cause he was himself an animal, a truism certainly, spite of the Oxonian, who asked the master of the schools if it wasn't rather derogatory to call a man an animal.

A candidate who had perhaps heard of Sabæan odours from the spicy shores of Araby the blest,' says, 'Spain is noted for its scent of fruits: when sailors are sailing along the shore they smell the delicious fruit twenty miles off.' Citrons and oranges, however, have no such range of perfume.

Many examples might be given of errors in the simpler arithmetical questions, including those in

notation and numeration.

I have taken these illustrations of examinations chiefly from those of an ordinary kind, as they are of widest general interest, and their subjects such as come within the average school range. If I should

succeed in pressing upon teachers the importance of attending carefully to those wavering steps and slow' which intellectually, as well as physically and morally, mark the progress of the child, my notes will do more than afford amusement for a vacant half-hour. I close them with the abstract of results forwarded to the candidate referred to in a previous page, one whose examination was very rudimentary.

In numeration and notation, of six sums one was correct. In addition, all wrong. Reading, good. Handwriting, very bad. Spelling from dictation, very bad. Report of circumstances of supposed accident or occurrence, very bad. Miscellaneous, indifferent. It is unnecessary to add how the space in the appended note, 'The Candidate has satisfied the Examiners,' was filled up.

so endeavour to form an estimate of Mr. Miller's poetic powers, present and potential.

The tale of Arazonian' is told by his Californian guest to an English squire, as they range across our countryman's fine estate.

The squire is a patient listener:

For his guest had gold, and he yet was clever,

And mild of manner; and, what was more, he,

In the morning's ramble, had praised the kine,

The clover's reach, and the meadows fine, And so made the squire his friend for ever.

The story tells how a young Californian, after having won the love of a fair American beauty, starts to seek a fortune for her in the Far West.

He goes to the gold-fields and is followed in his wanderings by a beautiful Indian girl, who loves him with all the passion of her passionate race; but the man is constant to his first love.

Now the gold weighed well, but was lighter of weight

Than we two had taken for days of late,
So I was fretted, and, brow a-frown,

I said, 'She is fairer, and I loved her first, And shall love her last, come the worst to worst.'

A tempest breaks upon them as

Higher and higher the hot words ran
Between them.

Come under the roof, come up from the river, As up from a grave-come now or come never!'

The tassel'd tops of the pines were as weeds, The red woods rock'd like lake-side reeds, And the world seem'd darken'd and drown'd for ever.

He sleeps and dreams:

And then I slept, and sleeping I dream'd Of great green serpents with tongues of fire,

And of death by drowning, and of after death

Of the day of judgment, wherein it seem'd That she, the heathen, was bidden higher, Higher than I, that I clung to her side, And clinging struggled, and struggling cried,

And crying, waken'd, all weak of my breath. And this is his waking:

Long leaves of the sun lay over the floor, And a chip-monk chirp'd in the open door, But above on his crag the eagle scream'd, Scream'd as he never had scream'd before. I rush'd to the river: the flood had gone Like a thief, with only his tracks upon The weeds and grasses and warm wet sand; And I ran after with reaching hand, And call'd as I reach'd and reach'd as I ran; And ran till I came to the cañon's van, Where the waters lay in a bent lagoon, Hook'd and crook'd like the horned moon.

Here in the surge where the waters met, And the warm wave lifted, and the winds did fret

The wave till it foam'd with rage on the Jand,

sand;

I lay in my hammock: the air was heavy And hot and threat'ning; the very heaven Was holding its breath; and bees in a bevy Hid under my thatch; and birds were driven

In clouds to the rocks in a hurried whirr
As I peer'd down by the path for her;
She stood like a bronze bent over the river,
The proud eyes fix'd, the passion unspoken,
When the heavens broke like a great dyke
broken:

Then ere I fairly had time to give her
A shout of warning, a rushing of wind
And the rolling of clouds with a deafening
din,

VOL. IV. NO. XXI. NEW SERIES.

Her rich hair trail'd with the trailing weeds, And her small brown hands lay prone or lifted

As the wave sang strophes in the broken reeds,

Or paused in pity, and in silence sifted
Sands of gold, as upon her grave.
And as sure as you see yon browsing kine,
And breathe the breath of your meadows
fine,

When I went to my waist in the warm

white wave

And stood all pale in the wave to my breast, And reach'd for her in her rest and unrest, Her hands were lifted and reach'd to mine.

He gathers his gold together, and exclaims, as he sets his face

BB

To the east and afar from the desolate place, 'She has braided her tresses, and through her tears

Look'd away to the west, for years, the

years

That I have wrought where the sun tans brown;

She has wak'd by night, she has watch'd by day,

She has wept and wonder'd at my delay, Alone and in tears, with her head held down,

Where the ships sail out and the seas swirl in,

Forgetting to knit and refusing to spin. She shall lift her head, she shall see her lover,

She shall hear his voice like a sea that rushes,

She shall hold his gold in her hands of snow, And down on her breast she shall hide her

And a mystical stare in her marvellous eyes?

He is troubled at heart at this vision, which has long haunted him, protesting that he has done all in his power

To save that passionate child of the sun.

He breaks the spell and approaches his old love. He cannot be deceived.

She is marvellous young and is won-
derful fair,'

I said again, and my heart grew bold,
And beat and beat a charge for my feet.
Time that defaces us, places, and replaces us,
And trenches the face as in furrows for
tears,

!;

Has traced here nothing in all these years. 'Tis the hair of gold that I vex'd of old, The marvellous flowing flower of hair, And the peaceful eyes in their sweet surprise,

That I have kissed till the head swam round,

And the delicate curve of the dimpled chin, And the pouting lips and the pearls within, Are the same, the same, but so young, so fair!'

My heart leapt out and back at a bound, As a child that starts, then stops, then lingers.

'How wonderful young!' I lifted my fingers

And fell to counting the round years over, That I had dwelt where the sun goes down. Four full hands, and a finger over! 'She does not know me, her truant lover,' I said to myself, for her brow was afrown As I stepped still nearer, with my head held down

All abashed and in blushes my brown face

brown,

That I well might pass myself for another.' So I lifted my voice and I spoke aloud: 'Annette, my darling! Annette Macleod!' She started, she stopp'd, she turn'd, amazed, She stood all wonder with her eyes wildwide,

Then turned in terror down the dusk wayside,

And cried as she fled, The man is crazed, And calls the maiden name of my mother!'

This situation, by the way, as far as the daughter's being mistaken for the mother goes, is to be found in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and also in Tennyson's idyl of The Brook.

Then follows a passionate outcry happiness, and the poem closes with against the hollowness of all human

these lines:

So I have said, and I say it over,
And can prove it over and over again,
That the four-footed beasts on the red-
crown'd clover,

The pied and horned beasts on the plain
That lie down, rise up, and repose again,
And do never take care or toil or spin,
Nor buy, nor build, nor gather in gold,
Though the days go out and the tides
come in,

Are better than we by a thousandfold ;
For what is it all, in the words of fire,
But a vexing of soul and a vain desire

This is the outline of the story of 'Arazonian,' the first in order, though probably not the first written, of the Songs of the Sierras.

Its weaknesses are only those of a young and inexperienced writer. The dramatic interest of the poem is occasionally marred by the insertion of an episode at the time when the excitement of the narrative is at its highest, as, for example, in the case of the fine but inartistically protracted storm scene in the desert of New Mexico; whilst a similar interruption in the continuity of the poem is observable in the second introduction, at great length, of the vision of the Indian girl when the half-dozen lines or so in which the apparition scene is before described would, with trifling alteration, have amply sufficed to produce the dramatic effect needed by the situation.

a

But we must hasten on to his most remarkable poem, 'With Walker in Nicaragua.'

He describes Walker thus:

He was a brick, and brave as a bear,
As brave as Nevada's grizzlies are,
A Texan tigress in her lair,

Or

any lion of anywhere;

Yet gentle as a panther is,

Mouthing her young in her first fierce kiss,
And true of soul as the north pole-star;
Tall, courtly, grand as any king,
Yet simple as a child at play,
In camp and court the same alway,
And never moved at any thing;
A dash of sadness in his air,
Born, may be, of his over care,
And, may be, born of a despair
In early love-I never knew;
I questioned not, as many do,
Of things as sacred as this is;
I only knew that he to me
Was all a father, friend, could be;
I sought to know no more than this
Of history of him or his.

And again he thus speaks of him as his friend:

Success had made him more than king, Defeat made him the vilest thing In name, contempt or hate can bring; So much the leaded dice of war Do make or mar of character.

Speak ill who will of him, he died
In all disgrace; say of the dead
His heart was black, his hands were red;
Say this much, and be satisfied;
Gloat over it all undenied ;

only say that he to me,
Whatever he to others was,
Was truer far than any one
That I have known beneath the sun,
Man, maid, or saint, or Sadducee,
As boy or man for any cause-
I simply say he was my friend
When strong of hand and fair of fame :
Dead and disgraced, I stand the same
To him, and so shall to the end.

At the end of the poem he relates how Walker died:

To die with hand and brow unbound He gave his gems and jewell'd sword; Thus at the last the warrior found Some freedom for his steel's reward. He walk'd out from the prison-wall Dress'd like a prince for a parade, And made no note of man or maid, But gazed out calmly over all; Then look'd afar, half paused, and then Above the mottled sea of men He kissed his thin hand to the sun; Then smiled so proudly none had known But he was stepping to a throne, Yet took no note of any one. A nude brown beggar Peon child, Encouraged as the captive smiled, Look'd up, half-scared, half-pitying; He stoop'd, he caught it from the sands, Put bright coins in its two brown hands, Then strode on like another king.

Two deep, a musket's length, they stood, A-front, in sandals, nude, and dun As death and darkness wove in one, Their thick lips thirsting for his blood. He took their black hands one by one, And, smiling with a patient grace, Forgave them all, and took his place. He bared his broad brow to the sun, Gave one long last look to the sky, The white-wing'd clouds that hurried by, The olive-hills in orange hue;

A last list to the cockatoo

That hung by beak from cocoa-bough
Hard by, and hung and sung as though
He never was to sing again,