It is because these storied walls,
often ruined, often rebuilt, still shelter a gallery of historic portraits
such as the world cannot equal; there is not a Bourbon king, nor a Bourbon
battle, nor one great name among the courtier contemporaries of Bourbons,
that is not represented there; the "Hall of the Guises" contains kindred
faces, from 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.
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