Seem'd all on fire within, around,
Deep sacristy and altar's pale ;
Shone every pillar foliage-bound,

And glimmer'd all the dead men's mail.

Blazed battlement and pinnet high,

Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair:
So still they blaze, when fate is nigh
The lordly line of high Saint Clair.

There are twenty of Roslin's barons bold
Lie buried within that proud chapelle :
Each one the holy vault doth hold,

But the sea holds lovely Rosabelle.

And each Saint Clair was buried there,

With candle, with book, and with knell ;
But the sea-caves rung, and the wild waves sung
The dirge of lovely Rosabelle.

(i.) Let the piece be learned well by heart. This should be made a necessary part of the out-school work-of "preparation." While, as has been said above, something more than the memory is to be thought of, and a mere loading of that faculty is before all things to be deprecated, the memory is not to be neglected. The memory is to be the servant of the mind; it is to fetch and carry for it; and it must be kept busy. One might say it should serve as a sort of library, which it were well to stock judiciously, with volumes well read and to be read again and again, not with shelves of works unintelligible to us. The learning a piece of good writing is placing a volume in that library. It is not enough to learn it, but it is a good beginning. Certainly, as has often been said, it is no trivial blessing to have the memory furnished in one's youth with what is worth remembering to the end of one's life, and grows more and more precious as we grow older and

discern better its virtues.

Some attention should be paid to elocution. The piece learnt must be recited carefully and thoughtfully. When the pupil understands it better, as it is to be hoped he will do at the close of his "lesson," he will probably repeat it more intelligently; but to repeat it with some intelligence, some proper feeling and emphasis, this must be one of the duties of his preparation for his work. How rare is good reading, at least among English men! Ladies generally read better, because they have more practice in the art; amongst men the art can scarcely be said to exist. Certainly much of the music of poetry and of rhythm

is often lost or diminished, if the passage containing it is not read aloud. To be fully appreciated, it should be heard by the outer ear, and so by the inner. By younger persons, this music will probably be altogether unperceived and not understood, if they are not taught to feel and hear it. Rosabelle will be to them as a passage from one of Sir Richard Blackmore's Epics. They will miss its varying tones; they will see the poet piping, so to say, but they will not hear the notes that flow from him; he will pipe, but they will not dance; he will mourn, but they will not lament. Let, then, their sense of the music of poetry be cultivated. Let them see that reading is in a manner interpretation.

(ii.) Now let the general meaning of the piece be considered. To turn to our instance, let the story of the poem be brought out. Rosabelle, it will be seen, divides into four parts: there is the introduction, the minstrel's proem; then there is the group of figures on the frith shore, with the storm gathering over them; then Roslin Chapel all ablaze; then the two last stanzas connect, as it were, the two preceding scenes-connect the chief of those figures with that ominous blaze. To each of those two main scenes five stanzas are devoted; so that in mere form they correspond together. These scenes should be carefully realized; the pupil should describe them in his own words. For younger pupils this realizing of the story might, as I have already said, be work enough. For them, old ballads and pieces like Rosabelle, or a chapter of one of the Waverley Novels, or a passage from Pope's Iliad would serve excellently; or, which would require a little more power, they might read a play of Shakspere merely for the story. Of course with poems of a not merely narrative sort, greater difficulties would arise take Wordsworth's lines on The Daisy, for instance, or Gray's Ode on the Spring. Perhaps few persons are fully conscious how very common most careless reading is, especially of poetry. Again and again the main point of a poem is missed: or, if the main point is caught, that is all. One may frequently meet devout admirers of Milton's Lycidas who understand scarcely a passage of that noble poem. They are lulled and pleased with Lycidas as one is with the sound of waves without knowing what they say. Gray's Elegy is, I suppose, a generally popular poem. How many of those who doat upon it follow the current of the thought, or at all comprehend certain parts? Yet surely poetry read in this fashion is read most ineffec

tually. Poetry becomes a mere pleasant murmur. It is like hearing laughter without knowing the joke that moves it. Yorick, "a fellow of infinite jest," sets the table in a roar, and we roar with it; but what was that "flash of merriment"? To these readers poetry is an inarticulate art, like music, but with inferior sensuous expression.

It is most important, therefore, that the general meaning of everything read should be asked after, even where it seems obvious. When this is well discovered, the meaning of the parts should be inquired into, and their relation to the main idea investigated; that is, the unity of the piece should receive attention. It should be shown how in all artistic works of excellence one main idea rules and sways; that there is one great centre towards which all the parts bend and converge; that no part is really isolated and independent, however much it may seem so, but subserves that main idea. In what does the unity of Rosabelle consist? We have seen that this ballad presents us with two powerful pictures; how are these pictures related? Are they mere rivals jarring with each other? Do they divide and distract the attention? Or are they harmoniously subordinate to one idea, each serving to bring that idea into its full relief? Do their colours blend so as to leave one single impression? Questions of this sort may seem easy enough to the wise; but they will certainly not be found so by the ordinary learner. To answer them will demand his best attention and thought. Again and again the teacher will discover that the part has been mistaken for the whole, that an aisle has been regarded as the cathedral.

It would frequently be advisable to direct one's pupils to make written abstracts of any piece of prose or poetry that is to be studied by them. These would serve as an evidence that the hours allotted to preparation had been rightfully employed; secondly, they would thoroughly test the writer's comprehension of his work; thirdly, they might be of use in teaching the scholar how to write his native tongue. With regard to the last suggested advantage, this mode of learning the art of composition is surely better, at least for younger persons, than that of what is called Essay writing. To exact "Essays" is perhaps to imitate that austere Egyptian master who insisted on bricks being produced though he declined to furnish straw. Even let it be sup

posed that a youth has knowledge enough to write an essay, yet the difficulty of transferring that knowledge to paper has to be overcome;

and this is no slight difficulty.

Many a fluent talker is a most tardy

and labouring writer. All his powerful glibness goes at the sight of

a pen.

"Facunda parum decoro

Inter verba cadit lingua silentio."

He cannot translate himself. He is like an undecipherable manuscript. Most persons, however ready scribes they may become eventually, have once experienced this helpless condition. Their minds have appeared to them tabulæ rasæ of as complete a kind as they were at the time of birth, according to Locke, or as the palpable unfilled sheet in front of them. They have no self-projecting power. They cannot cast any shadows. Abstract-making may teach how to express one's meaning without drawing too mercilessly on one's own resources. When the straw is provided, everybody may be expected to produce bricks of some sort. Much attention should be paid to the style, as well as to the matter, of these abstracts. They must be truthful; they must be well turned.

The pupil should be encouraged to examine himself in his work. He should be taught to ask himself questions, and if he cannot answer any one of them he should be permitted to lay it before his teacher. Let him say to himself as he reads each passage: "Now do I understand that?" Let him write down the difficulties he cannot overcome -in every case there should be some such—and bring them so written to his tutor. These questions would serve as another test of the pupil's having properly prepared his lesson. They could not fail to elicit his intelligence. They would place him in a position thoroughly to appreciate whatever instruction might be given him, and partly at least prevent that lavish throwing away of pearls of which many a classroom is the daily scene.

(iii.) Now let attention be given to minor, subsidiary matters-to allusions, to manners and customs, to historical and semi-historical details. The story having been well mastered, we must see how it is set forth and illustrated; having observed the form, we must now regard the colour. What age does Rosabelle reflect? What habits, what superstitions, what rites, what creeds? Surveyed in this light, Rosabelle is full of interest. There is the old hall with its minstrel and its ladies gay; then the water-sprite with its wreck-prophetic scream; the Seer with his fearful vision; the young lords bent on their knightly

pastime; the dead barons lying in their quaint cerements; the funeral train with its torches, and, requiems, and tolling bells. All these are local and historical features that contrast with the permanent and abiding elements of the poem-with the deep human sympathy the sad tale stirs in us as in those "ladies gay" that heard it, or are fancied to hear it, long years ago; with the filial affection which omens and storms cannot daunt from its pious purpose- -a most fair sight, and one, thank Heaven, that has not passed away from the earth with the Middle Ages; with the fond ever-cherished belief that the children of love and duty do not perish unnoticed by the higher powers, but that their

"Death is mourned by sympathy divine."

Those temporary fashions contrast also with the unchanged and unchanging phenomena of nature. Nature might say with her bright

daughter, the Brook :

"Men may come, and men may go,

But I go on for ever."

"The good knights are dust, And their swords are rust, And their souls are with the saints, we trust ;" the ladies gay have long since passed the Seer has become a part of that world into which he was ever curiously gazing; the torches of the priests burnt out ages ago; but the sights and sounds of Nature are still fresh and vivid waves still blacken foam-edged, winds still moan and wail.

The water-sprite is heard often in old poems, and the poems that imitate or refer to these. By Logan it is called the water-wraith; see his Braes of Yarrow:

"Thrice did the water-wraith ascend,

And gave a doleful groan thro' Yarrow."

And so Wordsworth in his Yarrow Visited; and so Campbell in his Lord Ullin's Daughter (a poem with a like catastrophe with Rosabelle, but of a different, less noble motive) :

"By this the storm grew loud арасе,

The water-wraith was shrieking ;
And in the scowl of heaven each face

Grew dark as they were speaking."

But, according to Jamieson, this use of wraith is incorrect, wraith answering rather to the English ghost.