last cold touch
on the once passionate heart, it found him still clasping the book of
the mighty magician. * Let it be also noted that no Christian priest was
at his bedside. He needed not the mum-lings of a smaller soul to aid him
in his last extremity. Hope he may have had, but no fear. His life ended
like a long summer day, slowly dying into night.

* The present Lord Tennyson wrote as follows to Sir Arthur
Hodgson, Chairman of the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trustees:
"I beg to convey from my mother and myself our grateful
acknowledgment to the Executive Committee of Shakespeare's
Birthplace for their most kind expression of sympathy and
for their beautiful wreath. My father was reading 'King
Lear,' 'Troilus and Cressida,' and 'Cymbeline' through the
last days of his life. On Wednesday he asked for
Shakespeare. I gave him the book, but said, 'You must not
try to read.' He answered, 'I have opened the book.' I
looked at the book at midnight when I was sitting by him,
lying dead on the Thursday, and found he had opened on one
of the passages which he had called the tenderest in
Shakespeare. We could not part with this volume, but buried
a Shakespeare with him. We had the book enclosed in a metal
box and laid by his side.
--Yours faithfully, Hallam Tennyson."

CHRIST'S OLD COAT.

The little town of Trier (Treves) will soon wear a festive appearance.
Pilgrims will be flocking to it from all parts of Germany, and God knows
from where besides. Its handful of inhabitants have obtained licenses to
open hotels and restaurants; every inch of available space has been let,
so that whirligigs, panoramas, and menageries have to be refused the
sites they apply for; every room in the town is to be let, more or less
furnished; and not only is the tram company doubling its line, but the
railway company is constructing special stations for special trains.

All this excitement springs from a superstitious source. After an
interval of several years the Church will once more exhibit an old rag,
which it calls the Holy Coat, and which it pretends is the very garment
we read of in the Gospels. Such a precious relic is, of course, endowed
with supernatural qualities. It will heal the sick, cure cripples, and,
let us hope, put brains into idiotic heads. Hence the contemplated rush
to Trier, where more people will congregate to see Christ's coat than