Ve- The oasthouse smoke, the hop-bine burn,
Knowing that all good things return
To Love that lasts!

If Love could last, who then would mind
The freezing rack, the unfeeling wind,
The curdling pool, the shivering sedge,
The empty nest in leafless hedge,

"O yes, do!" said Lamia. ronica said nothing, but the silence that followed seemed filled with an unspoken request. Hitherto the nightingales had been competing with each other in the contiguous brakes. Now, as though they knew our desire, they desisted for a while, and in the gathering dark-Brown dripping bents and furrows bare, ness, rendered deeper by the drooping branches of the wide-spreading oak, we listened to lines none of us had heard before.

If Love could last, if Love could last,
The Future be as was the Past,
Nor faith and fondness ever know
The chill of dwindling afterglow,
O! then we should not have to long
For cuckoo's call and throstle's song,
But every season then would ring
With rapturous voices of the Spring.
In budding brake and grassy glade
The primrose then would never fade,
The windflower flag, the bluebell haze
Faint from the winding woodland ways,
But vernal hopes chase wintry fears,
And happy smiles and happier tears
Be like the sun and clouds at play, —
If Love could last!

If Love could last, the rose would then
Not bloom but once, to fade again.
June to the lily would not give

A life less fair than fugitive,

But flower and leaf and lawn renew
Their freshness nightly with the dew.
In forest dingles, dim and deep,
Where curtained noonday lies asleep,
The faithful ringdove ne'er would cease
Its anthem of abiding peace.

All the year round we then should stray
Through fragrance of the new-mown hay,
Or sit and ponder old-world rhymes
Under the leaves of scented limes.
Careless of Time, we should not fear
The footsteps of the fleeting year,
Or, did the long warm days depart,
'Twould still be Summer in our heart, -
Did Love but last!

Did Love but last, no shade of grief
For fading flower, for falling leaf,
For stubbles whence the piled-up wain
Hath borne away the golden grain,
Leaving a load of loss behind,
Would shock the heart and haunt the mind.
With mellow gaze we then should see
The ripe fruit shaken from the tree,
The swallows troop, the acorns fall,
The last peach redden on the wall,

The wild-geese clamoring through the air,
The huddling kine, the sodden leaves,
Lack-lustre dawns and clammy eaves?
For then through twilight days morose
We should within keep warm and close,
And by the friendly fireside blaze
Talk of the ever-sacred days

When first we met, and felt how drear
Were life without the other near;
Or, too at peace with bliss to speak,
Sit hand-in-hand, and cheek-to-cheek, -
If Love could last!

Was it fancy that made me think I caught the sound of a sigh, almost of a sob? But no untimely word of thanks or praise marred the consentaneous silence. Moon there was none; only here and there a dimly discerned outrider of the night. Then the nightingales resumed their unobtrusive nocturn, and the odor of unseen flowers came floating on the dewy air from the garden that I love.

ALFRED AUSTIN.

From Blackwood's Magazine. 1ST MARCH, 1871.

IN the early morning of 1st March, 1871, Laurence Oliphant (who was then correspondent of the Times) and I left the Hôtel Chatham to walk up the Champs Elysées to a balcony in the Avenue de la Grande Armée, from which we were to view the entry of the Germans into Paris. The sky was grey; the air was full of mist; not a soul was to be seen; the shutters of every house were closed; a day of national humiliation could not have commenced more dismally. I remember that we felt an oppressive sensation of loneliness and gloom, which we communicated to each other at the same instant, and then laughed at the simultaneity of our thoughts.

:

At the Arch of Triumph were two men in blouses, the first we met. They were staring through the mist at the Porte Maillot, and we proceeded to stare too, for it was from that gate that the entry was to be made. So far as we could see, the whole place was absolutely empty; but our eyes were not quite reliable, for the fog on the low ground was so thick that it was impossible to make out anything. That fog might be full of troops, for all we knew.

It was then about half past seven, and as we had been told the night before that the advanced-guard would come in at eight, we thought, after standing for some minutes on the heaps of gravel which had been thrown up during the siege to form a trench and barricade under and around the Arch, that we had better move on to our balcony. Meanwhile, however, some twenty or thirty other blouses, evil-faced and wretched, had come up, and eyed us with undisguised suspicion, and consulted each other apparently, as to what we could be, and what they should do to us. We left them hesitating, and walked ou.

glish represented the rest of the world, as we generally do on such occasions.

We gazed hard at the Porte Maillot, from which we were distant about a quarter of a mile; but though the mist had begun to lift a little, it was still too thick to allow anything to be distinguished clearly on the Neuilly road. We looked and looked again in vain. It was not till we had waited, somewhat impatiently, for half an hour, that, at a quarter past eight, some one exclaimed, "I do believe I see moving specks out there beyond the gate." Up went all our glasses, and there they were! We recognized more and more distinctly six horsemen coming, and evidently coming fast, for they grew bigger and sharper as each second passed. One seemed to be in front, the other five behind.

As we watched eagerly they reached the open gate, dashed through it, and the instant they were inside the five behind spread out right and left across the broad avenue, as if to occupy it. The one in front, who, so far as we could see, had been riding until then at a canter, broke into a hand-gallop, and then into a full gallop, and came tearA group of Englishmen gathered on ing up the hill. As he neared us we that balcony- a dozen curious sight- saw he was a hussar officer a boy seers. The owner of the house was he did not look eighteen! He charged Mr. Corbett, who was afterwards min- past us, his sword uplifted, his head ister at Stockholm; amongst the others, thrown back, his eyes fixed straight so far as I remember, were Mr. Elliot, before him, and one of us cried out, the Duke of Manchester, Captain Trot-" By Jove, if that fellow's mother ter, and Lord Ronald Gower. Excepting the men in blouses about the Arch, who by this time had multiplied to at least a hundred, there was nobody within sight. The void was painful. Not a window was open (excepting in the rooms to which we had come); our balcony alone was peopled; one of the greatest historic spectacles of our time was about to be enacted in front of us; yet, save ourselves and the blouses, there was no public to contemplate it. The French who lived up there refused to look, or, if they did look, it was from behind their shutters. Such part of the educated population as were in Paris that day (most of them were absent) hid themselves in grief. We En

could see him she'd have something to
be proud of for the rest of her time ! ”
The youngster raced on far ahead of
his men, but at the Arch of Triumph
the blouses faced him. So, as he
would not ride them down in order to
go through (and if he had tried it he
would only have broken his own neck
and his horse's too in the trench), he
waved his sword at them, and at slack-
ened speed passed round.
We caught

sight of him on the other side through
the archway, his sword high up, as if
he were saluting the vanquished city at
his feet. But he did not stop for senti-
ment. He cantered on, came back,
and as his five men had got up by that
time (he had outpaced them by a couple

of minutes), he gave them orders, and| More and more troops marched up,

off they went, one to each diverging avenue and rode down it a short distance to see that all was right.

The boy trotted slowly round and round the Arch, the blouses glaring at him.

The entry was over that is to say, the Germans were inside Paris. That boy had done it all alone. The moral effect was produced. Nothing more of that sort could be seen from the balcony. We took it for granted that the rest, when it came, would only be a march past, and that thenceforth the interest of the drama would be in the street. So to the street Oliphant and I returned, two others accompanying us. The remainder of the party, if I remember right, stopped where they were for some time longer.

Just as we got to the Arch the boy came round once more. I went to him and asked his name.

"What for?" he inquired. "To publish it in London to-morrow morning."

infantry and cavalry, but always in
small numbers; the mass of the Ger-
man army was at Longchamps, for the
great review to be held that morning
by the emperor, and the thirty thou-
sand men who, under the convention
of occupation, were to enter Paris (in
reality, about forty thousand came),
were not to appear till the review was
over.

At nine o'clock the commander of the occupation (General von Kameke) rode in with an escort. At his side was Count Waldersee, who during the war had been chief of the staff to the Duke of Mecklenburg, to whose army Oliphant had been attached. Seeing Waldersee, Oliphant jumped out to. greet him, shook hands with him warmly, chatted gaily, and, after showing various signs of intimacy, came back towards us laughing, as the other rode on. This was, not unnaturally, too much for those of the blouses who saw it; and, before Oliphant could reach us, they rushed at him. Some hit him, some tried to trip him up; a

"Oh that's it, is it?" he remarked, with a tinge of the contempt for news-good dozen of them were on him. A papers which all German officers display. Well, I'm von Bernhardi, 14th Hussars. Only, if you're going to print it, please give my captain's name also; he's von Colomb."

(I heard, the last time I was in Germany, that the brave boy Bernhardi is dead, and that Colomb was then colonel of the King's Hussars, at Bonn.)

Five minutes later a squadron of the regiment came up, and Lieutenant von Bernhardi's command-in-chief expired. But the youngster had made a history for his name; he was the first German into Paris in 1871.

couple of us made a plunge after him, roared to the blouses that he was au Englishman, and that they had no right to touch him; and somehow (I have never understood how) we pulled him out undamaged, but a good deal out of breath and with his jacket torn. The blouses howled at us, and bestowed ungentle epithets on us, and followed us, and menaced; but we got away into another part of the constantly thickening crowd, and promised each other that we would speak no more that day to Germans. I need scarcely say that the mob was unchecked masWe stood amongst the blouses, and ter, that the Germans would not have wondered whether they would wring interfered in any fight that did not diour necks. We were clean, presum-rectly concern them, and that neither ably we had money in our pockets, and a French policeman nor a French solI had spoken to a German-three un- dier was present to keep order within pardonable offences. No attack, how- the limits of the district fixed for the ever, was made on any of us for the occupation. Those limits were the moment. Now that I look back on the Place de la Concorde on the east, the particular circumstances, I fail to com- Faubourg St. Honoré and the Avenue prehend why they were good enough des Ternes on the north, the Seine on to abstain.

the south.

At half past one I had wandered

By ten the sun had worked through | creditable to them. So long as they the fog, and also, by ten, a consider- were not provoked by some particular able number of the inhabitants of Paris cause, they remained quiet and showed had become unable to resist the temp- no rage. They wanted to behold a retation of seeing a new sight, and had markable sight that was offered for come out to the show. At that hour their inspection, and though beyond there must have been thirty or forty doubt it vexed them, their vexation thousand people in the upper part of was not strong enough to check their the Champs Elysées; the gloom of the curiosity. At least that was our imearly morning was as if it had not pression from what we saw. been; all was movement and brightness. The crowd, which in the after-back alone to the Avenue de la Grande noon we estimated at from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand, was composed, for the greater part, of blouses; but mixed with them were a quantity of decent people, from all parts of the town, women and children as well I could not get to him to speak, but I as men, belonging, apparently, to knew by his presence there that the the classes of small shopkeepers, em- review (to which he had ridden from ployees, and workmen. From morning Versailles) was over, and that, before to night I did not perceive one single very long, the real march in would gentleman; nor was a shutter opened commence. It did not occur to me at in the Champs Elysées. The upper the moment that Mr. Russell was doing strata kept out of sight; it was the other couches, especially the very lowest, that had come out..

Armée, where the crowd had become very dense, filling up, indeed, the entire roadway. On the other side I saw a horseman trying to work his way through. It was Mr. W. H. Russell.

a risky thing in cutting across the mob on a prosperous horse, which manifestly had not gone through the siegetime in Paris. It was not till some hours later that I learnt how nearly the mob had killed him.

At last, at two o'clock, thick dust arose outside the Porte Maillot, and I made out with my glass that the people were being pressed back at the gate, and that troops were advancing slowly

Directly troops enough were in to supply pickets, sentries were posted at the street-corners; patrols were set going; a guard was mounted at the house of Queen Christina, in the Champs Elysées, which had been selected for the German headquarters. We looked on at all this, at first with close attention, but by degrees the state of things - for the mob would not make way, grew rather dull. In times of great and the Germans were patient and excitement, events seem to become stu- gentle with them. The head of the pid so soon as they cease, temporarily, | column got up creepingly as far as the to be dangerous. Besides, for the Arch of Triumph; but then came a moment, the interest of the day had dead block. The gathering of people changed its place and nature; it was filled up the Place de l'Etoile and the no longer in the German army, but in upper part of the Avenue des Champs the French crowd; not in the entry, Elysées, and packed it all so solidly but in the reception. As we had that often, for minutes at a time, the rightly judged, the drama was in the cavalry could not move ahead. A good street. So we stood about and watched half-hour passed before space was the people, and talked to some of them, cleared for the emperor's headquarters and thought that, on the whole, they staff; and even then, for nearly anbehaved very well. Of course they other half-hour after the staff had would have done better still if they had stopped at home, and had left the Germans severely alone; but, as they had thought fit to come, they also thought fit to keep their tempers, which was

reached the Neuilly side of the Arch, they had to sit still upon their horses, unable to progress one yard.

And what a staff it was! With the exception of the Crown Prince Fred

erick, every prince in the army
that meant almost every prince in Ger-
many-and heaps of officers of high
rank, had come up from the review to
take part in the ride in. At their head,
alone, sat the late Duke Ernest of
Saxe-Coburg, taking precedence as the
senior reigning sovereign present. Be-
hind him were rows on rows of mem-
bers of the royal and historic families Suddenly I saw that his horse's head
of Germany, some twenty in a row, was moving from the line; he was
and, including aides-de-camp and order- coming out. He turned to the right,
lies, some thirty rows! In every sort in my direction; he raised his hand to
and color of uniform, they stretched the salute as he passed before his
across the full width of the great ave-neighbors to the end of the rank, came
nue from curbstone to curbstone, and
would have filled up the pathways too
if they had not been already choked
with French spectators. I had the
good fortune to work my way to the
corner of the pavement where the
Place de l'Etoile opens out, and there
I stood and gazed.

and horses from me - - to make out the ex-
pression of his face, which was then
fully exposed to me; but there was no
marked expression on it. At that mo-
ment of intense victory, when all was
won, inside surrendered Paris, with
the whole world thinking of him, he
seemed indifferent, fatigued, almost
sad.

The sun shone splendidly; the mob stared silently; the princes waited tranquilly.

I recognized many faces that I had got to know at Versailles during the siege. I saw Meiningens, and Hohenzollern, and Altenburgs, and Lippes, and Reuss, and Pless, and Schoenburgs, Waldecks, Wieds, Hohenlohes, and Mecklenburgs, and other names that are written large in the chronicles of the Fatherland.

And as I went on looking, my eyes fell on the front rauk, and the fourth man in that rank was - Bismarck.

straight towards me, and guided his
horse in between the column of officers
and the tightly jammed crowd on the
pavement. It seemed impossible he
could find room to pass, so little space
was there; but pass he did. The top
of his jackboot brushed hard against
my waistcoat; but with all my desire to
get out of his way I could not struggle
backwards, because of the denseness
of the throng behind me. No French-
man recognized him. I have wondered
since what would have happened if I
had told the people who he was. Would
they have gaped at him in hating si-
lence? Would they have cursed him
aloud? Would they have flung stones
at him? Or would they, as a safer
solution, have battered me for the crime
of knowing him by sight? He rode on
slowly down the hill, making his way
with difficulty. I heard next day that,
once outside the gate, he trotted straight
back to Versailles.

an

So, on that marvellous occasion occasion which he, of all men, had most contributed to create - he did not enter Paris after all (beyond the Arch of Triumph, I mean). A friend to whom I told this story some years later, took an opportunity to ask him what was his reason for riding away and for taking no further part in the day's

His right hand was twisted into his horse's mane; his helmeted head hung down upon his chest, so low that I could perceive nothing of his face except the tip of his nose and the ends of his moustache. There he sat, motionless, evidently in deep thought. After I had watched him for a couple of minutes (I need scarcely say that, having discovered him, I ceased to look at anybody else), he raised his head work. He answered, "Why, I saw slowly and fixed his eyes on the top of the Arch, which was just in front of him, some eighty yards off. In that position he remained, once more motionless, for a while. I did my best he was only the thickness of three

that all was going on well, and that
there would be no row; I had a lot to
do at Versailles, so I went and did it.”
If that was in reality his sole motive,
he proved that he possessed, at that
period of his life, a power of self-