Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

One of the guests told us with great laughter, that his hairdresser, as he powdered him, said, "You see, sir, though I am only a miserable fellow, I yet have not more religion than others." We concluded that the revolution would soon be completed, and that superstition and fanaticism must absolutely yield to philosophy; we calculated the probability of the time, and who of this company may have the happiness to live to see the reign of reason. The older ones were sorry that they could not flatter themselves to see this; those younger rejoiced with the hope that they shall live to the time, and we particularly congratulated the Academy for having introduced the great work, and that they have been the chief source, the centre, the mainspring of freedom of thought.

One of the guests had taken no part in this gay conversation, and had even scattered a few jokes in regard to our beautiful enthusiasm. It was M. Cazotte, an agreeable and original gentleman; but who, unfortunately, was prepossessed by the idle imaginations of those who believe in a higher inspiration. He took the word, and said, in the most serious manner: "Sirs, rejoice; you all will be witnesses of that great and sublime revolution for which you wish so much. You are aware that I make some pretensions to prophecy. I repeat it to you, you will all see it!"

"For this a man needs no prophetic gifts," was answered him.

"This is true," he replied, "but probably a little more for what I have to tell you yet. Do you know what will arise from this revolution (where, namely, reason will triumph in opposition to religion)? what her immediate consequence, her undeniable and acknowledged effects will be?"

"Let us see," said Condorcet, with his affected look of simplicity, "a philosopher is not sorry to meet a prophet."

"You, M. Condorcet," continued M. Cazotte, "you will be stretched out upon the floor of a dungeon, there to yield up your ghost. You will die of poison, which you will swallow to save yourself from the hangman--of the poison which the good luck of the times, which then will be, will have compelled you always to have carried with you."

This at first excited great astonishment, but we soon remembered that the good Cazotte occasionally dreamed waking, and we all laughed heartily.

"M. Cazotte," said one of the guests, "the tale you relate to us here is not as merry as your 'Devil in Love' (a romance which Cazotte had written). What kind of a devil has given you the dungeon, the poison, and the hangman?--what has this in common with philosophy, and with the reign of Reason?"

"This is just what I told you," replied Cazotte. "In the name of philosophy, in the name of humanity, of liberty, of reason, it shall be that you shall take such an end; and then reason will still reign, for she will have temples; yes, at the same time there will be no temples in all France, but temples of Reason."

"Truly," said Chamfort, with a scornful smile, "you will not be one of the priests in these temples?"

"This I hope," replied Cazotte, "but you, M. de Chamfort, who will be one of them--and very worthy you are to be one--you will open your veins with twenty-two incisions of the razor--and yet you will only die a few months afterwards."

They look at each other, and continue to laugh. Cazotte continues:

"You, M. Vicq d'Azyr, you will not open your veins yourself; but afterwards you will get them opened six times in one day, and during the night you will die."

"You, M. Nicolli, you will die on the scaffold."

"You, M. Bailly, on the scaffold!"

"You, M. Malesherbes--you, on the scaffold!"

"God be thanked," exclaimed M. Roucher, "it appears M. Cazotte has it to do only with the Academy; he has just started a terrible butchery among them; I--thanks to heaven--"

Cazotte interrupted him: "you?--you, too, will die on the scaffold."

"Ha! this is a bet," they exclaimed from all sides; "he has sworn to extirpate everything!"

_Cazotte._--"No, it is not I that has sworn it."

"Then we must be put under the yokes of the Turks and Tartars?--and yet--"

_Cazotte._--"Nothing less: I have told you already; you will then be only under the reign of philosophy and reason; those who shall treat you in this manner, will all be philosophers, will always carry on the same kind of conversation which you have peddled out for the last hour, will repeat all your maxims; they will, like you, cite verses from Diderot and the Pucelle."

It was whispered into one another's ear: "You all see that he has lost his reason--(for he remains very serious while he is talking)--Do you not see that he is joking?--and you know that he mixes something mysterious into all his jokes." "Yes," said Chamfort, "but I must confess his mysteries are not agreeable, they are too scaffoldish! And when shall all this occur?"

_Cazotte._--"Six years will not expire, before all I told you will be fulfilled."

"There are many wonders." This time it was I (namely Laharpe) who took the word, "and of me you say nothing?"

"With you," replied Cazotte, "a wonder will take place, which will at least be as extraordinary; you will then be a Christian!"

Here was a universal exclamation. "Now I am easy," cried Chamfort, "if we don't perish until Laharpe is a Christian, we shall be immortal!"

"We, of the female sex," then said the Duchess de Grammont, "we are lucky that we shall be counted as nothing with the revolutions. When I say nothing, I do not mean to say as if we would not mingle ourselves a little into them; but it is assumed that nobody will, on that account, loath at us or at our sex."

_Cazotte._--"Your sex will this time not protect you, and you may ever so much desire not to mingle into anything; you will be treated just like men, and no distinction will be made!"

_Duchess._--"But what do you tell us here, M. Cazotte? You preach to us the end of the world!"

_Cazotte._--"That I do not know; but what I do know, is, that you, Madame Duchess, will be led to the scaffold, you, and many other ladies, and on the public cart, with your hands tied on your back!"

_Duchess._--"In this case, I hope I shall have a black trimmed coach?"

_Cazotte._--"No, madam! Nobler ladies than you, shall, like you, be drawn on that same cart, with the hands tied on the back!"

_Duchess._--"Nobler ladies? How? the princesses by birth?"

_Cazotte._-"Nobler yet!"

Now was observed a visible excitement in the whole company, and the master of the table took on a dark appearance; they began to see that the joke had been carried too far.

Madame de Grammont, to scatter the clouds which the last answer had occasioned, contented herself by saying in a facetious tone: "You shall see that he will not even allow me the comfort of a father confessor!"

_Cazotte._--"No, madam! you will not get one; neither you nor any one else! The last one executed, who, out of mercy, will have received a father confessor"--here he stopped a moment--

_Duchess._--"Well, who will be the fortunate one, when this fortunate preference will be granted?"

_Cazotte._--"It will be the only preference that he shall yet keep; and this will be the king of France!"

Now the host arose from the table, and all with him. He went to Cazotte, and said with an excited voice, "My dear M. Cazotte, this lamentable jest has lasted long. You carry it too far, and within a degree where you place the company in which you are, and yourself, into danger."

Cazotte answered not, and made himself ready to go away, when madame Grammont, who always tried to prevent the matter from being taken seriously, and exerted herself to restore the gaiety of the company, went to him, and said: "Now, M. Prophet! you have told us all our fortunes, but you say nothing of your own fate?"

He was silent and cast down his eyes; then he said: "Have you, madame, read, in Josephus, the history of the siege of Jerusalem?"

_Duchess._--"Certainly! who has not read it? but you seem to think that I have not!"

_Cazotte._--"Well, madame, during the siege a man went round the city, upon the walls, for seven days, in the face of the besiegers and the besieged, and cried continually, with a mournful voice, 'Wo unto Jerusalem! Wo unto Jerusalem!' but on the seventh day he cried, 'Wo unto me!' and at that moment he was dashed to pieces by an immense stone, which the machines of the enemy had thrown."

After these words, M. Cazotte bowed himself, and went away.

In relation to the above extraordinary prediction, a certain M.... has inserted the following article in the public journals of Paris: "That he well knew this M. Cazotte, and has often heard from him the announcement of the great oppression which was to come over France, and this at a time when not the least of it was suspected. The attachment to the monarchy was the reason why, on the second of September, 1792, he was brought to the abbey, and was saved from the hands of the bloodthirsty rabble only through the heroic courage of his daughter, who mitigated the raging populace. This same rabble which wanted to destroy him, led him to his house in triumph. All his friends came to congratulate him, that he had escaped death. A certain M. D... who visited him after the terrible days, said to him: "Now, you are saved!"--"I believe it not," answered Cazotte; "in three days I shall be guillotined!"--"How can this be?" replied M. D... Cazotte continued: "Yes, my friend, in three days I will die on the scaffold!" As he said this he was very much affected, and added: "Shortly before your arrival, I saw a gend'armes enter, who fetched me by order of Petion; I was under the necessity of following him: I appeared before the mayor of Paris, who ordered me to the _Conciergerie_, and thence I came before the revolutionary tribunal. You see, therefore (by this vision, namely, which Cazotte had seen), my friend, that my hour has arrived; and I am so much convinced of this, that I am arranging my papers. Here are papers for which I care very much, which you will deliver to my wife; I entreat you to give them to her, and to comfort her.""

M. D... declared this all folly, and left him with the conviction, that his reason had suffered by the sight of the scenes of terror from which he had escaped.

The next day he came again; but he learned that a gensd'arme had taken M. Cazotte to the Municipality. M. D... went to Petion; arrived at the mayoralty, he heard that his friend had just been taken to prison; he hurried thither; but he was informed that he could not speak to him, he would be tried before the revolutionary tribunal. Soon after this, he heard that his friend had been condemned and executed.

GREENWOOD.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

BY MAUNSELL B. FIELD.

I would that I were dreaming,
Where lovely flowers are gleaming,
And the tall green grass is streaming
O'er the gone--for ever gone.

MOTHERWELL.

The evening glories of a summer sky
Brimming the heart with yearnings to be blest;
The wood-bird's wailing as he soars on high
Winging his weary way to distant nest;
The murmuring billows as they kiss the strand,
Bearing dim memories of stranger land;

The sad mysterious voices of the night,
Bathing the soul in reverie and love;
The low wind, whispering of its former might
To the tall trees that sigh the hills above,
Like angel-tones that roll from sphere to sphere
And dimly echo to the faithful ear;

The flitting shadows glancing o'er the sail
Of some proud ship that's dreaming on the sea;
The lighthouse fires that fitful glow and pale;
The far-off strains of martial minstrelsy;
Wechawken's hoary head o'er hill and dell,
Gloomy and proud, a giant sentinel;

Such the soft charms, thou Paradise of Death!
My languid spirit hath erewhile confest,
When wearied with the city's tainted breath,
Fever'd and faint I've sought thy shades of rest,
Where all combines in heaven, and earth, and sea,
To image life, death, immortality!--

Here where the dusky savage twanged his bow
In the old time at startled doe or fawn,
Raised the shrill war-whoop at the approach of foe,
His wild eye flashing with revenge and scorn;
Here where the Indian maiden told her love
To the soft sighing spirits of the grove.

Here, where the bloody fiend of frantic war
Flapped its red wings o'er hill-top and o'er plain--
Where the sharp musket ring, and cannon roar,
Crashed o'er the valley, thundered o'er the main,
No sound is heard, save the sweet symphony
Of Nature's all-pervading harmony.

Here the pale willow, drooping o'er the wave,
Dips its long tresses in the silvery flood;
Here the blue violet, blooming o'er the grave,
Distils its fragrance to the enamored wood,
While the complaining turtle's mournful woe
Steals on the ear in murmurs soft and low.

Here its cold shaft the polished marble rears;
Here, eloquent of grief, the sculptured urn
Bares its white bosom to the dewy tears,
Dropt pure from heaven, far purer to return!
Here the grim granite's sempeternal pile
In monumental grandeur stands the while.

Where the still stars with gentlest radiance shine
On forest green and flower-enamelled vale,
Two simple columns circled by one vine,
Tell to the traveller's eye the tender tale
Of constancy in life and death--and love,
Not e'en the horrors of the tomb could move.

Here strained, and struggling with the unequal might
Of sea and tempest, the poor foundering bark,
And the snapp'd cable, chiselled on yon height,
Where calmly sleeps the wave-tossed pilot mark;
Hope, with her anchor, pointing to the sky,
Triumphant hails the spirit flight on high!

Hark! how the solemn spirit dirge ascends
In floating cadence on the evening air,
Where with clasped hands the weeping angel bends
In human grief o'er her that's buried there;
The gentle maid, in festive garments hurled
From life's gay glitter to the gloomy world!

Thy childish laughter lingers on mine ear,
Thy fairy form still floats before mine eye;
Still is the music of thy footsteps near,
Visioned to sense by tenderest memory;
Thy soul too pure for purest mortal love,
Enraptured seraphs snatched to realms above!

Here where the sparkling fountain flings its spray
In sportive freedom, frolicksome and wild,
Mocking the wood-nymphs with its gladsome lay,
Serenely sleeps the dark-eyed forest child--
Her kinsman's glory and her nation's pride!
A chieftain's daughter and a warrior's bride!

Oft shall the pale face, pensive o'er thy mound,
Weep for the white man's shame, the red man's wrong;
Oft from spring warblers, o'er this hallowed ground,
Shall gush the tenderest melody of song,
For the poor pilgrim to that distant shore,
Her fathers loved, their sons shall see no more!

Pause, weary wanderer, pause! In yon lone glade
Where silence reigns in deep funereal gloom,
Where the pale moonbeams struggle through the shade,
Open the portals of "The Stranger's Tomb!"
No holier symbol taught since time began
The sacred sympathy of man for man!

Dear Greenwood! when the solemn heights I tread,
And catch the gray old ocean's sullen roar,
Chanting the dirge of the mighty dead,
Over whose graves the oblivious billows pour,
A tearful prayer is gushing from my breast,
"Here in thy peaceful bosom may I rest!--

"Rest till the signal calls the ransomed throng
With shouts their Saviour and their God to greet;
Rest till the harp, the trumpet, and the song
Summon the dead, Death's conqueror to meet;
And love, imperfect, man's best gift below,
In heaven eternal rapture shall bestow!"

AN AUGUST REVERIE.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY A. OAKLEY HALL.

I have "laid" the tiniest ghost of my professional duties. I shook off city dust twenty hours ago, and my lungs are rejoicing this August morning with the glorious breezes that sweep from the summits of the "Trimountains" of Waywayanda lake--that stretches its ten miles expanse before my freshened vision.

Waywayanda lake?

A Quere. Shall I play geographer to those who are learned in the nomenclature of snobbism? Who allow innkeepers and railroad guides to assassinate Aboriginal terms in order that petty pride may exult in petty fame? No! But if snobbism has a curiosity, I refer it to the first landscape painter of its vicinage: or the nearest fisherman amateur: or the Recorder of New-York: or sportsman Herbert and the pages of his "Warwick Woodlands;" a list of references worthy of the spot.

And as I gaze and breathe I feel as if the waters before me had bubbled from the fountains of rejuvenescence for which Ponce de Leon so enthusiastically searched in the everglades of Florida; and as if, too, I had just emerged from their embraces.

My pocket almanac says that I am living in the dogdays. Perhaps so. But "Sirius" hath no power around these mountains and primeval solitudes. Were the fiercest theological controversialist at my elbow, he would be as cool as an Esquimaux.

I feel at peace with all things. My friend M. says the conscience lieth in the stomach. Perhaps so; and perhaps I owe my quietude of spirit to the influence of as comforting a breakfast as ever blessed the palate of a scientific egg-breaker.

Shall I join forces with the laughing beauties who are handling maces in the billiard room of the inn hard by? Shall I challenge my "Lady Gay Spanker" of last night's acquaintance to a game of bowling? Shall I tempt the unsophisticated pickerel of the lake under the shadow of yonder frowning precipice, with glittering bait? Shall I clamber the mountain side and feast my vision with an almost boundless view--rich expanses of farm land stretching away for miles and miles, and edging themselves in the blue haze of the horizon where the distant Catskill peaks rise solitary in their sublimity?

It is very comfortable here. Is there always poetry in motion? How far distant are the confines of dreamland: that magical kingdom where the tired soul satiates itself in the intoxications of fancy?

I had just carefully deposited upon a velvety tuft of grass Ik Marvel's "Reveries of a Bachelor." I had arrived at the conclusion that its pages should be part and parcel of the landscape about. Surely there is a unison between them both. There are always certain places where only certain melodies can be sung to the proper harmony of the heart-strings. Who ever learned "Thanatopsis" on the summit of the Catskills, and afterwards forgot a line of it? Now I have seen these same "Reveries" of the said bachelor upon many a centre-table: in the lap of many a town beauty, half cushioned in the velvet of a drawing room sofa: but the latter half of the volume never looked so inviting as it does here just in the middle of one of nature's lexicons. May the page of it never be blurred.

Reveries of a Bachelor!

'Tis a sugared pill of a title. Its morals are sad will o' wisps. And if the definition "that happiness consists in the search after it" be true, it is so when the definition settles itself on the mind of a bachelor. Hath _he_ reveries half so sweet for morsels under the tongues of memory and fancy as those which come nigh to the brain of the married man? As sure as the lesser is always included in the greater: as certain as the maxim _de minimis lex non curat_: the reveries of the first are but bound up in the reveries of the last; one is a _pleasing_ romance, the other its enchanting sequel.

What is that yonder? There is a merry-faced form in the distant haze, shaking a dreamy negative with his head. A head whose reality is miles and miles away, airing its brow of single blessedness in foreign travel.

Let us argue the point: he smiles as if willing. Man socially is at least a three volumed work: however much longer the James-like pen of destiny may extend him. Volume first--bachelor. Volume second--husband. Volume third--father. There _may_ be a dozen more--there _should_ be none less.

You have been a bachelor: you are a husband and a father. You always had, perhaps, a bump of self-esteem attractive to the digits of Fowler. You never believed half so well of yourself as when one morning at your business you were first asked concerning the well being of your _family_. At the moment, you were in a fog, like the young attorney upon the first question of his first examination: next, memory rallied and your face brightened; your stature increased as you replied. You felt you were going up in the social numeration table of life. Two years ago you were a unit: you next counted your importance by tens over the parson's shoulder; when your child was born you felt that the leap to hundreds in the scale was far from enough and should have been higher.

Before the publication of your third volume--the father--you had been measurably blind. Your mental sight was afflicted with amaurosis. Like the philosopher of old you are now tempted to grasp every one by the hand and cry "Eureka." How indignantly you take down "Malthus" from your upper library shelf and bury him on the lowest among the books of possible reference. Your political views upon education are cured of their jaundice. You pray of Sundays in the service for the widow and the orphan with a double unction. You walk the streets with a new mantle of comfort. The little beggar child whose importunities of the last wet day at the street crossings excited your petulance, upon the next wet day invites your sympathies. You stop and talk to her, nor perceive until you have ascertained where her hard-hearted parents live, and that she is uncommonly bright for the child of poverty and wretchedness, and that you have a half dollar unappropriated--nor perceive until these are found out, I say, that your umbrella has been dripping upon the skirts of your favorite coat, and that you have stood with one foot in a puddle. How this would have annoyed you years ago. But now--? How unconcernedly of the curious looks from pedestrians around do you stop the careless nurse in Broadway, who has allowed her infant charge to fall asleep in a painful attitude, and lay "it" tenderly and comfortably in position. You recall to mind with much remorse the execrations of five years ago, when the moanings of a dying babe in the next apartment to your own at the hotel disturbed your rest; and you wonder whether the mother still thinks of the little grave and the white slab which a sympathetic fancy _now_ brings up before you.

You are at your business: the lamps are lighting: in the suggestions of profit by an hour or longer at the desk you recognize an unholy temptation. Now, as often before, through all the turmoils of business memory suggests the lines of Willis:

"I sadden when thou smilest to my smile,
Child of my love! I tremble to believe
That o'er the mirror of thine eye of blue
The shadow of my soul must always pass--
That soul which from its conflicts with the world
Comes _ever_ to thy guarded cradle home,
And careless of the staining dust it brings,
Asks for its idol!"

And you dwell on them. You bless the author first, and truly think how cruelly unjust are they who can call into torturing question the loyalty as husband and father of him whose soul could plan and whose pen could write such holy lines. And then you think deeper of the sentiments. And then the profit-tempter hides himself in the farthest corner of the money-drawer; and you begin to think your clerk a very clever manager: and wonder if _his_ remaining will not do as well--poor fellow, he's _only_ a bachelor. And then you decide that he will, and so yourself, "careless of the staining dust" your coming brings, fly to "the guarded cradle home."

You have been in Italy. Or you have studied the pictures in the _Louvre_. But the hours which you passed before the canvas whereon was embodied Madonna and child never seemed so agreeable in their realization as they now appear in the glass of memory, as you see the child of your love in the arms of your life companion whose eyes, always bright to yours, and brighter still at your coming after absence, grow brightest when they are lifted from the slumbering innocence beneath them. Men call you rough in your bearing, perhaps. What would they say to see how gently your arms receive the sleeping burthen and transfer it softly to its snowy couch? Your step abroad is heavy and impetuous: how noiselessly it falls upon the floor--_now!_ And how the modulated voice accords with every present thought!

You cannot give the child a sweeter sleep by watching over him so intently: and yet you choose to stay. Moments are not so precious to you that at this one household shrine they will become valueless in some most chastened heart-worship! Your infant does not when awake understand the language which your affection addresses: and yet you look with rapture to the future, when the now inquiring eye will become one of understanding; when the cautiously put forth arms will clasp in loving confidence; when the fond endearing name now half intelligibly and doubtingly lisped forth will be uttered in the boldness of love.

The shadowy form in the distant cloud over the lake has been listening intently. It listens still; and the face of it bends towards me as if to say, there's a hidden truth and mysterious sympathy in all you say; and yet the language soundeth strangely in these bachelor ears--

Bachelor ears!

Listless and deaf, as yet, to all the sweeter human music of our nature. Deafer yet to the clarion call of emulation in the race of life and struggles for power, rank, and fame. Deafest of all to that which spurreth on man to be a king of kings among the great men of his race.

You are a father, then, I say; and working in your mental toil by night and day, in the severest and darkest frowning of all professions. But in the crowded senate-room, and in the close committee-chamber; and in the court-room among the multitudes of faces all about, (some of these anticipating in their changing features defeat and disgrace,) there is a _something_ which overrides all agitation: clears the heavy brain, and oils the tongue with every pungency of rhetoric.

What is that "something?"

Were I home and in my library the downturned leaf of the duodecimo biography in the left corner of the first shelf would tell it you at a glance. The biography of Lord Erskine; marked at the page which speaks of his dauntless legal debut in the Sandwich case, when not the necessity of speaking in a crowded court-room from the obscure back benches: when not the sarcastic eyes of a hundred (etiquette-ly termed) brethren; when not the awful presence of Lord Mansfield nor his rebuking interruption at a critical sentence frightened the self-possession of the enthusiastic advocate, or stopped the current of his eloquent invective. The biography, which goes on to tell how, when the speech was ended, all the attorneys in the room flocked around the debutant with retainers--needed, more than all the smiles and congratulations to be drawn from earnest heart-wells: and how the advocate replied--(when some one, timid of the judge, asked how the barrister had the courage to stand the rebuking interruption, and never to quail with embarrassment before it)--_I felt my little children tugging at my gown and crying, now is the time, father, to get us bread_.

How eloquent!

How worthy of a father's heart! And in the reference, the dullest mind cannot fail to read the "something" which, to every father in a like position, nerves the will, disarms all agitation, clears the heavy brain, and oils the tongue with every pungency of rhetoric.

--The shadowy form turns closer towards me as my reverie yet chains me to the lake side, where the mountain breezes still are freshening all the August air.--

You have a purpose now in life, which, like the messenger of the king, that every morning knocked at his bedroom door to say, "Oh king, remember all this day that you are mortal," hourly brings to mind the bright reward of every toil and every aspiration. Besides a physical frame there is a mental constitution hinging on your own. There's a long life far beyond your own brief years of breath to provide for. Your name is to be perpetuated. In the very evening of your life there is to be a star that is now in its morning of existence, which will cheer and enliven. You feel all this as in some sad hour of the sickly night; you pace your room with the little sufferer wrestling with disease, and you feel that in the future will be found ample rewards for all your present bitter draughts of anxiety.

Wrestling with disease!

The thought is ugly to the mental sight. I pause to brush its cobweb from my August Reverie as an idle vaporish thing. But the shadowy form, in the edge of the distant cloud, over the far off waters of the lake, hisses the words back into my brain. And then it comes nearer. And then the atmosphere grows more dreamy and hazy about. And I half feel the mountain breezes, and half miss them from off my temples. And next I feel my thoughts less concentrate, as the shadowy form I know so well seems to be looking under my half-closed lids, and dwelling on the words I brushed like cob-webs--"wrestling with disease."

And I think of the still chamber, with the blue edge of the bracket, as it is rimmed with the faintest glimmer of the turned-down gas. And I see the half-closed shutters. And the tumbler with its significant spoon on the mantel. And the pale watcher by the ghostly curtains of the bed. And I am bending silently and almost pulseless over the sleeping boy, upon whose face each minute the fever-flushes play like summer lightning under a satin cloud.

And days go by. There is a strange hush in the household, with a horridly sensitive jarring from the vehicles in the street, which never, never were before so noisy, neither have the thronging passengers from the pavements ever gossipped so discordantly, as they go under the windows of the silent house. There's a strange echo of infantile prattle by the niches on the landings of the stairs, and from the couches, and behind the curtains; but the substantive music, whence the conjured-up echo came, is nowhere found. Then the echo itself becomes but an illusion. And Memory is strangely and impassionately chid for its creation.

I pass into a little room scarcely wide enough to wheel a sofa within. It seems as boundless in its desolation as an untenanted temple-ruin. There are mournful spirits in the little atmosphere which sting me to the heart--not to be torn away. The little cotton-dog, and morocco-ball, and jingling-bells, and coral-toys, so strangely scattered all about, are prodigious ruins to the sight. There's a gleeful laugh, a cunning smile, an artless waving of the hands, which should be here as tenants of the room. All gone! all gone into that hushed and silent chamber where yet the patient-watcher is by the snowy curtains; and the sickly blue still edges the rim of the bracket light, and the fever-flushes still play about the wasted cheek.

How long to last? What next to come? And the shadowy form no longer can peep under the all-closed eyelids, but enters its whisperings through the delicate passages of the ear into the brain, which tortures in a maze of bitter conjecture and horrid contemplation. And my reverie becomes a painful nightmare dream.

* * * * *

But the mountain-breezes, and the uprising-to-meridian sun, are merciful. The shadowy form my reverie hinged itself upon is blown away. The open eyes once more glance upon the glassy waters of the lake close by the shore, and onward to the dancing ripples far away. And a merry prattling voice, from out of loving arms, is coming nearer and nearer over the velvety lawn--a voice so full of spirit, and life, and health, and sparkling innocence of care, that in a moment the frightful nightmare-dream is quite forgotten.

More--

My reverie turns itself into a lesson of bright reality; a present study of budding mind; a jealous watch of care encroaching upon innocence; a kindly outpouring of the father's manly heart upon the shrine of his idol.

Could such a reverie better end?

HEROINES OF HISTORY--LAURA.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE BY MARY E. HEWITT.

Laura, rendered immortal by the love and lyre of Petrarch, was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, who was of the _haute noblesse_ of Avignon. He died in the infancy of Laura, leaving her a dowry of one thousand gold crowns, (about fifty thousand dollars,) a magnificent portion for those times. She was married at the age of eighteen to Hugh de Sade, a young noble only a few years older than his bride, but not distinguished by any advantages either of person or mind. The marriage contract is dated in January, 1325, two years before her first meeting with Petrarch; and in it her mother, the Lady Ermessende, and her brother, John de Noves, stipulate to pay the dower left by her father; and also to bestow on the bride two magnificent dresses for state occasions; one of green, embroidered with violets; the other of crimson, trimmed with feathers. In all the portraits of Laura now extant, she is represented in one of these two dresses, and they are frequently alluded to by Petrarch. He tells us expressly that when he first met her at matins in the church of Saint Claire, she was habited in a robe of green spotted with violets. Mention is also made of a coronal of silver with which she wreathed her hair; of her necklaces and ornaments of pearls. Diamonds are not once alluded to because the art of cutting them had not then been invented. From all which it appears that Laura was opulent, and moved in the first class of society. It was customary for women of rank in those times to dress with extreme simplicity on ordinary occasions, but with the most gorgeous splendor when they appeared in public.

There are some beautiful descriptions of Laura surrounded by her young female companions, divested of all her splendid apparel, in a simple white robe and a few flowers in her hair, but still preeminent over all by her superior loveliness.

She was in person a fair, Madonna-like beauty, with soft dark eyes, and a profusion of pale golden hair parted on her brow, and falling in rich curls over her neck. The general character of her beauty must have been pensive, soft, unobtrusive, and even somewhat languid. This softness and repose must nave been far removed from insipidity, for Petrarch dwells on the rare and varying expression of her loveliness, the lightning of her smile, and the tender magic of her voice, which was felt in the inmost heart. He dwells on the celestial grace of her figure and movements, and describes the beauty of her hand and the loveliness of her mouth. She had a habit of veiling her eyes with her hand, and her looks were generally bent on the earth.

In a portrait of Laura, in the Laurentinian library at Florence, the eyes have this characteristic downcast look.

Laura was distinguished, then, by her rank and fortune, but more by her loveliness, her sweetness, and the untainted purity of her life and manners in the midst of a society noted for its licentiousness. Now she is known as the subject of Petrarch's verses, as the woman who inspired an immortal passion, and, kindling into living fire the dormant sensibility of the poet, gave origin to the most beautiful and refined, the most passionate, and yet the most delicate amatory poetry that exists in the world.

Petrarch was twenty-three years of age when he first felt the power of a violent and inextinguishable passion. At six in the morning on the sixth of April, A. D. 1327, (he often fondly records the exact year, day and hour,) on the occasion of the festival of Easter, he visited the church of Saint Claire at Avignon, and beheld, for the first time, Laura de Sade. She was just twenty years of age, and in the bloom of beauty--a beauty so touching and heavenly, so irradiated by purity and smiling innocence, and so adorned by gentleness and modesty, that the first sight stamped the image in the poet's heart, never thereafter to be erased.

Petrarch beheld the loveliness and sweetness of the young beauty, and was transfixed. He sought acquaintance with her, and while the manners of the times prevented his entering her house, he enjoyed many opportunities of meeting her in society, and of conversing with her. He would have declared his love, but her reserve enforced silence. "She opened my breast and took my heart into her hand, saying 'speak no word of this,'" he writes. Yet the reverence inspired by her modesty and dignity was not always sufficient to restrain her lover. Being alone with her on one occasion, and she appearing more gracious than usual, Petrarch tremblingly and fearfully confessed his passion; but she, with altered looks, replied, "I am not the person you take me for!" Her displeasure froze the very heart of the poet, so that he fled from her presence in grief and dismay.

No attentions on his part could make any impression on her steady and virtuous mind. While love and youth drove him on, she remained impregnable and firm; and when she found that he still rushed wildly forward, she preferred forsaking to following him to the precipice down which he would have hurried her. Meanwhile, as he gazed on her angelic countenance, and saw purity painted on it, his love grew spotless as herself. Love transforms the true lover into a resemblance of the object of his passion. In a town, which was the asylum of vice, calumny never breathed a taint upon Laura's name: her actions, her words, the very expression of her countenance, and her slightest gestures were replete with a modest reserve combined with sweetness, and won the applause of all.

Francesco Petrarch was of Florentine extraction, and the son of a notary, who, being held in great esteem by his fellow-citizens, had filled several public offices.

When the Ghibelines were banished Florence, in 1302, Petraccolo was included in the number of exiles; his property was confiscated, and he retired with his wife, Eletta Canigiani, whom he had lately married, to the town of Arrezzo, in Tuscany. And here on the night of the 20th of July, 1304, Petrarch first saw the light. When the child was seven months old his mother was permitted to return from banishment, and she established herself at a country house belonging to her husband near Ancisa, a small town fifteen miles from Florence. The infant who, at his birth, it was supposed would not survive, was exposed to imminent peril during this journey. In fording a rapid stream, the man who had charge of him carried him, wrapped in swaddling clothes, at the end of a stick; he fell from his horse, and the babe slipped from the fastenings into the water; but he was saved, for how could Petrarch die until he had seen his Laura?

The youth of Petrarch was obscure in point of fortune, but it was attended by all the happiness that springs from family concord, and the excellent character of his parents. At the age of fifteen he was sent to study in the university of Montpellier, then frequented by a vast concourse of students. His father intended his son to pursue the study of the law, as the profession best suited to ensure his reputation and fortune; but to this pursuit Francesco was invincibly repugnant. He was soon after sent to Bologna, where, as at Montpellier, he continued to display great taste for literature, much to his father's dissatisfaction.

At Bologna, Petrarch made considerable progress in the study of the law, moved thereto, doubtless, by the entreaties of his excellent parent.

After three years spent at Bologna, Petrarch was recalled to France by the death of his father. Soon after his mother died also, and he and his brother were left entirely to their own guidance, with very slender means, and those diminished by the dishonesty of those whom his father named as trustees to their fortune. Under these circumstances Petrarch entirely abandoned the profession of the law, as it occurred to both him and his brother that the clerical profession was their best resource in a city where the priesthood reigned supreme. They resided at Avignon, and became the favorites and companions of the ecclesiastical and lay nobles who formed the papal court. His talents and accomplishments were of course the cause of this distinction; besides that his personal advantages were such as to prepossess every one in his favor. He was so handsome as frequently to attract observation when he passed along the streets. When, to the utmost simplicity and singleness of mind, were added splendid talents, the charm of poetry, so highly valued in the country of the Troubadours, an affectionate and generous disposition, vivacious and pleasing manners, an engaging and attractive exterior; we cannot wonder that Petrarch was the darling of his age, the associate of its greatest men, and the man whom princes delighted to honor.

The passion of Petrarch for Laura was purified and exalted at the same time. She filled him with noble aspirations, and divided him from the common herd. He felt that her influence made him superior to vulgar ambition, and rendered him wise, true, and great. She saved him in the dangerous period of youth, and gave a worthy aim to all his endeavors. The manners of his age permitted one solace; a Platonic attachment was the fashion of the day. The Troubadours had each a lady to adore, to wait upon, and to celebrate in song; without its being supposed that she made him any return beyond a gracious acceptance of his devoirs, and allowing him to make her the heroine of his verses. Petrarch endeavored to merge the living passion of his soul into this airy and unsubstantial devotion. Laura permitted the homage: she perceived his merit and was proud of his admiration; she felt the truth of his affection, and indulged the wish of preserving it and her own honor at the same time. Without her inflexibility, this had been a dangerous experiment: but she always kept her lover distant from her; rewarding his reserve with smiles, and repressing by frowns all the overflowings of his heart.

By her resolute severity, she incurred the danger of ceasing to be the object of his attachment, and of losing the gift of an immortal name, which he has conferred upon her. But Petrarch's constancy was proof against hopelessness and time. He had too fervent an admiration of her qualities ever to change: he controlled the vivacity of his feelings, and they became deeper rooted. "Untouched by my prayers," he says, "unvanquished by my arguments, unmoved by my flattery, she remained faithful to her sex's honor; she resisted her own young heart, and mine, and a thousand, thousand things, which must have conquered any other. She remained unshaken. A woman taught me the duty of a man! to persuade me to keep the path of virtue, her conduct was at once an example and a reproach."

But whether, in this long conflict, Laura preserved her heart untouched, as well as her virtue immaculate; whether she shared the love she inspired; or whether she escaped from the captivating assiduities and intoxicating homage of her lover, "fancy free;" whether coldness, or prudence, or pride, or virtue, or the mere heartless love of admiration, or a mixture of all together, dictated her conduct, is at least as well worth inquiry as the color of her eyes, or the form of her nose, upon which we have pages of grave discussion. She might have been _coquette par instinct_, if not _par calent_; she might have felt, with feminine _tacte_, that to preserve her influence over Petrarch, it was necessary to preserve his respect. She was evidently proud of her conquest: she had else been more or less than woman; and at every hazard, but that of self-respect, she was resolved to retain him. If Petrarch absented himself for a few days, he was generally better treated on his return. If he avoided her, then her eye followed him with a softer expression. When he looked pale from sickness of heart and agitation of spirits, Laura would address him with a few words of pitying tenderness. When he presumed on this benignity, he was again repulsed with frowns. He flew to solitude,--solitude! Never let the proud and torn heart, wrung with the sense of injury, and sick with unrequited passion, seek that worst resource against pain, for there grief grows by contemplating itself, and every feeling is sharpened by collision. Petrarch sought to "mitigate the fever of his heart" amid the shades of Vaucluse, a spot so gloomy, and so solitary, that his very servants forsook him; and Vaucluse, its fountains, its forests, and its hanging cliffs, reflected only the image of Laura.

He passed several years thus, cut off from society; his books were his great resource; he was never without one in his hand. Often he remained in silence from morning till night, wandering among the hills when the sun was yet low; and taking refuge, during the heat of the day, in his shady garden. At night, after performing his clerical duties (for he was canon of Lombes), he rambled among the hills; often entering, at midnight, the cavern, whose gloom, even during the day, struck his soul with awe. "Fool that I was!" he exclaims in after life, "not to have remembered the first school-boy lesson--that solitude is the nurse of love!"

While living at Vaucluse, Petrarch, invited to Rome by the Roman Senate, repaired thither to receive the laurel crown of poesy. The ceremony was performed in the Capitol with great solemnity, in presence of all the nobles and high-born ladies of the city. Leaving Rome soon after his coronation, he repaired to Parma, where Clement VI. rewarded him for subsequent political services by naming him prior of Migliarino in the diocese of Pisa.

Petrarch returned to Avignon. The sight of Laura gave fresh energy to a passion which had survived the lapse of fifteen years. She was no longer the blooming girl who had first charmed him. The cares of life had dimmed her beauty. She was the mother of many children, and had been afflicted at various times by illness. Her home was not happy. Her husband, without loving or appreciating her, was ill-tempered and jealous. Petrarch acknowledged that if her personal charms had been her sole attraction he had already ceased to love her. But his passion was nourished by sympathy and esteem; and, above all, by that mysterious tyranny of love, which, while it exists, the mind of man seems to have no power of resisting, though in feebler minds it sometimes vanishes like a dream. Petrarch was also changed in personal appearance. His hair was sprinkled with gray, and lines of care and sorrow trenched his face. On both sides the tenderness of affection began to replace, in him the violence of passion, in her the coyness and severity she had found necessary to check his pursuit. The jealousy of her husband opposed obstacles to their seeing each other. They met as they could in public walks and assemblies. Laura sang to him, and a soothing familiarity grew up between them as her fears became allayed, and he looked forward to the time when they might sit together and converse without dread.

At length he resolved to leave Laura and Avignon forever; and instead of plunging into solitude, to seek the wiser resource of travel and society. Laura saw him depart with regret. When he went to take leave of her, he found her surrounded by a circle of her ladies. Her mien was dejected; a cloud overcast her face, whose expression seemed to say, "Who takes my faithful friend from me?" Petrarch was struck to the heart by a sad presentiment: the emotion was mutual; they both seemed to feel that they should never meet again.

Petrarch departed. The plague, which had been extending its ravages over Asia, entered Europe. It spread far and wide: nearly one half the population of the world became its prey. Petrarch saw thousands die around him, and he trembled for his friends. He heard that it was at Avignon. A thousand sad presentiments haunted his mind. At last the fatal truth reached him, Laura was dead! By a singular coincidence, she died on the anniversary of the day when he first saw her. She was taken ill on the third of April, and languished but three days. As soon as the symptoms of the plague declared themselves, she prepared to die: she made her will, which is dated on the third of April, and received the sacraments of the church. On the sixth she died, surrounded by her friends and the noble ladies of Avignon, who braved the dangers of infection to attend on one so lovely and so beloved. On the evening of the same day on which she died, she was interred in the chapel of the Cross which her husband had lately built in the church of the Minor Friars at Avignon.

Her tomb was discovered and opened in 1533, in the presence of Francis the First, whose celebrated stanzas on the occasion are well known.

Of the fame which, even in her lifetime, love and poetical adoration of Petrarch had thrown around his Laura, a curious instance is given which will characterize the manners of the age. When Charles of Luxembourg (afterwards Emperor) was at Avignon, a grand fete was given, in his honor, at which all the noblesse were present. He desired that Petrarch's Laura should be pointed out to him; and when she was introduced, he made a sign with his hand that the other ladies present should fall back; then going up to Laura, and for a moment contemplating her with interest, he kissed her respectively on the forehead and on the eyelids.

Petrarch survived her twenty-six years, dying in 1374. He was found lifeless one morning in his study, his hand resting on a book.

THE KING AND OUTLAW.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

Robin Hood was a gentleman,
An outlaw bold was he;
He lost his Earldom and his land,
And took to the greenwood tree.

The king had just come home from war
With the Soldan over sea;
And Robin dwelt in merry Sherwood,
And lived by archerie.

Five bucks as fat as fat could be,
Were bleeding on the ground,
When up there came a hunter bright,
With a horn and leashed hound.

"Who's this, who's this, i' th' merry greenwood?
Who's this with horn and hound?
We'll hang him, an' he pay not down
For his life a thousand pound.

"Come hither, hither, Friar John,
And count your rosarie,
And shrive this sinful gentleman,
Under the greenwood tree!"

"Stand back, stand back, thou wicked Friar,
Nor dare to stop my way;
I'll tear your cowl and cassock off,
And hurl your beads away!"

"Nay! hold your hands, my merry man!
I like his gallant mood;
Sir Hunter pray you take a staff,
And play with Robin Hood."

They played an hour with quarter staffs,
A good long hour or more,
And Robin Hood was beat at the game,
That never was beat before.

"Hold off, hold off," he said at length,
And wiped the blood away;
"Thou art a noble gentleman,
Come dine with me to-day."

"With the quarter staff, as a yeoman might,
For love I played with thee;
Now draw thy sword, as fits a knight,
And play awhile with me."

They fought an hour with rapiers keen,
A weary hour or more,
And Robin Hood began to fail,
That never failed before.

But still he fought as best he might,
In the summer's burning heat,
Till he sank at last with loss of blood,
And fell at the Stranger's feet.

He brought him water from the spring,
And took him by the hand;
"Rise up!" he said, "my good old Earl,
The best man in the land!

"Rise up, rise up, Earl Huntington,
No longer Robin Hood;
I will be king in London town,
And you in green Sherwood!"

SAINT ESCARPACIO'S BONES.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE.