as he was, so joyous in his deportment, so handsome, so physically well-developed, he made no impression of incompleteness, of maimed or stinted nature. And yet, in social intercourse, these familiar friends of his habitually and instructively allowed for him, as for a child. or some other lawless thing, exacting no strict obedience to conventional rules, and hardly noticing his eccentricities enough to pardon them. There was an inde finable characteristic about Donatello that set him outside of rules.

He caught Miriam's hand, kissed it, and gazed into her eyes without saying a word. She smiled and bestowed upon him a little careless caress, singularly like what one would give to a pet dog when he puts himself in the way to receive it. Not that it was so decided a caress either, but only the merest touch, somewhere between a pat and a tap of the finger; it might be a mark of fondness, or perhaps a playful pretence of punishment. At all events, it appeared to afford Donatello exquisite pleasure; insomuch that he danced quite round the wooden railing that fences in the Dying Gladiator.

"It is the very step of the Dancing Faun," said Miriam apart to Hilda. "What a child, or what a simpleton he is! I continually find myself treating Donatello as if he were the merest unfledged chicken; and yet he can claim no such privileges in the right of his tender age, for he is at least-how old should you think him, Hilda?"

"Twenty years, perhaps," replied Hilda, glancing at Donatello; but, indeed, I cannot tell; hardly so old, on second thoughts, or possibly older. He has nothing to do with time, but has a look of eternal youth in his face."

"All underwitted people have that look," said Miriam, scornfully.

"Donatello has certainly the gift of eternal youth, as Hilda suggests," observed Kenyon, laughing; "for, judging by the date of this statue, which I am more and more convinced Praxiteles carved on purpose for him, he must be at least twenty-five centuries old, and he still looks as young as ever."

"What age have you, Donatello?" asked Miriam.

"Signorina, I do not know," he answered; "no great age, however; for I have only lived since I met you."

"Now what old man of society could have turned a silly compliment more neatly than that!" exclaimed Miriam. "Nature and art are just at one sometimes. But what a happy ignorance is this of our friend Donatello! Not to know his own age! It is equivalent to being immortal on earth. If I could only forget mine!" "It is too soon to wish that," observed the sculptor. "You are hardly older than Donatello looks."

I shall be content then," rejoined Miriam, "if I could only forget one day of all my life." Then she seemed to repent of this allusion, and hastily added, "A woman's days are so tedious that it is a boon to leave one of them out of the account."-The Marble Faun.

HAY, JOHN, an American novelist, poet, journalist, and diplomat, born at Salem, Ind., October 8, 1838. He was educated at Brown University, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Springfield, Ill., in 1861. In the same year he became Assistant Secretary of President Lincoln, and later his Adjutant and Aide-de-Camp. He served for a time in the Union army, and became an assistant adjutant-general. After the war he was Secretary of Legation at Paris and Madrid, and Chargé d'Affaires at Vienna. In 1870 he returned to the United States, and for six years was employed on the editorial staff of the New York Tribune. From 1879 to 1881 he was Assistant Secretary of State. During his connection with the Tribune he became known by his dialect poems Jim Bludsoe and Little Breeches. These were afterward published, with others of his verses, in a volume entitled Pike County Ballads (1871). In the same year he published Castilian Days, a collection of sketches of Spanish life. He also, conjointly with John G. Nicolay, wrote The Life of Abraham Lincoln which was published in the Century Magazine, in 1886-87, and issued in 10 volumes. His collected poems appeared in 1890. In 1897 President McKinley appointed him United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, and he was accepted just prior to Queen Victoria's celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of her reign.

MY CASTLE IN SPAIN.

There was never a castle seen
So fair as mine in Spain;
It stands embowered in green,
Crowning the gentle slope
Of a hill by Xenil's shore,

And at eve its shade flaunts o'er
The storied Vega plain,

And its towers are hid in the mists of hope;
And I toil through mists of pain

Its glimmering gates to gain.

In visions wild and sweet Sometimes its courts I greet; Sometimes in joy its shining halls

I tread with favored feet;

But never my eyes in the light of day
Were blessed with its ivied walls,
Where the marble white and the granite gray
Turn alike where the sunbeams play
When the soft day dimly falls.

I know in its dusky rooms
Are treasures rich and rare;
The spoil of Eastern looms,

And whatever of bright and rare
Painters divine have won

From the vault of Italy's air;
White gods of Phidian stone
People the haunted glooms:
And the song of immortal singers
Like a fragrant memory lingers,
I know, in the echoing rooms.

But nothing of these, my soul !

Nor castle, nor treasures, nor skies,
Nor the waves of the river that roll,
With a cadence faint and sweet,
In peace by its marble feet-
Nothing of these is the goal

For which my whole heart sighs.
'Tis the pearl gives worth to the shell-

The pearl I would die to gain ;
For there does my lady dwell,
My love that I love so well-
That Queen whose gracious reign
Makes glad my Castle in Spain.

Her face so purely fair

Sheds light in the shady places,
And the spell of her maiden graces
Holds charmed the happy air.
A breath of purity
Forever before her flies,

And ill things cease to be
In the glance of her honest eyes,
Around her pathway flutter,
Where her dear feet wander free,
In youth's pure majesty,

The wings of vague desires,

But the thought that love would utter
In reverence expires.

Not yet! not yet shall I see
That face which shines like a star
O'er my storm-swept life afar

Transfigured with love for me;
Toiling, forgetting, and learning,
With labor and vigils, and prayers,
Pure heart and resolute will,
At last I shall climb the Hill,
And breathe the enchanted airs
Where the light of my life is burning,
Most lovely and fair and free;
Where alone in her youth and beauty,
And bound by her fate's sweet duty,
Unconscious she waits for me.

BEFORE THE BULL-FIght.

One does not soon forget the first sight of the full Coliseum. In the centre is the sanded arena, surrounded by a high barrier. Around this rises the graded succession of stone benches for the people; then numbered seats for the connoisseurs; and above a row of