4754

Just a pinky porcelain trifle,
"Belle Marquise! »

Wrought in rarest rose-Dubarry,
Quick at verbal point and parry,
Clever, doubtless; - but to marry,

No, Marquise!

IV

For your Cupid, you have clipped him,

Rouged and patched him, nipped and snipped him,
And with chapeau-bras equipped him,

"Belle Marquise!»

Just to arm you through your wife-time,
And the languors of your lifetime,

"Belle Marquise!"

Say, to trim your toilet tapers

Or to twist your hair in papers,
Or to wean you from the vapors;
As for these,

You are worth the love they give you,
Till a fairer face outlive you,

Or a younger grace shall please;
Till the coming of the crows'-feet,
And the backward turn of beaux' feet,

"Belle Marquise!"

Till your frothed-out life's commotion
Settles down to Ennui's ocean,

Or a dainty sham devotion,

"Belle Marquise!»

V

No: we neither like nor love you,

"Belle Marquise ! »
Lesser lights we place above you,-

Milder merits better please.
We have passed from Philosophe-dom
Into plainer modern days,-
Grown contented in our oafdom,

Giving grace not all the praise;
And, en partant, Arsinoé,-

Without malice whatsoever,—
We shall counsel to our Chloë

To be rather good than clever;

For we find it hard to smother

Just one little thought, Marquise!
Wittier perhaps than any other,
You were neither Wife nor Mother,
"Belle Marquise!"

A BALLAD TO QUEEN ELIZABETH
OF THE SPANISH ARMADA

K'

ING PHILIP had vaunted his claims;

He had sworn for a year he would sack us;

With an army of heathenish names

He was coming to fagot and stack us;

Like the thieves of the sea he would track us,

And shatter our ships on the main;

But we had bold Neptune to back us, And where are the galleons of Spain?

His carackes were christened of dames

To the kirtles whereof he would tack us;
With his saints and his gilded stern-frames,
He had thought like an egg-shell to crack us;
Now Howard may get to his Flaccus,

And Drake to his Devon again,

And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus,— For where are the galleons of Spain?

Let his Majesty hang to St. James

The axe that he whetted to hack us:
He must play at some lustier games.

Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us;
To his mines of Peru he would pack us

To tug at his bullet and chain;

Alas! that his Greatness should lack us! But where are the galleons of Spain?

GLORIANA!

ENVOY

-the Don may attack us

Whenever his stomach be fain;

He must reach us before he can rack us,

And where are the galleons of Spain?

4755

A

THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE

From Four Frenchwomen'

TENDER wife, a loving daughter, and a loyal friend,- shall we not here lay down upon the grave of Marie de Lamballe our reverential tribute, our little chaplet of immortelles, in the name of all good women, wives, and daughters? "Elle était mieux femme que les autres.»* To us that appar ently indefinite, exquisitely definite sentence most fitly marks the distinction between the subjects of the two preceding papers and the subject of the present. It is a transition from the stately figure of a marble Agrippina to the breathing, feeling woman at your side; it is the transition from the statuesque Rachelesque heroines of a David to the "small sweet idyl" of a Greuze. And, we confess it, we were not wholly at ease with those tragic, majestic figures. We shuddered at the dagger and the bowl which suited them so well. We marveled at their bloodless serenity, their superhuman self-sufficiency; inly we questioned if they breathed and felt. Or was their circulation a matter of machinery-a mere dead-beat escapement? We longed for the sexe prononcé of Rivarol we longed for the showman's "female woman!" We respected and we studied, but we did. not love them. With Madame de Lamballe the case is otherwise. Not grand like this one, not heroic like that one, "elle est mieux femme que les autres.”

She at least is woman -after a fairer fashion - after a truer type. Not intellectually strong like Manon Philipon, not Spartan-souled like Marie de Corday, she has still a rare intelligence, a courage of affection. She has that clairvoyance of the heart which supersedes all the stimulants of mottoes from Reynel or maxims from Rousseau; she has that "angel instinct” which is a juster lawgiver than Justinian. It was thought praise to say of the Girondist lady that she was a greater man than her husband; it is praise to say of this queen's friend that she was more woman than Madame Roland. Not so grand, not so great, we like the princess best. Elle est mieux femme que les autres.

*She was more woman than the others.

MARY MAPES DODGE

(1840 ?-)

O WRITE a story which in thirty years should pass through more than a hundred editions, which should attain the apotheosis of an edition de luxe, which should be translated into at least four foreign languages, be allotted the Montyon prize of 1500 francs for moral as well as literary excellence, and be crowned by the French Academy-this is a piece of good fortune which falls to the lot of few story-tellers. The book which has deserved so well is 'Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates,' a story of life in Holland. author, born in New York, is a daughter of Professor James Jay Mapes, an eminent chemist and inventor, an accomplished writer and brilliant talker.

In a household where music, art, and literature were cultivated, and where the most agreeable society came, talents were not likely to be overlooked. Mrs. Dodge, very early widowed, began writing before. she was twenty, publishing short stories, sketches, and poems in various periodicals. 'Hans Brinker' appeared in 1864,- her delight in Motley's histories and their appeal to her own Dutch blood inspiring her to write it. Of this book Mr. Frank R. Stockton says:

Its

MARY MAPES DODGE

"There are strong reasons why the fairest orange groves, the loftiest mountain peaks, or the inspiriting waves of the rolling sea, could not tempt average boys and girls from the level stretches of the Dutch canals, until they had skated through the sparkling story, warmed with a healthy glow.

"This is not only a tale of vivid description, interesting and instructive; it is a romance. There are adventures, startling and surprising, there are mysteries of buried gold, there are the machinations of the wicked, there is the heroism of the good, and the gay humor of happy souls. More than these, there is love-that sentiment which glides into a good story as naturally as into a human life; and whether the story be for old or young, this element gives it an ever-welcome charm. Strange fortune and good fortune come to Hans and to Gretel, and to many other deserving characters in the tale, but there is nothing selfish about these heroes and heroines. As soon as