His poems are high and noble and full of truth as well as beautiful visions. No blot, no stain mars their beauty. His verse is the most faultless in our language, both as regards the music of its flow and the art displayed in the choice of words. As a word-painter no modern poet has equaled him.

His language, although consisting for the most part of strong and pithy Saxon words, is yet the very perfection of all that is elegant and musical in the art of versification.

The great Poet's faith grew brighter and more hopeful during the last years of his life, and when he died in 1892 and was laid with kings and queens in Westminster Abbey his own words came to many a sorrowing heart:

"Come away; for Life and Thought
Here no longer dwell;

But in a city glorious,

A great and distant city, have bought

A mansion incorruptible.

Would they could have stayed with us!"

SIR GALAHAD.

BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

SIR GALAHAD was a knight who was seeking for the Holy Grail, the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper.

A knight who undertook this pilgrimage must be pure in thought, word, and deed.

My good blade carves the casques of men,

My tough lance thrusteth sure,

My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.

The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel;

They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
And when the tide of combat stands,
Perfume and flowers fall in showers,

That lightly rain from ladies' hands.

When on my goodly charger borne,
Through dreaming towns I go,

The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
The streets are dumb with snow.

The tempest crackles on the leads,

And, ringing, spins from brand and mail; But o'er the dark a glory spreads,

And gilds the driving hail—
I leave the plain, I climb the height;
No branchy thicket shelter yields;
But blessed forms in whistling storms
Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields

The clouds are broken in the sky,
And through the mountain-walls
A rolling organ-harmony

Swells up, and shakes and falls.
Then move the trees, the copses nod,
Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
"O just and faithful knight of God!
Ride on the prize is near."

So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;

By bridge and ford, by park and pale, All-armed I ride, what e'er betide,

Until I find the Holy Grail.

LITTLE ROSALIE.

(Abridged.)

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.

PART I.

MRS. SPOFFORD was born at Calais, Me., but she has spent the greater part of her life in the old town of Newburyport, Mass. She now lives near this quaint city, in a delightful home, on the banks of the Merrimac River.

She began writing when quite young, and her story "In a Cellar," which appeared in one of the first numbers of the "Atlantic Monthly," was greatly admired. Her writings show a wide range of reading and insight into character.

Her magazine stories are especially fine, and are filled with music, beauty, and color.

1. It was a little "play-acting girl," as the children's nurse called her. Her name, on the advertising bills posted up at every street corner, was "LITTLE ROSALIE"; and the great delight of the children was to be allowed to go to a matinée on a Saturday afternoon when they could hear and see her.

Sometimes Little Rosalie was one character in the play and sometimes she was another. Once she was a moonlight fairy in a little white silk gown whose long

folds fell about her feet; her soft hair was loose on her shoulders, a star gleamed on her forehead, and another star tipped the lily's stem she held for a wand.

With her eyes uplifted and a white light on her face, Rosalie sang, and the children thought a little angel from heaven would sing and look in just that way.

2. And when, in another scene, she came dancing on in short, gauzy skirts, with two butterfly wings of peacock feathers upon her shoulders, and, springing upon a cloud, went sailing up out of sight as the play ended with soft music, they always found it difficult thoroughly to believe that she was not a fairy indeed.

"Going to see Little Rosalie," said Tom, "is n't like going to the theater generally. It's-"

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"It's just because we love her so," said Bessy.

"And wish to see her," added Johnny.

"And I really think she knows us now," said Maidie.

"I should have liked so much to throw her my bunch of violets, if I had dared, the very last time we were there."

3. Mamma," said Kitten, "is she weally alive, or do they only wind her up and make her go?"

"I don't believe she's alive just as we are,” said Fanny. "She has those lovely wings, you know."

She does n't have them all the time," said Joe; "she does n't have them when she's kneeling by her dying mother or selling the things in the street,"