library had echoed for the last time the musical tones of his much-loved voice. The next morning he started to his son's. The day was the coldest of the year. He made the trip in an open carriage. The exposure gave him a severe cold, which resulted in an attack of pneumonia. Dr. J. W. Benson, of Louisville, was sent for, and though he treated Mr. PRENTICE's disease with the utmost skill, there was not enough strength in his enfeebled constitution to rally from its effects.

I saw Mr. PRENTICE several times during his illness, and each time thought he would recover, but I believe that from the first he anticipated his own destiny. He said, "It is almost impossible for one who has suffered as much as I have to get well; but I do not complain. Death has no terrors for me: this world is not our only home; there is a brighter and a nobler existence beyond the grave."

About a week after the interview I saw him again. He appeared to suffer less pain than at any time during his illness. He inquired kindly, very kindly, about some of his friends in Louisville, and expressed a faint hope that he would be able to go to see them in a few weeks; but I could see in his countenance that he was calmly and patiently awaiting the hour when he would no longer be a dweller beneath the skies. On Friday, the 21st of January, he sent me word that he was dying. I felt it my duty to be by his bed-side. The river had overflowed its banks and the messenger who arrived from the farm reported the roads in an almost impassable condition. My wife, who had loved and admired Mr. PRENTICE's poetry from her childhood, could not be dissuaded from accompanying me. We left the city late in the evening, and after proceeding some distance we were compelled to leave the road and go through a dense wood in order to avoid the back water. The darkness was enough to appal stouter

hearts than ours. At last we reached a temporary lake which had surrounded the house of the dying.

A little boat was in waiting to take us across the water; but I shall not attempt to describe the picture that presented itself to our view as I lifted my wife into the boat, and saw the physician standing on the steps with a flickering lamp in his hand, reflecting the scene of death in the background.

It was about ten o'clock when we entered the room. Mr. PRENTICE had been in a dying condition since eight in the morning. Not a murmur or word of complaint crossed his lips. My wife approached his bed and said, “Do you know me, Mr. PRENTICE?" He did not recognise her at first, and thinking she was Mrs. Prentice's little sister, Josephine, said, "Yes, it is Josephine;" but when my wife told him her name, he said, "Yes, yes, I know you now; it is Alice."

Mr. PRENTICE was in the full possession of his faculties until the last moment of existence; and I have been informed by Captain J. M. Hewet, who faithfully nursed him throughout his sickness, that in not a single instance did he abandon that patient forbearance and elegant politeness which so beautifully characterised all his actions in life. I have heard it said that the last words of great men are great like themselves, and I felt no little curiosity to hear the last words of Mr. PRENTICE. My wife, who held his hand in hers at the time, says they were (as near as she could understand them), "I want to go, I want to go." I have often stood by the side of the dying, but I never before beheld a death-scene half so solemn or impressive. Mr. PRENTICE'S little grandson, Georgie, was asleep on a lounge in the room, unconscious of the end that was awaiting the being he most loved upon earth. The attending physician had ceased to hope even against hope, and weary

with watching, fell asleep in his chair. At last Col. Prentice knelt at the side of his father and exclaimed in accents of deepest woe, "Pa, Pa, speak to me once more;” but no answering word came to relieve the awful silence; and a few moments afterwards the golden bowl was broken and the silver cord unstrung, and the spirit of the great man winged its flight to the bosom of the God who gave it.

VICTOR HUGO.

WITH A GLANCE AT HIS WORKS.

VICTOR HUGO has been successful in every department of literature. He has made a brilliant reputation, not only as an essayist and novelist, but as a poet and dramatist. His "Claude Gueux," "Studies upon Mirabeau,” and "Littérature et Philosophie Melées," aided in securing his election to the French Academy. His "Marion de Lorme" and "Lucrèce Borgia," in spite of their faults and inconsistencies, and questionable morality, occupy a prominent. place upon the stage. His political speeches and orations. are read and studied in every civilised country upon the globe. He has written any number of odes and ballads, and lyrical and legendary poems.

He claims to belong to one of the noblest families of France. He traces his noble descent as far back as the year 1531. His residence, "Hauteville House," in the island of Guernsey, is famed for its costly magnificence and sumptuous splendor. There is not a room in it that is not ornamented with some exquisite carvings and rare. curiosities. Every department is arranged entirely after his own taste and designs. He has spent a large portion of his life in collecting the rarest works of art, including oak carvings of the middle ages and Renaissance, ancient tapestries, statues, vases, porcelains and enamels. He is

said to have covered his walls and furniture with inscriptions and devices illustrative of the most eventful passages in his life and of his peculiar ideas of moral and ethical philosophy.

His chimney-piece is thus described by Lecanu :

Let us imagine a cathedral of carved wood, which, firmly rooted in the flooring, rises in a towering mass to the ceiling, indenting the tapestry above with its highest pinnacles. The doorway is represented by the hearth, and the rose window by a convex mirror placed above the fireplace. The central gable rises in a double entablature, decorated with arcades and fantastic foliage in a deliciously bastard style, in which the rococo blends with Byzantine architecture. Surmounted on this are two towers, supported by buttresses, which most happily repeat the ornamentation of the main body. This crowning piece reminds one of the façades of the guild-halls in Antwerp and Bruges. Here, also, as in the roofs of these old remains of the time of Philip II. some plain figures stand out in rigid simplicity, and give life to the bold indental lines of the architecture. One figure is that of a bishop, with a gilt crozier; and on two adjacent escutcheons is the proverb:

CROSSE DE BOIS, EVEQUE D'OR.
CROSSE D'OR, EVEQUE DE BOIS.

Below are two carved figures, representing one, St. Paul, with

LE LIVRE

underneath; the other a monk, and the words

LE CIEL.

On two plain volutes are inscribed the names of the greatest benefactors of humanity, in chronological order :

MOISE, SOCRETE, CHRIST, COLOMB, LUTHER, DANTE, SHAKSPEARE, MOLIERE.

In this palatial residence he indites his literary works for the edification and corruption of mankind. It is here that he stigmatised the execution of John Brown as "worse. than the murder of Abel by Cain," and said, "C'est Washington tuant Spartacus." It is here that he wrote "The