he so deliberately set forth all that tends to his discredit, not with mocking bravado, but with simply an acceptance of things as they stand, and a desire to tell of them? He looks back on his life, he sees that he has wasted it, he regrets that on the whole he has had so little enjoyment of it, and that his few pleasures have left worse pains behind, and so he wishes to sing a "Ballad of Good Counsel to his former friends and comrades.

He embodies this message in a long Testament, a form which enables him to say his say, and pay off all his old scores, with flings at those who have served him ill, and thanks for the few who have done him good turns. Into this he weaves nearly all that he has written. Whether or not he was the inventor of this form of composition, his Will is the only one of the kind that has been admitted to probate by posterity. The point of much of his satire is lost now, because we are not acquainted with the target at which it is aimed, yet we cannot help feeling that it must have reached the mark, cut deep, and rankled. It is local and personal, so its application is gone, but it is only a part of his work, and having done its office, serves now as a faded background into which are woven brilliant bits of glowing tapestry.

In a few spots the background retains all its old colors, where Villon is speaking out of his own heart about himself and his life, for hearts do not fade so easily; but it is in the bits of tapestry that we find the most lasting hues,— it is the ballads and lays which sound as new and living now as when they moulded themselves into shape in the poet's brain as he sat in the Châtelet or the prison of the Bishop of Orléans. There is nothing local, nothing temporary, about these clean-cut, sparkling gems,—gold and silver thread tarnishes, but jewels worked into the design keep their brightness. There is a melody which lingers in one's ears in the rippling rhymes. The clusters of names rich in associations are gathered together by one who knows well their magic. In a breath one passes from a mocking laugh to the deepest, tenderest pathos. The refrains, sometimes almost whole poems in themselves,

fairly haunt one, and make constant plea for the poet's memory. Some of them are drops of his life-blood, still red and warm, and the heart from which they came must have been the heart of a great poet, however cruelly he himself abused it and flung it away.

Villon's poems as literature are in one way as strange a combination as Villon as a character. The man was brilliant genius and despicable worthlessness joined in one; the poet was the first modern, and at the same time filled with a spirit which had been dormant since the age of the classics. There was hardly a touch of the mediæval in him—no conventional allegory, no conventional womanworship and chivalry, no carefully manufactured conventional sentiment, very little conventional religion. Instead there was the old Greek spirit of keen enjoyment of the physically beautiful, of bodily pleasure, of the happiness of the senses, with all considerations of morality conveniently pushed aside. One might say he was a type of the Pagan Renaissance, but he comes upon the stage a little too early for that. The shakiness of his mythology and classical allusions shows how slender his knowledge of such things was, so there must have been in him an independent revival of the spirit without any predisposing cause. And his view of death is almost wholly pagan. He sees the charnel house, the annihilation, the oblivion, the close of an earthly life of pleasure or misery, rather than the beginning of another of happiness or torment. Since all alike, great and small, good and bad, come to the same undistinguishable dust and ashes, he draws the conclusion "Eat, drink and be merry. Live at your ease. Let the monks paint pictures of rewards and punishments in that uncertain life beyond, but heed them not." Yet one must not be too sure. He may have felt that it was better for him resolutely to close his eyes to the future, since he would see nothing good if he opened them.

But in looking at this world his clear view stood him in good stead, and made him more than a belated Pagan, made him the forerunner of a new type. He not only saw the "joyous life," but he saw through it. He owed this

keen vision almost as much to his humble origin and hard life as to his inborn genius. He was a man with no traditional sentiment, no aristocratic prejudices, no reverence for authority, no hampering ideals, nothing but keen senses, an active brain and a ready tongue. He perceived clearly, he thought boldly, and he spoke so that we listen to him yet, and comparing his words with those of the realists of our own day, we find in him the same point of view, the same tone, the same spirit. Change his language a little, and he might as well belong to nineteenth century Bohemia as to fifteenth.

So from Bohemia and from the common herd came this new force in literature, and freedom from all convention gave naturalness.

In this naturalness are his two enduring elements,reality and power. He gives us bits of life in songpictures, drawn with a nervous vigor that cannot grow old. The turbulent France of his day seems unreal and visionary, just such a confused mass of forgotten shadows as the Cemetery of the Innocents, where the blind paupers were to pick out good from bad with Villon's spectacles, but out of the darkness flares the dismal light of Villon's ill-spent life and wasted genius, inglorious, unhonored, unrespected, yet perpetuated for all time, and not passing away like "the snows of yester-year" of which he sang.

THE NIGHT BLOOMING CEREUS.

Sweet, modest flower, companion of the stars,
Nor less divine and strange and fair than they,

Like thee, when hid beneath Night's darkening shades,

Thy fairy petals spread, thy sweet perfume

With blessings breathes, and night itself is made
Fairer by thee than brightest day-

Like thee

In this dark world, bright souls there are unseen
Who flourish in the shade of man's despite,
And live their life and shed their deeds divine,
And then, bright, fair, slow folding up their lives
Sleep on and rest, forgotten evermore.

Burton J. Hendrick.

THE

THE STORY OF A PICTURE.

HE cheerless December sun, setting in a smoky glow behind a maze of Paris chimney tops, managed to send a few last straggling rays into a high attic chamber, which, built up as though it were an afterthought upon the very roof itself, looked far down through its one tiny window upon the narrow street below, and out upon a fantastic world of roofs and chimneys. Inside, the small room with ceiling low and sagging—as if it were afraid to straighten up, lest it should lose the distant connection with mother earth far beneath, and fly off among the clouds-hardly differed from a hundred others of the same wretched class, except that a large oil painting was drawn up on its easel to catch the last light from the dusty, cracked window, and a black cat, somewhat lean and cadaverous, lay curled up asleep on the one pillow of the bed, as if no stranger to that luxury. Indeed the whole chamber had that half-conscious air, copied perhaps from its tenant, of having seen better days, and of now doing its best to present a respectable appearance, and cover up its too evident poverty. The faded coverlet almost split its crazy pattern trying to hide the rusty iron bedstead; the wicker chair bottom stretched its best to reach wholebodied across the seat; and the ragged portiere nearly dragged down the curtain rod in vain efforts to hide the shadowy closet behind, and to touch the dusty floor beneath.

Meanwhile, interrupting these silent endeavors, footsteps were heard, faint at first, but growing louder and louder as they ascended the many flights of narrow stairs with steady tread, keeping time to the cheerful strains of an evident American whistle.

The black cat lazily stretched itself, and jumped to the floor in time to rub its dusky back against the legs of its master, who, as he entered, threw the door wide open behind him, to let the cold wind from the hall rush in and perform what the practical tenant called his daily sweeping out. The new comer walked slowly to the window

and anxiously peered out into the gathering darkness, while the cheerful whistle died quickly away. Then he threw himself down in the solitary chair, which creaked and groaned under his weight, and looked once more at his beloved picture, his only friend, it seemed, save the lean black cat.

"I don't see," he said, brushing back the brown hair which curled artist fashion over neck and forehead, "I don't see why I ever came to this country of shrugs and idioms, do you, old cat?"

The only answer to this appeal was a deliberate opening and shutting of one eye by the knowing beast, as it slowly curled up again in the shadowy recesses of the pillow.

"Yes you do, you old Sphinx! It was for the love of the art. My father drove me away, too." With louder voice and an angry stamp on the floor, which shook the little room, and rang from the cat a plaintive mew, "Yes he did! and you know it, old cat! But," he added in milder tones, "that doesn't help us a bit, or keep the wolf from the door-or the wind either," as the door flew open again in a sudden gust and then shut to with a bang.

"However," with a hopeful smile again, "when this picture is framed and named, and sells for a big price in the gallery, we shall be on our feet again, that is, figuratively speaking. I've no doubt you would prefer to roll up on that old pillow. But first," he continued, looking fondly at the painting, "I must add another branch to this tree, and then write my name in the corner, like this." And he bent over to trace by the fading twilight, "Cecil Gray" upon the canvas, and to fill in one more leafy branch near the top of a tall maple.

"There," he thought, "its done at last, my best work, and painted from memory. Four years ago-my memory has served me even better than the painter's brush. But times are changed and times are hard."

"Old cat," he spoke aloud now and half bitterly, "I suppose you know to-night is Christmas eve, hang up your stocking, and all that sort of thing. But supper comes nearer to us now, and the cupboard is empty, at least it would be if there were any-the cracker-box is, anyhow.