lève without being played, the William came I do not know player loses a stroke.

that the game of Pall Mall The number and difficulty continued to be played in Engof the rules will be highly land; and except in the Montesteemed by those metaphysical pelier form of la chicane, across golfers who bombard the Com- country or along a road, it is mittee of the Royal and Ancient quite extinct on the Continent. Club with questions passing Nevertheless it was, as Lauthier the wit of man to solve! The says, "a noble game," and croCommittee would be grateful if quet seems to be its very dull those inquirers would expend and decadent descendant, Sainttheir subtlety in translating Simon says that the jeu de mail the rules of the jeu de mail. was going out when he wrote,

My author says nothing about 1730-1740, and tennis about lady players, and does also was ceasing to be the not even contemplate their ex- great game of France. People istence. He gives suggestions took to an indoors life of flirtfor the making of short Malls ing, playing cards, and talkin the grounds of country ing philosophy, and the great houses, but this appears to age of games in France was be an invention of his own. the fifteenth century, though Ladies did play. Queen Mary I do not know any mention was accused of amusing herself of jeu de mail till a century at jeu de mail a few days after later. the decease of her husband, Darnley, who was so unfortu- (Here I must confess that I nate as to die early, when bis am not perfectly certain about house was blown up, in cir- the lève of the little girl in cumstances never satisfactorily Flinck's portrait. Some may explained. Probably she used see in it a miniature form of a private Mall at the house of the curious spud which the Lord Setoun. The little Dutch shepherds of Bethlehem carry girl in Flinck's portrait has so in miniatures in fifteenth-cenmany jewels that her father tury MSS., as does Philip Lord may have been a rich man, Wharton in Vandyok's famous able to afford a small private portrait. Madame de PompaMall of his own.

dour, in a portrait of her as In our own Mall the Duke shepherdess, has such a spud. of York (James II.) played But that shown in Flinck's constantly, and conversed with portrait would have been useMr Pepys on National Defence. less for the practical purposes of James was a very long driver; a spud—it is much too slim and he could drive the Mall in one light. In Lauthier's sketch of stroke, and an iron shot a man playing at passe the short stroke at least,—and he slim club has certainly a deep was also a famous golfer and narrow spoon-head, but it is a keen curler. After Dutch not distinctly made of iron.)

THE CICALAS: AN IDYLL.

BY HENRY NEWBOLT.

Scene - AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT.

Persons-A LADY AND A POET.

THE POET.

DIMLY I see your face: I hear your breath
Sigh faintly, as a flower might sigh in death:
And when you whisper, you but stir the air
With a soft hush like summer's own despair.

THE LADY (aloud).
O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest,
Give to our old sad Earth eternal rest.
Since from her heart all beauty ebbs away,
Let her no more endure the shame of day.

THE POET.

A thousand ages have not made less bright
The stars that in this fountain shine to-night:
Your eyes in shadow still betray the gleam
That every son of man desires in dream.

THE LADY.

Yes, hearts will burn when all the stars are cold;
And Beauty lingers—but her tale is told :
Mankind has left her for a game of toys,
And fleets the golden hour with speed and noise.

THE POET.

Think you the human heart no longer feels Because it loves the swift delight of wheels ? And is not Change our one true guide on earth, The surest hand that leads us from our birth?

THE LADY.

Change were not always loss, if we could keep Beneath all change a olear and windless deep: But more and more the tides that through us roll Disturb the very sea-bed of the soul.

THE POET.

The foam of transient passions cannot fret
The sea-bed of the race, profounder yet:
And there, where Greece and her foundations are,
Lies Beauty, built below the tide of war.

THE LADY.

So-to the desert, once in fifty years—
Some poor mad poet sings, and no one hears :
But what belated race, in what far clime,
Keeps even a legend of Arcadian time?

THE POET.

Not ours perhaps : a nation still so young,
So late in Rome's deserted orchard sprung,
Bears not as yet, but strikes a hopeful root
Till the soil yield its old Hesperian fruit.

THE LADY.

Is not the hour gone by? The mystio strain,
Degenerate once, may never spring again.
What long-forsaken gods shall we invoke
To grant such increase to our common oak?

THE POET.

Yet may the ilex, of more ancient birth,
More deeply planted in that genial earth,
From her Italian wild wood even now
Revert, and bear once more the golden bough.

THE LADY.

A poet's dream was never yet less great
Because it issued through the ivory gate!
Show me one leaf from that old wood divine,
And I përchance might take your hopes for mine.

THE POET.

May Venus bend me to no harder task!
For, Pan be praised ! I hold the gift you ask.
The leaf, the legend, that your wish fulfils,
To-day he brought me from the Umbrian hills.

THE LADY.

Your young Italian-yes! I saw you stand
And point his path across our well-walled land:
A sculptor's model, but alas! no god :
These narrow fields the goat-foot never trod !

THE POET.

Yet from his eyes the mirth a moment glanced
To which the streams of old Arcadia danced ;
And on his tongue still lay the childish lore
Of that lost world for which you hope no more.

THE LADY.

Tell me !—from where I watched I saw his face,
And his hands moving with a rustio grace,
Caught too the alien sweetness of his speecb,
But sound alone, not sense, my ears could reach.

THE POET,

He asked if we in England ever heard
The tiny beasts, half insect and half bird,
That neither eat nor sleep, but die content
When they in endless song their strength have spent.

THE LADY.

Cicalas ! how the name enchants me back
To the grey olives and the dust-white track!
Was there a story then ?-I have forgot,
Or else by chance my Umbrians told it not.

THE POET.

Lover of music, you at least should know
That these were men, in ages long ago, —
Ere musio wag--and then the Muses came,
And love of song took hold on them like flame.

THE LADY.

Yes, I remember now the voice that speaks-
Most living still of all the deathless Greeks-
Yet tell me-how they died divinely mad,
And of the Muses what reward they had.

THE POET.

They are reborn on earth, and from the first
They know not sleep, they hunger not nor thirst:
Summer with glad Cicala's song they fill,
Then die, and go to haunt the Muses' Hill.

THE LADY.

They are reborn indeed! and rightly you
The far-heard echo of their music knew!
Pray now to Pan, since you too, it would seem,
Were there with Phædrus, by Ilissus' stream.

THE POET.

Beloved Pan, and all ye gods whose grace
For ever haunts our short life's resting-place,
Outward and inward make me one true whole,
And grant me beauty in the inmost soul,

THE LADY.

And thou O Night, O starry Queen of Air,
Remember not my blind and faithless prayer!
Let me too live, let me too sing again,
Since Beauty wanders still the ways of men.