her wisdom will be as fresh and fragrant incense, nor will their truthfulness be too closely scanned. Thou knowest that I have taken all knowledge to be my province, and therefore have I oft and longingly gazed into the flowery fields of that divine art where to-day in our much-loved England thou art disporting thyself supremely and alone. But when I consider thy tragedies, throughout which is diffused the inmost soul of poesy, my crude yet labored metres seem to me as the body of a maiden, not indeed devoid of a certain comeliness and grace, yet into whose waiting bosom hath not yet been breathed the spirit of life. In thy tragedies thou hast the majestic grace which in the Attic ages belonged to Sophocles alone; thou hast the stately march and music of Aeschylus, without in thy themes his ceaseless iteration of predestined woe which ranks his heroes outside humanity; yet the sombre hand of fate hath not more inflexibly driven the gentle Iphigenia to her doom than it hath followed Macbeth to his foreshadowed crime and end. But in thy canticles it is not an o'ershadowing, mysterious, and tragic fate, but a gracious and loving Providence which, as thyself hath phrased it, "Holds in His hands the shears of destiny, And has commandment on the pulse of life." In comedy, Aristophanes is not thy master, yet must I greatly choose thy tragedies as monuments of thy abiding fame. Funeral dolors rather than bridal carols inspire even the harp of David, beloved of the Lord; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost toucheth ever the shadowed phases of our earthly lives.