COMPENSATIONS.

The darkening streets about me lie, The shame, the fret, the squalid jars: But swallows' wings go flashing by And in the puddles there are stars.

FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.

HYMN TO DEATH.

And the white souls that need not chain or bar.

Untiring, through its endless corridor Thou rangest, and the clanking of thy key

Is music to the captives who would soar, And only wait for thee

To draw the bolt, and whisper "Liberty!"

main

Knows not the splendor of the awaken

ing sun.

dark,

Patiently stretching forth thy strong right hand

No lingering glory tells when day is done;

But everywhere is quietness and peace:

A land of shadows as of wings outspread,

Where strife, and hot desire, and anguish cease,

And, regnant in their stead, Broods the unbroken silence of the dead.

Shepherd that leanest pensive on thy crook

In the low valley of the gathered mist, Watching with fixed unfathomable look Yon smiling pastures which the sun hath kissed,

Lo! hither come the stragglers from the flocks

Weary stumbling down the rugged steep, Torn by the briers, bruised by the cruel rocks.

Ah, shepherd, lead thy sheep Gently unto the bourne of rest and sleep.

Healer of heart-ache, when beneath the strain

Of toil and struggle the tired pulse beats low,

Or the racked body writhes in throes of pain,

And weeping, round the house the

mourners go,

Calmly thou enterest through the fast closed door,

Smiling on those poor souls who cower and shrink,

Then standing by the sufferer, bendest o'er,

And givest him to drink

A draught fresh-drawn from blessed Lethe's brink.

Warder of this great dungeon-palace built By Him whose footstool is the farthest star,

Here lie thy prisoners-spirits stained with guilt,

bark,

Thou mayest not stay; a wind blows from the land,

be worse than laughing in church, and almost as bad as making a joke in really respectable society. The responsibilities of intellect are now so widely felt that they weigh even where there is no ground for them. Imagination, if it exists, must be kept within bounds. Humor, or what passes for it, must be sparingly indulged. The foundations of belief, the future of the race, the freedom of the will, the unity of history, the limits of political economy, are among the subjects which haunt the mind without paralyzing the pen of the latter-day novelist. The "smooth tale, generally of love," has been developed into a representation of the higher life with episodes on ultimate things. I dare say that it is all quite right, and that to read for amusement is a blunder as well as a sin. If people want comedy, they can go to the play. If they want farce, they can turn to The politics. serious novel is for graver moods. But those who love, like Horace, the golden mean may look back with fondness to the beginning of her

If a

the commencement of the expiring century. Nobody could write so now. The eighty years which have elapsed since Jane Austen was laid to rest in Winchester Cathedral have brought no intellectual or moral revolution more complete than the apotheosis of the novel. Sir Walter Scott seriously, and with good reason, believed that if he had put his name to "Waverley" and "Guy Mannering" he would have injured his reputation as a poet, and even his character as a gentleman. novel is published anonymously nowadays, it is in order that the public may be subsequently informed whose identity it is which has been artfully, and but for a moment, concealed. The novel threatens to supersede the pulpit, as the motor-car will supersede the omnibus. We have a new class of novelists who take themselves very seriously, and well they may. Their works are seldom intended to raise a smile. They are designed less for amusement than for instruction, so that to read them in a spirit of levity would

ceased to be pariahs and had not become prigs.

Perhaps few of us realize the extent to which the novel itself is a growth of the present reign. If we put aside the great and conspicuous instances of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, of Walter Scott, there is scarcely an EnFanny Burney, Jane Austen, and glish novelist now read who died before her Majesty's accession to the throne.

I am told that superfine people, when they wish to disparage art, or literature, or furniture, or individuals, describe the objects of their contempt as "Early Victorian." In other words, they consign them to the same category as Dickens, Thackeray, and Charlotte Brontë. The immense and almost unparalleled popularity of Dickens has, as was inevitable, suffered some diminution. The social abuses which he satirized are for the most part extinct. The social habits which he chronicled have largely disappeared. The taste for "wallowing naked in the pathetic" is not what it was. A generation has arisen which can be charitable without

waiting for Christmas, and cheerful without drinking to excess. But these are small points, and it is impossible to imagine a time when Dickens will not be regarded as one of the great masters of English fiction. The late Master of Balliol, a keen and fastidious critic, a refined and delicate scholar, regarded Dickens as beyond comparison the first writer of his time. When the queen came to the throne, "Pickwick" was appearing in monthly parts. The first number was issued in April, 1836, the last in November, 1837. It is a curious coincidence that in June, 1837, when the crown actually passed from William the Fourth to Victoria, the death of the author's sister-in-law suspended the publication. "Pickwick" had burst upon the world as an entire novelty. No other English novelist who was then writing survives now except Disraeli and Bulwer, as different from Dickens, to say nothing of their inferiority, as chalk from cheese.

The imitators of Dickens, so numerous and so tiresome, are apt, illogically enough, to make people forget that he was among the most original of all writers. It is the language of compliment and not of detraction to call him the Cockney's Shakespeare. In Shakespeare he was steeped. His favorite novelist was Smollett. But his art was all his own. He was the Hogarth of literature, painting with a broad brush, never ashamed of caricature, but always an artist, and not a dauber. There is little or no resemblance between Falstaff and Sam Weller. But they are the two comic figures which have most thoroughly seized upon the English mind. Touchstone and Mr. Micawber may be each a finer specimen of his creator's powers. They are not, however, quite so much to the taste of all readers. They require a little more fineness of palate. Sam Weller is, and seems likely to remain, the ideal Londoner. We cannot hear his pronunciation. We get his humor without its drawbacks. The defects are absent from his qualities. He has not even the appalling gluttony which distinguishes Mr. Pickwick and his friends. It seems

strange to realize that "Pickwick" and "Oliver Twist" were actually coming out at the same time. "Oliver Twist" began to run in January, 1837, and continued till March, 1839. "Oliver Twist," again, was overlapped by "Nicholas Nickleby," which lasted from April, 1838, to October, 1839. Three such books in little more than three years is a feat which no other British novelist has achieved, except Sir Walter Scott. They proved to the benighted "Early Victorians" that in the days of effete Whiggery and Bedchamber plots a genius of the highest order had appeared. Miss Martineau could never forgive Dickens for having in "Oliver Twist" confounded the new Poor-law with the old. That is not literary criticism. But it must be admitted that Dickens, though not intellectually a Socialist, was a very sentimental politician. He hated political economy, and he coupled with it the name of Sir Robert Peel. A gushing and impulsive benevolence, which in Dickens's case was thoroughly genuine, is often offended by the cold-blooded temper and cautious methods of parliamentary statesmanship. When Dickens began to write, public affairs were on rather a low level, and were conducted on rather a small scale. Dickens's early work was a more or less conscious revolt against fashionable lethargy and conventional shams. His novels, unlike Thackeray's, were in a sense a part of politics. They were meant to affect, and they did affect, the political temper of the nation. I sometimes wonder that the Independent Labor Party do not make more of Dickens. For Dickens, though he did not trouble himself much about abstract propositions, was possessed with the idea that both political parties were engaged in preying upon the public.

To Dickens as an historical novelist imperfect justice has been done. The "Tale of Two Cities" is said to be most admired by those who admire Dickens the least. A similar remark has been made of "Esmond." The "Tale of Two Cities" is founded upon Carlyle's "French Revolution." It has no humor,