of her deed, than the two bodies, and tyranny expiring in its own blood. To bury her name in oblivion, to seek no recompense but in the act itself, and to demand for the good which she should have accomplished, neither blame nor praise but from God and her own conscience. Such up to the last was the only ambition of her soul. Blame she would have spared her family. Renown she did not desire for herself. Glory seemed to her a mere earthly reward, unworthy of the disinterestedness of her action, and only calculated to lessen the value of her sacrifice.

But from the conversation which she had had since her arrival in Paris, with Lanze de Perret, and with her landlord, she had learnt that Marat no longer appeared in the Convention. She must then seek her victim elsewhere, and to approach him it was necessary to deceive him.

On this she resolved. This dissimulation, which checked the natural sincerity of her heart, converted the dagger into a snare, her courage into stratagem, and the immolation into an assassination, was her first punishment, and the only thing with which her conscience reproached her. One distinguishes between an heroic and a criminal act, even before the acts themselves are accomplished, by the difference of the means used for their accomplishment. Crime is always obliged to screen itself by falsehood; virtue never. One is untruth, the other truth in action. One shuns, the other seeks, the light. Charlotte made up her mind to deceive. It cost her more than to strike. She acknowledged it herself. Her own conscience did her greater justice than posterity.

She returned to her room, and wrote a letter to Marat, which she herself left at the door of the "friend of the people." "I have just arrived from Caen," wrote she; "your love for your country leads me to imagine that you will be glad to be informed of the unfortunate events which have taken place in this part of the republic. I will present myself at your house in about an hour. Be kind enough to grant me an interview, and a few minutes' conversation. I can put you in the way of rendering France an essential service."

Charlotte, counting on the effect of this letter, arrived at Marat's house at the appointed time, but she was not admitted. She then left at the gate a second letter more urgent and more insidious than the first. In

it she appealed, not only to the patriotism but to the pity of the "friend of the people," and used as a snare the generosity which she attributed to him. "I wrote to you, Marat, this morning," said she, "did you receive my letter? I can scarcely believe it possible, as I was turned from your door. I trust that to-morrow you will grant me an interview. I repeat that I have just arrived from Caen, and that I have secrets to reveal to you of the greatest importance to the safety of the republic. Besides which I am persecuted for the cause of liberty. I am unfortunate, which alone suffices to give me a claim on your patriotism."

Without waiting for an answer, she left her room at seven o'clock in the evening, dressed with greater care than usual, in or der to mislead the persons by whom Marat was surrounded by her decent appearance. Her white dress was covered on the shoulders by a silk handkerchief. This handkerchief, which concealed her chest, was crossed at the waist and tied behind. Her hair was confined under a Normandy cap, the lace lappets of which fell against her cheeks. A wide green ribbon round her temples fastened this head-dress. Her hair, escaping at the back of her head, fell in ringlets on her shoulders. No paleness of complexion, no wildness of the eye, no tremulousness of the voice, gave indications of the death she carried with her. Thus captivatingly attired she presented herself at Marat's dwelling.

Marat lived in the first story of a ruined house, No. 18, in the Rue des Cordeliers, since converted into an Ecole de Médecine. His lodgings consisted of an ante-chamber, and a study looking into a narrow court, a small room adjoining, in which was his bath, a sleeping-room, and a drawing-room, the windows of which looked upon the street. These apartments were miserably furnished. Marat's numerous works heaped on the floor, public documents still wet with ink scattered on the tables and chairs, printers' foremen going in and out continually, women employed in folding and directing pamphlets and journals; the worn-away steps of the stairs, the dirt at the thresholds of the doors, everything attested the usual bustle and disorder surrounding a man of business, and the concourse of citizens who besieged the house of a journalist and an idol of the people.

This dwelling, so to express it, displayed the pride of his poverty. It seemed as if its

master, then all-powerful with the nation, | desired that his visitors should exclaim, at the sight of his misery and labor, "Behold the friend and model of the people! he has neither plundered them of dwellings, luxuries, nor dress."

This poverty was the characteristic of the Tribune. But though it was affected, it was real. The household of Marat was that of an humble artisan. The woman who managed his household was well known. Her name had been formerly Catherine Evrard, but since the "friend of the people" had given her his name by taking her for his wife, one fine day, in the face of the sun, after the example of Jean-Jaques Rousseau, people called her Albertine Marat. A sin gle maid-servant assisted this woman in the household arrangements. A porter, named Laurent Basse, went on errands and did the out-door work. In his leisure moments this hard-worked man employed himself in the ante-chamber with the manual labor necessary for the despatch of the papers and handbills of the "friend of the people."

The restless activity of the writer had not as yet been slackened by the lingering disease which was destroying him. The fever of his blood seemed only to quicken his intellect. Whether in his bed, or in his bath, he never ceased writing, declaiming, inveighing against his enemies, and inciting on the Convention and the Cordeliers. Indignant at the silence of the Convention at the reception of one of his messages, he immediately wrote another letter, in which he threatened the Convention that he would be carried dying to the tribune to shame the representatives for their pusillanimity, and to dictate to them the murders which he deemed necessary. He allowed no repose either to himself or others. Full of the presentiment of death, his only fear seemed to be that his last hour would advance too rapidly to allow him the necessary time to despatch a sufficient number of the proscribed. More anxious to kill than to live, he hastened to send before him the greatest possible number of victims, as so many hostages, offered by the sword to the Revolution which he desired to leave behind him without enemies. The terror which was spread from Marat's house entered it again under another form, the perpetual fear of assassination. His companion and his friends imagined as many daggers raised against him, as he had raised against the lives of three hundred thousand citizens. The access to his dwel

ling was as strongly guarded as that of a tyrant's palace. No one was allowed to approach him but the most devoted friends, or informers recommended beforehand, and subjected to the minutest interrogation and the strictest examination. Love, suspicion, and fanaticism united, watched over his safety.

Charlotte, though ignorant of these obsta cles, suspected them. She alighted from the carriage on the other side of the street, opposite to Marat's dwelling. Daylight was departing, especially in this neighborhood, the gloom of which was deepened by the high houses and narrow streets. The por ter refused at first to allow the young unknown to enter the court-yard. She, however, insisted, and mounted several steps of the stairs, recalled in vain by the voice of the doorkeeper. Hearing the voice, Marat's mistress opened the door, and refused admittance to the stranger. The loud altercation of these women, the one entreating to be allowed to speak to the "friend of the people," the other obstinately refusing her admittance, reached the ears of Marat: he gathered from her interrupted expostulations that the visitor was the stranger from whom he had received two letters during the day. In a loud and imperative voice he or dered that she should be admitted. Either from jealousy or distrust, Albertine obeyed with a murmuring reluctance. She introduced the young girl into the room occupied by Marat, and retired, leaving the door of the corridor ajar, in order to hear every word and every movement of the sick man.

This room was dimly lighted; Marat was in his bath. In this forced repose of his body he did not allow his mind to participate. A rough board placed across the bath was covered with papers, open letters, and half-written documents. He held in his right hand the pen, which the entrance of the stranger had suspended on the page. The sheet of paper was a letter to the Convention, demanding sentence of banishment to be pronounced upon the last Bourbons still tolerated in France. On one side of the bath was a heavy block of oak set upright, on which was an inkstand of the roughest workmanship, from whose impure source, during the last three years, so many extravagances of cruelty, so many accusations, and so much blood had flowed. Marat, covered in his bath with a dirty ink-spotted sheet, had only his head, shoulders, chest, and right arm out of the water. There was nothing

in the appearance of this man to touch the heart of a woman, and make her hesitate to strike the blow. Gray hair surrounded by a dirty handkerchief, a retiring forehead, bold eyes, large cheek-bones, an enormous sneering mouth, a hairy chest, emaciated limbs, and a livid skin: such was Marat.

Charlotte avoided catching his eye, for fear of betraying the horror inspired by his appearance. Standing with her eyes cast down, and her hands hanging by the side of the bath, she waited for Marat to question her as to the situation of Normandy. She replied briefly, suiting her answer so as to flatter what she believed to be the disposition of the demagogue. He asked her the names of the deputies who had taken refuge in Caen. She told him, and he wrote them down. "That is well," said he, when he had finished writing, with the accent of a man who is sure of vengeance. "Before a week is over they shall be brought to the guillotine."

At these words, as if she had waited for another crime to urge her to the deed, Charlotte drew from her bosom the knife, and plunged it with supernatural force up to the hilt in the heart of Marat. With the same movement Charlotte withdrew the bloody knife from the body of her victim, and let it fall at her feet. Come to me, my dear friend, come to me," cried Marat, and expired under the blow.

NOTHING.

Beside the door, one Summer day,
There sat a maiden bright and gay,
And fair, as was the fairy May

That decked the fields around her;
Softly she hummed a blithesome strain,
And glanced adown the grassy lane,
Then turned, and sewed her seam again
With smile and sigh commingled.
"What are you thinking of, my child?"
Her gentle mother said, and smiled,
And turned with anxious glance, yet mild,
Waiting her daughter's answer.
But she looked up in bright surprise,
And dropped her lovely tell-tale eyes,
And answered, (are such answers wise?)
"Nothing! dear mother, nothing!"

A woman, with a lonely look,
Sat reading from a time-worn book,
But often from its page she took

Her calm yet saddened glances. "My life is passing by," she said, "The years are fleeting o'er my head, "With swift and sure, though noiseless tread, "Soon they will all be over. "And I shall step from off life's stage, "My hair grown white with work and age, "But nothing written on life's page

"That I had fondly longed for!" But, when a child with wondering eyes Asked her what grieved her, in surprise, She kissed his cheek, and low replies"Nothing dear childie, nothing!"

THE LIGHT OF ASIA.

[EDWIN ARNOLD, C. S. I., was born in Sussex, England, 1832. In 1852, at Oxford, he won the Newdigate prize by his English poem on the "Feast of Belshazzar." In 1857, he was appointed principal of the Government Sanscrit College at Poona, in the Bombay Presidency, and fellow of the University of Bombay, which positions he held till 1861.

Since 1861, he has been on the editorial staff of the "London Daily Telegraph," and published "The Indian Song of Songs," and recently "The Light of Asia," from the latter of which the following extract is made.]

Yet not to love

Alone trusted the king; love's prison-house
Stately and beautiful he bade them build,
So that in all the earth no marvel was
Like Vishramvan, the prince's pleasure-place.
Midway in those wide palace-grounds there rose
A verdant hill whose base Rohini bathed,
Murmuring adown from Himalay's broad feet.
To bear its tribute into Gunga's waves.
Southward a growth of tamarind trees, and sål,
Thick set with pale sky-colored ganthi-flowers,
Shut out the world, save if the city's hum
Came on the wind no harsher than when bees
Hum out of sight in thickets. Northward soared

The stainless ramps of huge Himála's wall,
Ranged in white ranks against the blue-untrod,
Infinite, wonderful-whose uplands vast,
And lifted universe of crest and crag,
Shoulder and shelf, green slope and icy horn,
Riven ravine, and splintered precipice
Led climbing thought higher and higher, until
It seemed to stand in heaven and speak with gods.

Fronting this

The builders set the bright pavilion up,
Fair-planted on the terraced hill, with towers
On either flank and pillared cloisters round.
Its beams were carved with stories of old time-
Radha and Krishna and the sylvan girls-
Sita and Hanuman and Draupadi;
And on the middle porch god Ganesha,

With disk and hook-to bring wisdom and wealth-
Propitious safe, wreathing his sidelong trunk.
By winding ways of garden and of court
The inner gate was reached, of marble wrought,
White with pink veins; the lintel lazuli,
The threshold alabaster, and the doors
Sandal-wood, cut in pictured panelling;
Whereby to lofty halls and shadowy bowers

Passed the delighted foot, on stately stairs,

Through latticed gallerys, 'neath painted roofs

And clustering columns, where cool fountains-fringed
With lotus and nelumbo-danced, and fish

Gleamed through their crystal, scarlet, gold, and blue.
Great-eyed gazelles in sunny alcoves browsed
The blown red roses; birds of rainbow wing
Fluttered among the palms; doves, green and gray,
Built their safe nests on gilded cornices;
Over the shining pavements peacocks drew
The splendors of their trains, sedately watched
By milk-white herons and the small house-owls.
The plum-necked parrots swung from fruit to fruit
The yellow sun-birds whirred from bloom to bloom,
The timid lizards on the lattice basked
Fearless, the squirrels ran to feed from hand,
For all was peace: the shy black snake, that gives
Fortune to households, sunned his sleepy coils
Under the moon-flowers, where the musk-deer played,
And brown eyed monkeys chattered to the crows.
And all this house of love was peopled fair
With sweet attendance, so that in each part
With lovely sights were gentle faces found.
Soft speech and willing service, each one glad
To gladden, pleased at pleasure, proud to obey;
Till life glided beguiled, like a smooth stream
Banked by perpetual flow'rs, Yasodhara
Queen of the enchanting court.

But innermost,
Beyond the richness of those hundred halls,
A secret chamber lurked where skill had spent
All lovely fantasies to lull the mind.
The entrance of it was a cloistered square-
Roofed by the sky, and in the midst a tank-
Of milky marble built, and laid with slabs

Of milk-white marble; bordered round the tank
And on the steps, and all along the frieze
With tender inlaid work of agate-stones,
Cool as to tread in summer-time on snows
It was to loiter there; the sunbeams dropped
Their gold, and, passing into porch and niche,
Softened to shadows, silvery, pale, and dim,
As if the very day paused and grew eve
In love and silence at that bower's gate;
For there beyond the gate the chamber was,
Beautiful, sweet; a wonder of the world!

Soft light from perfumed lamps through windows fell
Of nakre and stained stars of lucent film
On golden cloths outspread, and silken beds,
And heavy splendor of the purdah's fringe,
Lifted to take only the loveliest in.

Here, whether it was night or day none knew
For always streamed that softening light, more bright
Than sunrise, but as tender as the eve's;
And always breathed sweet airs, more joy-giving
Than morning's, but as cool as midnight's breath;
And night and day lutes sighed, and night and day
Delicious foods were spread, and dewy fruits,
Sherbets new chilled with snows of Himalay,
And sweetmeats made of subtle daintiness,
With sweet tree-milk in its own ivory cup,
And night and day served there a chosen band
Of nautch-girls, cup-bearers, and cymballers,
Delicate, dark-browed ministers of love,
Who fanned the sleeping eyes of the happy prince,
And when he waked, led back his thoughts to bliss
With music whispering through the blooms, and charm
Of amorous songs and dreamy dances, linked
By chime of ankle bells and wave of arms

And silver vina-strings: while essences

Of musk and champak and the blue haze spread
From burning spices soothed his soul again
To drowse by sweet Yasodhara; and thus
Siddartha lived forgetting.

Furthermore,

The king commanded that within those walls
No mention should be made of death or age,
Sorrow, or pain, or sickness. If one dropped
In the lovely court-her dark glance dim, her fee
Faint in the dance-the guiltless criminal
Passed forth an exile from that Paradise,
Lest he should see and suffer at her woe.
Bright-eyed intendants watched to execute
Sentence on such as spake of the harsh world
Without, where aches and plagues were, tears and fears
And wail of mourners, and grim fume of pyres.
'Twas treason if a thread of silver strayed
In tress of singing-girl or nautch-dancer;
At every dawn the dying rose was plucked,
The dead leaves hid, all evil sights removed :
For said the king, “If he shall pass his youth
Far from such things as move to wistfulness,
And brooding on the empty eggs of thought,
The shadow of this fate, too vast for man,
May fade, belike, and I shall see him grow
To that great stature of fair sovereignty