A custom rather of an amorous tongue, Yet if so strange a frenzy e'er should seize thee, Mir. O cruel sentence! how can I survive Am.- Mirtillo, now 'tis time Thou should'st depart; I've heard thee much too long; Go, and console thyself with this at least; Of hopeless lovers there's a numerous crowd; There is no love but carries with it pain, Many, as well as thou, of love complain. (Exit Mirtillo.) Mirtillo, O my life, my soul! If here within thou couldst perceive The secret feelings of the heart Of Amarillis whom thou call'st so cruel, Well do I know that she would find From thee that pity thou implor'st from her! O hapless souls bound by the ties of love; Mirtillo has my heart, yet what avails Dost thou divide whom Love has bound Of truly noble souls! — this fond desire I now present a spotless sacrifice Before thy shrine. And thou, my love, Mirtillo, O pardon her that's only cruel Where she is forced from thee to hide All show of mercy! O forgive Her thy fierce foe in looks and words alone, But thy most tender lover in her heart! What greater vengeance can'st thou take on me, Thy tears my blood, and all those pangs, Are not thy pangs, are not thy sighs, but mine! UÉRIN, GEORGES MAURICE and Eugénie de, Cayla, Languedoc - Eugénie in 1805, and her brother on August 5, 1810. Maurice died there July 19, 1839, and was followed to the grave by his sister in 1848. After going to school at Toulouse and studying in Paris, Maurice attached himself to the monastic society that was gathered around the Abbé Lamennais at La Chênaie, in Brittany, in 1832. Having remained there for a year, he returned to Paris, taking little further interest in the monastery after the Abbé's own departure. In Paris he tried to support himself by teaching, and writing for the papers and magazines, employments for which he was singularly unsuited. Excepting a short "prose poem," called the Centaur, he left little behind him that seemed even intended to endure; but in his journal and letters we find a rare sympathy and intimacy with nature, combined with an almost unequal power in her interpretation. Eugénie's place in literature has been determined by the spiritual interest and perfect style of her jour nal, which remains a permanent record of her love for her brother and the high purity of her Catholicism. The Reliquiae of Georges Maurice de Guérin, containing a few poems, his journals, and a number of his letters, edited by his friend, M. Trébutien, with a notice of the author by Sainte-Beuve, appeared in 1861; and the Journal et Lettres of Eugénie was published the following year, and was crowned by the Académie Française. THE CENTAUR'S YOUTH. Wandering at my own will like the rivers, feeling wherever I went the presence of Cybele, whether in the beds of the valleys or on the height of the mountains, I bounded whither I would, like a blind and chainless life. But when Night, filled with the charm of the gods, overtook me on the slope of the mountain, she guided me to the mouth of the caverns, and there tranquillized me as she tranquillizes the billows of the sea. Stretched across the threshold of my retreat, my flanks hidden within the cave and my head under the open sky, I watched the spectacle of the dark. The sea-gods, it is said, quit during the hours of darkness their palaces under the deep; they seat themselves on the promontories, and their eyes wander over the expanse of the waves. Even so I kept watch, having at my feet an expanse of life like the hushed sea. My regards had free range, and traveled in the most distant points. Like sea-beaches which never lost their wetness, the line of mountains to the west retained the imprint of gleams not perfectly wiped out by the shadows. In that quarter still survived, in pale clearness, mountain summits naked and pure. There I beheld at one time the god Pan descend, ever solitary; at another, the choir of the mystic divinities; or I saw pass some mountain-nymph charm-struck by the light. Sometimes the eagles of Mount Olympus traversed the upper sky and were lost to view among the far off constellations, or in the shade of the dreaming forests. Thou pursuest after wisdom, O Melampus, which is the science of the will of the gods; and thou roamest from people to people like a mortal driven by the destinies. In the times when I kept my night watches before the caverns, I have sometimes believed that I was about to surprise the thought of the sleeping Cybele, and that the mother of the gods, betrayed by her dreams, would let fall some of her secrets; but I have never made out more than sounds, which faded away in the murmur of night, or words inarticulate as the bubbling of the rivers.- From The Centaur; translation of MAtTHEW ARNOLD. WINTER EVENING ON THE COAST OF BRITTANY. All the sky is covered over with gray clouds just silvered at the edges. The sun, who departed a few moments ago, has left behind him enough light to temper for awhile the black shadows, and to soften down, as it were, the approach of night. The winds are hushed, and the tranquil Ocean sends up to me, when I go out on the doorstep to listen, only a melodious murmur, which dies away in the soul like a beautiful wave on the beach. The birds, the first to obey the nocturnal influence, make their way toward the woods, and you can hear the rustle of their wings in the clouds. The copses which cover the whole hillside of Le Val, which all the day-time are alive with the chirp of the wren, the laughing whistle of the woodpecker, and the different notes of a multitude of birds, have no longer any sound in their paths and thickets, unless it be the prolonged high calls of the blackbirds at play with one another and chasing one another, after all the other birds have their heads safe under their wings. The noise of man, always the last to be silent, dies gradually out over the face of the fields. The general murmur fades away, and one hears hardly a sound except what comes from the villages and hamlets, in which, up till far into the night, there are cries of children and barking of dogs. Silence wraps me round; everything seeks repose except this pen of mine, which perhaps disturbs the rest of some living atom asleep in a crease of my note-book, for it makes its light scratching as it puts down these idle thoughts. Let it stop, then! for all I write, have written, or shall write, will never be worth setting against the sleep of an atom.- From Maurice's Journal. THE BROTHER'S DEATH. No, my beloved one, death shall not separate us, it shall not remove you from my thoughts. Death separates only the body; the soul, in place of being there, is in Heaven, and this change of dwelling takes away nothing from its affections. O, my friend, Maurice, Maurice, are you far from me? Do you hear me? What are those regions where you now are? What is God, so beautiful, so good, who makes you happy by His ineffable presence, unveiling for you eternity? You see what I wait for, you possess what I hope for, you know what I believe. Mysteries of the other world, how profound you are, how terrible you are, but how sweet you sometimes are! yes, very sweet, when I think that Heaven is the place of happiness. All my life will be a life of mourning, with a widowed heart, without intimate union. I love Marie, and my surviving brother much, but it is not with our sympathy.— From Eugénie's Journal. UERNSEY, ALFRED HUDSON, an American historian and biographer; born at Brandon, Vermont, in 1828; died January 17, 1902. After receiving a common-school education, he entered the Union Theological Seminary, New York. After graduating, he entered the employment of Harper & Brothers, and when Harper's Magazine was started he joined its editorial staff, where he remained nearly VOL. XI.-31 |