Emperor. This epigram reminds us of Béranger's exquisite song, wherein the poet tells how the Aï sparkled, and his mistress sang a lyric of Greek divinity, when, lo, a carrier-pigeon, tired by long travel, settled at their feet. No wonder it was weary, the faithful bird! It had flown straight from Athens with news that Greece was free, and the immortal poet sang : "Bois dans ma coupe, O messager fidèle ! 4 And there is one other whom we must mention— Theophila, who married the poet Canius Rufus. None of the writings of Canius are known to us; but as his statue was set up in Rome, he must have had some repute. He was a native of Cadiz, and his style was humorous. "What is my Canius about ?" asks Martial. Is he writing the history of the Claudii, or emulating the jests of Phædrus, or striding majestic in the cothurnus of Sophocles? Or is he loitering in the portico of Isis, or bathing in the thermæ of Agrippa, or enjoying Lucan's country house, or the suburban villa of Pollio? Or has he started for sunny Baia, where now the yacht flies along the Lucrine waves? is doing? Laughing. You wish to know what "Tell me, if you chance to know it, Froude upon Elizabeth. Does he mean to get the upper VOL. II. M . Is 't burlesque he's writing, à la This be sure- -whate'er he's after, Where the poet is, there's laughter." A right pleasant fellow this Canius, and he seems to have been rewarded for his healthy hilarity with a most charming bride. Martial wrote a delightful epigram on the portrait of this lady. "This is that Theophila, your betrothed, my Canius, whose mind is full of Attic learning. The Athenian garden of the great old man might well claim her; not less willingly would the Stoic sect take possession of her. If she approves your poems, they will be immortal. Sappho must have praised the verses of Theophila, who, more modest than the Lesbian, is her equal in genius." Here is a pretty portrait of a Roman girl of the period wherewith to end our sketch. What a pity the poems of Canius did not attain their promised immortality! His love-songs to this peerless Theophila, for whom Stoics and Epicureans contended, ought certainly to have been of the first force. Alas! the laughing poet and his lovely learned wife have been dust near eighteen centuries. WILLIAM BLAKE, SEER AND PAINTER. By acting, we strengthen the energy which enables us to act. The doctrine is as old, at least, as Aristotle. We also increase the pleasure we take in action, which at first is very slight. Action to be pleasurable, must, however, have special reference to the actor's idiosyncrasy. Mr. Bagehot, in The Fortnightly Review, with quiet dogmatism, made the following announcement: "Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man, more continuously and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.” It certainly does not. Still, allowing for his loose phraseology, I think Mr. Bagehot has come near the truth. Business probably suits the average man better than what he calls pleasure. And, as by reason of business the world goes on-for there would soon be a stoppage if we were all poets, painters, and philosophers-it is well that the majority should find business their most suitable occupation, although they seldom deliberately prefer it, in theory. Mr. Bagehot is, of course, much more than ocomotive, ready to whirl the goods-train over interminable he other hand, left the highway ler the honeysuckle hedgerows, t themselves in bird-haunted riad-minded. You cannot dognnot limit him. A gulf equally al matters Mr. Matthew Arnold n Maurice. Both men are im ideas of the day. But, while gland of ours the legitimate and elopment of King Edward I.'s s his eloquent voice in protest sular life. The one man feels in their failures and blunders; inence above them, and treats sm. In a characteristic essay, "contributed to a contemporary, ARNOLD AND MAURICE. 181 Mr. Arnold congratulates himself on having no influence -for he knows what influence means-and no party; and he says to himself: "Even suppose I could get some followers, and assemble them, brimming with affectionate enthusiasm, in a committee-room at some inn, what on earth should I say to them, what resolutions could I propose? I could only propose the old Socratic commonplace, Know thyself; and how blank they would all look at that!" Would they not? The idea of poor Mr. Arnold, poet and critic, having to pass resolutions among a set of practical men, in the parlour of The Spotted Dog, having nothing to propose except that used-up yvôli σeautòv, is comic. But how is it that he has no sympathy with his fellows, and cannot see that even resolutions passed at an inn may do the State some service? That sympathy is the very essence of Mr. Maurice's influence. All things human are "Dear to the man that is dear to God." He has no sarcasm, or sneer, for the mighty impotence of that great middle class, which is the perplexing growth of modern society. Therein lies power, but power yet uncrystallised. Mr. Arnold is simply terrified by the omnipotent monster, while Mr. Maurice recognises the symmetric future in the amorphous present, as his admirable lectures on The Representation and Education of the People amply prove. The theme is a suggestive one, but is only noticed in this place as involving a singular example of the mental chasms which exist between man and man, even in the nineteenth century. The widest imaginable difference, probably, is that |