" 'I am alone within my room, 'tis night!
"The household is at rest, no light, no noise;
Sleep!-but I cannot weigh my eyelid down.
Pray!-but my spirit listens not my prayer.
My ear yet rings with all those dancing airs,
"Which echo taught the raptured sense to day.
In vain I close my eyes, I see the fete;

"The waltz with dreamy round yet turns my head;
'Gay phantoms of the ball, alas! now ended,

66 A thousand beauteous shades before me dance;
"I see the lustre of soft looks, I feel

My trembling hand by gentle fingers pressed.
"As the gay circle moves, their long fair tresses
"Like some light wind glance o'er my beating cheek.
"I see the faded roses falling from their brows.
"I hear my name by cherished lips pronounced;
"Anna! Blanche! Lucy!

"What must love be if ev'n its dream's so sweet?

*

"But love hath not yet opened on my life,
"It is a fiery star which dawneth now;
"Ah! should heaven e'er give to my embrace
"One of those living dreams which follow me,
"If I might hither bear, fond, languishing
"Some spotless maid, in the first bloom of life,

My soul in one short day would live a thousand years."

But the dawn of another day brings with it sorrow, his visions are dispersed, his horizon is clouded, and he awakes to dream no more. Moved by the tears of his sister, whose heart is already anothers', and whose want of fortune is the only obstacle to her happiness; he resolves upon a noble sacrifice. He relinquishes to her his own inheritance, and with it all earthly enjoyments, and determines in the morning to become a servant of the altar. He sees his sister united to the object of her affections. For the last time he mingles in the dance, for the last time his soul drinks inspiration from the merry voices and bright faces of his young companions. He then bids an eternal adieu to those scenes consecrated by the memory of past happiness, tears himself from the arms of his mother; and flies to hide a bleeding yet steadfast heart in the gloom of the cloister.

The manner in which he takes leave of his native village, after the close of the festivities attendant upon his sisters nuptials, is beautifully pathetic:

"The mountain breeze, companion of the eve,

"Had cleared the heavens, and swept away the clouds;
"It was a night whose calm serenity

Spoke to the soul of peace, eternity,

"And love. The rounded moon in azure throned
Spreading o'er all her vacillating light,
"Seemed, by defining every outline pale

A mute remembrance both of life and day;
Weeping I plunged in those dark avenues
"With traces of my mother yet all filled;

"And my feet wandered o'er the enclosed plain,
"Where as so many flowers, my days had bloomed.
"I listened to the water's soothing strain
"As it fell gently in its marble basin;

"I touched each wall, I spoke to every tree,
"I strayed from trunk to trunk embracing each,
"Lending them feeling from the tears I shed,
"And thought,-imagination has such power,-
"I felt within their bark a friendly heart.
"On every rustic seat, where I had sat,
"Or seen my mother seated with her son
"I rested for a while; I turned my face
"Towards where her image to my eyes appeared,
"And spoke to her in heart; she answered me,
"For her own voice was echoed in my soul.

"I hastened on my way, through pathless fields,
"Fearing to meet, to hear some human form,
"Until the summit where the glooomy mount
"Rises and re-descends towards other plains-
"On a grey rock there stands a granite cross
"Where the moss creeps,-the eagle builds his nest;
"There for the first time I looked back, and saw
"The landscape far below its charms unfold.

"A sigh my spirit bore to this sweet spot,
"And kneeling on the grass I cried: "oh thou
"Who tak'st the son, be with the mother still;
"Embitter not to her this parting hour!

"

I only leave, oh God, these hearts, this home,
"That I may give them greater peace and love;
May peace and love remain there in my place,
"And may this sacrifice thy grace receive;
"Instead of me, o'er its dear inmates watch,
"Bless day and night each instant of their course;
"Be thou, oh God! Thou, oh celestial Father!
"The sisters' brother and the mothers's son;
"O'erwhelm them with thy gifts and lead them on
"Through a long life and by a gentle road
"Until together we shall sing thy praise

"And thy paternal breast shall reunite us all.

I spoke, and through the summit's crowning woods
My native horizon forever sank."

He passes six years in perfect seclusion; six years of solitary meditation and communion with God, in which he tells us that his life has been a blank page, without passions, fears, hopes, or struggles. The sacrifice has brought

its own reward, a pure and perfect peace is spread over his soul, and if the stream of life no longer flows on amid gay and smiling shores, he feels at last by the calm of its waves that it is bearing him towards Heaven. How exquisite is this idea:

"Sad memories, regrets, the images

"Of laughing scenes, of liberty, and love,
'Scarcely disturb the visions of the night;
"A heavenly peace hath shed its tints o'er all,
"As through the medium of a tinted glass
"The light receives the rosy blush of dawn;
"How sweet to feel the heart enwrapt in God,
"As a rich perfume is preserved in gold;
"To have so high an aim, so marked a road,
"To live six years in one celestial thought."

What could give a more perfect idea of the beautiful serenity of a mind existing only in the contemplation of an other world, to which the joys and sorrows of earth are but a faint resemblance of that which has been, but shall be no

more.

"When I have passed the threshold of the fane
"Whose second night envelopes me in gloom,
"When I see rise, between myself and man
A solitude of stone, immoveable,

"

Type of the space where the Creator dwells, "All mystery, eternity and depth;

"When the last rays of evening to the west

Recalled, upon the glowing pane expire;

"And when the bells' deep chimes in softer tones
Evaporate, and on some sonorous pillar
"Resting my brow, I feel it tremble like
"The key of some celestial instrument.

"When the immense cathedral, from its base,
"Its wall, its towers, its sepulchral caves,

"Seems as a living being, to this voice

"Moved by the common transport to respond

44

When, glancing from the pavement to the vault

"I feel within this space a listening ear,

"And that an unseen friend through the vast nave diffused

"Draws me to him, in a peculiar tongue

Speaks to my soul, holds silent converse with me,

"In his vast breast receives, envelopes me;

Then, on the marble pavement bending low,

Hiding my eyes beneath my mantle's fold,

"As one who flies a tempest of the soul,

"All blinded by a thousand lightning flames,
"My spirit seeks a shelter silently

"In the deep bosom of its God."

But even in this asylum he is not allowed to remain ;

the country is laid waste by the bloody tide of revolution restrained neither by the institutions of God, nor of man. The people arise: in the full consciousness of their power they trample on all laws, they select their victims alike from all ranks. None are spared, the blooming girl, the tender infant, the venerable sire whom even time hath honored, all share the common doom. The universal cry is death! virtue and innocence are become crimes which merit this doom Villages are set on fire that the hand of the destroyer may have light to accomplish its deeds of darkness, and the flames are extinguished by the blood of the inhabitants. At length the temples of the most High are broken open, the shrines are polluted, the altars overthrown, the Levites slain. Jocelyn is entreated to fly by his mother, but he resolutely determines to remain, while there is yet any thing to defend; and to die before the altar rather than desert his post. He lingers until he witnesses the destruction of the convent itself, and the death of his comrades; and then mingling with the crowd escapes from this scene of horror, and hastens, he knows not whither. He travels during seven days and seven nights until he reaches the base of the northern Alps. Here an old shepherd, moved by the tale of his misfortunes, receives him into his humble dwelling, and guides him over mountains and precipices to a cave, concealed in a deep valley, where, after promising to supply him with food, he leaves him.

In this new region, De Lamartine displays the most graphic powers of description. His style, changing with his subject, acquires new dignity and force, without losing its peculiar softness. With a magician's wand he transports us to the summits of those lofty mountains, whence the mind looks down serenely upon the storms and struggles of an unhappy world without feeling their influence, and is lost in the contemplation of Nature in its sublimest form. With him we climb the steep and difficult surface of the rocks, stand upon the brink of fearful precipices, and watch with envious eyes the eagles' flight, and the course of the avalanche. We hear the roaring of the glacier, we see the spraygemmed diadem of the waterfall, and such a dress of enchantment has the poet thrown around the whole that we return to earth with regret after so bold a flight. It is impossible to expatiate on all the beauties which here present themselves; and it were equally impossible to pass on with

out remarking some of those "gems of thought" which are so diffused throughout the whole poem, that we might speak of them in the words used by our author in describing the coiffure of Mdle. Malagambe; "in which the profusion of jewels was so great that it seemed as if the contents of a whole casket had been showered upon her head." Such are these.

"How swims the eye in this pure firmament,
"How soft a blue, and yet what dazzling light,
"Tis like the ocean when some broken ray
"Is mirrored in the zephyr-ruffled wave.
"Lo! in the horizon the falling star;

"The dark pine shade conceals from me the moon,
"Whose restless whiteness, seems beneath this cloud
"Like snow which falls, and melts upon the leaves.
"On the soft breeze which scarce my check has felt,
"What ponderous sigh is from the summit borne ?—
"It rises, it complains, it sinks-it dies!

"It is the tempest passing o'er my head;

"It is the sail through which the cold wind whistles
"And the night thunders, when o'er gloomy seas
"The wave pursues the bark.

"Harmonious pines! harp of the wood's on which
"All Heaven's winds their voices modulate.
"The universal instrument of tears and song,

Enchanting Nature with her thousand echoes
Where, in soft accents of aerial breath

"Each heart finds sighs re-echoing its own.

"Oh sacred trees, who know what Heaven grants us,

"In this deep vale, by Nature rounded thus,
That unto God alone her brightest charms
Might be unveiled."

Here he remains for a long time alone, yet is his solitary existence full of interest and delight. In exploring the vast regions around him, in the enjoyment of their beauties, in sylvan employments and the exercises of devotion the days glide away quickly and happily; the very novelty of his situation prevents him from feeling its loneliness. As this disappears however, a sense of entire desolation forces itself upon his mind. He mourns his entire separation from the human race; he is cut off from his fellow men, from their intercourse and from their sympathies.