Alack the change! in vain I look
For haunts in which my boyhood trifled,—
The level lawn, the trickling brook,

The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled:
The church is larger than before;

You reach it by a carriage entry ;
It holds three hundred people more,
And pews are fitted up for gentry.
Sit in the Vicar's seat: you'll hear

The doctrine of a gentle Johnian,
Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,
Whose phrase is very Ciceronian.
Where is the old man laid ?-look down,
And construe on the slab before you,
Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown,

Vir nullâ non donandus lauru?

The Rainbow.

My First in torrents bleak and black
Was rushing from the sky,

When with my Second at his back
Young Cupid wandered by;

'Now take me in; the moon hath past;
I pray ye, take me in!

The lightnings flash, the hail falls fast,
All Hades rides the thunder-blast;

I'm dripping to the skin!'

'I know thee well, thy songs and sighs;
A wicked god thou art,

And yet most welcome to the eyes,
Most witching to the heart!'
The Wanderer prayed another prayer,
And shook his drooping wing;
The Lover bade him enter there,

And wrung my First from out his hair,
And dried my Second's string.

And therefore (so the urchin swore,
By Styx, the fearful river,
And by the shafts his quiver bore,
And by his shining quiver)
That Lover aye shall see my Whole
In Life's tempestuous Heaven;
And, when the lightnings cease to roll,
Shall fix thereon his dreaming soul
In the deep calm of even.

Robert Stephen Hawker (1804-75), Cornish poet and unconventional parson, was born at Plymouth, the son of a physician who afterwards took orders, and grandson of a vicar of Plymouth who compiled the Morning and Evening Portions and wrote many other theological works. Young Hawker went up from Cheltenham Grammar School to Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1823; his father found himself unable to keep him there; but that same autumn the poetic but practical and resolute undergraduate married a lady of fortune and forty-one, and with her returned to Oxford. He carried off the Newdigate in 1827, was ordained in 1831, and in 1834 became vicar of Morwenstow, on the Cornish coast. Its parishioners were demoralised by generations of wrecking, smuggling, and spiritual ignorance; but in his forty years' labour he rebuilt the vicarage, restored the church,

built a school, and introduced a weekly offertory and a striking ceremonial largely of his own devising. He was a devoted parson, but was fond of open air life, and was the intimate and ally of his seafaring parishioners; a mystic in religion, he even shared many of the superstitions of his people as to apparitions and the evil eye. His usual garb was an odd compound of seaman's rig and imposing hyper-ecclesiastical costume-strange brightcoloured vestments imperfectly concealing seaboots to the knee. In his poetry, the spontaneous outpouring of a complex but vigorous personality too much absorbed by active life and its duties and joys to become a 'professional poet,' Hawker is delightful. His Tendrils by Reuben, published at seventeen, he did not reprint; but by his Cornish ballads in Records of the Western Shore (1832-36), the Quest of the Sangraal (1863), and other poems he showed himself unmistakably a poet. His Footprints of Former Men in Cornwall (1870) was a collection of miscellaneous papers on local traditions. None of Hawker's poems is so well known as his spirited 'Song of the Western Men,' based on the old Cornish refrain, 'And shall Trelawny die?' a ballad so spontaneous and swinging in its rhythms as to have deceived Sir Walter Scott and Lord Macaulay into accepting it as a genuine relic of the seventeenth century. Hawker's wife died in 1863-a blow that drove the eccentric parson-poet to melancholy and opium, from which he was saved only by the loyalty of his second wife (1864), daughter of a Polish exile, who bore him three daughters, and nursed his declining years with rare devotion. He died at Plymouth 15th August 1875, having been admitted twelve hours before to the Roman Catholic communion. There was a painful controversy after his death as to whether and how long he had been a Roman Catholic at heart.

In Hawker's Sangraal, Arthur, much unlike his Tennysonian namesake, speaks to his comrades of the Table Round as a medieval English crusader might well have done :

Ho for the Sangraal, vanished vase of God!
Ye know that in old days, that yellow Jew
Accursed Herod; and the earth-wide judge,
Pilate the Roman; doomster for all lands-
Or else the judgment had not been for all-
Bound Jesu-master to the world's tall tree
Slowly to die.-Ha, sirs, had we been there
They durst not have assayed their felon deed,-
Excalibur had cleft them to the chine !—
Slowly he died, a world in every pang,
Until the hard centurion's cruel spear
Smote his high heart: and from that severed side
Rushed the red stream that quenched the wrath of heaven.
Then came Sir Joseph, hight of Arimathie,
Bearing that awful vase the Sangraal!
The vessel of the Pasch, Shere Thursday night,
The self-same cup wherein the faithful wine
Heard God, and was obedient unto blood;
Therewith he knelt, and gathered blessed drops
From his dear Master's side that sadly fell,

The ruddy dews from the great tree of life :
Sweet Lord! What treasures! like the priceless gems
Hid in the tawny casket of a king-

A ransom for an army; one by one!
That wealth he cherished long: his very soul
Around his ark: bent as before a shrine.

He dwelt in Orient Syria, God's own land:

The ladder-foot of Heaven-where shadowy shapes
In white apparel glided up and down!
His home was like a garner, full of corn
And wine and oil: a granary of God.
Young men, that no one knew, went in and out
With a far look in their eternal eyes.

All things were strange and rare; the Sangraal
As though it clung to some ethereal chain
Brought down high Heaven to earth at Arimathie.

Ride! ride! with red spur, there is death in delay, "Tis a race for dear life with the devil;

If dark Cromwell prevail, and the King must give way, This earth is no place for Sir Beville.

So at Stamford he fought, and at Lansdown he fell,
But vain were the visions he cherished,

For the great Cornish heart, that the King loved so well,
In the grave of the Granville it perished.

See Lives-from opposite points of view on the Catholic question by Mr Baring-Gould (1875; 3rd ed. 1886) and by Dr F. G. Lee (1876); an edition of Hawker's poems, with a short Life, by J. G. Godwin (1879); one of his prose works (1893); and another of his poems, with a bibliography by S. Wallis (1899).

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Lord Houghton (1809-85), long known in literature and public life as Richard Monckton Milnes, was born in London, the only son of Robert Pemberton Milnes, 'Single-speech Milnes' (1784-1858), of Fryston Hall, Bawtry Hall, and Great Houghton, Yorkshire, who declined the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and a peerage; his mother was a daughter of the fourth Lord Galway. Educated by private tutors at home and in Italy, he went up in 1827 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his M.A. in 1831, and where he was a leader in the Union and one of the famous Apostles.' From 1837 to 1863 he represented Pontefract, first as a Conservative, but latterly (after Peel's conversion to Free Trade) as an Independent Liberal; then he was called by Palmerston to the Upper House, of which for a score of years he was the only poet.' His friendships constituted a great part of his life; he knew everybody worth knowing at home and abroad, and cherished kindly and intimate relations with French statesmen, Italian revolutionaries, and American poets. His catholicity and the tact which enabled him to bring together at his table men widely opposed in politics and religion earned for him Carlyle's (playful) recommendation for the post of 'perpetual president of the heaven-andhell-amalgamation society.' A Mæcenas of poets, Lord Houghton got Tennyson the laureateship, soothed the dying hours of poor David Gray, and was one of the first to recognise Mr Swinburne's genius; he suffered at the hands of the Quarterly for his worship of such baby idols as Mr John Keats and Mr Alfred Tennyson.' His own verse was always graceful, cultured, and thoughtful, though wanting in force and fervour; some of the shorter pieces were in their day exceedingly popular Strangers Yet,' for example, and 'The Beating of my Own Heart.' Besides this, Lord Houghton the 'Mr Vavasour' of Disraeli's Tancred-was a traveller, a philanthropist, an unrivalled after-dinner speaker, and Rogers's successor in the art of breakfast-giving. He went up in a balloon, and down in a diving-bell; he was the first publishing Englishman who gained access to the harems of the East; he championed oppressed nationalities, liberty of conscience, the Essays and Reviews, fugitive slaves, the reform

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of the franchise, and women's rights; and he carried a Bill for establishing reformatories. His works included Memorials of a Tour in Greece, chiefly Poetical (1834); Memorials of a Residence on the Continent (1838); Poetry for the People (1840); Poems, Legendary and Historical (1844); Palm Leaves (1844); Life and Remains of John Keats (1848); Monographs, Personal and Social (1873); and his Collected Poetical Works (1878). His Life has been admirably presented by Sir T. Wemyss Reid (2 vols. 1890).

Walk in St Mark's again some few hours after,
When a bright sleep is on each storied pile-
When fitful music and inconstant laughter

Give place to Nature's silent moonlight smile :
Now Fancy wants no faery gale to waft her
To Magian haunt, or charm-engirded isle;
All too content, in passive bliss, to see
This show divine of visible poetry.

On such a night as this impassionedly

The old Venetian sung those verses rare : 'That Venice must of needs eternal be,

For Heaven had looked through the pellucid air,

And cast its reflex on the crystal sea,

And Venice was the image pictured there;'

I hear them now, and tremble, for I seem

As treading on an unsubstantial dream.

That strange cathedral! exquisitely strange

That front, on whose bright varied tints the eye
Rests as of gems-those arches whose high range
Gives its rich-broidered border to the sky-

Those ever-prancing steeds! My friend, whom change
Of restless will has led to lands that lie
Deep in the East, does not thy fancy set
Above those domes an airy minaret?

The Men of Old.

I know not that the men of old
Were better than men now,

Of heart more kind, of hand more bold,
Of more ingenious brow:

I heed not those who pine for force
A ghost of time to raise,

As if they thus could check the course
Of these appointed days.

Still is it true, and over-true,
That I delight to close

This book of life self-wise and new,
And let my thoughts repose
On all that humble happiness
The world has since forgone-
The daylight of contentedness
That on those faces shone!

For flowers that grow our hands beneath We struggle and aspire

Our hearts must die, except they breathe The air of fresh desire.

But, brothers, who up Reason's hill

Advance with hopeful cheerOh! loiter not; those heights are chill, As chill as they are clear;

And still restrain your haughty gaze,

The loftier that ye go, Remembering distance leaves a haze On all that lies below.

From The Long-ago.' On that deep-retiring shore Frequent pearls of beauty lie, Where the passion-waves of yore Fiercely beat and mounted high: Sorrows that are sorrows still

Lose the bitter taste of woe; Nothing's altogether ill

In the griefs of Long-ago.

Tombs where lonely love repines,

Ghastly tenements of tears, Wear the look of happy shrines Through the golden mist of years. Death, to those who trust in good, Vindicates his hardest blow; Oh! we would not, if we could, Wake the sleep of Long-ago!

Though the doom of swift decay
Shocks the soul where life is strong,
Though for frailer hearts the day

Lingers sad and overlong-
Still the weight will find a leaven,
Still the spoiler's hand is slow,
While the future has its heaven,

And the past its Long-ago.

Shadows.

They seem'd, to those who saw them meet,
The casual friends of every day;

Her smile was undisturb'd and sweet,
His courtesy was free and gay.

But yet if one the other's name

In some unguarded moment heard, The heart you thought so calm and tame Would struggle like a captured bird:

And letters of mere formal phrase

Were blister'd with repeated tearsAnd this was not the work of days,

But had gone on for years and years!

Alas, that love was not too strong

For maiden shame and manly pride! Alas, that they delay'd so long

The goal of mutual bliss beside!

Yet what no chance could then reveal,
And neither would be first to own,
Let fate and courage now conceal,
When truth could bring remorse alone.

Thomas Gordon Hake (1809-95), the 'parable poet,' was born at Leeds, and educated at Christ's Hospital. He travelled a good deal on the Continent, took his M.D. at Glasgow, and practised at Bury St Edmunds, Richmond, and elsewhere. Among his friends were Borrow, Trelawny, Rossetti, his cousin Gordon Pasha, and Watts-Dunton. He published Madeline (1871), Parables and Tales (1873), The Serpent Play (1883), New Day Sonnets (1890), &c. See his Memoirs of Eighty Years (1893). The blind poet, Philip Bourke Marston, inspired one of his bestknown poems, 'The Blind Boy;' this is perhaps one of his most memorable sonnets:

The Infant Medusa.

I loved Medusa when she was a child,

Her rich brown tresses heaped in crispy curl Where now those locks with reptile passion whirl, By hate into dishevelled serpents coiled.

I loved Medusa when her eyes were mild,
Whose glances, narrowed now, perdition hurl,
As her self-tangled hairs their mass unfurl,
Bristling the way she turns with hissings wild.
Her mouth I kissed when curved with amorous spell,
Now shaped to the unuttered curse of hell,

Wide open for death's orbs to freeze upon;
Her eyes I loved ere glazed in icy stare,
Ere mortals, lured into their ruthless glare,

She shrivelled in her gaze to pulseless stone. Elizabeth Penrose (Mrs Markham;' 17801837) was the daughter of the Rev. Edmund Cartwright, inventor of the power-loom, and as a child devoured folios of history with more appetite than her meals. In 1814 she married the Rev. John Penrose, an industrious theological writer, and in 1823 published under the well-known pseudonym her History of England for the Use of Young Persons, followed in 1828 by a similar History of France. Other works were Amusements of Westernheath, A Visit to the Zoological Gardens, Historical Conversations, and Sermons for Children. Her History of England, which, intentionally and expressly, omitted 'painful' scenes and party politics, won a great popularity and had numberless reprints (one, for example, in 1874), having been edited and continued by Mary Howitt.

Julia Pardoe (1806–62), daughter of an army officer, began to publish poems while yet a girl at home in Beverley. Ill-health sent her abroad and provided materials for her Traits and Traditions of Portugal in 1833. A visit to Constantinople in 1836 led to her City of the Sultan, The Romance of the Harem, and The Beauties of the Bosphorus. She visited Hungary, and wrote The City of the Magyar, and a novel, The Hungarian Castle (1842). A series of works deal with French historyLouis XIV. and the Court of France (1847), The Court and Reign of Francis I. (1849), The Life of Mary de Medicis (1852; new ed. 1891), and Episodes of French History during the Consulate and the First Empire (1859). Books of another

type are The Confessions of a Pretty Woman, Flies in Amber, The Jealous Wife, Reginald Lyle, Lady Arabella, and The Thousand and One Days. Her sprightly and pleasantly written novels were very popular, but hardly more so than her attractive presentations of the historical past. She was not trained in strict historical research, and her notions of evidence left much to be desired; but she was an acute observer, and her knowledge of the East was accurate and profound.

The Baroness von Tautphœus (1807-93) was the daughter of James Montgomery of Seaview, County Donegal; and in 1838 Jemima Montgomery married the Baron von Tautphous, Chamberlain at the Bavarian Court, and spent the rest of her life in Germany. Her novels--The Initials (1850), Cyrilla (1853), Quits (1857), and At Odds (1863)-were written in English, but by their genial pictures of the most various aspects of South German life and character they reveal the Irishwoman's intimate sympathy with the men and women, the nobles and peasants, the rich and poor of her adopted fatherland. Her first venture was generally reckoned the most attractive and successful of her stories; the second dealt with a gloomy tragedy of crime and punishment.

The Countess of Dufferin and The Hon. Mrs Norton sustained the honour of a gifted race. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, by his marriage with Miss Linley, had one son, Thomas (1775–1817), whose convivial wit and fancy were scarcely less bright or less esteemed than those of his father, and who died Colonial Paymaster at the Cape of Good Hope. In 1805 Thomas was in Scotland as aide-de-camp to Lord Moira, and he there married Caroline Henrietta, daughter of Colonel and Lady Elizabeth Callander of Craigforth, by whom he had seven children, and who wrote Carwell and two other novels.

Helen Selina (1807-67) was the first of the 'three Graces,' of whom the second became Mrs Norton and the third the Duchess of Somerset. In 1825 she married, through love at first sight and in the face of some parental opposition, Commander Blackwood (1794-1841), a naval officer, who on the death of his father in 1839 succeeded as fourth Lord Dufferin. After her husband's accidental death only two years later, she devoted herself mainly to the education of her son, afterwards, as fifth Earl and first Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, d'stinguished as author and diplomatist. And in 1862, at the earnest request of the Earl of Gifford (son of the Marquis of Tweeddale), a devoted friend, now on his deathbed, the countess went through the form of marriage with him a few weeks before his death. From her girlhood she had written songs and verses; Lispings from Low Latitudes, or Extracts from the Journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington, was the outcome of a trip up the Nile with her son, to whom on his birthdays many of her poems were addressed. The marquis collected

her Songs, Poems, and Verses in 1894, prefixing a Life of his mother. Her best things are inimitably tender, sweet, pathetic, and humorous, the best known by far being

The Lament of the Irish Emigrant.

I'm sittin' on the stile, Mary,

Where we sat side by side
On a bright May mornin' long ago,
When first you were my bride;
The corn was springin' fresh and green,

And the lark sang loud and high-
And the red was on your lip, Mary,
And the love-light in your eye.

The place is little changed, Mary,
The day is bright as then,
The lark's loud song is in my ear,

And the corn is green again;
But I miss the soft clasp of your hand,

And your breath warm on my cheek,
And I still keep list'ning for the words
You never more will speak.

'Tis but a step down yonder lane,

And the little church stands near,
The church where we were wed, Mary,
I see the spire from here.
But the graveyard lies between, Mary,

And my step might break your rest--
For I've laid you, darling! down to sleep,
With your baby on your breast.

I'm very lonely now, Mary,

For the poor make no new friends,
But, O, they love the better still,

The few our Father sends !
And you were all I had, Mary,

My blessin' and my pride:
There's nothin' left to care for now,

Since my poor Mary died.

Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary,

That still kept hoping on,

When the trust in God had left my soul,

And my arm's young strength was gone:
There was comfort ever on your lip,
And the kind look on your brow—
I bless you, Mary, for that same,
Though you cannot hear me now.

I thank you for the patient smile
When your heart was fit to break,
When the hunger pain was gnawin' there,
And you hid it, for my sake!

I bless you for the pleasant word,
When your heart was sad and sore--
O, I'm thankful you are gone, Mary,
Where grief can't reach you more!
I'm biddin' you a long farewell,

My Mary-kind and true!
But I'll not forget you, darling!
In the land I'm goin' to;

They say there's bread and work for all,

And the sun shines always there

But I'll not forget old Ireland,

Were it fifty times as fair!