search, among which was the celebrated one headed by the late Dr. E. K. Kane, Lady Franklin, especially, being indefatigable in her endeavors to ascertain his fate, but without any success until 1854, when Dr. Rae found some relics, and in 1859, Captain McClintock discovered on the shore of King William's Land a record deposited in a cairn by the survivors of Franklin's company. This document was dated April 25, 1848, and stated that Sir John died June 11, 1847-that the Erebus and Terror were abandoned April 22, 1848, when the survivors, 105 in number, started for the Great Fish River. Many relics were also found of this party, who perished on their journey, probably soon after leaving the vessels. It appears also that Sir John really did discover the long-sought-for north-west passage, but the knowledge of its whereabouts perished with him, although subsequent expeditions have been sent out to find it.

Page 456.-THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.The verse beginning

"And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,"

amiable disposition, perished by losing his way on the mountain Hellvellyn. His remains were not discovered till three months afterward, when they were found guarded by a faithful terrier bitch, his constant attendant during frequent solitary rambles through the wilds of Cumberland and Westmoreland.-Scott's Poems.

Page 517.-THE MEETING OF THE WATERS.— "The Meeting of the Waters" forms a part of that beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow, in the county of Wicklow, and these lines were suggested by a visit to this romantic spot in the summer of the year 1807.Moore's Works, 8vo.

Page 522.-THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.— Moore's "Lake of the Dismal Swamp," written at Norfolk, in Virginia, is founded on the following legend: "A young man who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never afterward heard of. As he had frequently said in his ravings that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger or had been lost in some of its dreadful mo

Page 504.-LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.The Mermaid Tavern was the resort of Ben Jonson and his literary friends, members of a club established by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603, and numbering among them Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Donne, Selden, and the noblest names in English authorship. Truly might Beaumont, in his poetical epistle to Jonson, exclaim-"What things have seen

Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whom they came Had mean'd to put his whole wit in a jest!" -Chambers's Book of Days.

Page 513.-ALNWICK CASTLE.-Alnwick Castle is one of the finest in England. It is built of freestone, in the Gothic style, and covers five acres of ground, and was restored in 1830 at an outlay of $1,000,000. It belongs to the Duke of Northumberland, a descendant of the Percys so famed in ancient ballads, and especially for their feuds with their neighbors on the other side of the border, the noble Douglases. One of the Percys was an emperor of Constantinople, another was a major in the British army, and "fought for King George at Lexington" and at the battle of the Brandywine.

Page 523.-ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. This magnificent ode, called by Hallam "perhaps the finest in the English language," was composed, as we learn from Milton's own heading of it in the edition of 1645, in the year 1629. Milton was then twenty-one years of age, in the sixth academic year at Cambridge, and a B. A. of a year's standing. There is an interesting allusion to the ode by Milton himself, when he was in the act of composing it, in the sixth of his Latin elegies. In that elegy, addressed to his friend Charles Diodati, residing in the country, in answer to a friendly epistle which Diodati had sent to him on the 13th of December, 1629, there is a distinct description of the "Ode on the Nativity" as then finished, or nearly so, and ready to be shown to Diodati, together with the express information that it was begun on Christmas Day, 1629.-Milton, Masson's ed.

Page 549.-EMIGRANTS IN THE BERMUDAS.— Representative government was introduced into the Bermudas in 1620, and in 1621 the Bermuda Company of London issued a sort of charter to the colony, including rights and liberties-among them liberty of worship-that attracted many of those English emigrants whose feeling Marvell has here fashioned into song.-Morley's Shorter Poems of the English Language.

Page 550.-REBECCA'S HYMN.-It was in the twilight of the day when her trial-if it could be called such-had taken place, that a low knock

dle Marches. Whether these are the original words will admit of a doubt.-Sir Walter Scott.

Page 593.-I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAY.-This hymn was written without the remotest idea that any portion of it would ever be employed in the devotions of the Church. Whatever service it has done in that way is owing to the late Bishop of Pennsylvania, then the rector of St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn, who made the selection of verses out of the whole which constitutes the present hymn, and offered it to the Committee on Hymns appointed by the General Convention The hymn was at first rejected by the committee, of which the unknown author was a member, who, upon a satirical criticism being made upon it, earnestly voted against its adoption. It was admitted on the importunate application of Dr. Onderdonk to the bishops on the committee.-Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature.

of

Page 630.-ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.-As he was floating down the river to attack Quebec, General Wolfe read the "Elegy" in low tones to his officers, and upon its conclusion said: "I had rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec"-a remark which has perhaps done as much to perpetuate Wolfe's name as the capture of Quebec, great as that achievement was.

Page 637.-STANZAS.-These beautiful lines were composed by Hood on his death-bed.

Page 642.—To A SKELETON.-The manuscript of this poem was found near a skeleton in the London Royal College of Surgeons about 1820. The author has never been found, though a reward of fifty guineas was offered for his discovery. Single Famous Poems.

Page 655.-THE LIE.-This celebrated poem has been attributed to Joshua Sylvester. In a note of Mr. Peter Cunningham's to his edition of Campbell's Lives of the Poets, referring to the passage in which Campbell says, "We would willingly ascribe the 'Soul's Errand' to him (Raleigh)," we read, "The Lie' is ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh in an answer to it written at the time, and recently discovered in the Cheetham Library at Manchester. That it was written by Raleigh is now almost past a doubt."-Bellew's Poets' Corner.

This is one of the songs which so touched Goldsmith in his youth that nothing he heard sung in after years had an equal charm for him. "The music of the finest singer," he wrote in the Bee, October 13, 1759, "is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy maid sung me into tears with 'Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-Night' or the 'Cruelty of Barbara Allen;"" and in a letter to his Irish friend Hodson, December 27, 1757, he says: "If I go to the opera where Signora Columba pours out all the mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for 'Lishoy's Fireside' and 'Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-Night,' from Peggy Golden."-Mary Carlyle Aitken.

Page 672.-THE OLD AND YOUNG COURTIER.— The whole of the sixteenth century was marked by important changes of every kind-political, religious, and social. The wars with France and the internal contests of the Roses were over, and the energy of the nation was directed to new objects. Trade and commerce were extended; fresh sources of wealth were developed; and new classes of society sprang up into importance whose riches enabled them to outvie the old landed gentry, but who had few of their hereditary tastes and habits. Hence the innovation of old customs and the decay of ancient manners to which the gentry themselves were compelled to conform. This old song, which is printed in the Percy Reliques from an ancient black-letter copy in the Pepys Collection, is a lament over the changes which had taken place in the early part of the seventeenth century, as compared Half Hours with the Best Authors. with the days of Queen Elizabeth.-Knight's

Page 677.-BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.-The battle of Blenheim or Hochstadt was fought August 13, 1704, between the English and Austrians, under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the French and Bavarians, under Marshal Tallard, Marson, and the Elector of Bavaria. The latter army, being badly handled and huddled together in the village of Blenheim, was suddenly attacked by Marlborough and completely defeated, losing 30,000 in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Marlborough's loss was but 11,000. This victory completely shattered the French prestige which Louis XIV. had struggled so

hard to obtain.

Page 688.-LINES WRITTEN BY ONE IN THE TOWER. Chidiock Tychborn shared in Babington's conspiracy, and was executed with him in 1586. (For a fuller account see Disraeli's Curios

Page 704.-HONEST POVERTY.-A great critic (Aikin) on songs says that love and wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following is on neither subject, and consequently is no song, but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good-prose thoughts inverted into rhyme. In a Letter from Burns to G. Thomson.

Page 724.-ALEXANDER'S FEAST.-St. Cecilia is said to have been a Roman lady born about A. D. 295, bred in the Christian faith, and married to a Pagan nobleman, Valerianus. She told her husband that she was visited nightly by an angel, whom he was allowed to see after his own conversion. The celestial youth had brought from paradise two wreaths, which he gave to them. One was of the lilies of heaven, the other of its roses. They both suffered martyrdom at the beginning of the third century, in the reign of Septimius Severus. The angel by whom Cecilia was visited is referred to in the closing lines of Dryden's "Ode," coupled with a tradition that he had been drawn down to her from heaven by her melodies. In the earliest traditions of Cecilia there is no mention of her skill in music. This part of her story seems to have been developed by a little play of fancy over her relations with the angel, and the great Italian painters-Raffaelle, Domenichino, and others-fixed her position as the patron saint of music by representing her always with symbols of harmony, a harp or organ-pipes.

Then came the suggestion adopted in Dryden's "Ode," that the organ was invented by St. Cecilia.

The practice of holding musical festivals on St. Cecilia's Day, the 22d of November, began to prevail in England at the close of the seventeenth century. The earliest piece composed for such a meeting was produced in 1683, and was by Henry Purcell. From that date to about 1740 there was an annual Cecilian festival in London, and the fashion spread into the provinces. Poets-Dryden and Pope among them-were applied to for odes which were to celebrate the power of music, and to be set to music for performance as a special feature of the anniversary.-Morley's Shorter Poems.

Page 735.-A CANADIAN BOAT-SONG.-I wrote these words to an air which our boatmen sung to us frequently. The wind was so unfavorable that they were obliged to row all the way, and we were five days in descending the river from Kingston to Montreal, exposed to an intense sun during the day, and at night forced to take shelter from the dews in any miserable hut upon the banks that would receive us. But the magnificent scenery of the St. Lawrence repays all such difficulties.

Our voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in tune together. The original words of the air to which I adapted these stanzas appeared to

be a long, incoherent story, of which I could understand but little, from the barbarous pronunciation of the Canadians. It begins

Dans mon chemin j'ai rencontré Deux cavaliers très-bien montés; and the refrain to every verse was

A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais jouer,
A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais danser.

I ventured to harmonize this air, and have published it. Without that charm which association gives to every little memorial of scenes or feelings that are past, the melody may perhaps be thought common and trifling; but I remember when we have entered, at sunset, upon one of those beautiful lakes into which the St. Lawrence so grandly and unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest compositions of the first masters have never given me; and now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip of our oars in the St. Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the rapids, and all those new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting voyage.—Moore's Poems, note.

Page 739.-A VISION UPON THIS CONCEIT OF THE FAERIE QUEENE.-This sonnet is the first among the commendatory poems prefixed to the earliest edition of The Faerie Queene. As original in con

ception as it is grand in execution, it is about the

finest compliment which was ever paid by poet to poet, such as it became Raleigh to indite and Spenser to receive. Yet it labors under a serious defect. The great poets of the past lose no whit of their glory because later poets are found worthy to share it. Petrarch in his lesser, and Homer in his greater sphere, are just as illustrious since Spenser appeared as before.-Richard Chenevix Trench.

Page 756.-THE DESERTED VILLAGE.-Lissoy, near Ballymahon, where the poet's brother, a clergyman, had his living, claims the honor of being the spot from which the localities of "The Deserted Village" were derived. The church which tops the neighboring hill, the mill, and the brook, are still pointed out; and a hawthorn has suffered the penalty of poetical celebrity, being cut to pieces by those admirers of the bard who desired to have classical toothpick - cases and tobacco - stoppers. Much of this supposed locality may be fanciful, but it is a pleasing tribute to the poet in the land of his fathers.-Sir Walter Scott.

Page 787.-INDIAN REVELRY.-This remarkable poem appeared originally, it is believed, in the St. Helena Magazine, and was afterward copied in the London Spectator and other journals. It relates to the early service of English