In the fact that by contrast we estimate size,*
And, where there are none except Titans, great

stature

Is only a simple proceeding of nature.

What puff the strained sails of your praise shall you furl at, if

The calmest degree that you know is superlative? At Rome, all whom Charon took into his wherry must,

As a matter of course, be well issimused and errimused,

A Greek, too, could feel, while in that famous boat he tost,

That his friends would take care he was coroyed and wraтosed,

And formerly we, as through graveyards we past, Thought the world went from bad to worse fearfully fast;

Let us glance for a moment, 'tis well worth the pains,

And note what an average graveyard contains; There lie levellers levelled, duns done up themselves,

.

There are booksellers finally laid on their shelves, Horizontally there lie upright politicians,

Dose-a-dose with their patients sleep faultless physicians,

There are slave-drivers quietly whipt underground,

There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast

bound,

There card-players wait till the last trump be

played,

* That is in most cases we do, but not all,

Past a doubt, there are men who are innately small,
Such as Blank, who, without being 'minished a tittle,
Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little.

There all the choice spirits get finally aid,
There the babe that's unborn is supplied with a
berth,

There men without legs get their six feet of earth,
There lawyers repose, each wrapt up in his case,
There seekers of office are sure of a place,
There defendant and plaintiff get equally cast,
There shoemakers quietly stick to the last,
There brokers at length become silent as stocks,
There stage-drivers sleep without quitting their
box,

And so forth and so forth and so forth and so on,
With this kind of stuff one might endlessly go on;
To come to the point, I may safely assert you
Will find in each yard every cardinal virtue ;*
Each has six truest patriots: four discoverers of
ether,

Who never had thought on't nor mentioned it either:

Ten poets, the greatest who ever wrote rhyme: Two hundred and forty first men of their time: One person whose portrait just gave the least hint Its original had a most horrible squint:

One critic, most (what do they call it?) reflective, Who never had used the phrase ob- or subjective: Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred Their sons for the rice-swamps, at so much a head, And their daughters for-faugh! thirty mothers of Gracchi:

Non-resistants who gave many a spiritual black

eye:

Eight true friends of their kind, one of whom was a jailer:

Four captains almost as astounding as Taylor:

* (And at this just conclusion will surely arrive,
That the goodness of earth is more dead than alive.)

Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us his
Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Brutuses,
Who, in Yankee back-parlors, with crucified smile,*
Mount serenely their country's funereal pile:
Ninety-nine Irish heroes, ferocious rebellers

'Gainst the Saxon in cis-marine garrets and cellars Who shake their dread fists o'er the sea and alĺ that,

As long as a copper drops into the hat :
Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark
From Vaterland's battles just won-in the Park,
Who the happy profession of martyrdom take
Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak:
Sixty-two second Washingtons: two or three Jack-

sons:

And so many everythings else that it racks one's Poor memory too much to continue the list, Especially now they no longer exist;—

I would merely observe that you've taken to giv ing

The puffs that belong to the dead to the living, And that somehow your trump-of-contemporarydoom's tones

Is tuned after old dedications and tombstones."

Here the critic came in and a thistle pre

sented t

From a frown to a smile the god's features relented,
As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling with pride,
To the god's asking look, nothing daunted, replied,
"You're surprised, I suppose, I was absent so long,
But your godship respecting the lilies was wrong;
I hunted the garden from one end to t'other,
And got no reward but vexation and bother,

*Not forgetting their tea and their toast, though, the while
† Turn back now to page-goodness only knows what,
And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot.

Till, tossed out with weeds in a corner to wither, This one lily I found and made haste to bring hither."

"Did he think I had given him a book to review?

I ought to have known what the fellow would do,” Muttered Phoebus aside, "for a thistle will pass Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers with an

ass;

He has chosen in just the same way as he'd choose
His specimens out of the books he reviews;
And now, as this offers an excellent text,
I'll give 'em some brief hints on criticism next."
So, musing a moment, he turned to the crowd,
And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows aloud,-

'My friends, in the happier days of the muse, We were luckily free from such things as reviews; Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer

The heart of the poet to that of his hearer;
Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and

they

Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay; Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul Pre-created the future, both parts of one whole; Then for him there was nothing too great or too small,

For one natural deity sanctified all;

Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of

moods

Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods;

He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods;

"Twas for them that he measured the thought and

the line,

And shaped for their vision the perfect design,
With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true,
As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue;
Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart,
The universal, which now stands estranged and
apart,

In the free individual moulded, was Art;

Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire

For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher,
As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listen-

ing,

And her whole upward soul in her countenance glistening,

Eurydice stood-like a beacon unfired,

Which, once touch'd with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired

And waited with answering kindle to mark

The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark.

Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relieve

The need that men feel to create and believe,
And as, in all beauty, who listens with love,
Hears these words oft repeated-beyond and
above,'

So these seemed to be but the visible sign
Of the grasp of the soul after things more di-
vine;

They were ladders the Artist erected to climb
O'er the narrow horizon of space and of time,
And we see there the footsteps by which men had
gained

To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained,