You will tell us that if we gain by the protection which we seek, the country will lose by it, because the consumer must bear the loss.

We answer:—

You have ceased to have any right to invoke the interest of the consumer; for whenever his interest is found opposed to that of the producer, you sacrifice the former. You have done so for the purpose of encouraging labor and increasing employment. For the same reason you should do so again.

You have yourself refuted this objection. When you are told that the consumer is interested in the free importation of iron, coal, corn, textile fabrics—yes, you reply, but the producer is interested in their exclusion. Well, be it so;—if consumers are interested in the free admission of natural light, the producers of artificial light are equally interested in its prohibition.

But again, you may say that the producer and consumer are identical. If the manufacturer gain by protection, he will make the agriculturist also a gainer; and if agriculture prosper, it will open a vent to manufactures. Very well: if you confer upon us the monopoly of furnishing light during the day,—first of all, we shall purchase quantities of tallow, coals, oils, resinous substances, wax, alcohol—besides silver, iron, bronze, crystal—to carry on our manufactures; and then we, and those who furnish us with such commodities, having become rich, will consume a great deal, and impart prosperity to all the other branches of our national industry.

If you urge that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of nature, and that to reject such gifts is to reject wealth itself under pretense of encouraging the means of acquiring it, we would caution you against giving a death-blow to your own policy. Remember that hitherto you have always repelled foreign products, because they approximate more nearly than home products to the character of gratuitous gifts. To comply with the exactions of other monopolists, you have only half a motive; and to repulse us simply because we stand on a stronger vantage-ground than others would be to adopt the equation, X=—; in other words, it would be to heap absurdity upon absurdity.

Nature and human labor co-operate in various proportions (depending on countries and climates) in the production of commodities. The part which nature executes is always gratuitous; it is the part executed by human labor which constitutes value, and is paid for.

If a Lisbon orange sells for half the price of a Paris orange, it is because natural and consequently gratuitous heat does for the one what artificial and therefore expensive heat must do for the other.

When an orange comes to us from Portugal, we may conclude that it is furnished in part gratuitously, in part for an onerous consideration; in other words, it comes to us at half-price as compared with those of Paris.

Now, it is precisely the gratuitous half (pardon the word) which we contend should be excluded. You say, How can natural labor sustain competition with foreign labor, when the former has all the work to do, and the latter only does one-half, the sun supplying the remainder? But if this half, being gratuitous, determines you to exclude competition, how should the whole, being gratuitous, induce you to admit competition? If you were consistent, you would, while excluding as hurtful to native industry what is half gratuitous, exclude a fortiori and with double zeal that which is altogether gratuitous.

Once more, when products such as coal, iron, corn, or textile fabrics are sent us from abroad, and we can acquire them with less labor than if we made them ourselves, the difference is a free gift conferred upon us. The gift is more or less considerable in proportion as the difference is more or less great. It amounts to a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product, when the foreigner only asks us for three-fourths, a half, or a quarter of the price we should otherwise pay. It is as perfect and complete as it can be, when the donor (like the sun in furnishing us with light) asks us for nothing. The question, and we ask it formally, is this, Do you desire for our country the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the pretended advantages of onerous production? Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you exclude, as you do, coal, iron, corn, foreign fabrics, in proportion as their price approximates to zero, what inconsistency would it be to admit the light of the sun, the price of which is already at zero during the entire day!

STULTA AND PUERA

There were, no matter where, two towns called Fooltown and Babytown. They completed at great cost a highway from the one town to the other. When this was done, Fooltown said to herself, "See how Babytown inundates us with her products; we must see to it." In consequence, they created and paid a body of obstructives, so called because their business was to place obstacles in the way of traffic coming from Babytown. Soon afterwards Babytown did the same.

At the end of some centuries, knowledge having in the interim made great progress, the common sense of Babytown enabled her to see that such reciprocal obstacles could only be reciprocally hurtful. She therefore sent a diplomatist to Fooltown, who, laying aside official phraseology, spoke to this effect:

"We have made a highway, and now we throw obstacles in the way of using it. This is absurd. It would have been better to have left things as they were. We should not, in that case, have had to pay for making the road in the first place, nor afterwards have incurred the expense of maintaining obstructives. In the name of Babytown, I come to propose to you, not to give up opposing each other all at once,—that would be to act upon a principle, and we despise principles as much as you do,—but to lessen somewhat the present obstacles, taking care to estimate equitably the respective sacrifices we make for this purpose."

So spoke the diplomatist. Fooltown asked for time to consider the proposal, and proceeded to consult in succession her manufacturers and agriculturists. At length, after the lapse of some years, she declared that the negotiations were broken off. On receiving this intimation, the inhabitants of Babytown held a meeting. An old gentleman (they always suspected he had been secretly bought by Fooltown) rose and said:—"The obstacles created by Fooltown injure our sales, which is a misfortune. Those which we have ourselves created injure our purchases, which is another misfortune. With reference to the first, we are powerless; but the second rests with ourselves. Let us at least get quit of one, since we cannot rid ourselves of both evils. Let us suppress our obstructives without requiring Fooltown to do the same. Some day, no doubt, she will come to know her own interests better."

A second counselor, a practical, matter-of-fact man, guiltless of any acquaintance with principles, and brought up in the ways of his forefathers, replied—

"Don't listen to that Utopian dreamer, that theorist, that innovator, that economist; that Stultomaniac. We shall all be undone if the stoppages of the road are not equalized, weighed, and balanced between Fooltown and Babytown. There would be greater difficulty in going than in coming, in exporting than in importing. We should find ourselves in the same condition of inferiority relatively to Fooltown, as Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lisbon, London, Hamburg, and New Orleans, are with relation to the towns situated at the sources of the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Tagus, the Thames, the Elbe, and the Mississippi; for it is more difficult for a ship to ascend than to descend a river. [A Voice—'Towns at the embouchures of rivers prosper more than towns at their source.'] This is impossible. [Same Voice—'But it is so.'] Well, if it be so, they have prospered contrary to rules."

Reasoning so conclusive convinced the assembly, and the orator followed up his victory by talking largely of national independence, national honor, national dignity, national labor, inundation of products, tributes, murderous competition. In short, he carried the vote in favor of the maintenance of obstacles; and if you are at all curious on the subject, I can point out to you countries, where you will see with your own eyes Roadmakers and Obstructives working together on the most friendly terms possible, under the orders of the same legislative assembly, and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set endeavoring to clear the road, and the other set doing their utmost to render it impassable.

INAPPLICABLE TERMS

From 'Economic Sophisms'

Let us give up ... the puerility of applying to industrial competition phrases applicable to war,—a way of speaking which is only specious when applied to competition between two rival trades. The moment we come to take into account the effect produced on the general prosperity, the analogy disappears.

In a battle, every one who is killed diminishes by so much the strength of the army. In industry, a workshop is shut up only when what it produced is obtained by the public from another source and in greater abundance. Figure a state of things where for one man killed on the spot two should rise up full of life and vigor. Were such a state of things possible, war would no longer merit its name.

This, however, is the distinctive character of what is so absurdly called industrial war.

Let the Belgians and the English lower the price of their iron ever so much; let them, if they will, send it to us for nothing: this might extinguish some of our blast-furnaces; but immediately, and as a necessary consequence of this very cheapness, there would rise up a thousand other branches of industry more profitable than the one which had been superseded.

We arrive, then, at the conclusion that domination by labor is impossible, and a contradiction in terms, seeing that all superiority which manifests itself among a people means cheapness, and tends only to impart force to all other nations. Let us banish, then, from political economy all terms borrowed from the military vocabulary: to fight with equal weapons, to conquer, to crush, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion, tribute, etc. What do such phrases mean? Squeeze them, and you obtain nothing. Yes, you do obtain something; for from such words proceed absurd errors, and fatal and pestilent prejudices. Such phrases tend to arrest the fusion of nations, are inimical to their peaceful, universal, and indissoluble alliance, and retard the progress of the human race.



CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

(1821-1867)

BY GRACE KING

Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821; he died there in 1867. Between these dates lies the evolution of one of the most striking personalities in French literature, and the development of an influence which affected not only the literature of the poet's own country, but that of all Europe and America. The genuineness of both personality and influence was one of the first critical issues raised after Baudelaire's advent into literature; it is still one of the main issues in all critical consideration of him. A question which involves by implication the whole relation of poetry, and of art as such, to life, is obviously one that furnishes more than literary issues, and engages other than literary interests. And thus, by easy and natural corollaries, Baudelaire has been made a subject of appeal not only to judgment, but even to conscience. At first sight, therefore, he appears surrounded either by an intricate moral maze, or by a no less troublesome confusion of contradictory theories from opposing camps rather than schools of criticism. But no author—no dead author—is more accessible, or more communicable in his way; his poems, his theories, and a goodly portion of his life, lie at the disposition of any reader who cares to know him.



The Baudelaire legend, as it is called by French critics, is one of the blooms of that romantic period of French literature which is presided over by the genius of Theophile Gautier. Indeed; it is against the golden background of Gautier's imagination that the picture of the youthful poet is best preserved for us, appearing in all the delicate and illusive radiance of the youth and beauty of legendary saints on the gilded canvases of mediaeval art. The radiant youth and beauty may be no more truthful to nature than the gilded background, but the fact of the impression sought to be conveyed is not on that account to be disbelieved.

Baudelaire, Gautier writes, was born in the Rue Hautefeuille, in one of those old houses with a pepper-pot turret at the corner which have disappeared from the city under the advancing improvement of straight lines and clear openings. His father, a gentleman of learning, retained all the eighteenth-century courtesy and distinction of manner, which, like the pepper-pot turret, has also disappeared under the advance of Republican enlightenment. An absent-minded, reserved child, Baudelaire attracted no especial attention during his school days. When they were over, his predilection for a literary vocation became known. From this his parents sought to divert him by sending him to travel. He voyaged through the Indian Ocean, visiting the great islands: Madagascar, Ceylon, Mauritius, Bourbon. Had there been a chance for irresolution in the mind of the youth, this voyage destroyed it forever. His imagination, essentially exotic, succumbed to the passionate charm of a new, strange, and splendidly glowing form of nature; the stars, the skies, the gigantic vegetation, the color, the perfumes, the dark-skinned figures in white draperies, formed for him at that time a heaven, for which his senses unceasingly yearned afterwards amid the charms and enchantments of civilization, in the world's capital of pleasure and luxury. Returning to Paris, of age and master of his fortune, he established himself in his independence, openly adopting his chosen career.

He and Theophile Gautier met for the first time in 1849, in the Hotel Pimodau, where were held the meetings of the Hashish Club. Here in the great Louis XIV. saloon, with its wood-work relieved with dull gold; its corbeled ceiling, painted after the manner of Lesueur and Poussin, with satyrs pursuing nymphs through reeds and foliage; its great red and white spotted marble mantel, with gilded elephant harnessed like the elephant of Porus in Lebrun's picture, bearing an enameled clock with blue ciphers; its antique chairs and sofas, covered with faded tapestry representing hunting scenes, holding the reclining figures of the members of the club; women celebrated in the world of beauty, men in the world of letters, meeting not only for the enjoyment of the artificial ecstasies of the drug, but to talk of art, literature, and love, as in the days of the Decameron—here Baudelaire made what might be called his historic impression upon literature. He was at that time twenty-eight years of age; and even in that assemblage, in those surroundings, his personality was striking. His black hair, worn close to the head, grew in regular scallops over a forehead of dazzling whiteness; his eyes, the color of Spanish tobacco, were spiritual, deep, penetrating, perhaps too insistently so, in expression; the mobile sinuous mouth had the ironical voluptuous lips that Leonardo da Vinci loved to paint; the nose was delicate and sensitive, with quivering nostrils; a deep dimple accentuated the chin; the bluish-black tint of the shaven skin, softened with rice-powder, contrasted with the clear rose and white of the upper part of his cheeks. Always dressed with meticulous neatness and simplicity, following English rather than French taste; in manner punctiliously observant of the strictest conventionality, scrupulously, even excessively polite; in talk measuring his phrases, using only the most select terms, and pronouncing certain words as if the sound itself possessed a certain subtle, mystical value,—throwing his voice into capitals and italics;—in contrast with the dress and manners about him, he, according to Gautier, looked like a dandy who had strayed into Bohemia.

The contrast was no less violent between Baudelaire's form and the substance of his conversation. With a simple, natural, and perfectly impartial manner, as if he were conveying commonplace information about every-day life, he would advance some axiom monstrously Satanic, or sustain, with the utmost grace and coolness, some mathematical extravagance in the way of a theory. And no one could so inflexibly push a paradox to the uttermost limits, regardless of consequences to received notions of morality or religion; always employing the most rigorous methods of logic and reason. His wit was found to lie neither in words nor thoughts, but in the peculiar standpoint from which he regarded things, a standpoint which altered their outlines,—like those of objects looked down upon from a bird's flight, or looked up to on a ceiling. In this way, to continue the exposition of Gautier, Baudelaire saw relations inappreciable to others, whose logical bizarrerie was startling.

His first productions were critical articles for the Parisian journals; articles that at the time passed unperceived, but which to-day furnish perhaps the best evidences of that keen artistic insight and foresight of the poet, which was at once his greatest good and evil genius. In 1856 appeared his translation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe; a translation which may be said to have naturalized Poe in French literature, where he has played a role curiously like that of Baudelaire in Poe's native literature. The natural predisposition of Baudelaire, which fitted him to be the French interpreter of Poe, rendered him also peculiarly sensitive to Poe's mysteriously subtle yet rankly vigorous charms; and he showed himself as sensitively responsive to these as he had been to the exotic charms of the East. The influence upon his intellectual development was decisive and final. His indebtedness to Poe, or it might better be said, his identification with Poe, is visible not only in his paradoxical manias, but in his poetry, and in his theories of art and poetry set forth in his various essays and fugitive prose expressions, and notably in his introduction to his translations of the American author's works.

In 1857 appeared the "Fleurs du Mal" (Flowers of Evil), the volume of poems upon which Baudelaire's fame as a poet is founded. It was the result of his thirty years' devotion to the study of his art and meditation upon it. Six of the poems were suppressed by the censor of the Second Empire. This action called out, in form of protest, that fine appreciation and defense of Baudelaire's genius and best defense of his methods, by four of the foremost critics and keenest artists in poetry of Paris, which form, with the letters from Sainte-Beuve, de Custine, and Deschamps, a precious appendix to the third edition of the poems.

The name 'Flowers of Evil' is a sufficient indication of the intentions and aim of the author. Their companions in the volume are: 'Spleen and Ideal,' 'Parisian Pictures,' 'Wine,' 'Revolt,' 'Death.' The simplest description of them is that they are indescribable. They must not only be read, they must be studied repeatedly to be understood as they deserve. The paradox of their most exquisite art, and their at times most revolting revelations of the degradations and perversities of humanity, can be accepted with full appreciation of the author's meaning only by granting the same paradox to his genuine nature; by crediting him with being not only an ardent idealist of art for art's sake, but an idealist of humanity for humanity's sake; one to whom humanity, even in its lowest degradations and vilest perversions, is sublimely sacred;—one to whom life offered but one tragedy, that of human souls flying like Cain from a guilt-stricken paradise, but pursued by the remorse of innocence, and scourged by the consciousness of their own infinitude.

But the poet's own words are the best explanation of his aim and intention:—

"Poetry, though one delve ever so little into his own self, interrogate his own soul, recall his memories of enthusiasms, has no other end than itself; it cannot have any other aim, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, as that which shall have been written solely for the pleasure of writing a poem. I do not wish to say that poetry should not ennoble manners—that its final result should not be to raise man above vulgar interests. That would be an evident absurdity. I say that if the poet has pursued a moral end, he has diminished his poetic force, and it would not be imprudent to wager that his work would be bad. Poetry cannot, under penalty of death or forfeiture, assimilate itself to science or morality. It has not Truth for object, it has only itself. Truth's modes of demonstration are different and elsewhere. Truth has nothing to do with ballads; all that constitutes the charm, the irresistible grace of a ballad, would strip Truth of its authority and power. Cold, calm, impassive, the demonstrative temperament rejects the diamonds and flowers of the muse; it is, therefore, the absolute inverse of the poetic temperament. Pure Intellect aims at Truth, Taste shows us Beauty, and the Moral Sense teaches us Duty. It is true that the middle term has intimate connection with the two extremes, and only separates itself from Moral Sense by a difference so slight that Aristotle did not hesitate to class some of its delicate operations amongst the virtues. And accordingly what, above all, exasperates the man of taste is the spectacle of vice, is its deformity, its disproportions. Vice threatens the just and true, and revolts intellect and conscience; but as an outrage upon harmony, as dissonance, it would particularly wound certain poetic minds, and I do not think it would be scandal to consider all infractions of moral beauty as a species of sin against rhythm and universal prosody.

"It is this admirable, this immortal instinct of the Beautiful which makes us consider the earth and its spectacle as a sketch, as a correspondent of Heaven. The insatiable thirst for all that is beyond that which life veils is the most living proof of our immortality. It is at once by poetry and across it, across and through music, that the soul gets a glimpse of the splendors that lie beyond the tomb. And when an exquisite poem causes tears to rise in the eye, these tears are not the proof of excessive enjoyment, but rather the testimony of a moved melancholy, of a postulation of the nerves, of a nature exiled in the imperfect, which wishes to take immediate possession, even on earth, of a revealed paradise.

"Thus the principle of poetry is strictly and simply human aspiration toward superior beauty; and the manifestation of this principle is enthusiasm and uplifting of the soul,—enthusiasm entirely independent of passion,—which is the intoxication of heart, and of truth which is the food of reason. For passion is a natural thing, even too natural not to introduce a wounding, discordant tone into the domain of pure beauty; too familiar, too violent, not to shock the pure Desires, the gracious Melancholies, and the noble Despairs which inhabit the supernatural regions of poetry."

Baudelaire saw himself as the poet of a decadent epoch, an epoch in which art had arrived at the over-ripened maturity of an aging civilization; a glowing, savorous, fragrant over-ripeness, that is already softening into decomposition. And to be the fitting poet of such an epoch, he modeled his style on that of the poets of the Latin decadence; for, as he expressed it for himself and for the modern school of "decadents" in French poetry founded upon his name:—

"Does it not seem to the reader, as to me, that the language of the last Latin decadence—that supreme sigh of a robust person already transformed and prepared for spiritual life—is singularly fitted to express passion as it is understood and felt by the modern world? Mysticism is the other end of the magnet of which Catullus and his band, brutal and purely epidermic poets, knew only the sensual pole. In this wonderful language, solecisms and barbarisms seem to express the forced carelessness of a passion which forgets itself, and mocks at rules. The words, used in a novel sense, reveal the charming awkwardness of a barbarian from the North, kneeling before Roman Beauty."

Nature, the nature of Wordsworth and Tennyson, did not exist for Baudelaire; inspiration he denied; simplicity he scouted as an anachronism in a decadent period of perfected art, whose last word in poetry should be the apotheosis of the Artificial. "A little charlatanism is permitted even to genius," he wrote: "it is like fard on the cheeks of a naturally beautiful woman; an appetizer for the mind." Again he expresses himself:

"It seems to me, two women are presented to me, one a rustic matron, repulsive in health and virtue, without manners, without expression; in short, owing nothing except to simple nature;—the other, one of those beauties that dominate and oppress memory, uniting to her original and unfathomable charms all the eloquence of dress; who is mistress of her part, conscious of and queen of herself, speaking like an instrument well tuned; with looks freighted with thought, yet letting flow only what she would. My choice would not be doubtful; and yet there are pedagogic sphinxes who would reproach me as recreant to classical honor."

In music it was the same choice. He saw the consummate art and artificiality of Wagner, and preferred it to all other music, at a time when the German master was ignored and despised by a classicized musical world. In perfumes it was not the simple fragrance of the rose or violet that he loved, but musk and amber; and he said, "my soul hovers over perfumes as the souls of other men hover over music."

Besides his essays and sketches, Baudelaire published in prose a novelette; 'Fanfarlo,' 'Artificial Paradises,' opium and hashish, imitations of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an Opium Eater'; and 'Little Prose Poems,' also inspired by a book, the 'Gaspard de la Nuit' of Aloysius Bertrand, and which Baudelaire thus describes:—

"The idea came to me to attempt something analogous, and to apply to the description of modern life, or rather a modern and more abstract life, the methods he had applied to the painting of ancient life, so strangely picturesque. Which one of us in his ambitious days has not dreamed of a miracle of poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of the soul, to the undulations of reverie, and to the assaults of conscience?"

Failing health induced Baudelaire to quit Paris and establish himself in Brussels; but he received no benefit from the change of climate, and the first symptoms of his terrible malady manifested themselves—a slowness of speech, and hesitation over words. As a slow and sententious enunciation was characteristic of him, the symptoms attracted no attention, until he fell under a sudden and violent attack. He was brought back to Paris and conveyed to a "maison de sante," where he died, after lingering several months in a paralyzed condition, motionless, speechless; nothing alive in him but thought, seeking to express itself through his eyes.

The nature of Baudelaire's malady and death was, by the public at large, accepted as confirmation of the suspicion that he was in the habit of seeking his inspiration in the excitation of hashish and opium. His friends, however, recall the fact of his incessant work, and intense striving after his ideal in art; his fatigue of body and mind, and his increasing weariness of spirit under the accumulating worries and griefs of a life for which his very genius unfitted him. He was also known to be sober in his tastes, as all great workers are. That he had lent himself more than once to the physiological and psychological experiment of hashish was admitted; but he was a rare visitor at the seances in the saloon of the Hotel Pimodau, and came as a simple observer of others. His masterly description of the hallucinations produced by hashish is accompanied by analytical and moral commentaries which unmistakably express repugnance to and condemnation of the drug:—

"Admitting for the moment," he writes, "the hypothesis of a constitution tempered enough and strong enough to resist the evil effects of the perfidious drug, another, a fatal and terrible danger, must be thought of,—that of habit. He who has recourse to a poison to enable him to think, will soon not be able to think without the poison. Imagine the horrible fate of a man whose paralyzed imagination is unable to work without the aid of hashish or opium.... But man is not so deprived of honest means of gaining heaven, that he is obliged to invoke the aid of pharmacy or witchcraft; he need not sell his soul in order to pay for the intoxicating caresses and the love of houris. What is a paradise that one purchases at the expense of one's own soul?... Unfortunate wretches who have neither fasted nor prayed, and who have refused the redemption of labor, ask from black magic the means to elevate themselves at a single stroke to a supernatural existence. Magic dupes them, and lights for them a false happiness and a false light; while we, poets and philosophers, who have regenerated our souls by incessant work and contemplation, by the assiduous exercise of the will and permanent nobility of intention, we have created for our use a garden of true beauty. Confiding in the words that 'faith will remove mountains,' we have accomplished the one miracle for which God has given us license."

The perfect art-form of Baudelaire's poems makes translation of them indeed a literal impossibility. The 'Little Old Women,' 'The Voyage,' 'The Voyage to Cytherea,' 'A Red-haired Beggar-girl,' 'The Seven Old Men,' and sonnet after sonnet in 'Spleen and Ideal,' seem to rise only more and more ineffable from every attempt to filter them through another language, or through another mind than that of their original, and, it would seem, one possible creator.



MEDITATION

Be pitiful, my sorrow—be thou still: For night thy thirst was—lo, it falleth down, Slowly darkening it veils the town, Bringing its peace to some, to some its ill.

While the dull herd in its mad career Under the pitiless scourge, the lash of unclean desire, Goes culling remorse with fingers that never tire:— My sorrow,—thy hand! Come, sit thou by me here.

Here, far from them all. From heaven's high balconies See! in their threadbare robes the dead years cast their eyes: And from the depths below regret's wan smiles appear.

The sun, about to set, under the arch sinks low, Trailing its weltering pall far through the East aglow. Hark, dear one, hark! Sweet night's approach is near.

Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'

THE DEATH OF THE POOR

This is death the consoler—death that bids live again; Here life its aim: here is our hope to be found, Making, like magic elixir, our poor weak heads to swim round, And giving us heart for the struggle till night makes end of the pain.

Athwart the hurricane—athwart the snow and the sleet, Afar there twinkles over the black earth's waste, The light of the Scriptural inn where the weary and the faint may taste The sweets of welcome, the plenteous feast and the secure retreat.

It is an angel, in whose soothing palms Are held the boon of sleep and dreamy balms, Who makes a bed for poor unclothed men; It is the pride of the gods—the all-mysterious room, The pauper's purse—this fatherland of gloom, The open gate to heaven, and heavens beyond our ken.

Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'

MUSIC. Photogravure from a Painting by J.M. Strudwick.

MUSIC

Sweet music sweeps me like the sea Toward my pale star, Whether the clouds be there or all the air be free I sail afar. With front outspread and swelling breasts, On swifter sail I bound through the steep waves' foamy crests Under night's veil. Vibrate within me I feel all the passions that lash A bark in distress: By the blast I am lulled—by the tempest's wild crash On the salt wilderness. Then comes the dead calm—mirrored there I behold my despair.

Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'

THE BROKEN BELL

Bitter and sweet, when wintry evenings fall Across the quivering, smoking hearth, to hear Old memory's notes sway softly far and near, While ring the chimes across the gray fog's pall.

Thrice blessed bell, that, to time insolent, Still calls afar its old and pious song, Responding faithfully in accents strong, Like some old sentinel before his tent.

I too—my soul is shattered;—when at times It would beguile the wintry nights with rhymes Of old, its weak old voice at moments seems Like gasps some poor, forgotten soldier heaves Beside the blood-pools—'neath the human sheaves Gasping in anguish toward their fixed dreams.

Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'

The two poems following are used by permission of the J.B. Lippincott Company.

THE ENEMY

My youth swept by in storm and cloudy gloom, Lit here and there by glimpses of the sun; But in my garden, now the storm is done, Few fruits are left to gather purple bloom.

Here have I touched the autumn of the mind; And now the careful spade to labor comes, Smoothing the earth torn by the waves and wind, Full of great holes, like open mouths of tombs.

And who knows if the flowers whereof I dream Shall find, beneath this soil washed like the stream, The force that bids them into beauty start? O grief! O grief! Time eats our life away, And the dark Enemy that gnaws our heart Grows with the ebbing life-blood of his prey!

Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard.

BEAUTY

Beautiful am I as a dream in stone; And for my breast, where each falls bruised in turn, The poet with an endless love must yearn— Endless as Matter, silent and alone.

A sphinx unguessed, enthroned in azure skies, White as the swan, my heart is cold as snow; No hated motion breaks my lines' pure flow, Nor tears nor laughter ever dim mine eyes.

Poets, before the attitudes sublime I seem to steal from proudest monuments, In austere studies waste the ling'ring time; For I possess, to charm my lover's sight, Mirrors wherein all things are fair and bright— My eyes, my large eyes of eternal light!

Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard.

DEATH

Ho, Death, Boatman Death, it is time we set sail; Up anchor, away from this region of blight: Though ocean and sky are like ink for the gale, Thou knowest our hearts are consoled with the light.

Thy poison pour out—it will comfort us well; Yea—for the fire that burns in our brain We would plunge through the depth, be it heaven or hell, Through the fathomless gulf—the new vision to gain.

Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'

THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE

From 'L'Art Romantique'

The crowd is his domain, as the air is that of the bird and the water that of the fish. His passion and his profession is "to wed the crowd." For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate observer, it is an immense pleasure to choose his home in number, change, motion, in the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from one's home and yet to be always at home; to be in the midst of the world, to see it, and yet to be hidden from it; such are some of the least pleasures of these independent, passionate, impartial minds which language can but awkwardly define. The observer is a prince who everywhere enjoys his incognito. The amateur of life makes the world his family, as the lover of the fair sex makes his family of all beauties, discovered, discoverable, and indiscoverable, as the lover of painting lives in an enchanted dreamland painted on canvas. Thus the man who is in love with all life goes into a crowd as into an immense electric battery. One might also compare him to a mirror as immense as the crowd; to a conscious kaleidoscope which in each movement represents the multiform life and the moving grace of all life's elements. He is an ego insatiably hungry for the non-ego, every moment rendering it and expressing it in images more vital than life itself, which is always unstable and fugitive. "Any man," said Mr. G—— one day, in one of those conversations which he lights up with intense look and vivid gesture, "any man, not overcome by a sorrow so heavy that it absorbs all the faculties, who is bored in the midst of a crowd is a fool, a fool, and I despise him."

When Mr. G—— awakens and sees the blustering sun attacking the window-panes, he says with remorse, with regret:—"What imperial order! What a trumpet flourish of light! For hours already there has been light everywhere, light lost by my sleep! How many lighted objects I might have seen and have not seen!" And then he starts off, he watches in its flow the river of vitality, so majestic and so brilliant. He admires the eternal beauty and the astonishing harmony of life in great cities, a harmony maintained in so providential a way in the tumult of human liberty. He contemplates the landscapes of the great city, landscapes of stone caressed by the mist or struck by the blows of the sun. He enjoys the fine carriages, the fiery horses, the shining neatness of the grooms, the dexterity of the valets, the walk of the gliding women, of the beautiful children, happy that they are alive and dressed; in a word, he enjoys the universal life. If a fashion, the cut of a piece of clothing has been slightly changed, if bunches of ribbon or buckles have been displaced by cockades, if the bonnet is larger and the back hair a notch lower on the neck, if the waist is higher and the skirt fuller, be sure that his eagle eye will see it at an enormous distance. A regiment passes, going perhaps to the end of the earth, throwing into the air of the boulevards the flourish of trumpets compelling and light as hope; the eye of Mr. G—— has already seen, studied, analyzed the arms, the gait, the physiognomy of the troop. Trappings, scintillations, music, firm looks, heavy and serious mustaches, all enters pell-mell into him, and in a few moments the resulting poem will be virtually composed. His soul is alive with the soul of this regiment which is marching like a single animal, the proud image of joy in obedience!

But evening has come. It is the strange, uncertain hour at which the curtains of the sky are drawn and the cities are lighted. The gas throws spots on the purple of the sunset. Honest or dishonest, sane or mad, men say to themselves, "At last the day is at an end!" The wise and the good-for-nothing think of pleasure, and each hurries to the place of his choice to drink the cup of pleasure. Mr. G—— will be the last to leave any place where the light may blaze, where poetry may throb, where life may tingle, where music may vibrate, where a passion may strike an attitude for his eye, where the man of nature and the man of convention show themselves in a strange light, where the sun lights up the rapid joys of fallen creatures! "A day well spent," says a kind of reader whom we all know, "any one of us has genius enough to spend a day that way." No! Few men are gifted with the power to see; still fewer have the power of expression. Now, at the hour when others are asleep, this man is bent over his table, darting on his paper the same look which a short time ago he was casting on the world, battling with his pencil, his pen, his brush, throwing the water out of his glass against the ceiling, wiping his pen on his shirt,—driven, violent, active, as if he fears that his images will escape him, a quarreler although alone,—a cudgeler of himself. And the things he has seen are born again upon the paper, natural and more than natural, beautiful and more than beautiful, singular and endowed with an enthusiastic life like the soul of the author. The phantasmagoria have been distilled from nature. All the materials with which his memory is crowded become classified, orderly, harmonious, and undergo that compulsory idealization which is the result of a childlike perception, that is to say, of a perception that is keen, magical by force of ingenuousness.

MODERNNESS

Thus he goes, he runs, he seeks. What does he seek? Certainly this man, such as I have portrayed him, this solitary, gifted with an active imagination, always traveling through the great desert of mankind, has a higher end than that of a mere observer, an end more general than the fugitive pleasure of the passing event. He seeks this thing which we may call modernness, for no better word to express the idea presents itself. His object is to detach from fashion whatever it may contain of the poetry in history, to draw the eternal from the transitory. If we glance at the exhibitions of modern pictures, we are struck with the general tendency of the artists to dress all their subjects in ancient costumes. That is obviously the sign of great laziness, for it is much easier to declare that everything in the costume of a certain period is ugly than to undertake the work of extracting from it the mysterious beauty which may be contained in it, however slight or light it may be. The modern is the transitory, the fleeting, the contingent, the half of art, whose other half is the unchanging and the eternal. There was a modernness for every ancient painter; most of the beautiful portraits which remain to us from earlier times are dressed in the costumes of their times. They are perfectly harmonious, because the costumes, the hair, even the gesture, the look and the smile (every epoch has its look and its smile), form a whole that is entirely lifelike. You have no right to despise or neglect this transitory, fleeting element, of which the changes are so frequent. In suppressing it you fall by necessity into the void of an abstract and undefinable beauty, like that of the only woman before the fall. If instead of the costume of the epoch, which is a necessary element, you substitute another, you create an anomaly which can have no excuse unless it is a burlesque called for by the vogue of the moment. Thus, the goddesses, the nymphs, the sultans of the eighteenth century are portraits morally accurate.

FROM 'LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE'

EVERY ONE HIS OWN CHIMERA

Under a great gray sky, in a great powdery plain without roads, without grass, without a thistle, without a nettle, I met several men who were walking with heads bowed down.

Each one bore upon his back an enormous Chimera, as heavy as a bag of flour or coal, or the accoutrements of a Roman soldier.

But the monstrous beast was not an inert weight; on the contrary, it enveloped and oppressed the man with its elastic and mighty muscles; it fastened with its two vast claws to the breast of the bearer, and its fabulous head surmounted the brow of the man, like one of those horrible helmets by which the ancient warriors hoped to increase the terror of the enemy.

I questioned one of these men, and I asked him whither they were bound thus. He answered that he knew not, neither he nor the others; but that evidently they were bound somewhere, since they were impelled by an irresistible desire to go forward.

It is curious to note that not one of these travelers looked irritated at the ferocious beast suspended from his neck and glued against his back; it seemed as though he considered it as making part of himself. None of these weary and serious faces bore witness to any despair; under the sullen cupola of the sky, their feet plunging into the dust of a soil as desolate as that sky, they went their way with the resigned countenances of those who have condemned themselves to hope forever.

The procession passed by me and sank into the horizon's atmosphere, where the rounded surface of the planet slips from the curiosity of human sight, and for a few moments I obstinately persisted in wishing to fathom the mystery; but soon an irresistible indifference fell upon me, and I felt more heavily oppressed by it than even they were by their crushing Chimeras.

HUMANITY

At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those artificial fools, those voluntary buffoons whose duty was to make kings laugh when Remorse or Ennui possessed their souls, muffled in a glaring ridiculous costume, crowned with horns and bells, and crouched against the pedestal, raised his eyes full of tears toward the immortal goddess. And his eyes said:—"I am the least and the most solitary of human beings, deprived of love and of friendship, and therefore far below the most imperfect of the animals. Nevertheless, I am made, even I, to feel and comprehend the immortal Beauty! Ah, goddess! have pity on my sorrow and my despair!" But the implacable Venus gazed into the distance, at I know not what, with her marble eyes.

WINDOWS

He who looks from without through an open window never sees as many things as he who looks at a closed window. There is no object more profound, more mysterious, more rich, more shadowy, more dazzling than a window lighted by a candle. What one can see in the sunlight is always less interesting than what takes place behind a blind. In that dark or luminous hole life lives, dreams, suffers.

Over the sea of roofs I see a woman, mature, already wrinkled, always bent over something, never going out. From her clothes, her movement, from almost nothing, I have reconstructed the history of this woman, or rather her legend, and sometimes I tell it over to myself in tears.

If it had been a poor old man I could have reconstructed his story as easily.

And I go to bed, proud of having lived and suffered in lives not my own.

Perhaps you may say, "Are you sure that this story is the true one?" What difference does it make what is the reality outside of me, if it has helped me to live, to know who I am and what I am?

DRINK

One should be always drunk. That is all, the whole question. In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time, which is breaking your shoulders and bearing you to earth, you must be drunk without cease.

But drunk on what? On wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a moat, in the dull solitude of your chamber, you awake with your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, the wave, the star, the clock, of everything that flies, sobs, rolls, sings, talks, what is the hour? and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer, "It is the hour to get drunk!" Not to be the martyred slave of Time, get drunk; get drunk unceasingly. Wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose.

FROM A JOURNAL

I swear to myself henceforth to adopt the following rules as the everlasting rules of my life.... To pray every morning to God, the Fountain of all strength and of all justice; to my father, to Mariette, and to Poe. To pray to them to give me necessary strength to accomplish all my tasks, and to grant my mother a life long enough to enjoy my reformation. To work all day, or at least as long as my strength lasts. To trust to God—that is to say, to Justice itself—for the success of my projects. To pray again every evening to God to ask Him for life and strength, for my mother and myself. To divide all my earnings into four parts—one for my daily expenses, one for my creditors, one for my friends, and one for my mother. To keep to principles of strict sobriety, and to banish all and every stimulant.



LORD BEACONSFIELD

(1804-1881)

BY ISA CARRINGTON CABELL

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, born in London, December, 1804; died there April 19th, 1881. His paternal ancestors were of the house of Lara, and held high rank among Hebrew-Spanish nobles till the tribunal of Torquemada drove them from Spain to Venice. There, proud of their race and origin, they styled themselves, "Sons of Israel," and became merchant princes. But the city's commerce failing, the grandfather of Benjamin Disraeli removed to London with a diminished but comfortable fortune. His son, Isaac Disraeli, was a well-known literary man, and the author of 'The Curiosities of Literature.' On account of the political and social ostracism of the Jews in England, he had all his family baptized into the Church of England; but with Benjamin Disraeli especially, Christianity was never more than Judaism developed. His belief and his affections were in his own race.



Benjamin, like most Jewish youths, was educated in private schools, and at seventeen entered a solicitor's office. At twenty-two he published 'Vivian Grey' (London, 1826), which readable and amusing take-off of London society gave him great and instantaneous notoriety. Its minute descriptions of the great world, its caricatures of well-known social and political personages, its magnificent diction,—too magnificent to be taken quite seriously,—excited inquiry; and the great world was amazed to discover that the impertinent observer was not one of themselves, but a boy in a lawyer's office. To add to the audacity, he had conceived himself the hero of these diverting situations, and by his cleverness had outwitted age, beauty, rank, diplomacy itself.

Statesmen, poets, fine ladies, were all genuinely amused; and the author bade fair to become a lion, when he fell ill, and was compelled to leave England for a year or more, which he spent in travel on the Continent and in Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine. His visit to the birthplace of his race made an impression on him that lasted through his life and literature. It is embodied in his 'Letters to His Sister' (London, 1843), and the autobiographical novel 'Contarini Fleming' (1833), in which he turned his adventures into fervid English, at a guinea a volume. But although the spirit of poesy, in the form of a Childe Harold, stalks rampant through the romance, there is both feeling and fidelity to nature whenever he describes the Orient and its people. Then the bizarre, brilliant poseur forgets his role, and reveals his highest aspirations.

When Disraeli returned to London he became the fashion. Everybody, from the prime minister to Count D'Orsay, had read his clever novels. The poets praised them, Lady Blessington invited him to dine, Sir Robert Peel was "most gracious."

But literary success could never satisfy Disraeli's ambition: a seat in Parliament was at the end of his rainbow. He professed himself a radical, but he was a radical in his own sense of the term; and like his own Sidonia, half foreigner, half looker-on, he felt himself endowed with an insight only possible to, an outsider, an observer without inherited prepossessions.

Several contemporary sketches of Disraeli at this time have been preserved. His dress was purposed affectation; it led the beholder to look for folly only: and when the brilliant flash came, it was the more startling as unexpected from such a figure. Lady Dufferin told Mr. Motley that when she met Disraeli at dinner, he wore a black-velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles falling down to the tips of his fingers, white gloves with several rings outside, and long black ringlets rippling down his shoulders. She told him he had made a fool of himself by appearing in such a dress, but she did not guess why it had been adopted. Another contemporary says of him, "When duly excited, his command of language was wonderful, his power of sarcasm unsurpassed."

He was busy making speeches and writing political squibs for the next two years; for Parliament was before his eyes. "He knew," says Froude, "he had a devil of a tongue, and was unincumbered by the foolish form of vanity called modesty." 'Ixion in Heaven,' 'The Infernal Marriage,' and 'Popanilla' were attempts to rival both Lucian and Swift on their own ground. It is doubtful, however, whether he would have risked writing 'Henrietta Temple' (1837) and 'Venetia' (1837), two ardent love stories, had he not been in debt; for notoriety as a novelist is not always a recommendation to a constituency.

In 'Henrietta' he found an opportunity to write the biography of a lover oppressed by duns. It is a most entertaining novel even to a reader who does not read for a new light on the great statesman, and is remarkable as the beginning of what is now known as the "natural" manner; a revolt, his admirers tell us, from the stilted fashion of making love that then prevailed in novels.

'Venetia' is founded on the characters of Byron and Shelley, and is amusing reading. The high-flown language incrusted with the gems of rhetoric excites our risibilities, but it is not safe to laugh at Disraeli; in his most diverting aspects he has a deep sense of humor, and he who would mock at him is apt to get a whip across the face at an unguarded moment. Mr. Disraeli laughs in his sleeve at many things, but first of all at the reader.

He failed in his canvass for his seat at High Wycombe, but he turned his failure to good account, and established a reputation for pluck and influence. "A mighty independent personage," observed Charles Greville, and his famous quarrel with O'Connell did him so little harm that in 1837 he was returned for Maidstone. His first speech was a failure. The word had gone out that he was to be put down. At last, finding it useless to persist, he said he was not surprised at the reception he had experienced. He had begun several things many times and had succeeded at last. Then pausing, and looking indignantly across the house, he exclaimed in a loud and remarkable tone, "I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me."

He married the widow of his patron, Wyndham Lewis, in 1838. This put him in possession of a fortune, and gave him the power to continue his political career. His radicalism was a thing of the past. He had drifted from Conservatism, with Peel for a leader, to aristocratic socialism; and in 1844, 1845, and 1847 appeared the Trilogy, as he styled the novels 'Coningsby,' 'Tancred,' and 'Sibyl.' Of the three, 'Coningsby' will prove the most entertaining to the modern reader. The hero is a gentleman, and in this respect is an improvement on Vivian Grey, for his audacity is tempered by good breeding. The plot is slight, but the scenes are entertaining. The famous Sidonia, the Jew financier, is a favorite with the author, and betrays his affection and respect for race. Lord Monmouth, the wild peer, is a rival of the "Marquis of Steyne" and worthy of a place in 'Vanity Fair'; the political intriguers are photographed from life, the pictures of fashionable London tickle both the vanity and the fancy of the reader.

'Sibyl' is too clearly a novel with a motive to give so much pleasure. It is a study of the contrasts between the lives of the very rich and the hopelessly poor, and an attempt to show the superior condition of the latter when the Catholic Church was all-powerful in England and the king an absolute monarch.

'Tancred' was composed when Disraeli was under "the illusion of a possibly regenerated aristocracy." He sends Tancred, the hero, the heir of a ducal house, to Palestine to find the inspiration to a true religious belief, and details his adventures with a power of sarcasm that is seldom equaled. In certain scenes in this novel the author rises from a mere mocker to a genuine satirist. Tancred's interview with the bishop, in which he takes that dignitary's religious tenets seriously; that with Lady Constance, when she explains the "Mystery of Chaos" and shows how "the stars are formed out of the cream of the Milky Way, a sort of celestial cheese churned into light" the vision of the angels on Mt. Sinai, and the celestial Sidonia who talks about the "Sublime and Solacing Doctrine of Theocratic Equality,"—all these are passages where we wonder whether the author sneered or blushed when he wrote. Certainly what has since been known as the Disraelian irony stings as we turn each page.

Meanwhile Disraeli had become a power in Parliament, and the bitter opponent of Peel, under whom Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, and the abrogation of the commercial system, had been carried without conditions and almost without mitigations.

Disraeli's assaults on his leader delighted the Liberals; the country members felt indignant satisfaction at the deserved chastisement of their betrayer. With malicious skill, Disraeli touched one after another the weak points in a character that was superficially vulnerable. Finally the point before the House became Peel's general conduct. He was beaten by an overwhelming majority, and to the hand that dethroned him descended the task of building up the ruins of the Conservative party. Disraeli's best friends felt this a welcome necessity. There is no example of a rise so sudden under such conditions. His politics were as much distrusted as his serious literary passages. But Disraeli was the single person equal to the task. For the next twenty-five years he led the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons, varied by short intervals of power. He was three times Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1853, 1858, and 1859; and on Lord Derby's retirement in 1868 he became Prime Minister.

In 1870, having laid aside novel-writing for twenty years, he published 'Lothair.' It is a politico-religious romance aimed at the Jesuits, the Fenians, and the Communists. It had an instantaneous success, for its author was the most conspicuous figure in Europe, but its popularity is also due to its own merits. We are all of us snobs after a fashion and love high society. The glory of entering the splendid portals of the real English dukes and duchesses seems to be ours when Disraeli throws open the magic door and ushers the reader in. The decorations do not seem tawdry, nor the tinsel other than real. We move with pleasurable excitement with Lothair from palace to castle, and thence to battle-field and scenes of dark intrigue. The hint of the love affair with the Olympian Theodora appeals to our romance; the circumventing of the wily Cardinal and his accomplices is agreeable to the Anglo-Saxon Protestant mind; their discomfiture, and the crowning of virtue in the shape of a rescued Lothair married to the English Duke's daughter with the fixed Church of England views, is what the reader expects and prays for, and is the last privilege of the real story-teller. That the author has thrown aside his proclivities for Romanism as he showed them in 'Sibyl,' no more disturbs us than the eccentricities of his politics. We do not quite give him our faith when he is most in earnest, talking Semitic Arianism on Mt. Sinai.

A peerage was offered to him in 1868. He refused it for himself, but asked Queen Victoria to grant the honor to his wife, who became the Countess of Beaconsfield. But in 1876 he accepted the rank and title of Earl of Beaconsfield. The author of 'Vivian Grey' received the title that Burke had refused.

His last novel, 'Endymion,' was written for the L10,000 its publishers paid for it. It adds nothing to his fame, but is an agreeable picture of fashionable London life and the struggles of a youth to gain power and place.

Lord Beaconsfield put more dukes, earls, lords and ladies, more gold and jewels, more splendor and wealth into his books than any one else ever tried to do. But beside his Oriental delight in the display of luxury, it is interesting to see the effect of that Orientalism when he describes the people from whom he sprang. His rare tenderness and genuine respect are for those of the race "that is the aristocracy of nature, the purest race, the chosen people." He sends all his heroes to Palestine for inspiration; wisdom dwells in her gates. Another aristocracy, that of talent, he recognizes and applauds. No dullard ever succeeds, no genius goes unrewarded.

It is the part of the story-teller to make his story a probable one to the listener, no matter how impossible both character and situation. Mr. Disraeli was accredited with the faculty of persuading himself to believe or disbelieve whatever he liked; and did he possess the same power over his readers, these entertaining volumes would lift him to the highest rank the novelist attains. As it is, he does not quite succeed in creating an illusion, and we are conscious of two lobes in the author's brain; in one sits a sentimentalist, in the other a mocking devil.



A DAY AT EMS

From 'Vivian Grey'

"I think we'd better take a little coffee now; and then, if you like, we'll just stroll into the REDOUTE" [continued Baron de Konigstein].

In a brilliantly illuminated saloon, adorned with Corinthian columns, and casts from some of the most famous antique statues, assembled between nine and ten o'clock in the evening many of the visitors at Ems. On each side of the room was placed a long, narrow table, one of which was covered with green baize, and unattended, while the variously colored leather surface of the other was very closely surrounded by an interested crowd. Behind this table stood two individuals of very different appearance. The first was a short, thick man, whose only business was dealing certain portions of playing cards with quick succession, one after the other; and as the fate of the table was decided by this process, did his companion, an extremely tall, thin man, throw various pieces of money upon certain stakes, which were deposited by the bystanders on different parts of the table; or, which was more often the case, with a silver rake with a long ebony handle, sweep into a large inclosure near him the scattered sums. This inclosure was called the bank, and the mysterious ceremony in which these persons were assisting was the celebrated game of rouge-et-noir. A deep silence was strictly observed by those who immediately surrounded the table; no voice was heard save that of the little, short, stout dealer, when, without an expression of the least interest, he seemed mechanically to announce the fate of the different colors. No other sound was heard save the jingle of the dollars and napoleons, and the ominous rake of the tall, thin banker. The countenances of those who were hazarding their money were grave and gloomy their eyes were fixed, their brows contracted, and their lips projected; and yet there was an evident effort visible to show that they were both easy and unconcerned. Each player held in his hand a small piece of pasteboard, on which, with a steel pricker, he marked the run of the cards, in order, from his observations, to regulate his own play: the rouge-et-noir player imagines that chance is not capricious. Those who were not interested in the game promenaded in two lines within the tables; or, seated in recesses between the pillars, formed small parties for conversation.

As Vivian and the baron entered, Lady Madeleine Trevor, leaning on the arm of an elderly man, left the room; but as she was in earnest conversation, she did not observe them.

"I suppose we must throw away a dollar or two, Grey!" said the baron, as he walked up to the table.

"My dear De Konigstein—one pinch—one pinch!"

"Ah! marquis, what fortune to-night?"

"Bad—bad! I have lost my napoleon: I never risk further. There's that cursed crusty old De Trumpetson, persisting, as usual, in his run of bad luck, because he will never give in. Trust me, my dear De Konigstein, it'll end in his ruin; and then, if there's a sale of his effects, I shall perhaps get the snuff-box—a-a-h!"

"Come, Grey; shall I throw down a couple of napoleons on joint account? I don't care much for play myself; but I suppose at Ems we must make up our minds to lose a few louis. Here! now for the red—joint account, mind!"

"Done."

"There's the archduke! Let us go and make our bow; we needn't stick at the table as if our whole soul were staked with our crown pieces—we'll make our bow, and then return in time to know our fate." So saying, the gentlemen walked up to the top of the room.

"Why, Grey!—surely no—it cannot be—and yet it is. De Boeffleurs, how d'ye do?" said the baron, with a face beaming with joy, and a hearty shake of the hand. "My dear, dear fellow, how the devil did you manage to get off so soon? I thought you were not to be here for a fortnight: we only arrived ourselves to-day."

"Yes—but I've made an arrangement which I did not anticipate; and so I posted after you immediately. Whom do you think I have brought with me?"

"Who?"

"Salvinski."

"Ah! And the count?"

"Follows immediately. I expect him to-morrow or next day. Salvinski is talking to the archduke; and see, he beckons to me. I suppose I am going to be presented."

The chevalier moved forward, followed by the baron and Vivian.

"Any friend of Prince Salvinski I shall always have great pleasure in having presented to me. Chevalier, I feel great pleasure in having you presented to me! Chevalier, you ought to be proud of the name of Frenchman. Chevalier, the French are a grand nation. Chevalier, I have the highest respect for the French nation."

"The most subtle diplomatist," thought Vivian, as he recalled to mind his own introduction, "would be puzzled to decide to which interest his imperial highness leans."

The archduke now entered into conversation with the prince, and most of the circle who surrounded him. As his highness was addressing Vivian, the baron let slip our hero's arm, and seizing hold of the Chevalier de Boeffleurs, began walking up and down the room with him, and was soon engaged in very animated conversation. In a few minutes the archduke, bowing to his circle, made a move and regained the side of a Saxon lady, from whose interesting company he had been disturbed by the arrival of Prince Salvinski—an individual of whose long stories and dull romances the archduke had, from experience, a particular dread; but his highness was always very courteous to the Poles.

"Grey, I've dispatched De Boeffleurs to the house to instruct the servant and Ernstorff to do the impossible, in order that our rooms may be all together. You'll be delighted with De Boeffleurs when you know him, and I expect you to be great friends. Oh! by the by, his unexpected arrival has quite made us forget our venture at rouge-et-noir. Of course we're too late now for anything; even if we had been fortunate, our doubled stake, remaining on the table, is of course lost; we may as well, however, walk up." So saying, the baron reached the table.

"That is your excellency's stake!—that is your excellency's stake!" exclaimed many voices as he came up.

"What's the matter, my friends? what's the matter?" asked the baron, very calmly.

"There's been a run on the red! there's been a run on the red! and your excellency's stake has doubled each time. It has been 4—8—16—32—64—128—256; and now it's 512!" quickly rattled a little thin man in spectacles, pointing at the same time to his unparalleled line of punctures. This was one of those officious, noisy little men, who are always ready to give you unasked information on every possible subject, and who are never so happy as when they are watching over the interest of some stranger, who never thanks them for their unnecessary solicitude.

Vivian, in spite of his philosophy, felt the excitement and wonder of the moment. He looked very earnestly at the baron, whose countenance, however, remained perfectly unmoved.

"Grey," said he, very coolly, "it seems we're in luck."

"The stake's then not all your own?" very eagerly asked the little man in spectacles.

"No, part of it is yours, sir," answered the baron, very dryly.

"I'm going to deal," said the short, thick man behind. "Is the board cleared?"

"Your excellency then allows the stake to remain?" inquired the tall, thin banker, with affected nonchalance.

"Oh! certainly," said the baron, with real nonchalance.

"Three—eight—fourteen—twenty-four—thirty-four, Rouge 34—"

All crowded nearer; the table was surrounded five or six deep, for the wonderful run of luck had got wind, and nearly the whole room were round the table. Indeed, the archduke and Saxon lady, and of course the silent suite, were left alone at the upper part of the room. The tall banker did not conceal his agitation. Even the short, stout dealer ceased to be a machine. All looked anxious except the baron. Vivian looked at the table; his excellency watched, with a keen eye, the little dealer. No one even breathed as the cards descended. "Ten—twenty—" here the countenance of the banker brightened—"twenty-two—twenty-five— twenty-eight—thirty-one'—Noir 31. The bank's broke; no more play to-night. The roulette table opens immediately."

In spite of the great interest which had been excited, nearly the whole crowd, without waiting to congratulate the baron, rushed to the opposite side of the room in order to secure places at the roulette table.

"Put these five hundred and twelve Napoleons into a bag," said the baron; "Grey, this is your share, and I congratulate you. With regard to the other half, Mr. Hermann, what bills have you got?"

"Two on Gogel's house of Frankfort—accepted of course—for two hundred and fifty each, and these twelve napoleons will make it right," said the tall banker, as he opened a large black pocket-book, from which he took out two small bits of paper. The baron examined them, and after having seen them indorsed, put them calmly into his pocket, not forgetting the twelve napoleons; and then taking Vivian's arm, and regretting extremely that he should have the trouble of carrying such a weight, he wished Mr. Hermann a very good-night and success at his roulette, and walked with his companion quietly home. Thus passed a day at Ems!

THE FESTA IN THE "ALHAMBRA"

From 'The Young Duke'

You entered the Alhambra by a Saracenic cloister, from the ceiling of which an occasional lamp threw a gleam upon some Eastern arms hung up against the wall. This passage led to the armory, a room of moderate dimensions, but hung with rich contents. Many an inlaid breastplate—many a Mameluke scimitar and Damascus blade—many a gemmed pistol and pearl embroided saddle might there be seen, though viewed in a subdued and quiet light. All seemed hushed and still, and shrouded in what had the reputation of being a palace of pleasure.

In this chamber assembled the expected guests. His Grace and the Bird of Paradise arrived first, with their foreign friends. Lord Squib and Lord Darrell, Sir Lucius Grafton, Mr. Annesley, and Mr. Peacock Piggott followed, but not alone. There were two ladies who, by courtesy if no other right, bore the titles of Lady Squib and Mrs. Annesley. There was also a pseudo Lady Aphrodite Grafton. There was Mrs. Montfort, the famous blonde, of a beauty which was quite ravishing, and dignified as beautiful. Some said (but really people say such things) that there was a talk (I never believe anything I hear) that had not the Bird of Paradise flown in (these foreigners pick up everything), Mrs. Montfort would have been the Duchess of St. James. How this may be I know not; certain, however, this superb and stately donna did not openly evince any spleen at her more fortunate rival. Although she found herself a guest at the Alhambra instead of being the mistress of the palace, probably, like many other ladies, she looked upon this affair of the singing-bird as a freak that must end—and then perhaps his Grace, who was a charming young man, would return to his senses. There also was her sister, a long, fair girl, who looked sentimental, but was only silly. There was a little French actress, like a highly finished miniature; and a Spanish danseuse, tall, dusky, and lithe, glancing like a lynx, and graceful as a jennet.

Having all arrived, they proceeded down a small gallery to the banqueting-room. The doors were thrown open. Pardon me if for a moment I do not describe the chamber; but really, the blaze affects my sight. The room was large and lofty. It was fitted up as an Eastern tent. The walls were hung with scarlet cloth tied up with ropes of gold. Round the room crouched recumbent lions richly gilt, who grasped in their paw a lance, the top of which was a colored lamp. The ceiling was emblazoned with the Hauteville arms, and was radiant with burnished gold. A cresset lamp was suspended from the centre of the shield, and not only emitted an equable flow of soft though brilliant light, but also, as the aromatic oil wasted away, distilled an exquisite perfume.

The table blazed with golden plate, for the Bird of Paradise loved splendor. At the end of the room, under a canopy and upon a throne, the shield and vases lately executed for his Grace now appeared. Everything was gorgeous, costly, and imposing; but there was no pretense, save in the original outline, at maintaining the Oriental character. The furniture was French; and opposite the throne Canova's Hebe, by Bertolini, bounded with a golden cup from a pedestal of ormolu.

The guests are seated; but after a few minutes the servants withdraw. Small tables of ebony and silver, and dumb-waiters of ivory and gold, conveniently stored, are at hand, and Spiridion never leaves the room. The repast was most refined, most exquisite, and most various. It was one of those meetings where all eat. When a few persons, easy and unconstrained, unincumbered with cares, and of dispositions addicted to enjoyment, get together at past midnight, it is extraordinary what an appetite they evince. Singers also are proverbially prone to gormandize; and though the Bird of Paradise unfortunately possessed the smallest mouth in all Singingland, it is astonishing how she pecked! But they talked as well as feasted, and were really gay. It was amusing to observe—that is to say, if you had been a dumb-waiter, and had time for observation—how characteristic was the affectation of the women. Lady Squib was witty, Mrs. Annesley refined, and the pseudo Lady Afy fashionable. As for Mrs. Montfort, she was, as her wont, somewhat silent but excessively sublime. The Spaniard said nothing, but no doubt indicated the possession of Cervantic humor by the sly calmness with which she exhausted her own waiter and pillaged her neighbors. The little Frenchwoman scarcely ate anything, but drank champagne and chatted, with equal rapidity and equal composure.

"Prince," said the duke, "I hope Madame de Harestein approves of your trip to England?"

The prince only smiled, for he was of a silent disposition, and therefore wonderfully well suited his traveling companion.

"Poor Madame de Harestein!" exclaimed Count Frill. "What despair she was in when you left Vienna, my dear duke. Ah! mon Dieu! I did what I could to amuse her. I used to take my guitar, and sing to her morning and night, but without the least effect. She certainly would have died of a broken heart, if it had not been for the dancing-dogs."

"The dancing-dogs!" minced the pseudo Lady Aphrodite. "How shocking!"

"Did they bite her?" asked Lady Squib, "and so inoculate her with gayety?"

"Oh! the dancing-dogs, my dear ladies! everybody was mad about the dancing-dogs. They came from Peru, and danced the mazurka in green jackets with a jabot! Oh! what a jabot!"

"I dislike animals excessively," remarked Mrs. Annesley.

"Dislike the dancing-dogs!" said Count Frill. "Ah, my good lady, you would have been enchanted. Even the kaiser fed them with pistachio nuts. Oh, so pretty! delicate leetle things, soft shining little legs, and pretty little faces! so sensible, and with such jabots!"

"I assure you, they were excessively amusing," said the prince, in a soft, confidential undertone to his neighbor, Mrs. Montfort, who, admiring his silence, which she took for state, smiled and bowed with fascinating condescension.

"And what else has happened very remarkable, count, since I left you?" asked Lord Darrell.

"Nothing, nothing, my dear Darrell. This betise of a war has made us all serious. If old Clamstandt had not married that gipsy little Dugiria, I really think I should have taken a turn to Belgrade."

"You should not eat so much, poppet," drawled Charles Annesley to the Spaniard.

"Why not?" said the little French lady, with great animation, always ready to fight anybody's battle, provided she could get an opportunity to talk. "Why not, Mr. Annesley? You never will let anybody eat—I never eat myself, because every night, having to talk so much, I am dry, dry, dry—so I drink, drink, drink. It is an extraordinary thing that there is no language which makes you so thirsty as French. I always have heard that all the southern languages, Spanish and Italian, make you hungry."

"What can be the reason?" seriously asked the pseudo Lady Afy.

"Because there is so much salt in it," said Lord Squib.

"Delia," drawled Mr. Annesley, "you look very pretty to-night!"

"I am charmed to charm you, Mr. Annesley. Shall I tell you what Lord Bon Mot said of you?"

"No, ma mignonne! I never wish to hear my own good things."

"Spoiled, you should add," said Lady Squib, "if Bon Mot be in the case."

"Lord Bon Mot is a most gentlemanly man," said Delia, indignant at an admirer being attacked. "He always wants to be amusing. Whenever he dines out, he comes and sits with me half an hour to catch the air of Parisian badinage."

"And you tell him a variety of little things?" asked Lord Squib, insidiously drawing out the secret tactics of Bon Mot.

"Beaucoup, beaucoup," said Delia, extending two little white hands sparkling with gems. "If he come in ever so—how do you call it? heavy—not that—in the domps—ah! it is that—if ever he come in the domps, he goes out always like a soufflee."

"As empty, I have no doubt," said Lady Squib.

"And as sweet, I have no doubt," said Lord Squib; "for Delcroix complains sadly of your excesses, Delia."

"Mr. Delcroix complain of me! That, indeed, is too bad. Just because I recommended Montmorency de Versailles to him for an excellent customer, ever since he abuses me, merely because Montmorency has forgot, in the hurry of going off, to pay his little account."

"But he says you have got all the things," said Lord Squib, whose great amusement was to put Delia in a passion.

"What of that?" screamed the little lady. "Montmorency gave them to me."

"Don't make such a noise," said the Bird of Paradise. "I never can eat when there is a noise. St. James," continued she, in a fretful tone, "they make such a noise!"

"Annesley, keep Squib quiet."

"Delia, leave that young man alone. If Isidora would talk a little more, and you eat a little more, I think you would be the most agreeable little ladies I know. Poppet! put those bonbons in your pocket. You should never eat sugar-plums in company."

Thus talking agreeable nonsense, tasting agreeable dishes, and sipping agreeable wines, an hour ran on. Sweetest music from an unseen source ever and anon sounded, and Spiridion swung a censer full of perfumes around the chamber. At length the duke requested Count Frill to give them a song. The Bird of Paradise would never sing for pleasure, only for fame and a slight check. The count begged to decline, and at the same time asked for a guitar. The signora sent for hers; and his Excellency, preluding with a beautiful simper, gave them some slight thing to this effect:—

Charming Bignetta! charming Bignetta! What a gay little girl is charming Bignetta! She dances, she prattles, She rides and she rattles; But she always is charming—that charming Bignetta!

Charming Bignetta! charming Bignetta! What a wild little witch is charming Bignetta! When she smiles I'm all madness; When she frowns I'm all sadness; But she always is smiling—that charming Bignetta!

Charming Bignetta! charming Bignetta! What a wicked young rogue is charming Bignetta! She laughs at my shyness, And flirts with his highness; Yet still she is charming—that charming Bignetta!

Charming Bignetta! charming Bignetta! What a dear little girl is charming Bignetta! "Think me only a sister," Said she trembling; I kissed her. What a charming young sister is—charming Bignetta!

He ceased; and although

"—the Ferrarese To choicer music chimed his gay guitar In Este's halls,"

as Casti himself, or rather Mr. Rose, choicely sings, yet still his song served its purpose, for it raised a smile.

"I wrote that for Madame Sapiepha, at the Congress of Verona," said Count Frill. "It has been thought amusing."

"Madame Sapiepha!" exclaimed the Bird of Paradise. "What! that pretty little woman who has such pretty caps?"

"The same! Ah! what caps! Mon Dieu! what taste! what taste!"

"You like caps, then?" asked the Bird of Paradise, with a sparkling eye.

"Oh! if there be anything more than other that I know most, it is the cap. Here, voici!" said he, rather oddly unbuttoning his waistcoat, "you see what lace I have got. Voici! voici!"

"Ah! me! what lace! what lace!" exclaimed the Bird in rapture. "St. James, look at his lace. Come here, come here, sit next me. Let me look at that lace." She examined it with great attention, then turned up her beautiful eyes with a fascinating smile. "Ah! c'est jolie, n'est-ce pas? But you like caps. I tell you what, you shall see my caps. Spiridion, go, mon cher, and tell ma'amselle to bring my caps—all my caps, one of each set."

In due time entered the Swiss, with the caps—all the caps—one of each set. As she handed them in turn to her mistress, the Bird chirped a panegyric upon each.

"That is pretty, is it not—and this also? but this is my favorite. What do you think of this border? c'est belle, cette garniture? et ce jabot, c'est tres seduisant, n'est-ce pas? Mais voici, the cap of Princess Lichtenstein. C'est superb, c'est mon favori. But I also love very much this of the Duchesse de Berri. She gave me the pattern herself. And after all, this cornette a petite sante of Lady Blaze is a dear little thing; then, again, this coiffe a dentelle of Lady Macaroni is quite a pet."

"Pass them down," said Lord Squib, "we want to look at them." Accordingly they were passed down. Lord Squib put one on.

"Do I look superb, sentimental, or only pretty?" asked his lordship. The example was contagious, and most of the caps were appropriated. No one laughed more than their mistress, who, not having the slightest idea of the value of money, would have given them all away on the spot; not from any good-natured feeling, but from the remembrance that to-morrow she might amuse half an hour buying others.

While some were stealing, and she remonstrating, the duke clapped his hands like a caliph. The curtain at the end of the apartment was immediately withdrawn and the ball-room stood revealed.

It was of the same size as the banqueting-hall. Its walls exhibited a long perspective of gilt pilasters, the frequent piers of which were entirely of plate looking-glass, save where occasionally a picture had been, as it were, inlaid in its rich frame. Here was the Titian Venus of the Tribune, deliciously copied by a French artist; there, the Roman Fornarina, with her delicate grace, beamed like the personification of Raphael's genius. Here Zuleikha, living in the light and shade of that magician Guercino, in vain summoned the passions of the blooming Hebrew; and there Cleopatra, preparing for her last immortal hour, proved by what we saw that Guido had been a lover.

The ceiling of this apartment was richly painted and richly gilt; from it were suspended three lustres by golden cords, which threw a softened light upon the floor of polished and curiously inlaid woods. At the end of the apartment was an orchestra, and here the pages, under the direction of Carlstein, offered a very efficient domestic band.