admit of so definite a solution as to be reduced to a positive science, are, What are the gipsies? Where do they go to? And what becomes of them? In other words, "The pivot on which the real interest in the gipsies, during the past, the present, and the future, turns, is the phenomenon of the occasional amalgamation of other blood with theirs, their settlement, and the civilisation, perpetuity, and increase of the people, maintaining their identity in the world, notwithstanding their having no religion peculiar to themselves, like the Jews. In conducting an inquiry like the one mentioned, a simple regard to facts is the sole legitimate object of contemplation; it not being even necessary to understand why or how a phenomenon exists, to believe that it does exist. For example: no one professes to understand how it is that the Jews exist in their scattered state, yet no one denies, or even doubts, their existence on that account. In the present volume, it may be said that the reasons given for the existence of the gipsies in a civilised state are amply sufficient to explain, connect, and substantiate the various facts discovered."

TIME WAS, IS, AND SHALL BE.

TIME WAS: When first we met upon the river,
Whose sparkling eddies flashed and laughed beneath,
That the broad sunlight came with gleam and quiver,
And thy dear name was as a household breath.

All seemed a dream, in which we talked and moved;
Calm flowed life's current downward to the main,
And we as shadows of that dream, beloved,

Drifted along, nor recked of change or pain.
Time was: And yet the angel as we passed
Whispered us, "Passion is but ghost of love;
Drink thou in pureness of the joys that last,
And read thy kingdom in the realms above."
TIME IS: As time, alas! to some must come
(Some weary hearts, who bear their inward scars),
Giving their round of duties to the home,

While he who loved them hath outsoared the stars.

Time is: A sense of weakness, failing powers,

Of all that has been, wrapped in memory's mist,
Watered with tears, deep mourned, but stronger loved,
Pressed as a cross unto the heart, and kissed.

TIME SHALL BE: What? A grand beatitude
Of crowning joys in those blest realms above;
The veil uplifted from the aching eyes,

And heaven itself fulfilment of our love.

Time shall be: These deep spirituals of life
Still bear the roll of ages on their way,
And we, the wearied pilgrims, through the strife
Of crossed desires, thus reach the Crown of Day.

416

MARGUERITE PRINTANIÈRE.

A SPRINGTIDE STORY.

BY JOHN ESTAGEL.

WHAT'S in a name? quoth the bard of Avon.

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. Granted, it would. But, is the issue therefore closed? No, for something still doth lie in a name. What? not substance indeed, yet such very important accidents as go to make up the form, which an object primarily assumes to the mind's vision. If artichoke happened to be linked with the idea of a rose, or turnip to be inseparably associated with the fancy of a lily, our after-experience might teach us that ugly names did not of necessity produce corresponding odours. None the less, however, supposing the names of those floral beauties to be different from their actual ones, what we now know as roses and lilies would then emit sweet scent, not independently of coarse appellations, but despite them. By consequence, as an inapt designation attaching to a beautiful identity has the disadvantage of failing to lend the prime charm of attraction, and of repulsing instead of prepossessing, so an appropriate name, though leaving substances untouched, of a surety does affect with advantage the first accidental impression made upon our inward senses by any given concretion. I confess to a feeling of gratitude, at not finding myself patronymically either a Hogsflesh or a Sheepshanks. And really, had my paternal ancestors so far forgotten their duty to posterity, as to saddle me with anything more unhandsome in names, Luke Squabs for instance, I am doubtful whether the carotid artery, by which the said Luke Squabs must needs have existed, would be whole and sound at the present day. Certes, this story, once read, might approve itself quite as sweetly, under any other title, to the mental nostrils of her or him who read it. But, may not he who writes it unctuously flatter himself, that, its heroine possessing charms of name as well as of nature, much has been already gained, if readers are thus attracted, and thence led on to see her through her story? Wherefore, there is a something in a name.

A similar influence was it that acted upon me when I first heard of Marguerite Printanière, or rather saw her name in writing. Everybody, it seems to me, likes the name of Margaret. The word is of Latin, perhaps Greek, derivation. In the Latin language, it means a pearl or jewel of price; but, undoubtedly, the ancient Latins did not impersonate it. Some time early in the middle ages, Margarita would appear to have been adopted as a Christian name into all the western tongues, Latin and Teutonic, and to have been engrafted upon some of them as a term signifying herb. Even so late as Dr. Johnson, it had not become obsolete in this latter sense with us. In Italian, Margaret is Margareta, or, like the Latin, Margarita, generally shortened to Rita. In Spanish, Maraquita may be taken as the synonym, though etymologically slightly changed, its usual abbreviation being Quita. In German, the name is recognisable by every one in Margaretha, and hardly less familiar is its

diminutive Gretchen. Amongst us English, the name is a greater favourite than with any other nation: but we have played upon it, and abused it oftener too. In no language does Margaret sound sweeter or homelier than in ours: not so Mag, Maggie, Meg, Madge, Moggie, Peg, Peggy, and abominable Piggy, of which abridgments only the two first are defensible. The French have it Marguerite, purely and simply, and one may add royally, for, made out in the full, there is no more queenly name than Margaret. Their ordinary word for daisy is likewise Marguerite; so that French idiomacy admits of Marguerite Printanière, my heroine's title, denoting either a spring daisy, or any individual Margaret in the springtide of life, according to the thought and drift of the speaker or writer.

To begin. There is but one Paris. And, in respect of light-hearted recreation out of doors, is not the centre point, the pivot, the mainspring, the key of Paris, its Champs Elysées? Many think that we have splendid home-material for an Elysian Fields in the Green Park and St. James's, which, if thrown together, broken up into parterres, and freed from their senseless rail-enclosures, would doubtless contribute in recreative pleasure to the popular wants, hundredfold more than they do at this present. Nothing gets done, perhaps nothing ever will, and, if anything were done, the insuperable obstacle of climate would still go on sinning against us by dampness, as it sins by unwholesome heat against the nationalities of the south. Paris holds a central position. It is neither too hot, not too cold; but, above all, it is dry. We all know the Champs Elysées of to-day, with its shady trees, now recovered from the wreckings of revolutions, its umbrageous groves, its majestic allées, its delightful side-walks, its provisions of easy-chairs, its nocturnal illuminations, and, chiefest of allures, its cafés chantants. But, I can remember, when the Champs Elysées looked all confusion, or, at least, when nature alone dwelt there, forlorn and artless; when the trees were still scraggy, and the groves yet unthought of; when the walking-ground was either knee-deep in sand, or dank with mud and mouldy moss; when, though the place has had its cafés from time immemorial, those that then stood in it were dingy things, compared to their bright and tasteful successors. Before the Second Empire, the Concerts Musard had not been transplanted from the Boulevards, neither had the Folies Marigny been born, nor had Mabille developed out of the Chaumière, nor the Cirque de l'Impératrice come into being, nor, of course, the Panorama de Solferino, nor the Palais d'Industrie. The Rond Point and much else was a slough, the allées and avenues were as yet unblessed with asphalt, whilst the cafés chantants and restaurants, to say nothing of the legion of minor Parisian pleasures which distribute themselves over the French capital, mustered at less than a third of the number they now do, in its aptlynamed Champs Elysées. The means of amusement used to be one respectable café chantant at the bottom, the Jardin d'Hiver half-way up on the left, and the Hippodrome at the top. All the rest of the present paradise was a wilderness, enjoyable certainly, yet merely the crude faculties of nature unordered by art. In none of the multifarious improvements is the change so prominently manifested as in the taste and decoration of the celebrated cafés chantants.

An introductory word, then, on these cafés chantants. There have

been cafés within and about Paris having music and a stage for singers quite from the commencement of this century, but, lurking mostly along the southern boulevards, or in such unget-at-able localities as Asnières, they did not count with civilisation. Their admission to polite life dates no further back than thirty years ago, under Louis Philippe. Even then, for a long period, there were only two in the Champs Elysées, and only one-the Café Morel-where any one of repute would care to be seen. Now, besides the Vert Galant, a very respectable café chantant by the Pont Neuf, and numberless lesser though equally well-conducted cafés on the outer line of boulevards, there are three of first-class character in the Champs Elysées, each with their regular staff of artists, male and female, and an orchestra of choice musicians. That on the left as you go in from the Place de la Concorde is, officially speaking, the Café de l'Horloge, being so called after the famous Pavillon de l'Horloge of the Tuileries. This café, commonly known as the Café de Madame Anna, from the keeper of it, is very popular on account of its specialty in admitting stage dances to its programme, and in affecting Arab songs and other outlandish music. Opposite, and parallel with the Avenue Gabriel, comes first the Café des Ambassadeurs, so denominated because extending side by side with the Turkish, English, and other embassies. As it is the largest, best-appointed, and handsomest open-air café in Paris, there can be no doubt that, but for the insuperable rivalry of the adjoining café, which engages Thérèsa, it would beat all competition out of the field. Yet, notwithstanding the drawing power of a star, the singers, both romancist and comic, being picked, and the orchestra conducted by such a superior man as Javelot, the extensive area of seats and tables at the Ambassadeurs is generally fully occupied during the season. Most of these summer cafés have a partnership with the winter cafés on the boulevards or elsewhere, such, namely, as close during the hotter months. Thus, those artists who have been singing in the winter at the Ba-ta-clan, on the Boulevard Prince Eugène, are wont to migrate in the summer to the Vert Galant or to Madame Anna's; whilst the singers and orchestra of the Eldorado, on the Boulevard de Strasbourg, and of the Casino Français, in the Palais Royal, have the habit of uniting their forces at the Ambassadeurs when that place opens in May. One café, however, is transferred bodily every year, title and all, from the stifling Rue du Faubourg Poissonière to the second grove on the right in the Champs Elysées. It is thus that the Alcazar d'Hiver, after a natural decadence in February and March, annually renews its youth with the bud under the style of the Alcazar d'Eté, and on the very spot of the old Café Morel, with which, too, in many other respects it identifies itself. This is the café, both in its winter and summer phases, which has been the scene of Thérèsa's greatest triumphs. For a short time in the height of her singular career the Eldorado contrived to secure her services, or, more truly, helped towards her successes; but, soon returning to the old stage, Thérèsa has become almost one with the Alcazars d'Hiver and d'Eté. A London open-air café is an impossibility. But, seeing that much of the tale I am going to tell derives from a Parisian café, let me take my reader beforehand to the Alcazar d'Eté, and ask him or her to observe by way of a mise-en-scène what there meets the senses. The ground space is about the size of a good average parish church, and, for want of a

better simile, one may say that in plan also it greatly resembles a church. Entering by the lower gate, and leaving the restaurant on your right, you see before you a multitudinous array of chairs, of the same pattern as those ordinarily seen in continental churches, a table painted green to every four chairs, three main passages like church aisles, two rows of trees arranged precisely as would be the pillars of a church, with evergreen plantations on either side high enough to represent church walls and effectually to preclude sight though not sound, from the outer barbarians, the figure being completed by a final correlation in the stage and orchestra department, which of course here form the cynosure of all eyes, as in churches do other things and persons. The gas-light is artistic and plentiful, and not unfrequently assisted by variegated bengal, whence, of a fine night, anything more fairy-like in real life than the whole scene together can be scarcely imagined. One feature of these open-air cafés is very noticeable, in that the singing damsels utterly eschew the stupid fashion of most of our music-halls and of all our concerts, which prescribes a piece of music being held in the hand (although, like the Miss Flamboroughs' half-guineas in the "Vicar of Wakefield," not necessarily for use), the general effect of which is to invest a young lady, on retiring at the end of a song, with as much gaucherie as if she had just been eating humble pie instead of trying her best to please. The French lady-singers act their pieces as well as sing them; besides which they sit out the entire performance from one end to the other, tastily dressed, and disposed on velvet fauteuils semicircularly placed at the back of the stage, so being ready at a moment's notice to stand up and take their turn at singing. The sitting arrangement, for some mysterious reason, is forbidden by the authorities in the winter cafés, but allowed and encouraged in the summer ones. Where it is carried out it has the double effect of adding largely to the attractiveness of the concert -what concert, providing a continous front of belles in semicircles, would not attract ?-and of mutually familiarising singers and audience.

A propos of this same subject, I have frequently heard Thérèsa's wonderful popularity debated, and have generally remarked that the would-be savants put it down to the debased state of public taste. She is illiterate, she has no voice, she is hideously ugly, she is rude and vulgar, in short, everything that is bad, physically and morally: she is popular, only because she panders to a low condition of Parisian morals. Well, the question may be a question. All I can say, is that, having heard and considered Thérèsa hundreds of times, such is not my critique on her. I have conversed with her, and found that she did not express herself as an illiterate would, but the contrary. She may not have an operatic voice, strictly speaking, and I never saw that she made any pretension to one; but she has an astonishingly good ear for music, and complete command over what amount of voice she does possess. True, she is no beauty; but she is not uglier than many of her compeers, whilst it cannot be denied that, when she sings and her face lights up, her ugliness absolutely disappears. Possibly she is rude and vulgar in private; but I know presentable Frenchwomen ruder and more vulgar. As to her songs, I deny that they are of a questionable character. A critic must be hypercritical indeed who would object to the "Sapeur," or to "Revenant du Moulin," or to the "Femme à Barbe," or to the "Vénus aux Carottes,"