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deepest sympathy, and Mr. Jerry Deneen | this poor orphan. I remain with due a reprimand on his dilatoriness? respect Your humble servant WILLIAM

Writen Thursday 18 hundred an 76. SIR my husband was very bad an died this tiome Sir I ave ben sodly put aboute by wan Jerry Deneen as behaved shamful to my poor husband Sir this was ow it hapned Tim thats my husband Sir was mioghty il an as near dyin as iver you Cee Tim says i an whoo wud ye lioke to mak yer cofin sure thin Mary says he theirs kno wan as i wud lioke to mak it bether thin Jerry Deneen only he is mioghty behinde hande in his conthracts arrah Tim says I Sir mak yer minde aisey bout that for he is shure an sartin to finis the loikes o that in dacent tiome now Sir my poore husband the lord ave Marcy on his sowl had to waite for an other nites wake for that Jerry Deneen bad cess to him niver finised the dacent mans cofin in tiome now Sir I lave the mater in yer honers handes hopin as you will punis that vilan as want to charg me fiften shillin an he to kep my poor husband watin 2 bleshet nites for his cofin.

Yours to comande MARY C—. honored an kinde Sir may I thrust u to punis that divil Deneen.

A somewhat similar, and I might add amusing, instance happened not long ago when a tenant's wife died. It was on a Saturday night, I remember, and I did not hear of her death until Sunday. I then sent to my carpenter, and desired him to make a coffin for the remains. Next morning, on looking out of the window I saw her sons carrying the coffin from the workshop. I opened the window, and called to them to wait till I satisfied myself that it was a good one. On desiring them to lift off the cover, what was my astonishment to see the coffin filled with turnips! Passing by the turnip-pit, the bearers could not resist taking a few, for as they explained - "it felt so mioghty empty!"

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My noble spirit could not resist so charming a compliment, and I helped to obtain the license for another kind of "spirit," thereby making glad the heart of the poor orphan.

Here is another letter in which my friend Dan says "he'd walk from here to Cork" for me, and a very long walk it would be.

SIR

Ye ought for to concider an alow that my Pashion of Jalousy could not afford manes I could to pay my rint by givin me but to spake prisumptious I used all my bill to Bank and met it Honorable for it was in my Hearth an minde if ye wanted me to walk from here to Cork I wud not refus I have no more news but hoping that 15 may be worth £100 an wishin prosperity to ye an yer Famely your faithfull servant DANIEL M

Its two empirtnant intirely for me to ixpect a letter from ye Sir kno more at the prisent.

The next and last letter I will give you to read is from a tenant who buys turkeys each year for a friend of mine. The present ones seem to have been damaging the farmer's crops.

SIPTEMBER Friday 1884.

I hope this will find you in as gud healt as it laves me at the presint thank God Sind for the turkies at onst they ave the oats that flat I have boght ye 16 couple an a halve Captin at 4 shillins an nine pinse for too i gav wan shillin arnest* minde that sind me a payhin I dont want a black payhin nor naither a white I wants a spheckled wan sind for them turkies an welcome at wanst shurely i remain Sir Yours thruly Tom McG——.

them turkies ar small an fat an hav grate legs.

I have, I think, given sufficient reason to show that wit and honesty may still be found in dear old Ireland, and trust the perusal of these simple letters will afford amusement — though not in derision — to

the reader.

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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

TETHERED. I.

AN open lake with room for all the sky:

But learn that Pan in earth's primordial age
Sat down in sheer delight to fashion me,
Tuning my stops by forest, mount, and lea,

Northward wide slopes and then the tall To nature's finest notes with fingers sage.

blue chain;

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Swans on the river, on the lake's blue deep: In the walled garden with the limes arow A swan sits in a corner, half asleep,

A swan that wears a chain upon his limb, Measured the length that he may come and go; And he can reach the urn, and has his keep.

On the free lake, on the free river, The swans go who knows where : Guest of the garden, guest forever, Room in the fountain's bath for him, The chain's full length to take the air,

Swan enchained forever.

One showed a life's long secret, pitying
thus,
"Poor swan! 'tis like a tethered soul of
us."

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Pan dead, the Tuscan took me and fulfilled With love's immortal music. Shakespeare then

His Titan spirit launched into my mould. Anon to Milton's thunder-song I thrilled, Pulsed with Keats' passionate heart, and

unto men

Witnessed with Wordsworth from the solemn wold.

Spectator. ALFRED PERceval Graves.

A WINTER PICTURE.

THE winter rime is on the apple-trees;
The mulberries are bare; no longer shows
The graceful pear her wealth of burnished
fruit;

Stripped is the slender plum; the orchard

wears

A look of barren sadness; garnered in
Are all its purple, red, and golden fruits,
And sterile shall it show till blossom-time.
Thus Nature, after labor, takes her rest,
Gaining fresh vigor for her teeming-time,
By husbanding her strength; and so the fields,
Whereon in autumn glowed the ruddy corn,
Lie fallow for a season. 'Tis the time
Of universal pause from that hard toil
That is the lot of all our husbandmen;
Even the flowers are withered.

And the birds

As silent are as is the scene around
Beneath its snowy shroud; no whistle wakes
The echoes of the glade, no melody
Comes from the woodland spray; a deathlike
calm,

Serene and still, profound and beautiful,
Lies over Nature, as she tranquil sleeps.
Chambers' Journal.

A QUEST FOR A HEART.

I LOOKED forth from my inmost self, And searched the world throughout; "My life," I cried, "for one true heart, To swear by without doubt!"

I looked again, and looked in vain, No heart appealed to mine; "Seek not outside," a voice replied, "For hearts to answer thine."

I looked within, and next mine own,
So close that both seemed one,

I found the heart- and there it lies;
'Tis yours-my search was done.
Temple Bar.
N. T. B.

From The Edinburgh Review. SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET.•

These poets, however, came later than Spenser, and were not a little indebted to IT often happens that some eminent him, while yet they were, in some respects, characteristic of a great poet has almost unlike him. Some of them selected escaped observation owing to the degree themes so abstract and metaphysical as to in which other characteristics, not higher be almost beyond the limits of true poetic but more attractive to the many, have also art. The difficulty was itself an attraction belonged to him. Spenser is an instance to them, and their ambition was more to of this. If it were asked what chiefly instruct than to delight. Spenser loved constitutes the merit of his poetry, the philosophy as well as they, but was too answer would commonly be, its descriptive truly a poet to allow of his following her power, or its chivalrous sentiment, or its when she strayed into "a barren and dry exquisite sense of beauty; yet the quality land," or of his adopting the didactic which he himself desiderated most for his method when he illustrated philosophic chief work was one not often found in themes. Truth and beauty are things union with these, viz., sound and true phil- correlative; and very profound truths can osophic thought. This is the characteris-be elucidated in verse without the aid of tic which we propose to illustrate at pres- such technical reasoning processes as ent. It was the characteristic which chiefly won for him the praise of Shake

speare:

those with which Dryden conducted his argument in "The Hind and Panther," and Pope in his essays. Spenser's Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such imagination never forsook the region of As, passing all conceit, needs no defence; the sympathies; but it had the special and it was doubtless the merit to which he gift of drawing within their charmed circle owed the influence which Milton acknowl- themes which for another poet must have edged that Spenser's poetry had exercised ever remained outside it, and of suffusing over his own. There is more of philos- them at once with the glow of passion ophy in one book of "The Faery Queen "and with the white light of high intelli than in all the cantos of his Italian mod-gence. It is true that he dealt much in els. In Italy the thinkers were generally allegory; but though allegory is commonly astute politicians or recluse theologians; and her later poets, excepting of course Tasso, cared more to amuse a brilliant court with song and light tale than to follow the steps of Dante along the summits of serious song. England, on the other hand, uniting both the practical and the meditative mind with the imaginative instincts of southern lands, had thereby strengthened both that mind and those instincts, and thus occupied a position neither above nor beneath the region of thoughtful poetry. In the latter part of the sixteenth and earlier part of the seventeenth century, she possessed a considerable number of poets who selected, apparently without offence, very grave themes for their poetry. It will suffice to name such writers as Samuel Daniel, John Davies, George Herbert, Dr. Donne, Giles Fletcher, Habington, and, not much later, Dr. Henry More, the Platonist.

• The Works of Edmund Spenser. Edited by the Rev. Dr. GROSART. In 8 vols. London: 1883.

a cold thing—always, indeed, if it be mere allegory yet whenever Spenser's genius is true to itself, his allegory catches fire, and raises to the heights of song themes which would otherwise have de scended to the level of ordinary prose. Had Spenser's poetry not included this philosophic vein, it would not have been in sympathy with a time which produced a Bacon, whose prose is often the noblest poetry, as well as a Sidney, whose life was a poem. At the Merchant Taylors' Grammar School, Bishop Andrews and, as is believed, Richard Hooker, were among his companions; and when he entered Cambridge, Pembroke Hall was at least as much occupied with theological and metaphysical discussion as with classical literature.

We may go further. It was in a large measure the strength of his human sympathies, which at once forced Spenser to include philosophy among the subjects of his poetry, and prevented that philosophy

from becoming unfit for poetry. As he great things" for two centuries after was eminently a poet of the humanities, Spenser had denounced the approaching so his philosophy was a philosophy of the imposture. That imposture is the one, humanities; he could no more have tak-now but too well known, which, in the en up a physiological theme for a poem, name of justice, substitutes for it the like Phineas Fletcher's "Purple Island," fiction of a universal equality in the interthan a geographical one, like Drayton's ests of which all human society hitherto "Polyolbion." The philosophy which in known is to be levelled down and remod. terested him was that which "comes elled. Artegal, Spenser's emblem of jushome to the business and bosoms of men." tice, rides forth on his mission accompaIt was philosophy allied to life -philos- nied by his squire Talus, the iron man, ophy moral, social, and political. Such with the iron flail. On the seaside they philosophy is latent in all great poetry, descry "many nations" gathered tothough it is in some ages only that it be-gether: comes patent. It is with his political and social philosophy that we shall begin, proceeding afterwards to his philosophy of

man.

We know from Spenser's letter to Sir Walter Raleigh that to embody a great scheme of philosophy was the end which he proposed to himself in writing "The Faery Queen." That poem was to consist of twelve books; and the hero of each was to impersonate one of the twelve moral virtues enumerated by Aristotle. This poem he proposed to follow up by a second, the hero of which was to have been King Arthur after he had acceded to the throne, and which was to have illustrated the political virtues. We learn from Todd's "Life of Spenser " that at a party of friends held near Dublin, in the house of Ludowick Bryskett, the poet gave the same account of his poem, then unpublished, but of which a considerable part had been written. Bryskett, on that occasion, spoke of him as "not only perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well read in philosophy, both moral and

natural."

There they beheld a mighty gyant stand
Upon a rocke, and holding forth on hie
An huge great paire of ballaunce in his hand,
With which he boasted in his surquedrie*
That all the world he would weigh equallie,
If aught he had the same to counterpoize;
For want whereof he weighed vanity,

And filled his ballaunce full of idle toys; And was admired much of fools, women, and boys.

He sayd that he would all the earth uptake
And all the sea, divided each from either;
So would he of the fire one ballaunce make,
And of the ayre without or wind or weather:
Then would he ballaunce heaven and hell
together,

And all that did within them all containe;
Of all whose weight he would not misse a
fether;

And looke what surplus did of each remaine, He would to his own part restore the same againe.

Therefore the vulgar did about him flocke, And cluster thicke unto his leasings vaine, Like foolish flies about a hony-crocke In hope by him great benefit to gain.t The Knight of Justice here breaks in, and affirms that the giant ought before restorUnhappily, only half of the earlier roing everything to its original condition, mance was written, or at least has reached to ascertain exactly "what was the poyse us, and no part of the second; but much of every part of yore." The giant knows which belongs to the subject of the sec that the best mode to meet an unanswerond poem may be found in fragments scat-able reply is by reiteration : — tered over the six books of "The Faery Queen." One of these political fragments vindicates the old claim of poets to be prophets; for the great revolutionary dogma expounded in it is one which, though its earlier mutterings may have been heard at the time of the German Anabaptists, did not "open its mouth" and "speak

-

Therefore I will throw downe these moun

tains hie,

And make them levell with the lowly plaine,
These towring rocks which reach unto the

skie,

I will thrust down into the deepest maine, • Pride.

↑ Faery Queen, Book V., canto ii., stanza 30.

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