are now their only demonstrations. In Paris, they are at this moment the established subject of public laughter. In the Illustration, and other illustrated newspapers, there are weekly caricatures of Leroux, Proudhon, Thoré, and other leading Socialists. Jérome Paturol-a wretched production in ridicule of the whole movement of 1848-is the popular novel of the day. At one of the Parisian theatres, there has been produced, under the title of La Propriété c'est le vol, a farce, in which the Socialists are attacked with a license as regards personality unequalled since the days of Aristophanes. When, in the course of the performance, Proudhon is introduced as the devil, the applause is tremendous. Nor are more serious answers to the Socialists wanting. The report of what has occurred in

Texas has brought down a storm of indignation upon Cabet. In a shrewd, witty, shallow book, Thiers has stepped forward as the champion of property. Less popular, perhaps, but far more profound, and far more effective as an exposure of the errors of the Socialists, are the Letters of Michel Chevalier.

To one who remembers February last, all this seems very strange. A people retracting what so recently they established; laughing at what so recently they revered! But let no one think that the history is yet at an end. The presidency of Louis Napoleon is but a mystic covering of emotion rolled over the thoughts of France. There are wild elements underneath. The existence of such a man as Proudhon is no jest in Europe.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M.

As o'er the Elysium of the ancient dead
The pensive stars their light celestial shed,
So on the Colosseum's rugged walls,
Through driving clouds, the moon's soft radiance
falls,

And pours its peaceful light on all below,
Like sleep descending on the troubled brow.
There glancing on the massive walls beneath,
Where waves the ivy to the zephyr's breath,
It beams upon a pathway broad and drear—
A mighty nation sleeps in silence there-
And 'mid dim shadows desolate and vast,
Pale memory wanders sadly o'er the past.
There, arch on arch, and pile on pile arise,
Like monuments of ages to the skies;
There, through the winding corridors of stone,
The wanderer roams more lonely than alone;
Descending now where Sol ne'er sends his ray,
Now rising upwards to the face of day.
Here, like the drooping forehead of the sage,
The ruin bows beneath the weight of age;
There, from the building rent, huge masses lie,
Mouldering in silence 'neath the burning sky;
Like hopes that o'er the heart long held their sway,
By Time's unpitying hand all torn away.
Upon these rugged beds green forests rise,

Spreading their branches upwards to the skies;
Or, pendent from their roots, descend below-
As new desires on buried fancies grow,
The ivy twines around its shining wreath,
A fadeless garland on the brow of death!
Shrouding each year the ruins of the last,
Like cold oblivion stealing o'er the past.
The yew-tree, and the cypress' stately form,
Mourn to the wind, and shudder in the storm;
While, bending meekly from its stony bed,
The humble wallflower droops its pensive head,
And o'er the waste blooms forth in loveliness,
Like the sweet memory of departed bliss.
On the bleak summit, lordly in his rest,
The king of birds has built his lonely nest;
Roused by my steps, with shrill affright he cries,
And upward soars, like lightning, to the skies;
Then, downward darting from the giddy height,
Hovers around my head with threatening flight.
Within the vaulted arches' dismal shade
Ill-omened birds their foul abode have made,
Whence, issuing loud, their horrid cries resound,
And wake a thousand echoes with the sound.
From out the yew-tree's shade the bird of night
Loud murmuring comes, and wings his awkward

flight;

While, startled at the sound, the timid dove,
With notes of terror, quits her nest above,
And on some lonely urn, all tempest-torn,
Mourns like an exiled soul, and sighs forlorn.
Within the ruins pent, the angry blast
Imprisoned howls, and shrieks amid the waste,
Through vaulted arches murmuring deep and hoarse,
Like Time's swift torrent in its mighty course,
O'erwhelming all that human pomp and pride
Have reared in triumph on its awful tide.
The dark clouds floating through the air on high,
Obscure the light that overflows the sky,
And, casting forth their shade on all around,
Wrap the grim ruin in a night profound;
Now, as they break, the moon pours forth her beams,
And o'er the scene with purest radiance streams,
Revealing to the eye, all dim and vast,
This standing phantom of the buried past-
Its ruined walls, its mutilated form,
Its massive pillars bowing to the storin,

Its broad foundations, mingling with the dead,
Its threatening turrets, tottering overhead-
While high amid the clouds the cross is seen,
In stately grandeur, towering o'er the scene.

Great mistress of the world, imperial Rome!
I love to walk around thy mighty tomb,
And feel, all matchless as thy deeds appear,
Time, mightier still, those deeds hath buried here.
Mourn not, O man! thy proneness to decay,
Nor dread the evening of thy life's brief day;
Thy temple falls, but falls again to rise
Where death no more shall cloud thy destinies.
Empires shall sink with age, while thou shalt be
Still in the dawn of immortality.

Great mother of the Cæsars, mighty Rome!
I love to dream upon thy ruined tomb,
When the pale lamp of night sheds forth on high
Her mournful glance, like memory's pensive eye
Watching o'er scenes of woe and deeds of blood,
That crimsoned Tiber's deep and silent flood.
Awake, my harp, awake thy plaintive sigh,
More plaintive than the night-bird's minstrelsy;
Awake, and o'er the seven-hilled city sweep
A strain of Liberty, long, loud and deep!
Alas! no echo to thy mournful wail
Sounds o'er the hill, or trembles in the vale.

"Oh! sacred Liberty, thy name divine Dwells in my heart; before thy hallowed shrine My spirit bends, as o'er Eurotas' flood

The Spartans bowed, and worshipped as their god,

When brave Leonidas his foes defied,
And for his country fought, and bled, and died-
Or when Æmilius, with his warlike force,
Adored the Tiber in its rapid course.

I love thee, Liberty, as thou of old
Wast once regarded, when thy children bold
Rose 'gainst oppression like a mighty flood,
Their garments dyed in sweet Virginia's blood;
Or when three hundred deathless sons of fame,
Saved, with their lives, the honor of thy name-
Or, later, when from rugged height to height,
Mid Uri's cliffs, swift was thy daring flight
From Leman's waves to rocky Appenzell,
Or, charged with vengeance, on the shaft of Tell.
Then from their native hills a warrior band
Poured like an angry torrent o'er the land,
Swept the oppressor from their mountain home,
And reared thy banner on the tyrant's tomb.
But now forgotten all thy deeds of fame,
License and cruelty usurped thy name,
And from the Tagus to the Eridan

In purple floods the ensanguined current ran;
While Freedom, waking from the horrid dream,
Found thrones and laws engulfed beneath the
stream.

"Then mourned thy children, with averted eye,
Thy name dishonored, godlike Liberty!
Thine altars all defiled, thy sacred fane
The abode of demons gloating o'er the slain.
Then mourned thy children, but with aspect calm,
Confessed thy name, and gained the martyr's palm;
Like kings, with royal mien, they marched to death,
And on their brows they wore the conqueror's
wreath.

Then from her throne angelic Mercy fell,
And Hope, bewailing, bade the world farewell;
While on their ashes, with relentless hate,
A blood-stained tyrant fixed his cruel state.
Oh! then 'twas glorious to invoke thy name,
All glorious then thy worshippers became,
When to the conqueror's car the world bowed down,
Lived on his smile, and trembled at his frown.

"Yet once again, divinest Liberty,

Thy name is loved, once more thy sons are free;
Within a thousand hearts that guard thy train,
The soul of Brutus lives and burns again;
While proud Oppression, with his cruel band,
Lies, like great Cæsar, slain by Freedom's hand."

W. K

IN devoting this paper to an examination of the most remarkable literary forgery of modern times, the writer cannot but feel that he is in a situation of some embarrassment. The genius of Chatterton has found so many admirers, and so much has been written respecting every incident of his life, that it becomes a task of no ordinary difficulty, from the abundance of accessible material, to construct and condense a satisfactory sketch of his singular career and worldfamous imposture. By the side of the Rowley poems, all other literary fabrications shrink into insignificance; and the more attentively they are examined, the more vehement will be our feelings of admiration and astonishment.

The leading features of Chatterton's life may be condensed into a short compass. He was born at Bristol; educated at the Free-school there; apprenticed to an attorney; became disgusted with his profession; sought his fortune in London, and, after a short and miserable career as a literary hack, died-by his own hand. It is true that this apparently uneventful life is full of incidents painfully interesting and instructive; and few who have directed their attention to the study of the human mind--its innate principles and secret workings-would pass it by without serious and solemn reflection. The precocious development of his faculties imbued him in early youth with the feelings and aspirations of manhood. His character was full of incongruities. He was at once willful, arrogant, and obstinate; aimable, gentle, and affectionate. From his childhood he lived, and moved, and breathed in a world of his own. A brother apprentice has related that there was "generally a dreariness in his look, and a wildness, attended with a visible contempt for others;" and an old female relation, according to Warton, has stated that "he talked very little, was very absent in company, and used very often to walk by the river-side, talking to himself, and flourishing his arms about." |

Some of his biographers have not hesitated to affirm that there was the taint of insanity in his constitution; thus, as Mr. Southey remarks, "affording a key to the eccentricities of his life, and the deplorable rashness of his death."

At the time of his death Chatterton was but seventeen years and ten months old. But what were the results of this short life? He had not only produced a collection of poems, which exhibit a ripeness of fancy and a warmth of imagination far beyond any effort of the frigid age in which he lived, but by a skillfully executed fraud had given rise to a controversy in which the keenest intellects eagerly engaged. Nor can it be said that the depth and variety of antiquarian information and research displayed in this memorable dispute-by Warton and Malone especially on one side, and Jacob Bryant on the other-were entirely thrown away. If the exhibition of learning and the zeal of the combatants appear disproportioned to the importance of the subject, it must, at any rate, be admitted that the Rowley controversy roused for a time the dormant spirit of literary inquiry, and facilitated the introduction of stricter canons of criticism, and more rigid principles of analysis.

Chatterton's first forgery, although of the nature of an innocent hoax-a mere schoolboy's trick-is deserving of some little attention, as illustrating in a striking manner not merely his profound skill in the art of deception, but his ready insight into human character, and quick perception of individual weaknesses and peculiarities. A pewterer of Bristol, named Burgum, had taken some notice of him, and, whilst treating him as a mere boy, had encouraged a degree of intimacy which gave Chatterton an opportunity of practising on his credulity. He soon found that Burgum was a vain man, and just the person to be tickled and inflated with the pride of ancestry; so he set to work and deduced his pedigree from one of the companions of the Conqueror. From documents

which he pretended to have discovered in the muniment room of the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, he compiled a history of the "De Bergham" family; and furthermore produced a poem, entitled "The Romaunt of the Cnyghte,' written by one John De Bergham, who flourished in the fourteenth century. As Chatterton had suspected, the worthy pewterer was too well pleased to permit himself to doubt the authenticity of the documents which conferred on him such an amount of ancestral dignity; and thus auspiciously commenced the course of fraud which ended in the production of Rowley. A short time after this, a new bridge was opened at Bristol, with the usual ceremonies, and the same week there appeared in Felix Farley's Bristol Journal a curious account of the manner of opening the old bridge, prefaced by the following letter:

"Mr. Printer, The following description of the Mayor's first passing over the old bridge, taken from an old manuscript, may not (at this time) be unacceptable to the generality of your readers. Yours, &c.

DUNHELMUS BRISTOLIENSIS."

Then followed, in curiously antique orthography, a circumstantial account of the procession. The communication was read with avidity and astonishment; but who was Dunhelmus Bristoliensis ? Inquiries were made, the handwriting examined; but Chatterton kept his secret, and remained undiscovered. Emboldened by success, however, he presented another paper for insertion, and was recognized. He was now closely interrogated about the discovery of the documents, and after some little demur, invented a tale, which, however plausible, was anything but satisfactory.

A surgeon of Bristol, named Barrett-a learned and painstaking_man-was at this time writing a history of Bristol; and to this gentleman, Chatterton was introduced by a Mr. Catcott, the partner of Burgum the pewterer, as a likely person to furnish some information respecting the antiquities of the place. This was too good an opportunity to be lost; Chatterton eagerly embraced it, and soon produced an Ancient Account of Bristol, by Turgot or Turgotus, "translated by T. Rowley, out of Saxon into English." This is perhaps the least excusable of Chatterton's frauds; it was falsifying the information of a really valuable work, and injuring the reputation of a learned and estimable man, to gratify an idle and certainly not very honorable caprice. But we pass

the question of morality by, to proceed with our narrative. In December, 1768, Chatterton wrote to Dodsley, the bookseller, to state that he "could procure copies of several ancient poems, &c. written by one Rowley, a priest in Bristol, who lived in the reign of Henry VI. and Edward IV." The bookseller returned no answer; and, after waiting two months, Chatterton wrote again. This letter-whether answered or not is doubtful

also led to no result, and some other channel of publication was sought for. Horace Walpole at this time occupied a high position in the world of letters. From his private printing-press at Strawberry Hill had issued many remarkable works, and his reputation as a man of taste was already European. In addressing such an august personage, Chatterton saw the necessity of conforming to his particular tastes, and assuming a most respectful deference. He accordingly forwarded a paper, entitled, "The Kyse of Bepnetepne in Englande, wroten by T. Kowlie, for Mastre Canynge," with the accompanying note:

This short note, it will be observed, is another striking example of Chatterton's miraculous perception of character and knowledge of the world. Never was an epistle more adroitly worded. Walpole, who was at once pleased with his correspondent, and evidently imagined him a very different person from the humble Bristol apprentice, forwarded a prompt and polite reply, containing, among others, these complimentary expressions: "What you have already sent me is valuable and full of information; but, instead of correcting you, sir, you are far more able to correct me. I have not the happiness of understanding the Saxon language, and without your learned notes, should not have been able to comprehend Rowley's text." So auspicious was Chatterton's introduction to Walpole !

Believing that he had at last secured an influential patron to present his "discoveries" to the world of letters, he lost no time in forwarding some additional anecdotes and fragments of ancient poetry. But his eager