concerned with moral culture; the greatest grief of his old age was the feeling that man is powerless to do good. To him may be applied his own definition of man as he ought to fashion himself: "A conscience made beautiful."

3

Jean Tisseur died leaving two brothers, the Abbé Alexandre, whose Voyages littéraires, says M. Paul Mariéton, are held in high esteem by the Lyonnais, and Clair Tisseur, author of Pauca Paucis, who by more than one characteristic recalls Jean, but who is superior to him in style and culture. M. Renouvier, a great metaphysician and an ardent lover of poetry, has made me acquainted with Pauca Paucis, which the author kept secret. also regards Clair Tisseur as the best poet of the family. He justly praises, in these verses of a sage, "the sincerity of the accent and the often happy handling of new rhythms."

He

During his long life Clair Tisseur wrote only a few verses for some friends, but these verses are himself, his recollections and his feelings. In them he shows himself calm and moderate like his brother Jean, and a kindly Stoic. I believe he was by profession an architect; in his verses he is above all things a Hellenist and a rustic. In reading him one comes to the conclusion that the things he best loved in this world, after virtue, were the scent of lavender and the pines, the song of the cicada, and the epigrams of the Anthologies. poet dedicated his work to the modest Graces.

The

Il ne demande point en don l'or indien,

Ni la blanche Chrysé, ni les troupeaux qu'engraisse

Dans ses riches sillons, la vieille Argos, ni rien
Que la mesure en tout de l'aimable sagesse.
Charités aux cœurs purs, écoutez mes prières ! *

As one sees by this invocation, Clair Tisseur, like André Chénier, clothed his thoughts in an antique vesture. To those who complained of this as a disguise he replied that to express a beautiful thought a beautiful symbol is required, and that the most beautiful symbols were those of Greece; and lastly, that he had lived in the shadow of myrtles on a soil recalling Greece. We may add that a sincere emotion readily finds expression beneath these classic forms.

What particularly pleases me in Clair Tisseur's verses is the idylls and the landscapes. He has drawn a few domestic pictures of graceful simplicity. The last of them especially charms me by that harmonious sadness whose secret seems taken from Propertius:

Phydilé, Phydilé, quand je ne serai plus,
Un frère, des amis garderont ma mémoire.
Mais toi, tu gémiras; tu ne voudras pas croire
Que l'Océan sans bords, dans l'éternal reflux,
Ait englouti l'ami sur qui, tendre et farouche,
Tu veillas si longtemps.

...

Surtout (je te connais) que devant toi personne
N'outrage ma mémoire! ou bien levant ton bras,
Pour porter témoignage, alors tu défendras
Celui qui te fut cher, ainsi qu'une lionne

* He asks not for the gold of Ind

Nor white Chryseis, nor fattening flocks

Grazing on the rich plains of Argos, nor for aught
But in all things the moderation of kindly wisdom.
Pure-hearted Charities, hear my prayers!

Défend son lionceau. Déjà, déjà je vois
Éclater ton regard, j'entends trembler ta voix.
Et le sein soulevé, pleurante et tout émue,
Tu rediras s'il fut envieux ou méchant ;
Du pauvre, hôte des dieux, s'il détourna la vue;
S'il fut un ami sûr; si jamais, le sachant,
Il commit l'injustice ou trahit sa parole;
Si l'avide et grossier Mammon fut son idole.
Toi qui me vis de près diras ce que je fus,
Phydilé, Phydilé, quand je ne serai plus.*

Don't you love this melancholy, sweet, and rhythmical as joy? To give some idea of Clair Tisseur's poetic talent, here is one of his pictures of Provençal nature, drawn with a refined and graceful severity a poem on the birth of a cicada: the cicada or cigale, which on this side of the Loire we are fond of confusing with the grasshopper,

* Fidele, Fidele, when I am no more,

My brother and my friends will keep my memory green.
But you will grieve for me; unwilling to believe

That the boundless Ocean, in its eternal reflux,

Has swallowed the friend, o'er whom, tender and shy,
You watched so long.

...

Above all (I know you) let no one in your presence
Insult my memory; or, raising your arm
In witness, you will defend

Him who was dear to you, as a lioness

Defends her cubs. Already, already, I see

The flash of your eye, I hear your trembling voice.
With heaving breast, weeping and greatly moved,
You will ask, whether he was envious or wicked;
Whether he averted his eyes from the poor man, the guest

of the gods;

Whether he was a true friend; and whether he knowingly
Ever committed an injustice, or broke his word;

Whether gross, greedy Mammon was the idol he worshipped.
You who knew me so well will tell what I was,
Fidele, Fidele, when I am no more.

but whose untiring song is equally dear to the classic Meleager and our own Paul Arène.

La cigale encor tendre, engourdie, étonnée
De ce monde nouveau, semble d'un long sommeil
S'éveiller faiblement sous le rayon vermeil.
L'élytre, diaphane et de réseaux veinée,

Tout humide à ses flancs est collée; et des grains
D'un rouge vif et clair la piquent aux aisselles,
Comme si l'on voyait le sang à travers elles,
Fluide s'épancher en canaux purpurins.

Mais demain le soleil, de ses rayons tenaces,
Aura durci son aile et desséché ses flancs :
Le virtuose noir fait, sous les cieux brûlants,
De cymbales de fer retenir les espaces.*

Happy Clair Tisseur, beneath his olive-trees! To embellish life what are wealth and honours, compared with poetry and art? †

* The still tender cicada, torpid, astonished
At this new world, from a long sleep
Seems feebly to awake under the rosy rays.
The diaphanous wing, with its network of veins,
Adheres all wet to its flanks; and specks
Of a bright clear red mark her axillæ,

As though one could see through them the blood
Spreading, liquid, through its purple conduits.

But to-morrow the sun, with his persistent rays,
Will have hardened her wing, and dried her flanks :
And the black virtuoso, under the blazing skies,

Will make the welkin resound with the clash of iron cymbals.

↑ It is only right to add that, under the name of the Nizier de Puitspelu, M. Clair Tisseur is one of the glories of Lyons. Every one there knows his Vieilleries Lyonnaises. But in this sketch I have sought to draw attention only to the poet.

ASTRONOMICAL DAY-DREAMS*

M

CAMILLE FLAMMARION, who has devoted himself entirely to astronomy, has all the imaginable qualifications for "popularizing science; to begin with, he knows. He has made protracted calculations and observations. Moreover, he has enthusiasm and imagination; and he shirks neither stage management nor stage effects. He neglects nothing that will make the sky interesting, dramatic, romantic, picturesque, amusing, and moral, for our benefit. His book, dedicated to the gravest of the Muses, Urania, is a kind of scientific poem, wherein philosophy mingles with astronomy. I may perhaps be believed if I say that M. Flammarion's philosophy is not so confident as his science. It is a pity, for it is a charming philosophy. M. Flammarion promises us a very happy immortality. If one may believe him, our souls, after death, will flit from star to star, and endlessly enjoy the voluptuousness of love and knowledge: we shall be meditative butterflies. We shall retain enough human weakness to be tender, and enough ignorance to be curious. We shall have senses; but they will be powerful and

* Camille Flammarion, Uranie. Illustrations by Bieler, Gambard and Myrbach (collection Guillaume, in 8°).