De l'autre côté, sur la plage, 66 Sur une barque qu' Amour guidait } L'embarque, et s'abandonne aux venta Il dit et redit en ses chants "Vous voyez, jeunes bergères, Que l'Amour fait passer le Tems!" Mais l'Amour bientôt se lasse Time and Lobe. Old TIME is a pilgrim-with onward course But the trav❜ller to-day must halt perforce- "Pass me over," Time cried; "O! tarry not, Many maids saw with pity, upon the bank, While some wanted LOVE to unmoor the bark, "Oft shipwrecks occur," was the maid's remark; "When seeking to pass old TIME!" From the strand the small skiff LOVE pushed agʊur— He crossed to the pilgrim's side, And taking old TIME in his weil-triramed boat, Sweetly he sung as he worked at the oar, "You see, young maidens who crowd the shore But soon the poor boy of his task grew tired, And faint from his toil, for mercy desired In his turn grown tuneful, the pilgrim old 1 close this paper by an ode on the subject of "time," by a certain Mr. Thomas. Its author, a contemporary of the philosophic gang alluded to throughout, was frequently the object of their sarcasm, because he kept aloof from their coteries. He is author of a panegyric on Marcus Aurelius, once the talk of all Paris, now forgotten. These are the concluding stanzas of an * Prout alludes to O'Connell's conduct on the Poor Law for Ireland. O Teins! suspends ton vol! respecte ma jeunesse ! Que ma mère long-tems, témoin de ma tendresse, Reçoive mes tributs de respect et d'amour! Et vous, GLOIRE! VERTU! déesses immortelles, Que vos brillantes ailes Sur mes cheveux blanchis se reposent un jour! Time! retard thy departure! and linger awhile Let my "songs" still awake of my mother the smile Of my sister the joy, as she sings. But, O GLORY and VIRTUE! your care I engage; When I'm old-when my head shall be silvered with age, Come and shelter my brow with your wings! No. X. THE SONGS OF FRANCE. ON WINE, WAR, WOMEN, WOODEN SHOES, PHILOSOPHY, FROGS, AND FREE TRADE. From the Prout Papers. CHAPTER IV.-FROGS AND FREE TRAde. THE more we develop these MSS., and the deeper we plunge into the cavity of Prout's wondrous coffer, the fonder we become of the old presbyter, and the more impressed with the variety and versatility of his powers. His was a tuneful soul! In his earthly envelop there dwelt a hidden host of melodious numbers; he was a walking store-house of harmony. The followers of Huss, when they had lost in battle their commander Zisca, had the wit to strip him of his hide; out of which (when duly tanned) they made unto themselves a drum, to stimulate by its magic sound their reminiscences of so much martial glory: our plan would have been to convert the epidermis of the defunct father into that engine of harmony which, among Celtic nations, is known by the name of the "bagpipe;" and thus secure to the lovers of song and melody an invaluable relic, an instrument of music which no Cremona fiddle could rival in execution. But we should not produce it on vulgar occasions: the ministerial accession of the Duke (1835), should alone be solemnised by a blast from this musico-cutaneous phenomenon; aware of the many accidents which might otherwise occur, such as, in the narrative of an Irish wedding, has been recorded by the poet,— "Then the piper, a dacent gossoon, Began to play 'Eileen Aroon;' Cut a hole in his bag, Which alas! put an end to the tune The music blew up to the moon!" Lord Byron, who had the good taste to make a claretcup out of a human skull, would no doubt highly applaud our idea of preserving a skinful of Prout's immortal essence in the form of such an Æolian bagpipe. In our last chapter we have given his opinions on the merit of the leading French philosophers-a gang of theorists now happily swept off the face of the earth, or most miserably supplanted in France by St. Simonians and Doctrinaires, and in this country by the duller and more plodding generation of "Utilitarians." To Denis Diderot has succeeded Dionysius Lardner, both toiling interminable at their cyclopædias, and, like wounded snakes, though trampled on by all who tread the paths of science, still rampant onwards in the dust and slime of elaborate authorship. Truly, since the days of the great St. Denis, who walked deliberately, with imperturbable composure, bearing his head in his astonished grasp, from Montmartre to the fifth milestone on the northern road out of Paris; nay, since the still earlier epoch of the Sicilian schoolmaster, who opened a "university" at Corinth, omitting Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Dennis the critic who figures in the "Dunciad," never has the name been borne with greater éclat than by its great modern proprietor. His theories, and those of Dr. Bowring, are glanced at in the following paper, which concludes the Proutean series of the " Songs of France." Far be it from us to imagine that either of these learned doctors will turn from their crude speculations and listen to the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so wisely; we know the self-opinionated tribe too well to fancy such a consummation as the result of old Prout's strictures: but, since the late downfal of Whiggery, we can afford to laugh at what must now only appear in the harmless shape of a solemn quiz. We would no more quarrel with them for hugging their cherished doctrines, than we would find fault with the Hussites above mentioned; who, when the Jesuit Peter Canisius came to Prague to argue them into conciliation, inscribed on their banner the following epigrammatic line: "Tu procul esto 'Canis,' pro nobis excubat' ANSER !'" The term "Huss" being, from the peculiarity of its guttural sound, among Teutonic nations indicative of what we call a goose. Jan. 1st, 1835. OLIVER YORKE. Watergrasshill, Jan. 1, 1832. It is with nations as with individuals: the greater is man's intercourse with his fellow-man in the interchange of social companionship, the more enlightened he becomes; and, in the keen encounter of wit, loses whatever awkwardness or indolence of mind may have been his original portion. If the aggregate wisdom of any country could be for a mo U |