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tion like a pine-tree, about five feet high, with | specimens of glorification. His knowledge regular leaves and branches; another is in a of the place is ample and accurate, and he is pyramidal form, like a cypress. altogether an extremely useful and agreeable guide.

THE POEM OF THE MONTH.

If you wind down the mountains on the side opposite from that which you ascended, you will come to Serena's Arbor, which is thirteen miles from the entrance of the cave, functice is the following, from Graham's THE new poem that has fallen under

and the end of this aveuue. A most beautiful termination it is! In a semicircle of stalactite columns is a fountain of pure water spouting up from a rock. This fluid is as transparent as air; all the earthy particles it ever held in suspension, having been long since precipitated. The stalactite formations in this arbor are remarkably beautiful.

One hundred and sixty-five avenues have been discovered in Mammoth Cave, the walk through which is estimated at about three hundred miles. In some places, you descend more than a mile into the bowels of the earth. The poetic-minded traveller, after he has traced all the labyrinths, departs with lingering reluctance. As he approaches the entrance, daylight greets him with new and startling beauty. If the sun shines on the verdant sloping hill, and the waving trees, seen through the arch, they seem like fluid gold; if mere daylight rests upon them, they resemble molten silver. This remarkable richness of appearance is doubtless owing to the contrast with the thick darkness, to which the eye has been so long accustomed.

As you come out of the cave, the temperature of the air rises thirty degrees instantly (if the season is summer), and you feel as if plunged in a hot vapor bath; but the effects of this are salutary and not unpleasant. Nature never seems so miraculous as it does when you emerge from this hidden realm of marvellous imitations. The "dear goddess" is so serene in her resplendent and more harmonious beauty! The gorgeous amphitheatre of trees, the hills, the sky, and the air, all seem to wear a veil of transfigured glory. The traveller feels that he was never before conscious how beautiful a phenomenon is the sunlight, how magnificent the blue arch of heaven!

There are three guides at the service of travellers, all well versed in the intricate paths of this nether world. Stephen, the presiding genius of Mammoth Cave, is a mulatto, and a slave. He has lived in this strange region from boyhood, and a large proportion of the discoveries are the result of his courage, intelligence, and untiring zeal. His vocation has brought him into contact with many intellectual and scientific men, and a prodigious memory, he has profited much by intercourse with superior minds. He can recollect every body that ever visited the cave, and all the terms of geology and mineralogy are at his tongue's end. He is extremely attentive, and peculiarly polite to ladies. Like most of his race, he is fond of grandiloquent language, and his rapturous expressions, as he lights up some fine point of view, are at times fine

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Magazine for the present month. We think few who have read Miss Carey's recent poems entitled Lyra, Jessie Carol, October, and The Winds, with her prose volume just published by Redfield, will be disposed to question, that in the brief period in which she has been before the public she has entitled herself to the highest rank among the living literary women of the United States.

WINTER. BY ALICE CAREY. Now sits the twilight palaced in the snow, Hugging away beneath a fleece of gold Her statue beauties, dumb and icy cold,

And fixing her blue steadfast eyes below, Where in a bed of chilly waves afar,

With dismal shadows o'er her sweet face blown, Tended to death by eve's delicious star,

Lies the lost day alone.

Where late, with red mists bound about his brows, Went the swart Autumn, wading to the knees Through drifts of dead leaves shaken from the boughs Of the old forest trees,

The gusts upon their baleful errands run

O'er the bright ruin, fading from our eyes,
And over all, like clouds about the sun,
A shadow lies.

For, fallen asleep upon a dreary world,

Slant to the light, one late October morn, From some rough cavern blew a tempest cold, And tearing off his garland of ripe corn, Twisted with blue grapes, sweet with luscious wine, And Ceres' droswy flowers, so dully red, Deep in his cavern leafy and divine,

Buried him with his dead.

Then, with his black beard glistening in the frost,
Under the icy arches of the north,

And o'er the still graves of the seasons lost,
Blustered the Winter forth-

Spring, with your crown of roses budding new,
Thought-nursing and most melancholy Fall,
Summer, with bloomy meadows wet with dew,
Blighting your beauties all.

Oh heart, your spring-time dream will idle prove,
Your summer but forerun the autumn's death,
The flowery arches in the home of love
Fall, crumbling, at a breath;

And, sick at last with that great sorrow's shock,
As some poor prisoner, pressing to the bars
His forehead, calls on Mercy to unlock
The chambers of the stars--
You, turning off from life's first mocking glow
Leaning it may be, still on broken faith,
Will down the vale of Autumn gladly go
To the chill winter, Death.
Hark! from the empty bosom of the grove
I hear a sob, as one forlorn might pine-
The white-limbed beauty of a god is thine,
King of the seasons! and the night that hoods
Thy brow majestic, brightest stars enweave-
Thou surely canst not grieve;

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Come, Poesy, and with thy shadowy hands
Cover me softly, singing all the night-
In thy dear presence find I best delight;
Even the saint that stands

Tending the gate of heaven, involved in beams
Of rarest glory, to my mortal eyes
Pales from the blest insanity of dreams
That round thee lies.

Unto the dusky borders of the grove

Where gray-haired Saturn, silent as a stone,
Sat in his grief alone,

Or where young Venus, searching for her love,
Walked through the clouds, I pray,

Bear me to-night away.

Or wade with me through snows

Drifted in loose fantastic curves aside,

From humble doors where Love and Faith abide, And no rough winter blows,

Chilling the beauty of affections fair,

Cabined securely there.

Where round their fingers winding the white slips
That crown his forehead, on the grandsire's knees,

Sit merry children, teasing about ships

Lost in the perilous seas;

Or listening with a troublous joy, yet deep,
To stories about battles, or of storms,

Till weary grown, and drowsing into sleep,
Slide they from out his arms.

Where, by the log-heap fire,

As the pane rattles and the cricket sings,

I with the gray-haired sire

May talk of vanished summer-times and springs, And harmlessly and cheerfully beguile

The long, long hours

The happier for the snows that drift the while
About the flowers.

Winter, wilt keep the love I offer thee?

No mesh of flowers is bound about my brow;
From life's fair summer I am hastening now.
And as I sink my knee,

Dimpling the beauty of thy bed of snow-
Dowerless, I can but say-

O. cast me not away!

CARLYLE ON THE OPERA.
HE London Keepsake, for 1852, contains

a

painting, gilding at discretion: a hall as of the Caliph Alraschid, or him that commanded the slaves of the Lamp; a hall as if fitted up by the genies, regardless of expense. Upholstery and the outlay of human capital, could do no more. Artists, too, as they are called, have been got together from the ends of the world, regardless likewise of expense, to do dancing and singing, some of them even geniuses in their craft. One singer in particular, called Coletti, or some such name, seemed to me, by the cast of his face, by the tones of his voice, by his general bearing, so far as I could read it, to be a man of deep and ardent sensibilities, of delicate intuitions, just sympathies; originally an almost poetic soul, or man of genius, as we term it; stamped by Nature as capable of far other work than squalling here, like a blind Samson to make the Philistines sport! Nay, all of them had aptitudes, perhaps of a distinguished kind; and must, by their own and other people's labor, have got a training equal or superior in toilsomeness, earnest assiduity, and patient travail, to what breeds men to the most arduous trades. I speak not of kings' grandees, or the like show-figures; but few soldiers, judges, men of letters, can have had such pains taken with them. The very ballet girls, with their muslin saucers round them, were perhaps little short of miraculous; whirling and spinning there in strange mad vortexes, and then suddenly fixing themselves motionless, each upon her left or right great-toe, with the other leg stretched out at an angle of ninety degrees;-as if you had suddenly pricked into the floor, by one of their points, a pair, or rather a multitudinous cohort, of mad restlessly jumping and clipping scissors, and so bidden them Devil's name! A truly notable motion; marvelrest, with opened blades, and stand still, in the

something that was at hand, or thrown off so used to it. Motion peculiar to the Opera; perany thing on the spur of the moment, but set haps the ugliest, and surely one of the most diffihimself to write down to his company, and cult, ever caught a female creature in this world. do his best in that way. The paper is written Nature abhors it; but Art does at least admit it in the character of a travelling and philoso- to border on the impossible. One little Cerito, or phical American, who pours forth his thoughts Taglioni the Second, that night when I was there, on the opera; the topics being the deteriora- went bounding from the floor as if she had been tion of music as an art, the small beneficial made of Indian-rubber, or filled with hydrogen result that follows so much outlay and such the ceiling; perhaps neither Semiramis nor Cathegas, and inclined by positive levity to bolt through combination of artistical skill, the amount of rine the Second had bred herself so carefully. training bestowed on the singers and dancers, Such talent, and such martyrdom of training, gagreater than that which produces great men, thered from the four winds, was now here, to do and the company before the curtain, together its feat, and be paid for it. Regardless of exwith reflections thereanent. It is a piece of pense, indeed! The purse of Fortunatus seemed forcible description, and of thoughtful though to have opened itself, and the divine art of Musiperhaps rather one-sided reflection. As we cal Sound and Rhythmic Motion was welcomed heard it remarked a few days ago by a shrewd with an explosion of all the magnificences which critic, Carlyle is never so much himself as when the other arts, fine and coarse, could achieve. For he appears in the character of another-for ex-you are to think of some Rossini or Bellini in the amples, in that of the strolling lecturer, who left with his unpaid lodging-house keeper a denunciation of modern philanthropists, or in that of the correspondent whose letters he quotes in the Life of Sterling. In the disguise of a Yankee philosopher he thus breaks out, after some serious and highly-wrought pre-human talents, and excellent perseverances and Alas, and of all these notable or noticeable fatory phrases on the glories of true music, energies, backed by mountains of wealth, and led while yet true music partook of the divine: by the divine art of Music and Rhythm vouchsafed by Heaven to them and us, what was to be the issue here this evening? An hour's amusement,

"Of the account of the Haymarket Opera my account, in fine, is this: Lustres, candelabras, VOL. V.-NO. 1.-3

rear of it, too; to say nothing of the Stanfields, and hosts of scene-painters, machinists, engineers, enterprisers-fit to have taken Gibraltar, written the History of England, or reduced Ireland into Industrial Regiments, had they so set their minds to it!

not amusing either, but wearisome and dreary, to to this end, on such a funeral pile,-your celestial a high-dizened select populace of male and female Opera-house grows dark and infernal to me! Bepersons, who seemed to me not worth much amus-hind its glitter stalks the shadow of Eternal Death; ing! Could any one have pealed into their hearts through it too I look not up into the divine eye,' once, one true thought, and glimse of Self-vision: as Richter has it, but down into the bottomless 'High-dizened most expensive persons, Aristocra- eyesocket'-not up towards God, Heaven, and the cy so called, or Best of the World, beware, be- Throne of Truth, but too truly down towards Falware what proofs you give of betterness and best-sity, Vacuity, and the Dwelling-place of Everlastness!' and then the salutary pang of conscience in ing Despair." reply: A select Populace, with money in its purse, and drilled a little by the posture-maker: good Heavens! if that were what, here and every where in God's Creation, I am? And a world all dying because I am, and show myself to be, and to have long been, even that? John, the carriage, the carriage; swift! Let me go home in silence, to reflection, perhaps to sackcloth and ashes!' This, and not amusement, would have profited those high-dizened persons.

THE GRAVE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. IR JOHN RICHARDSON has just published, in London, a very valuable work, embracing the results of his recent travels and adventures in the polar regions, in search of the brave navigator who is probably buried under their eternal snows. As a narrative it is not particularly interesting; it is rich "Amusement, at any rate, they did not get from rather in scientific facts and observations. Euterpe and Melpomene. These two Muses, sent It has northern landscapes, painted by an obfor, regardless of expense, I could see, were but server who combines scientific knowledge the vehicle of a kind of service which I judged to with the taste of a lover of nature; exhibibe Paphian rather. Young beauties of both sexes tions of zeal and endurance under hardships; used their opera-glasses, you could notice, not en- and incidents interesting from their rarity or tirely for looking at the stage. And it must be their circumstances; but nothing different owned the light, in this explosion of all the uphol- from other expeditions undertaken to explore steries, and the human fine arts and coarse, was the same region. A large part of the scienmagical; and made your fair one an Armida,-if tific matter is presented by itself. A curious you liked her better so. Nay, certain old Impro- account of the Indian races whose territories per-Females (of quality), in their rouge and jew- were travelled over forms a succession of seels, even these looked some reminiscence of enchantment; and I saw this and the other lean do- parate chapters, and a series of elaborate pamestic Dandy, with icy smile on his old worn America occupies an appendix, which fills pers on the physical geography of northern face; this and the other Marquis Singedelomme, Prince Mahogany, or the like foreign Dignitary, nearly two-thirds of the second volume. The tripping into the boxes of said females, grinning nature of the country explored gives a freshthere awhile with dyed moustachios and macasness to every thing connected with it, and insar-oil graciosity, and then tripping out again;-terest even to casual observation. and, in fact, I perceived that Colletu and Cerito This is a curious fact connected with the and the Rhythmic Arts were a mere accompani- feeling of heat:

ment here.

"Wonderful to see; and sad, if you had eyes! Do but think of it. Cleopatra threw pearls into her drink, in mere waste; which was reckoned foolish of her. But here had the Modern Aristecracy of men brought the divinest of its Arts, heavenly Music itself; and, piling all the upholsteries and ingenuities that other human art could do, had lighted them into a bonfire to illuminate an hour's flirtation of Singedelomme, Mohogany, and these improper persons! Never in Nature had I seen such waste before. O Colletti, you whose inborn melody, once of kindred as I judged to 'the Melodies eternal,' might have valiantly weeded out this and the other false thing from the ways of men, and made a bit of God's creation more melodious, they have purchased you away from that; chained you to the wheel of Prince Mahogany's chariot, and here you make sport for a macassar Singedelomme and his improper-females past the prime of life! Wretched spiritual Nigger, oh, if you had some genius, and were not a born Nigger with mere appetite for pumpkin, should you have endured such a lot? I lament for you beyond all other expenses. Other expenses are light; you are the Cleopatra's pearl that should not have been flung into Mahogany's claret-cup. And Rossini, too, and Mozart and Bellini-Oh, Heavens, when I think that Music too is condemned to be mad and to burn herself,

"The power of the sun this day in a cloudless sky was so great, that Mr. Rae and I were glad to take shelter in the water while the crews were engaged on the portages. The irritability of the human frame is either greater in these Northern latitudes, or the sun, notwithstanding its obliquity, acts more powerfully upon it than near the Equator; for I have never felt its direct rays so oppressive within the Tropics as I have experienced them to be on some occasions in the high latitudes. The luxury of bathing at such times is not without alloy; for, if you choose the mid-day, you are assailed in the water by the tabani, who draw blood in an instant with their formidable lancets; and if you select the morning or evening, then clouds of thirsty moschetoes, hovering around, fasten or the first part that emerges. Leeches also infest the still waters, and are prompt in their aggres sions."

The following relate to cold and mid-win ter:

"The rapid evaporation of both snow and ice in the winter and spring, long before the action of the sun has produced the slightest thaw or appearance of moisture, is made evident to residents in the high latitudes by many facts of daily occurrence; and I may mention that the drying of linen furnishes a familiar one. When a shirt, after being washed, is exposed in the open air to a temperature of 40° or 50° below zero, it is in

stantly rigidly frozen, and may be broken if violently bent. If agitated when in this condition by a strong wind, it makes a rustling noise like theatrical thunder. In an hour or two, however, or nearly as quickly as it would do if exposed to the sun in the moist climate of England, it dries and becomes limber.....

"In consequence of the extreme dryness of the atmosphere in winter, most articles of English manufacture made of wood, horn, or ivory, brought to Rupert's Land, are shrivelled, bent, and broken. The handles of razors and knives, combs, ivory scales, and various other things kept in the warm rooms, are damaged in this way. The human body also becomes visibly electric from the dryness of the skin. One cold night I rose from my bed, and having lighted a lantern, was going out to observe the thermometer, with no other clothing than my flannel night-dress, when, on approaching my hand to the iron latch of the door, a distinct spark was elicited. Friction of the skin at almost all times in winter produced the electric odor....

boring spot. Each slab is neatly fitted to its place by running a flenching-knife along the joint, when it instantly freezes to the wall, the cold atmosphere forming a most excellent cement. Crevices are plugged up, and seams accurately closed by throwing a few shovelfuls of loose snow over the fabric. Two men generally work together in raising a house, and the one who is stationed within cuts a low door, and creeps out when his task is over. The walls being only three or four inches thick, are sufficiently translucent to admit a very agreeable light, which serves for ordinary domestic purposes; but if more be required a window is cut, and the aperture fitted with a piece of transparent ice. The proper thickness of the walls is of some importance. A few inches excludes the wind, yet keeps down the temperature so as to prevent dripping from the interior. The furniture

such as seats, tables, and sleeping-places-is also formed of snow, and a covering of folded reindeer-skin or seal-skin renders them comfortable to the inmates. By means of ante-chambers and porches, in form of long, low galleries, with their

the interior; and social intercourse is promoted by building the houses contiguously, and cutting doors of communication between them, or by erecting covered passages. Storehouses, kitchens, and other accessory buildings, may be constructed in the same manner, and a degree of convenience gained which would be attempted in vain with a less plastic material. These houses are durable, the wind has little effect on them, and they resist the thaw until the sun acquires very considerable power."

"Even at mid-winter we had three hours and a half of daylight. On the 20th of December I re-openings turned to leeward, warmth is insured in quired a candle to write at the window at ten in the morning. On the 29th, the sun, after ten days' absence, rose at the fishery, where the horizon was open; and on the 8th of January, both limbs of that luminary were seen from a gentle eminence behind the fort, rising above the centre of Fishery Island. For several days previously, however, its place in the heavens at noon had been denoted by rays of light shooting into the sky above the woods, The lowest temperature in January was 50° F. On the 1st of February the sun rose to us at nine o'clock and set at three, and the days lengthened rapidly. On the 23d I could write in my room without artificial light from ten A. M. to half-past two P. M., making four hours and a half of bright daylight. The moon in the long nights was a most beautiful object; that satellite being constantly above the horizon for nearly a fortnight together in the middle of the lunar month. Venus also shone with a brilliancy which is never witnessed in a sky loaded with vapors; and, unless in snowy weather, our nights were always enlivened by the beams of the Aurora."

Few if any readers will ever be in a situation to use the knowledge of how to build a snow-house. The Arctic architecture, from a chapter on the Esquimaux, is worth reading, should it never turn out to be worth knowing:

The following account of the formation of dry land is from an earlier portion of the journey, and refers to a region between the 50th and 55th degrees of latitude:

"The eastern coast-line of Lake Winipeg is in general swampy, with granite knolls rising through the soil, but not to such a height as to render the scenery hilly. The pine forest skirts the shore at the distance of two or three miles, covering gentlyrising lands; and the breadth of continuous lakesurface seems to be in process of diminution, in the following way. A bank of sand is first drifted up, in the line of a chain of rocks which may happen to lie across the mouth of an inlet or deep bay. Carices, balsam-poplars, and willows, speedily take root therein; and the basin which lies behind, cut off from the parent lake, is gradually converted into a marsh by the luxuriant growth of aquatic plants. The sweet gale next appears "As the days lengthen, the villages are emptied on its borders, and drift-wood, much of it rotten of their inhabitants, who move seaward on the ice and comminuted, is thrown up on the exterior to the seal-hunt. Then comes into use a marvel- bank, together with some roots and stems of larlous system of architecture, unknown among the ger trees. The first spring storm covers these rest of the American nations. The fine pure snow with sand, and in a few weeks the vigorous vegehas by that time acquired, under the action of tation of a short but active summer binds the strong winds and hard frosts, sufficient coherence whole togethor by a network of the roots of bents to form an admirable light building material, with and willows. Quantities of drift-sand pass before which the Eskimo master-mason erects most com- the high winds into the swamp behind, and, weighfortable dome-shaped houses. A circle is first ing down the flags and willow branches, prepare a traced on the smooth surface of the snow; and the fit soil for succeeding crops. During the winter slabs for raising the walls are cut from within, so of this climate, all remains fixed as the summer as to clear a space down to the ice, which is to left it; and as the next season is far advanced beform the floor of the dwelling, and whose evenness fore the bank thaws, little of it washes back into was previously ascertained by probing. The slabs the water, but, on the contrary, every gale blowrequisite to complete the dome, after the interioring from the lake brings a fresh supply of sand of the circle is exhausted, are cut from some neigh- from the shoals which are continually forming

along the shore. The floods raised by melting snows cut narrow channels through the frozen beach, by which the ponds behind are drained of their superfluous waters. As the soil gradually acquires depth, the balsam-poplars and aspens overpower the willows; which, however, continue to form a line of demarcation between the lake and the encroaching forest. Considerable sheets of water, are also cut off on the northwest side of the lake, where the bird's-eye limestone forms the whole of the coast. Very recently this corner was deeply indented by narrow branching bays, whose outer points were limestone cliffs. Under the action of frost, the thin horizontal beds of this stone split up, crevices are formed perpendicularly, large blocks are detached, and the cliff is rapidly overthrown, soon becoming masked by its own ruins. In a season or two the slabs break into small fragments, which are tossed up by the waves across the neck of the bay into the form of narrow ridgelike beaches, from twenty to thirty feet high. Mud and vegetable matter gradually fill up the pieces of water thus secluded; a willow swamp is formed; and when the ground is somewhat consolidated, the willows are replaced by aspens."

The volumes have all the value of an official survey, and they are the most important contributions to our knowledge of the Terra Incognita of the Lower Mackenzie, that have been published. The occupants of this region are the Loucheux Indians. Fine grown men of considerable stature, and well-knit frames, they have evidently followed the course of the Mackenzie River, from south to north. These are the Indians of whom from the scantiness of our previous data, information is most valuable. They are reasonably considered to belong to the same family as the Dog-rib, Beaver, Hare, Copper, Carrier, and other Indians, a family which some call Chepewyan, others Athabascan, but which the present work designates as Tinne. The Esquimo and Crees, though as fully described, are better known. The chapters, illustrative of the other branches of the natural history of North America, are equally valuable.

WITS ABOUT THE THRONE OF LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH.

try, and painting, and architecture, and sculpture, as their appropriate provinces, to those great master spirits of Italy, to whom they forbade the culture of political philosophy, so Louis, when he interdicted to the gigantic intellects of his times and country all intervention in the affairs of the commonwealth, summoned them to the conquest of all the other realms of thought in which they might acquire renown, either for him, for France, or themselves. The theatres, the academies, the pulpits, and the monasteries of his kingdom rivalled each other in their zealous obedience to that royal command, and obeyed it with a success from which no competent and equitable judge can withhold his highest admiration. At this day, when all the illusions of the name of Louis are exhausted, and in this country, where his Augustan age has seldom been regarded with much enthusiasm, who can seriously address himself to the perusal of his great tragedians, Corneille and Racine-or of his great comedians, Moliere and Regnard-or if his great poets, Boileau and La Fontaine-or of his great wits, La Rochfaucauld and La Bruyere-or of his great philosophers, Des Cartes and Pascal-or of his great divines, Bossuet and Arnauld—or of his great scholars, Mabillon and Montfaucon-or if his great preachers, Bourdaloue and Masillon-and not confess that no other monarch was ever surrounded by an assem blage of men of genius so admirable for the extent, the variety and the perfection of their powers. "And yet the fact that such an assemblage were clustered into a group, of which so great a king some characteristic quality uniting them all to each was the centre, implies that there must have been other and to him, and distinguishing them all from the nobles of every other literary commonwealth which has existed among men. What, then, was that quality, and what its influence upon them?

"Louis lived with his courtiers, not as a despot among his slaves, but as the most accomplished of gentlemen among his associates. The social equality was, however, always guarded from abuse by the most punctilious observance, on their side, of the reverence due to his preeminent rank. In that enchanted circle men appeared at least to obey, not from a hard necessity, but from a willing heart. The bondage in which they really lived was ennobled by that conventional code of honor which dictated and enforced it. They prostrated themselves before their fellow-man with no sense of self-abasement, and the chivalrous homage with

W sie Panes Stephens's Lectures on the which they gratified him, was considered as imE copy the following paragraphs from

History of France. The illustrious men referred to are of course well known by educated men, but to the masses their names are familiar chiefly from their appearance in the brilliant romances of Dumas.

"The constellation of genius, wit, and learning, in the midst of which Louis shone thus pre-eminently, was too brilliant to be obscured by any clouds of royal disfavor; nor would any man have shrunken with greater abhorrence than himself, from any attempt to extinguish or to eclipse their splendor. He wisely felt, and frankly acknowledged, that their glory was essential to his own; and he invited to a seat at his table, Moliere the roturier, to whom the lowest of his nobles would have appointed a place among his menial servants. As Francis, and Charles, and Leo, and Julius, and Lorenzo had assigned science, and poe

parting dignity to themselves.

66

Louis acknowledged and repaid this tribute of courtesy, by a condescension still more refined, and by attentions yet more delicate than their own. The harshness of power was so ingeniously veiled, every shade of approbation was so nicely marked, and every gradation of favor so finely discriminated, that the tact of good society-that acquired sense, which reveals to us the impression we make on those with whom we associate-became the indispensable condition of existence at Versailles and Marly. The inmates of those palaces lived under a law peculiar to themselves; a law most effective for its purposes, though the recompense it awarded to those who pleased their common master was but his smile, and though the penalty it imposed on those who displeased him was but his frown"

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