VOL. V.

DEATH UPON THE MOUNTAINS

BEAR him downward; very still he lies,
And the sheeted face is pale. We found him
Yonder with his feet set to the skies,

And the rocks around him.

Where he trod, no mortal foot before

E'er had trodden. To the unknown summit,
He, across the snow's eternal floor,

Strode, to overcome it.

And he won the topmost rock; and there

Found we when days passed, a ghastly burden.
Others may tell how the peaks were fair;
Death his only guerdon.

Not for him the sun's departing pride,

Though the mighty mountain made surrender
Of her virgin heights. The victor died.
Ere the sunset splendour.

There is one at home perchance will weep;

Eyes that looked soft sorrow when they parted;
When a dream of death invades her sleep,
Lone and broken-hearted.

So we bear him downward, pacing slow,

Tears fast falling from the heart's pure fountains: Requiescat carve we mid the snow

"Death upon the mountains.”

H. SAVILE CLARKE.

NN

FRENCH ETIQUETTE

IT is the fashion with some who would pass as examples of original genius or unsophisticated good-nature to speak slightingly of that unwritten code of society known as the rules of étiquette. Doubtless natural politeness taught by no rule is delightful enough. Politeness has been defined to be benevolence in small things; and some persons may have as strong a genius in this way as the calculators and arithmeticians who have never been to school, and will tell you without taking breath what is the cost of fifty million pounds of sugar at sevenpence three farthings a pound. But is benevolence so universal a quality that society can wisely allow each individual to be left to his inspirations? Hypocrisy has been called the homage vice renders to virtue; affect a virtue if you have it not. And the rules of politeness, known as étiquette, exact from each individual a certain deference to the feelings of others which is in its way a homage to humanity. Of such rules it may be said as Labruyère says of the commonplace phrases of compliment current in his own time:

"Il y a un certain nombre de phrases toutes faites que l'on prend comme dans un magasin, et dont l'on se sert pour se féliciter les uns les autres sur les événements. Bien qu'elles se disent souvent sans affection et qu'elles soient reçues sans reconnaissance, il n'est pas permis avec cela de les omettre, parce que du moins elles sont l'image de ce qu'il y au monde de meilleur, qui est l'amitié, et que les hommes, ne pouvant guère compter les uns sur les autres pour la réalité, semblent être convenus entre eux de se contenter des apparences."

And if the rules of étiquette be carefully considered they will be found for the most part devised with this view, to enforce on members of society an appearance at least of humanity and benevolence; not but that with too many on whom society has enforced this external polish the inner nature remains as uncivilised as in the age of the stoneperiod; you may scrape off the varnish of civility with a five-franc piece and find the Lacustrian savage underneath. In the medieval times, when everybody paid toll at the town-gate for all commodities and instruments of handicraft which they brought into the walls, the jongleur used to arrive before the city-warders with his rebeck and his ape; and in return for a few scrapes on his fiddle, and a few gambols from his ape before the guard, the latter-in their particoloured raiment, with helmet on their heads and cuirass on their shoulders - would condescend to give the poor fellow a good-humoured laugh and word, and let him go through scot-free. The jongleurs have increased in

number and in seriousness of occupation since then, but they have lost their privilege of going scot-free on any occasion. Nevertheless, the expression "payer en monnaie de singe" still exists, and the manner of payment too, though practised by less-meritorious members of society than our old friend the jongleur. Our Lacustrian people with the polished outsides, for example, contrive to get through life very comfortably by conformity to certain exigences of society; they pay their debt to humanity "en monnaie de singe."

The French have always had the reputation of being the most advanced nation in the world in matters of politeness, and we know many who persist in saying that this excellence consists "en payant en monnaie de singe" only; but such is not the opinion of the writer. It is true, however, that elderly people among the French themselves, with a flavour of the old régime still clinging about them, lament the decay of polite usages, and pronounce for a general décadence of all things in these days of Femmes à la barbe-Rien n'est sacré pour un sapeur— Barbes-bleus, and Grandes duchesses. But such complaints have always existed. The

style of lamentation must have existed ever since the days of Methuselah, after which human nature grew so corrupt that it could no longer support nine hundred and sixty-nine years of existence. Nevertheless, let us not have the conceit to believe such a lamentation can have no truth in any case.

Dismissing, then, the question of the relative politeness of the French of this and of past generations, we may state our belief that no people ever regulated existence and the terms of intercourse of society so conveniently as the French; and if the chief aim of life should be to extract out of it the greatest amount of pleasure and self-satisfaction, we conceive that our neighbours have never been surpassed in the success with which they have organised all social arrangements. As for politics, we leave those to politicians; but the arrangements of family life, social life, the ways of establishing oneself in life, and of gathering generally as many of the roses of existence as possible without the thorns, are all planned and observed with such regularity and pre-. cision that the greatest-happiness-of-the-greatest-number principle is there triumphantly developed. With us, life, compared with life in France, is a hurry-scurry, a hurly-burly, a sort of Donnybrook Fair, in fact; and we have always thought the difference of existence in the two countries was well characterised by the crowds who wait outside the doors of the theatres in the respective countries. Observe the French crowd. It is true the sergent de ville is there, and that the claimants for admission are parqué between ingeniously-contrived lines of railing; but the office of the sergent de ville is a mere sinecure on such occasions, and there is never any pressure of any kind on the railings or on the