without damaging permanently anything but the censorship. What, then, happened when the restriction was removed? If I cite the Restoration Drama, Philistia will again rejoice; but there are two great principles to be deduced from that period which should give the coup de grace to Mr. Sumner. According to Pepys' Diary,-which to my knowledge has not yet been cited in this connection,-the first ten years of the Restoration saw the few theatres in London given over to Shakespeare, Jonson, Shirley's tragedies, translations of Corneille, Dryden, and Beaumont and Fletcher. Pepys mentions twelve Shakespearean plays; I doubt if New York has seen more in the last decade. What profoundly shocked Evelyn, and whence comes the disrepute of that generation, was the appearance of women on the stage. We can hardly consider this an indecent custom without offending many idols of the American public. The second and greater principle, confirmed by both Pepys and Evelyn, is that when, at the rare behest of a licentious court, an indecent play was put on, the public refused to patronize it. The creed of our faith in America, of our liberty and our law, has ever been made articulate by the voice of the people. Are they so depraved that they cannot judge? Are they become so wanton that Mr. Sumner must correct them? Only those things which have the vigor of truth in them can stand unsupported. Public indecency, to persist, must have support, and it is on record that indecency is not popular. Can the public no longer be trusted?

SAMUEL L. M. BARLOW.

It is good to have young things near you,
Children to play with, children to hold,
To hear their laughter, to have them hear you
Calling to them as you grow old;

To know that you have a part in the ages
Through all to-morrows, though silently,
Immortal as singers and saints and sages
While youth buds out on the ancient tree-
The Somerset man looked out at the sky.
Solemn and soft he said, "Oh-ay!"

IN THE DELTA

BY WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY

The river country's wide and flat

And blurred ash-blue with sun,

And there all work is dreams come true,

All dreams are work begun.

The silted river made for us

The black and mellow soil

And taught us as we conquered him
Courage and faith and toil.

The river town that water-oaks

And myrtles hide and bless

Has broken every law except

The law of kindliness.

And north and south and east the fields

Of cotton close it round,

Where golden billows of the sun

Break with no shade or sound.

Dear is the town, but in the fields
A little house could be,

If built with care and auspices,
A heart's felicity.

O friend, who love not much indoors
Or lamp-lit, peopled ways,
What of a field and house to pass

Our residue of days?

We'd learn of fret and labor there

A patience that we miss

And be content content to be

Nor wish nor hope for bliss.

THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH

BY MARTIN ARMSTRONG

POETRY is the expression of emotion: it is the fine emotions of life caught and crystallized into words. That is not to say that poetry cannot have an intellectual content, but that the intellectual and philosophical must be present in fusion only, fused, that is, into emotional significance.

Philosophy, in the narrow application of the term, is at the opposite pole to poetry. Poetry is the result of an intense sensation of life. Philosophy, strictly speaking, is a purely intellectual process which constructs out of the dry bones of life, duly collected and tabulated by science, a variety of facts and theories. By itself it is barren, just as by itself a printing-press is barren: each is a contrivance elaborated by man for his own use. Poetry is warm and living, it is action of body and soul and appeals directly to the feelings and emotions; the living part of man. Philosophy, cold and mechanical, appeals to the intellect. The relation of poetry to philosophy is the relation of the dancer to the choreographer who records his dance. It is well that dances should be recorded and analyzed, but pages of diagrams can never give the exultant glow, the instantaneous conviction,-instantaneous because emotional,-which the dancer feels and inspires. And it is only so far as philosophy reaches beyond the intellect to the emotions and so becomes an organic part of man's life, its dry fuel changed by fire into fire, that it becomes creative, poetic.

In the work of some poets, poets such as Chaucer, Keats, and Bridges, the intellectual is implicit only. From a general survey of their work as a whole it may be possible to extract a philosophy, or perhaps no more than a mere attitude towards life, as a perfume-maker extracts attar from roses; but even so the attitude will be vague and general, incapable of detailed application. But in the work of other poets, of whom George Meredith is a notable example, a philosophy is explicit. It is to poets of this