Autumn came at last, and the child was dying. It was morning, and she lay on her couch, with half the village around her. Her eyes were fixed upon the sky, and her arms were entwined about the lamb, who lay with its head in her bosom. The vicar knelt down, and prayed. He could not bear to lose the light of his household, though he knew that the angels were waiting for her on the threshold of heaven. When he arose she slept. Ages have passed since then, and she still sleeps; and will sleep till the heavens and the earth shall have passed away. The next day was the Sabbath, and they bore her to the little churchyard where her mother was buried. Their graves were dug side by side. All the children and maidens, dressed in white, followed her bier; and half the mothers in the village wept as if she had been their own child; and the Lamb, looking whiter than ever, walked in their midst. But when the services were over and the coffin lowered into the grave, it looked once at the far blue sky, and then turned away, and walked down the path which little Agnes had taken at her mother's funeral. No one dared to stop it; but all watched it with breathless attention until it disappeared among the grave-stones. Some of the boldest, and the vicar among the rest, followed to where it seemed to disappear, but could find no further traces. Nobody was ever able to account for it, but every body believed it to have been a miracle, manifested for their salvation, notwithstanding a wise philosopher who wrote a large folio to prove that it never existed at all. Its memory is still preserved with veneration in that country, and from that day to this, the people have continued godly and pious.
—And so ends the story of the White Lamb.
M. Romieu, an ultramontane writer, quoted with much parade by the Tablet, says of France:—"The most exact picture of our epoch is drawn in the phrase, 'that not a woman is brought to bed in France who does not give birth to a Socialist.'" On this the Nation remarks:—"In what a dissolute condition la jeune France, with all its bibs and tuckers, must certainly be! Only imagine Madame de Montalembert brought to bed of twin Phalansteriens! The lady of M. Jules Gondou, redacteur de l'Univers, of a horrid little Fourierist! The nursery of M. de Falloux in red pinafores, squalling out Soc.-de-moc. canticles! Never before such danger in swaddling clothes!"
Authors and Books.
A curious work, which will not be devoid of interest to the historian or belles-lettres antiquary, has recently been published at Leipzig, under the title of Die Alexandersage bei den Orientalern (or the Legend of Alexander as it exists in the East), by Dr. Frederick Spiegel. With the exception of King Arthur, no personage plays a more extended rôle in the romantic European legends of the middle ages, than Alexander; but our readers may not be generally aware that the feats of this great conqueror are still perpetuated under a thousand strange forms even on the remote East, generally under the name of Iskander. "No historic material has ever been more widely extended than this history of Alexander, and there are even yet races in the interior of Central Asia who declare themselves directly descended from him;"—precisely, no doubt, as certain very respectable families extant at the present day in Hungary and Italy prove themselves lineal descendants of Julius Cæsar, Æneas, and even Noah. "In the earliest times, even in the very scene of his exploits, Alexander became a hero of legend-like and exaggerated histories, a collection of which, bearing the name of Pseudo-Callisthenes, as editor, is yet preserved; and from this came the innumerable Alexanderine romances of the middle ages, which at length totally obscured the true accounts of the conqueror. In the East, also, and particularly in Persia, he has been made the subject of many great epic poems. The relation existing between all these legends, which have sprung up at such different times, and under such extremely varied circumstances, is an interesting problem for the literary historian, and the book we have mentioned is valuable, since in it every thing relating to the Persian portion thereof, is given in full." From the index, an admirable analysis of its contents, and a somewhat extended abridgment, which we have perused, we may assert that few works more curiously interesting have for a long time been published.
Of great interest to antiquaries and positive utility to artists, is the Trachten des Christlichen Mittelalters (or Dresses of the Christian Middle Age), by J. Von Hofner. As they are all taken from contemporary works of art, they may be relied on for correctness. The part last published consists of the second division, embracing guises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Among others, the reader may find Armour of the sixteenth century, the Dress of a lady of rank in the middle of the same century, a French dress of the fifteenth century, and a tournament helmet of the same period. Such books serve better than any reading to impress on the minds of the young correct ideas of past manners and times.