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young man desired. Poor Cæsarini! It was much to him to get a new listener, and he fondly imagined every honest listener must be a warm admirer. But, with the coyness of his caste, he affected reluctance and hesitation; he dallied with his own impatient yearnings. And Maltravers, to smooth his way, proposed an excursion on the lake.

"One of my men shall row," said he; “you shall recite to me, and I will be to you what the old housekeeper was to Molière."

Maltravers had deep good-nature where he was touched, though he had not a superfluity of what is called good-humour, which floats on the surface and smiles on all alike. He had much of the milk of human kindness, but little of its oil.

The poet assented, and they were soon upon the lake. It was a sultry day, and it was noon; so the boat crept slowly along by the shadow of the shore, and Cæsarini took from his breast pocket some manuscripts of small and beautiful writing. Who does not know the pains a young poet takes to bestow a fair dress on his darling rhymes ?

Cæsarini read well and feelingly. Everything was in favour of the reader. His own poetical countenance-his voice, his enthusiasm, half suppressed-the pre-engaged interest of the auditor-the dreamy loveliness of the hour and scene (for there is a great deal in time in these things!)-Maltravers listened intently. It is very difficult to judge of the exact merit of poetry in another language even when we know that language well-so much is there in the untranslatable magic of expression, the little subtleties of style. But Maltravers, fresh, as he himself had said, from the study of great and original writers, coud not but feel that he was listening to melodious but feeble mediocrity. It was the poetry of words, not things. He thought it cruel, however, to be hypercritical, and he uttered all the commonplaces of eulogium that occurred to him. The young man was enchanted; "And yet," said he, with a sigh, "I have no public. In England they would appreciate me." Alas! in England, at that moment, there were five hundred poets as young, as ardent, and yet more gifted, whose hearts beat with the same desire, whose nerves were broken by the same disappointments.

Maltravers found that his young friend would not lis

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ten to any judgment not purely favourable. The archbishop in Gil Blas was not more touchy upon any criticism that was not panegyric. Maltravers thought it a bad sign, but he recollected Gil Blas, and prudently refrained from bringing on himself the benevolent wish of "beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus de bon gout." When Cæsarini had finished his MS. he was anxious to conclude the excursion-he longed to be at home, and think over the admiration he had excited. But he left his poems with Maltravers; and getting on shore by the remains of Pliny's villa, was soon out of sight.

Maltravers that evening read the poems with attention. His first opinion was confirmed. The young man wrote without knowledge. He had never felt the passions he painted, never been in the situations he described. There was no originality in him, for there was no experience; it was exquisite mechanism, his verse -nothing more! it might well deceive him, for it could not but flatter his ear-and Tasso's silver march rang not more musically than did the chiming stanzas of Castruccio Cæsarini.

The perusal of this poetry and his conversation with the poet threw Maltravers into a fit of deep musing. "This poor Cæsarini may warn me against myself!" thought he. "Better hew wood and draw water than attach ourselves devotedly to an art in which we have not the capacity to excel. It is to throw away the healthful objects of life for a diseased dream-worse than the Rosicrucians it is to make a sacrifice of all human beauty for the smile of a sylphid that never visits us but in visions." Maltravers looked over his own compositions, and thrust them into the fire. He slept ill that night. His pride was a little dejected. He was like a beauty who has seen a caricature of herself.

"Still follow SENSE of every art the soul."

POPE. Moral Essays. Essay IV.

ERNEST MALTRAVERS spent much of his time with the family of De Montaigne. There is no period of life in which we are more accessible to the sentiment of friendship than in the intervals of moral exhaustion which succeed to the disappointments of the passions. There is then something inviting in those gentler feelings which keep alive, but do not fever, the circulation of the affections. Maltravers looked with the benevolence of a brother upon the brilliant, versatile, and restless Teresa. She was the last person in the world he could have been in love with-for his nature, ardent, excitable, yet fastidious, required something of repose in the manners and temperament of the woman whom he could love, and Teresa scarcely knew what repose was. Whether playing with her children (and she had two lovely ones-the eldest six years old), or teasing her calm and meditative husband, or pouring out extempore verses, or rattling over airs which she never finished on the guitar or piano-or making excursions on the lake-or, in short, in whatever occupation she appeared as the Cynthia of the minute, she was always gay and mobile-never out of humour, never acknowledging a single care or cross in life-never susceptible of grief, save when her brother's delicate health or morbid temper saddened her atmosphere of sunshine. Even then the sanguine elasticity of her mind and constitution quickly recovered from the depressionand she persuaded herself that Castruccio would grow stronger every year, and ripen into a celebrated and happy man. Castruccio himself lived what romantic poetasters call "the life of a poet." He loved to see the sun rise over the distant Alps, or the midnight moon sleeping on the lake. He spent half the day and often half the night in solitary rambles, weaving his airy rhymes, or indulging his gloomy reveries, and he thought loneliness made the element of a poet. Alas! Dante, Alfieri, even Petrarch might have taught him

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that a poet must have intimate knowledge of men as well as mountains, if he desire to become the CREATOR. When Shelley, in one of his prefaces, boasts of being familiar with Alps and glaciers, and Heaven knows what, the critical artist cannot help wishing that he had been rather familiar with Fleet-street or the Strand. Perhaps, then, that remarkable genius might have been more capable of realizing characters of flesh and blood; and have composed corporeal and consummate wholes, not confused and glittering fragments.

Though Ernest was attached to Teresa and deeply interested in Castruccio, it was De Montaigne for whom he experienced the higher and graver sentiment of esteem. This Frenchman was one acquainted with a much larger world than that of the coteries. He had served in the army; been employed with distinction in civil affairs; and was of that robust and healthful moral constitution which could bear with every variety of social life, and estimate calmly the balance of our mortal fortunes. Trial and experience had left him that true philosopher who is too wise to be an optimist

too just to be a misanthrope. He enjoyed life with sober judgment, and pursued the path most suited to himself, without declaring it to be the best for others. He was a little hard, perhaps, upon the errors that beong to weakness and conceit-not those that have their source in great natures or generous thoughts. Among his characteristics was a profound admiration for England. His own country he half loved yet half disdained. The impetuosity and levity of his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions. He could not forgive them (he was wont to say) for having made the two grand experiments of popular revolution and military despotism in vain. He sympathized neither with the young enthusiasts who desired a republic, without well knowing the numerous strata of habits and customs upon which that fabric, designed for permanence, should be built-north the uneducated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration of the warrior empire-nor with the dull and arrogant bigots who connected all ideas of order and government with the ill-starred and wornout dynasty of the Bourbons. In fact, GOOD SENSE was with him the principium et fons of all theories and all practice. And it was this quality

that attached him to the English. His philosophy on this head was rather curious.

"Good sense," said he one day to Maltravers, as they were walking to and fro at De Montaigne's villa, by the margin of the lake, "is not a merely intellectual attri bute; it is rather the result of a just equilibrium of all our faculties, spiritual and moral. The dishonest, or the toys of their own passions, may have genius; but they rarely, if ever, have good sense in the conduct of life. They may often win large prizes, but it is by a game of chance, not skill. But the man whom I perceive walking an honourable and upright career-just to others, and also to himself (for we owe justice to ourselves-to the care of our fortunes, our characterto the management of our passions) is a more dignified representative of his Maker than the mere child of genius. Of such a man, we say he has GOOD SENSE; yes, but he has also integrity, self-respect, and self-denial. A thousand trials which his sense braves and conquers are temptations also to his probity-his temper-in a word, to all the many sides of his complicated nature. Now, I do not think he will have this good sense any more than a drunkard will have strong nerves, unless he be in the constant habit of keeping his mind clear from the intoxication of envy, vanity, and the various emotions that dupe, and mislead us. Good sense is not, therefore, an abstract quality or a solitary talent; but it is the natural result of the habit of thinking justly, and therefore seeing clearly, and is as different from the sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist or attorney, as the philosophy of Socrates differed from the rhetoric of Gorgias. As a mass of individual excellences make up this attribute in a man, so a mass of such men thus characterized give a character to a nation. Your England is, therefore, renowned for its good sense; but it is renowned also for the excellences which accompany strong sense in an individual-high honesty and faith in its dealings-a warm, love of justice and fairplaya general freedom from the violent crimes common on the Continent, and the energetic perseverance in enterprise once commenced, which results from a bold and healthful disposition."

"Our wars-our debt," began Maltravers.

"Pardon me," interrupted De Montaigne, "I am speaking of your people, not of your government. A

The suitities.