it necessary that Mademoiselle de Fano should assist at the pulverising." "Nonsense!" "'Tis no nonsense, sir," cried Le Blond-" I tell you, you have carried off the lady I adore! and by the heavens above" "I carried her off-why should I do such folly? I am married already to one of the Fays of Caucasus. But to business-your fortune is now made -enjoy it wisely, and forget how you acquired it. One word of tittle tattle, and you die-a bird shall carry it, though you whisper it to the priest; the sword shall find you though you are bending at the altar. You understand me?" "And Jacqueline?" enquired Le Blond. "Is here. Have patience, and accept the invitation that will be sent to you to-day. Farewell. Be silent and happy." Abubeker disappeared. About noon, somebody enquired for Monsieur de Laure, and a stately-mannered gentleman came into the room, where our hero had long been expecting something to take place, and presented an invitation to him to dine with the Archbishop of Alby. The invitation was accepted in mute admiration at the talents of the Chaldean; and even the court of an archbishop presented no difficulties to Le Blond, who, having been a duke so long, though only in a dream, enacted nothing so naturally as the bearing of a grandee. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. When his Grace's carriage, which out of compliment had been sent for him, had deposited him in the courtyard of the palace, he was conducted by several attendants into the episcopal gardens. The Archbishop, who was walking there, ttended by a number of gentlemen, received him courteously, and presented him to the others as the new proprietor of De Laure. All expressed regret at the sudden and unavoidable absence of his friend Monsieur Valerien des Anges. "We must get better acquainted," said a noble-looking old gentleman, a little lame of one leg, "for we are now neighbours in the country. I am General de Fano, and my daughter tells me she had the pleasure of knowing you in Namur." Le Blond grew red as scarlet, and then pale. The General observed his confusion with a sly laugh. "Give me your arm, De Laure," he said, familiarly, "and I'll present you to her. She is yonder in the arbour, and knows already you are here." Le Blond quivered with emotion. "Ah, General," he said, "I wish my friend Valerien des Anges, since he has told you so much, had told you all-that my heart-my soul" "Well, man, he has told me all about it, and I hope he told you in return, that since you are recommended to me by those whom I consider it an honour to obey, I feel myself proud to own you as my son. Come, she expects us-gently, gently, man; you forget my damaged knee. Well, then, run on, for these things are better said in private." Why should we say more? That Le Blond was presented to the Arch:bishop's guests as the bridegroom of Jacqueline that in company with the General and his daughter he took possession of his new estate; that the marriage was splendid, and that the finest of it all was the tear that glittered in Jacqueline's eyes, as she fell upon his neck when the ceremony was over, and they were left for one mo ment by themselves, and whispered in the well known tones of other days"Io amo-lo amo!" He cast himself at her feet. "Egli ama!" she exclaimed, as she raised him; and then, flinging themselves into each other's arms, they whispered, "Noi amamo! noi amamol-we love! we love!" CHRISTOPHER IN HIS CAVE. "ONE of those heavenly days that cannot die!" So saith Wordsworth, while" his heart rejoiced in nature's joy," as saith Burns-and in these few syllables you feel how happy at the time were both poets. But not happier than you and we have often been and are now, though poets we may not be truly called, except according to the sense in which all human beings are poets who love dearly their mother earth. And are you sure you understand the feeling in Wordsworth's beautiful line? Is it that the day itself is too divine to die, and that the sun will never bring himself to set on it; or that the memory of it must needs be immortal? Alas! how many heavenly days "seeming immortal in their depth of rest" have died and been forgotten! Treacherous and ungrateful is our memory even of bliss that overflowed our being as light our habitation. Our spirit's deepest intercommunion with nature has no place in her records blanks are there that ought to have been painted with imperishable imagery, and steeped in sentiment fresh as the morning on life's golden hills. Yet there is mercy in this dispensationfor who can bear to behold the light of bliss re-arising from the past on the ghastlier gloom of present misery? The phantoms that will not come when we call on them to comfort us, are too often at our side when in our anguish we could almost pray that they might be reburied in oblivion. Such hauntings as these are not as if they were visionary-they come and go like forms and shapes still embued with life. Shall we vainly stretch out our arms to embrace and hold them fast, or as vainly seek to entrench ourselves by thoughts of this world against their visitation? The soul in its sickness knows not whether it be the duty of love to resign itself to indifference or to despair. Shall it enjoy life, they being dead! Shall the survivors, for yet a little while, walk in other companionship out into the day, and let the sunbeams settle on their heads as they used to do, or cover them with dust and ashes, and show to those in heaven that love for them is now to be expressed by remorse and penitence! Christopher in his Cave! and he makes, we assure you, a very pretty hermit. Our beard is not so long as that goat's hanging on the cliff. In Christian countries, Recluses shave, and are attentive to their toilet. We even wear not spectacles, for we have come to enjoy the haze our decaying eyesight gives to all objects in nature, nor envy yours, but bless it, that sees them for ever effulgent. World-sick? Yea, streets are not the channels of the streams we love, whose flowings are in the soul. Earth-sick? Nay-filial shall we be to the last-and bless her as she takes us back into her bosom. Life-sick? Oh! say it not for God is good-and grief gracious; and sorrow consecrates the path of fading and faded flowers-yet some among them, O wo! and bliss is me! brighter so help us heaven than ever-that leadeth to the grave. And where is our Cave? Hushfor we must not "prate of its whereabouts"-were we to do so, it would dissolve. But this much we may reveal—it is in the Highlands. That is a wide word, and will not break the spell. The interior is cool in these the Dog-days-nor would it be otherwise if Sirius himself were panting at its mouth. Yet perfectly dry-though one wonders how without moisture of some kind or other the moss roof and walls, in their infinite varieties of colouring, can be so freshly beautiful. 'Tis but some four paces wide-some six long-and the key-stone of the arch little higher than our heads-the roof at no place beyond touch of the long nail or claw on our middle finger. In a niche facing the light we are reposing on a couch covered with the furs of fox, wild-cat, and otter-a root-wreathed table, with slate-slab fair as any marble, we ever and anon leaning on our elbow-keep writing away at-as now-soliloquizing pennæ susurru-of which the whole wide world will be listening delighted, in a week or so for sound travels slowly through such a solitude-to the echo. Friend of our soul! would thou wert here for the first time in thy life to hear silence. What! you are eyeing that other table in shadow. That brightest of crystal would seem empty to an inexperienced eye-to yours full to the stopper-of Glenlivet. They who placed it there were far from supposing that we were likely to imbibe the dimidium of a gallon-but 'tis an old saving superstition of the mountains that to place before a solitary man a vessel in which spirits are, yet fill it not, is fatal. Ay-wheaten bread of whitest grain-though grown in the regions of heather. No need of the Po for Parmesan. The meadows here overflow with milk as with honey. Fieldstrawberries redden the rocks-and these basket-fulls by fairy hands were gathered, ere a dew-drop had of itself evanished-though 'tis a wonder, even to ourselves, where can have grown those glorious grapes, pale and purple, in piled-up clusters-all for Christopher in his Cave-the Sardanapalus that he is yet abstemious as that old Roman at his Turnip Feast. A Library, too, we declare and well-selected-for there is the face of Maga-these six vols. are manifestly Moxon's edition of Wordsworth. there is no mistaking Pickering's Shakspeare by Campbell-and here, on the table before us, Milton, a mighty mass of ore from the gold mines, and beside himan ALBUM. In their own handwriting page after page of poetry by the great poets and the good! Creations of the pencil too -landscapes belonging to all the loveliest lands on earth and the most magnificent-by amateurs who are artists indeed-and by famous artists *proud to leave some relic of their genius in the Book of Beauty, laid here by Beauty's hands, to charm in his solitude an old man's eyes! And what volume is this, annuallike in its primrose-coloured boards, if boards they be, so delicate in their seeming, and with lily-leaves that look as if they were fragrant-and fragrant must they be, if ever breathed over have they been by the lips of her who placed them for the perusal of Christopher in his Cave. "POEMS OF MANY YEARS by Richard Monkton Milnes;" the name is not infamiliar, nor yet is it familiar to our ear-thirty years ago and upwards we heard a man of the name of Milnes speak in Parliament in surpassing style-this may not be the same-no-no-for he, if extant, must be as ancient as ourselves-and poetry may flow into-but not out of VOL. XLIV. NO. CCLXXIV, the heart of one who is half-way-down the hill of life. "'Tis his son!" Ha! what voice gave that whisper? Wast thine, thou restless wren, that fifty times at least within these two or three hours we have been sitting here, hast been borne leaf-like out and in our Cave, and only now been perceived by us to have all the while been occupied-in bringing food to a voracious nestful that will soon exchange the twilight of this cave for that of the umbrage of the many-gladed woods? Time was we pounced on a book the instant we saw it on the board, like osprey on fish showing its back upon the billow-with a clutch as sure, and maw as ravenous-shrieking over it as we tore it piece-meal. In our sacred hunger no bones of a book made we then-we swallowed it guts and all— and, lighter from the repast, upsoared in circles, and then shot straight as an arrow, "to prey in distant isles." Now we leisurely alight beside it, like an old sick sea-eagle as we are, and mumble at a leaf or two as if with our teeth we had lost our appetite, and our stomach were in sympathy with our gums. Often do we crawl away from our quarry without tasting itwithout so much as knowing whether it be fish, flesh, or fowl-and keep sitting disconsolately for hours toge ther on a stone or stump like a mere bunch of feathers. O Audubon ! no more shalt thou behold Us-a Speck in the Sun-no more shalt thou hear Us-a Cry in the Cloud. "Poems of Many Years!" 'Tis something to lie here—be assured, O Volume! for the Lady whom all those mountains love is herself a poet-and no book that is not poetry would she place for chance of perusal by Christopher in his Cave. The still studythe busy parlour-the bedchamber serene the mirthful drawingroomare one and all fit places for the perusal of poetry; but fitter the wood, the grove, the glen-fittest-and already we begin to feel the inspiration-such a Cave as this-in the heart of inland peace-yet visited-if we mistake not by the voice of the sea. Let us hold converse, then, with this brother in the spirit, whom we may never see in the flesh-and let this pretty pen of ours, plucked from a stockdove's wing, and nibbed by Genevieve, cease its prattling, while we recite to ourselves-ad aperturam enough to love, yet nothing doubting that had we ever so many hearts we could give them all away among the virgin apparitions. Or, if this simile do not satisfy, let us tell you that we like to look at a Volume as at a Valley-discerning not one feature of the scene distinctly, but feeling its spirit as surely as if we distinctly discerned them all-so that, when our dreamy eyes come to settle down upon it, every object occupies the very place we expected to find it in, and is of the very character and kind we thought it to be, only lovelier in their neighbourhood, because now all understood, and forming in themselves a little world where beauty has reduced them all into order, and order is the expression of peace! Nay, if we still must strive to make clear our meaning, have you never sat in a boat on a lake before known to you but by name, and, unwilling all at once to look steadily on what is nevertheless filling your breast with delight, kept even your hands at times over your eyes, and at others glanced stealthily around, almost as if afraid to lapse into the magical world among whose shadows you were sailing, till, taking courage as it were from the glimpses of beauty that made themselves be seen whether you would or no-perhaps from some other fairy pinnace passing by meteorous with its cloud of sail-or bird floating away undisturbedly among the reeds, too happy to fly from its own bay where there was every thing to love and nothing to fear-you have at last de-* livered up your whole soul to the scene, and in one minute have become almost as well acquainted with its character as if you had lived for years on its banks, and have added to the domain of memory, never more to fade, a lovelier vision than Imagination's self could have created in the world of Dreams! This comes of soliloquizing criticism on Poetry, with a pen plucked from the wing of a stockdove, and nibbed by Genevieve, in a Highland Cave. Pardon our prolixity—and read THE LONG-AGO. 'Tis pleasant in a Cave to glance, with ever and anon a pausing eye, over a volume like this, of which one by-heart-gotten strain easily persuades us that the rest must be trustworthy to our memory-to glance over it without absolutely reading it, yet all the while feeling the breath, and seeing the glow of its beauty-just as it is pleasant in a room, in like manner, to glance over an array of ladies fair, not one of whom we have looked on long Yesterday's immediate flow, "Eyes which can but ill define Find a dear familiar face In each hour of Long-ago. 66 Follow yon majestic train "As the heart of childhood brings Something of eternal joy, From its own unsounded springs, "Youthful Hope's religious fire, O'er the scenes of Long-ago. "Many a growth of pain and care, "On that deep-retiring shore Frequent pearls of beauty lie, Where the passion-waves of yore Fiercely beat and mounted high: Sorrows that are sorrows still Lose the bitter taste of wo; Nothing's altogether ill In the griefs of Long-ago. "Tombs where lonely love repines, "Tho' the doom of swift decay A green old age is the most loving season of life, for almost all other passions are then dead or dying, or the mind, no more at the mercy of a troubled heart, compares the little pleasure their gratification can ever yield now with what it could at any time long ago, and lets them rest. Envy is the worst disturber or embitterer of man's declining years but it does not deserve the name of a passion and is a disease, not of the poor in spirit-for they are blessedbut of the mean, and then they indeed are cursed. For our own parts we know Envy but as we have studied it in others -and never felt it except towards the wise and good-and then 'twas a longing desire to be like them, painful only when our hearts almost died within us to think that might never be, and that all our loftiest aspirations were in vain! Our envy of Genius is of a nature so noble that it knows no happiness like that of guarding from mildew the laurels on the brows of the Muses' Sons. What a dear kind soul of a critic is old Christopher North! Watering the flowers of poetry, and removing the weeds that might choke themletting in the sunshine upon them and fencing them from the blast; proclaiming where the gardens grow, and leading boys and virgins into the pleasant alleys-teaching hearts to love and eyes to see their beauty, and classifying, by the attributes it has pleased nature to bestow on the various orders, the plants of Paradise-this is our occupation-and the happiness of witnessing them all growing in the light of admiration is our reward. How many will be induced to read this volume by the specimens now selected by us in our Cave! How harmoniously they combine-rather selecting themselves-offering themselves to us by force of fine affinities-families of kindred emotions that come flocking of their own accord to our feet. THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH. "No, tho' all the winds that lie |