The Portland daily press., 1879-11-29
Excerpts.
From the December Magazines.
NApOLEON'S PARENTS.

annals of Ajaccio Carlo Bonaparte was
poor gentleman of excellent breeding and char
acter, who married in his youth young and
romantic girl named Letizia Ramolino, who
| followed him in his campaigns mp to the mo-
ment of the birth of Napoleon. 1t is impossi-
BILE to say how much the history of Europe
| owes to the high heart and indomitable spirit
| of this sodierly woman She never relin-
quished her authority in her family. When
! all her children were prime es and potentates
| she was still the severe stern Madame Mere.
| The beauty AMI grace of Josephine Beauhar-
nais never conquered her; the sweet Tyrolese
prettiness of Maria Louisa won from her only
sort of contemptuous indulgence. When her
mighty son ruled the continent, she was the
only human being whose chidings he regarded
or endured. She was faithful in her rebukes
while the sun shone, and when calamity came,
her undaunted spirit was still true and devoted
| to the fallen. Her provincial habit of economy
stood her in good stead in her vigorous old age;
| she was rich when the Empire passed away,
| and her grandchildren needed her aid. 1t
| must have been from her that Napoleon took
his extraordinary character, for Carlo Bona
| parte though brave soldier and an ardent
| patriot in his youth was of an easy and genial
! temper inclined to take the world as he found
| it, and not to insist too much on having 1t go
| in his especial way. After the cause of Corsi-
can liberty was lost by the succe IS of the French
| arms, he accepted the situation without regret,
| and becoming intimate with the conquerors, ne
| placed as many of his family as possible on the
| French pension list. His sons Napoleon and
| Louis We're given scholarships at Brlenne ana
| at Autun, and his eldest daughter, Elise, en-
| tered the royal institution at st. Cyr. While
| yet in the prime of life, he died of the same
deadly disease which was to finish Napoeon's
| days at St. Helena; and the heroic mother, her
| responsibilities becoming still heavier by this
blow, lived for eight years longer amid the con-
| fusion and civil tumult which had become
| chronic in Corsica, and then, after the capture
| of the island by the English in 1898, she made
her escape with her children to Marseiles,
where she lived several years in great penury
-Harper's Magazine.
NATURE AND THE POETS.
The poetic Interpretation of nature, which
has come to be a convenient phrase, and about
which the Oxford professor of poetry has writ
ten book, is, of course, myth, or is to be
read the other way. 1t is the soul the poet in
terprets, not nature There is nothing in na-
ture but what the beholder supplies. Does the
| sculptor interpret the marble or his own ideal?
Is the music in the instrument, or in the soul
of the performer? Nature is dead clod until
| you have breathed upon it with your genius.
You commune with your own soul, not with
woods and W tiers; they furnish the conditions,
and are what you make them. Did Shelley in
! terpret the song of the sky-lark, or Keats that
| of the nightingale? They interpreted their
own wild yearning hearts. The trick OF the
! poet is always to idealize Hatare-to see it sub
| jectively. You cannot find what the poet finds
in the woods until you take the poets heart to
| the woods. He sees nature through a colored
| glass, sees it truthfully, but with an indescrib-
| able charm added, the aureole of the spirit. A
tree a cloud, bird, a sunset, have no hidden
meaning that the art of the poet is to unlock
for u.s. Every poet shall interpret them differ
emily, and interpret them rightly, because the
soul is infinite. Millions nightingale is not
| Coleridge's; Burnss daisy is not Wordsworth's s.
| Emerson's humble-bee is not another's; nor
does Turner see in nature what Tintoretto
does nor Veronese what Correggio does. Ma
ture is all things to all men.-John Burroughs,
in Scribner
WRITING FOR CHARITY FAIR JOURNALS.
The autumn tints and the refrain Of the PEN
sive postal card admonish me that the season
of charity fairs is coming Each fair will have
| its little daily newspaper, edited and printed
on the premises, and all men and women who
earn their bread and putter by scribbling will
be asked to write something for that paper
not for pay, but as a contribution to the good
the careless esteem, if not the contempt, in
which the literary trade is held than the fact
that the invention of that impudent idea as
tonished nobody, and the added fact that it did
not hide itself and die, but continues to live
and flourish to this day.
The charity-fair people would not think of ask
ing Mr.. Vanderbilt to give them a railroad; they
would not think of asking tile Cunarders to
give them ship; but they have no delicacy
about asking me to give a sketch,-wnereas
| those other parties could easier spare a rail-
| road or ship than l could spare the twenty
| five dollars worth of bread and butter which
my sketch represents Ii the reader is a chari-
| ty-fair person, he is receiving a new light at
this moment;-it it never occurred to him before
that mere piece of manuscript was actually
| money in disguise; it never occurred to him
that in asking a twenty-ive-dollar author to
contribute an article he was asking him to
| give sum atrociOuSly out of proportion TO his
| means. In my opinion, the professional scribe
who gives an article to charity-fair journal
| is goose. For one or two reasons: one is be-
| cause he is contributing from a hundred to a
| thousand times more according to his means)
| than anybody else ever confers on those OBJ
iects; another is that he has no right to rob his
| family in such an eXtravagant way; anu u
third because sending his article to a charity
fair journal is barring it against adding to his
| reputaton,-for that sort OF journal is only a
| literary hearse. He would do much better to
| contribute twenty-five dollars in money, and
sell his stuff to a magazine; it would be seen,
| then, and run a chance of advancing him in
| the public estimation. l always answer chari-
| ty-journal requests according to my purse and
my sympathies. Sometimes l send twenty
five cents, at times even dollar, when L am
| strongly stirred; but reserve my manuscript
for the living press. To borrow poor Sanchos
words, 81 may not be genius, but trust God
| j am not an asS'-Atlantlc.
A SEPTEMBER sAUNTER.
1t is pity that "the world' has to come
home from the country by the beginning OF
September, because September in the country
is one of the most beautiful of months. On the
other hand, as the larger number of people
live in the country, and are familiar with the
changing splendor of the year, it is amusing to
think that ''the world" or the small number
of denizens of the city who go to the seaside or
the hills for few weeks in the Summer sup
pose that the country is rather deserted when
they return to streets and dark parlors again.
They are fortunate who, lingering while the
others go, can see in September and October
half the truth of Bryants line,
'with what glory comes and goes the Year,
In September the caprcious heats are passed.
There is maturity and moderation in the tenn
perature which assures the saunterer against
gusts and whirlwinds, and he may safely lay
plans for a whole days lettering enjoyment.
The fruit is ripening, the apples and pears and
grapes, and the peaches upon the Northern
hills Southern New Jersey and Delaware are
Justly proud of their peaches, but there are
some upon New England hills, twelve hundred
feet above the sea, which are not less large
and delicious-the very peaches that used to
be. The landscape, too, seems to ripen. There
is a russet hue. and yellowing and reddening,
which gives to its surface rich fruity bloom
The hills with rounded foliage turn toward the
sun and bask in the warmth like the huge vel
low pumpkins that lie among the stocks OF In
dian corn. Later in the month and in October,
IN a region of naples, their distant deep and
intense brilliancy makes the hectic OF the nils
that announces the rapid dissolution OF the
year. ,...
Some leisurely or belated farmers, even after
a hard early frost, are still raking their rowen'