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Dulwich College.

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Bradfield College 81 After the close finish of the Ashburton Shield the minor contest for the Spencer Cup excited less interest. During its progress competitors and spectators were once more drenched by a third thunderstorm, which seemed particularly disadvantageous to our representative, who made only 15 points in his seven shots. The interest of the contest lay between the champions of Clifton, Charterhouse, and Whitgift. Sands, for Charterhouse, made 27 and then missed his last shot; Chillingworth, of Whitgift, made the same number, but without a miss, and Luce, of Clifton, with 23 had a shot to fire -equal to the occasion he made the necessary bull's eye, and thus scored the double event for Clifton amid general and hearty applause.

Meanwhile, in the Cadets Match Marlborough had gained fourth place with 78, the winners being Cheltenham with 85, and had Private Hussey-who made only 33-been able to second the efforts of Corp. James (45) we should have carried off the prize.

In conclusion let us congratulate the Eight on a most gallant bid for victory; let us express our hearty appreciation of Manton's untiring efforts during two seasons to bring out a good team; let us thank the O.M.'s at Wimbledon for their advice and assistance; and let us once more appeal to the School to support an institution which for unobtrusive merit has no equal at Marlborough, so that the proxime accessit of 1884 may become the absolute win of 1885.

Natural History Society. President-H. RICHARDSON, Esq. Committee

E. Robertson. Sec.-E. K. Chambers.

Rev. T. N. Hart-Smith. E. F. Benson.
R. G. Durrant, Esq.
Treasurer-Rev. J. P. Way.
Meetings-
Thursday, Sep. 25th, Private.
Thursday, Oct. 16th, "America" (with magic lan-
tern) Rev. E. S. Marshall.

Saturday, Oct. 25th,
Rev. J. G. Wood.
Thursday, Nov. 6th, "The Tongue." Dr. Fergus.
Thursday, Nov. 20th, Private.

At the private meeting of Sept. 25th, at which 31 members were present, the President called attention to an important paper by E. Meyrick, O.M., on Micro-lepidoptera, in the "Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute," and to an article in the "Bristol Naturalists' Report" on some experiments with the divining rod, similar to those recently made in Mr. Beesly's field. He also stated that the Society had expressed willingness to support a proposal of the

Bristol Naturalists' Society for a confederation of all similar societies in the west of England, with the object of combining the results of independent He also exhibited an oil painting of investigation. the old House as it appeared whilst still the Castle Inn, the work of a well-known Marlborough man, Mr. Geo. Maton, which will probably be purchased for the Museum.

Mr. Preston exhibited a valuable coin, a silver crown of the Protectorate, presented by F. Thursby Pelham, Esq., O.M., and a large number of skins of rare birds and animals, sent on approval by Mr. H. G. Frank, which would have filled some important gaps in our collection if there had been funds to purchase them. Amongst them there were a Tasmanian devil, an Apteryx Owenii, a bird of paradise, a most beautiful specimen of Ptiloris paradisicus and a lemur.

Holiday observations on the disappearance of deers' horns, animal sagacity, the effect of lightning, the appearance of rare birds and animals, sounds produced by insects, moths in coal mines, &c., produced con. siderable discussion, in which Robertson, Chambers, G. T. K. Maurice, Mr. Hart-Smith, Ainslie, Wainwright, Mr. Preston, and Mr. Durrant took part. Mr. Hart-Smith also exhibited a portion of a very large collection of British and foreign beetles, kindly offered to the Society by F. C. Pawle, Esq., but it is a question whether our funds are sufficient to house the collection as well as it deserves: and it is too valuable as a whole to be broken up by selection.

It will be gratifying to everyone to know that the answer to our appeal for means to meet the loss occasioned by the destruction by fire of 200 copies of the great work of Avebury has been so handsomely responded to, that the deficit has been covered.

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ROBERT BROWNING.

OCTOBER 15TH, 1884.

WE are not professed worshippers of Mr. Browning. We do not belong to any one of those societies which periodically meet to discuss various renderings of the more intricate passages in their favourite author, and to demonstrate entirely to their own satisfaction that Mr. Browning is incomparably the greatest poet that ever existed or ever will exist. On the other hand we are not of those who after glancing cursorily through a few pages throw down the volume with the hasty criticism totally incomprehensible,' and decline ever after to open it again. No sensible critic can doubt that Mr. Browning is a very great poet, and we venture to prophesy that his fame will be much greater in the future than it is now. He will probably never be a popular poet; it requires a refined and cultivated mind to appreciate his poetry; but this disadvantage, if it is a disadvantage, he shares with Wordsworth; and like Wordsworth, he will live, because his poetry rests not on things transient and fleeting, but on the things which are true for all time, the life and emotions and character of mankind. There are two characteristics which Browning shares with several other poets of this century, with Tennyson, with Arnold, and with Clough. These

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are, first, the large amount of general learning and culture which he displays, and secondly, the interest which he takes in questions of religion and philosophy. These tendencies are most noticeable in his longer poems, such as Paracelsus, and Christmas Eve and Easter Day.

It is, however, his shorter pieces, his Dramatic Lyrics, and similar poems that more especially strike the average reader. Browning's genius is essentially dramatic. It is this that separates him from the other poets of his day, who see everything through a halo of self.' Browning's poetry is not of a subjective order. He goes straight to the heart of his characters and sketches them or rather lets them sketch themselves with a loving fidelity and minuteness of detail. Among the most powerful of these representations are Fra Lippo Lippi, the Last Duchess, Bishop Blougram's Apology, The Glove, but they are all too long for quotation. Mr. Arnold describes the two elements of true poetry as being moral profundity' and 'natural magic.' In Browning's poetry the' moral profundity' predominates, but there is much of the natural magic' also. He has not Tennyson's delicate harmony and accurate versification, or Mr. Arnold's own power of melodious rhythm, but he has much of the sensuous delight in the beauty of outward

nature which is a conspicuous feature in their writings. Here again his power of minute observation helps him. The following poem is

called "Home Thoughts from Abroad."

Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now,

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds and all the swallows;
Hark! Where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover,
Blossoms and dewdrops,-at the bent spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with heavy dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower, Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower! We have said that Browning is wanting in melody. It is difficult to reconcile this with his passionate love for and deep sense of music. His own writings show this in a remarkable degree. One of his most striking passages describes the effect produced upon Saul in his madness by the music of David's harp. This sense of music imparts to his poetry, not exactly melody, but a peculiar harmony of rhythm, which often takes the form of an additional emphasis laid on the important syllables. This is well illustrated by the following lines from the Lost Leader, in which two or three words in each line have a strong accent on them :

Just for a handful of silver he left us,

Just for a riband to stick in his coat

Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,

Lost all the others she lets us devote;

They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,

So much was theirs, who so little allowed:

How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags were they purple his heart had been proud!

The two charges most frequently brought against Browning, besides that of a want of melody are, firstly, obscurity of meaning, and secondly a fondness for the grotesque, especially in his rhymes. These in our humble opinion are both real defects, but in both cases it is possible to plead extenuating circumstances. The obscurity is greatly due to Mr. Browning's shorthand style of writing. He hurries from one

thought to another, and expects the reader to follow him without knowing the connecting links. But once the keynote of the compositon is discovered, everthing gradually falls into one grand harmonious whole; and it must be remembered that Browning's poems must emphatically be studied rather than read.

Mr. Browning seldom allows himself to be grotesque when it would manifestly be unsuitable to his subject. The following lines are from a poem called Holy Cross Day, describing the annual service at which all Jews at Rome were at one time obliged to attend. This service naturally was ridiculous. Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff; Take the church-road for the bells due chime Gives us the summons-it's sermon time.

We have heard it suggested that the curious rhymes in which Mr. Browning often indulges had their origin in his admiration for his wife's poetry. In Mrs. Browning's poetry they arose from careless writing, but her husband, who valued her poetry very highly, may have imitated them intentionally.

[The following poem, suggested by a visit to Corfe Castle, was originally published in the Isle of Purbeck Gazette, and is reprinted by permission of the Author.-Ed. M.] "I love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter, merrily set down." -WINTER'S TALE.

Herewith I send a tiny poem,

And this besides, by way of proem.
Stern critics, one is grieved to see,
Doubt the veracious history

Our childhood read in "Little Arthur'
(How Edward rode on Purbeck heath,
And how Elfrida wrought his death).
'Tis true, if one examines farther,
One finds the nucleus of a ballad,

Chopped up and garnished, like a salad-
The native purity of diction

Lost in the mix of fact and fiction.

Our ballad-monger loved to cull
Such matter, strange and pitiful,
To move the tragic sense withal,
And cause the ready tear to fall:
A source of unalloyed delight
To such as could not reach the flight
Of those world-ranging meteor spirits
Who compass all this globe inherits,
And lift us far beyond the sense
Of homelier-bred experience.
And as upon the tale I mused,

Methought how, in the soul transfused

Of some artificer of song,

Of music passionate and strong,

The thing would take new shape, and be

Once more a truthful history,

True in its natural sympathy,

True in its power to sway the soul
With incontestable control-

How he would mould, like plastic clay,
These broken fragments of a lay
Into some new and perfect whole.
But since I am no poet born,

I trust it may not move your scorn
To read this lame and limping measure,
Writ to beguile a moment's leisure-
Something that's neither here nor there-
A bastard-thing, that claims no share
In the flush of high imagination
That colours true art's least creation,
Nor wears the muse's daintiest dimple
Pressed on the ballad pure and simple.
Then if you seek yet more excuse

For this my worse than wayward muse,
Accept this, in default of better,
And figure me the railroad's debtor;
The rythmic motion of the train,
A-lilting in the weary brain,

Set all my thoughts to jigging rhyme,
Only to pass away the time-

A trivial trick of versification,

Idlest of all self-delectation.

THE CONFESSION OF THE QUEEN ELFRIDA.

Father, I know thy skill is vain

To shrive me of my sin:

My ears drink in the words of peace-
My heart no peace shall win.

Long while they wrestled for my soul,
The blessing and the ban-
The blessing that thy lips pronounce,
The blood of a murdered man.
But now I know that in the strife
The deadly curse has won,
There is no power of recompense,
No penance to be done.

The holy works thou bad'st me do,
I know that they were lies.
There is no pity in the dead,

No pardon in his eyes.

His eyes are on me night and day,-
The eyes of a slaughtered king,-
And in the horror of their gaze
I read the doom they bring.

I see them in the hateful sun,
And through the cruel night,

No depths of blackness may prevail
To screen them from my sight.
Long time I conned my deadly spells,
And wrought against his life;

I knew that he must come at last,
To taste my whetted knife.

I heard his bugle-horn without,
And felt no touch of fear-
'Twas music in my ears, that told
My hour of triumph near.
Faintly he rode, and rode alone,
And begged a boon of wine,

And saw not how the hand of Death
Had clutched the cup with mine.
Once, twice I stabbed him as he drank;
I heard nor groan nor cry,
But I saw his eyes that flashed in mine-
I shall see them till I die.

Red ran the wine upon the floor,
As he threw down the cup;
But redder were these hands of mine
That took the goblet up.
Away! my soul is sick with prayer,
And I will pray no more:

The curse I cursed him with remains
Deep graved at my heart's core.

I cursed him, for he stood between
My son and my son's right;

I curse him for he haunts me now-
I curse him in hell's despite.
Away! Will words undo that stroke,
And bring the dead again?

Will praying make the boy a man,
For whom I struck in vain ?

Lost, lost the cause for which I toiled,
The pains and bitter cost;
Lost is the king and Wessex might,
And my soul, too, is lost!

WORDSWORTH.

Turn we our steps aside a while,
And rest by Wordsworth's grave;
Where his loved Rotha ceaselessly
Rolls on her living wave.

Still stands the gray old village church
With portals open wide;

And still the streams are heard afar

Down the steep mountain side.

In calm unruffled, as of old,

The silent lake still lies,

And mirrors in its surface calm

The gleam of azure skies.

L.E.U.

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These extracts from a letter from a Marlburian, who left only a short time ago, may be of interest to some whose eyes are turned towards emigration :"FLORIDA has turned out very different from what I expected. A director of a Land Company told me in England that I should have work here, so I sailed at short notice. We changed ships at New York, and I travelled South with the manager of the Company, who was not encouraging in his estimate of my capabilities. After landing in Florida I went up country, and stayed a month at the Company's camp. We had home-made bread, which was just eatable, salt beef and bacon, coffee and sugar. I slept in a hammock, on a chair, or on the floor. The roof was far from rain-proof. I then shifted my quarters to a farmer's house hard by, where I paid $10 a month for board. The Company intend starting a town here, and I have bought the first plot. Two weeks ago my house was finished, and I am beginning to get a little more settled. My house is built of cypress wood, all got out of the woods close by; some of the boards split out are six feet long. I went one day, while in camp, to see the boards being split, three miles away. I was guided by the sound through some thick tropical growth, and found myself on the edge of a dry water-course, 10 feet deep and 15 feet broad. On the other side of it I came to a place where there was no undergrowth, the trees were too thick for the sun to pierce. I found the men at work, and after staying some time they told me the best way out. I went straight at first, but took a wrong turn, which ended in some cow tracks, and I followed one till it faded away. Then I tried to retrace my steps, but it was no easy matter, and finally I gave it

up. I was in a sort of plain, about half-a-mile across, surrounded by cabbage, palmetto, and other thick growth. I saw that I was lost, so set to work to find the path again, and after two hours search succeeded, and followed it successfully out.

Although I have made a bad start, I hope to do well. The manager does everything to help me, but he has no work to be done except labourer's work, such as hewing and carting. It seems as if a lot of money might be made here. Orange groves pay well, but they take a good deal of capital, and are some six years before they bear. I am starting a vegetable garden; for such produce there is always a good market in New York. Meanwhile I hope to start some orange trees. Pigs run wild in the woods, and want no food; the only trouble is to keep the young ones marked and to keep them round the house, to prevent their going wild. The cattle, too, are never fed. There are several Englishmen about here. This part of Florida is very low land, and after heavy rain this is an island. There is a small lake here, with a few alligators in it, but they have never been known to attack any. Man's worst enemy here is the rattlesnake. There are a few deer, bears, and tigers to be got."

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Obituary.

DAVID ORMEROD ARCHER. Archer was drowned at Freshwater, on Sept. 27th, while trying to swim through the breakers, with a heavy sea running in the bay. It will be remembered that at the end of last year he was prostrated by a terrible attack of peritonitis, from which it seemed that he could hardly recover, but which his own vigorous constitution, and the devotion of the doctor pulled him through.

Archer came here Sept., 1879, and left Christmas 1883. He was a simple, cheery, honourable fellow, with plenty of pluck and will, with pluck indeed, as it has turned out, beyond his strength. He was here only two days before the beginning of term, full of life and hope. He was an only child with great expectations, and his sad and premature death has caused great regret among his friends, and deep sympathy for his relations.

O.M.'s.

MARRIAGES.

T.

Sept. 26th, at Christ Church, Albany Street, the Rev. Walter Edmund Spencer, M.A., Senior Curate of Christ Church, to Sarah Susan, elder daughter of E. J. Bevir, Q.C.,

Bencher of Lincoln's Inn.

Sept. 30th, at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Wonston, the Rev. Edward Ballachy Hill, to Maude, eldest daughter of the Rev. Newton Spicer, Rector of Wonston.

Sept. 30th, at Tackley, Oxon, Captain W. H. Wyld, 16th Lancers, son of the late Rev. W. Wyld, of Woodborough,

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