How joyously life's fountains here are flowing! In crystal cups the purple flood is foaming; Through dusky myrtle-groves are lovers roaming, The dance begins in halls all bright and glowing. Be watchful, though! Here treachery is hiding. Wild passion naught for truth or ruth is caring: As hawks do doves, mild innocence 'tis tearing, And human vengeance lightly is deriding. But now, once more alive, the slain appear! They speak, with awful voice, the words of doom: Death his cold hand is silently extending. Now sinks the daring mood in ghastly fear. The golden dream of life dissolves in gloom; The silent grave brings on the bright joy's ending. It is very hard, if not impossible, to render into any other language the true spirit of a German poem. But in the original this sonnet is far above mediocrity. It idealizes the opera of _Don Juan_ very artistically, and displays a combination of force with harmony and grace which gives the impression, in connection with the other sonnets, that if Strauss had devoted his mental energy to poetry alone, he would not have taken a low rank among the poets of Germany. W.W.C. LITERATURE OF THE DAY. The Life of Thomas Fuller, D.D., with Notices of his Books, his Kinsmen and his Friends. By John Eglinton Bailey. London: Pickering. By no means to the credit of the nineteenth century, it is hardly prudent, as yet, to speak to the general public about Thomas Fuller without formally introducing him. Coleridge and Southey and Lamb were, to be sure, familiar with his writings, and prized them extremely. But they did the same by the writings of many another old worthy now undeservedly slighted; and, for all their eulogies on him, the great bulk of readers were still content to continue in ignorance of the treasures he has bequeathed to us. The neglect of him which at present prevails is, however, in large measure, a delinquency of long standing. His chief work is undoubtedly his _Church History_; and Heylin's elaborate impugnment of its accuracy appears to have had great weight, as with Fuller's contemporaries, so with the generation which immediately followed, and onward almost to our own time. To Heylin succeeded Bishop Nicolson in exerting himself to discredit that valuable work, and it is only within a few years that its character has been substantially rehabilitated. Together with the reputation of Fuller as an historian, his reputation in other respects for a long while underwent eclipse; for, as it is reviving again, we may not say that it passed away. His matter quite apart--and it is always interesting--and abstractedly from his pervasive pleasantry, which is always original, it is a wonder that he is not more esteemed than he is in an age which professes to set store by style. Mr. John Nichols, an editor of his _Worthies_, timidly hazarded the observation that, as against the strictures of Bishop Nicolson, there might be much said in