not part us shall not remove you from my thoughts. Death only separates our bodies; the soul, instead of being there, is in heaven, and the change of abodes takes nothing away from its affections. Far from it, I trust; one loves better in heaven, where all becomes divine." And thus she goes on talking to him, tell and his wife on their way to Le Cayla, the After that he seldom moved from his easy- near. Two days after, Eugénie re-opened her journal, and thus inscribed it : "Still to him. To Maurice dead-to Maurice in heaven. He was the glory and the joy of my heart. Oh, how sweet and how full of love is the name of brother! July 21st.-No, my dear, death shall his corpse; of the funeral; of the letters that came too late for him; of the weary turmoil of visits of condolence; of his old peasant nurse bringing the cakes and figs he would have enjoyed; of the clear sky, the grasshopperchirp, the beat of the flail; of her bitter tears, Some have said that her sorrow was excesand of the prayers that relieved her grief. which is "regretting, not repining;" which sive; but surely that grief is not unchristian resigns itself perfectly, and is far from being amount of suffering becomes a matter of inwithout hope. These conditions fulfilled, the dividual nature, dependent both on the degree of personal loss and the inherent elasticity of the character, just as some constitutions are far more susceptible of physical pain than others. heart was widowed; and so it was for life; She wrote on that very first day that her but there was thankfulness in all her sorrow. On the 17th of August she writes: "I was less a sister than a mother. Do you remember that I compared myself to spoke of my afflictions for your soul-that Monica weeping for her Augustine when we dear soul that was astray? How I entreated for its salvation-prayed, supplicated! A holy priest told me, Your brother will re turn.' Oh, he did return, and then left me for heaven-for heaven, I trust. There were death. My God, I have more to bless thee evident signs of grace and mercy in that for than to complain of."-P. 282. Some days later : : "I desire the salvation of all, that all should profit by the redemption that was for all mankind; but the heart has its elect, and for these one has a hundred times more "Should I not love thee, my God, the other wonders than in these towns in the sole, true, everlasting love? I think I love mud" (p. 302). thee, as the timid Peter said, but not like John, who rested 'on thy bosom-divine repose, that is wanting to me! What can I seek among created things? Shall I make a pillow of a human breast? Alas! I have seen how death snatches it away. Let me rather lean, O Jesus, upon thy Crown of Thorns." -P. 287. She had made many friends; she had "colonies of cousins" whom she dearly loved, and many more of later date loved for Maurice's sake and their own. There is a very pretty passage about her early and more recent friendships : "I always stood in need of friendships, and rare introuvable ones have come to me, as it were, from heaven, and all first through my brother, the dear Maurice, whom I have lost. Louise dated previously. She is for me of a different flavor, fruit of another season. I met her at seventeen. Her charm is a thing apart, like the age at which we linked ourselves together., Though sadness has come since, we see one another through flowers." P. 329. These friendships, their duties and their seldom came between her and her comfortable thoughts of Maurice. Her last impression when she saw his embrace of the cross was, that he was gone to Paradise; and that belief was almost constantly with her. There is only one entry in her diary of the grievous correspondence, were a great solace to her; idea of Maurice calling for aid in his sufferings, and then she hurries to prayer, saying Prayer is the dew of purgatory." After the first two months, the journal begins to be addressed to M. d'Aurevilly, who had begged to be regarded as an adopted brother, and to receive her effusions in the same way as Maurice had done. But it was a thing impossible to write to any new-made friend as to the brother whose first baby steps she had guided, and the peculiar simple fragrance of the diary is lost from that time. There are no more fond bits of patois; no more of the poetry of washing, cooking, or spinning; no more such merry records as nothing passed to-day but two crows." Eran and Mimi lose their pet names; and if anything about the homely neighbors is set down, it is as being curious in itself, not because an eye from the home circle will be gratified by it. We respect Eugénie the more for it, but care less for the journal, though there are still choice passages in it. There she records the account of those last ten days of Maurice's illness; there she describes skies and flowers, and tells of her books,—“ few came to Le Cayla, but if they please, they please very much." And sometimes the habit of writing all that is in her heart carries her away, and she pours out her feelings as if forgetting that she is not writing to Maurice: "This morning, in my prayers, I felt myself borne towards the other life, where he is, where he expects me as he did at Paris. Ah! there we shall see far 1139 THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. and there is a recovery of cheerfulness visible This summer-1840-Maurice's friends made his literary remains known to the world. They were not numerous, the chief being "Le Centaure," a poem in prose, supposed to be the autobiography of a centaur, and embodying the longings for the ecstasies of a free wild life in the bosom of nature, of which Maurice had been full in his three unhappy Parisian years. To us it is difficult to enter into the merit of the "Centaur;" but when came out in the Revue des Deux Mondes of June, 1840, it was spoken of in the highest terms by Georges Sand, and it was accompanied by some of Maurice's descriptive letters, which placed his poetical powers beyond a doubt, and excited strong enthusiasm. But one section of the literary world, and at the head of them Georges Sand,-the first to | was, excited a curiosity and interest about proclaim his genius,-claimed him as among her which was partly gratified, after the the free-thinkers of the age; and "the stain deaths of her father and brother, by M. they placed on his brow," was in Eugénie's d'Aurevilly, who printed for private circulaeyes ill conpensated by the honors ascribed to tion a selection of her papers. M. de Sainte him. Henceforth her chief care was that the Beuve made her the subject of one of his world should not admire him without know- Causeries de Lundi, and finally, at the end ing that his belief, if obscured for a time, had of fourteen years, Marie de Guérin placed in returned in full brightness; and to win this the hands of M. Trebutien all the papers and recognition of his Christianity was the task journals in her possession. This is the work that the Académie pronounces "couronnee," of her later life. She wrote letters to his for its style and for its beneficial tendency. friends, she drew up a short memoir of him Eugénie, utterly heedless of distinction for to be affixed to an edition of his works, and herself, has, while seeking it for her brother, she remained through all these latter days received it in double measure. holding her shield of faith over the remains that the other party would fain have won to themselves. But of herself we know nothing. Her journal was less and less resorted to, and breaks off finally on the last day of 1840, with the characteristic entry, "How sad time is, whether it goes or comes; and how right was the saint who said, Let us throw our hearts into eternity'!" She lived nine years after her brother, for the last two of which she was sinking under the same complaint; but apparently it laid a gentle hand upon her, for she kept up her usual habits almost to the last-attended to her father, to household cares, and to the neighboring poor; observed her hours for reading and prayer, and in the evening taught the Catechism in the kitchen to any ignorant person who had come to help in the vintage. Of her end we know almost nothing, except that after she had received the last rites of the Church she said to her sister, "Take this key: you will find papers in that drawer, and you will burn them. They are nothing but vanity." Eugénie de Guérin died on the 31st of May, 1848, and her father only survived her for six months. Erembert followed two years after; and the sole survivors of this honored house are Mademoiselle Marie de Guérin and a young daughter of Erembert. Caroline, the widow of Maurice, returned to India, married again, and died while still young. The oft-repeated words of David come before us as we think of Maurice and Eugénie "They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided." Still, there was no knowing or lov ing Maurice without carrying on the feeling to Eugénie; and the revelations of herself that she had almost unwittingly made, in the endeavor to show her brother as he really Maurice, as M. Trebutien truly says, will be far longer remembered as the brother of Eugénie than as the author of the "Centaur; and perhaps he would be content with this subordination, for no brother ever loved sister with a more true and generous love than he bore to "Ma sœur Eugénie Au front pale et doux," as he says in a little poem written in Brittany, one stanza of which we cannot forbear quoting, it is so perfect a symbol of the two lives: De faire l'échange Au mien, 'Vois comme la bise La feuille flétrie Elle, sans parole, M. de Sainte Beuve has called the remains It well deserves the title; but to us it seems of Eugénie the book of brothers and sisters. that its great lesson is the never-ceasing freshness and charm of "doing all to the glory of God." From The Independent. MR. BRYANT'S NEW POEMS. * THERE lies before us, as we write, a small, thin volume, which bears the imprint of "Boston; printed for the author by E. G. House, No. 5 Court street, 1809." It was the second edition," corrected and enlarged," of a work whose complete title-page ran in this wise: "The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times, a satire, together with the Spanish Revolution and other poems, by William Cullen Bryant." The year 1808 was just fifty-six years ago, six years more than half a century—and nearly two generations of men, as they are commonly reckoned. The writer of that volume had been born on the 3d of November, in the year 1794, and was consequently but thirteen years of age when his first volume was published. It might well have been said of him, as Pope said of himself, that he lisped in numbers, for the numbers came," and so marked was the merit, 80 mature the thought, so polished the style, the conception and exccution of the various pieces so extraordinary, that when the second edition was called for, the friends of the writer were compelled to prefix the following advertisement to the second edition, to remove the doubts of authenticity which the first volume had raised :: "ADVERTISEMENT. "A doubt having been intimated in The Monthly Anthology of June last, whether a youth of thirteen years could have been the author of this poem, in justice to his merits the friends of the writer feel obliged to cer tify the fact from their personal knowledge of himself and his family, as well as his literary improvement and extraordinary talents. They would premise that they do not come uncalled before the public to bear this testimony-they would prefer that he should be judged by his works, without favor or affection. As the doubt has been suggested, they deem it merely an act of justice to remove it -after which they leave him a candidate for favor in common with other literary adventurers. They therefore assure the public that Mr. Bryant, the author, is a native of Cummington, in the county of Hampshire, and in the month of November last arrived at the age of fourteen years. The facts can be authenticated by many of the inhabitants of that place, as well as by several of his friends who give this notice; and if it be deemed worthy of further inquiry, the printer is ena"Thirty Poems." By William Cullen Bryant. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1864. We are not at all surprised that such an assurance was found necessary to dispel the incredulity of the public in regard to the youth of the author. The political views of the volume are naturally those which a lad of quick and fervid sensibilities would catch from the prevailing prejudices and convictions of New Englanders, whose commerce had been deeply injured by the measures of restraint which the Government had seen fit to impose upon trade, and the tone of the poetry recalls those great English satirists who were then in the ascendant in our literature; but there are few other indications in it of immaturity, and many of a rare facility of versification and a ready mastery of language. At this day there is something amusingly naive in the audacity of the little boy of the Hampshire hills sending forth his indignant lines in the hope of arresting the turbulence of faction, and no less in the honest self-confidence in which he invites the criticism of his poetry, with a promise to improve under the lessons of any fair and candid disclosure of his faults. "The first sketch of the following poem," he says in the preface, "was written when the terapin policy of our administration, in imposing the embargo, exhibited undeniable evidence of its hostility to commerce, and proof positive that its political character was deeply tinctured with an unwarrantable partiality for France. Since that time our political prospects are daily growing more and more alarming, the thunders of approaching ruin sound longer and louder,-and faction and falsehood exert themselves with increasing efforts to accelerate the downfall of our country. The author has, therefore, thought proper to revise, enlarge, and lay this second edition of the Embargo before the American public." That was probably the first political leader ever written by the hand which has since written so many-the first butt of the hornless head against public wrongs and abuses, which was destined to toss them high in the air in after-years! In the same preface the writer speaks of his literary pre tensions in this wise: "Should the candid reader find anything in the course of the work sufficiently interesting to arrest his attention, it is presumed he will not grudge the trouble of laboring through a few 'in equalities,' a few 'flat and prosaic passages.' The writer of these poems is far from thinking that all his errors are expunged, or all his faults corrected. Indeed, were that the case, he is suspicious that the composition' would cease to be his own. Fair criticism he does not deprecate. He will consider the ingenious and good-natured critic as a kind of schoolmaster, and will endeavor to profit by his lesson." Modest for a boy of thirteen, shall we say? Yes; but with a very decided undercurrent of conscious genius. In addition to the vigorous satire on the Embargo, this volume contained a no less vigorous appeal, in heroic couplets, in behalf of the Spanish revolution, or the efforts of the Spanish patriots in resistance to the despotism of Bonaparte; a graceful ode to the Connecticut River; the "Reward of Literary Merit," a story which recounts the glory and disappointment of the literary life; several enigmas, of which we select one as both proper to these times and a specimen of the young author's skill: "The son of war, in brazen armor bound, Black is my throat as midnight, and profound; From my dark entrails forced, with startling Then follow "The Contented Ploughman," a song; "The Drought," a poem descriptive of the scorching heats of summer, in which we note several peculiarities of the writer's more matured style; and finally, a "Translation from Horace." As the original is well known to all scholars,-it is the 22d carmen of the 1st book addressed to Aristius Fuscus, we append this easy and graceful rendering, as perhaps, the best evidence of the precocious powers of the author that we could select : "The man whose life, devoid of guile, "Whether he tempt the scorching blast, "In warlike Daunia's spacious wood, There shall the fair reward my toils, Who sweetly speaks and sweetly smiles." When most boys have as yet scarcely opened their Latin Accidence, this youth was turning Horace's pretty prattle about his Lalage into such sweet lines as these! We have dwelt upon this first volume of Mr. Bryant as a fitting prelude to another volume before us, the title of which is before quoted. He is now in his seventieth year, and after a life of almost incessant intellectual labor, in one of the most exacting and laborious of professions, he comes before us the patriarch of our literature-in an aspect quite as extraordinary as that in which he originally presented himself to the world. With eye undimmed-with faculties unworn with heart still eager and hopeful-at a period of life when, to most men, if the golden bowl be not yet broken at the fountain, or the silver chord be loosed, the grasshopper at least has become a burden; he flings into our laps "Thirty Poems," mostly new and all excellent. The long interval which has elapsed between his earliest and his latest publication has been filled with the evidences of an unflagging poetic activity. Not a year has passed in which we have not been delighted, and made better by some product of his genius, always fresh and always riper and richer. No great poem-using the word "great" in the sense of size-has illustrated his career-no mighty epic flight, no grand dramatic masterpiece, no long narrative of heroic deeds, or of crime and sorrow and woe-and yet that career is wreathed and festooned along its entire path by poems which are great in the sense of surpassing loveliness and perfection. It has been the singular felicity of Mr. Bryant that he has done whatever he has done with consummate finish and completeness. If he has not, as the critics often tell us, the comprehensiveness or philosophic insight of Wordsworth, the weird fancy of Coleridge, the gorgeous diction of Keats, the exquisite subtlety of |