his powers of description. He was travelling with a friend much younger than himself. They had missed their way in a wood by taking a wrong track, and after getting more and more astray, they reached, when it was quite dark, what seemed to be a charcoal-burner's cabin. They found the whole family at table, and were hospitably invited to join them. Courier had misgivings, the house looked like a regular arsenal-pistols, sabres, knives, cutlasses all over the place. His misgivings were not lessened by the incautious demeanour of his companion who told all about himself, his wealth, and the contents of his knapsack in the most openhearted way. "At last, when the supper was over, we were left to ourselves; our host retired to rest downstairs, we were to sleep in the upper room where we had supped. A loft some seven or eight feet above the floor was to be our bed. It was reached by a ladder, after climbing which you had to go on hands and knees to avoid the joists hung with all kinds of provisions for the year. My companion climbed up into this nest, and was soon fast asleep with his precious knapsack for a pillow. I resolved to keep awake and so made up a good fire, and sat down by the side of it. The night had nearly passed in perfect quiet, and I was beginning to forget my uneasiness, and was thinking that the day must soon break when I heard a discussion going on below between our host and his wife. Listening at the chimney which communicated with that of the room below, I made out distinctly (the husband was speaking) the words Well! well! come! must I kill them both? The woman said yes! and I heard no more.

"How shall I tell you my feelings? I stood scarcely able to breathe, every limb cold as marble; you could hardly have told whether I was dead or alive. Good heavens! to think of it even now. Our two selves almost without arms, against a dozen or fifteen of them so well equipped! And my companion almost dead with sleep and fatigue! I dared not call him, or make any noise;-escape alone I could not, the window was not so very high, but in the yard below were a couple of huge mastiffs howling like wolves.-You may imagine the state I was in. At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed interminable, I heard some one on the stairs, and through the cracks in the door saw the father with a lamp in one hand, and one of his large knives in the other. He was coming up, and his wife following him. I kept behind the door. He opened it, but before he came in put down the lamp, which his wife took. Then he came in barefoot, she shading the lamp with her hand, and whispering-

Gently! don't make any noise! He crossed over to the foot of the ladder, and went up it, holding his knife between his teeth. When he was on a level with the bed-this unhappy young man the while lying there helpless with his bare throat exposed -with one hand he took his knife, and with the other-ah! cousin! -he seized a ham which was hanging from the roof, cut a slice off it and returned as he came. The door was closed again, the light disappeared, and I was left alone to my reflections: we were called at daybreak, breakfast was put before us, and as part of it two capons one of which, said our hostess, we were to take with us, and the other we were to eat then. The sight of them explained the meaning of those terrible words, Must I kill them both ?"

In the summer of 1807 Courier received instructions to join the head quarters at Verona. But he lingered on at Naples, working at his Xenophon, and when he did start could not resist the temptation of spending a week or two at Rome. When he reported himself at Verona in January, 1808, he found a letter from the Minister of war putting him under arrest, and stopping part of his pay. His note in reply is very characteristic:

"Monseigneur, par votre lettre du 3 Novembre vous me demandez l'état de mes services. Ayant été en Calabre une fois pris et trois fois depouillé par les brigands, j'ai perdu tous mes papiers. Je ne me souviens d'aucune date. Les renseignements que vous me demandez ne peuvent se trouver que dans vos bureaux. Je n'ai d'ailleurs ni blessures ni actions d'éclat à citer. Mes services ne sont rien, et ne méritent aucune attention. Ce qu'il m'importe de vous rappeler c'est que je suis ici aux arrêts par votre ordre, pour avoir dit, à Naples, au général Dedon ce que tout le monde pense de lui."

After some months spent in Milan and in Leghorn, and chiefly devoted to literary pursuits, he resigned his commission in March, 1809. The state of his affairs required his presence in France, and all his efforts to obtain a furlough, or an exchange into Spain, were fruitless. Naturally no such privileges would be accorded to one whose only claim to them was that he had written down his superior officer a coward and circulated the writing in the army. After his resignation he went to Paris and there met some friends who held commissions in the grande armée. Whimsical as ever, he was seized with a longing to see service under Napoleon. With some difficulty, for Napoleon had no love for people who resigned their commissions, he obtained a promise of employ

ment, and joined the army of the Danube. But here again his wonted ill-luck followed him. He was never to see aught but the miseries of war. Short of supplies, and having quarrelled again with his general, he was obliged to serve on foot. He took part in the engagement of the isle of Lobau, but was so ill with fever that he had to be carried off the field. Again, considering that he was only provisionally engaged, he retired from the army, simply notifying the fact to those in command, and not waiting for any leave. His soldiering days were over. From this date we have only the scholar, and the pamphleteer. He must be the subject of another paper.

R. W. TAYLOR.

ION'S MORNING HYMN.

Eur. Ion. 82-111.

Now the orient car of day
Heavenward rolls its gleaming way;
Paling stars, as yet more bright
Flushes up the rosy light,

Fly to realms of mystic night.
See! Parnassus' gleaming crown
Morn's first radiance scatters down,
Caught on peaks of virgin snow,
Flung to mortals far below.
Reek of myrrh and incense fly
To the ceiled temple high,
Where at Phoebus' sacred shrine
Sits the priestess, words divine
Pouring with prophetic skill,
Singing at Apollo's will.

Haste ye! Delphians, haste and bring
From Castalia's silvery spring
Fresh libations for our King:
Cleanse his temple; silence all
Keep within his sacred hall:
By his suppliants let no word
Of ill-omened sound be heard.
Mine the care, from childhood's days,

With branches fresh and wreaths of bays

Thus to deck Apollo's doors;

Then with dewy showers the floors
Thus I sprinkle; then the flight
Of chirping birds, in morn's first light
Clustering on his golden fane,
I scatter with my shafts again.
Never father's tender care,

Never mother's love I knew;
Phoebus' guardian power I share,
So I give him service due.

L.

ROBERT BROWNING.

IT is by no means an easy task to write a satisfactory criticism on the works of any great author. To do so fully and completely requires a mind at once broad enough to survey its subject from every side, and capacious enough to comprehend his highest and deepest thoughts. But it is one thing to assert your entire comprehension of all that was in a poet's mind, and quite another to attempt to convey to others some of the profit and delight gained by yourself in the endeavour to apprehend somewhat of his truth and beauty. Yet I should not have ventured to take upon me even this lesser task, had there been any hope remaining that the champion of Walter Savage Landor* would accomplish his design of pleading the cause of a poet not less neglected, but possessing yet stronger claims on our attention. But while this office has fallen into other and weaker hands, there is no audience to which an advocate could look with greater confidence of a fair and kindly hearing than to that composed of the younger members of an English University. It is true that those who spend their days in wooing the favour of

The hard-grained muses of the cube and square, and would fain have us see some wondrous grace in their angular and ungainly features, are ruthlessly forbidden by their jealous mistresses to pay their devoirs at any other shrine, if they would win their highest honours. But there are many of us here who own the gentler sway of the fairer sisters of Helicon, and are not only permitted but encouraged by them to turn aside at times from the perfect grace and finished art of their earlier disciples to the pages where we find, clothed in language hardly less exquisite, the nobler purer thoughts of Christian England. There are many within these ancient walls by whom the words of Shakspere and Milton, Shelley, Keats and Tennyson are read with a power of critical discernment which may fall far short of

* See Our Library Staircase,- The Eagle, Vol. IV. pp. 39-50.