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quake as Japan itself. Its great lyrics, nean produced the Roman race, who did while they praise him "who made the more than any other ancient race to fix round world so fast that it cannot be the belief in human law, and to raise the moved," are full of the terrors of these ideal of human constancy. The Jews, no great convulsions, which move earth to its doubt, did far more to raise the heart to foundations. They are always question- the conception of eternal love and immuing the hills why they display so change table purpose; but then the Jews, too, ful a mind: "Why hop ye so, ye high were disciplined by the most terrible hills?" They are always depicting the experience of the mutability of human phenomena of the volcano and the earth- possessions and human joys. The more quake: "God is our hope and strength, a mutable was the world around them, the very present help in trouble; therefore more keenly they seemed to pierce the will we not fear, though the earth be enveloping cloud, and to saturate themmoved, and though the hills be carried selves with the vision of an immutable into the midst of the sea; though the will: "In my trouble I will call upon the waters thereof rage and swell; though the Lord, and complain unto my God. So mountains shake at the tempest of the shall he hear my voice out of his holy same." But the great teaching of that temple, and my complaint shall come bepeople was the fixity of the eternal pur- fore him, it shall enter into his ears. The poses, and the fitness of man to enter into earth trembled and quaked; the very founthose purposes, and to lean upon one in dations also of the hills shook, and were whom "there was no variableness or removed, because he was wroth. There shadow of turning." The Japanese, no went a smoke out of his presence, and a doubt, are very ready impressionists, and consuming fire out of his mouth, so that their high artistic qualities are due to coals were kindled at it. He bowed the the pliancy of their temperament, the heavens also, and came down, and it was ease with which they reflect the varying dark under his feet. He rode upon the emotions of the moment as it flies. But cherubims, and did fly; he came flying impressionism is not the lesson of life, upon the wings of the wind. He made though it is one of the great secrets of darkness his secret place, his pavilion the vivacity of art. Even in art the ob- round about him with dark water, and ject of true impressionism is to catch the thick clouds to cover him. At the brightmoment in which the essential nature ness of his presence his clouds removed, of a thing or character shines out, and so hailstones, and coals of fire. The Lord to fix the aspect of it which is truest and also thundered out of heaven, and the most permanent. And even art loses its Highest gave his thunder, hailstones and significance where there is no such per- coals of fire. He sent out his arrows, and manent essence to seize and portray, where scattered them; he cast forth lightnings, there is no sacred art, as it is called, in and destroyed them. The springs of waother words, no "white radiance of eter-ters were seen, and the foundations of the nity" with which to contrast the varying colors and flying shadows of human joy and grief. Japan will doubtless yield in time a very delicate and exquisite form of human character; but the Japanese must learn to muse and brood and fix their hearts on that which remains in its serenity above the driving clouds of human destiny, before they will take their place amongst the great peoples who have contributed their full share to the moulding of man. Earthquakes may seem very curious ingredients in the moral training which goes to give stability and fixity to human character; but as a matter of fact, the Mediterranean has been more the centre of earthquake than any other part of the European world; and the Mediterra

round world were discovered, at thy chiding, O Lord! at the blasting of the breath of thy displeasure. He shall send down from on high to fetch me, and shall take me out of many waters." No truer description could be found anywhere of what has just been happening in Japan. Yet these most terrible phenomena of earthly mutability not unfrequently become the school of perseverance and the discipline of steadfast faith. At all events, it is not by impressing lightness and changefulness on man that the changefulness of nature generally works. The transitoriness of life seems to lend human beings to that which is not transitory. Levity often melts like snow before the hurricanes of change.

SPITE.

From The Spectator.

How go on your flowers? None double;
Not one fruit-sort can you spy;
Strange! and I too at such trouble
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There's a great text in Galatians
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails!

If I trip him just a-dying
Sure of Heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to Hell, a Manichee?

That is pure spite. It does not even wish

THERE are special dangers in a day of small things which do not beset us in times of larger issues and higher passion. When patriotic indignation against Ger many for robbing France of two great provinces takes the form of inspiring great French singers and musicians with the magnificent resolve not to give the young German emperor the pleasure of hearing their performances, we may feel sure that the wild passion of revenge has dwindled into the pettier and meaner to justify itself as revenge. It revels in passion of spite. The distinction, we its own redundance of arbitrariness and suppose, is often one only of degree. caprice. And that is just the most evil Revenge broods on the memory of some feature about spite, that it never even real or fancied wrong, till it can find no claims to be founded, as revenge does, outlet except in wreaking a retribution on on a kind of "wild justice." On the something like an equal scale. On the contrary, it claims to have its root in prejother hand, spite dwells on no great wrong, udice or self-will. It founds itself on the on no great grievance, but indulges in personal irritation which the presence of a self-stimulated dislike, rather than in any certain person or persons causes, and luximmense resentment. Spite in its intens-uriates in venting a spleen for which no est form is the attitude of a tormentor like Quilp, who finds his gratification in inflicting a great number of small miseries on the object of his dislike, rather than any great retribution which measures the pain to be inflicted by the pain that has been suffered. It was a humorous kind of spite in which Byron indulged when he secreted a copy of contemptuous verses under the cushion of the chair in which a man he disliked (was it not Rogers?) was about to sit. It was spite in which the great Napoleon frequently in dulged when he invented ingenious modes of making women suffer for not giving him a willing and hearty homage. It was spite, again, with which Voltaire wreaked his vexation on Frederick the Great, and with which Frederick the Great wreaked his vexation on Voltaire, after their great quarrel. Animosities which do not rise to the dignity of passions, evince themselves in spite. Caliban is spiteful, not revengeful, and even Ariel, in the small torments which he inflicts on Caliban, may be said to retaliate spite with spite. It is of the essence of spite to be arbitrary, and yet to be greedy of the pleasure of inflicting pain. Perhaps the most perfect delineation of spite in English literature is Browning's "Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister," where hate, almost confessed as purely arbitrary and causeless, positively revels in its own arbitrariness, in its own wilfulness of caprice. The soliloquist says to Brother Lawrence, the object of his spite:

reason or just cause beyond that of personal antipathy is even imagined. That is the one thing that makes the malevolence of spite so alarming. It is a kind of weed which springs up without being visibly sown. Revenge may be rooted out, because it may be shown that the cruel or unjust temper which planted the seeds of revenge has been replaced by something totally opposite in character, something, therefore, which causes a different attitude of feeling to spring up. But spite glories in its own wilfulness, finding a sort of pride in being uncaused, or at least selfcaused. The French singers who would not let the German emperor enjoy their performance, would probably treat their attitude of mind as a kind of revenge rather than spite. But it has surely much more of the nature of spite. There can be no parity at all between a lost province and a missed solo. No one can persuade himself that by refusing to sing or play before the young emperor, he punishes in any sense the reluctance to restore Alsace and Lorraine; but of course, though this is spite and not revenge, it is not pure spite, for it is spite originally founded on revenge, and not on mere arbitrary distaste or self-will, and the spite which grows out of revenge cannot be said to partake as much of the nature of evil for evil's sake, as the spite which prides itself on its own lawless self-will. There is always more hope, too, of removing even the spite which grows out of revenge, for that has a natural though not a noble origin,

than the spite which grows out of nothing | cotting was all spite. It was the petty save its own inherent disposition to rail at its own surroundings.

There is always hope for a day of high passion. Even evil passions, if they are on a great scale, are generally closely related to noble passions, and often grow in the same soil. But spite is the product of empty lives and mean vexations, of a poor soil, a poor scale of living; and betoken a dwindling power both of love and hate. Like the life in the Spanish cloister of which Browning gives so graphic and hateful a picture, the kind of life which breeds spite is one of petty interests and pettier envies. Our own day is saved from spite, so far as it is saved from spite, by the multitude of its interests and activities, rather than by their magnitude and scale. There is too rapid a circulation of life amongst us to admit of much spite, which hardly grows apace without plenty of time to brood over small distastes and minute irritations. There is no life which is freer from spite than the large, meditative life, but there is no life which is fuller of it than the life which, without being suited to meditation, forces itself, or is, by unfortunate circumstances, forced, into that brooding over selfish worries which has even less right to the name of meditation than to that of action. If we are not on the whole a spiteful generation, it is rather because we are full of very busy and changing occupations, than because we have many large and living interests. It is small cliques which give birth to spites, and in the modern world small cliques are always breaking up and giving way to the impulse of new combinations of social curiosity and sympathy. Still, ours is a time in which the smallness of the various controversies and issues raised, is always in danger of producing spite, wherever it is in danger of anything like arrested life. Democracies have always given rise to a multiplication of political grudges, which are, in fact, spites in the political region. Ostracism in Athens was only a sort of democratic spite. And half the political energy of the United States seems to be expended in the venting of political spites. In France, the scenes which so often take place in the Chamber hardly profess to be more than bursts of political spite. The pettier the scale of our controversies becomes, the more they tend to spitefulness, unless change comes so fast as to leave no room for the microscopic brooding which is essential to that attitude of mind. Boy

scale of life in Ireland, and the ample time allowed for brooding over the political quarrels in which the various Irish parties indulged, that favored the development of those small and bitter grudges. What is wanted to sweep away spite is any higher interest, involving full employment for all the higher energies of man. There has usually been more show of spite among women of the leisured classes than amongst men, simply because there has been less occupation and a pettier scale of life. Amongst the modern women who go into business or professions, whatever may be their defects, there is at least a great emancipation from social spites. They compete eagerly with each other, but they do not stick pins into each other, as they used to do when they had nothing better to amuse them. A multitude of small interests is not favorable to the growth of ardor of any kind; but on the other hand, it is fatal to that worst result of brooding leisure, the small and yet deadly animosities which spring up in minds weary of themselves and destitute of high interests. The constant ripple of our eager civilization kills many opportunities of greatness; we may be thankful that it also kills many opportunities for the worst kind of smallness, the smallness that is malignant as well as small.

Indeed, spite seems to us about the most hopeless form of living death in which the mental and moral life ever gets itself extinguished. The grander passions, even when they are evil and vindictive, always leave room for hope that they may be transformed into something nobler. But a mind full of petty spites has hardly any potentialities of good. They are the nearest spiritual analogues to pure molecular repulsions without counteracting attractions of which we can conceive. What an atom would do in space which repelled every other atom, and was incapable of either attracting or being attracted, it is not easy to imagine. But that is what a mind full of small spites does in the realm of mind. It lowers the tone and quality of all life in its vicinity, as well as its own tone. It is purely destructive. No great nation should ever permit itself so fatal a spirit. Compared with spite, war itself is a healing influence; for though war, as we see, sometimes produces an after-crop of petty spites, it also produces a rich imme diate crop of heroism, self-forgetfulness, and noble enthusiasm.

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The White Witch over the water bent, her

face grew grey with pain, She brushed the mist from her keen black eyes, she looked in the bowl again; Once more she shivered, as if in fear, and her lips were drawn and white, As she gasped: "There's a heavy weird to dree, an' ye dare to sail to-night.

"I see the wild waves lashed to foam, away by great Bradda Head;

Amid the rocks under Bradda Head and the deadly swirl of the Sound,

The

or

boats were foundered, crushed, swamped; their gallant crews were drowned.

They gathered, a stern avenging crowd, on

Slieu Wallin's lofty crest,

They brought the White Witch to her doom, in her shroud of burial dressed; They forced her into the barrel spiked, whe her shrieks rang shrill and wide; They sent her rolling to her death down the mountain's rocky side.

And still a barren track is left, 'mid gorse and heather-bell,

Of the sentence and fulfilment stern to coming years to tell;

And pilgrims to the sunny isle, if they scale Slieu Wallin's crest,

I see the surge round the Chicken Rock, and May see the "Witch's Way" to death marked

the breaker's lip is red;

I see where corpses toss in the Sound, with

nets, and gear, and spars,

And never a one of the fishing fleet is riding under the stars."

Black and stern the fishermen stood, as her bode the White Witch said,

Till Kermode strode from out the group, and bared his hoary head,

With: "The glass is steady, the sea is smooth, the nets are strong to haul, Our timbers are stout, our hearts are good,

and Heaven is over us all.

"I say, set sail, my mates, and leave the witch to mutter and moan;

I neither care to know her rede nor to heed her malison.

I say, set sail; we Islemen sure can trust to our own right hand;

An I'd my will the witch and her crew should be cleared from off our land."

Loud cheered the fishermen of Peel, and away from the harbor mouth,

Like great brown birds each fishing-smack went heading for the south;

And careless of threat and mocking word,
careless of scoff and sneer,
Shunned by the women and children all, the
White Witch left the pier.

And or ever three bright suns arose, o'er sea and land to smile,

Or ever three broad suns sank down behind St. Patrick's Isle,

Through town, and hamlet, and mountain farm, the terrible tidings ran; There was mourning for the fishing fleet through the length and breadth of Man.

on the hill's broad breast.

All The Year Round.

TO EDWARD CLODD.

FRIEND, in whose friendship I am twice wellstarred,

A debt not time may cancel is your due; For was it not your praise that earliest drew, On me obscure, that chivalrous regard, Ev'n his, who, knowing fame's first steep how hard,

With generous lips no faltering clarion blew, Bidding men hearken to a lyre by few Heeded, nor grudge the bay to one more bard?

Bitter the task, year by inglorious year,
Of suitor at the world's reluctant ear.

One cannot sing forever, like a bird,
For sole delight of singing! Him his mate
Suffices, listening with a heart elate;
Nor more his joy, if all the rapt heav'n
heard.
Academy.
WILLIAM WATSON.

FRIENDS.

LET us be friends: we may not now be more; Your silent glances make but poor amends For all my pain. Speak as you did before — Let us be friends.

Love to my heart its fire no longer lends;

'Tis chilled and hardened to its very core: No quickening beat your presence now attends. Yet would I not forget the joys of yore; And now that Fate has worked its cruel ends,

For few and far between the men who strug- Shake hands and smile; for my sake, I imgled to the shore,

When the sudden tempest struck the fleet,

and 'mid scud, and flash, and roar,

plore. Let us be friends. Chambers' Journal.

SAM WOOD.

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