8.

Wings, lend wings for the cold, the clear!
What's far conquers what is near.

Roses will bloom nor want beholders,

Sprung from the dust where our own flesh moulders. What shall arrive with the cycle's change?

A novel grace and a beauty strange.

I will make an Eve, be the artist that began her, Shaped her to his mind! — Alas! in like manner They circle their rose on my rose tree.

PROTUS.

AMONG these latter busts we count by scores,
Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,

Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast.
One loves a baby face, with violets there,
Violets instead of laurel in the hair,

As those were all the little locks could bear.

Now read here. "Protus ends a period
Of empery beginning with a god:

Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant;
Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant.
And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like fire
Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
A fame that he was missing, spread afar-
The world, from its four corners, rose in war,
Till he was borne out on a balcony

To pacify the world when it should see.
The captains ranged before him, one, his hand
Made baby points at, gained the chief command.

And day by day more beautiful he grew
In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,
While young Greek sculptors gazing on the child
Were, so, with old Greek sculpture, reconciled.
Already sages laboured to condense

In easy tones a life's experience:

And artists took grave counsel to impart

In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art -
To make his graces prompt as blossoming

Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:

Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne,
For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,
And mortals love the letters of his name."

-Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same
New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say
How that same year, on such a month and day.
"John the Pannonian, groundedly believed

A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved
The Empire from its fate the year before,—
Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore
The same for six years, (during which the Huns
Kept off their fingers from us) till his sons

Put something in his liquor"— and so forth.
Then a new reign. Stay- "Take at its just worth

66

(Subjoins an annotator) "what I give

As hearsay. Some think John let Protus live
And slip away. 'Tis said, he reached man's age
At some blind northern court; made first a page,

l'hen, tutor to the children — last, of use
About the hunting-stables. I deduce

He wrote the little tract On worming dogs,'
Whereof the name in sundry catalogues

Is extant yet. A Protus of the Race

Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace, -
And if the same, he reached senility."

Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great

eye

Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can

To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!

HOLY-CROSS DAY.

ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO ATTEND AN ANNUAL

CHRISTIAN SERMON IN ROME.

["Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my lord preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb at least from her conspicuous table here in Rome, should be, thougt but once yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon beneath the feet of the guests. And a moving sight in truth, this, of so many of the besotted, blind, restive, and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now paternally brought · nay, (for He saith, Compel them to come in,') haled, as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace. What awakening, what striving with tears, what working of a yeasty conscience! Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conver sions which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be altogether the glory." — Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.]

เ

Though what the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather to this effect:

1.

FEE, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!

Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week.

Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,