is a high virtue in St. Clare to purchase Uncle Tom. He

"`All we have willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good shall exist.'"

In his `Introductory Address to the Browning Society', the Rev. J. Kirkman, of Queen's College, Cambridge, says of `Abt Volger': --

"The spiritual transcendentalism of music, the inscrutable relation between the seen and the eternal, of which music alone unlocks the gate by inarticulate expression, has never had an articulate utterance from a poet before `Abt Vogler'. This is of a higher order of composition, quite nobler, than the merely fretful rebellion against the earthly condition imposed here below upon heavenly things, seen in `Master Hughes' [of Saxe-Gotha]. In that and other places, I am not sure that persons of musical ATTAINMENT, as distinguished from musical SOUL AND SYMPATHY, do not rather find a professional gratification at the technicalities. . .than get conducted to `the law within the law'. But in `Abt Vogler', the understanding is spell-bound, and carried on the wings of the emotions, as Ganymede in the soft down of the eagle, into the world of spirit. . . .

"The beautiful utterances of Richter alone approach to the value of Browning's on music. Well does he deserve remembrance for the remark, that `Music is the only language incapable of expressing anything impure', and for many others. They all [the poets quoted in the passage omitted above], comparatively, speak FROM OUTSIDE; Browning speaks FROM INSIDE, as if an angel came to give all the hints we could receive, "`Of that imperial palace when we came.' He speaks of music as Dante does of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, because he has been there. Even the musical Milton, whose best line is, `In linked sweetness long drawn out', whose best special treatment of music is in the occasional poem, `At a solemn music', has given us nothing of the nature of `Abt Vogler'. It should be perfectly learnt by heart; and it will be ever whispering analogies to the soul in daily life. Because, of course, the mystery of life and the mystery of music make one of the most fundamental transcendental harmonies breathed into our being."

`Touch him ne'er so lightly', etc.

In the first stanza some one describes admiringly a writer of mushroom poems. In the second stanza another gives the genesis of a poem which becomes a nation's heritage.

The speaker is one to whom Shelley is an almost ideal being. He can hardly think of him as a man of flesh and blood. He meets some one who has actually seen him and talked with him; and it's all so strange to him, and he expresses so much surprise at it, that it moves the laughter of the other, and he breaks off and speaks of crossing a moor. Only a hand's breadth of it shines alone 'mid the blank miles round about; for there he picked up, and put inside his breast, a moulted feather, an eagle-feather. He forgets the rest. There is, in fact, nothing more for him to remember. The eagle-feather causes an isolated flash of association with the poet of the atmosphere, the winds, and the clouds, "The meteoric poet of air and sea."

The speaker, a Spaniard, it must be supposed, describes to his companion the only poet he knew in his life, who roamed along the promenades and through the by-streets and lanes and alleys of Valladolid, an old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels. He appeared interested in whatever he looked on, and his looks went everywhere, taking in the cobbler at his trade, the man slicing lemons into drink, the coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys turning its winch; books on stalls, strung-up fly-leaf ballads, posters by the wall; "`If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; If any cursed a woman, he took note.' Yet stared at nobody, -- you stared at him, And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, He seemed to know you, and expect as much." Popular imagination is active as to who and what he is; perhaps a spy, or it may be "a recording chief-inquisitor, the town's true master if the town but knew", who by letters keeps "our Lord the King" well informed "of all thought, said, and acted"; but of the King's approval of these letters there has been no evidence of any kind.