THE REST OF IMMORTALS.

MATTHEW ARNOLD. DIED APRIL 15, 1888.

"Who, though so noble, shared in the world's toil,
And though so tasked, kept free from dust and soil."

HILST April with her temperate touch and slight

WH

Changes the shadows, and secludes the light, Well is it thou shouldst vanish from our sight,

Thou gentle toiler for the soul's success,

As unobtrusive in thine aim to bless

As spring-time flecking the field's barrenness.

We would not have thee garnered with the wheat:

Most delicate diviner, it is meet

Thou diest while the year is incomplete.

Nature e'en now could fondly deck thy tomb
With willows, shooting argent through the gloom
Of her dun woods, and wintry alder-bloom.

For thee thy Surrey fitting landscape found:
The hills two meadows high, the fir-tree mound,
The breadth of country in blue swathes enwound,

And nooks of tender colour on the plain,
The ochre sand-pit with its madder-stain,
The yew's dark glitter down the chalky lane,

The track of steam across the weald express
Thy love of life urbane, of safe recess,
Unmarred by gloom of savage loneliness.

Ill had we fared, if thou hadst been recluse,
Keen-hearted guide to the ennobling use
Of converse-Hamlet-subtle in abuse.

Were we not dead to the fine art of blame,

Furious and blind? When thou didst put to shame, Scarred folly felt the misery of fame.

What was it that was precious in thine eyes?
What evil hast thou taught men to despise?
Ah, well we know wherein thy secret lies:

Converse with Nature did thy Wordsworth win,
Thou hast set man's felicity within,

And bidden his true blessedness begin.

For thou didst hold most human is their care
Who wander not distracted here and there,
But in the world's essential movement share,

Museful and pliant to its varying flow,
Renouncing action for the toil to know
Whither its oft-retarded waters go.

Deep in the inner heavens we think of thee
Replenished, gazing on reality,

Following thy being's law with motion free.

Dear must thou be to God who didst require
Of Him His best: the stops of every lyre
Trying with fingers that refused to tire;

And Shakespeare, falsely smiting, must be dumb: But who like thee could listen when the hum Ceased that the swelling melody might come?

And who like thee had faith that those who weave Great songs will soothe whom science doth bereave, And empty of his creed's enchantments leave?

Therefore the poet to his high employ
Thou dost restore-to be the strength and joy
Of mortals, 'mid the bitter world's annoy.

Whilst thou thyseif-ah, winning, ample-browed,
Benignant minstrel !-dost our moods o'ercloud,
As one presageful destiny hath bowed.

Idle the hope that thou, condemned to break
With fond tradition for the spirit's sake,
A resonant, unfaltering chaunt couldst wake

To marshal and subdue; yet dear thy strain,
Low, elegiac, falling as the rain

Upon us in our hours of heat and pain.

In our dead poets' sacred dormit'ry
There is not found a resting-place for thee;
They rise, they join the pensive company

Of those who press around thy grave's dark rim,
And call to thee. Chaucer's blue eyes are dim;
Spenser is there, murmuring his heavenly hymn.

April 1888.

MICHAEL FIELD.

NATIONAL DEFENCE.

THE

HE Lord Mayor is mistaken in the wonderful letter he wrote to the promoters of the meeting on the national defences intended to be held at Guildhall. There has been no scare in the public mind, nothing in the shape of a "panic," and there was nothing "unpatriotic" in the motives of the promoters. There has been a good deal of lively talk among military and naval men, accompanied by some interesting and rather startling disclosures. A dramatic incident, suggesting industrious rehearsal beforehand, has occurred in the House of Lords. The Prime Minister suddenly opened fire upon his Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief on the strength of an anonymous paragraph in a newspaper purporting to have been written with the sanction of "the highest military authority." There is a convenient ambiguity in the expression under the shelter of which his Royal Highness made a safe rather than a dignified retreat. But worse punishment was bestowed upon an absent man. The Adjutant-General, speaking three weeks before at a dinner given to Sir John Pender, had expressed himself with unusual freedom on the immoral tendencies of party government, holding up a fancy picture of official profligacy in which the Secretary of State for War imagined he saw something that was meant for his own portraiture. Such terrible presumption had to be checked at once, or who could tell to what lengths it might go? It seemed to portend an invasion of the civil by the military power, something in the line of General Boulanger. A generous Premier, aided perhaps by the impression that it might be his turn next, if not that he was the person chiefly assailed, listened kindly to his colleague's complaints and loaded his blunderbus for an attack that same night, not without a hope perhaps that, as the culprit was not present to receive the fire in person, and

would only hear its echoes next morning, he would deem prudence the better part of valour. If this was Lord Salisbury's expectation he was soon undeceived, and by general consent he carried off no laurels from the encounter. Lord Wolseley apologized handsomely for any remarks that might have seemed to imply a censure upon the present Government more than upon any other, but with respect to the statements which formed the gist of his offence he stuck to his guns.

This incident was hardly over when an opportunity was afforded for an unusual outflow of professional eloquence in the House of Commons. The Government, in proposing a grant in aid of the Australian squadron, and a loan for putting our coaling stations and home ports in a state of defence, seemed to present themselves in that attitude of inchoate penitence and half-confession which offers the finest opening for an accuser. You admit, then, it is all true that we have been saying for years, and you will find much more to be true if you will only push your inquiries a little farther. You have begun to do well, and we all rejoice at it, but these are but the first signs and fruits of the temper that befits you. Then followed a list of fatal omissions identical in substance with the incriminatory newspaper paragraph which had so disturbed Mr. Stanhope. There are matters of opinion and there are matters of fact. The former are open to discussion; of the latter it is only requisite to know whether or not certain assertions are true. Our military experts tell us there is not a single breech-loading gun on any of our fortifications from Portland to the Tweed, that our guns are inferior to those served out to any foreign army, that ours is the only army in Europe as yet unequipped with the repeating rifle, and that our volunteers are cheated in the name of artillery with obsolete guns which were made a quarter of a century ago. We are told that some of our recently launched ironclads are without guns, and are likely to remain without them till some time next year, or perhaps the year after. We are assured that no big guns are being manufactured, that the Government do not know where to get them made, and may have to send their orders abroad, no encouragement having been given to our home manufacturers. We are told with the same confidence of assertion that the army is unprovided with means of transport, that we have no stores, and absolutely no gunpowder. We are said to be in the same evil plight as regards organization, of which there is nothing that deserves the name, so that there would infallibly be a breakdown on any sudden call for action. The upshot is that the country is practically in a defenceless condition. Some show of defensive arrangements we have no doubt, and we should make the best of them if occasion arose. But a defence which, according to all reasonable forecast, would prove inadequate, is no defence at all, but a mere