thrilled me, under this heading. We have confined | Sweet-dropping whispers of a voice that ourselves, therefore, to the three universi. ties of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin; and if we shall appear to do scant justice to the second, it is because her best representative, the late Mr. Calverley, is so well known to the public that any criticism from us would be gratuitous, while the successful jeux d'esprit of Mr. Trevelyan do not belong to the period to which we have limited ourselves the last thirteen or fourteen years. A careful perusal of the contributions of Oxford to this domain of letters during the last decade can hardly fail to awaken, as its most striking result, a sense of surprise at the dreariness which, as a rule, seems to brood over her young singers. We except from this category those buoy ant spirits who gave birth, in 1874 and 1875, to the Shotover Papers, a magazine which, if it evinced a somewhat rebellious spirit towards the authorities, at least exhibits the redeeming feature of a hearty love of fun. With this exception, however, the prevailing tone of Oxford poetry is one of gloom. "Hardly anywhere, indeed, have we encountered a more remarkable support for the conventional foreign view of the seriousness of our national temperament than in the verses written during the last four or five years, by young men presumably in the prime of life and health, who are supposed to lead the most delightful of lives, with every variety of recreation within their reach. Is it the Oxford climate that is at fault, wherein, as a don once put it, you never feel your bodily spirits at more than half pressure, but are clogged by the mist and damp in which, from surrounding heights, that fair city may be generally seen weltering? Or is it the discontent begotten of much learning and study of philosophy at Balliol, the chief nest of recent Oxonian song-birds? Anyhow, the fact remains, explain it as we may, that their singing, as a rule, is in the minor key. Happily, we have abundant grounds for declining to believe that they are invaria bly as unhappy as they make themselves out to be, grounds resting on individual observation supplemented by the following passage from the Cambridge Tatler. The writer describes how he received from a friend a poem beginning as follows: Once on the border-land of sleep and waking, After a day of tears; Just as the morning in the east was breaking, A sweet sound filled my ears; Like a sharp beam of light, etc. "After the receipt of this, I went in the evening to visit my poor friend, and found him entertaining a somewhat noisy sup per party. . . . I took a seat near him and accepted his hospitable proffers of oysters and porter, and by-and-by I took an opportunity of laying a 'soft velvet touch' on his arm, and saying, in 'a sweet dropping whisper,' that I was glad this was not a day of tears' also. He gave me a look of mingled reproach and anguish, and swallowed two oysters without speak. ing." We have hopes, at any rate, that this may be true of Oxford as well; and we are further borne out in our surmises by the fact that the authors of some of these funereal strains were simultaneously capable of concocting the most diverting of epigrams upon university celebrities. Yet, strangely enough, these same wits, if ever they do indulge in a smile in the pages before us, do so in the grimmest fashion, and with "alien jaws," to borrow a phrase from the poet they love so truly and so well. Turning back to the Shotover Papers, we find that verse is hardly their strong point, although they contain some ingen. ious parodies; and in the lines "Vance v. Shakespeare," a telling protest against the preposterous régime then prevailing, under which the theatre, closed in termtime to all dramatic representations proper, was open to performances of a type described by a parodist as "most musichall, most melancholy." But there is considerable humor in many of the prose pieces, notably the really delightful trav esties of Professor Ruskin's discursive style, the autobiography of Colenso compiled from the examples in his arithmetic, and beginning, "I owe £3,746 17s. 3d. for whiskey-his own words" - and in the "Fables of Fantasticus," from which we will quote the following: THE OLD BIRD AND THE ROLLING STONE. An old bird one day perched itself upon a rolling stone, which was resting, after a long and fruitless search for moss. The poor stone was fretfully lamenting its want of success. "I have some chaff with which they tried to catch me this morning," said the kindly old bird, "if that will do as well." "I've tried it, but it won't stick," sobbed the stone. will, by gum!" cried the eager old biped. "Don't contradict!" said the stone, rolling over and crushing to death the venerable bird. Moral. - Never use vulgar expressions to a stone unless it is firmly imbedded in a wall. "It "How I was Ploughed in Mods" is a ludicrous paper, and illustrates admirably the habit of mind of those who, endeavoring to prove that they have been unfairly treated, succeed only too completely in convincing their hearers of the reverse. In our own day there was a good story current of a young nobleman who de scribed how in a divinity paper the exam: iners had tried to catch him with the word 'Papaio, and make him translate it "Romans; 'but I wasn't such a fool, so I put it Pomaeans!" And the story add. ed that he could not conceive why they had ploughed him. With the last number of the Shotover Papers all fun faded out of the life of the undergraduate, that is, if we are to judge by his literature, for he can say, with great truth, "I am saddest when I sing." An unproductive gap of four years occurred, and towards the close of 1879 some undergraduates, hailing for the most part from Balliol, put forth Waifs and Strays, a terminal magazine of Oxford verse. In the early numbers there were some faint sounds of mirth,-ghost-like mockeries of Praed, but with the entrance, in the fourth number, on an epoch of hand-made paper and rough edges, all such unseemly laughter was finally hushed. We have already attempted to explain this phenomenon, and will only add that the æsthetic movement was then exerting considerable influence upon undergraduate society, and may to some extent have been answerable for it. Winter and death, wrecks, ruined castles, and unrequited love, these are the favorite themes; and it must be admitted that they are treated in a strain of the most approved melancholy. Witness this extract: Even like Æneas in these days must we Steer a doomed course in heaviness of soul,- Beneath, the hunger of the moaning sea; From among all the contributions, those signed with the initials "J. W. M." and "H. C. B." seem to us to stand out by their conspicuous merit. The former writer, whether in his sonnets, Latin or English, or in such a tour de force as the piece entitled "Santa Cruz," displays a sense of form often exquisite, always noticeable; an easy mastery of rhythm, and abundant evidences of refined scholarship. The latter's verses are grateful from their quaint whimsicality · the nearest ap On Oxford's towers the tranquil stars look down, The sleeping city sighs with gentle breath; Closed are the eyes, relaxed the careful frown, This wearied brain of England slumbereth. How refreshing is this assurance that our young barbarians are not all at play! And yet this sense of Importance reflects, though in a rather ludicrous way, that strong affection for their Alma Mater which is one of the most agreeable features of Oxford and Cambridge men. When Mr. Keeley Halswelle's clever pictures of the Thames were exhibited in London some months back, the rooms used to be crowded with university men, delighted amid the gloom of London to get a glimpse of their beloved river again. How true it is that Oxford men or Oxford undergraduates are always thinking about Oxford, may be gathered from the story of the three visitors to Schaffhausen, we think it was, who inscribed the following quatrain in the hotel book: Three Oxford men came here to see And one had not passed Smalls. In "Love and Idleness " (London, 1883) we have a collection of pieces, nearly all of which had previously appeared in Waifs and Strays, by three of the clev erest contributors, two of whom we have already alluded to. Perhaps there is nothing better in the book than the verses entitled, "In Scheria," a glimpse into the after life of Nausicaa, instinct with classical feeling, and remarkable for the rare charm of the versification. Excellent, too, is the sombre piece, Loca senta situ," which recalls the scenery of Keats's ballad, "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and the lines on a drawing of Lionardo, at Venice. Of the fantastical "Doggerel in Delft," we have been most struck by the ingenious "Monologue d'outre Tombe," where an exact compliance to a peculiar metre is combined with an extraordinary freakishness of thought. The same quaint vein is shown in the "History of Philip the Deacon" and "The Last Tennis Party." Of the sonnets, those on "The Lost Self," Love Unreturned,” and “On a Madonna and Child, by Bellini," have | And we found in his palms, which were holstruck us as the most successful. For low, --- sheer cleverness and power of assimila- What are frequent in palms, - that is, dates. tion, there is nothing more remarkable than the descriptive poem, called "Santa This is really a triumph of wit and ingeCruz," narrating an episode in the career nuity. And "The May Exam.," by Alof Admiral Blake; but the eclecticism of fred Pennysong, though perhaps a trifle the style is somewhat kaleidoscopic. The brutal, is irresistibly comic. One line will grim Puritan sentiment of the time is dex-suffice to show its malicious fidelity, terously conveyed by the use of Scrip "And Charley Vane came out so grand, tural phraseology; while the whole poem in a tall, white chimney-pot." The same is cast in a Tennysonian mould, with a remarks apply to the burlesque on "HamSwinburnian lilt of rhythm and turn of let." For we do not share George Eliot's expression. The morbid vein we have morbid horror of parodies, nor believe, as spoken of above is luckily not so notice- she dreads, that a day will come when the able in this really very interesting volume; original will only be referred to for comand yet to all Oxonian poets and poetast-parison with the travesties. On the coners of recent years we think that this vig. trary, we hold that these Cambridge wits orous protest of a Cambridge singer may have earned our gratitude far more effecbe addressed with more or less of point:tually by helping to furnish food for honO brother poets, why with aimless craving Torture your souls and quarrel with your lot? Why with such bitter pains and abject slaving To dance with death a masquerading lie? We are not Greeks: have not the ages brought us A purer creed, a yet more sacred fire? Can we not love the noble arts Greece taught us, Without a thought of wallowing in her mire? Time is not ours to toy mid flowers or fountains In drowsy odorous gardens of delight; Man has to plough the wastes, to scale the mountains, est laughter than their Oxford compeers, who "steer a doomed course in heaviness of soul." Of all the parodies of a muchparodied Victorian poet, there is, perhaps, none so felicitous as the inimitable lines on the Octopus, in the Light Green, from which we take these four lines at random, for all are equally good: In thy eightfold embraces enfolden, Let our empty existence escape; In Kottabos, a Trinity College, Dublin, miscellany, we have a blending of the two elements which characterize the verse of the older universities, the melancholy of Oxford and the mirth of Cambridge. Kottabos is a publication quite unique in Has friends to succor, and has foes to fight. all members of Trinity College, Dublin, itself, being a common ground on which At any rate, it is exhilarating in the past and present of all grades - meet extreme to turn from the wailings of most in a rivalry of scholarship, wit, and hu of these youthful bards, spite of their mor. Though edited by one of the procleverness and imagination, to the breezy fessorial staff - himself a fine scholar and Philistinism of the Light Green. This welcome contributor - there is no donshort-lived magazine was due to the enter-nish spirit about its pages, but rather a prise and wit of two or three Cambridge catholicity of sentiment and a freedom of undergraduates, the title being suggested expression that are probably unsurpassed by a serial named the Dark Blue, which, in any publication of the sort. From this beyond the title, possessed hardly a single it will be seen that Kottabos stands on feature characteristic of Oxford. For the a different and more advantageous footing benefit of non-university readers, we can than the other magazines we have been not resist quoting the following stanza discussing, and the results do not belie from "The Heathen Pass-ee," Bret our expectations. Harte's "Heathen Chinee" re-written, rather than parodied, - describing of Tom Crib how In the crown of his cap Were the Furies and Fates, Of the Dorian States, Amid so much good original verse, it is hard to award the palm. For fire and vigor it is perhaps due to Mr. Mulvany's "Garden Party in the time of Nero," a really splendid poem, and by far the best of his contributions. Here is a brilliant picture from it: -- Never were seen such sights as the Emperor's | And sang it: strangely could he make and sing. gardens show, Pilots, who give to the breeze their tresses and zones of gold. In less skilful hands the metre, with its double rhyme, would have degenerated into a mere jingle. Of the serious verse, we will take a sample from the poem on the text, "Thou hast sent sleep, and stricken sleep with dreams: ". Why have the gods thus cast on man such sadness and woe? All the day must he toil, with labor of brain and of hands; Yet when the night with her wings has cov. ered the evening glow, Still must he labor and toil, inhabiting shadowy lands. Again must he mourn a form which he fain would ever forget, Again must he gaze on a face marred by the fingers of Death; Again must he look on eyes with rivers of weeping wet, And again feel fanning his cheeks the sweets of a breathless breath. Surely a terrible gift did the Titan bear to man When he gave him fire from heaven, and forethought placed in his mind; Better far would he be to fulfil his earthly span, Only knowing what is, not looking before or behind. In Mr. S. K. Cowan, Kottabos possesses a parodist capable at times of Calverleyan flights. His "Tennysonian Idyll" is excruciatingly absurd, a wonderful bit of sustained burlesque. We will confine ourselves to one short extract: And in those days he bought a pair of dogs Cæsar and Pompey - each so like to each, That not one single man in the whole world Could tell the difference. And he made a song Like is my Cæsar, so they say, they say: I know not which is liker, he or him. The condensed novelette, "X. Y., or the Cambridge Man," a skit on the late Mortimer Collins's highly colored style of hero-worship; "An Appeal," a protest against the ordinary lodging-house diet, and for which we would suggest as an alternative title " Chopping without Changing;" and "Half-hours with the Classics," are merely the titles of some of the happiest pieces in this charming miscellany, where fun and fancy, Irish melancholy and Irish mirth, find such unfetFrom the last-named tered utterance. piece, supposed to be written by a young lady who has been reading "Classics for English Readers," we will make our final quotation: Pensive through the land of lotus, Still our Mentor, still our guide, All the learned ones trooped before us, To the hemlock-drinker grand; Of gloomy Dis on thee, Socrates! In conclusion, we have only to make the suggestion that the editor of Kottabos should give us a collection of the best pieces of English verse, humorous and pathetic, that have appeared in this maga zine, and which in that form ought to achieve the popularity they so richly de serve, but can hardly hope to win while scattered through the pages of a miscel lany which, by its title and the refined classicism of much of its contents, appeals only to an audience of scholars. From The Saturday Review. THE SEVENTH CENTENARY OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH. THE service held last Sunday at the Temple Church, to celebrate the sevenhundredth anniversary of its consecration by Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, has a unique interest, historical as well as architectural. There are but three other churches extant in England formerly belonging to the Knights Templars, or "round churches" as they are commonly designated from the naves being circular, in imitation of the Church of the | temporary Christendom. Pilate and Herod Holy Sepulchre, the best known of which were made friends together in the betrayal is St. Sepulchre's at Cambridge, rendered of innocent blood. This may sound strong famous in the early days of the Tractarian language; but a brief retrospect will suf movement through what was called "the fice to show that it is not one whit stronger Stone Altar Case," heard in the Court of than the facts of the case demand. In Arches. By far the finest of the four is spite of two diverse but converging curthe Temple Church in London, the nave rents of adverse testimony, prompted by or circular portion of which is exactly the unscrupulous esprit de corps of the two coeval with Canterbury, as Sir Gilbert most powerful organizations of mediæval Scott points out in his work on "Medieval Europe, the legal and the ecclesiastical, Architecture," having been consecrated in the real verdict of history is plain beyond 1185, the year the metropolitan cathedral dispute. The Templars may have sinned was completed; but the style is somewhat grievously, as other religious orders of the less advanced than that of Canterbury, day had sinned, and the secular priestowing to the preference apparently of the hood. Of the hideous crimes which were Templars for Romanesque. The choir charged upon them, and for which bunwas not consecrated till fifty-five years dreds were tortured and burned to death, later, and is described by Scott as "a and the whole order suppressed, there is magnified transcript of the Lady Chapel no shadow of proof. Of the atrocious inat St. Saviour's," Southwark. It is not iquity of the method of their suppression however so much the peculiar architecture even their worst accusers do not venture of the church, interesting as it is not only to affect a doubt. to experts, as the remarkable history of The order was founded in 1118, with the powerful order to which it owed its the warm approval of St. Bernard, as a origin, which challenges attention on such sacred militia for the rescue and defence an occasion, and the primate rightly of the Holy Land, bound by the three grasped the true idea of the solemnity in monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and devoting his discourse to this subject. He obedience, but with castles for convents made a telling point in his comparison of and the battlefield instead of the cloister the great Christian hero who has just as the scene of its characteristic operafallen at Khartoum to the Templars who tions. It had been enriched with fresh fell in battle with the infidel at Acre and privileges by successive popes, and from Tiberias. And it is true enough, as he the nine French knights who formed its suggested, that the strength of Mahome- nucleus had increased to fifteen thousand, tanism in its rise was mainly due to the with nine thousand castles or convents contemporary corruption of the Christian scattered over Europe and the East. It East and to its large though unacknowl- had thus grown into a powerful and edged plagiarisms from the faith it set wealthy organization, governed by its own itself to uproot. But when he went on to laws, and animated by a distinctive corobserve, if he is correctly reported, that porate spirit of its own. Such a body was "the order of the Temple, in spite of its sure, like other great corporations, to pro. power and wealth, expired in failure - -avoke jealousy and hatreds, but it was to a failure which was emphasized by the magnificence of its ambition to achieve what was beyond its strength," his language betrays, if not entire ignorance, a strangely defective apprehension of one of the most tremendous catastrophes and scandals of medieval Church history. The Crusades no doubt failed as regards their immediate purpose, though they produced results of permanent importance for Christian Europe. But the Templars, like the rival order of St. John of Jerusalem, survived the failure of the Crusades, and fell at last | not through failure or through their own fault-though no doubt they were far from faultless but by a gigantic crime deliberately planned and perpetrated in cold blood through the joint action of the chief civil and chief spiritual ruler of con- | baser passion than hatred that the Templars owed their fall. If we turn first to our English historians, we shall find Hume — whose sympathies are not apt to be enlisted on the side of religion against the State, roundly asserting that they were sacrificed "to the cruel and vindictive spirit of Philip the Fair, who determined at once to gratify his avidity and revenge by involving the whole order in an undistinguished ruin;" there was more of avidity than revenge, as will presently appear. He goes on to observe that no evidence was produced, beyond that of two apostate knights condemned to perpetual imprison. ment for their vices, of the monstrous charges alleged, most of which will hardly bear repetition, and that, if some confessed under torture, they retracted their confes |