house in which Chapelle lodged. They were not
sure that he ever comprehended the mystification.

A very remarkable actor at the Vaudeville, but
remarkable for quite another sort of qualities, was
Vertpré, the father of the charming Jenny. Noble
characters, historical personages, were rendered
by him with a perfection of truthfulness which
made him a great favourite with the public.
The end of his career was sad. He was smitten
with insanity while playing a vaudeville entitled
Fontenelle. The same terrible accident has happened
more than once to actors. It occurred
in a little one-act piece, on the slavery of Regnard,
the poet, in Algiers, which M. de Rochefort
wrote for the Variétés. Léonard Touset,
who played the part of Regnard, stopped short
in the middle of a couplet. He recommenced it
three times, but could not finish it. He was
obliged to retreat behind the scenes, and, next
day, into a lunatic asylum.

The number of dramatic victims in France is
very considerable. M. de Rochefort believes that
actresses are less subject than actors to this sad
affliction. Nevertheless, not long ago, a provincial
actress of great merit was suddenly
stopped in her part, on the stage, by mental
derangement. The previous evening, she had regretted
the thinness of the house, because, she
said, she never felt herself in better train for
acting. Her comrades also stated that on that
last occasion she surpassed herself.

THE SUNKEN CITY.

BY day it lies hidden and lurks beneath
   The ripples that laugh with light ;
But calmly, and clearly, and coldly as death,
   It glooms into shape by night,
When none but the awful Heavens and me
Can look on the City that's sunk in the Sea.

Many a Castle I built in the air;
   Towers that gleamed in the sun ;
Spires that soared so stately and fair
   They touched heaven every one,
Lie under the waters that mournfully
Closed over the City that's sunk in the Sea:

Many fine houses, but never a Home;
   Windows, and no live face!
Doors set wide where no beating hearts come;
   No voice is heard in the place:
It sleeps in the arms of Eternity—
The silent City that's sunk in the Sea.

There the face of my dead love lies,
   Embalmed in the bitterest tears;
No breath on the lips! no smile in the eyes,
   Tho' you watcht for years and years:
And the dear drowned eyes never close from me,—
Looking up from the City that's sunk in the sea.

Two of the bonniest Birds of God
   That ever warmed human heart
For a nest, till they fluttered their wings abroad,
   Lie there in their chambers apart,—
Dead! yet pleading most piteously
In the lonesome City that's sunk in the Sea.

And oh! the brave ventures there lying in wreck,
   Dark on that shore of the Lost!
Gone down, with every hope on deck,
   When all-sail for a glorious coast.
And the waves go sparkling splendidly
Over the City that's sunk in the Sea.

Then I look from my City that's sunk in the Sea,
   To that Star-Chamber overhead;
And torturingly they question me—
   "What of this world of the dead
That lies out of sight, and how will it be
With the City and thee, when there's no more sea ?"

WHITSUNTIDE IN THE COUNTRY.

OUR Chicklebury club holds its annual rejoicing
every Whitsuntide between the falling
of the May blossom and the coming on of the
hay harvest. Sun or rain, hot or cold, the club
dinner, the two club suppers, the procession, and
the dance, take place at Dowton Parva.

The earliest indication of the coming feast
breaks out in the beginning of May, when glossy
streamers of red and blue begin to show in
bouquets in the shop windows at Swallowtown,
the post-town and market-town of our district
of Downshire: a place consisting of long
straggling streets of two rows of dull bald-looking
stone houses, that stand silently staring
at each other from century to century, like
stupid guests at a stupid dinner-party. Those
cockades that look so like dahlias, and those
streamers of blue and red ribands so much
resembling those worn by the recruits of her
Majesty's regiments of the line, are the Chicklebury
club colours, and are intended to decorate
the bosoms and rusty-brown hats of the members
of the "Royal Good Samaritan Mutual Aid
Society."

When, I say, the hawthorn blossom has fallen
from the hedges, like a shroud suddenly removed;
when the fresh vigorous spring leaps from under,
blithe and gay, and laughing in the happy sunshine;
when on rainy days the mower, just for
preparation, already whets his long curved scythe
for the hay; when the blackbird begins to
sharpen his orange beak, for the cherries begin
to darken, when the green corn is a foot or more
high, when the young birds begin to find their
legs, when the grass begins to plume and flower,
and the clover to sweeten and purple; then does
the country mind begin to look forward to the
club dinner. Then, across the rolling green
prairies of corn rises to the shepherd's memory
the scent of roast meat, and the scented vapour
of the eighteen-pounder plum-pudding; then, to
the driver in the little white tilt cart, the very
wayside flowers round Dowton Parva seem by
strange magic to exhale the odour of boiled
savoys, and the furze blossom itself to forget its
almond scent and to breathe forth the perfume of
enormous veal-pies.

About a month before Whitsuntide, the
female farm-servants begin to be seized with
strong migratory instinct, and the overhauling
of blue bonnet-boxes and old chests is a constant
employment in the spring evenings. The talk,