quite a child, "a little monkey of six, still dressed in a little baize frock," or just "wearing his first braces," he sees himself "in ecstasy before the splendours of the wing-cases of a gardener-beetle, or the wings of a butterfly." At nightfall, among the bushes, he learned to recognize the chirp of the grasshopper. To put it in his own words, "he made for the flowers and insects as the Pieris makes for the cabbage and the Vanessa makes for the nettle." The riches of the rocks; the life which swarms in the depth of the waters; the world of plants and animals, that "prodigious poem; all nature filled him with curiosity and wonder." "A voice charmed him; untranslatable; sweeter than language and vague as a dream." (1/3.)

These peculiarities are all the more astonishing in that they seem to be absolutely spontaneous and in nowise hereditary. What his parents were he himself has told us: small farmers, cultivating a little unprofitable land; poor "husbandmen, sowers of rye, cowherds"; and in the wretched surroundings of his childhood, when the only light, of an evening, came from a splinter of pine, steeped in resin, which was held by a strip of slate stuck into the wall; when his folk shut themselves in the byre, in times of severe cold, to save a little firewood and while away the evenings; when close at hand, through the bitter wind, they heard the howling of the wolves: here, it would seem, was nothing propitious to the birth of such tastes, if he had not borne them naturally within him.

But is it not the very essence of genius, as it is the peculiarity of instinct, to spring from the depths of the invisible?

Yet who shall say what stores of thought unspoken, what unknown treasures of observation never to be communicated, what patient reflections unuttered, may be housed in those toil-worn brains, in which, perhaps, slowly and obscurely, accumulate the germs of faculties and talents by which some more favoured descendant may one day benefit? How many poets have died unpublished or unperceived, in whom only the power of expression was lacking!

When he was seven years old his parents recalled him to Saint-Léons, in order to send him to the school kept by his godfather, Pierre Ricard, the village schoolmaster, "at once barber, bellringer, and singer in the choir." Rembrandt, Teniers, nor Van Ostade never painted anything more picturesque than the room which served at the same time as kitchen, refectory, and bedroom, with "halfpenny prints papering the walls" and "a huge chimney, for which each had to bring his log of a morning in order to enjoy the right to a place at the fireside."

He was never to forget these beloved places, blessed scenes of his childhood, amid which he grew up like a little savage, and through all his material sufferings, all his hours of bitterness, and even in the resignation of age, their idyllic memory sufficed to make his life fragrant. He would always see the humble paternal garden, the brook where he used to surprise the crayfish, the ash-tree in which he found his first goldfinch's nest, and "the flat stone on which he heard, for the first time, the mellow ringing of the bellringer frog." (1/4.) Later, when writing to his brother, he was to recall the good days of still careless life, when "he would sprawl, the sun on his belly, on the mosses of the wood of Vezins, eating his black bread and cream" or "ring the bells of Saint-Léons" and "pull the tails of the bulls of Lavaysse." (1/5.)

For Henri had a brother, Frédéric, barely two years younger than he; equally meditative by nature, and of a serious, upright mind; but his tastes inclined rather to matters of administration and the understanding of business, so that where Frédéric was bored, Henri was more than content, thirstily drinking in science and poetry "among the blue campanulas of the hills, the pink heather of the mountains, the golden buttercups of the meadows, and the odorous bracken of the woods." (1/6.) Apart from this the two brothers "were one"; they understood one another in a marvellous fashion, and always loved one another. Henri never failed to watch over Frédéric with a wholly fatherly solicitude; he was prodigal of advice, helpful with his experience, doing his best to smooth away all difficulties, encouraging him to walk in his footsteps and make his way through the world behind him. He was his confidant, giving an ear to all that befell him of good or ill; to his fears, his disappointments, his hopes, and all his thoughts; and he took the keenest interest in his studies and researches. On the other hand, he had no more sure and devoted friend; none more proud of his first success, and in later days no more enthusiastic admirer, and none more eager for his fame. (1/7.)

He was twelve years old when his father, "the first of all his line, was tempted by the town," and led all his family to Rodez, there to keep a café. The future naturalist entered the school of this town, where he served Mass on Sunday, in the chapel, in order to pay his fees. There again he was interested in the animal creation above all. When he began to construe Virgil the only thing that charmed him, and which he remembered, was the landscape in which the persons of the poem move, in which are so many "exquisite details concerning the cicada, the goat, and the laburnum."

Thus four years went by: but then his parents were constrained to seek their fortune elsewhere, and transported their household to Toulouse, where again the father kept a café. The young Henri was admitted gratuitously to the seminary of the Esquille, where he managed to complete his fifth year. Unfortunately his progress was soon interrupted by a new exodus on the part of his family, which emigrated this time to Montpellier, where he was haunted for a time by dreams of medicine, to which he seemed notably adapted. Finally, a run of bad luck persisting, he had to bid farewell to his studies and gain his bread as best he could. We see him set out along the wide white roads: lost, almost a wanderer, seeking his living by the sweat of his brow; one day selling lemons at the fair of Beaucaire, under the arcades of the market or before the barracks of the Pré; another day enlisting in a gang of labourers who were working on the line from Beaucaire to Nîmes, which was then in process of construction. He knew gloomy days, lonely and despairing. What was he doing? of what was he dreaming? The love of nature and the passion for learning sustained him in spite of all, and often served him as nourishment; as on the day when he dined on a few grapes, plucked furtively at the edge of a field, after exchanging the poor remnant of his last halfpence for a little volume of Reboul's poems; soothing his hunger by reciting the verses of the gentle baker-poet. Often some creature kept him company; some insect never seen before was often his greatest pleasure; such as the pine-chafer, which he encountered then for the first time; that superb beetle, whose black or chestnut coat is sprinkled with specks of white velvet; which squeaks when captured, emitting a slight complaining sound, like the vibration of a pane of glass rubbed with the tip of a moistened finger. (1/8.)

Already this young mind, romantic