The following is said to be engraved on an old monument in one of the London city churches:

Qu an tris di C vul stra

os guis ti ro um nere vit. H san chris mit mu la

In this verse the last syllable of each word in the top line is the same as that of each corresponding word in the bottom line, and is to be found in the centre. It reads thus:

Quos anguis tristi diro cum vulnere stravit
Hos sanguis christi miro tum munere lavit.

Translated thus:

Those who have felt the serpent's venomed wound
In Christ's miraculous blood have healing found.

The next is by Christopher Harvie, a great friend of George Herbert, and the last is by Herbert

Spirits of souls, not lips

And I thy light eclipse,

When I most strive to raise thee. Alone, are fit to praise thee,

I BLESS Thee, Lord, because I GROW
Among Thy trees, which in a ROW
To Thee both fruit and order OW.

What open force, or hidden CHARM,
Can blast my fruit, or bring me HARM,
While the enclosure is Thine ARM?

Enclose me still, for fear I START.
Be to me rather sharp and TART,
Than let me want Thy hand and ART.
When Thou dost greater judgments SPARE,
And with Thy knife but prune and PARE,
Even fruitful trees more fruitful ARE.

Such sharpness shows the sweetest FRIEND:
Such cuttings rather heal than REND:
And such beginnings touch their END.

PROSE POEMS.

N many of the prose works of our modern authors there are to be found specimens

of accidental versification and unintentionally measured strains, as well as passages of such a nature as to lead to the supposition that a certain degree of rhythmical writing and rugged blank verse had been sought after. It would be difficult, however, to collect examples of this; but in the writings of Charles Dickens we find two excellent illustrations. The first is from the "Old Curiosity Shop," where the funeral of Little Nell is described:

"And now the bell-
The bell she had so often heard by night
And day, and listened to with solemn
Pleasure, almost as a living voice-
Rung its remorseful toll for her, so young,
So beautiful, so good. Decrepit age,
And vigorous life, and blooming youth, and
Helpless infancy, poured forth-on crutches,
In the pride of strength and health, in the full

Blush of promise, in the mere dawn of life—
To gather round her tomb. Old men were there,
Whose eyes were dim and senses failing;

Grandmothers, who might have died ten years ago
And still been old; the deaf, the blind, the lame,
The palsied, the living dead in many

Shapes and forms; to see the closing of that Early grave. What was the death it would shut In, to that which still could crawl and creep Above it? Along the crowded path they Bore her now; pure as the newly-fallen Snow that covered it, whose days on earth had Been as fleeting. Under that porch where she Had sat when Heaven in its mercy brought Her to that peaceful spot, she passed again, And the old church received her in its quiet shade.” Again, some will no doubt be surprised to recognise in the next example the Song of the Kettle from the "Cricket on the Hearth"-evidently an unintentional outburst on the part of the author, in which the lines not only preserve their symmetry, but also rhyme with each other:

"It's a dark night, sang the kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way;

And above, all is mist and darkness, and below, all is mire and clay;
And there is only one relief in all the sad and murky air,
And I don't know that it is one, for it's nothing but a glare
Of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together
Set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather;
And the widest open country is a long dull streak of black ;
And there's hoarfrost on the finger-post, and thaw upon the track;

And the ice it isn't water, and the water isn't free;

And you couldn't say that anything is what it ought to be ;
But he's coming, coming, coming!"-

Our friends across the Atlantic, however, have a peculiar way of their own in regard to poetical prose, in which they travesty some of the best poems in the English language in a very amusing way. Yankee philology has been a source of much discussion in many periodicals-their peculiar goahead idiosyncrasies finding vent in the concoction of new phrases and words which are not only apt but very expressive. This is not the place to enter into any lengthened discussion on the point, but by way of introduction to the peculiar prose poems which have been produced in the States, we may refer shortly to the "high-falutin'" style of their metaphors and similes. This tendency has often been noticed in respect to American literature, and readers of Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, and other writers, will easily remember many instances of these curiosities, in which are produced the effects of wit by twisting a phrase from its figurative to its literal meaning. For example, we are told of a man who made a hat for the head of a discourse, and a shoe for the foot of a mountain. We learn of a gentleman who sat down on the

S