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it and within it ; nay, he is a poet precisely because he can 

 discern it there." These words have been adopted as the motto 

 of one of his poems by one whose works I cordially commend to 

 your notice — P. G. Hamerton. His essays on life in France and 

 England, his youthful poems, his reminiscences of Lancashire 

 life, are interesting works, and wiU be found to furnish reading of 

 a nature to give to the mind of the provincial man a wider scope 

 and broader tendency — enabhng him to see ' ' beyond the borough 

 and the shire." 



Returning to the point from which I began, I repeat that the 

 best study for men leading prosaic lives is — poetry. In the 

 touching and refining appeals of our poets to the "tragedy and 

 the epic " of human life is to be found the best counterpoise to 

 the absorbing business claims of an enterprising and bustling 

 generation. Some folk like to be soothed with music. They 

 would find — if they came with minds prepared to receive it — 

 that in the lays of Milton, of Pope, of Burns, of Tennyson, of 

 Swinburne, of Longfellow, of Rossetti, is to be found the quint- 

 essence of music — rhythm the most perfect, the sound seeming 

 an echo to the sense. And if it be your lot to seek for something 

 which shall brush away the troubles, the annoyances, the 

 failures, of your day of business, when you go in the evening to 

 those homes which I trust have never lost " their ancient 

 English dower of inward happiness " — browse at will upon the 

 fair and wholesome pasturage of good old English literature, or 

 take down from the shelf close at hand the works of one of your 

 favourite poets. Give yourself up to their enlightened guidance, 

 surrender yourself to the spell of their enchantment, follow them 

 as they tell of a glorious future for this hard world, linger in the 

 serenity and brightness they diffuse, dwell on their visions of 

 fair women and noble men charged with but one object — that of 

 raising in an infinitude of tenderness fallen humanity to a higher 

 and hoher state. Thus you may 



. " Join the choir invisible 

 Of those immortal dead who live again 

 In minds made better by their presence. 



And with their mild persistence urge man's search 

 To vaster issues." 



And sweet spirits shall bear the burden for you — with watch 

 in the night, and call in early morning. 



