My gift of a nine-hundred years old name

With any body's gift.
This sort of trifling?

Who'd stoop to blame
Even had you skill

In speech-(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me;-here you miss
Or there exceed the mark;" and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours forsooth and made excuse,
-E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, Sir, she smiled no doubt
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands,
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat

The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, Sir! Notice Neptune though
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.

Poor dead Duchess! and poor living one too! for that complaisant embassador who listened so silently would hardly give warning, even if the father were likely to take it; and we feel as they walk down the palace stairs that another victim comes. The pathos of the next lyric is of a different order.

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.

[16-.]

I sprang to the stirrup, and Ioris and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

"Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew,

Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other: we kept the great pace

Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place,

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,

Then shortened each stirrup and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting, but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom a great yellow star came out to see ;
At Düffeld 'twas morning as plain as could be;

And from Mechelm church-steeple we heard the half chime,
So Ioris broke silence with "Yet there is time!"

At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last
With resolute shoulders, each butting away

The haze as some bluff river headland its spray.

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence,-ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance !
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on.

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Ioris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her
We'll remember at Aix"-for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So we were left galloping, Ioris and I,

Past Loos and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;

The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,

And "Gallop," gasped Ioris, "for Aix is in sight!

"How they'll greet us!"—and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and crop over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news, which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise bad or good,

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is friends flocking round,

As I sate with his head twixt my knees on the ground,
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat one last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

Although we have cause to hope that the good steed recovered, yet his trial of speed and strength is too painful to conclude with. I add a few lines from the "Englishman in Italy," a long poem so pulpy, so juicy, so full of bright color and of rich detail, that it is just like a picture by Rubens. Selection is difficult-but I choose the passage in question because its exceeding truth was first pointed out to me by Mr. Ruskin.

But to-day not a boat reached Salerno,
So back to a man

Came our friends with whose help in the vineyards
Grape-harvest began:

In the vat half-way up on our house-side

Like blood the juice spins,

While your brother all bare-legged is dancing
Till breathless he grins

Dead beaten in effort on effort

To keep the grapes under,

Since still when he seems all but master
In pours the fresh plunder

From girls who keep coming and going

With basket on shoulder

Meanwhile see the grape-bunch they've brought you,

The rain-water slips

O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe,
Which the wasp to your lips

Still follows with fretful persistence

Nay taste while awake

This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball,
That peels flake by flake

Like an onion's each smoother and whiter;
Next sip this weak wine

From the thin green flask with its stopper
A leaf of the vine-

And end with the prickly pear's red flesh,
That leaves through its juice
The stony black seeds on your pearl teeth-

and so on.

XV.

PROSE PASTORALS.

SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S ARCADIA-ISAAC WALTON'S COMPLETE ANGLER.

DURING this warm summer, and above all during this dry burning harvest weather, which makes my poor little roadside cottage (the cottage which for that reason among others I am about to leave) so insupportable from glare, and heat, and dust in the fine season, have the frequent, almost daily habit of sallying forth into the charming green lane, the grassy, turfy, shady lane of which I have before made mention, and of which I share the use and the enjoyment with the gipsys. Last summer I was able to walk thither, but in the winter I was visited by rheumatism, and can not walk so far without much heat and fatigue; so my old poney-phaeton conveys me and my little maid, and my pet-dog Fanchon, and my little maid's needle-work of flounces and fineries, and my books and writing-case, as far as the road leads, and sometimes a little farther; and we proceed to a certain green hillock under down-hanging elms, close shut in between a bend in the lane on our own side, and an amphitheater of oak and ash and beech trees opposite; where we have partly found and partly scooped out for ourselves a turfy seat and turfy table redolent of wild-thyme and a thousand fairy-flowers, delicious in its coolness, its fragrance, and its repose.

Behind the thick hedge on the one hand stretch fresh watermeadows, where the clear brook wanders in strange meanders between clumps of alder-bushes and willow-pollards; fringed by the blue forget-me-not, the yellow loosestrife, the purple willowherb, and the creamy tufts of the queen of the meadow; on the other hand we catch a glimpse over gates of large tracts of arable land, wheat, oat, clover, and bean fields, sloping upward

to the sun; and hear, not too closely, the creaking wagon and the sharpening sythe, the whistle, the halloo, and the laugh, all that forms the pleasant sound of harvest. labor. Just beyond the bend in the lane too, are two fires, belonging to two distinct encampments of gipsys; and the children, dogs, and donkeys of these wandering tribes are nearly the only living things that come into sight, exciting Fanchon now to pretty defiance, now to prettier fear.

This is my constant resort on summer afternoons; and there I have the habit of remaining engaged either with my book or with my pen until the decline of the sun gives token that we may gather up our several properties, and that aided by my staff I may take a turn or two in the smoothest part of the lane and proceed to meet the pony-chaise at a gate leading to the old Manor House which forms the usual termination of my walk. Now this staff, one of the oldest friends I have in the world, is pretty nearly as well known as myself in our Berkshire village. Sixty years ago it was a stick of quality, and belonged to a certain Duchess Dowager of Atholl, that Duchess of Atholl who as in her own right Baroness Strange and Lady of Mann, with whom we had some acquaintance because her youngest son married a first cousin of my father's and took the name of Aynsley as his wife had done before him, as a condition of inheriting an estate in Northumberland. I have a dim recollection of the Duchess, much such an one as Dr. Johnson had of Queen Anne, as a stately lady in black silk." Well! in her time the stick was a stick of distinction, but on her leaving her Berkshire house it was left behind and huddled by an auctioneer into a lot of old umbrellas, watering-pots, and flower-stands which my father bought for a song. I believe that he made the purchase chiefly for the sake of this stick, which he presented to my mother's faithful and favorite old housekeeper, Mrs. Mosse, who lived in our family sixty years, and was sufficiently lame to find such a support of great use and comfort in her short and unfrequent walks. During her time and for her sake, I first contracted a familiar and friendly acquaintanceship with this ancient piece of garniture. It was indeed a stick of some pretension, of the order commonly called a crook, such as may be seen upon a chimney-piece figuring in the hand of some trim shepherdess of Dresden china. What the wood might have been I can not tell