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By Sir William Wilson Hunter, K.C.S.I., M.A., LL.D. Henry Frowde, Publisher. Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland. By Olive Schreiner. T. Fisher Unwin, Publisher. I. COVENTRY PATMORE. By Edmund Gosse, Contemporary Review, 795 Revue des Deux Mondes, 809 VI. SPENCER AND DARWIN. By Grant Allen, VII. A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF A HURRICANE IN MAURITIUS, VIII. THE TWO PRIESTS OF KONNOTO, IX. THE NATURAL ALLIANCES OF EUROPE, HELLAS, HAIL, POETRY. 794 LOVE COMFORTLESS, PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON. FOR SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE Co. Single copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents. From The Contemporary Review. COVENTRY PATMORE. A PORTRAIT. On December 1, 1896, a very few persons were gathered in the small Catholic church of Lymington to say farewell to one of the most extraordinary men our age has known. The mass was said, the prelate had censed and sprinkled the uplifted bier, the shuffling feet were heard of those who were to carry the dead away forever. But, while still kneeling there, watching the decent formal rites, one friend at least, in what was almost an illusion, seemed to see the oak sides of the coffin become transparent, and to perceive, once more, for the last time, that long spare figure now wrapped in the Franciscan habit, that his own nature. It was Peter Patmore's misfortune to be mixed up in affairs that were painful, if not necessarily dis. creditable; the Scott duel in 1821 and the Plumer Ward controversy later on, for instance, did his reputation harm. I was told by Robert Browning that when, about 1845, that kindly poet tried to interest Thackeray in the fortunes of Coventry, the author of "Vanity Fair” refused with such violence to help or even see the young man that Browning was forced to ask him for an explanation. Thackeray, then, growing calmer, proceeded to say that Peter Patmore's attitude in the Scott duel had produced in his own mind, as in that of many others, a violent prejudice against the very name. During the years when practical help would have been valuable arrogantly gentle head, half prophet to Coventry Patmore, at all events, his half vulture, which had never bent to an opponent nor failed to kindle to a friend. So strangely had this man come to seem the very incarnation of will, of personal impulse an absolute law to itself, so monstrous did it appear to ex pect the mere shell of Coventry Patmore to obey the whims and conventions of the world, that for a moment one marvelled by what miracle of dulness or of daring all these busy servitors could expect to carry him unwillingly with them. It was a momentary hallucination, and it sank in the mournful strain of the bleak cemetery, the cruel wind, the blank and empty day. I. Coventry Kearsey Dighton Patmore was born at Woodford, in Essex, on July 3, 1823. He was one of the three sons of Peter George Patmore and of his wife, who had been Miss Eliza Robertson. Peter Patmore was the friend of Hazlitt and Lamb, a man much absorbed in literature, and of some talent. He is principally remembered as that confidant of Hazlitt to whom the letters in "Liber Amoris" were addressed. He survived to his seventieth year, and died in 1856, the later part of his life having been clouded with want of success, caused, it is to be feared, by something unsympathetic in father had none to give him. It is, therefore, pleasant to record that of his father he invariably spoke, as far as my experience goes, with the highest respect and affection. But that Peter Patmore's literary connections made living by the pen any easier for his young son is a fiction which must be corrected. Hardly anything, I believe, has been recorded about the childhood and youth of the poet. He was not in the habit of referring frequently to the past. But, in 1891, when he was on a visit to me in London, he began to speak of his early life. I warned him that I should note down what he said, and he-replying, "I must be careful to tell no lies, then,"-continued. What immediately follows is founded on the notes I took on that occasion, and may be depended upon as substantially correct, as far as the memory of an old man, dealing with events of sixty years before, could be exact. That is to say, the precise sequence of facts may be confused, but, as to the sentiments and emotions described, those I believe to be beyond question as I state them. He said, then. that from the first he was distinguished from his brothers by his intellectual tastes, and that, in consequence, his father, who was resolutely bookish, showed him a marked preference, mak |