uld from the plague, know, as a matter of fact, nothing at all of
their inmost companions. When the novel-devouring period is reached,
this is especially remarkable: a mother may then look at her young
daughter sitting apart, silent, entranced, drinking in what she takes
for the true philosophy of life from some romance of modern society
which has been recommended to her as "splendid" by the girls at school,
and find no more appropriate reflection to make upon this spectacle than
that "Mary is never so happy as when she is buried in a book." But one
imagines the family counsellor, under similar circumstances, interesting
himself or herself to discover what sort of a book it is that Mary is
buried in, and, if it should prove to be a tissue of false sentiment,
false pathos, and even false morals from beginning to end, directing
her attention to that fact, and giving her as an antidote something
which, whether grave or gay, amusing or affecting, should be written in
good English and in sound taste.

GRACE H. PEIRCE.

MITHRA.

What comes with sound of stately trumpets pealing,
With flash of torches, flaring out the stars?
What majesty, what splendor slow revealing,
What mystery through the night's unfolding bars,
In gloom, cloud-multiform, delaying long,
Bursts into flower of flame and shower of song?

What march of multitudes in rhythmic motion,
What thunder of innumerable feet,
What mighty diapasons like the ocean,
Reverberating turbulently sweet
Through far dissolving silences, are blown
Worldward upon the winds' low monotone?

The mountains hear the warning and awaken,
In hushed processional issuing from the night,
Like Druid priests with mystic white robes shaken,
Communing in some immemorial rite:
Round their old brows burns what pale augury,
What benison, what ancient prophecy?

The sea has heard; through all its caverns under
Whither its giant broods have fled dismayed,
There goes a voice of wailing and of wonder:
"He comes, with gleaming spears and ranks arrayed,
And clang of chariot-wheels, and fire of spray:
We hear, we fear, we tremble and obey."

The earth has heard it, and, arising breathless,
Sets wide her doors and leans with beckoning palms
Over the quickening east: "Resistless, deathless
Father of worlds and lord of storms and calms,
Thou at whose will the seasons bloom and fail,
Dispenser and destroyer,