the dark outline, as it lay pencilled upon the midnight sky, and as
every moment it grew closer and clearer, of the hostile heights! Not
a word was spoken--not a sound heard beyond the rippling of the
stream. Wolfe alone--thus tradition has told us--repeated in a low
tone to the other officers in his boat those beautiful stanzas with
which a country churchyard inspired the muse of Gray. One noble line,

'The paths of glory lead but to the grave,'

must have seemed at such a moment fraught with mournful meaning. At
the close of the recitation Wolfe added, 'Now, gentlemen, I would
rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec.'"

Hales, in his Introduction to the poem, remarks: "The _Elegy_ is
perhaps the most widely known poem in our language. The reason of
this extensive popularity is perhaps to be sought in the fact that it
expresses in an exquisite manner feelings and thoughts that are
universal. In the current of ideas in the _Elegy_ there is perhaps
nothing that is rare, or exceptional, or out of the common way. The
musings are of the most rational and obvious character possible; it
is difficult to conceive of any one musing under similar
circumstances who should not muse so; but they are not the less deep
and moving on this account. The mystery of life does not become
clearer, or less solemn and awful, for any amount of contemplation.
Such inevitable, such everlasting questions as rise on the mind when
one lingers in the precincts of Death can never lose their freshness,
never cease to fascinate and to move. It is with such questions, that
would have been commonplace long ages since if they could ever be so,
that the _Elegy_ deals. It deals with them in no lofty philosophical
manner, but in a simple, humble, unpretentious way, always with the
truest and the broadest humanity. The poet's thoughts turn to the
poor; he forgets the fine tombs inside the church, and thinks only of
the 'mouldering heaps' in the churchyard. Hence the problem that
especially suggests itself is the potential greatness, when they
lived, of the 'rude forefathers' that now lie at his feet. He does
not, and cannot solve it, though he finds considerations to mitigate
the sadness it must inspire; but he expresses it in all its awfulness
in the most effective language and with the deepest feeling; and his
expression of it has become a living part of our language."

The writer in the _North American Review_ (vol. 96) from whom we have
e