From the N. Y. Evening Post.
REAL AND IDEAL.

It includes

In vain the old comedian tries
To silence insult; murmurs rise;

J. W. Montclair sends us a daintily printed lit-Away he totters with alarm, tle collection of " Metrical Compositions," under And falls within the prompter's arm. the title of "Real and Ideal." some original verses and a number of well-word-On tragedy the players close. On comedy the curtain rose ; ed translations from the German, which show a graceful pen and skilful mastery of the translator's art. As a specimen we copy these couplets, translated from Rückert :

WAYFARING.

I KNOCKED in vain at the rich man's door,
A farthing is all he gives to the poor.
Gently I tapped at affection's gate,
Ten others were wooing; I was too late.
Fain would I approach honor's castled abode,
No spurs had I won, no palfrey I rode.
Where industry toiled, a pittance to gain,
I met only rags, starvation, and pain.

The vulgar crowd, they whistle and cry
A dying actor's litany.

Behind the curtains, within a chair,
Ruddy of cheek and brown of hair,
A corpse is resting; its brow is cold,
And on it a painted lie is told.

For the mien that made the idle laugh,
It looks a solemn epitaph;
False and hollow is all we see:
His life, his art, were mockery

Never will rustle in nature's breeze
Those faded, painted, canvas trees;
And the oily moon that gleams o'erhead

Through life have I sought the abode of content; | Never learned to weep for the dead.

It beckoned, but vanished when nearer I went.

One cottage I found; 'twas grassy and low;
Thither for refuge at last I may go.

Its portals are open, to welcome each guest;
There many before me in silence sought rest.

A quaint yet vivid life picture is the following from the German of Anastasius Grun :

THE OLD COMEDIAN.

The footlights blaze, the curtains rise,
And peering are a thousand eyes
Where tinselled jugglers strut apace;
With paint begrimed each truthless face.

Yon mountebank of snowy hair,
I well could draw his home despair;
Poor, worn-out, crippled harlequin,
His efforts fail respect to win.

Whilst honored age, though lorn and weak,
A tutorage with youth may seek,
This old, obedient, hired clown
Racks his stiff joints to please the town.

Old men, they court repose by night;
The aged arm forgets its might;
'Tis raised to guide, or to caress;
"Tis folded prayerful, and to bless.
Those trembling hands hang by his side;
Those valiant lips his limbs deride;
And when to points the text may soar,
With loud guffaw the groundlings roar.

Though chronic pains may pinch his frame,
He must be Momus, ever the same;
To those who see him night by night,
His tears would prove a rare delight.

But lo! how faint the actor speaks;
He falters, and an exit seeks.
"Old Thespian, hast forgot thy cue?
Thy walk's unsteady, thy text untrue!"

From a motley group, 'neath a tattered sky,
Comes one to speak this eulogy;
"He fought and fell, as heroes yield,
Upon the drama's battle-field."

Then a dancing girl, as a beggarly muse,
Upon his brow, with shabby excuse,

Pressed a laurel wreath that some Cæsar had
worn,

A paper invention, dirty and torn.

His funeral procession numbered two;
Brief was the pageant, the costs were few
And as they laid him away to rest,
I heard no pity, I heard no jest.

Of Mr. Montclair's original poems we give a creditable specimen in

PART IX.-CHAPTER XXVI.

can think of. Don't speak to me about Italy. It's all a snare and delusion to get honest folk off firm ground. Let me get to the bottom in peace and quiet. Life's no worth having at such a price," sighed the sufferer; to whom his undutiful charge answered only by laughter and jibes, which, under the circumstances, were hard to bear. "You are better now," said the heartless youth," or you could not go into the philosTo-morrow morning

you'll eat a good breakfast, and”

COLIN and his guardian went on their way in a direction opposite to that in which the mistress travelled sadly alone. They made all the haste possible out of the cold and boisterous weather, to get to sea; which was at once, according to all their hopes, to bring health to the invalid. Lauderdale, who carried his little fortune about him, had been at great pains in dispersing it over his person; so that, in case of falling among thieves,—ophy of the subject. which, to a man venturing into foreign parts, seemed but too probable,—he might, at least, "Dinna insult my understanding," said have a chance of saving some portion of his Colin's victim. "Go away, and look out for store. But he was not prepared for the dire your Italy or whatever you call it. A callant . and dreadful malady which seized him un- like you believes in everything. Go away awares, and made him equally incapable of and enjoy yourself. If you don't go peaceataking care of his money and of taking care bly, I'll put you out," cried the miserable of Colin. He could not even make out how man, lifting himself up from his pillow, and many days he had lain helpless and useless in seizing a book which Colin had laid there, to what was called the second cabin of the throw at his tormentor. A sudden lurch, steamer,—where the arrangements and the however, made an end of the discomfited provisions were less luxurious than in the philosopher. He fell back, groaning, as Comore expensive quarters. But Lauderdale lin escaped out of the little cabin. was unconscious altogether of any possibility quite intolerable, and I'll no put up with it of comfort. He gave it up as a thing im- any longer," said Lauderdale, to himself. possible. He fell into a state of utter scep- And he recalled, with a sense of injury, Coticism as he lay in agonies of sea-sickness on lin's freedom from the overpowering malady the shelf which represented a bed. "Say under which he was himself suffering. nothing to me about getting there," he said, me that's ill, and no him," he thought, with with as much indignation as he was capable surprise, and the thought prevailed even over of. sea-sickness. By and by it warmed with a delicious glow of hope and consolation the heart of the sufferer. "If it sets the callant right, I'm no heeding for myself," he said in his own mind, with renewed heroism. Perhaps it was because, as Colin said, Lauderdale was already beginning to be better that he was capable of such generosity. Certainly the ship lurched less and less as the evening Only four days," said Colin, laughing, went on, and the moonlight stole in at the "and the gale is over. You'll be better to-port-hole and caressed the sufferer, widening

"What do you mean by there, callant. As for land, I am far from sure that there's such a thing existing. If there is, we'll never get to it. It's an awful thing for a man in his senses to deliver himself up to this idiot of a sea, to be played with like a bairn's ball. It's very easy to laugh,-if you had been standing on your head, like me for twenty days in succession"

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morrow."

"It's

"It's

his horizon a little before he was aware. He "To-morrow!" said Lauderdale, with a had begun to wonder whether Colin had his contemptuous groan; "I've no faith in to- great-coat on, before long, and fell asleep in morrow. I'm no equal to reckoning time that thought, and worked out his remaining according to ordinary methods, and I'm no spell of misery in gigantic efforts-continued conscious of ever having existed in a more all through the night-to get into Colin's agreeable position. As for the chances of coat, or to get Colin into his coat, he was not ever coming head uppermost again, I would quite sure which. Meanwhile, the object of not give sixpence for them. It's all very Lauderdale's cares was on deck, enjoying the well for the like of you. Let me alone, cal-moonlight, and the sense of improving health, lant; if this infernal machine of a ship would and all the excitement and novelty of his new but go down without more ado, and leave a life.

man in peace,—that's the pleasantest thing I They had been four days at sea, and Colin,

who had not been ill, had become acquainted | eagerness of the speaker. "He ought to be with the aspect of all his fellow-passengers, a preacher, by his looks," Colin said to himwho were as good sailors as himself. They self, as he stood within the limits to which, as were going to Leghorn, as the easiest way of a second-class traveller, he was confined, and reaching Italy; and there were several inva- saw, at a little distance from him, the worn lids on board, though none whose means made figure of the sick man, upon whose face the necessary a passage in the second cabin, of moonlight was shining. As usual, the sister which Colin himself and Lauderdale were the was clinging to his arm, and listening to him sole occupants. Of the few groups on the with a rapt countenance; not so much conquarter-deck who were able to face the gale, cerned about what he said as absorbed in anxColin had already distinguished one, a young ious investigation of his looks. It was one of man, a little older than himself, exceedingly the sailors this time who formed the audience to pale and worn with illness, accompanied by whom the invalid was addressing himself,—a a girl a year or two younger. The two were man whom he had stopped in the midst of someso like each other as to leave no doubt that thing he was doing, and who was listening with they must be brother and sister, and so unlike great evident embarrassment, anxious to esas to call forth the compassionate observation cape, but more anxious still, like a good-heartof everybody who looked at them. The young ed fellow as he was, not to disturb or irritate lady's blooming face, delicately round and the suffering man. Colin drew a step nearer, full, with the perfect outline of health and feeling that the matter under discussion could youth, had been paled at first by the struggle be no private one, and the sound of the little between incipient seasickness and the deter- advance he made caught the invalid's nervous mination not to leave her brother; but by ear. He turned round upon Colin before he this time at the cost of whatever private could go back, and suddenly fixed him with agonies-she had apparently surmounted the those wonderful dying eyes. "I will see you common weakness, and was throwing into again another time, my friend," he said to fuller and fuller certainty, without knowing the released seaman, who hastened off with it, by the contrast of her own bloom, the sen- an evident sense of having escaped. When tence of death written on his face. When the stranger turned round, he had to move they were on deck, which was the only time back his companion, so that in the change of that they were visible to Colin, she never left position she came to be exactly in front of him,-holding fast by his arm with an anxious Colin, so near that the two could not help tenacity; not receiving, but giving support, seeing, could not help observing each other. and watching him with incessant, breathless The girl withdrew her eyes a minute from anxiety, as if afraid that he might suddenly her brother to look at the new form thus predrop away from her side. The brother, on sented to her. She did not look at Colin as a his side, had those hollow eyes, set in wide, young woman usually looks at a young man. pathetic niches, which are never to be mis- She was neither indifferent, nor did she attaken by those who have once watched be- tempt to seem so. She looked at him eagerly, loved eyes widening out into that terrible with a question in her eyes. The question breadth and calm. He was as pale as if the was a strange one to be addressed, even from warm blood of life had already been wrung the eyes, by one stranger to another. It said out of him drop by drop; but, notwithstand- as plain as words," Are you a man to whom ing this aspect of death, he was still possessed I can appeal-are you a man who will underby a kind of feverish activity, the remains of stand him? Shall I be able to trust you, and strength, and seemed less disturbed by the ask your help?" That and nothing else was gale than any other passenger. He was on in the wistful, anxious look. If Colin's face deck at all hours, holding conversations with had not been one which said "Yes" to all such of the sailors as he could get at,-talking such questions, she would have turned away, to the captain, who seemed to eschew his so- and thought of him no more; as it was, she ciety, and to such of his fellow-travellers as looked a second time with a touch of interest, were visible. What the subject of his talk a gleam of hope. The brother took no more might be, Colin from his point of observation apparent notice of her than if she had been a could not tell; but there was no mistaking cloak on his arm, except that from time to the evidences of natural eloquence and the time he put out his thin, white hand to make

sure that her hand was still there. He fixed | still more startled by the strain in which his his eyes on Colin with a kind of solemn stead-new companion proceeded than by his first fastness, which had a wonderful effect upon address; but a dying man had privileges. the young man, and said something hasty "I hope so," Colin repeated; "one of many and brief, a most summary preface, about the here." beautiful night. "Are you ill?" he added, in the same hasty, breathless way, as if im-" patient of wasting time on such preliminaries. "Are you going abroad for your health?"

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Colin, who was surprised by the question, felt nearly disinclined to answer it; for in spite of himself it vexed him to think that anybody could read that necessity in his face. He said, "I think so," with a smile which was not quite spontaneous; my friends at least have that meaning," he added more naturally a moment afterward, with the intention of returning the question; but that possibility was taken rapidly out of his hands. "Have you ever thought of death?" said the stranger. "Don't start; I am dying, or I would not ask you. When a man is dying, he has privileges. Do you know that you are standing on the brink of a precipice! Have you ever thought of death?"

"Yes, a great deal," said Colin. It would be wrong to say that the question did not startle him; but, after the first strange shock of such an address, an impulse of response and sympathy filled his mind. It might have been difficult to get into acquaintance by means of the chit-chat of society, which requires a certain initiation; but such a grand subject was common ground. He answered as very few of the people interrogated by the sick man did answer. He did not show either alarm or horror; he started slightly, it is true, but he answered without much hesitation,

"Yes, I have thought often of death," said Colin. Though he was only a secondclass passenger, this was a question which put all on an equality; and now it was not difficult to understand why the captain eschewed his troublesome question, and how the people looked embarrassed to whom he spoke. "Ah, I am glad to hear such an answer,' said the stranger; "so few people can say You have found out, then, the true aim of life. Let us walk about, for it is cold, and I must not shorten my working-days by any devices of my own. My friend, you give me a little hope that, at last, I have found a brother in Christ."

80.

“Ah, no, not of many," said the invalid; if you can feel certain of being a child of God, it is what but few are permitted to do. My dear friend, it is not a subject to deceive ourselves upon. It is terribly important for you and me. Are you sure that you are fleeing from the wrath to come? Are you sure that you are prepared to meet your God?"

He

They had turned into the full moonlight, which streamed upon their faces. The ship was rushing along through a sea still agitated by the heavings of the past storm, and there was nothing moving on deck except some scattered seamen busy in their mysterious occupations. Colin was slow to answer the new question thus addressed to him. was still very young; delicate, and reticent about all the secrets of his soul; not wearing his heart upon his sleeve even in particulars less intimate and momentous than this. "I am not afraid of my God," he said, after a minute's pause; "pardon me, I am not used to speak much on such subjects. I cannot imagine that to meet God will be less than the greatest joy of which the soul is capable. He is the great Father. I am not afraid.”

"Oh, my friend!" said the eager stranger, his voice sounded in Colin's ear like the voice of a desperate man in a life-boat, calling to somebody who was drowning in a storm,-" don't deceive yourself; don't take up a sentimental view of such an important matter. There is no escape except through one way. The great object of our lives is to know how to die,-and to die is despair, without Christ."

"What is it to live without him?" said Colin. "I think the great object of our lives is to live. Sometimes it is very hard work. And, when one sees what is going on in the world, one does not know how it is possible to keep living without him," said the young man, whose mind had taken a profound impression from the events of the last three months. "I don't see any meaning in the world otherwise. So far we are agreed. Death, which interests you so much, will clear up all the rest."

"Which interests me?" said his new "I hope so," said Colin, gravely. He was friend; "if we were indeed rational crea