The announcement of his presence ran through the garden in a moment, the dances stopped, the music ceased, and the crowd thronged toward the point where the still genial and lovely old man was standing.  At once there rose from all lips the cry of Vive Beranger! which was quickly followed by that of Vive la Republique! The poet whose diffidence is excessive, could not answer a word, but only smiled and blushed his thanks at this enthusiastic reception.  The acclamations continuing, an agent of the police invited him to withdraw, lest his presence might occasion disorder.  The illustrious songwriter at once obeyed; by a singular coincidence the door through which he went out opened upon the place where Marshal Ney was shot.  If he were now in the vein of writing, what a stirring lyric all these circumstances might suggest.

* * * * *

AUDUBON AND WASHINGTON IRVING—­THE PLAGUE OF RAILROADS.—­The voyager up the Hudson will involuntarily anathematize the invention of the rail, when he sees how much of the most romantic beauty has been defaced or destroyed by that tyranny which, disregarding all private desire and justice, has filled up bays, and cut off promontories, and leveled heights, to make way for the intrusive and noisy car.  But the effects of these so-called “improvements,” upon the romantic in nature will be forgotten if he considers the injury and wrong they cause to persons, and particularly to those whose genius has contributed more to human happiness than all the inventions in oeconomical art.

The Nestor of our naturalists, and in his field, the greatest as well as the oldest of our artists, AUDUBON, with the comparatively slight gains of a long life of devotion to science, and of triumphs which had made him world-renowned, purchased on the banks of the river, not far from the city, a little estate which it was the joy as well as the care of his closing years to adorn with everything that a taste so peculiarly and variously schooled could suggest.  He had made it a pleasing gate-way to the unknown world, with beautiful walks leading down to the river whose depth and calmness and solemn grandeur symboled the waves through which he should pass to the reward of a life of such toil and enviable glory.  He had promise of an evening worthy of his meridian—­when the surveyors and engineers, with their charter-privileges, invaded his retreat, built a road through his garden, destroyed forever his repose, and—­the melancholy truth is known—­made of his mind a ruin.

WASHINGTON IRVING—­now sixty-seven years of age—­had found a resting-place at Wolfert’s Roost, close by the scenes which lie in the immortal beauty that radiates from his pages, and when he thought that in this Tusculum he was safe from all annoying, free to enjoy the quietness and ease he had earned from the world, the same vandals laid the track through his grounds, not only destroying all their beauty