My wife, who likes the things I've doft,
Sublimes her sentiments, for oft

She'll take, and-air them !
-You little Puss, you love this pair,
And yet you never seem to care

To let me wear them !
(By permission of the Author.)

YORICK'S, DEATH.

LAWRENCE STERNE. A Few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius stept in, with an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his drawing Yorick's curtain, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick, looking up in his face, took hold of his hand, and after thanking him for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet hereafter, he would thank him again and again; he told him he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip for ever. “I hope not," answered Eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke,-"I hope not, Yorick,” said he. Yorick replied with a look up, and a gentle squeeze of Eugenius's hand--and that was all—but it cut Eugenius to his heart. “Come, come, Yorick !” quoth Eugenius, wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man within him; my dear lad, be comforted; let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this crisis when thou most wantest them. Who knows what resources are in store, and what the power of God may yet do for thee ?" Yorick laid his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head. “For my part,” continued Eugenius, crying bitterly as 'he uttered the words, “I declare, I know not, Yorick, how to part with thee; and would gladly flatter my hopes,” added Eugenius,

cheering up his voice, " that there is still enough of chee left to make a bishop, and that I may live to see it.” “I beseech thee, Eugenius," quoth Yorick, taking off his night-cap as well as he could with his left hand-his right being still grasped close in that of Eugenius—“I beseech thee to take a view of my head." “I see nothing that ails it,” replied Eugenius. “ Then, alas ! my friend,” said Yorick, “let me tell you that it is so bruised and mis-shaped with the blows which have been so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that I might say with Sancho Panza, that should I recover, and .mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of them would fit it.'” Yorick's last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips, ready to depart, as he uttered this; yet still it was uttered with something of a Cervantic tone, and as he spoke it, Eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes-faint picture of those flashes of his spirit, which (as Shakspeare said of his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar!"

Eugenius was convinced from this that the heart of his friend was broke. He squeezed his hand, and then walked softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door; he then closed them, and never opened them more.

He lies buried in a corner of his churchyard, under a plain marble slab, which his friend Eugenius, by leave of his executors, laid upon

his
grave,

with no more than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy

66

Alas, Poor YORICK!

Ten times a day has Yorick's ghost the consolation to bear his monumental inscription read over, with Euch a variety of plaintive tones as denote a general pity and esteem for him. A footway crossing the churchyard close by his grave, not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it, and sighing as he walks on,

ALAS, POOR YORICK !

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT ST, PRAXED's

CHURCH.

ROBERT BROWNING.

a

VANITY, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews—sons mine. . . Ah, God, I know not! well-
She, men would have to be

your
mother

once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was !
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am bishop since.
And as she died, so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.
Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask,
"Do I live?-am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all.
St. Praxed's ever was the church for peace;
And so about this tomb of mine I fought
With tooth and nail to save iny niche, ye know.
Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner south
He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence
One sees the pulpit o'the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And

dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,

Go dig

And 'neath

my

tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet, where Anselm stands : Peach-blossom marble, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulseOld Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless : how I earned the prize! Draw close : that conflagration of my churchWhat then? So much was saved if ought were

missed! My sons ye would not be

my

death? The white grape vineyard where the oil-press stood; Drop water gently till the surface sinks, And if ye find . . . Ah, God, I know not, I!.. Bedded in store of rotten fig leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast. Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both his hands, Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst ! Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years : Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I

say basalt for my slab, sons? Black-
'Twas ever antique black, I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my

frieze to come beneath ?
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
St. Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
And Moses with the tables... but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,

Child of my bowels, Anselm ? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp,
Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine,
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at:
Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then!
'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve
My bath must needs be left behind. Alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-
And have I not St. Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth limbs ?
That's if ye carve my epitaph aright;
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word;
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line-
Tully, my masters ? Ulpian serves his need!
And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense smoke !
For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state, and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
And let the bedclothes for a mortcloth drop
Into great laps and folds of sculptor's work:
And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
Growl with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
And this life, too, popes, cardinals, and priests,
St. Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall, pale mother, with her talking eyes,
And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble’s languages, Latin pure, discreet,

-Aha, Elucescebat, quoth our friend ?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best !
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the pope