of the lower middle class. If one would really form an estimate of what popularity signifies and what it is worth, he might discover a humiliating truth in the fact that the street entertainment of Punch and Judy is really more popular than "Hamlet" or "Macbeth," and that the most popular of all the songs still sung in England is one adapted to the old French melody of "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre," and that forms the bacchanalian chorus in circles where a spurious convivality still prevails:

We won't go home till morning,

Till daylight doth appear;

mental or comic, we might well come to the conclusion that the age of English song has passed. But this would be an error. The song worthy to be so called will continue to exist and be admired in literature and be enshrined in books, if it do not find a place in the music-stands of the boudoir and the drawing-room. Lyrical poetry will never die. It is the earliest form of poetry and in many respects the best, as has been proved from the days of the patriarchs, when Miriam sang her song of triumph on the overthrow of the hosts of Pharaoh, and of the later time when King David poured out his full soul in exultation or repentance, and when his

For he's a jolly good fellow,

And so say all of us;

with an extra powerful emphasis upon the final us.

Not quite so vulgar, but quite as popular, as these are the vapid sentimental songs which find favor with what may be considered the great majority of the fair sex, who possess a smattering of literary taste, and a still slighter smattering of musical appreciation that are issued in shoals by the musical publishers of the present day, to the almost complete displacement of the really good songs and the very excellent music of a bygone generation. As the literary reviews and other periodicals do not bestow much, if any, of their critical attention upon these slight and ephemeral productions, every publisher in league, it is to be supposed, with the author and composer - becomes his own critic and displays his appreciation of his own wares in the advertising columns of the penny press; calls them "lovely," "soul-entrancing," "awfully attractive," " "immensely successful," "pathetic and most perfect," "sentimental but sensible," "always certain of an encore," "most charming and descriptive," "the greatest success of the season,' 'always uproariously encored." Often, as if fearing that these encomia should fail of their effect, these enterprising tradespeople publish in extenso, as advertisements, what they call the "words" (words and nothing else) of these effusions, at a cost per line which possibly the writers of such songs would be only too glad to have in their pockets, if the music publishers would extend their liberality in that di

rection.

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To judge by the ultra-popular songs of the present day, whether they be senti

had not been purified in the fires of adversity, sang "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's." The days for the produc tion of new epic poems may have passed, never more to return, but the days of lyrical poetry will never pass as long as there are young and passionate hearts in the world, and cultivated intellects to ap preciate the noble, the pathetic, and the tender outpourings of affection and fancy which, in combination with the music of rhythm and rhyme, constitute lyrical poetry, and which only needs what it does not always obtain the music of the "human voice divine " to become "songs in the truest sense and in the highest meaning of the word.

CHARLES MACKAY.

From Macmillan's Magazine. BORROUGHDALE OF BORROUGHDALE. "For every man hath a talent if he do but find it." JOHN LOCKE.

CHAPTER II.

A FEW days later, sitting again in the same place, he suddenly looked up, after a prolonged interval of silence, and inquired whether Farquart had returned his cousin's visit.

Farquart, who was painting, turned round, laughed, stared a little, and said no, he had not. All his friends knew, he declared, that he hadn't time to run about dropping those ridiculous bits of oblong paper, so didn't look for it. As for his cousin Katherine, it was useless going to see her, for there was only one sittingroom in the house she lived in, and the old woman, her aunt, was always sitting there too. Besides, poor Katherine was so immersed in her microscopic preparations and rubbish of various sorts that

good-natured civility, sitting down in the chair she tremblingly indicated to him, and plunging into a dissertation upon the weather, and the recent political events with an amount of fluency which would not a little have astonished some of his own intimates.

Apparently the poor lady's embarrassment was too profound, however, to be so easily dispersed, and, after a few abortive and disjointed attempts at conversation, she suddenly got up, saying that she really must inform the professor, who would never forgive her were she to allow Lord Borroughdale to go away without his seeing him, and so saying left the room.

Miss Holland, who up to this had remained somewhat aloof from the conver. sation, now necessarily took up the thread of it, continuing to speak upon the same topics which the guest himself had already started. Unfortunately the latter's own chronic complaint showed an immediate disposition to revive, and it was with a sort of despairing resolution to put an end to it at once or to perish in the attempt, that he suddenly leaped from his chair, and crossing over to the large table near which she was still sitting, begged to know what was the use of those little brass boxes, several of which he saw upon it.

"They are parts of a camera lucida," she answered, "for drawing microscopic objects, you know. I am helping my uncle to prepare some drawings for a monograph he is bringing out," she went on. "His eyes unfortunately are not at all strong, and he is ordered to take as much care of them as possible.

"What sort of things do you draw?" "These sort of things," she answered, placing before him some pieces of white paper, upon each of which was outlined in ink an eccentrically shaped object which appeared to Borroughdale's eyes to resemble some sort of jointed drainpipe, with a small flower or a flower-bud protruding erratically out of every joint.

"Why, what upon earth are they?" he inquired.

small cell upon the stage of the microscope before her.

"Now look," she said to Borroughdale. "Not there," she added, as that worthy youth began plunging his head energetically towards the base of the instrument. "And don't put your hands there either, or you will interfere with the focus. See, hold this little knob, and move it up and down till you get it arranged to your sight."

Under these instructions Lord Borroughdale at last got his eyes and his fingers into the right places; having done which he remained gazing for some minutes down the instrument. Suddenly he gave a tremendous jump.

"Hullo! it's alive!" he exclaimed.

"Alive! Oh yes, quite alive," she answered, laughing. "You couldn't draw them, in fact, at all, if they weren't, as they go back then into their tubes."

Borroughdale said no more, but continued to gaze down the instrument, with his head tightly glued to the top of it. At last, however, he lifted the latter, and, turning round, stared hard instead at his companion, as though he thought she had been performing some act of legerdemain for his benefit.

"Well, what did you see?" she said, smiling.

"The most extraordinary thing happened. I've looked through microscopes often before, but never seen anything the least bit like this. There was a little lump of jelly fastened to a bit of stick, and I was wondering why you should have told me to look at it, when all at once it stretched until it became as big as a glass chandelier, all covered over with little bobbing bells, and all the bells began nodding, and curtseying, and dancing, and jumping about together, as if they'd suddenly gone mad, and then all at once, crack! the whole thing rolled up into a lump of jelly again."

66

While speaking, Miss Holland had been carefully extracting some nearly invisible object out of a glass at her elbow by means of a tube, and was now placing them in a

"Curious? they're the most extraordi. nary things I ever saw in the whole course of my life! And you say they are common. Could one get them for oneself?"

"Oh yes, I should think so. There are almost always some amongst the seaweed and other things that are sent to my uncle."

At this moment the professor entered, accompanied by Mrs. Holland, who, under his wing, appeared in some degree to regain self-possession. He was a small, thin, bloodless-looking man, with that extreme lankiness of jaw which one has come to associate with the citizens of the great republic, but with a feebler mouth and chin than generally accompanies the type. His forehead, on the other hand, was remarkably large and fine, and the same contradiction seemed to some degree to run through the whole person and bearing. His eyes, which were evidently weak, were protected by large spectacles, and his head partially covered with a small black skull-cap.

"Ah! my niece, I perceive, is showing you some of our new forms," he said to Borroughdale, when the first greetings had been exchanged. "Your lordship, I presume, takes an interest in marine zoology?" he added in a tone of confidence.

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Not I," said Borroughdale; "at least I never thought at all about it before, but what Miss Holland has just been showing me is the most extraordinary thing I ever saw; things, you know, that are all over glass balls, and bob out at you like a jack-in-the-box. I could go on looking at them all day."

"Ah! the little Carchesium. True, those compound Vorticellaceæ form a singularly striking group, do they not? Professor Wurst of Munich has recently been publishing the results of a series of investigations upon their structural development which promises to be of considerable value. No doubt, though, Gellenshaft is still the great authority upon the whole order. Your lordship is acquainted probably with the writings of Professor Gellenshaft?"

"Not I; I know nothing, I tell you, about them, or about science or natural history, or anything of the sort. I almost wish I did; at least, if there are many things as curious as those," he added, glancing ingenuously over to the table.

"Why do you not take to it then?" Miss Holland inquired, who, with the orderliness of habit, was mechanically put ting the things there back into their places again. "You really ought to do so when it interests you so much," she added, turning round to look at him, and speaking with some insistance.

Borroughdale reddened, shuffled his feet about a little on the carpet. "I shouldn't so much mind if you'd help me!" he exclaimed, with a sudden burst of audacity. Then, with an equally rapid lapse into despondency, "I never could

learn anything in my life, though!" he added gloomily; "so there would not be any sort of use in my trying."

The end of it was, however, that when a quarter of an hour later Lord Borroughdale took his leave, he carried off with him a pocket microscope and a bottle containing a pinch of green stuff. Half that night he sat up trying to puzzle out those unaccountable aberrations which unfolded themselves to his eyes, and two days later he reappeared at the professor's clamor. ing to know where he could get some more. Under these auspices he was not long in making friends with the purveyors of the tanks at the Zoological Gardens, and in duly setting himself up with a microscope and a regulation supply of "objects." It was the genuine outbreak of a hitherto unsuspected faculty, which but for some such accident as this might have lain comfortably perdue under the surface for the rest of his days. Now, however, that it had proclaimed itself, it did not seem likely to be allowed much rest; one thing inevitably leading to another, and that other, as inevitably, to the one immediately beyond.

Borroughdale, whom all his masters with one consent had proclaimed too stupid or too stubborn to learn anything, for whom the magnificent educational resources of England had hitherto been ransacked in vain, having apparently at the eleventh hour discovered something about which he did care to be informed, seemed bent upon making up for lost time. He sat hours at a time over his forceps and pliers, plunged into the most uninviting of primers and manuals, attended lectures, and spent days amongst the bewildering mazes of the British museums. Of course all this sudden intellectual activity necessitated, it will be understood, a pretty constant recurrence to the house in Bayswater, and to those sources of encouragement for which he had there stipulated. Poets from the beginning of things have sung the provoca tions and incitements which lead to the romantic passion, but perhaps a community of hobbies- little romantic as that may sound-is not one of the least effective or the least stimulating of these. So at any rate it was in this case. Borroughdale's brain and heart, despite the immeasurable antagonism which is supposed to exist between the two organs, awoke both of them into conscious activity, both of them, as it happened, precisely at the same moment.

Although in his eyes she appeared to