be manful in necessary fight, fair in trade, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in the household, prudent in living, plain in speech, merry upon occasion, simple in behavior, and honest in all things. In this trust and this knowledge I now commend my young countrymen to The Boy's Percy.""

Many other things, too, engaged his attention at this time. December 21, 1878, he writes, "I am in the midst of two essays on AngloSaxon poetry; " and then in a letter to a friend a few months before he died we see how he was employing his many-sided genius and manifold activities:

My lectures take all my time, and I cannot write you. I had not thought they would be so laborious, but I find the numerous illustrations of antique thought and habit require a great deal of research, and each lecture is a good week's work for a well man. And when I contemplate the other things I am waiting to do, many of them half done, to-wit: (1)

my "Hymns of the Marshes," nearly complete, whereof you have the "Marshes of Glynn" and the little song of "Trees and the Master;" (2) my "Clover and Other Poems," now quite ready for the press; (3) my “Credo and Other Poems," a thick volume, all in memoranda, ready to be written out in a few weeks; (4) my "Choral Symphony," for chorus and orchestra, being my "Psalm of the West," with music; (5) my "Symphony Life," in four movements-first, childhood; second, youth; third, manhood; fourth, old age; (6) my "Symphony of the Plantation," being the old and the new life of the negro, in music; (8) my "Girl's Paston Letters," now in my desk, half prepared; (9) my "Boy's Monstrelet," also in desk ready to arrange; (10) my "Boy's Gesta Romanorum ". when I contemplate these, now lying upon my hands in actual forms of one sort or another, without daring to think of books merely projected, I fall to wondering whether I have any business or right to wait, whether I had not better go and borrow five thousand, ten thousand dollars-which could be so easily repaid in five years (the copyrights of the "Boy's Froissart" and "King Arthur" would have done it if I had not

been obliged to sell them), and put myself in heaven at once, with nothing but poetry to write and two years of freedom from slavery to butcher and baker.

But at the time he was preparing these lectures and penning this letter he was being quickly consumed by the final fever, which, Dr. Ward informs us, set in in May, 1880. The following winter brought a hand to hand battle for life, and in December it was thought that he was at death's door. Nevertheless before April 1, 1881, he had delivered the twelve lectures-there were to have been twenty-which were later published under the title of "The English Novel." "A few of the earlier lectures," continues Dr. Ward, “he penned himself; the rest he was obliged to dictate to his wife. With the utmost care of himself, going in a closed carriage and sitting during his lecture, his strength was so exhausted that the struggle for breath in the carriage on his return seemed

each time to threaten the end. Those who heard him listened with a sort of fascinated terror, as in doubt whether the hoarded breath would suffice to the end of the hour. It was in December of this winter, when too feeble to raise the food to his mouth, with a fever temperature of 104 degrees, that he penciled his last and greatest poem, 'Sunrise,' one of his projected series of the · Hymns of the Marshes.' It seemed as if he were in fear that he would die with it unuttered."

Perhaps a little note on "Hamlet" which he left in his desk will throw some light on the cheerfulness and serenity with which he continued his work to the very last:

The grave scene is the most immense conception of all tragedy to me; it is the apparition of death upon a world which has not yet learned the meaning of life: how bleak it is, it is only skulls and regret; there is no comfort in it. But death, my God! it is the sweetest and dearest of all the angels to him who understands.

After giving this course of lectures he rallied enough to go to New York to complete arrangements with his publisher for bringing out the remaining volumes of the Boy's series. But while there his illness became so aggravated that "his medical adviser pronounced tent life in a pure, high climate to be the last hope." His brother Clifford took him to Richmond Hill, three miles from Asheville, N. C., where his father and wife joined them, his own devoted wife having already taken her place as nurse by his bedside. No one can record the end in simpler or better-chosen words than Dr. Ward has done: "As the passing weeks brought no improvement to the sufferer, he started August 4 on a carriage journey across the mountains with his wife to test the climate of Lynn, Polk County, N. C. There deadly illness attacked him. No return was possible, and Clifford was summoned by telegraph, and