pure draughts of the fountain-head of English poetry. Neither was close enough to the heart of nature, or free enough from the artificial and the conventional, to respond to, and reproduce, what had had its genesis in a soul of such exquisite sensibility and simplicity as was Chaucer's.

*

*

*

*

The noble stream of English poetry rejoices in a most copious fountain-head. At its source we find "the golden gorge of dragons spouting forth a flood of fountain foam." Then, as if denying its sweet waters to unworthy generations, it flows under ground, but reappears, with increased force, to sparkle beneath the smiles of a virgin queen. Since then, its waters, have continued to flow uninterruptedly onward, gaining in volume, in purity, and in health-giving power, and now bear upon their broad expanse, "argosies of magic sails."

"TRIBULATION" —THE ETYMOLOGY OF

THE WORD.

BY RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.

LIADS without an Homer, some one has called,

with a little exaggeration, the beautiful but.

anonymous ballad poetry of Spain.

One may be permitted, perhaps, to push the exaggeration a little.

further in the same direction, and to apply the same language not merely to a ballad but to a word. Let me illustrate my meaning somewhat more at length by the word "tribulation." We all know in a general way that this word, which occurs not seldom in Scripture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it is quite worth our while to know how it means this, and to question the word a little closer. It is derived from the Latin "tribulum," which was the threshing instrument, or roller, whereby the Roman husbandman separated the corn from the husks; and "tribulatio" in its primary significance was the act of this separation. But some Latin writer of the Christian church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of an higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them was light, trivial, and poor, from the solid and the true, their chaff from their wheat, therefore he called these sorrows and trials "tribulations," threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner. Now in proof of my assertion that a single word is often a concentrated poem, a little grain of gold capable of being beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf, I will quote, in reference to this very word "tribulation," a graceful composition by George Wither, an early English poet, which you will at once perceive is all wrapped up in this word, being from first to last only the expanding

of the image and thought which this word has implicitly given; these are his lines:

"Till from the straw, the flail, the corn doth beat,
Until the chaff be purged from the wheat,
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear,
The richness of the flour will scarce appear,
So, till men's persons great afflictions touch,
If worth be found, their worth is not so much,
Because, like wheat in straw, they have not yet
That value which in threshing they may get.
For till the bruising flails of God's corrections
Have threshed out of us our vain affections;
Till those corruptions which do misbecome us
Are by thy sacred spirit winnowed from us;
Until from us the straw of wordly treasures,
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures,
Yea, till His flail upon us He doth lay,
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away;
And leave the soul uncovered; nay, yet more,
Till God shall make our very spirit poor,
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire;
But then we shall; and that is my desire."

This deeper religious use of the word "tribulation” was unknown to classical, that is to heathen, antiquity, and belongs exclusively to the Christian writers; and the fact that the same deepening and elevating of the use of words recurs in a multitude of other, and many

of them far more striking, instances, is one well deserving to be followed up. Nothing, I am persuaded, would more strongly bring before us what a new power Christianity was in the world than to compare the meaning which so many words possessed before its rise, and the deeper meaning which they obtained, so soon as they were assumed by it as the vehicles of its life, the new thought and feeling enlarging, purifying, and ennobling the very words which they employed.

JUNE.

FROM THE "PRELUDE" TO "THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL."

a

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

OT only around our infancy

Doth heaven with all its splendours lie;

Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not; Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies;

With our faint hearts the mountain strives;

* "Heaven lies about us in our infancy."WORDSWORTH.

Its arms outstretched, the druid wood
Waits with its benedicite;

And to our age's drowsy blood

Still shouts the inspiring sea.

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in;

At the Devil's booth are all things sold,

Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking:
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
"Tis only God may be had for the asking;
There is no price set on the lavish summer,
And June may be had by the poorest comer.

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, grasping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;