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prepared to go to Bretagne. I was anxious to see Bergeronette, my passion for whom had not decreased in her absence. It was greater than ever. Absence, which weakens all human passions, and, above all, the marriage of Robert, made me entertain a hope that Bergeronette would yield to my entreaties. I began my journey, and in four days I was on the sands where, for the first time, I had met Bergeronette. The shore was desolate now. I crossed to the island, in a boat managed by an old man; and, during the passage, thought of the first time I had visited the Isle of Tudi. It was as desolate as of yore, and this appearance was increased by the melancholy pallor of autumn. The ferryman informed me that Bergeronette lived in the cot which had formerly belonged to her father. I went to it; my heart beat violently as I suddenly heard the voice of Bergeronette.

"Bravo!" cried I, and hurried to her. I saw her she was sitting by the window, spinning. Yes, I could scarcely realize that it was she-she was so pale and broken. I hurried into the cot. She recognized me, rose with emotion, and offered me her hand.

Ah, you are come !" said she. "I had begun to think I should never see you again."

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Oh, I do not forget so soon-I am not like Robert de Tyvonarien."

She trembled.

"He has forgotten me, then," said she, with an effort.

She added nothing, and sat down, so as to hide the tears she was striving to conceal. I saw them, however, and repented of my precipitation; but so violent is a revengeful and jealous love, that I could not refrain from telling Bergeronette a piece of news which I knew would affect her so much. She soon became calm; but I observed that the blue vapor of her eye became momentarily more condensed. It was evident that Bergeronette suffered the keenest sorrow. I attempted to soften the violence of the blow I had given her; she saw my intention, and to show me that she wished to give way to it, took me kindly by the arm, and led me down to the shore, where she had been so happy. When there, she smiled, and became charmingly instinct with grace and good-humor. I soon

saw that she strove to appear so only from complaisance to me; but I hoped at some future time to win her love. Love is never unaccompanied by hope.

To me, the day appeared delicious. An old woman prepared our supper; Bergeronette did not eat. She complained that she was fatigued; and we arranged that, if the weather was fine on the next day, we would take an excursion to sea. Bergeronette promised to take charge of the management of the boat. I retired early to allow her to repose, and sought the inn of Loc Tudi. I was almost happy; my heart quivered with hope.

"Oh, how deeply will I love you, Bergeronette!" murmured I, with tears in my eyes. "How deeply will I love you, so that you shall forget Robert, and be to me my better angel !"

On the next day the morning was delicious, and I hastened to the Isle of Tudi. The sun smiled upon the sea, and the east wind was warm and gentle. The waves gently undulated, and the swallows sailed in the air above us. When I had approached the cot of Bergeronette, I stopped and waited to hear if she was yet singing. Just then two sailors passed by and attracted my attention.

"The family has not been lucky," said one.

"Such a pretty girl!" said the other. "What did she die of?"

"An aneurism of the heart," the doctor says.

"Oh, she got that at Paris." "See what it is to quit one's own town."

"Poor girl! she would have made a nice wife for one of our boys."

"She will make a better angel for God Almighty."

A dreadful shudder came over my whole frame. With one bound I was in the hut. Two tapers burned by the side of the bed. I threw myself across it.

Bergeronette was not singing now.

Frederic de Talhouet ceased and wept. After a silence of some time, he continued: "That is why I loved too well, and why I shall never love again.”

There was a pause again, during which Frederic and I gave free course to our fancies, without imparting them to each other. The history of Berger

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Suggested by an embalmed Indian head, presented by the writer to the N. Y. Lyceum of Natural

History.]

"Thus bravely live heroic men.

A consecrated band,

Life is to them a battle-field,

Their hearts a Holy Land."-TUCKERMAN.

Nor to the conflict, where those death-wounds came
That still discolor thine undaunted brow,
Not to the wild-wood where thy soul of flame

Found vent alone in deeds all nameless now-
Though startled Fancy first by these is caught,
Not, not to these dost thou enchain my thought!

The tuft of honor, streaming there unshorn,

With those trenched gashes, every one in front,
Proud knightly crest was ne'er more bravely borne

By charging champion through the battle's brunt ;
While those old scars from forays long since past
Bespeak the warrior's life from first to last!

Bespeak the man who acted out the whole,

The whole of all he knew of High and True;

All that was imaged in his savage soul—

All that his barbarous powers on earth could do,—
Bespeak the Being perfect to the plan

Of Nature when she moulded such a man !

His simple Law of Duty and of Right,

Oneness of soul in action, thought and feeling,
His mind disturbed by no conflicting light,

His narrow faith, so clear in each revealing,
His will untrammelled to act out the part
So plainly graved on his untutored heart-

Envy I these? would I for these forego

The broader scope of being that is mine?
His bond of sense with spirit once to know
Would I the strife for Truth and Good resign?
How can I? when-according to my light—
My law like his is still to BRUNT THE FIGHT!

THE EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS.

BY W. A. JONES.

We design the present article, rather as a sketch of literary statistics, a table of instances, to illustrate the general principle we aim to establish, than as anything like a complete survey or accurate digest of the subject which it would require a volume to contain. We consider the fact as having an historical basis, as founded in the history of letters, that true genius comes to maturity much sooner than is generally supposed. In a word, we have merely collected a number of witnesses to confirm the maxim stated by Steele, though in a rather restricted form. It occurs in a paper of the Lover, number twenty-two: "I am apt to think that before thirty, a man's natural and acquired parts are at that strength, with a little experience, to enable him (if he can be enabled) to acquit himself well in any business or conversation he shall be admitted to."

The vulgar error is to rate the growth of the individual intellect of the original with the ordinary progress of "the common mind ;" to measure the giant by the common standard of human stature. This is evidently absurd. Yet no error is so common, as to attempt to depress cleverness by sneers at the youthful age of the aspirant, like the taunts of Walpole directed against Pitt, and like those of every dull man, of middle age, who has a fixed position (beyond which he is not likely to rise), at those who are evidently fast rising above him. No young man of talent, but has had enemies such as these to encounter; men, who seem to take a certain fiendish delight and cherish a malicious pleasure in seeking to depress everything like genuine enthusiasm and the buoyant ambition of the bright boy or the brilliant young mar. This arises half from sheer malice and as much from pure ignorance of the nature and temperament of genius. When the "climber upward" has gained his place among his peers, then these miserable flatterers cringe and fawn as basely as they formerly maligned and ridiculed him; and would fain crowd out of sight

his old friends and staunch adherents. In his green age and budding season the youth of genius craves and requires sympathy. It is with him, especially (and, in a measure, with all men), an intellectual want, as evident as the coarsest necessary elements of existence.

By early maturity of genius we mean no prodigies of childish or boyish talent such we always distrust, as unhealthy prematureness, generally resulting in a feeble manhood. Wonderful boys are almost always dull men. No particular point of time can be fixed, but manly intellects are at their maturity somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, and in good constitutions, this vigor and freshness remain sometimes to a great age. Youth is a heavy charge to lay against any writer, yet one becoming daily of less weight. Surely, it is a season which furnishes qualities and feelings, not to be expected in later life, and at least to be cherished for that reason. To the contemners of youthful genius, we would reply, in the words of the admirable Cowley, himself an example of precocity of talent; "It is a ridiculous folly to laugh at the stars because the moon and the sun shine brighter.' sun shine brighter." Let every captious critic, also, read Bacon's exquisite essay on "Youth and Age,” in which he will find the truest justice allotted to each period of this our mortal life.

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The majority of true poets have, as general rule, produced their best works, at a very early age, comparatively. A very few distinguished instances, on the other side of the question, cannot affect the principles we aim to establish, but rather by especial inference, as they furnish the exceptions, so far they go to form the general maxim. Youth is naturally the season of enjoyment, and genial enjoyment as naturally gives birth to the sweetest, the most cordial, the delicatest strains of the muse. Yet, we do not mean by youth the season of childhood, or boyhood, but the period of mature adolescence, from twenty-four to thirty. Very many fine

poets have actually done their best before even this epoch; and all, who have ever become eminent for the exercise of the imaginative faculty, have discovered some signs at least, of its existence while in their teens: a very small number of great names being excluded. In a life of the classic English poets, we find but rare examples of late poetical genius; Chaucer, Dryden, Young, Johnson, Cowper, Milton, who composed Paradise Lost, about middle life, yet wrote Comus at the age of twentysix, when it was first performed as a Masque at Ludlow castle, in Wales. In the drama, where one might justly admit a late development of poetical power, inasmuch as that department of poetry demands more and more cultivated faculties than any other: even in comedy, requiring a close observation of manners, and a keen eyesight into characters, we still find the capital writers producing their master-pieces, while other men are hardly fitted by reading and a knowledge of life, even to criticise them. Thus, Shakespeare's first play was printed in his twenty-seventh year: Jonson's Every Man in his Humor, with those admirable portraits of the braggadocios in Bobadil, and of the Jealous Husband, in Kitely, was written in his twenty-second year. The last play of Farquhar, the Recruiting Officer, appeared a few weeks before his death, which occurred when he was only twenty-seven, and his other delightful comedies were produced some years earlier. Congreve's Old Bachelor was the fruit of his college years, and appeared at his twenty-first year. The masterpiece of English comedy, Love for Love, only two years afterwards. Sheridan's Rivals, inferior only to the School for Scandal, was performed in his twentyfourth year. Lessing's Sara Sampson was composed before he was twenty; and the first fruits of Goethe and Schiller's dramatic genius (unlike those of the other writers we have quoted, in not being by any means their best, yet as evincing power and future dramatic skill), Goetz of Berlinchen and the Robbers, at the respective ages of twenty and twenty-one. Sheridan Knowles, the earliest of living English Dramatists, is the last instance we remember of early dramatic genius.

In prose fiction, requiring at least equal knowledge of character and manners, with comedy—we have Roderick Random, perhaps Smollet's best work,

at twenty-seven, and the Man of Feeling at twenty-six. Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, were later. But in the present century Hood, Hook, and Dickens, unquestionably wrote their best works earliest.

Among the miscellaneous poets, Hall's first, and last, volume of poetry, full of vigor, and mature knowledge of life, was published in his twenty-third year. Warton admits that Donne's best poetry was written before the age of twentyfive. Cowley is generally considered precocious: his first volume appeared when he was a boy of thirteen. But his best poetry was the growth of his later years. Pope's Ode to Solitude is often referred to. He was ten years old when he wrote it: a greater miracle was his producing such a body of acute criticism, as his famous Essay on Criticism displays, when he was but twentyone. Akenside's chief work, the Pleasures of the Imagination, at twentythree. Collins's noble odes were written at twenty-six. Burns's first volume was first printed when the poet was twentyeight; under favorable influences, his genius had undoubtedly blossomed much sooner. Classic English poetry in this nineteenth century has been written by young poets, and even the master of them all, still living, wrote his characteristic pieces quite early. Wordsworth's first volume came out at the age of twenty-three; the Pleasures of Hope at twenty-one: the wonderful Ancient Mariner, in which some critics can see nothing, was printed at seventeen; Byron's second canto of Childe Harold, at twenty-four. Lamartine's first poem appeared at the age of twenty. Of contemporary English poets, we believe all of them without exception produced their finest things at a very early age-Proctor, Moore, Hunt, Tennyson, Miss Barret, Hood, and a brilliant galaxy of smaller stars. Two, perhaps, in their separate walks, the finest poets of this century, Goethe, Schiller, and Wordsworth excepted, died very early; Shelley at thirty, and Keats at twenty-four. We reserve a column for American Bards, in conclusion, when we come to speak of American Literature, and of this very striking feature in it of the early age at which our finest writers have done their best things, and of an equally singular impressive trait, discernible in the fact, that after a comparatively early period, they either ceased to pro

duce, or fell off very considerably. Meantime, we notice a fact as remarkable as the early maturity of genius, i. ..of the creative power; in imaginative productions, in the history of those eminent for critical and speculative ability. The first and greatest critics, moralists, and prose writers, performed, what we are apt to conceive a still greater wonder, in exhibiting at so youthful a period, uncommon abilities, in departments generally consigned to the man of tried experience and mature years. Some of the greatest monarchs and generals the world has ever seen, performed feats, the most brilliant, while quite young men. It is only necessary to refer to Alexander the Great, Cæsar, the first Prince of Orange, his son Maurice, William III. of England, Gustavus Adolphus Eugene, Marlborough, Peter the Great, Charles of Sweden, Napoleon, and Clive.

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There is a genius for criticism, for metaphysical investigation and politics, as well as for poetry or any of the arts. We will select our illustrations of this at random. Bacon, at thirteen, entered Cambridge: at sixteen wrote against the Aristotelian Logic; at nineteen put forth a pamphlet on the existing state of Europe: at twenty-six (some say at fifteen) planned the No▾um Organon. Burke wrote his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, at the age of twenty-six. Machulay has remarked wonderful comcidence (certainly in itself unaccountable: yet not confined to those two admirable writers); that the judgment was the faculty first developed in them, but that fancy came much later; that at middle age, they were most just and logical and comprehensive in their sober speculations, yet then also just in the dawn of that gorgeous eloquence, which was richest in their latest works. Hazlitt furnishes a similar instance. His first work, on the Principles of Human Action, was published in his twenty-fifth year. He says he was engaged upon it for eight years; and we should suspect the same thing from internal evidence. It is hard, dry and jejune: yet close and rigidly logical, with, as Macintosh thinks, much power of metaphysical speculation. How different is this from his Table-Talk and Plain Speakers and Lectures: abounding not only in subtle, intrusive and deep thought: but picturesque, rich, eloquent and glancing. Browne's Religio

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Medici was the work of his twentyseventh or eighth year. Brown, the Scotch metaphysician, whose later style was flowery to excess, and even effeminate in a high degree, composed a Tract on Causation, which at once gave him high rank as a metaphysician, when he had not reached his eighteenth year. The elegant Hume's first philosophical essays, written or at least planned at College, were published at twenty-six, and are so much less readable than his easy historical narration, that Hazlitt himself designates the Treatise on Nature, this very work, as a metaphysical chokepear.' Among the Poets, we omitted one, who was almost as much of a critic, Beaumont, who died at twenty-nine: having written the Maid's Tragedy (a delicate as well as judicious work) at twentyone. Pope comes in, for critical skill, in his capital versified Essay on Criticism at twenty-one, and in his choice letters, those to Wycherly at seventeen. A few of the great old English Divines, we have looked into, for this particular purpose. We gather these results: Fuller, the wit and church historian's first work, came out when he was twentythree. Taylor was Laud's, and South Clarendon's chaplain; and known universally for their eloquence, at twentyseven. Butler corresponded with Dr. Clarke, while a boy at school.

A few miscellaneous instances. Felltham's Resolves, in the last century, was written at eighteen, a remarkable instance of youthful judgment.

The sagacious, grave Burleigh, first held office at court when just twentytwo. Sir Thomas More, before him, had been elected to parliament at the same age. Pitt was chancellor of the exchequer before he was twenty-five. Hallam, while a collegian, planned his history of the Middle Ages. The founders of the Edinburgh Review, and the ablest writers for it, were all of them young men-Jeffrey, Macintosh, Scott, Brougham.

Certain persons cannot see, that judgment, where it is the nicest, most tolerant, and comprehensive, and exact, is not always the fruit of study nor the growth of experience. It often precedes both; and it is an instinctive faculty-an original talent-applying this truth to the instances of a low judgment in matters (not of literature or philosophy, as we have considered it) relating to ordinary business. Steele

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