Browning in this discussion is not up| Left where we were left so lately, Dear to the mark either of his later or earlier time. It recalls (to use the felicitous distinction for which we are indebted to Mrs. Sutherland Orr1) Browning's milieu rather than his centre. It is "middling," and belongs more to the symposium and dinner-table level than to that height of plastic and poetic power by which the world will always remember the poet. For all through his great period, in a score of poems like "Cleon," "Prospice," and "Ben Ezra," we have the faith in God and the soul breaking out into its natural result. and True! When, half a week Since, we walked and talked, and thus I told you, how suffused a cheek You had turned me had I sudden brought the blush into the smile By some word like "Idly argued! you know better all the while!" Now, from me-Oh, not a blusn but, how much more, a joyous glow, Laugh triumphant, would it strike, did your "Yes, better I do know Break my warrant for assurance! which assurance may not be, If, supplanting hope, assurance needs must change this life to me. And at the close, in his very last pub- So I hope, no more than hope, but hope One who never turned his back but four great writers who make the scene marched breast-forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. And even in "La Saisiaz" we must not minimize the expression of conviction which concludes the discussion and comes immediately after the dialogue. The passage is a very beautiful one, with its personal allusion and reminis cences: spread out below La Saisiaz illustrious -that, even so, this poet at least would leave the world no lower legacy than his belief in God and in the soul. The passage is remarkable in many ways. It is on the one hand a singular illustration of the sume superbiam quæsitam meritis, attained at last by one who, at an earlier stage, had truly told the British public that they loved him not, and who even now veils his assumption under the most elaborate dramatization. But on the other, this dramatization so Thus have we come back full circle: fan- glows and coruscates with local color, cy's footsteps one by one that it may fitly close these pages of Go their round conducting reason to the reminiscence. point where they begun, 1 "Quel homme extraordinaire!" M. Milsand once said to me; “son centre n'est pas au millieu."—"Life of Browning," p. 183. The squalid village of Bossey, or, as Browning spells it, Bossex, lies on the tramway line from Geneva to Collonges, exactly below La Saisiaz, and, indeed, apparently no more than "a stone's high bank behind and above them, is throw" from its lower margin. Browning now stood looking at it, and that very morning he had traversed its lanes to identify the "obscene red roof" of the tenement, now a cattle-shed, where dwelt as a boy the famous son of a Geneva watchmaker. Here he dwelt, in what was then the house and private school of a Swiss pastor, making his first acquaintance at the same time with the delicious country life, and with good and evil generally, and thence arose more visible, perhaps even from La Saisiaz, and Browning links his last week's visit to the English poet's house with the morning's visit to Rousseau's. "Famed unfortunates" both! Yet, because of that phosphoric Swathing blackness self with brightness fame, till putridity looked flame, all the world was witcheu. and in both cases for the same reason. Rousseau preached that all that is good and beautiful lay in the primitive past, Like a fiery flying serpent from its egg, and he gave no reason for it, except, a soul-Rousseau's. From Bossex beneath, Browning turns to Leman on the right, where the Villa Diodati "joins the glimmer of the lake," upon the high banks known as Belle Rive. There I plucked a leaf, one week sinceivy, plucked for Byron's sake. "Which believe-for I believe it." So preached one his gospel-news. The other, Byron, moaned melodiously of the dying day, and of storm and darkness like a woman's eye, and above all, of the meanness and littleness of man: "Which believe-for I believe it," such the comfort man received famous bard believed. On Byron's famous visit to Geneva, he settled in "a villa in the neighbor- Sadly since perforce he must: for why? the hood, called Diodati, very beautifully situated on the high banks of the lake, where he established his residence for the remainder of the summer" (Moore's "Life of Byron.") Shelley and his wife took a small house at the same time on the shore, and within ten minutes' walk. But Byron's residence,' rising upon the He is 1 This concluding passage of "La Saisiaz" will always be remarkable for some amazing mistakes as to it made by the commentators of Browning. In the "Biographical and Historical Notes" appended to the seventeenth volume of the complete edition of Browning's works, "Diodati," where the poet plucked a leaf, and which he saw join the glimmer of the lake," is referred to not as a place but as a man! "Professor of Hebrew at Geneva, he held a high place among the Swiss Reformers. chiefly celebrated for his translation of the Bible, etc," Dr. Berdoe, in bis excellent and useful Browning Cyclopædia," accepts this wonderful suggestion, and improves upon it by first removing Byron from the neighboring Diodati, where Browning went to pluck the ivy in his memory, to the distant Ouchy, and by then presenting the worthy Diodati of the sixteenth century as one of five great men, whom Browning celebrates. 'These five famous writers Voltaire, Gibbon, Byron, Rousseau, and Diodati, "who were all theists, passed on the pine-tree torch of Theism from age to age!" But if the world accepted the messages of Rousseau and Byron simply because of their belief and their fame, why should it not some day accept the message of Browning too? Fame? Then, give me fame, a moment! Let me grasp them altogether, hold on Beacon-like above the rapt world ready, Send the dazzling summons downward, flashed full on face by-Fame! Thanks, thou pine-tree of Makistos, wide thy giant torch I wave! But of the "human glories" vivifying | most for beginning these extracts from the Genevan expanse, two yet remain for him to relume. One is Gibbon, whose learning supplies a trunk, a "central solid knowledge," for this giant torch, flashing widely, but "rooted yonder at Lausanne." The other is Voltaire, who makes that central learning seem dull by the flame of wit which flits, and spits and sparkles and coils round and round it on every side; and that restless flame, "what but Ferney nourished it?" Gibbon and Voltaire are enough, he says-but, "since every resin feeds the flame," he adds the all-explosive eloquence of Jean Jacques from Bossex, and the ivy branch, “green forever," of Byron from Diodati. my journal. I had thought of compiling a history of the parish by way of "Typical Developments," but it turns out that the new vicar is setting out on the same enterprise; and it is perhaps more in his way than mine. Besides, there is very little history to tell. Our village is unhonored yet in story, The present residents its only glory, as Sophocles says in the Coloneus. The house-martins have begun to think about building on the north side of the house. I had the old nests taken down for the pleasure of seeing these "amusive" little creatures, as Gilbert White would call them, once more at As Rousseau, then, eloquent, as Byron their loved masonry; and this year I prime in poet's power, Lo, I lift the coruscating marvel-Fame! and, famed, declare nailed boards across the corners of the windows for cleanliness' sake. At first they were rather puzzled and sat on the -Learned for the nonce as Gibbon, witty cross-pieces looking out on the world as wit's self, Voltaire "He there with the brand flamboyant, broad o'er night's forlorn abyss, Crowned by prose and verse; and wielding, with Wit's bauble, Learning's rod... Well? Why, he at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God!" The "Angelus" was pealing from the little church of Veyrier as I took my last view of La Saisiaz. The September night had already begun to darken, but high on the cliff above the châlet one could almost fancy he saw the conflagration which, in the close of this poem, Browning's too suddenly-released imagination has so wildly kindled. Some will hold this protest "against the world," by Athanasius Browning to be a mere flicker of doubt just escaping from despair; others will welcome it as a blaze of defiant optimism. I was content that evening to take it in relation to the question with which he deals, and as being, in his own words, "no less than hope." like tiny Dominicans; then a pair began building in one of the obtuse angles below; then they took themselves off to a window on the east side which had not been tampered with; finally as there was not enough accommodation here for several families, the rest have swallowed their feelings and begun to build as usual. The nightingales are staying longer in the garden than in any year I can remember. There is a tradition that they used to build in the hedge overhanging what was once a more or less public road, but have not done so since the road was added as a shrubbery to the garden. I suppose now that we have a parish council they feel at liberty to withdraw their protest. Swinburne and Matthew Arnold are the 1 There are as good private and "intimate" journals being kept at this moment as any that were kept in the last century. Unfortunately, however, the public will not see them in the course of nature till forty or fifty years have elapsed; till, that is, half their charm has evaporated. The Cornhill has been lucky enough, however, to secure one of the best of these, but only on conditions. The chief of these is absolute anonymity. But after all anonymity only adds the pleasure of guessing. All that can be said of the Cornhill diarist is that he lives in the country, and that, like the author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," he is paucis notus paucioribus ignotus.-ED. Cornhill. set-up men about the place. When they are teetotallers they do very well. William, my coachman, is a teetotaller by profession, but, as the phrase goes, not a bigot. He was a gunner, and the other night-I suppose he had been drinking delight of battle with his peers he brought me home from, where I had been dining, in his best artillery style, as though the carriage was a last poets who have dared speak of the 8th. My old gardener has at last condescended to retire. He has been on the place, I believe, for sixty years, man and boy; but for a long time he has been doing less and less; his dinner-hour has grown by insensible degrees into two, his intercalary luncheons and nuncheons more and more numerous, and the state of the garden past winking at. This morning he was rather depressed, and broke it to me that I must try to find some one to take his place. As some help, he suggested the names of a couple of his cronies, both well past their grand climacteric. When I made a scruple of their age, he pointed out that no young man of this generation could be depended upon; and further, that he wished to end his days in his own cottage (i.e., my cottage) where he had lived all his life, so that there would be a difficulty in introducing any one from outside. I suppose I must get a young fellow who won't mind living for the present in lodgings. I make a point as far as possible of taking soldiers for servants, feeling in duty bound to do so; besides, I like to have well 9th.-C., who is just home from Cairo, came to dine, and we had much talk about things military which need not be recorded. It seems the Sphinx's cap has been discovered, but one cannot imagine this increasing his majesty; hats are such local and temporal things. C. remarked that some of the papers had been speaking of the Sphinx as "she;" confusing it with the Greek sphinx who asked riddles and made short work of the unfortunates who failed to answer them. But is not his beard in the British Museum? The Egyptian sphinx has far too much serenity to play either the poser or the cannibal. But there is a riddling sphinx of the Nile, a very modern and undignified personage; and the Egyptian question, one may hope, has at last found an Edipus in England, one might almost say in Lord Cromer. For Lord Cromer typifies, even to exaggeration, in the eyes of native and European, our characteristic qualities, strength of hand, and strength of purpose, devotion to athletics and distrust of ideas. His memorial is written in Milner's book, and no praise can be too high for his exhibition of the "Justum et tenacem propositi virum;" the man who knows his mind and won't be bribed. But the French beat us when it comes to ideas. They are imbuing Egypt with a French spirit by working upon the schools. Every French teacher is a political agent; they are all sent out by government and while abroad qualify for pension. What English teachers we have go out on their own responsibility and are altogether ignored by the Foreign Office. Probably Curzon will look into this, now that we are understood to be not quite on the point of flitting. It is curious to notice the new type that is being created by young England in Egypt. The usual British alertness, not to say menace, of manner is soothed down into an Oriental dreaminess, as though time had never been called money, and there was no such superstition as free-will; but of course the Orientalizing is only superficial. 11th.-To-day falls our customary beating of the bounds. But the new vicar is for still older customs, and wants to revive the Rogation-tide procession with a litany, especially in view of the present drought. Tom, who is patron of the living and parson's warden, refused to take part and "make a guy of himself," as he expressed it; and Farmer Smith, his colleague, said very bluntly that he would have no papist nonsense in his fields, and "besides, there couldn't be any rain till the wind shifted." So, as the substantial men stood aloof, the vicar had to content himself with the choir-boys, who celebrated the new forms with too much of the old spirit. I suppose my wandering life has purged me from a good deal of insular and Protestant prejudice, for I confess there seems more sense and present advantage in the religious rite than in the civil, when boundaries are all registered in maps. But we have lost whatever instinct we ever had for picturesque ceremonial. The other day I saw the town council of - turn out to meet a royal princess; the majority wore gowns which were much too short for them, and their hats were the various hats of every day. In short, they were ridiculous, and seemed to know it. This Jingoism in America is too silly. A little while ago it was England, now it is Spain. A schoolboy translated Horace's "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" by "sweetness and decency have died out of the land." Jingoism is the schoolboy's version of patriotism. under popularly elected bodies, it removes them from the control of "village Hampdens." Any person of intelligence who has had to do with a village board will rejoice at the change. The ordinary business of assessing and paying grants can be done here as well as at Whitehall, and leave "my Lords" free for more important matters. But it is to be hoped they will present each county with a fairly big minimum of Code, because, excellent judges as we are of roads and workhouses, we have something to learn about education. And as for coopting experts, where are we to get them? Left to ourselves, our temptation will be to over-technicalize the elementary subjects. There will be very little protest from the farmers about raising the age of compulsory attendance, because now that the sharpest boys prefer other callings, the masters have discovered that they can do as well or better without them, by harnessing their horses abreast, using steam ploughs, etc. Clause 27 is of course a Toleration Bill and they are always intolerable to the intolerant; but this one will remove two real grievances. Churchmen will be able to teach their own children in Board Schools, and Dissenters theirs in Church Schools. To pretend that each sect will spend its time in calling its brother "Raca" is idiotic; each will have its own syllabus to work through. If religion is to do anybody any good, it must be a religion in which somebody believes; the caput mortuum distilled by Agnostics out of Christianity by evaporating every dogma, and labelled "undenominational religion," must be about as valuable a tonic for the children of the laboring classes as the wish-wash of "literary influences" that Mr Bryce prescribesMatthew Arnold's pet nostrum. have an old song in Berkshire: We Sartinly the sixpenny's the finest ale I've seed yit; intermediate. 12th.-Read through the second-reading debate on the Education Bill. The I do not like the fourpenny, but loathe the proposed devolution to County Councils is a smart piece of political dishing, because, while it places all schools alike Let the Church stick to her "sixpenny," and the Dissenters to their "four |