The fused individualities separate; the his hat and wishes them good day, and won't joined lives break assunder, like one of Prince be brought to hear reason any how. An Rupert's drops; each goes on a separate way; Englishman is the horror of most French woeach finds new hierophants and new divini- men. ties; and so the ball of life and love is kept up with other players-but the same marker. What a pity it is that the third term should

ever come.

And Frenchmen too, they have the same horror of English pride and independence in English women. They almost all say that they would rather be deceived with smiles, than treated with the coldness, the pride, the disdain, the iron wilfulness of a faithful English woman. They cannot understand it. It is a new experience, and they don't admire it.

Now, English women do not understand this kind of love making: we have no national equivalent for it, even among the most inconsiderate of our flirting, charming, bewitching coquettes. I cannot say it is a national Anything but this; Italian revenge, Spanish loss to be filled up. passion, and French inconstancy, all rather The worst characteristic of a French lover than the cold severity and marble pride of Is his suspiciousness. It is the worst charac- Englishwomen. It is a riddle to them. It is teristic of French society generally. Profound long before they can be brought to understand ineradicable skepticism is the plague spot, the it, and longer still before they will accept the festering sore of the modern French mind.position-une peu basse, they say that our That no man is honest, and no woman faith-women assign them. There is generally terful, are the Alpha and Omega of the popular rible confusion between French and English creed; to believe that his trusted friend will lovers at the first, and very seldom any real betray him for self-interest, his wife deceive union of heart and life even if they marry; him for the most paltry pleasures, that the man unless the wife has been so long abroad as to who offers him a service does so for some lose her nationality, and to adopt foreign views sinister motive, and that the caresses of his and foreign feelings. betrothed hide some fault planned or committed; to believe that he lives in the midst of snares and enemies, and that he must trust to his intellect alone to help him out of themthis is the creed of the modern Frenchman, and this he calls wisdom and knowledge of the world.

Another peculiarity among the French is their strictness with the unmarried women.They cannot understand the liberty of our young ladies. It is a crime in their eyes-a premium for immorality. A French fiancée is never allowed a moment's unrestricted intercourse with her lover. Perhaps she sees him only once or twice before her marriagefor marriage is a commercial affair in France; and so much a year with my daughter, is married to so much a year with your son: but it is the marriage portion and the income that marry: the daughter and the son are merely accessories. Which makes it very easy for our unmarried women to be totally misunderstood in France-and sometimes painfully so. For liberty recognized among us as natural and proper, is there considered dangerous and immoral. I knew an instance of this.

His suspicions know no limit, and no rest. A bouquet which he has not given, a soirée to which he is not invited, friends that he does not know; even a new gown or a new mode of dressing the hair-are all indications that the lady is betraying him, and that he must bend his mind and tax all his faculties to "find her out." He is never unconvinced; for, even if he "finds out" nothing, he says only that he has been tricked, and that Madame is more skilful than himself; more artful he says, if very angry. French women are generally submissive to this kind of thing. They are In the corner yonder, just under that broadmarvellously patient and forbearing, those gay leaved palm of the Jardin d'Hiver-are M. little creatures; and they expostulate and ges- Auguste and Miss Harriet; Mademoiselle Henticulate, and affirm and disclaim with a volu- riette as he calls her. Miss Harriet is about bility and a grace and an earnestness that few thirty, an orphan of good family, tolerably men can resist. So the storms blow over; well-looking, lady-like and rich. She is a litand Madame (for all that has been written tle original, and passes even in England for refers chiefly to widows), Madame only shrugs being eccentric and too independent. M. Auher shoulders, and laughs, and says, "Mon guste is the possessor of some five or six hundDieu, quel homme!" as she dries her eyes and red a year (he is rich for a Parisian); possesssettles her smooth bands of glossy hair. But, or too of certain small properties beside.they don't much mind, they say, and would They met by accident: they were travelling rather have a French lover-with all his fire together from Avignon, and they first met at and fury, and jealousy and suspicion, with whom they can have a dramatic scene, and then a poetic reconciliation-than a stiff sombre Anglais, cet homme sevère, who takes up

Vaucluse, by the Fountain. An acquaintance sprang up between them: very naturally: which left them mutually pleased with each other. It was an adventure; and Miss Har

riet being an impulsive lady on the verge of her wane, liked adventures. All English women do.

time he condescended to be more explicit; and then he expressed his conviction that another Monsieur-one of Mademoiselle's miM. Auguste received permission to visit her. lor friends doubtless-bad given her this bouThey both adroitly gave each other such proofs quet to replace his own-that his was not of their mutual respectability as took off all choice, not rich enough for Mademoiselle's that might have been equivocal in their ac- taste-he apologized for its poverty; but he quaintance. M. Auguste was ravished at was only a poor Frenchman with a heart-he Mademoiselle's condescension. She was truly must leave the means and the power to make charming; her boudoir was delicious, Mad- Mademoiselle happy to her rich compatriots, emoiselle herself was perfectly idéale, and was with a good deal more. And then he ended the realization of all M. Auguste's dreams of by taking up his hat and gloves and saying in female perfection: compliments paid with the a tragic voice, “ Adieu for ever!" Of course profoundest reverence, but with an exaltation that storm blew over and fine weather of feeling that bewildered poor Harriet. A was restored; but this was the beginning of neglected daughter, shut up in a remote coun- long days of jealousy as groundless and as try village in the west of England, her inde- worthless. Harriet bore up against them pendence gained only when her first youth heroically. She was the essence of good tem-had fled-it was no wonder that these new per to him, and soothed his waywardness and and strange devotions bewildered and unset- bore with his follies, until he himself confesstled her. A kind of startled gratitude, grati-ed that her temper was wonderful, and that fied vanity and personal admiration-for M. he tried it sorely. However, he went too far Auguste was exceedingly handsome-made once. He was in bad humor, and he forgot up together a feeling which the world calls himself; and then the English pride woke love, and which she herself mistook for the

same.

Up to a certain point in their intercourse nothing could be more delightful than M. Auguste. The refinement and spirituality of his tone and conversation completed the charm which his wonderful knowledge of the human heart, and his good looks had begun; and Harriet was desperately in love-much to the edification of her maid, who watched that she might take lessons. Flowers, gifts, pleasures of all kinds where showered fast and thick on the Englishwoman's path, and perpetual sunshine was over her. Poor Mademoiselle Henriette in her weary past had never dreamed of such happiness.

So

up; and she called him "Monsieur," and bade him adieu tearlessly, and never so much as sighed when he closed the door, as she believed for ever. But he wrote to her after this, and apologized for his violence: (it was all because she had walked in the Tuileries gardens with a certain relative of hers, who was too young and well-looking for M. Auguste's taste; and as Frenchmen cannot understand the liberty of our unmarried women it was grand ground for a quarrel). In his letter he besought a reconciliation with her; who was the life of his soul, and the star of his future: promising better things, and the profoundest confidence in her integrity. Harriet relented, and the wheel of love went One day Harriet had brought a large round once more. But he never forgot, nor bunch of lilies of the valley, and placed them wholly forgave her passionate burst of Enin the vase from which she took M. Auguste's glish pride; and he told her more than once last and now decidedly faded bouquet. These that Frenchwomen were much more submiswere very simple acts. No one would have sive, and that he did not approve of this Rothought them stormseeds sown broadcast. M. man pride, this classic haughtiness, of the EnAuguste called. His eyes glanced to the lilies glish women. So they quarrelled again, bebefore it saw the smiling face eager to greet cause he was impertinent and sarcastic. him. His countenance changed; his address was cool, constrained, and distressingly polite. Harriet could not understand this; and, at Quarrels, still healed by love, but becoming first, was too timid to ask; for she dreaded bad daily more numerous and more fierce, and the news of his own affairs or some terrible catas- love less powerful in the healing-doubts and trophe. At last she did summon up courage suspicions for ever renewed and passionately enough. M. Auguste smiled gloomily. He resented-these where the dying throes of the pointed to the vase and bit out a few words affair, painful enough to witness. His pride spitefully, in which Harriet distinguished "un was now wounded as well as hers: she could autre prétendant-infâme-scélérat-trahi not forgive her strength of will, and she could -triché-adieu-Madame." Not very intel- not forgive his want of trust. He was cerligible to the innocent Englishwoman, who tain, she had deceived him. Yes Madamedid not see any infamy or treachery in a deceived, betrayed, tricked him-the confidhandful of lilies of the valley bought by her- ing French gentleman, the loyal man of honor! self for twelve sous at the Madeleine. After a Which indignity Mademoiselle resented in

The third term had come, even to M. Auguste and Mademoiselle Henriette.

real earnest. So the matter ended, and they the wrong he would have been adroitly flatparted really for ever. Which was the best tered into the right; and so his own sensitive thing both could have done, if they looked to self-love would never have been wounded by happiness and peace. an over hard or fierce integrity. Yield and Yet M. Auguste was a fine fellow. Bril- flatter, and his wife would be superior; opliant, generous, witty, kind, brave, romantic, pose and reason, and she would be slave. and not harshly egotistical though extremely Reflect on this, ye Englishwomen who travain. He was a pearl beyond price among vel in France, and who believe in the perhis countrymen, and would have made any petual sunshine of French love. It is the Frenchwoman living, the proudest and hap- true and literal description of the general piest of her sex. For, she would have yield- French mind in love matters; and all who ed to his dictation, and have managed his are not prepared to be suspected, watched and jealousy: she would have soothed him by flat- disbelieved as a matter of course, had best tery and amused him by her wit; his suspi- eschew the charms, even of flattery, gayety, cion would not have fired her pride-she generosity, affectionate forethought, exquisite would have taken it as a thing of course, and politeness, and such keenness of perception perhaps have felt neglected if she had not as seems to give an added sense, and to open seen it; and his anger would have been turned a new world aside by coaxing and submission. When in

TIME AND THE PREMIER.

than I am.

PALMERSTON is only a month or two younger He certainly enjoys no immunity from the effects of age.-Lord Aberdeen to Lord John Russell.

His whiskers still are dark,

Tho' Time hath blenched them long,
And seventy years have left their mark
On a form once lithe and strong:
The years have borne away
The graces of his prime;
But, still no sage in spite of age,
He pays no heed to Time.

The quibble and the jest

The hollow, heartless mirth,

The sneer at what men hold most dear,
The scorn of honest worth.

The power to feel no shame

To laugh at it instead

No pride in England's fame,
No sorrow for her dead.

Have thy years nothing taught

Save the heart-hollow laughter,
An exile of all thought

To some remote hereafter?
From Time's unchanging laws
Thou cans't not be exempt,
The tyrant will not pause
For even thy contempt.

Then make of him a friend,
Retrieve thy errors past,
There yet is space to mend,
Tho' years are crowding fast.
A hoary jester's name

Be thine no more to bear,
Leave us a statesman's fame
To honor and revere.

Thou pinest for thy youth-
Recal its better part,

Its loyalty and truth,

Its warm and gen'rous heart.
Enact the lessons learned

In those more honest days,
While yet thy bosom yearned
For good men's love and praise.

Let not the people think

"The Pilot at the helm,
When our good ship is nigh to sink,.
And storms to overwhelm,
Sits down with folded hands,
Laughing with senile glee,
The planks will last till my time is past,
And that's enough for me. !

The Press, 2 June.

OUR HOUSES.-We always look upon our houses as mere temporary lodgings. We are always hoping to get larger and finer ones, or are forced in some way or other to live where we do not choose, and in continual expectation of changing our place of abode. In the present state of society, this is in a great measure unavoidable; but let us remember it is an evil, and that so far as it is avoidable it becomes our duty to check the impulse. It is surely a subject for serious thought, whether it might not be better for many of us, if, in attaining a certain position in life, we determined, with God's permission, to choose a house in which to live and die-a home not to be increased by adding stone to stone and field to field, but which, being enough for all our wishes at that period, we should resolve to be satisfied with forever. Consider this, and also, whether we ought not to be more in the habit of seeking honor from our descendants than our ancestors; thinking it better to be nobly remembered that nobly born; and striving so to live that our sons, and our sons' sons, for ages to come, might still lead their children reverently to the doors out of which we had been carried to the grave, saying, "Look, this was his house; this was his chamber."-Ruskin.

From the Times.

the classical student as the events now passing THE VEDA AND ITS TRANSLATION. in the kingdom of Saxony would be to the student of the laws and institutions of AmerWHEN we are told that a geological stratum ica. The historian of America is bound to which rises to the surface in some parts of Eng- study the institutions of England; the histoland, Germany, and Russia shows itself again rian of England is bound to take cognizance with the same character, with the same organic of the laws of the Anglo-Saxons and the literremains in the remote regions of India, we may ature of the Normans; nor can the Latin be startled at first, but we soon arrive at the scholar dispense with a knowledge of the literconclusion that these distant layers must have ature of Greece. But although the original been originally connected, that they are parts relation between the Hindoo and the Greek of a deposit which covered a large tract of may be the same as that between the Greek the earth's surface at some distant period of and the Roman, the Roman and the German, time, and that, though torn asunder and bu- the German and the Celt, yet nothing remains ried under the ruins of later formations, they of laws, of traditions, or of poetry in India of constitute one system, the scattered fragments so early a date as to throw light on the later of which can be used to complete and to illus-traditions and institutions of Greece, Rome, trate one another. The same conclusion has and Germany. The only thing which these been drawn in the science of language from nations share in common is their language, facts exactly analogous. The ancient language and, no doubt now exists that for a right unof India, the Sanscrit, shows in its words and derstanding of the origin and the structure of its grammatical system the same character, the Greek and Latin a knowledge of Sanscrit is same organic remains, which we find in the indispensable. But the work to which we languages of Greece, Italy, and Germany, and called attention some years ago, and of which hence, though it is impossible to trace histori- the second volume has now been published, cally any connection between the aborigi- lays claim to a much higher antiquity than nal inhabitants of India and of Greece, the anything in Sanscrit, Greek, Roman, or Gerconclusion is inevitable that at some distant man literature. It pretends to be no more or period of time the ancestors of the Anglo- less than the first work composed by human Saxons, the Greeks, the Romans, and the authors. Professor Wilson, the translator of Hindoos formed a small nucleus, a united the Rig-Veda, places the hymns of this Veda, family, commonly called the Arian family, as which the Brahmins consider as their sacred distinguished, even at that early time, by lan- revelation, " at least fifteen centuries prior to guage, manners, and religion, from the ances- the Christian era," and Professor Max Mültors of the other two great families of the hu- ler, the editor of the text and the commentaman race, the Semitic and the Turanian. ry, "calls it the "first literary document of the Arian race."

In spite of this close relationship between the people of Greece, Italy, Germany, and India, the literature of the Brahmins has fail- "Without insisting on the fact" he says "that ed to command that interest which the intel- even chronologically the Veda is the first book of lectual history of a cognate race might seem the Arian nations, we have in it, at all events, a to deserve. What is commonly known by the period in the intellectual life of man, to which name of Sanscrit literature, the laws of Manu, there is no parallel in any other part of the world. In the hymns of the Veda we see man the Epic poems of the "Mahábhárata" and the left to himself to solve the riddle of this world. "Rámáyana," the plays of Kalidása, the six We see him crawling on like a creature of the systems of philosophy, and the Puránas, are all much later than Homer, or even the laws of the Decemvirs at Rome. Besides, they are all so peculiarly Oriental that the historian cannot use them for comparison with the works of the classical writers of Rome or Greece. All these productions belong to a period when the traces of a common origin of the Greeks and the Hindoos had long faded away, and they are of as little importance to

earth, with all the desires and weaknesses of his animal nature. Food, wealth, and power, a large family, and a long life are the theme of his daily prayers. But he begins to lift up his eyes. He stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He opens his ears to the winds, and ened from darkness and slumber by the light of asks them whence and whither? He is awakand who seems to grant him the daily pittance the sun, and Him whom his eyes cannot behold, of his existence, he calls his life, his breath, his brilliant Lord and Protector.' He gives names to all the powers of nature, and after he has callRig-Veda Sanhita; a collection of ancient Hin-ed the fire Agni, the sunlight Indra, the winds doo hymns, translated from the original Sanscrit, by H. H. Wilson, M.A., F.R.S.-London, Allen &

Co., 1854.

Rig-Veda Sanhita; the sacred hymns of the Brahmins, together with the Commentary of Sayana Acharya, edited by Max Mueller, M.A., Christ Church, Oxford.-London, Allen & Co., 1854.

Maruts, and the dawn Ushas, they all seem to
grow naturally into beings like himself-nay,
He invokes them, he
greater than himself.
praises them, he worships them. But still with
all these gods around him, beneath him, and
above him, the early poet seems ill at rest within

himself. There, too, in his own breast, he has However, we must confess to a certain disdiscovered a power that wants a name-a power appointment in reading the first and second nearer to him than all the gods of nature-a power volumes of the translation of the Rig-Veda, for that is never mute when he prays, never absent we do not pretend to have worked our way when he fears or trembles. It seems to inspire through the 2,000 pages quarto of text and his prayers, and yet to listen to them; it seems

to live in him, and yet to support him, and all commentary published by Professor Müller, around him. The only name he can find for this which, by the by, seem to contain no more mysterious power is Brahma, for brahma means than about a third of the whole work. But originally force, will, wish, and the propulsive in reading Professor Wilson's translation we power of creation. But this impersonal Brahma, were kept in a continual state of expectation too, as soon as it is named, grows into something and suspense. Here and there we find some strange and divine. It becomes Brahmanaspati striking, simple, grand, and original concep-the lord of power; an epithet applicable to tions; but immediately afterwards modern many gods in their toils and their victories. phrases, meaningless epithets, and mystical And still the voice within him has no name; that hallucinations. power which is nothing but itself, which supports pressions strongly reminding us of a Greek Suddenly we meet with exthe gods, the heavens, and every living being,

We

floats before his mind, conceived, but not ex- myth, with names and similes which seem to pressed. At last he calls it Atma, for atma offer a clue to Greek or Roman legends, and means self, and self alone. Self, whether divine to furnish an explanation to what in Greece is or human-self, whether creating or suffering but a strange and unintelligible fable. -self, whether one or all, but always self, inde- see Uranos, we see Zeus, and Eos, under aspendent and free. Who has seen the first-born,' pects which explain much that is enigmatical says the poet, when he who has no bones (i. e., in Homer and Hesiod. But then, again, we form) bore him that had bones? Where was find wild fancies, far-fetched and unnatural the blood, the life, the self of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? This comparisons and conceptions, which we are idea of a divine self once expressed, everything the history of the human mind. It is true accustomed to ascribe to a much later stage in else must acknowledge its supremacy. 'The gods themselves came later into being-who that our ideas of the early development of the knows whence the great creation sprang?' human mind are based on no facts-that they are in many cases generalizations without parNow, according to this account it would ticulars. Yet it is impossible to suppress a seem as if in the Veda a record had been pre-feeling of doubt whether all this which we served to fill the vacuum between the first dis-read in the Veda is ancient and genuine. If persion of the human race and the times re- it is, the generally received notions of the propresented by the earliest literary documents gress of the intellect require considerable moof the principal Arian nations, such as the dification, and what in the early history of poems of Homer in Greece, and the Zenda- Greece has been taken for a first beginning vesta in Persia. No one would deny that will have to be treated as the result of a prethere has been a long period during which the vious period analogous to that which in India Arian race, after being separated from the is represented by the Veda. It has been asrest of mankind, was broken up into different sumed, for instance, that in the early history nationalities, each forming its own language, of literature epic poetry always preceded the its religious ideas, its laws and traditions. age of lyrical compositions; in fact, that poeVixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi, but we try received its first impulse from epical tracould hardly have expected that in Greece any-ditions. In proof of this theory it was usual thing previous to Homer, or in India anything to quote the Máhábharata" in India, the anprevious to the epic poems of the "Mahábhárata" and "Rámáyana" would ever be discovered. If the Veda be what it pretends to be, it would be one of the most remarkable relics in the early history of the human race, and Professor Müller, who has restored these songs from manuscripts, and published them for the first time after a lapse of more than 3,000 years, would have disinterred ruins more ancient than Babylon and Nineveh, more interesting than Thebes and Karnak. We all take an interest in the early history of our race, particularly where we can watch the gradual growth of the human mind, where we can find something besides mere names and dates, and battles, and sieges-some thoughts, ever so simple and childish, if but true and genuine.

cient popular songs of Persia, the Iliad in Greece, the supposed ballad poetry of Rome, and the national songs of the Edda and the Nibelunge in Germany. But the Veda, if genuine, would tend to show that this epic period of poetry was preceded by a period of lyrical and sacred songs, and that poetry with the Arian nations began from within rather than from without-not with the actions, but with the feelings of man.

Yet, we should recommend great caution in drawing general conclusions from these Vedic songs. It is true that nothing has been brought forward, as far as we are aware, to invalidate the antiquity and the genuineness of the Veda, but we should like to see some fuller account of its origin, its preservation and its