circle of Italian loveliness. Who can wonder, then, that Madame Clarissa's noble nephew, on every return voyage, tarried in the noisy metropolis only long enough to take every requisite care of his gallant bark, and then hastened to practice la bella lingua Italiana with his charming protégé ? It may be thought singular that one who so narrowly escaped the consequences of a vow, should ever again voluntarily assume such a responsibility. Yet, if the records of the parish say truly, not many years since, Viola Donatelli did religiously promise, through all the vicissitudes of this our world, to love, honor and obey' Francisco Roberto.

Prosperity has followed the captain of the Sea-Nymph,' and that title is displaced by a nobler; happiness dwells with the nun of St. Agatha, and that appellation is no longer hers. Yet, often do their wondering children look up, from the sports of infancy, to mark the grateful tears with which their parents speak of the ROSE-COLORED PACKET.

SONNET.

DAWN.

I see the light, I taste the flowing air-
There is no cloud above me—and I feel,
Bathing my forehead, delicate and rare,
And full of odor, the sweet influence steal.
The tints of dawn the last fair star conceal,
Throwing faint crimson o'er its lessening ray;
And the far, billowy vapors melt away,
Touched by thy golden wand-imperial Sun!
Rising in glorious beauty, giving life

To the young flowers, and joy to every one—
Whose early-wafted thoughts to Heaven are rife
With deep devotion, borrowed at thy shrine.
Well might the ancient world deem thee divine,
And the first worship of the soul be thine!

P. B.

201

SCRAPS OF PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICISM.

VICTOR HUGO, one of the most popular novelists and dramatists of modern France, has recently published a couple of volumes, with a title which may be, not inaptly, translated, A Medley of Philosophy and Literature. The style of this collection is various; for its papers were produced at different intervals, during a considerable series of years. We have translated here and there a few brilliant paragraphs, which may convey correctly the author's sentiments, and may furnish some idea of his style:

WALTER SCOTT AND LE SAGE.

Le Sage, I should say, is more witty; Scott is more original; the one excels in narrating individual adventure, the other mingles with such adventure the description of a whole people, or age; the first scorns all truth of place, manner, history; the latter, scrupulously faithful to truth, owes to it perhaps the magic attraction of his pages. In the works of both, the characters are drawn with skill; but in Scott they seem better sustained, because they are more lively, and of a fresher nature. Le Sage often sacrifices the conscience of his heroes to the humor of an intrigue; Scott gives his heroes a severer disposition; their principles, their very prejudices have in them something noble that cannot bend to circumstances. We are surprised, in reading a romance of Le Sage, at his great variety of incident; we are still more surprised, on finishing a romance of Sir Walter, at the simplicity of his plot; and the reason is, that the first labors chiefly on the general action, the second on the particular details. The one paints life, the other paints the heart. In short, the works of Le Sage give us, as it were, experience of fortune; those of Sir Walter Scott give us experience of men.

GREAT MEN

Are those who have felt much, lived much; who, in a few years, have lived many lives. The tallest pines grow only in the regions of storm. Athens, the city of tumult, was the mother of a thousand great men; Sparta, the city of order, boasted but one Lycurgus; and Lycurgus was born before his laws.

Thus we see that great men most frequently appear in the midst of popular agitations: Homer, in the midst of the heroic ages of Greece; Virgil, under the triumvirate; Ossian, on the wreck of his country and her gods; Dante, Ariosto and Tasso, in the midst of the reviving convulsions of Italy; Corneille and

Racine, in the age of the Fronde; and Milton, chanting the first rebellion at the foot of the bloody scaffold of Whitehall.

And if we examine the individual destiny of these great men, we shall find them harrassed by an agitated and miserable life. Camoens cleaves the waves, his poem in his hand. D'Ercilla writes his verses on the skins of beasts, in the forests of Mexico. Those of them, whom bodily suffering does not divert from suffering of mind, lead a stormy life, devoured by an irritability of disposition, which renders them a burthen to themselves and to those who surround them. Happy they who do not die before their time, consumed by the ardor of their own genius, like Pascal; by grief, like Molière and Racine- or victims to the ter

rors of their own imagination, like the miserable Tasso!

KANT'S WIG

Was sold for thirty thousand florins, at the time of his death, and brought only twelve hundred crowns at the last Leipsic fair: a palpable proof, in my opinion, that the rage for Kant and his ideology is abating in Germany. This wig, in its changes of price, may be considered as a thermometer of the progress of Kantism.

APPRECIATION OF CRIME.

Visdelou, that Platonic lover of Lexicology, mentions, in his 'Supplement to the Oriental Library,' that the Chinese empress, Un-Heu, was guilty of many crimes, such as the assassination of her husband, her brother, her children; but one in particular, which he calls an unheard-of outrage,' is an order — all the laws of grammar to the contrary notwithstanding that she should be styled emperor, and not empress!

LETTER-WRITING.

We now consider in France, and with reason, that an essential part of elegant education is the acquisition of a certain facility of managing what is called the epistolary style. In fact, the style to which we give this name. if in truth it can be called a style is, in literature, like a public domain, which all the world have a right to cultivate. It thus happens that the epistolary style belongs rather to nature than art. Productions of this kind, in some fashion, are like flowers, which grow of themselves; while other compositions of human wit resemble edifices, which, from foundation to summit, must be laboriously built after general laws and particular combinations. The greater number of letterwriters have been ignorant that they were authors, they have made works, as the often-cited Monsieur Jourdain made prosewithout knowing it. They did not write for the sake of writing, but because they had relations and friends, business and affec

tions. They were very little pre-occupied, in their correspondence, with a care for immortality, but, very vulgarly, with the substantial cares of life. Their style is simple as intimacy, and its simplicity constitutes its charm. It is because they sent their letters only to their families, that they have reached posterity. We think it impossible to say what are the elements of the epistolary style; other styles have rules this has only its secrets.

FOIBLES OF THE GREAT.

Voltaire should not be judged by his comedies, Boileau by his Pindaric odes, or Rousseau by his allegories. Criticism should not maliciously seize upon the feebleness which the most distinguished talent often exhibits; nor should history give undue prominence to the littlenesses which are almost always found in the most illustrious charaters. Louis XIV. would have thought himself dishonored, if his valet de chambre had surprised him without a wig; Turenne, when alone in the dark, trembled like a child; and we know that Cæsar was alarmed, lest he should be upset in his car of triumph.

THE POET OF WORDS, NOT IDEAS.

When a language has been in use, like ours, during several ages of literature; when it has been created and carried to perfection, turned and twisted into every shape and style; when it has passed not only through all the material forms of rhythm and rhyme, but through no one knows how many comical, tragical and lyrical brains, there escapes, like a scum, from the collection of words which compose its literary richness, a certain quantity, or, so to speak, a certain floating mass of conventional phrases, hemistiches, more or less insignificant, which are nobody's property, but belong to all the world.

Thus it is, that a man of the least invention, with the aid of a little memory, can rake up, by diligence, from this public reservoir, a tragedy, a poem, an ode, which shall be in verses of twelve, eight, or six syllables, of good rhyme and excellent pauses, and not deficient, perhaps, in elegance, harmony, and a certain grace. Thereupon, our master shall publish his work in a great, empty volume, and shall believe himself a lyric, epic, or tragic poet, after the fashion of the fool who thought himself the owner of his hospital. Envy, however, the patroness of mediocrity, shall smile upon his labors; the prouder critics, who wish to imitate omnipotence, and create something, will amuse themselves in building him up a reputation; and connoisseurs, who are not so ridiculously obstinate as to insist that words should express ideas, will celebrate, after the morning journals, the brilliancy, the point, the taste of the new poet; the saloons- echoes

of the journals will be in ecstacy; and the publication of the work will result in no further inconvenience than the premature wearing out of the poet's hat-rim.

GRAMMAR AND MEDICINE.

The wise men, who are so clear-sighted in grammar, in versification, in prosody, and so blind in poesy, remind us of those physicians who know the slightest fibre of the human frame, but who deny the soul, and are ignorant of virtue.

POETRY.

Poetical composition results from two intellectual phenomena, meditation and inspiration. Meditation is a faculty; inspiration is a gift. All men, to a certain degree, can meditate; very few are inspired. Spiritus flat ubi vult. In meditation, the spirit acts; in inspiration, it obeys; because the first is of men, the second comes from a higher source. He who gave us this power is stronger than we. These two processes of thoughts are intimately linked in the soul of the poet. The poet invites inspiration by meditation, as the prophets raised themselves to ecstacies by prayer. That the muse should reveal herself to him, he must in some sort have passed all his material existence in repose, in silence, and in meditation. He must be isolated from external life, to enjoy in its fullness that inward life, which developes in him a new existence; and it is only when the physical world has utterly vanished from before his eyes, that the ideal world is fully revealed to him. It seems that poetic inspiration has in it something too sublime for the common nature of man. Genius can compass its greater efforts only when the soul is released from the vulgar cares that follow it in life; for thought cannot take its wings till it has laid aside its burden. Thence comes it, doubtless, that inspiration is born only of meditation. Among the Jews, the people whose history is so rich in mysterious symbols, when the priest had built the altar, he lighted upon it an earthly flame and it was then only that the divine ray descended from Heaven.

Happy he who possesses this double power of meditation and inspiration, which is genius! Whatever may be the age on which he falls, or the country — be he born in the bosom of domestic calamities, be he thrown on a time of popular convulsions, or, what is still more to be lamented, on a period of stagnant indifference - let him trust himself to the future; for, if the present belong to other men, the future is for him. He is of the number of chosen beings for whom a day is allotted. Sooner or later, the day comes; and it is then fed by sublime thought, and elevated by divine inspiration that he throws him