He looked awhile as if to give it time to reach the water, then clutching his head in both his hands, tottered to his own chamber and threw himself heavily on the earthen floor, his arms and legs spread wide and his power ful hands digging into the hard ground until they were covered with blood. [The child was found on the top of the cliff and taken care of by kind friends, under whose fostering care he soon found his voice.] ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY. [Arthur O'Shaughnessy has too much ori- | teristic are "The Lay of the Two Lovers" and ginality to be called the literary child of any author or period; but he is unquestionably the creation of a school of poetry which has arisen within the last quarter of a century, and which has elicited for some of its qualities the highest admiration, and for others the deepest antipathy. The most notable member of this school is Mr. Swinburne. Apart from the subject matter of poets of this school, one of their chief characteristics is their great mastery of exquisite melody, and their Hellenic worship of beauty in nature and art. Arthur O'Shaughnessy was born in 1846. On his father's side he belongs to the Galway branch of the O'Shaughnessy family, the several divisions of which in Galway, Clare, and Limerick are supposed to have a common descent from Lieut.-col. William O'Shaughnessy, son of Sir Dermot O'Shaughnessy the second. His mother was of English royalist descent. "Chaitivel," in the latter of which, best known, are the splendid lines which describe "The Farewell of Sattazine to her dead lover Pharamond." Music and Moonlight (1874) contains some of the choicest of Mr. O'Shaughnessy's lyrics. Of these the most widely known is the "Outcry," a passionate love-dream. Very remarkable also are "Song of a Shrine,” "Song of the Holy Spirit," and "Supreme Summer." The last is distinctly one of the best of the poet's productions. Mr. O'Shaughnessy is a frequent contributor to periodical literature, and many of his poems, although not yet collected, have been taken up by the public. Amongst these we may mention the "Song of a Fellow-worker." A new volume is in preparation. His genius has been to a considerable extent inspired by a French influence, he being an intimate friend of the majority of contemporary French poets, Victor Hugo among the rest. Though not living in France, he is a French journalist, writing frequently in Le Livre, and having been one of the chief con lique des Lettres. In 1873 he married the daughter of Westland Marston, the celebrated dramatist. This lady had a great deal of the literary talent of the family, and in conjunction with her husband published in 1874 Toyland, a series of stories about toys. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy died in February, 1879.] An Epic of Women and other Poems was Mr. O'Shaughnessy's first work,--a volume which, we may remark by the way, is now almost out of print, and which has a considerable biblio-tributors to the once well-known La Répubgraphical interest on account of a symbolical title-page and curious designs by Mr. J. T. Nettleship, a friend of the poet and author of An Essay on Robert Browning, and other works. In the Epic the most notable poem is perhaps "Creation," verses which caused such division of opinion in the ranks of rival critics as to be read among what we may call the pièces judicatoires in a literary libel trial which attracted some attention a few years ago. Other wellknown poems in the volume are "The Daughter of Herodias" and "Cleopatra." But that which obtained immediate popularity, has been quoted everywhere, and is a particular favourite in America, is the exquisite lyric entitled "The Fountain of Tears." Two of the Lays of France (1873) are founded on the lyrics of Marie de France; but the greater part are original. Of these the most charac-author. VOL. IV. SUPREME SUMMER.1 O heart full of song in the sweet song-weather, A voice fills each bower, a wing shakes each tree, Come forth, O winged singer, on song's fairest feather, And make a sweet fame of my love and of me. This and following extracts are by permission of the 82 The blithe world shall ever have fair loving leisure, Is thick with fair words, between roaring and But one summer knew her, and grew glad to own Then, fall on us, dead leaves of our dear roses, But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting O perhaps the mere silences round you- You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes Or a bird's little song, faint and broken, And the tears shall flow faster and faster, And roll down bleared roads to each distance Of past desolation and years; Till they cover the place of each sorrow, And leave you no Past and no morrow: But the floods of the tears meet and gather; Is poured the whole sorrow of years? HON. LEWIS WINGFIELD. [The Hon. Lewis Wingfield was born on February 25, 1842. He was educated at Eton and Bonn, and was originally intended for the diplomatic service. He preferred, however, to adopt the stage as a profession; and having appeared in various provincial companies, made his début at the Haymarket as Laertes in Hamlet, and Minerva in the burlesque of Ixion. But he soon abandoned the stage, and entered as an art-student in the academy at Antwerp, at the same time studying surgery in the hospital of St. Elizabeth in the same city. He finished his studies in painting in Paris, under Couture, in 1870, and obtained his diploma as a surgeon. When the Franco-German war broke out he went to the German side as a medical man, and was present at the battles of Woerth and Wissembourg. He returned to Paris in time for the first siege, and was employed during those trying days as head-assistant surgeon in the American hospital, and correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. Mr. Wingfield was also present during the commune and the second siege of the French metropolis, and during this period he was the special correspondent of the Times. Meanwhile he had not been idle with his brush; one of his pictures was bought by the French government, and hangs in the town-hall at Orleans. In 1876 Mr. Wingfield entered on a new career, publishing a novel under the title Slippery Ground. At the end of 1877 appeared Lady Grizel, a story dealing with the history of George III., which created a considerable amount of attention. Still more marked was the success of My Lords of Stroguea tale dealing with Irish affairs at the period of the Union. This work has received great and deserved praise, and is marked by eloquence and high powers of graphic description. Mr. Wingfield's latest work is a novel which deals with prison life. Inspired by the idea that the books published on this subject by ex-convicts contained gross exaggerations and misrepresentations, he entered on a series of original investigations, receiving special facilities from the Home Office.] STROGUE ABBEY. (FROM "MY LORDS OF STROGUE."1) The home of the Glandores on Dublin Bay is a unique place, perched on rising ground, shaded by fine old timber. Originally an ecclesiastical establishment, it was turned into a fortress by Sir Amorey Crosbie in 1177, and has been altered and gutted, and rebuilt, with here a wing and here a bay, and there a winding staircase, or mysterious recess, to suit the whim of each succeeding owner, till it has swelled into a stunted honey-comb of meandering suites of rooms, whose geography puzzles a stranger on his first visit there. 1 By permission of the author. The only portions of it which remain intact are (as may be seen by the great thickness of the walls) the hall, a long, low, narrow space, panelled in black oak and ceiled in squares; the huge kitchen, where meat might be roasted for an army; and the dungeons below ground. The remaining rooms (many of them like monkish cells) are of every shape and pattern, alike only in having heavy casement frames set with diamond panes, enormous obstinate doors, which creak and moan, declining to close or open unless violently coerced, and worm-eaten floors that slope in every freak of crooked line except the normal horizontal one. Indeed, the varied levels of the bedroom floor (there is but one story) are so wildly erratic, that a visitor, who wakes for the first time in one of the pigeon-holes that open one on the other, like the alleys of a rabbit warren, clings instinctively to his bed-clothes as people do at sea, and, on second thoughts, is seized with a new panic lest the house be about to fall-an idle fear, as my lady is fond of showing; for the cyclopean rafters, that were laid in their places by the crumbled monks, are hard and black as iron, so seasoned by sea-air that they will possibly stand good so long as Ireland remains above the water. A gloomier abode than this it is scarce possible to picture; for the window-sashes are of exceeding clumsiness, the ornamentation of a ponderous flamboyancy in which all styles are twisted, without regard for canons, into curls and scrolls; and yet there is a blunt cosiness about the ensemble which seems to say, "Here at least you are safe. If Dublin Bay were full of hostile ships, the adjacent land teeming with the enemy in arms, they might batter on for ever. They might beat at our portals till the last trump should summon them to more important business, but our panels would never budge." On approaching the Abbey by the avenue you are not aware of it-so masked is it by trees and ivy-till a sharp turn brings you upon a gravelled quadrangle, three sides of which are closed in by walls, while the fourth is marked out by a row of statues (white nymphs with pitchers), whose background is the chameleon sea. Directly facing these figures -at the opposite end of the square, that isa short wide flight of steps, and a low terrace paved with coloured marbles, lead to the front entrance. The left side of the quadrangle is the "Young Men's Wing," sacred to whips and fishing-tackle, pierced by separate little doors for convenience on hunting mornings-two sets of separate chambers, in fact, which may be entered without passing through the hall; and above them is the armoury, a neglected museum of rusty swords and matchlocks, an eyrie of ghosts and goblins, which is never disturbed by household broom. The right side is bounded by a close-clipped ivied wall, pierced by an archway which gives access to the stables and the kennels, ended by a mouldering turret, converted long since into a water-tower. The grand hall, low and dark as it is with sable oak and stiff limnings of dead Crosbies, occupies the whole length and width of the central portion of the house, or rather of the narrow band which joins the two side blocks together. You may learn, by looking at the time-discoloured map which hangs over its sculptured mantelpiece, that the ground-plan of the Abbey is shaped like the letter H, whose left limb forms the young men's wing, the offices, and dining-room; whose right limb is made up of my lady's bedroom, the staircase vestibule, and the reception saloons; while the grand hall, or portrait gallery, reproduces the connecting bar. Five steps, with a curiouslycarved banister, lead out of the grand hall at either end; that to the left opening into the dining-room-a finely-proportioned chamber, panelled from floor to ceiling, with trophies of rusty armour breaking its sombre richness; that to the right communicating with my lady's bedroom, painted apple-green with arabesques of gold, which is chiefly remarkable for luxuriously-cushioned window-seats, from whence a fine view may be obtained of the operations in the stable-yard. The late lord used to sip his chocolate here in brocaded morning-gown and nightcap, haranguing his whipper-in and bullying the horse-boys, or tossing scraps to favourite hounds as they were trotted by for his inspection; and my lady has continued the practice through her widowhood, for it gratifies her vanity, as chatelaine, to watch the numberless grooms and lackeys, the feudal array of servants and retainers. An odd nest for a lady, no doubt; but the countess chooses to inhabit it, she says, till her son brings home a bride, for the late lord sent for Italian workmen to decorate it according to her taste, and in it she will remain till the hour for abdication shall arrive. A second door, at right angles to my lady's, opens from the hall on to the staircase with its heraldic flight of beasts; beyond this is the chintz drawing-room, a cheery pale-tinted chamber which Doreen has taken to herself as a boudoir, although it is practically no better |