am delighted to find you in such good humor with my uncle the archbishop." "I am absolutely in love with him," answered I. "His goodness to me has been such as I can never sufficiently acknowledge. Less than my present happiness could never have made me amends for being at so great a distance from Don Cæsar and his son." "I am persuaded," replied he, "that they are both of them equally chagrined at having lost you. But possibly you are not separated forever; fortune may some day bring you together again." I could not hear such an idea started without being moved by it. My sighs would find vent; and I felt at that moment so strong an affection for Don Alphonso, that I could willingly have turned my back on the archbishop and all the fine prospects that were opening to me, and have gone back to the castle of Leyva, had but a mortification taken place in the back of the scarecrow which had frightened me away. Don Ferdinand was not insensible to the emotions that agitated me, and felt himself so much obliged by them, that he took his leave with the assurance of the whole family always taking an anxious interest in my fate.

A

Two months after this worthy gentleman had left us, in the luxuriant harvest of my highest favor, a lowering storm came suddenly over the episcopal palace; the archbishop had a stroke of apoplexy. By dint of immediate applications and good nursing, in a few days there was no bodily appearance of disease remaining. But his reverend intellects did not so easily recover from their lethargy. I could not help observing it to myself in the very first discourse that he composed.. Yet there was not such a wide gap between the merits of the present and the former ones, as to warrant the inference that the sun of oratory was many degrees advanced in its post-meridian course. second homily was worth waiting for; because that would clearly determine the line of my conduct. Alas, and well a day! when that second homily came, it was a knockdown argument. Sometimes the good prelate moved forward, and sometimes he moved backwards; sometimes he mounted up into the garret, and sometimes dipped down into the cellar. It was a composition of more sound than meaning, something like a superannuated schoolmaster's theme, when he attempts to give his boys more sense than he possesses of his own, or like a capuchin's sermon, which only scatters a few artificial flowers of paltry rhetoric over a barren desert of doctrine.

I was not the only person whom the alteration struck. The

audience at large, when he delivered it, as if they too had been pledged to watch the advances of dotage, said to one another in a whisper all round the church, "Here is a sermon, with symptoms of apoplexy in every paragraph." "Come, my good Coryphæus of the public taste in homilies," said I then to myself, "prepare to do your office. You see that my lord archbishop is going very fast-you ought to warn him of it, not only as his bosom friend, on whose sincerity he relies, but lest some blunt fellow should anticipate you, and bolt out the truth in an offensive manner. In that case you know the consequence; you would be struck out of his will, where no doubt you have a more convertible bequest than the licentiate Sedillo's library."

But as reason, like Janus, looks at things with two faces, I began to consider the other side of the question; the hint seemed difficult to wrap up so as to make it palatable. Authors in general are stark mad on the subject of their own works, and such an author might be more testy than the common herd of the irritable race; but that suspicion seemed illiberal on my part, for it was impossible that my freedom should be taken amiss, when it had been forced upon me by so positive an injunction. Add to this that I reckoned upon handling the subject skillfully, and cramming discretion down his throat like a high-seasoned epicurean dish. After all my pro and con, finding that I risked more by keeping silence than by breaking it, I determined to venture on the delicate duty of speaking my mind.

Now there was but one difficulty; a difficulty indeed! how to open the business. Luckily the orator himself extricated me from that embarrassment, by asking what they said of him in the world at large, and whether people were tolerably well pleased with his last discourse. I answered that there could be but one opinion about his homilies; but that it should seem as if the last had not quite struck home to the hearts of the audience, like those which had gone before. "Do you really mean what you say, my friend?" replied he, with a sort of wriggling surprise. "Then my congregation are more in the temper of Aristarchus than of Longinus!" No, may it please your grace," rejoined I, "quite the contrary. Performances of that order are above the reach of vulgar criticism: there is not a soul but expects to be saved by their influence. Nevertheless, since you have made it my duty to be sincere and unreserved, I shall take the liberty of just stating that your last discourse is

not written with quite the overpowering eloquence and conclusive argument of your former ones. Does not your grace feel just as I do on the subject?"

This ignorant and stupid frankness of mine completely blanched my master's cheek; but he forced a fretful smile, and said, "Then, good Master Gil Blas, that piece does not exactly hit your fancy?" "I did not mean to say that, your grace," interrupted I, looking very foolish. "It is far superior to what any one else could produce, though a little below par with respect to your own works in general." "I know what you mean," replied he. "You think I am going downhill, do not you? Out with it at once. It is your opinion that it is time for me to think of retiring?"

"I should never have had the presumption," said I, "to deliver myself with so little reserve, if it had not been your grace's express command. I act in entire obedience to your grace's orders; and I most obsequiously implore your grace not to take offense at my boldness." "I were unfit to live in a Christian land!" interrupted he, with stammering impatience, "I were unfit to live in a Christian land if I liked you the less for such a Christian virtue as sincerity. A man who does not love sincerity sets his face against the distinguishing mark between a friend and a flatterer. I should have given you infinite credit for speaking what you thought, if you had thought anything that deserved to be spoken. I have been finely taken in by your outside show of cleverness, without any solid foundation of sober judgment!"

Though completely unhorsed, and at the enemy's mercy, I wanted to make terms of decent capitulation, and to go unmolested into winter quarters; but let those who think to appease an exasperated author, and especially an author whose ear has been long attuned to the music of his own praises, take warning by my fate. "Let us talk no more on the subject, my very young friend," said he. "You are as yet scarcely in the rudiments of good taste, and utterly incompetent to distinguish between gold and tinsel. You are yet to learn that I never in all my life composed composed a finer homily than that unfortunate one which had not the honor of your approbation. The immortal part of me, by the blessing of heaven on me and my congregation, is less weighed down by human infirmity than when the flesh was stronger. We all grow wiser as we grow older, and I shall in future select the people about me with more caution; nor submit the castigation of my works but to a much abler

critic than yourself. Get about your business!" pursued he, giving me an angry shove by the shoulders out of his closet; "go and tell my treasurer to pay you a hundred ducats, and take my priestly blessing in addition to that sum. God speed you, good Gil Blas! I heartily pray that you may do well in the world! There is nothing to stand in your way, but the want of a little better taste."

PLEASURE IS VANITY.

BY MATTHEW PRIOR.

(From "Solomon.")

[MATTHEW PRIOR, English poet and diplomatist, was born at WimborneMinster, Dorsetshire, England, July 21, 1664; died at Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, September 18, 1721. He was graduated at St. John's College in 1686; became intimate with Charles Montagu, and with him wrote "The Hind and the Panther, transvers'd to the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse," (1687), a parody on Dryden, who was deeply annoyed. Prior was secretary to Lord Dursley, ambassador to the Hague, 1690-1697; secretary to the Earl of Portland's embassy to France in 1698. He was afterward a member of Parliament and an ambassador to Paris, and in 1715 was impeached and imprisoned two years in his own house. His poems are not great, but are graceful, polished, and witty. Among the best known are: "Carmen Seculare" (1700), and "Alma, or the Progress of the Mind " (1715).]

I COMMUNED thus: the power of wealth I tried,
And all the various luxe of costly pride,

Artists and plans relieved my solemn hours;

I founded palaces, and planted bowers.
Birds, fishes, beasts of each exotic kind,

I to the limits of my court confined.

To trees transferred I gave a second birth,

And bade a foreign shade grace Judah's earth.

Fish ponds were made, where former forests grew,
And hills were leveled to extend the view.
Rivers diverted from their native course,

And bound with chains of artificial force,

From large cascades in pleasing tumult rolled,

Or rose through figured stone, or breathing gold.

From furthest Africa's tormented womb

The marble brought, erects the spacious dome,

Or forms the pillars' long extended rows,

On which the planted grove, and pensile garden grows.

The workmen here obeyed the master's call,
To gild the turret, and to paint the wall;
To mark the pavement there with various stone,
And on the jasper steps to rear the throne:
The spreading cedar that an age had stood,
Supreme of trees, and mistress of the wood,
Cut down and carved, my shining roof adorns,
And Lebanon his ruined honor mourns.

A thousand artists show their cunning power,
To raise the wonders of the ivory tower.
A thousand maidens ply the purple loom,
To weave the bed, and deck the regal room;
Till Tyre confesses her exhausted store,
That on her coast the Murex is no more;
Till from the Parian isle, and Libya's coast,
The mountains grieve their hopes of marble lost;
And India's woods return their just complaint,
Their brood decayed, and want of Elephant.

My full design with vast expense achieved,
I came, beheld, admired, reflected, grieved;
I chid the folly of my thoughtless haste,
For, the work perfected, the joy was past.

To my new courts sad thought did still repair;
And round my gilded roofs hung hovering care.
In vain on silken beds I sought repose,
And restless oft from purple couches rose;
Vexatious thought still found my flying mind
Nor bound by limits, nor to place confined;
Haunted my nights, and terrified my days;
Stalked through my gardens, and pursued my ways,
Nor shut from artful bower, nor lost in winding maze.
Yet take thy bent, my soul; another sense
Indulge; add music to magnificence:

Essay if harmony may grief control;

Or power of sound prevail upon the soul.
Often our seers and poets have confessed,

That music's force can tame the furious beast;
Can make the wolf, or foaming boar restrain
His rage; the lion drop his crested main,
Attentive to the song; the lynx forget
His wrath to man, and lick the minstrel's feet.
Are we, alas! less savage yet than these?
Else music sure may human cares appease.

I spake my purpose; and the cheerful choir
Parted their shares of harmony: the lyre