JEAN CHARLES LEONARD DE SISMONDI

(1773-1842)

His

ISMONDI, the celebrated historian of Italy and of Italian literature, was born at Geneva, Switzerland, May 9th, 1773. father, a village pastor, was named "Simonde," a patronymic which the son for literary and other purposes altered to the more aristocratic one of "de Sismondi." The Simonde family emigrated from Geneva during the French Revolution, and after spending a short time in England, settled at Pescia, near Lucca, in Italy, where Sismondi received the bent which resulted in his most celebrated works. His "History of the Italian Republics" appeared between 1807 and 1818, and his "Literature of the South of Europe" between 1813 and 1829. He wrote, besides, a "History of France," a number of works on Political Economy and "Julia Severa," a historical novel, which appeared in 1829. He died at Geneva, June 25th, 1842.

ROMANTIC LOVE AND PETRARCH'S POETRY

EVER did passion burn more purely than in the love of Petrarch for Laura. Of all the erotic poets, he alone never expresses a single hope offensive to the purity of a heart which had been pledged to another. When Petrarch first beheld her, on the sixth of April, 1327, Laura was in the church of Avignon. She was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, and wife of Hugues de Sade, both of Avignon. When she died of the plague, on the sixth of April, 1348, she had been the mother of eleven children. Petrarch has celebrated, in upwards of three hundred sonnets, all the little circumstances of this attachment; those precious favors which, after an acquaintance of fifteen or twenty years, consisted at most of a kind word, a glance not altogether severe, a momentary expression of regret or tenderness at his departure, or a deeper paleness at the idea of losing her beloved and constant friend. Yet even these marks of an attachment so pure and unobstrusive, and which he had so often struggled to subdue, were repressed by the coldness of Laura, who, to preserve her lover, cautiously abstained from giving the least encouragement to his love. She avoided his presence, except at church, in the brilliant levees of the papal court, or in

the country, where, surrounded by her friends, she is described by Petrarch as exhibiting the semblance of a queen, pre-eminent amongst them all in the grace of her figure, and the brilliancy of her beauty. It does not appear that, in the whole course of these twenty years, the poet ever addressed her, unless in the presence of witnesses. An interview with her alone would surely have been celebrated in a thousand verses; and, as he has left us four sonnets on the good fortune he enjoyed in having an opportunity of picking up her glove, we may fairly presume that he would not have passed over in silence so happy a circumstance as a private interview. There is no poet, in any language, so perfectly pure as Petrarch, so completely above all reproach of levity and immorality; and this merit, which is due. equally to the poet and to his Laura, is still more remarkable, when we consider that the models which he followed were by no means entitled to the same praise. The verses of the Troubadours and of the Trouveres were very licentious. The court of Avignon, at which Laura lived, the Babylon of the West, as the poet himself often terms it, was filled with the most shameful corruption; and even the Popes, more especially Clement V. and Clement VI. had afforded examples of great depravity. Indeed, Petrarch himself, in his intercourse with other ladies, was by no means so reserved. For Laura he had conceived a sort of religious and enthusiastic passion; such as mystics imagine they feel towards the Deity, and such as Plato supposes to be the bond of union between elevated minds. The poets who have succeeded Petrarch have amused themselves with giving representations of a similar passion, of which, in fact, they had little or no experience. In order to appreciate the full beauty of Petrarch's sonnets, it would be necessary to write the history of his attachment, as M. Ginguené has so ably done; and thus to assign to every sonnet the place to which its particular sentiment destines it. But it would be even more necessary that I should myself be sensible of the excellence of these poems, and that I should feel that charm which has enchanted every nation and every age. To this I must acknowledge that I am a stranger. I could have wished, in order to comprehend and to become interested in the passion of Petrarch, that there should have been a somewhat better understanding between the lovers; that they should have had a more intimate knowledge of each other; and that, by this means, we might ourselves have been better acquainted with both,

I could have wished to have seen some impression made upon the sensibility of this loving and long-loved lady; to have seen her heart, as well as her mind, enlarging itself and yielding to the constancy and the purity of true friendship, since virtue denied a more tender return. It is tiresome to find the same veil, always shading not only the figure, but the intellect and the heart of the woman who is celebrated in these monotonous verses. If the poet had allowed us a fairer view of her, he would have been less likely to fall into exaggerations, into which my imagination, at least, is unable to follow him. How desirable would it be that he should have recalled her to our minds by thought, by feeling, and by passion, rather than by a perpetual play upon the words Laura (the laurel), and l'aura (the air). The first of these conceits, more especially, is incessantly repeated, nor merely in the poems alone. Throughout Petrarch's whole life, we are in doubt whether it is of Laura or of the laurel that he is enamored; so great is the emotion which he expresses, whenever he beholds the latter; so passionately does he mention it; and so frequently has he celebrated it in his verses. Nor is that personified heart, to which Petrarch perpetually addresses himself, less fatiguing. It speaks, it answers, it argues, it is ever upon his lips, in his eyes, and yet ever at a distance. He is always absent, and we cannot avoid wishing that during his banishment, he would for once cease to speak of it. Judging from these conceits, and from the continual personification of beings which have no personal attributes, it has always appeared to me that Petrarch is by no means so great a poet as Dante, because he is less of a painter. There is scarcely one of his sonnets, in which the leading idea is not completely at variance with the principles of painting, and which does not, therefore, escape from the imagination. Poetry may be called a happy union of two of the fine arts. It has borrowed its harmonies from music, and its images from painting. But to confound the two objects which poetry has thus in view is to be equally in error; whether we attempt, by an image, to represent a coincidence in sound, as when the laurel is put for Laura; or whether we wish to call up an image by sounds, as when, neglecting the rules of harmony, we produce a discordance suited to the object we design to paint, and make the serpents of which we are speaking hiss in our verses.

From "Literature of the South of Europe."

SAMUEL SMILES

(1812-)

AMUEL SMILES was born at Haddington, Scotland, in 1812. He began life as a physician, practicing at Haddington and in

Leeds. Becoming editor of the Leeds Times, he gave up medicine for journalism and essay writing, and in such books as "Character," "Thrift," and "Self-Help," he has almost created a school of his own. His essays are characterized by a wealth of incident and anecdote which makes them interesting and entertaining even when they are most didactic. Besides his essays Smiles wrote a "History of Ireland," a "Life of George Stephenson," "Brief Biographies," and "The Huguenots in France." From 1845 to 1866 he was an officer of various English railway companies. The whole tendency of his writings is to establish a more efficient faith in honesty and persistent industry as the basis of success in life and business.

MEN WHO CANNOT BE BOUGHT

Thou must be brave thyself,

If thou the truth would teach;
Live truly and thy life shall be
A great and noble creed.

'Tis a very good world we live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;

But to beg, or to borrow, or to get a man's own
'Tis the very worst world that ever was known.
- Bulwer Lytton.

Good name in man or woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse, steals trash: 'tis something, nothing,
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousand;

But he that filches from me my good name,

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

F

IRST, there are men who can be bought. There are rogues innumerable, who are ready to sell their bodies and souls for money and for drink. Who has not heard of the elections which have been made void through bribery and corruption? This is not the way to enjoy liberty or to keep it. The men who sell themselves are slaves; their buyers are dishonest and unprincipled. Freedom has its humbugs. "I'm standing on the soil of liberty," said an orator. "You ain't," replied a bootmaker in the audience. "You're standing in a pair of boots you never paid me for."

The tendency of men is ever to go with the majority — to go with the huzzas. "Majority," said Schiller, "what does that

mean? Sense has ever centred in the few. Votes should be weighed, not counted. That state must sooner or later go to ruin where numbers sway and ignorance decides."

When the secession from the Scotch Church took place, Norman Macleod said it was a great trial to the flesh to keep by the unpopular side, and to act out what conscience dictated as the line of duty. Scorn and hissing greeted him at every turn. saw a tomb to-day," he says, in one of his letters, "in the chapel of Holyrood, with this inscription, 'Here lies an honest man!' I only wish to live in such a way as to entitle me to the same éloge."

The ignorant and careless are at the mercy of the unprincipled; and the ignorant are as yet greatly in the majority. When a French quack was taken before the Correctional Tribunal at Paris for obstructing the Pont Neuf, the magistrate said to him, "Sirrah! how is it you draw such crowds about you, and extract so much money from them in selling your 'infallible' rubbish ?" "My lord," replied the quack, "how many people do you think cross the Pont Neuf in the hour? » "I don't know," said the judge. "Then I can tell you about ten thousand; and how many of these do you think are wise?" "Oh, perhaps a hundred!" "It is too many," said the quack; "but I leave the hundred persons to you, and take the nine thousand and nine hundred for my customers!

Men are bribed in all directions. They have no spirit of probity, self-respect, or manly dignity. If they had, they would spurn bribes in every form. Government servants are bribed to pass goods, fit or unfit for use. Hence soldiers' half-tanned shoes give way on a march; their shoddy coats become ragged;