rom all the realms of Christendom; the "Salon des Rois" holds Joan
of Arc, sculptured in marble by the hand of a princess; in the drawing-
room, Pere la Chaise and Marion de l'Orme are side by side, and the
angelic beauty of Agnes Sorel floods the great hall with light, like a
sunbeam; and in this priceless treasure-house, worth more to France than
almost fair Normandy itself, this gallery of glory, first arranged at
Choisy, then transferred hither to console the solitude of a weeping
woman, the wanderer finds the only remaining memorial of La Grande
Mademoiselle.

THE SWAN-SONG OF PARSON AVERY.
1635.

When the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late,
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury with his wife and children eight,
Dropping down the river harbor in the shallop Watch and Wait.

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer-morn,
And the newly-planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born,
And the homesteads like brown islands amidst a sea of corn.

Broad meadows reaching seaward the tided creeks between,
And hills rolled, wave-like, inland, with oaks and walnuts green:
A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eye had never seen.

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,
And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread
To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead!

All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-breeze died,
The blackening sky at midnight its starry lights denied,
And, far and low, the thunder of tempest prophesied.

Blotted out was all the coast-line, gone were rock and wood and sand;
Grimly anxious stood the helmsman with the tiller in his hand,
And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land.

And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore:
"Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before
To the pleasant land of Heaven, where the sea shall be no more!"

All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside,
To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide;
And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide.

There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair,
A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare,
And through it all the murmur of Father Avery's prayer.

From the struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast,
On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed,
Alone of all his household the