ld bird that floated far and fair
Betwixt the sun and sea!"

So "he became monk," and was sorry he had done so, especially when he met
a pretty maid,

"And this was Agathe, young Agathe,
A motherless fair girl,"

whose father was a kind of Dombey, for

"When she smiled
He bade no father's welcome to the child,
But even told his wish, and will'd it done,
For her to be sad-hearted, and a nun!"

So she "took the dreary veil."

They met like a blighted Isabella and Lorenzo:

"They met many a time
In the lone chapels after vesper chime,
They met in love and fear."

Then, one day,

"He heard it said:
Poor Julio, thy Agathe is dead."

She died

"Like to a star within the twilight hours
Of morning, and she was not! Some have thought
The Lady Abbess gave her a mad draught."

Here Mr. Aytoun, with sympathy, writes "Damn her!" (the Lady Abbess, that
is) and suggests that thought must be read "thaft."

Through "the arras of the gloom" (arras is good), the pale breezes are
moaning, and Julio is wan as stars unseen for paleness. However, he
lifts the tombstone "as it were lightsome as a summer gladness." "A
summer gladness," remarks Mr. Aytoun, "may possibly weigh about half-an-
ounce." Julio came on a skull, a haggard one, in the grave, and Mr.
Aytoun kindly designs a skeleton, ringing a bell, and crying "Dust ho!"

Now go, and give your poems to your friends!

Finally Julio unburies Agathe:--

"Thou must go,
My sweet betrothed, with me, but not below,
Where there is darkness, dream, and solitude,
But where is light, and life, and one to brood
Above thee, till thou wakest. Ha, I fear
Thou wilt not wake for ever, sleeping here,
Where there are none but the winds to visit thee.
And Convent fathers, and a choristry
Of sisters saying Hush! But I will sing
Rare songs to thy pure spirit, wandering
Down on the dews to hear me; I will tune
The instrument of the ethereal moon,
And all the choir of stars, to rise and fall
In harmony and beauty musical."

Is this not melodious madness, and is this picture of the distraught
priest, setting forth to sail the seas with his dead lady, not an
invention that Nanteuil might have illustrated, and the clan of
Bousingots approved?

The Second Chimera opens nobly:--

"A curse! a curse! {8} the beautiful pale wing
Of a sea-bird was worn with wandering,
And,