work is a labour of love. The first stanza we quote contains a grand and elaborate metaphor, and one which in most years is true in our northern climate :

Rude Winter, violating neutral plain

Of March, through April's territory sallied,
Scoured with his snowy plumes May's smooth domain,
Then, down encamping, made his daring valid.
Nor till June, mustering all her gallant train

Of glittering spears, Spring's flying legions rallied,

Did the usurper from the realms of sleet

Fold his white tents and shriek a wild retreat.

Then, all at once, the land laughed into bloom,
Feeling its alien fetters were undone ;
Rushed into frolic ecstasies; the plume
The courtly lilac tosses i' the sun,
Laburnum tassels dripping faint perfume,

White thorn, pink blossoms, showed, not one by one,
But all in rival pomp and joint array,

Blent with green leaves as long delayed as they.

A subtle glory crept from mead to mead,

Till they were burnished saffron to behold,

And from their wintry byres and dark sheds freed,
The musing kine lay couched on cloth of gold.
Abetted by the Spring, the humblest weed

Wore its own coronal, and gaily bold

Waved jewelled sceptre. Stirred by some strange power
The very walls seemed breaking into flower.

And all throughout the air there reigned the sense

Of waking dream with luscious thoughts o'erladen,

Of joy too conscious made and too intense

By the swift advent of excessive Aiden :

Bewilderment of beauty's affluence,

Such as delights, though dangerous, man and maiden.
And then it was, by Heaven's despotic grace,

Godfrid first gazed on Olive's form and face.

Olive has been brought up among gentle influences, and the sketch of this maiden, still in the Eden of her home, is beautifully drawn in verse. Translated into prose it describes a warm-hearted, graceful girl, whose amiability is recognized by every one, even by dumb animals. She knows evil and good, as it is in the outer world, only through the medium of her reading. She has bent over the page, and thought "how sweet for others it must be to love," but her own heart is still untouched. We hope the poet whose recital of the old,

old story made her tremble with secret sympathy was Tennyson, or some such lofty songster; but we suppose her partiality for "the rainbow tale which tearful fancy weaves means that she was given to reading three-volume novels down from Mudie's. The character is natural enough. There are plenty of Olives in the world, but let us trust that their fate is happier, that they have a stronger will and hearts better schooled than hers. Unfortunately for this poor Olive, when the hour of trial comes, the wisdom of the three-volume novels cannot help her; more likely it robs her of her strength at the very time when she needs it most.

Godfrid and Olive have only been two days together, when they are attracted to each other. Without word or sign each has enthralled the other. It is all the work of Fate, reasons the poet. We are swayed by the influence of Nature, and reply to every change of the seasons. It was the luxuriant bloom and beauty of all things round them that wrought upon these susceptible hearts. Had Godfrid come in winter, neither of them would have been stirred. He would have gone away as an ordinary visitor; but now in their last moment alone he parts from Olive with an embrace. He travels across the country at railway speed, and only then calls reason into council and considers his position. He is poor. He must not ask for Olive's hand, and he smothers his remorse in leaving her by bringing himself to believe that there could be no real affection for such as he on Olive's side. Her parents, after Godfrid is gone, suspect that he may have made some impression upon her, and to put an end to it, win her reluctant consent to an engagement with Sir Gilbert, a rich man, but of somewhat narrow mind. He prefers a day's sport to a whole year of stagnant southern weather," and all his ideas centre round shooting, fishing, and the excellence of the British State, while he seems incapable of enjoying anything higher. Godfrid is told of the engagement, and congratulates Olive by letter, his joy on this occasion showing clearly what a burden the news had lifted from his mind. Soon after he meets the young lady and her mother coming out of a shop in London,-even such things are capable of being moulded into verse. The mother, having no longer ground for fears, invites him to renew his visit. In a moment of haste he complies, and says yes, he will go on Friday. And accordingly he goes. Fate seems here to be at work again. Godfrid might not have gone if he had taken time to think; but the meeting was sudden, the invitation was unexpected, and its frankness won a ready and unguarded consent. We wonder was there any purpose in choosing Friday? We

hope it was a chance choice, for fatalism in poetry is certainly a step higher than superstition.

There is here, at first sight, a departure from the probabilities. The evening after his arrival Godfrid goes out at sunset with Olive. But we have two things to consider, which tone down the improbability, and in fact remove it, except in so far as it is unlikely that they would have had such an opportunity, or could avail themselves of it without remark. In the first place, Olive has had reason to believe that Godfrid's affection, if there was any, has died out; and, on the other hand, he thinks that she regards him only at the safe cold distance of ordinary friendship. The second fact which softens the improbability is this-that, if human nature possesses anything bordering on the infinite, it is its capacity of trusting itself. Olive sits down by a river-side. He sees tears upon her face. She has unconsciously revealed her secret. Just beyond her the waters are rushing down in a cataract, perhaps to her an emblem of her inevitable and dreaded future. Godfrid has been strong hitherto. "Artist!" the poet exclaims,

"amend thy craft. With shield nor spears Mould me thy Venus Victrix, but-in tears!"

Now all his strength is gone like a shadow. He is likened to one, who, having overstepped the edge of a precipice, finds that with every struggle his foothold is only slipping more and more. She resists but a moment, reminding him of her pledge, her sacred pledge; and then her strength too is gone. The smouldering fire within both bursts out with a despairing ardour. They manifest an affection, which is bitter because hopeless, and in Olive's case disloyal; and for her at least it brings its own retribution-a marriage dower of secret repining misery that can only end with life itself. For the Catholic mind, there are deep meanings in this short passionate episode; for others (and of course, as Mr. Austin's readers, they will immeasurably outnumber our co-religionists), there are simply deep feelings, and these perhaps not of the wisest. We shall consider it under the two aspects, and contrast them. First, the Godfrids and the Olives of the world will look with unmingled pity upon the actors here. Godfrid they will regard as a young and ardent man, in whom they admire strong affections and a sublime appreciation of Nature's language, and of all things of beauty that touch the heart. If he made mistakes, they were scarcely culpable, he was so much the victim of circumstances. From the beginning they were against him, and ensnared him.. There was the subtle influence of summer and reviving nature to make him unconsciously susceptible to

Olive's charms, until he had gone almost too far to stand still. Then he would not have rashly returned to her presence had not the invitation taken him by surprise; when he ventured out with her, how could he have known the state of her mind? and then any man of flesh and blood would have acted under the circumstances as he did. Then what a fine sense of duty he had. In the first place, it was duty that made him run counter to his affections and resign all thought of winning her. Now they obey stern duty and return to the house, and she goes with a steadfast will to the fate before her, and gives her hand to Sir Gilbert, and becomes his faithful wife. It is a sad story-a sad world. There is many a human tragedy enacted around us.

We see with other eyes than these, thanks to the Faith that is in us and in so many thousands of young hot hearts to-day. To us this first Act is a mere portrayal of human weakness. It is an apology for it, yea, an exaltation of it, showing it in its most touching and most fascinating aspect. We can sympathize with human frailty struggling yet aspiring, hoping for higher, better things, but as yet only striving to rise; but with this ⚫ weakness we cannot sympathize, because it is the weakness of guilt. The poet has made a mistake in holding it up clothed in beauty and pathos to excite the pity of his readers-perhaps of those who would be quick in blind sympathy, and frail themselves in the day of trial. Godfrid does not know his own heart; he has but little control over his actions, not even when Olive's happiness depends on his holding himself resolutely aloof from that centre of his weakness. As for Olive, she seems made up of weakness. She gives the pledge that binds her life against her will, and then has not the courage to keep it. She will give away at the altar a heart now dead to conjugal love. That night will be as a thorn in her bosom, which her husband's embrace will only drive deeper; and later on the end will come, with the be trayal of her secret two years after,-bitterness, death. This is what Godfrid has done that night. It leaves him no sense of guilt, but little remorse; only regret for having lost her. And so they part. With these thoughts there stands out before us the vast difference between the world's opinion of these things and that high standard of unswerving virtue which the Church holds up to her children. Where religion is present, not as a thing assumed or as an occasional habit of thought, but as the very breath of life, no shadow can creep over the soul but it reveals itself, no force of circumstances can lead into inevitable evil. For the weakest there is ever abundance of that grace which is always sufficient for us; for VOL. XXVII.-NO. LIII. [New Series.]

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the frail and imperilled there is heavenly guidance, tenderly dispensed through those who are human even as ourselves; for all, there is the great truth, which has made among the multitude countless heroes and heroines numbered only by God. It is the maxim for which the Spartans fell and were glorified by the world, and which in a far higher sense must be the motto of our battle-days-Better to die than yield.

Godfrid has gone, and Olive is married towards the close of the year. The bridal day dawns "through low dun clouds," and the bride, in her resigned despair, makes a poor mockery of mirth :

They said she looked like a white shut-up rose

That chance hath burgeoned in a time forlorn,

When she stood veiled, and that she walked the nave

As straight and cold as coffin goes to grave.

The next stanza, ending Act I., full of a sense of melancholy and impending doom, seems to make Nature herself take the place of the chorus of the tragedy, and at the close dies down from wild grandeur into a dirge-like wail:

Then autumn fired the woods, and crimson glowed,
Fringed bole and feathered bough, and topmost spray,
Which, as fell in the shrivelled foliage, showed
Roofless and bare, that late shut out the day:

While hurrying Winter's drifting storm-showers flowed
From hissing heavens, and slowly died away

The colour from drenched Nature's face. And then?
Black trunks, and dirgeful winds, and dripping fen.

The next Act, both as regards its versification and its story, is incomparably the best of the four. The first publication of this part, under the name of Madonna's Child, ended with stanza clxxxiv., "Ah! Life is sad, and scarcely worth the pain!" and so far it is complete in itself. The two characters, which confront each other in this hard struggle between Love and Religion, are drawn with power and truth. It may be said to be Catholic in sentiment, and a reader might go through much of it without discovering that the author's sympathies are with Godfrid, who, as far as belief (or unbelief) goes, may perhaps be taken as a type of his own mind. We are the more strengthened in this opinion by the fact that the Catholic allusions, the descriptions of ritual, and the general spirit in which these things are introduced, lead us to believe that the mind which evolved them so truly must have learned them by experience, as Godfrid had imbibed the spirit of the Faith with the air of his childhood. We have to thank him for