with his neighbor's wife, and to be perpetually calling attention to himself by some extravagant utterance.

"But I think," urged Veronica, "I could name poets that have achieved considerable celebrity in their lifetime, yet who were, on the whole, perfectly respectable members of society."

poet, that I see no indication of his troubling himself concerning his position in this world. Perhaps that only causes her to be more solicitous on the subject, and, I suppose, she shares the general desire of her sex to see some solid and practical evidence of success. She reverted to her favorite theme last night, when, as the twilight was deep- Happily the conversation at this ening, she sate with me and Lamia on point was arrested by the subject of it the fixed rude seat that girds the bole joining us. But Lamia was not disof my primeval oak, for Lamia inad-posed to allow it to be diverted altovertently let fall the observation that gether into another channel.

the Poet's writings seem to be compar- "We were saying that poets have atively little known. He is the least fewer readers now than formerly." solitary and most companionable of "I did not say so," observed Vemen; but it happened that at that mo-ronica.

ment he was not of our company.

"Yet, if you did," replied the Poet,

"If his works are comparatively little "I almost think you would have been known as yet," said Veronica, "and right. Poetry is the delight, as it is every day they are acquiring a wider the expression, either of very simple or circle of readers"- what a character- of very elevated natures. The present istic touch was that!"it is because age has several marks of distinction; he owes nothing of what reputation he but it is not simple, and it is not lofty. has acquired to factitious circumstance. It is practical and pedestrian, caring Born neither in a lofty nor in a humble for astronomy only as an auxiliary to position of life, he does not interest the navigation, and for chemistry only as it world by the lustre of his descent or promotes light, heat, or locomotion. by the romance of his self-achieved It has no disinterested interest in anyelevation. There is nothing peculiar thing. It is exceedingly enquiring, but either in his antecedents or in his ca- it asks for demonstration, and poetry reer. He has written nothing sensa-demonstrates nothing. Neither has it tional, and done nothing sensational. any literary interest in literature; and He does not excite wonder by being rich or compassion by being poor. He has no patrons and no clients. In all the external conditions of his life he is a very ordinary person. His hair is no longer than that of his neighbors, he is scrupulously well-dressed, he lives with his mother, whom he adores, earns his bread by inspecting elementary schools, and pays his debts with prosaic punctuality."

books, no matter of what calibre, and literature, are to it one and the same thing. But why should it be otherwise? And has it often been otherwise? Fit audience, though few, was good enough for Milton; and the poet who wants more is surely very presumptuous and very unreasonable. Indeed, why should he have an audience at all now that he no longer wanders from manor-house to manor-house re

"It does not sound poetical," ob- citing his verses? Surely, reading served Lamia. verse to oneself soon palls." “Don't talk nonsense,' said Ve

"Precisely. Your view is the view of the public at large. I know, dear Lamia, what you would like him to be and do. You would like him to have been born either in a palace or in a garret, to dress in picturesque velveteen rather faded, to have an eye in a fine frenzy rolling, to look on evening dress as the mark of a Philistine, to run away

ronica.

"Don't talk sense, I was going to say," said Lamia.

"Suppose you do neither," I ventured to observe, "but recite, instead, some of your own verses to this particular audience, at this particular manorhouse."

If Love could last, who then would mind
The freezing rack, the unfeeling wind,
The curdling pool, the shivering sedge,
The empty nest in leafless hedge,

"O yes, do!" said Lamia. Ve- The oasthouse smoke, the hop-bine burn, ronica said nothing, but the silence that Knowing that all good things return followed seemed filled with an unspoken To Love that lasts! request. Hitherto the nightingales had been competing with each other in the contiguous brakes. Now, as though they knew our desire, they desisted for a while, and in the gathering dark-Brown dripping bents and furrows bare, ness, rendered deeper by the drooping The wild-geese clamoring through the air, branches of the wide-spreading oak, The huddling kine, the sodden leaves, listened to lines none of us had heard Lack-lustre dawns and clammy eaves? For then through twilight days morose before. We should within keep warm and close, And by the friendly fireside blaze Talk of the ever-sacred days

If Love could last, if Love could last,
The Future be as was the Past,
Nor faith and fondness ever know
The chill of dwindling afterglow,
O! then we should not have to long
For cuckoo's call and throstle's song,
But every season then would ring
With rapturous voices of the Spring.
In budding brake and grassy glade
The primrose then would never fade,
The windflower flag, the bluebell haze
Faint from the winding woodland ways,
But vernal hopes chase wintry fears,
And happy smiles and happier tears
Be like the sun and clouds at play, —
If Love could last!

If Love could last, the rose would then
Not bloom but once, to fade again.
June to the lily would not give

A life less fair than fugitive,

But flower and leaf and lawn renew
Their freshness nightly with the dew.
In forest dingles, dim and deep,
Where curtained noonday lies asleep,
The faithful ringdove ne'er would cease
Its anthem of abiding peace.

we

When first we met, and felt how drear
Were life without the other near ;
Or, too at peace with bliss to speak,
Sit hand-in-hand, and cheek-to-cheek, —
If Love could last!

Was it fancy that made me think I caught the sound of a sigh, almost of a sob? But no untimely word of thanks or praise marred the consentaneous silence. Moon there was none; only here and there a dimly discerned outrider of the night. Then the nightingales resumed their unobtrusive nocturn, and the odor of unseen flowers came floating on the dewy air from the garden that I love.

ALFRED AUSTIN.

From Blackwood's Magazine. 1ST MARCH, 1871.

IN the early morning of 1st March, 1871, Laurence Oliphant (who was then correspondent of the Times) and I left the Hôtel Chatham to walk up the Champs Elysées to a balcony in the Avenue de la Grande Armée, from which we were to view the entry of the Germans into Paris. The sky was grey; the air was full of mist; not a soul was to be seen; the shutters of every house were closed; a day of national humiliation could not have commenced more dismally. I remember that we felt an oppressive sensation of loneliness and gloom, which we communicated to each other at the same instant, and then laughed at the simultaneity of our thoughts.

At the Arch of Triumph were two glish represented the rest of the world, men in blouses, the first we met. They as we generally do on such occasions. were staring through the mist at the Porte Maillot, and we proceeded to stare too, for it was from that gate that the entry was to be made. So far as we could see, the whole place was absolutely empty; but our eyes were not quite reliable, for the fog on the low ground was so thick that it was impossible to make out anything. That fog might be full of troops, for all we knew.

It was then about half past seven, and as we had been told the night before that the advanced-guard would come in at eight, we thought, after standing for some minutes on the heaps of gravel which had been thrown up during the siege to form a trench and barricade under and around the Arch, that we had better move on to our balcony. Meanwhile, however, some twenty or thirty other blouses, evil-faced and wretched, had come up, and eyed us with undisguised suspicion, and consulted each other apparently, as to what we could be, and what they should do to us. We left them hesitating, and walked on.

We gazed hard at the Porte Maillot, from which we were distant about a quarter of a mile; but though the mist had begun to lift a little, it was still too thick to allow anything to be distinguished clearly on the Neuilly road. We looked and looked again in vain. It was not till we had waited, somewhat impatiently, for half an hour, that, at a quarter past eight, some one exclaimed, "I do believe I see moving specks out there beyond the gate." Up went all our glasses, and there they were! We recognized more and more distinctly six horsemen coming, and evidently coming fast, for they grew bigger and sharper as each second passed. One seemed to be in front, the other five behind.

As we watched eagerly they reached the open gate, dashed through it, and the instant they were inside the five behind spread out right and left across the broad avenue, as if to occupy it. The one in front, who, so far as we could see, had been riding until then at a canter, broke into a hand-gallop, and then into a full gallop, and came tearA group of Englishmen gathered on ing up the hill. As he neared us we that balcony a dozen curious sight- saw he was a hussar officer a boyseers. The owner of the house was he did not look eighteen! He charged Mr. Corbett, who was afterwards min- past us, his sword uplifted, his head ister at Stockholm; amongst the others, thrown back, his eyes fixed straight so far as I remember, were Mr. Elliot, before him, and one of us cried out, the Duke of Manchester, Captain Trot-"By Jove, if that fellow's mother ter, and Lord Ronald Gower. Except- could see him she'd have something to ing the men in blouses about the Arch, be proud of for the rest of her time ! " who by this time had multiplied to at The youngster raced on far ahead of least a hundred, there was nobody his men, but at the Arch of Triumph within sight. The void was painful. the blouses faced him. So, as he Not a window was open (excepting in would not ride them down in order to the rooms to which we had come); our go through (and if he had tried it he balcony alone was peopled; one of the would only have broken his own neck greatest historic spectacles of our time and his horse's too in the trench), he was about to be enacted in front of us; waved his sword at them, and at slackyet, save ourselves and the blouses, ened speed passed round. We caught there was no public to contemplate it. sight of him on the other side through The French who lived up there refused the archway, his sword high up, as if to look, or, if they did look, it was from he were saluting the vanquished city at behind their shutters. Such part of his feet. But he did not stop for sentithe educated population as were in ment. He cantered on, came back, Paris that day (most of them were ab- and as his five men had got up by that sent) hid themselves in grief. We En-time (he had outpaced them by a couple

of minutes), he gave them orders, and off they went, one to each diverging avenue and rode down it a short distance to see that all was right.

The boy trotted slowly round and round the Arch, the blouses glaring at him.

The entry was over- - that is to say, the Germans were inside Paris. That boy had done it all alone. The moral effect was produced. Nothing more of that sort could be seen from the balcony. We took it for granted that the rest, when it came, would only be a march past, and that thenceforth the interest of the drama would be in the street. So to the street Oliphant and I returned, two others accompanying us. The remainder of the party, if I remember right, stopped where they were for some time longer.

More and more troops marched up, infantry and cavalry, but always in small numbers; the mass of the German army was at Longchamps, for the great review to be held that morning by the emperor, and the thirty thousand men who, under the convention of occupation, were to enter Paris (in reality, about forty thousand came), were not to appear till the review was over.

At nine o'clock the commander of the occupation (General von Kameke) rode in with an escort. At his side was Count Waldersee, who during the war had been chief of the staff to the Duke of Mecklenburg, to whose army Oliphant had been attached. Seeing Waldersee, Oliphant jumped out to greet him, shook hands with him warmly, chatted gaily, and, after show

Just as we got to the Arch the boying various signs of intimacy, came came round once more.

I went to him

and asked his name.
"What for?" he inquired.
"To publish it in London to-morrow
morning."

back towards us laughing, as the other rode on. This was, not unnaturally, too much for those of the blouses who saw it; and, before Oliphant could reach us, they rushed at him. Some hit him, some tried to trip him up; a

“Oh! that's it, is it ?" he remarked, with a tinge of the contempt for news-good dozen of them were on him. A papers which all German officers display. "Well, I'm von Bernhardi, 14th Hussars. Only, if you're going to print it, please give my captain's name also; he's von Colomb."

couple of us made a plunge after him, roared to the blouses that he was an Englishman, and that they had no right to touch him; and somehow (I have never understood how) we pulled him (I heard, the last time I was in Ger-out undamaged, but a good deal out of many, that the brave boy Bernhardi is breath and with his jacket torn. The dead, and that Colomb was then colonel | blouses howled at us, and bestowed of the King's Hussars, at Bonn.)

Five minutes later a squadron of the regiment came up, and Lieutenant von Bernhardi's command-in-chief expired. But the youngster had made a history for his name; he was the first German into Paris in 1871.

ungentle epithets on us, and followed us, and menaced; but we got away into another part of the constantly thickening crowd, and promised each other that we would speak no more that day to Germans. I need scarcely say that the mob was unchecked masWe stood amongst the blouses, and ter, that the Germans would not have wondered whether they would wring interfered in any fight that did not diour necks. We were clean, presum-rectly concern them, and that neither ably we had money in our pockets, and a French policeman nor a French solI had spoken to a German three un- dier was present to keep order within pardonable offences. No attack, how- the limits of the district fixed for the ever, was made on any of us for the occupation. Those limits were — the moment. Now that I look back on the Place de la Concorde on the east, the particular circumstances, I fail to com- Faubourg St. Honoré and the Avenue prehend why they were good enough des Ternes on the north, the Seine on to abstain. the south.

At half past one I had wandered

Armée, where the crowd had become very dense, filling up, indeed, the entire roadway. On the other side I saw

By ten the sun had worked through | creditable to them. So long as they the fog, and also, by ten, a consider- were not provoked by some particular able number of the inhabitants of Paris cause, they remained quiet and showed had become unable to resist the temp- no rage. They wanted to behold a retation of seeing a new sight, and had markable sight that was offered for come out to the show. At that hour their inspection, and though beyond there must have been thirty or forty doubt it vexed them, their vexation thousand people in the upper part of was not strong enough to check their the Champs Elysées; the gloom of the curiosity. At least that was our imearly morning was as if it had not pression from what we saw. been; all was movement and brightness. The crowd, which in the after-back alone to the Avenue de la Grande noon we estimated at from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand, was composed, for the greater part, of blouses; but mixed with them were a quantity a horseman trying to work his way of decent people, from all parts of the through. It was Mr. W. H. Russell, town, women and children as well I could not get to him to speak, but I as men, belonging, apparently, to knew by his presence there that the the classes of small shopkeepers, em- review (to which he had ridden from ployees, and workmen. From morning Versailles) was over, and that, before to night I did not perceive one single very long, the real march in would gentleman; nor was a shutter opened commence. It did not occur to me at in the Champs Elysées. The upper the moment that Mr. Russell was doing strata kept out of sight; it was the a risky thing in cutting across the mob other couches, especially the very low- on a prosperous horse, which maniest, that had come out. festly had not gone through the siegetime in Paris. It was not till some hours later that I learnt how nearly the mob had killed him.

At last, at two o'clock, thick dust arose outside the Porte Maillot, and I made out with my glass that the people were being pressed back at the gate, and that troops were advancing slowly - for the mob would not make way, and the Germans were patient and gentle with them. The head of the column got up creepingly as far as the Arch of Triumph; but then came a dead block. The gathering of people filled up the Place de l'Etoile and the upper part of the Avenue des Champs Elysées, and packed it all so solidly that often, for minutes at a time, the cavalry could not move ahead. A good half-hour passed before space was cleared for the emperor's headquarters staff; and even then, for nearly an

Directly troops enough were in to supply pickets, sentries were posted at the street-corners; patrols were set going; a guard was mounted at the house of Queen Christina, in the Champs Elysées, which had been selected for the German headquarters. We looked on at all this, at first with close attention, but by degrees the state of things grew rather dull. In times of great excitement, events seem to become stupid so soon as they cease, temporarily, to be dangerous. Besides, for the moment, the interest of the day had changed its place and nature; it was no longer in the German army, but in the French crowd; not in the entry, but in the reception. As we had rightly judged, the drama was in the street. So we stood about and watched the people, and talked to some of them, and thought that, on the whole, they behaved very well. Of course they other half-hour after the staff had would have done better still if they had stopped at home, and had left the Germans severely alone; but, as they had thought fit to come, they also thought fit to keep their tempers, which was

reached the Neuilly side of the Arch, they had to sit still upon their horses, unable to progress one yard.

And what a staff it was! With the exception of the Crown Prince Fred