tor.

the poet a letter to Cardinal J. B. Pallotta, then the governor of Rome, a post to which he had been raised, in the flower of his age, by Pope Urban VIII. Pallotta was a man of force and ambition, feared as much as honored for the extreme severity of his morals. His influence over Innocent X. was so considerable and so salutary that he was himself talked of as a possible successor to the tiara. This man, as Canon Bargrave recounts in his

his book, however, he comes late in the list of seventeenth-century lyrists, and has no claims to be considered as an innovaHe owed all the basis of his style, as has been already hinted, to Donne and to Ben Jonson. His originality was one of treatment and technique; he forged a more rapid and brilliant short line than any of his predecessors had done, and for brief intervals and along sudden paths of his own he carried English prosody to a higher refinement, a more glittering felic-"Pope and College of Cardinals" in ity, than it had ever achieved. Thus, in 1660, offered Crashaw the post of private spite of his conceits and his romantic secretary to himself, which the poet seems coloring, he points the way for Pope, who to have held for about two years. In the did not disdain to borrow from him freely. vivid pages of the close of "John IngleIt is unfortunate that Crashaw is so un- sant" the reader will find a very correct equal as to be positively delusive; he and stirring picture of the condition of the baffles analysis by his uncertain hold upon | holy city some six years after Crashaw's style, and in spite of his charm and his departure from it. He will easily realize, genius is perhaps most interesting to us from that description, that although Rome because of the faults he shares with had purged itself from its most crying purely modern poets. It would scarcely scandals of a hundred years before, its be unjust to say that Crashaw was the society was far from being calculated to first real poet who allowed himself to use soothe or delight the soul of a chaste a splendid phrase when a simple one mystic, who had seen no ruder side of life would have better expressed his mean- than was to be found in the quiet hall of ing; and in an age when all but the best Peterhouse or the saintly society of Little poetry was apt to be obscure, crabbed, and Gidding. His soul burned within him berugged, he introduces a new fault, that of cause of the wickedness of the servants being visionary and diffuse, with a delib- of the cardinal, and at last, like Joseph, he erate intention not only, as the others did, felt constrained to bring their evil report to deck nature out in false ornament, but to his father in God. We hear from Barto represent her actual condition as being grave, who was in Rome at the time, in something more “starry and "seraph common with all the exiled fellows of Peical" than it really is. His style has hec-terhouse, that Pallotta took the hint and tic beauties that delight us, but evade us also, and colors that fade as promptly as the scarlet and the amber in a sunset sky. We can describe him best in negatives; he is not so warm and real as Herrick, nor so drily intellectual as the other hymnists, nor coldly and respectably virile like Cowley. To use an odd simile of Shelley's, he sells us gin when the other poets offer us legs of mutton, or at all events baskets of bread and vegetables.

After the birth of the future Duchess of Orleans in 1644, Queen Henrietta Maria fled to Paris, and held a kind of court there for the benefit of her husband's cause. The poet Cowley was her secretary, and seems to have introduced Crashaw to her. Tradition says that the younger poet found the elder in great poverty in Paris, and that his good offices with the queen enabled him to secure for Crashaw one of the last fragments of preferment still clinging about exiled majesty. To a fellow Catholic Henrietta Maria could still offer an introduction to Roman society, and it is said that she gave

chastised his followers, whereupon they in revenge threatened to take Crashaw's life. The cardinal, who came from An. cona, bethought him of the neighboring sanctuary of Loreto, of which he was him. self the patron, and on April 24, 1649, he procured for the poet a small benefice in the famous Basilica Church of Our Lady.

We can imagine with what feelings of rapture and content the world-worn poet crossed the Apennines and passed down to the dry little town above the shores of the Adriatic, in which he doubtless pictured to himself a haunt of peace and prayer till his life's end. As he ascended the last hill, and saw before him the magnificent basilica which Bramante had built as a shelter for the holy house, he would feel that his feet were indeed upon the threshold of his rest. With what joy, with what a rapturous and beating heart, he would long to see that very Santa Casa, the cottage built of brick, which angels lifted from Nazareth out of the black hands of the Saracen, and gently dropped among the nightingales in the forest of

that is, as far as it was possible to her to do so; for, unluckily for her, she was not one of those people who are good company for themselves. In order thoroughly to appreciate the charm of being alone, persons of her temperament must be very happy or very much the reverse; and at this time she was neither the one nor the other. She had, moreover, various causes for disquietude and anxiety, and these were apt to rise up before her in dismal array when she had nothing else to do than to think about them. Philip's letters had of late been few and short; it was only too clear that things were not turn

and what was worse than this was that Nellie appeared, most unreasonably, to cherish a grudge against him on account of the course which he had seen fit to pursue, and persistently changed the subject when his name was mentioned. It was chiefly on Philip's behalf that Margaret felt ill at ease; but there was another small matter which disturbed her peace a good deal in these days, and which was certainly not among the annoyances to which any one would have supposed her likely to be liable.

Loreto on that mystic night of the year 1294. There, like a child's bare body wrapped in the velvets and naperies of a princely cradle, the humble Casa lay in the marble enclosure which Sansovino had made for it, and there through the barbaric brickwork window in the holy chimney he could see, in a trance of wonder, the gilded head of Madonna's cedarn image that St. Luke the Evangelist had carved with his own hands. Here indeed a delicious life seemed planned for Crashaw to minister all day in the rich incense; to touch the very raiment of Our Lady, stiff with pearls and rubies to the feet; to trim the golden lamps, the offering out in accordance with his wishes; ings of all the kings of the whole Catholic world; to pass in and out between the golden cherubim and brazen seraphim; to cleanse the mosaics of lapis-lazuli, and to polish the silver bas-reliefs till they shouted the story of the magic flight from Nazareth. There, in the very house of Jesus, to hear the noise and mutter of the officiating priest, the bustle of canons, chaplains, monks, and deacons, the shrill, sweet voices of the acolytes singing all day long-this must have seemed the very end of life and beginning of heaven to the mystical and sensuous Crashaw. It apears, however, that his joys were brief. In August, 1649, four months after his appointment, his benefice had passed into other hands, and we learn from Bargrave that he died a few weeks after he arrived at Loreto, not without suspicion of having been poisoned by those whom he had denounced to Cardinal Pallotta. He seems to have been in his thirtyseventh year. Cowley composed a lovely elegy for his funeral, promising him an immortality which he has in some sort achieved. He was a good man and a gentleman, an extreme instance of a remarkable type, and the only one of all the English divine poets of the century whose temperament drove them actually within the precincts of Rome.

Edmund W. Gosse.

66

Exceeding her income!-exceeding fifteen thousand five hundred a year! exclaimed old Mr. Stanniforth, when Hugh journeyed to Manchester for the express purpose of making a singular communication to him. "Then all I can say is that she must have a nest of firstclass robbers under her roof!"

The old gentleman had, however, made. no great difficulty about authorizing his co-executor to sell out certain securities; and in this manner the cost of Mrs. Winnington's residence and entertainments in Park Street had been defrayed.

Given a proportionate style of living, it is not much more difficult to exceed fifteen thousand than fifteen hundred a year; and poor Margaret's financial talents were of the slenderest order. During the first days of her wealth, when it had seemed to her that her income was practically boundless, she had responded liberally to every appeal for charity that had been made to her, and she would not now reduce subscriptions which were really out of all keeping with her resources. Later on, the charity which begins at home had been forcibly brought to her notice by her mother, who knew how far money would go, if any one did, but who not unjustifiably argued that Margaret was quite the richest woman of her acquaintance. The expense of living

I was married for rather more than a year; and all last winter I lived with my wife in Conduit Street, where she died only a few months ago. She was a girl from a pastrycook's shop in Oxford." Margaret turned very white; but she did not remove her hand from Philip's shoulder, where she had laid it when she sat down beside him on the sofa.

imagine, judging from analogy, that what | true.
he said to himself was something more
like this: What an ungrateful brute I
am! Here have I been receiving every
imaginable kindness all my life, and
scarcely troubling myself to say thank
you for it, thinking of nothing and caring
for nothing but my own gratification
and now
I have my reward! I am
ashamed of myself and disgusted with
myself. I can't undo the past; but I will
go home and cry peccavi; and then, if
my father chooses to turn me out of doors,
let him do it. I shall not complain.' So
he packs his portemanteau, and pays his
hotel bill, and off he goes to the station
without saying a word to anybody, and
and here he is, wishing very much to
make a clean breast of it, but in oh! such
an awful funk that he doesn't know how
to begin."

"Am I so formidable?" said Margaret, smiling and giving Philip's hand an encouraging squeeze. "My dear boy, if you have anything unpleasant to tell me, tell it me at once; and don't think that I shall scold you. I am a great deal too bad myself to condemn my neighbors. The only way in which you could really pain me would be to conceal your troubles from me; and that you have never done in your life."

"Ah, Meg; it is just what I have done. I don't want to make excuses for myself; but I can't help thinking that it is more difficult to me to be honest than to most people. Walter, now, couldn't tell a lie to save his life: if he did, he would get so red and look so guilty that it wouldn't be of the slightest service to him. But I don't suffer in that way. I can tell a lie with the utmost facility; and that, I suppose, is why I have been telling you lies of a more or less direct kind ever since I can remember."

"Oh, don't say that!" exclaimed Margaret.

"You had better not tempt me," answered Philip, with a rather bitter laugh, "or I may take you at your word. My poor, dear old Meg, I could go on throwing dust in your eyes to the end of the chapter; but I won't. I want to turn over a new leaf. upon my soul and honor, I do! Only, before I can do that, I must swallow a dose of nauseous physic; and if you only knew how I hate the idea of raising it to my lips, you would beware of interrupting me. Now, don't say a word; I am going to drink." Philip made a gulp and a grimace, and then said, very quickly: "What Kenyon told you was

"Oh, how did it happen?" she exclaimed. "I am sure it was all her fault." In the midst of all his discomfort and humiliation Philip could not repress a short laugh. "No, it was not her fault," he answered. "She was as good a little woman as ever breathed; and well, I was very fond of her."

"Fonder than of Nellie?" asked Margaret hastily.

"No; not nearly so fond. At least, I believe not I can't tell. Will you have the whole truth? I don't remember. Oh, dear me !" exclaimed Philip, bursting out laughing, "when I do go in for telling the truth, I believe there's no one like me. I wonder how many men there are living in this world of weathercocks who would have dared to say such thing as that!"

It certainly was not very wise to say such things to Margaret. She tried to look as if she was not pained and shocked, but made an indifferent success of the attempt.

"Of

"I don't wonder that you did not let me know about it at first," she said. course you could not let me know, and it is not telling an untruth to remain silent. Perhaps, for everybody's sake, it was kinder to remain silent for a time. I can see how it was; you intended to enlighten me, and then you put off, and put off, as one does. Wasn't that it?"

"I was having her educated and made presentable," answered Philip. He perfectly understood that Margaret was arguing with herself quite as much as she was making excuses for him; and it did not appear to him that she was likely to get the best of the argument. He would almost rather have been reproached a little.

"Poor thing!" Margaret said pres

ently.

"Yes, you may say 'Poor thing!' now, without a mental reservation. I wonder how it would have been had she been still living, and I had brought her down here to introduce her to you. She used to talk about 'beyaviour; and if Mrs. Winnington had snubbed her, it is more than probable that she would have burst out crying in public. Would you have said,

"Oh, don't!" exclaimed Margaret. She did not at all understand Philip's whimsi-is cal pleasure in sneering at himself; nor could she guess that it was in this manner that he was accustomed to answer conscience and still the pangs of remorse.

There was a long silence, which Margaret broke by asking, "Was hers a sudden death?"

And then Philip, taking up a different tone, related how he had lost first his baby, and afterwards his wife, and spoke upon both subjects with so much real feeling that he was quite forgiven long be- | fore he had ceased.

Philip was staring intently at the ground when he made this startling disclosure, and he consequently did not see how Margaret's face fell. Her voice "I suppose you have not told Nellie was quite steady and cheerful as she ananything about this yet?" said Marga-swered,