and touching in the foregoing little piece-much that is sure to come home to the feelings of every mother who reads it. It is, however, curiously characteristic of French modes of thinking, that neither the Ella nor the Clari of the poem should make the slightest allusion to the persons whom we, in our simplicity, would have looked upon as the natural sharers of their anxieties, their husbands, namely, the fathers of the babes so tremblingly longed for, so dearly welcomed! How different, and how much more true to nature, are the lines in the old Scottish ballad

"Thou art sae like my ain soldier laddie,

Thou'rt aye the nearer, the dearer to me !"

But in French poetry, as in French prose, we fear that such an allusion would be considered in the worst possible taste; and yet in no country are there more tender fathers than in France. Were we to seek to account for this anomaly, it would lead us very far, indeed, from the subject upon which we sat down to write; we shall not, therefore, make the attempt, but content ourselves with saying, that we regret this solitary blemish in an otherwise faultless composition, all the more as it weakens the pleasing impressions made upon our minds by the two young mothers suggesting, as it does, ideas of domestic discomfort, of cold-hearted selfishness in connexion with them.

The half-hour for which we undertook to bestow our tediousness upon our readers not being yet expired, we shall venture to direct their attention to the following attempt of ours to translate one of the exquisite fragments of verse into which the prose of the eccentric, but highly-gifted, Alphonse Karr sometimes forgets itself:

THE GARDEN.

"In Spring each year, when Nature fills with green,

With balmy odours, and with joy each

scene

When all is life and all is love on earth: Among the lilac and laburnum flowers, Sweet memories lurk like Fauns in forest bowers,

Sporting around my path with playful mirth.

"Each flower that opes its petals to the day, To me hath got some gentle phrase to saySome word that to the heart's core thrilleth me;

When flowereth in mid June the pure white rose,

Why bend I where it 'sheds its sudden snows,"*

Gazing upon it sadly, thoughtfully?

"Because the white rose in this month of sweets,

To me these thirteen summers past repeats, 'See, John, thy name-day's not forgot by me!'

Each flow'ret hath its own low-whispered word,

Which to the depth of tears my heart hath stirred,

And yet which soothes me most deliciously.

"You know the flower that hangs itself from walls,

Like a green net o'er leaves and buds that falls?

Convolvulus, or bind-weed, which you will;

Its countless bells, in sombre azure dyed,
Its countless bells, at morn and eventide,
To me a certain song are singing still:

"A song of love, a simple, earnest song I made one day I had been waiting long, For HER, beneath the shadow of a tree! Yonder the starry wall-flower, bright and gay

(The greatest babbler 'mong the flowers), doth say,

'Rememberest thou the days thou once didst see?

"The places where thy life more swiftly sped,

The flight of steps that to the garden led, The antique steps, moss-grown and gray of hue?

From out their crevices grew golden flow

ers

Her white robe touched them in the morning hours,

When on the violets glistened still the dew!

"Then didst thou cull these plants of little worth:

And now on certain days thou bring'st them forth,

And to thy lips each withered leaf doth press!'

Oft, too, when passing by the orange tree, That on yon terrace blossoming we see,

Its sighings softly to mine ear express

"That glorious summer's eve rememberest thou,

When wandering here, joy seated on thy brow,

Thou didst evoke the future to appear? And thou didst say to me, "Fair orange tree, Thine odorous petals open joyously;

Be proud and happy that thou bloomest here.

""Be proud to cast thy virgin blossoms down,

My love shall twine them in the graceful

crown

She forms in braiding her long chesnut
hair!"

Well, for these thirteen seasons I retain
For her my blossoms every year in vain,

And waste mine odours on the empty air!'"

One more specimen of modern French poetry, and we have done with the subject, at least for the present. It is a sonnet by the late celebrated romance writer, de Balzac, who was also distinguished, though in a less degree, as a poet, and is one of a series he wrote upon flowers. To those who have read "Faust," either in the original or a translation, it will not be necessary to explain that the allusion in the sonnet is to a custom in Germany, as well as in some parts of France, among young people, of telling their fortunes by counting the petals of a daisy, torn from it one by one for that purpose:

SHALL I own that Margot's story affected me in a very different manner from what the good Abbé had intended it should? I could neither sympathise with the outraged pride of the old Marquis, the offended dignity of family, nor with the insulted honour of the sacred vocation she had aban

doned. My reflections took a very different form, and turned entirely upon the dangers of the career she had adopted-perils which, from what I could collect of her character, were extremely likely to assail her. She was young, beautiful, gifted, and ambitious; and, above all, she was friendless. What temptations would not assail her by what flatteries would she not be beset! Would she be endowed with strength to resist these? Would the dignity of her ancient descent guard her, or would the enthusiasm for her art protect her? These were questions that I could not solve, or rather, I solved them in many and different ways. For a long time had she occupied a great share in my heart; sometimes I felt towards her as to wards a sister. I thought of the hours we had passed side by side over our books-now working hard and eagerly, now silent and thoughtful, as some train of ideas would wile us away from study, and leave us forgetful of even each other-till a chance word, a gesture, a sigh, would recall us-and then, interchanging our confessions, for such they were, we turned to our books again. But at other times, I thought of her as one dearer still than this as of one to win whose praise I would adventure anything whose chance words lingered in my memory, suggestive of many a hope, and, alas! many a fear! It is no graceful reflection to dwell upon, however truthful, that our first loves are the emanations of our self-esteem. They who

first teach us to be heroes to our own hearts are our earliest idols. Ay, and with all the changes and chances of life, they have their altars within us to our latest years. Why should it not be so? What limit ought there to be to our gratitude, to those who first suggested noble ambitions, highsoaring thoughts, and hopes of a glorious future who instilled in us our first pride of manhood, and made us seem worthy of being loved!

Did

Margot had done all this for me when but a child, and now she was a woman, beautiful and gifted! The fame of her genius was world-wide. she still remember me ?-had she ever a thought for the long past hours when we walked hand-in-hand together, or sat silently in some summer arbour? I recalled all that she had ever said to me, in consolation of the past, or with hope for the future. I pondered over little incidents, meaningless at the time, but now full of their own strong significance; and I felt at last assured that, when she had spoken to me of ambitious darings and high exploits, she had been less exhorting me than giving utterance to the bursting feelings of her own adventurous spirit.

Her outbreaks of impatience- her scarcely suppressed rebellion against the dull ritual of our village life her ill-disguised suspicion of priestly influence, now rose before me; and I could see, that the flame which had burst forth at last, had been smouldering for many a year within her. I could remember, too, the temper, little short of scorn, in which she saw me devote myself to Jesuit readings, and labour hard at the dry tasks the Sister Ursule had prescribed for me. And yet then all my ambitions were of the highest and noblest. I could have braved any dangers, or met any perils,

in the career of a missionary! Labour, endurance, suffering, martyrdom itself, had no terror for me. How was it that this spirit did not touch her heart? Were all her sympathies so bound up with the world that every success was valueless that won no favour with mankind? Had she no test for nobility of soul save in the recognition of society? When I tried to answer these questions, I suddenly bethought me of my own short-comings. Where had this ambition led me what were its fruits? Had I really pursued the proud path I once tracked out for myself? - or, worse thought again, had it no existence whatever? Were devotion, piety, and single-heartedness nothing but imposition, hypocrisy, and priestcraft?. Were the bright examples of missionary enterprise only cheats?-were all the narratives of their perilous existence but deception and falsehood? My latter experiences of life had served little to exalt the world in my esteem. I had far more frequently come into contact with corruption than with honesty. My experiences were all those of fraud and treachery-of such, too, from men that the world reputed as honourable and high-minded. There was but one step more, and that a narrow one, to include the priest in the same category with the layman, and deem them all, alike rotten and corrupted. I must acknowledge that the Abbé himself gave no contradiction to this unlucky theory. Artful and designing always, he scrupled at nothing to attain an object, and could employ a casuistry to enforce his views far more creditable to his craft than to his candour. I was no stranger to the arts by which he thought to entrap myself. I saw him condescend to habits and associates the very reverse of those he liked, in the hope of pleasing me; and even when narrating the story of Margot's fall-for such he called it I saw him watching the impression it produced upon me, and canvassing, as it were, the chances, that here at length might possibly be found the long-wished-for means of obtaining influence over me.

"I do not ask of you," said he, as he concluded, "to see all these things as I see them. You knew them in their days of poverty and downfall; you have seen them the inhabitants of an humble village, leading a life of ob

scurity and privation; their very pretension to rank and title a thing to conceal; their ancient blood a subject of scorn and insult. But I remember the Marquis de Jupernois a haughty noble in the haughtiest court of Europe; I have seen that very Marquis receiving royalty on the steps of his own chateau, and have witnessed his days of greatness and grandeur."

"True," said I, "but even with due allowance for all this, I cannot regard the matter in the same light that you do. To my eyes, there is no such dignity in the life of a nun, nor any such disgrace in that of an actress."

I said this purposely in the very strongest terms I could employ, to see how he would reply to it.

"And you are right, Gervois," said he, laying his hand affectionately on mine. "You are right. Genius and goodness can ennoble any station, and there are few places where such qualities exert such influence as the stage."

I suffered him to continue without interruption in this strain, for every word he spoke served to confirm me in my suspicion of his dishonesty. Mistaking the attention with

which I listened for an evidence of conviction, he enlarged upon the theme, and ended at last by the conclusion, that to judge of Margot's actions fairly, we should first learn her motives.

"Who can tell," said he, "what good she may not have proposed to herself! by what years of patient endurance and study-by what passages of suffering and sorrow she may have planned some great and good object. It is a narrow view of life that limits itself to the day we live in. They who measure their station by the task they perform, and not by its results on the world at large, are but short-sighted mortals; and it is thus I would speak to yourself Gervois. You are dissatisfied with your path in life. You complain of it as irksome, and even ignoble. Have you never asked yourself, Is not this mere egotism? Have I the right to think only of what suits me, and accommodates itself to my caprices? Are there no higher objects than my pleasure or my convenience? Is the great fabric of society of less account than my likings or dislikings? Am I the judge, too, of the influence I may

exert over others, or how my actions may sway the destinies of mankind? None should be more able to apply these facts than yourself you that, in a rank of which you were, I must say unjustly, ashamed, and yet were oftentimes in possession of secrets on which thrones rested and dynasties endured.”

He said much more in the same strain; some of his observations being true and incontestible, and others the mere outpouring of his crafty and subtle intellect. They both alike fell unheeded by me now. Enough for me that I had detected, or fancied I had detected him. I listened only from curiosity, and as one listens for the last time.

Yes! I vowed to myself that this should be our last meeting. I could not descend to the meanness of dissimulation, and affect a friendship I did not feel; nor could I expose myself to the chances of a temptation which assailed me in so many shapes and forms. I resolved, therefore, that I would not again visit the Abbé; and my only doubt was whether I should not formally declare my determination.

He had ceased to speak; and I sat, silently pondering this question in my own mind. I forgot that I was not alone, and was only conscious of my error when I looked up and saw his small and deep-set eyes firmly fixed upon me.

"Well, be it so, Gervois," said he, calmly; but let us part friends."

I started, and felt my face and forehead burning with a sudden flush of shame. There are impulses that sway us sometimes stronger than our reason; but they are hurricanes that pass away quickly, and leave the bark of our destiny to sail on its course unswervingly.

"You'll come back to me one of these days, and I will be just as ready to say, 'Welcome!' as I now say Good-bye! good-bye!'" and, sorrowfully repeating the last word as he went, he waved his hand to me, and withdrew.

For a moment I wished to follow him, to say I know not what; but calmer thoughts prevailed, and I left the house, and wandered homewards. That same evening I sent in my demand of resignation, and the next morning came the reply according it. My first thought was a joyful sense of liberty and freedom from a bondage

I began to think over the various things for which my capacity might fit me. They seemed a legion when I stood in no need of them, and yet none now rose to my mind, without some almost impassable barrier. I knew no art nor handicraft. My habits rendered me unequal to daily labour with my hands. I knew many things en amateur, but not as an artist. I could ride, draw, fence, and had some skill in music, but in not one of these could I compete with the humblest of those who taught them. Foreign languages, too, I could speak, read, and write well; but of any method to communicate their knowledge I had not the vaguest conception. After all, these seemed my best acquirements, and I determined to try and teach them.

With this resolve I went out and spent two pounds of my little capital in books. It was a scanty library, but I arrayed it on a table next my window with pride and satisfaction. I turned over the leaves of my dictionary, with something of the feeling with which a settler in a new region of the globe might have wandered through his little territory.

My grammars I regarded as mines whose ores were to enrich me; and my well-thumbed copy of Telamachus, and an odd volume of Lessing's comedies, were in themselves stores of pleasure and amusement. I suppose it is a condition of the human mind that makes our enjoyment in the ratio of the sacrifices they have cost us. I know of myself, that since that day I now speak of, it has been my fortune to be wealthy, to possess around me every luxury my wish could compass, and yet I will own it, that I have never gazed on the well-filled shelves of a costly library, replete with every comfort, with a tithe of the satisfaction I then contemplated the two or three dog-eared volumes that lay before me.

My first few days of liberty were passed in planning out the future. I