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raine has no cause for anxiety in this and the Justau-corps. Each band was particular season of 1894; some of its distinguished by scarves and caps of clusters would do credit to a hothouse. corps colors, but all wore white gauntYet the unforeseen does so often hap-lets, and in each right hand was a pen, and it is as well not to be too san- sword. Behind these three lines of guine, even though the sunsets every night are as auspicious as possible. After a few days in Touraine one comes to realize that though its noble castles are much-indeed, very much - with their façades and portals so exquisitely

Carved with figures strange and sweet,
All made out of the carver's brain,

more.

though they are much, the grapes are Touraine was formerly ruled, often tyrannically, by its castles. It now lives benignly by its vineyards.

From The Saturday Review. THE HEROIC AND THE VULGAR AT FRIEDRICHSRUH.

youths, trained to arms and discipline and equipped in the manner of a past century, crowded nearly four thousand others in modern dress- all come to honor the founder of German unity, and the greatest statesman whom Germany has produced.

As Prince Bismarck appeared and moved slowly towards them, the sword points fell in honor, and the unarmed students uncovered. Some moments passed before he began to speak — moments of intense silence, during which, no doubt, the old man's thoughts went back sixty years to the days when he was captain of his corps at Goettingen. He must have thought of those daysof the thirty duels he had fought, and of the thirty times he had heard from the umpire that his antagonist had Now and then reality shows us in a been disabled (abgefuehrt), for as the single moment the two sides of the sword points went up again he tried to shield of life; the one side is of pull himself erect and begin to speak. bronze, moulded in noble and dignified The old hero has changed in the last figures that appeal to our deepest emo- ten years. The shoulders are rounded tions, and the other is of mud, distorted and bowed; the giant form seems to into gibbering, leering, vacant faces have shrunk together. But the most that move us to laughter or pitying ghastly change is to be seen in the face contempt. German history is fertile in as he stands there uncovered. The such contrasts; the German people grey-blue eyes that used to have the have never seen anything incongruous gleam of steel have lost their light; in thanking a merciful Providence for they seem to see nothing; life has giving them a victory at the cost of ten ebbed away from them. The chin and thousand lives and of the misery of a lower part of the face, once so bold and myriad homes. But even Germany resolute, have withered to wrinkled and has never displayed the heroic and. the uncertain outlines; the head has fallen vulgar in closer proximity or in ex- forward on the chest; and the voice tremer contrast than the other day at the voice is terrifying. One misses the Friedrichsruh. Deputations of stu- old metallic ring, it has become tonedents from all the German universities less; but that was to be expected. waited on Prince Bismarck to congrat- | What strikes one with almost a sense ulate him on his eightieth birthday, of fear is that it has shrunk to a little and foremost among them marched thread of monotonous sound that dies nearly five hundred corps students, away and begins again with a painful representing more than a hundred Ger- effort, almost as if it obeyed the slow, man corps. They drew up like soldiers weary pulsations of the heart. Bisin front of the modest house, pictur- marck's thoughts have evidently gone esque figures, in the long black horse- back to his student home on the ramman's boots reaching to mid-thigh, the | parts of Goettingen, and to the contrast white, close-fitting buckskin breeches, between the splendid strength and

-

vigor of those days and the deadly pleasures of a conqueror." As his speech ends the students break into cheers that at first sound strangely inappropriate - "Er soll leben, Bismarck. Hoch! Hoch soll er leben" but, after all, the words are true enough. He shall live high enough in

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yet unborn, and this consoling and inspiriting thought led naturally to the music of Koerner's sword-song, and as the challenge rang out, the students defiled past the prince, a moving fence of steel. And for a few yards, to the corner of his house, the old man kept step with them, carrying his right elbow on his hip, as if his hand too held a sword. This scene, whose pathos and inspiration are understood from the Baltic sands to where the Bavarian mountains look down upon the plains of Italy, and from the forts of Metz and Strasburg to those that guard Courland and the Vistula, seems to us, also, to possess an heroic and pathetic interest.

weakness of these; for, as he thanks his visitors with faltering words and in that strange voice that shocks with the sense of something outworn and dying, he speaks of "a man of my age," "an old man," and so forth. Yes, that is what Prince Bismarck, Duke of Lauen- the esteem and affection of generations burg, maker of Germany, is now "a poor old man." And as the students listen to him, straining their ears to catch each word, tears flood their eyes in spite of their warlike accoutrements. But the old man compels himself to speak to them; his indomitable will summons life back again; the voice grows clearer as he goes on, and the words flow uninterrupted by those terrible pauses. The figure is erect and the head upheld as he tells them of their duty to the State, and warns them to hold fast to their patriotism and to the imperial idea as to the centre and rallying point for all Germans. This, he seems to say, is the work and achievement of my life; you will not let the labor and the sacrifice be in There was, however, another side to vain; that is my consolation now," he the shield a ridiculous side. The adds, "it is not in the German ever reverence of the ordinary German is completely to forget the ideals of his usually lacking in dignity. As the stuyouth." Was Bismarck thinking of dents returned to the station, they the advice that the dying Schiller gave passed huge piles of packing-cases and to his compatriots, "Be true to the crates bursting with the provisions dreams of your youth"? The prince which German gratitude had sent as went on to vindicate the past. "We presents to the true Father of the had to fight desperately," he began, Cheeses from two hundred "for our national independence. The pounds in weight to half-a-dozen prologue was the war in SchleswigHolstein; then we had to fight with Austria in order to separate from her; and after that war, every one saw that a war with France was inevitable. It was manifestly our policy not to enter upon it before the newly gathered fruits of German unification had been safely housed. I sought to prevent the war r; we had no reason to want it; we had won all that we wished for. To fight out of a mere lust of conquest would have been a proof of Napoleonic light-mindedness. It has always been a praiseworthy characteristic of the German to find his satisfaction in his own consciousness of merit, and to feel no desire for the privileges or the

Land.

ounces; a hundred and forty dozen cheeses of different sizes and sorts; and sausages of all dimensions, from the one twenty-three yards long and of appropriate thickness, that required a crate to itself, down to the one that came in a letter and provided a meal for the birds. Here were over a dozen immense salmon, and there piles of pâté de foie gras, cases of apples, barrels of oysters, pots of honey; on this side, a tank containing living carp, on that, tarts and eggs, for all the world as if Friedrichsruh were a beleaguered fortress. Over a thousand bottles of wine, cider, beer, liqueur, and cognac were provided; more than five thou sand cigars, with pipes of every shape

II.

As she flitted by garth and slipped through glade,

Her light limbs winnowed the wind, and

made

The gold of the pollened palm to float
On her budding bosom and dimpled throat.

III.

Then, brushing the nut-sweet gorse, she
sped
Where the runnel lisps in its reedy bed,
O'er shepherded pasture and crested fallow,
And buskined her thighs with strips of

sallow.

IV.

And out of the water-bed scooped the

cresses,

And frolicked them round her braidless tresses.

and quality, and five thousand matches. Some admirers of the great man at Luebeck sent him enough confectionery for the rest of his life, in the shape of a copy of the Niederwald monument molded in macaroon biscuit. Nor was the outward man neglected: the prince was overwhelmed with mantles, cloaks, and rugs; helmets, slippers, and swords; warm stockings and hot-water bottles. Eighty-three utterly obscure individuals, burning with the desire to shine in reflected glory, dedicated their photographs to the hero. And literary vanity was not behindhand in the race. Thirty German authors were ruthless enough to send copies of their complete By the marigold marsh she paused to twist works, whilst eleven others, more mer- The gold-green coils round her blue-veined wrist, ciful, presented him with selected tomes; penholders and inkstands, too, were to be counted by the dozen. The religious element in Germany was represented by a batch of Bibles; and an old lady of a self-sacrificing turn of mind, kindly contributed a funeral wreath she had intended for her own grave. Nor did the grateful Teuton forget to provide the hero of the empire with a pleasing occupation for his leisure hours. No less than one hundred and twenty thousand letters were showered upon him in commemoration of the festival. If we calculate that he worked at them ten hours a day, and allowed three minutes for each letter, it would take him about three years merely to read this correspond- She called "I have come. So follow, ence. Surely Goethe was right when he spoke of vulgarity as being the besetting sin of the German, and when he praised Schiller for "his freedom from the slavery that binds all of us, the slavery of life's commonness."

From Blackwood's Magazine.
THE COMING OF SPRING.
Jam redit et Virgo.
VIRGIL, Eclogue IV., v. 6.
I.

SPRING came out of the woodland chase,
With her violet eyes and her primrose face,
With an iris scarf for her sole apparel,
And a voice as blithe as a blackbird's carol.

V.

She passed by the hazel dell, and lifted
The coverlet fern where the snow had
drifted,

To see if it there still lingered on,

Then

shook the catkins, and laughed, "'Tis gone!"

VI.

Through the crimson tips of the wintry brake

She

peeped, and shouted,
Awake!"

"Awake!

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Round crouching cottage and soaring But with him there came the faithful bird That lives with the stars, and is nightly heard

castle

The larch unravelled its bright-green tassel;

In scrub and hedgerow the blackthorn flowered,

And laughed at the May for a lagging coward.

X.

Then tenderly ringing old Winter's knell,
The hyacinth swung its soundless bell,
And over and under and through and
through

The copses there shimmered a sea of blue.

XI.

Like a sunny shadow of cloudlet fleeting, Spring skimmed the pastures where lambs were bleating;

Along with them gambolled by bole and mound,

And raced and chased with them round and round.

XII.

To the cuckoo she called, "Why lag you now?

The woodpecker nests in the rotten bough; The misselthrush pipes to his brooding

mate,

And the thistlefinch pairs; you alone are late."

XIII.

Then over the seasonless sea he came,
And jocundly answered her, name for

name,

And, falsely flitting from copse to cover, Made musical mock of the jilted lover.

When the husht babe dimples the mother's breast,

And Spring said, sighing, "I love you best.

XV.

"For sweet is the sorrow that sobs in song, When Love is stronger than Death is strong,

And the vanished past a more living thing Than the fleeting voice and the fickle wing."

XVI.

Then the meadows grew golden, the lawns grew white,

And the poet-lark sang himself out of sight;

And English maidens and English lanes
Were serenaded by endless strains.

XVII.

The hawthorn put on her bridal veil, And milk splashed foaming in pan and pail;

The swain and his sweeting met and And the air and the sky were amethyst. kissed,

XVIII.

"Now scythes are whetted and roses blow,"

Spring, carolling, said; "it is time to go." And though we called to her, "Stay! O stay!"

She smiled through a rainbow, and passed away. ALFRED AUSTIN.

66

THERE are often hidden meanings in the humorous answers given by schoolboys in the examination room. From a collection of such answers in the University Correspondent, we cull a few authenticated specimens. "Parallel straight lines," said one boy, 'are those which meet at the far end of infinity." And another sagely remarked that "Things which are impossible are equal to one another." The boy who wrote "A point is that which will not appear any bigger, even if you get a magnifying glass," would have no difficulty in understanding that a star, being but a lucid

point, cannot be magnified. Every examiner is familiar with the non-committal answers frequently received, and with which may be classified the cautious statement that "Two straight lines cannot enclose a space, unless they are crooked." But even these words of wisdom are eclipsed by the definitions of kinetic and of potential energy once received. "Kinetic energy," ran the definitions, "is the power of doing work. Potential energy is the power of doing without work." This truth, which has a monetary application, is well worth adding to our contemporary's collection.

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VIII. BIRD-LIFE IN SPRING,

IX. ARMORIAL BEARINGS, OLD AND NEW,. Daheim,

Chambers' Journal,
Spectator,.

442

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