Was Milton floating in the brain of Vic-exceeding tenderness and beauty, of such earnest passion, such graceful and attractive melancholy, that to say we present you

"Millions of flaming swords drawn from the with the best, would be an assertion we

But the love-ditty? Anon, anon, sweet A monosyllable line, be it observed, remarkable lectress! There are, really, so many of for melodious expression.

Yet a little more colin-maillard among We snatch at them "quite promiscuously;" we stretch out our hands, and they are filled. Pause, then, yet a moment with us, ere we proceed to touch the ballad-poetry of our author, and admire such beauty and such happiness of expression as these :

Victor's crowd of fair forms.

"Ferait fuir le sommeil, le plus craintif des anges;"

"Par la blanche colombe aux rapides adieux :” "Cette tente d'un jour qu'il faut sitôt ployer," spoken of mortal life.

We cannot doubt but that you will approve and enjoy sentiments so ennobling, so cheering, so calming, couched in such beautiful form as here they lie:

"L'auguste Piété, servante des proscrits.”
"Cet lange, qui donne et qui tremble,

C'est l'aumône aux yeux de douceur,
Au front crédule, et qui ressemble
A la Foi dont ella est la sœur."

Au front crédule! How sweetly expressive of unsuspecting innocence! the purity, the "whiteness of the soul," patent in the calm, clear, and candid brow!—

"Le soir, au seuil de sa demeure,

Heureux celui qui sait encore Ramasser un enfant qui pleure, Comme un avare un sequin d'or!"'

Beautiful as a proverb of Palestine or of Persia! Shall we go on? It would be as easy as agreeable to prolong this occupation. We might continue to gratify the reader of taste with admirable passages, striking and original expressions, taking the jewels from out their rich entourage. We might, we say, continue to present to notice single lines of fine effect and significance, as

thing but the original, that you may the We purposely refrain from giving any better appreciate these noble lines. Verily, with such command of language and such resounding march of versification, we, for ourselves, shall begin to believe in the possibility of a French Dryden-a "glorious John," and eke—of Paris.

Shall we go on? we say. No; for when should we have done with so pleasing an employment? Yet this one little curiosity we must commend to our loving countrymen and dearly beloved Cockneys,-this designation of time and locality to the nativity of

"Ce pédant qu'on appella Ennui ;" whom the wicked Frenchman, with true national raillery, calls

"Ce docteur, né dans Londres un Dimanche en Décembre.'

But since me must perforce take this hit at the hands of Victor, we e'en beg leave patch this compliment to America, with to pass on the fun; and, accordingly, des

our best bow to President Polk and his swaggering statists:

"Peuple à peine essayé, nation de hasard,

Sans tige, sans passé, sans histoire, et sans art.'

Thus it is that our friend disposes of the grandiloquent Jonathan :

:

"Many persons, whose opinion is of weight, have said that the author's odes are not odes: be it so. Many others will say (with less reason) that his ballads are no ballads at all: granted also. Let fo'ks give them any other appellation they choose: the author agrees to it beforehand." So says Victor himself, in one of his prefaces to the Odes et Ballades; and it must be confessed that his ballad is almost as great a novelty in that class of or vigorous and impetuous, graceful and French poetry, as in its own department flowing numbers as these :

"Doux comme un chant du soir, for comme un choc d'armures;"

was his ode. Into his effusions of high

lyrical effort the poet has poured a flood of difference which it manifested to every song, drawn from other sources of inspira- thing but the souvenirs of its own achievetion than such as supplied the greater and ments; the sympathies of the Restoration, the lesser classical copyists,--the pure imi- on another hand, would revert rather to the tators and the mixed herd of imitators of pure "classic" glories of Louis XIV., or, imitation. A bolder grasp of measures, a at furthest, to the Caussades and Candales, more ample sweep of language, a greater and the Gabrielles of his father and his freedom of thought, a finer play of imagina- grandfather. To avow, therefore, before a tion, and an immeasurably deeper intensity Parisiau public a mediæval flight of imagiof feeling by the introduction into that nation, was rather a daring attempt at reacberetofore cold and formal style, that dis- tion in poetic sympathies; albeit the essay tant, and, so to say, objective life, of a per- was made during the restoration of an anvading passion, a natural earnestness of cient dynasty, and under the blessed rule sentiment, a vivid personality of emotion,- of a "roi chevalier." We might dispute these have been the contributions of Vic- the successful realization of the author's tor Hugo to the Ode of France; endow- design, but we are content to take them ments of which there was so much need, under the name he has given them in his qualities whose absence was so felt, that first volume--Ballads; and embracing in the contemplation of the otherwise well- our notice others which come under the executed compositions became as distasteful to the poetic student as to the lonely husband in his Spartan halls was the aspect of the fair proportioned statues, wanting the tenderness and the fire, the melting and kindling glance of vitality:

Εὐμόρφων δὲ κολοσσῶν

Έχθεται χάρις ἀνδρέ
Ομμάτων δ' ἐν ἀχηνίαις

Έρξει πάσ' 'Αφροδίτα. -- Ascu. Agam.

So great and so novel in their character are, we again repeat, the merits of our author with reference to the higher lyrical poetry of his country. Without claiming for him so high a meed of praise, we can hardly regard his productions under the head of ballads as forming a less striking contrast with their predecessors ejusdem nominis. Although a taste for antiquarian research, and a tendency to reproduce the characteristics of the olden times of their history, have now been for some time conspicuous in the literature of our accomplished neighbors, it was not a little startling to hear a young poet announce, twenty years ago, that his ballads were an en deavor to give some idea of what might be the poems of the first troubadours of the middle ages, of those Christian rhapsodists who had nothing in the world but their sword and their guitar, and who went about from château to château, requiting hospitality with songs." This was certainly a novel announcement, and a bold one; for if, on one part, from "liberal" France was to be expected nothing but contempt for those dark ages of knightly courtesy and religious enthusiasm; or from the remnants of imperial France, only that in

same head, without pretending to the same purpose, shall endeavor to give our readers a notion of Hugo's ability in this department. One, and a splendid one, among those which profess a troubadour character -La Fiancée du Timbalier-is known to the readers of FRASER by the admirable translation in "The Relics of Father Prout." We select another, as excelling by its touching simplicity, and as presenting-if not exactly a specimen of what the troubadours themselves would have sungat all events, a coloring of imagination drawn from those times of popular credence with their countless and picturesque superstitions. Few can fail to be struck, we think, with the beautiful picture contained in the sixth stanza :—