difficult question to settle—that question as to the manner of dealing with political offenders. But to us, at least, it seems clear that there is nothing reasonable to be said for the hashing up in one system of Michael Davitt and Bill Sykes.

The criminal laws of England stand in immense need of emendation. They press with terrible force on one class of offences, and they deal very lightly with another class. The rights of property are maintained even still with a ferocious vigor, and a poor man or a woman stealing a loaf of bread is punished with what might be called in proportion an extraordinary severity. On the other hand, we read every day in the papers of a drunken scoundrel who has kicked his wife almost to death getting off with something like six months' imprisonment. The whole general system needs a parliamentary review; but, unfortunately, Parliament is busied mostly with foreign affairs, and gives itself little time to look into the concerns of the inhabitants of these islands. When we get time enough-if we ever do-to think of domestic affairs, we may come to form and act upon some definite opinion as to the scale of punishment for offences against property and offences against life, and likewise to arrange for some difference being made between the treatment of a high-minded and virtuous man who starts a rebellious movement against the existing authorities, and a man who amuses himself after the fashion of Jack the Ripper. The second question which came up concerned the general dealings of the authorities in the English prisons. To that we have already made some reference. The English prison system is beyond all question-and we are not now speaking of the relative guilt of the offenders-much more severe than that of the United States. In the American Republic there is every chance given to the convicted criminal to reform and become a better man. An English visitor to one of the State prisons in the American Republic is sometimes amazed at the sort of ad

vantages placed within the reach of the convict.

man

In some of the State prisons in America there is, no doubt, a stern severity in dealing with serious breaches of discipline or with attempts at escape or mutiny. In many of these prisons measures of punishment for such offences are allowed which would not be endured by public opinion in England. But, on the other hand, the ordinary life of a prisoner is in most of these States made much more endurable than the ordinary life of a prisoner in England. The idea in the United States is to give the imprisoned or woman a fair chance of becoming reformed, and returning to society a better citizen. Of course it may be said, and it is said here every day, that we must not make prison life an agreeable experience for criminal offenders, and that if a man ought to be punished he ought to be punished, and there an end. That argument, of course, however it may be expressed, is an argument pure and simple for the principle of torture. The man has done wrong; he ought to be sent to prison; he is sent to prison; his life ought to be made miserable for him in prison, in order that when he comes out of prison he may take care not to go into prison again. As a matter of fact, it is quite certain that in no country in the world is there created a regular jail-bird class as much as in Great Britain. Men and women pass their whole lives in ting into prison and getting out of it. Some of the restrictions imposed in the Irish prisons were positively grotesque, and especially grotesque when they applied to political offenders. A shortsighted man was not allowed to wear spectacles; a man with a severe cold in his head was not allowed the use of a pocket-handkerchief, lest perchance he should make use of it as a rope and hang himself; and this in the case of men whose lives, as soon as they came out of prison, would be comfortable, happy, and even honored. But to return to the mere question of the common criminal, it is greatly to be doubted whether the severity of our

get

SOME RECENT VERSE.

JULY FUGITIVE.

Can you tell me where has hid her
Pretty Maid July?

I would swear one day ago
She passed by,

I would swear that I do know
The true bliss of her eye:
"Tarry, maid, maid," I bid her:

But she hastened by:

Do you know where she has hid her? Maid July?

Yet in truth it needs must be

The flight of her is old:

Yet in truth it needs must be,

For her nest, the earth, is cold. No more in the pooléd Even

Wade her rosy feet, Down-flakes no more plash from them To poppies 'mid the wheat.

She has muddied the day's oozes
With her petulant feet:
Scared the clouds that floated,
As sea-birds they were,
Slow on the coerule

Lulls of the air,

Lulled on the luminous
Levels of air:

She has chidden in a pet

All her stars from her:

Now they wander loose and sigh
Through the turbid blue,
Now they wander, weep, and cry-
Yea, and I too-

"Where are you, sweet July,
Where are you?"

Who hath beheld her footprints,
Or the pathway she goes?

Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat,

Which of you knows?

Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic Night of the rose?

Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow
On the lily's snows?
Gales, that are all-visitant,
Find the runaway:

And for him who findeth her
(I do charge you say)

I will throw largesse of broom
Of this summer's mintage,
I will broach a honey-bag
Of the bee's best vintage.
Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet,
None of them knows!

How then shall we lure her back
From the way she goes?

For it were a shameful thing,

Saw we not this comer

Ere autumn came upon the fields Red with rout of summer.

When the bird quits the cage,

We set the cage outside, With seed and with water,

And the door wide,

Haply we may win it so

Back to abide.

Hang her cage of earth out

O'er Heaven's sunward wall,

Its four gates open, winds in watch
By reinéd cars at all:

Relume in hanging hedgerows

The rain-quenched blossom, And roses sob their tears out

On the gale's warm heaving bosom:

Shake the lilies till their scent

Over-drip their rims:

That our runaway may see

We do know her whims:

Sleek the tumbled waters out

For her travelled limbs:

Strew and smooth blue night thereon,

There will-O not doubt her!

The lovely sleepy lady lie,

With all her stars about her!

From "New Poems." By Francis Thompson. Copeland and Day, Publishers. Price $1.50.

MIDSUMMER.

Dawn-tide growing, rose-light sowing, Heaven showing bloom and sheen, With the summer morning breaking Silver soft and all serene,

Oh, the still delight of waking. When the grass is in the mowing And the leaf is green!

Dark kine lowing, slow mists throwing

In their going, half unseen, Where the thatch is shine and shadow Oh, below the sail to lean, Barges dropping down the meadow, When the grass is in the mowing And the leaf is green!

Waters flowing, sunshine glowing,
Breezes blowing in between,
Every spray a blossom giving,
Every dewdrop Hippocrene,
Oh, the loveliness of living

When the grass is in the mowing
And the leaf is green.

From "In Titian's Garden." By Harriet Prescott Spofford. Copeland & Day, Publishers. Price $1.25.

THE OLD SPINET.

It is slim and trim and spare,
Like the slender Lady Claire
In the gowns they used to wear,
Long ago:

And it stands there in the gloom
Of the gabled attic room,
Like a ghost whose vacant tomb
None may know.

I can see the lady's hands,
White as lilies, as she stands
Strumming fragmeuts of Durand's
On the keys:

And I hear the thin, sweet strain
Of the Plymouth hymns again,
Like the sobs of windless rain
In the trees.

She would play the minuet
For the stately-stepping set,
While the ardent dancers met,
Hands and hearts:

Did the old-time spinet care,
If Dan Cupid unaware
Pricked the breasts of brave and fair
With his darts?

Now the spiders with their floss
Up and down the keyboard cross,
And the strings are dull as dross,
Once so bright.

No one cares to touch the keys,-
Stain'd old yellow ivories,-
Save the ghosts some dreamer sees
In the night.

From "The Heart of Life." By James Buckham.
Copeland and Day, Publishers.

English Stage, The. Being an Account

of the Victorian Drama by Augustin Filon. Translated from the French by Frederic Whyte. John Milne, Publisher.

M. Ramsay. Hodder & Stoughton, Publishers.

Industries and Wealth of Nations. By Michael G. Mulhall. Longmans &

Co., Publishers.

In the Tideway. By Flora Annie Steel. Constable & Co., Publishers.

Later Gleanings; Theological and Ecclesiastical. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. John Murray, Publisher.

Letters from the Black Sea During the Crimean War. By Admiral Sir Leopold Heath, K.C.B. Richard Bentley & Sons, Publishers.

March Hares. By Harold Frederic. John Lane, Publisher.

My Father as I Recall Him. By Mamie Dickens. Roxburghe Press.

Naturalist in Australia, The. By W. Saville-Kent, F.L.S., F.Z.S., etc. Chapman & Hall, Publishers.

$1.25.

Price

M.D. and August Hammar, C.E. Wm. Heinemann, Publisher. Pantalas. By Edward Jenkins. Richard Bentley & Son, Publishers. Peakland Faggot, A; Tales Told of Milton Folk. By R. Murray Gilchrist. Grant Richards, Publisher. Popular Royalty. By Arthur H. Beavan. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Publishers.

Tale of Two Tunnels, A. By W.
Clark Russell. Chapman & Hall,
Publishers.

Wild Norway. By Abel Chapman.
Arnold, Publisher.
Woodland Life, The. By Edward
Thomas. Blackwood & Sons, Pub-
lishers.

Woman and the Republic. By Helen
Kendrick Johnson. D. Appleton &
Co., Publishers. Price $1.50.
Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's
Reign. Hurst & Blackett, Publish-

ers.