ways welcome. He sat a long while over his wine, chatting gaily to some friend or other, for he never dined alone; or to one of the actors, whom he often had with him, after dinner, to read over their parts, and to take his instructions. He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles. "Lest this statement should convey a false impression, I hasten to recall to the reader's recollection the very different habits of our fathers in respect of drinking. It was no unusual thing to be a three-bottle man' in those days in England, when the three bottles were of port or burgundy; and Goethe, a Rhinelander, accustomed from boyhood to wine, drank a wine which his English contemporaries would have called water. The amount he drank never did more than ex hilarate him-nover made him unfit for work or for society. "Over his wine, then, he sat some hours; no such thing as dessert was seen upon his table in those days- not even the customary coffee after dinner. His mode of living was extremely simple; and even when persons of very moderate circumstances burned wax, two poor tallow candles were all that could be seen in his rooms. In the evening he went often to the theatre, and there his customary glass of punch was brought at six o'clock. If not at the theatre, he received friends at home. Between eight and nine a frugal supper was laid; but he never took anything except a little salad or preserves. By ten o'clock he was usually in bed.” MEMOIR OF THE KING OF SWEDEN. - Oscar I., King of Sweden and Norway, born July 4, 1799, is the only issue of the marriage of Marshal Bernadotte with Desirée Clary, daughter of a merchant of Marseilles, whose elder sister married Joseph Bonaparte. Oscar Bernadotte was placed, at the age of nine years, in the Imperial Lyceum, where his name may yet be seen on the walls of the various quartiers of that establishment. Marshal Bernadotte was elected Crown Prince of Sweden, accepted the reversion of the crown, and borrowing 2,000,000 francs, that he might not appear in Stockholm with only hist sword, proceeded at once to that capital with his son, after both had abjured Catholicism on the road, and embraced Lutheranism, the dominant religion of Sweden. Bernadotte had shortly the satisfaction of seeing his son soon forget his French in the course of a year, and acquire, under the teaching of the poet Atterborn, perfect mastery over the Swedish language. In 1818, when, after the death of Charles XIII., Bernadotte ascended the throne, he transmitted to Oscar the title of Chancellor of the University of Upsal, of which next year he became a student. His military instruction kept pace with his literary instruction, and in 1818 he became Colonel of the Guards. He had scarcely quit SIMILE OF A WOMAN TO THE MOON. The ver ted the Swedish soil during his reign. Once, sion I have seen (and I believe in print) of the however, under pretence of going to visit the Latin epigram on this subject runs thus: banks of the Rhine he pushed as far as Eichstadt, in Bavaria, the residence of Eugene Beauharnias, Duke of Leuchtenberg, whose eldest daughter Josephine he married, July 19th of that year. This marriage was much talked of in Europe, as seeming to prove that the plebeian origin of the new Swedish dynasty had not been forgotten by the courts of the continent. In 1834 he was named Viceroy of Norway; and in 1888, in con impossible; verse could create fame, but no tive to Court etiquette.' To say, as Niebuhr money fama and fames were then, as ever, says, that the Court was a Dalilah to which in terrible contiguity. As soon as the neces- he sacrificed his locks,' is profoundly to sity for a career is admitted, much objection misunderstand his genius, profoundly to falis to the ground; for those who reproach misread his life. Had his genius been of him with having wasted his time on court that stormy class which produces great refestivities, and the duties of government, formers and great martyrs had it been his which others could have done as well, must mission to agitate mankind by words which, ask whether he would have saved that time reverberating to their inmost recesses, called had he followed the career of jurisprudence them to lay down their lives in the service and jostled the lawyers through the courts at of an idea had it been his tendency to Frankfort? or would they prefer seeing meditate upon the far-off destinies of man, him reduced to the condition of poor Schiller, and sway men by the coercion of grand rep wasting so much of his precious life in liter- resentative abstractions, then, indeed, we aryhack-work,' translating French books might say his place was aloof from the motfor a miserable pittance? Time, in any ley throng, and not in sailing down the case, would have been claimed; in return swiftly-flowing stream to sounds of mirth and for that given to Karl August, he received, music on the banks. But he was not a reas he confesses in the poem addressed to the former, not a martyr. He was a poet, whose Duke, what the great seldom bestow-religion was Beauty, whose worship was of affection, leisure, confidence, garden and Nature, whose aim was culture. His mishouse. No one have I had to thank but him; sion was to paint life; and for that it was and much have I wanted, who, as a poet, ill-requisite he should see life, to know` understood the arts of gain. If Europe praised me, what has Europe done for me? Nothing. Even my works have been an expense to me.' “The haunt and the main region of his song.' Happier circumstances might indeed have surrounded him and given him a greater "In 1801, writing to his mother on the sphere. It would have been very different, complaints uttered against him by those as he often felt, if there had been a nation to who judged so falsely of his condition, he appeal to, instead of a heterogeneous mass says they only saw what he gave up, not of small peoples, willing enough to talk of what he gained they could not comprehend Fatherland, but in nowise prepared to behow he grew daily richer, though he daily gave up so much. He confesses that the narrow circle of a burgher life would have ill accorded with his ardent and wide-sweeping spirit. Had he remained at Frankfort, he would have been ignorant of the world. But here the panorama of life was unrolled before him, and his experience was every way enlarged. Did not Leonardo da Vinci spend much of his time charming the Court of Milan with his poetry and lute-playing? did he not also spend time in mechanical and hydrostatical labors for the state? No reproach is lifted against his august name; no one cries out against his being false to his genius; no one rebukes him for having painted so little at one period. The Last Supper' speaks for him. Will not Tasso, Iphigenia, Hermann and Dorothea, Faust, Meister, and the long list of Goethe's works, speak for him? come a nation. There are many other ifs in which much virtue could be found; but inasmuch as he could not create circumstances, we must follow his example, and be content with what the gods provided. I do not, I confess, see what other sphere was open to him in which his genius could have been more sacred; but I do see that he built out of circumstance a noble temple, in which the altar-flame burnt with a steady light. To hypothetical biographers he left the task of settling what Goethe might have been; enough for us to catch some glimpse of what he was." As a specimen of the narrative portion of the book we subjoin the account of Goethe's daily life at Weimar, about the beginning of this century, when he was fifty years old. "I have dwelt mainly on the dissipation of "He rose at seven, sometimes earlier, afhis time, because the notion that a court life ter a sound and prolonged sleep: for, like affected his genius by corrupting his mind' Thorwaldsen, he had a talent for sleeping' is preposterous. No reader of this biogra- only surpassed by his talent for continuous phy, it is to be hoped, will fail to see the work. Till eleven he worked without intertrue relations in which he stood to the ruption. A cup of chocolate was then Duke; how free they were from anything brought, and he resumed work till one. At like servility or suppression of genuine im- two he dined. This meal was the important pulse. Indeed, one of the complaints against meal of the day. His appetite was immense. him, according to the unexceptionable au- Even on the days when he complained of not thority of Riemer, was that made by the sub- being hungry, he ate much more than most alterns, of his not being sufficiently atten- men. Puddings, sweets, and cakes were al ways welcome. He sat a long while over his wine, chatting gaily to some friend or other, for he never dined alone; or to one of the actors, whom he often had with him, after dinner, to read over their parts, and to take his instructions. He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles. "Lest this statement should convey a false impression, I hasten to recall to the reader's recollection the very different habits of our fathers in respect of drinking. It was no unusual thing to be a three-bottle man' in those days in England, when the three bottles were of port or burgundy; and Goethe, a Rhinelander, accustomed from boyhood to wine, drank a wine which his English contemporaries would have called water. The amount he drank never did more than ex hilarate him- never made him unfit for work or for society. "Over his wine, then, he sat some hours; no such thing as dessert was seen upon his table in those days-not even the customary coffee after dinner. His mode of living was extremely simple; and even when persons of very moderate circumstances burned wax, two poor tallow candles were all that could be seen in his rooms. In the evening he went often to the theatre, and there his customary glass of punch was brought at six o'clock. If not at the theatre, he received friends at home. Between eight and nine a frugal supper was laid; but he never took anything except a little salad or preserves. By ten o'clock he was usually in bed." MEMOIR OF THE KING OF SWEDEN.-Oscar I., King of Sweden and Norway, born July 4, 1799, is the only issue of the marriage of Marshal Bernadotte with Desirée Clary, daughter of a merchant of Marseilles, whose elder sister married Joseph Bonaparte. Oscar Bernadotte was placed, at the age of nine years, in the Imperial Lyceum, where his name may yet be seen on the walls of the various quartiers of that establishment. Marshal Bernadotte was elected Crown Prince of Sweden, accepted the reversion of the crown, and borrowing 2,000,000 francs, that he might not appear in Stockholm with only his sword, proceeded at once to that capital with his son, after both had abjured Catholicism on the road, and embraced Lutheranism, the dominant religion of Sweden. Bernadotte had shortly the satisfaction of seeing his son soon forget his French in the course of a year, and acquire, under the teaching of the poet Atterborn, perfect mastery over the Swedish language. In 1818, when, after the death of Charles XIII., Bernadotte ascended the throne, he transmitted to Oscar the title of Chancellor of the University of Upsal, of which next year he became a student. His military instruction kept pace with his literary instruction, and in 1818 he became Colonel of the Guards. He had scarcely quitted the Swedish soil during his reign. Once, however, under pretence of going to visit the banks of the Rhine he pushed as far as Eichstadt, in Bavaria, the residence of Eugene Beauharnias, Duke of Leuchtenberg, whose eldest daughter Josephine he married, July 19th of that year. This marriage was much talked of in Europe, as seeming to prove that the plebeian origin of the new Swedish dynasty had not been forgotten by the courts of the continent. In 1834 he was named Viceroy of Norway; and in 1888, in con " THE POEM OF A LITTLE LIFE THAT WAS BUT Her little form more perfect grew, THREE APRILS LONG. BY T. B. ALDRICH. HAVE you not heard the poet tell The gates of heaven were left ajar : O'er which the white-winged seraphs go, She touched a bridge of flowers- those feet, She came, and brought delicious May! And o'er the porch the trembling vine Into this world of ours! O Babie, dainty Babie Bell! So full of meaning, pure and bright Of those oped gates of Paradise! And we loved Babie more and more: Such holy love was born; We felt we had a link between And for the love of those dear eyes, And woke the chords of joy and pain, We said, "Sweet Christ!" our hearts bent down And now the orchards which were once With gentle pulses of perfume- And in her features we could trace, In softened curves, her mother's face: Her angel naturo ripened too. We thought her lovely when she came, But she was holy, saintly now; Around her pale and lofty brow We saw a ring of slender flame ! It came upon us by degrees; And all our thoughts ran into tears! Aloud we cried in our belief: The messenger from unseen lands: Death's bride arrayed in flowers! - Journal of Commerce. WITH high-souled Monti, cowardly I deem So rainbow-wreathed with many a fairy gleam — A thing of light, all beautiful and free, In front of earth and heaven. Thus it should seem That he who steadfast stands through good and ill, Who yokes blind Fortune's coursers to his car, Until all adverse powers are driven far, From the Dublin University Magazine. HOW I BECAME AN EGYPTIAN. [The following fragments were left at home by an eccentric young man, who had given some promise in the literary way, but volunteered the other day, to the grief of his friends, and sailed for the East. We give them to our readers as they have come into our hands, leaving them to decide whither he has assigned adequate exciting causes for the strange suspicions which seem to have taken hold of his imagination. Men know but little of the psychology of this portion of our organization: anything, therefore, which tends to illustrate it, is interesting. — Ed.] * dark region without horror and dismay. Now the one feeling was, escape. I looked forward into the blackness, as into the face A wide wooden rail was about of a friend. this time passed on my left, with oars leaning against it. Farther down, I brushed by a ring and rope. What was still lower, I could not see; and for an instant hesitated about trusting my foot down into the darkness, when one of the oars I had just left above me I heard fall-it had been touched, I felt, by the Pursuer. My mind was made up. I trod boldly forward, and found footing to make a spring on to the gunwale of a barge. I reached I FLED through the streets, crowded as they it; and passed with three strides across it to were, forcing my way, with the determination another, moored alongside, and then to a third, of terror; for I felt that I must make my in crossing which I could discern the reflecescape, whatever came of it. The avenues tions of the dim lights of the opposite side of of the city actually roared with life and blazed the river, struggling, as it were, to hold their with light, from a thousand voices and foot-places against the rush of the black stream steps, a thousand wheels, and a thousand jets towards the left. My terror must have been of vivid gas. Yet through all did I speed-extreme, enhanced by the bounding up of the speed along I know not how, I scarcely planks behind me under the pursuing step, for I know why, whither, or from what; but with never slackened my pace, nor felt an instant's some vague idea of reaching the river, as if hesitation, but, fevered as I was by the hot its banks were the horns of the altar of Hope. speed of my course, sprung, as far as my wildest strength could carry me, out into the mid-stream. - * It was down an alley I was now pressing, narrow at first, and partially obscure, but, as it opened upon a solitary gaslight, widening Panting, wet, giddy, exhausted, reeking into a silent street, of which the termination with slime, which booted my legs up to the seemed swallowed up in darkness. As we knees, I leaned against a damp wall to recovrushed-why do I say we? As I rushed outer breath and consciousness after my transit. of the din of the raging city into this deserted Involuntarily straining my eyes back into the avenue, and bounded along it, I began to tide I had just crossed, I experienced a feeling hear, what I had only been intuitively con- of relief, as I saw that there was nothing scious of before, the footsteps of one running swimming across. So I have baffled the Purbehind me. It may be supposed that the suer, I said to myself-put the river between sound added wings to my flight, which was it and me! Well done! The swim was a further urged by the knowledge that I was tough one, and the flounder out tougher still. fast approaching the banks of the river. In I have been all but sucked down-an ugly fact, the sullen rush of its black waters began death. But here I am alone. The shadow to make itself audible, traversing at right angles the double row of grim houses, which ranked at either side off into shadow, and terminating the perspective before me. Here the ground, or street-way, too, began to descend, as the bank of the river was approached; and by some fainter lights, sparingly scattered, there came into view the shapeless hulls of barges, moored in masses along the shelving slime of the water's edge. of a smile stole across my features as I plashed I suppose at any other period of my life I VOL. XII. 7 |