"Talk not of, wasted affection, affection never was wasted;

If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters returning Back to their springs like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment, That which the fountain sends forth, returns again to the fountain."

This is doubtless very refined for an old Norman priest, but the thought is beautiful and the expression just.

The poor child, escorted by her guide, looks everywhere for some trace of her family and her betrothed. Sho visits the fertile bayous of New Orleans, the green shores of the Delaware, the sterile and stormy plains that lie at the foot of the Ozarks; from time to time, some gleams of hope appear; she learns that Gabriel has become a trapper. She knows even that he has passed her in a boat, one autumn night; but days, months and years pass away. In the search youth has faded, Evangeline grows older, becomes a Sister of Mercy, and gives up her life to the sick. At last, one day, she finds her lover stretched upon a hospital bed and dying; he opens his eyes, sees her, and dies consoled: she soon follows him.

"Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,
Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping,
Under the humble walls of the little Catholic church-yard,
In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed.
Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them,
Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,

Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey!

Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches
Dwells another race, with other customs and language.
Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom.
In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy

Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story.

While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."

There is, in this poem, a singular mingling of the factitious and the natural-two contrasting elements, the real and the permitted, one moving the heart by its truth, the other wounding the mind by affectation. All the American portion merits praise. We are carried down the vast Mississippi to the. music of mocking birds. The new, magnificent world is not merely described and analyzed, but the poet reproduces it, and communicates to the reader its peculiarity, its vivifying sap, its inner emotion. We have the "red cars of corn, which, signifying lovers, make the girls blush during harvest." We have the Mission vespers, suug in the midst of the wilderuess; the Crucifix hangs upon an old oak, only dweller in that solitude; all heads are bared, and the Christ regards them with a look of divine pity, while the sound of the even song mingles with the rustling of the boughs, and the vine clusters droop downward on the forehead of the crucified Saviour. We have the hunter's camp, in the same prairies, ainid seas of verdure, and profound bays of vegetation, which mingled with the wild rose and the purple amorphia, float like waves in the light and shade. There go headlong bands of buffaloes, wolves, wild deer, and armies of riderless steeds. There, near the rivers, under clusters of holm, a smoke announced a robber camp, who stain with blood the solitudes of God, and circling above their heads, the vulture expects his prey. Then you have the Acadian farmer, a king, like the good Evander: then when the twilight comes, and the labor hours are over, and stars appear in heaven, you see the flocks and herds, with nostrils open, breathing the freshness of the night, their heads upon each other's necks: patient and self

important, after them comes the dog, marching right and left in his instinctive pride, proud of governing all these, happy to be their protector at night, when the wolves howl and the lambs tremble. Then the moon rises, and the wagons laden with fodder come home. The horses, their manes wet with the dews, neigh joyously, and shake with their robust shoulders the red fringed harness. The patient cows are milked: the laugh of the farmer's men is heard, and the singing of young girls, and the long lowings of the kine. and the doors are barred.

Then silence,

As an American idyll this poem is admirable. All that it lacks is passion. The love of the betrothed, its birth and progress, are not indicated. It appears that all the ardor of the poet's inspiration can direct itself only to the country itself, towards the sublime and virgin nature which surrounds it.

In this Anglo-American poet two tendencies are visible; the one, religious, towards the Catholic creed, towards vaster and more liberal Christian ideas: the second, literary, towards the Scandinavian Teutonism. His hexameter verse, which flows with sad solemnity, is filled with numerous, irregular alliterations.

The first effect of this upon an car accustomed to the rapid English iambics is unpleasant, but one gets used to it. And then one endures the echo of the same consonant at the beginning and in the middle of words, strange as it is to the poetic habits of the South; you find examples in the old Latin and Greek poets, but it is generally avoided by the English.

We in France have never been able to adopt this rhythm, although the ridiculous Guilliaume Cretin tried to naturalize it, and which comes from the German Meistersünger of the fifteenth century; a curious fact, to be found in no history. of literature. Mr. Longfellow knows Icelandic and Danish

and has passed some time on the Scandinavian Peninsula; and, without thinking, he has habituated himself to alliteration, an involuntary form with him, voluntary with the old Scalds, and still preserving a popular influence in the North. The Danish poet, Ochlenschlager has written part of his poem on the gods of the North in alliterative verse.

Tilgiv tvungne

Trael af Elskov

At han dig atter

Astaeld findet, etc.

So Longfellow,

Fuller of fragrance than they

And as heavy with shadows and night-dews,

Hung the heart of the maiden,

The calm and magical moonlight

Seemed to inundate her soul.

What is strange is that Mr. Longfellow, in writing, never noticed these multiplied alliterations which flow spontaneously from his pen and fill the poem. This involuntary return of English poetry towards its primitive source in the Scandinavian caves is too curious a fact to be passed over in silence.

Thus then, while old Europe regenerates herself as she can, young and less troubled nations are endeavoring art and poetry. Evangeline is not a chef-d'auvre, but its beauties have the gift of life, future life in them. IIere are the elements which prevent the death of society and of literature, the most correct notions of justice and morality, the most ardent and thoughtful love of native land.

Ir is amazing how many frivolous or ironical books have issued from the American presses since 1830. The races inheriting from old civilization, seeing before them an unknown world of industry and politics to conquer and to organise, find themselves face to face with ridiculous contrasts, and are naturally given to irony. Roman Gaul commenced thus.

This irony in the United States is still very rude; it will become refined, but at present it is singularly bitter and coarse. Readers upon this side of the Atlantic can only feel disgust for the odious scenes written by two satiric painters of manners, Messrs. Moore and Matthews, authors of Tom Stapleton and Puffer Ilopkins. I read eagerly these sketches of American life by Americans. The impression is a mournful one; it is not popular, but low and aristocratic in the worst seuse of that word; faded and corrupted vices, without grace or taste; a coward life which pursues titles, envies fortune, rushes upon success. These manners are destitute of purity,