me his wife, and gained an honorable title to his tenderest affec tion. The infatuation of Paris reflected little honor upon you. A thoughtless youth, gay, tender, and impressible, struck with your beauty, in violation of all the most sacred laws of hospitality carries you off, and obstinately refuses to restore you to your husband. You seduced Paris from his duty, I recovered Louis from vice; you were the mistress of the Trojan prince, I was the companion of the French monarch. HELEN. I grant you were the wife of Louis, but not the queen of France. Your great object was ambition, and in that you met with a partial success; my ruling star was love, and I gave up everything for it. But tell me, did not I show my influence over Menelaus in his taking me again after the destruction of Troy? MAINTENON. That circumstance alone is sufficient to show that he did not love you with any delicacy. He took you as a possession that was restored to him, as a booty that he had recovered; and he had not sentiment enough to care whether he had your heart or not. The heroes of your age were capable of admiring beauty, and often fought for the possession of it; but they had not refinement enough to be capable of any pure, sentimental attachment or delicate passion. Was that period the triumph of love and gallantry, when a fine woman and a tripod were placed together for prizes at a wrestling bout, and the tripod esteemed the more valuable reward of the two? No: it is our Clelia, our Cassandra and Princess of Cleves, that have polished mankind and taught them how to love. HELEN. Rather say you have lost sight of nature and passion, between bombast on one hand and conceit on the other. Shall one of the cold temperament of France teach a Greek how to love? Greece, the parent of fair forms and soft desires, the nurse of poetry, whose soft climate and tempered skies disposed to every gentler feeling, and tuned the heart to harmony and love! was Greece a land of barbarians? But recollect, if you can, an incident which showed the power of beauty in stronger colors than when the grave old counsellors of Priam on my appearance were struck with fond admiration, and could not bring themselves to blame the cause of a war that had almost ruined their country; you see I charmed the old as well as seduced the young. MAINTENON. But 1, after I was grown old, charmed the young; I was idolized in a capital where taste, luxury, and magnificence were at the height; I was celebrated by the greatest wits of my time, and my letters have been carefully handed down to posterity. HELEN. Tell me now, sincerely, were you happy in your elevated fortune? MAINENON. Alas! Heaven knows I was far otherwise; a thousand times did I wish for my dear Scarron again. He was a very ugly fellow, it is true, and had but little money; but the most easy, entertaining companion in the world: we danced, laughed, and sung; I spoke without fear or anxiety, and was sure to please. With Louis all was gloom, constraint, and a painful solicitude to please - which seldom produces its effect: the king's temper had been soured in the latter part of life by frequent disappointments; and I was forced continually to endeavor to procure him that cheerfulness which I had not myself. Louis was accustomed to the most delicate flatteries; and though I had a good share of wit, my faculties were continually on the stretch to entertain him, a state of mind little consistent with. happiness or ease; I was afraid to advance my friends or punish my enemies. My pupils at St. Cyr were not more secluded from the world in a cloister than I was in the bosom of the court; a secret disgust and weariness consumed me. I had no relief but in my work and books of devotion; with these alone I had a gleam of happiness. HELEN. Alas! one need not have married a great monarch for that. MAINTENON. But deign to inform me, Helen, if you were really as beautiful as fame reports; for, to say truth, I cannot in your shade see the beauty which for nine long years had set the world in arms. HELEN. Honestly, no. I was rather low, and something sunburnt but I had the good fortune to please; that was all. I was greatly obliged to Homer. MAINTENON. And did you live tolerably with Menelaus after all your adventures? HELEN. As well as possible. Menelaus was a good-natured, domestic man, and was glad to sit down and end his days in quiet. I persuaded him that Venus and the Fates were the cause of all my irregularities, which he complaisantly believed. Besides, I was not sorry to return home: for, to tell you a secret, Paris had been unfaithful to me long before his death, and was fond of a little Trojan brunette whose office it was to hold up my train; but it was thought dishonorable to give me up. I began to think love a very foolish thing: I became a great housekeeper, worked the battles of Troy in tapestry, and spun with my maids by the side of Menelaus, who was so satisfied with my conduct, and behaved, good man, with so much fondness, that I verily think this was the happiest period of my life. MAINTENON. Nothing more likely; but the most obscure wife in Greece could rival you there. Adieu! You have convinced me how little fame and greatness conduce to happiness. HYMN TO CONTENT. О THOU, the nymph with placid eye! Receive my temperate vow: Not all the storms that shake the pole And smooth the unaltered brow. O come, in simple vest arrayed, No more by varying passions beat, Simplicity, in Attic vest, And Innocence, with candid breast, And Hope, who points to distant years, Fair opening through this vale of tears A vista to the sky. There Health through whose calm bosom glide The temperate joys in eventide, That rarely ebb or flow; And Patience there, thy sister meek, Presents her mild unvarying cheek To meet the offered blow. Her influence taught the Phrygian sage With settled smiles to wait: But thou, O Nymph, retired and coy! O say what soft propitious hour When Autumn, friendly to the Muse, LIFE. LIFE! I know not what thou art, I own to me's a secret yet. But this I know, when thou are fled, As all that then remains of me. Life! we 've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear Perhaps 't will cost a sigh, a tear; -Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good Night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good Morning. RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM. BARHAM, RICHARD HARRIS, an English clergyman and humorous writer, born at Canterbury, December 6, 1788; died in London, June 17, 1845. He began the study of law, but abandoned the legal for the clerical profession; was ordained in 1813; was made a minor canon of St. Paul's, London, in 1821, and three years later became one of the priests in ordinary in the chapel of King George IV. He was a grave, dignified, and decorous clergyman. Few indeed knew that he was also one of the cleverest humorous writers of his time. In 1837 he began to contribute, under the pseudonym of "Thomas Ingoldsby," to "Bentley's Miscellany" a series of papers in prose and verse with the general title of "The Ingoldsby Legends," which were accorded a high place in humorous literature, and are now classics. He also wrote: "My Cousin Nicholas," a novel (1841); and "Life of Theodore Hook" (1849). MY LORD TOMNODDY. (From the "Ingoldsby Legends.") My Lord Tomnoddy got up one day; He had nothing to do, So his Lordship rang for his cabriolet. Tiger Tim Was clean of limb, His boots were polished, his jacket was trim; He stood in his stockings just four foot ten; And thus to Tiger Tim he said, "Malibran's dead, Duvernay's fled, Taglioni has not yet arrived in her stead; |