It is not a little singular that a British author should have supplied the only Arcadian resident of all this Arcadian region.  The Abbe Delille was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont.  But there is very little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the “Gardens” or the other verse of Delille.

Out of his own mouth (the little green-backed book, my boy) I will condemn him:—­

    “Ce n’est plus cette simple et rustique deesse
    Qui suit ses vieilles lois; c’est une enchanteresse
    Qui, la baguette en main, par des hardis travaux
    Fait naitre des aspects et des tresors nouveaux,
    Compose un sol plus riche et des races plus belles,
    Fertilise les monts, dompte les rocs rebelles.”

The baguette of Delille is no shepherd’s crook; it has more the fashion of a drumstick,—­baguette de tambour.

If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds of rain over Turner’s pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of that land of olives is only of love or war:  the vines, the olive-orchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing.  And if I read an old Sirvente of the Troubadours, beginning with a certain redolence of the fields, all this yields presently to knights, and steeds caparisoned,—­

    “Cavalliers ab cavals armatz.”

It is smooth reading, and is attributed to Bertrand de Born,[3] who lived in the time when even the lion-hearted King Richard turned his brawny fingers to the luting of a song.  Let us listen:—­

    “The beautiful spring delights me well,
      When flowers and leaves are growing;
    And it pleases my heart to hear the swell
      Of the birds’ sweet chorus flowing
        In the echoing wood;
    And I love to see, all scattered around,
    Pavilions and tents on the martial ground;
        And my spirit finds it good
    To see, on the level plains beyond,
    Gay knights and steeds caparisoned.”

[Footnote 3:  M. Raynouard, Poesies de Troubadours, II. 209.]

But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse, the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit our own times:—­

    “I tell you that nothing my soul can cheer,
      Or banqueting or reposing,
    Like the onset cry of ‘Charge them!’ rung
      From each side, as in battle closing;
        Where the horses neigh,
    And the call to ‘aid’ is echoing loud,
    And there, on the earth, the lowly and proud
        In the foss together lie,
    And yonder is piled the mingled heap
    Of the brave that scaled the trenches steep.