THE SHIPWRECKED MARINER.

ALFRED TENNYSON was born at Somersby, England, Aug. 6, 1809. He was one of six sons. In his youth he lived near to the heart of Nature landscape, sea, and sky. He studied at Cambridge, and afterward devoted his life to the art of poetry. His first important book was published in 1832. His latest volume appeared in 1892; so many years did he give, with steadfast purpose, to the work he had chosen. Unless Wordsworth be excepted, no poet of the nineteenth century ranks higher than Tennyson. He was a master of lyric melody, and many of his lines sing their way to the

heart of the reader. It has been said by a high authority that "Tennyson has incomparable felicity in all poetic forms, surpassing in melody also, unmatched in rhythmic power and variety."

At his home in Aldworth he died, honored and in the fullness of years, October 6, 1892.

And where was Enoch? prosperously sailed
The ship Good Fortune, though at setting forth
The Biscay, roughly ridging eastward, shook
And almost overwhelmed her, yet unvexed
She slipped across the summer of the world,
Then after a long tumble about the Cape,
And frequent interchange of foul and fair,
She passing through the summer world again,
The breath of heaven came continually
And sent her sweetly by the golden isles,
Till silent in her oriental haven.

There Enoch traded for himself, and bought
Quaint monsters for the market of those times,
A gilded dragon, also, for the babes.

Less lucky her home-voyage; at first indeed
Through many a fair sea-circle, day by day,
Scarce rocking, her full-busted figure-head
Stared o'er the ripple feathering from her bows:
Then followed calms, and then winds variable,
Then baffling, a long course of them; at last
Storm, such as drove her under moonless heavens
Till hard upon the cry of "breakers" came
The crash of ruin, and the loss of all
But Enoch and two others. Half the night,
Buoyed upon floating tackle and broken spars,
These drifted, stranding on an isle at morn
Rich, but the loneliest in a lonely sea.

No want was there of human sustenance,
Soft fruitage, mighty nuts, and nourishing roots;
Nor save for pity was it hard to take

The helpless life so wild that it was tame.

There in a seaward-gazing mountain gorge

They built, and thatched with leaves of palm, a hut, Half hut, half native cavern. So the three,

Set in this Eden of all plenteousness,

Dwelt with eternal summer, ill-content.

For one, the youngest, hardly more than boy,
Hurt in that night of sudden ruin and wreck,
Lay lingering out a five-years' death-in-life.
They could not leave him. After he was gone,
The two remaining found a fallen stem;
And Enoch's comrade, careless of himself,
Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fell

Sun-stricken, and that other lived alone.

In those two deaths he read God's warning "wait."
The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coiled around the stately stems, and ran
Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branched
And blossomed in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail :
No sail from day to day, but every day

The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east ;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;

Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again

The scarlet shafts of sunrise but no sail.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

PAULETTE AND HER GIFT.

ÉMILE SOUVESTRE was born at Morlaix [mor'la'], France, Sept. 15, 1806. In his childhood and early youth he became intimately familiar with Breton life and scenery. After studying law at Rennes he lived in Paris and was inspired by the rich intellectual life of that city. He wrote a number of plays and several prose works. To American readers he is perhaps best known by "An Attic Philosopher in Paris." From that charming book the present extract is taken, by courtesy of D. Appleton and Company.

He died July 5, 1864.

A knock at my door; a poor girl comes in, and greets me by name. At first I do not recollect her; but she looks at me and smiles. Ah! it is Paulette! But it is almost a year since I have seen her, and Paulette is no longer the same: the other day she was a child, now she is almost a young woman.

Paulette is thin, pale, and miserably clad; but she has always the same open and straightforward look the same mouth, smiling at every word, as if to court your sympathy the same voice, somewhat timid, yet expressing fondness. Paulette appears to me as a part of one of my happiest recollections.

It was the evening of a public holiday. The principal buildings of Paris were illuminated with festoons of fire, a thousand flags waved in the night winds,

and the fireworks had just shot forth their spouts of flame into the midst of the park.

All of a sudden, one of those unaccountable alarms which strike a multitude with panic fell upon the dense crowd: they cry out, they rush on headlong; the weaker ones fall, and the frightened crowd tramples them down in its convulsive struggles.

I escaped from the confusion by a miracle, and was hastening away, when the cries of a perishing child arrested me. I reëntered that human chaos, and, after unheard-of exertions, I brought Paulette out of it at the peril of my life.

That was two years ago; since then I had not seen the child again but at long intervals, and I had almost forgotten her. But Paulette's memory was that of a grateful heart, and she came at the beginning of the year to offer me her wishes for my happiShe brought me besides, a wallflower in full bloom; she herself had planted and reared it: it was something that belonged wholly to herself; for it was by her care, her perseverance, and her patience, that she had obtained it. This unexpected pres

ness.

ent, the little girl's modest blushes, and the compliments she stammered out, dispelled, as by a sunbeam, the kind of mist which had gathered round my mind; my thoughts suddenly changed from the leaden tints of evening to the brightest colors of dawn. I made Paulette sit down, and I questioned her with a light heart. At first the little girl replied by monosyllables;