about fashion. Then, the life they describe is conventional: Browning's should be real. The motives and springs of action which they describe are simple: those of life are really complex, manifold, various, and overlapping each other. In Browning, we find the psychologist trying to show us, in his analysis, some of the many influences under which the soul acts. With most poets the soul is, as it were, a river. Browning recognizes the fact that it is a mighty ocean. Currents flow backwards and forwards: there are depths and shallows: there are storms on the surface and stillness below, or there are whirlpools below and calm on the surface. The sun shines on it, and the clouds rain upon it: perpetual change is going on, but it remains the same. It has infinite possibilities: it contains infinite treasure. It is ever in unrest, ever flowing and ebbing: ever disturbed, uncertain, and wayward. To describe, to dissect, to observe these currents and moods is the hardest task that poet ever set himself; and it is Browning's self-imposed task. If he has failed, he has failed splendidly. It is a defeat which is a great victory.

All his works, from the earliest, have been in the same direction. The "Dramatic Lyrics" were the natural predecessors of "The Ring and the Book," and "Hohenstiel Schwangau." The dramas themselves, so rugged and uncouth, are necessary studies before the later works could be produced. For Browning is an impersonal poet. Like Homer and Shakspeare, his dramatic power is so great that we lose sight of him altogether. He does not describe: he creates. He does not act before us; but he erects his stage, and presently his puppets perform upon it. His verse is rough and harsh, because he will be the master of it. He drags and forces the language to do his bidding. He presses verbs and adjectives to do service which have never before worked for mortal bard. He wants a word, and scorning the customary hack who has worked so long and worked for so many, he looks about to find a better, and having found him, he makes him come along and do his work. Thus it is that, even in his best pieces, we are conscious from time to time of a jolt. He is like a driver who drives furiously over rough ground: driving not for pleasure, but because work has to be done. If you want to float lazily on a summer sea, there is Tennyson; if you would glide down

the stream without an effort, there is Byron ; if you would drive along a smooth road, and admire the hedges on either hand, there is Pope. But if you are not afraid of hard work, rough work, tough work, go with Browning, and follow him while he clears the jungle of thoughts, aims, motives, and passions, and shows you a human heart as poet never showed before.

Browning is not, of course, popular. Popularity he flung to the winds years ago, when he first began to write. We suppose that he must long since have ceased even to desire that really worthless thing-the admiration of the million. True, he aimed at theatrical success; but though his play of "Strafford" was put on the stage with every possible care, and the principal part taken by Kemble himself, it was a complete failure. His dramas have vigour, clearness of plot, strong accentuation of character, and rapid action. But one feels, on reading one after the other, that they are utterly unsuited for acting. The reason we believe to be their deficiency in tenderness. It is Browning's chief failing. Sympathy he must have, because he sees so deeply; but it is sympathy of a sort all his own. It does not lead him to be tender. It is the sympathy which comes from knowledge, and not that which springs from the feeling of possible partnership in misfortune or remorse. It is the pity of a strong man for the weak, mingled with a little contempt. But this is fatal to dramatic success. On the stage, above all, we must be human.

The comparatively few who read Browning regard him with an admiration and intensity of affection almost unequalled in modern times. When, twenty years ago, Tennyson's "In Memoriam" burst into popularity, it gained no such enthusiastic admirers as those who hang upon the lips of Browning. When Byron awoke and found himself famous, his fame was like brass beside gold compared with the reputation of Browning among his admirers. These seem few in number, when we count up those who read Tupper; but they are strong in quality. To begin with, it requires a certain amount -we may say, a high amount of culture before we can appreciate the poet at all; and no small effort of the intellect is needed to follow him through all the mazy windings and involutions of his thought. The story is well known how Douglas Jerrold, recovering from an illness, took up "Sordello,"

Is he simple? Read "Pippa Passes." Is he strong, and rough, and sinewy? Read every line which he has written.

We have, besides the usual throng of verse writers common to every age, one or two leading poets besides Browning. But there is not one who has a better chance of that best kind of posthumous fame: not one who will so certainly be remembered as the highest product of his time.

A PERILOUS VOYAGE.
(POEM ON A RECENT EVENT.)

HE one was taken, the other left;
Their path alike on desert shore--
Hot with sun-rays, and wonderful:
Unlike all other paths before.

And with the night more heated air,

From stars that seemed to touch the sand, Oppressed their breath; and voices near

Spoke what they did not understandWhich, when they challenged, said no more; And so they went upon the shore aloneThe prince and peasant on their voyage, Their perilous voyage-to lands unknown. One morn they parted on the sand,

And one the other saw no more;
And one awoke to faces seen before,
And one to angel faces evermore.

And royal hands upon this sand,
Where they had parted, wreaths have laid;
And sweet white flowers gently spread,
And the lone shore immortal made.

WINTER AMONG THE BLUE NOSES.

CLO

IN TWO PARTS.-PART 1.

"LOSE to the northern borders of the United States dwell a race of men who delight in the peculiar name of Blue Noses. As the Flatheads of the Prairies take their name from a self-imposed deformity of the cranium, it might naturally be supposed that we take ours from a habit of tattooing our nasal organs with the indigo plant. But, no-although we live in a wild and forestclad land, we are pale-faced "men and brothers;" partially civilized also, to say the least of it certainly, so far as to be above the use of the tattooing iron. How, then, comes it that our noses are blue? For an answer to this question I must refer my readers to nature, which has so ordained it that the complexion of man varies according to the conditions of climate under which he lives, and has made so many shades of colour, from the red and white of the Saxon

to the black of her interesting children who bask in Afric's sunny climes. We are subject not only to intense cold, but also to heat, and to rapid and extreme changes. The human flesh when frozen, say at a temperature of 20°, turns white; when thawed again, say at a temperature of 40°, it turns first red, and then blue; and after this operation has been repeated sufficiently often, it assumes an uniform azure hue. Now, the only prominent part of the human form which is not well wrapped up is the nose. This is hard lines for the noses. They ought to have nose-caps, but they haven't; so Jack Frost lays hold of them with his icy fingers; and instead of the white, pink, or red noses which ornament the open countenances of the Anglo-Saxon in other climes, in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia the probosces of the natives, from exposure to the chilly blasts, wear a bluish hue; and hence the cognomen.

The medical statistics of the British army show that our climate, though severe, is exceedingly healthy; the mortality in the different stations on this continent being less than in any other part of the world where English troops are quartered. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and that part of New Brunswick which borders on the Bay of Fundy, have a more variable and damper climate than the interior of New Brunswick and Lower Canada. Hence, tourists who do not get beyond the Atlantic seaboard carry away with them an unfavourable idea of our climate. A stranger, having penetrated the fogs of the bay, finds himself, in St. John, a victim to the wind. When it blows from the north or north-west, the weather is dry and cold in winter, dry and warm in summer. East wind brings rain, west wind fog, and south wind both rain and fog. him now travel a few miles inland, and he will escape all these vicissitudes. Fredericton, sixty miles from St. John as the crow flies, enjoys as much sunshine as any place I know of a still, cold winter, and a warm summer, with a bright sun five days out of seven all the year round.

Let

The thermometer in winter has been known to fall as low as 0.35 Fahrenheit, and o'15 or 0'20 is not by any means an unusual degree of cold; but actual cold, as indicated by the mercury, is scarcely felt. A much less degree of frost, accompanied by a high wind and poudre of drifting snow, penetrates the warmest clothing, and chills