are a few slight deficiencies in the "Autocrat." The poems are introduced rather awkwardly, and the machinery of the characters and of the boarding house is a little tiresome, but the volume will almost always be seen among that small collection of well-thumbed books found in any public library. Two later books, "The Professor" and "The Poet," completing the Autocrat series, follow in a similar vein. The best comment on these works is made by their sagacious author, who likens them to the wine of grapes that are squeezed in the press after the first juice that runs of itself from the heart of the fruit has been drawn off. In "The Professor" the story of Iris is an interwoven thread of gold, while the episode of the Little Gentlemen is itself a poem-its close very touching. The "Poet of the Breakfast Table" is of a more serious cast than its predecessors, and the author more and more ignores the boarders, who have clearly become little more than straw figures, and devotes himself to his peculiar mental speculations and his fluent gossip on books and learning.

Dr. Holmes is our typical University man of letters. To him Alma Mater meant far more than a mere training school for future work in the outside world. It meant good-fellowship, and all the pleasures and experiences that can be derived from a wholesome college life. At college he made many warm friendships, for although studious, he was always ready to join in the general round of amusement and jollity. From time immemorial men of letters have chafed and fretted under the routine of college curriculums, and have finally wrapped themselves up in a gloomy, introspective existence. Not so with Dr. Holmes. His after life showed him to be too much a man of the world to seclude himself from his fellow men; he loved to have personal contact with men and things, and the formation of this trait was made at Harvard. Emerson, Lowell, and Longfellow were all influenced during their college careers by the atmosphere of quiet refinement which is the characteristic of our sister University. But this very atmosphere was the foundation of Dr. Holmes'

literary career. His whole soul was imbued with the historic recollections of Cambridge and Boston, and his mind loved to dwell upon the glorious work Harvard had done and was still doing for education.

The charge has often been brought against Yale that, while her celebrated democracy is a very good thing in itself, she has not this atmosphere of refinement which seems so necessary to bring out latent literary talent; that her bustling, ambitious spirit, everywhere conspicuous, has a tendency to stunt the growth of literary culture and progress. This is not so. The extension and popularity of the courses in English Literature, and the widespread and constant use of the Libraries show the warm interest Yale men have in literature. The very idea of a democracy is "all for all," and tends to develop in each man what he can best give to the college as a whole. While Yale can boast of neither a Longfellow nor a Holmes, still we are confident that no Yale man will ever say that his Alma Mater has not the power to develop the literary genius of her sons.

What we love most in Dr. Holmes was his kindly and genial nature. There is no man in the whole range of literature, certainly among American men of letters, who was more respected and beloved by his fellow men. The "genial"

Holmes he was called and well did he deserve this name. His moral core was bravery, honesty, kindliness. The sunshine of his soul gleamed out so often that the egotism of his writings is forgotten in the charm of the artless humor and tender sympathy of his nature. To Englishmen he was almost as dear as to his own countrymen, and the English press, which is so chary of its praises of American authors, unites in eulogizing the sterling quali ties of the man.

From all the pettiness to which authors and artists are proverbially liable, Dr. Holmes was singularly free. No man was more ready to see the best side of other writers, and only the best side. His judgment of worth was remarkable. On one occasion Dr. Holmes received a col. lection of poems from an unknown Californian author

asking whether he considered it worth while for the writer to continue. Holmes was struck with the promising originality of the poems and wrote the desired letter of encouragement. Some time elapsed and all thought of his Californian correspondent had slipped his mind when a gentleman called and asked if he remembered the incident. "I do indeed," replied Holmes. "Well," remarked his visitor, "I am the man." It proved to be Bret Harte.

Nature had cast him in too tender a mould to stand out as a reformer in the world. Like Addison, he preferred to point out the follies and foibles of mankind with the pen of genial satire. He was more adapted to enter our hearts by kindliness and good humor than by placing himself there by the sheer force of over-powering intellect and conviction. The lasting memory of Dr. Holmes will be neither of his often striking thoughts, nor of his sometimes profound criticisms, but of the unvarying sweetness of a nature which sorrow could not ruffle nor experience embitter.

Philip Curran Peck.

THE SONG OF THE VIKINGS.

Where the were-wolf howls to the storm-king's wrath,

And the gray sea lashes its angry mane,
This prow has sped o'er a perilous path,
That few may follow and live again.

By the ice-walls guarding the northern seas,
Where the white-bear reigns o'er his floes alone,
We steered, in the teeth of the northern breeze,
Straight on to the were-witch throne.

Our prayer is the song of the whistling gale,
Our laughter the shriek of the northern blast,
The sea our goddess-she will not fail

To welcome us home at last.

Charles E. Thomas.

THE REEF OF NORMAN'S WOE.

LOUCESTER town nods and dozes in the sunlight

enjoying

The good, corpulent old fellow sleeps as blissfully as if there were no fisheries under his nostrils and no incessant

wash of the waves against the rocks. Not a factory chimney drifts smoke across his eyes and so he sleeps well. Only at nightfall, when the harbor lights begin to twinkle, he rouses, rubs his eyes, puts on his nightcap and says, "Bless me! Is it night again?" Is it night again?" And so to sleep

once more.

Nightmare comes sometimes with its horrible apparitions summoned at the ghostly call of storms, and then the great sleeper moves uneasily and shudders. And when the fishing boats do not return after weary weeks, he says drowsily, "Is it really so? Ah, me !" Outside the harbor Norman's Woe keeps watch and ward. lifts his head triumphantly out of the wreckage and tells no tales.

It

The pastor of the little Gloucester church had taken his afternoon walk through the Magnolia woods and towards the North point when the storm was over. He stood just within the thicket which tops the promontory at Rafe's Chasm-like tossed hair above a beetling brow -and looked fixedly at a girlish figure seated upon the rocks. The great waves were hurling themselves against the fortress of the cliffs and lifting fountains of spray. The figure sat wrapped in reverie. And so she was going away to-morrow and had come out to watch the waves. He wondered if it all meant as much to her as to him. He felt a certain sense of gratitude that this restless, incessant sea had been his brother and friend ever since his earliest recollection.

He recalled his own boyhood almost with a shudder, and felt again the weird fascination he had known when he had watched the phosphorescent lights from that very

spot. He had often seen the ghost-dance across the water in misty evenings, and sometimes the mid-summer moon at crescent, piercing a bank of black cloud like a scimeter stabbing into the heart of a prostrate giant. Even now he could see his uncouth childish figure in that lonely spot. The fisher-folk were on the whole very kind to him. Pennies and grog were unlimited for the lad of fifteen, and he could sing a ribald song with the best of them.

How deceptive a thing is memory! The fishing boats and the fishermen, his fancy could see again returning with a big "catch" of mackerel, and among them the orphan lad looked with great staring eyes at the figure upon the rocks there at Rafe's Chasm, just as the fleet. rounded Norman's Woe and not a stone's throw away. A lying trick of the brain! There sat the figure placidly before him. The saintly face of the girl whom he had seen for the first time in his congregation only a month or two before, was mingled with all his experience. Glints of the afternoon sunlight streamed through the trees lighting the rain jewels on the foliage with loveliest fairy tints and playing across the stern features of the clergyman. It touched, too, the beautiful head with the masses of gold hair, and seemed to illumine the smile upon the lips.

She could look away across the harbor and see the church spire glistening in the light. That eccentric clergyman with his impressive personality and vivid intellect and lonely life! He must be a very good man. They said he had been very wicked once. That was why he preached so continually against the sin of the world. Was it so selfish? Ecstatic bits of music fraught with ripples of laughter and the gliding of dancing feet drifted through her mind. And the Gloucester preacher said the grace and gallantry was hollow and a sham.

A fine soldierly figure rose before her imagination, a handsome, aristocratic face and such honest eyes. She found herself contrasting him with the clergyman, and sentiment is to be blamed if the greater nature suffered in the comparison. No, no, the minister must be wrong. How