But not the fires that flash on high,
Nor streams beneath that roll,
Like woman's hallowed beauty made
The music of my soul.

And her sweet smile o'er all my dreams
Like stars on fountains played,
And in the vesper hour I heard

Her whispers thrill the shade;
And round her graceful form I flung
The purple clouds of song,
Until the vision dazzled me,

Although it lived not long.

Now undeceived, no more a lover,

Life's brightest, saddest dream is over.

Now, all this time, in love being a wretched tactician,

I toiled up Love's Vesuvius, resolved to die or
win it,

I forgot that the keyhole commands our position,
And the landlady, crouched like a cat in a passion,
And one eye closed up in the sharpshooter fashion,

And, like L'Homme Blasé, find 'it only smokes, Was squinting-no eye ever squinted as can hers—

there's nothing in it.'

At our simple endearments and primitive manners.
Till her glance, that would turn new milk into
cider,
Flashed fire through the keyhole, and murdered a
spider,

I only hope for friendship now,
To cheer my lonely way,

And chase remembrance from my brow,
With gently winning ray;

Then sun me in thy cloudless eyes,

Be all the past forgiven,

And should remorseful mem'ries rise,
Oh, speak of Hope and Heaven!"

(Mem. This fusillade of pathos I have always found victorious,

Who therein, like Napoleon, with gusto and skill,
Was applying geometry merely to kill.

The mine was exploded-she says, in a fume,
She wouldn't have such goings on in her room.

66

You romp with the housemaid, you flirt with my nieces,

If properly supported by the muscle amatorius.1) | And have broken the peace of my daughter to

pieces."

"But truce to sadness and digression.

Voici, ma chère, the entire confession.

Thrice my shafts the Fates have parried;-
My first flame's dead, my second married-
The third (she's gone to France) one day
In tears and sofa-cushions lay-

So, drawing innocently near her,

I tried to rally, soothe, and cheer her.
Why spin the tale? In that blest hour
Long-prisoned Love proclaimed his pow'r;
Wild words I spoke, the most sincere
That song e'er poured in Beauty's ear;
And oh her words, remembered dearly,
Still ring within my bosom clearly-
And though the links are broken now
That bound us then with mutual vow,
I know that then her words were true-
Her feelings' springs were fresh and new--
Her melting lips, Love's very shrine,
Then ever warmly welcomed mine.
No practised airs had she t' assist her,
Sweet rose! she trembled when I kissed her-
And as the tides forth from my soul
Of love and song would mingled roll,
She clasped in tears her minstrel lover,
Like flow'rs from which the dews rill over."

(Mem. This very artless gesture seemed in no way to astound her.)

"Oh! come," said Mary,

My fourth". "don't you think that three will do? Now, I don't believe one-third of what you tell me can be true

"Dear Mary,

Were you ever once undoubtedly?"
yes, alas!

And here behold her portrait!" and I led her to
the glass.

Here, to make the tale impressive, my arm again

stole round her.

1 A muscle of the orbit used in ogling.

Now, reader, there's far less connection between her
And me than there is 'twixt a carpus and femur;
But this was a piece of artistical dodging
To keep Mary away evermore from my lodging.
Yet I answered her calmly and pleasantly-"Ah!
so!"

Hitching up, with a smile, my retiring Tommaso, 2
"Pray, ma'am, would you think me so very im-
prudent,

If a poet, a brick, and a medical student,
Received at her hands that indulgent humanity
Which, with shower-baths and time, soothes both
love and insanity?

But as to her peace, Major Thunderbolt broke it.
Put that in your pipe, my dear madam, and
smoke it.

And to prove that I know your pet lobster, I wager
A month's rent that I give a true sketch of the

Major:

He has gooseberry eyes, and a conical head,
With an elephant's snout, but amazingly red;
Long, lank, incoherent, with swaggering pace,
Supercilious and dont-care-a-pin-for-you face,
And a nursery of whisker from dewlap to pole,
Like a garrisoned rampart defending the whole."
But here her brow flushed to a sort of a curious
Anti-teetotalish atropurpureus,

2 Vulgo, Tommy.

And she faced me full front, wheeling swiftly | Or a private, indeed, than a quack, should engage about on

her.

Ah! woman, that tongue of thine-young ones and old

Her dear me!-her-thank God for Greek Oh, yes! you're a doctor? but, faith, if your pill epiglouton.1 Is all like what I got, you'll cure less than you kill; For a fortnight I hadn't an hour to myself, And they settled a cat that found one on the shelf. Though you think you look wise in your specs, since you got 'em,

Had you twenty glass eyes, you're a humbug at bottom."

Is worse than a scalpel, by Jove, when you scold,
And, Bellona-like, charge, in life's battle, across us
With your genio-cherito-chrondrio-glossus:2
"As for Lucy, Lord knows it were better the Major,

FRANCES POWER COBB E.

Cobbe's pen is that which, by a somewhat misleading synedoche, is called "woman's rights." She has maintained in many an essay the claims of her sex to have a place in the professions and a share in the political activity of her time. In her own self she is, perhaps, one of the strongest arguments in favour of her view, for she has shown in literature an activity that is paralleled by few men, and a grace of style and freshness of thought for which more than one masculine writer might vainly sigh.

[One of the favourite subjects of Miss | sundry other tragic passions, to be read of in books, but no longer witnessed on the real stage of life. Of course we should expect to find it modified according to the conditions of modern civilized existence. Nobody desires to see a Hercules, a Theseus, or a Perseus going about in England slaying monsters, and robbers, and dragons for the public good; nor do we expect to hear of Sir Galahad riding through a forest (shall we say St. John's Wood?) in search of distressed maidens to defend with sword and lance.

Frances Power Cobbe is the daughter of Mr. Charles Cobbe of Newbridge House, county Dublin, and was born on December 4, 1822. She received her education at Brighton. For many years she has been a frequent contributor to the periodical literature of the day, and her essays republished in volume form make up a goodly list. She has published amongst other things Essays on the Pursuits of Women, 1863; Broken Lives, 1864; Cities of the Past, reprinted from Fraser's Magazine, 1864; Italics: Brief Notes on Politics, People, and Places in Italy; Darwinism in Morals and other Essays, 1872; The Hopes of the Human Race Hereafter and Here, 1874. The work from which we quote, entitled Re-echoes, appeared in 1876. It is a republication of essays which she contributed to the Echo, and which formed for many years one of the most attractive features in that journal.]

CHIVALRY OF THE PERIOD.

We have been tempted sometimes to ask whether the sentiment of chivalry were not defunct, along with revenge and remorse, and

We smile, not only at classic and mediæval chivalry, but at the reflection of it in the Elizabethan age, when the gallant Lord Herbert of Cherbury solemnly debated whether his vow as a Knight of the Bath did not compel him to "succour" a small damsel of six, from whom a romping schoolboy had stolen a blue ribbon. Yet a stage further, and we find the chivalry of the eighteenth century represented by Lord Chesterfield, whose "ruling passion strong in death" manifested itself in his last expiring groan, "Give Mr. Dayrolles a chair!" That was an ebb of chivalry at all events. Has the tide turned in our day, or has it still further receded?

In more respects than one we fear the appearances are against us. The non-intervention policy, sound as it usually is, as regards nations, is certainly carried in these busy days rather too far into private life. We have time enough, alas! to spread scandalous stories; but to take the trouble to contradict and crain them down the scandal-monger's throat is a thing for which we profess to have no leisure. We give our money freely enough to men in distress; but to obey a summons for help in

1 Bustle.-epi, upon, and gloutos.

2 A muscle of the tongue.

the case of a brawl or a robbery, or to run the | is talk of admitting women to new professions,

risk of appearing in a court of justice or in the columns of a newspaper-this is a chivalry for which we have no taste. Still more largely does the critical spirit which pervades all modern life detract from the generous enthusiasm of loyalty and admiration with which men used to look up to their leaders in the world of thought and action. So clear is this, that it is now actually startling in common discourse to hear a man speak in anything like the spirit of chivalry even of his friend and ally.

that in such case they must be prepared to forego the "chivalry" with which they have hitherto been treated, and find it exchanged for some unprecedented mode of behaviour which (it is grimly added) they "won't like”? But do men, then, really feel that it would be a luxury to treat women rudely?—an enjoyment from which this same "chivalry" somehow cruelly debars them so long as women do nothing (at least, nothing remunerative) in the way of work? Will it be a release to them from the irksome bondage of good manners when they may brush past a feeble lady with a dig of their elbows in her side, and keep a poor old woman standing while they lounge in a rocking-chair, or puff tobacco in the face of another, and bid a pretty girl "go to Jericho?" We really do not quite believe it, at least not in the case of the pretty girl, however it may be with the old women.

拳

But it is especially in the treatment of women by men that chivalry is always supposed to show itself. How may this be with us now? We fear it is a very enigmatical thing, this same masculine chivalry of the nineteenth century. In the humbler ranks it never induces men to prevent women from doing the coarsest and hardest labour. They may sweep crossings, and fill coal trucks, and dance on tight ropes, and no chivalry says "Leave it for me!" But when women work so long that their small strength competes with men after the fashion of the tortoise and the hare, then chivalry limits the hours of female labour; and when women by chance discover that they can earn a good deal of money in some new way-say by painting on china-then the chivalry of their male companions induces them to seize their maul-sticks and forbid them to do any work but that for which the smallest pay is to be obtained. Chivalry is not in the least shocked at the sight of a woman dressed in male attire dancing on a public stage, but chivalry is disgusted beyond measure at the spectacle of a modest lady attending the sick as a physician in a hospital. Chivalry has not lightened any single tax, succession duty, or other burden in favour of women. There is nothing for which a woman pays less, and gets the same thing as But there are a great many things for which women pay as much (or, from their ignorance, more) than a man, and obtain less in the way of accompanying rights and privileges, without chivalry being in the remotest degree concerned with the matter. All this, to our thinking, is rather unchivalrous chivalry. But, then, there is to balance it that masculine "politeness" of which we always hear so much. A woman has, indeed, generally to pick her steps with some difficulty through the mire of life, but then she is sure to be offered an arm to go down a broad carpeted staircase to dinDo we not always hear, whenever there

a man.

ner.

The truth seems to be, that though the outward forms of chivalrous courtesy are not lost, the self-sacrificing part of it, which constitutes its true beauty and value, is in some danger of being forgotten amid our modern press of business and general struggle for existence. In the leisure of the drawing-room every one is courteous; in the hurry of quitting a steamboat not one in a dozen is moderately goodmannered. The young, the well-dressed, and (of course, as nature will have it) the beautiful, are treated with a care often quite superfluous; the aged, the feeble, and the solitary are rudely pushed aside. When a train draws up at a terminus, and there is ample time for descent, many a well-bred man will offer his hand to the lady passengers to aid them to alight. When a train is going to start, and an "unprotected" seeks to take her ticket and climb into her carriage, it too often happens that one man will push before her to the ticket-window, and a second give her a poke with his umbrella; while a third, with agility quite remarkable, jumps before her into the carriage and takes the corner seat. The true spirit of chivalry was never better exemplified, though somewhat awkwardly expressed, than by a poor dull school-boy home for the holidays, amid a party where there were many pretty young girls, and one deaf, decrepid old lady. The other boys in company bore off the girls to dinner, each with many juvenile compliments. "And I," said the dull lad, offering his arm to the astonished old lady-"I'll take you, Miss D., because you are little, and because you are old!"