I am more unhappy now than I was then." There is the cry of a sore conscience, and of a heart yearning towards the relief which was hidden in her great fall, in those words. Suddenly some one came into her room. It was the king, who had found it impossible to embark, and had returned to her. They looked at each other in black dismay. What a contrast to that interview at Naples in which Louis-Philippe told her, having come into her room as suddenly, of the Restoration! But rescue was coming to them from an unexpected quarter. The captain of an English steampacket, and a British. consul who had been informed by a faithful servant of the king's presence, offered to secure the safety of the royal couple. The story of the king's voyage has a well-known comic side, but no one has ever laughed at Marie-Amélie.

With her arrival in England, and her installation at Claremont as Comtesse de Neuilly, the Queen of the French passes out of the changing page of history. Louis-Philippe never "conspired,” as it is called, when a dismissed sovereign of France tries to regain his former position, and he said the truest thing that has ever been said about that country, which has given us such striking historical repetitions since his time. "You may be right, my dear sir," he replied to a gentleman who was urging the chances of his grandson, "the Comte de Paris is possible, as the Comte de Chambord and the Bonapartes are possible; in France everything is possible, but nothing can last, because respect has ceased to exist." His faithful wife closed his eyes, content that he had died a Christian death. It was much to be thankful for, considering his education by Philippe Egalité, and by a woman who praised a certain abbé, in the presence of her pupils, because "he ridiculed revealed religion with so much good taste and moderation."

The long years of Marie-Amélie's widowhood were tranquil and honoured. A common fate removed the barriers between the parted relatives to some extent. When the daughter of Marie-Antoinette died, the Countess de Neuilly wrote letters of condolence to Henri de Bourbon, on the death of the Countess de Marnes. The Second Empire was flourishing then; it was flourishing also when MarieAmélie died, and people thought about the last Dauphiness of France, or about the Queen of the French, no more than they dreamt of Sedan, Wilhelmshöhe, and Chiselhurst.

John Keats.

A SKETCH.

"SEVERN-I-lift me up-I am dying-I shall die easy; don't be frightened-be firm and thank God it has come." The tongue which gave utterance to these words, as its whispered articulation fell upon the ear of the solitary watcher, ceased to move; and the hand which had traced so many lines, familiar in their poetic beauty to us all, laid aside its pen for ever.

So, quietly, and without a sign of rebellion, passed away from a life which at the last had become almost insufferable, a youthful poet of whose genius the world had not as yet become aware.

The son of humble but respectable parents, John Keats came into possession of none of those advantages which combine to make a scholarly poet; nor can it be said that the influence of refined culture can be traced in the productions of his pen. He never attained to the spotless-immaculacy of polished verse. He could always introduce us "To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy

Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,
Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves

And moonlight; ay, to all the mazy world

Of silvery enchantment;"

and his poems are characterised by a singular fertility of imagination, a striking vigour of style, a remarkable power of diction, a richness and warmth of expression, and even, at times, a finish which held out a promise of future excellence, never, alas! to be fulfilled.

It is curious to contrast the rich luxuriant warmth of Keats with the cold glitter of his contemporary Shelley. There is always in Keats's ideal an abundant mixture of the sensual; in Shelley the ideal is of the spirit, spiritual. The passion even of Shelley, though intense, was pure, without a tinge of the flesh; that of Keats was hot, full-blooded, and to a certain degree gross.

On the 29th day of October 1795, two months earlier than the natural expectation of his mother led her to prepare for him, the future poet made his advent into the world.

He gave early signs of an affectionate and yet resolute nature, for we find him, when only in his fifth year, possessing himself of an old sword and keeping vigilant watch for several hours on the outside of his mother's sick-room door, guarding her against invasion, prompted to the act by the doctor's instructions that she was not to be disturbed. A few years later we find him fighting sturdily with every boy

in Mr. Clarke's school at Enfield. Daring, spirited, ever ready to quarrel, he seemed to possess the material for a soldier rather than a man of letters. We can see him, his lustrous eyes aglow with passion and his intelligent face vivid with hate, as he resolutely attacks an usher who has dared to box his brother's ears; we can see him also, his bright eyes dimmed, his beautiful features clouded and sorrowful, as, on the occasion of his mother's death, he conceals himself in a passion of grief beneath his master's desk, rejecting all forms of comfort or consolation.

It would appear that for some length of time he seemed to make little or no progress in his studies, till on a sudden, as every one had relinquished the thought of his ever becoming celebrated for academical distinctions, his intellect sprang into life and activity, and, at a sacrifice of his play-time and half-holidays, he succeeded in carrying off all the first prizes in literature.

In his fifteenth year John Keats was apprenticed by his guardian to a surgeon residing at Edmonton, but we do not gather that his own wishes in the matter were ever consulted. While at Edmonton he did not disconnect himself from the family of his late preceptor, and found in his son Charles Cowden Clarke, who afterwards gained for himself distinction in the field of literature, a sympathising friend.

The first book which aroused in any appreciable way the latent spirit of poesy in the youthful student was Spenser's' Faërie Queene.' The splendour of this grand old poem captivated his sympathetic soul; and the spirit of the dead poet preserved in its pages stirred into life the dormant faculties of Keats's intellect. Chapman's renowned translation of Homer seems in a scarcely less degree to have possessed for him a profound fascination; later on he became enamoured of Shakespeare, and sat at the feet of the peerless dramatist with as great reverence as did Paul at Gamaliel's. An edition of Shakespeare with manuscript notes by Keats contains the following remarks on a passage in Troilus and Cressida': "Shakespeare's genius was an innate universality; wherefore he laid the achievements of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze; he could do easily men's utmost-his plan of tasks to come was not of this world. If what he proposed to do hereafter would not, in the idea, answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his conception of ultimates!"

When the apprenticeship of Keats had come to its natural termination he set his face towards the metropolis, and moving thither with some show of resolution to pursue the studies incident to his profession, he took up his abode in the Poultry, and diligently attended the hospital lectures, which could alone enable him to enter upon the practical part of his profession.

It was at this period that he first became acquainted with persons who had specially devoted their lives to the perilous fascination of

literature or art. Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Godwin, and Haydon -among the foremost men of their time-with other personages who were less illustrious, formed the enviable circle of his intimate acquaintances.

It must have been at this period also, and probably during a visit paid to Leigh Hunt, then residing at Hampstead, that Coleridge uttered the singular remark which was called to mind under such painful circumstances a few years later. It would seem that Keats and Leigh Hunt were taking an evening walk in one of the lanes near Highgate, remarkable at that time for their picturesque beauty. During their walk they encountered a man who in his generation was considered a literary giant-Coleridge. The two friends could scarcely have imagined that they stood face to face with a prophet. After shaking hands with Keats, Coleridge turned to Leigh Hunt and whispered: "There is death in that hand." How soon the strange yet familiar visitor, of whose presence the author of 'Ye Ancient Mariner' seemed to have been aware, fulfilled his silent mission, we all remember only too well.

We do not gather at what period Keats commenced to entertain a dislike to his calling, but we are told that "the uncongenial profession to which Keats had attached himself now became every day more repulsive"; and it is certain that, soon after he had embarked upon the practical part of his profession, his over-sensitive nature became so much impressed by the thought of the probable consequences of an unskilful operation, that he gathered sufficient determination to abandon his profession, and yield himself up to the uncertain allurements of the literary art. Thus we find him, as he crossed the threshold of manhood, with no fixed means of support, and only kept in spirit from day to day by that bright-eyed hope which he so pathetically petitioned in the stanzas commencing:

"When by my solitary hearth I sit

And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my mind's eye flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet hope! ethereal balm upon me shed,

And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head."

Yielding to the advice of Mr. Haydon, Keats quitted London and sojourned in the country, where he commenced to devote his time and talent to the production of those luxuriant poems which still illumine the brilliant pages of English literature.

From this period date that long series of letters which fill so many pages of his memoirs. The first place he visited was Carisbrooke (1817), dating from which place he says: "I find I cannot exist without poetry without eternal poetry. I began with a little, but habit has made me a leviathan. I had become all in a tremble from

not having written anything of late. The sonnet overleaf did me good; I slept the better last night for it. This morning I am nearly as bad again."

The last sentences, to those who imagine Keats not to have been a poet, will be a sufficient proof that he did not write from acquired habit, but from inspiration. It amounts almost to a labour in literary child-birth. We wish the myriad would-be poets of the present money-seeking age would read these sentences and digest them. It would be better for them, better for editors, better for publishers, better for the public, if they waited till they were "all in a tremble" to be delivered.

A passage in a letter dated from Margate in the same year reveals how distrustful Keats was of his own powers. "I have been in such a state of mind," he says, " as to read over my lines and to hate them. I am one that gathereth samphire-dreadful trade !' The cliff of poetry towers above me; yet when my brother reads some of Pope's Homer or Plutarch's Lives, they seem like music to mine!" And again: "There is no greater sin, after the seven deadly, than to flatter oneself into the idea of being a great poet."

In the same letter we come upon the discovery that he is not divorced from the commonest of all cares, money troubles, which he finds do not stimulate, like envy and detraction, but rather resemble "a nettle-leaf or two in your bed."

He maintains, however, his intercourse with nature undisturbed, and gains from her every-day aspect a loftier enjoyment than mere wealth can supply. He writes: "In truth the great elements we know of are no mean comforters. The open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown; the air is our robe of state, the earth is our throne, and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it―able, like Daniel's harp, to make such an one as you forget almost the tempest cares of life."

Emerson, more than twenty years later, writes in the same strain: "I see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions that an angel might share. . . . I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria, the sunset and moonrise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams."

The superiority of such fine spirits as these to the simple worldly cares by which so many of us are held in bondage, ought to excite in our minds a spirit of honourable emulation.