_Où suis-je? quel nouveau miracle_ _Tient encore mes sens enchantés_ _Quel vaste, quel pompeux spectacle_ _Frappe mes yeux épouvantés?_ _Un nouveau monde vient d'éclore_ _L'univers se reforme encore_ _Dans les abîmes du chaos;_ _Et, pour réparer ses ruines_ _Je vois des demeures divines_ _Descendre un peuple de héros._ --J.B. ROUSSEAU. "Ode on the Birth of the Duke of Brittany." Here we find the poet's senses enchanted and alarmed at the appearance of a prodigy--a vast and magnificent spectacle--a new birth which is to reform the universe and redeem it from a state of chaos, all which means simply that a male child is born to the house of Bourbon. This is as bad as "_Je chante les vainqueurs, des vainqueurs de la terre_." We will avail ourselves of the present opportunity to observe that there is a very small portion of enthusiasm in the "Ode on the Taking of Namur." ENVY. We all know what the ancients said of this disgraceful passion and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author who has spoken of it. "The potter envies the potter, the artisan the artisan, the poor even the poor, the musician the musician--or, if any one chooses to give a different meaning to the word _avidos_--the poet the poet." Long before Hesiod, Job had remarked, "Envy destroys the little-minded." I believe Mandeville, the author of the "Fable of the Bees," is the first who has endeavored to prove that envy is a good thing, a very useful passion. His first reason is that envy was as natural to man as hunger and thirst; that it may be observed in all children, as well as in horses and dogs. If you wish your children to hate one another, caress one more than the other; the prescription is infallible. He asserts that the first thing two young women do when they meet together is to discover matter for ridicule, and the second to flatter each other. He thinks that without envy the arts would be only moderately cultivated, and that Raphael would never have been a great painter if he had not been jealous of Michael Angelo. Mandeville, perhaps, mistook emulation for envy; perhaps, also, emulation is nothing but envy restricted within the bounds of decency. Michael Angelo might say to Raphael, your envy has only induced you to study and execute still better than I do; you have not depreciated me, you have not caballed against me before the pope, you have not endeavored to get me excommunicated for placing in my picture of the Last Judgment one-eyed and lame persons in paradise, and pampered cardinals with beautiful women perfectly naked in hell! No! your envy is a laudable feeling; you are brave as well as envious; let us be good friends.