country," he calls it, "being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, sprinkled with many very sweet islands and goodly lakes." If any prince were absolute lord of that land, with its woods, commodious for shipbuilding, writes the poet, bent on utility to, and favor from, his sovereign, that prince would soon hope to master all the seas, and ere long the world. Spenser, by the way, could be also just in judgment: "It is a great wonder," he writes, "to see the odds which is between the zeal of Popish priests and the Ministers of the Gospel, for they spare not to come out of Spain, Rome, and from Remes, by long toil and dangerous traveling hither where they know peril of death awaiteth them, and no reward or riches is to be found, only to draw the people unto the Church of Rome; whereas some of our idle Ministers, having a way for credit and destination thereby opened unto them without pains and without perils, will, neither for the same, nor for any love of God, nor for any good they may do, be drawn forth from their warm nests to look out unto God's harvest."

The author, in 1836, of certain imaginary conversations at Cambridge (not Landor, nor like him) muses thus under the window of Spenser's room: "Pembroke has undergone so few alterations during the last three hundred years that the rooms once occupied by the noblest and purest spirit that ever hallowed the walls, are still in existence." It is in like manner that Thackeray called our good and beloved Charles Lamb "Saint Charles." These are the rash words of people who do not know the Saints of Calendars.

The woods now are fewer than in Spenser's day, whether or not they were sent, as he hoped, down to the sea in ships; the lake has so sunken as to leave no more than a trace under

the castled hill. From Spenser's report we receive the impression of a multitude tragically great, here as in "Mounster." Famine is the great effectual weapon against numbers; numbers are the food of hunger; it brings each man to equal anguish with his neighbor, so as to forestall human pity and to prevent reciprocal succor; and the numbers were there, naked mankind in the naked woods. There is no multitude now: there are no more cries, if there are no songs. The south of Ireland altogether looks like a vast free farm with feeding flocks of geese and goats. Bleak is the hamlet, the cottage has no paved garden-path, no little close for flowers, no little croft for fruit. Gray are the streets, the churches of the Gothic as Horace Walpole understood it.

Nevertheless the Irish countryman and countrywoman have a sweetness of thought and word strange to the English ear. The present writer's sister records that, sketching lambs and sheep in the fields one day, and aware of an old woman looking over her shoulder, she said to her, "Well, those creatures, at any rate, are happy." The woman replied, “And why wouldn't they?-without sin." And an Irish cook, in English employment in London, having weekly dealings with a boy-pedlar at the railings, was asked about the boy and his condition, and his wares. The cook answered that she was interested in him because he had "a noble brow." These people have spiritual minds, and their popular songs have, like the Scottish and the Border ballads, the principle of poetry. That the greatest and most purely poetic literature in the world should rise from the ranks of the English people whose popular ballads are bald, blank, common, altogether without fancy, mystery, or beauty, raises an unanswerable question. Less by the village or the farm, then,

are England and Ireland to be allied than by the fields. But the solitude of that landscape is a human misfortune, and all too significant of evil past and actual. "No part of all that realme shal be able to dare to quinch," says Spenser. Something must depend upon the meaning we may choose to attribute to the act of quinching. The view from Kilconan Castle suggests that such quinching as may have been attempted did not prosper. But he who recommended the defeat of southern Ireland by famine fled from some partial quinching after twelve years of his govern

The Dublin Times.

ment, leaving this castle in flames. And it was long thought that the baby of a poet, the child of the bride of the Epithalamion, was burned to ashes in its cradle in this tower of memories. But it is impossible to find a date for the birth of this infant among the years allotted to Spenser's children. There seems to be no room. Was the story imagined as a suggestion of retaliation on the man who gave the children of the country to die by famine? The little shabby tower that

looked out upon many wandering griefs, did not contain this one, most helpless, and imprisoned.

Alice Meynell.

All day a steady drizzle had been falling, and all day and for many days train-loads of men and material had rattled and bumped up the slope past the little village in the hills. And now it was eight o'clock and, although the height of summer, it was dusk; here and there lights shone out from windows on to the road and here and there the "volets" were already closed for the night.

Away in the distance another heavy train came laboring up the slope, and I quickened my pace past the last of the houses and down the little road which connects the village and the station, for I had an object at last. Watching the trains go by is one of the many of our childhood's pastimes to which we have returned in these strange days of

war.

As I reached the fork the rear engine of the train clanked by and I saw for an instant by the light of its open firebox a knot of women standing beside the iron gate which barred the road. And then, as the train receded, I heard voices.

"Moi aussi, je reste," said a third voice, and a fourth; and a fifth, an old and high-pitched voice, added: "B'en sûr que j'y reste- And all night if necessary. With two sons killed and one prisoner là-bas-naturally one wishes to see one's last one. Mais, bon Dieu de bon Dieu, que c'est long

que c'est long. . . ."

"Au 'voir, alors," said the first speaker.

"Au revoir, Mathilde." And footsteps squelched up the lane and past me. Silence fell again, and, loth to

intrude, with a muttered "Pardon" and "Bon soir, Mesdames," I passed through the little wicket and across the lines.

They were six. An old woman and a younger stood together under a large umbrella. On the gate leaned another old woman, gazing at nothing. "Bon Dieu," she said, at intervals, "Bon Dieu." A younger woman sheltered a baby under the black knitted shawl which covered her head and shoulders. The baby slept, but mechanically she still swayed her body to and fro. Facing her were two other women with shawls, their hands hidden beneath their aprons. They said nothing There was nothing to say: nothing to do but to wait. To wait and watch for that fleeting moment which would dangle before them, and as quickly snatch away, their husbands and their

sons.

-th

For they were sure to pass. It was common knowledge in the village, and even we strangers had heard of it. The earlier trains had said so- -all the Army Corps was on the move, on its way to the great attack which was now almost hourly expected; much of it had already gone; and sometimetonight, or tomorrow, or perhaps the next day-it would be the turn of the

-th regiment of infantry, les gens de par-ici.

"It is your husband that you are waiting to see, Madame?" I asked the woman with the baby.

"Oui, Monsieur, mon mari." "Perhaps he will be in this train."

"Perhaps. On ne sait jamais," and she hitched her burden up a little in her

arms.

"I, it's my son-caporal qu'il est," began the old woman who had been leaning on the gate, laying a veined and wrinkled hand on my arm. "Caporal mitrailleur," she shouted, but the toiling engine appearing round the

curve drowned her quavering voice in noise.

And then the train was upon us. The crooked brown fingers tightened on my arm as the first trucks clattered by. Carts, field-kitchens, baggage-wagons, water-carts-all the varied impedimenta of an infantry battalion. Behind, a long line of cattle trucks; some were dark and one saw little but the pale faces of men crowded at the sliding doors; others showed a flickering yellow candle-light and a few had liberally-pierced tins of glowing coke swinging at the door or standing in the middle of the truck. Over these braziers men bent, heating food. Cries and gusts of laughter came out at us; sometimes arms waved and were whisked away and shouts of greeting blew back to us, but we were seen by few. It was obviously not our train.

A sentry slouched past us in the mist, the hood of his long loose "capuchon" over his bent head, and his rifle slung on his back. It was sad work patrolling the lines, and he was old-these were his last days as a soldier. Deep in his own thoughts, he passed us without a sign. I turned from watching him to Berthe, the woman with the child. But the "permissions," they were frequent now for the French? Yes, they were good-every six months at least. And when was he last home? Oh, it was nearly five months now. "Oh, well," I cried without thinking, "a few days more and-" I checked myself abruptly, realizing, but it was too late. I saw her glance at my brassard and read her thought. I was not of the infantry.

"It is to be a great attack, Monsieur," was all she said. My gaze dropped before hers.

"C'est vrai," I could only murmur; "C'est vrai. . . .”

It was nearly time for the next train. Every ten minutes or quarter of an hour they passed, a seemingly

endless procession, winding up through the hills and down across the plain to the East-the East where, high up, the sky winked and flickered silently. Down towards us came a train, and we stepped back from the line to avoid it. It ran swiftly and smoothly down the hill, passing us in a blaze of light-or so it seemed to our unaccustomed eyes. Nobody was at the windows, but now and again we caught glimpses of figures moving about the corridors and of little beds against the walls in tiers.

"Les blessés!" One of the women seemed to shiver slightly. The others drew their shawls a little closer about them.

"Five trains since this afternoon. Five-les Anglais."

"Ah! They suffer also, the English," said the old woman. "Quel malheur de guerre...

"Le voilà!" An engine had whistled in the distance. Then, nearer, it whistled again, and a minute later only the curve hid it from us.

We had spread ourselves out a little, instinctively "pour mieux voir," they said; but one was more alone, too, like that.

A few tense seconds and the train reached us. What regiment, what regiment? Yes! It was the -th. But which battalion?

The doors were filled with shouting, gesticulating figures, and it was difficult to get an answer. Men, craning out, yelled unintelligible messages; some threw letters at us, and were swept away roaring back instructions; others scanned our faces intently and passed on expressionless-we were not whom they sought.

It was not our battalion, but the men were plainly from these parts. Truck after truck rolled by, the sides decorated with branches, and adorned with brave boasts and rude caricatures in chalk, just visible in the dark. I

thrilled with the excitement, and, catching something of the spirit, waved and shouted back. It was amazing; it was a revelation to meI who had grown to mock at the idea of enthusiasm after three years of war. It was more like a train-load of schoolboys off for the holidays than-than what it was.

So absorbed had I become that I forgot my companions until the last wagon had passed, and with a sound that was half-sob and half-laugh one of them said, "Ten minutes more." We joined again at the crossing gate.

"Ah! les braves gars!" A woman wiped her eyes and sniffed. "Ils ont du courage."

"The next train, they say, for certain

"Et Mathilde!" said someone suddenly. We looked at one another in silence. Mathilde, who had waited in the rain all day, and had just gone home-

Berthe averted her eyes. "I daren't," she whispered, looking down the line. "Nor I. Ten minutes only-it's too far."

"Yes, too far.

Mathilde."

"Where does she live?" I asked, turning to the gate. It was the least I could do; and, having received directions, I plunged clumsily into the slippery lane.

The last trucks were passing as we threw ourselves, exhausted, against the iron gate; Mathilde's breath came in heaving sobs, for she had led the last terrible hundred yards.

Even as we arrived, a blue-coated figure gave a mighty shout. "Hé! Mathilde!"

She stretched out her arm towards him, tears streaming down her face. "François!" she called; but he was

gone.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu! I couldn't see him," she said brokenly. "I was