And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

CHORUS

And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

VII

Thus long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute,

Timotheus, to his breathing flute
And sounding lyre,

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,

Inventress of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

With Nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown:

He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.

GRAND CHORUS

At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,

Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

With Nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown:

He raised a mortal to the skies;

She drew an angel down.

ACHITOPHEL*

From Absalom and Achitophel>

HIS plot, which failed for want of common-sense,

TH Had yet a deep and dangerous consequence:

For as when raging fevers boil the blood,
The standing lake soon floats into a flood,
And every hostile humor, which before
Slept quiet in its channels, bubbles o'er;

So several factions from this first ferment

Work up to foam, and threat the government.

Some by their friends, more by themselves thought wise,
Opposed the power to which they could not rise.

Some had in courts been great, and thrown from thence,
Like fiends were hardened in impenitence.

Some, by their monarch's fatal mercy, grown

From pardoned rebels kinsmen to the throne,

Were raised in power and public office high;

Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie.

Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked councils fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.

A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high

He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide;

Else why should he, with wealth and honor blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son;
Got while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
*Lord Shaftesbury.

In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolved to ruin or to rule the State.

To compass this the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,

And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke:

Then, seized with fear yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.

So easy still it proves in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.

How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,

Where none can sin against the people's will!
Where crowds can wink, and no offense be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin
With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress;
Swift of dispatch, and easy of access.

Oh! had he been content to serve the Crown,
With virtues only proper to the gown;

Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle that oppressed the noble seed;
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
Achitophel, grown weary to possess

A lawful fame, and lazy happiness,
Disdained the golden fruit to gather free,
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.
Now, manifest of crimes contrived long since,
He stood at bold defiance with his prince;
Held up the buckler of the people's cause
Against the Crown, and skulked behind the laws.
The wished occasion of the plot he takes;
Some circumstances finds, but more he makes.
By buzzing emissaries fills the ears

Of listening crowds with jealousies and fears

Of arbitrary counsels brought to light.

And proves the king himself a Jebusite.

4951

MAXIME DU CAMP

(1822-1894)

HY have I always felt happy, filled with the spirit of content and of infinite independence, whenever I have slept in the tent or in the ruins of foreign lands?" The love of change and adventure has been the spring of Du Camp's life, a life whose events are blended so intimately with his literary achievement, that to know the one is to know the other. This practical man of the world has an imaginative, beauty-loving side to his nature, which craves stimulus from tropical unfamiliar nature and exotic ways. So, after the usual training of French boys in lycée and college,-"in those hideous houses where they wearied our childhood," as he says, the just-emancipated youth of twenty-two left his home in Paris for an eighteen-months' trip in the far East. The color and variety of the experience whetted his love of travel, and very soon after his return he began a serious study of photography in view of future plans.

Then came the revolution of 1848, the overthrow of Louis Philippe; and Du Camp had an opportunity to prove his courage and patriotism in the ranks of the National Guard. In his Souvenirs de l'Année 1848,' he tells the story with color and interest, and with the forceful logic of an eye-witness.

MAXIME DU CAMP

His bravery and a serious wound won him the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, bestowed by General Cavaignac. This drew attention to him, and led the minister of public instruction to intrust him a few months later with a mission of exploration to Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, and Asia Minor; a result of which trip was his first literary success. Utilizing his photographic knowledge, he collected a great many negatives for future development. Upon his return he published a volume of descriptive sketches, 'Le Nil, Egypte, et Nubie,' generously illustrated with printed reproductions of these pictures. This first combination of photography and typography was popular, and was speedily imitated, initiative of many illustrated books.

Later, Du Camp's warlike and exploring instincts led him at his own expense into Sicily with Garibaldi, where he collected matter and photographs for 'Les Deux Siciles,' another successful volume. In 1851 he associated with others to found the Revue de Paris, for which he wrote regularly until its suspension in 1858. He has also written a great deal for the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which for several years he continued a series of historical studies upon the government of Paris. The six volumes upon 'Paris: its Organs, its Functions, its Life, during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,' form one of his chief achievements. His personal knowledge on the subject, and his access to valuable unpublished documents, give it authoritative value.

In 'Les Ancêtres de la Commune,' and 'Les Convulsions de Paris,' he has accomplished much more in the same line. The latter, a brilliant circumstantial exposition of the Commune, a logical condemnation of its folly and ignorance, brought him gratitude from the French Academy, and aided his election to that body in 1880. For this extensive work on contemporary politics, for his illustrated travels, and his artistic and literary criticism, he is better known than for his two or three novels and volumes of poetry.

Du Camp's may be characterized as a soldierly style, strong, direct, and personal. He loves to retrace old scenes with the later visible sequence of cause and effect. Always straightforward, sometimes. bluntly self-assertive, he is sometimes eloquent. Perhaps his great charm is spontaneity.

THE

A STREET SCENE DURING THE COMMUNE

From The Convulsions of Paris'

HERE were strange episodes during this terrible evening. At half-past eight, M. Rouville, a Protestant minister, was at home in a house he owns on the Rue de Lille. He heard an alarm, the cry, "Everything is burning! Escape!" Then he went down, saw the street in flames, and the poor people weeping as they escaped. Just as he was returning to rescue a few valuables, some federates rushed into the court, crying, Hurry! They are setting the place on fire!" He took some money and the manuscript of the sermons he had preached. Mechanically he seized his hat and cane. Then, throwing a last look around. the apartment where he had long lived, invoking the memory of the great Biblical destructions familiar to him in Holy Writ,