ation for the past. It was the softening influence of an
act of heroism, which makes every man feel himself a brother hand in
hand with every other;--such power has a single act of moral greatness
to reverse the relations of men, lifting up one, and bringing all others
to do him homage.

It was the coronation scene in the life of 'Ole' King Solomon of
Kentucky.

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM

(1828-1889)

Each form of verse has, in addition to its laws of structure, a subtle
quality as difficult to define as the perfume of a flower. The poem, 'An
Evening,' given below, may be classified both as a song and as a lyric;
yet it needs no music other than its own rhythms, and the full close to
each verse which falls upon the ear like a soft and final chord ending a
musical composition. A light touch and a feeling for shades of meaning
are required to execute such dainty verse. In 'St. Margaret's Eve,' and
in many other ballads, Allingham expresses the broader, more dramatic
sweep of the ballad, and reveals his Celtic ancestry.

The lovable Irishman, William Allingham, worked hard to enter the
brotherhood of poets. When he was only fourteen his father took him from
school to become clerk in the town bank of which he himself was manager.
"The books which he had to keep for the next seven years were not those
on which his heart was set," says Mr. George Birkbeck Hill. But this
fortune is almost an inevitable part, and probably not the worst part,
of the training for a literary vocation; and he justified his ambitions
by pluckily studying alone till he had mastered Greek, Latin, French,
and German.

Mr. Hill, in his 'Letters of D.G. Rossetti' (Atlantic Monthly, May,
1896), thus quotes Allingham's own delightful description of his early
home at Ballyshannon, County Donegal:--

"The little old town where I was born has a voice of its own,
low, solemn, persistent, humming through the air day and
night, summer and winter. Whenever I think of that town I
seem to hear the voice. The river which makes it rolls over
rocky ledges into the tide. Before spreads a great ocean in
sunshine or storm; behind stretches a many-islanded lake. On
the south runs a wavy line of blue mountains; and on the
north, over green rocky hills rise peaks of a more distant
range. The trees hide in glens or cluster near the river;
gray rocks and bowlders lie scattered about the windy
pastures. The sky arc