his books and read through I know not how many thousand pages of horrible Latin and Greek stuff, with the vague hope that, while fumbling amidst all this rubbish, he might by good fortune come upon some happy inspiration, or some approximation of the idea for which both were now so sedulously seeking. Alas! the books availed him not. The oracles were dumb, and would not be propitiated. The longer he read, the duller grew his brain, and the more hopeless became his quest; until at length, in sheer desperation, he commanded Franz never again to revert to the subject in his hearing, and thenceforth discharged it from his mind. Franz, meanwhile, acted more wisely, but with no better success. He cudgelled his brain night and day, drew design after design in an aimless, unintelligent way, and even fell to dreaming over the matter at night. But all in vain. Each fresh idea was found, upon examination, to embody nothing of value, and after months of patient toiling in the generation of successive delusions, each as worthless as its predecessor, Franz was nearly ready to exclaim that he had undertaken a fool's task which could by no possibility result otherwise than in shamefaced failure. Impressed with such an idea he ceased to give the subject other than desultory thoughts, and applied himself once more to the routine of ordinary business. There are fearful stories told of men who have been buried in trances, and to such graves their friends, warned by some horrible inspiration, have returned again and again, with bated breaths and finger on lip, to see if the dead have moved in their coffins. Franz had buried his idea, to be sure, yet had a vague presentiment, compounded half of hope, half of desire, that its inhumation had been premature. | And so he returned to it again and again, and as frequently turned his back upon it, but never without an uneasy sense that some little vitality was still remaining. One evening he grew so nervous from mentally rehearsing his ill fortunes that, with a hope of diverting his mind, he went up into the book-room, where old Karl was, as usual, buried to the cars in one of his ponderous volumes.

"Well, master," said Franz, "your books don't help one much when he is in search of practical ideas, do they?"

"If you mean by that such fool's-errand ideas as those of your patron with the thousand pieces of gold-they don't? The best book to look for such things in is this," retorted the master, rather sharply; for he always grew cross-grained and red in the face when he thought of the time that he had wasted in the

matter. And so saying, he tossed a little book across to Franz. "That's a volume of pious legends and monkish miracles," he said, grimly. "If a miracle's what you want, you'll find plenty of them there." And he dropped his face so suddenly that it almost seemed as if he had split open the great volume on his knees with his nose, and buried his head to the helve in it.

"That's all that I'll get out of you to-night," grumbled Franz, as he turned over the pages of the little miracle-book, in a listless, discontented way. He thought that he might as well be doing that as moping down-stairs in the shop, and thinking over his defeats. At length here a word and there a word attracted his attention, until, without knowing it, he had quite lost himself in

THE LEGEND OF ABBOT ERRO.

. . . Old Abbot Erro, of Armentaría, sat with his face bowed above the Sacred Book. It was far into the night. Again and again he had turned the hour-glass, again and again had addressed himself to his studies. He had sat from the time when the sun sank like a blazing world behind the purple hills; and now the thin, tremulous moon hung like a sickle among the ungarnered fields, wherein the stars lay sown like burning seeds. Constellation after constellation had swung up upon Polaris, the glittering pivot of the heavens, and already had Ursa Major swam half his circuit in the circle of perpetual apparition. Still, Abbot Erro bent painfully above the pages of the Sacred Book, with bitten lip, his deep, solemn eyes fixed upon the mysterious lines which had caused him so much doubting solicitude:

"A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night."

The divine soul within the good man accepted the hidden truth, while his mind, trained in the sophistries and casuistries of the schools, questioned, if it did not deny. He could not understand how, even to Omnipotence, the slow, orderly advance of ten centuries, of three and thirty generations of human life, could be merged into moments. Finite reason rebelled against the infinite thought; and, sick at soul, the good abbot sighed, and, closing the volume, fastened its brazen clasps. But the doubt haunted him. He could not sleep, he could not rest.

When the sun arose Abbot Erro, still pondering upon the mystic words, passed out from the gardens of the monastery. The fresh

mured, "I thank Thee for the blessed revelation. A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night."

The sunshine flooded the crowns of the mighty trees, and dripped like yellow rain upon the woodland paths. The brooks rang their flitting bells in hidden pools. The soft winds passed through the leaves like the whispers of invisible beings.. But Abbot Erro saw not, heard not. His soul still wrestled with the angel as did Jacob of old, and would not let him go without the blessing.

Presently came the song of a bird from the depth of the wood. Erro listened. It came soft and low, like the gurgle of a liquid flute. What the flower is to the plant, that is song to the bird; and such a song was this that Erro arose and followed the beckoning sound. Fresh and clear came the wondrous notes; but no bird did the good monk see, for the fluttering leaves hid it from his longing eyes. It fled before him, and he followed. The burden of his soul was forgotten. He did not even hear the bell of the monastery tolling to prayers. But he followed the gurgling notes as one might follow the song of the brook beside which he walks -on through the woodland paths, on through the tangled undergrowth and the evergreen thicket, until the elusive song grew faint in the green distance of leaves, and lost itself in the drone of the early bees. Sorrowfully Erro retraced his steps. He felt that something sweet had eluded him for ever. At the gate of the monastery the porter refused him entrance.

"Am I not the abbot?" he asked, mildly. "And yet my brethren refuse me that which they grant to the stranger and the wayfarer." "The abbot is within at matins." "Within! Am I not the Abbot Erro? and is not this my charge?"

"Farther down by the wood thou shalt find the ruins of old Erro's monastery; there they have lain for more than a hundred years, and it must be near two centuries ago that Erro himself wandered into the woods and was heard of no more.

Abbot Erro gazed into the faces that surrounded him. They were strange and full of pity. His eyes wandered to the towers of the monastery at whose gates he stood; the tooth of time had not yet gnawed upon them. Then the old man smote his breast and wept aloud. Two centuries had been measured out to him in the song of a bird. He bowed his gray head

"Master," cried Franz, "to-morrow I will follow the birds."

True to his determination, Franz was ready with the sun. In his hand was his staff, and his bread-wallet was at his belt. He passed along the village street, singing in his old, happy way. No one heard him; he was too early even for the housewives. How sweet is the early morning. The eyes of the world are pleasant to look into before they are quite awake.

The village was soon behind him. He was out on the cool, brown road, whose grassy borders still glittered with the persistent drops of a midnight shower. The trees shook their tresses at him in the morning breeze.

"Where are ye, oh birds?" cried Franz. "Come and sing me your songs, and tell me how I may fashion them in gold."

He threw himself down by the brook that came sliding and gurgling through the long grass of the fertile meadow, and bathed his forehead in its coolness. "Sing me your song, oh brook!" he cried. But the laughing waters only blew their bubbles in his face, and danced away, clicking their liquid castanets. The little silver-sided fishes came up, and pouted at him with their great solemn mouths, and seemed to be mumbling to themselves their discontent. Franz crumbled a bit of bread for them, then rose to his feet and grasped his staff. "Give me your songs, O insects in the summer grass, and in the nodding sedges!" he cried. Only a gold-belted bee buzzed at his ear, then dropped, and hid itself in the horn of a meadow flower. "Pshaw! ye still-mouthed things," said Franz, "what care ye for the sorrows of a wandering goldsmith, who has come to steal your music?"

The

Just then he caught sight of a little brown bird that was enjoying a morning swing among the long sedges, and drying its feathers in the early sun. "Whichever way you go, little fellow, I shall follow," muttered Franz, "be it up the blue hills, or on through the notch, and into the smoky valleys beyond.' bird rose from the spray, fluttered for a moment in the air, as a humming-bird does before a flower, then slid and dropped, slid and dropped, as little brown birds are wont to do, whistling with every slide, as if the vocal and muscular efforts were the results of the same impulse. On through the fresh green grass went Franz,

here pausing to pluck a meadow flower for his hat, there to contemplate the inversion of blue sky and sedges in some still pool, wherein the rushes and the lush grasses buried their roots. Then over the fences and into the broad, sepia road, and beneath the overhanging trees; along the deep-flowing brook, which ran by the old mill, with moss-crusted leaves, and rotten, silent wheel; apast the broad, glassy, shadowhaunted pond, wherein the great creamy waterlilies rode at green anchor; apast the low farm-houses, whose wet Vandyck-brown shingles are a feast of colour to the eye, and from whose chimneys the cheery breakfast smoke was just beginning to rise-the air full of birds and sunshine, the brooks of sound and motion, the grasses swarming with insect life, and over the flower-knots the butterflies flapping their drowsy wings, or sailing slowly the air, with black, feathery wings set like the lateens which stud the purple seas of Zante.

Franz felt his soul refreshed and elated; the warm, pure air, washed and purified by the showers of the nights, was wine to his senses. He swung his staff, and shouted to the great sun, whose glory was in the heavens and upon the beautiful earth. At such a time all the sensations of being are pleasures; physical life exists in the midst of its most perfect conditions; the muscles, the nerves, the tissues, the blood, rejoice together, and through them the soul enjoys and exults.

Meanwhile the little brown bird, now fluttering through the matted thicket, now diving into the cool recesses of the nodding trees, now in the sheer caprice of joyous life darting into the blue air and chirping to the sun, was nearing the great hills. It was hard to tell whether man or bird was the happier.

Franz did not regard the road which led circuitously up to the kilns of the charcoalburners. He planted his staff firmly in the tough, moist sod, and commenced mounting right on the precipitous side among the cedars, which stretched their low, rigid branches as if to intercept him. I need not here recite the history of his upward scramble; how he startled the birds from their nests in the evergreens, or roused the moping hawk which, poised high in the sunshine upon the stark dead limb of some decaying tree, watched the misty landscape with glittering eyes; how he came upon the hot, gray rocks whereon the prickly cactus grows, and where the emerald stag-beetles were sunning themselves. It was quite noon before he reached the bald summit of the highest hill, for he had loitered rather than walked, and now, after a lunch upon the contents of

| his wallet a lunch which the birds shared with him-he stretched himself in the thick brown shade of a hemlock clump and slept. Of what should he have dreamed? Men have dreamed music in their sleep. Rousseau dreamed that he stood by the gates of Paradise and heard the angelic voices singing that tune which the church psalmodies have individualized by the dreamer's name. I could not even guess what Franz dreamed. It is hard te prophesy what will fly into that gossamer web which the spider Sleep spins across the brain.

Franz was awakened by the noisy clamour of a flight of crows who were out birds-egging. There they were, floating in the blue heavens like so many black crosses. Then they sank slowly behind the trees. Franz turned over and lay with his elbows buried in the dry crinkly mosses and his chin in his hands. It was a splendid position in which to receive an inspiration, and inspiration, you will remember, was what he was in search of. None came from the crows, however, though a painter might find inspiration in a flight of crows against a saffron sky quite as well as in a group of red-brown cows standing hoof-deep in the moist grasses which rim the meadow pools. Then Franz turned to the robins that were hopping and strutting in their red lapels, like so many martinets. "Ah! if you would only be good enough to give me a lift with an idea," hethought. But they wouldn't. Franz yawned, and drummed a tattoo with his toes. Presently an antiphonal chirping and singing over the slope of the hill, and towards the charcoalburners' huts, attracted his attention. "Here comes my inspiration," yawned Franz. He rose to his knees and peered over the intervening bushes.

Midnight found him bending over his work in Master Karl's shop!

Like the good old Abbot Erro, Franz had lost nothing by following the birds. It soon became noised throughout the village that Franz, the goldsmith's apprentice, had caught an inspiration up in the summits of the blue hills, and was fixing it in gold. All that the good villagers knew about the hills and the woods was, that they were there; that the former were hard to climb, that the latter were worth so much the cord for cutting and hauling. They wondered what sort of an idea it was, and, indeed, tried hard to find out. But Franz had moved his bench up-stairs into the room which had its windows buried in the leaves of the fragrant trees. There he could work unseen and unmolested. But you could

The months rolled on. Autumn came, and the dolphin woods showed their dying colours to the receding sun. Winter came, and wrestled like an athlete with the leafless trees and laid the meadows in snow. Spring came, and the sun returned, and in its trail rolled the great wave of verdure, the coming in of the full, strong tide of the life of the flowers and the green things. Again the waste places sang; again the brooks went gliding and gurgling through the grass of the meadows. Franz had finished his labours, and when the appointed day arrived he took his staff in hand, and with his wondrous work beneath his arm started upon his journey. His patron met him at the door and embraced him.

"If the work prove not a success," he said, gravely, "you may expect nothing better tonight than a bed in the stable."

"Trust the birds for that," laughed Franz. In the evening he was ushered into the long drawing-room where were many guests assembled. To his astonishment he beheld his wondrous Lorelay candelabrum set up in the centre of the room, and shedding a mellow light from its blazing branches. Before it, and well in its rays, he set the rose-wood case which contained his golden message from the woods. "Gentlemen," said the patron, advancing, "you have all admired the elegant genius which has found expression in the Lorelay candelabrum."

"Divine," cried M. Recru, from the Conservatory of Paris.

cranks and springs for soul."

"One moment, friends," pleaded the patron, with an encouraging smile at Franz. "Let the workman's work speak for itself.” Franz threw open the case. The guests gathered round. The patron's brow fell. His friends looked at the work, then at each other.

Wrought with wondrous delicacy, there stood in Etruscan gold a five-railed country-fence; its posts rooted in the high grass. Near it there were thick bushes, their foliage enamelled, their blossoms fretted, and set here and there with rain-drops of crystal. Upon the fence, and just by the first post, a single delicate vine twined itself fantastically among the bars into the sign of the treble clef.

The patron shook his head. "It is a fine bit of workmanship," he said, slowly, and with evident disappointment. "Your country fence, with its five rails, corresponds, of course, to the bars and spaces of written music, and the curling vine indicates the treble clef. I suppose that a vivid imagination might infer the song." But there was in his tone which seemed to add, "As I have to supply the vivid imagination, however, I don't propose to pay you any thousand pieces of gold for the affair."

The guests shook their heads. The thing was pretty, in its way; but what of that? Had they been called together for the purpose of viewing a mere bit of delicate goldsmith-craft? Had the critical Recru, the profound Borrascoso, who had composed a mass in G, and the bird-throated Vogelkehle, who could reach the high C without shutting his eyes, been summoned for this? Each felt like a star that had obeyed an attraction and rushed toward the new centre, expecting it to be a sun, and

"My friends," continued the patron, "you see that the Lorelay sings. But who can translate to me the song which lies poised behind her golden lips? No one? Then I have called upon the artist whose handiwork she is, to help me in my dilemma. He has promised me a song in gold."

"Impossible!" cried the critics.

they sell in the shops for tenpence.

The wise Vogelkehle was the only one whose face did not fall. He held his chin and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then smiled and cleared his throat. Franz dropped a hidden spring, when lo! from the golden bushes, and from the high grass, flew the birds. Some perched upon the rails; others fluttered, with open bills, between them or above them. A

throng. Their souls were enlightened. Such are nature's notations of the silent, the unsung music of the sunny fields—the music which can be felt, but is not heard. But the wise Vogelkehle saw that the birds in this wondrous mechanism, each in its place, represented a sound, and so, reading them as notes, until the music trippled and rippled from his lips

like the limpid waters of a mountain stream. The little golden birds leaped and fluttered into new positions at the regular beat of time, and when at length their rhythmical sport was over, they flew back into the yellow bushes and the long burnished grass.

He

Tears stood in Vogelkehle's eyes. caught the hand of the young gold-worker, and pressed it with fervour. "It is an inspiration," he cried, "for here is a song that none but the birds could have made." And so indeed it was, for I swear to you that I have heard it in the antiphonal songs of the thrushes throughout the long summer afternoons when I have lain beneath the hemlocks, even as Franz lay, waiting for some of nature's pleasant inspirations. Others, too, have heard it, and love it; for well I know that this self-same song which Franz wrought in yellow gold, after the birds had taught it to him up in the blue hills, and which Vogelkehle sang so sweetly that night, is none other than the song which Reichard has set to the words, "Du bist mir nah' und doch so fern" ("Thou art so near, and yet so far from me").

And this is what Franz found in following the birds.

W. S. NEWELL.

THE SOLDIER'S FUNERAL.

It is the funeral march. I did not think
That there had been such magic in sweet sounds!
Hark! from the blackened cymbal that dead tone-
It awes the very rabble multitude.

They follow silently, their earnest brows
Lifted in solemn thought. 'Tis not the pomp
And pageantry of death that with such force
Arrests the sense, the mute and mourning train,
The white plume nodding o'er the sable hearse,
Had passed unheeded, or perchance awoke
A serious smile upon the poor man's cheek
At Pride's last triumph. Now these measured
sounds,

This universal language, to the heart
Speak instant, and on all these various minds
Compel one feeling.

But such better thoughts
Will pass away, how soon! and these who here
Are following their dead comrade to the grave,
Ere the night fall, will in their revelry
Quench all remembrance. From the ties of life
Unnaturally rent, a man who knew
No resting-place, nor no delights at home,
Belike who never saw his children's face,
Whose children knew no father, he is gone,
Dropp'd from existence, like the wither'd leaf
That from the summer tree is swept away,

Its loss unseen. She hears not of his death
Who bore him, and already for her son
Her tears of bitterness are shed; when first
He had put on the livery of blood,
She wept him dead to her.

We are indeed
Clay in the potter's hand! one favour'd mind,
Scarce lower than the angels, shall explore
The ways
of Nature, whilst his fellow-man,
Framed with like miracle the work of God,
Must as the unreasonable beast drag on
A life of labour, like this soldier here,
His wondrous faculties bestow'd in vain,
Be moulded to his fate till he becomes
A mere machine of murder.

And feast with Dives. These are they, O Lord,
Who in thy plain and simple Gospel see
All mysteries, but who find no peace enjoin'd,
No brotherhood, no wrath denounced on them
Who shed their brethren's blood,-blind at noon,
day

As owls, lynx-eyed in darkness!
O my God!

I thank thee that I am not such as these;
I thank thee for the eye that sees, the heart
That feels, the voice that in these evil days,
Amid these evil tongues, exalts itself
And cries aloud against iniquity.

SOUTHEY.

O THOU OF LITTLE FAITH!

Sad-hearted, be at peace: the snowdrop lies
Buried in sepulchre of ghastly snow;
But spring is floating up the southern skies,
And darkling the pale snowdrop waits below.

Let me persuade: in dull December's day

We scarce believe there is a month of June; But up the stairs of April and of May The hot sun climbeth to the summer's noon. Yet hear me: I love God, and half I rest. O better! God loves thee, so all rest thou. He is our summer, our dim-visioned Best;And in his heart thy prayer is resting now.

GEORGE MACDONALD.