art in miniature. But in his description of Cleopatra's banquet (in "One of Cleopatra's Nights") he bewilders us with the grandeur of his imaginative vision, with the breadth of his canvas. Like the twin spires of the Cologne Cathedral, his descriptions are grand in conception, yet finished in detail. Indeed, Gautier revelled too much in details: it is his artistic fault. He forgets himself in the presence of any object of artistic delight, and lingers elaborately over every incidental feature. His "Mademoiselle du Maupin," which Swinburne calls "The Golden Book of spirit and sense-the Holy Writ of Beauty," might seem to a less impassioned critic a prolix celebration of the sensual aspect of love and female loveliness. Still, when he sets out to tell a weird or a dramatic tale, his success is admirable. The wild, midnight ride on the dark steeds to Clarimonde's castle in "La Morte Amoureuse," is a striking example of his fervor; for cold though he is in his poems, Gautier is tropically warm in many of his shorter tales. And he has always a firm touch; as SainteBeuve said, he "carves in granite," he might have said, in marble and gold.

Gautier first became conspicuous by wearing a red waistcoat on the first night of Victor Hugo's "Hernani." A Gascon born, he was nothing if not flamboyant. But a secretaryship under Balzac tamed a little the fiery author of the "History of Romanticism," though he remained to the last the prince of pictorial and plastic poetry and prose. Sainte-Beuve called his prose "pure Lacrima-Christi." "Mademoiselle du Maupin" is a licentious tale of a masquerading Rosalind without Rosalind's chastity, in which Gautier openly defied the conventionalities. His "Captain Fracasse" is a romantic varia tion on the theme of the strolling players of Scarron's coarse "Roman Comique;" it transports us by vivid art to the times of Louis XIII., and cloak and sword are concerned in it as well as mask and buskin. The great description of the book is that of the ruined Chateau de la Misère. Of his short tales the masterpiece is, no doubt, "La Morte Amoureuse" (The Dead Leman), in which the medieval incubus legend is utilized in the dream-life of love which a young priest lives with a beautiful vampire. Phantom love is the theme of

"Arria Marcella," a phantasmagoria of revived Pompeii; of "The Mummy's Foot," in which a Pharaoh's daughter comes from the tombs of Egypt to seek her lost possession; and "Omphale," in which a gay lady of the olden empire returns to life from a piece of tapestry. “Avatar” is a fantasy on the transmigration of souls, by which a lover seeks to take the place of a husband. "Jettatura" is a tragedy of the evil eye. Gautier also wrote a delightful series of books on his travels.

DEPARTURE OF THE Swallows.

THE rain-drops splash, and the dead leaves fall,
On spire and cornice and mould;

The swallows gather, and twitter and call,
"We must follow the Summer; come one, come all,
For the Winter is now so cold.”

Just listen awhile to the wordy war,
As to whither the way shall tend,
Says one, "I know the skies are fair
And myriad insects float in air

Where the ruins of Athens stand.

"And every year, when the brown leaves fall,
In a niche of the Parthenon

I build my nest on the corniced wall,
In the trough of a devastating ball
From the Turk's besieging gun."

Says another, "My cosey home I fit
On a Smyrna grande café,

Where over the threshold Hadjis sit,
And smoke their pipes and their coffee sip,

Dreaming the hours away."

Another says, "I prefer the nave

Of a temple in Baalbec;

There my little ones lie when the palm-trees wave,

And, perching near on the architrave,

I fill each open beak."

"Ah!" says the last, "I build my nest

Far up on the Nile's green shore,

Where Memnon raises his stony crest,
And turns to the sun as he leaves his rest,
But greets him with song no more.

"In his ample neck is a niche so wide,
And withal so deep and free,

A thousand swallows their nests can hide,
And a thousand little ones rear beside-
Then come to the Nile with me."

They go, they go to the river and plain,
To ruined city and town,

They leave me alone with the cold again,
Beside the tomb where my joys have lain,
With hope like the swallows flown.

LOOKING UPWARD.

FROM Sixtus' fane when Michael Angelo
His work completed radiant and sublime,
The scaffold left and sought the streets below,
Nor eyes nor arms would lower for a time;
His feet knew not to walk upon the ground,
Unused to earth, so long in heavenly clime.

Upwards he gazed while three long months went round, So might an angel look who should adore

The dread triangle mystery profound.

My brother poets, while their spirits soar,

In the world's ways at every moment trip,

Walking in dreams while they the heavens explore.

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

ALFRED DE MUSSET's first poetical work, "Tales of Spain and Italy" (1833), reminded his contemporaries of "Don Juan." The author, while confessing a sort of Byronic discipleship, protested, "My glass is not large, but I drink from my own." Born in 1810 of a noble and cultured family, he affected the gentleman in literature. He hated the very notion of having to do anything and even refused an embassy to Spain, the land of his early dreams. He adopted the half-cynical tone of Byron in his "Confessions of a Child of his Age," and in his "Rolla," a sombre poetic tale. Like Byron he almost always painted himself and his own moods. In the "Confession" he declared that "he did not conceive that one could do anything but love." His life was a series of amours and love adventures. drank so deeply that he became a drunkard. His great gifts he scarcely honored.

He

It was his notorious liaison with George Sand, with whom he went to Italy in 1833, that awoke the genuine passion and divine despair within his heart. In "Elle et Lui" (She and He), Mme. Dudevant tells of this ill-fated journey from which De Musset returned broken-hearted. She accused him of insane jealousy. After Alfred's death Paul de Musset retorted with "Lui et Elle" (He and She), in which he charged George Sand with flagrant infidelity. We are not here concerned with this notorious scandal: suffice it to say that the excitable poet, after shedding a flood of tears, commemorated his lost illusions in "Les Nuits" (The Nights), entitled respectively May, August, October and December. The "Night of May," with his admiring "Letter to Lamartine" and his musical "Stanzas to Malibran," represent his loftiest poetical achievement. Heine said of him: "The

Muse of Comedy kissed him on the lips, but the Muse of Tragedy on the heart." Nor can one forget the splendor of youth that shines in his poems. No one has sung so truthfully and touchingly its aspirations and its sensibilities, its doubts and its hopes. Much of his poetry is entirely free from moral taint.

De Musset wrote a number of comedies and so-called proverbs that have striking originality. His dramatic masterpiece is probably "Love is not to be trifled with," in which a double love intrigue proves fatal to the hero and his two loves.

VENICE.

IN Venice not a barque
Is stirring, all is dark,
For through the gloomy night
Breaks ne'er a light.
The lion, gaunt and grand,
Seated upon the strand,
Scans the wide waters o'er

Forevermore.

While many a ship and boat
In groups around him float,
Like herons, lulled to sleep

Upon the deep,
Over the misty sea,
Fluttering lazily,
Streamers and sails unfurled,

Clinging and curled.

Now the moon's dreamy light
Is flooding all the night,
From many a glimmering cloud

Her airy shroud—
Just as some novice would
Draw on her ample hood,
Yet leaving still, I ween,

Her beauty seen.
And the still water flows
Past mighty porticoes,
And stairs of wealthy knights,
In lordly flights.

And the pale statues gleam
In the pure light, and seem
Like visions of the past

Come back at last.
All silent, save the sound
Of guards upon their round,
As on the battled wall

Their footsteps fall.
More than one damsel strays
Beneath the pale moon's rays,
And waits, with eager ear,

Her cavalier;

More than one girl admiring
The charms she is attiring;
More than one mirror shows
Black dominoes.
La Vanina is lying
With languid raptures dying,
Upon her lover's breast

Half lulled to rest.
Narcissa, Folly's daughter!
Holds festal on the water,
Until the opal morning

Is softly dawning.
Who then in such a clime
But has a madcap time?
Who but to love can give

Life, while he live?