So, too, with Edward Fitzgerald, who, with consummate skill, has here played the part of 'Mr. Sludge, the Medium' to perfection. And we only wish that Robert Browning, in his Berserker rage over the painful betrayal of what was dearest to him in life, had 'spit' _this_, and not what he frantically did, 'in his face' as it burst from him in scorn of one who confessed:— 'I cheated when I could, Rapped with my toe-joints, set sham hands at work!...' _'R-r-r ... Cowardly scamp! I only wish I could burn down the house, And spoil your sniggering._'[23] But no! we have 'no time' to waste in hating even this dram-drinking, drivelling, droning Dotard. For hark!—'That strain I heard was of a higher mood'! Its very first note 'laps us in Elysium,' and we at once forget man's self-inflicted misery and all his morbid diseases and cares—'Do I wake or sleep?'... ... 'Tender is the Night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no Light Save what from Heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what Flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft Incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable Month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child The coming musk-rose full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.... Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The Voice I heard this passing Night was heard In ancient days by Emperor and clown; Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic-casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.' Yes; that is surely the sweetest, the tenderest, the heavenliest of all the Persian Nightingales, come back to us in our sorest need, and singing to us amid the glory of the Resurrection of Life, in the Festival of another Spring, as he never sang in the English air before. It is a Western youthful Poet's Dream of JELÁLEDDÍN renewing the first notes of his immortal song, and chanting again the Hymn of Eternal Life, solemn yet joyous, mystic yet clear: stirring what is deepest in our heart and driving away our sorrow, till 'all the pulses of our being, reanimated, beat anew!' 'O ye hopes, that stir within me, Health comes with you from above! God is with me, God is in me! I cannot die, if Life be Love.' Thus does our own deep, mystic Singer, Coleridge, echo, in kindred strains, the deepest Faith of JELÁLEDDÍN. W. H.