Had led those glittering legions forth,
And bade them seek in realms afar,
'Neath the proud turrets of the north,
The glory and the boon of war.

There moved the phalanx of the brave,
Far swelling as the ocean-wave

Of the dark Arctic, when it rolls
Amid the icebergs of the poles.

On their proud frontlets you might trace,
Adown the far historic page,

The character of many a race,

The chivalry of many an age.

The sons of sires whom Cæsar led,
The Lithuanian and the Goth,
Were marching with a measured tread
In the same mighty sabaoth,
Beside the noblest youth of France-
All sharers in the same romance.
There was young recklessness of life,
And lofty fearlessness of eye,
That gloried in the fiercest strife,
Nor cared, as heroes live, to die.
And there the veteran's war-wrought form,
The soldier of Marengo's field,
Inured to battle, and to storm,

Of lion-heart, unused to yield:

That soldier, who in early youth

Had met the Arab's whirlwind-lance, Still follows here with changeless truth, The yet ascending star of France. Amid his chosen chiefs of war,

Napoleon from a height survey'd

The mighty masses of the Czar,
In countless density array'd;

And thought, as rose the cloudless sun, 'Twas thus-when Austerlitz was won.

Now 'tis the evening;-on the plain
Are strown the battle-drifted slain;
The tawny children of the Moor,
The Calmuck, the Carinthian boor,
The belted Cossack of the Don,
The plumed knight of Arragon,
The emblem lion and the bear,

Have met in death's stern conflict there;
And many a youth of fearless eye
Beneath this dark and storm-swept sky
Reclines upon the turf to die :

Still, o'er the soldier's dying hour,

Memory bestows her magic power,

And lights the flickering lamp of life
As though its streams were fresh and rife;
For each has left a vacant hearth,
His loves, the valley of his birth,
His altar, and his childhood's home,
The kindling of a mother's eye,
When lust of conquest bade him roam

To march beneath a distant sky

The peasant of the winding Rhine

Has wandered from his vine-wrought bowers,

The shepherd of the Appenine

Has left his flock-his mountain flowers;

Yon dresser of the olive-grove

Has torn him from his plighted love

Upon Italia's hills afar

She gazes on the evening star,
And tunes for him the sweet guitar,
But her sad faithfulness is vain—

That youth will ne'er return again;

When the last rallying charge of horse
Spur'd proudly on o'er many a corse,
His form was crush'd-upon his brow
The dews of death are falling now:
Ere yet the coming dawn of day
Shall wake again the reveillé,
His life's last impulse will be o'er,
He'll hear the bugle-note no more;
He may not meet his blushing maid
Beneath the bowering myrtle shade-
Siberia's ravens riot here,

In gather'd flights, the wintry year,
And ere the far return of spring,
His bones are bleach'd and glistening.

But soon the sun will light again
The battle on this reeking plain ;
Italia's gayest, bravest knight,
The wildest meteor of the fight,
Leads on his clouds of prancing steeds,
His dreamers of chivalrous deeds-
The farthest banners as they float
Shall tremble to the trumpet-note,
And seas of nodding plumes shall wave
To the firm foot-fall of the brave.
Gallia's untiring eagles fly
Yet onward, 'neath the northern sky,
Where coldly shines the pivot star
O'er the bronzed towers of the Czar:
But thence those eagles shall be driven
By the dread tempest winds of heaven:
For they shall find a fiercer foe
E'en than the desert-nurtured men ;
And their proud bearers shall lie low,

Entomb'd in wastes of wolf-traced snow.

71

MADAME DE STAEL.

BY ROBERT WALSH.

THERE is an emphatic moral in the statements of Madame de Saussure, concerning the unhappiness of her celebrated friend. The very splendour of her endowments, her triumphs as an author, her importance and lustre in the eyes of the world, not merely failed to secure for her "our being's end and aim," but contributed to deprive her of all tranquillity and contentment. Her talents, says her biographer, penetrated through every feature; they sparkled in her eyes, marked her slightest phrases, imparted a subduing eloquence to her kindness and her pity, but embittered her existence. "Her heart was more alive than that of any other person; but she suffered more vividly, and the intensity of her sorrow was dreadful. She gave us the idea of a superior intelligence, whom a jealous fate had subjected to the miseries and illusions of this world, and whose high prerogative only rendered her more sensible of the emptiness and wretchedness of human life," She underwent all the fugitive and the fixed miseries of the heart; and such was her own impression of the disadvantage of her lot, that when she observed a manifestation of wit in her daughter, she earnestly warned her against seeking celebrity.

The spirit of Madame de Stael was, in fact, morbidly restless; her sensibility lawless and excessive; her ambi

tion premature and exorbitant. Her passions and habits had been subjected to no discipline. Whether from obstinacy or delusion, she pursued, on every side, unattainable ends. She allowed her potent imagination to keep her in the clouds. The incessant attempt to pass the "flaming bounds of space and time," and to soar upon "the seraph-wings of ecstacy," could not but end in bitter chagrin, or a fatal catastrophe. She married, first a worthy man, whom she did not please to love, and with whom she held but little intercourse. The liaisons, or ties of friendship, platonic, or more than platonic, by which she was connected with the Narbonnes, the Schlegels, and the Constants, being precarious, transitory, and ambiguous, could not satisfy her aspirations, if they left her conscience at rest.

Her face may have had "intellectual beauty," and her exterior, when animated by the play of her faculties, ceased to be repulsive; but the whole woman was not of the description that awakens and perpetuates the sublime passion, of which she coveted to be the object. She excited only admiration—the love which she sought, like Sappho, was not to be won by her mental accomplishments, and she had too much acuteness, and fervour of fancy and affection, to remain blind to the absence of reciprocity. On that head of romantic passion and sympathetic union, she continued deeply excitable, and strongly imaginative, beyond the period of age when those who have been gifted with the kind of attractions which she lacked, lose much of their power and their susceptibility. Madame de Saussure tells that there was "a passion, or at least emotion, in all her attachments,"-that they appeared to differ "rather in intensity than in kind," and were "naturally expansive, ardent, impetuous, and even stormy;" that for a long time "she comprehended only