being in the habit of corresponding with the great, the style of his supplication cost him much thought, but at last he produced a memorial commencing as follows:

"Madame :-You enjoy the reputation, which I doubt not is well founded, of according your favors to all who solicit them. I therefore venture to appeal to your bounty in behalf of the church of Cuiseaux," etc.

The exalted lady had no sooner cast her eyes upon the poor priest's unlucky exordium, than she flew into a rage, and had him thrown into prison, whence it was with great difficulty that his friends procured a release. The story seems apocryphal, but the memorial bears the following indorsement in the handwriting of Madame de Maintenon:-The lieutenant of police is ordered to issue a lettre-de-cachet against the signer of this petition.

Sonnets.

WRITING A SONNET.

Doris, the fair, a sonnet needs must have;

I ne'er was so put to 't before;-a Sonnet!
Why fourteen verses must be spent upon it;
'Tis good howe'er to have conquered the first stave,
Yet I shall ne'er find rhymes enough by half,

Said I, and found myself i' th' midst o' the second.
If twice four verses were but fairly reckoned

I should turn back on th' hardest part and laugh.
Thus far with good success I think I've scribbled,
And of the twice seven lines have clean got o'er ten.
Courage! another 'll finish the first triplet,

Thanks to thee, Muse, my work begins to shorten,
There's thirteen lines got through driblet by driblet:
'Tis done! count how you will I warrant there's fourteen.

IN A FASHIONABLE CHURCH.

The air is faint, yet still the crowds press in;

With stir of silks and under-flow of talk

That falls from lips of ladies as they walk,

Ere yet the dainty service doth begin:
Ah me! the very organ's glorious din

Is tuned to pliant trimness in its place.
And over all a sweet melodious grace
Floats with the incense-stream good souls to win!
O God, that spak'st of old from Sinai's brow!
And Thou that laid'st the tempest with a word!
Is this Thy worship? Come amongst us now
With all Thy thunders, if Thou wouldst be heard.
So tyrannous is this weight of pageantry,
Almost, we cry, "Give back Gethsemane!"

THE PROXY SAINT.

Each for himself must do his Master's work,
Or at his peril leave it all undone;,
Witness the fate of one who sought to shirk
The Sanctuary service yet would shun
The penalty. A man of earthly aims

(So runs the apologue,) whose pious spouse Would oft remind him of the Church's claims,

Still answered thus, "Go, thou, and pay our vows
For thee and me!" Now, when at Peter's gate
The twain together had arrived at last,
He let the woman in; then to her mate,

Shutting the door, "Thou hast already passed
By proxy," said the Saint-"just in the way
That thou on earth was wont to fast and pray."

ABOUT A NOSE.

'Tis very odd that poets should suppose

There is no poetry about a nose,

When plain as is the nose upon your face,

A noseless face would lack poetic grace.

Noses have sympathy: a lover knows

Noses are always touched when lips are kissing:

And who would care to kiss where nose was missing?

Why, what would be the fragrance of a rose,

And where would be our mortal means of telling

Whether a vile or wholesome odour flows

Around us, if we owned no sense of smelling?

I know a nose, a nose no other knows,

'Neath starry eyes, o'er ruby lips it grows; Beauty is in its form and music in its blows.

DYSPEPSIA.

Ah, me! what mischiefs from the stomach rise!
What fatal ills, beyond all doubt or question!

How many a deed of high and bold emprise

Has been prevented by a bad digestion!

I ween the savory crust of filthy pies

Hath made full many a man to quake and tremble, Filling his stomach with dyspeptic sighs,

Until a huge balloon it doth resemble.

Thus do our lower parts impede the upper,

And much the brain's good works molest and hinder.

We gorge our cerebellum with hot supper,

And burn, with drams, our viscera to a cinder,

Choosing our arrows from Disease's quiver,

Till man in misery lives to loathe his liver.

HUMILITY.

Fair, soft Humility, so seldom seen,
So oft despised upon this little earth,
Counted by men as dross of nothing worth,
Though in the sight of Mightiness supreme
'Tis hailed and welcomed as a glorious birth,
Offspring of greatness, beauty perfected,
And yet of such fragility extreme,
That if we call it ours, 'tis forfeited;
Named, it escapes us, thus we need beware,
When with the Publican we plead the prayer,
"A sinner, Lord, be merciful to me!"

Our hearts do not say softly, "I thank Thee,
O Lord, for this sweet grace, Humility,
Which I possess, unlike the Pharisee."

AVE MARIA.

Ave Maria! 'tis the evening hymn

Of many pilgrims on the land and sea.

Soon as the day withdraws, and two or three
Faint stars are burning, all whose eyes are dim
With tears or watching, all of weary limb
Or troubled spirit, yield the bended knee,
And find, O Virgin! life's repose in thee.
I, too, at nightfall, when the new-born rim
Of the young moon is first beheld above,
Tune my fond thoughts to their devoutest key,
And from all bondage-save remembrance-free
Glad of my liberty as Noah's dove,

Seek the Madonna most adored by me,
And say mine "Ave Marias" to my love.

Conformity of Sense to Sound.

In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;

In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.-COLERIDGE: trans. Schiller

ARTICULATE IMITATION OF INARTICULATE SOUNDS.

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
POPE: Essay on Criticism.

On a sudden open fly,

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.--MILTON: Paradise Lost, ii.

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.-MILTON: Lycidas.
His bloody hand

Snatched two unhappy of my martial band,

And dashed like dogs against the stony floor.-POPE: Hom. Odys.

The Pilgrim oft

At dead of night, 'mid his orison, hears

Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitous down-dashed,

Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon.

DYER: Ruins of Rome.

What! like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce,

With arms, and George, and Brunswick, crowd the verse,
Rend with tremendous sounds your ears asunder,

With drum, gun, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder?

Then all your muse's softer art display:

Let Carolina smooth the tuneful lay,

Lull with Amelia's liquid name the nine,

And sweetly flow through all the royal line.-POPE: Sat. I. Remarkable examples are afforded by Dryden's Alexander's Feast, and The Bells of Edgar A. Poe.

IMITATION OF TIME AND MOTION.

When the merry bells ring round,

And the jocund rebecs sound

To many a youth and many a maid

. Dancing in the checkered shade.-MILTON: L'Allegro.

Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;

The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.

POPE: Hom. Odys.

Which urged, and labored, and forced up with pain,
Recoils and rolls impetuous down, and smokes along the plain.

DRYDEN Lucretius.

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

:

POPE: Essay on Criticism.

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

POPE: Essay on Criticism.

Oft on a plat of rising ground

I hear the far-off curfew sound,

Over some wide-watered shore,

Swinging slow with sullen roar.-MILTON: Il Penseroso.

The well-known hexameters of Virgil, descriptive respectively of the galloping of horses over a resounding plain, and of the heavy blows in alternately hammering the metal on the anvil, afford good examples,-the dactylic, of rapidity, the spondaic, of slowness.

Quadrupe- dante pu- | trem soni- | tu quatit | ungula | campum,

Eneid, viii. 596.

Illi in- ter se- | se mag- | na vi | brachia | tollunt.-Æneid, viii. 452.

IMITATION OF DIFFICULTY AND EASE.

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,

The line, too, labors, and the words move slow, &c.-POPE: Ess. on Criticism. He through the thickest of the throng gan threke.-CHAUCER: Knight's Tale. And strains from hard-bound brains six lines a year.-POPE: Sat. Frag.

Part huge of bulk,

Wallowing, unwieldy, enormous in their gait,

Tempest the ocean.-MILTON: Paradise Lost, vii.

He came, and with him Eve, more loath, though first
To offend, discountenanced both, and discomposed.
MILTON: Paradise Lost, x.

So he with difficulty and labor hard

Moved on,

with difficulty and labor he.-MILTON: Paradise Lost, ii.