barelegged, fetched me a tumbler of cool, creamy milk nearly twelve inches high.

XIII.

ON my homeward journey I happened upon a long, winding, shadow-haunted pass, such as abounds in this region, and which reminded me (as, indeed, did the whole Saxon Switzerland) of our own Yellowstone Valley, modeled on the scale of one inch to the foot, or thereabouts. The white-sanded bottom was so narrow that space was scarcely left for the slender path to follow the meanderings of the rivulet, which tinkled concealed beneath luxuriant overgrowths of forget-me-not and fern. Up to the sky, on either side, climbed the rugged walls, shaggy with fir and hemlock, and thatched below with grass-tufts and shrubs. The fallen fragments which ever and anon blocked the way with their surly shoulders were iridescent with green moss, and dampness seemed to exude from the rocky clefts. The footpath was criss-crossed with pine-roots, till it resembled an irregular parquet-floor. Sometimes the bowlders had so fallen together as to inclose spacious hollows, the crevices of which had been stopped up with sand and pebbles and vegetable decay. One might have lived very comfortably in many of these caves; they were overrun with raspberry and blackberry vines, and within were cool and dry, with clean, sanded floors. But I saw no troglodytes.

At one point a broad nose of rock jutted over the pathway full fifteen feet, like a ceiling; and so low-studded was it that I could easily touch its flat surface with my upraised hand. There was something fascinating about this freak, and at the same time provocative of a smile-Old Nature making a humorous pretense of imitating the works of man! But the grotesque pranks she plays with this softhearted white sandstone of hers are indescribable and endless. In many places the surface of the rock is honey-combed and otherwise marked as if by the action of water. I am not acquainted with the geological history of this strange tract, but I should fancy it might have been the compact, sandy bed of some great lake, which having broken its boundaries, and gone seaward by way of the Elbe, the sand-bed caked and cracked and hardened, and became traversed with ravines and gulches, worn by downward-percolating streams. The lake must have subsided gradually to produce the horizontal markings which are everywhere apparent. I have often seen precisely similar formations to this of the Saxon Switzerland at the bottom of dried-off mud-ponds. Beyond the mouth of the Elbe are great shoals and bars, composed of the same kind of sand as that which I trod under foot in this shadowy ravine.

It should not be called a pass, for it was a place to linger and pause in, to enter at sunrise and scarcely depart from by moonlight. It seemed wholly secluded; I met neither foot nor footprint throughout its whole long length. Even the sky might not be too familiar; looking upward, but a narrow strip of blue was visible, and the overbending trees fretted even that with emerald lattice-work. However, I could not support life on raspberries and water; the afternoon

was more than half gone, and I had no idea how far off the Badehaus might be. Hastening onward, the narrow walls of the ravine suddenly opened out right and left in a vast circular sweep, and I stood within a grand natural amphitheatre, rising high and descending low above and beneath. My station was about a third of the way up, in what might be called the dress-circle. The arena below was crowded thick with summer folinge-oaks, elms, beeches, and underbrush in profusion. There were the players-gay fellows, in nodding caps and green, fluttering cloaks. The audience was composed of a stiff and sedate assemblage of dark-browed hemlocks, standing rigid and erect each in his rock-bound seat. Not one of them all was sitting down; but, whether this were owing to some masterly exploit on the part of one of the actors, bringing every spectator in irrepressible enthusiasm to his feet, or whether (as, judging from their gloomy and unyielding aspect, seemed more likely) they had started up to demand the condign punishment of some unlucky wretch who had outraged their sense of decorum, I had no means of determining. In fact, my arrival seemed to have put an abrupt stop to the proceedings, whatever they may have been; there was no voice or movement anywhere, save as created involuntarily by the mysterious wind. On my shouting across, however, to a sombre giant on the opposite side of the amphitheatre, to know the title of the drama which was under representation, he answered me, indeed, but with an unreal tone of hollow mockery, and in such a manner as to leave me no wiser than I was before. Manifestly, I was looked upon as an interloper, who had slipped in without paying for a ticket; and self-respect demanded that I should retire at once.

But the theatre, vast as it was, had only two doors-that by which I had entered, and another just opposite. To reach this I must make half the circuit of the inclosure, the direct route across the arena being impracticable, owing to the savagely precipitous nature of the descent. The path which had hitherto guided me now bearing to the right, I followed it in that direction, passing almost within reach of the outstretched arms of hundreds of inhospitable hemlocks. Presently the sun, which, hidden behind a cloud, had sunk almost to the upper verge of the rocky rampart, shone out with mellow lustre, flinging my shadow far away into the centre of the arena, where the green - coated actors treated it with great indignity, bandying it from one to another, tossing it up and down, and more than once letting it tumble heedlessly into some treacherous pitfall. Meanwhile the wind, which had caused me no small annoyance already that afternoon, was maliciously making the rounds of the house, and stirring up every individual in it to a sibilant utterance, whose import there was no mistaking. It was my first-and will, I fancy, be my last-experience of being hissed out of a theatre; and since I was neither a condemned playwright nor an unsuccessful actor, I could not help resenting the injustice of the proceeding. Yet, after all, why should I consent to be ruffled by their senseless clamor?

I can assure myself of no worse fault than the venial one of having "interviewed" them and their like pretty often, and occasionally published some part of my observations in the public prints; but if I have erred, it has been on the side of eulogy; and should I ever have occasion to mention trees in future, it will be with the proviso that all of them the oldest, biggest, and respectablest, more particularly-are no better than incorrigible blockheads at bottom.

XIV.

To the banks of the Elbe I came at last, with a dusty distance of three or four miles still lying between me and Schandau. But the scenery hereabouts is novel and striking: the stone quarries extending up and down the river for many leagues, and the heaps of sand and débris, rising to an average height of perhaps a hundred feet, and sloping sharply downward to the water's edge, are a remarkable if not a strictly picturesque feature. The path if the informal track which leads a risky life along the base of these lofty dumping - grounds can be called such-yields wearisomely to the feet, and a wary lookout must be kept to dodge the heavy stones which are continually bowling downward from the summit. At intervals there are slides, compactly constructed of masonry and worn very smooth, by which the square blocks quarried from the cliffs are shot to the water's edge, and are there taken on board by canal-boats and floated to Dresden, all the modern part of which is built of this material. The supply is practically inexhaustible, but that does not prevent the cliffs from suffering in appearance; and be fore many years a voyage up the Elbe will be no longer attractive. It is a nice question in economy, whether it be worth while to rob Saxon Switzerland to pay Dresden. Perhaps only the stone contractors would answer it unhesitatingly in the affirmative. It reminds me of the little boy who was courted by his friends as being the possessor of a fine cake. With the praiseworthy purpose of at once concentrating and augmenting their regard, he made the cake a part of himself by eating it. But, strange to say, his friends ceased to visit him from that day forward, and the cake gave him a stomach-ache.

I took my dinner that evening at the Forsthaus, one of that row of hotels which rampart Schandau. Hot and noisy as they are to live in, their bill of-fare is to Herr Boettcher's as a novel by Thackeray to a school-boy's composition. I dined on a terrace beneath the trees, with the river just beyond. At dark, every table had its great astral-lamp, and the gentlemanly proprietor amused himself and his guests by making blue, red, and green fires on the stone-steps.

Next morning, as I stood with my valise on the platform of the railway station at Krippen, a fellow-he keeps a small tobaccostore on See-Strasse, in Dresden-stepped up to me, and, after requesting the favor of a light from my cigar, supposed, in a cheerful tone, that I was returning to town by the approaching train.

"No," said I, smiling in spite of myself. "I left Dresden finally yesterday morning. I

am now bound for Prague; and never expect, sir, to see you, or buy your cigars, again!"

The train came in; the cigar-vender assisted a pretty young woman, with small, shapely feet, into a second-class carriage; then the whistle blew, the train started, and

IN

WOMEN'S MEN.

N turning over the ever-fresh pages of "Jane Eyre," Orestes said to me: "Rochester is a woman's man-brutal, mysterious, grand, tender, hateful, and impossible."

"What makes you so severe about woman's estimate of mankind?" said I, rather tartly. "Has any woman fallen in love with you?" (Orestes and I always quarrel.)

"Ah! Now you are very satirical, are you not?" said Orestes, calmly, looking in the fire; "but oblige me by looking over the heroes of women's novels, and also remember the men whom you and I know, who are worshiped by women-are they not a poor set?"

"Well," said I, "as all men are more or less supposed to belong to women, and generally marry them, or try to, we may call all men women's men. Do you submit to that classification?"

"No; I am referring to the ideal man whom the female novelist evokes, as the German did the camel, from the depths of her inner consciousness, such a man as Rochester, and, worse still, the faultless prig."

"I agree with you," said I, reluctantly, for I hate to agree with Orestes, he is so masterful" I agree with you that the faultless prig' is rather hard to take. I remember one instance in the drama-John Mildmay, whom I always wish to murder, with his self-sufficient virtue; he is not a woman's man, by any means."

"No," said Orestes; "he is simply a quiet, good fellow, whom you could trust and respect, and therefore you would not love and adore!"

"Well, the point of all argument is, that it develops ideas which otherwise would not come to the mind. I have an idea! Isn't a quiet, good fellow apt to be conceited, and is not that the reason why we do not love or adore him? while the man of lesser virtue has humility, and is aware of his own worthlessness, and is absorbed in us, and grate

ful."

"There I have you!" said Orestes, triumphantly. 'Absorbed in us' is good! That is all you care for." (Orestes is a brute.).

No, not all we care for; but still a great deal," said I. "Do not the French call love 'L'égoïsme à deux ?' We are egotistic, for both of us, when we are in love; and, of course, absorption in us is indispensable. I have known one agreeable and altogether blameless person who had singularly bad fortune with women, because he always allowed them to see (he could not help it) that he was thinking more of himself than of them. If he shut a door, it was because the draught blew on him, not on her. If he removed a vase of flowers, it was because he did not like the perfume; if the dust blew in at the car-window and annoyed him, he shut it with

out asking her leave, although a shut window gave her a sick-headache. When his dear self was attended to, then he had petits soins for the lady-not before. He was a good fellow, and utterly unconscious of his egotism, and quite astonished and dismayed when girl after girl rejected him and his fortunes."

"A very nice person, no doubt," said Orestes.

Yes, one of your heroes," replied I. "Now, a woman's hero would at least have the tact to affect to forget himself, if he did not."

"But how do you account for the fascination of Rochester-he had no petits soins?"

"Oh, yes, he had! His very severity was complimentary, and his tenderness was superb. Rochester was a little absurd as a sketch, as it was the first work of the trembling hand of genius overweighted by its own power. Charlotte Brontë wanted to paint strength and power. She made the lines a little blurred, and Rochester became brutal in manner, but never in deed. She had not seen society, so she made some mistakes; but they were very external and unimportant. She knew how to draw a real character who has lived, and who has made little Jane Eyre stand forth as one of the best heroines of modern times. Think what an insignificant person she would have been if Rochester had not loved her! We feel all through the book that she must have been somebody, else he would not have loved her-that is the great artistic merit of the book. She lives, she exists, merely in the light thrown on her by Rochester. It is as if one part of a painting lighted up another. It always reminds me of another great artistic feat. In Browning's My Last Duchess' the old fellow describes his own character so unconsciously. Jane Eyre does this."

"Yes," said Orestes, "I see you are in love with Rochester, like all women. I should have given him a wide berth myself."

"I dare say he would have returned the compliment. But you abuse lady-novelists. What do you think of Ernest Maltravers as a hero, or Kenelm Chillingly-Bulwer's heroes?"

"I confess to liking Bulwer," said Orestes (as if it was a great concession). "I think Ernest a very handsome, lovable, faulty young gentleman. If I had been a young lady, I should undoubtedly have worshiped him. He was the conception of a young, romantic novel-writer, as Kenelm Chillingly was the more ripe and noble fruit of his maturity. I consider Kenelm Chillingly the best and most natural sketch in modern fiction. Godolphin is also a charming hero-manly, and attractive, and not impossible."

"And yet I know no lady-novelist who would have dared to make her men so cruel and hard as these men were occasionally," said I, although I secretly agreed with him.

Orestes laughed. "But they were cruel in a man's way, not in a woman's way! Look at Ouida's men; they slash around, and are impolite, and break things, and are very strong, and terrible, and brutal, as I call it; and yet women find them so unutterably delightful. I insist that, if a man should behave at a

club as lady-novelists are fond of describing their heroes as behaving in drawing-rooms, they would be kicked out. But I am talking for information. Now, tell me, do women love brutal men?"

"Some women do, I think; they love strength always, and manhood, and a character totally unlike themselves. Perhaps they excuse brutality as an evidence of strength. I have known one very refined and superior woman who loved and married a brutal, cruel fellow, and really liked to have him push her down-stairs. She thought it was the defect of early education, and used to say, 'Poor Charles! he is so sensitive!' Other people who saw her young brow grow wrinkled before she was thirty, and her early bloom vanish, would have liked to confine poor Charles's sensitiveness behind the four walls of some public institution; but she continued to work for him, shield him, and pity him, to the last; but this instance was very rare. I think women love and appreciate kindness, and are offended by brutality, as a general axiom."

"Well, then, I have another serious count to make against women-novelists; their heroes are so mysterious. What do they want to wrap the very common fellows up in such an enchanted carpet of mystery for?"

"Because women know very little of the lives of men. What can a woman, from her secluded 'coign of vantage,' know of the life of a gay man about town? Heaven forefend that she should know! And when she begins to love a man, a woman naturally explains all that is not explainable in the character or conduct of the man she loves by throwing over it a veil of mystery. She undoubtedly thinks a great deal better of him than he deserves, but that is one of the flowers of paradise, which I trust will always linger on the earth. Imagine how it would take down all the business of love if we thought as ill of you as you deserve!"

"Thank you," said Orestes; "you are quite complimentary. Now, would you be so good as to describe to me the sort of man whom a woman might, could, or would, or should love?"

"I don't like the subjunctive mood," said I. "I like the indicative mood present tense. She loves the earnest, the unaffected man, the sincere and real man, the man who does the work of the world, and who has no selfish conceit, or if he has any has the sense to conceal it. She loves the modest man, who pays her a shy compliment with his eyes, and not with his lips. She sees with a pair of eyes which Nature has given her extra, knowing her defenseless condition. She calls these eyes her instincts. She sees if he truly loves her and not himself."

"I do not find any such men in ladies' novels," said Orestes.

"You find plenty of them in the marketplace, with contented faces, don't you? as if some good woman loved them?"

"No. I never met an American with a contented face," said Orestes. "I have met some very good fellows, such as you describe, but I have not classed them as among wom en's favorites."

"Perhaps you are thinking of lady-killers; they are a class by themselves. You remem

ber Bunyan's description of Vanity Fair, and remember that there is a world where the vain, the foolish, the credulous, and the absurd, live and have their being. There the lady-killer exists, and ravages the countryside. Any woman who can be flattered, any woman who prefers to have a little incense burned under her nose, instead of having an honest fire on her hearth, is the victim to this interesting creature, and perhaps Ouida, who does not belong to the higher order of lady-novelists (except when she writes a short story like A Dog of Flanders'), pictures him occasionally, but the lady-killer is not a woman's man. There is a hero in 'Middlemarch' who is intensely interesting, poor Lydgate, whom Rosamund murders." "Oh, there you have me. I am forced to agree that one woman can draw a man's picture. George Eliot can paint with brains. Lydgate's story is, without exception, the most terrible and the most common tragedy of the nineteenth century. Rosamund is a very familiar murderess. I know half a dozen of her, and yet no novel-writer has found her but this greatest of women geniuses."

"Yes, the author of Middlemarch' and 'Romola' certainly dives deeper than any English writer, except Shakespeare, into the intricate foldings of human nature. She is a writer of infinite ethical purity, but she makes one profoundly sad, I think, with her hopeless views of the fortunes of our kind. All the best-meaning people come to grief in her novels, only the poor, the bad, the commonplace, swim on the topmost wave."

"That is the mistake of great geniuses frequently," said Orestes. "They are profoundly saddened by their superior insight. They are like the two travelers, one of whom stopped half-way, and saw a peaceful valley; the other went higher up, and saw, with his ! greater opportunity, a burning city. When they came home, the man who had seen the most was the saddest man."

66

George Sand has drawn some powerful pictures of men," I replied; “but they are French men, who I think are entirely different from Anglo-Saxon men. She has one supreme conviction, that all the relation of man to woman is a selfish one. She of course makes love supremely selfish, but even in the relation which a son bears to his mother she makes selfishness predominant, and in the relation of husband and wife it is the ruling motive. I believe she thinks a father can love his daughter so much that he will desire her happiness rather than his own, but she has a poor opinion of the sex generally."

"No woman had a better opportunity of reading the character of distinguished men than she had," said Orestes; "but she was too near them in intellectual strength to try them by the best of all possible meters-that of a truly womanly nature. No man loves unreservedly and naturally a woman who is his intellectual equal."

"Now, that is one of your masterful speeches," said I. "I have known men worship wives who were their intellectual superiors."

"So have I, that is not the question: I said equals. No man wants to hold the same

intellectual plane as his wife; she then becomes a comrade, a fellow-student, not a wife. If he vacates the throne, and puts her on it, it is all very good, but then he assumes the position which she should hold-that of worshiper. Some men like it, I should not."

"No, I quite believe you; the role of worshiper would not suit you; but cannot you imagine taking a great deal of comfort with a wife who should be your equal in most things?

"No, I should hate a woman who knew statistics, which I know better than any thing. I should wish her to appeal to me for the number of inhabitants in Peking."

"Oh! oh! oh! what was it we were saying about devotion to us, absorption in us, a little while ago?" said I, rather triumphantly.

When Orestes is beaten in argument, or thinks he is going to be, he never hears what you say; he always goes off on some other topic. On this occasion he pursued his original train of thought, as if I had not spoken. I must say I have seen other members of the superior sex who condescended to this artifice.

lovable men in the brothers Moore, and in the young doctor in Villette,' another enchanting novel."

"Yes; I see you adore the rather brutal and mysterious hero, as I said before. Now, who of modern novelists has drawn a good heroine?" said Orestes.

"I think Edmund Yates has drawn one of the most interesting women in all modern fiction, in Harriet Routh, the heroine of 'Black Sheep;' a good woman, so faithful to a bad man that she steals for him, forges for him, and is his subservient tool. The author keeps up your respect for her through the whole novel in the most masterly manner. Some one beautifully said of her, 'She is true to a higher law than the law she breaks.' She was fidelity incarnate, although it made her go against all the laws of her being."

"Rather doubtful morality that," said Orestes; "if woman were not better than men, and did not make them more decent, more honorable, more religious, than they can be without her, where would the world be? Make a good woman a partner in

"I know that; I am not approving of Harriet Routh as a pattern for schools and families; I am only admiring the author's cleverness in making fidelity so beautiful that it glosses even wickedness. Now, which is the most to be admired, a good woman faithful to a bad man, or-"

Undoubtedly you did. You would have us possess no talents, no tastes, except such as we derive from you. You would have us chameleons, would you?”

"Yes-well-bred, well-dressed, sympathetic, and very pretty chameleons," replied Orestes; "but we are wandering from the subject, and have gone from women's men to men's women. Whose heroes and heroines do you like and approve of―Thackeray's ? ”

"No! I have never fallen in love with Arthur Pendennis, Harry Esmond, or Barnes Newcome. Thackeray's old men and old women, his snobs and his villains, are delightful; his young men and women of good society are failures. He was simply the gi ant Great Heart writing philosophical treatises. I find his love-making a failure. Now I should be in love with any of Miss Brontë's heroes much sooner than with any of Thackeray's. Look at Robert Gerard Moore in 'Shirley,' that most delicious, little-read novel! What a mixture of strength and tenderness! you feel that every look of his was a caress, the very selfish weakness that made him offer himself to Shirley for her money, while he loved Caroline, was so human, and as long as he did not love her-forgivable!"

"I like that," said Orestes; "that is a very strong piece of feminine logic! You can forgive a man any thing as long as he does not love anybody but yourself! What if Shirley had accepted him?"

"That would have made it a little awkward, but that never happens in novels. Charlotte Brontë has drawn very real and

"You might as well quote Dr. Johnson's

"If the man who turnips cries,

Cries not when his father dies,"" interrupted Orestes. "A good woman faithful to a bad man? Why, a good woman is faithful to everybody, and the badness or goodness of the recipient makes no alteration in her faithfulness."

"Then you approve of Harriet Routh. She was faithful in obeying a bad husband, whom she madly loved; she hated dishonesty, yet she became dishonest at his bidding. She laid on the altar of her affections, her principles, her talents, her belief, her hope of heaven; and she did it deliberately and understandingly. Is she not to be ad

mired?"

"What reward did she get?" asked Orestes.

"Ob, the usual one of devoted wives: he struck her and deserted her. The Nancy Sykes order of things pervades all grades of society. I think men love women who illtreat them. The most devoted lovers I have ever seen have been those men whose wives have treated them the worst. I do not think there has ever been so high an instance of conjugal devotedness shown by any man as by one of my friends, whose wife has always consistently flouted him."

"Then you think men are like being whipped, do you?

spaniels, and

No, not exactly-but I think it is one of the curious phases of love, and perhaps not inexplicable-when you remember what imperfect beings we all are-that affection is somewhat stimulated by fear. who is not entirely sure of his wife's love is

A husband

perhaps more anxious to it and the agitation in which certain was keep their husbands, on this point, pro inges a wholesome freshening of the affection Are we not always disposed to undor lee that which we are quite sure is invio at your own?"

"I do not think I should mad being very sure and quite tranquil about Mrs. Orestes," said my opponent. "I think I should prefer to be agitated about somet ang else.”

"Of course you would and you would be glad to have Mrs. Orestc3 o en setting easychairs for you before th fre, and having footstools placed in cont attitudes; and good dinners forever om ng on, in solemn procession, which ... Orestes should order; and you would like to have the grocer's book properly balanced, and Mrs. O., in a very becoming toilet which should cost you nothing, always in a very good-humor to receive you, and to put up with you when you were stupid, be quiet when you were sleepy, not wish to go out when you did not -in all respects, that well-bred chameleon whom you described, and you would take all this, as you do the sunshine, without any particular gratitude, or inquiring if Mrs. Orestes had not some tastes and acquirements which you did not meet, and, although you might like her very much, and abstractly consider her as a very comfortable and rather

qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, and honest father? Ought his life to be decent, his bills to be paid, his tastes to be high and elegant?' Yes, we should all say; yes, I add, that, to be loved by woman, he should be liberal, candid, and attentive to his wife in the small courtesies, as well as in the recognized duties of protecting her, and providing for her support the honorable maintenance of a gentlewoman,' as the fine old English phrase has it. Then he should allow her her own opinions, let her lead her own life, as much as he leads his, remembering that she is to be accountable on the last great day for her talents, and the use she has made of them, as he is; and that, if she does not have the liberty to lead her own life her own way, she must become a gnarled, distorted, and ugly tree, like that famous one which Bulwer described, which grew out of a tombstone in England."

"Well, you have ended with a lively image," said Orestes. "I do not think I have ever met Mr. Ignatius, if he is the gentleman you have been describing. I fear he is a 'woman's man,' and therefore impossible!" "I have been more fortunate, then, than you, for I have met him."

M. E. W. S.

ness, I think she would ultimately bore you; and you would sigh for the genius, sparkle, and eccentricity, of Mrs. Ignatius-you would wish that Mrs. Orestes were not so humdrum; in fact, your affections would need an impetus, a little agitation," said I, rather out of breath.

"Yes," said Orestes, musingly (he is an old bachelor), "I wish she would come along! . That picture of yours about the easy-chair and the footstool is rather pleasing. I think I like it better than your literary opinions. Couldn't you go on and describe Mrs. Orestes more? Would she have a pleasant voice, and read aloud to me, and would she always agree with me in my opinions, and never have any flights about Charlotte Brontë's heroes (whom I fear I do not resemble)? and could she not combine with all this the genius, sparkle, and eccentricity, of Mrs. Ignatius?'"

"I sincerely hope she will not-or, as you like the subjunctive mood, I hope she either might, could, would, or should not do any of these things."

"Now, do you not see," said Orestes, who is maddening, sometimes, "that you have agreed with me throughout-that you have admired all the brutal heroes, and that you have made these muscular gentry triumphant in bringing out women's virtues? The husband of Harriet Routh made her what she was. I, whom you evidently consider a hero, make Mrs. Orestes! What sort of a busband is Ignatius, who bears with the 'genius, sparkle, and eccentricity of madame his

wife?"

"Ah! he is a model husband," said I, "a pattern hero. In the first place, he is a gentleman, after Thackeray's noble description: 'What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these

HAS

ENGLISH PROSE.

AS there ever been a line of demarkation, sufficiently sharp and intelligible, drawn between poetry and prose? Is it difficult to discriminate between the flowering shrubs that we sometimes meet on the uplands of prose, and the clustering sprays that, heavy with buds and blossoms, flush the fragrant slopes of Helicon ?

Notwithstanding that Coleridge's definition of prose and poetry is suggestive, it does not seem to me to be either satisfactorily explicit or thoroughly correct. Prose, he says, "is words in their best order," and poetry "the best words in the best order." The relationship between these expositions is so close that one fails to apprehend readily the distinction intended; and especially as it is difficult to accept the inference that prose, in its most educated aspect, can be other than "the best words in the best order," or that poetry is nothing more than is embodied in this mere rhetorical idea. In truth, this definition of poetry applies properly to prose only, for the obvious reason that prose is less restricted in the choice of words and terms than poetry, as the latter, because of the inexorable exactions of rhythm, measure, or rhyme, is not only constantly obliged to forego the best word, but to even jeopardize the sense of a sentence by doing violence to its proper construction, as illustrated by that signal failure-the last verse of Gray's "Elegy, written in a Country Church-yard."

The line must be drawn somewhere; and, were I a ruler in the world of letters, I should be inclined to decide that, no matter what the thesis, no literary composition should be regarded as poetry that was not characterized throughout, and strictly, by metrical num

bers, perfect rhythm, and the purest rhyme, as well, perhaps, as by a brief pause, at least, at the end of each line. This, in my humble judgment, combined with the best words possible in the best order possible, embraces the constructive elements of all true poetry; while I am almost convinced, besides, that the absence of any one of these characteristics is fatal to it in its highest and most artistic acceptation.

This view of the subject will, of course, be considered heterodox, if not barbarous, by certain classics. It is, however, of English poetry I am speaking; and here I may observe that its earliest two great mastersChaucer and Spenser-seem to have entertained this idea rigidly. We have but to turn to the "Canterbury Tales" and the "Faerie Queene" to satisfy ourselves on this point; for, considering the period at which these poems were written, they are wondrous examples of correct metre, smooth rhythm, and tuneful rhyme. Nay, more-if we had, at the present day, a true knowledge of the pronunciation of the language at the time they were composed, we should, doubtless, be able to discover in them quite sufficient, in the way of rhyme and the harmony of numbers, to throw many a modern epic into the shade. Be this as it may, what is now of great importance to my argument is, that neither the father of English poetry nor his illustrious successor has, so far as I am aware, established any precedent for the admission into poetry of imperfect rhythm or faulty rhymes, or for the introduction of even a single line the final syllable or word of which does not rhyme most harmonionsly with that of some other line. In fact, both these authors seem to have accepted Cicero's idea of poetry rather than that reëchoed subsequently by Dryden or Coleridge, and to have been impressed with the conviction that poetry is not as to essence but as to structure only.

As all ideas possible to the understanding can be presented with greater ease and amplitude in prose than in numbers characterized by perfect rhyme and rhythm, it is quite apparent to me that poetry is depending upon the latter for its very existence. And here, precisely, is where a grave difficulty obtains. The imagination may be flushed with all the colors of the rainbow, and the tongue may break forth in raptures the most sublime, but, in the absence of metrical numbers and perfect rhymes, it is all to no purpose, so far as true poetry is concerned. Here, as in music, a defective ear is fatal; for, notwithstanding that the argument and sense may be comprehended thoroughly, there is lost to the appreciation that delightful harmony. that mysterious and exquisite something which is "the blossom and fragrance of all human language."

Poets are as thick as blackberries because some of the great masters of the art, in an evil hour-when the tide was out, perhaps have left us such faulty examples, and have taken such liberties with the laws which, in my opinion, should govern it strictly, that its gates seem to have been thrown wide open to all comers. Not that I presume divine in spiration, that exceptional characteristic of the race, to be indispensable to the claims of

a poet simply as such; but what I venture to believe is, that no one should be permitted to enter these gates, or to commingle with the true brotherhood within, who is not possessed of the signs, tokens, and passwords, of the art. These should be exacted by the tylers of æsthetics in the very first instance, whatever the candidate's status in other relations may turn out to be subsequently. I am, however, quite well aware that the mere constructer of verses, who is a stranger to divine inspiration, can never attain to any exalted position in the art. The edifice he builds, if even symmetrical in the highest degree, will be wanting in beauty and excellence of material-will be deficient in grandeur and originality of design, as well as in all those magnificent effects that so charm and captivate the sense. No one would think of instituting a comparison between the Capitol at Washington and one of the small, substantial structures on Blackwell's Island. And yet both are built upon the same fundamental principles, and in accordance with some of the strictest rules of mechanical art. In

the unpretending little church round the corner," and the haughty St. Peter's at Rome, we find alike the rhyme and the rhythm, so to speak, that constitute architecture per se —that is, in its aspect of design or form. So that any one who constructs a single stanza upon the basis already laid down, is, it would seem, entitled as fully to the name poet as Byron or Tennyson, although the composition, intrinsically, may not be worth a single straw, or of no more value than the following four lines from Wordsworth's "She was a Phantom of Delight: "

"The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command." Although the idea here is impoverished and rendered commonplace through the wretchedly circumstantial manner in which it is treated, the lines are properly constructed; for, with the exception of the word "temperate," which must be squeezed into two syllables to satisfy the rhythm, they are, in a mechanical sense, perfect throughout-that is, as a body without a soul. Here, however, I shall fall back a few paces, and present what I regard as an example of the first approach toward the realization of this ideal English poetry of mine. The illustration is from Milton's "Paradise Lost," and the very opening lines of that magnificent production:

"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse," etc.

ation. But, then, the language and the ideas subsequently are of themselves so sublime and picturesque that, dazzled with the splendor and purity of the ore, and the massiveness of the ingots, we forget to subject them to any formula, and accept them as presenting all the requisites of true poetry.

Another step in the right direction, and one in advance of what is termed "blankverse," is to be found in those compositions where we meet, in a stanza of four metrical lines, two that rhyme perfectly with each other the second and last-and two that do not rhyme in even the slightest degreethe first and second. as in the following example, from Tennyson:

"The rain had fallen, the poet arose,

And passed by the town and out of the street; A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow went over the wheat."

This quatrain, if such it may be termed, is embarrassed with two wooden legs. Here we have prose and poetry intermingled, and the beauty and homogeneity of the verse marred consequently. How much more harmonious and finished would it have been, had the author thought proper to have so shaped the sense that the third line of the stanza read thus:

"From the gates of the sun a light wind blows! But Tennyson has never been able to shake out all his canvas in rhyme. Whenever we encounter him in this latitude we find him almost invariably under close-reefed topsails or struggling on a lee-shore. He is at home only in blank-verse, with its immeasurable stretch of sea-room. Here there is neither the Scylla of rhyme, nor the Charybdis that restricts the choice of words, to beset his course; and here, consequently, he is at ease, with his hand laid carelessly on the helm, and the wind always blowing a pleasant gale aft.

There are, however, persons of the most exquisite taste and judgment, whose ear wearies of a constant succession of rhymes, and who enjoy those delicious sandwiches which are supplied so bountifully by the poets of the present day, as well as by those who have gone to their reward, whatever that may be. Let it be so. But shall we not call things by the names proper to them? Is the following verse of a song written, on a most suggestive subject, "Spring," by the distinguished author just mentioned, even tolerable poetry?

"Birds' love and birds' song
Flying here and there;
Birds' song and birds' love,
And you with golden hair!
Birds' song and birds' love,
Passing with the weather;
Men's song and men's love,
To love once and forever."

It seems to me that, musically speaking, Tennyson has a defective ear-that, like those who are at home in blank-verse only, he sees and feels all, but hears nothing. Hence the failure of his lyrical efforts, and the certainty of his living in his florid, metrical prose alone.

rare and compassion joined, c other in the victor's mind, proclaim him good and great,

"Unbounded
Temper
Alternat
And a
Although the

smooth.

hero and the man complete."

ythm here is sufficiently provided we keep our eye on "tempering," a the rhvines are faulty-unless, indeed, it was i ended by the author that the first two ines should be read by a rural Yankee, and the other two by an Irishman, thus:

"Unbounded courage and compassion j'ined,
Tempering each other in the victor's mind,
Alternately proclaim him good and great,
And make the hero and the man complate."

As, however, "great" was formerly pronounced "greet" by no inconsiderable number of educated persons, we can perhaps dis. pense with the Irishman here. But this the ingenious reader must decide for himself.

Without pausing to examine examples. marred by false numbers or rhythm only, I shall cite one more illustration, as a very near approach to true poetry, without having attained the climax. The lines are from Byron, and will, of course, be recognized every. where:

"The sky is changed! and such a change! O night, And storm and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,

And lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder," etc.

Here we find the quantities, the rhythm, and the rhyme, almost perfect; but the lines are so incomplete and disjointed in themselves individually, that we at once reject them as tricky, or utterly unworthy the sublime language and ideas they embody. Again, "among" does not rhyme perfectly with "along;" while, in verification of what I have already observed, it is, through the exactions of the rhyme, forced out of its natural position in the line - although the example it affords is perhaps the least strik ing of its class. Read the whole passage as florid and picturesque prose, as it ought to be read, and as its construction demands peremptorily, and we shall be able to apprehend fully the strength and beauty of which it has been shorn by an attempt to warp the lines into a shape utterly foreign to them. Let us see:

"The sky is changed! and such a change! O night and storms and darkness! ye are wondrous strong, yet lovely in your strength as the light of a dark eye in woman! Far along, from peak to peak, among the rattling crags leaps the live thunder," etc.

We can now perceive how detrimental to the true structure of poetry is the absence of even one of the characteristics I have mentioned-although that one might be consid ered the most unimportant. The truth is, after the manner of the three primary colors in a pencil of white light, rhyme, rhythm, and numbers combined, are the architecture of poetry; and hence the absence of any one of these elements is, I am of the belief, fatal to the whole fabric.

And here I shall venture to state that, possibly from the year 1180, when the gray dawn of the English language first became perceptible, to the time of Milton, no writer in that tongue ever thought of presenting to