and earnest conversation. In an hour or two they departed.

In the mean time, there I sat, with dogged resolution. In the afternoon, the captain and owner came in again, they talked as fast and earnestly as Frenchmen usually do. The consul appeared to be trying to persuade them to do something, which they were apparently very reluctant to do. At length, I saw the former draw up a paper, and the latter sign it. The owner of the privateer brought it to me, and said, there, sir, is your discharge. By signing it I have surrendered $100,000. Yesterday it was mine, as I thought, and were it now mine, it would not replace what I have lost by this war. I was once a merchant, in extensive business, but lost all, except the ship in which I am now cruising, and by which I was resolved to make a desperate effort to recover a part of what I had lost. If I have surrendered what I could have held, it may do you and your owners good."

I thanked him, perhaps too coldly; took the discharge, left the office, and called on our consul, Mr. Humphrey. I omitted to say, that when I was first taken to the French consul's office, I obtained permission to go to a notary and make a protest. I asked Mr. H. if he had any commands for Genoa. He seemed surprised, and asked when I should set sail.

"As soon as the wind permits."
"But you are here as a prize."
"I have obtained my discharge."
"It is not possible-how?"

"I cannot tell how, but I have it."
"Let me see it."

I showed him the paper; he read it attentively, and returned it.

"This is unexampled-mysterious. They are playing you a trick. Have you been on board your vessel?"

"I have not."

"I will go there with you, if it can be found; and if we find it, we will see what those on board will say to us."

"You are an old man, and I will not trouble you to go. I will go alone, and return to you immediately."

I proceeded to the vessel, and there found the Frenchmen regaling themselves upon my wine and dainties. I showed them the discharge, which they read with dismay, but left the ship to my control. I gave the necessary directions to the crew; and set out on

my return. At the wharf I met Mr. Humphrey. He was too impatient to await my return and came to meet me there. I told him all was well, and he then told me that he had called on the French consul and asked him how it happened that he had discharged the Yankee so quickly.

"Why," said he, "I found I must either dismiss him or bury him, and I preferred the former."

I took supper with the consul, requested him to forward my protest to Boston, and the next day, the wind being favorable, set sail for Genoa.

On my way thither, I was in constant dread of again falling into the power of a French privateer.

When in sight of Genoa, I perceived a strange ship approaching. I unfurled every sail, and my pursuer did the same, both ships flying with unwonted speed, directly into the harbor. As I came near to a crowd of vessels at anchor, I perceived them in trepidation; but my enemy being at my heels, I thought not of shortening sail, until my ship was driven, by the impetus which fright had given her, into the midst of them, as a hen is driven by a hawk into the house.

Fortunately, very little damage was done. I made my vessel fast, and went to visit the consignee on shore. He told me that the van of a French ariny, bound on a distant expedition, had just arrived, the commander of which seized everything he wanted, for which he paid his own price; and that he was particularly anxious to procure salted provisions.

I had eighty barrels of salt beef on board; and preferring to sell my own property at my own price, I landed it in the night, and concealed it in an old barn, in the suburbs of the city, where no mortal would be apt to look for salt beef.

This done, I proceeded to unload my vessel and sell my cargo. While doing this, a French general and suite came on board. Having examined the ship, he said to me, very politely, that the French Republic was much in want of a vessel to carry the commander and staff of a military expedition to its place of destination; that my vessel was precisely such as was wanted, and he had selected her for that purpose. The republic would pay a reasonable freight and all charges, and I must be ready in a fortnight.

"It is out of my power," said I, “to

comply with your wishes. The vessel is not mine, and my orders are to proceed from this place to Barcelona."

"Oh! ce n'est rien. The Republic wants your vessel, and must have it. You were mistaken in supposing they were wishes that I expressed. You must be ready in a fortnight." Then making an imperative bow, he departed. This visit disturbed and vexed me. I had sold my cargo at a very great profit, and hoped soon to be at home enjoying an increase of wealth and reputation.

But the General had spoken in a tone of decision, and I had witnessed, every day, striking and distressing proofs that it was useless to resist his resolute will.

I consulted my friend, but he could give me no hope. I inquired whether it would be safe or expedient to offer money for my ship. He thought it could do no harm.

I found the General busy with his secretaries, and expressed a wish that he would receive a sum of money instead of my ship.

66

"You are mistaken, my dear sir," said he, smiling, the Republic does not want money, it is willing to pay money. My young friend, your reluctance to go surprises me. I should think you would eagerly covet the glory of transporting, in your ship, the conqueror of Italy and his staff to Egypt. Such good fortune does not often fall to the lot of so young a man. You will visit a celebrated country, and connect your name in history with the hero of the age." And he turned to dictate to his secretaries with an air that said, it must be so.

Visions of glory and delight passed before me, but they vanished when I thought of duty and of home. Reflection suggested to me another expedient to get free. All the salt provisions known to be in the city had been seized, and I knew that more was wanted. I again called on the General, and asked him if he wished to purchase salt beef. Yes, yes," said he quickly. Have you got any? I will give you your own price for it. Where is it?"

"Certainly."

I will, then, deliver you the salt beef, if you will give me a written permission to depart with my vessel."

"Oh; that is not paying a price. Your vessel I must have. You will hereafter thank me for giving you an opportunity of laying up for yourself recollections which will always give you pleasure. I must have your beef, too, and be assured I shall have it, if it is in the city. General Bonaparte will soon be here, and you must be prepared to receive him on board." A decisive bow put an end to the interview.

For several days I felt much anxiety. I had no doubt that he had ordered his subordinates to search for the beef, and feared it would be found. At length an officer came to me, and told me that the beef was so essential to the army that the General had concluded to accept my proposal. Without any more words, an order for the beef was exchanged for a written permission to depart. I took a cargo of wheat on board and sailed, in a few days, for Barcelona.

On my arrival at the port of Barcelona, several men, ragged and filthy, came on board and inquired what cargo we had brought. We answered, wheat, and they left us. Not long afterwards, several others, genteelly dressed, and having the manners of gentlemen, came on board, and asked me if I had any wheat for sale. I told them that I had brought a cargo for their market. They then proposed to purchase it, and, after some talk, offered me more than I expected to obtain on shore. During the conversation, my suspicions were awakened, and I wished to ascertain if all was right. I drew from them, without much difficulty, that they intended to land the wheat secretly without paying the duties, and could, therefore, afford to give me more for it than I could realize in any other way. I discovered, in short, they were professed smugglers. I told them, if they would give me their names, I would consider their offer, and let them know my determination. They thereupon gave me their names, fairly written, and departed.

Now, I have you, thought I, I will complain of you to the Intendant, have you punished as you deserve, and sustain the reputation of the Yankees for honesty.

Early the next morning, I hastened to the Intendant, made my complaint,

though in his lifetime he boasted, with a little aristocratic affectation:—

Nulla taberna meos habeat, neque pila libellos

Queis manus insudet vulgi, Hermogenisque Tigelli.

They say that king Louis was interrupted, while making annotations on the margin of his Horace, to hear the first news of the landing of Napoleon at Cannes.

The "lank-haired Corsican" was no lover of our poet. The classic rules and verses, nine years pressed, pruned, and polished, chimed not with the ardent nature of the great revolutionist and practical romanticist. He "walked through" the rules with "an astonishing disregard" of the traditional proprieties and unities. He preferred Ossian. Was not that characteristic ? And that it should be an imitation, Macpherson's Ossian, too! A something grand, dimly sublime, vast and vague, real high poetic qualities mingled with melodramatic bombast. The book has great poetic elements floating chaotically in a nimbus of puffy wordslike, with a difference, the truthful elements in Macpherson Abbott's history of Napoleon.

Seeking an explanation of his admiration for Ossian, one is persuaded that Napoleon's Ossian might be something quite different from yours or mine. Those crude poems, passing through that creative mind, may have changed "into something rich and strange," not conceived by our barrener common natures. Falconer's Shipwreck was to Walter Scott a far higher order of poem than the Falconer's Shipwreck that Jenkins reads. The high alchemy by which dull pages, submitted to "such seething brains, such shaping fantasies," are transmuted to golden legends, commands our respect, however occult the process may be to our lower reason.

After all, so much depends upon how you look at things-poems, men, or dead-walls. You see "sermons in stones and books in the running brooks," where, accordingly as his views are geological or industrial, Jenkins sees only "specimens" and "privileges." It is quite possible, withal, that Ossian appears better in French than in Macpherson's English. If pines and oaks nowhere flourish so well as in their native soil, some of the less noble growths gain

VOL. VIII.-4

strength and symmetry by transplanting.

And here as well as anywhere, let me say a word of French translations. A minority report on the subject is much needed. Having no competence to draw it up, yet, pending the services of a fitter pen, I beg the attention of the "general reader," especially of him who tells me that he reads French as well as he does English, though he does not speak it, to one or two observations. And the first observation is, dear General, that you do not read French as well as you do English-unless you read English very badly. One large part of the pleasure you find in the perusal of Burns, or Bushe, or Jeremy Taylor, lies in the music of their language. A large part of this pleasure lies undeveloped for you and me in Beranger, or Berryer, or Bossuet. My dear General, you do not know, and, consequently, do not read, French like a native, just because your ear, and eye, and intelligence are not wonted, from birth upward, to its words and phrases. In fine, if you will permit me, you do not read French. What you really read is, at best, a current mental translation. And this on the supposition that you can translate currently. You have gone through Charles XII., and Telemaque, and Gil Blasadmirable works all-and have done a book full of exercises, and have run through the story of some of Dumas' or

Geo. Sand's novels. It does not follow that you know your French, even in the first dictionary sense of knowledge. I will lay you a wager-of ten to onethat you cannot, without preparation, render into intelligible English, word for word, ten entire pages of any one of the first three volumes I will take from the shelf. Here is one by Gauthier, one by Hugo, another by Balzac.

We are apt to say, we constantly hear it said, that the French cannot understand our authors—that their tongue cannot reproduce the richness, the grandeur, the depth, and the delicacy of English thought and sentiment. Agreed, if you insist upon it. Now let us look at the other side. Pray show me there, a complete transfer of Molière, of Hugo, of Beranger, of Barbier. I have seen none. Their grace becomes awkwardness, their wit is blunted, their music is lost, their fire is quenched, in large part. They fall as far behind their originals

as a French Burns or Shakespeare fall behind their originals. Whether Burns and Shakespeare are not originally far in advance of and higher than any French poets, is another question, which I do not presume to discuss. I will only venture to say, aside and in a parenthetical way, that Madame Desbordes Valmore seems to me a sweeter, profounder poet than Mrs. Hemans, and that Barbier would vainly seek his equal for vigor, conciseness, and imagery at once bold and apt, among contemporary English satirists.

It will be well worth the while of the minority reporters to notice, "in this connection," that the French do have a Byron, Milton, Burns, Pope, Young, Shakespeare, in their own tongue several translations of some of them. The minority can make something of this fact, as an argument in favor of the capacity of the French mind and language to take in and render English thought and sentiment. It is noticeable that these authors in this shape are popularly appreciated. There are, for example, two complete translations of Shakespeare's dramatic works :-Letourneur's and Benjamin Laroche's. Both have passed through many editions. Of the former, one has been annotated by Guizot. Of the latter, there is now in course of publication a cheap illustrated edition, issued in numbers, for sale at all the stalls for a franc and a half a number. Here is a copy of Hamlet-by still another hand-that cost me but four sous. To say that all the philosophy, and all the sentiment, and all the melody of that rare product of the divinest of human minds is rendered here, would not be true. Of the thousands who read it in its primitive form, how many of us sound all its depths, soar with the author to all its heights, catch all its harmonies? Without venturing to answer that questionwhich is also aside-I go on to state that this translation is imperfect-very imperfect if you will:-but mind you, General, not so absurd as, by a very natural mistake, we are at first sight inclined to think. Take these lines at hazard:

"Helas! si cette chair voulait, decomposée, Se dissoudre en vapeur, ou se fondre en rosée !

Et si l'accord pouvait se retablir un peu Entre la suicide et la foudre de Dieu!" Although the example is not as marked

a one as I might, with five minutes, searching, have found, you are ready to exclaim, that this is a sad falling off from the original, which, if your memory serve you [Act I., Scene 2], you directly quote to show the contrast, with a complacency as if you had written it yourself. General, did its ever strike you that the translation you find so ridiculous is your own! The French may have wandered from the original, but what you read, really read and are thinking of, is your English translation of the French-Shakespeare diluted to the third degree-a double disadvantage.

A propos of Shakespeare, and still further aside, if possible, from the central point of my general view, if I may be considered clearly to have one, I want to introduce here a striking proof-though we do not need it-of the thoroughness of Shakespeare's study, I had better said, of his intuitive or inspired surety of glance, the truthfulness of his analysis of human nature. You may read it in Augustin Thierry's Essai sur l'Histoire du Tiers Etat, first edition, page 204. Colbert, the great statesman who contributed so largely to make a Grande Monarque of Louis XIV., loved and served his master with a sort of a canine affection, believing in him as the personification of the public good. Towards the close of his life, his patriotic counsels rudely rejected by the ungrateful object of his worship, he discovered the illusion. The painful disenchantment hastened and embittered his last hours. On his death-bed, he said, speaking of the king, "If I had done for God what I have done for that man, I should have been twice saved, and now I know not what is to become of me." Louis, who was ill himself at the time, sent him a letter containing friendly phrases. When those about him asked him to dictate a response, he at first seemed not to hear, then said: "I do not want to hear any more of the king; at least, let him leave me now in quiet; it is to the King of kings that I must now think of answering." See Henry VIII., Act III., Scene 2. Colbert had never read Shakespeare. But Shakespeare had read Colbert, and all souls of all times and nations.

One more contribution to the minority report. It will hardly be denied, that the difficulty of transfer from German