The Northern Muse.

KING OLAF was sad in his castle-home,
As he wander'd to and fro,

And sad on his ear fell the Norway foam
As it dash'd on the rocks below.

All sadly he look'd from the casement tall,
When he heard a soft sound ring-
A sound from without the castle-wall,
Like the thrill of a gold harp-string.

As the ship's mast springs again upright
While the tempest gathers breath,
So King Olaf felt his soul grow light,
And rise from the waves of death.

The harp-string trill'd forth yet once more,
A glory suddenly flew

O'er sea and sky and the mountains hoar,
And the green corn greener grew.

"Who stands without," King Olaf cried,
"And strikes the gold harp-string?"
""Tis a stranger maiden," a page replied,
"A maiden as fair as Spring.

"All lately she came, none know from where, In a swift ship o'er the sea;

And the strains she sings sound soft and rare, Like the strains of a far countree.

"She has sung by village and sung by town, And eke by the greenwood-side;

And beside the sea, when the sun goes down,

She oft sings at eventide.

"Then the fisher-boy leans from out his boat, And the fish within the sea

Draw near to her feet, and motionless float,
Entranced by her melody.

Like silver gleam'd her robe's white fold,

Green cinctur'd at the waist, And waving wings of feathery gold Her angel shoulders grac'd

A smile of love-like rapture fled
Through Olaf's darken'd brain;
He blessed the saints, and bent his head,
And then look'd up again.

A moment yet, in lustrous glow,
She stood before him there,
Then faded slow, and yet more slow,

Into the viewless air.

The russet robe, the clouted shoes,
They lay upon the floor,

The vesture which the Northern Muse
In her disguisement wore.

But echoes of her sweet notes yet
By gentle hearts are heard,

In concert with the rivulet

And with the woodland bird.

And still about old castle-wall,
Or ivied Gothic shrine,
She murmurs in the waterfall,
Or sighs beneath the pine.

And though within the noisy street
She doth unheeded go,

And in the roar of engines fleet

Her voice sounds faint and low;

Yet not the less her notes shall rise
Above the anvil's chime,

And there shall swell into the skies

Fit pæan for our time.

WILLIAM STIGANT.

The Father of the French Press.

Ir is not easy to discover why Frenchmen crowd about the little closelypacked Boulevard watch-boxes, where women in snowy caps deal in evening journals. For, take up one of these gray little papers, and discover the interest in it if you can. It includes scraps of news, it is true; lively criticisms on opera or drama; the latest quotations of the Bourse; divers facts; and opinions on medicaments and cheap slop clothes, paid by the line. There is a slice of a highly-coloured romance in it, in which a nettle is called a nettle, and sometimes a little more. It comprehends, it may be, a foreign letter, which flirts about matters political, but touches them never.

"And is this a newspaper," an Englishman asks-" this soulless, timid, uninformed square of tea-paper?" Even so; it is a journal of the Empire, costing three-halfpence, and sold by thousands from the site of the Bastille to the Arc de Triomphe. It is read eagerly by gentlemen wearing the after-dinner toothpick gracefully dangling from the mouth. The concierge has an eager glance at it before he carries it to monsieur on the fourth floor. The café waiter unwinds it from a stick at his first leisure moment, and becomes absorbed in its tittle-tattle. Ladies who have dined in Véry's best salon, or who have enjoyed Barrière hospitality by the heights of Montmartre, thank their bearded husbands for it, while the Cognac is burning bluely upon the surface of the coffee. In crémeries, where students with empty pockets congregate; in pewtercountered wine-shops, where the patois of Brittany and of Marseilles pleasantly commingle; in black wood-sheds, where the Auvergnat works and screeches; from garret to porter's hole, from the Quartier d'Antin to the Montagne Ste. Genevieve, is this paper, call it Patrie or Presse, thumbed and devoured. It is by turns lively and grandiose. It gives to a fracas in the street the dignity of an historical event; but, then, on historical events proper it is, as a rule, silent. You may learn "the reason why" at a certain bureau in the Rue Bellechasse. Let us not sigh and complain, and bewail the lot of our French brothers, or that there is an evil eye shadowed by a cocked-hat ever glancing over the shoulder of the journalist. For who so gay as this same journalist, save his readers? It is the merriest dance in fetters we can call to mind. The jingle of the iron is sweet music, to which absinthe may be pleasantly sipped. The historian of this same journal, and of all French journals from Renaudot's time down to this hour, calmly remarks that fetters are the proper accoutrements of the French journalist. Absolute liberty is incompatible with his prosperity. He sings well only in a cage. Open his door, and he chirrups and twitters in high regions, until he maddens all who hear his notes without method or harmony.