as the fountain of health, pursuing it when its countenance is turned away, inventing fire to imitate it, gratefully using its light and heat for all kinds of purposes and practices. Yet, in reading both accounts, we are vaguely conscious that there is poetry in the science, and science in the poetry. The matters of fact are the same in each; the difference is in the approach to them. § 30. The Nightingale in Poetry and Science.— Let us take a fresh example. In another volume of the Encyclopædia Britannica we find the following remarks under the article "Ornithology": "Order II.-Insessores or Perching Birds. — This is the most numerous order of the class of birds, and, as Cuvier has observed, is distinguished chiefly by negative characters; for it embraces all those various groups which, sometimes possessing but little in common, are yet in themselves neither raptorial, scansorial, grallatorial, natatorial, nor gallinaceous.. ... The first principal division of the passerine birds consists of those genera in which the external toe is united to the internal by not more than one or two of the joints, and contains four great tribes. "Tribe Ist.-Dentirostres.-(Bill with a marginal notch towards the extremity of the upper mandible.) . . . The genus Curruca, Bechstein, has the CURRUCA AND PHILOMELA 85 bill straight, slender throughout, a little compressed anteriorly, the upper mandible slightly curved towards the point. It contains that prince of European songsters, the nightingale (C. Luscinia), a bird of shy and unobtrusive disposition, seldom seen in open places, but loving the protection of a close entangled undergrowth of brakes and bushes. . . . We know not that the female sings." These, then, are the matters of fact about the nightingale. But are they the complete account, the whole truth about the bird? Do we, as men and women, know the nightingale till we realise the Philomela of Keats, herself descended through a long line of nightingales in ancient and modern verse, any better than we can be said to know the sun by the degree of his meridianal altitude? Is not this also the nightingale-recognisable by a higher law than that of its mandible and toe?— "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird : No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that ofttimes hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." § 31. Matter of Fact and Poetry.-These contrasts or comparisons might be indefinitely extended. Take the scientific description of a wind blowing from the west, and compare it with Shelley's burst of poetry: "Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head where the forces of metaphor and simile combine their imaginative work to express the truth, which scientific language, restricted to matters of fact, would be inadequate to render. Or, as another example in detail, take up the newspaper of this morning. To the poet's eye-and "we are all poets," remember, "when we read a poem well" -it is full of these suggestive contrasts. I read in the Morning Post before me that— "Harriet H., forty-six, caretaker at a hop warehouse in Southwark Street, was charged with the wilful murder of her two children, Elizabeth, aged twelve years, and Alfred, aged ten years, by cutting their throats with a table knife. The only evidence MELPOMENE IN SOUTHWARK 87 who ten given was that of Inspector said: At twenty-three minutes to o'clock this morning I went with Inspector and Sergeant to the top floor of the warehouse in Southwark Street. In a back bedroom of that floor I saw the girl Elizabeth lying on a small bed on her back with her throat cut. In another bed in the same room I saw the boy Alfred lying on his right side. His throat was cut from ear to ear, and he also had cuts on his hands, as though he had struggled. In the kitchen on the same floor I saw the woman. Her hands were covered with blood. I told her I was a police officer, and asked, “Who did this?" She said, "I did." I conveyed her in a cab to the police station, where she was charged with wilfully murdering her two children. She made no reply to the charge. On that evidence I ask for a remand, and that the prisoner may be taken in a cab to Holloway, as I have reason to believe, from a letter which she has written to her husband, that she is not in her right mind. The letter, which was handed in, was as follows:- Darling Husband, I know I am dying, and I cannot leave my darlings behind. I hope they will join my darling Nell in Heaven. Jesus, lover of my soul. God be with you. Dicky; forgive me. What with the death of my darling Nell. But I am mad.' The prisoner was asked if she wished to put any questions. She replied: 'No, thank you very much.' She was then remanded." This sorrow, this tragedy of London, is sordid matter of fact. The middle-aged woman murdered her children, and probably I shall not have the curiosity to follow her trial to the lunatic asylum or the gallows. But transform the surroundings: pursue the story in Euripides of Medea's jealousy of her husband, of her slaughter of her children, and her lament at her own fell deed: read the cry of Constance in Shakespeare's King John, "Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form, I will not keep this form upon my head, Have we not here something of this sorrow in Southwark? "God be with you, Dicky; forgive me. What with the death of my darling. But I am mad." Or read the second book of Wordsworth's Excursion, which contains "The Story of |