* * * * * *
I have outlived all that trouble about the picture of "Enid," and many troubles beside; I have kissed my mother's dear face in her coffin. I have won success, and I have won gold; and neither seem to me quite the boons some hold them to be.
Hessie's early grief passed away like a spring shower. She is now a happy wife; and I have at this moment by my side a little gold-haired fairy thing, her child. My dear sister's happiness is secured; her boat of life is safe at anchor. Edward Vance's shadow only crossed her path and passed away. She never met him since the old days; I but once. His career has strangely disappointed his friends.
For me, my life is calm and contented. I think the healthy-spirited always make for themselves happiness out of whatever materials may be around them; and I find rich un-wrought treasure on every side, whithersoever I turn my eyes. My sister's glad smile is a blessing on my life; and one rare joy is the bright-faced little lisper at my side, who peers over my shoulder with spiritual eyes, and asks mysterious questions about my work. And, standing always by my side like an angel, bearing the wand of power and the wings of peace, I have my friend, my beautiful art. She fills my days with purpose and my nights with sweet rest and dreams. She places in my hands the means of doing good to others. While illumining my upward path, she seems to beckon me higher and yet higher. Looking ever in her dear eyes, I bless God for the abundance of his gifts; and I muse serenely on the time when she, the interpreter of the ideal here on earth, will conduct me to the gates of eternal beauty.
From Once a Week.
IMPERIAL AND ROYAL AUTHORS.
BY S. BARING GOULD.
Is the present Emperor of the French aware that in publishing his Vie de César, he is treading a beaten path? that his predecessors on the French throne have, from a remote age, sought to unite the fame of authorship with the glory of regal position? and is he aware of the fact, that their efforts in this quarter have not unfrequently been accounted dead failures? Julius Caesar has already been handled by one of them, and with poor success, for Louis XIV., at the age of sixteen, produced a translation of the first book of the Commentaries of Caesar, under the title Guerre des Suisses, traduite dupremier livre des Commentaires de Jules César, par Louis XI V., Dieu-Donné, roi de France et de Navarre. This work, consisting of eighteen pages, was printed at the royal press in folio, 1651.
Louis XIV., however, was not the first French monarch to try his hand upon Julius Caesar; he had been preceded by Henry IV., who translated the whole work, and did not give it up after the first book. Will the present Vie de César reach a second volume? and, if it does, will it extend to a fourth? Those who know best the occupations of the imperial writer, say that it might be rash to feel sure beyond the first volume, or to calculate on more than a second. Let us see whether there is much novelty in the circumstance of a monarch becoming an author. We shall only look at the emperors of Rome and the kings of France. We know well enough that our own Alfred translated Boethius, Orosius, and Bede, and that Henry VIII. won the title of "Defender of the Faith" by his literary tilt with Luther; and that James I. wrote against tobacco; and we are not disposed to revive the dispute about the Eikon Basilike.
Let us then turn to the Roman emperors after Caesar, who was an author himself, or neither Henry IV., nor Louis XIV., nor Louis Napoleon, would have had much to say about him.