One venerable man, beloved of all, Sufficed, where innocence was yet in bloom, How reverend was the look, serenely aged, As Etna's fires, grow dim before the rising day. NOTE. 1 Wyoming, a county in the north-east of Pennsylvania. decliv'ities, slopes. SPELL AND PRONOUNCE all, so that its introduc- rev'elry, noisy pleasure. Rhen'ish, relating to the tromp, for trump. VICTOR'S VISIT TO DAHORE.-JEAN Paul. (Translated by Dr. C. Geikie.) JEAN PAUL FREDRICH RICHTER, commonly called JEAN PAUL, a great German prose poet, philosopher, and humourist, was born in 1763. His works fill sixty volumes. He died in 1825. The following extract is from a novel of his called "Hesperus." 1. HE hastened on, and his haste drew out the saddest lutemusic of his soul. For it seemed as if it were not he who was passing over the summer fields; the summer fields seemed rather to be flitting past him; one landscape after another, a wide theatre, with woods, another with grain-fields, flew by him; new hills rose, with other lights, lifting up their woods, and others sank down with theirs; long shadowy plains ran back before the yellow sunlight that flowed towards him; now, valleys full of flowers streamed round him; then, hot, barren, hill-shores bore him upwards; one moment the brook murmured close to his ear, and then suddenly its windings glittered far away beyond fields of poppies; white roads and green paths met him and stretched away from him, leading round the wide earth; full villages, with gleaming windows, moved past him, and gardens with undressed children; the sun, low sunk, seemed by turns lifted up and let down, and presently rested on the tops of the hills. 2. At last he ascended the broad mountain which rises with its scattered columns of trees and shafts of gray rock; the village of Marienthal nestling green at its feet. . . . Then the earth, tuned by the Eternal, sent forth music from a thousand strings; the same harmony rising from the moving stream, divided between gold and darkness, the murmuring flower-cup, the peopled air, and the bush stirred by the evening wind; the reddened East and the reddened West stood like the two rose-taffeta wings of an opened harpischord; a tremulous sea of music flowed from the heavens and the earth between them. 3. On this mountain, at Victor's feet, like a crowned giant, or a transplanted island of Spring, lay an English park. The mountain dipped down to another on the north, and made a cradle, in which lay the still village, the morning and the evening sun covering it by turns with a golden mist for curtains. In five gleaming ponds trembled five darker evening skies, and every upleaping wavelet painted itself with ruby in the sunfire floating over it. Two brooks crept onwards in changeful windings, darkened by roses and willows, through the broad meadows, and a flaming water-wheel, like a beating heart, forced the water, reddened by the sunset, through all the green. Flowers-the butterflies of the world of plants-nodded everywhere; on every mossy stone of the brook, from every tender stalk, round every window, a flower swayed to and fro in its own odour, and Spanish vetches interlaced the unhedged garden with blue and red veins. A transparent clump of golden-green birches rose out of the high grass on the northern hill, and on its top five tall fir-trees, the wreck of a fallen forest, stood like an eyry. 4. Dahore's little house was at the end of the village, in a tangle of honeysuckle, under a linden tree. Victor's heart burst forth: "Blessed be thou, still haven! hallowed by a soul which here looks up to heaven, and waits till it launch itself into the sea of eternity!" Suddenly the windows of the abbey where Clotilda had grown up, cast flames of evening red on him, and the sun went, softly as a Penn*, towards America-and the thin * William Penn, the beneficent founder of Pennsylvania. The sun, of course, goes towards America. night spread itself over Nature-and the green hermitage of Dahore veiled itself in it. Then, Victor kneeled, alone, on the mountain-that throne-step-and looked into the glowing west, and over the wide calm earth, and into the heavens, and let his soul expand, and filled itself with the thought of God. 5. As he knelt, all was alike sublime and tender-worlds and suns came up from the east, and the many-coloured insect nestled itself in the mealy flower-cup-the evening wind beat its immeasurable wing, and the naked lark rested warmly under the softly feathered breast of its mother; a man stood on the mountain-ridge, and a golden-chafer on the pollen-stalks of the flower; and the Eternal loved his whole world. THE WATER GUEUSE.-ANONYMOUS. THE beggar's band, that walks the land, But freer still, from man's command, The landsman sues; but to refuse, But none deny the Water Gueuse, Nor corn, nor grain, has he the pain To purchase or to till; And Spanish churls their wines must drain, The beggar's flask to fill. His robes are roll'd with many a fold Of canvass, white and fine; His wallet is the good ship's hold, His staff the mast of pine. By land, the brave, foul fortune's slave, May meet, by her decree, The headman's stroke, the traitor's grave, Beneath the gallows-tree; But ne'er to kneel before that steel, Shall be the gueuse's lot, Or, writhing in mid-air, to feel The suffocating knot. If foes prevail, not ours to quail, Old ocean takes us to his breast, And now to trowl one lusty bowl, Before we mount the wave: Here's rest to gallant Egmont's? soul !--- While conquest's fame gilds Nassau's name,- No chain can bind, no threat can tame, NOTES. "Gueuse" means a beggar-woman, the feminine being perhaps used here from the poet speaking of a ship. The Gueux were a body of Dutch patriots, who took this name of "the beggars," and waged war as they could, by sea and land, against Philip II. of Spain, who then held possession of Holland, They rose in 1566. 2 Egmont, a Flemish noble beheaded by Philip II. 3 Nassau. William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, the hero of the Dutch War of Liberty. THE HISTORY OF A PHILOSOPHIC VAGABOND. GOLDSMITH. OLIVER GOLDSMITH, one of the best writers of English prose, and an exquisite humourist and poet, was born in Ireland in 1728, and, after a life of very chequered fortune, died in London in 1774. He was wise for every one but himself, for nothing could make him prudent in money matters, and he died, at last, deep in debt. The following sketch is partly a glimpse of his own history. The description of an usher, or assistant's position in a school, in Goldsmith's day, shows how very different schools were at that time from what they are now, for nothing that is described could be found at this day in any school. 1. THE first misfortune of my life, as you all know, was great; but, though it distressed, it could not sink me. No person ever had a better knack at hoping than I. The less kind I found Fortune at one time, the more I expected from her at another; and being now at the bottom of her wheel, every new revolution might lift but could not depress me. I proceeded, therefore, towards London on a fine morning, no way uneasy about to-morrow, but cheerful as the birds that carolled by the road, and comforted myself with reflecting that London was the mart where abilities of every kind were sure of meeting distinction and reward. 2. Upon my arrival in town, sir, my first care was to deliver your letter of recommendation to our cousin, who was himself in little better circumstances than I. My first scheme, you know, sir, was to be usher at an academy, and I asked his advice on the affair. Our cousin received the proposal with a true sardonic grin. "Ay," cried he, "this is indeed a very pretty career that has been chalked out for you. I have been an usher at a boardingschool myself; and may I die by an anodyne necklace, but I had rather be an under-turnkey in Newgate. I was up early and late; I was browbeat by the master, hated for my ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys within, and never permitted to stir out to meet civility abroad. But are you sure you are fit for a school? Let me examine you a little. Have you been bred apprentice to the business? No. Then you won't do for a school. Can you dress the boys' hair? No. Then you won't do for a school. Have you had the small-pox? No. Then you won't do for a school. Can you lie three in a bed? No. Then you will never do for a school. Have you got a good stomach? Yes. Then you will by no means do for a school. No, sir; if you are for a genteel, easy profession, bind yourself seven years as an apprentice to turn a cutler's wheel; but avoid a school by any means. Yet come," continued he, "I see you are a lad of spirit and some learning; what do you think of commencing author, like me? You have read in books, no doubt, of men of genius starving at the trade; at present I'll show you forty very dull fellows about town that live by it in opulence. All honest jog-trot men, who go on smoothly and dully, and write history and politics, and are praised-men, sir, who, had they been dull cobblers, would all their lives have only mended shoes, but never made them." The 3. Finding that there was no great degree of gentility affixed to the character of an usher, I resolved to accept his proposal, having the highest respect for literature. I sat down, and finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. whole learned world, I made no doubt, would rise to oppose my systems; but then I was prepared to oppose the whole learned world. Like the porcupine, I sat self-collected with a quill pointed against every opposer. 4. The learned world said nothing-nothing at all. Every man |