["Mr. Whittier is emphatically the apostle of all that is pure, fair, and morally beautiful."-Athenæum, 1882.

The delightful weather which generally falls to us in November is often known as St. Martin's Summer, from its arriving about Martinmas Day (November 11).]

The sweet day, opening as a flower
Unfolds its petals tender,
Renews for us at noontide's hour

The Summer's tempered splendor.

The birds are hushed; alone the wind,
That through the woodland searches,
The red oak's lingering leaves can find,
And yellow plumes of larches.

But still the balsam-breathing pine
Invites no thought of sorrow;

No hint of loss from air like wine
The Earth's content can borrow.

The Summer and the Winter here
Midway a truce are bolding,
A soft consenting atmosphere
Their tents of peace infolding.

The silent woods, the lonely hills,
Rise solemn in their gladness;
The quiet that the valley fills
Is scarcely joy or sadness.

How strange! the Autumn yesterday
In Winter's grasp seemed dying;
On whirling winds from skies of gray
The early snow was flying.

And now while over Nature's mood
There steals a soft relenting,
1 will not mar the present good
Forecasting or lamenting.

My Autumn time and Nature's hold
A dreamy tryst together;
And both, grown old, about us fold
The golden-tissued weather.

I lean my heart against the day
To feel its bland caressing;

I will not let it pass away

Before it leave its blessing.

The King's Missive, Mabel Martin, and Later Poems (1881).

TO AUTUMN.

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821).

[By general consent of critics this ode ranks among the very finest in English literature.]

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing Sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells:

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue:
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

WORDSWORTH IN HIS INDIAN SUMMER.

F. W. H. MYERS.

We have reached the Indian Summer of Wordsworth's genius: it can still shine at moments bright as ever, and with even a new majesty and calm; but we feel, nevertheless, that the melody is dying from his song, that he is hardening into self-repetition, into rhetoric, into sermonizing commonplace, and is rigid where he was once profound. The Thanksgiving Ode (1816) strikes death to the heart. The accustomed patriotic sentiments-the accustomed virtuous aspirations— these are still there; but the accent is like that of a ghost who calls to us in hollow mimicry of a voice that once we loved.

And yet Wordsworth's poetic life was not to close without a great symbolical spectacle, a solemn farewell. Sunset among

the Cumbrian hills, often of remarkable beauty, once or twice, perhaps, in a score of years, reaches a pitch of illusion and magnificence which indeed seems nothing less than the commingling of earth and heaven. Such a sight-seen from Rydal Mount in 1818-afforded once more the needed stimulus, and evoked that “Evening Ode, composed on an evening of extraordinary splendor and beauty," which is the last considerable production of Wordsworth's genius. In this ode we recognize the peculiar gift of reproducing with magical simplicity, as it were, the inmost virtue of natural phenomena.

"No sound is uttered, but a deep
And solemn harmony pervades
The hollow vale from steep to steep,
And penetrates the glades.
Far distant images draw nigh,
Called forth by wondrous potency

Of beamy radiance, that imbues
Whate'er it strikes with gem-like hues!

In vision exquisitely clear

Herds range along the mountain side;
And glistening antlers are descried,
And gilded flocks appear."

Once more the poet brings home to us that sense of belonging at once to two worlds which gives to human life so much of mysterious solemnity.

"Wings at my shoulder seem to play;

But, rooted here, I stand and gaze

On those bright steps that heavenward raise

Their practicable way."

And the poem ends-with a deep personal pathos-in an allusion, repeated from the Ode on Immortality, to the light which "lay about him in his infancy "-the light

"Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored;

Which at this moment on my waking sight

Appears to shine, by miracle restored!
My soul, though yet confined to earth,
Rejoices in a second birth;-

'Tis past, the visionary splendor fades,
And Night approaches with her shades."

WORDSWORTH, in English Men of Letters.

PLACE DE LA BASTILLE,* PARIS.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882).

[The Bastille, the old State prison and citadel of Paris, had been for centuries a fearful engine of despotism. The cell windows were but four inches wide, and they allowed only two inches of unobstructed light. The Bastille was captured and destroyed by a revolutionary mob, 14th July 1789, and the stones were used to construct the Bridge De la Concorde.]

How dear the sky has been above this. place!
Small treasures of this sky that we see here,

Seen weak through prison-bars from year to year;
Eyed with a painful prayer upon God's grace
To save, and tears that strayed along the face
Lifted at sunset. Yea, how passing dear,

Those nights when through the bars a wind left clear
The heaven, and moonlight soothed the limpid space!

So was it, till one night the secret kept

Safe in low vault and stealthy corridor

Was blown abroad on gospel-tongues of flame.

O ways of God, mysterious evermore!

How many on this spot have cursed and wept

That all might stand here now and own thy name.

THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE.

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881).

["His 'French Revolution' is a series of lurid pictures, unmatched for vehement power, in which the figures of such sons of earth as Mirabeau and Danton loom gigantic and terrible as in the glare of an eruption, their shadows swaying far and wide grotesquely awful. But all is painted by eruption-flashes in violent light and shade. There are no half-tints, no gradations, and we find it impossible to account for the continuance of power of less Titanic actors in the tragedy, like Robespierre, on any theory, whether of human nature or of individual character, supplied by Mr. Carlyle. Of his success, however, in accomplishing what he aimed at, which was to haunt the mind with memories of a horrible political nightmare, there can be no doubt."-J. R. LOWELL: My Study Windows.]

On Monday, the 14th of October 1793, a cause was pending in the Hall of Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as those old stone walls never before witnessed the trial of Marie Antoinette. The once brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at the judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her last night. To "Bastille Square."

*