And Judas, too,

the basest face I see

Will not contain his utter infamy;
Among the dregs and offal of mankind,
Vainly I seek an utter wretch to find.
He who for thirty silver coins would sell
His Lord, must be the Devil's miracle.
Padre Bandelli thinks it easy is

To find the type of him who with a kiss Betrayed his Lord. Well, what I can I'll do ; And if it please his reverence and you,

For Judas' face I'm willing to paint his.

The wilful work built by the conscious brain
Is but the humble handicraft of art:

It has its growth in toil, its birth in pain.
The Imagination, silent and apart

Above the Will, beyond the conscious eye,
Fashions in joyous ease and as in play
Its fine creations, — mixing up alway

The real and the ideal, heaven and earth,
Darkness and sunshine; and then, pushing forth
Sudden upon our world of consciousness
Its world of wonder, leaves to us the stress,
By patient art, to copy its pure grace,
And catch the perfect features of its face.

In facile natures fancies quickly grow,
But such quick fancies have but little root.
Soon the narcissus flowers and dies, but slow
The tree whose blossoms shall mature to fruit.
Grace is a moment's happy feeling, Power

life's slow growth; and we for many an hour

Must strain and toil, and wait and weep, if we
The perfect fruit of all we are would see.

Therefore I wait. Within my earnest thought
For years upon this picture I have wrought,
Yet still it is not ripe; I dare not paint
Till all is ordered and matured within.
Hand-work and head-work have an earthly taint,
But when the soul commands I shall begin.

On themes like these I should not dare to dwell
With our good Prior, they to him would be
Mere nonsense; he must touch and taste and see;
And facts, he says, are never mystical.

Now, the fact is, our worthy Prior says,
The convent is annoyed by my delays;
Nor can he see why I for hours and days
Should muse and dream and idle here around.
I have not made a face he has not found

Quite good enough before it was half done.

Don't bother more," he says, "let it alone."
What can one say to such a connoisseur?
How could a Prior and a critic err?

But, not to be more tedious, I confess
I am disturbed to think I so distress
The worthy Prior. Yet 't were wholly vain
To him an artist's feelings to explain;
But, Signor Duca, you will understand,
And so I treat on higher themes with you.
The work you order I shall strive to do
With all my soul, not merely with my hand.
William Wetmore Story.

AMBROSE.

[EVER, surely, was holier man

NEVER

Than Ambrose, since the world began:
With diet spare and raiment thin

He shielded himself from the father of sin;
With bed of iron and scourgings oft,

His heart to God's hand as wax made soft.

Through earnest prayer and watchings long
He sought to know 'tween right and wrong,
Much wrestling with the blessed Word
To make it yield the sense of the Lord,
That he might build a storm-proof creed
To fold the flock in at their need.

At last he builded a perfect faith,

Fenced round about with, "The Lord thus saith";
To himself he fitted the doorway's size,
Meted the light to the need of his eyes,
And knew, by a sure and inward sign,
That the work of his fingers was divine.

Then Ambrose said, "All those shall die
The eternal death who believe not as I";
And some were boiled, some burned in fire,
Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire,
For the good of men's souls, might be satisfied
By the drawing of all to the righteous side.

One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth
In his lonely walk, he saw a youth

Resting himself in the shade of a tree;

It had never been granted him to see

So shining a face, and the good man thought
'T were pity he should not believe as he ought.

So he set himself by the young man's side,
And the state of his soul with questions tried;
But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed,
Nor received the stamp of the one true creed;
And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find
Such face the porch of so narrow a mind.

"As each beholds in cloud and fire
The shape that answers his own desire,

So each," said the youth, "in the Law shall find
The figure and features of his mind;

And to each in his mercy hath God allowed
His several pillar of fire and cloud."

The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal
And holy wrath for the young man's weal:
"Believest thou then, most wretched youth,"
Cried he, "a dividual essence in Truth?

I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin
To take the Lord and his glory in.”

Now there bubbled beside them where they stood A fountain of waters sweet and good;

The youth to the streamlet's brink drew near

Saying, "Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here!"

Six vases of crystal then he took,

And set them along the edge of the brook.

"As into these vessels the water I pour,
There shall one hold less, another more,
And the water unchanged, in every case,
Shall put on the figure of the vase;

O thou, who wouldst unity make through strife,
Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of Life ?"

When Ambrose looked up, he stood alone,

The youth and the stream and the vases were gone;
But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace,
He had talked with an angel face to face,
And felt his heart change inwardly,

As he fell on his knees beneath the tree.

James Russell Lowell.

Mincio, the River.

THE MINCIO.

E happy swans, who by the banks and streams

YE

Of the blest Mincio have your lot assigned,

Tell me, if true, what by report we find,

That Virgil in your haunts felt day's first beam? Tell, if with thee his high, poetic dream,

Fair Siren, hovered o'er his raptured mind;