which they repeated after her. And in the evening she also prayed with them, before their eyes were heavy with sleep, so that it was a pleasure instead of pain and discomfort. Whatever beautiful, lovely, or grand objects were met with in their walks-pine forests with the sunlight streaming through the branches-a fine sheet of water-cascades-a glorious sunset, with the tinted clouds grouped around the mountains, "While, through the west, where sinks the crimson day, Meek Twilight slowly sails, and waves her banners gray" she rarely failed to impress upon their minds that all this loveliness and goodness sprang from their Almighty Father. Lamartine gives an interesting and affecting account of his father reading Jerusalem Delivered. "It is night. The doors of the little house of Milly are closed. A friendly dog utters from time to time a bark in the court-yard. The rain of autumn dashes against the panes of the two lower windows, and the wind, howling in gusts, produces, in its passage through the branches of one or two plane trees, and the crevices of the shutters, those melancholy and intermittent plaints which are heard on the margin of pine forests by the listening ear of the wayfarer. The apartment which I thus see in memory is large, but almost naked. At the farther extremity is a deep recess containing a bed. The curtains of the bed are of white serge with blue checks. It is my mother's bed. There are two cradles on wooden chairs at the foot of the bed, the one large, the other small. They are the cradles of my youngest sisters, who have long been sound asleep. A huge fire of vine branches blazes beneath a chimney-piece of white stone. * * * * * In one corner there is a little harpsichord, open, with some sheets of the music of Le Devin de Village,' by J. J. Rousseau, scattered over the instrument; nearer the fire, in the centre of the apartment, there is a little card-table, with a green cloth all spotted with ink stains, and with holes in the stuff; on the table are two tallow candles burning in candlesticks of plated copper, and diffusing a feeble light around, while they cast huge shadows flickering in the breeze, on the whitewashed walls of the apartments. Opposite the fire-place, his elbow resting on the table, a man is seated holding a book in his hand. His figure is tall, his limbs robust. He still retains the vigor of youth. His forehead is open, his eye blue, and his smile, at once firm and grace ful, displays to view a row of teeth like pearl. Some remains of his original costume, his of attitude, proclaim the retired officer. If any hair especially, and a certain military stiffness doubts are entertained on this point, they are speedily dissipated by the appearance of his sabre, his regulation pistols, his helmet, and the gilt plates of his horses' bridle, which shine suspended from a nail in the wall at the extremity of a little cabinet which opens off the On a apartment. This man is our father. couch of platted straw, occupying an angle formed by the fire-place and the wall of the recess, is seated a woman who appears still young, although she is already bordering on her thirty-fifth year. Her figure, tall also, has all the suppleness and all the elegance of that of a young girl. Her features are so delicately formed, her black eyes have a look so open the blue veins and the ever-changing color, and penetrating, her transparent skin permits called up by the slightest emotion, to be so clearly visible beneath its snowy surface; her jet black, but fine and glossy tresses fall in such wavy folds and graceful ringlets around her cheeks, and rest upon her shoulders, that it is impossible to say whether she is eighteen or thirty years of age. No one would wish to strike off from her age one of those years, which have only served to perfect her phys iognomy and ripen her beauty. This beauty, although pure in every feature, if they are examined in detail, is peculiarly apparent in the ensemble, by its harmony, its grace, and above all by that radiance of inward tenderness, that true beauty of the soul, which lights up the body from within-a radiance of which the loveliest face is only the outward reflection. This young woman, half reclining on the cushions, holds a little girl asleep in her arms, her head resting on her shoulder. The child's fingers are still clasped around one of her mother's long ringlets, with which she was playing a few moments ago, before she fell asleep. Another little girl, rather older, is seated on a stool at the foot of the sofa; she is leaning her fair head on her mother's knees. This young woman is my mother; these two children are my two eldest sisters. Two others are in their respective cradles. My father, as I have said, holds a book in his hand. He reads aloud. I fancy I still hear the manly, full, nervous, and yet flexible sound of that voice, which pours forth in broad and sonorous streams, interrupted at times by the gusts of wind against the windows. My mother, her head a little inclined to one side, listens in a dreamy mood. I, my face turned toward my father and my arm resting on one of his knees, drink in every word, anticipate every story, devour with my eyes the book, whose pages unfold too slowly for my imagination. What is this book? This first book, whose perusal, thus heard at the entrance into life, teaches me leys. The earth was covered with snow, through which, here and there, appeared the dark trunks of the pines. Icy fogs, the dark trunks of the pines. Icy fogs, in eddying wreaths, encircled the peaks of the mountains. Lamartine thinks that Ossian is certainly one of those palettes from which his imagination has borrowed most of its colors, and which has what a book really is, and opens to me, so to | ber were sweeping over the hills and valspeak, the world of emotion, the world of love and reverie—this book was the Jerusalem Delivered; the Jerusalem Delivered, translated by Lebrun, with all the majestic harmony of the Italian stanza, but purified and refined by the exquisite taste of the translator from those glaring defects of affectation and false ornament, which sometimes sully the manly simplicity of Tasso, like gold dust which would tarnish a diamond, but which the Frenchman has blown away. Thus Tasso, read by my father, listened to by my mother with tears moistening her eyelids, is the first poet who has stirred the chords of my imagination and my heart. Thus does he form for me a part of that universal and immortal family, which each selects from every country and from all ages, to form the companions of his soul and the society of his thoughts. I have kept as precious relics the two volumes. I have rescued them from all the vicissitudes which change of residence, deaths, successions, and divisions bring upon family libraries. From time to time, at Milly, in the same apartment, when I return there alone, I open them with pious reverence. I sometimes read once more some of these same stanzas half aloud, endeavoring to feign to myself my father's voice, and imagining that I still see before me my mother with my two sisters, listening with closed eyes. I then feel again the same emotion at the verses of Tasso. I hear the same noises of the wind through the trees, the same cracklings of the vine branches on the hearth, but my father's voice is no longer there, my mother's form no longer presses the couch, the two cradles are transformed into two graves, over the mounds of which waves the grass of a foreign land. And all this ever ends by my dropping a few tears, which blot the leaves of the book as I close it." At the age of sixteen Lamartine meets with a translation of Ossian, by Baour Lormian; the book was universally read. Women sang it-pocket editions found their way into all the libraries. The shadowy realm portrayed by Ossian, harmonized well with the scenes by which Lamartine was surrounded. He carried the volumes in his hunting excursions over the mountains, and while his dogs made the hills echo with their barking, he would read the pages seated beneath some overhanging rock; and on his raising his eyes from the pages, mists, black clouds, ice and snow surrounded him, similar to what he had been reading of. The first perusal of this wild romance by Lamartine was while the bitter blasts of November and Decem imparted the greatest number of tints to She The most charming episode in these memoirs, is the story of Graziella "Sweet name! in thy each syllable Lamartine gives the following account of where he wrote this matchless story. In order to work at leisure on his History of the French Revolution, some few years ago, he took refuge in the little island of Ischia, situated in the centre of the Gulf of Gaëta, and separated from the mainland by a lovely sea. "One day then, in the year 1843, I was alone, reclining in the shade of a citron tree, on the terrace of the fisherman's cottage where I resided, occupied in gazing at the sea, listening to the surf which washed upward on the beach and carried back again the rustling shells of its shores, and inhaling the breeze which the rebound of each wave wafted to my cheek, like the humid fan which the poor negroes wave above the foreheads of their masters underneath our tropics. I had finished rummaging over, the evening before, the memoirs, the manuscripts, and the documents which I had brought with me for the History of the Girondists: I was deficient in materials. against the trunk of this orange tree? I will read it to you." And I read to him, while the sun darted its setting rays from behind the Epomeo, a lofty mountain of the island, a few pages of the story of Graziella. The place, the hour, the shade, the sky, the sea, the perfume of the trees, diffused their charm over the pages, in themselves without color or perfume, and lent them the enchantment of distance and surprise. He appeared touched: we closed the book, and we descended to the beach. In the evening we visited the island in company with his wife. I offered him hospitality for one night, and he departed on the morrow.' This story of Graziella will, for the beauty of the narrative, and as a description of love in its depth, and purity, and for affecting interest, successfully bear competition with any thing of the kind ever written. Lamartine and a young friend, in strolling along the shore of the Margellina, which extends from the tomb of Virgil to Mount Pausilippo, meet with an old man placing his fishing tackle in his skiff, and a child of twelve years the sole rower. They apply to the old man to take them to sea as rowers, and to teach them the art and mystery of fishing; and they agree to pay him two carlins a day, for their apprenticeship and food. They spend days and moonlit nights out on the water, and their feelings are exquisitely described in eloquent language. A storm one night drives them to the island of Procida, and there they behold Graziella, beautiful as her name and "I had opened those which never fail us-our recollections. I was writing on my knees the story of Graziella, that sad but charming shadowing forth of love, whom I had met in former days in this same gulf, and I was writing it opposite to the island of Procida, in sight of the ruins of the little house amidst the vines, of the garden on the hill, which her finger seemed still to point out to me. While thus occupied, I saw gliding toward me, over the sea, a skiff in full sail, dashing aside the spray from her bows, which glittered in the dazzling sunlight. A young man and a young woman were seated in the stern, endeavoring to -"knowing nothing, shelter their glowing foreheads beneath But trusting thoughts and innocent daily habits." the shadow of the mast." This proves to be a friend of Lamartine's, Eugene Pellatan, and his wife. He had left his young and graceful wife in a cottage on the beach. "After conversing for a moment about France, and this island, to which he had learned by chance at Naples that I had retired, he saw the pages on my knees and a half-worn pencil in my hand. He asked me what I was doing. 'Do you wish to hear,' said I, while your young wife reposes after the fatigue of the passage, and while you recruit your strength by resting for a while What first exhibits to her the depth and hidden affections of her heart is the the story of Paul and Virginia, read to her by Lamartine. On the night of the storm when they were driven to the island, they had been compelled to throw everything overboard, and all that they had saved in the way of books were the Letters of Jacopo Ortis, a species of Werther half political, half romantic, written by Ugo Foscolo, a. volume of Tacitus, and Paul and Virginia. The Tacitus and Jacopo Ortis failed to interest the inhabitants of the fisherman's cabin in any way. Far different in effect was the beautiful story of St. Pierre's; only a few pages had been read when the old man, the young girl, the children all had changed their attitude. The fisherman forgot to inhale the smoke from his pipe. The old grandmother held her hands clasped beneath her chin, "in the attitude of the poor women who hear the word of God seated on the pavement of the temples." Graziella, who was usually seated a little apart, unconsciously approached, as if faseinated by some power of attraction, concealed in the book. With dilated eyes she looked at the book, at the lips of the reader, at the space between the lips and the book; her breathing became quickened, and before many pages had been read, Graziella's timid reserve had been forgotten. "I felt the warmth of her respiration on my hands. Her hair floated over my forehead; two or three burning tears fell from her cheeks, and stained the pages close to my fingers." "When I chanced to hesitate for a proper expression to render the French word, Graziella, who for some time had been holding the lamp, sheltered from the wind by her apron, approached with it close to the pages, and almost burned the book in her impatience, as if the flame could render the sense visible to my eye, and make the words flow more quickly from my lips. I smilingly pushed back the lamp with my hand, without turning my eyes from the page, and I felt my fingers warm with her tears." The farther reading of the book is deferred to another night none can restrain their anxiety to hear the conclusion, and it is concluded amid sobs and tears. How truly the growth of Graziella's affection for her young lover is described-it grows up in the manner that Sterne says is the best method of courtship, "A course of small quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as to be misunderstood-with now and then a look of kindness, and little or nothing said upon it; leave nature for your mistress, and she fashions it to her mind." When you wrote this, Laurence Sterne, you wrote the best receipt for making love ever written. Graziella in declaring her love, does it in breath deep, strong, and fervid. "I know very well that I am but a poor girl, unworthy to touch your feet even in thought. Therefore, I do not ask you to love me; I shall never ask if you love me. But I love you, I love you, I love you;" and she seemed to concentrate her whole soul in these three words. Her lover is recalled to France-he promises to return in four months; but though he thinks of Graziella, and intends to return, months flee by-at last he receives a letter and packet from Graziella, containing these words, "The doctor says that I shall die before three days. I wish to bid you adieu before I have lost my strength. Oh, if you were here, I should still live! but, it is the will of God. I shall speak to you soon, and always from the height of the skies. Love my spirit! it will be beside you all your life. I bequeath my locks, cut off one night for you. Consecrate them to God in some chapel of your country, that something that belongs to me may be ever near you.' Twelve years later poor Graziella's lover returns to Naples he sought traces of her, none were to be found. The little house on the steep shore of Procida had fallen into ruins, a heap of gray rubbish. Time quickly effaces every object from the face of the earth; but time can never efface the traces of a first love from the heart which has experienced it. Lamartine writes that— "One day in the year 1830, on entering a church in Paris, in the evening, I saw the coffin pall. The coffin recalled Graziella to my mind. of a young girl carried in, covered with a white I concealed myself in the shadow of a pillar. I thought of Procida, and I wept long and bitterly. *** I returned in silence to my chamber; I wrote in a single breath, and moistening them with tears, the verses entitled the First Regret. They are the echo, weakened by the lapse of twenty years, of a feeling which awakened the first outpourings of my heart. In them is wanting only the name of Graziella. I would enshrine it in all the graces of poetry, if there existed here below a crystal pure enough to enclose that tear, that memory, that regret. It is thus that I expiated by my tears the hardness and ingratitude of my heart of nineteen. I can never read over these verses without adoring that fresh image, ever borne to my soul on the transparent and murmuring waves of the Gulf of Naples, and without hating myself. But souls pardon in a better world. Hers has forgiven me. also, reader! I have wept." Forgive me, Reader indulge me with one more extract from this genuine book, filled with flashes of genius, that go as directly to the heart, and remain as firmly buried in it, as the arrow of Tell in the heart of Gesler. "[Written under a tree by the wayside, in the valley of Echelles, at Chambery.]-I enter to-day on my twenty-first year. ****** I have been a madman. I met with happiness, and I did not recognize it! or rather, I only recognized it when it was beyond my reach. I dashed it from me, I despised it. Death has swell of your uncovered limbs. It is fastened at the neck by a simple cord of black thread. Your hair, braided behind your head, is interlaced with two or three pinks, withered the evening before. You are seated on a terrace, paved with cement, on the margin of the sea, where the linen has been laid out to dry, where the fowls hatch their broods, where the lizards creep among two or three pots of rosemary and mignonette. The red dust of the coral which you have polished yesterday litters the threshold of your door beside my own. A little unsteady table is before you-I am standing behind you. I hold your hand to guide your fingers upon the paper, and teach you to form the letters. You set to work with an earnesttaken it to himself. Oh, Graziella' Graziella! ness of application and a charming awkwardwhy did I abandon you? The only delightfulness of attitude, which leans your cheek almost days of my life were those which I spent by on the table. Then, all at once, you begin to your side in the poor cottage of your father, weep with impatience and shame, on seeing with your young brothers and your aged grand- that the letter you have formed is far from mother, like a child of the family! Why did I being like the copy. I scold you, I encourage not remain there? Why did I not feel that you you-you resume the pen. This time it is loved me? and when I did know it, why did I not better. You turn round your face, blushing sufficiently love you myself, to prefer you to all for joy, as if to seek your recompense in the others, to cease to blush for you, to become a fish- satisfied look of your teacher! I roll, careerman with your father, and to forget, in that lessly, a tress of your long black hair round humble station, and in your arms, my name, my my finger, like a living ring-the ivy which still country, my education, and all that net-work of clings to the branch!-you say to me: 'Are you fetters in which my soul is confined, and which pleased with me? shall I soon be able to write entangles it at every step when it endeavors to your name?' And, the lesson finished, you return to nature? **** At present it is too resume your work at your table in the shade. late. You can give nothing now but undying I again commence to read at your feet. And remorse for having left you! And I can give in the winter evenings, when the bright rosy you nothing but these tears which start to my flame of the olive husks lighted in the brazier, eyes when I think of you-tears of which I which you blow to give it strength, was reconceal the source and the object, for fear the flected from your neck and from your counteworld should say to me: he weeps for the nance, it made you resemble the Fornarina. daughter of a poor seller of fish, who did not And in the lovely days of Procida, when you even wear shoes every day; who dried the figs advanced with naked limbs into the surf, to of her island on osier hurdles in the sun, with- gather sea-fruits! And when you dreamed, out other head-dress than her hair; and who with your cheek resting on your hand, gazing earned her bread by pressing the coral against at me, and when I fancied you were thinking the lathe, for two grains a day! What a mis- of your mother's death, your whole countetress for a youth who has translated Tibullus, nance became so sad! And that night, when and has read Dorat and Parny! Vanity! van- I left you on your bed, pale and lifeless as a ity! thon destroyer of hearts! thou overturner statue of marble, and when I became aware at of nature! My lips cannot utter forth enough last that a thought had killed you--and that execrations against thee. Nevertheless, my this thought was myself! Ah, I wish for no happiness, my love, was there. Oh! if a sigh other image to be present before my eyes till sadder than the plaint of the waters in this death! There is a grave in my past life, there abyss, more radiant than the rays reflected is a little cross erected in my heart! I shall from this ruddy rock of fire upward to the never allow it to be torn thence, but I shall enheavens, could call you back to life again, I twine around it the sweetest flowers of memowould kneel, I would wash your lovely naked ry." feet with my tears. You should pardon me. I should be proud of my abasement in the eyes of the world for your sake. I see you again, as if four years of oblivion, and the barrier of the coffin, and the grassy covering of the tomb, did not separate us! You are before me! a gray robe of coarse wool, mingled with the harsh fibres of the goat's hair, binds your childlike waist, and falls in heavy folds to the round * * * ** * These recollections of Lamartine's will become a favorite volume with those who ture, or the human heart in general. They are in the habit of studying their own nacontain a frank expression of thoughts and feelings, and give us an insight of the strength and frailties of a man of genius, |