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papers of London.

THE BOOK WORLD.

In like garrulous humor, I go on to tell you of such books as relieve our town May. The Seven Gables you have read, it must be, and found it, as all the world finds it, trenchant in its wit, playful in humor, and delicate to a hair's-breadth in its description. It comes in well as a quiet sedative after the rough outlining, and nightmare-ish work of BORROW's, about which we have had a very pretty publishers' quarrel.

of her life, she attended with exemplary de- | the Fair until it is opened; then you shall votion to the duties of a wife and mother. have all the gossip of all the gossipping When her children had grown up to manhood, and gained an independence for themselves, she then thought herself justified in following a propensity which was in her so powerfully at work, and which prompted her to leave a comfortable home and many loving friends. She first directed her steps to Palestine and Egypt. After her return she visited Scandinavia and Iceland. Then she set out on a voyage round the world, landing in Brazil, surmounting the Parahyby, and penetrating through thick, primitive forests, to visit the aborigines at their own homes; then passing Cape Horn, touching at Valparaiso, she traversed the Pacific Ocean to Otaheite and China, Singapore and Ceylon, as far as Kandy; wandering hence to Bengal, Hindostan, and Delhi, turning her steps to the caves of Adjunta and Ellora, to Bombay. From that spot she sailed through the Arabian and Persian Sea to Bassora, followed the Tigris up to Bagdad, continuing to pass over an immense country to Babylon, Mosul, Nineveh, into Kurdistan, and Persia's second capital, Tabris. Pursuing her course over Tiflis, along the Caucasus, she embarked at Redout Kali for Constantinople and Greece, whence she returned to her native country. She speaks in glowing terms of the kindness she met with at the hands of some of the tribes who are considered to be most backward in civilization."

All the world, they say, is going to the Fair. In the omnibuses and the steamboats you hear adieux said, and there are sobbings on all the docks of the town. Even now, if the papers are to be believed, a million of strange men and women are threading the streets of London. The Queen was to be the first to usher in the morning of the Exhibition, and there was such display, without a doubt, as will not fatigue the eyes of Londoners for many a day to come. Look out for your next numbers of the Illustrated News for a show of the festivities.

Meantime, the little Yacht, that is to measure itself with Yarmouth yachtmen, is off from the stocks, and is fast finishing for her long cruise into the waters by Spithead.

The steamers are fitting up, and the packets are setting out rude state-rooms-made of deal—into the heart of their ships. Little side-fairs-like Greenwich fair with its booths-are, we are told, to compete with the greater fair of Hyde Park. Here there will be-if the Greenwich precedent is followed-unlimited beer-drinking, and plenty of fun and policemen. And now I will drop

Yeast is the queerish title of a book presently to see the light in this country, but originally put out in the page of Fraser. It is written, as the critics say, by that strong-feeling, but not very settle-minded clergyman who gave us not long ago, the forcible story of Alton Locke. Its humor will be after the same order, and I give you here a sprig of his poetry to show how his thought runs into a fever of sympathy. It might be another song of a shirt.

A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATTER.
"The merry brown hares came leaping

Over the crest of the hill,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping
Under the moonlight still.

"Leaping late and early,

Till under their bite and their tread
The swedes, and the wheat, and the barley,
Lay cankered, and trampled, and dead.

"A poacher's widow sat sighing

On the side of the white chalk bank,
Where under the gloomy fir-woods

One spot in the ley throve rank.

"She watched a long tuft of clover,

Where rabbit or hare never ran;
For its black sour haulm covered over
The blood of a murdered man.

"She thought of the dark plantation,

And the hares, and her husband's blood; And the voice of her indignation

Rose up to the throne of God.

"I am long past wailing and whining-
I have wept too much in my life;
I've had twenty years of pining
As an English laborer's wife.

"A laborer in Christian England,

Where they cant of a Saviour's name,
And yet waste men's lives like the vermin's,
For a few more brace of game.

"There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire ;

There is blood on your pointers' feet; There is blood on the game you sell, squire, And there's blood on the game you eat!

"You have sold the laboring man, squire,
Body and soul to shame,

To pay for your seat in the House, squire,
And to pay for the feed of your game.

"You made him a poacher yourself, squire,
When you'd give neither work nor meat;
And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden
At our starving children's feet;

"When pack'd in one reeking chamber,

Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay;

"But the merry brown hares came leaping
Over the uplands still,

Where the clover and corn lay sleeping

On the side of the white chalk hill."

You can hardly say now that I have given you nothing to think of; for this rugged rhyme suggests a world-full of wandering conjectures.

Yet another sweet half-dozen of verselets for I feel in poetic humor-I take from a daily paper, where they should not lie unnoticed. If you know that sweet, half-lily-half-pink colored flower called arbutus, whose fragrance is like that of a May morning after a shower-you will pin

While the rain patter'd in on the rotting bride-it to the cover of your herbarian, where this

bed,

And the walls let in the day;

"When we lay in the burning fever

On the mud of the cold clay floor,

Till you parted us all for three months, squire,
At the cursed workhouse-door.

"We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders?
What self-respect could we keep,
Worse housed than your hacks and your poin-

ters,

Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep?

Our daughters with base-born babies

Have wander'd away in their shame;

If your misses had slept, squire, where they did
Your misses might do the same.

"Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking
With handfuls of coal and rice,
Or by dealing out flannel and sheeting
A little below cost price?

"You may tire of the jail and the workhouse,
And take to allotments and schools,
But you've run up a debt that will never
Be repaid us by penny-club rules.

"In the season of shame and sadness,
In the dark and dreary day,
When scrofula, gout, and madness
Are eating your race away;

"When to kennels and liveried varlets

You have cast your daughters' bread, And, worn out with liquor and harlots, Your heir at your feet lies dead;

"When your youngest, the mealy-mouthed

rector,

Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave;
You will find in your God the protector
Of the freeman you fancied your slave.—

"She looked at the tuft of clover,

And wept till her heart grew light; And at last, when her passion was over, Went wandering into the night.

first nestling of the spring lies pressed.

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We have copied from a recent illustrated | graving upon wood. The time has gone edition of Goldsmith's Poems some new designs. They are full of meaning, and in the English copy, beautifully rendered. No branch of art is making steadier and richer progress in our day than the art of en

by when woodcuts were considered merely as picturesque aids to the text. Sentiment is now conveyed by the joint labor of designer and engraver, as thoroughly as by language.

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GOLDSMITH is old, but any really good in picture, as in the lines which embody it. presentations of his pathetic or picturesque We may probably take another occasion scenes to the eye, will always carry with for renewing our acquaintance with the them a new interest. Truth to nature in dainty cuts of this new rendering of poor an author, will feed hosts of minds, as well GOLDSMITH's poems.

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FRANCE, like England, has its poets of the people-workmen who cheer their toil by happy thoughts, and whose glorious and triumphant songs are oft-times heard ring ing clear and beautiful, high above the din and mêlée of the battle of life. You may detect in their poetic offerings a want of that classical taste and polish which are the result of careful scholastic culture; sometimes they are obscured by the rude patois of the remote country district in which these poets grow, as are the Doric effusions of our own Scottish Burns; and yet you cannot fail at once to see that the true fire burns in them -that their lips have been touched by the live coal from the altar, and that their hearts and souls are inspired with the true spirit of poetry.

Of such is Jasmin, one of the greatest living poets of France, though he is-yes! let us confess it a barber! A barber-poet, one would scarcely expect this! Yet it is so. Burns a peasant, Bloomfield and Clare ploughboys; these do not seem out of keep

ing with the poetic character-they have heard the lark's song filling the heavens, as the happy bird fanned the milk-white cloud with its wing-listened to the purling of the brook, the bleating of sheep, the milkmaid's and reaper's song; and their minds were daily fed upon the choicest influences of nature. But a barber and hair-dresser, what poetic associations has he, any more than a tailor can have? And yet there are poetic tailors too; and why not? Has any one read Gerald Massey's poems? If so, they will see the true and unmistakable poetic fire burning brightly there. And Jasmin is a barber, and disdains not the craft, but loves it, for it gives him independence. He ennobles it, he glorifies it, for the lowliest work is elevated by pure and happy thought; it is lifted and lighted up by the voice of song and the beautiful utterances of poetry.

Barbers, however, are usually accounted men of spirit and wit in France. Thus Beaumarchais makes Figaro the barber, the

wit of his famous play; Le Sage, in his "Gil | Blas," pays the same compliment to the craft. In Spain and Italy, the barber is often the one brilliant man in his town or village, and his shop is the place where all the news of the district circulates, and in which all sorts of delightful intrigues are contrived. But barbers are often men of intelligence and parts; and those who are familiar with the life of Moliere, the greatest of French wits, will remember what long hours he used to spend with his cherished friend the barber of Pezenas.

part of the country. So that Jasmin possesses a kind of poetic descent, as he himself sometimes jocularly boasts.

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The little child grew; he throve, at the bottom of his poor little cradle, all crammed with lark's feathers; slender, small, yet nourished by healthy milk, and happy as a king's son. Seven years passed; he could now, horn in hand, and paper cap on his head, accompany his father in the charivaris of the neighborhood. But his great delight, above all, was to ramble among the woods, in the little islands of the Garonne, which were filled with willow-trees. 'Nakedfooted, and naked-headed," he says, "I plunged among the green boughs; I wasn't alone; sometimes there were twenty, sometimes thirty of us. Oh! how my soul leapt, when we all set out together at midday, singing The Lamb whom Thou hast given, (a well-known carol in the South.) The very recollection to this day delights me. To the island! to the island!' shouted the boldest, and then all made haste to land, and each to gather together his bundle of fagots. The bundle was made up an hour before nightfall; the rest of the time was spent in play. And then the return, so glorious it was! On thirty heads, tripped along thirty fagot-bundles; and thirty voices sung, as at setting out, the same burden."

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But France has also a baker-poet, almost as well known as Jasmin; we mean Jacques Reboul, the baker of Nismes. Reboul is, however, rather a classical French poet, than a poet of the people, like Jasmin. He writes and sings with classic purity and grace, nothing ashamed of his daily work, by which he makes his bread, but elevating and ennobling it by his pure life, his glorious thoughts, and his inspired songs. There is a little touching piece of his called "The Angel and the Child," which is probably one of the most charming eulogies ever written. Jasmin belongs to the town of Agen, on the Garonne, a fine river flowing across the the province of Guienne, in the south of France; Agen is there called "the eye of Guienne." In the distance are seen the peaks of the lofty Pyrenees, a range of mountains holding in their embrace some of the finest scenery in Europe. Jasmin was born in 1798, at the close of that expiring century of woe and destruction; he first saw the light in a dingy ruin peopled with rats, in the corner of an old street of the town abovenamed. His father was a hunchback, and his mother a cripple; the home was a very poor and miserable one, and the hunchback father, who was a tailor, could with difficulty make both ends meet. Little Jasmin was brought into the world during the noise of a frightful charivari which was being inflicted on some unpopular neighbor, and amidst the thundering noise of horns, old pans, marrow-child," said the old man, "I am going to the bones and cleavers, what should be the first sounds to fall on the future poet's ear but some thirty couplets of a song, shouted by the mob, the composition of his own father? For old Jasmin the tailor, though he could not read, composed by some sort of born instinct, the greater part of the burlesque songs sung at the charivaris, so usual in that

At last, school was thought of a word, the very sound of which frightened him. His grandfather handed over to his poor mother, for this purpose, a small sum of money, which he had scraped together by carrying parcels; but the family was too poor to use it thus; it was needed to buy bread. One day, when little Jasmin was playing about the street, he saw an old man being carried along in an old chair, by the hospital-porters. He looked; it was his grandfather! "Whither are you going, dear grandfather? Why do you weep! And why are you leaving your dear little grandchildren, that love you so?" "My

hospital; it is there that the Jasmins die." Five days after, he died; and from that Monday, the child, for the first time, knew that the Jasmins were poor.

All these touching recollections are brought out in a little poem which Jasmin afterwards published, entitled, "Mous Soubenis," (Mes Souvenirs,) and which is a graphic piece of

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