offering it to her majesty. The officers of the fête are obliged to observe exactly all these ancient forms, under penalty of a fine of sixty sous. From here the assemblage marches to the grounds of the Château, where, under the shade of the trees, the Seigneur leads off the dance with the Queen of the Rose. This open-air ball closes at sunset. On the afternoon of the day following, the Rosière invites the young girls of the village to a little feast, which is followed by games and other innocent amusements. So we have the history of the origin, and a description of the ceremonies, of the charming festival of the Rose. There is then a place on earth where a chaplet of roses is regarded as the most honourable prize which can be given to virtue. This institution has an admirable influence upon morals and manners at Salency. All the inhabitants of the village, about a hundred and fifty householders, are gentle, honest, sober, and industrious. It is said that there actually is no record of a crime committed at Salency by a native of the place, and no instance of gross vice. Yet the peasants in the neighbouring parishes are by no means free from brutal and vicious qualities. It almost seems as though the roses of St. Médard had sweetened the souls and made beautiful the lives of all the natives of Salency. Dear little maidens who read this history, though you don't live in virtuous, happy Salency, and talk French every day, and have a real nobleman for a landlord-if you are good, and pure, and truthful, and industrious, and obedient, and loving-never fear that you shall miss your reward your crowning. A Lord, more gracious and just than any mortal Seigneur, will adjudge them to you at last; angel lips, more pure than those of any mortal priest, will bless you; angel hands will bestow upon you "treasure laid up in heaven," and crown you with roses that shall never fade. THE OLD MAPLE-TREE. BY COUSIN MAY. Away out in a lonely region of the West, surrounded by lofty mountains on one side and broad prairies on the other, stood a beautiful forest. Many and many years had passed by since God first planted the seeds which had now grown up into such tall and stately trees. All the summer long, bright little birds flitted to and fro in their branches, playing bo-peep with the sunshine as it quivered through the leaves. A tiny brook wound round and round through the valleys, and murmured musically about the roots of the old trees. Delicate flowers nestled in the grass, or nodded along the margin of the stream, filling the air with fragrance, and from their cups innumerable bees laded themselves with sweets for their hives in the hollows of the old oaks. Though many years had passed away, the forest had never been visited by man. Yet was it not lonely; for besides the birds and bees, many other creatures made it their home. Beautiful spotted fawns, and deer with branching horns, nibbled at the young foliage, or drank from the sparkling brook; and other animals, less beautiful and innocent than these, hid in the dark places of the woods, or made war upon the smaller animals. And then thousands of squirrels chirped among the branches; and when the first frosts ripened the nuts, every tree of the forest seemed alive with the merry little. animals, busy in laying up their winter stores. But there was one tree, a huge maple, which stood all alone, the only one of its species, in the very middle of the forest, which was always lonely. Every fall, when the oaks and hickories were gay with their little visitors, this lonely. maple would cast longing looks at them, and wish and wish that some of the little squirrels would come and frisk among its branches. Once in awhile, some mischievous little fellow, out of pure wantonness, would scamper up its. trunk, play awhile among its leaves, and then fly down in a twinkling, and up into the next oak or hickory, where it would sit jabbering and chattering with an acorn or nut in its paws, making faces at the old maple. Oh! how that poor tree sighed to think that it alone, of all the trees in the grove, was a useless tree; that never a nut or an acorn grew upon its branches, nothing but leaves and little brown, butterfly-shaped seeds, which were noticed neither by the birds nor the squirrels. Every spring, when the ice began to thaw out of the brooks, it could feel the rich life gushing up through its trunk and limbs, and it knew there was something more in it than leaves and brown seeds; and every spring it waited and watched, expecting some kind of rich nut or delicious fruit to burst from its branches. But spring after spring it waited and watched in vain. While all its neighbours were burdened with the blossoms for a rich harvest in the fall, it yielded nothing. The years flew swiftly by, and each one as it passed added to its size and beauty. It might, in time, have grown contented with its lot in affording protection to a few blue and white violets which nestled at its roots every spring, had it not been for the presentiment, which amounted almost to a certainty, that it was created for some better purpose. At length a change came over the forest. There came to it one day a number of ox teams drawing great wagons piled up with beds and boxes, and women and children, and with them five or six men and boys, shouting their "gees" and "haws" to the oxen as they drove them through the woods, and halted beside the brook, just across the hill from the maple. Before many days trees were cut down, cabine built, fences made, and the whole place began to wear a very home-like appearance. The axe and the gun resounded through the woods from morning till night, and merry children made the hills and the valleys ring with their glee. By and by came the glad days of autumn, when the forest yielded its rich harvest. If the poor maple tree had longed for the companionship of the squirrels, and had mourned because its life was useless to them, how did it grieve when, one bright frosty morning in October, a whole troup of boys and girls, with buckets and bags and baskets, came out to gather the nuts which the frost had ripened. Their home had been in a great city, a long way off, and everything in the country was new and delightful to them. They had just been learning lessons from their older brothers on the form and colour of trees, and were now proud to be able to distinguish the brown, heavy ock from the bare, branching walnut and the trim, yellow hickory, with as much ease as their teachers. When they had nearly filled their baskets with nuts, and were almost ready to return home, an exclamation of delight from one of the little girls brought them all together on the top of a little knoll, where they espied, among the yellow and brown foliage, a single tree covered with bright crimson leaves, looking almost like a flame of fire in the forest. Certain that they would find some kind of nut or fruit upon it or beneath it, they all set off for the spot, but, after long searching among the beautiful leaves, were much disappointed in unding neither. The old tree was sadly grieved at their disappointment: all its red leaves quivered with anguish, and its branches drooped in pain. But at this moment the father of the children happened to pass by, and to him they compained of the lovely cheat," as they called the tree. He told them not to judge too rashly, but to be patient and wait until spring, and they would then find that the tree was not quite so much of a cheat as they supposed. “O, tell us now, father," cried the children, "what it will bear?" But all the reply he would make was, "Wait, and you will see.' And all through the fall, every leaf that fell from the maple murmured as it trembled in the ir, "Wait and you will see." And all through the long winter, as it tossed its naked branches to and fro on the wind, the tree wondered and wondered, and ever sighed, Wait, and you wul see." At length soft breezes stole through the trees, the ice began to melt in the brooks, the buds to smell on some of the early shrubs, and everything to wear an early spring-time hue. Then the father, without the knowledge of his children, went and tapped the maple tree, and in a few days had a dozen little cakes of tice brown maple sugar. He laid them upon a branch of the tree, and then took the children out to see its fruits. They had never seen Maple sugar before, and when they had tasted it were fairly wild with delight, and declared that the old tree which they had all abused so in the fall was worth more than all the nut trees in the woods together. As for the poor maple, it was satisfied at last. It found that its life was not altogether useless. It had ministered to the happiness of others and was content. But by-and-by, when summer came, and the leaves were green upon all the trees, and the birds were singing from every branch, a little brown wren came and sat upon one of its inmost branches, and told it how some of its fruits had been sent back to the children's far-off city home-how a little cripple boy ate of it, and dreamed of the green woods and gushing waters where he had played in his health-how a poor mother's eyes ran over as a cake of it was placed in her hands, for it would please her pale little daughter who lay sick and lonely on a bed of pain-how it rejoiced the hearts of the old, for it brought back to their memories the days of their childhood, when their homes were in the green woods. And the old tree bowed all its leaves in humility, and whispered to the little bird the tale of its long years of waiting, and its repining at its lowly lot, while all the time He who made it was reserving it for the greater usefulness when His time should come. A CHILD'S EVEN-SONG. BY R. F. H. Good-night to thee, thou glorious Sun! Thy race of usefulness thou'st run My God and thine gave thee thy light And with thy rays so warm and bright, To make tall trees and small plants grow But now thou hidest thy bright light, I also have a work to do, I must be kind and gentle too, Then if Life's Sun should soon decline, But if God should my days prolong, I'll pray, each morn I rise, Thus while I watch thy waning light, OUR LIBRARY TABLE. from under which their hair hangs in long wavy locks-often white-on to their shoulders, hair and beard being suffered to grow at will. Dogs lying in the sunshine; Maltese nurses and English children passing along; here and there an English lady, in fuli feather and crinoline, taking her morning walk-all this in the foreground of our living picture, with the red line of soldiery in the immediate background, standing out against the dark alley of trees and the foliage on the citadel, the sunlight glancing on their bayonets. Again The island itself is fertilo and thickly wooded, principally with cypresses and olive trees; the latter grow here to a large size, and spread their curiously PRINCE HASSAN'S CARPET. By Hope Luttrell.-(London: T. Cautly Newby, Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square.)—" Prince Hassan's Carpet" is the title (a trivial and inconsequent one we may say en passant) of a volume of discursive sketches of travel, which, had it been less discursive and less sketchy, would have been better worth the author's pains, and more conducive to the reader's pleasure. The owner of "Prince Hassan's Carpet," even at secondhand, has no excuse for the want of plan and purpose in his travels; but the erratic wanderings of an English yacht would have accounted naturally enough for the incongruity of, passing from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, from the stormy head-perforated branches over fresh grassy glades, where lands of Sunburgh to the heights of San Sebastian. We are the more dissatisfied with the author's sketchy descriptions, because he has the power to do better; and, with an artist's eye for colour and grouping, is not without observance, and an impressionability to scenic beauty which deserves and should have had development. In proof of the first, let us take the following picture of the morning appearance of the esplanade at Corfu, where guard trooping and military drill appear to have the same charms for idlers and the general public as at home. Here a knot of Corfiotes (thorough-bred, Maltese, Italian) in the loose, baggy blue trousers, held up by a broad coloured sash, which distinguish the islanders from Greeks of the mainland, shoes turned up at the toes, brown frieze jackets usually hanging over one shoulder, and scarlet fez completing their costume, stand with baskets full of vegetables or golden oranges for sale; while beside them an English shop-keeper, his legs apart and his hands in his pockets, in the full consciousness of his monetary and national superiority, affords a contrast the nature of which he little dreams. There a group of white-kilted Greeks, gorgeous in the gold not after the manner of the Romanists. The dress of the priests is a long black robe draped over an underdress of black, girt with a broad sash violet, brown, or green; the head-dress a sort of high black cap, wood nymphs might indeed find pleasant restingplaces, and where, when we returned later in the spring [it was February when the writer first visited the island] large violet anemones starred the ground, and golden coronella flowered luxuriantly among the underwood. Tall orange-trees, covered with fruit, fill the gardens and orchards, as we see applehardily-both fruits in some instances to an enor trees filling them in England; and citrons grow as mous size. Then, in whatever direction you ride along the coast of the island, your eye rests on beautiful stretches of sea and hill opposite, or from some headland or curve in the land (or from the old Venetian harbour of Govino, five miles from the town) you catch the equally beautiful views of Corcyra herself. In transcribing these passages, the flowery lightness of the style awakens a suspicion that Hope Luttrell is neither artist nor yachtsman, but simply a lady traveller, with a note-book in her hand; and as we read on, this impression deepens. The classic land, with all its Homeric associations, awakens neither manly reflective ness nor scholarly enthusiasm. The writer skims the surface of things and places, like a swallow on the wing; and the sketches are in outline only. The second part, which takes us to the northern isles, would have been much more interesting if, instead of quoting so largely from written history, the author had trusted to personal impressions. The seal legends are exceedingly interesting and well told. The writer speaks touchingly of the Shetlanders, and of the ill-paid industry of the women, whose exquisite knitting might, with a little trouble and an organized plan amongst a few influential ladies, be rendered a source of real wealth. At Arles the pictorial appearance of the amphi theatre, with the remains of its white marble walls and twin Corinthian columns, arouses the admiration of the author, who, passing on, just glances at Nismes, and the "exquisite little Maison Carrée"; but without offering a description of the antique city, or of the temple dedicated to the sons of Agrippa-Caius and Lucius-about the year of Rome 754. San Sebastian is reached and dismissed without description of any sort; but the beauty of the Bar of Palermo obliges the writer to be a little less brief, and, consequently, we have some pretty sketches of the city and its surroundings; but even these are pieced out with a tale to make the requisite number of pages, and we rise from the perusal of the volume unsatisfied, having had a taste of good things, which it is evident the author might have made better, or, at all events, have served up in proper quantity. To those, however, who read simply to be amused, "Prince Hassan's Carpet" will be found a very agreeable volume, light, elegant, and entertaining. THE BOOK OF PERFUMES. By Eugène Rimmel. (Chapman and Hall, Piccadilly.)-It has been said by an ancient Greek philosopher, somewhat paradoxically (though the sense of the phrase is obvious enough), that "the sweetest smell is the absence of all smell." Mr. Rimmel's book proves the converse of this dogma, and the olfactory senses of men and animals for these, too, drink the " aerial wine," of which "the air [to use the language of John Garth Wilkinson] is the cellarage; so the secret chemistry of Nature, for ever expressing and amalgamating odours from roots and leaves and flowers, making the fields a fresh service of fragrance from county to county and from year to year"-prove that there is a yet more exquisite enjoyment for the majority of mankind in the presence of sweet scents than in their absence. Mr. Rimmel's subject is so agreeable, and its materials so numerous (drawn as they are from woods and wilds and ocean), that we do not wonder that one engaged in the manipulation of perfumes should feel the wish to spread a knowledge of their history and properties beyond the walls of the laboratory. Not many years since, another London perfumer felt himself impelled by such an impulse, and made his début in the arena of literature with a pleasant volume entitled "The Art of Perfumery" -a volume dealing with the commercial statisties and the modes of preparing perfumes, nicely written, well arranged, and, in its way, valuable. Mr. Rimmel, on the other hand, contemns the pretence of enlightening the public as to the art of preparing perfumes, and in his very elegant and pleasant work gives us the history of their use from ancient to modern times-a history which he appears to have traced in all lands and languages under the sun. In speaking of the two books, comparisons, as Dogberry says, would literally be "odorous." We merely mention the former in reference to the present volume, from the rather remarkable fact of there being in our metropolis two practical perfumers, actively engaged in business, who are sufficiently conversant with the literary N 66 a essence of it highly esteemed. In the middle ages the Crusaders brought from the east a taste for perfumes, and subsequently Italy became the principal place of their manufacture, and Venice as famous for them as Capua had been in the time of the ancients. Perfumes appear to have prevailed at court from the earliest periods. Sardanapalus, Caligula, Clovis, Charlemagne, Catherine de Medicis, and Queen Elizabeth were all lovers of sweet scents. The former queen took with her to France Florentine named René, who was very expert in preparing perfumes and cosmetics: this René appears to have been an analytical chemist, with a subtle knowledge of the lethal qualities of certain vegetables and mineral substances, and was clever at distilling them; and his royal mistress is said to have had frequent recourse to his craft, in order to rid herself unsuspected of those who were distasteful to her. In Elizabeth's time the taste for perfumes became excessive. Scented gloves - which had acquired a bad odour in France from the use which the wily Catherine de Medicis was suspected of making of them in the case of Jeanne d'Albert, mother of Henry IV.-came into fashion vitriol by way of improving the complexion. PERIODICALS. ODD FELLOWS' QUARTERLY. Manchester. -An agreeable number, with articles by the editor, Eliza Cook, "Silverpen" (whose story of "The Lancashire Labour Club" is continued), and Mrs. C. A. White (who contributes "A Glimpse of the Black Country"). THE LIFE-BOAT JOURNAL contains much to interest all classes in the support of the noble and much-needed institution whose doings, from quarter to quarter, are recorded in its pages. The utility of its services during the present winter have been largely taxed and bravely proved. It is a national reproach, with the wreck-chart before us, that any of the redstarred shoals and rocks upon our coast remain without a life-boat in their near vicinity. NEW MUSIC. "In the fifteenth year of the Queen, when the Right Hon. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, came from Italy, and brought with him gloves, sweet bags, a perfumed leather jerkin, and other pleasant things. In that year the Queen had a pair of perfumed gloves, trimmed only with four tufts or rows of coloured silk. She took such pleasure in the gloves that she was pictured with them upon her hands, GOLDEN DAYs. Ballad. Words by Matthias and for many years afterwards it was called 'The Barr; Music by C. H. Morine. (London: Joseph Earl of Oxford's perfume.' On another occasion | Williams, 11, Holborn Bars, and 123, Cheapside. Queen Elizabeth, visiting the University of Cam--We have so frequently called attention to the bridge, was presented with a pair of perfumed gloves, and was so delighted with them that she put them on at once. She also usually carried with her a pomander (or pomme d'ambre), which was a ball composed of ambergris, benzoin, and other perfunies; and she was once mightily pleased with her gift of a 'faire girdle of pomander,' which was a series of pomanders strung together and worn round the neck. These pomanders were held in the hand to smell occasionally, and were supposed to be preservatives from infection." In comparatively recent times doctors wore casso- words of songs by Mr. Barr, that our readers |