Tall Alp after tall Alp behind him, Petit saw before him only a world of foothills. Yet his journey had been passionate. Now the work he had done was dead leaves, his energy all burned grass, his aspirations dust. And dry and bitter in his mouth was the reflection that the summons might have missed his ear while he had watched his fellows. Had zeal overreached him, some hidden jealousy undone him? What grief and rebellion to know himself cause, agent, and penalty of his own ruin! O black decades to come! Still, Scott found himself at thirty-four. IN LIEU OF THE LAUREATE I am so distressed to see that the Poet Laureate has failed to produce an official ode for the British royal wedding that I hardly know whether to rummage through the archives of the Hanoverians for a substitute manufactured for some earlier occasion or to manufacture a new article myself. I think I shall let learning and poetry both serve me with the help of E. K. Broadus’s agreeable new study of “The Laureateship.” Here, for instance, is a part of what the elegant Henry James Pye, George III’s laureate, wrote when the Princess Charlotta Matilda of England married Prince Frederick William of Stuttgart: Awhile the frowning Lord of arms Shall yield to gentler Pow’rs the plain; Lo! Britain greets the milder charms Of Cytherea’s reign. Mute is the trumpet’s brazen throat, And the sweet flute’s melodious note Floats on the soft ambrosial gale; The sportive Loves and Graces round, Beating with jocund step the ground, Th’ auspicious nuptials hail! The Muses cease to weave the wreath of war, But hang their roseate flow’rs on Hymen’s golden car! Or if this seems a shade heroic and a little old-fashioned, here are certain lines of Tennyson on the marriage of Princess Beatrice to Prince Henry of Battenberg: The Mother weeps At that white funeral of the single life, Her maiden daughter’s marriage; and her tears Are half of pleasure, half of pain—the child Is happy—even in leaving _her_! And yet that seems to me to have a touch of insinuation about the fun of getting away from the royal mother which I should be the last to intend—though Tennyson cannot have meant it. Let me turn instead to Thomas Warton and his admirable compliments to a king with the same name as that of the present husband of England’s queen: Lo! the fam’d isle, which hails thy chosen sway, What fertile fields her temperate suns display! Where Property secures the conscious swain, And guards, while Plenty gives, the golden grain.... These are Britannia’s praises. Feign to trace With rapt reflections Freedom’s favourite race! But though the generous isle, in arts and arms Thus stands supreme, in Nature’s choicest charms; Though George and Conquest guard her sea-girt throne One happier blessing still she calls her own— and that happier blessing was of course the bride.