and Mr. Swinburne's Bothwell,' he has written the only works within this generation worthy of being called dramas.' -G. B. Smith.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

"Now, don't, sir! Don't expose me! Just this once!
This was the first and only time, I'll swear,—
Look at me,-see, I kneel,—yes, by the soul
Of her who hears-(your sainted mother, sir!)
All, except this last accident, was truth-
This little kind of slip !-and even this,
It was your own wine, sir, the good champagne
(I took it for Catawba, you're so kind),
Which put the folly in my head!

"'Get up?'

You still inflict on me that terrible face?

You show no mercy?—Not for her dear sake,

The sainted spirit's, whose soft breath even now
Blows on my cheek—(don't you feel something, sir ?)
You'll tell?

Please, sir! your thumbs are through my windpipe, sir!
Ch-ch!

"Well, sir, I hope you've done it now!

O Lord! I little thought, sir, yesterday,

When your departed mother spoke those words
Of peace through me, and moved you, sir, so much,
You gave me (very kind it was of you)
These shirt-studs-(better take them back again,
Please, sir)—yes, little did I think so soon

A trifle of trick, all through a glass too much

Of his own champagne, would change my best of friends
Into an angry gentleman!"-Mr. Sludge, The Medium.

Guendolen.

"She's dead

"She threw them thus

Let me unlock her arms!"

Tresham.

About my neck and blessed me, and then died.

You'll let them stay now, Guendolen !"

"White

"

And look to him! What ails you, Thorold ? ”
Guendolen.-
As she and whiter! Austin-quick-this side!"

Austin.-" A froth is oozing thro' his clenched teeth-
Both lips, where they're not bitten thro', are black!
Speak, dearest Thorold!"

Tresham.

66

Something does weigh down
My neck besides her weight; thanks; I should fall
But for you, Austin, I believe !-there, there-
'Twill pass away soon !-Ah-I had forgotten-
I am dying."

Guendolen.

"Thorold-Thorold-why was this?"
Tresham.—“ I said, just as I drank the poison off,
The earth would be no longer earth to me,
The life out of all life was gone from me!
There are blind ways provided, the foredone,
Heart-weary player in this pageant world
Drops out by letting the main masque defile
By the conspicuous portal :-I am through-
Just through!"-A Blot on the 'Scutcheon.

"You, now, so kind here, all you Florentines,

What is it in your eyes . . those lips, those brows
Nobody spoke it
yet I know it well!-

Come now-this battle saves you, all's at end,

Your use of me is o'er, for good, for evil

Come now, what's done against me, while I speak,
In Florence? Come! I feel it in my blood,

My eyes, my hair, a voice is in my ear
That spite of all this smiling and kind speech
You are betraying me! What is it you do?
Have it your way, and think my use is over;
That you are saved and may throw off the mask-
Have it my way, and think more work remains

Which I could do-so show you fear me not,
Or prudent be, or generous, as you choose,
But tell me tell me what I refused to know

At noon, lest heart should fail me! Well? That letter?
My fate is known at Florence! What is it?”—Luria.

12. Mastery of Rhyme.-"There is no such extravagant and out-of-the-way word in the language that Browning will not find you a rhyme for, if not in one word, then in two, three, or four; and if not in one language then in another."-Roden Noel.

"In one very important matter, that of rhyme, he is perhaps the greatest master of our language; in single and double, in simple and grotesque alike, he succeeds in fitting rhyme to rhyme with a perfection which I have never found in any other poet of any age."-John Addington Symonds.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

"But I think I gave you as good!

'That foreign fellow,-who can know How she pays, in a tuneful mood,

For his tuning her that piano?'

"Could you say so, and never say

'Suppose we join hands and fortunes,

And I fetch her from over the way,

Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?'

"But you meet the Prince at the Board,

I'm queen myself at bals-pare,

I've married a rich old lord,

And you're dubbed knight and an R.A."

"But where I begin my own narration

Is a little after I took my station

-Youth and Art.

To breathe the fresh air from the balcony,
And, having in those days a falcon eye,

To follow the hunt thro' the open country,

From where the bushes thinlier crested

The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree :-
When, in a moment, my ear was arrested
By-was it singing, or was it saying,
Or a strange musical instrument playing
In the chamber?-and to be certain

I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain."

-The Flight of the Duchess.

"But the most turned in yet more abruptly
From a certain squalid knot of alleys,

Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,
Which now the little chapel rallies

And leads into day again-its priestliness
Lending itself to hide their beastliness
So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),

And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
That, where you cross the common as I did,

And meet the party thus presided,

'Mount Zion' with Love-lane at the back of it, They front you as little disconcerted

As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,

And her wicked people made to mind him,

Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him."

-Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day.

WHITTIER, 1807-1892

Biographical Outline.-John Greenleaf Whittier, born. December 17, 1807, in the East Parish of Haverhill, Mass.; both parents strict Quakers; father a farmer of supposed Huguenot descent, living far from any neighbor and far from any school; Whittier works as a boy on his father's farm, where, through insufficient clothing and other unwise methods of "toughening" then in vogue among New England farmers, he sows the seeds of lifelong ill health; until his nineteenth year his only education is obtained at a district school, which is open but a small part of each year; his first literary inspiration comes from Burns, through the medium of a travelling Scotch pedler, and from Scott; as a school-boy he used to cover his slate with original rhymes instead of sums; during his early youth he writes much verse, but his father discourages the son's "foolish waste of time over his day-dreams;" his first published poem, "The Exile's Departure," was contributed anonymously, in 1826, to the Free Press, then recently established in Newburyport by William Lloyd Garrison; the merit of the poem is recognized by Garrison, who discovers its authorship, and, without invitation, visits Whittier on his father's farm; he finds the young poet hoeing corn and clad so poorly and meagrely that he at first declines to be presented to the young city editor, but afterward yields to the importunities of his sister Elizabeth; Garrison declares that Whittier bids fair to become another Bernard Barton," and urges him to obtain a better education; Whittier's father is not pleased with the idea, as he is unable to aid his son, but the young poet learns from one of his father's farm-laborers the art of making ladies' slippers, and thus soon earns money enough to