clear radiance of the name of André Chénier extinguished the light of all the names that had hitherto shone brightly. A poet with the light of genius on his brow and the martyr's aureole round his head, had risen from the grave to lead the young generation into the promised land of the new literature. André Marie Chénier, born in Constantinople (Galata) in 1762, was the son of a beautiful, bright, and intellectual Greek woman, whose maiden name was Santi l'Homaka.[1] His father was the French consul-general for Turkey, an eminent savant. While still a little child, André was taken to France, to a beautiful part of Languedoc. During the years that he passed there he forgot his native language, but when he began to learn it again at school in Paris, he picked it up so fast that at the age of sixteen he had completely mastered it. He devoted himself eagerly to the study of its literature, with which he was as well acquainted as with that of France. At the age of twenty he entered the army as a _cadet gentilhomme_, a kind of second lieutenant, and went into garrison with his regiment at Strasburg. He spent all his spare time in studying languages. But the garrison life, with its utter want of intellectual interests, was very irksome to him; after six months of it he returned to Paris; and as he at this time developed a malady the only cure for which was a regular and quiet life, he threw up his commission. But abstinence and inaction were little to the taste of a young man in whose case the eager passions of youth were combined with the restless artistic and scientific bent of the genius. In company with friends he travelled for two years in Switzerland and Italy, making a long stay in Rome. He fell ill in Naples and was unable to reach Greece, the goal of the journey, the country he longed to see. When he returned to Paris in the beginning of 1785, he mixed with the best society of the day in his parents' house. He made acquaintance with Le Brun, the poet, David, the painter, Lavoisier, the chemist, and numbers of diplomatists and public officials whom the Revolution was to make famous. Besides these he had his own private circle of friends, most of whom were talented young noblemen. Dividing his time pretty equally between study and pleasure, he was also much in the company of the most frivolous and dissipated set of the day, which consisted of fine gentlemen (the Duke of Montmorency, Prince Czartoryski, &c.), ladies of rank (the Duchesse de Mailly, the Princesse de Chalais, &c.), artists and authors (Beaumarchais, Mercier, &c), and beautiful young courtesans (the Rose, Glycère, Amélie of Chénier's poems)--a mixed company whose ways and doings Rétif de la Bretonne has described to us, and the majority of whom fell victims to the guillotine. At this period of his life Chénier made acquaintance with a man who, sharing to the full his love of liberty and hatred of all terrorism, at once became