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and that till you or he read it no masculine eye had scanned a line of its contents, no masculine ear heard a phrase from its pages. However, the view they take of the matter rather pleases me than otherwise. If they like, I am not unwilling they should think a dozen ladies and gentlemen aided at the compilation of the book. Strange patchwork it must seem to them this chapter being penned by Mr. and that by Miss or Mrs. Bell, that character or scene being aelineated by the husband, that other by the wife! The gentleman, of course, doing the rough work, the lady getting up the finer parts. I admire the idea vastly.

Through the endless summer evenings, on
the lineless, level floors:

Through the yelling Channel tempest
when the syren hoots and roars-
By day the dipping house-flag and by
night the rocket's trail-

As the sheep that graze behind us so we
know them where they hail.

We bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a care,

The flash the wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer:

From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chains

The lover from the sea-rim drawn-his love in English lanes.

race the southern wool:

We warn the crawling cargo-tanks of
Bremen, Leith and Hull:

To each and all our equal lamp at peril of
the sea-

The white wall-sided warships or the whalers of Dundee!

"I have read 'Madeline.' It is a fine We greet the clippers wing-and-wing that pearl in simple setting. Julia Kavanagh has my esteem. I would rather know her than many far more brilliant personages. Somehow my heart leans more to her than to Eliza Lynn, for instance. Not that I have read either 'Amymone' or 'Azette,' but I have seen extracts from them which I found it literally impossible to digest. They presented to my imagination Lytton Bulwer in petticoats-an overwhelming vision. By-the-bye, the American critic talks admirable sense about Bulwer-candor obliges me to confess

that.

"I must abruptly bid you good-bye for the present. Yours sincerely,

"Currer Bell."

Come up, come in from Eastward, from
the guard-ports of the Morn!
Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies
of the Horn!

Swift shuttles of an empire's loom that
weave us main to main,

The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back again!

Go, get you gone up-Channel with the seacrust on your plates;

From "Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle." By Go, get you into London with the burden

Clement K. Shorter. Dodd, Mead & Co., Publishers.

of your freights!

Haste, for they talk of Empire there, and say, if any seek,

The Lights of England sent you and by silence shall ye speak.

EXTRACTS FROM "A SONG OF THE
ENGLISH."

THE COASTWISE LIGHTS.

Our brows are wreathed with spindrift and the weed is on our knees:

Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.

From reef and rock and skerry-over

headland, ness and voe

The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!

THE SONG OF THE DEAD.

Hear now the song of the Dead-in the
North by the torn berg-edges-
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by
their hide-stripped sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South-in the sun
by their skeleton horses,

Where the warrigal whimpers and bays
through the dust of the sere river-

courses.

Song of the Dead in the East—in the heatrotted jungle hollows, Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof-in the break of the buffalo-wallows. Song of the Dead in the West-in the Barrens, the snow that betrayed them,

Where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the grave-mound they made them:

Hear now the Song of the Dead!

1.

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, ir the man-stifled town:

We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.

Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need.

Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.

As the deer breaks-as the steer breaksfrom the herd where they graze, In the faith of little children we went on our ways.

Then the wood failed-then the food failed -then the last water dried

In the faith of little children we lay down and died.

On the sand-drift-on the veldt-side-in the fern-scrub we lay,

That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.

Follow after-follow after! We have

watered the root,

There's never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we manned;
There's never an ebb goes seaward now
But drops our dead on the sand-
But slinks our dead on the sands forlore,
From the Ducies to the Swin.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid it in!

We must feed our sea for a thousand years,

For that is our doom and pride,

As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind

Or the wreck that struck last tideOr the wreck that lies on the spouting reef

Where the ghastly blue-lights flare. If blood be the price of admiralty, If blood be the price of admiralty, If blood be the price of admiralty,

Lord God, we ha' bought it fair! From "The Seven Seas." By Rudyard Kipling. D. Appleton & Company, Publishers.

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And the bud nas come to blossom that had, too, something of the Arabian

ripens for fruit!

Follow after-we are waiting by the trails that we lost

For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.

Follow after-follow after-for the har

vest is sown: By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!

II.

We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her

waves

But marks our English dead:

dignity in his bearing, and he walked with long, well-balanced steps, swiftly, but without haste, as the Arab walks barefooted in the sand, not even suspecting that weariness can ever come upon him; erect, proud, without selfcollected and consciousness, elastic,

ever ready in his easy and effortless movement, for sudden and violent action. He was not pale as dark Italians. are, but his skin had the color and looks of fresh, light bronze, just chiseiled, and able to reflect the sun, while having a light of its own from the ebony blood beneath. That was the reason why the Neapolitans, who did

We have strawed our best to the weed's not chance to have seen Sicilians often,

unrest

To the shark and the sheering gull. If blood be the price of admiralty,

Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

took him for a foreigner and got into his way, holding out their hands to beg, and making ape-like grimaces at him behind his back. But those who

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knew the type of his race and recog. nized it, did nothing of that sort. On the contrary, they were careful not to molest him.

The friend whom he sought, high up in the city, in a luxurious, sunlit room, overlooking the harbor and the wide bay, was as unlike him as one man could be unlike another-white, fairhaired, delicate, with soft, blue eyes and silken lashes, and a passive hand that accepted the pressure of Taquisara's rather than returned it-the pale survival of another once conquering race.

Gianluca was evidently ill and weak, though few physicians could have defined the cause of his weakness. He moved easily enough when he rose to greet his friend, but there was a mortal languor about him, and an evident reluctance to move again when he had resumed his seat in the sun. He was muffled in a thickly wadded silk coat of a dark color. His fair, straight hair was brushed away from his thin, bluish temples and the golden young beard could not conceal the emaciation of his throat when his head leaned against the back of his easy-chair.

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Taquisara sat down and looked at him, lighted a black cigar and looked again, got up, stirred the fire and then went to the window.

He

"You are worse to-day," he said, looking out. "What has happened?" turned again, for the answer.

"It is all over," said Gianluca. "My father was there last night. She is betrothed to Bosio Macomer."

His voice sank low, and his head fell forward a little, so that his chin rested upon his folded hands. Taquisara uttered an exclamation of surprise and bit the end of his cigar.

"She? To marry Bosio Macomer? No-no-I do not believe it."

"Ask my father," said Gianluca, without raising his eyes. "Bosio was there, in the room, when they told my father the news."

"No doubt," said Taquisara, beginning to walk up and down. "No doubt," he repeated. "But- He lit his cigar instead of finishing the

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sentence, and his eyes were thoughtful.

"But-what?" asked his friend, dejectedly. "If it had not been true, they would not have said it. It is all over."

"Life, you mean? I doubt Nothing is over, for nothing is done. They are not married yet, are they?" "No, of course not!".

"Then they may never marry."

"Who can prevent it? You? I? My father? It is over, I tell you. There is no hope. I will see her once more and then I shall die. But I must see her once more. You must help me to see her."

"Of course," answered Taquisara. "But what strange people you are!" he exclaimed, after a moment's pause. "Who can understand you? You are dying for love of her. That is curious, in the first place. I understand killing for love, but not dying oneself, just by folding hands and looking at the stars and repeating her name. Then, you do nothing. You do not say: She shall not marry Macomer, because I, I who speak, will prevent it, and get her for myself! No. Because some one has said that she will marry him, you feel sure that she will, and that ends the question. For the word of a man or a woman, all is to be finished. You are all contemplation, no action,-all heart, no hands-all love, no anger! You deserve to die for love. I am sorry that I like you."

"You always talk in at way!" said Gianluca, with a wearily sad intonation. "I suppose that life is different in Sicily."

"Life is life, everywhere," returned the Sicilian. "If I love a woman, it is not for the pleasure of loving her, nor for the glory of having it written on my tombstone that I have died for her. It is better that some one else should die and that I should have what I want. How does that seem to you? Is it not logic?. It is true that I have never loved any woman in that way. But then, I am young, though I am older than you are."

"What can I do?" The pale young

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"I would," said Taquisara. "I would write. I would see her-I would empty hell and drag Satan out by the hair to help me, if the saints would not. But you! You sit still and die of love. And when you are dead, what will you have? A fine tomb out in the country, and lights, and crowns, and some masses-but you will not get the woman you love. It is not love that consumes you. It is imagination. You imagine that you are going to die, and unless you recover from this, you probably will. With your temperament, the best thing you can do is to come with me to Sicily and forget all about Donna Veronica Serra. No woman would ever look at a man who loves as you do. She might pity you enough to marry you, if no one else presented himself just then; but when she was tired of pitying you she would love some one else. It is not life to be always pitying. That is the business of saints and nuns-not of men and women."

Gianluca was hurt by his friend's

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"I have spoken with her five times," said Gianluca, thoughtfully.

"Have you counted?" Taquisara smiled. "Very good-five times-seventeen, if you like you, sitting on the edge of your chair and opening your eyes wide to see her profile while she was looking at her aunt-you, saying that it was a fine day, or Tamagno was a great singer, and she, saying 'yes' to everything. And you love her. Well, no doubt, I could love a woman with whom I might never have spoken at all-surely-and why not? But you take it for granted that she knows you love her and expects you to ask for her, and has been told that you have done so and has herself dictated the refusal. You are credulous and despondent, and you are not strong. Besides, you sit here all day long, brooding and doing nothing but expecting to die, and hoping that she will shed a tear when she hears of your untimely end. Is that what you call making love in Naples?"

"I have told you that I can do nothing."

"It does not follow that there is nothing to be done."

"What is there, for instance?"

"Go to the Palozza Macomer and find out the truth yourself. Write to hertake your place before the door and stand there day and night until she sees you and notices you." Taquisara laughed. "Do anything-but do not sit here waiting to die in cotton wool with your feet to the fire and your head in the clouds."

"All that is absurd!" answered Gianluca, petulantly.

"Is it absurd? Then I will begin by doing it for you, and see what happens."

"You?" The younger man turned in surprise.

"I. Yes. All the more, as I have nothing to lose. I will go and find Bosio Macomer and talk with him

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"You will insult him," said Gianluca, anxiously. "There will be a quarrel

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I know you-and a quarrel about in doctrine but also sound in body. It her."

"Why should we quarrel?" asked Taquisara. "I will congratulate him on his betrothal. I know him well enough for that, and in the course of conversation something may appear which we do not know. Besides, if I go to the house, I may possibly meet Donna Veronica. If I do, I shall soon know everything, for I will speak to her of you. I know her."

is not merely that a valetudinarian is a source of endless anxiety to kindhearted people who have enough concern in their own homes without the burden of the minister's weakness, and that the work is certain to be crippled with a leader that is afraid of breaking down, but, what is much more unfortunate and injurious, the invalidism of his body will certainly creep into his teaching, for, as a rule,

"One sees that you are not a Neapoli- one can only get robust sermons from tan," smiling faintly. a robust man.

"No," answered the other, "I am not." And he laughed with a sort of quiet consciousness of strength which his friend secretly envied. "It is true," he added, "that things look easy to me here, which would be utterly impossible in Palermo. We are different with our women-and we are different when we love. Thank Heaven, for the present-I am as I am."

He smiled and relit his cigar, which had gone out.

One ought indeed to be thankful that Christ chose as his first apostles men not only of conspicuous spiritual genius, but also of a hardy, natural, wholesome habit of life fishermen, and such like and that of the four Gospels that must remain forever the authoritative documents of our faith, three proceeded, directly or indirectly, from those weather-beaten Galileans, and the fourth from a physician. Whatever may be said of later Chris"You have tian literature, there is nothing sickly, unreal, mawkish, or gloomy in the Gospels. They are sober, sensible, downright, manly books, such as ablebodied men would write and real men like to read. The body is a factor in thinking, as well as in pulling ropes and forging iron. Suppose two men be both saints, you need not expect equally good stuff from each in the way of thought if one be sound in body and the other unsound.

"No," said Gianluca. never been in love, I think!"

His fair young head leaned back wearily against the chair, and his eyes half closed as he spoke.

"Nor ever shall we, in your way, my friend," answered the Sicilian, rising from his seat. "I suppose it is because we are so different that we have always been such good friends. But then-one need not look for reasons. It is enough that it is so."

As a

From "Taquisara." By F. Marion Crawford. rule, any one who has inherited an inMacmillan & Co., Publishers.

SOUND HEALTH IN A SOUND PULPIT.

As it is the will of God that the Church should be fed and guarded by a human ministry, there is no man on the face of the earth who has such responsibility, and who ought to take such care of himself, as the minister of Christ. And first he must see to his health, for the spiritual prosperity of a congregation depends very largely on the minister being not only sound

ferior constitution, or whose nervous system is over-wrought, or whose body is deformed, or who is a chronic dyspeptic, or who is in any way below the working average of strength, will be peevish in temper, inclined to useless argument, fiercely intolerant of other people's views, a slave to crotchets, and pessimistic in the extreme. It is his misfortune, and allowance ought to be made for it. He may live above it, but the chances are he will not. One ought to extend to him every consideration, as to a crippled man, but it is wise to make some discount from his opinions. Unless he be singularly

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