purchase of seed and implements. A system of land banks, similar to those now devised for the working classes, was the means of dividing up the great estates of Prussia among the mass of her agriculturists. Mr. Gladstone has borrowed largely from their system in the preparation of his Irish tenant right bill, which is yet to remove the greatest of Irish grievances.

The poverty of the German nation for centuries has been one of the great obstacles to her internal development and European influence. There is therefore a deeper interest than the financial one attaching itself to every measure designed to put her people upon a better footing of comfort and prosperity. Nor can we fail to rejoice in the growing wealth of the only Teutonic nation which has shown itself free from the taint of financial corruption, and has cherished patriotic ideas more eagerly than others have hoarded gold.

NOT OF OUR WORLD.

ALL around you, my dear brother,
Lies a world you never enter,

And I think you scarcely see it

Though it spreads before your eyes.

You belong to quite another,

And your bright home is its centre :
Little wonder that you flee it,
When your own is Paradise.

It is early chilly morning

When the sun seems sick of rising,
Though it fall through crimson curtain
On your slumber-laden eyes,

While with many a lazy yawning

At the daylight so surprising,

You lie dreamily uncertain,
Really dreading to arise.

Hark! the factory bells are ringing,
The mill-whistle shrill is blowing,
There is bustle in the hovel
With the tramp of hurried feet.
To the mother babes are clinging,
She must go though it be snowing,
While the men with weary faces
Must invade the silent street.

Yes, and children, young and tender,
Answer to the iron summons,

And steal shivering through the snowflakes,
Or before the pelting rain.

Girlhood, pale, unkempt and slender,

Through the lanes and o'er the commons

Must be going as the morn breaks,
Life's hard struggle to maintain.

Oh, my brother, are you better
Than these toiling men and women,
In aught else except the chances
That have fixed your lot and theirs?
Have they sinned, that God should fetter
Them from childhood to their toil, when
He on you in favor glances

And your finer nature spares?

Have you never, in your wandering,

Lit upon some lovely picture

Of a far-off land of pleasure,

Where the softly gleaming sun

Rests on rivulets meandering

Through green fields, where quiet Nature
Sleepeth to a murmured measure
Of her own till day is done?

Have you never sighed, contrasting
That ideal scene of beauty

With the rugged world about you,
And the hard, real look of things?
Felt a nameless sorrow blasting

Every joy and every duty,

That the world could move without you,

And a longing for the wings

Of the dove, to soar forever
To the land within the picture,
To the land you knew in childhood,
To the fields you've seen in dreams,
From the reach of the stern never
That so galls the human creature,
To the rustle of the greenwood,
To the murmur of the streams?
So to these born heirs of sorrow
You and yours are but a vision,
Caught gas-lighted, through some window,
They, without in the dark street,

Piercing like a barbed arrow,
Though the lip may speak derision,
As they gaze in on the warm glow
Of your fireside-picture sweet.

To whom gentle Spring returning,
And the soft green grasses growing,
And the daisy on the smooth lawn
Bring no pleasure-only pain;
And a deep and bitter yearning,
While the years are onward going,
Each night longing for the sundawn,
And at morn for eve again.

In whose heart the song birds trilling ;
And the deep blue sky above them,
And the scented breezes o'er them,
And the flickering shadows cast,
Bring no pleasure, but a thrilling,
Hopeless wish for some to love them,
As they see but toil before them
And dead hopes throughout the past.

In whose eyes the smiles of beauty,
And the light of loving glances,
And the sheen of golden tresses,
And the sound of dancing feet,
Nerve them only for stern duty,
While unloving age advances,
And no love the lone heart blesses,
No kind eyes their sad eyes meet.

And the wedding bell but mocks them

With its merry, merry pealing,

As the bridal train sweeps by them
With its scent of flashing flowers;

And the plumèd hearse scarce shocks them,
Though their life away is stealing;
Does not cruel life deny them
Happy homes and blessed hours?
So, my brother, sometimes ponder,
Since you have all earthly treasure
That you need, yet feel unsated,
Wanting, still, more shining gold,
On the ones who homeless wander,
Or who toil without a pleasure,
To a life of sorrow fated,
And who are not of your world.

E. W. WATSON.

THE ITALIAN ELEMENT IN MILTON.

It is worthy of note that as soon as the Church attained social and political power she used it to suppress the ancient drama, then in its degeneracy, on account of its opposition to her teachings. Her converts were required to renounce the "pomps and vanities of this wicked world;" words which the puritan opponents of the stage, with historical propriety, have quoted and still quote as the renunciation of the drama.

After a long series of years, during which such a thing as a play had not been seen or heard of, the Church herself revived the old "pomps" under the forms of "Miracle plays" and "Mysteries," for the better instruction of the masses in the historical truths of the Bible, particularly those in reference to Christ.

In time these "Miracle plays" and "Mysteries" became more and more common and perverted from their original design, and gradually fell into disrepute, and certainly into disuse, though there is one example of them which has been performed for many years at Ober Ammergan.

These "Miracles" and "Mysteries" were probably the root from which sprang not only the Elizabethan drama but also Milton's divine epics; the one adopting the human and social, and the other the religious elements. There is certain evidence that his first intention was to write his Paradise Lost as a play, and there is still in existence in the collections of the British Museum a rough draught of his poem in that form.

Shakspeare, it is well known, was an universal copyist, and every year of criticism reveals the fact more and more; but as Emerson well says of him, (and mutato nomine it applies equally well to Milton :)

"Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality. The greatest genius is the most indebted Men, nations, poets, artisans, women, all have

man.

worked for him, and he enters into their labors. At the time when he left Stratford, and went up to London, a great body of stage-plays, of all dates and writers, existed in manuscript, and were in turn produced on the boards. Shakspeare,

in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old plays waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried. ...

The amount of indebtedness may be inferred from Malone's laborious computations in regard to the First, Second and Third parts of Henry VI, in which, 'out of 6,043 lines, 1,771 were written by some author preceding Shakspeare; 2,373 by him, on the foundation laid by his predecessors, and 1,899 were entirely his own.' Every intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment, it is his fine office to bring to his people; and he comes to value his memory equally with his invention."

Indeed, Milton himself takes the same view, as in his answer to "Eikon Basilike," (Works, vol. I, p. 526,) he says: "He borrows David's Psalms; had he borrowed David's heart, it had been much the holier theft. For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good authors is counted plagiary."

In Milton's days Italy was the only country whose literature was complete and rounded. Petrarch, the poet of love-Tasso, of the Crusades-Alfieri, of Fairy Land-and Dante, of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory-had all lived, written and passed away, leaving their works behind them as their noblest monument. What wonder, then, that Milton, who was at all times, from his earliest youth, a scholar, should be influenced by them not only in style and imagery but in language and matter? Especially when it is considered that at thirty years of age he went to Italy, and spent nearly fifteen months there in close intimacy with learned Italians of his day; among whom were Carlo and William Dati and Bonmatthaei, on the death of the former of whom he wrote his "Epitaphium Damonis." While in Tuscany he visited the blind astronomer Galileo at Arcetri, and refers to him in the course of his great poem, as also to the leafy shades of Vallombrosa. We infer that he did not visit the country of the Waldenses, as his famous sonnets contain none of those local allusions which Milton delights in. The learned of Italy seem to have received him with favor. He says in his "Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty:"

"But much latelier in the private academies of Italy, whither I was favored to resort, some trifles which I had in memory, composed under twenty or thereabout, (for the manner is that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading there,) were received with written encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps."