man's work can show. As an imaginative instance of positive and perfect nature, the whole train of thought evolved in the man's mind as he watches the head asleep on his knee is equal and incomparable; the thought of a pure honest girl, in whom the same natural loves and likings shall run straight and bear fruit to honour, that in this girl have all run to seed of shame; the possible changes of chance that in their time shall bring fresh proof of the sad equality of nature and tragic identity of birthmark as of birthright in all souls born, the remote conceivable justice and restitution that may some day strike the balance between varying lots and lives; the delicately beautiful and pitiful fancy of the rose pressed in between the pages of an impure book; and the mightier fancy so grandly cast in words, of lust, alone, aloof, immortal, immovable, outside of death in the dark of things everlasting; self-secluded in absorption of its own desire, and walled up from love or light as a toad in its stone wrapping; and last, with the grey penetration of London dawn, the awakening of mind into live daylight of work, and farewell taken of the night and its follies, not without pity or thought of them.

The whole work is worthy to fill its place for ever as one of the most perfect and memorable poems of an age or generation. It deals with deep and common things; with the present hour, and with all time; with that which is of the instant among us, and that which has a message for all souls of men; with the outward and immediate matter of the day, and with the inner and immutable ground of human nature. Its plainness of speech and subject gives it power to touch the heights and sound the