And even the rock, no longer bare,
Was robed in a roseate mantle rare,
And a laughing laud before me lay,
                              Mabel May.

                                 6.
Fools fly in the face of the bliss they believe
They were born for. If born for it, why not wait?
Can Fate miss man, or man miss Fate,
                              Mabel May?
No! we claim to acquire, unresign'd to receive,
What chance, not choice, can alone achieve,
And then, when we fail as is fit, we say
                           (Mabel May),
"Better check desire than chase despair!"
But what, when we say it, if unaware
The burning Beauty we could not bear,
Taking pity on our proved want, as 'twere,
Should pour itself over our path, and weave
Life's way with the light we have learn'd to leave,
Warning our sense with a reflex ray,
                                Mabel May?

                                 7.
O, 'tis you are the cause of these thoughts, I try
To release in speech and shall never succeed,
They lie too deep in my soul, indeed,
                               Mabel May;
For you are the light of my life, and I
And my life are yours, to be made thereby
Of what colour you will—you are my day,
                              Mabel May.
But that light of you, in this life of mine,
Were a depth of glory too divine
To be born all at once, if it did not shine
Deepened, reflected, and fused, in fine,
With the common things of life, that lie
In that light transmuted to melody
Odour and colour by its glad play,
                              Mabel May!
My wife! my life! my day, whose sway
Makes all things sweet with a sense of sun—
Scent-breathing flowers, and birds' sweet tone!
My one in all, and my all in one!
Now I hold you fast where my footsteps stray,
And find you most when you seem away,
Loving you more than my life can say,
                            Mabel May!

  AT THE OPENING OF THE BUDGET.

WHEN on a night of "great attraction" I go
to the play with an order, and, without any
trouble or inconvenience secure a private box,
or a reserved seat in the stalls, while I see
people who have paid their money waiting in
the passage, or anxiously struggling to find a
place in some remote corner where they will not
be able to see half the stage, I am apt to feel
that I am a party to a strange and unaccountable
piece of injustice. At times, indeed, when
I am in a sensitive humour, I am affected with
a twinge of something like remorse. I have
entered the theatre without payment, and the
box-keeper has politely shown me into one of the
best places, lingering respectfully at my back to
offer me a play-bill and ask if I would like an
opera-glass. Meanwhile the people who have
paid their money, and waited and struggled, are
rudely pushed away into any back seat which
the box-keeper chooses to assign to them.
When those people, uncomfortably imbedded
among their fellows, like fossils in clay, reverentially
look down upon me lounging easily in my
roomy box, I feel that I am a sort of bloated
aristocrat, one of the pampered and privileged
classes who enjoy advantages over the common
run of people in virtue of the fact that their
ancestors came over with the Conqueror, or for
some other reason equally absurd. I feel that
the heels of my dress-boots, though they may be
rather down at the sides, are the heels of a grinding
tyranny.

Why should I be thus favoured? Well, really
upon my word I cannot give you any good or
valid reason for it whatever. I am not a
dramatic critic. I am not a personal friend of
the manager. I was not particularly anxious to
see the play, and, having come in free, I shall of
course not trouble myself to applaud. All I can
say is, that a friend gave me an order—how he
got it I have not the most remote idea—and
that I am here in one of the best places, while
worthy folks, who were dying to see the play,
who have paid their money, who are determined
to be pleased, and who are eager to applaud
everything, are occupying the most uncomfortable
seats in the theatre. It is always a great
relief to me to perceive that these people regard
me with the respect which is due to a person
who pays his way. If I thought they had any
idea that I had come into that private box with
an order, and had not paid two pounds twelve
and sixpence for it, I am sure I should not be
able to look them in the face.

I had a touch of this same feeling the other
day, when, by merely showing my card at a little
door in the lobby of the House of Commons, I
was immediately passed into the Speaker's
gallery, while hundreds, who were probably
more interested than myself in the financial
speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
(which was the "great attraction" of the evening),
had been cooling their heels all day in St.
Stephen's Hall, waiting for the mere chance of a
seat in the gallery devoted to "strangers."
With great admiration for the Chancellor of the
Exchequer himself, I am willing to confess—
albeit I know what taxes are and feel them—
that I was not very deeply concerned about his
surplus, or what he was going to do with it. I
had even forgotten the date of the budget night,
until an honourable member casually reminded
me that he had put my name down on the
Speaker's list "for to-morrow."

Accordingly, when to-morrow came, I rolled
down to Westminster in a cab, and in a very
easy and indifferent frame of mind, knowing that
I had an order for the front row of the stalls,
and was sure to get in without any trouble.
You may judge how indifferent I am about
parliament and parliamentary orators, when I
tell you that on being set down at the corner of
Palace Yard I looked for Fendall's Hotel. It
was gone, and a whole row of houses with it,
and had been gone, I was informed, ever so