reaching across the ocean and uniting loving hearts. As a lullaby this song is one of the most beautiful ever written: if it has been surpassed then it is by Tennyson himself in his "Sea Dreams."

D

CANTO III.

THE third Canto opens with a beautiful description of sunrise :

"Morn in the white wake of the morning star

Came furrowing all the orient into gold."

Refreshed by a night's rest, the Prince and his companions

"rose, and each by other drest with care Descended to the courts that lay three parts In shadow."

Here Melissa met them,

"tinged with wan from lack of sleep,

Or grief,"

and urged them to fly, telling them that her mother knew all, and explaining how it had come about. It was thus: Lady Blanche had for some time past been jealous of Lady Psyche's popularity with the students, for it was agreed when the Princess and her two supporters founded the University that the Princess should be the head, and the two widow ladies the arms; but Lady Blanche complains that

Lady Psyche was the right hand now,

And she the left, or not, or seldom used;

Hers more than half the students, all the love."

On the previous night Lady Blanche had been canvassing her rival's new pupils, in a not very generous spirit:

"Who ever saw such wild barbarians?'

was her remark to Melissa.

""Girls! more like men!'"

At these words poor Melissa's blushes betrayed her secret to her mother's keen eye.

"O marvellously modest maiden you!'"

said her mother:

"Men! girls, like men! why, if they had been men You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus For wholesale comment.'

Then came these dreadful words out one by one, 'Why these are men. . . and you know it.'"

and with this Lady Blanche left her and went to announce her discovery to the Princess.

During her absence Florian questioned Melissa :

"How grew this feud betwixt the right and left?'”

and Melissa told them how it occurred, explaining that Princess Ida's childhood had been spent under the guardianship of Lady Blanche, the Princess's mother having died while Ida was quite a child hence Lady Blanche's jealousy of Lady Psyche, whom she accused of having undermined

her influence at the Palace and stolen her place in the Princess's affections.

Cyril has just returned from Lady Blanche's presence, for when he heard of her determination to disclose the real character of the three friends to the Princess, he at once sought her out and tried to stay her from her purpose; in fact, to use his words, he tried

"to melt this marble into wax

To yield us farther furlough;"

but, yawning, he exclaims:

"O hard task,

No fighting shadows here! I forced a way
Thro' solid opposition crabb'd and gnarl'd.
Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump
A league of street in summer solstice down,
Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman."

With every argument he plied her; such extremes, he told her, referring to the doom which had been pronounced against all men who should enter the gates,

"well might harm

The woman's cause. 'Not more than now,' she cried, So puddled as it is with favouritism!"

He appealed to her memory of the past, in vain ; he urged the disgrace which would come upon her daughter for concealing the truth, all in vain :

"but since I knew

No rock so hard but that a little wave

May beat admission in a thousand years,

I recommenced."

And now he touches her vulnerable point: he reminds her of the imaginary slights of which she has shown herself so sensitive, and then he offers her

"Some palace in our land, where you shall reign

The head and heart of all our fair she-world,
And your great name flow on with broadening time
For ever! Well, she balanced this a little,

And told me she would answer us to-day,

Meantime be mute: thus much, nor more I gained."

So far, then, they are respited. In the afternoon they accompany the Princess, at her special invitation, on a geological expedition, the Prince riding at her side. His "weird seizures" here attack

him again :

"The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show,

Her college and her maidens, empty masks,
And I myself the shadow of a dream,
For all things were and were not; "

but he seems to have been able to conceal their effect from the Princess. During the ride, the Prince, whom in his true character the Princess believes to be far away at his father's court, takes the opportunity to again urge his suit, and does his best to shake her resolution "never to wed."