amusement, which I unfeignedly gave. He
naturally rhapsodized about its intellectual
and humanising tendency, and affirmed, like
Mons. Jourdain's music-master, that the
advancement, study, and progress of music would
go far to lessen brawls of every description
— international and intestine quarrels— and
to keep the nations of the world in tune with
each other, better than Lord Palmerston's
most successful diplomacy. I don't say I
agreed to all, but it pleased me much to call
to the old gentleman's recollection the efforts
worthily made during the last few years to
popularise musical education— Mr. Hullah's
schools— M. Jullien's cheap concerts— class
teaching in the Army (some regiments of
which, I have heard, are advanced enough to
take part in the Church services)— the
arrangement and distribution of Dibdin's songs
for the use of the Navy— with Her Majesty's
special encouragement of glee-singing by the
crew of the Royal yacht,— the extraordinary
success of the Sacred Harmonic Society,
entirely a middle class foundation, were all
cited; and I satisfied the old gentleman, as
we parted at his door, by agreeing that
manners were all the better for music, and
that the Latin grammar was right respecting
the emollient for the brutal tastes and habits
of the people.

THE LEGEND OF THE LADYE'S CROSS*
* New Forest, Hampshire.

IT was a lovely evening— the glare of day was past,
But the rosy flush of sunset was still lingering to the last;
The flowers were blushing in their cells, in every shape and hue,
And the fevered earth was thirsting for the offering of the dew;
When with her small feet glancing, as a young and startled fawn,
She sped— the Lady Ethel— like a gleam across the lawn.

The birds were singing gaily— there was gladness in the air—
And she was queen of all the lands that spread around her there;
Queen of the leveret and the fawn, the lapwing and the dove,
An empress in her innocence, her beauty, and her love;
Queen of the grand old Forest, which ages still have trod—
The spirit of its solitudes, the Lady of its sod.

Her heart was beating quickly, and her pulses kept their tune,
As the fountain to the marble, or the ocean to the moon;
A glad free sense of motion, with a cadence soft and sweet,
As the tinkling of the silver bells to the arrowy glancing feet;
And that rich flush of sunset, whose instant blushes teach
The warm blood all its eloquence, the mute heart all its speech.

There was one that stood beside her, in the shadow of the glade,
When the fulness of deep feeling had a stiller silence made,
For the love like bounding waters, that go brawling o'er the plain,
But echoes back in merriment its shallowness of brain;
While the deep, still, calm affection, like the under-current steals,
And but in strong emotions shows the Magnate that it feels.

He had wooed her— not for riches— for of kingly race he came—
He had wooed her— not for beauty, not for conquest, or for fame.
In his father's court were high-born dames, of kindred and degree;
But none like Lady Ethel in all her purity.
As a young gazelle that stealeth in her glad and sweet surprise,
She met her timid confidence within those trusting eyes.

She had been wooed by others:— there was Reginald de Blore—
The deeper, haughtier, grew his love, as she repulsed him more;
Till with despair his brain was fired, and vengeance lit the pile—
A deep, dark plot of villany, of treachery, and guile.
So— as the thought grew madness— his hurried steps he bent;
A slave to work the powers of ill a mightier demon lent.

The silver birch was weeping with its fair and graceful stems,
And the emerald moss was wreathing all the rugged oak with gems,
And the flowers were growing drowsy with the heat of day opprest,
And were waiting eve's libations ere they closed their lids to rest;
When like a foul, dark spirit amid the gleams of light,
He passed adown the forest-glade, and vanished from their sight.

'Neath a fair oak the lovers sat—a mossy turf o'ergrown—
And there the Lady Ethel had made her sportive throne;
And at her feet Prince Richard knelt, mute with excess of bliss,
And owned the kingdoms of a world were naught compared to this;
While the dark glade the shadow swept, one flash of golden light,
That seemed as severed from the sky, hung hovering o'er the night.

All— as it marked them for its own— that last bright sunset fell,
Glowing (as ever brightest things) most brightly in Farewell!