as they are and as they seem. Peruse the impression of an awakening after chloroform, the portrait of the house-surgeon, 'bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn,' or of the patient who has attempted suicide, and both the difficulty and the boldness of the attempt are obvious. And then which of his contemporaries unite scene and sensation with such vividness of can association? 'Loud lows the steer; in the fallows Rooks are alert; and the brooks Gurgle and tinkle and trill. Thro' the gloaming, Boy and girl wander Dreaming in darkness and dew.' A rush of streaming hedges, Of jostling lights and shadows, Of racing woods and meadows.' He is indeed exceptionally quick to seize the attitude and gesture both of animate and inanimate nature, the very sound of 'Dripping, dropping in a rhythm, Like the measures aped from Nature summons back the whole impress on wakefulness, of a cistern leaking at the barren heart of midnight;' while such excerpts as Cloud-shadow and scudding sun-burst Were swift on the floor of the sea.' 'A sombre, sagging sky Of tossed and tumbled wrack.' And among the bleaching linen Goes the west at hide-and-seek.' His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties.' 'Her little face is like a walnut-shell surely indicate no common power of presentment. His command of metre and nuances, at all times remarkable, is especially so in the Ballades and Sonnets, where the ingenuity of the rhyme is barely perceptible. The whole of this tiny volume is alive with 'A laughing A laughing thought, a golden gleam, and the burden of its lesson is that life 'At whatever source we drink it, In whatever terms we think it, That he has not soared higher, that he seldom breaks loose from the peep-show of sensation, is the consequence of this burden; but that he never descends below his own level is no small virtue. He probes a little of existence keenly and profoundly; if, like a diver, he rises instantly and perforce to the surface, he has none the less fathomed his particle of the depth. The lesser poets must now cease to be investigated, and the least demand a passing mention. Messrs. Ashby Sterry, Sims, and Clement Scott (we class them by priority of merit) have thought fit to publish occasional verse that has appeared in comic papers. We shall best review them en bloc by a ditty in their own style which has not, as yet, graced the columns either of 'Punch' or 'The Referee: '— 'Whenever these gentlemen quit the black city For Margate, for Brighton, spa German, hill Swiss, If editors publish, a ditty like this. Whenever these gentlemen read of a topi- But whenever their editors quit the black city, Oh! These gentlemen, reckless of praise or of hiss, Mr. Trail is of a much superior calibre-a political satirist who is always neat and never gaudy-an epigrammatic essayist in verse; designed in his own words 'To sing, not croak-for swan, and not for frog.' Are not his polemics written in the book of the 'Saturday Review'? As for his parodies, they follow the old-fashioned lines of Rejected Addresses,' and they they are as far in advance of the Bon Gaultier Ballads' as Aytoun was of his collaborator. "When "loon"'s been used and "shoon" and "spoon," And "stiver" sounded "stiver"; And left alone with "liver!"" But what, finally, are we to say of the poet laureate? We are reminded of a story about Cherubini at a first rehearsal of his pupil's opera. 'Mais, Maestro, vous ne dites rien,' was Halévy's exclamation at the master's silence. 'Ni vous aussi,” was the dry rejoinder. The fact is that Mr. Austin has said nothing, though he has said it nicely. A Dialogue at Fiesole is like an extract from 'Friends in Council' done into iambics, but it contains a pretty passage : 'Look when the vines are linking hands, and seem As pausing from the dance of spring, And in 'Outside the Village Church' occurs— 'I saw, Beyond the pasture's withered bents, And sheaves of wheat, like weathered tents, A twilight bivouac of peace.' 'Scented Stillness,' too, is a suggestive echo. So is, .. a something subtle all around Came floating on the rising dew, And sweetness took the place of sound.' Indeed, his feeling for effect in landscape is much beyond his power of reflection. His philosophastering or martial strains are at best neutral, constantly insignificant in the extreme. He seems to us a lady-like painter in water-colours; and of his work as a whole, judged by any stern criterion, we are obliged to repeat his own words in 'A Woman's Apology :' "Tis only the barren breakers that bellow on barren shore, "Tis only the braggart thunders that rumble and rage and roar; Like a wave is the love that babbles.' It would be unfair to look for great poetry from minor poets; it is only when they are arrogant that we have felt mercy to be misplaced. And we have found in them much more than we expected; not an immensity, but, in five instances at least, a true intensity of talent. Though Hippocrene be condemned by the sanitary surveyor, and the muses have been temporarily evicted evicted from their dismantled temple to hob-nob with the physiologist and the photographer, they will not always remain shrinkingly self-conscious; they will revert to their ancient splendour; diffusion is the order of the day, but reaction is also a law of nature. The performance of our minor poets has been manifold. It leaves us dissatisfied even where we admire; impatient, bewildered, expectant in an atmosphere of intermezzo. We seem to sit waiting in the vast theatre of art. The house is crowded. There is a sing-song of prelude; the orchestra are aimlessly attuning their instruments. But, instead of the customary curtain, hangs a huge sheet of looking-glass that mirrors the refracted lights, the motley decorations, the selfregarding multitude. Ever and anon, through some upper window, steals a welcome breath of the summer night, wafting a dull murmur of the babel beyond; there is even the reflection of a star on that mimic reduplication of the scene;-a scene gladly mistaken by some, especially the critics, for the drama itself. But all the while we are aware that the real play is behind. The prompter's bell will ring; the glass curtain will rise; and the half-heard outer life, the half-felt inner life will be set on the stage by a master-hand. The audience itself holds the germ of the play; and the first to realize that audience will be the commanding poet of the future. ART. ART. III.-1. Histoire Générale de Paris. La Bastille. Histoire et Description des Bâtiments-Administration-Régime de la Prison-Evénements historiques. Par Fernand Bournon. Paris, 1893. 2. Archives de la Bastille. Documents inédits recueillis et publiés par François Ravaisson, Conservateur-adjoint à la Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Tomes I.-XVII. Paris, 1866. WE E have at length all the materials before us for a complete history of the Bastille, which it is not a little singular should have been wanting until quite a recent period. Under the old régime the subject was a dangerous one to touch, and the publication of the fictitious narratives of Linguet and Latude was in itself a symptom of the growing freedom of thought and action which culminated in the revolution. At the storming of the Bastille its muniments were dispersedmany of them were wantonly destroyed, others became a prey to the industrious pillage of antiquarians; others, which had fallen into indifferent hands (as the people, we are told, were then tolerably honest), were given up to a Commission whose promised reproduction of their contents was but one of the many abandoned projects of that turbulent time. Under the pressure of more exciting events interest in the Bastille completely died out. Its ruins were removed, all trace of its site obliterated, its records had disappeared, its very ground-plan was so hopelessly lost that Carlyle searched vainly for an intelligible account of it. Now all is restored to us in the volumes of M. Ravaisson and M. Bournon, and we have an embarrassing wealth of original documents and of connected history, illustrated by plans of the fortress at different periods, and enlightened by the exact and ample knowledge of French history which each of the authors before us brings to his task. If M. Bournon's handsome folio is a fair specimen of the series, issued under the title of 'Histoire Générale de Paris,' by the Édilité Parisienne, we must heartily congratulate that august body on so admirable a performance of a patriotic task. Alike in the style and beauty of its plates and printing, in the completeness of its idea and execution, in the richness and variety of the notes, and the pièces justificatives with which it is so largely furnished, and lastly, in the moderate cost at which it is supplied, M. Bournon's volume is truly a model of what such a history ought to be. Nor is M. Ravaisson's work less praiseworthy, if less outwardly attractive. Not only from the closet of the Arsenal Library, whence the first batch of police reports was unearthed, but from every available quarter, including our Vol. 186.-No. 372. English 2 B |