all, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights
streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring for
the best entertainment that the place affords, to "take one's ease at
one's inn"! These eventful moments in our lives' history are too
precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and
dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself,
and drain them to the last drop: they will do to talk of or to write
about afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking
whole goblets of tea--

The cups that cheer, but not inebriate--

and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we
shall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions,
or an excellent veal cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once fixed on
cow-heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be
disparaged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean
contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen
(getting ready for the gentlemen in the parlour). _Procul, O procul este
profani!_ These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be
treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts
hereafter.

A GARDEN IDYLL
[Sidenote: _Austin Dobson_]

A LADY A POET

THE LADY

Sir Poet, ere you crossed the lawn
(If it was wrong to watch you, pardon),
Behind this weeping birch withdrawn,
I watched you saunter round the garden.
I saw you bend beside the phlox,
Pluck, as you passed, a sprig of myrtle,
Review my well-ranged hollyhocks
Smile at the fountain's slender spurtle;

You paused beneath the cherry-tree,
Where my marauder thrush was singing,
Peered at the bee-hives curiously,
And narrowly escaped a stinging;
And then--you see, I watched--you passed
Down the espalier walk that reaches
Out to the western wall, and last,
Dropped on the seat before the peaches.

What was your thought? You waited long.
Sublime or graceful,--grave,--satiric?
A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song?
A tender Tennysonian lyric?
Tell me. That garden-seat shall be,
So long as speech renown disperses,
Illustrious as the spot where he--
The gifted Blank--composed his verses.

THE POET
[Sidenote: _Austin Dobson_]

Madam,--whose uncensorious eye
Grows gracious over certain pages,
Wherein the Jester's maxims li