Over the silver mountains

Where spring the nectar fountains;

There will I kiss

The bowl of bliss,

And drink mine everlasting fill
Upon every milken hill.

My soul will be a-dry before,
But after, it will thirst no more.

Then by that happy, blissful day,
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have cast off their rags of clay,
And walk apparelled fresh like me.
I'll take them first

To quench their thirst,

And taste of nectar's suckets

At those clear wells

Where sweetness dwells

Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.

And when our bottles and all we
Are filled with immortality,

Then the blest paths we'll travel,
Strewed with rubies thick as gravel
Ceiling of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral, and pearly bowers.
From thence to Heaven's bribeless hall,
Where no corrupted voices brawl;
No conscience molten into gold,
No forged accuser, bought or sold,
No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey,
For there Christ is the King's Attorney;
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And he hath angels, but no fees;
And when the grand twelve-million jury
Of our sins, with direful fury,

'Gainst our souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads his death, and then we live.
Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder!
Thou giv'st salvation even for alms
Not with a bribed lawyer's palms.
And this is mine eternal plea

To Him that made heaven, earth, and sea,
That, since my flesh must die so soon,
And want a head to dine next noon,

Just at the stroke when my veins start and spread, Set on my soul an everlasting head;

Then am I, like a palmer, fit

To tread those blest paths which before I writ.

Of death and judgment, heaven and hell,
Who oft doth think must needs die well.

WHAT IS LOVE?

Now, what is love, I pray thee, tell?
It is that fountain and that well
Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
It is, perhaps, the sauncing bell
That tolls all into heaven or hell;
And this is love, as I hear tell.

Yet what is love, I prithee, say?
It is a work on holiday,

It is December matched with May,
When lusty bloods in fresh array
Hear ten months after of the play;
And this is love, as I hear say.

Yet what is love, good shepherd, sain?
It is a sunshine mixed with rain,
It is a toothache or like pain,
It is a game where none hath gain;
The lass saith no, yet would full fain;
And this is love, as I hear sain.

Yet, shepherd, what is love, I pray?
It is a yes, it is a nay,

A pretty kind of sporting fay,
It is a thing will soon away,

Then, nymphs, take vantage while ye may;
And this is love, as I hear say.

Yet what is love, good shepherd, show?
A thing that creeps, it cannot go,
A prize that passeth to and fro,
A thing for one, a thing for moe,
And he that proves shall find it so;
And, shepherd, this is love, I trow.

9267

ALFRED NICHOLAS RAMBAUD.

RAMBAUD, ALFRED NICHOLAS, an eminent French educator and historian; born at Besançon, July 2, 1842. His life is a record. of brilliant achievements. He has held the professorship of history at Nancy, Bourges, and Colmar. In 1868, he took his degree in law, and the following year became an occasional lecturer in history at the Lyceum of Charlemagne, and received his LL.D. in 1870. The next year saw him professor of history in the faculty of Caen, which position he relinquished in 1875, to accept a similar one at Nancy. In 1879 he became head of the cabinet of M. Ferry, Minister of Public Instruction; and in 1881 he took charge of the course in literature at Paris, where in 1884 he occupied the chair of contemporaneous history. Collaborator of scientific, historical, archæological, and critical reviews, and of "Le Temps," he has directed "La Revue Bleue" since 1888. In 1896 he became Minister of Public Instruction. He is a member of many learned societies both at home and abroad. Of his works the most important is the "History of French Civilization" (3 vols., 1885), which is used as a text-book in nearly all universities. His other publications include: "French Domination in Germany, 1792-1804" (1873); "Germany under Napoleon I." (1874); "The French and the Russians," etc. (1877); "History of Russia" (1878); "History of Contemporary Civilization in France" (1887); and several theses.

BENEFITS TO GERMANY FROM FRENCH INVASIONS.

(From "Germany under Napoleon, 1804-1811.")

THE Germans complain of the harm we have done them in the wars, almost always defensive, which our kings carried on against the ambition of Austria. Who could calculate the harm done to us by their princes, when in 1791 they turned France from her task of reorganization; when they stirred up hatred between our working classes and our nobility, between the Assembly and Royalty; when they caused the Revolution to end in the Terror? Afterwards, even if the Emperor, the King of Prussia, and the Ecclesiastic Electors did declare war, the people called and

welcomed us. After a glorious defensive war, we were able to wage the most humane, the most beneficial of propagating wars. . . . Even under Napoleon I., French intervention in Germany was essentially different from German invasion of France the former brought with it the elements of progress. Thus it may be said that in all times, and under every form of government, we have done more good than harm to the Germans; and a Prussian empire, founded on a so-called right of revenge of Germany against us, is based on injustice and falsehood. . . .

It is strange that Germany should accept from Prussia, along with new laws, its opinions ready-made. . . . What magic spell have its new masters used to make Germany forget history? ... Before the Revolution there was no trace of hatred between France and Germany; and that is why the wars of the Revolution were none of them a war of races. All western Germany accepted French influence willingly. Our language was written and spoken there, our literary traditions and our fashions were followed with even too much docility. Frenchmen were enticed to dwell there; but not always chosen with sufficient discernment, so that adventurers by whom the Germans were duped gave a sorry idea of our nation. On the other hand, the feeling of hostility against England dates very far back. It is that nation which, from the first, made us understand what a foreigner was, and by trampling on France revealed her to herself.

...

Large German States owe their prosperity to French political and religious refugees. Nor was the influx less from Germany into France. Princes came as pilgrims to the shrine of Versailles to admire and worship the kingliest King; to Paris, where they found the greatest number of men of genius and of sharpers, the wittiest ladies, and the lightest women. There came those who wished to serve in the army; like Maurice of Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, and the Count of Löwendal, the victor of Berg-op-Zoom. The Rhenish provinces were but a continuation of France beyond the frontier: their sons fought under French colors; war and hate were not between the peoples, they were the business of the governments. Men were cosmopolitan, citizens of the world, rather than French, German, or Prussian.

The Revolution of 1803 in Germany was relatively as radical as the French Revolution. The German people looked on it with indifference, neither rejoicing nor grieving at the fall of its past:

because there was a great difference between the two revolutions. The sacrifices exacted from the privileged classes of France had served to found the unity of a great people, had brought liberty into the State and equality among the citizens. In Germany no such advantages had been obtained. The French had despoiled themselves for the grandeur of their country; in Germany for some great or petty sovereign, often more a princeling than a prince.

It was not as an enemy but as an Emperor that Napoleon was received. Princes and people crowded to see the small, lankhaired man, so unlike the legendary Charlemagne, whose sallow complexion, sinister, unfathomable glance, and Roman features, reminded them of the pagan Cæsar who had first crossed the mighty river.

CIVIL LIFE IN FRANCE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

(From the "History of French Civilization.")

Ir justice was cruel, the police of Paris were feeble. The multiplicity of jurisdictions among which Paris was divided, and the right of sanctuary allowed to nearly all the churches and abbeys, permitted criminals to elude pursuit.

Paris, although Philip Augustus had paved some streets and filled up the filthy holes which infected his palace, was still horribly dirty.

The narrow streets, with the houses overhanging in successive corbelings so that the upper stories touched, were incumbered with stalls, sign-boards, and goods exposed for sale. Swine, geese, and cattle wandered through them. There the butchers slaughtered their beasts at night; there was no light except that of the moon when it shone. The police were not responsible for anything after sunset. When once the curfew had rung, the honest bourgeois went to his home and shut himself in securely. The watch that is, the prevost's archers were too few to control the dangerous classes. To thrash the watch was a student's sport: naturally, ill-doers feared it little.

Sometimes a watchman like Gautier Rallard found an ingenious means of never entering into a fight with the robbers: he made his rounds preceded by music. The night watchman who went through the streets in a coat embellished with tears and death's-heads,-armed with a lantern and a bell, announc