thre, In the magger[42] of doughty Douglas, and all that ever with him be.

2. The fattiste hartes in all Cheviot he sayd he would kyll, and cary them away: "Be my feth," sayd the doughty Douglas agayn, "I will let[43] that hontyng if that I may."

3. Then the Percy out of Banborowe cam, with him a myghtee meany[44], With fifteen hondred archares bold of blood and bone; they were chosen out of shyars thre.

4. This began on a Monday at morn, in Cheviot the hillys so he; The chyld may rue that ys unborn, it was the more pittë.

5. The dryvars thorowe the woodës went, for to reas the deer; Bowmen byckarte uppone the bent[45] with their browd arrows cleare.

6. Then the wyld thorowe the woodës went, on every sydë shear; Greahondës thorowe the grevis glent[46], for to kyll their deer.

7. This begane in Cheviot the hyls abone, yerly on a Monnyn-day; Be that it drewe to the hour of noon, a hondred fat hartës ded ther lay.

8. They blewe a mort[47] uppone the bent, they semblyde on sydis shear; To the quyrry then the Percy went, to see the bryttlynge[48] of the deere.

9. He sayd, "It was the Douglas promys this day to met me hear; But I wyste he wolde faylle, verament;" a great oth the Percy swear.

10. At the laste a squyar of Northumberlande lokyde at his hand full ny; He was war a the doughtie Douglas commynge, with him a myghtë meany.

11. Both with spear, bylle, and brande, yt was a myghtë sight to se; Hardyar men, both of hart nor hande, were not in Cristiantë.

12. They were twenty hondred spear-men good, withoute any fail; They were borne along be the water a Twyde, yth bowndës of Tividale.

13. "Leave of the brytlyng of the deer," he said, "and to your bows look ye tayk good hede; For never sithe ye were on your mothers borne had ye never so mickle nede."

14. The doughty Douglas on a stede, he rode alle his men beforne; His armor glytteyrde as dyd a glede[49]; a boldar barne was never born.

15. "Tell me whose men ye are," he says, "or whose men that ye be: Who gave youe leave to hunte in this Cheviot chays, in the spyt of myn and of me."

16. The first man that ever him an answer mayd, yt was the good lord Percy: "We wyll not tell the whose men we are," he says, "nor whose men that we be; But we wyll hounte here in this chays, in spyt of thyne and of the."

17. "The fattiste hartës in all Cheviot we have kyld, and cast to carry them away:" "Be my troth," sayd the doughty Douglas agayn, "therefor the tone of us shall die this day."

18. Then sayd the doughtë Douglas unto the lord Percy, "To kyll alle thes giltles men, alas, it wear great pittë!"

19. "But, Percy, thowe art a lord of lande, I am a yerle callyd within my contrë; Let all our men uppone a parti stande, and do the battell of the and of me."

20. "Nowe Cristes curse on his crowne," sayd the lord Percy, "whosoever thereto says nay; Be my troth, doughty Douglas," he says, "thow shalt never se that day."

21. "Nethar in Ynglonde, Skottlonde, nor France, nor for no man of a woman born, But, and fortune be my chance, I dar met him, one man for one."

22. Then bespayke a squyar of Northumberlande, Richard Wytharyngton was his name: "It shall never be told in Sothe-Ynglonde," he says, "To Kyng Kerry the Fourth for shame."

23. "I wat youe byn great lordës twa, I am a poor squyar of lande: I wylle never se my captayne fyght on a fylde, and stande my selffe and looke on, But whylle I may my weppone welde, I wylle not fayle both hart and hande."

24. That day, that day, that dredfull day! the first fit here I fynde[50]; And you wyll hear any more a the hountyng a the Cheviot yet ys ther mor behynde.

25. The Yngglyshe men had their bowys ybent, ther hartes were good yenoughe; The first of arrows that they shote off, seven skore spear-men they sloughe.

26. Yet bides the yerle Douglas upon the bent, a captayne good yenoughe, And that was sene verament, for he wrought hem both wo and wouche.

27. The Douglas partyd his host in thre, like a chief chieftain of pryde; With sure spears of myghtty tre, they cum in on every syde:

28. Throughe our Yngglyshe archery gave many a wounde fulle wyde; Many a doughty they garde to dy, which ganyde them no pryde.

29. The Ynglyshe men let ther bowës be, and pulde out brandes that were brighte; It was a heavy syght to se bryght swordes on basnites lyght.

30. Thorowe ryche male and myneyeple[51], many sterne they strocke down straight; Many a freyke[52] that was fulle fre, there under foot dyd lyght.

31. At last the Douglas and the Percy met, lyk to captayns of myght and of mayne; The swapte together tylle they both swat, with swordes that were of fine milan.

32. These worthy freckys for to fyght, ther-to they were fulle fayne, Tylle the bloode out off their basnetes sprente, as ever dyd hail or rayn.

33. "Yield thee, Percy," sayd the Douglas, "and i faith I shalle thee brynge Where thowe shalte have a yerls wagis of Jamy our Scottish kynge."

34. "Thou shalte have thy ransom fre, I hight[53] the here this thinge; For the manfullyste man yet art thow that ever I conqueryd in fielde fighttynge."

35. "Nay," sayd the lord Percy, "I tolde it thee beforne, That I wolde never yeldyde be to no man of a woman born."

36. With that ther came an arrow hastely, forthe off a myghtty wane[54]; It hath strekene the yerle Douglas in at the brest-bane.

37. Thorowe lyvar and lungës bothe the sharpe arrowe ys gane, That never after in all his lyfe-days he spayke mo wordës but ane: That was, "Fyghte ye, my myrry men, whyllys ye may, for my lyfe-days ben gane."

38. The Percy leanyde on his brande, and sawe the Douglas de; He tooke the dead man by the hande, and said, "Wo ys me for thee!"

39. "To have savyde thy lyfe, I would have partyde with my landes for years three, For a better man, of hart nor of hande, was not in all the north contrë."

40. Of all that see a Scottish knyght, was callyd Sir Hewe the Monggombyrry; He saw the Douglas to the death was dyght, he spendyd a spear, a trusti tree.

41. He rode upon a corsiare throughe a hondred archery; He never stynttyde nor never blane[55], till he came to the good lord Percy.

42. He set upon the lorde Percy a dynte that was full sore; With a sure spear of a myghttë tree clean thorow the body he the Percy ber[56],

43. A the tother syde that a man might see a large cloth-yard and mare; Two better captayns were not in Cristiantë than that day slain were there.

44. An archer off Northumberlande saw slain was the lord Percy; He bore a bende bowe in his hand, was made of trusti tree;

45. An arrow, that a cloth-yarde was long, to the harde stele halyde he; A dynt that was both sad and soar he set on Sir Hewe the Monggombyrry.

46. The dynt yt was both sad and sore, that he of Monggombyrry set; The swane-fethars that his arrowe bar with his hart-blood they were wet.

47. There was never a freak one foot wolde flee, but still in stour[57] dyd stand, Hewyng on eache other, whyle they myghte dree, with many a balefull brande.

48. This battell begane in Cheviot an hour before the none, And when even-songe bell was rang, the battell was not half done.

49. They took ... on either hande by the lyght of the mone; Many hade no strength for to stande, in Cheviot the hillys abon.

50. Of fifteen hundred archers of Ynglonde went away but seventy and three; Of twenty hundred spear-men of Scotlonde, but even five and fifty.

51. But all were slayne Cheviot within; they had no strength to stand on by; The chylde may rue that ys unborne, it was the more pittë.

52. There was slayne, withe the lord Percy, Sir John of Agerstone, Sir Rogar, the hinde Hartly, Sir Wyllyam, the bold Hearone.

53. Sir George, the worthy Loumle, a knyghte of great renown, Sir Raff, the ryche Rugbe, with dyntes were beaten downe.

54. For Wetharryngton my harte was wo, that ever he slayne shulde be; For when both his leggis were hewyn in to, yet he kneeled and fought on hys knee.

55. There was slayne, with the doughty Douglas, Sir Hewe the Monggombyrry, Sir Davy Lwdale, that worthy was, his sister's son was he.

56. Sir Charles a Murrë in that place, that never a foot wolde fie; Sir Hewe Maxwelle, a lorde he was, with the Douglas dyd he die.

57. So on the morrowe they mayde them biers off birch and hasell so gray; Many widows, with weepyng tears, came to fetch ther makys[58] away.

58. Tivydale may carpe of care, Northumberland may mayk great moan, For two such captayns as slayne were there, on the March-parti shall never be none.

59. Word ys commen to Eddenburrowe, to Jamy the Scottische kynge, That doughty Douglas, lyff-tenant of the Marches, he lay slean Cheviot within.

60. His handdës dyd he weal and wryng, he sayd, "Alas, and woe ys me! Such an othar captayn Skotland within," he sayd, "i-faith should never be."

61. Worde ys commyn to lovely Londone, till the fourth Harry our kynge. That lord Percy, leyff-tenante of the Marchis he lay slayne Cheviot within.

62. "God have merci on his soule," sayde Kyng Harry, "good lord, yf thy will it be! I have a hondred captayns in Ynglonde," he sayd, "as good as ever was he: But Percy, and I brook my lyfe, thy deth well quyte shall be."

63. As our noble kynge mayd his avowe, lyke a noble prince of renown, For the deth of the lord Percy he dyd the battle of Hombyll-down:

64. Where syx and thirty Skottishe knyghtes on a day were beaten down: Glendale glytteryde on their armor bryght, over castille, towar, and town.

65. This was the hontynge of the Cheviot, that tear[59] begane this spurn; Old men that knowen the grownde well enoughe call it the battell of Otterburn.

66. At Otterburn begane this spume upon a Monnynday; There was the doughty Douglas slean, the Percy never went away.

67. There was never a tyme on the Marche-partës sen the Douglas and the Percy met, But yt ys mervele and the rede blude ronne not, as the rain does in the stret.

68. Jesus Christ our bales[60] bete, and to the bliss us bring! Thus was the hunting of the Cheviot; God send us alle good ending!

[Footnote 42: 'Maugre,' in spite of.]

[Footnote 43: Hinder.]

[Footnote 44: Company.]

[Footnote 45: Skirmished on the field.]

[Footnote 46: Ran through the groves.]

[Footnote 47: Blast blown when game is killed.]

[Footnote 48: Quartering, cutting.]

[Footnote 49: Flame.]

[Footnote 50: Perhaps "finish."]

[Footnote 51: "A gauntlet covering hand and forearm."]

[Footnote 52: Man.]

[Footnote 53: Promise.]

[Footnote 54: Meaning uncertain.]

[Footnote 55: Stopped.]

[Footnote 56: Pierced.]

[Footnote 57: Stress of battle.]

[Footnote 58: Mates.]

[Footnote 59: That there (?).]

[Footnote 60: Evils.]

JOHNIE COCK

1. Up Johnie raise[61] in a May morning, Calld for water to wash his hands, And he has called for his gude gray hounds That lay bound in iron bands, bands, That lay bound in iron bands.

2. "Ye'll busk[62], ye'll busk my noble dogs, Ye'll busk and make them boun[63], For I'm going to the Braidscaur hill To ding the dun deer doun."

3. Johnie's mother has gotten word o' that, And care-bed she has ta'en[64]: "O Johnie, for my benison, I beg you'l stay at hame; For the wine so red, and the well-baken bread, My Johnie shall want nane."

4. "There are seven forsters at Pickeram Side, At Pickeram where they dwell, And for a drop of thy heart's bluid They wad ride the fords of hell."

5. But Johnie has cast off the black velvet, And put on the Lincoln twine, And he is on the goode greenwood As fast as he could gang.

6. Johnie lookit east, and Johnie lookit west, And he lookit aneath the sun, And there he spied the dun deer sleeping Aneath a buss o' whun[65].

7. Johnie shot, and the dun deer lap[66], And she lap wondrous wide, Until they came to the wan water, And he stem'd her of her pride.

8. He has ta'en out the little pen-knife, 'Twas full three quarters[67] long, And he has ta'en out of that dun deer The liver but and[68] the tongue.

9. They eat of the flesh, and they drank of the blood, And the blood it was so sweet, Which caused Johnie and his bloody hounds To fall in a deep sleep.

10. By then came an old palmer, And an ill death may he die! For he's away to Pickeram Side As fast as he can drie[69].

11. "What news, what news?" says the Seven Forsters, "What news have ye brought to me?" "I have no news," the palmer said, "But what I saw with my eye."

12. "As I came in by Braidisbanks, And down among the whuns, The bonniest youngster e'er I saw Lay sleepin amang his hunds."

13. "The shirt that was upon his back Was o' the holland fine; The doublet which was over that Was o' the Lincoln twine."

14. Up bespake the Seven Forsters, Up bespake they ane and a': "O that is Johnie o' Cockleys Well, And near him we will draw."

15. O the first stroke that they gae him, They struck him off by the knee, Then up bespake his sister's son: "O the next'll gar[70] him die!"

16. "O some they count ye well wight men, But I do count ye nane; For you might well ha' waken'd me, And ask'd gin I wad be ta'en."

17. "The wildest wolf as in a' this wood Wad not ha' done so by me; She'd ha' wet her foot i' the wan water, And sprinkled it o'er my brae, And if that wad not ha' waken'd me, She wad ha' gone and let me be."

18. "O bows of yew, if ye be true, In London, where ye were bought, Fingers five, get up belive[71], Manhuid shall fail me nought."

19. He has kill'd the Seven Forsters, He has kill'd them all but ane, And that wan scarce to Pickeram Side, To carry the bode-words hame.

20. "Is there never a [bird] in a' this wood That will tell what I can say; That will go to Cockleys Well, Tell my mither to fetch me away?"

21. There was a [bird] into that wood, That carried the tidings away, And many ae[72] was the well-wight man At the fetching o' Johnie away.

[Footnote 61: Rose.]

[Footnote 62: Prepare.]

[Footnote 63: Ready.]

[Footnote 64: Has fallen ill with anxiety.]

[Footnote 65: Bush of whin, furze.]

[Footnote 66: Leaped.]

[Footnote 67: Quarter--the fourth part of a yard.]

[Footnote 68: "But and"--as well as.]

[Footnote 69: Bear, endure.]

[Footnote 70: Make, cause.]

[Footnote 71: Quickly.]

[Footnote 72: One.]

SIR PATRICK SPENS

1. The king sits in Dumferling toune, Drinking the blude-reid wine: "O whar will I get guid sailor, To sail this ship of mine?"

2. Up and spak an eldern knight, Sat at the kings right kne: "Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor, That sails upon the sea."

3. The king has written a braid letter[73], And sign'd it wi' his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the sand.

4. The first line that Sir Patrick read, A loud laugh laughed he; The next line that Sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his ee.

5. "O wha is this has done this deed, This ill deed done to me, To send me out this time o' the year, To sail upon the sea!"

6. "Make haste, make haste, my mirry men all, Our guide ship sails the morne:" "O say na sae, my master dear, For I fear a deadlie storme."

7. "Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone[74], Wi' the auld moone in hir arme, And I fear, I fear, my dear master, That we will come to harme"

8. O our Scots nobles were right laith To weet their cork-heeled shoone; But lang owre a' the play wer play'd, Their hats they swam aboone.

9. O lang, lang may their ladies sit, Wi' their fans into their hand, Or e'er they see Sir Patrick Spens Cum sailing to the land.

10. O lang, lang may the ladies stand, Wi' their gold kerns[75] in their hair, Waiting for their ain dear lords, For they'll se thame na mair.

11. Half owre, half owre to Aberdour, It's "fiftie fadom deep, And their lies guid Sir Patrick Spens, Wi' the Scots lords at his feet."

[Footnote 73: "_A braid letter_, open or patent, in opposition to close rolls."--Percy.]

[Footnote 74: Note that it is the sight of the new moon _late_ in the evening which makes a bad omen.]

[Footnote 75: Combs.]

THE BONNY EARL OF MURRAY[76]

1. Ye highlands, and ye Lowlands, Oh where have you been? They have slain the Earl of Murray, And they layd him on the green.

2. "Now wae be to thee, Huntly! And wherefore did you sae? I bade you bring him wi' you, But forbade you him to slay."

3. He was a braw gallant, And he rid at the ring[77]; And the bonny Earl of Murray, Oh he might have been a king!

4. He was a braw gallant, And he play'd at the ba'; And the bonny Earl of Murray Was the flower amang them a'.

5. He was a braw gallant, And he play'd at the glove[78]; And the bonny Earl of Murray, Oh he was the Queen's love!

6. Oh lang will his lady Look o'er the Castle Down, E'er she see the Earl of Murray Come sounding thro the town!

[Footnote 76: James Stewart, Earl of Murray, was killed by the Earl of Huntly's followers, February, 1592. The second stanza is spoken, of course, by the King.]

[Footnote 77: Piercing with the lance a suspended ring, as one rode at full speed, was a favorite sport of the day.]

[Footnote 78: Probably this reference is to the glove worn by knights as a lady's favor.]

MARY HAMILTON

1. Word's gane to the kitchen, And word's gane to the ha', That Marie Hamilton has born a bairn To the highest Stewart of a'.

2. She's tyed it in her apron And she's thrown it in the sea; Says, "Sink ye, swim ye, bonny wee babe, You'll ne'er get mair o' me."

3. Down then cam the auld Queen, Goud[79] tassels tying her hair: "O Marie, where's the bonny wee babe That I heard greet[80] sae sair?"

4. "There was never a babe intill my room, As little designs to be; It was but a touch o' my sair side, Came o'er my fair bodie."

5. "O Marie, put on your robes o' black, Or else your robes o' brown, For ye maun gang wi' me the night, To see fair Edinbro town."

6. "I winna put on my robes o' black, Nor yet my robes o' brown; But I'll put on my robes o' white, To shine through Edinbro town."

7. When she gaed up the Cannogate, She laugh'd loud laughters three; But when she cam down the Cannogate The tear blinded her ee.

8. When she gaed up the Parliament stair, The heel cam aff her shee[81]; And lang or she cam down again She was condemn'd to dee.

9. When she cam down the Cannogate, The Cannogate sae free, Many a ladie look'd o'er her window, Weeping for this ladie.

10. "Make never meen[82] for me," she says, "Make never meen for me; Seek never grace frae a graceless face, For that ye'll never see."

11. "Bring me a bottle of wine," she says, "The best that e'er ye hae, That I may drink to my weil-wishers, And they may drink to me."

12. "And here's to the jolly sailor lad That sails upon the faem; But let not my father nor mother get wit But that I shall come again."

13. "And here's to the jolly sailor lad That sails upon the sea; But let not my father nor mother get wit O' the death that I maun dee."

14. "Oh little did my mother think, The day she cradled me, What lands I was to travel through, What death I was to dee."

15. "Oh little did my father think, The day he held up[83] me, What lands I was to travel through, What death I was to dee."

16. "Last night I wash'd the Queen's feet, And gently laid her down; And a' the thanks I've gotten the nicht To be hangd in Edinbro town!"

17. "Last nicht there was four Maries, The nicht there'll be but three; There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beton, And Marie Carmichael, and me."

[Footnote 79: Gold.]

[Footnote 80: Weep.]

[Footnote 81: Shoe.]

[Footnote 82: Moan.]

[Footnote 83: Held up, lifted up, recognized as his lawful child,--a world-wide and ancient ceremony.]

BONNIE GEORGE CAMPBELL

1. High upon Highlands, and low upon Tay, Bonnie George Campbell rade out on a day.

2. Saddled and bridled and gallant rade he; Hame cam his guid horse, but never cam he.

3. Out cam his auld mither greeting fu' sair, And out cam his bonnie bride riving her hair.

4. Saddled and bridled and booted rade he; Toom[84] hame cam the saddle, but never came he.

5. "My meadow lies green, and my corn is unshorn, My barn is to build, and my babe is unborn."

6. Saddled and bridled and booted rade he; Toom hame cam the saddle, but never cam he.

[Footnote 84: Empty.]

BESSIE BELL AND MARY GRAY[85]

1. O Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, They war twa bonnie lasses! They biggit[86] a bower on yon burn-brae[87], And theekit[88] it oer wi rashes.

2. They theekit it oer wi' rashes green, They theekit it oer wi' heather: But the pest cam frae the burrows-town, And slew them baith thegither.

3. They thought to lie in Methven kirk-yard Amang their noble kin; But they maun lye in Stronach haugh, To biek forenent the sin[89].

4. And Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, They war twa bonnie lasses; They biggit a bower on yon burn-brae, And theekit it oer wi' rashes.

THE THREE RAVENS[90]

1. There were three ravens sat on a tree, Downe a downe, hay down, hay downe[91], There were three ravens sat on a tree, With a downe. There were three ravens sat on a tree, They were as blacke as they might be. With a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.

2. The one of them said to his mate, "Where shall we our breakfast take?"

3. "Downe in yonder greene field There lies a knight slain under his shield."

4. His hounds they lie down at his feete, So well they can their master keepe[92].

5. His haukes they flie so eagerly, There's no fowle dare him come nie.

6. Downe there comes a fallow doe, As great with young as she might goe.

7. She lift up his bloudy head, And kist his wounds that were so red.

8. She got him up upon her backe, And carried him to earthen lake[93].

9. She buried him before the prime, She was dead herselfe ere even-song time.

10. God send every gentleman Such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman[94].

[Footnote 85: Founded on an actual event of the plague, near Perth, in 1645. See the interesting account in Professor Child's 'Ballads,' Part VII, p. 75f.]

[Footnote 86: Built.]

[Footnote 87: A hill sloping down to a brook.]

[Footnote 88: Thatched.]

[Footnote 89: To bake in the rays of the sun.]

[Footnote 90: The counterpart, or perhaps parody, of this ballad, called 'The Twa Corbies,' is better known than the exquisite original.]

[Footnote 91: The refrain, or burden, differs in another version of the ballad.]

[Footnote 92: Guard.]

[Footnote 93: Shroud of earth, burial.]

[Footnote 94: Sweetheart, darling, literally 'dear-one' (liefman). The word had originally no offensive meaning.]

LORD RANDAL

1. Where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son? O where hae ye been, my handsome young man? "I hae been to the wild wood; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

2. "Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Randal, my son? Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?" "I din'd wi' my true-love; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

3. "What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randal, my son? What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?" "I gat eels boiled in broo[95]; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

4. "What became o' your bloodhounds, Lord Randal, my son? What became' o' your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?" "O they swell'd and they died; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

5. "O I fear you are poison'd, Lord Randal, my son! O I fear you are poison'd, my handsome young man!" "O yes! I'm poison'd; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down[96]."

[Footnote 95: Broth.]

[Footnote 96: Frogs, toads, snakes, and the like were often served for fish, and of course were supposed to act as a poison. One variant has a verse to elaborate this:--

"Where gat she those eels, Lord Randal, my son? Where gat she those eels, my handsome young man?" "'Neath the bush o' brown bracken; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down." ]

EDWARD[97]

1. "Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid, Edward, Edward, Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid, And why sae sad gang yee O?" "O I hae killed my hauke sae guid, Mither, mither, O I hae killed my hauke sae guid, And I had nae mair hot hee O."

2. "Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid, Edward, Edward, Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid, My deir son I tell thee O." "O I hae killed my reid-roan steid, Mither, mither, O I hae killed my reid-roan steid, That erst was sae fair and frie O."

3. "Your steid was auld, and ye hae gat mair, Edward, Edward, Your steid was auld, and ye hae gat mair, Sum other dule ye drie O[98]." "O I hae killed my fadir deir, Mither, mither, O I hae killed my fadir deir, Alas, and wae is mee O!"

4. "And whatten penance wul ye drie, for that, Edward, Edward, And whatten penance wul ye drie, for that? My deir son, now tell me O." "I'll set my feit in yonder boat, Mither, mither, I'll set my feit in yonder boat, And I'll fare over the sea O."

5. "And what wul ye doe wi' your towers and your ha', Edward, Edward, And what wul ye doe wi' your towers and your ha', That were sae fair to see O?" "I'll let them stand till they doun fa', Mither, mither, I'll let them stand till they doun fa', For here nevir mair maun I bee O."

6. "And what wul ye leive to your bairns and your wife, Edward, Edward, And what wul ye leive to your bairns and your wife, When ye gang over the sea O?" "The warldis room; let them beg thrae life, Mither, mither, The warldis room; let them beg thrae life, For them never mair wul I see O."

7. "And what wul ye leive to your ain mither dear, Edward, Edward, And what will ye leive to your ain mither dear? My dear son, now tell me O." "The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir, Mither, mither, The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir, Sic counsels ye gave to me O."

[Footnote 97: One of the finest of our ballads. It was sent from Scotland to Percy by David Dalrymple.]

[Footnote 98: You suffer some other sorrow.]

THE TWA BROTHERS

1. There were twa brethren in the north, They went to the school thegither; The one unto the other said, "Will you try a warsle[99] afore?"

2. They warsled up, they warsled down, Till Sir John fell to the ground, And there was a knife in Sir Willie's pouch, Gied him a deadlie wound.

3. "Oh brither dear, take me on your back, Carry me to yon burn clear, And wash the blood from off my wound, And it will bleed nae mair."

4. He took him up upon his back, Carried him to yon burn clear, And washed the blood from off his wound, But aye it bled the mair.

5. "Oh brither dear, take me on your back, Carry me to yon kirk-yard, And dig a grave baith wide and deep. And lay my body there."

6. He's taen him up upon his back, Carried him to yon kirk-yard, And dug a grave baith deep and wide, And laid his body there.

7. "But what will I say to my father dear, Gin he chance to say, Willie, whar's John?" "Oh say that he's to England gone, To buy him a cask of wine."

8. "And what will I say to my mother dear, Gin she chance to say, Willie, whar's John?" "Oh say that he's to England gone, To buy her a new silk gown."

9. "And what will I say to my sister dear, Gin she chance to say, Willie, whar's John?" "Oh say that he's to England gone, To buy her a wedding ring."

10. "But what will I say to her you loe[100] dear, Gin she cry, Why tarries my John?" "Oh tell her I lie in Kirk-land fair, And home again will never come."

[Footnote 99: Wrestle.]

[Footnote 100: Love.]

BABYLON; OR THE BONNIE BANKS O' FORDIE

1. There were three ladies lived in a bower, Eh vow bonnie, And they went out to pull a flower On the bonnie banks o' Fordie.

2. They hadna pu'ed a flower but ane, When up started to them a banisht man.

3. He's ta'en the first sister by her hand, And he's turned her round and made her stand.

4. "It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife, Or will ye die by my wee pen-knife?"

5. "It's I'll not be a rank robber's wife, But I'll rather die by your wee pen-knife!"

6. He's killed this may, and he's laid her by, For to bear the red rose company.

7. He's taken the second ane by the hand, And he's turned her round and made her stand.

8. "It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife, Or will ye die by my wee pen-knife?"

9. "I'll not be a rank robber's wife, But I'll rather die by your wee pen-knife."

10. He's killed this may, and he's laid her by, For to bear the red rose company.

11. He's taken the youngest ane by the hand, And he's turned her round and made her stand.

12. Says, "Will ye be a rank robber's wife, Or will ye die by my wee pen-knife?"

13. "I'll not be a rank robber's wife, Nor will I die by your wee pen-knife."

14. "For I hae a brother in this wood, And gin ye kill me, it's he'll kill thee."

15. "What's thy brother's name? Come tell to me." "My brother's name is Baby Lon."

16. "O sister, sister, what have I done! O have I done this ill to thee!"

17. "O since I've done this evil deed, Good sall never be seen o' me."

18. He's taken out his wee pen-knife, And he's twyned[101] himsel o' his own sweet life.

[Footnote 101: Parted, deprived.]

CHILDE MAURICE[102]

1. Childe Maurice hunted i' the silver wood, He hunted it round about, And noebodye that he found therein, Nor none there was without.

2. He says, "Come hither, thou little foot-page, That runneth lowlye by my knee, For thou shalt goe to John Steward's wife And pray her speake with me."

3. ".... .... I, and greete thou doe that ladye well, Ever soe well fro me."

4. "And, as it falls, as many times As knots beene knit on a kell[103], Or marchant men gone to leeve London Either to buy ware or sell."

5. "And, as it falles, as many times As any hart can thinke, Or schoole-masters are in any schoole-house Writing with pen and inke: For if I might, as well as she may, This night I would with her speake."

6. "And heere I send her a mantle of greene, As greene as any grasse, And bid her come to the silver wood, To hunt with Child Maurice."

7. "And there I send her a ring of gold, A ring of precious stone, And bid her come to the silver wood, Let[104] for no kind of man."

8. One while this little boy he yode[105], Another while he ran, Until he came to John Steward's hall, I-wis[106] he never blan[107].

9. And of nurture the child had good, He ran up hall and bower free, And when he came to this ladye faire, Sayes, "God you save and see[108]!"

10. "I am come from Child Maurice, A message unto thee; And Child Maurice, he greetes you well, And ever soe well from me."

11. "And as it falls, as oftentimes As knots beene knit on a kell, Or marchant men gone to leeve London Either for to buy ware or sell."

12. "And as oftentimes he greetes you well As any hart can thinke, Or schoolemasters are in any schoole, Wryting with pen and inke."

13. "And heere he sends a mantle of greene[109], As greene as any grasse, And he bids you come to the silver wood, To hunt with Child Maurice."

14. "And heere he sends you a ring of gold, A ring of the precious stone; He prayes you to come to the silver wood, Let for no kind of man."

15. "Now peace, now peace, thou little foot-page, For Christes sake, I pray thee! For if my lord heare one of these words, Thou must be hanged hye!"

16. John Steward stood under the castle wall, And he wrote the words everye one, .... ....

17. And he called upon his hors-keeper, "Make ready you my steede!" I, and soe he did to his chamberlaine, "Make ready thou my weede[110]!"

18. And he cast a lease[111] upon his backe, And he rode to the silver wood, And there he sought all about, About the silver wood.

19. And there he found him Child Maurice Sitting upon a blocke, With a silver combe in his hand, Kembing his yellow lockes. ....

20. But then stood up him Child Maurice, And sayd these words trulye: "I doe not know your ladye," he said, "If that I doe her see."

21. He sayes, "How now, how now, Child Maurice? Alacke, how may this be? For thou hast sent her love-tokens, More now then two or three;"

22. "For thou hast sent her a mantle of greene, As greene as any grasse, And bade her come to the silver woode To hunt with Child Maurice."

23. "And thou hast sent her a ring of gold, A ring of precyous stone, And bade her come to the silver wood, Let for no kind of man."

24. "And by my faith, now, Child Maurice, The tone[112] of us shall dye!" "Now be my troth," sayd Child Maurice, "And that shall not be I."

25. But he pulled forth a bright browne[113] sword, And dryed it on the grasse, And soe fast he smote at John Steward, I-wisse he never did rest.

26. Then he[114] pulled forth his bright browne sword, And dryed it on his sleeve, And the first good stroke John Stewart stroke, Child Maurice head he did cleeve.

27. And he pricked it on his sword's poynt, Went singing there beside, And he rode till he came to that ladye faire, Whereas this ladye lyed[115].

28. And sayes, "Dost thou know Child Maurice head, If that thou dost it see? And lap it soft, and kisse it oft, For thou lovedst him better than me."

29. But when she looked on Child Maurice head, She never spake words but three:-- "I never beare no childe but one, And you have slaine him trulye."

30. Sayes[116], "Wicked be my merrymen all, I gave meate, drinke, and clothe! But could they not have holden me When I was in all that wrath!"

31. "For I have slaine one of the curteousest knights That ever bestrode a steed, So[117] have I done one of the fairest ladyes That ever ware woman's weede!"

[Footnote 102: It is worth while to quote Gray's praise of this ballad:--"I have got the old Scotch ballad on which 'Douglas' [the well-known tragedy by Home] was founded. It is divine.... Aristotle's best rules are observed in a manner which shows the author never had heard of Aristotle."--Letter to Mason, in 'Works,' ed. Gosse, ii. 316.]

[Footnote 103: That is, the page is to greet the lady as many times as there are knots in nets for the hair (_kell_), or merchants going to dear (_leeve_, lief) London, or thoughts of the heart, or schoolmasters in all schoolhouses. These multiplied and comparative greetings are common in folk-lore, particularly in German popular lyric.]

[Footnote 104: _Let_ (desist) is an infinitive depending on _bid_.]

[Footnote 105: Went, walked.]

[Footnote 106: Certainly.]

[Footnote 107: Stopped.]

[Footnote 108: Protect.]

[Footnote 109: These, of course, are tokens of the Childe's identity.]

[Footnote 110: Clothes.]

[Footnote 111: Leash.]

[Footnote 112: That one = the one. _That_ is the old neuter form of the definite article. Cf. _the tother_ for _that other_.]

[Footnote 113: _Brown_, used in this way, seems to mean burnished, or glistening, and is found in Anglo-Saxon.]

[Footnote 114: _He_, John Steward.]

[Footnote 115: Lived.]

[Footnote 116: John Steward.]

[Footnote 117: Compare the similar swiftness of tragic development in 'Babylon.']¸

THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL

1. There lived a wife at Usher's Well, And a wealthy wife was she; She had three stout and stalwart sons, And sent them o'er the sea.

2. They hadna been a week from her, A week but barely ane, When word came to the carlin[118] wife That her three sons were gane.

3. They hadna been a week from her, A week but barely three, When word came to the carlin wife That her sons she'd never see.

4. "I wish the wind may never cease, Nor fashes[119] in the flood, Till my three sons come hame to me, In earthly flesh and blood."

5. It fell about the Martinmass[120], When nights are lang and mirk, The carlin wife's three sons came hame, And their hats were o' the birk[121].

6. It neither grew in syke[122] nor ditch, Nor yet in ony sheugh[123], But at the gates o' Paradise, That birk grew fair eneugh.

* * * * *

7. "Blow up the fire, my maidens! Bring water from the well! For a' my house shall feast this night, Since my three sons are well."

8. And she has made to them a bed, She's made it large and wide, And she's ta'en her mantle her about, Sat down at the bed-side.

* * * * *

9. Up then crew the red, red cock[124], And up and crew the gray; The eldest to the youngest said, "'Tis time we were away."

10. The cock he hadna craw'd but once, And clapp'd his wing at a', When the youngest to the eldest said, "Brother, we must awa'."

11. "The cock doth craw, the day doth daw. The channerin[125] worm doth chide; Gin we be mist out o' our place, A sair pain we maun bide."

12. "Fare ye weel, my mother dear! Fareweel to barn and byre! And fare ye weel, the bonny lass That kindles my mother's fire!"

[Footnote 118: Old woman.]

[Footnote 119: Lockhart's clever emendation for the _fishes_ of the Ms. _Fashes_ = disturbances, storms.]

[Footnote 120: November 11th. Another version gives the time as "the hallow days of Yule."]

[Footnote 121: Birch.]

[Footnote 122: Marsh.]

[Footnote 123: Furrow, ditch.]

[Footnote 124: In folk-lore, the break of day is announced to demons and ghosts by three cocks,--usually a white, a red, and a black; but the colors, and even the numbers, vary. At the third crow, the ghosts must vanish. This applies to guilty and innocent alike; of course, the sons are "spirits of health."]

[Footnote 125: Fretting.]

SWEET WILLIAM'S GHOST

1. Whan bells war rung, an mass was sung, A wat[126] a' man to bed were gone, Clark Sanders came to Margret's window, With mony a sad sigh and groan.

2. "Are ye sleeping, Margret," he says, "Or are ye waking, presentlie? Give me my faith and trouth again, A wat, true-love, I gied to thee."

3. "Your faith and trouth ye's never get, Nor our true love shall never twin[127], Till ye come with me in my bower, And kiss me both cheek and chin."

4. "My mouth it is full cold, Margret, It has the smell now of the ground; And if I kiss thy comely mouth, Thy life-days will not be long."

5. "Cocks are crowing a merry mid-larf[128], I wat the wild fule boded day; Give me my faith and trouth again, And let me fare me on my way."

6. "Thy faith and trouth thou shall na get, Nor our true love shall never twin, Till ye tell me what comes of women A wat that dy's in strong traveling[129]."

7. "Their beds are made in the heavens high, Down at the foot of our good Lord's knee, Well set about wi' gilly-flowers, A wat sweet company for to see."

8. "O cocks are crowing a merry mid-larf, A wat the wild fule boded day; The salms of Heaven will be sung, And ere now I'll be missed away."

9. Up she has taen a bright long wand, And she has straked her trouth thereon[130]; She has given it him out at the shot-window, Wi mony a sad sigh and heavy groan.

10. "I thank you, Margret, I thank you, Margret, And I thank you heartilie; Gin ever the dead come for the quick, Be sure, Margret, I'll come again for thee."

11. It's hose and shoon an gound[131] alane She clame the wall and followed him, Until she came to a green forest, On this she lost the sight of him.

12. "Is there any room at your head, Sanders? Is there any room at your feet? Or any room at your twa sides? Where fain, fain woud I sleep."

13. "There is nae room at my head, Margret, There is nae room at my feet; There is room at my twa sides, For ladys for to sleep."

14. "Cold meal[132] is my covering owre, But an[133] my winding sheet: My bed it is full low, I say, Among hungry worms I sleep."

15. "Cold meal is my covering owre, But an my winding sheet: The dew it falls nae sooner down Than ay it is full weet."

[Footnote 126: "I wot," "I know," = truly, in sooth. The same in 5-2, 6-4, 7-4, 8-2.]

[Footnote 127: Part, separate. She does not yet know he is dead.]

[Footnote 128: Probably the distorted name of a town; _a_ = in. "Cocks are crowing in merry--, and the wild-fowl announce the dawn."]

[Footnote 129: That die in childbirth.]

[Footnote 130: Margaret thus gives him back his troth-plight by "stroking" it upon the wand, much as savages and peasants believe they can rid themselves of a disease by rubbing the affected part with a stick or pebble and flinging the latter into the road.]

[Footnote 131: Gown.]

[Footnote 132: Mold, earth.]

[Footnote 133: But and==also.]

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

(1799-1850)

BY WILLIAM P. TRENT

Honoré de Balzac, by common consent the greatest of French novelists and to many of his admirers the greatest of all writers of prose fiction, was born at Tours, May 16th, 1799. Neither his family nor his place of birth counts for much in his artistic development; but his sister Laure, afterwards Madame Surville,--to whom we owe a charming sketch of her brother and many of his most delightful letters,--made him her hero through life, and gave him a sympathy that was better than any merely literary environment. He was a sensitive child, little comprehended by his parents or teachers, which probably accounts for the fact that few writers have so well described the feelings of children so situated [See 'Le lys dans la vallée' (The Lily in the Valley) and 'Louis Lambert']. He was not a good student, but undermined his health by desultory though enormous reading and by writing a precocious Treatise on the Will, which an irate master burned and the future novelist afterwards naïvely deplored. When brought home to recuperate, he turned from books to nature, and the effects of the beautiful landscape of Touraine upon his imagination are to be found throughout his writings, in passages of description worthy of a nature-worshiper like Senancour himself. About this time a vague desire for fame seems to have seized him,--a desire destined to grow into an almost morbid passion; and it was a kindly Providence that soon after (1814) led his family to quit the stagnant provinces for that nursery of ambition, Paris. Here he studied under new masters, heard lectures at the Sorbonne, read in the libraries, and finally, at the desire of his practical father, took a three years' course in law.

He was now at the parting of the ways, and he chose the one nearest his heart. After much discussion, it was settled that he should not be obliged to return to the provinces with his family, or to enter upon the regular practice of law, but that he might try his luck as a writer on an allowance purposely fixed low enough to test his constancy and endurance. Two years was the period of probation allotted, during which time Balzac read still more widely and walked the streets studying the characters he met, all the while endeavoring to grind out verses for a tragedy on Cromwell. This, when completed, was promptly and justly damned by his family, and he was temporarily forced to retire from Paris. He did not give up his aspirations, however, and before long he was back in his attic, this time supporting himself by his pen. Novels, not tragedies, were what the public most wanted, so he labored indefatigably to supply their needs and his own necessities; not relinquishing, however, the hope that he might some day watch the performance of one of his own plays. His perseverance was destined to be rewarded, for he lived to write five dramas which fill a volume of his collected works; but only one, the posthumous comedy 'Mercadet', was even fairly successful. Yet that Balzac had dramatic genius his matured novels abundantly prove.

The ten romances, however, that he wrote for cheap booksellers between 1822 and 1829 displayed so little genius of any sort that he was afterwards unwilling to cover their deficiencies with his great name. They have been collected as youthful works ('Oeuvres de jeunesse'), and are useful to a complete understanding of the evolution of their author's genius; but they are rarely read even by his most devoted admirers. They served, however, to enable him to get through his long and heart-rending period of apprenticeship, and they taught him how to express himself; for this born novelist was not a born writer and had to labor painfully to acquire a style which only at rare moments quite fitted itself to the subject he had in hand.

Much more interesting than these early sensational romances were the letters he wrote to his sister Laure, in which he grew eloquent over his ambition and gave himself needed practice in describing the characters with whom he came in contact. But he had not the means to wait quietly and ripen, so he embarked in a publishing business which brought him into debt. Then, to make up his losses, he became partner in a printing enterprise which failed in 1827, leaving him still more embarrassed financially, but endowed with a fund of experience which he turned to rich account as a novelist. Henceforth the sordid world of debt, bankruptcy, usury, and speculation had no mystery for him, and he laid it bare in novel after novel, utilizing also the knowledge he had gained of the law, and even pressing into service the technicalities of the printing office [See 'Illusions perdues' (Lost Illusions)]. But now at the age of twenty-eight he had over 100,000 francs to pay, and had written nothing better than some cheap stories; the task of wiping out his debts by his writings seemed therefore a more hopeless one than Scott's. Nothing daunted, however, he set to work, and the year that followed his second failure in business saw the composition of the first novel he was willing to acknowledge, 'Les Chouans.' This romance of Brittany in 1799 deserved the praise it received from press and public, in spite of its badly jointed plot and overdrawn characters. It still appeals to many readers, and is important to the 'Comédie humaine' as being the only novel of the "Military Scenes.". The 'Physiology of Marriage' followed quickly (1829-30), and despite a certain pruriency of imagination, displayed considerable powers of analysis, powers destined shortly to distinguish a story which ranks high among its author's works, 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote' (1830). This delightful novelette, the queer title of which is nearly equivalent to 'At the Sign of the Cat and the Racket,' showed in its treatment of the heroine's unhappy passion the intuition and penetration of the born psychologist, and in its admirable description of bourgeois life the pictorial genius of the genuine realist. In other words the youthful romancer was merged once for all in the matured novelist. The years of waiting and observation had done their work, and along the streets of Paris now walked the most profound analyst of human character that had scrutinized society since the days when William Shakespeare, fresh from Stratford, trod the streets and lanes of Elizabethan London.

The year 1830 marks the beginning not merely of Balzac's success as the greatest of modern realists, but also of his marvelous literary activity. Novel after novel is begun before its predecessor is finished; short stories of almost perfect workmanship are completed; sketches are dashed off that will one day find their appropriate place in larger compositions, as yet existing only in the brain of the master. Nor is it merely a question of individual works: novels and stories are to form different series,--'Scenes from Private Life,' 'Philosophical Novels and Tales,'--which are themselves destined to merge into 'Studies of Manners in the Nineteenth Century,' and finally into the 'Comédie humaine' itself. Yet it was more than a swarm of stories that was buzzing in his head; it was a swarm of individuals often more truly alive to him than the friends with whom he loved to converse about them. And just because he knew these people of his brain, just because he entered into the least details of their daily lives, Balzac was destined to become much more than a mere philosopher or student of society; to wit, a creator of characters, endowed with that "absolute dramatic vision" which distinguishes Homer and Shakespeare and Chaucer. But because he was also something of a philosopher and student of sociology, he conceived the stupendous idea of linking these characters with one another and with their several environments, in order that he might make himself not merely the historian but also the creator of an entire society. In other words, conservative though he was, Balzac had the audacity to range himself by the side of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and to espouse the cause of evolution even in its infancy. The great ideas of the mutability of species and of the influence of environment and heredity were, he thought, as applicable to sociology as to zoölogy, and as applicable to fiction as to either. So he meditated the 'Comédie humaine' for several years before he announced it in 1842, and from being almost the rival of Saint-Hilaire he became almost the anticipator of Darwin.

But this idea of evolution was itself due to the evolution of his genius, to which many various elements contributed: his friendships and enmities with contemporary authors, his intimacies with women of refinement and fashion, his business struggles with creditors and publishers, his frequent journeys to the provinces and foreign countries; and finally his grandiose schemes to surround himself with luxury and the paraphernalia of power, not so much for his own sake as for the sake of her whose least smile was a delight and an inspiration. About each of these topics an interesting chapter might be written, but here a few words must suffice.

After his position as an author was more or less assured, Balzac's relations with the leaders of his craft--such as Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, and George Sand--were on the whole cordial. He had trouble with Sainte-Beuve, however, and often felt that his brother-writers begrudged his success. His constant attacks on contemporary journalists, and his egotistic and erratic manners naturally prejudiced the critics, so that even the marvelous romance entitled 'La Peau de chagrin' (The Magic Skin: 1831),--a work of superb genius,--speedily followed as it was by 'Eugénie Grandet' and 'Le Père Goriot,' did not win him cordial recognition. One or two of his friendships, however, gave him a knowledge of higher social circles than he was by birth entitled to, a fact which should be remembered in face of the charge that he did not know high life, although it is of course true that a writer like Balzac, possessing the intuition of genius, need not frequent salons or live in hovels in order to describe them with absolute verisimilitude.

With regard to Balzac's debts, the fact should be noted that he might have paid them off more easily and speedily had he been more prudent. He cut into the profits of his books by the costly changes he was always making in his proof-sheets,--changes which the artist felt to be necessary, but against which the publishers naturally protested. In reality he wrote his books on his proof-sheets, for he would cut and hack the original version and make new insertions until he drove his printers wild. Indeed, composition never became easy to him, although under a sudden inspiration he could sometimes dash off page after page while other men slept. He had, too, his affectations; he must even have a special and peculiar garb in which to write. All these eccentricities and his outside distractions and ambitions, as well as his noble and pathetic love affair, entered into the warp and woof of his work with effects that can easily be detected by the careful student, who should remember, however, that the master's foibles and peculiarities never for one moment set him outside the small circle of the men of supreme genius. He belongs to them by virtue of his tremendous grasp of life in its totality, his superhuman force of execution and the inevitableness of his art at its best.

The decade from 1830 to 1840 is the most prolific period of Balzac's genius in the creation of individual works; that from 1840 to 1850 is his great period of philosophical co-ordination and arrangement. In the first he hewed out materials for his house; in the second he put them together. This statement is of course relatively true only, for we owe to the second decade three of his greatest masterpieces: 'Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes,' and 'La Cousine Bette' and 'Le Cousin Pons,' collectively known as 'Les Parents pauvres' (Poor Relations). And what a period of masterful literary activity the first decade presents! For the year 1830 alone the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul gives seventy-one entries, many of slight importance, but some familiar to every student of modern literature, such as 'El Verdugo,' 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote,' 'Gobseck,' 'Adieu,' 'Une Passion dans le desert' (A Passion in the Desert), 'Un Épisode sous la Terreur' (An Episode of the Terror). For 1831 there are seventy-six entries, among them such masterpieces as 'Le Réequisitionnaire' (The Conscript), 'Les Proscrits' (The Outlaws), 'La Peau de chagrin,' and 'Jésus-Christ en Flandre.' In 1832 the number of entries falls to thirty-six, but among them are 'Le Colonel Chabert,' 'Le Curé de Tours' (The Priest of Tours), 'La Grande Bretèche,' 'Louis Lambert,' and 'Les Marana.' After this year there are fewer short stories. In 1833 we have 'Le Médecin de campagne' (The Country Doctor), and 'Eugénie Grandet,' with parts of the 'Histoire des treize' (Story of the Thirteen), and of the 'Contes drolatiques' (Droll Tales). The next year gives us 'La Recherche de l'absolu' (Search for the Absolute) and 'Le Père Goriot' (Old Goriot) and during the next six there were no less than a dozen masterpieces. Such a decade of accomplishment is little short of miraculous, and the work was done under stress of anxieties that would have crushed any normal man.

But anxieties and labors were lightened by a friendship which was an inspiration long before it ripened into love, and were rendered bearable both by Balzac's confidence in himself and by his ever nearer view of the goal he had set himself. The task before him was as stupendous as that which Comte had undertaken, and required not merely the planning and writing of new works but the utilization of all that he had previously written. Untiring labor had to be devoted to this manipulation of old material, for practically the great output of the five years 1829-1834 was to be co-ordinated internally, story being brought into relation with story and character with character. This meant the creation and management of an immense number of personages, the careful investigation of the various localities which served for environments, and the profound study of complicated social and political problems. No wonder, then, that the second decade of his maturity shows a falling off in abundance, though not in intensity of creative power; and that the gradual breaking down of his health, under the strain of his ceaseless efforts and of his abnormal habits of life, made itself more and more felt in the years that followed the great preface which in 1842 set forth the splendid design of the 'Comédie humaine.'

This preface, one of the most important documents in literary history, must be carefully studied by all who would comprehend Balzac in his entirety. It cannot be too often repeated that Balzac's scientific and historical aspirations are important only in so far as they caused him to take a great step forward in the development of his art. The nearer the artist comes to reproducing for us life in its totality, the higher the rank we assign him among his fellows. Tried by this canon, Balzac is supreme. His interweaving of characters and events through a series of volumes gives a verisimilitude to his work unrivaled in prose fiction, and paralleled only in the work of the world-poets. In other words, his use of co-ordination upon a vast scale makes up for his lack of delicacy and sureness of touch, as compared with what Shakespeare and Homer and Chaucer have taught us to look for. Hence he is with them even if not of them.

This great claim can be made for the Balzac of the 'Comédie humaine' only; it could not be made for the Balzac of any one masterpiece like 'Le Père Goriot,' or even for the Balzac of all the masterpieces taken in lump and without co-ordination. Balzac by co-ordination has in spite of his limitations given us a world, just as Shakespeare and Homer have done; and so Taine was profoundly right when he put him in the same category with the greatest of all writers. When, however, he added St. Simon to Shakespeare, and proclaimed that with them Balzac was the greatest storehouse of documents that we have on human nature, he was guilty not merely of confounding _genres_ of art, but also of laying stress on the philosophic rather than on the artistic side of fiction. Balzac does make himself a great storehouse of documents on human nature, but he also does something far more important, he sets before us a world of living men and women.

To have brought this world into existence, to have given it order in the midst of complexity, and that in spite of the fact that death overtook him before he could complete his work, would have been sufficient to occupy a decade of any other man's life; but he, though harassed with illness and with hopes of love and ambition deferred, was strong enough to do more. The year 1840 saw the appearance of 'Pierrette,' and the establishment of the ill-fated 'Revue parisienne.' The following year saw 'Ursule Mirouet,' and until 1848 the stream of great works is practically unbroken. The 'Splendeurs et misères' and the 'Parents pauvres' have been named already, but to these must be added 'Un Ménage de garçon' (A Bachelor's House-keeping), 'Modeste Mignon,' and 'Les Paysans' (The Peasants). The three following years added nothing to his work and closed his life, but they brought him his crowning happiness. On March 14th, 1850, he was married to Mme. Hanska, at Berditchef; on August 18th, 1850, he died at Paris.

Madame Evelina de Hanska came into Balzac's life about 1833, just after he had shaken off the unfortunate influence of the Duchesse de Castries. The young Polish countess was much impressed, we are told, by reading the 'Scènes de la vie privée' (Scenes of Private Life), and was somewhat perplexed and worried by Balzac's apparent change of method in 'La Peau de chagrin.' She wrote to him over the signature "L'Étrangère" (A Foreigner), and he answered in a series of letters recently published in the Revue de Paris. Not long after the opening of this correspondence the two met, and a firm friendship was cemented between them. The lady was about thirty, and married to a Russian gentleman of large fortune, to whom she had given an only daughter. She was in the habit of traveling about Europe to carry on this daughter's education, and Balzac made it his pleasure and duty to see her whenever he could, sometimes journeying as far as Vienna. In the interim he would write her letters which possess great charm and importance to the student of his life. The husband made no objection to the intimacy, trusting both to his wife and to Balzac; but for some time before the death of the aged nobleman, Balzac seems to have distrusted himself and to have held slightly aloof from the woman whom he was destined finally to love with all the fervor of his nature. Madame Hanska became free in the winter of 1842-3, and the next summer Balzac visited St. Petersburg to see her. His love soon became an absorbing passion, but consideration for her daughter's future withheld the lady's consent to a betrothal till 1846. It was a period of weary waiting, in which our sympathies are all on one side; for if ever a man deserved to be happy in a woman's love, it was Balzac. His happiness came, but almost too late to be enjoyed. His last two years, which he spent in Poland with Madame de Hanska, were oppressed by illness, and he returned to his beloved Paris only to die. The struggle of thirty years was over, and although his immense genius was not yet fully recognized, his greatest contemporary, Victor Hugo, was magnanimous enough to exclaim on hearing that he was dying, "Europe is on the point of losing a great mind." Balzac's disciples feel that Europe really lost its greatest writer since Shakespeare.

In the definitive edition of Balzac's writings in twenty-four volumes, seventeen are occupied by the various divisions of the 'Comédie humaine.' The plays take up one volume; and the correspondence, not including of course the letters to "L'Étrangère," another; the 'Contes drolatiques' make still another; and finally we have four volumes filled with sketches, tales, reviews, and historical and political articles left uncollected by their author.

The 'Contes' are thirty in number, divided into "dixains," each with its appropriate prologue and epilogue. They purport to have been collected in the abbeys of Touraine, and set forth by the Sieur de Balzac for the delight of Pantagruelists and none others. Not merely the spirit but the very language of Rabelais is caught with remarkable verve and fidelity, so that from the point of view of style Balzac has never done better work. A book which holds by Rabelais on the one hand and by the Queen of Navarre on the other is not likely, however, to appeal to that part of the English and American reading public that expurgates its Chaucer, and blushes at the mention of Fielding and Smollett. Such readers will do well to avoid the 'Contes drolatiques;' although, like 'Don Juan,' they contain a great deal of what was best in their author, of his frank, ebullient, sensuous nature, lighted up here at least by a genuine if scarcely delicate humor. Of direct suggestion of vice Balzac was, naturally, as incapable as he was of smug puritanism; but it must be confessed that as a _raconteur_ his proper audience, now that the monastic orders have passed away, would be a group of middle-aged club-men.

The 'Comédie humaine' is divided into three main sections: first and most important, the 'Études de moeurs' (Studies of Manners), second the 'Études philosophiques' (Philosophic Studies), and finally the 'Études analytiques' (Analytic Studies). These divisions, as M. Barrière points out in his 'L'Oeuvre de H. de Balzac' (The Work of Balzac), were intended to bear to one another the relations that moral science, psychology, and metaphysics do to one another with regard to the life of man, whether as an individual or as a member of society. No single division was left complete at the author's death; but enough was finished and put together to give us the sense of moving in a living, breathing world, no matter where we make our entry. This, as we have insisted, is the real secret of his greatness. To think, for example, that the importance of 'Séraphita' lies in the fact that it gives Balzac's view of Swedenborgianism, or that the importance of 'Louis Lambert' lies in its author's queer theories about the human will, is entirely to misapprehend his true position in the world of literature. His mysticism, his psychology, his theories of economics, his reactionary devotion to monarchy, and his idealization of the Church of Rome, may or may not appeal to us, and have certainly nothing that is eternal or inevitable about them; but in his knowledge of the human mind and heart he is as inevitable and eternal as any writer has ever been, save only Shakespeare and Homer.

The 'Études de moeurs' were systematically divided by their author into 'Scenes of Private Life,' 'Scenes of Provincial Life,' 'Scenes of Country Life,' 'Scenes of Parisian Life,' 'Scenes of Political Life,' and 'Scenes of Military Life,'--the last three divisions representing more or less exceptional phases of existence. The group relating to Paris is by far the most important and powerful, but the provincial stories show almost as fine workmanship, and furnish not a few of the well-known masterpieces. Less interesting, though still important, are the 'Scenes of Private Life,' which consist of twenty-four novels, novelettes, and tales, under the following titles: 'Béatrix,' 'Albert Savarus,' 'La Fausse maitresse' (The False Mistress), 'Le Message' (The Message), 'La Grande Bretèche,' 'Étude de femme' (Study of Woman), 'Autre étude de femme' (Another Story of Woman), 'Madame Firmiani,' 'Modeste Mignon,' 'Un Début dans la vie' (An Entrance upon Life), 'Pierre Grassou,' 'Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées' (Recollections of a Young Couple), 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote,' 'Le Bal de Sceaux' (The Ball of Sceaux), 'Le Contrat de mariage' (The Marriage Contract), 'La Vendetta,' 'La Paix du ménage' (Household Peace), 'Une Double famille' (A Double Family), 'Une Fille d'Éve' (A Daughter of Eve), 'Honorine,' 'La Femme abandonnée' (The Abandoned Wife), 'La Grenadière,' 'La Femme de trente ans' (The Woman of Thirty).

Of all these stories, hardly one shows genuine greatness except the powerful tragic tale 'La Grande Bretèche,' which was subsequently incorporated in 'Autre étude de femme,' This story of a jealous husband's walling up his wife's lover in a closet of her chamber is as dramatic a piece of writing as Balzac ever did, and is almost if not quite as perfect a short story as any that has since been written in France. 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote' has been mentioned already on account of its importance in the evolution of Balzac's realism, but while a delightful novelette, it is hardly great, its charm coming rather from its descriptions of bourgeois life than from the working out of its central theme, the infelicity of a young wife married to an unfaithful artist. 'Modeste Mignon' is interesting, and more romantic than Balzac's later works were wont to be; but while it may be safely recommended to the average novel-reader, few admirers of its author would wish to have it taken as a sample of their master. 'Béatrix' is a powerful story in its delineation of the weakness of the young Breton nobleman, Calyste du Guénie. It derives a factitious interest from the fact that George Sand is depicted in 'Camille Maupin,' the _nom de plume_ of Mlle. des Touches, and perhaps Balzac himself in Claude Vignon, the critic. Less factitious is the interest derived from Balzac's admirable delineation of a doting mother and aunt, and from his realistic handling of one of the cleverest of his ladies of light reputation, Madame Schontz; his studies of such characters of the _demi-monde_--especially of the wonderful Esther of the 'Splendeurs et misères'--serving plainly, by the way, as a point of departure for Dumas _fils_. Yet 'Béatrix' is an able rather than a truly great book, for it neither elevates nor delights us. In fact, all the stories in this series are interesting rather than truly great; but all display Balzac's remarkable analytic powers. Love, false or true, is of course their main theme; wrought out to a happy issue in 'La Bourse,' a charming tale, or to a death of despair in 'La Grenadière' The childless young married woman is contrasted with her more fortunate friend surrounded by little ones ('Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées'), the heartless coquette flirts once too often ('Le Bal de Sceaux'), the eligible young man is taken in by a scheming mother ('Le Contrat du mariage'), the deserted husband labors to win back his wife ('Honorine'), the tempted wife learns at last the real nature of her peril ('Une Fille d'Éve'); in short, lovers and mistresses, husbands and wives, make us participants of all the joys and sorrows that form a miniature world within the four walls of every house.

The 'Scenes of Provincial Life' number only ten stories, but nearly all of them are masterpieces. They are 'Eugénie Grandet,' 'Le Lys dans la vallée,' 'Ursule Mirouet,' 'Pierrette,' 'Le Curé de Tours,' 'La Rabouilleuse,' 'La Vielle fille' (The Old Maid), 'Le Cabinet des antiques' (The Cabinet of Antiques), 'L'Illustre Gaudissart' (The Illustrious Gaudissart), and 'La Muse du département' (The Departmental Muse). Of these 'Eugénie Grandet' is of course easily first in interest, pathos, and power. The character of old Grandet, the miserly father, is presented to us with Shakespearean vividness, although Eugénie herself has, less than the Shakespearean charm. Any lesser artist would have made the tyrant himself and his yielding wife and daughters seem caricatures rather than living people. It is only the Shakespeares and Balzacs who are able to make their Shylocks and lagos, their Grandets and Philippe Brideaus, monsters and human beings at one and the same time. It is only the greater artists, too, who can bring out all the pathos inherent in the subjection of two gentle women to a tyrant in their own household. But it is Balzac the inimitable alone who can portray fully the life of the provinces, its banality, its meanness, its watchful selfishness, and yet save us through the perfection of his art from the degradation which results from contact with low and sordid life. The reader who rises unaffected from a perusal of 'Eugénie Grandet' would be unmoved by the grief of Priam in the tent of Achilles, or of Othello in the death-chamber of Desdemona.

'Le Lys dans la vallée' has been pronounced by an able French critic to be the worst novel he knows; but as a study of more or less ethereal and slightly morbid love it is characterized by remarkable power. Its heroine, Madame Mortsauf, tied to a nearly insane husband and pursued by a sentimental lover, undergoes tortures of conscience through an agonizing sense of half-failure in her duty. Balzac himself used to cite her when he was charged with not being able to draw a pure woman; but he has created nobler types. The other stories of the group are also decidedly more interesting. The distress of the abbé Birotteau over his landlady's treatment, and the intrigues of the abbé Troubert ('Le Curé de Tours') absorb us as completely as the career of Caesar himself in Mommsen's famous chapter. The woes of the little orphan subjected to the tyranny of her selfish aunt and uncle ('Pierrette'), the struggles of the rapacious heirs for the Mirouet fortune ('Ursule Mirouet,') a story which gives us one of Balzac's purest women, treats interestingly of mesmerism (and may be read without fear by the young), the siege of Mlle. Cormon's mature affections by her two adroit suitors ('Une Vielle fille'), the intrigues against the peace of the d'Esgrignons and the sublime devotion to their interests of the notary Chesnel ('Le Cabinet des antiques'), and finally the ignoble passions that fought themselves out around the senile Jean Jacques Rouget, under the direction of the diabolical ex-soldier Philippe Brideau ('La Rabouilleuse,' sometimes entitled 'Un Ménage de Garcon'), form the absorbing central themes of a group of novels--or rather stories, for few of them attain considerable length--unrivaled in the annals of realistic fiction.

The 'Scenes of Country Life,' comprising 'Les Paysans,' 'Le Médecin de campagne,' and 'Le Curé de village' (The Village Priest), take high rank among their author's works. Where Balzac might have been crudely naturalistic, he has preferred to be either realistic as in the first named admirable novel, or idealistic as in the two latter. Hence he has created characters like the country physician, Doctor Benassis, almost as great a boon to the world of readers as that philanthropist himself was to the little village of his adoption. If Madame Graslin of 'Le Curé de village' fails to reach the height of Benassis, her career has at least a sensational interest which his lacked; and the country curate, the good abbé Bonnet, surely makes up for her lack on the ideal side. This story, by the way, is important for the light it throws on the workings of the Roman Church among the common people; and the description of Madame Graslin's death is one of Balzac's most effective pieces of writing.

We are now brought to the 'Parisian Scenes,' and with the exception of 'Eugénie Grandet,' to the best-known masterpieces. There are twenty titles; but as two of these are collective in character, the number of novels and stories amounts to twenty-four, as follows:--'Le Père Goriot,' 'Illusions perdues,' 'Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes,' 'Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan' (The Secrets of the Princess of Cadignan), 'Histoire des treize' [containing 'Ferragus,' 'La Duchesse de Langeais,' and 'La Fille aux yeux d'or' (The Girl with the Golden Eyes)], 'Sarrasine,' 'Le Colonel Chabert,' 'L'lnterdiction' (The Interdiction), 'Les Parents pauvres' (Poor Relations, including 'La Cousine Bette' and 'Le Cousin Pons'), 'La Messe de l'athée' (The Atheist's Mass), 'Facino Cane,' 'Gobseck,' 'La Maison Nucingen,' 'Un Prince de la Bohème' (A Prince of Bohemia), 'Esquisse d'homme d'affaires' (Sketch of a Business man), 'Gaudissart II.' 'Les Comédiens sans le savoir' (The Unconscious Humorists), 'Les Employés' (The Employees), 'Histoire de César Birotteau,' and 'Les Petits bourgeois' (Little Bourgeois). Of these twenty-four titles six belong to novels, five of which are of great power, nine to novelettes and short stories too admirable to be passed over without notice, eight to novelettes and stories of interest and value which need not, however, detain us, and one, 'Les Petits bourgeois', to a novel of much promise unfortunately left incomplete. 'Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan' is remarkable chiefly as a study of the blind passion that often overtakes a man of letters. Daniel d'Arthez, the author, a fine character and a favorite with Balzac, succumbs to the wiles of the Princess of Cadignan (formerly the dashing and fascinating Duchesse de Maufrigneuse) and is happy in his subjection. The 'Histoire des treize' contains three novelettes, linked together through the fact that in each a band of thirteen young men, sworn to assist one another in conquering society, play an important part. This volume is the most frankly sensational of Balzac's works. 'La Duchesse de Langeais' however, is more than sensational: it gives perhaps Balzac's best description of the Faubourg St. Germain and one of his ablest analyses of feminine character, while in the description of General Montriveau's recognition of the Duchess in the Spanish convent the novelist's dramatic power is seen at its highest. 'La Fille aux yeux d'or,' which concludes the volume devoted to the mysterious brotherhood, may be considered, with 'Sarrasine,' one of the dark closets of the great building known as the 'Comédie humaine.' Both stories deal with unnatural passions, and the first is one of Balzac's most effective compositions. For sheer voluptuousness of style there is little in literature to parallel the description of the boudoir of the uncanny heroine. Very different from these stories is 'Le Colonel Chabert,' the record of the misfortunes of one of Napoleon's heroic soldiers, who after untold hardships returns to France to find his wife married a second time and determined to deny his existence. The law is invoked, but the treachery of the wife induces the noble old man to put an end to the proceedings, after which he sinks into an indigent and pathetic senility. Balzac has never drawn a more heart-moving figure, nor has he ever sounded more thoroughly the depths of human selfishness. But the description of the battle of Eylau and of Chabert's sufferings in retreat would alone suffice to make the story memorable. 'L'Interdiction' is the proper pendant to the history of this unfortunate soldier. In it another husband, the Marquis d'Espard, suffers from the selfishness of his wife, one of the worst characters in the range of Balzac's fiction. That she may keep him from alienating his property to discharge a moral obligation she endeavors to prove him insane. The legal complications which ensue bring forward one of Balzac's great figures, the judge of instruction, Popinot; but to appreciate him the reader must go to the marvelous book itself. 'Gobseck' is a study of a Parisian usurer, almost worthy of a place beside the description of old Grandet; while 'Les Employés' is a realistic study of bureaucratic life, which, besides showing a wonderful familiarity with the details of a world of which Balzac had little personal experience, contains several admirably drawn characters and a sufficient amount of incident. But it is time to leave these sketches and novels in miniature, and to pass by the less important 'Scenes' of this fascinating Parisian life, in order to consider in some detail the five novels of consummate power.

First of these in date of composition, and in popular estimation at least among English readers, comes, 'Le Père Goriot.' It is certainly trite to call the book a French "Lear," but the expression emphasizes the supreme artistic power that could treat the _motif_ of one of Shakespeare's plays in a manner that never forces a disadvantageous comparison with the great tragedy. The retired vermicelli-maker is not as grand a figure as the doting King of Britain, but he is as real. The French daughters, Anastasie, Countess de Restaud, and Delphine, Baroness de Nucingen, are not such types of savage wickedness as Regan and Goneril, but they fit the nineteenth century as well as the British princesses did their more barbarous day. Yet there is no Cordelia in 'Le Père Goriot,' for the pale Victorine Taillefer cannot fill the place of that noblest of daughters. This is but to say that Balzac's bourgeois tragedy lacks that element of the noble that every great poetic tragedy must have. The self-immolation of old Goriot to the cold-hearted ambitions of his daughters is not noble, but his parental passion touches the infinite, and so proves the essential kinship of his creator with the creator of Lear. This touch of the infinite, as in 'Eugénie Grandet,' lifts the book up from the level of a merely masterly study of characters or a merely powerful novel to that of the supreme masterpieces of human genius. The marvelously lifelike description of the vulgar Parisian boarding-house, the fascinating delineation of the character of that king of convicts, Vautrin, and the fine analysis of the ambitions of Rastignac (who comes nearer perhaps to being _the_ hero of the 'Comédie humaine' than any other of its characters, and is here presented to us at the threshold of his successful career) remain in the memory of every reader, but would never alone have sufficed to make Balzac's name worthy of immortality. The infinite quality of Goriot's passion would, however, have conferred this honor on his creator had he never written another book.

'Illusions perdues' and 'Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes' might almost be regarded as one novel in seven parts. More than any other of his works they show the sun of Balzac's genius at its meridian. Nowhere else does he give us plots so absorbing, nowhere else does he bring us so completely in contact with the world his imagination has peopled. The first novel devotes two of its parts to the provinces and one to Paris. The provincial stories centre around two brothers-in-law, David Séchard and Lucien de Rubempré, types of the practical and the artistic intellect respectively. David, after struggling for fame and fortune, succumbs and finds his recompense in the love of his wife Eve, Lucien's sister, one of Balzac's noble women. Lucien, on the other hand, after some provincial successes as a poet, tries the great world of Paris, yields to its temptations, fails ignominiously, and attempts suicide, but is rescued by the great Vautrin, who has escaped from prison and is about to renew his war on society disguised as a Spanish priest. Vautrin has conceived the idea that as he can take no part in society, he will have a representative in it and taste its pleasures through him. Lucien accepts this disgraceful position and plunges once more into the vortex, supported by the strong arm of the king of the convicts. His career and that of his patron form the subject of the four parts of the 'Splendeurs et misères' and are too complicated to be described here. Suffice it to say that probably nowhere else in fiction are the novel of character and the novel of incident so splendidly combined; and certainly nowhere else in the range of his work does Balzac so fully display all his master qualities. That the story is sensational cannot be denied, but it is at least worthy of being called the Iliad of Crime. Nemesis waits upon both Lucien and Vautrin, and upon the poor courtesan Esther whom they entrap in their toils, and when the two former are at last in custody, Lucien commits suicide. Vautrin baffles his acute judge in a wonderful interview; but with his cherished hope cut short by Lucien's death, finally gives up the struggle. Here the novel might have ended; yet Balzac adds a fourth part, in order to complete the career of Vautrin. The famous convict is transformed into a government spy, and engages to use his immense power against his former comrades and in defense of the society he has hitherto warred upon. The artistic propriety of this transformation may be questioned, but not the power and interest of the novel of which it is the finishing touch.

Many readers would put the companion novels 'La Cousine Bette' and 'Le Cousin Pons' at the head of Balzac's works. They have not the infinite pathos of 'Le Père Goriot,' or the superb construction of the first three parts of the 'Splendeurs et misères,' but for sheer strength the former at least is unsurpassed in fiction. Never before or since have the effects of vice in dragging down a man below the level of the lowest brute been so portrayed as in Baron Hulot; never before or since has female depravity been so illustrated as in the diabolical career of Valérie Marneffe, probably the worst woman in fiction. As for Cousine Bette herself, and her power to breed mischief and crime, it suffices to say that she is worthy of a place beside the two chief characters.

'Le Cousin Pons' is a very different book; one which, though pathetic in the extreme, may be safely recommended to the youngest reader. The hero who gives his name to the story is an old musician who has worn out his welcome among his relations, but who becomes an object of interest to them when they learn that his collection of bric-a-brac is valuable and that he is about to die. The intrigues that circulate around this collection and the childlike German, Schmucke, to whom Pons has bequeathed it, are described as only the author of 'Le Curé de Tours' could have succeeded in doing; but the book contains also an almost perfect description of the ideal friendship existing between Pons and Schmucke. One remembers them longer than one does Frazier, the scoundrelly advocate who cheats poor Schmucke; a fact which should be cited against those who urge that Balzac is at home with his vicious characters only.

The last novel of this group, 'César Birotteau,' is the least powerful, though not perhaps the least popular. It is an excellent study of bourgeois life, and therefore fills an important place in the scheme of the 'Comedy,' describing as it does the spreading ambitions of a rich but stupid perfumer, and containing an admirable study of bankruptcy. It may be dismissed with the remark that around the innocent Caesar surge most of the scoundrels that figure in the 'Comédie humaine,' and with the regret that it should have been completed while the far more powerful 'Les Petits bourgeois' was left unfinished.

We now come to the concluding parts of the 'Études de moeurs.' the 'Scenes' describing Political and Military Life. In the first group are five novels and stories: 'L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine' (The Under Side of Contemporary History, a fine story, but rather social than political), 'Une Ténébreuse affaire' (A Shady Affair), 'Un Épisode sous la Terreur,' 'Z. Marcas,' and 'Le Deputé d'Arcis' (The Deputy of Arcis). Of these the 'Episode' is probably the most admirable, although 'Z. Marcas' has not a little strength. The 'Deputé,' like 'Les Petits bourgeois,' was continued by M. Charles Rabou and a considerable part of it is not Balzac's; a fact which is to be regretted, since practically it is the only one of these stories that touches actual politics as the term is usually understood. The military scenes are only two in number, 'Les Chouans' and 'Une Passion dans le désert.' The former of these has been sufficiently described already; the latter is one of the best known of the short stories, but rather deserves a place beside 'La Fille aux yeux d'or.' Indeed, for Balzac's best military scenes we must go to 'Le Colonel Chabert' or to 'Adieu.'

We now pass to those subterranean chambers of the great structure we are exploring, the 'Études philosophiques.' They are twenty in number, four being novels, one a composite volume of tales, and the rest stories. The titles run as follows:--'La Peau de chagrin,' 'L'Élixir de longue vie' (The Elixir of Life), 'Melmoth réconcilié,' 'Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu' (The Anonymous Masterpiece), 'Gambara,' 'Massimila Doni,' 'Le Réquisitionnaire,' 'Adieu,' 'El Verdugo,' 'Les Marana,' 'L'Auberge rouge' (The Red Inn), 'Un Drame au bord de la mer' (A Seaside Drama), 'L'Enfant maudit' (A Child Accursed) 'Maître Cornélius' (Master Cornelius), 'Sur Catherine de Médicis,' 'La Recherche de l'absolu,' 'Louis Lambert,' 'Séraphita,' 'Les Proscrits,' and 'Jésus-Christ en Flandre.'

Of the novels, 'La Peau de chagrin' is easily first. Its central theme is the world-old conflict between the infinite desires and the finite powers of man. The hero, Raphael, is hardly, as M. Barrière asserts, on a level with Hamlet, Faust, and Manfred, but the struggle of his infinite and his finite natures is almost as intensely interesting as the similar struggles in them. The introduction of the talisman, the wild ass's skin that accomplishes all the wishes of its owner, but on condition that it is to shrink away in proportion to the intensity of those wishes, and that when it disappears the owner's life is to end, gave to the story a weird interest not altogether, perhaps, in keeping with its realistic setting, and certainly forcing a disastrous comparison with the three great poems named. But when all allowances are made, one is forced to conclude that 'La Peau de chagrin' is a novel of extraordinary power and absorbing interest; and that its description of its hero's dissipations in the libertine circles of Paris, and its portrayal of the sublime devotion of the heroine Pauline for her slowly perishing lover, are scarcely to be paralleled in literature. Far less powerful are the short stories on similar themes, entitled 'L'Élixir de longue vie,' and 'Melmoth réconcilié' (Melmoth Reconciled), which give us Balzac's rehandling of the Don Juan of Molière and Byron, and the Melmoth of Maturin.

Below the 'Peau de chagrin,' but still among its author's best novels, should be placed 'La Recherche de l'absolu,' which, as its title implies, describes the efforts of a chemist to "prove by chemical analysis the unity of composition of matter." In the pursuit of his philosophic will-o'-the-wisp, Balthazar Claës loses his fortune and sacrifices his noble wife and children. His madness serves, however, to bring into relief the splendid qualities of these latter; and it is just here, in its human rather than in its philosophic bearings, that the story rises to real greatness. Marguerite Claës, the daughter, is a noble heroine; and if one wishes to see how Balzac's characters and ideas suffer when treated by another though an able hand, one has but to read in conjunction with this novel the 'Maître Guérin' of the distinguished dramatist Émile Augier. A proper pendant to this history of a noble genius perverted is 'La Confidence des Ruggieri,' the second part of that remarkable composite 'Sur Catherine de Médicis,' a book which in spite of its mixture of history, fiction, and speculative politics is one of the most suggestive of Balzac's minor productions.

Concerning 'Séraphita' and 'Louis Lambert,' the remaining novels of this series, certain noted mystics assert that they contain the essence of Balzac's genius, and at least suggest the secret of the universe. Perhaps an ordinary critic may content himself with saying that both books are remarkable proofs of their author's power, and that the former is notable for its marvelous descriptions of Norwegian scenery.

Of the lesser members of the philosophic group, nearly all are admirable in their kind and degree. 'Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu' and 'Gambara' treat of the pains of the artistic life and temperament. 'Massimila Doni,' like 'Gambara,' treats of music, but also gives a brilliant picture of Venetian life. 'Le réquisitionnaire,' perhaps the best of Balzac's short stories, deals with the phenomenon of second sight, as 'Adieu' does with that of mental alienation caused by a sudden shock. 'Les Marana' is an absorbing study of the effects of heredity; 'L'Auberge rouge' is an analysis of remorse, as is also 'Un Drame au bord de la mer'; while 'L'Enfant maudit' is an analysis of the effects of extreme sensibility, especially as manifested in the passion of poetic love. Finally, 'Maître Cornelius' is a study of avarice, in which is set a remarkable portrait of Louis XI.; 'Les Proscrits' is a masterly sketch of the exile of Dante at Paris; and 'Jésus-Christ en Flandre' is an exquisite allegory, the most delicate flower, perhaps, of Balzac's genius.

It remains only to say a few words about the third division of the 'Comédie humaine,' viz., the 'Études analytiques.' Only two members of the series, the 'Physiologie du mariage' and the 'Petites misères de la vie conjugale,' were ever completed, and they are not great enough to make us regret the loss of the 'Pathology of Social Life' and the other unwritten volumes. For the two books we have are neither novels nor profound studies, neither great fiction nor great psychology. That they are worth reading for their suggestiveness with regard to such important subjects as marriage and conjugal life goes without saying, since they are Balzac's; but that they add greatly to his reputation, not even his most ardent admirer would be hardy enough to affirm.

And now in conclusion, what can one say about this great writer that will not fall far short of his deserts? Plainly, nothing, yet a few points may be accentuated with profit. We should notice in the first place that Balzac has consciously tried almost every form of prose fiction, and has been nearly always splendidly successful. In analytic studies of high, middle, and low life he has not his superior. In the novel of intrigue and sensation he is easily a master, while he succeeds at least fairly in a form of fiction at just the opposite pole from this, to wit, the idyl ('Le Lys dans la vallée'). In character sketches of extreme types, like 'Gobseck,' his supremacy has long been recognized, and he is almost as powerful when he enters the world of mysticism, whither so few of us can follow him. As a writer of novelettes he is unrivaled and some of his short stories are worthy to rank with the best that his followers have produced. In the extensive use of dialect he was a pioneer; in romance he has 'La Peau de chagrin' and 'La Recherche de l'absolu' to his credit; while some of the work in the tales connected with the name of Catherine de Medici shows what he could have done in historical fiction had he continued to follow Scott. And what is true of the form of his fiction is true of its elements. Tragedy, comedy, melodrama are all within his reach; he can call up tears and shudders, laughter and smiles at will. He knows the whole range of human emotions, and he dares to penetrate into the arcana of passions almost too terrible or loathsome for literature to touch.

In style, in the larger sense of the word, he is almost equally supreme. He is the father of modern realism and remains its greatest exponent. He retains always some of the good elements of romance,--that is to say, he sees the thing as it ought to be,--and he avoids the pitfalls of naturalism, being a painter and not a photographer. In other words, like all truly great writers he never forgets his ideals; but he is too impartial to his characters and has too fast a grip on life to fall into the unrealities of sentimentalism. It is true that he lacked the spontaneity that characterized his great forerunner, Shakespeare, and his great contemporary, George Sand; but this loss was made up by the inevitable and impersonal character of his work when once his genius was thoroughly aroused to action. His laborious method of describing by an accumulation of details postponed the play of his powers, which are at their height in the action of his characters; yet sooner or later the inert masses of his composition were fused into a burning whole. But if Balzac is primarily a dramatist in the creation and manipulation of his characters, he is also a supreme painter in his presentation of scenes. And what characters and what scenes has he not set before us! Over two thousand personages move through the 'Comédie humaine,' whose biographies MM. Cerfberr and Christophe have collected for us in their admirable 'Répertoire de la comédie humaine,' and whose chief types M. Paul Flat has described in the first series of his 'Essais sur Balzac.' Some of these personages are of course shadowy; but an amazingly large number live for us as truly as Shakespeare's heroes and heroines do. Nor will any one who has trod the streets of Balzac's Paris, or spent the summer with him at the chateau des Aigues ('Les Paysans'), or in the beautiful valleys of Touraine, ever forget the master's pictures.

Yet the Balzac who with intangible materials created living and breathing men and women and unfading scenes, has been accused of vitiating the French language and has been denied the possession of verbal style. On this point French critics must give the final verdict; but a foreigner may cite Taine's defense of that style, and maintain that most of the liberties taken by Balzac with his native language were forced on him by the novel and far-reaching character of his work. Nor should it be forgotten that he was capable at times of almost perfect passages of description, and that he rarely confounded, as novelists are too apt to do, the provinces of poetry and prose.

But one might write a hundred essays on Balzac and not exhaust him. One might write a volume on his women, a volume to refute the charge that his bad men are better drawn than his good, a volume to discuss Mr. Henry James's epigrammatic declaration that a five-franc piece may be fairly called the protagonist of the 'Comédie humaine.' In short one might go on defending and praising and even criticizing Balzac for a lifetime, and be little further advanced than when one began; for to criticize Balzac, is it not to criticize life itself?

THE MEETING IN THE CONVENT

From 'The Duchess of Langeais'

I

In a Spanish town on an island of the Mediterranean there is a convent of the Barefooted Carmelites, where the rule of the Order instituted by Saint Theresa is still kept with the primitive rigor of the reformation brought about by that illustrious woman. Extraordinary as this fact may seem, it is true. Though the monasteries of the Peninsula and those of the Continent were nearly all destroyed or broken up by the outburst of the French Revolution and the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, yet on this island, protected by the British fleets, the wealthy convent and its peaceful inmates were sheltered from the dangers of change and general spoliation. The storms from all quarters which shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century subsided ere they reached this lonely rock near the coast of Andalusia. If the name of the great Emperor echoed fitfully upon its shores, it may be doubted whether the fantastic march of his glory or the flaming majesty of his meteoric life ever reached the comprehension of those saintly women kneeling in their distant cloister.

A conventual rigor, which was never relaxed, gave to this haven a special place in the thoughts and history of the Catholic world. The purity of its rule drew to its shelter from different parts of Europe sad women, whose souls, deprived of human ties, longed for the death in life which they found here in the bosom of God. No other convent was so fitted to wean the heart and teach it that aloofness from the things of this world which the religious life imperatively demands. On the Continent may be found a number of such Houses, nobly planned to meet the wants of their sacred purpose. Some are buried in the depths of solitary valleys; others hang, as it were, in mid-air above the hills, clinging to the mountain slopes or projecting from the verge of precipices. On all sides man has sought out the poesy of the infinite, the solemnity of silence: he has sought God; and on the mountain-tops, in the abysmal depths, among the caverned cliffs he has found Him. Yet nowhere as on this European islet, half African though it be, can he find such differing harmonies all blending to lift the soul and quell its springs of anguish; to cool its fevers, and give to the sorrows of life a bed of rest.

The monastery is built at the extremity of the island at its highest part, where the rock by some convulsion of Nature has been rent sharply down to the sea, and presents at all points keen angles and edges, slightly eaten away at the water-line by the action of the waves, but insurmountable to all approach. The rock is also protected from assault by dangerous reefs running far out from its base, over which frolic the blue waters of the Mediterranean. It is only from the sea that the visitor can perceive the four principal parts of the square structure, which adheres minutely as to shape, height, and the piercing of its windows to the prescribed laws of monastic architecture. On the side towards the town the church hides the massive lines of the cloister, whose roof is covered with large tiles to protect it from winds and storms, and also from the fierce heat of the sun. The church, the gift of a Spanish family, looks down upon the town and crowns it. Its bold yet elegant façade gives a noble aspect to the little maritime city. Is it not a picture of terrestrial sublimity? See the tiny town with clustering roofs, rising like an amphitheatre from the picturesque port upward to the noble Gothic frontal of the church, from which spring the slender shafts of the bell-towers with their pointed finials: religion dominating life: offering to man the end and the way of living,--image of a thought altogether Spanish. Place this scene upon the bosom of the Mediterranean beneath an ardent sky; plant it with palms whose waving fronds mingle their green life with the sculptured leafage of the immutable architecture; look at the white fringes of the sea as it runs up the reef and they sparkle upon the sapphire of its wave; see the galleries and the terraces built upon the roofs of houses, where the inhabitants come at eve to breathe the flower-scented air as it rises through the tree-tops from their little gardens. Below, in the harbor, are the white sails. The serenity of night is coming on; listen to the notes of the organ, the chant of evening orisons, the echoing bells of the ships at sea: on all sides sound and peace,--oftenest peace.

Within the church are three naves, dark and mysterious. The fury of the winds evidently forbade the architect to build out lateral buttresses, such as adorn all other cathedrals, and between which little chapels are usually constructed. Thus the strong walls which flank the lesser naves shed no light into the building. Outside, their gray masses are shored up from point to point by enormous beams. The great nave and its two small lateral galleries are lighted solely by the rose-window of stained glass, which pierces with miraculous art the wall above the great portal, whose fortunate exposure permits a wealth of tracery and dentellated stone-work belonging to that order of architecture miscalled Gothic.

The greater part of the three naves is given up to the inhabitants of the town who come to hear Mass and the Offices of the Church. In front of the choir is a latticed screen, within which brown curtains hang in ample folds, slightly parted in the middle to give a limited view of the altar and the officiating priest. The screen is divided at intervals by pillars that hold up a gallery within the choir which contains the organ. This construction, in harmony with the rest of the building, continues, in sculptured wood, the little columns of the lateral galleries which are supported by the pillars of the great nave. Thus it is impossible for the boldest curiosity, if any such should dare to mount the narrow balustrade of these galleries, to see farther into the choir than the octagonal stained windows which pierce the apse behind the high altar.

At the time of the French expedition into Spain for the purpose of re-establishing the authority of Ferdinand VII., and after the fall of Cadiz, a French general who was sent to the island to obtain its recognition of the royal government prolonged his stay upon it that he might reconnoitre the convent and gain, if possible, admittance there. The enterprise was a delicate one. But a man of passion,--a man whose life had been, so to speak, a series of poems in action, who had lived romances instead of writing them; above all a man of deeds,--might well be tempted by a project apparently so impossible. To open for himself legally the gates of a convent of women! The Pope and the Metropolitan Archbishop would scarcely sanction it. Should he use force or artifice? In case of failure was he not certain to lose his station and his military future, besides missing his aim? The Duc d'Angoulême was still in Spain; and of all the indiscretions which an officer in favor with the commander-in-chief could commit, this alone would be punished without pity. The general had solicited his present mission for the purpose of following up a secret hope, albeit no hope was ever so despairing. This last effort, however, was a matter of conscience. The house of these Barefooted Carmelites was the only Spanish convent which had escaped his search. While crossing from the mainland, a voyage which took less than an hour, a strong presentiment of success had seized his heart. Since then, although he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, nothing of the nuns, not so much as their brown habit; though he had heard only the echoes of their chanted liturgies,--he had gathered from those walls and from these chants faint indications that seemed to justify his fragile hope. Slight as the auguries thus capriciously awakened might be, no human passion was ever more violently roused than the curiosity of this French general. To the heart there are no insignificant events; it magnifies all things; it puts in the same balance the fall of an empire and the fall of a woman's glove,--and oftentimes the glove outweighs the empire. But let us give the facts in their actual simplicity: after the facts will come the feelings.

An hour after the expedition had landed on the island the royal authority was re-established. A few Spaniards who had taken refuge there after the fall of Cadiz embarked on a vessel which the general allowed them to charter for their voyage to London. There was thus neither resistance nor reaction. This little insular restoration could not, however, be accomplished without a Mass, at which both companies of the troops were ordered to be present. Not knowing the rigor of the Carmelite rule, the general hoped to gain in the church some information about the nuns who were immured in the convent, one of whom might be a being dearer to him than life, more precious even than honor. His hopes were at first cruelly disappointed. Mass was celebrated with the utmost pomp. In honor of this solemn occasion the curtains which habitually hid the choir were drawn aside, and gave to view the rich ornaments, the priceless pictures, and the shrines incrusted with jewels whose brilliancy surpassed that of the votive offerings fastened by the mariners of the port to the pillars of the great nave. The nuns, however, had retired to the seclusion of the organ gallery.

Yet in spite of this check, and while the Mass of thanksgiving was being sung, suddenly and secretly the drama widened into an interest as profound as any that ever moved the heart of man. The Sister who played the organ roused an enthusiasm so vivid that not one soldier present regretted the order which had brought him to the church. The men listened to the music with pleasure; the officers were carried away by it. As for the general, he remained to all appearance calm and cold: the feelings with which he heard the notes given forth by the nun are among the small number of earthly things whose expression is withheld from impotent human speech, but which--like death, like God, like eternity--can be perceived only at their slender point of contact with the heart of man. By a strange chance the music of the organ seemed to be that of Rossini,--a composer who more than any other has carried human passion into the art of music, and whose works by their number and extent will some day inspire an Homeric respect. From among the scores of this fine genius the nun seemed to have chiefly studied that of Moses in Egypt; doubtless because the feelings of sacred music are there carried to the highest pitch. Perhaps these two souls--one so gloriously European, the other unknown--had met together in some intuitive perception of the same poetic thought. This idea occurred to two officers now present, true _dilettanti_, who no doubt keenly regretted the Théatre Favart in their Spanish exile. At last, at the Te Deum, it was impossible not to recognize a French soul in the character which the music suddenly took on. The triumph of his Most Christian Majesty evidently roused to joy the heart of that cloistered nun. Surely she was a Frenchwoman. Presently the patriotic spirit burst forth, sparkling like a jet of light through the antiphonals of the organ, as the Sister recalled melodies breathing the delicacy of Parisian taste, and blended them with vague memories of our national anthems. Spanish hands could not have put into this graceful homage paid to victorious arms the fire that thus betrayed the origin of the musician.

"France is everywhere!" said a soldier.

The general left the church during the Te Deum; it was impossible for him to listen to it. The notes of the musician revealed to him a woman loved to madness; who had buried herself so deeply in the heart of religion, hid herself so carefully away from the sight of the world, that up to this time she had escaped the keen search of men armed not only with immense power, but with great sagacity and intelligence. The hopes which had wakened in the general's heart seemed justified as he listened to the vague echo of a tender and melancholy air, 'La Fleuve du Tage,'--a ballad whose prelude he had often heard in Paris in the boudoir of the woman he loved, and which this nun now used to express, amid the joys of the conquerors, the suffering of an exiled heart. Terrible moment! to long for the resurrection of a lost love; to find that love--still lost; to meet it mysteriously after five years in which passion, exasperated by the void, had been intensified by the useless efforts made to satisfy it.

Who is there that has not, once at least in his life, upturned everything about him, his papers and his receptacles, taxing his memory impatiently as he seeks some precious lost object; and then felt the ineffable pleasure of finding it after days consumed in the search, after hoping and despairing of its recovery,--spending upon some trifle an excitement of mind almost amounting to a passion? Well, stretch this fury of search through five long years; put a woman, a heart, a love in the place of the insignificant trifle; lift the passion into the highest realms of feeling; and then picture to yourself an ardent man, a man with the heart of lion and the front of Jove, one of those men who command, and communicate to those about them, respectful terror,--you will then understand the abrupt departure of the general during the Te Deum, at the moment when the prelude of an air, once heard in Paris with delight under gilded ceilings, vibrated through the dark naves of the church by the sea.

He went down the hilly street which led up to the convent, without pausing until the sonorous echoes of the organ could no longer reach his ear. Unable to think of anything but of the love that like a volcanic eruption rent his heart, the French general only perceived that the Te Deum was ended when the Spanish contingent poured from the church. He felt that his conduct and appearance were open to ridicule, and he hastily resumed his place at the head of the cavalcade, explaining to the alcalde and to the governor of the town that a sudden indisposition had obliged him to come out into the air. Then it suddenly occurred to him to use the pretext thus hastily given, as a means of prolonging his stay on the island. Excusing himself on the score of increased illness, he declined to preside at the banquet given by the authorities of the island to the French officers, and took to his bed, after writing to the major-general that a passing illness compelled him to turn over his command to the colonel. This commonplace artifice, natural as it was, left him free from all duties and able to seek the fulfilment of his hopes. Like a man essentially Catholic and monarchical, he inquired the hours of the various services, and showed the utmost interest in the duties of religion,--a piety which in Spain excited no surprise.

II

The following day, while the soldiers were embarking, the general went up to the convent to be present at vespers. He found the church deserted by the townspeople, who in spite of their natural devotion were attracted to the port by the embarkation of the troops. The Frenchman, glad to find himself alone in the church, took pains to make the clink of his spurs resound through the vaulted roof; he walked noisily, and coughed, and spoke aloud to himself, hoping to inform the nuns, but especially the Sister at the organ, that if the French soldiers were departing, one at least remained behind. Was this singular method of communication heard and understood? The general believed it was. In the Magnificat the organ seemed to give an answer which came to him in the vibrations of the air. The soul of the nun floated towards him on the wings of the notes she touched, quivering with the movements of the sound. The music burst forth with power; it glorified the church. This hymn of joy, consecrated by the sublime liturgy of Roman Christianity to the uplifting of the soul in presence of the splendors of the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart terrified at its own happiness in presence of the splendors of a perishable love, which still lived, and came to move it once more beyond the tomb where this woman had buried herself, to rise again the bride of Christ.

The organ is beyond all question the finest, the most daring, the most magnificent of the instruments created by human genius. It is an orchestra in itself, from which a practiced hand may demand all things; for it expresses all things. Is it not, as it were, a coign of vantage, where the soul may poise itself ere it springs into space, bearing, as it flies, the listening mind through a thousand scenes of life towards the infinite which parts earth from heaven? The longer a poet listens to its gigantic harmonies, the more fully will he comprehend that between kneeling humanity and the God hidden by the dazzling rays of the Holy of Holies, the hundred voices of terrestrial choirs can alone bridge the vast distance and interpret to Heaven the prayers of men in all the omnipotence of their desires, in the diversities of their woe, with the tints of their meditations and their ecstasies, with the impetuous spring of their repentance, and the thousand imaginations of their manifold beliefs. Yes! beneath these soaring vaults the harmonies born of the genius of sacred things find a yet unheard-of grandeur, which adorns and strengthens them. Here the dim light, the deep silence, the voices alternating with the solemn tones of the organ, seem like a veil through which the luminous attributes of God himself pierce and radiate. Yet all these sacred riches now seem flung like a grain of incense on the frail altar of an earthly love, in presence of the eternal throne of a jealous and avenging Deity. The joy of the nun had not the gravity which properly belongs to the solemnity of the Magnificat. She gave to the music rich and graceful modulations, whose rhythms breathed of human gayety; her measures ran into the brilliant cadences of a great singer striving to express her love, and the notes rose buoyantly like the carol of a bird by the side of its mate. At moments she darted back into the past, as if to sport there or to weep there for an instant. Her changing moods had something discomposed about them, like the agitations of a happy woman rejoicing at the return of her lover. Then, as these supple strains of passionate emotion ceased, the soul that spoke returned upon itself; the musician passed from the major to the minor key, and told her hearer the story of her present. She revealed to him her long melancholy, the slow malady of her moral being,--every day a feeling crushed, every night a thought subdued, hour by hour a heart burning down to ashes. After soft modulations the music took on slowly, tint by tint, the hue of deepest sadness. Soon it poured forth in echoing torrents the well-springs of grief, till suddenly the higher notes struck clear like the voice of angels, as if to tell to her lost love--lost, but not forgotten--that the reunion of their souls must be in heaven, and only there: hope most precious! Then came the Amen. In that no joy, no tears, nor sadness, nor regrets, but a return to God. The last chord that sounded was grave, solemn, terrible. The musician revealed the nun in the garb of her vocation; and as the thunder of the basses rolled away, causing the hearer to shudder through his whole being, she seemed to sink into the tomb from which for a brief moment she had risen. As the echoes slowly ceased to vibrate along the vaulted roofs, the church, made luminous by the music, fell suddenly into profound obscurity.

The general, carried away by the course of this powerful genius, had followed her, step by step, along her way. He comprehended in their full meaning the pictures that gleamed through that burning symphony; for him those chords told all. For him, as for the Sister, this poem of sound was the future, the past, the present. Music, even the music of an opera, is it not to tender and poetic souls, to wounded and suffering hearts, a text which they interpret as their memories need? If the heart of a poet must be given to a musician, must not poetry and love be listeners ere the great musical works of art are understood? Religion, love, and music: are they not the triple expression of one fact, the need of expansion, the need of touching with their own infinite the infinite beyond them, which is in the fibre of all noble souls? These three forms of poesy end in God, who alone can unwind the knot of earthly emotion. Thus this holy human trinity joins itself to the holiness of God, of whom we make to ourselves no conception unless we surround him by the fires of love and the golden cymbals of music and light and harmony.

The French general divined that on this desert rock, surrounded by the surging seas, the nun had cherished music to free her soul of the excess of passion that consumed it. Did she offer her love as a homage to God? Did the love triumph over the vows she had made to Him? Questions difficult to answer. But, beyond all doubt, the lover had found in a heart dead to the world a love as passionate as that which burned within his own.

When vespers ended he returned to the house of the alcalde, where he was quartered. Giving himself over, a willing prey, to the delights of a success long expected, laboriously sought, his mind at first could dwell on nothing else,--he was still loved. Solitude had nourished the love of that heart, just as his own had thriven on the barriers, successively surmounted, which this woman had placed between herself and him. This ecstasy of the spirit had its natural duration; then came the desire to see this woman, to withdraw her from God, to win her back to himself,--a bold project, welcome to a bold man. After the evening repast, he retired to his room to escape questions and think in peace, and remained plunged in deep meditation throughout the night. He rose early and went to Mass. He placed himself close to the latticed screen, his brow touching the brown curtain. He longed to rend it away; but he was not alone, his host had accompanied him, and the least imprudence might compromise the future of his love and ruin his new-found hopes. The organ was played, but not by the same hand; the musician of the last two days was absent from its key-board. All was chill and pale to the general. Was his mistress worn out by the emotions which had wellnigh broken down his own vigorous heart? Had she so truly shared and comprehended his faithful and eager love that she now lay exhausted and dying in her cell? At the moment when such thoughts as these rose in the general's mind, he heard beside him the voice beloved; he knew the clear ring of its tones. The voice, slightly changed by a tremor which gave it the timid grace and modesty of a young girl, detached itself from the volume of song, like the voice of a prima donna in the harmonies of her final notes. It gave to the ear an impression like the effect to the eye of a fillet of silver or gold threading a dark frieze. It was indeed she! Still Parisian, she had not lost her gracious charm, though she had forsaken the coronet and adornments of the world for the frontlet and serge of a Carmelite. Having revealed her love the night before in the praises addressed to the Lord of all, she seemed now to say to her lover:--"Yes, it is I: I am here. I love forever; yet I am aloof from love. Thou shalt hear me; my soul shall enfold thee; but I must stay beneath the brown shroud of this choir, from which no power can tear me. Thou canst not see me."

"It is she!" whispered the general to himself, as he raised his head and withdrew his hands from his face; for he had not been able to bear erect the storm of feeling that shook his heart as the voice vibrated through the arches and blended with the murmur of the waves. A storm raged without, yet peace was within the sanctuary. The rich voice still caressed the ear, and fell like balm upon the parched heart of the lover; it flowered in the air about him, from which he breathed the emanations of her spirit exhaling her love through the aspirations of its prayer.

The alcalde came to rejoin his guest, and found him bathed in tears at the elevation of the Host which was chanted by the nun. Surprised to find such devotion in a French officer, he invited the confessor of the convent to join them at supper, and informed the general, to whom no news had ever given such pleasure, of what he had done. During the supper the general made the confessor the object of much attention, and thus confirmed the Spaniards in the high opinion they had formed of his piety. He inquired with grave interest the number of the nuns, and asked details about the revenues of the convent and its wealth, with the air of a man who politely wished to choose topics which occupied the mind of the good old priest. Then he inquired about the life led by the sisters. Could they go out? Could they see friends?

"Senhor," said the venorable priest, "the rule is severe. If the permission of our Holy Father must be obtained before a woman can enter a house of Saint Bruno [the Chartreux] the like rule exists here. It is impossible for any man to enter a convent of the Bare-footed Carmelites, unless he is a priest delegated by the archbishop for duty in the House. No nun can go out. It is true, however, that the Great Saint, Mother Theresa, did frequently leave her cell. A Mother-superior can alone, under authority of the archbishop, permit a nun to see her friends, especially in case of illness. As this convent is one of the chief Houses of the Order, it has a Mother-superior residing in it. We have several foreigners,--among them a Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, the one who directs the music in the chapel."

"Ah!" said the general, feigning surprise: "she must have been gratified by the triumph of the House of Bourbon?"

"I told them the object of the Mass; they are always rather curious."

"Perhaps Sister Theresa has some interests in France; she might be glad to receive some news, or ask some questions?"

"I think not; or she would have spoken to me."

"As a compatriot," said the general, "I should be curious to see--that is, if it were possible, if the superior would consent, if--"

"At the grating, even in the presence of the reverend Mother, an interview would be absolutely impossible for any ordinary man, no matter who he was; but in favor of a liberator of a Catholic throne and our holy religion, possibly, in spite of the rigid rule of our Mother Theresa, the rule might be relaxed," said the confessor. "I will speak about it."

"How old is Sister Theresa?" asked the lover, who dared not question the priest about the beauty of the nun.

"She is no longer of any age," said the good old man, with a simplicity which made the general shudder.

III

The next day, before the _siesta_, the confessor came to tell the general that Sister Theresa and the Mother-superior consented to receive him at the grating that evening before the hour of vespers. After the _siesta_, during which the Frenchman had whiled away the time by walking round the port in the fierce heat of the sun, the priest came to show him the way into the convent.

He was guided through a gallery which ran the length of the cemetery, where fountains and trees and numerous arcades gave a cool freshness in keeping with that still and silent spot. When they reached the end of this long gallery, the priest led his companion into a parlor, divided in the middle by a grating covered with a brown curtain. On the side which we must call public, and where the confessor left the general, there was a wooden bench along one side of the wall; some chairs, also of wood, were near the grating. The ceiling was of wood, crossed by heavy beams of the evergreen oak, without ornament. Daylight came from two windows in the division set apart for the nuns, and was absorbed by the brown tones of the room; so that it barely showed the picture of the great black Christ, and those of Saint Theresa and the Blessed Virgin, which hung on the dark panels of the walls.

The feelings of the general turned, in spite of their violence, to a tone of melancholy. He grew calm in these calm precincts. Something mighty as the grave seized him beneath these chilling rafters. Was it not the eternal silence, the deep peace, the near presence of the infinite? Through the stillness came the fixed thought of the cloister,--that thought which glides through the air in the half-lights, and is in all things,--the thought unchangeable; nowhere seen, which yet grows vast to the imagination; the all-comprising phrase, _the peace of God_. It enters there, with living power, into the least religious heart. Convents of men are not easily conceivable; man seems feeble and unmanly in them. He is born to act, to fulfil a life of toil; and he escapes it in his cell. But in a monastery of women what strength to endure, and yet what touching weakness! A man may be pushed by a thousand sentiments into the depths of an abbey; he flings himself into them as from a precipice. But the woman is drawn only by one feeling; she does not unsex herself,--she espouses holiness. You may say to the man, Why did you not struggle? but to the cloistered woman life is a struggle still.

The general found in this mute parlor of the seagirt convent memories of himself. Love seldom reaches upward to solemnity; but love in the bosom of God,--is there nothing solemn there? Yes, more than a man has the right to hope for in this nineteenth century, with our manners and our customs what they are.

The general's soul was one on which such impressions act. His nature was noble enough to forget self-interest, honors, Spain, the world, or Paris, and rise to the heights of feeling roused by this unspeakable termination of his long pursuit. What could be more tragic? How many emotions held these lovers, reunited at last on this granite ledge far out at sea, yet separated by an idea, an impassable barrier. Look at this man, saying to himself, "Can I triumph over God in that heart?"

A slight noise made him quiver. The brown curtain was drawn back; he saw in the half-light a woman standing, but her face was hidden from him by the projection of a veil, which lay in many folds upon her head. According to the rule of the Order she was clothed in the brown garb whose color has become proverbial. The general could not see the naked feet, which would have told him the frightful emaciation of her body; yet through the thick folds of the coarse robe that swathed her, his heart divined that tears and prayers and passion and solitude had wasted her away.

The chill hand of a woman, doubtless the Mother-superior, held back the curtain, and the general, examining this unwelcome witness of the interview, encountered the deep grave eyes of an old nun, very aged, whose clear, even youthful, glance belied the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face.

"Madame la duchesse," he said, in a voice shaken by emotion, to the Sister, who bowed her head, "does your companion understand French?"

"There is no duchess here," replied the nun. "You are in presence of Sister Theresa. The woman whom you call my companion is my Mother in God, my superior here below."

These words, humbly uttered by a voice that once harmonized with the luxury and elegance in which this woman had lived queen of the world of Paris, that fell from lips whose language had been of old so gay, so mocking, struck the general as if with an electric shock.

"My holy Mother speaks only Latin and Spanish," she added.

"I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make her my excuses."

As she heard her name softly uttered by a man once so hard to her, the nun was shaken by emotion, betrayed only by the light quivering of her veil, on which the light now fully fell.

"My brother," she said, passing her sleeve beneath her veil, perhaps to wipe her eyes, "my name is Sister Theresa."

Then she turned to the Mother, and said to her in Spanish a few words which the general plainly heard. He knew enough of the language to understand it, perhaps to speak it. "My dear Mother, this gentleman presents to you his respects, and begs you to excuse him for not laying them himself at your feet; but he knows neither of the languages which you speak."

The old woman slowly bowed her head; her countenance took an expression of angelic sweetness, tempered, nevertheless, by the consciousness of her power and dignity.

"You know this gentleman?" she asked, with a piercing glance at the Sister.

"Yes, my Mother."

"Retire to your cell, my daughter," said the Superior in a tone of authority.

The general hastily withdrew to the shelter of the curtain, lest his face should betray the anguish these words cost him; but he fancied that the penetrating eyes of the Superior followed him even into the shadow. This woman, arbiter of the frail and fleeting joy he had won at such cost, made him afraid; he trembled, he whom a triple range of cannon could not shake.

The duchess walked to the door, but there she turned. "My Mother," she said, in a voice horribly calm, "this Frenchman is one of my brothers."

"Remain, therefore, my daughter," said the old woman, after a pause.

The jesuitism of this answer revealed such love and such regret, that a man of less firmness than the general would have betrayed his joy in the midst of a peril so novel to him. But what value could there be in the words, looks, gestures of a love that must be hidden from the eyes of a lynx, the claws of a tiger? The Sister came back.

"You see, my brother," she said, "what I have dared to do that I might for one moment speak to you of your salvation, and tell you of the prayers which day by day my soul offers to heaven on your behalf. I have committed a mortal sin,--I have lied. How many days of penitence to wash out that lie! But I shall suffer for you. You know not, my brother, the joy of loving in heaven, of daring to avow affections that religion has purified, that have risen to the highest regions, that at last we know and feel with the soul alone. If the doctrines--if the spirit of the saint to whom we owe this refuge had not lifted me above the anguish of earth to a world, not indeed where she is, but far above my lower life, I could not have seen you now. But I can see you, I can hear you, and remain calm."

"Antoinette," said the general, interrupting these words, "suffer me to see you--you, whom I love passionately, to madness, as you once would have had me love you."

"Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you: memories of the past do me harm. See in me only the Sister Theresa, a creature trusting all to the divine pity. And," she added, after a pause, "subdue yourself, my brother. Our Mother would separate us instantly if your face betrayed earthly passions, or your eyes shed tears."

The general bowed his head, as if to collect himself; when he again lifted his eyes to the grating he saw between two bars the pale, emaciated, but still ardent face of the nun. Her complexion, where once had bloomed the loveliness of youth,--where once there shone the happy contrast of a pure, clear whiteness with the colors of a Bengal rose,--now had the tints of a porcelain cup through which a feeble light showed faintly. The beautiful hair of which this woman was once so proud was shaven; a white band bound her brows and was wrapped around her face. Her eyes, circled with dark shadows due to the austerities of her life, glanced at moments with a feverish light, of which their habitual calm was but the mask. In a word, of this woman nothing remained but her soul.

"Ah! you will leave this tomb--you, who are my life! You belonged to me; you were not free to give yourself--not even to God. Did you not promise to sacrifice all to the least of my commands? Will you now think me worthy to claim that promise, if I tell you what I have done for your sake? I have sought you through the whole world. For five years you have been the thought of every instant, the occupation of every hour, of my life. My friends--friends all-powerful as you know--have helped me to search the convents of France, Spain, Italy, Sicily, America. My love has deepened with every fruitless search. Many a long journey I have taken on a false hope. I have spent my life and the strong beatings of my heart about the walls of cloisters. I will not speak to you of a fidelity unlimited. What is it?--nothing compared to the infinitude of my love! If in other days your remorse was real, you cannot hesitate to follow me now."

"You forget that I am not free."

"The duke is dead," he said hastily.

Sister Theresa colored. "May Heaven receive him!" she said, with quick emotion: "he was generous to me. But I did not speak of those ties: one of my faults was my willingness to break them without scruple for you."

"You speak of your vows," cried the general, frowning. "I little thought that anything would weigh in your heart against our love. But do not fear, Antoinette; I will obtain a brief from the Holy Father which will absolve your vows. I will go to Rome; I will petition every earthly power; if God himself came down from heaven I--"

"Do not blaspheme!"

"Do not fear how God would see it! Ah! I wish I were as sure that you will leave these walls with me; that to-night--to-night, you would embark at the feet of these rocks. Let us go to find happiness! I know not where--at the ends of the earth! With me you will come back to life, to health--in the shelter of my love!"

"Do not say these things," replied the Sister; "you do not know what you now are to me. I love you better than I once loved you. I pray to God for you daily. I see you no longer with the eyes of my body. If you but knew, Armand, the joy of being able, without shame, to spend myself upon a pure love which God protects! You do not know the joy I have in calling down the blessings of heaven upon your head. I never pray for myself: God will do with me according to his will. But you--at the price of my eternity I would win the assurance that you are happy in this world, that you will be happy in another throughout the ages. My life eternal is all that misfortunes have left me to give you. I have grown old in grief; I am no longer young or beautiful. Ah! you would despise a nun who returned to be a woman; no sentiment, not even maternal love, could absolve her. What could you say to me that would shake the unnumbered reflections my heart has made in five long years,--and which have changed it, hollowed it, withered it? Ah! I should have given something less sad to God!"

"What can I say to you, dear Antoinette? I will say that I love you; that affection, love, true love, the joy of living in a heart all ours,--wholly ours, without one reservation,--is so rare, so difficult to find, that I once doubted you; I put you to cruel tests. But to-day I love and trust you with all the powers of my soul. If you will follow me I will listen throughout life to no voice but thine. I will look on no face--"

"Silence, Armand! you shorten the sole moments which are given to us to see each other here below."

"Antoinette! will you follow me?"

"I never leave you. I live in your heart--but with another power than that of earthly pleasure, or vanity, or selfish joy. I live here for you, pale and faded, in the bosom of God. If God is just, you will be happy."

"Phrases! you give me phrases! But if I will to have you pale and faded,--if I cannot be happy unless you are with me? What! will you forever place duties before my love? Shall I never be above all things else in your heart? In the past you put the world, or self--I know not what--above me; to-day it is God, it is my salvation. In this Sister Theresa I recognize the duchess; ignorant of the joys of love, unfeeling beneath a pretense of tenderness! You do not love me! you never loved me!--"

"Oh, my brother!--"

"You will not leave this tomb. You love my soul, you say: well! you shall destroy it forever and ever. I will kill myself--"

"My Mother!" cried the nun, "I have lied to you; this man is my lover."

The curtain fell. The general, stunned, heard the doors close with violence.

"She loves me still!" he cried, comprehending all that was revealed in the cry of the nun. "I will find means to carry her away!"

He left the island immediately, and returned to France.

Translation copyrighted by Roberts Brothers.

'AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR'

On the 22d of January, 1793, towards eight o'clock in the evening, an old gentlewoman came down the sharp declivity of the Faubourg Saint-Martin, which ends near the church of Saint-Laurent in Paris. Snow had fallen throughout the day, so that footfalls could be scarcely heard. The streets were deserted. The natural fear inspired by such stillness was deepened by the terror to which all France was then a prey.

The old lady had met no one. Her failing sight hindered her from perceiving in the distance a few pedestrians, sparsely scattered like shadows, along the broad road of the faubourg. She was walking bravely through the solitude as if her age were a talisman to guard her from danger; but after passing the Rue des Morts she fancied that she heard the firm, heavy tread of a man coming behind her. The thought seized her mind that she had been listening to it unconsciously for some time. Terrified at the idea of being followed, she tried to walk faster to reach a lighted shop-window, and settle the doubt which thus assailed her. When well beyond the horizontal rays of light thrown across the pavement, she turned abruptly and saw a human form looming through the fog. The indistinct glimpse was enough. She staggered for an instant under the weight of terror, for she no longer doubted that this unknown man had tracked her, step by step, from her home. The hope of escaping such a spy lent strength to her feeble limbs. Incapable of reasoning, she quickened her steps to a run, as if it were possible to escape a man necessarily more agile than she. After running for a few minutes, she reached the shop of a pastry-cook, entered it, and fell, rather than sat, down on a chair which stood before the counter.

As she lifted the creaking latch of the door, a young woman, who was at work on a piece of embroidery, looked up and recognized through the glass panes the antiquated mantle of purple silk which wrapped the old lady, and hastened to pull open a drawer, as if to take from thence something that she had to give her. The action and the expression of the young woman not only implied a wish to get rid of the stranger, as of some one most unwelcome, but she let fall an exclamation of impatience at finding the drawer empty. Then, without looking at the lady, she came rapidly from behind the counter, and went towards the back-shop to call her husband, who appeared at once.

"Where have you put ---- ----?" she asked him, mysteriously, calling his attention to the old lady by a glance, and not concluding her sentence.

Although the pastry-cook could see nothing but the enormous black-silk hood circled with purple ribbons which the stranger wore, he disappeared, with a glance at his wife which seemed to say, "Do you suppose I should leave _that_ on your counter?"

Surprised at the silence and immobility of her customer, the wife came forward, and was seized with a sudden movement of compassion as well as of curiosity when she looked at her. Though the complexion of the old gentlewoman was naturally livid, like that of a person vowed to secret austerities, it was easy to see that some recent alarm had spread an unusual paleness over her features. Her head-covering was so arranged as to hide the hair, whitened no doubt by age, for the cleanly collar of her dress proved that she wore no powder. The concealment of this natural adornment gave to her countenance a sort of conventual severity; but its features were grave and noble. In former days the habits and manners of people of quality were so different from those of all other classes that it was easy to distinguish persons of noble birth. The young shop-woman felt certain, therefore, that the stranger was a _ci-devant_, and one who had probably belonged to the court.

"Madame?" she said, with involuntary respect, forgetting that the title was proscribed.

The old lady made no answer. Her eyes were fixed on the glass of the shop-window, as if some alarming object were painted upon it.

"What is the matter, _citoyenne_?" asked the master of the establishment, re-entering, and drawing the attention of his customer to a little cardboard box covered with blue paper, which he held out to her.

"It is nothing, nothing, my friends," she answered in a gentle voice, as she raised her eyes to give the man a thankful look. Seeing a phrygian cap upon his head, a cry escaped her:--"Ah! it is you who have betrayed me!"

The young woman and her husband replied by a deprecating gesture of horror which caused the unknown lady to blush, either for her harsh suspicion or from the relief of feeling it unjust.

"Excuse me," she said, with childlike sweetness. Then taking a gold _louis_ from her pocket, she offered it to the pastry-cook. "Here is the sum we agreed upon," she added.

There is a poverty which poor people quickly divine. The shopkeeper and his wife looked at each other with a glance at the old lady that conveyed a mutual thought. The _louis_ was doubtless her last. The hands of the poor woman trembled as she offered it, and her eyes rested upon it sadly, yet not with avarice. She seemed to feel the full extent of her sacrifice. Hunger and want were traced upon her features in lines as legible as those of timidity and ascetic habits. Her clothing showed vestiges of luxury. It was of silk, well-worn; the mantle was clean, though faded; the laces carefully darned; in short, here were the rags of opulence. The two shopkeepers, divided between pity and self-interest, began to soothe their conscience with words:--

"_Citoyenne_, you seem very feeble--"

"Would Madame like to take something?" asked the wife, cutting short her husband's speech.

"We have some very good broth," he added.

"It is so cold, perhaps Madame is chilled by her walk; but you can rest here and warm yourself."

"The devil is not so black as he is painted," cried the husband.

Won by the kind tone of these words, the old lady admitted that she had been followed by a man and was afraid of going home alone.

"Is that all?" said the man with the phrygian cap. "Wait for me, _citoyenne_."

He gave the _louis_ to his wife. Then moved by a species of gratitude which slips into the shopkeeping soul when its owner receives an exorbitant price for an article of little value, he went to put on his uniform as a National guard, took his hat, slung on his sabre, and reappeared under arms. But the wife meantime had reflected. Reflection, as often happens in many hearts, had closed the open hand of her benevolence. Uneasy, and alarmed lest her husband should be mixed up in some dangerous affair, she pulled him by the flap of his coat, intending to stop him; but the worthy man, obeying the impulse of charity, promptly offered to escort the poor lady to her home.

"It seems that the man who has given her this fright is prowling outside," said his wife nervously.

"I am afraid he is," said the old lady, with much simplicity.

"Suppose he should be a spy. Perhaps it is a conspiracy. Don't go. Take back the box." These words, whispered in the pastry-cook's ear by the wife of his bosom, chilled the sudden compassion that had warmed him.

"Well, well, I will just say two words to the man and get rid of him," he said, opening the door and hurrying out.

The old gentlewoman, passive as a child and half paralyzed with fear, sat down again. The shopkeeper almost instantly reappeared; but his face, red by nature and still further scorched by the fires of his bakery, had suddenly turned pale, and he was in the grasp of such terror that his legs shook and his eyes were like those of a drunken man.

"Miserable aristocrat!" he cried, furiously, "do you want to cut off our heads? Go out from here; let me see your heels, and don't dare to come back; don't expect me to supply you with the means of conspiracy!"

So saying, the pastry-cook endeavored to get back the little box which the old lady had already slipped into one of her pockets. Hardly had the bold hands of the shopkeeper touched her clothing, than, preferring to encounter danger with no protection but that of God rather than lose the thing she had come to buy, she recovered the agility of youth, and sprang to the door, through which she disappeared abruptly, leaving the husband and wife amazed and trembling.

As soon as the poor lady found herself alone in the street she began to walk rapidly; but her strength soon gave way, for she once more heard the snow creaking under the footsteps of the spy as he trod heavily upon it. She was obliged to stop short: the man stopped also. She dared not speak to him, nor even look at him; either because of her terror, or from some lack of natural intelligence. Presently she continued her walk slowly; the man measured his step by hers, and kept at the same distance behind her; he seemed to move like her shadow. Nine o'clock struck as the silent couple repassed the church of Saint-Laurent. It is the nature of all souls, even the weakest, to fall back into quietude after moments of violent agitation; for manifold as our feelings may be, our bodily powers are limited. Thus the old lady, receiving no injury from her apparent persecutor, began to think that he might be a secret friend watching to protect her. She gathered up in her mind the circumstances attending other apparitions of the mysterious stranger as if to find plausible grounds for this consoling opinion, and took pleasure in crediting him with good rather than sinister intentions. Forgetting the terror he had inspired in the pastry-cook, she walked on with a firmer step towards the upper part of the Faubourg Saint-Martin.

At the end of half an hour she reached a house standing close to the junction of the chief street of the faubourg with the street leading out to the Barrière de Pantin. The place is to this day one of the loneliest in Paris. The north wind blowing from Belleville and the Buttes Chaumont whistled among the houses, or rather cottages, scattered through the sparsely inhabited little valley, where the inclosures are fenced with walls built of mud and refuse bones. This dismal region seems the natural home of poverty and despair. The man who was intent on following the poor creature who had had the courage to thread these dark and silent streets seemed struck with the spectacle they offered. He stopped as if reflecting, and stood in a hesitating attitude, dimly visible by a street lantern whose flickering light scarcely pierced the fog. Fear gave eyes to the old gentlewoman, who now fancied that she saw something sinister in the features of this unknown man. All her terrors revived, and profiting by the curious hesitation that had seized him, she glided like a shadow to the doorway of the solitary dwelling, touched a spring, and disappeared with phantasmagoric rapidity.

The man, standing motionless, gazed at the house, which was, as it were, a type of the wretched buildings of the neighborhood. The tottering hovel, built of porous stone in rough blocks, was coated with yellow plaster much cracked, and looked ready to fall before a gust of wind. The roof, of brown tiles covered with moss, had sunk in several places, and gave the impression that the weight of snow might break it down at any moment. Each story had three windows whose frames, rotted by dampness and shrunken by the heat of the sun, told that the outer cold penetrated to the chambers. The lonely house seemed like an ancient tower that time had forgotten to destroy. A faint light gleamed from the garret windows, which were irregularly cut in the roof; but the rest of the house was in complete obscurity. The old woman went up the rough and clumsy stairs with difficulty, holding fast to a rope which took the place of baluster. She knocked furtively at the door of a lodging under the roof, and sat hastily down on a chair which an old man offered her.

"Hide! hide yourself!" she cried. "Though we go out so seldom, our errands are known, our steps are watched--"

"What has happened?" asked another old woman sitting near the fire.

"The man who has hung about the house since yesterday followed me to-night."

At these words the occupants of the hovel looked at each other with terror in their faces. The old man was the least moved of the three, possibly because he was the one in greatest danger. Under the pressure of misfortune or the yoke of persecution a man of courage begins, as it were, by preparing for the sacrifice of himself: he looks upon his days as so many victories won from fate. The eyes of the two women, fixed upon the old man, showed plainly that he alone was the object of their extreme anxiety.

"Why distrust God, my sisters?" he said, in a hollow but impressive voice. "We chanted praises to his name amid the cries of victims and assassins at the convent. If it pleased him to save me from that butchery, it was doubtless for some destiny which I shall accept without a murmur. God protects his own, and disposes of them according to his will. It is of you, not of me, that we should think."

"No," said one of the women: "what is our life in comparison with that of a priest?"

"Ever since the day when I found myself outside of the Abbaye des Chelles," said the nun beside the fire, "I have given myself up for dead."

"Here," said the one who had just come in, holding out the little box to the priest, "here are the sacramental wafers--Listen!" she cried, interrupting herself. "I hear some one on the stairs."

At these words all three listened intently. The noise ceased.

"Do not be frightened," said the priest, "even if some one asks to enter. A person on whose fidelity we can safely rely has taken measures to cross the frontier, and he will soon call here for letters which I have written to the Duc de Langeais and the Marquis de Beauséant, advising them as to the measures they must take to get you out of this dreadful country, and save you from the misery or the death you would otherwise undergo here."

"Shall you not follow us?" said the two nuns softly, but in a tone of despair.

"My place is near the victims," said the priest, simply.

The nuns were silent, looking at him with devout admiration.

"Sister Martha," he said, addressing the nun who had fetched the wafers, "this messenger must answer '_Fiat voluntas_' to the word '_Hosanna_.'"

"There is some one on the stairway," exclaimed the other nun, hastily opening a hiding-place burrowed at the edge of the roof.

This time it was easy to hear the steps of a man sounding through the deep silence on the rough stairs, which were caked with patches of hardened mud. The priest slid with difficulty into a narrow hiding-place, and the nuns hastily threw articles of apparel over him.

"You can shut me in, Sister Agatha," he said, in a smothered voice.

He was scarcely hidden when three knocks upon the door made the sisters tremble and consult each other with their eyes, for they dared not speak. Forty years' separation from the world had made them like plants of a hot-house which wilt when brought into the outer air. Accustomed to the life of a convent, they could not conceive of any other; and when one morning their bars and gratings were flung down, they had shuddered at finding themselves free. It is easy to imagine the species of imbecility which the events of the Revolution, enacted before their eyes, had produced in these innocent souls. Quite incapable of harmonizing their conventual ideas with the exigencies of ordinary life, not even comprehending their own situation, they were like children who had always been cared for, and who now, torn from their maternal providence, had taken to prayers as other children take to tears. So it happened that in presence of immediate danger they were dumb and passive, and could think of no other defence than Christian resignation.

The man who sought to enter interpreted their silence as he pleased; he suddenly opened the door and showed himself. The two nuns trembled when they recognized the individual who for some days had watched the house and seemed to make inquiries about its inmates. They stood quite still and looked at him with uneasy curiosity, like the children of savages examining a being of another sphere. The stranger was very tall and stout, but nothing in his manner or appearance denoted that he was a bad man. He copied the immobility of the sisters and stood motionless, letting his eye rove slowly round the room.

Two bundles of straw placed on two planks served as beds for the nuns. A table was in the middle of the room; upon it a copper candlestick, a few plates, three knives, and a round loaf of bread. The fire on the hearth was very low, and a few sticks of wood piled in a corner of the room testified to the poverty of the occupants. The walls, once covered with a coat of paint now much defaced, showed the wretched condition of the roof through which the rain had trickled, making a network of brown stains. A sacred relic, saved no doubt from the pillage of the Abbaye des Chelles, adorned the mantel-shelf of the chimney. Three chairs, two coffers, and a broken chest of drawers completed the furniture of the room. A doorway cut near the fireplace showed there was probably an inner chamber.

The inventory of this poor cell was soon made by the individual who had presented himself under such alarming auspices. An expression of pity crossed his features, and as he threw a kind glance upon the frightened women he seemed as much embarrassed as they. The strange silence in which they all three stood and faced each other lasted but a moment; for the stranger seemed to guess the moral weakness and inexperience of the poor helpless creatures, and he said, in a voice which he strove to render gentle, "I have not come as an enemy, _citoyennes_."

Then he paused, but resumed:--"My sisters, if harm should ever happen to you, be sure that I shall not have contributed to it. I have come to ask a favor of you."

They still kept silence.

"If I ask too much--if I annoy you--I will go away; but believe me, I am heartily devoted to you, and if there is any service that I could render you, you may employ me without fear. I, and I alone, perhaps, am above law--since there is no longer a king."

The ring of truth in these words induced Sister Agatha, a nun belonging to the ducal house of Langeais, and whose manners indicated that she had once lived amid the festivities of life and breathed the air of courts, to point to a chair as if she asked their guest to be seated. The unknown gave vent to an expression of joy, mingled with melancholy, as he understood this gesture. He waited respectfully till the sisters were seated, and then obeyed it.

"You have given shelter," he said, "to a venerable priest not sworn in by the Republic, who escaped miraculously from the massacre at the Convent of the Carmelites."

"_Hosanna_," said Sister Agatha, suddenly interrupting the stranger, and looking at him with anxious curiosity.

"That is not his name, I think," he answered.

"But, Monsieur, we have no priest here," cried Sister Martha, hastily, "and--"

"Then you should take better precautions," said the unknown gently, stretching his arm to the table and picking up a breviary. "I do not think you understand Latin, and--"

He stopped short, for the extreme distress painted on the faces of the poor nuns made him fear he had gone too far; they trembled violently, and their eyes filled with tears.

"Do not fear," he said; "I know the name of your guest, and yours also. During the last three days I have learned your poverty, and your great devotion to the venerable Abbé of--"

"Hush!" exclaimed Sister Agatha, ingenuously putting a finger on her lip.

"You see, my sisters, that if I had the horrible design of betraying you, I might have accomplished it again and again."

As he uttered these words the priest emerged from his prison and appeared in the middle of the room.

"I cannot believe, Monsieur," he said courteously, "that you are one of our persecutors. I trust you. What is it you desire of me?"

The saintly confidence of the old man, and the nobility of mind imprinted on his countenance, might have disarmed even an assassin. He who thus mysteriously agitated this home of penury and resignation stood contemplating the group before him; then he addressed the priest in a trustful tone, with these words:--

"My father, I came to ask you to celebrate a mass for the repose of the soul--of--of a sacred being whose body can never lie in holy ground."

The priest involuntarily shuddered. The nuns, not as yet understanding who it was of whom the unknown man had spoken, stood with their necks stretched and their faces turned towards the speakers, in an attitude of eager curiosity. The ecclesiastic looked intently at the stranger; unequivocal anxiety was marked on every feature, and his eyes offered an earnest and even ardent prayer.

"Yes," said the priest at length. "Return here at midnight, and I shall be ready to celebrate the only funeral service that we are able to offer in expiation of the crime of which you speak."

The unknown shivered; a joy both sweet and solemn seemed to rise in his soul above some secret grief. Respectfully saluting the priest and the two saintly women, he disappeared with a mute gratitude which these generous souls knew well how to interpret.

Two hours later the stranger returned, knocked cautiously at the door of the garret, and was admitted by Mademoiselle de Langeais, who led him to the inner chamber of the humble refuge, where all was in readiness for the ceremony. Between two flues of the chimney the nuns had placed the old chest of drawers, whose broken edges were concealed by a magnificent altar-cloth of green moiré. A large ebony and ivory crucifix hanging on the discolored wall stood out in strong relief from the surrounding bareness, and necessarily caught the eye. Four slender little tapers, which the sisters had contrived to fasten to the altar with sealing-wax, threw a pale glimmer dimly reflected by the yellow wall. These feeble rays scarcely lit up the rest of the chamber, but as their light fell upon the sacred objects it seemed a halo falling from heaven upon the bare and undecorated altar.

The floor was damp. The attic roof, which sloped sharply on both sides of the room, was full of chinks through which the wind penetrated. Nothing could be less stately, yet nothing was ever more solemn than this lugubrious ceremony. Silence so deep that some far-distant cry could have pierced it, lent a sombre majesty to the nocturnal scene. The grandeur of the occasion contrasted vividly with the poverty of its circumstances, and roused a feeling of religious terror. On either side of the altar the old nuns, kneeling on the tiled floor and taking no thought of its mortal dampness, were praying in concert with the priest, who, robed in his pontifical vestments, placed upon the altar a golden chalice incrusted with precious stones,--a sacred vessel rescued, no doubt, from the pillage of the Abbaye des Chelles. Close to this vase, which was a gift of royal munificence, the bread and wine of the consecrated sacrifice were contained in two glass tumblers scarcely worthy of the meanest tavern. In default of a missal the priest had placed his breviary on a corner of the altar. A common earthenware platter was provided for the washing of those innocent hands, pure and unspotted with blood. All was majestic and yet paltry; poor but noble; profane and holy in one.

The unknown man knelt piously between the sisters. Suddenly, as he caught sight of the crape upon the chalice and the crucifix,--for in default of other means of proclaiming the object of this funeral rite the priest had put God himself into mourning,--the mysterious visitant was seized by some all-powerful recollection, and drops of sweat gathered on his brow. The four silent actors in this scene looked at each other with mysterious sympathy; their souls, acting one upon another, communicated to each the feelings of all, blending them into the one emotion of religious pity. It seemed as though their thought had evoked from the dead the sacred martyr whose body was devoured by quicklime, but whose shade rose up before them in royal majesty. They were celebrating a funeral Mass without the remains of the deceased. Beneath these rafters and disjointed laths four Christian souls were interceding with God for a king of France, and making his burial without a coffin. It was the purest of all devotions; an act of wonderful loyalty accomplished without one thought of self. Doubtless in the eyes of God it was the cup of cold water that weighed in the balance against many virtues. The whole of monarchy was there in the prayers of the priest and the two poor women; but also it may have been that the Revolution was present likewise, in the person of the strange being whose face betrayed the remorse that led him to make this solemn offering of a vast repentance.

Instead of pronouncing the Latin words, "Introibo ad altare Dei" etc., the priest, with divine intuition, glanced at his three assistants, who represented all Christian France, and said, in words which effaced the penury and meanness of the hovel, "We enter now into the sanctuary of God."

At these words, uttered with penetrating unction, a solemn awe seized the participants. Beneath the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, God had never seemed more majestic to man than he did now in this refuge of poverty and to the eyes of these Christians,--so true is it that between man and God all mediation is unneeded, for his glory descends from himself alone. The fervent piety of the nameless man was unfeigned, and the feeling that held these four servants of God and the king was unanimous. The sacred words echoed like celestial music amid the silence. There was a moment when the unknown broke down and wept: it was at the Pater Noster, to which the priest added a Latin clause which the stranger doubtless comprehended and applied,--"Et remitte scelus regicidis sicut Ludovicus eis remisit semetipse" (And forgive the regicides even as Louis XVI. himself forgave them). The two nuns saw the tears coursing down the manly cheeks of their visitant, and dropping fast on the tiled floor.

The Office of the Dead was recited. The "Domine salvum fac regem," sung in low tones, touched the hearts of these faithful royalists as they thought of the infant king, now captive in the hands of his enemies, for whom this prayer was offered. The unknown shuddered; perhaps he feared an impending crime in which he would be called to take an unwilling part.

When the service was over, the priest made a sign to the nuns, who withdrew to the outer room. As soon as he was alone with the unknown, the old man went up to him with gentle sadness of manner, and said in the tone of a father,--

"My son, if you have steeped your hands in the blood of the martyr king, confess yourself to me. There is no crime which, in the eyes of God, is not washed out by a repentance as deep and sincere as yours appears to be."

At the first words of the ecclesiastic an involuntary motion of terror escaped the stranger; but he quickly recovered himself, and looked at the astonished priest with calm assurance.

"My father," he said, in a voice that nevertheless trembled, "no one is more innocent than I of the blood shed--"

"I believe it!" said the priest.

He paused a moment, during which he examined afresh his penitent; then, persisting in the belief that he was one of those timid members of the Assembly who sacrificed the inviolate and sacred head to save their own, he resumed in a grave voice:--

"Reflect, my son, that something more than taking no part in that great crime is needed to absolve from guilt. Those who kept their sword in the scabbard when they might have defended their king have a heavy account to render to the King of kings. Oh, yes," added the venerable man, moving his head from right to left with an expressive motion; "yes, heavy, indeed! for, standing idle, they made themselves the accomplices of a horrible transgression."

"Do you believe," asked the stranger, in a surprised tone, "that even an indirect participation will be punished? The soldier ordered to form the line--do you think he was guilty?"

The priest hesitated. Glad of the dilemma that placed this puritan of royalty between the dogma of passive obedience, which according to the partisans of monarchy should dominate the military system, and the other dogma, equally imperative, which consecrates the person of the king, the stranger hastened to accept the hesitation of the priest as a solution of the doubts that seemed to trouble him. Then, so as not to allow the old Jansenist time for further reflection, he said quickly:--

"I should blush to offer you any fee whatever in acknowledgment of the funeral service you have just celebrated for the repose of the king's soul and for the discharge of my conscience. We can only pay for inestimable things by offerings which are likewise beyond all price. Deign to accept, Monsieur, the gift which I now make to you of a holy relic; the day may come when you will know its value."

As he said these words he gave the ecclesiastic a little box of light weight. The priest took it as it were involuntarily; for the solemn tone in which the words were uttered, and the awe with which the stranger held the box, struck him with fresh amazement. They re-entered the outer room, where the two nuns were waiting for them.

"You are living," said the unknown, "in a house whose owner, Mucius Scaevola, the plasterer who lives on the first floor, is noted in the Section for his patriotism. He is, however, secretly attached to the Bourbons. He was formerly huntsman to Monseigneur the Prince de Conti, to whom he owes everything. As long as you stay in this house you are in greater safety than you can be in any other part of France. Remain here. Pious souls will watch over you and supply your wants; and you can await without danger the coming of better days. A year hence, on the 21st of January" (as he uttered these last words he could not repress an involuntary shudder), "I shall return to celebrate once more the Mass of expiation--"

He could not end the sentence. Bowing to the silent occupants of the garret, he cast a last look upon the signs of their poverty and disappeared.

To the two simple-minded women this event had all the interest of a romance. As soon as the venerable abbé told them of the mysterious gift so solemnly offered by the stranger, they placed the box upon the table, and the three anxious faces, faintly lighted by a tallow-candle, betrayed an indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de Langeais opened the box and took from it a handkerchief of extreme fineness, stained with sweat. As she unfolded it they saw dark stains.

"That is blood!" exclaimed the priest.

"It is marked with the royal crown!" cried the other nun.

The sisters let fall the precious relic with gestures of horror. To these ingenuous souls the mystery that wrapped their unknown visitor became inexplicable, and the priest from that day forth forbade himself to search for its solution.

The three prisoners soon perceived that, in spite of the Terror, a powerful arm was stretched over them. First, they received firewood and provisions; next, the sisters guessed that a woman was associated with their protector, for linen and clothing came to them mysteriously, and enabled them to go out without danger of observation from the aristocratic fashion of the only garments they had been able to secure; finally, Mucius Scaevola brought them certificates of citizenship. Advice as to the necessary means of insuring the safety of the venerable priest often came to them from unexpected quarters, and proved so singularly opportune that it was quite evident it could only have been given by some one in possession of state secrets. In spite of the famine which then afflicted Paris, they found daily at the door of their hovel rations of white bread, laid there by invisible hands. They thought they recognized in Mucius Scaevola the agent of these mysterious benefactions, which were always timely and intelligent; but the noble occupants of the poor garret had no doubt whatever that the unknown individual who had celebrated the midnight Mass on the 22d of January, 1793, was their secret protector. They added to their daily prayers a special prayer for him; night and day these pious hearts made supplication for his happiness, his prosperity, his redemption. They prayed that God would keep his feet from snares and save him from his enemies, and grant him a long and peaceful life.

Their gratitude, renewed as it were daily, was necessarily mingled with curiosity that grew keener day by day. The circumstances attending the appearance of the stranger were a ceaseless topic of conversation and of endless conjecture, and soon became a benefit of a special kind, from the occupation and distraction of mind which was thus produced. They resolved that the stranger should not be allowed to escape the expression of their gratitude when he came to commemorate the next sad anniversary of the death of Louis XVI.

That night, so impatiently awaited, came at length. At midnight the heavy steps resounded up the wooden stairway. The room was prepared for the service; the altar was dressed. This time the sisters opened the door and hastened to light the entrance. Mademoiselle de Langeais even went down a few stairs that she might catch the first glimpse of their benefactor.

"Come!" she said, in a trembling and affectionate voice. "Come, you are expected!"

The man raised his head, gave the nun a gloomy look, and made no answer. She felt as though an icy garment had fallen upon her, and she kept silence. At his aspect gratitude and curiosity died within their hearts. He may have been less cold, less taciturn, less terrible than he seemed to these poor souls, whose own emotions led them to expect a flow of friendship from his. They saw that this mysterious being was resolved to remain a stranger to them, and they acquiesced with resignation. But the priest fancied he saw a smile, quickly repressed, upon the stranger's lip as he saw the preparations made to receive him. He heard the Mass and prayed, but immediately disappeared, refusing in a few courteous words the invitation given by Mademoiselle de Langeais to remain and partake of the humble collation they had prepared for him.

After the 9th Thermidor the nuns and the Abbé de Marolles were able to go about Paris without incurring any danger. The first visit of the old priest was to a perfumery at the sign of the "Queen of Flowers," kept by the citizen and _citoyenne_ Ragon, formerly perfumers to the Court, well known for their faithfulness to the royal family, and employed by the Vendéens as a channel of communication with the princes and royal committees in Paris. The abbé, dressed as the times required, was leaving the doorstep of the shop, situated between the church of Saint-Roch and the Rue des Fondeurs, when a great crowd coming down the Rue Saint-Honoré hindered him from advancing.

"What is it?" he asked of Madame Ragon.

"Oh, nothing!" she answered. "It is the cart and the executioner going to the Place Louis XV. Ah, we saw enough of that last year! but now, four days after the anniversary of the 21st of January, we can look at the horrid procession without distress."

"Why so?" asked the abbé. "What you say is not Christian."

"But this is the execution of the accomplices of Robespierre. They have fought it off as long as they could, but now they are going in their turn where they have sent so many innocent people."

The crowd which filled the Rue Saint-Honoré passed on like a wave. Above the sea of heads the Abbé de Marolles, yielding to an impulse, saw, standing erect in the cart, the stranger who three days before had assisted for the second time in the Mass of commemoration.

"Who is that?" he asked; "the one standing--"

"That is the executioner," answered Monsieur Ragon, calling the man by his monarchical name.

"Help! help!" cried Madame Ragon. "Monsieur l'Abbé is fainting!"

She caught up a flask of vinegar and brought him quickly back to consciousness.

"He must have given me," said the old priest, "the handkerchief with which the king wiped his brow as he went to his martyrdom. Poor man! that steel knife had a heart when all France had none!"

The perfumers thought the words of the priest were an effect of delirium.

Translation copyrighted by Roberts Brothers.

A PASSION IN THE DESERT

"The sight was fearful!" she exclaimed, as we left the menagerie of Monsieur Martin.

She had been watching that daring speculator as he went through his wonderful performance in the den of the hyena.

"How is it possible," she continued, "to tame those animals so as to be certain that he can trust them?"

"You think it a problem," I answered, interrupting her, "and yet it is a natural fact."

"Oh!" she cried, an incredulous smile flickering on her lip.

"Do you think that beasts are devoid of passions?" I asked. "Let me assure you that we teach them all the vices and virtues of our own state of civilization."

She looked at me in amazement.

"The first time I saw Monsieur Martin," I added, "I exclaimed, as you do, with surprise. I happened to be sitting beside an old soldier whose right leg was amputated, and whose appearance had attracted my notice as I entered the building. His face, stamped with the scars of battle, wore the undaunted look of a veteran of the wars of Napoleon. Moreover, the old hero had a frank and joyous manner which attracts me wherever I meet it. He was doubtless one of those old campaigners whom nothing can surprise, who find something to laugh at in the last contortions of a comrade, and will bury a friend or rifle his body gayly; challenging bullets with indifference; making short shrift for themselves or others; and fraternizing, as a usual thing, with the devil. After looking very attentively at the proprietor of the menagerie as he entered the den, my companion curled his lip with that expression of satirical contempt which well-informed men sometimes put on to mark the difference between themselves and dupes. As I uttered my exclamation of surprise at the coolness and courage of Monsieur Martin, the old soldier smiled, shook his head, and said with a knowing glance, 'An old story!'

"'How do you mean an old story?' I asked. 'If you could explain the secret of this mysterious power, I should be greatly obliged to you.'

"After a while, during which we became better acquainted, we went to dine at the first cafe we could find after leaving the menagerie. A bottle of champagne with our dessert brightened the old man's recollections and made them singularly vivid. He related to me a circumstance in his early history which proved that he had ample cause to pronounce Monsieur Martin's performance 'an old story.'"

When we reached her house, she was so persuasive and captivating, and made me so many pretty promises, that I consented to write down for her benefit the story told me by the old hero. On the following day I sent her this episode of a historical epic, which might be entitled, 'The French in Egypt.'

* * * * *

At the time of General Desaix's expedition to Upper Egypt a Provençal soldier, who had fallen into the hands of the Maugrabins, was marched by those tireless Arabs across the desert which lies beyond the cataracts of the Nile. To put sufficient distance between themselves and the French army, the Maugrabins made a forced march and did not halt until after nightfall. They then camped about a well shaded with palm-trees, near which they had previously buried a stock of provisions. Not dreaming that the thought of escape could enter their captive's mind, they merely bound his wrists, and lay down to sleep themselves, after eating a few dates and giving their horses a feed of barley. When the bold Provençal saw his enemies too soundly asleep to watch him, he used his teeth to pick up a scimitar, with which, steadying the blade by means of his knees, he contrived to cut through the cord which bound his hands, and thus recovered his liberty. He at once seized a carbine and a poniard, took the precaution to lay in a supply of dates, a small bag of barley, some powder and ball, buckled on the scimitar, mounted one of the horses, and spurred him in the direction where he supposed the French army to be. Impatient to meet the outposts, he pressed the horse, which was already wearied, so severely that the poor animal fell dead with his flanks torn, leaving the Frenchman alone in the midst of the desert.

After marching for a long time through the sand with the dogged courage of an escaping galley-slave, the soldier was forced to halt, as darkness drew on: for his utter weariness compelled him to rest, though the exquisite sky of an eastern night might well have tempted him to continue the journey. Happily he had reached a slight elevation, at the top of which a few palm-trees shot upward, whose leafage, seen from a long distance against the sky, had helped to sustain his hopes. His fatigue was so great that he threw himself down on a block of granite, cut by Nature into the shape of a camp-bed, and slept heavily, without taking the least precaution to protect himself while asleep. He accepted the loss of his life as inevitable, and his last waking thought was one of regret for having left the Maugrabins, whose nomad life began to charm him now that he was far away from them and from every other hope of succor.

He was awakened by the sun, whose pitiless beams falling vertically upon the granite rock produced an intolerable heat. The Provençal had ignorantly flung himself down in a contrary direction to the shadows thrown by the verdant and majestic fronds of the palm-trees. He gazed at these solitary monarchs and shuddered. They recalled to his mind the graceful shafts, crowned with long weaving leaves, which distinguish the Saracenic columns of the cathedral of Arles. The thought overcame him, and when, after counting the trees, he threw his eyes upon the scene around him, an agony of despair convulsed his soul. He saw a limitless ocean. The sombre sands of the desert stretched out till lost to sight in all directions; they glittered with dark lustre like a steel blade shining in the sun. He could not tell if it were an ocean or a chain of lakes that lay mirrored before him. A hot vapor swept in waves above the surface of this heaving continent. The sky had the Oriental glow of translucent purity, which disappoints because it leaves nothing for the imagination to desire. The heavens and the earth were both on fire. Silence added its awful and desolate majesty. Infinitude, immensity pressed down upon the soul on every side; not a cloud in the sky, not a breath in the air, not a rift on the breast of the sand, which was ruffled only with little ridges scarcely rising above its surface. Far as the eye could reach the horizon fell away into space, marked by a slender line, slim as the edge of a sabre,--like as in summer seas a thread of light parts this earth from the heaven it meets.

The Provençal clasped the trunk of a palm-tree as if it were the body of a friend. Sheltered from the sun by its straight and slender shadow, he wept; and presently sitting down he remained motionless, contemplating with awful dread the implacable Nature stretched out before him. He cried aloud, as if to tempt the solitude to answer him. His voice, lost in the hollows of the hillock, sounded afar with a thin resonance that returned no echo; the echo came from the soldier's heart. He was twenty-two years old, and he loaded his carbine.

"Time enough!" he muttered, as he put the liberating weapon on the sand beneath him.

Gazing by turns at the burnished blackness of the sand and the blue expanse of the sky, the soldier dreamed of France. He smelt in fancy the gutters of Paris; he remembered the towns through which he had passed, the faces of his comrades, and the most trifling incidents of his life. His southern imagination saw the pebbles of his own Provence in the undulating play of the heated air, as it seemed to roughen the far-reaching surface of the desert. Dreading the dangers of this cruel mirage, he went down the little hill on the side opposite to that by which he had gone up the night before. His joy was great when he discovered a natural grotto, formed by the immense blocks of granite which made a foundation for the rising ground. The remnants of a mat showed that the place had once been inhabited, and close to the entrance were a few palm-trees loaded with fruit. The instinct which binds men to life woke in his heart. He now hoped to live until some Maugrabin should pass that way; possibly he might even hear the roar of cannon, for Bonaparte was at that time overrunning Egypt. Encouraged by these thoughts, the Frenchman shook down a cluster of the ripe fruit under the weight of which the palms were bending; and as he tasted this unhoped-for manna, he thanked the former inhabitant of the grotto for the cultivation of the trees, which the rich and luscious flesh of the fruit amply attested. Like a true Provençal, he passed from the gloom of despair to a joy that was half insane. He ran back to the top of the hill, and busied himself for the rest of the day in cutting down one of the sterile trees which had been his shelter the night before.

Some vague recollection made him think of the wild beasts of the desert, and foreseeing that they would come to drink at a spring which bubbled through the sand at the foot of the rock, he resolved to protect his hermitage by felling a tree across the entrance. Notwithstanding his eagerness, and the strength which the fear of being attacked while asleep gave to his muscles, he was unable to cut the palm-tree in pieces during the day; but he succeeded in bringing it down. Towards evening the king of the desert fell; and the noise of his fall, echoing far, was like a moan from the breast of Solitude. The soldier shuddered, as though he had heard a voice predicting evil. But, like an heir who does not long mourn a parent, he stripped from the beautiful tree the arching green fronds--its poetical adornment--and made a bed of them in his refuge. Then, tired with his work and by the heat of the day, he fell asleep beneath the red vault of the grotto.

In the middle of the night his sleep was broken by a strange noise. He sat up; the deep silence that reigned everywhere enabled him to hear the alternating rhythm of a respiration whose savage vigor could not belong to a human being. A terrible fear, increased by the darkness, by the silence, by the rush of his waking fancies, numbed his heart. He felt the contraction of his hair, which rose on end as his eyes, dilating to their full strength, beheld through the darkness two faint amber lights. At first he thought them an optical delusion; but by degrees the clearness of the night enabled him to distinguish objects in the grotto, and he saw, within two feet of him, an enormous animal lying at rest.

Was it a lion? Was it a tiger? Was it a crocodile? The Provençal had not enough education to know in what sub-species he ought to class the intruder; but his terror was all the greater because his ignorance made it vague. He endured the cruel trial of listening, of striving to catch the peculiarties of this breathing without losing one of its inflections, and without daring to make the slightest movement. A strong odor, like that exhaled by foxes, only far more pungent and penetrating, filled the grotto. When the soldier had tasted it, so to speak, by the nose, his fear became terror; he could no longer doubt the nature of the terrible companion whose royal lair he had taken for a bivouac. Before long, the reflection of the moon, as it sank to the horizon, lighted up the den and gleamed upon the shining, spotted skin of a panther.

The lion of Egypt lay asleep, curled up like a dog, the peaceable possessor of a kennel at the gate of a mansion; its eyes, which had opened for a moment, were now closed; its head was turned towards the Frenchman. A hundred conflicting thoughts rushed through the mind of the panther's prisoner. Should he kill it with a shot from his musket? But ere the thought was formed, he saw there was no room to take aim; the muzzle would have gone beyond the animal. Suppose he were to wake it? The fear kept him motionless. As he heard the beating of his heart through the dead silence, he cursed the strong pulsations of his vigorous blood, lest they should disturb the sleep which gave him time to think and plan for safety. Twice he put his hand on his scimitar, with the idea of striking off the head of his enemy; but the difficulty of cutting through the close-haired skin made him renounce the bold attempt. Suppose he missed his aim? It would, he knew, be certain death. He preferred the chances of a struggle, and resolved to await the dawn. It was not long in coming. As daylight broke, the Frenchman was able to examine the animal. Its muzzle was stained with blood. "It has eaten a good meal," thought he, not caring whether the feast were human flesh or not; "it will not be hungry when it wakes."

It was a female. The fur on the belly and on the thighs was of sparkling whiteness. Several little spots like velvet made pretty bracelets round her paws. The muscular tail was also white, but it terminated with black rings. The fur of the back, yellow as dead gold and very soft and glossy, bore the characteristic spots, shaded like a full-blown rose, which distinguish the panther from all other species of _felis_. This terrible hostess lay tranquilly snoring, in an attitude as easy and graceful as that of a cat on the cushions of an ottoman. Her bloody paws, sinewy and well-armed, were stretched beyond her head, which lay upon them; and from her muzzle projected a few straight hairs called whiskers, which shimmered in the early light like silver wires.

If he had seen her lying thus imprisoned in a cage, the Provençal would have admired the creature's grace, and the strong contrasts of vivid color which gave to her robe an imperial splendor; but as it was, his sight was jaundiced by sinister forebodings. The presence of the panther, though she was still asleep, had the same effect upon his mind as the magnetic eyes of a snake produce, we are told, upon the nightingale. The soldier's courage oozed away in presence of this silent peril, though he was a man who gathered nerve before the mouths of cannon belching grape-shot. And yet, ere long, a bold thought entered his mind, and checked the cold sweat which was rolling from his brow. Roused to action, as some men are when, driven face to face with death, they defy it and offer themselves to their doom, he saw a tragedy before him, and he resolved to play his part with honor to the last.

"Yesterday," he said, "the Arabs might have killed me."

Regarding himself as dead, he waited bravely, but with anxious curiosity, for the waking of his enemy. When the sun rose, the panther suddenly opened her eyes; then she stretched her paws violently, as if to unlimber them from the cramp of their position. Presently she yawned and showed the frightful armament of her teeth, and her cloven tongue, rough as a grater.

"She is like a dainty woman," thought the Frenchman, watching her as she rolled and turned on her side with an easy and coquettish movement. She licked the blood from her paws, and rubbed her head with a reiterated movement full of grace.

"Well done! dress yourself prettily, my little woman," said the Frenchman, who recovered his gayety as soon as he had recovered his courage. "We are going to bid each other good-morning;" and he felt for the short poniard which he had taken from the Maugrabins.

At this instant the panther turned her head towards the Frenchman and looked at him fixedly, without moving. The rigidity of her metallic eyes and their insupportable clearness made the Provençal shudder. The beast moved towards him; he looked at her caressingly, with a soothing glance by which he hoped to magnetize her. He let her come quite close to him before he stirred; then with a touch as gentle and loving as he might have used to a pretty woman, he slid his hand along her spine from the head to the flanks, scratching with his nails the flexible vertebrae which divide the yellow back of a panther. The creature drew up her tail voluptuously, her eyes softened, and when for the third time the Frenchman bestowed this self-interested caress, she gave vent to a purr like that with which a cat expresses pleasure: but it issued from a throat so deep and powerful that the sound echoed through the grotto like the last chords of an organ rolling along the roof of a church. The Provençal, perceiving the value of his caresses, redoubled them until they had completely soothed and lulled the imperious courtesan.

When he felt that he had subdued the ferocity of his capricious companion, whose hunger had so fortunately been appeased the night before, he rose to leave the grotto. The panther let him go; but as soon as he reached the top of the little hill she bounded after him with the lightness of a bird hopping from branch to branch, and rubbed against his legs, arching her back with the gesture of a domestic cat. Then looking at her guest with an eye that was growing less inflexible, she uttered the savage cry which naturalists liken to the noise of a saw.

"My lady is exacting," cried the Frenchman, smiling. He began to play with her ears and stroke her belly, and at last he scratched her head firmly with his nails. Encouraged by success, he tickled her skull with the point of his dagger, looking for the right spot where to stab her; but the hardness of the bone made him pause, dreading failure.

The sultana of the desert acknowledged the talents of her slave by lifting her head and swaying her neck to his caresses, betraying satisfaction by the tranquillity of her relaxed attitude. The Frenchman suddenly perceived that he could assassinate the fierce princess at a blow, if he struck her in the throat; and he had raised the weapon, when the panther, surfeited perhaps with his caresses, threw herself gracefully at his feet, glancing up at him with a look in which, despite her natural ferocity, a flicker of kindness could be seen. The poor Provençal, frustrated for the moment, ate his dates as he leaned against a palm-tree, casting from time to time an interrogating eye across the desert in the hope of discerning rescue from afar, and then lowering it upon his terrible companion, to watch the chances of her uncertain clemency. Each time that he threw away a date-stone the panther eyed the spot where it fell with an expression of keen distrust; and she examined the Frenchman with what might be called commercial prudence. The examination, however, seemed favorable, for when the man had finished his meagre meal she licked his shoes and wiped off the dust, which was caked into the folds of the leather, with her rough and powerful tongue.

"How will it be when she is hungry?" thought the Provençal. In spite of the shudder which this reflection cost him, his attention was attracted by the symmetrical proportions of the animal, and he began to measure them with his eye. She was three feet in height to the shoulder, and four feet long, not including the tail. That powerful weapon, which was round as a club, measured three feet. The head, as large as that of a lioness, was remarkable for an expression of crafty intelligence; the cold cruelty of a tiger was its ruling trait, and yet it bore a vague resemblance to the face of an artful woman. As the soldier watched her, the countenance of this solitary queen shone with savage gayety like that of Nero in his cups: she had slaked her thirst for blood, and now wished for play. The Frenchman tried to come and go, and accustomed her to his movements. The panther left him free, as if contented to follow him with her eyes, seeming, however, less like a faithful dog watching his master's movements with affection, than a huge Angora cat uneasy and suspicious of them. A few steps brought him to the spring, where he saw the carcass of his horse, which the panther had evidently carried there. Only two-thirds was eaten. The sight reassured the Frenchman; for it explained the absence of his terrible companion and the forbearance which she had shown to him while asleep.

This first good luck encouraged the reckless soldier as he thought of the future. The wild idea of making a home with the panther until some chance of escape occurred entered his mind, and he resolved to try every means of taming her and of turning her good-will to account. With these thoughts he returned to her side, and noticed joyfully that she moved her tail with an almost imperceptible motion. He sat down beside her fearlessly, and they began to play with each other. He held her paws and her muzzle, twisted her ears, threw her over on her back, and stroked her soft warm flanks. She allowed him to do so; and when he began to smooth the fur of her paws, she carefully drew in her murderous claws, which were sharp and curved like a Damascus blade. The Frenchman kept one hand on his dagger, again watching his opportunity to plunge it into the belly of the too-confiding beast; but the fear that she might strangle him in her last convulsions once more stayed his hand. Moreover, he felt in his heart a foreboding of a remorse which warned him not to destroy a hitherto inoffensive creature. He even fancied that he had found a friend in the limitless desert. His mind turned back, involuntarily, to his first mistress, whom he had named in derision "Mignonne," because her jealousy was so furious that throughout the whole period of their intercourse he lived in dread of the knife with which she threatened him. This recollection of his youth suggested the idea of teaching the young panther, whose soft agility and grace he now admired with less terror, to answer to the caressing name. Towards evening he had grown so familiar with his perilous position that he was half in love with its dangers, and his companion was so far tamed that she had caught the habit of turning to him when he called, in falsetto tones, "Mignonne!"

As the sun went down Mignonne uttered at intervals a prolonged, deep, melancholy cry.

"She is well brought up," thought the gay soldier. "She says her prayers." But the jest only came into his mind as he watched the peaceful attitude of his comrade.

"Come, my pretty blonde, I will let you go to bed first," he said, relying on the activity of his legs to get away as soon as she fell asleep, and trusting to find some other resting-place for the night. He waited anxiously for the right moment, and when it came he started vigorously in the direction of the Nile. But he had scarcely marched for half an hour through the sand before he heard the panther bounding after him, giving at intervals the saw-like cry which was more terrible to hear than the thud of her bounds.

"Well, well!" he cried, "she must have fallen in love with me! Perhaps she has never met any one else. It is flattering to be her first love."

So thinking, he fell into one of the treacherous quicksands which deceive the inexperienced traveler in the desert, and from which there is seldom any escape. He felt he was sinking, and he uttered a cry of despair. The panther seized him by the collar with her teeth, and sprang vigorously backward, drawing him, like magic, from the sucking sand.

"Ah, Mignonne!" cried the soldier, kissing her with enthusiasm, "we belong to each other now,--for life, for death! But play me no tricks," he added, as he turned back the way he came.

From that moment the desert was, as it were, peopled for him. It held a being to whom he could talk, and whose ferocity was now lulled into gentleness, although he could scarcely explain to himself the reasons for this extraordinary friendship. His anxiety to keep awake and on his guard succumbed to excessive weariness both of body and mind, and throwing himself down on the floor of the grotto he slept soundly. At his waking Mignonne was gone. He mounted the little hill to scan the horizon, and perceived her in the far distance returning with the long bounds peculiar to these animals, who are prevented from running by the extreme flexibility of their spinal column.

Mignonne came home with bloody jaws, and received the tribute of caresses which her slave hastened to pay, all the while manifesting her pleasure by reiterated purring.

Her eyes, now soft and gentle, rested kindly on the Provençal, who spoke to her lovingly as he would to a domestic animal.

"Ah! Mademoiselle,--for you are an honest girl, are you not? You like to be petted, don't you? Are you not ashamed of yourself? You have been eating a Maugrabin. Well, well! they are animals like the rest of you. But you are not to craunch up a Frenchman; remember that! If you do, I will not love you."

She played like a young dog with her master, and let him roll her over and pat and stroke her, and sometimes she would coax him to play by laying a paw upon his knee with a pretty soliciting gesture.

Several days passed rapidly. This strange companionship revealed to the Provençal the sublime beauties of the desert. The alternations of hope and fear, the sufficiency of food, the presence of a creature who occupied his thoughts,--all this kept his mind alert, yet free: it was a life full of strange contrasts. Solitude revealed to him her secrets, and wrapped him with her charm. In the rising and the setting of the sun he saw splendors unknown to the world of men. He quivered as he listened to the soft whirring of the wings of a bird,--rare visitant!--or watched the blending of the fleeting clouds,--those changeful and many-tinted voyagers. In the waking hours of the night he studied the play of the moon upon the sandy ocean, where the strong simoom had rippled the surface into waves and ever-varying undulations. He lived in the Eastern day; he worshiped its marvelous glory. He rejoiced in the grandeur of the storms when they rolled across the vast plain, and tossed the sand upward till it looked like a dry red fog or a solid death-dealing vapor; and as the night came on he welcomed it with ecstasy, grateful for the blessed coolness of the light of the stars. His ears listened to the music of the skies. Solitude taught him the treasures of meditation. He spent hours in recalling trifles, and in comparing his past life with the weird present.

He grew fondly attached to his panther; for he was a man who needed an affection. Whether it were that his own will, magnetically strong, had modified the nature of his savage princess, or that the wars then raging in the desert had provided her with an ample supply of food, it is certain that she showed no sign of attacking him, and became so tame that he soon felt no fear of her. He spent much of his time in sleeping; though with his mind awake, like a spider in its web, lest he should miss some deliverance that might chance to cross the sandy sphere marked out by the horizon. He had made his shirt into a banner and tied it to the top of a palm-tree which he had stripped of its leafage. Taking counsel of necessity, he kept the flag extended by fastening the corners with twigs and wedges; for the fitful wind might have failed to wave it at the moment when the longed-for succor came in sight.

Nevertheless, there were long hours of gloom when hope forsook him; and then he played with his panther. He learned to know the different inflections of her voice and the meanings of her expressive glance; he studied the variegation of the spots which shaded the dead gold of her robe. Mignonne no longer growled when he caught the tuft of her dangerous tail and counted the black and white rings which glittered in the sunlight like a cluster of precious stones. He delighted in the soft lines of her lithe body, the whiteness of her belly, the grace of her charming head: but above all he loved to watch her as she gamboled at play. The agility and youthfulness of her movements were a constantly fresh surprise to him. He admired the suppleness of the flexible body as she bounded, crept, and glided, or clung to the trunk of palm-trees, or rolled over and over, crouching sometimes to the ground, and gathering herself together as she made ready for her vigorous spring. Yet, however vigorous the bound, however slippery the granite block on which she landed, she would stop short, motionless, at the one word "Mignonne."

One day, under a dazzling sun, a large bird hovered in the sky. The Provençal left his panther to watch the new guest. After a moment's pause the neglected sultana uttered a low growl.

"The devil take me! I believe she is jealous!" exclaimed the soldier, observing the rigid look which once more appeared in her metallic eyes. "The soul of Sophronie has got into her body!"

The eagle disappeared in ether, and the Frenchman, recalled by the panther's displeasure, admired afresh her rounded flanks and the perfect grace of her attitude. She was as pretty as a woman. The blonde brightness of her robe shaded, with delicate gradations, to the dead-white tones of her furry thighs; the vivid sunshine brought out the brilliancy of this living gold and its variegated brown spots with indescribable lustre. The panther and the Provençal gazed at each other with human comprehension. She trembled with delight--the coquettish creature!--as she felt the nails of her friend scratching the strong bones of her skull. Her eyes glittered like flashes of lightning, and then she closed them tightly.

"She has a soul!" cried the soldier, watching the tranquil repose of this sovereign of the desert, golden as the sands, white as their pulsing light, solitary and burning as they.

* * * * *

"Well," she said, "I have read your defense of the beasts. But tell me what was the end of this friendship between two beings so formed to understand each other?"

"Ah, exactly," I replied. "It ended as all great passions end,--by a misunderstanding. Both sides imagine treachery, pride prevents an explanation, and the rupture comes about through obstinacy."

"Yes," she said, "and sometimes a word, a look, an exclamation suffices. But tell me the end of the story."

"That is difficult," I answered. "But I will give it to you in the words of the old veteran, as he finished the bottle of champagne and exclaimed:--

"'I don't know how I could have hurt her, but she suddenly turned upon me as if in fury, and seized my thigh with her sharp teeth; and yet (as I afterwards remembered) not cruelly. I thought she meant to devour me, and I plunged my dagger into her throat. She rolled over with a cry that froze my soul; she looked at me in her death struggle, but without anger. I would have given all the world--my cross, which I had not then gained, all, everything--to have brought her back to life. It was as if I had murdered a friend, a human being. When the soldiers who saw my flag came to my rescue they found me weeping. Monsieur,' he resumed, after a moment's silence, 'I went through the wars in Germany, Spain, Russia, France; I have marched my carcass well-nigh over all the world; but I have seen nothing comparable to the desert. Ah, it is grand! glorious!'

"'What were your feelings there?' I asked.

"'They cannot be told, young man. Besides, I do not always regret my panther and my palm-tree oasis: I must be very sad for that. But I will tell you this: in the desert there is all--and yet nothing.'

"'Stay!--explain that.'

"'Well, then,' he said, with a gesture of impatience, 'God is there, and man is not.'"

FROM 'THE COUNTRY DOCTOR'

THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE

"Let us go to my barn," said the doctor, taking Genestas by the arm, after saying good-night to the curate and his other guests. "And there, Captain Bluteau, you will hear about Napoleon. We shall find a few old cronies who will set Goguelat, the postman, to declaiming about the people's god. Nicolle, my stable-man, was to put a ladder by which we can get into the hay-loft through a window, and find a place where we can see and hear all that goes on. A _veillée_ is worth the trouble, believe me. Come, it isn't the first time I've hidden in the hay to hear the tale of a soldier or some peasant yarn. But we must hide; if these poor people see a stranger they are constrained at once, and are no longer their natural selves."

"Eh! my dear host," said Genestas, "haven't I often pretended to sleep, that I might listen to my troopers round a bivouac? I never laughed more heartily in the Paris theatres than I did at an account of the retreat from Moscow, told in fun, by an old sergeant to a lot of recruits who were afraid of war. He declared the French army slept in sheets, and drank its wine well-iced; that the dead stood still in the roads; Russia was white, they curried the horses with their teeth; those who liked to skate had lots of fun, and those who fancied frozen puddings ate their fill; the women were usually cold, and the only thing that was really disagreeable was the want of hot water to shave with: in short, he recounted such absurdities that an old quarter-master, who had had his nose frozen off and was known by the name Nez-restant, laughed himself."

"Hush," said Benassis, "here we are: I'll go first; follow me."

The pair mounted the ladder and crouched in the hay, without being seen or heard by the people below, and placed themselves at ease, so that they could see and hear all that went on. The women were sitting in groups round the three or four candles that stood on the tables. Some were sewing, some knitting; several sat idle, their necks stretched out and their heads and eyes turned to an old peasant who was telling a story. Most of the men were standing, or lying on bales of hay. These groups, all perfectly silent, were scarcely visible in the flickering glimmer of the tallow-candles encircled by glass bowls full of water, which concentrated the light in rays upon the women at work about the tables. The size of the barn, whose roof was dark and sombre, still further obscured the rays of light, which touched the heads with unequal color, and brought out picturesque effects of light and shade. Here, the brown forehead and the clear eyes of an eager little peasant-girl shone forth; there, the rough brows of a few old men were sharply defined by a luminous band, which made fantastic shapes of their worn and discolored garments. These various listeners, so diverse in their attitudes, all expressed on their motionless features the absolute abandonment of their intelligence to the narrator. It was a curious picture, illustrating the enormous influence exercised over every class of mind by poetry. In exacting from a story-teller the marvelous that must still be simple, or the impossible that is almost believable, the peasant proves himself to be a true lover of the purest poetry.

"Come, Monsieur Goguelat," said the game-keeper, "tell us about the Emperor."

"The evening is half over," said the postman, "and I don't like to shorten the victories."

"Never mind; go on! You've told them so many times we know them all by heart; but it is always a pleasure to hear them again."

"Yes! tell us about the Emperor," cried many voices together.

"Since you wish it," replied Goguelat. "But you'll see it isn't worth much when I have to tell it on the double-quick, charge! I'd rather tell about a battle. Shall I tell about Champ-Aubert, where we used up all the cartridges and spitted the enemy on our bayonets?"

"No! no! the Emperor! the Emperor!"

The veteran rose from his bale of hay and cast upon the assemblage that black look laden with miseries, emergencies, and sufferings, which distinguishes the faces of old soldiers. He seized his jacket by the two front flaps, raised them as if about to pack the knapsack which formerly held his clothes, his shoes, and all his fortune; then he threw the weight of his body on his left leg, advanced the right, and yielded with a good grace to the demands of the company. After pushing his gray hair to one side to show his forehead, he raised his head towards heaven that he might, as it were, put himself on the level of the gigantic history he was about to relate.

"You see, my friends, Napoleon was born in Corsica, a French island, warmed by the sun of Italy, where it is like a furnace, and where the people kill each other, from father to son, all about nothing: that's a way they have. To begin with the marvel of the thing,--his mother, who was the handsomest woman of her time, and a knowing one, bethought herself of dedicating him to God, so that he might escape the dangers of his childhood and future life; for she had dreamed that the world was set on fire the day he was born. And indeed it was a prophecy! So she asked God to protect him, on condition that Napoleon should restore His holy religion, which was then cast to the ground. Well, that was agreed upon, and we shall see what came of it.

"Follow me closely, and tell me if what you hear is in the nature of man.

"Sure and certain it is that none but a man who conceived the idea of making a compact with God could have passed unhurt through the enemy's lines, through cannon-balls, and discharges of grape-shot that swept the rest of us off like flies, and always respected his head. I had a proof of that--I myself--at Eylau. I see him now, as he rode up a height, took his field glass, looked at the battle, and said, 'A11 goes well.' One of those plumed busy-bodies, who plagued him considerably and followed him everywhere, even to his meals, so they said, thought to play the wag, and took the Emperor's place as he rode away. Ho! in a twinkling, head and plume were off! You must understand that Napoleon had promised to keep the secret of his compact all to himself. That's why all those who followed him, even his nearest friends, fell like nuts,--Duroc, Bessières, Lannes,--all strong as steel bars, though _he_ could bend them as he pleased. Besides,--to prove he was the child of God, and made to be the father of soldiers,--was he ever known to be lieutenant or captain? no, no; commander-in-chief from the start. He didn't look to be more than twenty-four years of age when he was an old general at the taking of Toulon, where he first began to show the others that they knew nothing about manoeuvring cannon.

"After that, down came our slip of a general to command the grand army of Italy, which hadn't bread nor munitions, nor shoes, nor coats,--a poor army, as naked as a worm. 'My friends,' said he, 'here we are together. Get it into your pates that fifteen days from now you will be conquerors,--new clothes, good gaiters, famous shoes, and every man with a great-coat; but, my children, to get these things you must march to Milan where they are.' And we marched. France, crushed as flat as a bedbug, straightened up. We were thirty thousand barefeet against eighty thousand Austrian bullies, all fine men, well set up. I see 'em now! But Napoleon--he was then only Bonaparte--he knew how to put the courage into us! We marched by night, and we marched by day; we slapped their faces at Montenotte, we thrashed 'em at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcole, Millesimo, and we never let 'em up. A soldier gets the taste of conquest. So Napoleon whirled round those Austrian generals, who didn't know where to poke themselves to get out of his way, and he pelted 'em well,--nipped off ten thousand men at a blow sometimes, by getting round them with fifteen hundred Frenchmen, and then he gleaned as he pleased. He took their cannon, their supplies, their money, their munitions, in short, all they had that was good to take. He fought them and beat them on the mountains, he drove them into the rivers and seas, he bit 'em in the air, he devoured 'em on the ground, and he lashed 'em everywhere. Hey! the grand army feathered itself well; for, d'ye see, the Emperor, who was also a wit, called up the inhabitants and told them he was there to deliver them. So after that the natives lodged and cherished us; the women too, and very judicious they were. Now here's the end of it. In Ventose, '96,--in those times that was the month of March of to-day,--we lay cuddled in a corner of Savoy with the marmots; and yet, before that campaign was over, we were masters of Italy, just as Napoleon had predicted; and by the following March--in a single year and two campaigns--he had brought us within sight of Vienna. 'Twas a clean sweep. We devoured their armies, one after the other, and made an end of four Austrian generals. One old fellow, with white hair, was roasted like a rat in the straw at Mantua. Kings begged for mercy on their knees! Peace was won.

"Could a _man_ have done that? No; God helped him, to a certainty!

"He divided himself up like the loaves in the Gospel, commanded the battle by day, planned it by night; going and coming, for the sentinels saw him,--never eating, never sleeping. So, seeing these prodigies, the soldiers adopted him for their father. Forward, march! Then those others, the rulers in Paris, seeing this, said to themselves:--'Here's a bold one that seems to get his orders from the skies; he's likely to put his paw on France. We must let him loose on Asia; we will send him to America, perhaps that will satisfy him.' But 'twas _written above_ for him, as it was for Jesus Christ. The command went forth that he should go to Egypt. See again his resemblance to the Son of God. But that's not all. He called together his best veterans, his fire-eaters, the ones he had particularly put the devil into, and he said to them like this:--'My friends, they have given us Egypt to chew up, just to keep us busy, but we'll swallow it whole in a couple of campaigns, as we did Italy. The common soldiers shall be princes and have the land for their own. Forward, march!' 'Forward, march!' cried the sergeants, and there we were at Toulon, road to Egypt. At that time the English had all their ships in the sea; but when we embarked Napoleon said, 'They won't see us. It is just as well that you should know from this time forth that your general has got his star in the sky, which guides and protects us.' What was said was done. Passing over the sea, we took Malta like an orange, just to quench his thirst for victory; for he was a man who couldn't live and do nothing.

"So here we are in Egypt. Good. Once here, other orders. The Egyptians, d'ye see, are men who, ever since the earth was, have had giants for sovereigns, and armies as numerous as ants; for, you must understand, that's the land of genii and crocodiles, where they've built pyramids as big as our mountains, and buried their kings under them to keep them fresh,--an idea that pleased 'em mightily. So then, after we disembarked, the Little Corporal said to us, 'My children, the country you are going to conquer has a lot of gods that you must respect; because Frenchmen ought to be friends with everybody, and fight the nations without vexing the inhabitants. Get it into your skulls that you are not to touch anything at first, for it is all going to be yours soon. Forward, march!' So far, so good. But all those people of Africa, to whom Napoleon was foretold under the name of Kébir-Bonaberdis,--a word of their lingo that means 'the sultan fires,'--were afraid as the devil of him. So the Grand Turk, and Asia, and Africa, had recourse to magic. They sent us a demon, named the Mahdi, supposed to have descended from heaven on a white horse, which, like its master, was bullet-proof; and both of them lived on air, without food to support them. There are some that say they saw them; but I can't give you any reasons to make you certain about that. The rulers of Arabia and the Mamelukes tried to make their troopers believe that the Mahdi could keep them from perishing in battle; and they pretended he was an angel sent from heaven to fight Napoleon and get back Solomon's seal. Solomon's seal was part of their paraphernalia which they vowed our General had stolen. You must understand that we'd given 'em a good many wry faces, in spite of what he had said to us.

"Now, tell me how they knew that Napoleon had a pact with God? Was that natural, d'ye think?

"They held to it in their minds that Napoleon commanded the genii, and could pass hither and thither in the twinkling of an eye, like a bird. The fact is, he was everywhere. At last, it came to his carrying off a queen, beautiful as the dawn, for whom he had offered all his treasure, and diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs,--a bargain which the Mameluke to whom she particularly belonged positively refused, although he had several others. Such matters, when they come to that pass, can't be settled without a great many battles; and, indeed, there was no scarcity of battles; there was fighting enough to please everybody. We were in line at Alexandria, at Gizeh, and before the Pyramids; we marched in the sun and through the sand, where some, who had the dazzles, saw water that they couldn't drink, and shade where their flesh was roasted. But we made short work of the Mamelukes; and everybody else yielded at the voice of Napoleon, who took possession of Upper and Lower Egypt, Arabia, and even the capitals of kingdoms that were no more, where there were thousand of statues and all the plagues of Egypt, more particularly lizards,--a mammoth of a country where everybody could take his acres of land for as little as he pleased. Well, while Napoleon was busy with his affairs inland,--where he had it in his head to do fine things,--the English burned his fleet at Aboukir; for they were always looking about them to annoy us. But Napoleon, who had the respect of the East and of the West, whom the Pope called his son, and the cousin of Mohammed called 'his dear father,' resolved to punish England, and get hold of India in exchange for his fleet. He was just about to take us across the Red Sea into Asia, a country where there are diamonds and gold to pay the soldiers and palaces for bivouacs, when the Mahdi made a treaty with the Plague, and sent it down to hinder our victories. Halt! The army to a man defiled at that parade; and few there were who came back on their feet. Dying soldiers couldn't take Saint-Jean d'Acre, though they rushed at it three times with generous and martial obstinacy. The Plague was the strongest. No saying to that enemy, 'My good friend.' Every soldier lay ill. Napoleon alone was fresh as a rose, and the whole army saw him drinking in pestilence without its doing him a bit of harm.

"Ha! my friends! will you tell me that _that's_ in the nature of a mere man?

"The Mamelukes knowing we were all in the ambulances, thought they could stop the way; but that sort of joke wouldn't do with Napoleon. So he said to his demons, his veterans, those that had the toughest hide, 'Go, clear me the way.' Junot, a sabre of the first cut, and his particular friend, took a thousand men, no more, and ripped up the army of the pacha who had had the presumption to put himself in the way. After that, we came back to headquarters at Cairo. Now, here's another side of the story. Napoleon absent, France was letting herself be ruined by the rulers in Paris, who kept back the pay of the soldiers of the other armies, and their clothing, and their rations; left them to die of hunger, and expected them to lay down the law to the universe without taking any trouble to help them. Idiots! who amused themselves by chattering, instead of putting their own hands in the dough. Well, that's how it happened that our armies were beaten, and the frontiers of France were encroached upon: THE MAN was not there. Now observe, I say _man_ because that's what they called him; but 'twas nonsense, for he had a star and all its belongings; it was we who were only men. He taught history to France after his famous battle of Aboukir, where, without losing more than three hundred men, and with a single division, he vanquished the grand army of the Turk, seventy-five thousand strong, and hustled more than half of it into the sea, r-r-rah!

"That was his last thunder-clap in Egypt. He said to himself, seeing the way things were going in Paris, 'I am the savior of France. I know it, and I must go.' But, understand me, the army didn't know he was going, or they'd have kept him by force and made him Emperor of the East. So now we were sad; for He was gone who was all our joy. He left the command to Kléber, a big mastiff, who came off duty at Cairo, assassinated by an Egyptian, whom they put to death by impaling him on a bayonet; that's the way they guillotine people down there. But it makes 'em suffer so much that a soldier had pity on the criminal and gave him his canteen; and then, as soon as the Egyptian had drunk his fill, he gave up the ghost with all the pleasure in life. But that's a trifle we couldn't laugh at then. Napoleon embarked in a cockleshell, a little skiff that was nothing at all, though 'twas called 'Fortune'; and in a twinkling, under the nose of England, who was blockading him with ships of the line, frigates, and anything that could hoist a sail, he crossed over, and there he was in France. For he always had the power, mind you, of crossing the seas at one straddle.

"Was that a human man? Bah!

"So, one minute he is at Fréjus, the next in Paris. There, they all adore him; but he summons the government. 'What have you done with my children, the soldiers?' he says to the lawyers. 'You're a mob of rascally scribblers; you are making France a mess of pottage, and snapping your fingers at what people think of you. It won't do; and I speak the opinion of everybody.' So, on that, they wanted to battle with him and kill him--click! he had 'em locked up in barracks, or flying out of windows, or drafted among his followers, where they were as mute as fishes, and as pliable as a quid of tobacco. After that stroke--consul! And then, as it was not for him to doubt the Supreme Being, he fulfilled his promise to the good God, who, you see, had kept His word to him. He gave Him back his churches, and re-established His religion; the bells rang for God and for him: and lo! everybody was pleased: _primo_, the priests, whom he saved from being harassed; _secundo_, the bourgeois, who thought only of their trade, and no longer had to fear the _rapiamus_ of the law, which had got to be unjust; _tertio_, the nobles, for he forbade they should be killed, as, unfortunately, the people had got the habit of doing.

"But he still had the Enemy to wipe out; and he wasn't the man to go to sleep at a mess-table, because, d'ye see, his eye looked over the whole earth as if it were no bigger than a man's head. So then he appeared in Italy, like as though he had stuck his head through the window. One glance was enough. The Austrians were swallowed up at Marengo like so many gudgeons by a whale! Ouf! The French eagles sang their paeans so loud that all the world heard them--and it sufficed! 'We won't play that game any more,' said the German. 'Enough, enough!' said all the rest.

"To sum up: Europe backed down, England knocked under. General peace; and the kings and the people made believe kiss each other. That's the time when the Emperor invented the Legion of Honor--and a fine thing, too. 'In France'--this is what he said at Boulogne before the whole army--'every man is brave. So the citizen who does a fine action shall be sister to the soldier, and the soldier shall be his brother, and the two shall be one under the flag of honor.'

"We, who were down in Egypt, now came home. All was changed! He left us general, and hey! in a twinkling we found him EMPEROR. France gave herself to him, like a fine girl to a lancer. When it was done--to the satisfaction of all, as you may say--a sacred ceremony took place, the like of which was never seen under the canopy of the skies. The Pope and the cardinals, in their red and gold vestments, crossed the Alps expressly to crown him before the army and the people, who clapped their hands. There is one thing that I should do very wrong not to tell you. In Egypt, in the desert close to Syria, the RED MAN came to him on the Mount of Moses, and said, 'All is well.' Then, at Marengo, the night before the victory, the same Red Man appeared before him for the second time, standing erect and saying, 'Thou shalt see the world at thy feet; thou shalt be Emperor of France, King of Italy, master of Holland, sovereign of Spain, Portugal, and the Illyrian provinces, protector of Germany, savior of Poland, first eagle of the Legion of Honor--all.' This Red Man, you understand, was his genius, his spirit,--a sort of satellite who served him, as some say, to communicate with his star. I never really believed that. But the Red Man himself is a true fact. Napoleon spoke of him, and said he came to him in troubled moments, and lived in the palace of the Tuileries under the roof. So, on the day of the coronation, Napoleon saw him for the third time; and they were in consultation over many things.

"After that, Napoleon went to Milan to be crowned king of Italy, and there the grand triumph of the soldier began. Every man who could write was made an officer. Down came pensions; it rained duchies; treasures poured in for the staff which didn't cost France a penny; and the Legion of Honor provided incomes for the private soldiers,--of which I receive mine to this day. So here were the armies maintained as never before on this earth. But besides that, the Emperor, knowing that he was to be the emperor of the whole world, bethought him of the bourgeois, and to please them he built fairy monuments, after their own ideas, in places where you'd never think to find any. For instance, suppose you were coming back from Spain and going to Berlin--well, you'd find triumphal arches along the way, with common soldiers sculptured on the stone, every bit the same as generals. In two or three years, and without imposing taxes on any of you, Napoleon filled his vaults with gold, built palaces, made bridges, roads, scholars, fêtes, laws, vessels, harbors, and spent millions upon millions,--such enormous sums that he could, so they tell me, have paved France from end to end with five-franc pieces, if he had had a mind to.

"Now, when he sat at ease on his throne, and was master of all, so that Europe waited his permission to do his bidding, he remembered his four brothers and his three sisters, and he said to us, as it might be in conversation, in an order of the day, 'My children, is it right that the blood relations of your Emperor should be begging their bread? No. I wish to see them in splendor like myself. It becomes, therefore, absolutely necessary to conquer a kingdom for each of them,--to the end that Frenchmen may be masters over all lands, that the soldiers of the Guard shall make the whole earth tremble, that France may spit where she likes, and that all the nations shall say to her, as it is written on my copper coins, '_God protects you_!' 'Agreed,' cried the army. 'We'll go fish for thy kingdoms with our bayonets.' Ha! there was no backing down, don't you see! If he had taken it into his head to conquer the moon, we should have made ready, packed knapsacks, and clambered up; happily, he didn't think of it. The kings of the countries, who liked their comfortable thrones, were naturally loathe to budge, and had to have their ears pulled; so then--Forward, march! We did march; we got there; and the earth once more trembled to its centre. Hey! the men and the shoes he used up in those days! The enemy dealt us such blows that none but the grand army could have stood the fatigue of it. But you are not ignorant that a Frenchman is born a philosopher, and knows that a little sooner, or a little later, he has got to die. So we were ready to die without a word, for we liked to see the Emperor doing _that_ on the geographies."

Here the narrator nimbly described a circle with his foot on the floor of the barn.

"And Napoleon said, 'There, that's to be a kingdom.' And a kingdom it was. Ha! the good times! The colonels were generals; the generals, marshals; and the marshals, kings. There's one of 'em still on his throne, to prove it to Europe; but he's a Gascon and a traitor to France for keeping that crown; and he doesn't blush for shame as he ought to do, because crowns, don't you see, are made of gold. I who am speaking to you, I have seen, in Paris, eleven kings and a mob of princes surrounding Napoleon like the rays of the sun. You understand, of course, that every soldier had the chance to mount a throne, provided always he had the merit; so a corporal of the Guard was a sight to be looked at as he walked along, for each man had his share in the victory, and 'twas plainly set forth in the bulletin. What victories they were! Austerlitz, where the army manoeuvred as if on parade; Eylau, where we drowned the Russians in a lake, as though Napoleon had blown them into it with the breath of his mouth; Wagram, where the army fought for three days without grumbling. We won as many battles as there are saints in the calendar. It was proved then beyond a doubt, that Napoleon had the sword of God in his scabbard. The soldiers were his friends; he made them his children; he looked after us; he saw that we had shoes, and shirts, and great-coats, and bread, and cartridges; but he always kept up his majesty; for, don't you see, 'twas his business to reign. No matter for that, however; a sergeant, and even a common soldier could say to him, 'My Emperor,' just as you say to me sometimes, 'My good friend.' He gave us an answer if we appealed to him; he slept in the snow like the rest of us; and indeed, he had almost the air of a human man. I who speak to you, I have seen him with his feet among the grapeshot, and no more uneasy than you are now,--standing steady, looking through his field glass, and minding his business. 'Twas that kept the rest of us quiet. I don't know how he did it, but when he spoke he made our hearts burn within us; and to show him we were his children, incapable of balking, didn't we rush at the mouths of the rascally cannon, that belched and vomited shot and shell without so much as saying, 'Look out!' Why! the dying must needs raise their heads to salute him and cry, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!'

"I ask you, was that natural? would they have done that for a human man?

"Well, after he had settled the world, the Empress Josephine, his wife, a good woman all the same, managed matters so that she did not bear him any children, and he was obliged to give her up, though he loved her considerably. But, you see, he had to have little ones for reasons of state. Hearing of this, all the sovereigns of Europe quarreled as to which of them should give him a wife. And he married, so they told us, an Austrian archduchess, daughter of Caesar, an ancient man about whom people talk a good deal, and not in France only,--where any one will tell you what he did,--but in Europe. It is all true, for I myself who address you at this moment, I have been on the Danube, and have seen the remains of a bridge built by that man, who, it seems, was a relation of Napoleon in Rome, and that's how the Emperor got the inheritance of that city for his son. So after the marriage, which was a fête for the whole world, and in honor of which he released the people of ten years' taxes,--which they had to pay all the same, however, because the assessors didn't take account of what he said,--his wife had a little one, who was King of Rome. Now, there's a thing that had never been seen on this earth; never before was a child born a king with his father living. On that day a balloon went up in Paris to tell the news to Rome, and that balloon made the journey in one day!

"Now, is there any man among you who will stand up and declare to me that all that was human? No; it was _written above;_ and may the scurvy seize them who deny that he was sent by God himself for the triumph of France!

"Well, here's the Emperor of Russia, that used to be his friend, he gets angry because Napoleon didn't marry a Russian; so he joins with the English, our enemies,--to whom our Emperor always wanted to say a couple of words in their burrows, only he was prevented. Napoleon gets angry too; an end had to be put to such doings; so he says to us:--'Soldiers! you have been masters of every capital in Europe, except Moscow, which is now the ally of England. To conquer England, and India which belongs to the English, it becomes our peremptory duty to go to Moscow.' Then he assembled the greatest army that ever trailed its gaiters over the globe; and so marvelously in hand it was that he reviewed a million of men in one day. 'Hourra! cried the Russians. Down came all Russia and those animals of Cossacks in a flock. 'Twas nation against nation, a general hurly-burly, and beware who could; 'Asia against Europe,' as the Red Man had foretold to Napoleon. 'Enough,' cried the Emperor, 'I'll be ready.'

"So now, sure enough, came all the kings, as the Red Man had said, to lick Napoleon's hand! Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Poland, Italy, every one of them were with us, flattering us; ah, it was fine! The eagles never cawed so loud as at those parades, perched high above the banners of all Europe. The Poles were bursting with joy, because Napoleon was going to release them; and that's why France and Poland are brothers to this day. 'Russia is ours,' cried the army. We plunged into it well supplied; we marched and we marched,--no Russians. At last we found the brutes entrenched on the banks of the Moskova. That's where I won my cross, and I've got the right to say it was a damnable battle. This was how it came about. The Emperor was anxious. He had seen the Red Man, who said to him, 'My son, you are going too fast for your feet; you will lack men; friends will betray you.' So the Emperor offered peace. But before signing, 'Let us drub those Russians!' he said to us. 'Done!' cried the army. 'Forward, march!' said the sergeants. My clothes were in rags, my shoes worn out, from trudging along those roads, which are very uncomfortable ones; but no matter! I said to myself, 'As it's the last of our earthquakings, I'll go into it, tooth and nail!' We were drawn up in line before the great ravine,--front seats, as 'twere. Signal given; and seven hundred pieces of artillery began a conversation that would bring the blood from your ears. Then--must do justice to one's enemies--the Russians let themselves be killed like Frenchmen; they wouldn't give way; we couldn't advance. 'Forward,' some one cried, 'here comes the Emperor!' True enough; he passed at a gallop, waving his hand to let us know we must take the redoubt. He inspired us; on we ran, I was the first in the ravine. Ha! my God! how the lieutenants fell, and the colonels, and the soldiers! No matter! all the more shoes for those that had none, and epaulets for the clever ones who knew how to read. 'Victory!' cried the whole line; 'Victory!'--and, would you believe it? a thing never seen before, there lay twenty-five thousand Frenchmen on the ground. 'Twas like mowing down a wheat-field; only in place of the ears of wheat put the heads of men! We were sobered by this time,--those who were left alive. The MAN rode up; we made a circle round him. Ha! he knew how to cajole his children; he could be amiable when he liked, and feed 'em with words when their stomachs were ravenous with the hunger of wolves. Flatterer! he distributed the crosses himself, he uncovered to the dead, and then he cried to us, 'On! to Moscow!' 'To Moscow!' answered the army.

"We took Moscow. Would you believe it? the Russians burned their own city! 'Twas a haystack six miles square, and it blazed for two days. The buildings crashed like slates, and showers of melted iron and lead rained down upon us, which was naturally horrible. I may say to you plainly, it was like a flash of lightning on our disasters. The Emperor said, 'We have done enough; my soldiers shall rest here.' So we rested awhile, just to get the breath into our bodies and the flesh on our bones, for we were really tired. We took possession of the golden cross that was on the Kremlin; and every soldier brought away with him a small fortune. But out there the winter sets in a month earlier,--a thing those fools of science didn't properly explain. So, coming back, the cold nipped us. No longer an army--do you hear me?--no longer any generals, no longer any sergeants even. 'Twas the reign of wretchedness and hunger,--a reign of equality at last. No one thought of anything but to see France once more; no one stooped to pick up his gun or his money if he dropped them; each man followed his nose, and went as he pleased without caring for glory. The weather was so bad the Emperor couldn't see his star; there was something between him and the skies. Poor man! it made him ill to see his eagles flying away from victory. Ah! 'twas a mortal blow, you may believe me.

"Well, we got to the Beresina. My friends, I can affirm to you by all that is most sacred, by my honor, that since mankind came into the world, never, never, was there seen such a fricassee of an army--guns, carriages, artillery wagons--in the midst of such snows, under such relentless skies! The muzzles of the muskets burned our hands if we touched them, the iron was so cold. It was there that the army was saved by the pontoniers, who were firm at their post; and there that Gondrin--sole survivor of the men who were bold enough to go into the water and build the bridges by which the army crossed--that Gondrin, here present, admirably conducted himself, and saved us from the Russians, who, I must tell you, still respected the grand army, remembering its victories. And," he added, pointing to Gondrin, who was gazing at him with the peculiar attention of a deaf man, "Gondrin is a finished soldier, a soldier who is honor itself, and he merits your highest esteem."

"I saw the Emperor," he resumed, "standing by the bridge, motionless, not feeling the cold--was that human? He looked at the destruction of his treasure, his friends, his old Egyptians. Bah! all that passed him, women, army wagons, artillery, all were shattered, destroyed, ruined. The bravest carried the eagles; for the eagles, d'ye see, were France, the nation, all of you! they were the civil and the military honor that must be kept pure; could their heads be lowered because of the cold? It was only near the Emperor that we warmed ourselves, because when he was in danger we ran, frozen as we were--we, who wouldn't have stretched a hand to save a friend. They told us he wept at night over his poor family of soldiers. Ah! none but he and Frenchmen could have got themselves out of that business.

"We did get out, but with losses, great losses, as I tell you. The Allies captured our provisions. Men began to betray him, as the Red Man predicted. Those chatterers in Paris, who had held their tongues after the Imperial Guard was formed, now thought he was dead; so they hoodwinked the prefect of police, and hatched a conspiracy to overthrow the empire. He heard of it; it worried him. He left us, saying: 'Adieu, my children; guard the outposts; I shall return to you.' Bah! without him nothing went right; the generals lost their heads; the marshals talked nonsense and committed follies; but that was not surprising, for Napoleon, who was kind, had fed 'em on gold; they had got as fat as lard, and wouldn't stir; some stayed in camp when they ought to have been warming the backs of the enemy who was between us and France.

"But the Emperor came back, and he brought recruits, famous recruits; he changed their backbone and made 'em dogs of war, fit to set their teeth into anything; and he brought a guard of honor, a fine body indeed!--all bourgeois, who melted away like butter on a gridiron.

"Well, spite of our stern bearing, here's everything going against us; and yet the army did prodigies of valor. Then came battles on the mountains, nations against nations,--Dresden, Lutzen, Bautzen. Remember these days, all of you, for 'twas then that Frenchmen were so particularly heroic that a good grenadier only lasted six months. We triumphed always; yet there were those English, in our rear, rousing revolts against us with their lies! No matter, we cut our way home through the whole pack of the nations. Wherever the Emperor showed himself we followed him; for if, by sea or land, he gave us the word 'Go!' we went. At last, we were in France; and many a poor foot-soldier felt the air of his own country restore his soul to satisfaction, spite of the wintry weather. I can say for myself that it refreshed my life. Well, next, our business was to defend France, our country, our beautiful France, against all Europe, which resented our having laid down the law to the Russians, and pushed them back into their dens, so that they couldn't eat us up alive, as northern nations, who are dainty and like southern flesh, have a habit of doing,--at least, so I've heard some generals say. Then the Emperor saw his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had made kings, and the scoundrels to whom he had given back their thrones, all against him. Even Frenchmen, and allies in our own ranks, turned against us under secret orders, as at the battle of Leipsic. Would common soldiers have been capable of such wickedness? Three times a day men were false to their word,--and they called themselves princes!

"So, then, France was invaded. Wherever the Emperor showed his lion face, the enemy retreated; and he did more prodigies in defending France than ever he had done in conquering Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia. He meant to bury every invader under the sod, and teach 'em to respect the soil of France. So he let them get to Paris, that he might swallow them at a mouthful, and rise to the height of his genius in a battle greater than all the rest,--a mother-battle, as 'twere. But there, there! the Parisians were afraid for their twopenny skins, and their trumpery shops; they opened the gates. Then the Ragusades began, and happiness ended. The Empress was fooled, and the white banner flaunted from the windows. The generals whom he had made his nearest friends abandoned him for the Bourbons,--a set of people no one had heard tell of. The Emperor bade us farewell at Fontainebleau:--'Soldiers!'--I can hear him now; we wept like children; the flags and the eagles were lowered as if for a funeral: it was, I may well say it to you, it was the funeral of the Empire; her dapper armies were nothing now but skeletons. So he said to us, standing there on the portico of his palace:--'My soldiers! we are vanquished by treachery; but we shall meet in heaven, the country of the brave. Defend my child, whom I commit to you. Long live Napoleon II!' He meant to die, that no man should look upon Napoleon vanquished; he took poison, enough to have killed a regiment, because, like Jesus Christ before his Passion, he thought himself abandoned of God and his talisman. But the poison did not hurt him.

"See again! he found he was immortal.

"Sure of himself, knowing he must ever be THE EMPEROR, he went for a while to an island to study out the nature of these others, who, you may be sure, committed follies without end. Whilst he bided his time down there, the Chinese, and the wild men on the coast of Africa, and the Barbary States, and others who are not at all accommodating, knew so well he was more than man that they respected his tent, saying to touch it would be to offend God. Thus, d'ye see, when these others turned him from the doors of his own France, he still reigned over the whole world. Before long he embarked in the same little cockleshell of a boat he had had in Egypt, sailed round the beard of the English, set foot in France, and France acclaimed him. The sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire; all France cried out with one voice, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!' In this region, here, the enthusiasm for that wonder of the ages was, I may say, solid. Dauphiné behaved well; and I am particularly pleased to know that her people wept when they saw, once more, the gray overcoat. March first it was, when Napoleon landed with two hundred men to conquer that kingdom of France and of Navarre, which on the twentieth of the same month was again the French Empire. On that day our MAN was in Paris; he had made a clean sweep, recovered his dear France, and gathered his veterans together by saying no more than three words, 'I am here.'

"'Twas the greatest miracle God had yet done! Before _him_, did ever man recover an empire by showing his hat? And these others, who thought they had subdued France! Not they! At sight of the eagles, a national army sprang up, and we marched to Waterloo. There, the Guard died at one blow. Napoleon, in despair, threw himself three times before the cannon of the enemy without obtaining death. We saw that. The battle was lost. That night the Emperor called his old soldiers to him; on the field soaked with our blood he burned his banner and his eagles,--his poor eagles, ever victorious, who cried 'Forward' in the battles, and had flown the length and breadth of Europe, _they_ were saved the infamy of belonging to the enemy: all the treasures of England couldn't get her a tail-feather of them. No more eagles!--the rest is well known. The Red Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles--ah, 'tis pitiable! They seized Napoleon by treachery; the English nailed him on a desert island in mid-ocean on a rock raised ten thousand feet above the earth; and there he is, and will be, till the Red Man gives him back his power for the happiness of France. These others say he's dead. Ha, dead! 'Tis easy to see they don't know Him. They tell that fib to catch the people, and feel safe in their hovel of a government. Listen! the truth at the bottom of it all is that his friends have left him alone on the desert island to fulfil a prophecy, for I forgot to say that his name, Napoleon, means 'lion of the desert.' Now this that I tell you is true as the Gospel. All other tales that you hear about the Emperor are follies without common-sense; because, d'ye see, God never gave to child of woman born the right to stamp his name in red as _he_ did, on the earth, which forever shall remember him! Long live Napoleon, the father of his people and of the soldier!"

"Long live General Eblé!" cried the pontonier.

"How happened it you were not killed in the ravine at Moskova?" asked a peasant woman.

"How do I know? We went in a regiment, we came out a hundred foot-soldiers; none but the lines were capable of taking that redoubt: the infantry, d'ye see, that's the real army."

"And the cavalry! what of that?" cried Genastas, letting himself roll from the top of the hay, and appearing to us with a suddenness which made the bravest utter a cry of terror. "Eh! my old veteran, you forget the red lancers of Poniatowski, the cuirassiers, the dragoons! they that shook the earth when Napoleon, impatient that the victory was delayed, said to Murat, 'Sire, cut them in two.' Ha, we were off! first at a trot, then at a gallop, 'one, two,' and the enemy's line was cut in halves like an apple with a knife. A charge of cavalry, my old hero! why, 'tis a column of cannon balls!"

"How about the pontoniers?" cried Gondrin.

"My children," said Genastas, becoming suddenly quite ashamed of his sortie when he saw himself in the midst of a silent and bewildered group, "there are no spies here,--see, take this and drink to the Little Corporal."

"LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!" cried all the people present, with one voice.

"Hush, my children!" said the officer, struggling to control his emotion. "Hush! _he is dead_. He died saying, 'Glory, France, and battle.' My friends, he had to die, he! but his memory--never!"

Goguelat made a gesture of disbelief; then he said in a low voice to those nearest, "The officer is still in the service, and he's told to tell the people the Emperor is dead. We mustn't be angry with him, because, d'ye see, a soldier has to obey orders."

As Genestas left the barn he heard the Fosseuse say, "That officer is a friend of the Emperor and of Monsieur Benassis." On that, all the people rushed to the door to get another sight of him, and by the light of the moon they saw the doctor take his arm.

"I committed a great folly," said Genestas. "Let us get home quickly. Those eagles--the cannon--the campaigns! I no longer knew where I was."

"What do you think of my Goguelat?" asked Benassis.

"Monsieur, so long as such tales are told, France will carry in her entrails the fourteen armies of the Republic, and may at any time renew the conversation of cannon with all Europe. That's my opinion."

GEORGE BANCROFT

(1800-1891)

BY AUSTIN SCOTT

The life of George Bancroft was nearly conterminous with the nineteenth century. He was born at Worcester, Mass., October 3d, 1800, and died at Washington, D.C., January 17th, 1891. But it was not merely the stretch of his years that identified him with this century. In some respects he represented his time as no other of its men. He came into touch with many widely differing elements which made up its life and character. He spent most of his life in cities, but never lost the sense for country sights and sounds which central Massachusetts gave him in Worcester, his birthplace, and in Northampton, where he taught school. The home into which he was born offered him from his infancy a rich possession. His father was a Unitarian clergyman who wrote a 'Life of Washington' that was received with favor; thus things concerning God and country were his patrimony. Not without significance was a word of his mother which he recalled in his latest years, "My son, I do not wish you to become a rich man, but I would have you be an affluent man: _ad fluo_, always a little more coming in than going out."

To the advantages of his boyhood home and of Harvard College, to which he went as a lad of thirteen, the eager young student added the opportunity, then uncommon, of a systematic course of study in German, and won the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Göttingen in 1820. He had in a marked degree the characteristics of his countrymen, versatility and adaptability. Giving up an early purpose of fitting himself for the pulpit, he taught in Harvard, and helped to found a school of an advanced type at Northampton. Meantime he published a volume of verse, and found out that the passionate love of poetry which lasted through his life was not creative. At Northampton he published in 1828 a translation in two volumes of Heeren's 'History of the Political System of Europe,' and also edited two editions of a Latin Reader; but the duties of a schoolmaster's life were early thrown aside, and he could not be persuaded to resume them later when the headship of an important educational institution was offered to him. Together with the one great pursuit of his life, to which he remained true for sixty years, he delighted in the activities of a politician, the duties of a statesman, and the occupations of a man of affairs and of the world.

Bancroft received a large but insufficient vote as the Democratic candidate for the Governorship of Massachusetts, and for a time he held the office of Collector of the port of Boston. As Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinet of Polk, he rendered to his country two distinct services of great value: he founded the Naval School at Annapolis, and by his prompt orders to the American commander in the Pacific waters he secured the acquisition of California for the United States. The special abilities he displayed in the Cabinet were such, so Polk thought, as to lead to his appointment as Minister to England in 1846. He was a diplomat of no mean order. President Johnson appointed him Minister to Germany in 1867, and Grant retained him at that post until 1874, as long as Bancroft desired it. During his stay there he concluded just naturalization treaties with Germany, and in a masterly way won from the Emperor, William I., as arbitrator, judgment in favor of the United States's claim over that of Great Britain in the Northwestern boundary dispute.

Always holding fast his one cherished object,--that of worthily writing the history of the United States,--Bancroft did not deny himself the pleasure of roaming in other fields. He wrote frequently on current topics, on literary, historical, and political subjects. His eulogies of Jackson and of Lincoln, pronounced before Congress, entitle him to the rank of an orator. He was very fond of studies in metaphysics, and Trendelenburg, the eminent German philosopher, said of him, "Bancroft knows Kant through and through."

His home--whether in Boston, or in New York where he spent the middle portion of his life, or in Washington his abode for the last sixteen years, or during his residence abroad--was the scene of the occupations and delights which the highest culture craves. He was gladly welcomed to the inner circle of the finest minds of Germany, and the tribute of the German men of learning was unfeigned and universal when he quitted the country in 1874. Many of the best men of England and of France were among his warm friends. At his table were gathered from time to time some of the world's greatest thinkers,--men of science, soldiers, statesmen and men of affairs. Fond as he was of social joys, it was his daily pleasure to mount his horse and alone, or with a single companion, to ride where nature in her shy or in her exuberant mood inspired. One day, after he was eighty years old, he rode on his young, blooded Kentucky horse along the Virginia bank of the Potomac for more than thirty-six miles. He could be seen every day among the perfect roses of his garden at "Roseclyffe," his Newport summer-home, often full of thought, at other times in wellnigh boisterous glee, always giving unstinted care and expense to the queen of flowers. The books in which he kept the record of the rose garden were almost as elaborate as those in which were entered the facts and fancies out of which his History grew. His home life was charming. By a careful use of opportunities and of his means he became an "affluent" man. He was twice married: both times a new source of refined domestic happiness long blessed his home, and new means for enlarged comfort and hospitality were added to his own. Two sons, children of his first wife, survived him.

Some of Bancroft's characteristics were not unlike those of Jefferson. A constant tendency to idealize called up in him at times a feeling verging on impatience with the facts or the men that stood in the way of a theory or the accomplishment of a personal desire. He had a keen perception of an underlying or a final truth and professed warm love for it, whether in the large range of history or in the nexus of current politics: any one taking a different point of view at times was led to think that his facts, as he stated them, lay crosswise, and might therefore find the perspective out of drawing, but could not rightly impugn his good faith.

Although a genuine lover of his race and a believer in Democracy, he was not always ready to put implicit trust in the individual as being capable of exercising a wise judgment and the power of true self-direction. For man he avowed a perfect respect; among men his bearing showed now and then a trace of condescension. In controversies over disputed points of history--and he had many such--he meant to be fair and to anticipate the final verdict of truth, but overwhelming evidence was necessary to convince him that his judgment, formed after painstaking research, could be wrong. His ample love of justice, however, is proved by his passionate appreciation of the character of Washington, by his unswerving devotion to the conception of our national unity, both in its historical development and at the moment when it was imperiled by civil war, and by his hatred of slavery and of false financial policies. He took pleasure in giving generously, but always judiciously and without ostentation. On one occasion he, with a few of his friends, paid off the debt from the house of an eminent scholar; on another, he helped to rebuild for a great thinker the home which had been burned. At Harvard, more than fifty years after his graduation, he founded a traveling scholarship and named it in honor of the president of his college days.

As to the manner of his work, Bancroft laid large plans and gave to the details of their execution unwearied zeal. The scope of the 'History of the United States' as he planned it was admirable. In carrying it out he was persistent in acquiring materials, sparing no pains in his research at home and abroad, and no cost in securing original papers or exact copies and transcripts from the archives of England and France, Spain and Holland and Germany, from public libraries and from individuals; he fished in all waters and drew fish of all sorts into his net. He took great pains, and the secretaries whom he employed to aid him in his work were instructed likewise to take great pains, not only to enter facts in the reference books in their chronological order, but to make all possible cross-references to related facts. The books of his library, which was large and rich in treasures, he used as tools, and many of them were filled with cross references. In the fly-leaves of the books he read he made note with a word and the cited page of what the printed pages contained of interest to him or of value in his work.

His mind was one of quick perceptions within a wide range, and always alert to grasp an idea in its manifold relations. It is remarkable, therefore, that he was very laborious in his method of work. He often struggled long with a thought for intellectual mastery. In giving it expression, his habit was to dictate rapidly and with enthusiasm and at great length, but he usually selected the final form after repeated efforts. His first draft of a chapter was revised again and again and condensed. One of his early volumes in its first manuscript form was eight times as long as when finally published. He had another striking habit, that of writing by topics rather than in strict chronological order, so that a chapter which was to find its place late in the volume was often completed before one which was to precede it. Partly by nature and perhaps partly by this practice, he had the power to carry on simultaneously several trains of thought. When preparing one of his public orations, it was remarked by one of his household that after an evening spent over a trifling game of bezique, the next morning found him well advanced beyond the point where the work had been seemingly laid down. He had the faculty of buoying a thought, knowing just where to take it up after an interruption and deftly splicing it in continuous line, sometimes after a long interval. When about to begin the preparation of the argument which was to sustain triumphantly the claim of the United States in the boundary question, he wrote from Berlin for copies of documents filed in the office of the Navy Department, which he remembered were there five-and-twenty years before.

The 'History of the United States from the Discovery of America to the Inauguration of Washington' is treated by Bancroft in three parts. The first, Colonial History from 1492 to 1748, occupies more than one fourth of his pages. The second part, the American Revolution, 1748 to 1782, claims more than one half of the entire work, and is divided into four epochs:--the first, 1748-1763, is entitled 'The Overthrow of the European Colonial System'; the second, 1763-1774, 'How Great Britain Estranged America'; the third, 1774-1776, 'America Declares Itself Independent'; the fourth, 1776-1782, 'The Independence of America is Acknowledged.' The last part, 'The History of the Formation of the Constitution,' 1782-1789, though published as a separate work, is essentially a continuation of the History proper, of which it forms in bulk rather more than one tenth.

If his services as a historian are to be judged by any one portion of his work rather than by another, the history of the formation of the Constitution affords the best test. In that the preceding work comes to fruition; the time of its writing, after the Civil War and the consequent settling of the one vexing question by the abolition of sectionalism, and when he was in the fullness of the experience of his own ripe years, was most opportune. Bancroft was equal to his opportunity. He does not teach us that the Constitution is the result of superhuman wisdom, nor on the other hand does he admit, as John Adams asserted, that however excellent, the Constitution was wrung "from the grinding necessity of a reluctant people." He does not fail to point out the critical nature of the four years prior to the meeting of the Federal Convention; but he discerns that whatever occasions, whether transitory or for the time of "steady and commanding influence," may help or hinder the formation of the now perfect union, its true cause was "an indwelling necessity" in the people to "form above the States a common constitution for the whole."

Recognizing the fact that the primary cause for the true union was remote in origin and deep and persistent, Bancroft gives a retrospect of the steps toward union from the founding of the colonies to the close of the war for independence. Thenceforward, suggestions as to method or form of amending the Articles of Confederation, whether made by individuals, or State Legislatures, or by Congress, were in his view helps indeed to promote the movement; but they were first of all so many proofs that despite all the contrary wayward surface indications, the strong current was flowing independently toward the just and perfect union. Having acknowledged this fundamental fact of the critical years between Yorktown and the Constitution, the historian is free to give just and discriminating praise to all who shared at that time in redeeming the political hope of mankind, to give due but not exclusive honor to Washington and Thomas Paine, to Madison and Hamilton and their co-worthies.

The many attempts, isolated or systematic, during the period from 1781-1786, to reform the Articles of Confederation, were happily futile; but they were essential in the training of the people in the consciousness of the nature of the work for which they are responsible. The balances must come slowly to a poise. Not merely union strong and for a time effective, was needed, but union of a certain and unprecedented sort: one in which the true pledge of permanency for a continental republic was to be found in the federative principle, by which the highest activities of nation and of State were conditioned each by the welfare of the other. The people rightly felt, too, that a Congress of one house would be inadequate and dangerous. They waited in the midst of risks for the proper hour, and then, not reluctantly but resolutely, adopted the Constitution as a promising experiment in government.

Bancroft's treatment of the evolution of the second great organic act of this time--the Northwestern ordinance--is no less just and true to the facts. For two generations men had snatched at the laurels due to the creator of that matchless piece of legislation; to award them now to Jefferson, now to Nathan Dane, now to Rufus King, now to Manasseh Cutler. Bancroft calmly and clearly shows how the great law grew with the kindly aid and watchful care of these men and of others.

The deliberations of the Federal Constitution are adequately recorded; and he gives fair relative recognition to the work and words of individuals, and the actions of State delegations in making the great adjustments between nation and States, between large and small and slave and free States. From his account we infer that the New Jersey plan was intended by its authors only for temporary use in securing equality for the States in one essential part of the government, while the men from Connecticut receive credit for the compromise which reconciled nationality with true State rights. Further to be noticed are the results of the exhaustive study which Bancroft gave to the matter of paper money, and to the meaning of the clause prohibiting the States from impairing the obligation of contracts. He devotes nearly one hundred pages to 'The People of the States in Judgment on the Constitution,' and rightly; for it is the final act of the separate States, and by it their individual wills are merged in the will of the people, which is one, though still politically distributed and active within State lines. His summary of the main principles of the Constitution is excellent; and he concludes with a worthy sketch of the organization of the first Congress under the Constitution, and of the inauguration of Washington as President.

In this last portion of the 'History,' while all of his merits as a historian are not conspicuous, neither are some of his chief defects. Here the tendency to philosophize, to marshal stately sentences, and to be discursive, is not so marked.

The first volume of Bancroft's 'History of the United States' was published in 1834, when the democratic spirit was finding its first full expression under Jackson, and when John Marshall was finishing his mighty task of revealing to the people of the United States the strength that lay in their organic law. As he put forth volume after volume at irregular intervals for fifty years, he in a measure continued this work of bringing to the exultant consciousness of the people the value of their possession of a continent of liberty and the realization of their responsibility. In the course of another generation, portions of this 'History of the United States' may begin to grow antiquated, though the most brilliant of contemporary journalists quite recently placed it among the ten books indispensable to every American; but time cannot take away Bancroft's good part in producing influences, which, however they may vary in form and force, will last throughout the nation's life.

THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRGINIA

From 'History of the United States'

The period of success in planting Virginia had arrived; yet not till changes in European politics and society had molded the forms of colonization. The Reformation had broken the harmony of religious opinion; and differences in the Church began to constitute the basis of political parties. After the East Indies had been reached by doubling the southern promontory of Africa, the great commerce of the world was carried upon the ocean. The art of printing had been perfected and diffused; and the press spread intelligence and multiplied the facilities of instruction. The feudal institutions, which had been reared in the middle ages, were already undermined by the current of time and events, and, swaying from their base, threatened to fall. Productive industry had built up the fortunes and extended the influence of the active classes; while habits of indolence and expense had impaired the estates and diminished the power of the nobility. These changes produced corresponding results in the institutions which were to rise in America.

A revolution had equally occurred in the purposes for which voyages were undertaken. The hope of Columbus, as he sailed to the west, had been the discovery of a new passage to the East Indies. The passion for gold next became the prevailing motive. Then the islands and countries near the equator were made the tropical gardens of the Europeans. At last, the higher design was matured: to plant permanent Christian colonies; to establish for the oppressed and the enterprising places of refuge and abode; to found states in a temperate clime, with all the elements of independent existence.

In the imperfect condition of industry, a redundant population had existed in England even before the peace with Spain, which threw out of employment the gallant men who had served under Elizabeth by sea and land, and left them no option but to engage as mercenaries in the quarrels of strangers, or incur the hazards of "seeking a New World." The minds of many persons of intelligence and rank were directed to Virginia. The brave and ingenious Gosnold, who had himself witnessed the fertility of the western soil, long solicited the concurrence of his friends for the establishment of a colony, and at last prevailed with Edward Maria Wingfield, a merchant of the west of England, Robert Hunt, a clergyman of fortitude and modest worth, and John Smith, an adventurer of rarest qualities, to risk their lives and hopes of fortune in an expedition. For more than a year this little company revolved the project of a plantation. At the same time Sir Ferdinando Gorges was gathering information of the native Americans, whom he had received from Waymouth, and whose descriptions of the country, joined to the favorable views which he had already imbibed, filled him with the strongest desire of becoming a proprietary of domains beyond the Atlantic. Gorges was a man of wealth, rank and influence; he readily persuaded Sir John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of England, to share his intentions. Nor had the assigns of Raleigh become indifferent to "western planting"; which the most distinguished of them all, "industrious Hakluyt," the historian of maritime enterprise, still promoted by his personal exertions, his weight of character, and his invincible zeal. Possessed of whatever information could be derived from foreign sources and a correspondence with eminent navigators of his times, and anxiously watching the progress of Englishmen in the West, his extensive knowledge made him a counselor in every colonial enterprise.

The King of England, too timid to be active, yet too vain to be indifferent, favored the design of enlarging his dominions. He had attempted in Scotland the introduction of the arts of life among the Highlanders and the Western Isles, by the establishment of colonies; and the Scottish plantations which he founded in the northern counties of Ireland contributed to the affluence and the security of that island. When, therefore, a company of men of business and men of rank, formed by the experience of Gosnold, the enthusiasm of Smith, the perseverance of Hakluyt, the influence of Popham and Gorges, applied to James I. for leave "to deduce a colony into Virginia," the monarch, on the tenth of April, 1606, readily set his seal to an ample patent.

The first colonial charter, under which the English were planted in America, deserves careful consideration.

Appleton and Company, New York.

MEN AND GOVERNMENT IN EARLY MASSACHUSETTS

From 'History of the United States'

These better auspices, and the invitations of Winthrop, won new emigrants from Europe. During the long summer voyage of the two hundred passengers who freighted the Griffin, three sermons a day beguiled their weariness. Among them was Haynes, a man of very large estate, and larger affections; of a "heavenly" mind, and a spotless life; of rare sagacity, and accurate but unassuming judgment; by nature tolerant, ever a friend to freedom, ever conciliating peace; an able legislator; dear to the people by his benevolent virtues and his disinterested conduct. Then also came the most revered spiritual teachers of two commonwealths: the acute and subtle Cotton, the son of a Puritan lawyer; eminent in Cambridge as a scholar; quick in the nice perception of distinctions, and pliant in dialects; in manner persuasive rather than commanding; skilled in the fathers and the schoolmen, but finding all their wisdom compactly stored in Calvin; deeply devout by nature as well as habit from childhood; hating heresy and still precipitately eager to prevent evil actions by suppressing ill opinions, yet verging toward a progress in truth and in religious freedom; an avowed enemy to democracy, which he feared as the blind despotism of animal instincts in the multitude, yet opposing hereditary power in all its forms; desiring a government of moral opinion, according to the laws of universal equity, and claiming "the ultimate resolution for the whole body of the people:" and Hooker, of vast endowments, a strong will and an energetic mind; ingenuous in his temper, and open in his professions; trained to benevolence by the discipline of affliction; versed in tolerance by his refuge in Holland; choleric, yet gentle in his affections; firm in his faith, yet readily yielding to the power of reason; the peer of the reformers, without their harshness; the devoted apostle to the humble and the poor, severe toward the proud, mild in his soothings of a wounded spirit, glowing with the raptures of devotion, and kindling with the messages of redeeming love; his eye, voice, gesture, and whole frame animate with the living vigor of heart-felt religion; public-spirited and lavishly charitable; and, "though persecutions and banishments had awaited him as one wave follows another," ever serenely blessed with "a glorious peace of soul"; fixed in his trust in Providence, and in his adhesion to that cause of advancing civilization, which he cherished always, even while it remained to him a mystery. This was he whom, for his abilities and services, his contemporaries placed "in the first rank" of men; praising him as "the one rich pearl, with which Europe more than repaid America for the treasures from her coast." The people to whom Hooker ministered had preceded him; as he landed they crowded about him with their welcome. "Now I live," exclaimed he, as with open arms he embraced them, "now I live if ye stand fast in the Lord."

Thus recruited, the little band in Massachusetts grew more jealous of its liberties. "The prophets in exile see the true forms of the house." By a common impulse, the freemen of the towns chose deputies to consider in advance the duties of the general court. The charter plainly gave legislative power to the whole body of the freemen; if it allowed representatives, thought Winthrop, it was only by inference; and, as the whole people could not always assemble, the chief power, it was argued, lay necessarily with the assistants.

Far different was the reasoning of the people. To check the democratic tendency, Cotton, on the election day, preached to the assembled freemen against rotation in office. The right of an honest magistrate to his place was like that of a proprietor to his freehold. But the electors, now between three and four hundred in number, were bent on exercising "their absolute power," and, reversing the decision of the pulpit, chose a new governor and deputy. The mode of taking the votes was at the same time reformed; and, instead of the erection of hands, the ballot-box was introduced. Thus "the people established a reformation of such things as they judged to be amiss in the government."

It was further decreed that the whole body of the freemen should be convened only for the election of the magistrates: to these, with deputies to be chosen by the several towns, the powers of legislation and appointment were henceforward intrusted. The trading corporation was unconsciously become a representative democracy.

The law against arbitrary taxation followed. None but the immediate representatives of the people might dispose of lands or raise money. Thus early did Massachusetts echo the voice of Virginia, like deep calling unto deep. The state was filled with the hum of village politicians; "the freemen of every town in the Bay were busy in inquiring into their liberties and privileges." With the exception of the principle of universal suffrage, now so happily established, the representative democracy was as perfect two centuries ago as it is to-day. Even the magistrates, who acted as judges, held their office by the annual popular choice. "Elections cannot be safe there long," said the lawyer Lechford. The same prediction has been made these two hundred years. The public mind, ever in perpetual agitation, is still easily shaken, even by slight and transient impulses; but, after all vibrations, it follows the laws of the moral world, and safely recovers its balance.

Appleton and Company, New York.

KING PHILIP'S WAR

From 'History of the United States'

Thus was Philip hurried into "his rebellion"; and he is reported to have wept as he heard that a white man's blood had been shed. He had kept his men about him in arms, and had welcomed every stranger; and yet, against his judgment and his will, he was involved in war. For what prospect had he of success? The English were united; the Indians had no alliance: the English made a common cause; half the Indians were allies of the English, or were quiet spectators of the fight: the English had guns enough; but few of the Indians were well armed, and they could get no new supplies: the English had towns for their shelter and safe retreat; the miserable wigwams of the natives were defenseless: the English had sure supplies of food; the Indians might easily lose their precarious stores. Frenzy prompted their rising. They rose without hope, and they fought without mercy. For them as a nation, there was no to-morrow.

The minds of the English were appalled by the horrors of the impending conflict, and superstition indulged in its wild inventions. At the time of the eclipse of the moon, you might have seen the figure of an Indian scalp imprinted on the centre of its disk. The perfect form of an Indian bow appeared in the sky. The sighing of the wind was like the whistling of bullets. Some heard invisible troops of horses gallop through the air, while others found the prophecy of calamities in the howling of the wolves.

At the very beginning of danger the colonists exerted their wonted energy. Volunteers from Massachusetts joined the troops from Plymouth; and, within a week from the commencement of hostilities, the insulated Pokanokets were driven from Mount Hope, and in less than a month Philip was a fugitive among the Nipmucks, the interior tribes of Massachusetts. The little army of the colonists then entered the territory of the Narragansetts, and from the reluctant tribe extorted a treaty of neutrality, with a promise to deliver up every hostile Indian. Victory seemed promptly assured. But it was only the commencement of horrors. Canonchet, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts, was the son of Miantonomoh; and could he forget his father's wrongs? Desolation extended along the whole frontier. Banished from his patrimony, where the pilgrims found a friend, and from his cabin, which had sheltered the exiles, Philip, with his warriors, spread through the country, awakening their brethren to a warfare of extermination.

The war, on the part of the Indians, was one of ambuscades and surprises. They never once met the English in open field; but always, even if eightfold in numbers, fled timorously before infantry. They were secret as beasts of prey, skillful marksmen, and in part provided with firearms, fleet of foot, conversant with all the paths of the forest, patient of fatigue, and mad with a passion for rapine, vengeance, and destruction, retreating into swamps for their fastnesses, or hiding in the greenwood thickets, where the leaves muffled the eyes of the pursuer. By the rapidity of their descent, they seemed omnipresent among the scattered villages, which they ravished like a passing storm; and for a full year they kept all New England in a state of terror and excitement. The exploring party was waylaid and cut off, and the mangled carcasses and disjointed limbs of the dead were hung upon the trees. The laborer in the field, the reapers as they sallied forth to the harvest, men as they went to mill, the shepherd's boy among the sheep, were shot down by skulking foes, whose approach was invisible. Who can tell the heavy hours of woman? The mother, if left alone in the house, feared the tomahawk for herself and children; on the sudden attack, the husband would fly with one child, the wife with another, and, perhaps, one only escape; the village cavalcade, making its way to meeting on Sunday in files on horseback, the farmer holding the bridle in one hand and a child in the other, his wife seated on a pillion behind him, it may be with a child in her lap, as was the fashion in those days, could not proceed safely; but, at the moment when least expected, bullets would whizz among them, sent from an unseen enemy by the wayside. The forest that protected the ambush of the Indians secured their retreat.

D. Appleton and Company, New York.

THE NEW NETHERLAND

From 'History of the United States'

During the absence of Stuyvesant from Manhattan, the warriors of the neighboring Algonkin tribes, never reposing confidence in the Dutch, made a desperate assault on the colony. In sixty-four canoes they appeared before the town, and ravaged the adjacent country. The return of the expedition restored confidence. The captives were ransomed, and industry repaired its losses. The Dutch seemed to have firmly established their power, and promised themselves happier years. New Netherland consoled them for the loss of Brazil. They exulted in the possession of an admirable territory, that needed no embankments against the ocean. They were proud of its vast extent,--from New England to Maryland, from the sea to the Great River of Canada, and the remote Northwestern wilderness. They sounded with exultation the channel of the deep stream, which was no longer shared with the Swedes; they counted with delight its many lovely runs of water, on which the beavers built their villages; and the great travelers who had visited every continent, as they ascended the Delaware, declared it one of the noblest rivers in the world, with banks more inviting than the lands on the Amazon.

Meantime, the country near the Hudson gained by increasing emigration. Manhattan was already the chosen abode of merchants; and the policy of the government invited them by its good-will. If Stuyvesant sometimes displayed the rash despotism of a soldier, he was sure to be reproved by his employers. Did he change the rate of duties arbitrarily, the directors, sensitive to commercial honor, charged him "to keep every contract inviolate." Did he tamper with the currency by raising the nominal value of foreign coin, the measure was rebuked as dishonest. Did he attempt to fix the price of labor by arbitrary rules, this also was condemned as unwise and impracticable. Did he interfere with the merchants by inspecting their accounts, the deed was censured as without precedent "in Christendom"; and he was ordered to "treat the merchants with kindness, lest they return, and the country be depopulated." Did his zeal for Calvinism lead him to persecute Lutherans, he was chid for his bigotry. Did his hatred of "the abominable sect of Quakers" imprison and afterward exile the blameless Bowne, "let every peaceful citizen," wrote the directors, "enjoy freedom of conscience; this maxim has made our city the asylum for fugitives from every land; tread in its steps, and you shall be blessed."

Private worship was therefore allowed to every religion. Opinion, if not yet enfranchised, was already tolerated. The people of Palestine, from the destruction of their temple an outcast and a wandering race, were allured by the traffic and the condition of the New World; and not the Saxon and Celtic races only, the children of the bondmen that broke from slavery in Egypt, the posterity of those who had wandered in Arabia, and worshiped near Calvary, found a home, liberty, and a burial place on the island of Manhattan.

The emigrants from Holland were themselves of the most various lineage; for Holland had long been the gathering-place of the unfortunate. Could we trace the descent of the emigrants from the Low Countries to New Netherland, we should be carried not only to the banks of the Rhine and the borders of the German Sea, but to the Protestants who escaped from France after the massacre of Bartholomew's Eve, and to those earlier inquirers who were swayed by the voice of Huss in the heart of Bohemia. New York was always a city of the world. Its settlers were relics of the first fruits of the Reformation, chosen from the Belgic provinces and England, from France and Bohemia, from Germany and Switzerland, from Piedmont and the Italian Alps.

The religious sects, which, in the middle ages, had been fostered by the municipal liberties of the south of France, were the harbingers of modern freedom, and had therefore been sacrificed to the inexorable feudalism of the north. After a bloody conflict, the plebeian reformers, crushed by the merciless leaders of the military aristocracy, escaped to the highlands that divide France and Italy. Preserving the discipline of a benevolent, ascetic morality, with the simplicity of a spiritual worship,

"When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,"

it was found, on the progress of the Reformation, that they had by three centuries anticipated Luther and Calvin. The hurricane of persecution, which was to have swept Protestantism from the earth, did not spare their seclusion; mothers with infants were rolled down the rocks, and the bones of martyrs scattered on the Alpine mountains. The city of Amsterdam offered the fugitive Waldenses a free passage to America, and a welcome was prepared in New Netherland for the few who were willing to emigrate.

The persecuted of every creed and every clime were invited to the colony. When the Protestant churches in Rochelle were razed, the Calvinists of that city were gladly admitted; and the French Protestants came in such numbers that the public documents were sometimes issued in French as well as in Dutch and English. Troops of orphans were shipped for the milder destinies of the New World; a free passage was offered to mechanics; for "population was known to be the bulwark of every State." The government of New Netherland had formed just ideas of the fit materials for building a commonwealth; they desired "farmers and laborers, foreigners and exiles, men inured to toil and penury." The colony increased; children swarmed in every village; the advent of the year and the month of May were welcomed with noisy frolics; new modes of activity were devised; lumber was shipped to France; the whale pursued off the coast; the vine, the mulberry, planted; flocks of sheep as well as cattle were multiplied; and tile, so long imported from Holland, began to be manufactured near Fort Orange. New Amsterdam could, in a few years, boast of stately buildings, and almost vied with Boston. "This happily situated province," said its inhabitants, "may become the granary of our fatherland; should our Netherlands be wasted by grievous wars, it will offer our countrymen a safe retreat; by God's blessing, we shall in a few years become a mighty people."

Thus did various nations of the Caucasian race assist in colonizing our central states.

D. Appleton and Company, New York.

FRANKLIN

From 'History of the United States'

Franklin looked quietly and deeply into the secrets of nature. His clear understanding was never perverted by passion, nor corrupted by the pride of theory. The son of a rigid Calvinist, the grandson of a tolerant Quaker, he had from boyhood been familiar not only with theological subtilities, but with a catholic respect for freedom of mind. Skeptical of tradition as the basis of faith, he respected reason rather than authority; and, after a momentary lapse into fatalism, he gained with increasing years an increasing trust in the overruling providence of God. Adhering to none of all the religions in the colonies, he yet devoutly, though without form, adhered to religion. But though famous as a disputant, and having a natural aptitude for metaphysics, he obeyed the tendency of his age, and sought by observation to win an insight into the mysteries of being. The best observers praise his method most. He so sincerely loved truth, that in his pursuit of her she met him half-way. Without prejudice and without bias, he discerned intuitively the identity of the laws of nature with those of which humanity is conscious; so that his mind was like a mirror, in which the universe, as it reflected itself, revealed her laws. His morality, repudiating ascetic severities and the system which enjoins them, was indulgent to appetites of which he abhorred the sway; but his affections were of a calm intensity: in all his career, the love of man held the mastery over personal interest. He had not the imagination which inspires the bard or kindles the orator; but an exquisite propriety, parsimonious of ornament, gave ease, correctness, and graceful simplicity even to his most careless writings. In life, also, his tastes were delicate. Indifferent to the pleasures of the table, he relished the delights of music and harmony, of which he enlarged the instruments. His blandness of temper, his modesty, the benignity of his manners, made him the favorite of intelligent society; and, with healthy cheerfulness, he derived pleasure from books, from philosophy, from conversation,--now administering consolation to the sorrower, now indulging in light-hearted gayety. In his intercourse, the universality of his perceptions bore, perhaps, the character of humor; but, while he clearly discerned the contrast between the grandeur of the universe and the feebleness of man, a serene benevolence saved him from contempt of his race or disgust at its toils. To superficial observers, he might have seemed as an alien from speculative truth, limiting himself to the world of the senses; and yet, in study, and among men, his mind always sought to discover and apply the general principles by which nature and affairs are controlled,--now deducing from the theory of caloric improvements in fireplaces and lanterns, and now advancing human freedom by firm inductions from the inalienable rights of man. Never professing enthusiasm, never making a parade of sentiment, his practical wisdom was sometimes mistaken for the offspring of selfish prudence; yet his hope was steadfast, like that hope which rests on the Rock of Ages, and his conduct was as unerring as though the light that led him was a light from heaven. He never anticipated action by theories of self-sacrificing virtue; and yet, in the moments of intense activity, he from the abodes of ideal truth brought down and applied to the affairs of life the principles of goodness, as unostentatiously as became the man who with a kite and hempen string drew lightning from the skies. He separated himself so little from his age that he has been called the representative of materialism; and yet, when he thought on religion, his mind passed beyond reliance on sects to faith in God; when he wrote on politics, he founded freedom on principles that know no change; when he turned an observing eye on nature, he passed from the effect to the cause, from individual appearances to universal laws; when he reflected on history, his philosophic mind found gladness and repose in the clear anticipation of the progress of humanity.

End of Volume III.