Ere she gain her Heavenly-best, a God must mingle with the game: Nay, there may be those about us whom we neither see nor name, Felt within us as ourselves, the Powers of Good, the Powers of Ill, Strowing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains of the Will. Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine. Follow Light, and do the Right - for man can half-control his doom Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb. Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past. I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last. Gone at eighty, mine own age, and I and you will bear the pall; 1 The speaker said that "he should like to be assured that other outlying portions of the Empire, the Crown colonies, and important coaling stations were being as promptly and as thoroughly fortified as the various capitals of the self-governing colonies. He was credibly informed this was not so. It was impossible, also, not to feel some degree of anxiety about the efficacy of present provision to defend and protect, by means of swift, well-armed cruisers, the immense mercantile fleet of the Empire. A third source of anxiety, so far as the colonies were concerned, was the apparently insufficient provision for the rapid manufacture of armaments and their prompt despatch when ordered to their colonial destination. the necessity for manufacturing appliances equal to the requirements, not of Great Britain alone, but of the whole Empire. the keystone of the whole was the necessity for an overwhelmingly powerful fleet and efficient defence for all necessary coaling sta Hence But tions. This was as essential for the colonies as for Great Britain. It was the one condi. tion for the continuance of the Empire. All that Continental Powers did with respect to armies England should effect with her navy. It was essentially a defensive force, and could be moved rapidly from point to point, but it should be equal to all that was expected from it. It was to strengthen the fleet that colonists would first readily tax themselves, because they realized how essential a power. ful fleet was to the safety, not only of that extensive commerce sailing in every sea, but ultimately to the security of the distant portions of the Empire. Who could estimate the loss involved in even a brief period of disaster to the Imperial Navy. Any amount of money timely expended in preparation would be quite insignificant when compared with the possible calamity he uad referred to." Extract from Sir Graham Berry's Speech at the Colonial Institute, 9th November, 1886. That here the torpid mummy wheat Of Egypt bore a grain as sweet As that which gilds the glebe of England, Sunn'd with a summer of milder heat. So may this legend for awhile DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE. (IN ENNA.) FAINT as a climate-changing bird that flies All night across the darkness, and at dawn Falls on the threshold of her native land, And can no more, thou camest, O my child, Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams, Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb . With passing thro' at once from state to state, Until I brought thee hither, that the day, When here thy hands let fall the gather'd flower, Might break thro' clouded memories once again On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale Saw thee, and flash'd into a frolic of song And welcome; and a gleam as of the All flowers- but for one black blur of earth Left by that closing chasm, thro' which the car Of dark Aïdoneus rising rapt thee hence. And here, my child, tho' folded in thine arms, I feel the deathless heart of motherhood Within me shudder, lest the naked glebe Should yawn once more into the gulf, and thence The shrilly whinnyings of the team of Hell, |