1 From Hogg's Instructor. A FIRÉSIDE GOSSIP ABOUT BOOKS. "BOOKS!" said my uncle, contemptuously, "I am tired of the sight of books!" "It is of the sight only, dear sir," cried Margaret, the prettiest and the merriest of the party at that moment assembled in the library of our hospitable host, "for I think I never see you read !'' "Read!" repeated Sir Anthony, with the same accent as before, " ' no, indeed! My nieces and nephews, and, in fact, the world at large, have disgusted me with reading, We are absolutely swamped with what I hear called literature' now-a-days. New books' are as plentiful as the stars in the sky, or the sands on the sea-shore; and I'll have nothing to do with them. Since the present generation took to writing, I have done with reading.' Not, however, I hope, without some one undertaking their defence," said another of our party, lifting from the book he was reading eyes of such active intelligence, that they seemed to guarantee the worth of the author he had chosen. Before I report the talk that followed, in which I earnestly entreat the reader to tako a part, just let me say who and where we the speakers were. My uncle (I am proud of the relationship, being adopted daughter and potential heiress) little annoyed to find us in the same attitude when he came back, after a few hours' absence, and all seemingly as intent over our books as ever. I attributed to this feeling the impatient attack above described. However, Margaret soothed his slightly ruffled temper, persuaded him to take the offered chair, and then Sir Anthony looked round on the circle with a half-contemptuous, halfgood-natured smile, that obviously meant he intended to avail himself of that young lady's permission to revile their occupation. "Come, now," he began," let each of you give up the name of book and author, and I'll venture to say, not one out of the dozen has a classic in his or her hand." "Please, sir," said Margaret, with her roguish glance, "what is a classic?" "A classic," returned my uncle, with an air of decision, "a classic is hem - I'll leave scholars to define the word, butShakspeare is a classic!" "Thank you for the illustration, Sir Anthony," said Margaret; "but have we no scholars here equal to the definition? If not, how shall we decide?" 66 Anything of first-class excellence is a classic, I suppose," said the young man before mentioned; but (no offence to you, Sir Anthony)"-bowing with a courtesy that disarmed resentment "it is one of those convenient words of which we avail ourselves when we have no very precise idea of our own meaning-when we wish to admire, without the trouble of discriminating. However, taking it as I have defined it, I am prepared to maintain I hold a classic in my hand." "Name it," said Sir Anthony. "I don't like Elia,' "Is there no one to support my assertion?" asked Marcus, with a smile that, I thought, quivered on the boundary line of contempt; for he was a youth of quick feelings. is lord of a certain manor-house in the north I think my uncle who had left us thus before he went to give audience to some querulous farmers, who, under cover of the desperate weather, had signed a round-robin for lower rents - - was a CCCCLXXVI. LIVING AGE. VOL. II. 2 There was a dead silence. My uncle laughed. Marcus looked calm and proud, in his intellectual superiority, no doubt. "Read us a passage," suggested Margaret, and enlighten our obtuse perceptions. Let us judge of your favorite." "Yes," said I; "give my uncle The Superannuated Man,' or let him taste the ecstatic humor of The Convalescent.'"' "O, no!" said Marcus, "that is not as Charles Lamb should be read. To appreciate and enjoy certain books thoroughly, they must be read to one's self. Elia' is one of these. Our intercourse with this author should be a tête-à-tête; there is something so exquisitely confidential in his style, that a third person seems to destroy the charm. But, pray," turning to me," why do you not like Elia?" "I Margaret answered for me. "O!" she said, laughing, "he skims too lightly over the surface for cousin Mary; there is a dash of recklessness she cannot affect." "I cannot suffer the imputation of recklessness to rest upon Elia,' 6 "returned Marcus. "I confess there is an appearance of it, but it is only an appearance. With his light touch he knows how to unseal some of the deepest and purest springs of our nature. There is a profounder sadness in the very smile he sometimes provokes, than in the tears which other writers may call forth. He is one of those authors who excite a personal tenderness, and whom one defends with the tenacity of friendship. More than that (I grant you this much, Mary), if you consent to receive him at all, you must receive him as he is; I mean, you must not allow any minute fault-finding with your friend. I will not say he is not open to it, but affection will be blind to his gentle shortcomings." I smiled. My uncle said, "You talk like a book, Marcus; but, for all that, your defence does n't prove the India clerk a classic.' 99 "Nevertheless," said Marcus, "I undertake to prove it. Are you a judge of prose, Sir Anthony? I call this its perfection; and if you like wit of that order, which is above raising a laugh, but that excites a smile, which testifies how every finer perception thrills beneath its keen yet delicate stroke, you have that here as well. Listen." Sir Anthony fidgeted a little under the infliction, but the rest of the party being unanimous, Marcus began to read. He selected "The Old Benchers of the Middle Temple;" and he read it well; had he written it, he could not have read it with a more intelligent and delicate comprehension of its meaning. We all applauded when he had done. "Not so much amiss," said my uncle, relentingly. "You read very well, Marcus; our family always did. Suppose we try another Elia ?'"' 6 Marcus colored as one might who was enjoying a triumph. He gave us that delightful paper, "Books and Reading;" and afterwards, at my desire, "Blakesmoor in Hshire." endurance, what magnanimity of self-sacrifice, in that mysterious but quiet life of his !" Marcus, at universal request, entered into detail, and, after having repeated one or two of his quaint but exquisite sonnets, he considered he had established his position, and called on the lady opposite to announce her author. The lady blushed. She was reading one of Ida Hahn Hahn's novels. "Trash!" pronounced my uncle, "vile trash! Mary, I hope you never read such things. Pray, my dear," turning to the reader," have you anything to say in defence of your author? Is she a classic?" "No," said she, languidly, "except that they are so very interestingso much more interesting than English novels." "Give up such works, my dear young lady," said an elderly member of our circle, whom we all loved and respected, "they are pernicious food. They make life seem flat and insipid, and indispose to vigorous action; they make the head weary, and the whole heart faint. They teach you to look within upon your own heart and nature with a false and jaundiced eye; and they leave you nerveless and incapable for the fit business of existence. Don't you agree with me, sir?" she asked, addressing Marcus. Perfectly, madam; yet I have felt their fascination. I suppose you do not deny that they possess a certain charin; where do you consider it to lie?" "In their subtle appeal to all that is unhealthy and morbid within us, of which we all have something some more and some less. There is a half truth in them which makes them doubly dangerous; they would have us the victims rather than the conquerors of ourselves; and they weep and sympathize, when nothing but reprobation should be expressed, " 66 Madam," said my uncle, "I make you my best bow; you express my views to a nicety. I hope these young people will lay it to heart. Pray, Maggie, what book have you?" "A classic, fair sir," laughed Margaret, "indubitably a classic. But don't praise me too soon, for I am conscientiously compelled to add, I have not very heartily enjoyed it." Marcus presumed to look over her shoulder. "The Faery Queen?'"' exclaimed he; "O! for shame." "Pray, sir," returned my friend, turning Sir Anthony said the latter was baby-sharply upon him, " did you ever read through ish;" perhaps he meant its effects, for I saw the Faery Queen?"" him and Margaret wipe their eyes. Marcus colored slightly, and we all laughed. "And, Sir Anthony," concluded the en- "No," he said, "I am bound to confess I thusiastic Marcus, "Elia' was a hero. Cole-never read it through, but I have thoroughly ridge describes him as winning his way, with enjoyed its parts. sad and patient soul, through evil, and pain, and strange calamity.' What strength of I could spend many a morning over it without weariness, I hope; yet, I grant, it is not a book one reads con secutively. After a time, its style and very | Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, sweetness pall." death after life, does greatly I can bear my testimony to that," said another gentleman, dryly. Last summer, when about to recreate for a time in the country, I bethought myself I had never read Spenser, and that I would take the opportunity. However, on looking the work over, I considered that three out of the half-dozen old-fashioned, musty volumes, would be as much, perhaps, as I should get through. I am compelled to own I never got through the first. I used to carry it about perpetually in my pocket, take it out when occasion offered, read a few stanzas, reflect, yawn, and put it in again. I don't think I shall ever renew the attempt." My uncle smiled. "The classics are certainly in a minority," he said. And yet," said Marcus, "what exquisite descriptions we have in Spenser! His suns always rise and set well. I remember one passage especially, or rather (lest I misquote), lend me the book, Margaret." He soon found it, and read aloud: At last, the golden, oriental gate Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair, air. 66 Ease after war, please. "Such an effect had this subtlety upon the harassed and exhausted knight, thatHis hand did quake And tremble like a leaf of aspen green, Truly," said Sir Anthony, "that 's quite Shakspearian.' With this remark, which, of course, clinched the poet's merits, we passed on to another reader. He was in the third volume of "The Caxtons." "I don't intend," he said, "to argue my author's merits as a whole. His place in literature will scarcely be established during his own lifetime; we must leave coming years to decide what will be retained and what thrown away amongst his numerous writings. But this is a delightful work what I call a remunerative work. Many upward steps, morally and intellectually, must this progressive man of talent have taken since he wrote Pelham.' Have you read it, madam?" he asked, addressing the lady who had condemned the German novels. "No," she said, smiling; "I very rarely read novels; and I am not, in general, an admirer of Bulwer Lytton. "You must not judge of The Caxtons,' was the answer, "by any former work of the same writer. In his Family Picture' he has broken new ground. He dispenses with romantic incident and character, and gives us life in its quiet domestic flow. Instead of thrilling interest, we have the results of thought and observation. a genial wisdom that soothes while it instructs-and principles raised to the height of Christianity. The best characters, I think, are Roland and Austin Caxton. Trevanion is good, but that class of character has been often sketched before. Sir Sedley Beaudesert is well done, too; but I think Pisistratus, the biographer, gives us but a faint idea of his own individuality. Surely there is a want of skill there." "Then," said Marcus, looking up upon his attentive audience, there is that wonderful episode about Despair, that the enraptured Sydney ceased to read lest he should dispense "Viewed as a work of art," said Marcas his whole estate in gratitude to the poet. - who, be it observed, was hard to please You know that verse spoken by this fell de-it is defective; but, considered as a repos mon of the knight who has succumbed to his influence and committed suicide, and addressed to Una's champion, whom he would fain persuade to do the same : IIe there does now enjoy eternal rest, Is not short pain well borne that brings long ease, itory for some of the author's experiences of men and manners; for his more serious thoughts and views of things; as a vehicle for the display of diverse talent, it is, as you say, a delightful work. I owe to the writer some hours of pure enjoyment.' My uncle thought "He might look into it." Another of us had a volume of "Longfel low's Poems;" but my uncle (smarting still with extreme national pride under the results of the glorious War of Independence), who thought nothing good could come from Amer- "But," said the Lady Mentor of our party, ica, would scarcely hear a word on the sub-" there is a deficiency in Longfellow's phiject. "A Yankee pedagogue a poet!" he said, derisively; "the idea is an anomaly." Nevertheless, we made him hear reason, though he refused to receive it; and Longfellow got his due. Marcus warmed into magnanimity over "The Psalm of Life." losophy. Surely, however heroic, man is not quite enough for himself in all the emergencies of time. Your poet seems to me to ignore this. There is too little recognition of our dependence on the Divine Power, too high an exaltation of man's unaided capacities. Man cannot be so strong as Longfellow would have him, unless he consent to receive strength from a source to which Longfellow seldom, if ever, directs him. "Of course," said my uncle, nodding approbation to every word, "you are perfectly and admirably right, madam. If you please, we will dismiss the American professor. "My dear sir"—he spoke to an intelligent Scotch student, sitting in a retired corner "what is that very thin little book you seem so unwilling to give up reading? Is the quality apportioned to the quantity, as in the old adage?" Before he could answer, the dressing-bell rang, and we were forced (for my uncle was very methodical) to abandon our gossip. From Punch. the days of Chartist tom-foolery, having ordered THE CROWN AND THE BROAD-BRIM IN the arrest of everybody wearing point lace, or of .66 Surely the first of April, and not the fifth, should have been the date of this news we cannot dignify anything so absurd with the title of intelligence." We hope that none of our friends, the Quakers, will find themselves arrested on account of their broad-brims, under the shade of which treason is supposed to lurk; though, by the way, dissatisfaction with the Bavarian government is far more likely to be met with in a Wide-awake. It is really lamentable to think of the inanity that must possess what ought to be the mind of that ruler who can have resorted to such a piece of imbecile tyranny as the arrest of everybody with a hat of a particular fashion. Imagine our own government, in every one pointing with his hand on the ground, under the apprehension that the point-particularly in the case of the hand with its four fingers and thumb-must indicate some sympathy with the five points of the Charter. Mental imbecility such as this must disqualify those who are af flicted with it for the duties of government. How any nation can be ruled over for a day by persons displaying such a puerile notion of the means and appliances of power, is a miracle only to be accounted for by the supposition that the mass of the people are still lower in the intellectual scale than their governors. To complete the idiotic coloring of this picture, we are told that the persons arrested were liberated, "but the police retained their hats." The danger to the government is thus imputed to the hats themselves, and not to the heads they covered. We shall not be surprised to hear that the hats have been all tried on - by courtmartial and shot, for it is quite impossible to suggest any bounds to the idiotic proceedings of a government that has taken a lot of old hats into custody on a charge of high treason. Of course every person who has been deprived of his hat by the executive will be known to have had relations with a revolutionary broad-brim, and the fact of his going about bare-headed will render him liable to arrest on bare suspicion. We have not heard the measurement of brim which constitutes the offensive width, but we believe the Bavarian government allows very little margin. If this is not filling up the cup of oppression to the very brim, we know not what will constitute the full measure of tyranny. From Bentley's Miscellany. teenth century, to the courts and halls of the Louvre, bespeaks the kingdom having emerged from feudalism into a more civilized period. IT is quite characteristic of France and Francis the First fitted up the Louvre chiefly French dynasties that they should have no for the purpose of receiving Charles the Windsor and no Westminster, no spot in Fifth. He employed his architects and areither town or country, kept sacred as haunt, tists to fit out and adorn the palace, so as to as residence, or as temple, by the family of give the highest idea of the magnificence of sovereigns; no spot hallowed by recollections its master. Italy then, instead of Machiaof glorious, of feudal, of chivalric kind. The velism, which it matured in the previous cenonly remains of the residence of the old tury, had, under the school of the Medicis, French Kings within the old city of Paris come to practise itself, and, of course, to give are the chapel and the prison, which flanked the example of, magnificence in princes. the royal residence on either side. The The Medici adorned Florence and Rome: Sainte Chapelle, restored indeed, but still Francis was determined to vie with them, with sufficient of genuine antiquity which and throw all the capitals of his rival, Charles, recalls St. Louis, and the Conciergerie have into the shade. He therefore planned, built, reminiscences of the old Justiciaries. But and painted the Louvre. His palace, forming the modernized Palais de Justice is as unlike but one side of the square pile of buildings Westminster as if there was a determination now called the Louvre, is, however grandiose to suggest a contrast. What more different for that period, nothing remarkable for this. than Westminster Hall and the Salle de Pas His interior arrangement and decoration, too, Perdus, which answers to it; modern, noisy, were of the frittered and fantastic kind, which glaring, full of police and petty vendors? succeeding sovereigns did not respect. And The old royal palace there, as well as the little remains of Francis, beyond his portraits later palaces built around, such as that of by Titian, his goldsmiths' work and armor by the Tournelles, have disappeared, and there Benvenuto, his porcelain, and his carvings. is now no royal residence in Paris more an- Francis was a magnificent upholsterer. The cient than the Louvre, none in the provinces Louvre, which he built to inaugurate French more ancient than Fontainebleau. magnificence, was devoted for the rest of the The palatial history of France, however, century to the plots, meannesses, and cruelties like that of most other countries, is symbolic of a miserable set of bigots. Here was Guise of its political and social progress. England, murdered; here was the signal for the Massacre which still retains the chivalrous and the of Saint Bartholomew's day given. The most feudal element even in its modern constitution beautiful specimen of architecture in the and habits, has preserved the old donjon of Louvre is the end-window, that looks upon Edward the Third, in which the trophies of the Seine. Near this window, and from its Crecy still hang; and it is surrounded by stone-balustrade, Charles the Ninth fired with edifices of each successive century. The pa- his own royal hand upon the Huguenots, as latial history of Windsor is the counterpart they fled from massacre across the bridge. of the political history of England. Russia The infancy of the Louvre was magnificence never passed through feudalism; there are, and gilding; the maturity was intrigue, consequently, nothing but Corinthian and Ionic cruelty, and blood. columns at St. Petersburg. The Kremlin of Moscow has vanished, and, despite of restoration, all the vestiges of the barbarian antiquity of Russia have disappeared. The palatial antiquity of Prussia goes no further back than the great Frederic. Potsdam is all in all. There, and at Spandau, is Prussian history written. The Hofburg at Vienna tells equally well the story of the House of Hapsburg, Built on the very battlements, and overlooking the very glacis, which so short a time ago repelled the besieging army of the Turks, it is still a fortress, though not a feudal one, and bespeaks the military sovereign, surrounded with imperial power. Not very far from it, indeed. between the palace and the gate of Carinthia, took place the late mad attempt on the life of the young Emperor. In France, the 'change from those old turreted and befossed residences of the four Even Catherine of Medicis was appalled by the spectral reminiscence of the gloomy Louvre. She removed to the Tuileries in order to forget, amidst its gardens and green fields, the grim aspect of the royal palace and its deeds. It was Francis the First himself, whilst in the midst of his rearing up the Louvre, who made the site of the future Tuileries royal property. Louise of Savoy, his mother, complained that her residence, the Palace of the Tournelles, was unwholesome. Francis, therefore, purchased for her a small residence, about a bowshot country wards of the Louvre. It had been a place for drying tiles or slaughtering cattle, until M. De Villeroy had enclosed it and built a small house. This Francis purchased, and Louise inhabited. Later, Catherine of Medicis took possession of it, and spent her Florentine taste and fortune in building the central tower and the two wings, which form about |