Oh, thou art beautiful, howe'er it be !
Huntress, or Dian, or whatever named ;
And he the veriest Pagan, that first framed
A silver idol, and ne'er worship'd thee!—
It is too late-or thou should'st have my knee-
Too late now for the old Ephesian vows,
And not divine the crescent on thy brows!—

Yet, call thee nothing but the mere mild moon,
Behind those chestnut boughs,

Casting their dappled shadows at my feet;
I will be grateful for that simple boon,

In many a thoughtful verse and anthem sweet,
And bless thy dainty face whene'er we meet.

"The Haunted House" was Poe's favorite, and it is superb in its imaginative quality and gloomy fantasy. I can quote but two stanzas:

The moping heron, motionless and stiff,

That on a stone, as silently and stilly,
Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if
To guard the water-lily.

O'er all these hung a shadow and a fear,

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.

Few poets have equaled the weird beauty of "Up the Rhine" is the best of his humorous prose, and, while it is manifestly an im

this poem.

itation of " Humphry Clinker," it is an imitation that is equal to the original. It teems with inexhaustible fun. The volume consists of a collection of letters from a family party of tourists. There is Uncle Orchard, Mrs. Wilmot, his widowed sister; the lady's maid, Martha Penny, and Frank Summerville, the nephew, an accomplished man of the world. Martha's Martha's description of the storm on the passage across to Holland and her account of the disaster to the bath-house boat on the Rhine are inimitable and would throw an anchorite into convulsions of laughter.

One of the most charming of books for every reader, young and old, is "The Memorials of Thomas Hood," by his son and daughter. It shows this great man in his domestic and professional life, and is an exhibition of courage, love, hope, industry, and self-sacrifice rarely paralleled in our literary history. It is a book to be cordially commended, and whoever reads it will rise from its perusal with a greater appreciation of Thomas Hood, wit, humorist, and poet, than he has ever before known.

I saw her at the County Ball

There where the sounds of flute and fiddle

Gave signal sweet in that old hall,

Of hands across and down the middle,

Hers was the subtlest spell by far

Of all that sets young hearts romancing;
She was our queen, our rose, our star,

And then she danced-oh, heaven, her dancing!

*

*

*

Our love was like most other loves

A little glow, a little shiver,

A rosebud and a pair of gloves,

AndFly Not Yet " upon the river;

*

Some jealousy of some one's heir,
Some hopes of dying broken-hearted,
A mystery, a lock of hair,

The usual vows, and then we parted.

We parted-months and years rolled by,
We met again four summers after ;
Our parting was all sob and sigh—
Our meeting was all mirth and laughter;
For in my heart's most secret cell
There had been many other lodgers;
And she was not the ballroom's belle,

But only-Mrs. Something Rogers!

The name of Winthrop Mackworth Praed is perhaps not as familiar to the general reader as it once was, or as it deserves to be. He was the originator of a style of vers de société of which the foregoing, "The Belle of the Ballroom" is an example, and which has found so many imitators that it is now commonplace. He was one of the brilliant young men in the early '20's of the nineteenth century that made Cambridge university noted. He was the contemporary of Macaulay and Charles Austin and their rival in the famous Union Debating society, in which the young men of the university won their first oratorical honors and gave promise of what they might afterwards become in parliament. Macaulay's achievements we all know, but Praed is not so well known,

Winthrop Mackworth Praed was two years younger than Macaulay, having been born in 1802. He was first sent to Eton, where he established a magazine named the Etonian that became even more celebrated than the Microcosm of Canning and Frere in the preceding generation. It was wholly written by the students, though Praed contributed the larger portion of each number. He was so original both in verse and prose that great things were predicted of him.

Nor did he disappoint expectation. At Cambridge he won medals for Greek verse four times, and for English verse twice. He was the third of his year in the classics, gained a fellowship, and was one of the leading debaters in the Union society.

In one of the early numbers of "Noctes Ambrosianae," then being published in Blackwood, Professor Wilson writes: "Macaulay and Praed have written very good prize poems. These two young gentlemen ought to make a figure in the world." We know what Macaulay's fame is, and premature death alone prevented a complete fulfilment of the prediction in respect to Praed.

Both Macaulay and Praed were contributors to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, which it will be remembered was Macaulay's stepping stone to