has encountered peculiar difficulties, owing to the complexity and intricacy of the things with which she has had to deal; owing also to the fact that historical events, if they recur at all, recur only at long intervals and under changed conditions. For this reason the progress of history towards establishment in the form of a science has been slow and unsatisfactory; but nevertheless a progress.

3. As to the interpretation of historical facts, still greater difficulty has been encountered, a difficulty aggravated by the narrow-mindedness and prejudice of those writers who have assumed the office of historian. By reason of such prejudice and personal equation in the record of facts, historical interpretation is very imperfect and unsatisfactory; and to this extent history has only a feeble and imperfect claim to be regarded as a science.

4. As to the ability from historical data to indicate the course and tendency of things, the ability to predict the general and special aspects of the future, historical inquiry has made so little progress that no substantial claim may be advanced to regard history as a science. One or two general laws, however, namely, that it shall go well with the people who are virtuous and free, and go ill with those who are vicious and despotic, may be confidently declared as historical principles from which there is no deviation.

Finally, we may be certain of this, that the reign of law does extend over all the facts of human life with as much regularity and certainty as over the facts of material nature. We may also be certain that the human mind is not going to be satisfied with its present attainments in a knowledge of historical laws. On the whole, the outlook in this field of inquiry is auspicious for rapid progress and for the complete establishment of what we are as yet constrained to disallow, namely, that sublime and beautiful department of human knowledge which will then if not now be truly called the Science of History.

-

PLAZA OF THE POETS.

OUR BROTHER SIMON.

BY ANNIE L. MUZZEY.

Our Brother Simon, with a soul to save,
Sought doctors of divinity, and found

That he might make investment, safe and sound,
And sure to stand at par beyond the grave,
Where he must render, without stay or waive

Of execution, at the Final Day,

The sum of his accounts on earth, full-told,
And find his pleasing promises to pay
Promptly redeemed in gold.

The saving fund in which he would invest

Was one that his shrewd intellect could span.
He asked salvation on a business plan.
The firm foundation of his hope must rest
On such sure basis as would bear the test
Of worldly winds and rude financial shocks.
No pious dreamer he, with addled brain,

To put his trust in visionary stocks
And miss the present gain.

Faithful upon the formal Holy Day

To hear what dividends were falling due — He sought sedately his shareholder's pew, And bent his head in rapt attentive way, Stood up to praise, or humbly bent to pray, Made his responses with an air devout, And, prompt in all external rites to join,

Plunged deep his hand and pompously drew out

And dropped his sounding coin.

Such was his duty. Thus he served the Lord.

And from the service forth he went again
To bind more grievous burdens upon men,

For love or Lord relaxing not a cord.
The Deity whom he in works adored

Winked at dishonesty and saw no smirch
Upon the hand that gripped another's right,

To give to missions or to build a church
Would make his record white.

But, though he builded churches, none the less
God's church sat homeless at his very door,
And drew no portion from his hoarded store.
What power had Love to enter and possess
The man's dull soul with living tenderness

Till he himself was conscious of his need?
And, satisfied with bare externals, he

Knew not that in the spirit of his deed
Dwelt all that God might see!

And while men lauded his religious zeal
And service of the church, still at his side
The True Church walked unrecognized, denied;
His soul untouched by her divine appeal;
Her highest law, commanding him to deal
In love and justice, daily disobeyed;

Her tenderest faith and charity reviled;

Her truths profaned and sacrificed to trade; Her very name defiled.

Still, still,- God love us! while we spy the mote In Brother Simon's eye, let us not slight

The beam that blinds and baffles our own sight. In our self-righteousness we may not note How we, sometimes, slip into Simon's coat; How, holding to the letter which doth kill, We lose the spirit wherewith it is bound; How, serving in the Temple, we may spill The wine upon the ground.

THOU KNOWEST NOT.

BY HELENA MAYNARD RICHARDSON.

My love goes out to thee the whole day long,
Like one unbroken and low-chanted song,

But thou thou hearest not!

And when in peaceful trust thou drawest nigh,
To breathe the silent song I dare not try;
And so thou knowest not!

OPTIM: A REPLY.

BY GEORGE H. WESTLEY.

The reek and din of press and car,
Serfdom of distance, sky-fire, steam -
Are these more than the early dream,
The joyance of the morning star?

John Vance Cheney, in September Arena.

What would you then? Revert to Pan,
The nymph, the satyr, and the faun,
The savage rampant in the man,

The bacchanalia, Babylon?

"Tis all well past; no more to be

The young world's orgy, Circean feast;
Man to his noble destiny

Moves onward, "working out the beast."1

THE MURDERED TREES

BY BENJAMIN S. PARKER.

I walk across the barren fields and weep,
In melancholy madness, for my trees,
The great, potential trees that, rooted deep

In this brown soil, were priests and prophecies
To my waked youth, when, in their centuried morn,
By axe unscarred, untouched by red fire-blight,
They cast long shadows where glad things were born
To life's perennial drama of delight,
Complacent genii that through sun-kissed leaves
Smiled on the cabin's children at their play.
Trees, children, dreams! how outraged nature grieves
Because they are not! Yet my steps delay,

And, lingering, I recall the happy scene
Where they supremed it o'er a world of green.

1 Tennyson.

THE HIDDEN FLUTE.

BY MINNA IRVING.

'Twas just before the end of day,
And after sudden rain,

When from the wet and shining wood
Arose the silver strain,

And, stumbling over tangled vines
And many a twisted root,
We ran along the narrow path,

To find the hidden flute.

We heard him practice o'er and o'er
The same melodious air,

And traced the music to its source,
And found no player there.
But while into each other's eyes

We gazed with wonder mute,
Above us rippled out again
The rapture of the flute.

The sun upon the tallest tree
A shaft of glory threw,

And tilting on the topmost bough,

Against the breezy blue,

We saw a lark with spotted breast
And sober russet suit,

And swelling in his little throat
Beheld the hidden flute.

RETROENSETTA.

BY CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE.

"Where go the dying flowers?

Where does the old love go?"

"Nay, where went the winter's snow

But to make the summer showers?"

"But will not the showers go

(While the greedy earth devours) Not in days, but in hours?" "Alas, and it may be so."