similitudes, Major Favraud! In power of thought, beauty of expression, what comparison is there? Drayton's verse is poor and vapid, even mean, beside Longfellow's."

"I grant you that. I have never for one moment disputed the ability of those Yankees. Their manufacturing talents are above all praise, but when it comes to the 'God-fire,' as an old German teacher of mine used to say, our simple Southern poets leave them all behind—'Beat them all hollow,' would be their own expression. You gee, Miss Harz, that Cavalier blood of ours, that inspired the old English bards, will tell, in spite of circumstances."

"But genius is of no rank—no blood—no clime! What court poet of his day, Major Favraud, compared with Robert Burns for feeling, fire, and pathos? Who ever sung such siren strains as Moore, a simple Irishman of low degree? No Cavalier blood there, I fancy! What power, what beauty in the poems of Walter Scott! Byron was a poet in spite of his condition, not because of it. Hear Barry Cornwall—how he stirs the blood I What trumpet like to Campbell I What mortal voice like to Shelley's? the hybrid angel! What full orchestra surpassed Coleridge for harmony and brilliancy of effect? Who paints panoramas like Southey? Who charms like Wordsworth? Yet these were men of medium condition, all—I hate the conceits of Cowley, Waller, Sir John Suckling, Carew, and the like. All of your Cavalier type, I believe, a set of hollow pretenders mostly."

"All this is overwhelming, I grant," bowing deferentially. "But I return to my first idea, that Puritan blood was not exactly fit to engender genius; and that in the rich, careless Southern nature there lurks a vein of undeveloped song that shall yet exonerate America from the charge of poverty of genius, brought by the haughty Briton! Yes, we will sing yet a mightier strain than has ever been poured since the time of Shakespeare! and in that good time coming weave a grander heroic poem than any since the days of Homer! Then men's souls shall have been tried in the furnace of affliction, and Greek meets not Greek, but Yankee. For we Southerners only bide our time!"

And he cut his spirited lead-horse, until it leaped forward suddenly, as though to vent his excitement, and, setting his email white teeth sternly, with an eye like a burning coal, looked forward into space, his whole face contracting.

"The Southern lyre has been but lightly swept so far, Miss Harz," he continued, a moment later, "and only by the fingers of love; we need Bellona to give tone to our orchestra."

I could not forbear reciting somewhat derisively the old couplet—

"'Sound the trumpet, teat the drum,
Tremble France, we come, we come!'

"Is that the style Major Favraud?" I asked. "I remember the time when I thought these two lines the most soul-stirring in the language—they seem very bombastic now, in my maturity."

He smiled, and said: "The time is not come for our war-poem, and, as for love, let me give you one strain of Pinckney's to begin with;" and, without waiting for permission, he recited the beautiful "Pledge," with which all readers are now familiar, little known then, however, beyond the limits of the South, and entirely new to me, beginning with—

"I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon"—

continuing to the end with eloquence and spirit.

"Now, that is poetry, Miss Harz! the real afflatus is there; the bead on the wine; the dew on the rose; the bloom on the grape! Nothing wanting that constitutes the indefinable divine thing called genius! You understand my idea, of course; explanations are superfluous."

I assented mutely, scarce knowing why I did so.

"Now, hear another." And the woods rang with his clear, sonorous accents as he declaimed, a little too scanningly, perhaps—too much like an enthusiastic boy:

"Love lurks upon my lady's lip,
His bow is figured there;
Within her eyes his arrows sleep;
His fetters are—her hair!"

"I call that nothing but a bundle of conceits, Major Favraud, mostly of the days of Charles II., of Rochester himself—" interrupting him as I in turn was interrupted.

"But hear further," and he proceeded to the end of that marvelous ebullition of foam and fervor, such as celebrated the birth of Aphrodite herself perchance in the old Greek time; and which, despite my perverse intentions, stirred me as if I had quaffed a draught of pink champagne. Is it not, indeed, all couleur de rose? Hear this bit of melody, my reader, sitting in supreme judgment, and perhaps contempt, on your throne apart:

"'Upon her cheek the crimson ray
By changes comes and goes,
As rosy-hued Aurora's play
Along the polar snows;
Gay as the insect-bird that sips
From scented flowers the dew—
Pure as the snowy swan that dips
Its wings in waters blue;
Sweet thoughts are mirrored on her face,
Like clouds on the calm sea,
And every motion is a grace,
Each word a melody!'"

"Yes, that is true poetry, I acknowledge, Major Favraud," I exclaimed, not at all humbled by conviction, though a little annoyed at the pointed manner in which he gave (looking in my face as he did so) these concluding lines:

"Say from what fair and sunny shore,
Fair wanderer, dost thou rove,
Lest what I only should adore
I heedless think to love?"

"The character of Pinckney's genius," I rejoined, "is, I think, essentially like that of Praed, the last literary phase with me—for I am geological in my poetry, and take it in strata. But I am more generous to your Southern bard than you are to our glorious Longfellow! I don't call that imitation, but coincidence, the oneness of genius! I do not even insinuate plagiarism." My manner, cool and careless, steadied his own.

"You are right: our 'Shortfellow' was incapable of any thing of the sort. Peace be to his ashes! With all his nerve and vim, he died of melancholy, I believe. As good an end as any, however, and certainly highly respectable. But you know what Wordsworth says in his 'School-master'—

"'If there is one that may bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own,
It is the man of mirth.'"

He sighed as he concluded his quotation—sighed, and slackened the pace of his flying steeds. "But give me something of Praed's in return," he said, rallying suddenly; "is there not a pretty little thing called 'How shall I woo her?'" glancing archly and somewhat impertinently at me, I thought—or, perhaps, what would simply have amused me in another man and mood shocked me in him, the recent widower—widowed, too, under such peculiar and awful circumstances! I did not reflect sufficiently perhaps, on his ignorance of many of these last.

How I deplored his levity, which nothing could overcome or restrain; and yet beneath which I even then believed lay depths of anguish! How I wished that influence of mine could prevail to induce him to divide his dual nature, "To throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the better half!" But I could only show disapprobation by the gravity of my silence.

"So you will not give me 'How shall I woo her?' Miss Harz?" a