it had been better for him. But we do not wish now to speak evil of Racine. It may have been his fault or his misfortune that he was too touchy, too thin-skinned; we may recollect, however, that had his nature been less sensitive, his poetry would probably have lacked some of its most delicate and distinctive characteristics, Racine expresses himself always with great clearness, and his meaning may be gathered instantly from his words. When young he had all the tastes and literary perceptions of a scholar. In this he was in advance of his PortRoyalist teachers. Lancelot and Nicole were men who led a monkish life, and it was nowise their ambition to seek after elegant scholarship. They were sound grammarians, who taught earnestly and conscientiously the pupils entrusted to their care. Racine's predilection was for Greek, and those of his plays that relate to the stories in Greek mythology are generally accounted his best. Voltaire seems to give the highest praise to Iphigénie, but modern opinion is in favour of Phèdre, as being upon the whole Racine's most perfect tragedy. We recollect G. H. Lewes, a good dramatic critic, telling us that of all Racine's characters, he placed highest Hermione in Andromaque. And those who know Racine well may find that in Athalie the incident and conduct of the drama is better arranged than in his other tragedies. The interest here is not confined to one or two personages. We have four characters, on all of whom the weight of the piece is made to lean. If it is fortunate for Racine that we cannot easily determine which is his best tragedy, it is, perhaps, equally fortunate that we can name his worst. It is Bérénice. Racine wrote one comedy, Les Plaideurs (The Litigants), which he borrowed from The Wasps of Aristophanes. It is undoubtedly amusing, but the wit is not seen readily, and the piece is of a mongrel kind. The language is that of comedy, but the fun is nearly all farcical.

It is not very easy to gauge Racine's powers, and say what are the most distinctive features we see in his plays. Frenchmen say that Racine was "tendre." We must confess our inability to understand the word. Is it tender, or affectionate, or soft-hearted? We believe the word is misapplied. It has got into currency, and is therefore used. Racine had the power of putting into the mouths of his personages such

words as express their feelings very aptly; and therefore, because the object of all tragedy is to show terror and pity by the effect it produces, Racine has been called "tendre"! In England we call him "cold." That epithet is as ill-chosen as the other. A dramatist may write in verse, and yet not be a poet. We do not say this is the case with Racine, but we think his lines do not usually show the strong instinctive feeling of poetry which longs to express itself in verse. We hear that Boileau taught Racine how to write difficult verses easily-that is, to make them appear easy. If the tradition is true, the pupil profited by the instruction. not necessary for us now to determine why Racine chose to leave off writing for the stage. The common idea that he was converted to religion, and thought the theatre a pernicious amusement, is to us too farfetched to be wholly credible. Religious motives, perhaps, had something to do with it, but other reasons must have operated with him. It is as difficult to determine another less important point-the cause of his disfavour at Court towards the end of his life. He did fall into disfavour, certainly, but the story has probably been somewhat exaggerated.

It is

The

Louis the Fourteenth was fond of the theatre until he was forty years of age. At that time he was surfeited with pleasures, and had become blasé. For the first twenty years of his reign, he felt a pride in the men who had put a halo of glory over the country. He asked Boileau one day, who was "le plus rare" of the great writers who then honoured his reign. Boileau answered at once: "Sire, c'est Molière." The King replied: "I should not have thought so; but you are a better judge than I am." natural instincts of Louis the Fourteenth in literary matters were not bad. They were probably not profound; but, so far as they went, he had a capability for seeing truly. It is certain that in many theatrical performances before the Court his opinion was eagerly sought after. judgment was generally better than that of his courtiers, and more than once, after they had expressed their disapproval of a play, they changed their minds because the monarch, who had been slow to say what he thought, had thought well of it. Such was the case with Racine's comedy, Les Plaideurs, and with Molière's Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Without the protection of Louis the Fourteenth, Molière's

His

Tartuffe might never have been allowed on the stage during its author's lifetime.

We have said nothing of the minor French dramatists of the seventeenth century, for we have thought it better to keep to the main high-road and confine our few remarks to well-known names. Had we gone into the bye-ways and spoken of the theatre as illustrated by the second-class writers, the subject, taken altogether, would have been too large in the space at our disposal either to write about or to be read with satisfaction.

From the commencement of the Comédie Française, in 1680, to the year 1700, we find that on the public theatre in Paris-it will be recollected that there was then only one theatre of Corneille's plays there were altogether nine hundred and one representations; of Molière's, two thousand three hundred and fifty; and of Racine's, seven hundred and fifty-six. Corneille's Cid was his only play performed more than one hundred times; Molière's Tartuffe was his highest-one hundred and eighty-one; then his Misanthrope, one hundred and fifty. Racine's comedy, Les Plaideurs, was his highest-one hundred and twentyeight; then his Phèdre, one hundred and fourteen; then Andromaque, one hundred and eleven. Before the Court, Molière had altogether one hundred and ninety-three representations during that period; Corneille, one hundred and twenty-seven ; and Racine, one hundred and twenty-three. We must recollect, however, as between Corneille and Racine, that nineteen plays of the older author are represented, but only ten of his later rival; the advantage, therefore, would seem to be in Racine's favour.

Here our incomplete sketch of a most interesting period must come to an end. All who are interested in the old French stage will do well to study the subject in Mr. Hawkins's volumes, which are as amusing as they are painstaking and accurate and that is high praise.

LAUREL.

A PICTURED face, in frame of gold,
Large, tender eyes, and forehead bold,
And firm, unflinching mouth;
A face that tells of mingled birth-
The calmness of the northern earth,
The passion of the south!
The one face in the world to me,
The face I never more shall see

Until God's kingdom come!

Oh, tender eyes! oh, firm strong lips! What comfort in my life's eclipse?

What succour? Ye are dumb!

I brought the blossoms of the spring
To deck my true love's offering,
While he was far away:
With rose's bloom, with pansy's grace,
I wreathed the well-beloved face;
I have no flowers to-day.

But laurel, laurel for my brave,
My hero lying in his grave

Upon that foreign sod!
He passed amid the crash of guns,
Beyond the farthest sun of suns,
A kingly soul, to God!

He died upon the battle-field,
He knew not, he, to fly nor yield,

Bold Britain's worthy son!
And I will wreathe his laurel crown,
Although the bitter tears run down-
I was his chosen one.

He loved his country, so did I;
He parted forth to do or die,

And I-I let him go;

Oh dear, dear land! we gave thee all,
God bless the banner, and the pall,

God help the mourner's woe!

I hear the bells ring loud and sweet,
I hear the shouting in the street,
For joy of victory;
The very children cease their play,
To babble of the victor's bay,

And pennons flutter free.

I hear the vivas long and loud,
As they ride onward through the crowd,
His comrades bold and brave;
The shouts of triumph rend the air,
Oh, he must hear them lying there,

My hero in his grave!

I do not grudge thee, darling mine!
I, the last daughter of a line

Whose warrior blood ran free
Upon the battle-fields of old;
Thou wast not mine to have and hold,
The land had need of thee.

I do not grudge thee; I shall smile
Beloved, in a little while,

And glory in thy name;

I hold love's laurel in my hand,
But take thou from the grateful land
Thy wreath of deathless fame!

ON THE ROAD.

In spite of the necessary decadence of the road as a means of communication for business-folk since the introduction of railways, there are still many more people who may be said to live by it, and on it, than dwellers in great towns can believe. In every community there is a certain proportion of beings "restless, unfixed in principles and place," to whom the notion of remaining bound down to one given spot for any length of time is not only abhorrent, but intolerable. Many of them follow callings which are eminently respectable, if by the epithet "respectable we are to understand honesty, sobriety, and industry. On the other hand, there are many who are simply pariahs of society -men who have long since cut adrift all

"

but poor substitutes. The dates of country fairs were as accurately known amongst the travelling professions as are the dates of birthdays in families, and it may be imagined that no little care was necessary in the preparation of the year's campaign to ensure attendance at as many of these festivals as possible. We may wonder, when we see these men at such fairs as remain, where they come from; but if we were to question one of them, we should discover him to be a complete walking almanack of such events in every part of the country.

In spite of the wondrous changes which have passed over our country during the last half-century, the pedlar of old days still flourishes, and Autolycus is by no means an extinct being. He may still be seen progressing slowly along the cottage rows of village streets, calling at house after house with his oilskin-cased basket containing the very same collection of worthless gew-gaws which have been the peculiar stock-in-trade of pedlars from all time.

He is still regarded as an oracle and newsman, for, although villages nowadays mostly have their clubs and reading-rooms, there are many people who never see a newspaper, who would not be interested by it if they did see it, and who are far more ready to hear the last piece of gossip or scandal from the next village than the most startling piece of news from the greater world without. He is often a rogue, but he is a capital road companion, inasmuch as it is as much his business to keep himself au courant with what is going on, as it is to sell cheap jewellery and fancy ribbons; and, as the success of his calling depends to no small extent upon his command of the "gift of the gab," he is never dull company.

Another very flourishing professional wanderer is the gatherer of simples, or, as he calls himself, the herbalist. The conservatism of our country folk, in the matter of medicine, comprises, it may be said, almost all their conservatism. They are beginning to regard ghosts and bogles as stuff and nonsense; they have learnt to be moderate in their estimation of the Londoner, regarding him as neither a very marvellous nor a very terrible being; they have forgotten their old customs to a very great extent, and their old songs entirely; but to a wonderful extent they believe in the efficacy of the remedies handed down almost unchanged from the

days when the monks were the sole depositaries of medical and surgical knowledge. Our simple-gatherer is, therefore, a sort of doctor in his way. He believes firmly that apoplexy, paralysis, gout, and rheumatism are to be alienated by use of wallflowers; that the Canterbury-bell or throte wort is good for swellings and inflammations of the throat; that golden rod stops blood-flow; that Jesuit's bark cures ague; that the "golden water," made from liliesof-the-valley, is good to strengthen the limbs of children; that red valerian, peony, and columbine are invaluable-peony in especial hastening the growth of children's teeth, its dried roots being tied round their necks.

He can tell us all about the carminative hot and cold seeds, the opening roots, the emollient herbs, the capillary herbs, the sudorific woods, the cordial flowers, the vast list of flowers and roots which cure diseases of corresponding form-such as nettle-tea for nettle-rash, worm root for lunacy, liver wort for liver complaints, saffron-flowers for scarlet-fever. He works hard, early and late; for his occupation necessitates a good deal of trespassing. Long before the woodman has shouldered his axe, and started for the copses, the gatherer of simples may be seen creeping along the banks of sedgy streams, or kneedeep in the grass and flowers of pleasant fields, or groping along hedgerows, or pushing his way through thick undergrowth, always in a shamefaced sort of way; for his chief enemy, the keeper, cannot be persuaded that a man carrying a stout stick and a basket is not after rabbits or any other marketable creature that comes handy.

Strange to say, most of these wanderers hail from the great metropolis. We have met them in the most unlikely places, at the most out-of-the-way spots. A German bandsman has importuned us for a contribution under the very shadow of the great gateway of the once famous house of Our Lady of Walsingham. He and his companions, scarcely able to express themselves in English, had been on the tramp over East Anglia for a month, and were then going due West. We have heard the unmistakable accent of an East London pedlar within a stone's throw of Hadrian's Wall, at a once famous inn known as The Twice Brewed, standing on the military. road between Carlisle and Newcastle. We have met Punch and Judy crossing that wild expanse of fell country which lies

between Allendale town and Alston in Cumberland, the box in which Punch and Company travelled being a Bermondsey haddock-case. We have heard a music hall ditty, which three weeks before was being howled and whistled by every London gamin, shouted forth in the quiet street of a Dartmoor village by a gentleman who must have been a lineal descendant of the travelling chapmen and ballad-mongers of old time, such a curious sheaf of old ditties had he under his arm. But the retailer of ballads is a rare object nowadays. Music is a cheap and frequent taste, and the village youths who used to pass their leisure time in ringing grandsire bobs and triple-majors in the church steeple, are now drilled into the execution of glees and madrigals by the parson and his lady folk. The professional tramp is an entirely distinct being from any road wanderers hitherto named. From his title one would imagine that he amongst all of them would be the greatest traveller. Such, however, is not the case. Miserable wretch as he looks, he has a very keen eye to personal convenience and comfort, and it may be noted that he is rarely to be met with in outlandish counties, or very far from a main road. He bears, in fact, the same relation to other knights of the road that the captain of a coasting vessel bears to the merchant skipper, who wanders all over the globe, and who does not know until he arrives at a port where next he may go. As a rule, he confines himself to certain districts lying between certain "houses "i.e., unions, with the character of which he is thoroughly well acquainted. He is always on the tramp, but although in his peculiar limping mode of progression he covers more miles of road in a day than his personal appearance would warrant us in believing him capable of performing, he sees a very small circle of country in proportion to the time he occupies on business." As often as not he confines himself to a certain country or a certain round of parishes; the spirit of adventure and exploration is not strong within him, and he very much prefers monotony with certain results, to variety with uncertainty. The same custom is apparent amongst those itinerant vendors of basket-work and cheap hardware, who are generically known as "gipsies," although in nine cases out of ten they have not a drop of true Romany blood in their veins, and whose wheeled houses are such objects of envy and mystery to the youthful mind. They confine their

movements to certain roads, which they traverse at certain seasons, and may be observed to pass particular places at almost mathematically regular intervals. We once came across a basket-cart belonging to John Wild, of Marden, Kent, in the midst of Salisbury Plain, but it was an exceptional occurrence, probably arising from the fact that John Wild had been infringing the eighth commandment somewhere in his usual district, and was travelling "abroad" from motives of personal convenience.

One question to which we have never had an entirely satisfactory answer is, What becomes of all these nomad folk during the long months of winter? Some of them, we can understand, amalgamate themselves with the population of great cities, and follow other callings; some, we can readily believe, get boarded and lodged at the public expense in unions, prisons, and even in regiments, whence they emerge with the first burst of vernal weather. At any rate, from the middle of November to the beginning of April they are conspicuous by their absence from the roads, and the curious explorer who would select that period of the year for a study of our English road-professionals might be pardoned for believing that the race became extinct with the old glory of the road itself.

ODD STORIES ABOUT RINGS.

THE late Colonel G. Paulett Cameron, C.B., possessed a singularly curious ring, called the "Tiger's Claw," to which was attached an episode of a sanguinary character, related by the historians of India.

About the year 1650, Sevajee founded the Mahratta monarchy, which, subsequently, was destined to become one of the most powerful that arose on the ruins of the Mogul empire. At the period of its first uprising, it was of the highest importance for Sevajee to gain possession of the rich and renowned city of Beeja, which, at that period, was said by Eastern writers to be thirty miles in circumference. Finding he was not strong enough to take it by force, he sought an interview with the Mogul governor, Afzool Khan. It was agreed, to defeat treachery, that each should be attended by only a single follower. the appointed time Sevajee prepared himself for what he considered a holy work

At