But thine and thou, my brother, Keep heart and wing more high Than aught may scare or sunder; The waves whose throats are thunder And triumph as they die; More high than wrath or anguish, In thee, for us forbidden, Bids thee nor change nor languish, More high than wrath or anguish, We are fallen, even we, whose passion On earth is nearest thine; Who sing, and cease from flying; Who live, and dream of dying: Grey time, in time's grey fashion, Bids wingless creatures pine: We are fallen, even we, whose passion On earth is nearest thine. The lark knows no such rapture, As sways the songless measure And we, whom dreams embolden, We can but creep and sing And watch through heaven's waste hollow Of none that lack thy wing: Our dreams have wings that falter; A pride no care can alter, That wots not whence or why With joy more fierce and sweeter And drink the wind's wild wine Ah, well were I for ever, Wouldst thou change lives with me, And take my song's wild honey, And give me back thy sunny Wide eyes that weary never, And wings that search the sea; Wouldst thou change lives with me. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. BEACHY HEAD, September, 1886. IN treating of the Great Roads of England, I have to confess myself at starting embarrassed with the wealth, with the diffusiveness of my subject. Like Mr. Matthew Arnold's Truth, it may be approached from so many different sides; and in this lies its difficulty. For while, on the one hand, to write the history of the Great Roads from the days when they were mere uncertain tracks over desolate heaths, on which nothing was easier in life than to lose your way between York and Doncaster, or to spend a night on Salisbury Plain in an attempt to reach Salisbury -up to the time when the Telegraph Coach left London at half past five in the morning, and arrived at Exeter at half-past ten the same night-while, on the one hand, to do this thoroughly, would be to write the social history of England for three centuries, on the other hand, to deal solely with the roads from the time when they became coaching roads indeed, when the six-inside lumbering vehicle gave way about the year 1823 to the light four-inside fast coach, when the distance between London and Shrewsbury, 154 miles, between London and Exeter, 171 miles, and between London and Manchester, 187 miles, was done in a day--to deal solely with the Augustan age of coaching, in short, would be to deal solely with what accomplished hands have dealt with already. I propose, then, between these extremes to steer a middle and inconstant course; and by inconstant I mean that I shall disregard all "unities "-I shall, that is to say, bind myself neither to time, place, nor consistency of attitude to my subject. I shall now look at it, for instance, in the company of |