Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/611

598 there is opposition, and all contribute, in a greater or less part, to the work of “correcting” the despotic form of government under which France now groans. Who shall be prepared to say their action is a mistaken or a useless one? Shall we, who live in the very midst of publicity and daylight, sneer at just this one only little evidence of public opinion that escapes from all the silent obscurity that hems the French nation in?

Parisian salons are, I maintain, an Institution, and the French of this day may be as glad they have got them still, as they had a right to be, when, under Louis XV., Madame du Deffand “spoilt and flattered” Horace Walpole in her own salon, or when, under Louis XIV., Madame la Marquise de Sévigné, in the salon of Madame de Rambouillet, played at Blind Man’s Buff with the great Corneille.

with you, baby, away to the garden, And leave ugly Latin to Algernon, do: He must learn the lesson, although it’s a hard one, But, darling, there’s plenty of time before you.

Oh, if you but knew, dear, you’d run like the kitten, And scamper away from a future that waits:— If you knew the dry nonsense the big folks have written On purpose to pester the little folks’ pates.

We want all poor Algernon’s deepest attention, You see his sad case by the way that he frowns; He’s fighting a thing that they call a declension— A sort of a regiment of soldiers called nouns.

He’ll beat them, you know, for he’s brave and he’s willing; And going to work at them, hammer and tongs, And mamma knows who’ll give him a splendid new shilling As soon as he’s perfect to—here, see,—“By Songs.”

So don’t interrupt him, my darling, with chatter, He stops in his lesson to look up and laugh: His fragile conception of datives you scatter, And cut his poor ablative plural in half.

What, blue eyes wide open at hearing such tidings, At being accused in such very long words, And looking as wistful as if they were chidings? No, darling, run off to the flowers and the birds.

Eh? you want a lesson? Well! count all those roses, For each you leave out you must pay me a kiss: And Al shall be free, too, the moment he knows his Musæ, musarum, mu—what, Al?—musis.

So off with you, baby, and O! be contented That you’ve got no lesson to cloud that white brow, Some day you’ll wish Latin had not been invented: Perhaps, in her heart, mamma wishes so now. E. M. B.