this? Shall we ever come at the heroic period, the golden age? No, thank God; that is not in any one of the ages, but in all of them. The good men, the heroes, whenever such appeared, sought for it close to them, and not at a distance. And they were able to see it because they were not going up into the heaven or down into the deep to discover it. We want a criticism which shall do justice to the time in which we are born, to the men who live in it, just as much as to any time gone by, which shall do justice not to its modes and fashions, which are worth just as much as the modes and fashions of any other age and no more not to its inventions, though we may rejoice in them, and do all honor to the patient toil and thought which has produced them; but to that in it which is most common, most human, to that which does not separate us from other times, but unites us to them. May not our work to find out this common bond of fellowship give it a higher dignity than all those peculiar treasures that we think others had and we have lost? If we are driven in our weakness to ask how all may be men, can we not leave the heroes to the elder generations? Is it not possible, after all, that a man may be more glorious than a hero? that to be on a level with all, and to feel that the lowliest is the highest, may be better than to vaunt of some great champions and representatives, who make us think even more highly of ourselves than of them?

CARCASSONNE.

BY GUSTAVE NADAUD.

[French songwright and composer, born at Roubaix in 1820; died 1893.]

And yet to reach it one must still
Five long and weary leagues pursue;
And to return, as many more!

Ah! had the vintage plenteous grown!
The grape withheld its yellow store.
I shall not look on Carcassonne,

I shall not look on Carcassonne !

They tell me every day is there

Not more nor less than Sunday gay; In shining robes and garments fair The people walk upon their way. One gazes there on castle walls

As grand as those of Babylon,
A bishop and two generals!

I do not know fair Carcassonne,
I do not know fair Carcassonne !

The curé's right: he says that we

Are ever wayward, weak, and blind; He tells us in his homily

Ambition ruins all mankind:

Yet could I there two days have spent,
While still the autumn sweetly shone,
Ah me! I might have died content

When I had looked on Carcassonne,
When I had looked on Carcassonne !

Thy pardon, father, I beseech,
In this my prayer if I offend:
One something sees beyond his reach
From childhood to his journey's end.
My wife, our little boy Aignan,

Have traveled even to Narbonne;
My grandchild has seen Perpignan;
And I have not seen Carcassonne,
And I have not seen Carcassonne !

So crooned one day, close by Limoux,
A peasant, double bent with age.
"Rise up, my friend," said I: "with you
I'll go upon this pilgrimage."

We left next morning his abode,

But (Heaven forgive him) halfway on

The old man died upon the road:

He never gazed on Carcassonne.

Each mortal has his Carcassonne !

POEMS OF THACKERAY.

[WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, English novelist and humorist, was born in Calcutta, India, July 19, 1811, and died December 24, 1863. He studied for an artist, but could not learn to draw, and after some years of struggle began to make a name in Fraser's Magazine by "The Great Hoggarty Diamond," "The Yellowplush Papers," etc. There followed "The Paris Sketch Book"; "The Book of Snobs,' "Ballads of Policeman X," "Prize Novelists," etc., from Punch; and "The Rose and the Ring." "Vanity Fair," "Pendennis," "Henry Esmond," and "The Newcomes," his four great masterpieces, all came in the six years 1848-1854. His lectures on "English Humorists" and "The Four Georges" followed; then "The Virginians" (sequel to "Esmond"), "Lovel the Widower," "Philip," and the unfinished "Denis Duval," contributed to the Cornhill Magazine, which he edited 1859-1862, and which contained also "The Roundabout Papers."]

THE WHITE SQUALL.

ON DECK, beneath the awning,

I dozing lay and yawning;
It was the gray of dawning,
Ere yet the sun arose;

And above the funnel's roaring,
And the fitful wind's deploring,
I heard the cabin snoring

With universal nose.

I could hear the passengers snorting,
I envied their disporting-

Vainly I was courting

The pleasure of a doze!

So I lay, and wondered why light
Came not, and watched the twilight,
And the glimmer of the skylight,
That shot across the deck,

And the binnacle pale and steady,
And the dull glimpse of the dead-eye,
And the sparks in fiery eddy

That whirled from the chimney neck.

In our jovial floating prison

There was sleep from fore to mizzen,
And never a star had risen

The hazy sky to speck.

Strange company we harbored;
We'd a hundred Jews to larboard,
Unwashed, uncombed, unbarbered

-

Jews black, and brown, and gray;

When A SQUALL, upon a sudden,
Came o'er the waters scudding;
And the clouds began to gather,
And the sea was lashed to lather,
And the lowering thunder grumbled,
And the lightning jumped and tumbled,
And the ship, and all the ocean,

Woke up in wild commotion.
Then the wind set up a howling,
And the poodle dog a yowling,
And the cocks began a crowing,
And the old cow raised a lowing,
As she heard the tempest blowing;
And fowls and geese did cackle,
And the cordage and the tackle
Began to shriek and cackle;

And the spray dashed o'er the funnels,
And down the deck in runnels;

And the rushing water soaks all,
From the seamen in the fo'ksal
To the stokers whose black faces
Peer out of their bed places;
And the captain he was bawling,
And the sailors pulling, hauling,
And the quarter-deck tarpauling
Was shivered in the squalling;
And the passengers awaken,
Most pitifully shaken;

And the steward jumps up, and hastens

For the necessary basins.

Then the Greeks they groaned and quivered,
And they knelt, and moaned, and shivered,
As the plunging waters met them
And splashed and overset them;
And they call in their emergence
Upon countless saints and virgins;
And their marrowbones are bended,
And they think the world is ended.
And the Turkish women for'ard
Were frightened and behorror'd;
And shrieking and bewildering,
The mothers clutched their children;
The men sang "Allah! Illah!
Mashallah Bismillah!"

As the warring waters doused them,
And splashed them and soused them,
And they called upon the Prophet,
And thought but little of it.

Then all the fleas in Jewry
Jumped up and bit like fury;
And the progeny of Jacob

Did on the main-deck wake up
(I wot those greasy Rabbins

Would never pay for cabins);

And each man moaned and jabbered in

His filthy Jewish gaberdine,

In woe and lamentation,

And howling consternation.

And the splashing water drenches

Their dirty brats and wenches;

And they crawl from bales and benches

In a hundred thousand stenches.