It is not often that a fisherman's patience is more amply rewarded than mine was the other. day, while angling in the somewhat turbid lake of French literature. Shall I tell you precisely what I caught, reader; where I caught it, and how? Well, I took up a volume containing some choice morceaux from Florian- pray, allow me to drop the figure with which I started; for it is rather heavy, and I cannot well carry it any farther—and, at the outset, I found some excellent thoughts on the prominent fabulists of ancient and modern times, and the origin, history and genius of apologue. These thoughts are so instructive and truthful, so racy and rich, so well conceived, and withal, so elegantly expressed, as to render quite superfluous an apology for their reütterance. I like them on many accounts, and not less for the antidote they afford to the stereotyped and matter-of-fact dissertations which abound on different branches of polite literature, especially on the poetic art, constructed by men who set themselves up as scribes and rabbis in the literary sanhedrim; and who, moreover, know no more of the things whereof they affirm so dogmatically and oracularly, than a blind man knows of the hues of the rainbow.

But who was this Florian? A man who deserves to be better known. He was contemporary with Voltaire, and the two were intimate friends, an uncle of Florian having married a niece of Voltaire. In 1788, he became a member of the French Academy, and was one of the ornaments of that institution until his death. He wrote many things well, but fables, perhaps, best of all. Indeed, in this department, he ranks very near the inimitable La Fontaine.

But I will detain the reader no longer from the thoughts on apologue to which I have alluded. Allow me the liberty of removing from them their French costume, which becomes them so well, and of presenting them in the most fitting Anglo-Saxon one at my command:

ago, one of

Some time my friends, seeing me occupied in constructing fables, proposed to present me to one of his uncles, an elderly man, of a most amiable and obliging disposition, who, during all his life, had

evinced a great predilection for that species of literary composition ordinarily called apologue, who possessed in his library almost all the fabulists, and who read La Fontaine day and night. I gladly accepted the offer of my friend. We visited his uncle together.

I found him a little, old man, of some fourscore years, but with his mental faculties as fresh and active as ever. His countenance was sweet and mirthful; his eyes lively and spiritual; his face, his smile, his manner, all indicated an enviable peace of mind, and that habit of finding happiness in one's self, which, by contact, is so readily communicated to others. One felt sure, at the outset, that he saw in the octogenarian an excellent man. He received me with a frank and polite air, made me sit near him, begged me to raise my voice a trifle—only a trifle, because, as he phrased it, he had the happiness of being but slightly deaf; and, having been already advertised by his nephew that I made some pretensions of being a fabulist, he asked me if I would do him the honor to read some of my fables.

He did not need to press the request. I promptly chose those of my fables which I regarded as the best. I recited them in my best style, setting them off, as I supposed, with all the magical power of a good utterance; I even graced them with some of the airs of the stage-player; seeking, as I proceeded, to divine from the eyes of my judge, whether he was satisfied.

He listened to me with benevolence; laughed from time to time, at certain passages, and drew down his eyebrows at some others, which I noted, for the purpose of correcting them. After having listened to some dozen of my apologues, he gave me the tribute of eulogy which authors always regard as the price of their labor, and which is frequently, perhaps too frequently, all the reward they receive for their pains. I thanked him, as he praised me, after which we commenced an earnest and cordial conversation.

'I recognise in your fables,' said the old gentleman, ‘several subjects treated of in ancient or foreign efforts of the kind.'

Yes,' I replied, 'all are not of my invention. I have read a great many fabulists; and whenever I have found subjects which pleased me, and which had not been treated by La Fontaine, I have appropriated them, without hesitation. I have borrowed from Æsop, from Bidpai, from Gay, from the German fabulists, and, more frequently than from all the rest, from a Spaniard, named Yriarte, a poet whom I greatly esteem, and who has furnished me with the ideas embraced in the happiest of my apologues. I intend to anticipate the public in the preface to my fables, so that they cannot reproach.'

Oh! that will make it all very smooth to the public,' interrupted he, laughing. Of what consequence is it to your readers, that the subject of one of your fables has been first elicited by a Greek, a Spaniard, or yourself? The main thing, of course, is that your fable is well made. La Bruyère says, The selection of thoughts is invention.' Beside, you have La Fontaine for your example. There are scarcely any of his apologues that I have not found in authors more ancient than he. But if anything could add to his glory, it would be this comparison. Give yourself no uneasiness on this point. In poetry, as in war, that

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which one takes from his brothers is theft; but what he takes from foreigners is conquest. Let us speak of something more important. What are your ideas respecting apologues in general?'

At this question I was taken by surprise; I turned red, stammered, But seeing plainly enough, from the old and I know not what. man's good-natured air, that the best way was to avow my ignorance, I answered, with a tone of voice so weak that it was necessary to repeat the answer, that I had not yet sufficiently reflected on this question; but that I intended to grapple with it when I undertook my preliminary essay.

'I understand,' said he, 'you have begun to compose fables, and when your collection is finished, you will reflect on the fable. This method of proceeding is commnon enough, even in respect of more Moreover, if you had taken the contrary course, important matters. which surely would have been more in accordance with reason, I doubt if your fables would have gained by it. This is perhaps the only species of composition in which the technical poetic art is nearly uselessin which study adds nothing to talent-in which, to use a comparison of your own, one labors, by a kind of instinct, as really as the swallow However, I doubt not that you and the sparrow build their nests. have read in many prefaces to collections to fables, that the apologue - a definition is an instruction disguised under the allegory of an act which, by the way, suits the epic poem, the comedy, the romance, and which does not apply to many fables, as, for example, Philomel and Progné,'The Bird wounded by an Arrow,' 'The Peacock complaining to Juno,' The Fox and Portrait,' &c.—which cannot properly be said to have any act, and all the sense of which is shut up in one word at the end. Nor does the usually received definition of the schools apply to such fables as these: 'The Drunkard and his Wife,' 'The Joker and the Fishes,' Thyrsis and Amaranth'- which have only the merit of being simple narratives, and which, since they convey no moral, one would not be vastly sorry to see suppressed. Thus this definition, so universally adopted, does not appear to me to be always just.

You have also read, doubtless, in the very ingenious essay which La Motte has placed at the head of his fables, that 'to make a good apologue, it is necessary, first, to propose to one's self a moral truth, to hide it under the allegory of an image which offends neither against justice, unity, nor nature; then to lead the actors which are introduced to speak in a style familiar but elegant, simple but ingenious, animated by what there is most pleasing as well as what there is most elegant, and distinguishing well the shades of the pleasing and the elegant, of the natural and the artless.'

All this is very learned, I agree; but let a man adopt this theory, and reduce it to practice, and he will only be in a condition to prove, as La Motte has done, that the fable of the Two Pigeons' is an imperfect one, because it offends against unity; that the fable of the Amorous Lion' is still worse, because the entire image is vicious. But, notwithstanding these definitions and rules, the world knows no less by

heart the admirable fable of the Two Pigeons;' the world repeats not less frequently these lines of the Amorous Lion:'

'Amour, amour, quand tu nous tiens,

On peut bien dire, adieu, Prudence.'

Oh love! oh love, when thou dost weave thy spell,

One may at once to Prudence bid farewell.'

and nobody would care to be informed that these two fables could very easily be demonstrated to be formed contrary to the rules.

'Perhaps you will require of me, seeing I criticize so severely the definitions and precepts laid down respecting the fable, that I should point out something better; but I shall excuse myself from undertaking any such task, for I am convinced that this species of composition cannot be defined, and cannot be governed imperiously by precept. Boileau has said nothing of it in his Art Poetique, and I incline to think that his silence results from his having felt that he could not reduce it to his laws. This Boileau, who was unquestionably a poet, wrote the fable of 'Death and the Unfortunate,' in competition with La Fontaine. J. B. Rousseau, who was also a poet, treated the same subject. Read in d'Alembert these two apologues, compared with that of La Fontaine. You will find the same moral, the same image, the same order, almost the same expressions; yet the two fables of Boileau and Rousseau are very indifferent, while that of La Fontaine is a master-piece. The reason of this difference is very clearly developed in an excellent morceau or fable by Marmontel. He does not give the means by which a good fable may be written, for those cannot be given; he does not lay down principles, rules by which the metre must be governed, forI repeat it-in this department of the fine arts there are no rules; but he is the first, it seems to me, who has explained to us why it is that we find so great a charm in reading La Fontaine- whence comes the illusion which this inimitable writer creates. 'La Fontaine,' I quote from Marmontel, 'has not simply heard what he relates; he has seen it; he expects to see it again. He is not a poet who imagines; he is not a story-teller, who deals in pleasantry. He is a witness, present at the act, and who can render you present there yourself. His erudition, his eloquence, his philosophy, his politics, all he possesses of imagination, of memory, of sentiment—he sets them all at work, with the best faith in the world, to persuade you; and it is this air of good faith- it is the seriousness with which he mingles the greatest things with the smallest things it is the importance which he attaches to the efforts of children-it is the interest which he takes in a rabbit and a weasel, which so tempts one to exclaim, every instant, 'Oh, the good man!'' Marmontel is right. When that word is said, one is ready to pardon every thing in an author; he is no more offended with the lessons which he gives us, the truths which he teaches us; he permits him to pretend to teach us wisdom, a pretension which one excuses with so ill a grace in an equal. But a good man is not our equal. His credulous simplicity, which amuses us, which makes us laugh, invests him with superiority in our eyes; so that we can feel the more strongly the

A ROMANCE OF THE CLOISTER.

BY MRS. H. z. EVERETT.

'YES, I will; I will take the veil! I will profess at the Sacré Cœur, and there, amid those sacred scenes, I shall be free from the taunts of my cousin and the reluctant bounty of my aunt. Alas! why was I born to this! Oh, Holy VIRGIN! give me grace to imitate THEE in thy fortitude under affliction!'

Thus soliloquized Rose de Biragues as she sat in her little room, her hand resting upon the open page of her diary, where she had just recorded a detailed account of slights and insults innumerable, which for many a weary day she had received at the hands of her aunt and cousin.

Rose de Biragues was the orphan-niece of Madame de Férolles, the widow of a rich banker, residing a short distance from Caen, one of the largest and most flourishing towns in 'La Belle Normandie.' Louis de Biragues, the father of Rose, and the only brother of Madame de Férolles, displeased his worldly and ambitious sister by marrying early in life a charming girl, with no dower but her beauty. For two years he led a life of unalloyed happiness; but ere the third anniversary of their blissful union he was called upon to mourn the early death of his beloved wife, which left him inconsolable. Not even the newlyawakened tenderness of a father's love could arouse him from his despondency, and in a few months the sod of the parish church-yard was once more upturned to make room for him beside his wife. He bequeathed the infant Rose to Madame de Férolles, begging her to remember that she was the child of the brother she had once fondly loved, and do by her as she would by her own; but time had long since weakened Madame de Férolles' early love for Louis, and she only remembered that the infant committed to her care was the child of the despised Rose Deville.

But in spite of neglect and want of affection, Rose de Biragues grew to womanhood, and promised to be as beautiful as her cousin Marie de Férolles was plain and gauche. Many were the slights the poor girl would have to endure, as a casual comparison, drawn by some unprejudiced person between the merits of the two cousins, would reach the ears of Madame de Férolles; and so continued were the annoyances, that at last the poor girl in desperation determined to take the veil. Marie de Férolles and her mother both highly approved of Rose's resolution, and never were they so kind as when assisting her to prepare for the eventful step which would relieve them of her forever.

It was now winter, and it was decided that Rose should enter as Vostulante until after Christmas, when she was to make her profession as novice. It was the day before the celebration of that great feast of the Nativity, which brings forth in all its glory the almost imperial splendor of the Catholic church, that Rose de Biragues entered as an