Edward Gibbon, the historian, who had known Lamartine’s mother in her girlhood, spent a year at a house near her residence. He greatly admired the child Alphonse and predicted his future career. Footnote 4: The concièrges and porters at the large mansions in France were allowed to keep a lottery. A _quine_ consisted of five prizes. Footnote 5: Leopold declined the crown of Greece and became the King of Belgium. Footnote 6: The body of the daughter, at her dying request, had been embalmed and sent directly home for interment at Saint Point. The mother was in many respects like her husband’s mother, a devoted wife and indulgent parent, as well as the kindest of neighbors. * * * * * “Whoso takes good advice is secure from falling; but whoso rejects it, falleth into the pit of his own conceit.” _Gems from the East._ PASSAGE TO INDIA. (Extracts Selected.) WALT WHITMAN. (Curious in time I stand, noting the efforts of heroes, Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death? Lies the seed unreck’d for centuries in the ground? lo, to God’s due occasion, Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms, And fills the earth with use and beauty.) O Thou transcendent, Nameless, the fibre and the breath, Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them, Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving, Thou moral spiritual fountain—affection’s source—thou reservoir, (O pensive soul of me—O thirst unsatisfied—waitest not there? Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?) Thou pulse—thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, That circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself I could not launch, to those, superior universes? Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me, And lo, thou gently mastereth the orbs, Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space. Greater than stars or suns, Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth; What love than thine and ours could wider amplify? What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul? What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength? What cheerful willingness for others’ sake to give up all? For others’ sake to suffer all?