'
ALFRED DE VIGNY.
'_Sept._, 1839.
'"La harpe tremble encore, et la flute soupire."
'Sometimes we doubt this, and think the music has finally
ceased, so sultry still lies the air around us, or only
disturbed by the fife and drum of talent, calling to the
parade-ground of social life. The ear grows dull.
'"Faith asks her daily bread,
And Fancy is no longer fed."
'So materialistic is the course of common life, that we _ask
daily_ new Messiahs from literature and art, to turn us from
the Pharisaic observance of law, to the baptism of spirit. But
stars arise upon our murky sky, and the flute _soupire_ from
the quarter where we least expect it.
'_La jeune France_! I had not believed in this youthful
pretender. I thought she had no pure blood in her veins, no
aristocratic features in her face, no natural grace in her
gait. I thought her an illegitimate child of the generous, but
extravagant youth of Germany. I thought she had been left at
the foundling hospital, as not worth a parent's care, and that
now, grown up, she was trying to prove at once her parentage
and her charms by certificates which might be headed, Innocent
Adultery, Celestial Crime, &c.
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