supernatural does not strike them as either mysterious or terrifying. It is otherwise with the Teuton. His night phantasms treat of what is, to man, of all things the most genuinely alarming--his own shadow. Ghosts, wild huntsmen, erl-kings take the place of an innocuous un-mortal race. No starry radiance can rob the night of its terrors. "The stars shine in the sky, bright shine the rays of the moon, fast ride the dead." Such is the wailing burden to the ballad which Burgher imitated in his _Lenore_. There is a wide gulf between this and the tender star-idylls of Lithuania, and a gulf still wider divides it from the neighbourly familiarity with which the southerner addresses the heavenly bodies. We go from one world to another when we turn back to Italy and hear the country lads singing, "La buona sera, O stella mattutina!" "Good evening to you, O matutinal star." The West African negroes call the sky the king of sheds, and the sun the king of torches; the twinkling stars are the little chickens, and the meteor is the thief-star. "When day dawns, you rejoice," say the Yorubas; "do you not know that the day of death is so much the nearer?" The same tribe give this vivid description of a day-break scene: "The trader betakes himself to his trade, the spinner takes his distaff, the warrior takes his shield, the weaver bends over his sley, the farmer awakes, he and his hoe-handle, the hunter awakes, with his quiver and bow." Thoughtless of toil, the Tuscan joyfully cries, "Dawn is about to appear, bells chime, windows open, heaven and earth sing." The Greek holds that he who has not journeyed with the moon by night, or at dawn with the dew, has not tasted the world. Folk-poets have widely recognised the mysterious confusion between summer nights and days. The dispute at Juliet's window is recalled by the Venetian's chiding of the "Rondinella Traditora;" by the Berry peasants' vexation at the "vilaine alouette;" by the reproach of the Navarrese lover, "You say it is day, it is not yet midnight;" and most of all by the Servian dialogue: "Dawn whitens, the cock crows: It is not the dawn, but the moon. The cows low round the house: It is not the cows, it is the call to prayer. The Turks call to the mosque: It is not the Turks, it is the wolves." The observation of the swallow's morning song is another point at which the master poet and the obscure folk-singer meet. This time both are natives of sunny lands; there is a clear reason why it should be so--in the north the swallow passes almost for a dumb bird. Very rarely in England do we hear her notes, soft yet penetrating, like the high-pitched whisper of the AEolian harp. Some of us may, indeed, have first got acquainted with them in Dante's beautiful lines:-- Nell' ora che comincia i tristi lai La Rondinella presso alia mattina ... Little suspecting that he is committing the sin of plagiarism, the Greek begins one of his songs, "In the hour when the swallows, twittering, awake the dawn."