vival of the impressions made upon the popular imagination by the disappointments of Clay, Webster, and Blaine. Doubtless Presidential hopes have much to do with the tenacity with which certain Senators cling to office despite the burden of years, the spirit remaining willing long after the flesh has become weak. For the rule may be laid down that the older the Senator the stouter his determination to be just as young as he used to be. There is something pathetic in the sight of these aged men feebly brandishing their intellectual weapons before the statue of Ambition, and piping in shrill treble, "O Cæsar, we, about to die, salute thee!" Yet in general the Senators are well-preserved; for there is a stability of health which comes from the consciousness of an unimpeachable position. Decay is quickly summoned by the wail, "All is vanity." One or two of the members, it is true, may have become somewhat inarticulate of speech. Others may be reluctant in hearing the questions of their adversaries in debate. But what then?-all this is far from the sans everything of the seventh age. One thing is certain infirmities are not reflected in the Senatorial mirror. A new member, with breath scarcely recovered from his first race, caught a verbal Tartar last session, by referring to the Nestor of the Senate as "superannuated." This term, it must be emphasized, was worse than indecorous; it was unparlia mentary; it was antagonistic to the tenets of the Senatorial faith-cure. One might as well speak of the evergreen falling into the sere and yellow leaf. Despite such occasional and trifling physical detriments, oratory in the Senate is eminently respectable-an adjective, by the way, in no wise indicative of brilliancy. While the almost universal habit of speaking from the written page is incompatible with eloquence of the Webster and Hayne sort, it may be doubted whether the spirit of the age cares much for soaring flights. It is so lonesome up there! At all events, when the leading silver advocate of the Senate, who is picturesque enough with his towering stature, his patriarchal beard and glittering eye, begins to indulge in improvisations, there is an exodus of spectators and associates alike. And he is not the only Senator whose eloquence meets with a scant amount of attention. Yet, now and again, when occasion demands, the air vibrates, the rafters rattle, and auditors draw near and hang upon an orator's lips. From its very conspicuousness, the Senate has always been a shining mark for public opinion. Before the Civil War it was praised for the most part, and, when censured, never belittled. But of late years there has been much popular disfavor, although there are indications that the pendulum is about to may use his position to relieve himself? After all, the proper criterion is character; either wealth or poverty is merely a condition, and a man can be a man for a' that. Much of the popular prejudice is derived from the belief that the Senate is so intrenched by time and power that it is disdainful. This is far from the fact; a man may be assured and yet not indifferent. Ambition, if nothing else, stimulates the Senators to keep in touch with the times. Many of them complain bitterly that this is difficult to do; that they feel themselves cut off from the frank and free discussion of public issues which they had found so common in private life. This, however, seems to be a defect inherent in the system. If it is wise to have legislators elected for a term of six years, they can hardly be expected to represent current opinion. But is current opinion always the best? Ought it not to stand the test of at least two years' consideration by the country? If this be reasonable, then the Senate is abreast with popular judgment; for onethird of its membership changes every two years. Senators also bit REV. WILLIAM H. MILBURN have been chosen except for their great riches. This is true; the entrance to the Senate is far from being a needle's eye; but so long as our material civilization prevails, wealth must continue to be a mighty agent in the procurance of any desirable thing. But that it gives Senatorial standing and influence is not so apparent. The leading Senators, to-day, are men of moderate means. There are, too, not a few poor Senators, who live on their salaries and try to save money. The spectacle of the scrimping they have to do is not edifying. And here a different phase of the money question naturally presents itself. If a Senator is financially pressed and embarrassed, is there not danger that he have not by their works brought credit upon it, nor raised the standard of Senatorial efficiency. On the contrary, failing of celebrity, they have sought notoriety at the cost of selfrespect. But granted that the Senate has deteriorated, what then is the remedy? Abolish it as a useless fifth wheel, States Senate as a part of the governmental machinery been more evident than at the present time, when the final act in a great episode of American history awaits its action. In the ratification of the treaty with Spain, as in the question of a general arbitration treaty with Great Britain, Senators have shown a determination to assert their constitutional powers with great plainness. But the politicians suggest another remedy. Let the Senate be chosen by popular vote, they say. Every session some such measure is passed by the House, from purely disinterested motives doubtless. Disregarding the obvious and fatal defect in such a scheme that the Senate would never approve it, A. P. GARDEN what reason is there to Captain of Capitol Police. suppose that any improvement would result from the change? Is the quality of a State political convention any higher than that of a State Legislature? Should it not be easier to raise the standard of the latter, rather than that of the former, since its members are elected and sworn to perform their duty? No, no; reform should be from within and not from without; new methods are only a confession of governmental weakness. As the people are, so the Senate will be. It is a representative body, and can justly retort, " Physician, heal thyself." From the Portrait in the possession of Earl Spencer at Althorp, Northampton. Edmund Spenser: a Tercentenary Survey joined their friend in the silent land with that labor left undone. And the life of the nation rushed ever on and on. Years after, when patient eyes sought those footprints, and tried to map out again the earthly pilgrimage of that rare spirit, little was left to aid their pious quest. Less is known of the parents of Spenser than of those of almost any other great poet of the modern world. Two facts practically exhaust our certain knowledge. His father was related to that family of Spensers from which the victor of Blenheim sprung; "the nobility of the Spensers," wrote Gibbon, "has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the Faerie Queene' as the most precious jewel of their coronet." What exactly the relationship was it is impossible to say; that there was such a connection between the poet and the ancestors of the Spenser-Churchill family has never been questioned. To three of the daughters of Sir John Spenser the head of the family in his time-Spenser dedicated poems, and in those dedications, and elsewhere in his verse, he asserts his kinship with those ladies and their house. East Smithfield is pointed out as the locality of Spenser's birth; the year 1552 as the date. Few districts in London have altered so utterly out of recognition as the reputed scene of the poet's birth. Its vicinity to Tower Hill, then a focus of court life, is suggestive enough of its importance as a residential district in Elizabethan times. Although careful search has been made among the registers of all the churches in the neighborhood, no entry of Spenser's birth or baptism has been discovered; for the place and for the date tradition is our only authority. It is true that one of Spenser's sonnets is cited as evidence that he was born in 1552, but in offering such a witness two facts have to be taken for granted: i. e., that the sonnet was written in 1593, and that its fourty " years were forty years, rather than a lesser or greater period expressed in even numbers for poetic purposes. 66 It was in 1561 that the Merchant Taylors bethought themselves of founding a school, intended principally for the children of the citizens of London, and the estate purchased for the purpose included several buildings and a chapel. The statutes framed for the administration of the school are suggestive of its character. Children were not to be ad mitted unless they could read and write and say the catechism in either English or Latin; the school hours, both summer and winter, were from 7 A.M. to 5 P.M., with an interval between 11 and 1 o'clock; three times each day the pupils, "kneeling on their knees," were to say the prayers appointed "with due tract and pawsing." How came Spenser to be sent to Cambridge? Some light is thrown upon this question by a further consideration of the history of the Merchant Taylors' School. A few years after that school was founded the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London suggested to the Merchant Taylors the advisability of founding a scholarship at one of the universities. The company replied that, as they had been to so much expense in establishing the school, they could not burden their funds with that further charge, but they were willing to suggest that such scholarship might be founded at the cost of any individual member who might feel so disposed. Until that was done, however, the school did not lack for friends willing to carry out the Lord Mayor's suggestion. Robert Nowell died early in the year 1569, and in the accounts of his funeral there is a list giving the names of six boys of the Merchant Taylors' School, to whom two yards of cloth were given to make their gowns. The name of Edmund Spenser stands first on that list. Two months later his name appears again in the accounts of Robert Nowell, the entry, under date April 28th, reading: "to Edmond Spensore, scholler of the m'chante tayler scholl, at his gowinge to penbrocke hall in chambridge, Xs." On the 20th of the following month, that is, May, 1569, Spenser entered Pembroke Hall (now Pembroke College), as a sizar, and during his student days there he was several times indebted to the Nowell funds for small gifts of money. He probably needed them all. Poverty and ill health marked his university career. The college records prove the latter; his position as sizar, independent of his description as a "poure scholler" in the Nowell accounts, the former. Of Spenser as a Cambridge student we have but a shadowy picture. He took his B.A. in 1573, his M.A. in 1576; he made two friends in the persons of Gabriel Harvey and Edward Kirke; he planted, if tradition speaks truly, the mulberry-tree which still survives in the garden of his college. Some biographers would have us believe that his |