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"The antique symmetry was the one thing wanting to me," said Leonardo da Vinci; and he was an Italian. I will not presume to speak for the Americans, but I am sure that, in the Englishman, the want of this admirable symmetry of the Greeks is a thousand times more great and crying than in any Italian. The results of the want show themselves most glaringly, perhaps, in our architecture, but they show themselves, also, in all our

art.

Fit details strictly combined, in view of a large general result nobly conceived; that is just the beautiful symmetria prisca of the Greeks, and it is just where we English fail, where all our art fails. Striking ideas we have, and well-executed details we have; but that high symmetry which, with satisfying and delightful effect, combines them, we seldom or never have. The glorious beauty of the Acropolis at Athens did not come from single fine things stuck about on that hill, a statue here, a gateway there; no, it arose from all things being perfectly combined for a supreme total effect. What must not an Englishman feel about our deficiencies in this respect, as the sense for beauty, whereof this symmetry is an essential element, awakens and strengthens within him! what will not one day be his respect and desire for Greece and its symmetria prisca, when the scales drop from his eyes as he walks the London streets, and he sees such a lesson in meanness as the Strand, for instance, in its true deformity! But here we are coming to our friend Mr. Ruskin's province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he is its very sufficient guardian.

And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in favour of the humanities the natural and necessary stream of things, which seemed against them when we started. The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters. Nay, more; we seem finally to be even led to the further conclusion that our hairy ancestor

carried in his nature, also, a necessity for Greek.

And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really think that humane letters are in much actual danger of being thrust out from their leading place in education, in spite of the array of authorities against them at this moment. So long as human nature is what it is, their attractions will remain irresistible. As with Greek, so with letters generally: they will some day come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally, but they will not lose their place. What will happen will rather be that there will be crowded into education other matters besides, far too many; there will be, perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion and false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose their leading place. If they lose it for a time, they will get it back again. We shall be brought back to them by our wants and aspirations. And a poor humanist may possess his soul in patience, neither strive nor cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the partisans of physical science, and their present favour with the public, to be far greater than his own, and still have a happy faith that the nature of things works silently on behalf of the studies which he loves, and that, while we shall all have to acquaint ourselves with the great results reached by modern science, and to give ourselves as much training in its disciplines as we can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will always require humane letters; and so much. the more, as they have the more and the greater results of science to relate to the need in man for conduct, and to the need in him for beauty.

SHAKESPEARE

OTHERS abide our question. Thou art free.

We ask and ask - Thou smilest and art still,

Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,

Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,

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In a voice that she will know:
"Margaret! Margaret!"

Children's voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother's ear;
Children's voices, wild with pain -
Surely she will come again!
Call her once and come away;
This way, this way!

"Mother dear, we cannot stay!

The wild white horses foam and fret."
Margaret! Margaret!

Children dear, was it yesterday

We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.

She comb'd its bright hair, and she
tended it well,

When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.

She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;

She said: "I must go, for my kinsfolk

pray

In the little gray church on the shore to

day.

'Twill be Easter-time in the world—ah me! And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."

I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the

waves;

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"

She smiled, she went up through the surf
in the bay.

Come, dear children, come away down; Children dear, was it yesterday?
Call no more!

One last look at the white-wall'd town,
And the little gray church on the windy
shore,

Then come down!

She will not come though you call all day;

Come away, come away!

Children dear, were we long alone? "The sea grows stormy, the little ones

moan;

Long prayers," I said, "in the world they

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We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the

white-wall'd town;

Come away, away children; Come children, come down! The hoarse wind blows coldly;

Through the narrow paved streets, where Lights shine in the town.

all was still,

To the little gray church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,

But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.

We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,

And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.

She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear: "Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here! Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone; The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."

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But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book!
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!

Down, down, down!

Down to the depths of the sea!

She sits at her wheel in the humming town, Singing most joyfully.

Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy, For the humming street, and the child with its toy!

For the priest and the bell, and the holy

well;

For the wheel where I spun,

And the blessed light of the sun!"
And so she sings her fill,

Singing most joyfully,

Till the spindle drops from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,

And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh;

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mer

maiden

And the gleam of her golden hair.

She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl,
Singing: "Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she!
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea."

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr'd with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch'd sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side
And then come back down,
Singing: "There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!

She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea."

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And from the sign is gone Sibylla's

name,

And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks

Are ye too changed, ye hills?

See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your path-

way strays!

Here came I often, often, in old days Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,

Past the high wood, to where the elmtree crowns

The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?

The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,

The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?

This winter-eve is warm, Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,

The tender purple spray on copse and briars!

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,

She needs not June for beauty's heightening.

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!Only, methinks, some loss of habit's

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