Herself would dye thou should'st be unman'd.

"But (ah!) the golden Ewer by [a] stroke,
Is broke,
And now the Almond Tree
With teares, with teares, we see,
Doth lowly lye, and with its fall
Do all
The daughters dye, that once were musicall.

"Thus yf weake builded man cann saye,
A day
He lives, 'tis all, for why?
He's sure at night to dye,
For fading man in fleshly lome[3]
Doth rome
Till he his graue find, His eternall home.

"Then farewell, farewell, man of men,
Till when
(For us the morners meet
Pal'd visag'd in the street,
To seale up this our britle birth
In earth,)
We meet with thee triumphant in our mirth."
_Trinitaell Hall's Exequies._

Now, to what does Hall refer in the third stanza, in his mention of the
almond-tree? Is it a classical allusion, as in the preceding stanza, or has
it some reference to any botanical fact? I send the ballad, trusting that
as an inedited morsel you will receive it.

KENNETH R. H. MACKENZIE.

[We do not take _Hall_ here to be the name of a man, but Trinity Hall
at Cambridge.]

[Footnote 2: The reader will recognise the classical allusion.]

[Footnote 3: Loam, earth; roam.]

* * * * *

ON A PASSAGE IN MARMION.

I venture for the first time to trespass upon the attention of your readers
in making the following remarks upon a passage in _Marmion_, which, as far
as I know, has escaped the notice of all the critical writers whose
comments upon that celebrated poem have hitherto been published.

It will probably be remembered, that long after the main action of the poem
and interest of the story have been brought to a close by the death of the
hero on the field of Flodden, the following incident is thus pointedly
described:--

Short is my tale:--Fitz-Eustace' care
A pierced and mangled body bare
To moated Lichfield's lofty pile:
And there, beneath the southern aisle,
A tomb, with Gothic sculpture fair
Did long Lord Marmion's image bear,
&c. &c. &c.

"There erst was martial Marmion found,
His feet upon a couchant hound,
His hands to Heaven upraised:
And all around on scutcheon rich,
And tablet carved, and fretted niche,
His arms and feats were blazed.
And yet, though all was carved so fair,
And priest for Marmion breathed the prayer,
_The last Lord Ma