It is also wholesome that writers should not be told that they are persons of consummate and unfailing genius when they are nothing of the sort, and so be encouraged to think that even their most slipshod work is good enough to publish. EVENINGS AT HOME. SHUTTERS are barred; the wintry wind without The cosier we two, darling, by this fire- books; The household settled all to thy desire, So tolerant her care Ah! in such colloquies how I came to know The mind that mine had wedded, and to grow Ever more amorous of it, the more knew its supple richness! As, of yore, Some gymnast, wrestling with a splendid Spartan girl, I The closer she did come and dare his press, Or bear her bodily up, his lissome thrall, So with us two- her mind in its dear sex, I move, and she moves check: I thunder; lo! But chief, through all, the ever-fresh surprise She is, I swear, the most downright In every thoughtful gesture! What facility The short white puffs of smoke that snake the In apprehensions the most intricate! ruddy air. What readiness, on any beckoning from me, Questions of deep debate, In any field of floweriest phantasy! Brave girl, could thee amaze. Dared I my utmost, and would try to wing Abstractions were my temporary good, I groped mid verbiage for some root of real, Shed o'er the doleful search a tint ideal, As if the pale-berried mistletoe were my quest. Fit for Aspasia thou, could I be Pericles! POETRY: The Day of Congresses, 258. The Sadness of a Transition Period, 258. By the Sea, 320. Just published at this office: Mrs. Norton's Novel, OLD SIR DOUGLAS. 75 cents. TENANTS OF MALORY, by J. S. Le Fanu. 50 cents. In preparation: BROWNLOWS. by Mrs. Oliphant. LINDA TRESSEL, by the author of Nina Balatka. THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY, by Charles Lever. GRACE'S FORTUNE. ALL FOR GREED. PHINEAS PHINN, THE IRISH MEMBER, by Mr. Trollope. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year; nor where we have to pay c.mmission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Second The Complete work 20 66 50 "6 32 88 220 "" Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. "Twill be but to follow the striking example The Genevan Peace Congress the Church has just set, Where each on his neighbour's toes made free to trample, And his neighbour with interest paid off the debt. Till the preachers of peace, in a general quarrel, Broke up, after choosing Italia's Mars, GARIBALDI, for chairman, to point peace's moral, As, the leisure to make preparation for wars. - Punch. THE SADNESS OF A TRANSITION PERIOD. [From New Poems, by Matthew Arnold.] Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb: Our fathers watered with their tears For what availed it all the noise What helps it now that Byron bore, What boots it, Shelley, that the breeze That fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay ? Have restless hearts one throb the less? * Ye slumber in your silent grave! From The Cornhill Magazine. LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD. I THERE is something sad in most pretty stories, in most lovely strains, in the tenderest affections and friendships; but tragedy is a different thing from the indefinable feeling which lifts us beyond to-day into that dear and happy region where our dearest loves, and plays, and dreams, are to be found even in childish times. Poor little Red Riding Hood, with bright eyes glancing from her scarlet caplet, has been mourned by generations of children: but though they pity her, and lament her sad fate, she is no familiar playmate and companion. That terrible wolf with the fiery eyes, glaring through the brushwood, haunts them from the very beginning of the story; it is too sad, too horrible, and they hastily turn the leaves and fly to other and better loved companions, with whose troubles they sympathize, for they are but passing woes, and they know that brighter times are in store. For the poor little maiden at the well, for dear Cinderella, for Roe-brother and little sister, wandering through the glades of the forest, and Snowwhite and her sylvan court of kindly woodland dwarfs. All these belong to the sweet and gentle region where beautiful calm suns shine after the storm, amid fair landscapes, and gardens, and palaces. Even we elders sympathize with the children in this feeling, although we are more or less hardened by time, and have ourselves wandering in the midway of life met with wolves roving through the forest; wolves from whose cruel claws, alas! no father's or mother's love can protect us, and against whose wiles all warnings except those of our own experience are vain. And these wolves devour little boys as well as little girls and pats of butter. This is no place to write of some stories, so sad and so hopeless that they can scarcely be spoken; although good old Perrault, in his simple way, to some poor Red Riding Hoods straying from the path, utters a word of warning rhyme at the end of the old French edition : Some stories are too sad, others too trifling. The sketch which I have in my mind is no terrible tragedy, but a silly little tale, so foolish and trivial that if it were not that it comes in its place with the others, I should scarcely attempt to repeat it. I met all the personages by chance at Fontainebleau only the other day. The wolf was playing the fiddle under Little Red Riding Hood's window. Little Red Riding Hood was peeping from behind her cotton curtains. Rémy (that was the wolf's Christian name) could see the little balls bobbing, and guessed that she was there. He played on louder than ever, dragging his bow with long sobbing chords across his fiddle-strings, and as he played a fairy palace arose at his bidding, more beautiful than the real old palace across the Place that we had come to see. The fairy palace arose story upon story, lovely to look upon, enchanted; a palace of art, with galleries, and terraces, and belvederes and orangeflowers scenting the air, and fragrant blossoms falling in snow-showers, and fountains of life murmuring and turning marble to gold as they flowed. Red Riding Hood from behind her cotton curtains, and Rémy, her cousin, outside in the courtyard, were the only two inhabitants of this wonderful building. They were alone in it together, far away in that world of which I have been speaking, at a long long distance from the everyday all round about them, though the cook of the hotel was standing at his kitchen-door, and the stable-boy was grinning at Rémy's elbow, and H. and I, who had arrived only that evening, were sitting resting on the bench in front of the hotel, among the autumnal profusion of nasturtiums and marigolds with which the court-yard was planted. H. and I had come to see the palace, and to walk about in the stately old gardens, and to breathe a little quiet and silence after the noise of the machines thundering all day in the Great Exhibition of the Champ de Mars, the din of the cannons firing, of the carriages and multitudes rolling along the streets. The Maynards, Red Riding Hood's parents, were not passers-by like ourselves, they were comfortably installed at the hôtel for a month at a time, and came over once a year to see Mrs. Maynard's mother, an old lady who had lived at Fontainebleau as long as her two daughters could remember. This old lady's name was Madam Capuchon; but her first husband had been an Englishman, like Mr. Maynard, her son-inlaw, who was also her nephew.by this first marriage. Both Madam Capuchon's daughters were married, —Marthe, the eldest, to Henry Maynard, an English country gentleman; Félicie, the youngest, to the Baron de la Louvière, who resided at Poictiers and who was sous-préfet there. It is now nearly forty years since Madame Capuchon first went to live at Fontainebleau, in the old house at the corner of the Rue de la Lampe. It has long been doomed to destruction, with its picturesque high roof, its narrow windows and balconies, and sunny old brick passages and staircases, with the round ivy oil-de-boeuf windows. Staircases were piled up of brick in the time of the Lewises, broad and wide and easy to climb, and not of polished wood, like the slippery flights of to-day. However, the old house is in the way of a row of shops and a projected café and newspaper-office, so are the ivy-grown garden-walls, the acacia trees, the sun-dial, and the old stone seat. It is a pity that newer buildings cannot sometimes be selected for destruction; they might be rebuilt and re destroyed again and again, and people who care for such things might be left in peace a little longer to hold the dear old homes and traditions of their youth. and learnt that their dot was ample and their connections respectable. Marthe, the eldest daughter, was the least good-looking of the two, but to most people's mind far more charming than Félicie, the second. M. de la Louvière had at first a slight pref erence for Marthe, but learning through his uncle that an alliance was contemplated between her and an English connection of her mother's, he announced himself equally anxious to obtain the hand of Félicie, the younger sister. After some hesitation, much addition of figures, subtraction, divis ion, rule of three worked out, consultations and talk between Simonne and her mistress, and long discussions with Henry Maynard himself, who was staying with a friend at Fontainebleau at the time, this favour was accorded to the baron. Madame Capuchon, however, is a kind and despotic old lady; she has great influ- The young baroness went off nothing ence and authority in the town, and during loth: she was bored at home, she did not her life the old house is safe. It is now, as like the habit of severity and silence into I have said, forty years since she first came which her mother had fallen. She was a to live there, a young widow for the sec- slim, active, decided person, of calm affecond time, with two little daughters and a tions, but passionately fond of her own way, faithful old maid to be her only companions as indeed was Madame Capuchon herself, for in her flight from the world where she had all her regrets for that past in which it must known great troubles and changes. Mad- be confessed she had always done exactly as ame Capuchon and her children inhabited she liked, and completely ruled her two the two upper stories of the old house. husbands. For all Madame Capuchon's The rez de chaussée was partly a porter's blacks and drabs and seclusion, and shut lodge, partly a warehouse, and partly a lit- shutters, and confessors, and shakes of the tle apartment which the proprietor reserved head, she had greatly cheered up by this for his use. He died twice. during Mad-time: she had discovered in her health a deame Capuchon's tenancy; once he ventured lightful source of interest and amusement; to propose to herbut this was the former Félicie's marriage was as good as a play, as owner of the place, not the present proprie- the saying goes; and then came a catastrotor, an old bachelor who preferred his Par- phe, still more exciting than Félicie's brilis café and his boulevard to the stately si- liant prospects, which occupied all the spare lence and basking life of Fontainebleau. moments of the two years which succeeded the youngest girl's departure from home. This life suited Madame Capuchon, who from sorrow at first, and then from habit. continued the same silent cloistered existence for years-years which went by and separated her quietly but completely from her old habits and friends and connections and long-past trouble, while the little girls grew up and the mother's beauty changed, faded quietly away in the twilight life she was leading. The proprietor who had ventured to propose to the widow, and who had been refused with so much grace and decision that his admiration remained unaltered, was no more; but shortly before his death he had a second time accosted her with negotiations of marriage, not for himself this time. but for a nephew of his, the Baron de la Louvière, who had seen the young ladies by chance, beard much good of them from his uncle and their attached attendant Simonne, Madame Capuchon's nephew, Henry Maynard, was, as I have said, staying at Fontainebleau with a friend, who was unfortunately a very good-looking young man of very good family, who had come to Fontainebleau to be out of harm's way, and to read French for some diplomatic appointment. Maynard used to talk to him about his devotion for his pretty cousin Marthe with the soft trill in her voice and the sweet quick eyes. Young Lord John, alas, was easily converted to this creed, - he also took a desperate fancy to the pretty young lady; and Madame Capuchon, whose repeated losses had not destroyed a certain ambition which had always been in her na ture, greatly encouraged the young man. And so one day poor Maynard was told that he must resign himself to his hard fate. He had never hoped much, for he knew well enough |