Los Angeles daily herald., 1874-04-05
Shut your eyes and dream over the
next picture! Is it Provence or is
it "California del Sur?u

Shut your eyes and dream over the
next picture! Is it Provence" or is
it california del SURF"
"Cornice-like hung in air the narrow ledge,
The dark pines thronged beneath but, from
the edge
One saw the sun-touched faces of the trees
Laugh to the laughter of the southern seas.
White on the beach cleaned Cassis; far away
Sparkled Toulon, and the blue Gardiole lay"
"Calendau," by M. Frederic Mistral,
this is the poem. A few years ago
came to the literary world, as CLEAN
Of warm sunshine, his first poem,
"Mireio." Written in the soft Pro-
vencial dialect, the tongue of the old
trouueres, speech that borrowed the
music of the rills until its liquid ac-
cents became to the harsher French of
the northern provinces, what the Ionic
Greek of Homer, of Herodotus, was to
the less musical speech of Attica, the
poem was a delicious picture of the
life, half Gypsy, half Arcadian, of a
people by whose homes the great cur
rents of the ever advancing world-tide
had swept, and had changed them not.
1t was a picture of love, artless, child
like, such as one might dream of in
Eden, or in the olden days when the
fair earth was young. LOngfellow has
painted somewhat such life, some
what such a love, in "Evangeline,"
'In the Acadian land, on the shores of the
Basin of Minas."
"Mireio' was the poem of an idyllic
life which the world had forgotten;
"Calendau," framed in the half faded
histories of hundred years ago, is a
poem of sylvan love, where one looks
around half expecting to see the wood
sprites step out from the shaggy
trunks of the trees, or to stumble upon
some shady dell where, upon the green
sward, amid the daisies, the fauns and
satyrs are still dancing to the merry
piping of Pan. Very different are
these two poems, in their joyous out
door life, from the morbid introspec-
ton which so sadly Expresses us in
the gloomier northern mind. 1t is like
passing from the light, the sunshine,
the mere joy of being, of the old
Greek days, to the cloisters, the cells,
the austerities Of the middle ages.
All! the chill and the darkness weigh
one down. 1t is healthier to 60 afield
and listen to the birds. This picture
is better:-
"Afar over the sage-fields hummed the bees,
tluttered the birds about the sumac trees.
How lucid was the air of that sweet day
How fair upon the slopes the shadows lay!
The ranged and pillared rocks seemed to
upbear
Levels of green land, like some altar-stair."
Turn to the "reviewsn in the Atlan-
tic! Read the analysis of John Stuart
Mills Autobiography! There you may
see what is meant by the phrase "the
gloomy northern mind" 1t is a NOR
bid, hideous, self vivisection, - the
grim joy of the fiagellant over the
bloody cords that cut his quivering
h,-the strange delight of the devo-
tee, whose every nerve cries out in
torture at the cruel hook which i'm
pales him.
Scribner's opens with stirring bal
lad of the Bunker Hill days, "Mary
Buffers Ride" "The Great South"
by Edward King, is another INSTALL
ment of the illustrated series, which
has been for months back so attractive
feature of the Magazine. Among
the illustrations so literally scattered
through the article the "View near
Salem,' and the "Long Reach" in the
sleepy Roanoke valley, are scenes
of quiet beauty not easily to be for
gotten. "Norfolk," with her vessels,
and her rambling wharves, sits by the
quiet waters of her broad bay gently
dreaming of the commerce to come
with the coming of the days,-of the
white-winged barks and the trailing
smoke of the long, black-hulled
steamers, and of the men "'who go
down to the sea in ships. "The Mys-
FERROUS Island" by Jules Verne, is the
title of one of those fantastic extrava-
ganzas which have of late seemed to
meet some want, some new taste in
the reading public. Mustard" and
Worcestershire" are very good in
their way, but only as condiments, to
be sparingly used if we would avoid
dyspeptic stomach. "John Hay" is a
short biographical sketch of the now
noted author of Little Brooches" and
that other horrible monstrosity, "The
Mystery of Gilgal." The true poetical
beauty of his prose "Castilian Days"
the world hardly has noticed. The
warty excrescence upon the leaf is to
many more slightly than the tinted
flower dropping beside it.
Idly we walk our needless feet
Crushing TO earth the daisies sweet
We see them not, we only see
The poison weeds, that ever be
Rank with the flaming Summer heat.
WEEKLY HERALD for sale in wrap
DerS with hostage Stamns