The Portland daily press., 1878-11-23

~AS SoSA 0hOAo q SOOQ LOT guessing
Who guesses next?
Does not Mr.. Black in his latest story.
Macleod OF Dare, take the fatal step? Those
closing chapters so overdo passion that we are
glad to find relief in smile at the grotesque
| catastrophe. For what has Mr.. Black done but
ldealize the ridiculous young man, familiar to
our western country, nor entirely unknown
In the East, who shoots bis sweetheart be-
cause she dscards him, and then kills him
sell? "Wil you marry me ?" he asks, 'sNop,
she says. Then comes the crack of the re.
volver. Macleod does the business in roman
tic fashion, but it is the same old sad busi.
mes. Is the finale dramatic or melodramat-
ic?
The Western is rather pretentious
magazine published at st. Louis, which has
for one contributor a writer who, if he does
not speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak.
is on the most familiar terms with modern
tongues. Not content with translatng poems
from many languages he attempts original
poems in French-and they are original. for
certainly the literature of France has nothing
like them. His latest is entitled 'Tou.
jours," aud closes in this Surprising fashion:
Tes yeur ont an fen
Mer0elLeuc meJodieLr,
Qui murmure a mon ceur Ioujours Toujours,
Qus natTnauTe q mon c0eur IOajoars.
A meodous fire in ones eyes that murmurs
Touiours is indeed n.erueilleur.
The latest issue of the Western has one
paper OF considerable merit, a lust and
sympathetic study of Heine, charmingly writ.
ten and full of matter interesting if not new.
The prose translatons, when attempted. are
splrltedly done into excellent English, while
the flavor OF the original is often preserved.
and the poetic versions are quite as good as
those furnished to Blackwood by Theodore
Martin and maliciously copied into Ameri-
can newspapers.
The author, however, in his desire to make
picturesque sketch, commits one amusing
bunder. He pictures Heine as a boy-"a
black-eyed, black-locked, elf-like little Jew of
unconquerable vivacity;' and few pages
further on quotes Theophie Gauter's de-
scription of Heine at thirty-fve: "To look at
his lofty white forehead, pure as a marble
tablet and overhung by abundant masses of
blonde hair, one would hava said he was
German Apollo. His blue eyes sparkled
with inspiration" &c. Hair can be bleached.
as our bellies know, but how was the color of
the eyes changed?
The Western writer quotes some of the
memorable sentences that fell from the bitter
est tongue that ever spoke blasphemous
'Dieu me pGrdonnerG; c'est son metier,"
when asked on his h-bed if he was recon-
ciled with God; his description of the Eng
lish and England, "The most repusive set Of
people whom God in His anger ever created.
What repnlsive people! What an unexhil-
arating country! A country which the
ocean would long ago have gulped down if it
had not been afraid of being horribly sick at
the stomach; "the Jewish abhorrence of
the symbol OF Jewish oppression breaking
out in, 81 will be Japanese they hate
nothing so much as the cross" There
are others in gentler vein, as this: Chow
old are you?" says a parsonage to him
in one of his works. "Signora, I was
born on the morning of New Years day,
1900" II have always told you," said the
Marchese, 'that he was one of the first men
of the century," Or this, written after his
last visit to the Louvre, few days before he
took to his ''mattress-grave' "Only with
pain could drag myself to the Louvre, and
was nearly exhausted when I entered the
lofty hall where the blessed goddess of beauty,
our dear Lady of Milo, stands on her pedes-
taL at her feet lay long time, and
wept so passionately that stone must have
had compassion on me. Therefore the god
dess looked down pityingly upon me, yet at
the same time inconsolably, as though she
would say, See you not that have no arms,
and that therefore can give you no help?,
-Heine is the most quotable of authors,
and the Western man might have doubled
the length of his article without decreasing
| its interest. These, for example will bear
many repetitions: 81 was reading this book,
and fell asleep. I dreamed that 1 went on
with the reading, and three times 1 was
walked up by its tediousness." 81 have not
read 'Auffenburg.' 1t seems to me it must
be good deal like 'D'Arincourt,' which al
| so I have not read.'
There is numbered somewhere in the GEN.
turied Leisure Hour Series a volume made up
OF excerpts from Hene's works. Reading it
| is as good as going to see the fireworks.
| Some sentences in it come to Yorick's mem.
| ory: SIT frequently occurs that the prettiest
| maidens find it most difficult to obtain hus-
bands. 1t was thus in ancient days, too, for
it is well known that the three Graces re-
mained old maids" 'Literary history is the
| great morgue where all seek the dead ones
whom they loveor to whom they are related"
cary Scheffer's Gretchen is indeed Goethe's
| Gretchen, but she has read all of Friedrich
Schiller" "Are we not, all of us, crusaders
who, after all our hard-fOught battles, but
conquer grave?' "The same fact that
Boccacco offers in support of religion, might
be given in behalf of republic: 1T exists
in spite of its Minister'S "When the
Lord feels ennui, he opens one of the win
dows of Heaven and takes look at the Pa
risian Boulevards." SIN these times we
fight for ideas, and newspapers are our for
tresses." "Apes look down on men as de-
generate specimens of their own race, just as
the Hollanders regard the German language
as corruption OF the Dutch"
-Thers was accused by Republican writer's
OF doing more than any other man to revive
the Napoleonic legend in France. But 1t
may be doubtful if the brilliant pages of "The
| Copsulata and Eo,n;ra,, p,ovad mon liEa tho