He has promised to be good to her, and | As I write these words I remember we can only hope that he will keep his the thought so well expressed by De word." These words, spoken gruffly Quincey: "Life resembles a journey in a deep bass voice, and accompanied by stage-coach; the scene continually by a distrusting glance at Mr. Binns, changes, and the passengers also." I were not without their effect. They have quite a sentiment of tenderness in seemed to imply that man in general, my heart for the young girl, for Fräuand Mr. Thompson in particular, would lein Bertha, for Mr. Binns, Mrs. Jackdo anything rather than "keep his son, and even for the crocheting old word." Everybody shuddered, but German ladies, now that they will so Frau Biener was only acting up to a soon vanish into "the land of shadows." firmly implanted principle of hers. An Then I think of Mattie, already dearticle, according to her, must, above parted along that distant silver streak all, be made to wear. If solid, it of water whither I shall soon follow was not generally ornamental; if orna- her; and, leaning out of my window, I mental, as a rule it did not "wear." forget my past weeks of boredom, and Mr. Binns was ornamental; ergo, he gaze, almost with a feeling of regret, probably did not possess good "wear- over to where the red sun dies far away ing" qualities. She looked lovingly from off the wooded knolls of the across at her own Franz, who sat with Schwarzwald. one arm encircling Louise's capacious waist, and the other raising a tankard of beer! Nobody could deny that he, at least, was more useful than ornamental.

66

EMILY CONSTANCE COOK.

From Blackwood's Magazine. THE RAT-CATCHER OF HAMELN.

BY GUSTAV HARTWIG.

[It may be interesting to compare with Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin," and its many quaint humors, the treatment of the same legend by a young German poet, who has dealt solely with the grave and pathetic side of the story.]

THE Piper, he laughed with a scorn that stung,

But Franz now rose to speak for himself and wife. "My Louise is shy," he said, looking towards her fondly, "and it therefore devolves on me to speak. As to the betrothed couple, I can do no more than wish them as much happiness as my Louise and myself are blessed with; and as for you, ladies, I can only say that when you are next in the neigh-A curse was quivering on his tongue; borhood of Hohenellenputznau, we He fixed on the councillors, where they should be delighted if you would honor our little abode with a visit. My Louise A look that was fired with a deadly hate. "From the plague of rats I have set you has a girl to cook, and though ours is a free, simple household, yet it is a comfort-Not a tail of them's left, and it's all through

able one."

sate,

No longer the vermin, undismay'd,
With ravenous tooth on their victuals
prey'd,

And folks at ease to their work might fare,
With no rats scaring them everywhere.
There was joy in every house once more,
And comfort, as in the good days of yore,
Until one day of sultry heats

Hung heavy o'er Hameln's silent streets.
The town seemed in a death-trance seal'd;
The men were away at work a-field,
While in their homes so hush'd and still
The women toiled as good housewives will.
Then through the empty streets, with slow
And wary steps, - a dusky glow

In his keen eyes, and in his face
A purpose dire, - did the Piper pace.
He held the pipe in his right hand,
By his bony fingers firmly spann'd ;
Slowly he raised it up, and to
His lips he set it, then withdrew,

As though his heart had failed him then;
But, quick! 'twas back at his lips again.
Then strains, so marvellously sweet
As never mortal ear did greet,
Flow from the pipe, - a music rare,
Like spirit-voices in the air,

Entrancing, thrilling, plaintive, mild,
Demonic, weird, ear-piercing, wild.
Onward he strides; through street
street

He takes his way with stealthy feet,
And on his unblest path he bears
From house to house the magic airs;
And where her darlings young and fair
Nestled within the mother's care,
Wherever childhood's eye shone bright,
There did the magic use its might.
The witching music, floating round,
Their souls within its meshes bound;
Hark! Hark! It strikes upon the ear.
They stretch their little necks to hear,
Within their eyes gleams such delight,
As though heaven opened to their sight,
And to the Piper, one by one,
Away the little creatures run.
The mother chides no heed give they,
But one and all they rush away.
If little ones lay sick a-bed,
Away at once their sickness fled;

Out of their mother's arms they slip,
And shout and gambol, jump and skip.
With warning voice, sweet, full of pain,
She calls to them, but calls in vain ;
One sound alone their being sways,
The music the rat-catcher plays.
O'er every house, o'er every street
He casts his spell of music sweet,
And, snared in it, the children throng
Troops after him the town along.
Out through the gate, on, on they sweep,
Till they are stay'd by a mountain steep.

He looks round at them, as they sped,
So blithe of heart, so rosy red,
Poor innocents that should, perdie,
The victims of his vengeance be.
Then for a moment swept a trace
Of pity o'er his wrathful face.
Does he of the parents' anguish think,
And from his vengeful purpose shrink?
From life's tree shall he rudely tear
The buds that scarce have burgeon'd there?
He stays the spell- the pipe is hush'd.
Pity his hate has well-nigh crush'd,
When Hameln meets his view, and straight
The pipe resounds, and all is hate.
With tones low, sweet, yet dread to hear,
With tones wild, wondrous, eldritch, drear,
Does he the troops of children clasp, —
on Not one of them eludes his grasp.
So to the mountain on he goes,

The children round him, rows on rows,
When unseen hands with crash and shock
Split wide the adamantine rock.
In pours the living torrent, then
The mountain closes up again,
And Hameln's luckless children all
Are lost behind that stony wall.

Heavily on the unhappy town
The Piper's vengeance settled down;
Mother's hearts many it caused to break,
And there even now men's souls will ache,
To think of Hameln and the day
The Piper's music lured away
Her children, and their souls are stirr'd,
With anguish, just as though they heard
The strains so sweet, so dread to hear,
The strains so eldritch, wild, and drear,
Round Poppenberg that rang, when it
To swallow up Hameln's children split.
THEODORE MARTIN.

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From The Fortnightly Review.

RAPHAEL.1

from the first its influence must have overflowed so small a place. In the By his immense productiveness, by case of the lucky Raphael, for once, the the even perfection of what he pro- actual conditions of early life had been duced, its fitness to its own day, its hold suitable, propitious, accordant to what on posterity, in the suavity of his life, one's imagination would have required some would add in the "opportunity" for the childhood of the man. He was of his early death, Raphael may seem a born amid the art he was, not to transsignal instance of the luckiness, of the form, but to perfect, by a thousand good fortune, of genius. Yet if we reverential retouchings. In no palace, follow the actual growth of his powers, however, but in a modest abode, still within their proper framework, the age shown, containing the workshop of his of the Renaissance, an age of which, father, Giovanni Santi. But here, too, we may say, summarily, that it enjoyed though in frugal form, art, the arts, itself, and found perhaps its chief en- were present. A store of artistic objoyment in the attitude of the scholar, jects was, or had recently been, made in the enthusiastic acquisition of knowl- there, and now especially, for fitting edge for its own sake, if we thus view patrons, religious pictures in the old Raphael and his works in their environ- Umbrian manner. In quiet nooks of ment we shall find even his seemingly the Apennines Giovanni's works remechanical good fortune hardly distin-main; and there is one of them, worth guishable from his own patient disposal study, in spite of what critics say of its of the means at hand. Facile master as he may seem, as indeed he is, he is also one of the world's typical scholars, with Plato, and Cicero, and Virgil, and Milton. The formula of his genius, if we must have one, is this: genius by accumulation; the transformation of meek scholarship into genius-triumphant power of genius.

crudity, in the National Gallery. Concede its immaturity, at least, though an immaturity visibly susceptible of a delicate grace, it wins you nevertheless to return again and again, and ponder, by a sincere expression of sorrow, profound, yet resigned, be the cause what it may, among all the many causes of sorrow inherent in the ideal of materUrbino, where this prince of the nity, human or divine. But if you keep Renaissance was born in 1483, year also in mind when looking at it the facts of of the birth of Luther, leader of the Raphael's childhood, you will recognize other great movement of that age, the in his father's picture, not the anticiReformation-Urbino, under its dukes pated sorrow of the "Mater Dolorosa” of the house of Montefeltro, had where- over the dead son, but the grief of a withal just then to make a boy of simple household over the mother hernative artistic faculty from the first a self taken early from it. That may willing learner. The gloomy old for- have been the first picture the eyes of tress of the feudal masters of the town the world's great painter of Madonnas had been replaced, in those later years rested on; and if he stood diligently of the Quattro-cento, by a consum-before it to copy, and so copying, quite mate monument of Quattro-cento taste, unconsciously, and with no disloyalty a museum of ancient and modern art, to his original, refined, improved, subthe owners of which lived there, gal-stituted-substituted himself, in fact, lantly at home, amid the choicer flow- his finer self, he had already struck the ers of living humanity. The ducal persistent note of his career. As with palace was, in fact, become nothing his age, it is his vocation, ardent worker less than a school of ambitious youth in as he is, to enjoy himself-to enjoy all the accomplishments alike of war himself amiably, and to find his chief and peace. Raphael's connection with enjoyment in the attitude of a scholar. it seems to have become intimate, and And one by one, one after another, his 1 A lecture delivered to the University Extension masters, the very greatest of them, go to school to him.

Students: Oxford, August 2nd, 1892.