echo in French hearts, and every evening I retire happy at the sight. Gratitude prostrates the poor people before this statue of a good king. Who knows what other monument another passion may raise near this? Who can say how far the love of glory would lead our people? Who knows that in the place where we now are, there may not be raised a pyramid taken from the East ?"

"These are the secrets of the future," said Milton. "I, like yourself, admire your impassioned nation, but I fear them for themselves; I do not well understand them, and I do not recognise their wisdom when I see them lavishing their admiration upon men such as he who now rules you. The love of power is very puerile, and this man is devoured by it, without having force enough to seize it wholly. By an utter absurdity, he is a tyrant under a master. Thus has this colossus, never firmly balanced,3 been all but overthrown by the finger of a boy; does that indicate genius? No, no! when genius condescends to quit the lofty regions of its true home for a human passion, at least it should secure an entire grasp of that passion. Since Richelieu only aimed at power, why did he not make himself absolute master of power? I am going to see a man who is not yet known, and whom I see swayed by this miserable ambition, but I think that he will go further-his name is Cromwell.

ALFRED DE VIGNY, " Cinq-Mars."

1 At the sight, de l'avoir vu-2 taken from, arrachée à-3 never firmly balanced, toujours sans équilibre at least, etc......passion, du moins doit-il l'envahir.

A POET.

What I would wish to write, is the history of one of those eminently sensitive and eminently intelligent men, whose mysterious life touches on all things, and mingles with none; who have no communication with the material world except through those relations which duty or necessity imposes; whose conceptions embrace the moral world; who only hold upon this earth the place of a naïf and timid child; who only exercise there the limited rights of a helot or a pariah, and yet whose words may one day be the law of wise men and of potentates. It is a life generally simple in events, but strange and varied in feelings; full of hopes, the object of which is beyond our reach; full of struggles and of triumphs, of enterprises and of conquests, of unspeakable joys and of profound sorrows which we can scarcely know, because they belong to a higher sphere than our own -immense, in fact, in its trials, in its deceptions, in its enjoyments, in its catastrophes, in its course and in its end, as nature, as poetry, as the mind; because the history of nature, of poetry, of the mind is the very history of the poet; because the heart of the poet contains all, and more than all that humanity has felt-loves all that she has loved-possesses all that she covets—and suffers, when by the free action of thought he condemns himself to it, all that she is capable of suffering. I would express in a single type all the features of which the variable and almost indiscernible physiognomy of man is composed. I would write the life of Oliver Goldsmith.

CHARLES NODIER, "Notice sur Goldsmith."

A LITERARY SOLDIER.

The military life of Courier is assuredly one of the most singular that our long wars and great armies of the Revolution have witnessed. . . . . The history of every officer between the rank of captain and that of the commandant of a brigade or division is invariably the same. When one has told the enthusiasm of their youth, the sacred fire of their manhood, their campaigns all over Europe, the victories in which they have taken part, unnoticed in the ranks, the standards which they have captured from the enemy, and then their wounds, their mutilated limbs, and lastly their glorious end, there is nothing left to show in them something more than a man made to slaughter and to be slaughtered. Courier is indeed a far different hero. A soldier by compulsion, knowing the business of war from having learnt it, like Bonaparte, in a school, he despises it as soon as he encounters it, and yet he remains where education and circumstances have placed him. The turmoil of the camp, the marches and counter-marches, dignified into scientific movements, seem to interfere as little as the bustle of a city would, with his reverie, his observations and studies. Danger surrounds him, but he neither avoids nor seeks it. He confronts it, in order that he may know its nature, and that he may have a right to laugh at men that are simply brave.

ARMAND CARREL,

"Essai sur Paul-Louis Courier."

A BANQUET IN THE FIFTH CENTURY.

When all were seated, Attila's cup-bearer presented his master with a goblet full of wine, which he drank, saluting his principal guest (Oneegese), who rose at once, took a goblet from the cup-bearer standing behind him, and returned the greeting of the King. It was next the turn of the ambassadors, who acknowledged likewise, goblet in hand, the salute with which the King favoured them. All the other guests were saluted one after another, according to their rank, and responded in like manner, a cupbearer standing with a full cup behind each. The salutations being over, stewards entered, carrying large dishes loaded with viands, which they placed upon the tables. On the table of Attila they merely placed some food in wooden dishes, his cup being also of wood, whilst bread and viands of all kinds were served to the guests in silver dishes, and their goblets were of silver or gold.

The first course being over, the cup-bearers returned, and the exchange of salutes was resumed and carried on with the same etiquette through the whole assembly, from the first to the last. The second course, as profuse as the first, and consisting of quite different dishes, was followed by a third libation, in which the guests, already heated, vied with each other in draining their cups.

Towards the evening, the torches having been lit, two poets entered, who chanted before Attila, in the language of the Huns, verses of their own composition, in praise of his warlike virtues and his victories. Their songs excited the audience almost to delirium

-eyes flashed fire, faces assumed a terrible expression, tears were shed by many, says Priscus-tears of yearning by the young, tears of regret by the old. These Tyrteans of Hunnia were replaced by a buffoon, whose contortions and fooleries transported the assembly all at once from enthusiasm to an uproarious merriment. During those performances, Attila had remained immovable and stern, without allowing a change of countenance, a gesture, or a word, to betray in him the least emotion. Only when the youngest of his sons, named Ernakh, entered and approached him, a flash of tenderness sparkled in his eye; he drew the child nearer to his couch, gently caressing his cheek.

AMÉDÉE THIERRY,

66 Histoire d'Attila et de ses Successeurs.”

SAVONAROLA.

Savonarola read the sad future of Italy with a foresight proceeding from his superior intellect, his profound studies, his extensive intercourse abroad, and his solitary meditations. The fate of this great people grieved him; but he had at length accustomed himself to see no salvation for Christian Europe, except in a startling chastisement that must strike first at the heart and at the region around it, thence to extend over the whole body, and summon the most hardened to penitence. But if, in this point of view, the scourge was necessary, and became desirable, it would have missed its aim, had it burst upon Rome and Italy like a thunder-clap.

The