the amusement of the wives and daughters of the deputies, and provincial mothers have never liked the waltz.

Since some years, Madam Girardin has deserted the Rue Lafitte for the Champs Elysees. When one dwells so far from Paris, no little self-confidence is necessary to undertake to receive one's friends every evening. But Madame Girardin, go where she will, draws the crowd after her. A poetical dreamer, careless and restless, Madame Girardin obeys only the impressions of the moment. To-day, full of charining gayety and sparkling wit, she may, to-morrow, be plunged in the deepest melancholy, and be a prey to grief. In her conversation she will pass rapidly from a high political question to a touching story, expressed in words and with inflexions of the voice, which go directly to the hearts of her listeners. Yesterday she will have loved solitude, and have sought to isolate herself from the world, to enshrine herself with her ideas, her retrospections, her illusions and disallusions; to-morrow she will be in love with the world, its society, its fetes, and its joys, only again to revive her desire for solitude. When her friend, Armand Carrel, was dying of the wound inflicted by her husband, in that celebrated duel, she flew to the hotel, and exhausted herself in clamorous sorrow over the body, until her husband reminded her of the scandal of such a proceeding. That mobility of mind, however, affects neither her personal friendships nor her love of literature. She changes her impressions, but never her friends. To them she readily sacrifices her gayeties without pretext, and her sorrows without motive. She possesses in the highest degree the art of conversation. She is equal to Miry, the most brilliant story-teller, the most enchanting romancer of Paris, but who exceeds Madame Girardin neither in mind nor in imagination. Even the absent-minded Gautier is subdued by her spell, and becomes conversational under its influence; and these, with Lamartine and Victor Hugo, complete an admirable quartette, possessing the sympathies of Madame Girardin. Sometimes these literary family soirees or poetical conversations change to a great play, and the crowd collects to hear that piquant satire, the "School of the Journalists, or that magnificent poem, Judith, in three acts, or that ancient play, Cleopatra, destined to develop the talents of Mademoiselle Rachel.

The saloon of Madame de Courbonne has a less defined character. It is in a high degree literary, because Victor Hugo is there, but in a far less degree with M. Jasmin present. It is political with the presence of M. Dumon, who recites in original patois the pretended verses of his compeers. It was still more political in the presence of Guizot, M. Mole, and M. Salvandy; is diplomatic with the presence of M. Billing, minister of France to Copenhagen; of General Fagget, minister of Holland; of M. de Gluckesberg; of M. de Tschan, Charge from Switzerland, and not long since of Compte Luxbourg from Bavaria. The presence of the Countess Nansoutey; the beautiful Mrs. Baring; the Countess La Redorte; and the Countess de Montespan, stamp it with elegance. At the first glance on entering, one understands that the entertainment is conversation. Couches and divans are abundant, and these have been artfully arranged. The hostess is nearly always ill. She passes only from her bed to her couch. She rises at seven in the evening; at eight she is in her saloon, When her illness is more serious, and compels her to withdraw from company, there is a general consternation in the hearts of those faithful friends who are accustomed to visit her each evening. One of the most constant

visitors, M. Luxbourg, ambassador from Bavaria, was replaced in office by Prince Wallenstein, and this was through the influence of Lola Montes, that sylphide with clipped wings, who at that time governed the Bavarian Court.

The Sundays of M. Duchatel were not spent as most people think. His saloons and his wishes were governed by the tone common to all ministerial saloons, that terrible law, from which even her grace la Comtesse Duchatel was not exempt. They presented a perfect mosaic of men and women, of all countries, ages and conditions, strangers to each other, who yawned and watched the looks of the minister to smile upon him sillily, and make mouths at him in secret. Amidst these groups, and making themselves useful, were bureau clerks; also, M. Brindeau, a friend of the house, with his head skilfully dressed, curled and perfumed by Lentis. Varnished, gloved, and elegant from head to foot, M. Brindeau was envied by those less wealthy and less foppish; but he had the ear of the minister. There are two descriptions of financial saloons, those where business is discussed, and those where it is excluded. That of M. Rothschild's is the type of the last. It is the saloon of a great financial Grand Seignior. It affords a neutral ground, where all opinions may be expressed without fear or animosity. Money belongs to all parties. The friends of the actual minister and those of the future minister converse together; dance in the same quadrille, and put their legs under the same mahogany. They remain, however, not the less mortal enemies, until the day of-coalition. The Baron James de Rothschilds never enters mal a propos into politics he enters only into loan contracts, rail-roads, and banks. In the evenings, at home, he wishes to forget that he has been a banker all day, and he wishes that others should forget it also.

All financial saloons have not this horror of business. Some bankers give dinners, suppers, and parties, in order to procure customers. When the dessert comes, between two glasses of champaigne, they ask carelessly of a neighbor, "Is not Mr. so and so your banker?" "Yes! what then?" "Oh! I heard a rumor." "But what was it?" "I do not like to spread ill news of a neighbor." "Go on, I pray you." "You will not betray me?" "I am incapable of it." "Well, then, they report that your banker is embarrassed in his affairs; but I thought you would have heard it."

Here the conversation drops; but the calumny is afloat; the poison is communicated. You are ill at ease on going to bed; your sleep is disturbed with night-mare; you see your dollars dancing about like sylphs, and flying away like birds; and in the morning, the first thing, you go to your banker. You are at a loss to justify your sudden resolution: at last you explain awkwardly and timidly. Your banker smiles, and remarks without apparent malice, you dined yesterday with Mr. X.; and without seeking to dispel your suspicions, orders that your funds be placed at your disposal. That smile and that order cut short your suspicions, awaken your confidence, and you avow the truth. Your banker then proves to you his stability. Those who are happy enough to have bankers, should shun such houses as X. The theft of a customer is likely enough to be followed by a more grave crime. To those bank roués always promise patronage, but never give it. As long as you lure them with false hopes, you will always be a guest. The day you deposit your money with them, bid adieu to invitations, and take an affectionate leave of your dollars.

Of the dramatic saloons, those of Duprez and Mademoiselle Rachel

take the lead. There, as at the theatre, those two great artists are the leaders. Through a sentiment of noble but perhaps exaggerated pride, Duprez only invites his peers, artists like himself. He fears, and perhaps erroneously, that in other circles many would regard him as honored in accepting his invitations. In these days of equality, talent has still an aristocracy which is the equal of all other aristocracies. Duprez makes no other exception than in the case of the beautiful Fernetti, of Madame Paton, who before her marriage was the beautiful Mademoiselle Pacini, and M. and Madame Cremieux. Cremieux was more than the friend of Duprez, than his admirer: he was his lawyer, and now-a-days a tenor can no more sing without a lawyer than without a voice. Since Cremieux has become minister, he has more want of trumpeters than singers. The illustrious tenor, his wife, who has much talent, Colletti of the Italian Theatre, Strepponi Godefroy, the celebrated harp, and Dubois the violin, form concerts of which a king might be jealous.

Mademoiselle Rachel left the Faubourg St. Germain, where the society was too much composed of flaunting titles and too little sincerity for the rue Joubert, where there is less etiquette and more real gentility.

THE QUEEN'S CUP,

WON AT THE LATE RYDE REGATTA BY THE YACHT AMERICA.

IN travel it has been my lot to meet with curious things,-
The flags that cost a million lives in battle-fields of kings,
The ancient flask that Wallace wore on Falkirk's fatal field,
The iron casque of William Tell, and Hermann's rusted shield,
The trusty blade of Bolivar, a ring from Cromwell's hand,
And the covering of the Kaaba in Yemen's happy land;
With patriot joy mine eyes were dazed, when first I caught thy sight,
Thou priceless Koh-i-noor by which the new world claims her right;
The Empire of the Sea has passed away from Albion's shore:
Columbia rules the ocean now, Britannia ruled of yore.

The Warwick Vase is wondrous rare; its satyrs, wild with mirth,
Are forms of all that's sensual and bacchanal on earth;
The Portland Vase is rarer still, for antiquarian lore

Has never solved the legend strange its sculptured beauty bore;
The Hebe Vase,-the gem of all,- -a type of Grecian mould,
From which ambrosial nectar flowed, for Jupiter of old;
But thou art the VICTORIA VASE!-never Etruscan art
Produced an antique like to thee, to stir a nation's heart;
For with thee passed the sea's empire away from Albion's shore:
Columbia rules the ocean now, Britannia ruled of yore.

Our flag is new,-it hath not waved as yet a hundred years;
Our Eagle's wings are scarcely fledged, and yet he knows no fears;
His shadow doth in triumph fall o'er Adirondack's snows,
To the Navajo's chosen vale where murmuring Gila flows:
From Mariposa's golden hills to old Manhattan Bay,
His eye gleams as a meteor bright o'er freedom's starry way;
And proudly beats my heart to-day, while gazing upon thee,
Thou monolith, whose silent speech records our destiny;
The Empire of the sea has passed away from Albion's shore:
Columbia rules the ocean now, Britannia ruled of yore.

SOME IRISH POETS.

(Continued.)

OUR second extract from the German Anthology will be the "Spectre Caravan," by Ferdinand Freiligrath.* It has all the mysticism of the German school, but still there is displayed in it a masterly style: the picture it presents to the mind of the re-animated dust of the pilgrims to Mecca, who have, in their journey, been overtaken by death, is most strikingly vivid. We do not know where we could lay our hands on a better original, or a more spirited translation:

'Twas at midnight, in the desert, where we rested on the ground;

There my Beddaweens were sleeping, and their steeds were stretched around; In the farness lay the moonlight, on the mountains of the Nile,

And the camel bones that strewed the sands for many an arid mile.

With my saddle for a pillow did I prop my weary head,
And my Kaftan-cloth unfolded o'er my limbs was lightly spread;
While beside me, as the kapitan and watchman of my band,
Lay my Bazra-sword and pistols twain a-shimmering on the sand.
And the stillness was unbroken, save at moments by a cry
From some stray belated vulture sailing blackly down the sky;
Or the snortings of a sleeping steed at waters fancy-seen,

Or the hurried warlike mutterings of some dreaming Beddaween.
When behold! a sudden sandquake-and between the earth and moon,
Rose a mighty Host of Shadows, as from out some dim lagoon:
Then our coursers gasped with terror, and a thrill shook every man,
And the cry was Allah Akbar! 'tis the Spectre Caravan !"

On they came, their hueless faces toward Mecca ever more;
On they came, long files of camels, and of women whom they bore,
Guides and merchants, youthful maidens, bearing pitchers in their hands,
And behind them troops of horsemen following, sunless as the sands.
More and more! the phantom pageant overshadowed all the plains,
Yea, the ghastly camel-bones arose, and grew to camel trains;
And the whirling column-clouds of sand to forms in dusky garbs,
Here, afoot as Hadjee pilgrims-there, as warriors on their barbs!
Whence we knew the Night was come when all whom Death had sought
and found,

Long ago amid the sands whereon their bones yet bleach around,
Rise by legions from the darkness of their prisons low and lone,
And in dim procession march to kiss the Kaaba's Holy Stone.
And yet, more and more forever!-still they swept in pomp along,
'Till I asked me, can the desert hold so vast a muster-throng?
Lo! the Dead are here in myriads; the whole world of Hades waits,
As with eager haste to press beyond the Babelmandel straits.
Then I spake, "Our steeds are frantic! To your saddles every one!
Never quail before these shadows! You are children of the Sun!
If their garments rustle past you, if their glances reach you here,
Cry Bismillah!-and that mighty name shall banish every fear.

*It may not be uninteresting to our readers to know that Freiligrath, on account of the liberal political ideas he has dared to put forth, has been again exiled from Hulm, his native city, for the third time, and has announced his intention of taking refuge án this country.

"Courage, comrades! Even now the morn is waning far a-west,
Soon the welcome dawn will mount the skies in gold and crimson vest,
And in thinnest air will melt away those phantom shapes forlorn,
When again upon your brows you feel the odor winds of morn."

These are but two poems from two volumes, and can, at best, convey but a meagre impression of the entire work; the limits of a Magazine article, however, will not admit of further extracts, and we must remain

content.

We now turn to the Litera Orientales, published in the Dublin University Magazine, and which proved the most attractive feature of that widely celebrated periodical, during a number of years.

In the early part of his author life, Mangan delighted in oddities; the strangest connections, whether of sense or rhyme, gave him infinite pleasure; and, therefore, we may sometimes find ourselves convulsed with side-splitting laughter, in a moment after we have been weeping bitter tears; he would commence a poem with all the grandeur of an epic, every line beautifully rounded, exact in its proportions, united in its sense; he would intersperse the most beautiful metaphors, and suddenly transform the whole into ridicule by a single couplet at the end. This was charac teristic, but it was none the less a fault. It might please the multitude, it might tickle the ears of the reader for amusement, and afford a hearty laugh to the reader for occupation; but to the thinker who delights in each line, and at the end sums up the whole with pleasure, it must ever be disagreeable; it detracts from the merit of a poem to be concluded with comic effect, except it be a comic piece, where wit and humor are not out of place.

These remarks apply most particularly to those poems now under consideration. There are poems among them which may rank among the first compositions in our language, where the effect is kept up; but they are, in the main, such as we have mentioned. Beautifully executed until the conclusion, and then shattered to pieces by some ridiculous shaft of pleasantry.

We cannot bestow time in illustrating all our remarks with poems; but we give a few extracts as specimens of style in mechanical execution and rhythmical construction.