A PRESENTIMENT. 349 roux, to whom she related her journey and her deed in a charming letter, full of grace, and wit, and sublimity; she told him that her friends ought not to regret her, for a lively imagination and a sensitive heart only promise a stormy life to those who possess them; she added that she was well revenged on 2 Pétion, who at Caen suspected for a moment her political principles. Lastly, she begged him to tell Wimpffen that she had assisted him to win more than one battle. She finished in3 these words :-" What a sad people to form a republic. It is necessary at least to lay the foundation of peace; the government will come as it On the 15th, Charlotte Corday suffered her sentence with the calmness that had never deserted her. To the outrages of the vile populace, she only replied by the most modest and the most dignified deportment.5 But all did not heap outrages upon her; many pitied this girl, so young, so lovely, so disinterested in her act, and accompanied her to the scaffold with a look of pity and admiration. 6 THIERS, "Histoire de la Révolution Française." A PRESENTIMENT. The two young and already great men walked, as they conversed, upon that space which separates the statue of Henry IV. from the Place Dauphine; they stopped a moment in the centre of this place. 8 1 Sublimity, élévation-2 on, de-3 in, par-4 as it can, comme il le pourra-5 deportment, attitude-6 did not heap outrages upon her, ne l'outragèrent pas. 7" In conversing”—8 in the, au. "Yes, sir," continued Corneille,* "I see every evening with what rapidity a noble thought finds its echo in French hearts, and every evening I retire happy at the sight. Gratitude prostrates the poor people before this statue of a good king. Who knows what other monument another passion may raise near this? Who can say how far the love of glory would lead our people? Who knows that in the very place 2 where we now are, there may not be raised a pyramid taken from the East?" 3 4 "These are the secrets of the future," said Milton. “I, like yourself, admire your impassioned nation, but I fear them for themselves; I do not well understand them, and I do not recognise their wisdom when I see them lavishing their admiration upon men such as he who now rules you. The love of power is very puerile, and this man is devoured by it, without having force enough to seize it wholly. By an utter absurdity, he is a tyrant under a master. Thus has this colossus, never firmly balanced,5 been all but overthrown by the finger of a boy; does that indicate genius? No, no! when genius condescends to quit its lofty regions for a human passion, at least it should secure an entire grasp of that passion. Since Richelieu only aimed at power, why did he not make himself absolute master of power? I am going to see a man who is not yet known, and whom I see swayed by this miserable ambition, but I think that he will go further-his name is Cromwell." ALFRED DE VIGNY, " Cinq-Mars." 1 At the sight, de l'avoir vu- -2 in the very place, au lieu même 3 taken from, arrachée à-4 upon, à-5 never firmly balanced, toujours sans équilibre-6 at least, etc......passion, du moins doit-il l'envahir. * See the Biographical notice No. 6 in the Appendix. A TRUE POET. 351 A TRUE POET. What I would wish to write is the history of one of those eminently sensitive and eminently intelligent men, whose mysterious life touches on all things, and mingles with none; who have no communication with the material world except through those relations which duty or necessity imposes; whose conceptions embrace the moral world; who only hold upon this earth the place of a naïf and timid child; who only exercise there the limited rights of a helot or a pariah, and yet whose words will one day be the law of wise men and of potentates. It is a life generally simple in events, but strange and varied in feelings; 2 full of hopes, the object of which is beyond our reach; full of struggles and of triumphs, of enterprises and of conquests, of unspeakable joys and of profound sorrows which we can scarcely know, because they belong to a higher sphere than our own—immense, in fact, in its trials, in its deceptions, in its enjoyments, in its catastrophes, in its course and in its end, as nature, as poetry, as the mind; because the history of nature, of poetry, of the mind is the very history of the poet; because the heart of the poet contains all, and more than all that humanity has felt— loves all that she has loved-possesses all that she covets -and suffers, when by the free action of thought he condemns himself to it, all that she is capable of suffering. I would express in a single type all the features of which the variable and almost indiscernible physiognomy of man is composed. I would write the life of Oliver Goldsmith. 3 CHARLES NODIER, "Notice sur Goldsmith." 1 On, à-2 in feelings, dans les sensations-3 contains all, and more than all that, contient, et bien plus encore, tout ce que. SCENES OF GIPSY LIFE. To find a new phase of gipsy life, one must go as far as Scotland. In that country of mountains, in the midst of an austere nature, in contact with the ancient Britons of the north, the character of the Romany has become grander, and more romantic in its tendencies. There the gipsies do not seem to have been at any time so numerous as in England; several of their original tribes exist no longer; their chiefs have been seized by the law, and the members of their families either became dispersed, or they attached themselves to other groups. The annals of this wandering race-I do not speak of ancient times, I speak of the commencement of this century are written in characters of blood on the rocks and aged trees of the Caledonian forests. I will choose as the scene of their chronicle and of their adventures the county of Fife, one of the most rich in all Scotland in curious ruins, in rugged scenery, and in picturesque views. Some fifty years since a traveller from that country found himself one winter's day before the forge of a farrier, in the neighbourhood of Carlisle. The shoe of his horse, worn out by the ice, was being repaired, when another traveller stopped for the same purpose at the same stall. The steed of the latter was a fine horse of English blood, saddled and bridled with elegance. The horseman himself was richly dressed, booted and spurred, and held in his hand an unexceptionable jockey-whip. As there were several horses to be shod, the new comer, with an important air, expressed his desire to be served first. This assurance and this bold demeanour attracted the attention of the Scotch traveller, who examined the SCENES OF GIPSY LIFE. 353 stranger from head to foot. What was his astonishment when he recognised in the would-be gentleman a certain Sandy Brown, who had scoured the country with a band of gipsies, and whom he had seen several times at his father's house! When he arrived near that part of the country where he was known, the brilliant cavalier divested himself of his fine clothes, sold his horse, took again his leathern apron, his tattered garments, his trade as tinker, and rejoined his tribe in some out-of-theway spot. The facility with which gipsies assume and cast aside different masks, is one of the characteristics of the race. They relate in the county of Fife many adventures which do honour to the dexterity, if not to the morality, of Sandy Brown, the chief of the gipsies. He had observed one day in a field a young bull, which, I know not by what accident, had lost three parts of his tail. Brown bought of a tanner a hide of the same colour as that of the bull, and with much ingenuity fabricated a false tail, which he was able to adjust on to that of the living animal. Having thus disguised his prey, he carried it off. He was in the act of placing the animal on a boat at Queensferry, when there arrived in great haste a servant sent by his master in pursuit of the thief. A discussion arose between the servant and the gipsy. "I could swear," said the servant," that were it not for this long tail, I well recognise the animal which belongs to us." And he was going to make a more minute examination, when the gipsy drew a knife from his pocket, and, in the sight of all persons present, cut off the false tail of the animal, taking care to carry away a piece of the real tail, which bled profusely. With a superb gesture (the gesture of calumniated in 2 A |