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convents of Italy, but they appeared to me full of life compared with this circle.

The

Every fifteen minutes, a voice was heard, asking the most insipid question, and receiving the dullest answer; and the ennui, for a moment removed, returned with new weight upon these women, who might have been thought unhappy, if a habit, formed from childhood, had not taught them to support it. At length, the gentlemen arrived; and this moment, so long expected, brought no great change in the manner of these women. men continued their conversation near the fireplace, the women remained in the extreme part of the room, distributing the cups of tea; and, when the hour of departure arrived, they went away with their husbands, ready to begin again, the next day, a life which differed from the preceding only by the date of the almanac, and by the trace of years which came at length to be imprinted upon the face of these women, as if they had truly lived during this time.

man.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.

1792—.

This writer has been much before the world, within the last few years, in connection with the downfall of monarchy in France. But he is distinguished no less as an orator and poet, than as a statesHis Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, though in prose, is the perfect poetry of travel, and "traces, in strains of almost redundant beauty, the steps of an enlightened European pilgrim to the birth-place of our religion and the cradle of our race. Besides many Miscellaneous Poems, he has written The Last Canto of Childe Harold. The History of the Girondists, and The French Revolution of 1848, are recent works of his.

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[Translated from the French.]

ON LEAVING FRANCE FOR THE EAST.
DIM longings draw me on, and point my path
To Eastern sands, to Shem's deserted shore,
The cradle of the world, where God, in wrath,
Hardened the human heart of yore.

I have not yet felt, on the sea of sand,

The slumberous rockings of the desert bark;
Nor quenched my thirst, at eve, with quivering hand,
By Hebron's well, beneath the palm-trees dark;

Nor in the pilgrim's tent my mantle spread,
Nor laid me in the dust where Job hath lain,
Nor, while the canvas murmured overhead,
Dreamed Jacob's mystic dreams again.

Of the world's pages one is yet unread;·
How the stars tremble in Chaldea's sky,
With what a sense of nothingness we tread,

How the heart beats when God appears so nigh;How on the soul, beside some column lone,

The shadows of old days descend and hover,How the grass speaks, the earth sends out its moan, And the breeze wails that wanders over.

I have not heard, in the tall cedar-top,
The cries of nations echo to and fro,
Nor seen from Lebanon the eagles drop

On Tyre's deep-buried palaces below;
I have not laid my head upon the ground

Where Tadmor's temples in the dust decay,
Nor startled with my footfall's dreary sound
The waste where Memnon's empire lay.

I have not, stretched where Jordan's current flows,
Heard how the loud-lamenting river weeps,
With moans and cries sublimer even than those
With which the Mournful Prophet stirred its deeps;

Nor felt the transports which the soul inspire
In the deep grot where he, the bard of kings,
Felt, at the dead of night, a hand of fire

Seize on his harp, and sweep the strings.

I have not wandered on the plain whereon,
Beneath the olive-tree, the Saviour wept;
Nor traced his tears the hallowed trees upon,
Which jealous angels have not all outswept ;
Nor, in the garden, watched through nights sublime,
Where, while the bloody sweat was undergone,
The echo of his sorrows and our crime

Rung in one listening ear alone.

Nor have I bent my forehead on the spot

Where his ascending footstep pressed the clay;
Nor worn with lips devout the rock-hewn grot

Where, in his mother's tears embalmed, he lay;
Nor smote my breast on that sad mountain-head,
Where, even in death, conquering the Powers of Air,
His arms, as to embrace our earth, he spread,
And bowed his head, to bless it there.

For these I leave my home; for these I stake
My little span of useless years below;
What matters it where winter-winds may shake

The trunk that yields nor fruit nor foliage now?
Fool! says the crowd. Theirs is the foolish part!
Not in one spot can the soul's food be found;
No! to the poet thought is bread, — his heart

-

Lives on his Maker's works around!

[From "Memoirs of My Youth;" translated from the French, by Eugene

Plunkett.]

THE SELLING OF MILLY.

I SUMMONED One of those men who are respected in the country, - who purchase property at wholesale to sell it again at retail, one of those intelligent coiners of earth; and I said to him, "Sell as much of Milly, for me, as will make a hundred thousand francs;" or, rather, as Shakspeare's Merchant of Venice said to the Jew, "Sell a piece of my flesh for me!"

This man, whom thou knowest,

-for he comes from thy place, Mons. M., was tender-hearted. I perceived tears in his eyes. He would have given his profit to have spared me that sorrow; but it was too late for deliberation. We went together through the grounds, under a vagué pretext to examine what part of the estate could be most conveniently separated from the rest, and be divided into lots suitable to the buyers of the neighborhood. But it was then that the embarrassment became more intricate, and the anguish more heart-rending, between us. "Sir," said he to me, extending his arm, and dividing the air with a gesture,

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as a surveyor divides a piece of land, "here is a lot which might easily be sold together, and which would not make too great a breach in the remainder." Yes," answered I, “but it is the vineyard planted by my father the year of my birth, and which he always charged us to keep, in memory of him, as the best part of the estate, irrigated with his perspiration."-"Well, then," resumed the appraiser, "here is another that would greatly tempt buyers with limited means, because it is fit for cattle.". 66 Yes," returned I; "but it may not be done; it's the river, the meadow and the orchard, where our mother used to make us play and bathe in childhood, and where she nursed, with so much care, those apple, apricot and cherry trees for us. Let us seek elsewhere.". "That hillock behind the house?" 'Why, that's the hill that closed in the garden, and stood opposite the window of the family parlor. Who could look at it now, without weeping?"—"That cluster of houses apart from the rest, with those slanting vines, which descend into the valley?". "O! that's the residence of my sister's foster-father, and of the old woman who reared me with so much love. I might as well purchase two places in the cemetery for them, for they would soon be brought there by the grief with which they would see themselves driven from their home and their vineyard."—"Well, then, the main building, with the out-houses, the gardens and the space around the enclosure?" "But I wish to die there, in my father's bed. It's impossible; it would be the suicide of all domestic feelings!". "What have you to say against the bottom of yonder dale, which cannot be perceived from your windows?"—"Nothing more than that it contains the old grave in which were buried, before my own eyes, during my childhood, my little brother and a sister, for whom I have so bitterly mourned. Let us go elsewhere! everywhere here we would mutilate a sacred sentiment!"

We walked onward in vain; we found nothing which could be separated from the rest without carrying off, at the same time, a shred of my soul. In the evening, I returned mournfully to the house. I did not sleep.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

SAAVEDRA.

1547-1616.

The circumstances of the early life of Cervantes are not known. His history may be briefly given, in the following words from Carlyle: "A certain strong man, of former time, fought stoutly at Lepanto; worked stoutly as Algerine slave; stoutly delivered himself from such working; with stout cheerfulness endured famine and nakedness and the world's ingratitude; and, sitting in jail, with only one arin left, wrote our joyfullest, and, all but one, deepest, modern book, and named it Don Quixote." It is a coincidence worthy of remark, that Cervantes and Shakspeare closed their earthly state of being on the same day. The works of the latter are not more celebrated, in his own country, than is Don Quixote in Spain.

[From "Don Quixote;" translated from the Spanish.]

DON QUIXOTE'S ADVENTURE WITH THE WIND

MILLS.

As they were thus discoursing, they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills, which are in that plain; and, as soon as Don Quixote espied them, he said to his squire, "Fortune disposes our affairs better than we ourselves could have desired; look yonder, friend Sancho Panza, where thou mayest discover somewhat more than thirty monstrous giants, whom I intend to encounter and slay, and with their spoils we will begin to enrich ourselves; for it is lawful war, and doing God good service, to remove so wicked a generation from off the face of the earth." "What giants?" said Sancho Panza. —“Those thou seest yonder," answered his master, "with their long arms; for some are wont to have them almost of the length of two leagues."—"Look, sir," answered Sancho; "those which appear yonder are not giants, but windmills; and what seem to be arms are the sails, which, whirled about by the wind, make the mill-stone go."—"It is very evident," answered Don Quixote "that thou art not versed in the business of adventures. They are giants; and, if thou art afraid, get thee aside and pray, whilst I engage with them in fierce and unequal combat." So saying, he clapped spurs to his steed, notwithstanding the cries his squire sent after him, assuring him that they were certainly windmills, and not giants. But he was so fully possessed that they were giants, that he neither heard the outcries of his squire Sancho, nor yet discerned what they were, though he

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