weariedly does its utmost to pervert them or extinguish them. Yes; to its Hells of sweating tailors, distressed needlewomen, and the like, this Opera of yours is the appropriate Heaven! Of a truth, if you will read a Psalm of Asaph till you understand it, and then come hither and hear the Rossini-and-Coletti Psalm, you will find the ages have altered a good deal. ** * Nor do I wish all men to become Psalmist Asaphs and fanatic Hebrews. Far other is my wish; far other, and wider, is now my notion of this Universe. Populations of stern faces, stern as any Hebrew, but capable withal of bursting into inextinguishable laughter on occasion:-do you understand that new and better form of character? Laughter also, if it come from the heart, is a heavenly thing. But, at least and lowest, I would have you a Population abhorring phantasms; abhorring unveracity in all things; and in your 'amusements,' which are voluntary and not compulsory things, abhorring it most impatiently of all. * * THE NEW PROMETHEUS. BY CHARLES H. HITCHINGS. STROKING sleek her pampered palfrey, led for pastime from his stable — Known for miles round as a beauty-perfect form, and perfect face. Perfect form, erect and stately—very Juno-like in stature— Perfect face, divinely chiselled, with a clear commanding eye: All the calm therein concentred of a high-born woman's nature, Shut by walls of cold convention out from common sympathy. Very perfect, to be gazed on—like a statue to beholding; Like a sculptor's pure ideal of a grand majestic queen— Power of queendom, power unrivalled in her calm and conscious mien. So she stood, when first I saw her, with her vassals dumb before herScarce a woman for my choosing, had it been my lot to chooseYet she won me as a statue, that in memory long I bore her, With her hand upon her palfrey, and her footstep on the dews. Years rolled on in haunted places of the golden South I wandered, Shrines of Art, and fanes of Beauty, rich with master-works divine ; Yet, amid their choicest galleries, where my dreaming fancy pondered, Saw I never, Lady Mabel, form or face to equal thine! Niched in memory thus I held her, to myself thus inly musing— Pity, no quick revelation, light and warmth of soul diffusing, So I mused, till, home returning, once again I did behold her, No more statue-like and stately, but a woman pure and warm Bright and warm, of whom I once said, "Not the marble's self is colder;" Passion in her glowing cheek, and passion in her moulded form. And I wondered while I saw her, changed so wholly from the creature Of convention, calm and formal, to a lifelike human thing, To a sharer in the birthrights of our common human nature, Fed like us with joy and kindness, touched like us with sorrow's sting. Till a friend, that heard me wonder, said, "No marvel, though to seeming 'Tis a change might merit credence in the old forgotten age, When the types of inward feeling set the earlier bards to dreaming, With the myths of whose creation glows for aye the poet's page. "For there came a new Prometheus to the hall where dwelt your Dian, With the fire from heaven to warm her from her stonelike apathy; Sooth, to say, a simple poet brought from London as a lion, 'Mongst the courtly lords and ladies shy and simple as could be; "But with her all fire and passion; for he saw, with true perception, Through the cold, unlovely surface, to the perfect soul within,— She the dream of his ideal, he the type of her election, Youth, and hope, and life before them- he had but to woo to win. "Till the Earl, with lordly anger, through their common phrase discerning Thoughts too deep for tongues' revealing, bade the poet from her side. Human joy she found with Mertoun-human sorrow now she's learning, And in human tears hath melted all the frost-work of her pride. "He meanwhile-the new Prometheus-on the rocks of hard rejection Pays the forfeit of his daring, on the flinty rocks of scorn ; Pays the forfeit of upraising to a woman's bright perfection |