t was in vain,
as she informed him by quoting from Cats these lines:--

When a valved shell of ocean
Breaks one side or loses one,
Though you seek with all devotion
You can ne'er the loss atone,
Never make again the edges
Bite together, tooth for tooth,
And, just so, old love alleges
Nought is like the heart's first troth.

These are Tesselschade's lines upon the nightingale in Mr. Gosse's
happy translation:--

THE WILD SONGSTER.

Praise thou the nightingale,
Who with her joyous tale
Doth make thy heart rejoice,
Whether a singing plume she be, or viewless winged voice;

Whose warblings, sweet and clear,
Ravish the listening ear
With joy, as upward float
The throbbing liquid trills of her enchanted throat;

Whose accents pure and ripe
Sound like an organ pipe,
That holdeth divers songs,
And with one tongue alone sings like a score of tongues.

The rise and fall again
In clear and lovely strain
Of her sweet voice and shrill,
Outclamours with its songs the singing springing rill.

A creature whose great praise
Her rarity displays,
Seeing she only lives
A month in all the year to which her song she gives.

But this thing sets the crown
Upon her high renown,
That such a little bird as she
Can harbour such a strength of clamorous harmony.

Arnheim presents after dinner the usual scene of contented
movement. The people throng the principal streets, and every one seems
happy and placid. The great concert hall, Musis Sacrum, had not yet
begun its season when I was there, and the only spectacle which the
town could muster was an exhibition of strength by two oversized boys,
which I avoided.

At Arnheim, I should relate, an odd thing happened to my
companion. When she was there last, in 1894, she had need to obtain
linseed for a poultice, and visited a chemist for the purpose. He
was an old man, and she found him sitting in the window studying his
English grammar. How long his study had lasted I have no notion, but he
knew less of our tongue than she of his, and to get the linseed was no
easy matter. Ten years passed and recollection of the Arnheim chemist
had clean evaporated; but chancing to look up as we walked through the
town, the sight of the old chemist seated in his shop-window poring
over a book brought the whole