CHIEFLY UPON THE THEME OF A YOUNG MAID’S IMAGININGS

That Mausoleum at Dreux may touch to lift us.  History, pleads for the pride of the great discrowned Family giving her illumination there.  The pride is reverently postured, the princely mourning-cloak it wears becomingly braided at the hem with fair designs of our mortal humility in the presence of the vanquisher; against whom, acknowledgeing a visible conquest of the dust, it sustains a placid contention in coloured glass and marbles.

Mademoiselle de Seilles, a fervid Orleanist, was thanked for having advised the curvature of the route homeward to visit ’the spot of so impressive a monument’:  as it, was phrased by the Rev. Septimus Barmby; whose exposition to Nesta of the beautiful stained-glass pictures of incidents in the life of the crusading St. Louis, was toned to be likewise impressive:—­Colney Durance not being at hand to bewail the pathos of his exhaustless ‘whacking of the platitudes’; which still retain their tender parts, but cry unheard when there is no cynic near.  Mr. Barmby laid-on solemnly.

Professional devoutness is deemed more righteous on such occasions than poetic fire.  It robes us in the cloak of the place, as at a funeral.  Generally, Mr. Barmby found, and justly, that it is in superior estimation among his countrymen of all classes.  They are shown by example how to look, think, speak; what to do.  Poets are disturbing; they cannot be comfortably imitated, they are unsafe, not certainly the metal, unless you have Laureates, entitled to speak by their pay and decorations; and these are but one at a time-and a quotation may remind us of a parody, to convulse the sacred dome!  Established plain prose officials do better for our English.  The audience moved round with heads of undertakers.

Victor called to recollection Fenellan’s ‘Rev. Glendoveer’ while Mr. Barmby pursued his discourse, uninterrupted by tripping wags.  And those who have schemes, as well as those who are startled by the criticism in laughter to discover that they have cause for shunning it, rejoice when wits are absent.  Mr. Sowerby and Nesta interchanged a comment on Mr. Barmby’s remarks:  The Fate of Princes!  The Paths of Glory!  St. Louis was a very distant Roman Catholic monarch; and the young gentleman of Evangelical education could admire him as a Crusader.  St. Louis was for Nesta a figure in the rich hues of royal Saintship softened to homeliness by tears.  She doated on a royalty crowned with the Saint’s halo, that swam down to us to lift us through holy human showers.  She listened to Mr. Barmby, hearing few sentences, lending his eloquence all she felt:  he rolled forth notes of a minster organ, accordant with the devotional service she was holding mutely.  Mademoiselle upon St. Louis:  ’Worthy to be named King of Kings!’ swept her to a fount of thoughts, where the thoughts are not yet shaped, are yet in the breast of the mother emotions.