"There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire; There is blood on your pointers' feet; There is blood on the game you sell, squire, And there's blood on the game you eat! "You have sold the laboring man, squire, To pay for your seat in the House, squire, "You made him a poacher yourself, squire, "When pack'd in one reeking chamber, Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay; "But the merry brown hares came leaping Where the clover and corn lay sleeping On the side of the white chalk hill." You can hardly say now that I have given you nothing to think of; for this rugged rhyme suggests a world-full of wandering conjectures. Yet another sweet half-dozen of verselets for I feel in poetic humor-I take from a daily paper, where they should not lie unnoticed. If you know that sweet, half-lily-half-pink colored flower called arbutus, whose fragrance is like that of a May morning after a shower-you will pin While the rain patter'd in on the rotting bride-it to the cover of your herbarian, where this bed, first nestling of the spring lies pressed. We have copied from a recent illustrated | graving upon wood. The time has gone edition of Goldsmith's Poems some new designs. They are full of meaning, and in the English copy, beautifully rendered. No branch of art is making steadier and richer progress in our day than the art of en by when woodcuts were considered merely as picturesque aids to the text. Sentiment is now conveyed by the joint labor of designer and engraver, as thoroughly as by language. From "Eliza Cook's Journal," JASMIN, THE BARBER-POET. ing with the poetic character-they have heard the lark's song filling the heavens, as the happy bird fanned the milk-white cloud with its wing-listened to the purling of the brook, the bleating of sheep, the milkmaid's and reaper's song; and their minds were daily fed upon the choicest influences of nature. But a barber and hair-dresser, what poetic associations has he, any more than a tailor can have? And yet there are poetic tailors too; and why not? Has any one read Gerald Massey's poems? If so, they will see the true and unmistakable poetic fire burning brightly there. And Jasmin is a barber, and disdains not the craft, but loves it, for it gives him independence. He ennobles it, he glorifies it, for the lowliest work is elevated by pure and hap FRANCE, like England, has its poets of the people-workmen who cheer their toil by happy thoughts, and whose glorious and triumphant songs are oft-times heard ring ing clear and beautiful, high above the din and mêlée of the battle of life. You may detect in their poetic offerings a want of that classical taste and polish which are the result of careful scholastic culture; sometimes they are obscured by the rude patois of the remote country district in which these poets grow, as are the Doric effusions of our own Scottish Burns; and yet you cannot fail at once to see that the true fire burns in them -that their lips have been touched by the live coal from the altar, and that their hearts and souls are inspired with the true spirit of poetry. Of such is Jasmin, one of the greatest liv-py thought; it is lifted and lighted up by ing poets of France, though he is-yes! let us confess it a barber! A barber-poet, one would scarcely expect this! Yet it is so. Burns a peasant, Bloomfield and Clare ploughboys; these do not seem out of keep the voice of song and the beautiful utterances of poetry. Barbers, however, are usually accounted men of spirit and wit in France. Thus Beaumarchais makes Figaro the barber, the wit of his famous play; Le Sage, in his "Gil | part of the country. So that Jasmin posBlas," pays the same compliment to the sesses a kind of poetic descent, as he himself craft. In Spain and Italy, the barber is sometimes jocularly boasts. often the one brilliant man in his town or village, and his shop is the place where all the news of the district circulates, and in which all sorts of delightful intrigues are contrived. But barbers are often men of intelligence and parts; and those who are familiar with the life of Moliere, the greatest of French wits, will remember what long hours he used to spend with his cherished friend the barber of Pezenas. But France has also a baker-poet, almost as well known as Jasmin; we mean Jacques Reboul, the baker of Nismes. Reboul is, however, rather a classical French poet, than a poet of the people, like Jasmin. He writes and sings with classic purity and grace, nothing ashamed of his daily work, by which he makes his bread, but elevating and ennobling it by his pure life, his glorious thoughts, and his inspired songs. There is a little touching piece of his called "The Angel and the Child," which is probably one of the most charming eulogies ever written. Jasmin belongs to the town of Agen, on the Garonne, a fine river flowing across the the province of Guienne, in the south of France; Agen is there called "the eye of Guienne." In the distance are seen the peaks of the lofty Pyrenees, a range of mountains holding in their embrace some of the finest scenery in Europe. Jasmin was born in 1798, at the close of that expiring century of woe and destruction; he first saw the light in a dingy ruin peopled with rats, in the corner of an old street of the town abovenamed. His father was a hunchback, and his mother a cripple; the home was a very poor and miserable one, and the hunchback father, who was a tailor, could with difficulty make both ends meet. Little Jasmin was brought into the world during the noise of a frightful charivari which was being inflicted on some unpopular neighbor, and amidst the thundering noise of horns, old pans, marrowbones and cleavers, what should be the first sounds to fall on the future poet's ear but some thirty couplets of a song, shouted by the mob, the composition of his own father? For old Jasmin the tailor, though he could not read, composed by some sort of born instinct, the greater part of the burlesque songs sung at the charivaris, so usual in that The little child grew; he throve, at the bottom of his poor little cradle, all crammed with lark's feathers; slender, small, yet nourished by healthy milk, and happy as a king's son. Seven years passed; he could now, horn in hand, and paper cap on his head, accompany his father in the charivaris of the neighborhood. But his great delight, above all, was to ramble among the woods, in the little islands of the Garonne, which were filled with willow-trees. Nakedfooted, and naked-headed," he says, "I plunged among the green boughs; I wasn't alone; sometimes there were twenty, sometimes thirty of us. Oh! how my soul leapt, when we all set out together at midday, singing The Lamb whom Thou hast given, (a well-known carol in the South.) The very recollection to this day delights me. 'To the island! to the island!' shouted the boldest, and then all made haste to land, and each to gather together his bundle of fagots. The bundle was made up an hour before nightfall; the rest of the time was spent in play. And then the return, so glorious it was! On thirty heads, tripped along thirty fagot-bundles; and thirty voices sung, as at setting out, the same burden." At last, school was thought of—a word, the very sound of which frightened him. His grandfather handed over to his poor mother, for this purpose, a small sum of money, which he had scraped together by carrying parcels; but the family was too poor to use it thus; it was needed to buy bread. One day, when little Jasmin was playing about the street, he saw an old man being carried along in an old chair, by the He looked; it was his hospital-porters. "Whither are you going, grandfather! dear grandfather? Why do you weep! And why are you leaving your dear little grandchildren, that love you so?" "My child," said the old man, "I am going to the hospital; it is there that the Jasmins die." Five days after, he died; and from that Monday, the child, for the first time, knew that the Jasmins were poor. All these touching recollections are brought out in a little poem which Jasmin afterwards published, entitled, " Mous Soubenis," (Mes Souvenirs,) and which is a graphic piece of 864260 Jasmin alone was thoughtful, and sought to divine the meaning of that sad smile upon his poor mother's face. She took the knife to carve the tiny bit of mutton, and he cast a glance at her finger ;—ah! the secret was out! she had sold her wedding-ring! Here ends the second part of Jasmin's little history. The third transports us to the attic of a house, with a sky-blue front, where Jasmin, now an apprentice to a barber, watches by night the rustling leaves of a neighboring linden-tree. There, under the tiles, he passed a part of every night in reading, in reverie, and in versification. He read "Florian" with delight, and in his pictures, all misery is forgotten; the hospital, the beggar's wallet, the mother's ring: these had now all vanished from his memory. The singer of Gardon (Ducray-Dumesnil) especially bewitched him, and he tried his own hand at composing verses in the sweet patois, which he spoke so well. Meanwhile he kept his razor going, and scraped many chins, with his head full of poetry. Love, too, that blessed drop in the cup of life, illuminated his lot; and, with an eye to the future, he shortly opened a little barber's shop on his own account, on the Gravier promenade, where he cut, curled, and shaved, to their hearts' content, a "discerning public." He got on slowly at first; then quicker; then his little shop got well filled, and he prospered; as the proverb says, "it never rains but it pours." In short, curls, scissors, and razors, diligently handled, did their work in time; and, besides, there were Jasmin's songs, which soon sent a silver tide of good fortune into his shop; so much so that, in a fit of poetic ardor, Jasmin broke in pieces the old redoubted chair in which all his fathers had been carried to the hospital. He, in place of going to the hospital, went to a notary; and, finally, the first of his family, he saw his name emblazoned in the lists of the tax-collector. What an honor for the Jasmin stock! poetic autobiography, composed and group-happy round the table, forgot their distress. ed into little pictures with consummate art. The above incidents are from the first portion of the poem; the second commences by a pitiful inventory of his mean dwelling, and a picture of the miserable condition of the nine persons belonging to the poor household. At last, great was the joy one happy day! His mother came in with a bright face, and said, To school, to school, my son !" "What," said the little boy, "have we be come rich, then?" 'No, poor little thing; but you are to go for nothing!" So the child applied himself: in six months he could read; six months after he went to mass; six months after, among the singers in the choir, he chanted the Tantum ergo; and, finally, in another six months he entered the seminary gratis. But he staid there only six months; nevertheless, he had already begun to distinguish himself. He had obtained one prize, and this prize was an old worn-out cassock, which was trimmed up for his wearing, though he felt some shame at donning so old-fashioned a piece of goods. But he was not to wear it long. Wicked little Jasmin was turned out of school in consequence of a rather ticklish trick which he played to a certain girl named Jeanneton, mounted on a ladder, and whose details Jasmin describes in his Souvenirs" with considerable gusto. He was locked up in one of the canon's rooms; and what should he there do what sweeter task could he undertake-than that of testing the quality of the monk's sweetmeats and preserves? He was found out-a second fault-and driven forth from the seminary. Home ran the poor little Jasmin to his mother's house in the old street. It was Shrove-Tuesday. The table was set for dinner, and there was a morsel of mutton just cooked, about to be served up. Jasmin enters, tells his story, and excites general consternation. "Then we shall have no more," said the distressed mother, sobbing. "We shall have no more?" asked little Jasmin-" of what?" The mother explained: it was of miche-white breadwhich she daily used to get a portion of at Jasmin's seminary; a terrible loss for the poor family! But suddenly an idea seemed to strike the mother; and, going out, she bid the hungry children wait a moment, and hope. She soon returned, bringing a bit of bread in her hand; and the children, now His wife, born in nearly the same rank of life as himself, is a woman of good sense, some imagination, and of a very picturesque style of speaking, in her native patois, which comes quite gracefully from her lips. At first she was a sworn enemy of versewriting, and used to hide Jasmin's pens and paper; but since she learnt the market value |