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time for drawing, and if you keep your hand in practice and have much genius, it will burst out at some future day."

Here I saw that smile again, but was not hurt by it now; I smiled also, and told him I knew he was right and I should accept the offer.

With melancholy determination I took down my sign, its gilt letters still untarnished. I carried my easel, my lay figure, and all my valuable possessions to my attic, and took a last fond look of the sky-light which had been the confident of so many aspirations.

My new business was one that was valuable and interesting in itself, as well as profitable, so that I felt I was doing something besides merely making money, and I could not but confess that I was happier while actively employed among other men, than when waiting, and waiting in vain, in my lonely studio.

Yet I sometimes looked back with regret to those days of sweet delusion, and retain such an affection for Iphigenia that I carried it home with me when I went to visit my mother. She regarded it with maternal pride, and gave it an honorable place in her parlor, opposite Uncle John. I laughed very much when I saw that delight of my childhood, so meek and cadaverous it now appeared to me, but I turned to my own picture, and thought it almost as absurd.

There

seemed to be a family resemblance between the two-Iphigenia and my Uncle John!

I went with my mother to see Mrs. Brown for the first time since that eventful day on which I was so enraptured by Jephthah's daughter. I sat in the same place at table, and had the same quince, I believe, but could eat it now with perfect composure. I was highly amused to see how flimsy the daughter was in her lilac mantle and pink train, and how very thick Jephthah's sandalled legs had become. The white damsel also was no longer a phantom of delight.

The next morning I called upon Fanny Ann. She was playing a singular tune on a rickety piano. She welcomed me with sweet timidity, and had many pretty little airs and graces; but her hair was in curling-papers, and I did not stay long. I presented her portrait-that gem of art to her grandmother, whose sight was almost gone, and the good lady was very much delighted with it.

But the river, the hills, and the widestretching fields were as beautiful as ever, and I told my mother I should build a pleasanter house on the old place, in a few years, and that she should come and live with me, and-some one else. "Fanny Ann!" said my mother; but I thought of another Fanny.

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Oh for Hafiz! glorious Persian!
Keats, with buoyant, gay diversion
Mocking Schiller's grave immersion;
Oh for wreathed Anacreon!

Yet enough to have the living-
They, the few, the rapture-giving!
(Blesséd more than in receiving,)

Fate, that frowns when laurels wreathe them,
Once the solace might bequeathe them,

Once to taste of vino d'oro

On the Hills of Lebanon!

III.

Lebanon, thou mount of story,
Well we know thy sturdy glory,
Since the days of Solomon;
Well we know the Five old Cedars,
Scarred by ages-silent pleaders,
Preaching, in their gray sedateness,
Of thy forest's fallen greatness-
Of the vessels of the Tyrian,
And the palaces Assyrian,
And the temple on Moriah

To the High and Holy One!

Know the wealth of thy appointment—
Myrrh and aloes, gum and ointment;
But we knew not, till we clomb thee,
Of the nectar dropping from thee-
Of the pure, pellucid Ophir

In the cups of vino d'oro,

On the Hills of Lebanon!

IV.

We have drunk, and we have eaten,
Where Mizraim's sheaves are beaten,
Tasted Judah's milk and honey,
On his mountains, bare and sunny;
Drained ambrosial bowls, that ask us
Never more to leave Damascus ;
And have sung a vintage paan,
To the grapes of isles Egan,
And the flasks of Orvieto,

Ripened in the Roman sun:

But the liquor here surpasses
All that beams in earthly glasses.
'Tis of this that Paracelsus

(His elixir vitæ) tells us,

That to happier shores can float us

Than Lethean stems of lotus,

Straight restores when day is done.

Then, before the sunset waneth,

While the rosy tide, that staineth
Earth, and sky, and sea, remaineth,
We will take the fortune proffer'd,
Ne'er again to be re-offer'd-
We will drink of vino d'oro

On the Hills of Lebanon!

Vino d'oro! vino d'oro!

Golden blood of Lebanon!

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MACAO, September, 1858.

SKETCHES IN A PARIS CAFÉ.

ND besides, Monsieur, all the talents dine there!"

"AN

"I will certainly come. Where shall we meet ? What say you to the Galerie d'Orleans, for there one's sheltered from the vicissitudes of this fickle season, and, in its winter's throng, the faithless watches are never execrated. But what hour shall we meet? which is the best hour for seeing "all the talents" at your restaurant?

"Six o'clock. God protect you!"
"Until our next meeting." *

Some two winters ago, chance placed me at the right corner end of the large half-circle the orchestra makes in its middle, in the Grand Opera. The musician nearest to me was a young violinist about twenty years old. The opera given that night was M. Auber's failure (Homer himself sometimes sleeps) L'Enfant Prodigue. It had then reached its thirtieth night. The orchestra were long since tired of it. It is the custom of the artists of the orchestra when they feel little or no interest in the evening's piece to pass away as much time as they can by reading some book or another. They have heard the piece so often (for before it appears to the public it has been rehearsed many hundreds of times), that some of the older musicians never think of taking their eyes off their book during the whole evening, but when they have to play, they install the work they are reading on the stand by the side of the score, and play away with all their might while they are devouring some pictured page of Sir Walter Scott or Fenimore Cooper, or some animated and brilliant story of M. Alexandre Dumas. There are some ennuyés in the orchestra these authors no longer divert. An old bass-violinist has been pointed out to me as having mastered the Hebrew language while thus whiling away his time. A kettle-drummer (the one on the extreme right of the stage) is noted for his knowledge of the Russian. The cymbal-beater has made a considerable progress in the Sanscrit, and the triangle man is a proficient in the Coptic language and hieroglyphics.

I observed that my neighbor, notwithstanding his youth, was one of the ennuyés; although I several times wiped my eye-glasses I could not see what book formed the solace of his hours as he so covered it with his music, that neither its page-top nor its back was visible; besides,

the type was of a very small character. Our arms touched several times during the evening: the interchange of civilities these accidents produced was more than enough to afford facility to engage in a sustained conversation. After remarking upon the weariness he must feel by hearing the same music every day and night for months, I soon had an opportunity to inquire the name of the book he was reading, and having been long accustomed to the ruthless murders the Frenchmen commit on foreign names, I instantly recognized in "Weelyam Shaaspee" the great dramatic bard of England. The young violinist had exhausted his maternal literature, and he had (so he said) made sufficient progress in the English language to dare to swim through Shakespeare's pages uncorked with a translation. He, of course, thought Shakespeare sublimeevery body does. I did not take the trouble to inquire if he understood him; I have abandoned for many years making those inquiries of Frenchmen as being a mere waste of time. I have since had reason to think that his knowledge of English extended a very little ways beyond "Yes," and "How do you do."

Our conversation lasted, with short intervals, some hours; he talked with the freedom of youth, of artist's youth, glad to find a patient ear to listen to its story; while I, talking enough to draw him out, listened and talked with the interest I feel in every thing in this world, except the Multiplication Table and the Rule of Three. Before the curtain fell, we exchanged cards, and I went the next day to see him. Our acquaintance ripened soon into something like intimacy. One day happening to have rather more money than I usually can boast, I determined to dine at the Trois Frères Provençaux, partly because I was tired of the fixedprice restaurants and desired a change, and partly, I suspect, from a lurking hope that money, finding how cordial a reception I gave it, would visit my purse more frequently than it did. As a dinner for one person costs at the Trois Frères exactly the same sum of money as a dinner for two (the single portion being more than enough for two persons), I determined to invite my friend the violinist to dine with me. What a merry time we had of it! Was it not worth all the money it cost! To finish the evening gayly, we took our gloria at the Café de Paris, and

Adieu! Au revoir.

about midnight we separated, feeling at peace with the world and full of good will to all men. There's nothing like your Burgundy for enduing men's breasts with the milk of human kindness. As he held out his hand to me: "Come next week and dine with me," he said, "it will be something new to you; and besides, Monsieur, all the talents dine there."

As I have said I accepted his invitation, an punctual as a king I was pacing the animated Galerie d'Orleans while the Palais Royal clock was striking six o'clock. There is always a throng in the Palais Royal, and especially during the winter; its long arcades afford an agreeable walk in the inclement weather, the miniature shops with all their contents fancifully and tastily arranged in the immense and perfect plate of glass which, barely leaving the space sufficient for a door, covers the whole front of the shop: the unnumbered variety of the shops, the motley complexion of the promenaders, the pretty shop girls, the mirrored and gilded eating-houses with their displays of all the costly luxuries of the season, or rather of the wealthy, for they know no season, give a constantly novel and agreeable scene to foreigners and to Parisians. They are both, too, attracted thither by its offering within its vast parallelogram, restaurants, suited to every variety of purse, from the fixed-price restaurant at twenty-two cents, to the bill restaurant with an octavo volume of several hundred pages; and four theatres; and two musical cafés. The Galerie d'Orleans is the microcosm of the Palais Royal. It is an arcade running across the end of the garden of the Palais Royal, and separating the Palais Royal proper from the shops which line the garden; built entirely of glass and iron, lined on both sides with brilliant shops constructed of the same materials; entirely protected from the weather, it is so favorite a promenade, between six and eight o'clock in the evening, it is almost impossible to move in it except in the cadenced march of the crowd which fills it. The Place Saint Marc in Venice, (the only sight in the world which can be compared with this) is far inferior in brilliancy and gayety to the Palais Royal.

Even if my friend had been less punctual than he was (the fines inflicted by the Grand Opera for tardiness, are admirable correctives of artists' negligence of time), I could readily have amused myself in the Galerie d'Orleans, although I have been for a good many years a daily froquenter of its marble pavement. "Come,"

said he, putting his arm in mine, “are you ready for my artist-dinner; you contemplate it without trembling." "Allons donc!" said I, "know, my dear fellow, that when one has eaten his A. B. at -college commons, where, as Weelyan Shaaspee would say—

Rats and mice and such small deer, Have been Tom's food for many a year, he cannot be alarmed by any thing found in a kitchen."

We strolled by one of the external arcades of the Galeric d'Orleans, gayly down to some of the numerous entrances of the Palace, and plunged into one of the narrow streets imprisoned between two giant lines of eight-story houses, until we reached a brilliantly lighted door, painted gorgeously, its decorations being all the presents the earth, air, and water give to the kitchen. Coming suddenly from the dimly lighted street to the gas lighted gilded, and mirrored restaurant, if I was almost blinded by the light, I was completely stunned by the clatter. The ground-floor was as full as it could be; every body was talking as fast and as loud as they could talk; the servants (who had a large number of guests to wait on) shrieked out their questions and answers; the master of the house roared in tones which would not have thrown discredit on Boanerges, the whole bill of fare, which was interlarded with jokes whenever he caught the eye of some stanch habitué, who was never guilty of the "indelicacy" of asking for credit ;-jokes which were received with loud applause of laughter, which I attributed (for the jokes can only be called jokes by that charitable courtesy which takes the will for the deed, it was evident from his face he intended them for jokes.) partly to our masculine proneness to flatter authority, and partly because his absurdities from their colossal exaggeration, seemed caricatures of absurdity. Add to all this confusion confounded, the distant thunder of the cooks' bons; and the sum total of cach guest's dinner, bawled interrogatively by the woman at the counter, to the waiters, and that for eighteen cents, you had soup, two plates of meat, a dessert; a half bottle of wine and bread at discretionyou will admit that this was decidedly a cheap restaurant. Wonder that Frenchmen should despise life, when life can be maintained so cheaply!

According to the bill of fare, I eat Julienne soup, a beef-steak and potatoes, a mutton cutlet and potatoes, and plums and almonds-what I really eat, I have much less knowledge of than I possess of

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It was quite a masquerade of poverty. I vow if I had met any of those habitués on the street, I should have taken them for men of property. Every body had handsome kid gloves, and gold watches and chains, and the majority wore patent leather boots. If regard was had to the narrowness of their incomes, their very wardrobe demanded the exertion of consummate genius. The larger number of the guests were young men. These were "all the talents," who were persuaded (and generally with reason) that fortune was a mere question of time to them. There were young musical composers among the frequenters of the restaurant, and young actors, young painters, young scribblers, young musicians, and some shop-boys-and of both sexes of all of these stations of life. Most of the persons present were husbands or wives by brevet. The pro hac vice wives bore the names of their "husbands" with as much ease as if the mayor and the priest had taken their parts in the transmutation. The waiters, who were quite young, were on a footing of equality with the guests, and joked and laughed and patted them on the backs; they never thought of saying Monsieur; in many cases the waiters were richer than the guests. There were no disputes, no quarrelling, no impertinencies of any kind, the "ladies" were treated with a marked courtesy; every one was gay, every one was merry,-how could it be otherwise when all were so young.

I had scarcely exchanged the ordinary civilities with my friend's "Madame" (who was waiting for us when we came in) when I heard the notes of a guitar: turning to the door, I saw standing under the clock, and between the door and the window, a tall scrawny woman; she was dressed shabbily genteel, and every thing about her gave evident indications that she had long and still painfully struggled with poverty: she must have suffered acutely, during the conflict, for besides the lines rising on both sides of her nose, and running around her mouth, and the furrows on both checks, from the cheekbone to a level with the mouth, she was one of those constitutions which suffer the most from the ills of life, as they can bear more of them before breaking, than any other temperament. She was tall, thin, nervous; her limbs and her head were small, her hair was black and ill VOL. II.-4

dressed-not from carelessness, but as if her hands had many a time in the course of the day pressed it back to give more air to her fired brain; she kept her eyes fixed on the floor, and sang three or four of the merrier popular songs of the day. No attention was paid to her, unless I except the impertinent way the waiters snubbed her, and the rude jests the landlord made with her. After her songs were ended, she went around from table to table, holding out a small tin box for some recompense for her labors. I suppose she received in all some fifteen cents. In a short time after she left us, two mere lads, violinists, came in, and gave us something as much like music as they could make it. They handed around a cup, which received as liberal a donation as the poor woman's box. Then we had a harper.

With the music, the strange sights around me, the queer exclamations which met my ears, the beauty of "Madame," the youthful and artist's gayety of my friend, and the two bottles of extra wine he ordered (and a glass of which the waiter expected as of course), our dinner went off merrily enough-so merrily I have dined there several times since-and at my suggestion we all went to my room, (after my friend had paid the bill, fiftyfour cents, and given three cents to the waiter), where his "Madame" made coffee, while he and I arranged some cakes I had bought, on some plates, and blew up the fire, and we felt as happy as lords, for all we were up so many flights of the stairs of the spiral staircase.

"Don't think," said he, "that our res taurant is the lowest in Paris. There are some where you have soup, two plates, a dessert, wine, and bread at discretion, for twelve cents; indeed, outside of the Barrière du Mont Rouge, there is one where you may get all of that for ten centsthough I would not engage you to try it, for one of my friends, the 'serpent,' told me that he eat there before he entered our orchestra, and after the Italian opera season closed, one day he asked for fricasseed chicken, and he found the bones of it were those of an ox's tail. Du reste one may live at those places-I mean, one may keep starvation at arm's length at one of those places and without danger, -so the 'serpent' says,-if he eats only vermicelli soup and vegetables, for the bread there, as every where in Paris, is excellent. But it is a droll place though! The "serpent" says they have all of our musical entertainment, and a great deal more noise than we have (for in Paris the noise made in the restaurants, increases.

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