Meanwhile his room a shop became, With lathe and bellows, forge and flame; And in the midst, as each could see, Mechanic-chemist-all was he.

And thus with knowledge he was fraught,
Not by an instinct, but by thought-
Patient and tranquil-bent with care-
O'er many a book-a student rare.
And while he thus the useful knew,
He still was just and truthful too:
He loved the good, the dutiful—
The tasteful, and the beautiful;
Still modest-simple-was his air;
Still found he pleasure everywhere;
Still found he friends on every hand:
The humble loved, for he was bland;
The high admired, for all refined,

His look and manner matched his mind.

No envy broke his bosom's rest-
No pride disturbed his tranquil breast-

No praise he heeded, for he knew

To judge himself by standards true;

And words to him were vain and waste,

If still unsatisfied his taste.

With rapid hand his pencil drew

Light sketches of the scenes he knew,
Which told how well his studious eye
Had traced the hues of earth and sky-
The playful change of light and shade
O'er rippling wave or spreading glade.
And music from his fingers swept
So sweet so deep-the listener wept.
The tutored and untutored round,
In trembling trance, alike were bound;

For not alone with hand and heart,
He mastered all the gems of art,
But bade the soft piano's key
Reveal unwritten melody-

A flowing fount of playful feeling,

O'er which a plaintive tone was stealing

As twilight oft is seen to throw

Its saddening shade o'er sunset's glow.
'Tis said, alas! that those who love
Sad melodies, go soon above;
And that fair youth-that gentle boy-
So full of light, and love, and joy-
Sixteen bright summers o'er his head—
He sleeps, companion of the dead!

How vain are tears! but memory's art,
While yet it wrings, still soothes the heart;

For if it bring the lost to sight,

He comes in some fond robe of light.

Of all his sports in life's fair day,
He loved the best down yonder bay
To speed his boat with shivering sail,
Or glide before the whispering gale;
For in the presence of the sea
He found a quiet ecstasy,

As if it came with mystic lore,

And beckoned to some happier shore.
And when his last sad hour was nigh,
And clouds were gathering o'er his eye,
His mother asked, "How now, my boy?"
He answered, with a beam of joy—
"I'm in my boat!" and thus he passed—
These simple, meaning words—his last!

LETTER LVI.

London and Paris compared-Paris thirty years ago-Louis XVIII.— The Parisians-Garden of the Tuileries-Washington Irving—Mr. Warden, the American Consul-Société Philomatique-Baron Larrey -Geoffroy St. Hilaire-The Institute-Arago-Lumarck-Gay-Lussac -Cuvier Lacroix-Laplace - Laennec-Dupuytren-Talma-Made

moiselle Mars.

MY DEAR C**:

About the middle of April, 1851, I arrived in Paris, and soon after took charge of the Consulate there. As you know, I have frequently been in this gay city, and I now propose to gather up my recollections of it, and select therefrom a few items which may fill up the blank that yet remains in my story, and in some degree contribute to your amusement.

I first visited Paris in January, 1824, as I have told you. I had spent a month in London, which is always a rather gloomy place to a stranger, and in winter is peculiarly depressing. The people who have houses there, burrow into them, and lighting their coal fires, make themselves happy; but the wanderer from his country, shut out from these cheerful scenes, and forced into the streets, grimed with dirt and drizzle below and incumbered with bituminous fogs above, feels that he is in a dreary wilderness, where man and nature conspire to make him miserable and melancholy. In most great cities, there is something

to cheer the new-comer: it is precisely the reverse with London, and particularly at this dismal season. Its finest streets, its most sumptuous squares, even its noble monuments, which are not few, have always a rather dull aspect, and in the pitchy atmosphere of winter, they seem to be in mourning, and communicate their gloom to all around. St. Paul's, incrusted with soot and dripping with an inky deposit from the persistent fogs; Nelson's monument, black with coal-smoke, and clammy with the chill death-damp of the season,―all these things-the very ornaments and glories of the city are positively depressing, and especially to an American, accustomed to the transparent skies, the white snow-drifts, the bracing, cheering atmosphere of his own winter climate.

Paris is the very opposite of London. The latter is an ordinary city, impressed by no distinctive characteristics, except its gloom and its vast extent. It is little more than twenty Liverpools, crowded together, and forming the most populous city in the world. Paris, on the contrary, is marked with prominent and peculiar traits, noticed at once by the most careless obOn entering the streets, you are struck with the air of ornament and decoration which belongs to the architecture, the effect of which is heightened by the light color of the freestone, the universal building material. The sky is bright, and the people seem to reflect its cheerfulness. The public gar

server.

dens and squares, surrounded with monuments of art and teeming with men, women, and children, including abundance of rosy nurses and plump babies, all apparently bent on pleasure, and this, too, in midwinter-are peculiar and striking features of this gay metropolis. To an American who has just left London, his heart heavy with hypochondria, Paris is indeed delightful, and soon restores him to his wonted cheerfulness.

At the time I first arrived here, this city was, however, very different from what it now is. Louis XVIII. was upon the throne, and had occupied it for nine years. During this period he had done almost nothing to repair the state of waste and dilapidation in which the allies had left it. These had taken down the statue of Napoleon on the column of the Place Vendôme, and left its pedestal vacant; the king had followed up the reform and erased the offensive name of the exiled emperor from the public monuments, and put his own, Louis XVIII., in their place; he had caused a few churches to be repaired, and some pictures of the Virgin to be painted and placed in their niches. But ghastly mounds of rubbish-the wrecks of demolished edifices-scattered heaps of stones at the foot of half-built walls of buildings, destined never to be completed,-these and other unsightly objects were visible on every hand, marking the recent history of Napoleon, overthrown in the midst of his mighty projects, and leaving his name and his