In old times a fancy held men's minds, that the payment for poetry came only from Heaven: and that so soon as the Divine fingers which caught the minstrelsy of the angel world, touched upon gold, they palsied, and lost their power. Under the present flattering condition of the author world (of which, alas, we only read!) it may be well to revive the caution: the poor may, at the least, console themselves thereby; and as for the rich--they need no consolation. Time and time again, we believe, spicy authors have threatened to take the publisher's business off his hands; and in lieu of half the profits, to measure them all with themselves. But, unfortunately for the credit of the calling, authors are, in the general way, blessed with very moderate financial capacity; and from Scott to Lamartine, they have in such venture, to the best of our observation, worked very hard--for very little pay. * * * * * Speaking of Lamartine, reminds us of a little episode of French life, which has latterly crept into the French papers, and which would have made (as the publishers say) a "companion volume" to Lamartine's Raphael--always provided it were as well written out. The episode is dismissed in two or three lines of the journals, and is headed in very attracting way--"Died of Love." Such a kind of death being mostly unheard of--especially in New York--it will be necessary to justify the title by a somewhat fuller _résumé_ of the story, than the journalist favors us with. Marie of Montauban was as pretty a girl as the traveler might see in going through all of southern France; and a pretty girl of southern France, is more than pretty in any other quarter of France. Her father had been a small _propriétaire_, and had married a descendant of an old family, under circumstances of that vague and wild romance which grew up a little after the old Revolution. Both the parents, however, died early in life: she inherited from the mother exceeding delicacy, and a refinement, which agreed very poorly with the poverty to which her father's improvidence had left her an heir. Admired and beloved, and sometimes courted by those about her, she resolutely determined to secure her own support. She commenced in a romantic way--by quitting secretly her home, and throwing herself upon a very broad and a very wicked world. Fortune guided her to the home of a worthy baker; she here learned the smaller mysteries of his craft, and made such show in the front shop of her new-found patron, as bewitched the provincial _gailliards_, and made its tale upon the heart of the baker's son. In short, the son wooed in earnest; the baker protested: and whether it was the protest (which is sure to kindle higher flame) or the honest heart of the wooer himself, Marie forgot the earnest longings, which her mother's nature had planted in her, and became the runaway wife of the runaway baker's son.