Gen. That, sir, which I will not report after her.

Doc. You may, to me; and 't is most meet you should. Gen. Neither to you, nor any one, having no witness to confirm my speech. [Enter Lady Macbeth, with a taper.] Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close. Doc. How came she by that light?

Gen. Why, it stood by her: she has light by her continually; 't is her command.

Doc. You see, her eyes are open.

Gen. Ay, but their sense is shut.

Doc. What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands.

Gen. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour. Lady Macbeth. Yet, here's a spot.

Doc.

Hark! she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.

L. Macb. Out, damned spot! out, I say!-One; two: why, then 't is time to do 't. Hell is murky! - Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?

Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

Doc. Do you mark that?

L. Mach. The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? What, will these hands ne'er be clean? - No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting.

Doc. Go to, go to! you have known what you should not.

Gen. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: Heaven knows what she has known.

L. Macb. Here's the smell of the blood still all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!

Doc.

What a sigh is there! the heart is sorely charged.

Gen. I would not have such a heart in my bosom, for the dignity of the whole body.

Doc. Well, well, well,

Gen. Pray God, it be, sir.

Doc. This disease is beyond my practice: yet I have known those which walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds.

L. Macb. Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale :I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out of his grave. Doc. Even so ?

L. Macb. To bed, to bed! there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come! give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone to bed, to bed, to bed! [Exit Lady Macbeth.

Doc. Will she go now to bed?

Gen. Directly.

Doc. Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
More needs she the divine than the physician.

God, God, forgive us all! Look after her;
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upon her :- so, good-night.
My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight:
I think, but dare not speak.

Shakespeare.

XIV. DEGREES OF IMAGINATION.

Not only is imagination characteristic of all art and poetry, of all eloquence and beauty; not only is it the faculty which gives insight into the spiritual essence and loveliness of Nature and of all forms of human production, but the degree of imagination - is also the The greater the activity of imagination embodied in a work of art, or awakened by its contemplation, the higher the rank of that work.

test of greatness in art.

Art has been divided into the Beautiful, the Poetic, and the Sublime. A painting, a poem, or a story may have the simplest subject for its theme. A painting may represent a mere reflection of light upon a barn, and be beautiful. A poem upon a daisy or a bluebird may be imaginative and pleasing. The greatness of a work of art is not dependent upon its subject except in so far as this subject is a means of revealing insight. When such an object as a pool of water or some aspect of light and shade is the motive of a painting, or a brook the subject of a poem, the imagination may be present and the work may be made beautiful; but it is not the highest exercise of the faculty.

But whenever the human soul is portrayed with an object, though it be a mere pool of water; whenever the object becomes a mirror of the heart of man, of his love of Nature, his gloom or his hope, his earnestness, his sincerity, and his realization of life and the universe, art then becomes poetic. Anything is poetic in proportion as the human soul becomes the central element. Hu

man loves, human interests, human suffering and aspiration, these are really the subjects of poetry. Outward objects are the mere means of expression

Art, however, can go further. It is sublime in proportion as the human element preponderates. In beautiful art the natural preponderates. In poetic art the human and the natural elements are in equipoise. In sublime art the human preponderates over the medium or the language, which is suggestive and in the background. In sublime art the idea is all absorbing; it must be so great as to overshadow the form; it must lift the soul above and beyond any external object or accident.

Science, it is said, is always impersonal. Art is always personal. Great'art is dependent upon the ascendency of the personal element over the impersonal.

It is the imagination that makes the universe personal; that "conforms the outward show of things to the desires of the mind;" that penetrates below mere facts to truth; that throws aside all superficial accidents. It is the imagination that enables the human mind to disengage itself from a prison of literal facts.

The whole struggle for expression is, after all, dependent upon the manifestations of the soul through the tones and modulations of the voice and the body. Whenever the imagination and the passions are united, and the voice and the body are made subordinate, or brought into such control that the action of imagination and feeling is at once seen through them, the first step in training has been taken.

Dobson's "Song of Four Seasons" is beautiful. There is, of course, some imagination required, but the action of the faculty is not very high. But in such a poem as Gosse's "Return of the Swallows," while there is not the highest activity of the imagination, the mind is yet called upon to carry a more ideal conception. The same is true of Browning's " Apparitions" and "Love among the Ruins," of Tennyson's " Bugle Song" and "Day Dream." But such poems as Shelley's " Ode to the West Wind," "Prometheus Unbound," Coleridge's "Ode to France," Wordsworth's "Ode on Immortality," some portions of Job, and the Prophecy of Isaiah, are rightly termed sublime.

PROBLEM XVII. Distinguish by vocal expression that which is simply beautiful from that which is more profound, that which is poetic from that which is more sublime.

A SONG OF THE FOUR SEASONS.

WHEN Spring comes laughing by vale and hill,
By wind-flower walking and daffodil,

Sing stars of morning, sing morning skies,
Sing blue of speedwell, — and my Love's eyes.

When comes the Summer full-leaved and strong,
And gay birds gossip the orchard long,
Sing hid, sweet honey that no bee sips;
Sing red, red roses, - and my Love's lips.

THE RETURN OF THE SWALLOWS.

"OUT in the meadows the young grass springs,
Shivering with sap," said the larks, "and we
Shoot into air with our strong young wings,
Spirally up over level and lea;
Come, O Swallows, and fly with us,

Now that horizons are luminous !

Evening and morning the world of light,
Spreading and kindling, is infinite!”

Far away, by the sea in the south,

The hills of olive and slopes of fern
Whiten and glow in the sun's long drouth,

Under the heavens that beam and burn;
And all the swallows were gathered there
Flitting about in the fragrant air,

And heard no sound from the larks, but flew
Flashing under the blinding blue.

Out of the depths of their soft rich throats
Languidly fluted the thrushes, and said:
"Musical thought in the mild air floats,

Spring is coming and winter is dead!
Come, O Swallows, and stir the air,
For the buds are all bursting unaware,

And the drooping eaves and the elm-trees long
To hear the sound of your low sweet song.

Over the roofs of the white Algiers,

Flashingly shadowing the bright bazaar,
Flitted the swallows, and not one hears
The call of the thrushes from far, from far:
Sighed the thrushes; then, all at once,
Broke out singing the old sweet tones,
Singing the bridal of sap and shoot,
The tree's slow life between root and fruit.

But just when the dingles of April flowers

Shine with the earliest daffodils,

When, before sunrise, the cold clear hours
Gleam with a promise that noon fulfils,
Deep in the leafage the cuckoo cried,
Perched on a spray by a rivulet-side,

66

Swallows, O Swallows, come back again

To swoop and herald the April rain."

And something awoke in the slumbering heart

Of the alien birds in their African air,
And they paused, and alighted, and twittered apart,
And met in the broad white dreamy square;

And the sad slave woman, who lifted up

From the fountain her broad-lipped earthen cup,
Said to herself, with a weary sigh,

"To-morrow the swallows will northward fly!"

THOU deadly crater, moulded by my muse,

Edmund William Gosse.

Cast thou thy bronze into my bowed and wounded heart,
And let my soul its vengeance to thy bronze impart.

On the cannon purchased by receipts from his public readings.

Victor Hugo.

THOU who passest by, say at Lacedaemon we lie here in obedience to her laws.

Inscription at Thermopile.

Simonides.