general reader is less likely to be acquainted with them. Such a reader will find in Mr. Parton's book a good deal to amuse him, and a good deal to correct and heighten his idea of Voltaire as a man. It has been hinted that the merits of the book, as a literary commentary, are hardly equal to its merits

as a repository of fact. In the former respect, however, as has also been suggested, more than one scriptor haud paulo melior quam ego aut, Mr. Parton has supplied the deficiency in English by anticipation, and it is therefore superfluous to say any more on that score. Fortnightly Review.

It is night in Venice. CLELIA is alone in her balcony. She sings in a low voice lazily:

Death with my heart in a thin cold hand, O dear Death that art dear to meLove of my heart, the wide waste land, O my lost love, holds nought but thee! There is nought in the land, or sea, or sky,

But thou, and the man that once was I.

A pretty farrago of love and death! Whether this youth be singing to death or to his lady-love; whether love be death, or death love; whether his lady be dead, or he be dead, or both; let my little Florio say, if he can, for he made the verses and the music. How these children lisp of love and death! One would think they cared not a jot which of the two came to kiss them. It is all a matter of the minor key. If a roundshot knocked the mandolin from young master poet's fingers, would he not crouch behind the chair with his milkteeth chattering? I have not seen my little poet, my singer of love-lorn songs for days. He makes pretty verses, and not too powerful. They are not so weak either. Wonderful is the power of song. I have but to sing this rhyme of love and death a little louder, only a little louder; and at the signal, from the low black arch opposite creeps noise less a gondola. So slight a thread may draw a strong man, one who dare sing of death and face him too. Three notes of this poor melody-of dear death, forsooth-would bring Duke Angelo from his great black palace. So one may lure spiders. But I will sing to myself only-softly-softly—

No perfume is left on the fair broad earth
But the scent of thy raiment passing
No gold of price, no-
What man is that?

[sweet;

Florio (who has climbed unseen to her balcony). No man.

Clelia. A poet, then. Why have you come?

Fl. Why!

Cl. Because the night is fair, and craves for song? Have you some new numbers, little poet? This exquisite pale night is like a lady faint with passion, a dumb queen who longs to sing. Find her a voice, Florio. Sing for her and for me.

Fl. My song of death and love? Cl. No. Any song but that. Not that-not yet. Where have you been

these many idle days? Fl. Away from you. Cl. Where?

Fl. I know not. Only I know that I was not with you. I meant to see you

no more.

Cl. 'Twere pity, Florio.

Fl. Only a few days have gone; only a few nights like this night, accursed, which burns me like a shirt of fire; and I am here again. Yesterday I was far from this place. I had left you. I thought that I was free. And now I am here-here with you. Venice breathes flame to-night; and you are Venice. How beautiful you are!

Cl. Yes, in the shadows; beautiful as this night. Yes, I am Venice. She is a queen in tarnished gold, is she not? Venice and I are growing old, and are most beautiful in the loving shadow of a right that half conceals. And this night is like fire to you? Boy, it is full of coolness and softness, bountiful, tender, sweet. I am young to-night. Sing to me.

Fl. I have forgotten how to sing since you taught me to love.

Cl. Song without love is a cup without wine. If you had ever loved, your heart would be full of melodies, as the night is full of stars.

Fl. Cut like a gallant's love into a myriad little fires.

Cl. Often so-not always. There are many stars, but only one moon.

Fl. I am full of one love, as this night is filled to overflowing by one

moon.

Cl. You are too young to love.
Fl. Why am I here, then?
Cl. To be with me.

Fl. And is that not love?

Cl. Or habit. There are many kinds of love. Listen, Florio. There is the love of a child for sweetmeats. Is yours such a love? There is the love of a youth for himself-a vanity which needs feeding by girls' glances; and this the young do for the most part mistake for love. Then there is the love of a man, -but that is terrible.

Fl. Is there no love of women? Cl. Women are loved. They like to be loved. They love love. Florio, on such a night as this, I feel that every girl in Venice dreams that she is loved. Breathless she awaits her lover. There is a sound of the guitar and mandolin; the whisper of a song; the soft lisp of the gondolier's oar, and the drip of silver drops from the blade that turns in the moonlight. Then in the black shadow a little window opens; there is a faint light in the room; half hidden behind the curtain she stands trembling; she wishes him away, and she wishes him anear; her lips speak without her will, and she hears his name in her ears, and her ears grow hot with shame. Angelo," she whispers" Angelo !"

Fl. Angelo !

Cl. Or Beppo or Pippo or Cecco: it matters not a jot who the man is, so he be man and lover. There is a girl. I have painted her, complete from head to heel-a girl of Venice.

Fl. The night is sultry. I am stifled. Cl. Ah, little one, you cannot feel the passion of this night. You cannot be a woman, poet though you be.

Fl. Poet! I was a bird with one note. You tamed me to your hand; and I am dumb.

Cl. Then I shall whistle you away. What! keep a songless thrush! Pipe to me, pipe. Think of all the maidens dreaming around us, dreaming all of love; think of them; dream of them; sing for them. Sing to me.

Fl. My love! (He falls at her feet, and the hand which she yields him is wet with his tears.)

Cl. And you tried to leave me? Ungrateful. You will not leave me. This hour is for us. Is not this hour beautiful? Beautiful for me and thee?

Fl. For me and thee.

Cl. Sing to me, my bird with the sweet voice-sing to me

Fl. I cannot sing. It is so good to be silent when I am near you.

Cl. Sing; and I will give you this rose from my breast. See! It is pale in the moonlight, but the scent is sweet. Sing to me, Florio; and as your song, like this queen rose, fills the night full with perfume; so like a rose my heart will open to love, as my arms open now. (She stretches her arms to the dark palace opposite.)

Fl. Drop your arms. They strangle
They are great white snakes.

me.

Cl. See how I obey you! Obey me. Sing to me-sing to me of love; but not of love and death-not yet.

Fl. (sings).

If face of mine this night
My lady dreaming see,
I pray that kind and bright
With gentle thoughts it be.
May no rude look of mine

Trouble my lady's breast;
But dreams of me incline

Her soul to sweeter rest.

(As the last note of the music trembles to silence, she laughs.)

Fl. Ah! why do you laugh? It is horrible.

Cl. It is the song of a young monk. A pretty pale face to look into a dreaming woman's dream, and make her sleep the sounder. This is a night too exquisite for sleep. It is a night of all the loves.

Fl. Of all the infamies! The hot air stifles me. It is full of the sighs of men, who lie deep in slime below these creeping waters. Every breath is heavy with awful memories; of secret judgment, and noiseless murder; foul love and quick revenge; blood of a thousand knives; fumes of a thousand cups, and in each cup poison; poison in the very flowers of God-in this rose poison! (He sets his foot upon the rose; she laughs again.)

Cl. Do you think that I would kill u?

you

Fl. Have you not killed me? You have killed hope in me; you have killed my faith in woman. And here you stand close to me-your gown touches me—and smile, as if a smile could warm the dead to life. You cannot warm me to life.

Will that crushed rose open its heart again, because you smile? I am dead in a dead world. The world was all so beautiful to me a web of color, a fountain of sweet scent, its air all music. And then one day you smiled on me, as you are smiling now; and perfume, song, and color rushed together, and were one-were you; they found one exquisite form, and it was yours; and love found a language in your eyes.

I

You held my heart in your hand, and you have frozen it. And you have killed truth too. I can believe no more; and you have made me lie. When I am away from you, I comfort my soul with lies, and find torture. prove to myself that you love me. I have a thousand unmistakable proofs. Oh, I can argue with a fine subtlety. I explain to myself your every word, your slightest look. I show myself why

These

I

I may be sure that I am loved. are all lies. I am never deceived. know that you are cold to me, as the

Fl. That you may laugh again. Cl. There will be no laughter. Sing before you go

Fl. I am to go, then?

Cl. All good things go. Sing me your song of Death and Love. Fl. It was the first song I ever sang to you-that spring day on the island.

Cl. I remember. For my sake, Florio! Sing it to me now. (He begins to murmur the song, but she stops him.) Louder and clearer, Florio. Let the night hear it all.

Fl. (sings).Death with my heart in a thin cold hand,

O dear Death that art dear to meLove of my heart, the wide waste land, O my lost love, holds nought but thee!

There is nought in the land, or sea, or sky,

But thou, and the man that once was I.

No perfume is left on the fair broad earth

But the scent of thy raiment passing sweet;

No gold of price, no faine of worth,

But only the place where we did meet: O Death!-do I call on Death? Ah

me!

sweet love to thee.

Cl. Do you know why you sang that song?

Fl. To please you.

Cl. To please me; yes.
'Fl. What do you mean?

Cl. It is my signal to Duke Angelo.
Fl. What if he find you dead?

Cl. Put up your dagger. You dare not use it.

Fl. If I struck here, here in my heart, I should feel no more. You know me -you know I dare not strike. You have killed courage in me, as you killed faith, and hope, and love. There, take my dagger at your feet. God pardon you. (He leaps from the balcony. She leans her bosom on the edge and looks into the water below.)

Cl. Will he drown? No. rises; he swims. I knew it.

There, he They do

O Venice, mother of mine, what think you of the brood of men that crawl upon your waters ? Dukes and fishermen, blowers of glass or breathers of song, they are all men-and that's the pity. Florio has sung, and Angelo has heard his song. How sharply the black gondola severs itself from the darkness of the low archway! So death might steal from the shadows. It seems as I had seen this thing long ages since in some dead world. More music! (From the canal rises the Duke's voice singing the song of Florio.) Ah me, but I am tired of that song! (She tosses him the rose, which Florio's heel had crushed, and so begins to laugh again.)—Blackwood's Magazine.

but sing of death.

66

Every

even

I AGREE with Charles Lamb: body should have a hobby, though, like Lamb's friend John Tipp, that hobby should be only a fiddle. John Tipp of the Old South Sea House, as Elia tells us, thought an accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest accountant in it. And John was not without his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours"as it has done those of wiser and greater men than John Tipp. I could point at this moment to one of the most valuable and hard-worked of public servants who found in his hobby, a fiddle, "refreshment and almost rest''during the sixty years of his busy and most useful official life, and now, at upward of fourscore, finds in it a pleasant change from that arrear of reading" which in his well-earned leisure he is trying to reduce.

66

More fortunate than John Tipp, I have had more than one hobby. How we get our hobbies is matter for curious speculation. Some, I suspect, are born with us, and we are indoctrinated with others from accidental circumstances, while my chief hobby was, I think, the result of that beautiful system of compensation on the part of Providence of which, as we pass through life, we see so many proofs.

I was always so extremely short-sighted that I was quite unfitted to take part in the majority of those athletic sports, such as cricket, in which boys delight. Indeed, there was only one branch of them in which I was at all an adept, and in these refined days I almost blush to refer to it; I was said to handle the gloves very nicely.

The consequence of my infirmity was, that almost as soon as I ceased to be one of the "spelling" public I became one of the reading public; and on our holidays at school, instead of investing my small weekly allowance at the "tuck shop," I used to borrow from the small circulating library in the neighborhood materials for an afternoon's reading. I suppose I began with the "Mysteries of Udolpho," the "Scottish Chiefs," etc.; but before I left school in 1819 I had read and re-read all Scott's novels that had then appeared.

When I left school, and by the kindness of the late Lord Farnborough, received an appointment in the Civil Service, my wise and good father, disregarding Shakespeare's condemnation of

home-keeping youths," and believing that for a youth who was released from his office and official restraints at four o'clock, there was no place like home to keep him out of mischief, gave up to me

the small room in which his, if limited, still well-selected library of the best English writers was shelved, and made it mine, the room of which I was henceforth to be lord and master, with full liberty to invite to me there and at all times such friends as I pleased. I can never be too grateful for this thoughtful kindness. Perhaps my tendency to very varied if not omnivorous reading may be attributed to the fact that my father, who was a diligent reader of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, had a complete set of them; and these, with the Literary Gazette, which I began to take in on my own account, became great favorites with me.

My father was an inveterate walker, and yet so punctual a man of business that I do not believe during the many years he held his then office he was ever five minutes after ten, or ever missed his hour's walk before ten, or his hour's walk after four; and he strongly enjoined me to keep up my health by regular daily pedestrian exercise.

Hence my two hobbies, my love of books, my love of walking, made up my great hobby, which I venture to designate bookstalling, and to the pursuit of that hobby I owe not only much enjoyment, but in a great measure the rather curious collection of literary treasures which during fifty years of bookstalling I have gathered round me. I wonder how many hundred miles I walked during the fifty years from 1819 to 1869, during which I pursued, with greater or less activity, my gleanings from old bookstalls.

Fortunately for me catalogues are now showered upon us thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa; though I agree with a late dear friend of mine who was the exception to Chaucer's dictum that the greatest clerks are not the wisest men, and was at once the greatest clerk and the wisest man I ever knew, and who, speaking to me once on the formation of a library, expressed his belief that the majority of his most valuable books had been picked by him from the shelves of the booksellers, and not ordered from their catalogues, since from a catalogue you only get the title of the book, often very imperfect and deceptive, while turning over the pages of the book itself for a few minutes shows its scope and object

sufficiently to enable you to decide how far it is worth your buying.

After all, a bookstall is only an open shop where you can, without troubling the owner, turn over such volumes as may strike your fancy; and with this additional advantage, that the books are not only generally priced, but the outdoor prices are, as a rule, considerably lower than those pencilled in mysterious symbols, known only to the bookseller, on the shelves of his shop. It is matter for curious speculation how many of the "rarissimi" in the famous Roxburghe Library, which sold in 1812 for upward of 22,000l., and would in these days have produced three times that amount, had been picked up by the noble duke from the bookstalls which he delighted to visit. For he did visit them, and, with the view of himself bringing home any rarities he might pick up, he had the hind pockets of his overcoat made large enough to contain a small folio. This I state on the authority of one who knew him well, the late Francis Douce.

A great portion of the library of the Lord Macaulay had been collected by the same means. I remember meeting him many years since, very far east, and his then telling me that he had been look ing over the bookstalls in the neighborhood of the City Road and Whitechapel.

I remember the great historian telling me the curious incident which put him in possession of some French mémoires of which he had long been endeavoring to secure a copy but without success. He was strolling down Holywell Street when he saw in a bookseller's window a vol. ume of Muggletonian tracts. Having gone in, examined the volume, and agreed to buy it, he tendered a sovereign in payment. The bookseller had not change, but said, if he (Mr. Macaulay) would just keep an eye on the shop, he would step out and get it. I remember the shop well and the civil fellow who kept it. His name, I think, was Hearle, and he had some relatives of the same name who had shops in the same street. This shop was at the west end of the street and backed on to Wych Street; and at the back was a small recess, lighted by a few panes of glass generally somewhat obscured by the dust of ages. While Macaulay was looking round the shop a ray of sunshine fell through this