says, "He was neither the first, nor would he be the last." This same conversation has been gone through, or will be gone through, by more or less every son and every nephew in France; therefore the hardship is after all a common one.

When the conversation was ended, poor Monsieur Richard begged his uncle's pardon for having dreamt of thwarting him, and promised he would do his best to get over his disappointment, and accept his uncle's plans for him with fitting readiness and gratitude. Poor young man! The traces of the struggle were visible on his face, by its increased pallor, by the redness of his eyelids, and by a circle of dark blue that had hollowed itself under his eyes.

All was over. Monsieur Richard was to leave for Paris in a week, and next Thursday Mademoiselle Félicie was to be in pos

session of a dot that would enable her to become Madame de Champmorin.

without any genius for child-play, tries to adapt his smartness to the capacity of children. There is nothing in the world that children understand less or love less than the smartness of a sharp writer, - epigram made easy for little minds. What they want and love is the gaiety of true simplicity, with a touch of earnest humour, if it be possible, and a further touch of the simplest order of poetry, if it be, again, possible. We have all this, and no one knows how rare it is so well as an editor accustomed to look, at the children's books which pour in towards Christmas time, in the simple, and humorous, and often poetical little verses before us, which have, moreover, the true ring of that nonsense which only children who are not foolish love, that nonsense of the heart, of which Mrs. Eliot so truly says:

Sense may be all true and right,

But Destiny sometimes foils even the best But nonsense, thou art exquisite ! calculators. When Thursday came, old Martin Prévost was lying at the foot of his great We have not room to extract the capital iron safe, his face upon the floor, his two arms little introduction, called "Lilliput Levée " stretched out before him, and the back of (which has a sound to us, by the way, as of his head beaten in by blows. The master some rhymes we reviewed and appreciated of the strong box was murdered, the strong years ago on "Grandpapa-Little-Boy," but box was broken open, and all the ready are of a higher class), describing the Promoney in bank-notes and cash had disap-visional Government set up by the children peared. There had been what we call burglary, and what the French law terms "vol avec effraction.".

From The Spectator.

LILLIPUT LEVEE.*

THIS is a jolly little book. We have not the slightest idea who wrote it, but we are quite sure the author, or authoress, has a touch of genius, as well as plenty of playfulness and fancy. When a stiff old mind tries to bend its stiff old bones into the attitudes of childish playfulness, you know by the heavy way it drops on its knees to play with the imaginary toy, and the heavier way in which it picks itself up again to moralize on the gratitude that a good child should feel after playing with such a toy, that it is a rheumatic old mind, which should content itself with benignant affection for children, and not to try to enter into sympathy with them. But it is worse yet, when a fast, cleverish, punning littérateur,

Lilliput Levee. Poems of Childhood, Child Fancy, and Childlike Moods. Strahan.

when they subverted the tyrannical rule of the old folks, and proclaimed that "Order reigns in Lilliput town." But for any one who wants to appreciate the good hearty nonsense of the nonsensical part of the book, the following piece may serve for a fair specimen:

TOPSY-TURVey World.

If the butterfly courted the bee,
And the owl the porcupine;
If churches were built in the sea,
And three times one was nine;
If the pony rode his master,

If the buttercups ate the cows,
If the cat had the dire disaster
To be worried, sir, by the mouse;
If mamma, sir, sold the baby

To a gipsy for half-a-crown;
If a gentleman, sir was a lady, —
The world would be Upside-Down!
If any or all these wonders

Should ever come about,

I should not consider them blunders,
For I should be Inside-Out!

(Chorus.)

Ba-ba, black wool,

Have you any sheep?
Yes, sir, a pack-full,
Creep, mouse, creep!

Four-and-twenty little maids
Hanging out the pie,
Out jumped the honey-pot,
Guy-Fawkes, Guy!
Cross-latch, cross-latch,
Sit and spin the fire,
When the pie was opened,

The bird was on the brier!

66

| double chorus of forty-eight are all engaged in suppliance to the whispering boy to reveal his secret, which he does not do; and there is a fine artistic touch in the shadowy hint given of the figure of the choregos, or chorus-leader, "Artful Alice," quite exciting to the reader's imagination. There are other tales, too, quite as good. "FrodNow, that is an exercise in moral logic gedobbulum's Fancy" is excellent in its for children as well as a very jolly little bit way, containing a very fine lesson on the of absolute nonsense. There is a deal more advantages of early education, as illustrated philosophy in teaching a child that if the by the great self-possession and sang-froid order of everything were inverted he would which little Marjorie's perfect command not know it, because the disorder would of the French language gives her in the then be his notion of order, than in teach- presence of Frodgedobbulum. Better still, ing him that if twice two is four, then half perhaps, is the poetical legend of the origin four is two, besides the advantage that of the coloured Admirals, Admiral of the the one can be taught in nonsense verses, Red, and Admiral of the Blue; while and the other only in technical language. Shock-Headed Cicely and the Two Bears" And what a delightful and perfect sense is a completely fresh form of the Cinderella of anarchy is produced by taking the trou- type of legend, and one that will go straight ble to revolutionize the old nonsense verses to the heart of that healthy childish public "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a opinion that is always so strong in favour pie," "cross patch," and other equally im- of untidy infancy, the infancy which is portant subjects! Derange time-honoured not self-conscious enough, and does not care nonsense, and it shakes the foundations of enough for elderly praise, to wish to look things far more than any attempt to dis-"nice" and pretty in the eyes of drawingpute the authenticity of time-honoured room opinion. The scene is really dratruths. Even a lunatic would usually keep his nonsense verses as he learned them and it is anarchy going down to the very depth of things, when you turn the four and twenty blackbirds into the little maids that were in the garden, and make them hang out their own pie, instead of- but we must break off, our head already whirls with the unwonted chaos, and we can only say, with the mother of the Modern Gracchi, that "if indeed there be, O gasping One!" any real pie, or birds, or maids, "is a question soul-entrancing, light-abandoned, and far too vast to enter on at present, at this unlooked-for crisis."

on

matic:

Just then was heard a double roar,
That shook the place, both wall and floor;
Everybody looked to the door;

It was a roar, it was a growl;
The ladies set up a little howl,
And flapped and clucked like frightened fowl.

Sir Hildebrand for silence begs
In walk the bears on their hinder legs,
Wise as owls and merry as grigs!

The dark girls tore their hair of sable;
The fair girls hid underneath the table;
Some fainted; to move they were not able.

But most of them could scream and screech
Sir Nicholas Hildebrand made a speech —
'Order! ladies, I do beseech."

But if the pure nonsense of this little book
is good, the merry little tales are quite as
good, if not better. "The Wonderful Toy
of the Whispering Boy" is a most credita-
ble little mystery, which is of that kind
that children will think and think about it
and never find it out, for the excellent
reason that there is nothing to find out. The bears looked hard at Cicely
And yet there are plenty of details to ex- Because her hair hung wild and free
cite the imagination, a good deal of dra-"Related to us, miss, you must be !
matic action, and a very effective éclaircis-
sement, which throws no light at the end,
when the whispering boy is caught whis-
pering his secret in his sleep, though not
telling it. There is a chorus in it of four-and-
twenty little men and four-and-twenty little
women, as in old Greek plays; indeed, it
might fairly be called the Supplices, for the

Then Cicely, filling two plates of gold
As full of cherries as they could hold,
Walked up to the bears and spoke out bold :-

"Welcome to you! and to you Mr. Bear!
Will you take a chair? will you take a chair?
This is an honour, we do declare!"

Sir Hildebrand strode up to see,
Saying, Who may this maiden be?
Ladies, this is the wife for me!"

Almost before they could understand,
He took up Cicely by the hand,
And danced with her a saraband.

Her hair was as rough as a parlour broom,
It swung, it swirled all round the room-
Those ladies were vexed, we may presume.

Sir Nicholas kissed her on the face,
And set her beside him on the dais,
And made her the lady of the place.

The nuptials soon they did prepare,
With a silver comb for Cicely's hair;
There were bands of music everywhere.

And in that beautiful bridal show
Both the bears were seen to go
Upon their hind legs to and fro!

Shock-Headed Cicely's sudden and frank assumption of the attitude of a hostess to Sir Nicholas Hildebrand's bears, and her generosity with his golden plates of cherries, will take even the generous imagination of children by surprise.

But there is in this little book a still rarer element of attraction than even the

we

flower,

gay buoyancy of its movement in narrative, O Robin, sweet Robin ! do you know the power and one quite as sure to be permanently That comes to the heart with the fall of the and deeply fascinating to children; mean the touches of real poetry in the short pieces on nature. What can be simpler, truer, and more graphic in flower-painting than this?

THE FIRST of June.

The wind to the west is steady,
The weather is sweet and fair;
Laburnum slender lady,

Shakes out her yellow hair.

Magnolia like a stranger,

Stands stiffly all alone;

I think a word would change her
Into a flower of stone.

The solid Guelder roses

Are white as dairy cream;
The hyacinths fade, like posies;
The cloud hangs in a dream.

The odour of winds, and the shredding of trees,
And the deepening of colour in skies and in

seas?

There may, perhaps, be a touch more of older sentiment in that, than all children will quite like. It may make them feel uncomfortable and shy, if they are told to learn it or repeat it aloud, but if they are left to their own reading, it is a piece which will make its impression, and of which even Wordsworth would not have been ashamed.

And the South wind in coming and going was loud,

And odorous and moist like the breath of a cloud,

is in his happiest manner, as is, indeed the
whole poem.
A jollier little volume of

Chanson without Music, 384.

POETRY: Doves in Peacocks' Feathers, 322. The Arrest of Sinalunga, 322. Pan Anglican, 322, 384. Are the Children at Home? 339.

Preparing for Publication at this Office

THE CHAPLET OF PEARLS. By the author of "Heir of Redclyffe."
REALMAH. By the author of "Friends in Council."

THE BROWNLOWS. By Mrs. Oliphant.

LINDA TRESSEL. By the author of "Nina Balatka."

THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY. By Charles Lever.
GRACE'S FORTUNE.

ALL FOR GREED.

PHINEAS PHINN, THE IRISH MEMBER. By W. Trollope.
OCCUPATION OF A RETIRED LIFE. By Edward Garrett.
A SEABOARD PARISH. By George McDonald.
PEEP INTO A WESTPHALIAN PARSONAGE.

Just Published at this Office

50 cents.

THE TENANTS OF MALORY. By J. S. Le Fanu.
OLD SIR DOUGLAS. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. 75 cents.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & GAY,

GAY, BOSTON.

TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.

FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year; nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars.

Second
Third

The Complete work

"" 20

50

220 66

Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers.