could not fail to be more correct than that of all the so-called cognoscenti of Europe put together. His physique was splendid. In Théophile Gautier was to be found a rare blending of the animal and the intellectual-the thews of a gladiator and the brain of an angel. Much of his reckless defiance of social laws may be attributed to an excess of vitality, which would have made it as easy to chain up a lion with a rope of roses as to restrain such an exuberant passionate nature by mere conventional forms. In France his errors are pardoned and condoned, his frailties are forgotten, and a generous people remembers him only as a beautiful poet, who has shed an additional luster on her name.

The closing hours of his life were overshadowed by a premature gloom, the forerunner of darkness eternal. He grew somber and silenthe, the gay blagueur, the life and soul of every assembly in which he set foot! The jest died on his lips, the laughter in his eyes; he was no longer the animated creature of old, but a wan and weary specter of himself. His friend Ernest Feydeau brought one day to him his little daughter, to distract the poet, who was passionately fond of children. Gautier played a little while with the child's lovely flaxen ringlets, and then fell into a reverie, seemingly oblivious of everything. Then, without apparent cause, he began a bitter tirade against life and society, and the folly of humankind.

"And what is the reason of all this?" inquires his astonished friend.

The poet answers, with his mournful gaze fixed on vacancy:

"Your little daughter, who is exquisite, and who enters the world at a moment when intelligent beings esteem themselves happy to get out of it!"

Hamlet has taken up the skull and begun to moralize over it. "For to this favor we must all come." King, kaiser, plowman, politician- we must all pass through the Valley of the Shadow. The poet has caught from afar the sound of his summons. He is aware by instinct of whom the gay world of Paris will next say, sighing a moment between two peals of laughter, "Que la terre lui soit légère!"

He died on the 23d of October, 1872-only seven years ago. With him they may almost all be said to have departed, the gifted men and women of letters who formed a glittering constellation of stars upon the horizon of society in France some twenty or thirty years back. De Balzac, Béranger, De Musset, Henri Murger, Sainte-Beuve, Jules Janin, Dumas, Georges Sand, Lamartine, Delphine Gay-the earth has closed over them all. Only the great head of their

world, the master to whom each turned with reverence and respect-Victor Hugo-still survives.

There was never yet, perhaps, a poet's death that was more sincerely mourned by his brother poets than that of Théophile Gautier. Hundreds of elegiac verses in honor of his dead memory have been gathered together in one handsome volume by Alphonse Lemerre, and this forms the most graceful and abiding monument of his fame. From our own green isle to the sunny shores of Italy has been heard the voice of mourning and lamentation—the song of sorrow, for one who, perchance, often unknown, was yet as a brother and a kindred spirit. Plus d'œillets de jasmin, ô Vénus! plus de rose!" cries Jules Janin, passionately, in a charming classic epilogue called "The Death of Daphnis." The river and the stream are obscured by shadows; the oxen forsake the limpid water and the dewy grass; everything languishes upon the desolate horizon; Echo repeats to the woods and forests words of lamentation alone-for Daphnis, the beloved shepherd, is no more.

Algernon Swinburne has written a magnificent ode to the memory of Gautier, gorgeous as the sunset, sweet as the notes of the dying swan, and a few verses of this may perhaps be the fittest conclusion for this short paper on an adorable poet, some of whose verses may be reckoned among the glories of French literature:

"Here, where the sunset of our year is red, Men think of thee, as on the summer dead, Gone forth before the snows, before thy day, With unshod feet, with brows unchapleted. "Couldst thou not wait till age had wound, they

say,

Round those wreathed brows his snow-white blossoms? Nay,

Why shouldst thou vex thy soul with this harsh air,

Thy bright-winged soul, once free to take its way? "Nor for men's reverence hadst thou need to wear The holy flower of gray time-honored hair; Nor were it fit that aught of thee grew old, Fair lover all thy days of all things fair. . .

"Mixed with the mask of death's old comedy, Though thou too pass, have here our flowers, that

we,

For all the flowers thou gav'st, upon thee shed, And pass not crownless to Persephone.

"Blue lotus-blooms, and white, and rosy-red, We wind with poppies for thy silent head, And on the margin of the sundering sea, Leave thy sweet light to rise upon the dead!"

Temple Bar.

THE

CHAPTER XXX.

HOW YOUNG NICK KEPT HIS SECRET.

THE

HE consciousness of possessing all to himself so great a secret gave young Nick a sense of superior importance most enjoyable. He hugged it to his bosom, took it to bed with him, dreamed of it, never let it go out of his thoughts. His mother observed with some alarm that her son was changed during those days. He was sobered; he carried himself responsibly; his white eyebrows were charged with a burden of duty.

The change was certainly for the better, but she looked for some physical cause to account for his sudden abandonment of those impish moods which had once kept her in continual alarm. It might be impending measles; in fact, the boy was completely weighed down by his knowledge. The writing-master of Jubilee Road was too much in his mind. Whenever he saw Alison he thought of him; if he went out of the town he reflected that the Clapham Road, followed due north, leads to London Bridge, and that from London Bridge to Jubilee Road is but a step; if he came home, he passed the door of his uncle's study, and involuntarily compared the mean lodging at the East End with that stately room; if he heard his mother lamenting the wickedness of Stephen, he chuckled, thinking how that wicked man would be, and should be, some day brought to shame, and his wiles defeated; if he heard Alison whispering despondently that nothing had been as yet discovered, he rubbed his hands together and laughed inwardly, winking both eyes alternately, as he thought of what he himself had discovered; if he contemplated his own future prospects, his thoughs turned to the refugee whose return was to mark the commencement of his own fortunes.

The thing was overwhelming. All day he pondered over it, now with exultation, now with anxiety. His performances at school grew every day more lamentable; the subjunctive mood ceased to interest him, and he neglected the past participle; even the things which would certainly become of real use to him when he had his desk in Great St. Simon Apostle, his arithmetic, his French, his handwriting, became irksome. For, as the weary hours of work crept on, his mind was always away in that dingy house of Jubilee Road, and his thoughts were always turning to the Great Secret.

How was it to be disclosed in the most useful

SIDE.

and, at the same time, the most striking manner? Suppose some one else, a clerk in the house, for instance, should find out the writing-master of Jubilee Road. His uncle, Nicolas reflected with severity, was extremely thoughtless; he might even, on a Saturday half-holiday, stroll as far west as the entrance to the docks, and there be observed by the policemen at the doors, and then all his own share in the discovery would be actually fooled away.

These were difficult and interesting problems, but they were too much for the young brain. While Nicolas thought them over, which was all day long, in school and out, the book before him became a blank page; the common he wandered over, as lonely as any Robinson Crusoe, was as if it did not exist; the shouts of the boys at play, or the hum of the boys at work, fell on deaf ears. His school performances during this period were in the monthly report described as disgraceful. He cared nothing about Cæsar's triumphs in Gaul; he could not be roused to any interest in any subject whatever; the ceaseless admonitions of his masters produced no more effect than the lowing of distant cattle; if Cridland was called, Cridland had to be jogged by his nearest neighbor; if Cridland was asked a question, his reply betrayed not only ignorance of the subject, but gross inattention. The consequences were inevitable.

Must one go on? At that school they caned, but only in cases of continued inattention and idleness.

When the patience of the authorities was quite exhausted, Cridland received orders to remain after twelve o'clock. It need scarcely be observed that the fact of such a boy as young Nick, the crafty, the subtle, the hitherto successful evader of rules, being about to undergo the last extremity of the law, excited an interest so lively as to be akin to joy. In fact, it was joy— rapturous joy. When the hour of fate struck, the boys, instead of rushing off to play as usual, congregated about the door, listening in silence. Would young Nick take it plucky, or would young Nick funk? Would he cry out, or would he be silent?

They watched him march, with pale face, but head erect, into the operating-room; they listened while, after a pause, during which, as the more experienced knew, the head-master was delivering himself of the preliminary jaw. At last, the sound of the Instrument was heard : swish swish! swish! No other sound, no cry, no trampling of feet.

"I always run round and round," said young

Young

regularly.

But, throughout, a dignified silence.

Then the door opened, and young Nick came out. His head was as erect as usual, though his cheek was a little flushed, and his eyes brighter, perhaps. The boys made a lane. Young Nick looked neither to the right nor to the left, though a murmur of sympathetic admiration greeted him as he emerged; but, taking his hat from the peg, he walked away with pride, capping the head-master at the gate with a dignified smile, which seemed to say:

"You have done your duty; I forgive you. Let us agree in forgetting the late deplorable scene." Then the boys fell to discussing their own experiences, and the punishment of young Nick served for the rest of the day as a fillip or stimulus to the activity of the school life.

That night, after dark, any curious passer-by might have noticed a small, thin figure creep through the iron railings, and flit rapidly across the gravel to the back of the school. There was a window at that part of the building which might be opened from the outside, did one know the secret. Through that window the thin figure crept.

The next day, which was Wednesday, and a half-holiday, was a day of rebuke. The masters were late at prayers, and a general feeling rapidly spread that something was going to happen. In fact, it had been discovered that the gowns had been sewed together with such great artfulness that they could not be separated without much labor and time. The masters appeared, therefore, without them. The head-master was observed to put less heart than usual into the petition for forgiveness. After prayers he announced that an outrage had been committed on the sacred magisterial robes, and that he would give the offender until twelve to confess. The eyes of all involuntarily turned to young Nick, who only gazed upward thoughtfully, and shook his head with sadness. Worse things happened: it was immediately afterward found that the masters' seats had been plentifully studded with small pieces of cobbler's wax; that the ink for all the desks had been powdered with chalk, that the nibs of all the pens had been cut or broken off; that butter, or some such foreign substance, had been rubbed upon the blackboards; that mark-books had been shamefully treated, and the records of impositions mutilated.

Three boys were caned, for minor offenses, at twelve; no confessor appeared at that hour; the whole school was detained till one; the whole school was also deprived of its half-holi

covered his spirits, showed a cheerfulness strange to the rest, and displayed the greatest alacrity in his work. At five o'clock, when they were dismissed, he laughed. This episode cheered him for the moment, but he relapsed, and became mysteriously preoccupied again. His thoughts were not with his studies: he lost the good opinion of his masters—a consequence of sin, the true awfulness of which has been revealed by the author of "Eric "-he made his fellows think he was going silly, because a young Nick who had no more mischief in him, who never said or did anything worthy of his former reputation, who had gone quite silent and sluggish, was not the young Nick whom they had formerly admired. That boy had gone, vanished into the Ewigkeit. There was left in his place a quiet lad with white hair and eyebrows, pink face, and downcast look, who moved among them as speechless as a ghost, who never listened, who was always dreaming or asleep, who made no fuss, played no pranks, and took no notice. Quite a stupid and commonplace boy. Indeed, the secret was too much for him. Had its exclusive possession been much longer prolonged, I believe the boy would have suffered some kind of brain affection.

There were moments when the story presented itself to him in its comic aspect. The reflection that the man for whom so many tears had been shed, whose death had caused so much unexpected trouble, was really alive and well, stimulated Nicolas to dance and sing, to utter dark sayings, to construct enigmas, and to behave in Puck-like fashion toward Alison. She had no suspicion of his meaning, but she began to feel every day that the boy had some secret, and meant something real. And what did he mean by his constant allusions to the writingmaster?

In those days he made a "Ballad of the Writing-master," of which I only venture to quote the first two verses; would that all poets were content with publishing only the first two verses!

"The Writing-master sings, upon his way,

Of Gillott, J., soft nib, and pliant quill; His Round and Text like twins together play; His frolic Small-hand keeps him happy still. He sings all day about his merry task:

He dances on the curbstone when he's free ; Give me his lot, should you the question askA writing-master's is the life for me.

"He loves his boys-their master they adore; He rolls in wealth, his reputation's such:

At five o'clock, when he can work no more, Often the Lord Mayor asks him out, and much. 'There goes the Writing-master!' cry the girls, 'Oh! great, and grand, and rich, and proud is he. Let others wed for rings and things and pearls: 'Tis, oh! a writing-master's wife to be.'"

There were many more verses hammered out by this young poet on the same subject; but I refrain from quoting those which followed. He sang the whole right through one afternoon for Alison's pleasure, pretending he did not know she was in the room. He was, indeed, very crafty in those minor pretenses which deceived

no one.

"Will you tell me, you tiresome boy," asked Alison, worried by his iteration, “what you mean by perpetually talking about writing-masters ? " If you chose a profession," the boy replied, with another question, "wouldn't you like that?" "Certainly not," said Alison. "I would prefer anything, almost, to such a profession. What do you mean?"

"Not be a writing-master? Why, of all the unreasonable girls! If you only knew-consider, Alison."

He began to sing his song again.

The boy would give no fuller explanation. Another remarkable circumstance. He took to coming home late for tea on Saturdays, and sometimes did not appear until supper was the only meal possible. And, although he grew absolutely grasping after pocket-money, he never spent any on 'tuck," and yet never seemed to have any.

"

One Sunday-it was the first Sunday after they put up the tablet to the memory of Anthony Hamblin in the parish church—he disgraced the family altogether, for at sight of the tablet this ill-behaved and unfeeling boy began to laugh. That was at the commencement of the service; he laughed again when they stood up for the Psalms, he choked loudly several times during the sermon, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks all the way home across the common. Alison had never been so angry with him. Why he laughed the boy would not or could not tell. But he refused to go to church for the evening service, on the ground that he felt it coming on again.

The reason why he came home late on Saturdays, and had no pocket-money, was-first, that

think of those shabby boots, that worn coat, without a choking at the throat, and something like a tear in his eye, signs of emotion which he was fain to hide or efface as speedily as might be.

For his own part, Anthony, having quickly learned to trust the boy, looked forward to his weekly visit as to a break in the desolate monotony in his new existence. He sat at home and waited for him, growing anxious if he was late, and when he arrived there was a formal sort of catechism to be gone through.

"Have they made any discovery yet?" 'Not yet," replied the boy; "and I hope they never will."

That meant that the search, so far as he could tell, was as yet unsuccessful; so far, therefore, the chances were in favor of Stephen. This was just what the boy wanted.

Then they would sit down and talk about other things, the possibility of return being always in both their minds. The old relations between them were a great deal changed. The man and the boy thus thrown together under changed conditions were on the same level, in conversation. Young Nick never let his uncle forget that his secret gave him authority, so to speak; nor could Anthony ever forget that his present work and position afforded a striking contrast to his former. Indeed, Anthony's reverses might be compared with those of Hecuba, Crœsus, and other fallen monarchs, some of whom taught in schools. Louis Philippe and Dionysius, for instance. But then Louis Philippe went back again. He might, had he chosen, have taken a high moral line, and pointed out to Nicolas that the misfortunes of one man should be taken as a warning to other men. He omitted the opportunity, however, and the moral lesson was lost.

"Tell me how you like your work, Uncle Anthony," said the boy with a grin. "Your work! -ho, ho!"

It was the one disagreeable thing to Anthony about these interviews that young Nick would persist in alluding to his occupation.

Anthony grunted.

Anthony preserved silence.

"Do you like your boys? Are they a pleasant lot of fellows with a good tone and above meanness or falsehood?"

Anthony shook his head.

"Well, then, tell me what you do."

"You mean the day's routine?" He blushed