'It is a heart-touching face,' said Caper, as one morning, while hauling over his paintings, Rocjean brought the portrait to light which the cunning Shodd had so longed to possess for cupidity's sake.
'I should feel as if I had thrown Psyche to the Gnomes to be torn to pieces, if I had given such a face to Shodd. If I had sold it to him, I should have been degraded; for the women loved by man should be kept sacred in memory. She was a girl I knew in Prague, and, I think, with six or eight exceptions, the loveliest one I ever met. Some night, at sunset, I shall walk over the old bridge, and meet her as we parted; apropos of which meeting, I once wrote some words. Hand me that portfolio, will you? Thank you. Oh! yes; here they are. Now, read them, Caper; out with them!
ANEZKA OD PRAHA.
Years, weary years, since on the Moldau bridge,
By the five stars and cross of Nepomuk,
I kissed the scarlet sunset from her lips:
Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!
Dark waves beneath the bridge were running fast,
In haste to bathe the shining rocks, whence rose
Tier over tier, the gloaming domes and spires,
Turrets and minarets of the Holy City,
Its crown the Hradschin of Bohemia's kings.
O'er Wysscherad we saw the great stars shine;
We felt the night-wind on the rushing stream;
We drank the air as if 'twere Melnick wine,
And every draught whirled us still nearer Nebe:
Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!
Why ever gleam thy black eyes sadly on me?
Why ever rings thy sweet voice in my ear?
Why looks thy pale face from the drifting foam—
Dashed by the wild sea on this distant shore—
Or from the white clouds does it beckon me?
My own heart answers: On the Moldau bridge,
Anezka, we will meet to part no more.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON AMERICA.
Mr. Anthony Trollope's work entitled North-America has been republished in this country, and curiosity has at length been satisfied. Great as has been this curiosity among his friends, it can not, however, be said to have been wide-spread, inasmuch as up to the appearance of this book of travels, comparatively few were aware of the presence of Mr. Trollope in this country. When Charles Dickens visited America, our people testified their admiration of his homely genius by going mad, receiving him with frantic acclamations of delight, dining him, and suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him. Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough, surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features to his humorous eye. Two books—American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit—were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon, the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm, should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But, reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny extravaganza in Martin Chuzzlewit, which we can well afford to laugh at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found in the Notes so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write.