"WHITHER THE WIND THEIR COURSE DIRECTS." ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH (1819-1861).

["Clough [pr. Kluf] holds a high and permanent place among our poets, not only because, as Mr. Lowell says, he represents an epoch of thought, but because he represents it in a manner so rare, so individual. He is neither singer nor prophet; but he is a poet in virtue of the depth and sincerity with which he felt certain great emotions, and the absolute veracity with which he expressed them. 'His mind seems habitually to have been swayed by large, slow, deep-sea currents,' says one of the best of his critics,-currents partly general in their operations on his time, partly special to himself; and his utterances when so swayed are intensely real."-T. H. WARD: The English Poets, 1880. The motto of this poem is taken from Virgil's Æneid, iii. 269.] As ships becalmed at eve, that lay

With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day
Are scarce long leagues apart descried:

When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,
And all the darkling hours they plied,
Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas
By each was cleaving, side by side:

E'en so-but why the tale reveal

Of those, whom year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel,

Astounded, soul from soul estranged?

At dead of night their sails were filled,
And onward each rejoicing steered-
Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,
Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!

To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
Through winds and tides one compass guides-
To that, and your own selves, be true.

But O blithe breeze! and O great seas!
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last.

One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where'er they fare,-

O bounding breeze! O rushing seas!
At last, at last, unite them there!

This level floor of liquid glass
Begins beneath us swift to pass.
It goes as though it went alone
By some impulsion of its own.
(How light it moves! how softly! ah,
Were all things like the gondola !)

How light it moves! how softly! ah,
Could life as does our gondola,
Unvexed with quarrels, aims, and cares,
And moral duties and affairs,

Unswaying, noiseless, swift, and strong,
For ever thus thus glide along!
(How light we move! how softly! ah,
Were life but as the gondola !)

With no more motion than should bear
A freshness to the languid air;
With no more effort than expressed
The need and naturalness of rest,
Which we beneath a grateful shade
Should take on peaceful pillows laid!
(How light we move! how softly! ah,
Were life but as the gondola !)

In one unbroken passage borne
To closing night from opening morn;
Uplift at whiles slow eyes to mark
Some palace front, some passing bark;
Through windows catch the varying shore,
And hear the soft turns of the oar!
(How light we move! how softly! ah,
Were life but as the gondola !)

LITERATURE:

"CREATIVE AND SENTIMENTAL." JOHN RUSKIN (b. 1819).

I think it probable that many readers may be surprised at my calling Scott the great representative of the mind of the age of literature. Those who can perceive the intense penetrative depth of Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and melodious power of Tennyson, may be offended at my placing in higher rank that poetry of careless glance and reckless rhyme in which Scott poured out the fancies of his youth; and those

who are familiar with the subtle analysis of the French novelists, or who have in any wise submitted themselves to the influence of German philosophy, may be equally indignant at my ascribing a principality to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in an age which has produced De Balzac and Goethe.* But the mass of sentimental literature concerned with the analysis and description of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron, is altogether of lower rank than the literature which merely describes what it saw. The true seer feels as intensely as any one else, but he does not much describe his feelings. He tells you whom he met, and what they said; leaves you to make out from what they feel, and what he feels, but goes into little detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing and careful explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this plain recording of what people said and did, or with the right invention of what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that to invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens: which to do, requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it one's self; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of somebody sitting on the other side of the table. Even, therefore, where this sentimental literature is first-rate, as in passages of Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be ranked so high as the creative; and though perfection even in narrow fields is perhaps as rare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we have another "In Memoriam" as another "Guy Mannering,"† I unhesitatingly receive, as a greater manifestation of power, the right invention of a few sentences spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their supper-table, than the most tender and passionate melodies of the self-examining verse.

Modern Painters.

* Honoré de Balzac (-zak'), 1799-1858, novelist; one of the greatest names in French literature since the Revolution.-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (-tay), 1749-1832, the great German poet, dramatist, and philosopher.

+ In Memoriam, a series of 130 short elegiac poems written by Tennyson (published May 1850) in memory of his dear friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died 1833.-Guy Mannering, the second of the Waverley Novels, appeared anonymously in 1815. In chap. xxxvi. Paulus Pleydell is introduced as good scholar, an excellent lawyer, and a worthy man, practising the ancient and now forgotten pastime of high jinks."

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GROWTH AND DECAY OF LANGUAGE.
FREDERICK MAX MÜLLER (b. 1823).

Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford.

The language of Alfred is so different from the English of the present day that we have to study it in the same manner as we study Greek or Latin. We can read Milton and Bacon, Shakspeare and Hooker; we can make out Wycliffe and Chaucer; but when we come to the English of the thirteenth century, we can but guess its meaning, and we fail even in this with works previous to the Ormulum and Layamon. The historical changes of language may be more or less rapid, but they take place at all times and in all countries. They have reduced the rich and powerful idiom of the poets of the Veda* to the meagre and impure jargon of the modern sepoy. They have transformed the language of the Zend-Avesta and of the mountain records of Behistun into that of Firdusi and the modern Persians; the language of Virgil into that of Dante; the language of Ulfilas into that of Charlemagne; the language of Charlemagne into that of Goethe. We have reason to be

lieve that the same changes take place with even greater violence and rapidity in the dialects of savage tribes, although, in the absence of a written literature, it is extremely difficult to obtain trustworthy information. But in the few cases where careful observations have been made on this interesting subject, it has been found that among the wild and illiterate tribes of Siberia, Africa, and Siam, two or three generations are sufficient to change the whole aspect of their dialects. The languages of highly civilized nations, on the contrary, become more and more stationary, and seem sometimes almost to lose their power of change. Where there is a classical literature, and where its language is spread to every town and village, it seems almost impossible that any further changes should take place. Nevertheless, the language of Rome, for so many centuries the queen of the civilized world, was deposed by the modern Romance dialects, and the ancient Greek was supplanted in the end by

* Veda, applied to the four sacred books of the Hindus; Zend-Avesta, sacred book (B. C. 490) attributed to Zoroaster; Firdūsi or Firdousee, the greatest of Persian poets (b. 940 A.D.); Virgil, the great epic poet of the Romans (B.C. 70-19); Dante (-tay), the greatest of Italian poets (1265-1321 A.D.); Ul'filas, Gothic scholar and writer (318-388 A.D.); Charlemagne (Charles I.), King of France and Emperor of Germany, reigned A.D. 823-877.