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K. Oh Yaksha! listen to the truth:
Not if a man do dwell from youth
Beneath a Brahman's roof, nor when
The Srutis known to holy men
Are learned, and read the Vedas through,

Doth this make any Brahman true.
Conduct alone that name can give ;
A Brahmana must steadfast live,
Devoid of sin and free from wrong;
For he who walks low paths along,
Still keeping to the way shall come
Sooner and safer to his home
Than the proud wanderer on the hill;
And reading, learning, praying, still
Are outward deeds which ofttimes leave
Barren of fruit minds that believe.
Who practises what good he knows
Himself a Brahmana he shows;
And if an evil nature knew

The sacred Vedas through and through,
With all the Srutis, still must he,
Lower than honest Sudra be.

To know and do the right, and pay
The sacrifice, in peace alway,
This maketh one a Brahmana.

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So Yudhisthira said,
"Let Nakula, oh Yaksha! have his life
My dark-browed brother with the fiery eyes
Straight like a sala-tree, broad-chested, tall,
That long-armed lord."

"But see where Bhima lies Dead," spake the spirit, "dearest unto thee; And where Arjuna sleeps, thy guard and guide! Why dost thou crave the life of Nakula Not thine own mother's son-in Bhima's stead,

Who had the might of countless elephants,
Whom all the people call thy Well-Beloved?
Or wouldst thou see Nakula alive again
In place of great Arjuna, thine own blood,
Whose valor was the tower of Pandavas?"

But Yudhisthira answered: "Faith and right,

Being preserved, save all, and, being lost, Leave nought to save: these therefore I will

set

First in my heart. Faithful and right it is
To choose by justice, putting self aside.
Let Nakula live, oh Yaksha! for men call
King Yudhisthira just; nor will he lose,
Even for love, that name; make Nakula live!
Kunti and Madri were my father's wives;
Shall one be childless, and the other see
Her sons returning? Madri is to me
As Kunti, as my mother, at this hour;
As she who bore me she that bore the twins;
And justice shall she have, since I am judge;
Let Nakula live, thou Yaksha!"

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Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

LAMENT

OF ONE WHO COULD GO OUT ONLY IN A BATH-
CHAIR, THE DOCTOR RECOMMENDING THE
MORNING; BUT ONCE BEING OUT ON A JAN-
UARY AFTERNOON, HE FELT SOME SADNESS
AT TASTING A PLEASURE WHICH HE HAD
ALMOST FORGOTTEN.

OH, let me, as I ought to, grieve
For loss of thee, dear time of eve;
Let me be thankful as I ought

For forced remembrance and sad thought.
The quiet passionate evening time
Has been my love and oft my rhyme;
The orient day's divine ascent

I have loved with less of love's content;
More like our life and so more sweet
This time when earth and heaven so meet.

Almost did I-oh, sin! - forget
The dim delight of the sunset;
The round sun lingering misty red
Ere in the sea he sinks to bed;
The tremor and the blush upon
The sea, expecting the red sun;
The movement of that hour so still;
The sense that goes before the will,
And thoughts that heavy lag behind,
And bring the quiet to the mind;
And what delights the eye not least,
The gloom of the deserted east,
All empty of the glorious sun,

And darkness seen where morning shone.
The hill that, tip-toe, did defy
With rugged head the early sky,
Now in the gentle mist more great,
Leans down on earth with all its weight;
And here the old street slumbers deep,
And red-tiled cottages asleep
Look lazy, lost, and quieted
In drowsy dreams of ages dead.
And still the setting light is kind,
And somehow finds its way behind
To where the cottage children play
Forgetful of the serious day,
And all with serious love intent
On strife that bursts in merriment.
Oh, listen to the noise that's made

Where those thick bushes make thick shade!
The birds have something they must say
Before the light has gone away.

Before the light is gone away
Let love bring joy that loves delay;
The pensive sister of dear sorrow,
She weeps to-day to laugh to-morrow.
And now no longer do I grieve
For loss of thee, dear time of eve,
Since more than all I lost I find
In this forgiving evening kind,
This dying winter afternoon,
Unlike late-lasting joy of June,
And lovely with a likeness lent
That leaves it less and different.
No little beauty this, though less

Than summer's more than sweet excess;
No loss, this lovely difference

That suits it to my present sense.

Seldom and dear to me the sight
Of day adorn'd to meet the night.
'Tis sweeter now and much more dear
Than former summer evenings were,
When ofter. with surprise I met
The sudden joy of the sunset;
And when the color'd light was gone,
Then joy and I were left alone
In silent conversation free,
And thoughts of things I never see.
HENRY PATMORE.

THE OLD WASHERWOMAN.
"DIE ALTE WASCH-FRAU."

SEE, busy with her linen there,
Yes, busier far than all her peers,
In spite of age and snow-white hair,
In spite of six and seventy years,
An ancient woman who has gained

The daily bread which life demands,
Within the sphere that God ordained,
By sweat of brow, and toil of hands.
She in her youth has had her day,

Has loved and hoped, and met her mate,
Has walked along her woman's way,
Grim Care still following, sure as fate;
Has borne her husband children three,
Has nursed him in his sickness sore,
Her faith and hope undimmed, when he
Sank to his rest forevermore.

Children must bred and nourished be-
She bravely buckled to her task;
Reared them to honest industry,

Best heritage the poor can ask ;
Then with her dear ones she must part;
To seek their fortunes forth they fare,
And still the old and lonely heart

Blesses, and waits with courage there.
With careful savings flax she bought

And stinted sleep her flax to spinFine yarn her thrifty hands have wrought, And to the weaver carried in.

He wove a web of linen fair;

She brought the needle and the shears, And her own fingers sewed with care The last strait garment woman wears.

Last labor of a life complete,

She shrines it in a chosen place;
Strange treasure is a winding-sheet
To house as in a jewel-case!
On Sundays 'tis her first array,

It prints God's word within her breast, Thus she forestalls her burial day,

When in its folds she lies at rest.

May I, when eventide draws on,
Like this poor woman, see fulfilled
Th' allotted task, the battle won,
Within the lines my God hath willed!
When life's mixed cup is drained at last,
Like hers, my memories pious be,

That I may look, when time has passed,
As kindly on my shroud as she.
Temple Bar.

C. B.

From Blackwood's Magazine. JONATHAN SWIFT.

IN the controversy which Swift's life and character have provoked, it has been extremely difficult hitherto to arrive at any quite satisfactory conclusion. Biographical criticism, like Biblical, is a progressive science. The critical method, which we have brought to comparative perfection, was almost unknown to our forefathers. Johnson's "Lives of the English Poets" is one of the best books of the time, for his arbitrary dogmatism was controlled and informed by an admirable common sense; but even Johnson often misleads. We do not speak of his criticism of poetry, for the canon of taste has changed since his day as it may change again; but the genuine spirit of inquiry is conspicuous by its absence. Even the lives of the men who might almost be called contemporary are treated as if the gossip of the club and the tittle-tattle of the coffee-house were the only available sources of information. Thus, until Walter Scott's memoirs were published, the real Swift was almost unknown. The growth of the Swift legend was indeed unusually rapid; and if an exacter criticism had not been brought to bear upon it in time, there is no saying to what proportions it might not have attained. The great Dean of St. Patrick's was becoming a grotesque and gigantic shadow. Scott was not a critic in the modern sense of the word; but his judgment, upon the whole, was sound and just, and his large humanity enabled him to read into the story much that a stricter scrutiny has since approved. The creative sympathy. of genius is seldom at fault; for it works in obedience to the larger laws which govern human conduct, and if its methods are sometimes unscientific, its conclusions are generally reliable.

Scott has been followed by diligent students, and the researches of Mr. Mason, Mr. Forster, and Mr. Henry Craik may be considered exhaustive. All the documents that have any real bearing upon the controversy have been made accessible; and Mr. Craik's masterly life, in particular, leaves little to be desired.* Much

• Mr. Forster had only completed the first volume of

new matter has been recovered; much that was irrelevant has been set aside; and we think that a portrait, credible and consistent in its main lines, may now be constructed. After all deductions have been made, Jonathan Swift remains a great and imposing personality unique in that century as Benjamin Disraeli has been in ours.

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The dean himself is to some extent responsible for the gross caricature which has been commonly accepted as a faithful portrait by his countrymen. The intense force of his genius gave a vital energy to the merest trifles. His casual sayings have branded themselves upon the lan guage. Only a woman's hair — die like a poisoned rat in a hole - I am what I am ubi sava indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit, these letters of fire may be read through the darkness which has engulfed so much. But a true and complete estimate of a man's disposition and temper cannot be constructed out of scattered and isolated phrases. We must take these for what they are worth, compare them, weigh them, find out their proper place and relative value in the narrative. The subtler lights and shades of character are necessarily missed in a sketch which busies itself exclusively with the occasional outburst - however vivid and impressive — of passion or remorse. Mr. Thackeray seldom hurts our sense of the becoming; but his slight and unconscientious treatment of one of the greatest satirists of the world is, it must be sorrowfully admitted, a well-nigh unpardonable offence.

The leading events of Swift's life fall naturally into four main divisions: 1st, His school and college life; 2d, His residence with Sir William Temple; 3d, His London career, with its social, literary, and political triumphs; 4th, His Irish. banishment. He was born in 1667; he died in 1745: so that his life may be said the dean's biography before his death; but the materials which he had accumulated, as well as those in the possession of Mr. John Murray and others, have been put at Mr. Craik's disposal, and his elaborate "Life of Swift" (London-John Murray: 1882) must for the future be regarded as the standard work on the subject. Mr. Leslie Stephen's "Swift," published last year, is an acute though somewhat unsympathetic study, in which Swift's great qualities are rather minimized.

to cover nearly the whole period between | ing as those which united his mother to the Restoration of Charles II. and the Pope, last Jacobite rebellion.

Whose filial piety excells
Whatever Grecian story tells.

But he frequently went to see her,
walking the whole way, as was his habit;
and on her death he recorded his sorrow

Oliver Cromwell had been only a few years in his grave when Jonathan Swift was born. Swift was an Irishman, in so far as the place of birth determines nationality; but except for the accident that he was born in Dublin, he was, by extrac-in words so direct and simple that they tion and temperament, an Englishman. cling to the memory: "I have now lost He came of a good Hereford stock, and my barrier between me and death. God he was proud of his ancestry. "My birth, grant I may live to be as well prepared although from a family not undistin- for it as I confidently believe her to have guished in its time, is many degrees in- been. If the way to heaven be through ferior to yours," he says to Bolingbroke piety, truth, justice, and charity, she is an admission which he might safely there."

make, for St. John had a strain of Tudor Swift was thus cast upon the charity of blood in his veins. The dean's grand- his friends from his earliest infancy. father had been vicar of Goodrich, and When barely a year old, indeed, he was sehad been distinguished during the Civil cretly taken to Whitehaven by his nurse, War for the heartiness and obstinacy of who belonged to that part of the country, his loyalty. But loyalty was a losing and who could not bring herself to part game in England at the time. So it came from her charge. The little fellow apabout that several of the vicar's sons were pears to have thriven in that homely comforced to cross the Irish Channel, and panionship. He remained with her for try their luck in the Irish capital. The three years; and before he was brought eldest, Godwin, through his connection back to Ireland, he could read, he tells with the Ormond family, was fairly suc- us, any chapter of the Bible. Soon after cessful; but the younger brother, Jona- his return to Dublin he was sent by his than, when he married Abigail Erick, had uncle Godwin to the grammar school at still his fortune to make. He died a year Kilkenny the famous academy where or two afterwards, leaving his widow well- Swift and Congreve and Berkeley received nigh penniless. So that when Jonathan their early training. From Kilkenny the the second made his appearance in this lad went to Trinity College, - but his bad world on the last day of November, university career was undistinguished: he 1667, the outlook was by no means bright. failed to accommodate himself to the traThe widow contrived, however, to strug-ditional course of study, and it was with gle on hopefully, and indeed remained to some difficulty that he obtained his dethe end a bright, keen, thrifty, uncom- gree. The sense of dependence pressed plaining, capable sort of woman, much heavily upon him; he was moody and ill regarded by her son. In course of time at ease at war with the world, which she was able to get away from Dublin to had treated him scurvily, as he thought; her native country, where the Ericks had and more than once he threatened to been known more or less since the days break into open revolt. of that Eadric the forester from whom they claimed descent, and settled herself in Leicester, where she seems to have been well esteemed, and to have led the easy, blameless, unexciting life of a provincial town for many years. Her son had become famous before she died; but he was always loyal and affectionate to the cheery old lady, though their relations perhaps were never so intimate and endear

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The Celtic rebellion of 1688 drove him, with a host of English fugitives, across the Channel. not unwillingly, we may believe. He joined his mother at Leicester; but before the close of 1689, he had obtained a post in the household of Sir William Temple. Sir William was living at Moor Park, near Farnham, in Surrey a wild and romantic district even now, and which two centuries ago was a nat

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