no longer
felt."

He sprang from the cabin window as he said this, upon the ice-raft which
lay close to the vessel, and was borne away by the waves, and lost in
darkness and distance.

* * * * *

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

Arcadia

Sir Philip Sidney, the finest type of gentleman of Elizabethan
days, was born on November 30, 1554, at Penshurst, Kent, the
eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord-Deputy in Ireland, and
grandson, on his mother's side, of the Duke of Northumberland,
who was beheaded for complicity in the Lady Jane Grey
conspiracy. Education at Oxford, travel abroad, diplomatic
service, a wise interest in literature, and a singular
graciousness of character made Sidney "a full man." He was
regarded, at home and abroad, as the ideal gentleman of his
time, and a heroic death, at the siege of Zutphen, on October
2, 1586, enhanced his fame. His body was brought home for a
national funeral in old St. Paul's. Sidney's claims as a
writer are based on both prose--"Arcadia" and "An Apologie for
Poetrie"--and verse--"Astrophel and Stella." The elaborate and
artificial romance "Arcadia" was written for his sister Mary,
Countess of Pembroke, probably between 1578-80. It was left
incomplete, and was not published until four years after his
death. It has been described as forming the earliest model for
the art of prose. In our epitome we have followed the central
thread of a story which has innumerable episodic extensions.

_I.--Lost and Found_

It was the time that the earth begins to put on her new apparel against
the approach of her lover, when the shepherd, Strephon, on the sands
which lie against the island of Cithera, called upon him his friendly
rival, Claius, and bewailed their hopeless wooing of the fair
shepherdess, Urania, whose beauty taught the beholders chastity. As they
were going on with their praises, they perceived the thing which floated
nearer and nearer to the shore, by the favourable working of the sea,
till it was cast up hard before them, and they fully saw it was a man.
So they fell to rub and chafe him, till they brought him to recover both
breath, the servant, and warmth, the companion of living. Whereupon,
without so much as thanking them for their pains, he got up and cried,
as he looked round to the uttermost limits of his sight, "What, shall
Musidorus