same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery to turn it gray. . . .

Above all one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundation of the world, the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.

It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache; it infallibly prevented the hair from turning gray; it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion; it was the National Razor which shaved close. Who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the cross was denied. . . . It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, and abolished the beautiful and the good.

...

ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

BONIVARD.

TRANSLATED AND ARRANGED BY THE EDITORS.

BONIVARD failed in his efforts to free Geneva. Carried to Chillon, he endured a frightful captivity bound round the waist by a chain whose other end was fastened to an iron ring attached to a pillar. Thus he remained for six years, knowing no liberty beyond the chain's length. Able to lie down only as the chain permitted;

turning round his pillar like a wild beast; wearing the pavement with his monotonous march, exasperated by the thought that his captivity was availing nothing for the enfranchisement of his country, and that Geneva and he himself were destined to eternal fetters. Why, in his long night broken by no dawn, whose silence was disturbed only by the sound of the waves of the lake breaking against the walls of his dungeon,—why, O my God! did not his mind kill his body, or his body his mind? Why did not his jailer find him some morning dead or an idiot, when one single idea, one eternal idea, must break the heart and vanquish the brain? And yet, during this time, during six years, during this eternity, -not a cry, not a complaint, said his jailers, except doubtless when the skies let loose the tempest, when the storm raised the waves, when the wind and rain beat against the walls; for then his voice was lost in the great voice of nature: for then Thou alone, O my God! Thou alone couldst distinguish his cries and his groans; and his jailers who had not rejoiced in his despair, found him on the morrow calm and resigned, because the tempest was then stilled in his own heart as in Nature.

Oh, without that, without that would he not have broken his head against the pillar? Would he have awaited the day when there was a tumultuous rush into his prison and when a hundred voices at once shouted: "Bonivard, thou art free!"

"And Geneva ?"

"Free also!"

CHILLON.

LORD BYRON.

ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art—
For there thy habitation is the heart-
The heart which love of thee alone can bind:
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned,
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.

Chillon thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar, for 'twas trod
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonivard! Let none those marks efface,
For they appeal from tyranny to God.

CLEOPATRA AT ACTIUM.

THOMAS K. HERVEY.

THE banners of the world are met upon that wild blue

wave,

The sun hath risen that shall set upon an emperor's

grave,

From tongues of many a land bursts forth the warshout to the breeze,

And half the crowns of all the earth are played for on

the seas.

The ocean hath a tinge of blood a sound of woe the

air,

Death swims his pale steed through the flood-Oh, what doth woman there?

The shout of nations in their strife rings far along the lea,

Then what doth Egypt's dark-eyed queen upon that battle sea?

The Cydnus, hath it not the same bright wave and gentle flow

With which it stole to Tarsus, in those happy years ago, When music haunted all the shores by which its waters

rolled,

And she came down the river in her galley of the gold?

Her oars were of the silver then and to her purple sails
And in amid her raven hair, came only perfumed gales,
And Cupid trimmed the silken ropes along the Cedarn
spars,

And she lay like a goddess on her pillow of the stars.
Oh, the old city! and alas, the young and blessed dream
That fell into her spirit first upon its silver stream !
The wild, sweet memories of that morn still o'er her
feelings float,

And love has launched this battle-bark that steered that golden boat.

And she is yet, to one high heart, through all this

cloud of war,

As in that city of the sea, its own and only star—

The cynosure that shines so bright, across the place of

graves;

As first it rose upon his soul from o'er the Cydnus'

waves.

Oh, love that is so bold to dare should be more strong to do!

Or what, Oh, what doth Egypt there with that soft, silken crew?

And she should have a firmer soul who treads the bat

tle deck ;

And passion when it fails to save is, Oh, too sure to wreck !

And hers is still the spendthrift heart that, when a wayward girl,

In passion's home to pleasure's bowl cast in a priceless pearl ;

But Oh, her wealth of hoarded gems were all too poor to

pay

The one rich pearl, in this wild hour, her fears have flung away.

The princely pearl to whom her brow, though dark seemed, Oh, how fair!

And crowns were only precious things, when in her raven hair;

Who paid her smiles with diadems - and bought at empire's cost

The love which he must lose to-day- when all beside is lost!