13.

France, Italy, Germany, Spain:
—Shall we visit the Kaiser, our brother?
In Burgundia, Alsatia, Lorraine,
  Our Barons are fighting each other.

14.

Spain, with its pale olive groves,
  Germany's oak-forests brown,
France, where the Graces and Loves
  For their pleasure have built Paris town.

15.

Italy, feminine fair!
  Where the mountains are liquid with light,
And solid with splendour the air,
  And laden with odour the night.

16.

Italy,— fairest of all!
  Like that sad Trojan slave, when they bound her,
In the camp of the Greeks, mid the brawl
  Of her conquerors wrangling around her:

17.

All these are, to-night, all our own:
  Where shall we choose to abide?
Shall our court be in cloudy Cologne?
  Or in Florence the sunny? Decide!

18.

The lord of the broad Trevisan
  (With the Margrave new come to his court)
Is fighting the Duke of Milan:
  Which side shall we please to support?

19.

To Innspruck the Kaiser is fled:
  The Spaniard's in Naples at bay:
The people are pining for food:
  The princes are prowling for prey.

20.

Sin and Satan are throwing the dice
  In Rome for the old triple crown;
And meanwhile the Witch's lean mice
  Have eaten her scarlet gown.

21.

There is much that needs setting to rights,
  Massacre, murder, and war, . . .
But how sweet are these midsummer nights!
  Shall we let things remain as they are?

22.

Yet 'tis fit that we travel in state,
  Since a King and a Queen are we.
Let us scatter our largesse elate,
  And be lavish as monarchs should be.

23.

Before us our herald shall go,
  And all cities their gates shall set ope,
When they hear him his clarion blow,
  For the name of our herald is Hope:

24.

Our almoner cometh behind,
  Singing a saintly hymn,
He is gentle, and wise, and kind,
  And Memory men call him:

25.

The owl in the hollow oak-tree
  Is our seneschal wary and old;
The glow-worms our chamberlains be;
  And our minstrels the nightingales bold;

26.

The Summer's our palace; the star
  Is our throne; while, below and above,
Earth and Heaven our monarchies are;
And our wealth is immense,— for we love.

A NEW STAGE STRIDE.

IT is probable that most of us who have been
in the habit of going much to "the Play," have
often felt it to be time that something was done
to render the illusion of the stage more complete.
Those who have ever sat in a stage—or even in
a side box must have over and over again felt
that they could see a great deal too much of
what was going on "behind." We have all of
us probably felt dissatisfied with those mysterious
side-scenes or wings by which the stage has
hitherto been bounded on the right and left.
By means of those wings the characters on the
stage have up to this time been in the habit of
making their entrances and exits, leaving us in
an unpleasant state of uncertainty as to whether
they were supposed to walk straight through
the wall of a banqueting-room—for instance—
or whether the banqueting-room had been left,
for the sake of ventilation, with no walls at all
at the sides. By what mysterious and
unaccountable exits the guests used to clear out
when Lady Macbeth gave them notice to quit
in the banquet scene!

And there was another defect connected with
those side-scenes. It seemed impossible to get
those which were not in use, at the moment,
sufficiently out of the way. Thus it would
continually happen that in the midst of a dark
forest, a hundred miles from any human habitation,
we were rendered unbelieving, and our
young illusions were rudely checked, by a glimpse
of a bit of pilaster with a gorgeous curtain
which had figured in the palace scene a minute
before, or by the merest fragment of a light-
comedy breakfast-room to be revealed in all its
glory in the coming farce.

And then with regard to ceilings and skies,
is it not a fact that there are free-thinkers among
us who have never been satisfied with those
strips of canvas which, hanging in parallel lines
across the top of the stage, have so long waved
before the doubting eyes of many generations
of play-goers? In trying not to think that those
strips of linen were suggestive of a washing-day,
in trying not to see those gilded bits of cornice
gleaming among the trees of the forest, in
resolutely ignoring the man with the paper cap
and carpenter's apron, standing ready for action
at the wing, we who have sat occasionally at
the side of the theatre have had to put such
severe restraints upon ourselves, and have
altogether had to fight so furiously in resisting the
testimony of our senses, that much of our
pleasure and interest in the play enacting before
us has been sacrificed.

In a word, there has been, up to this time, a
certain roughness, a want of finish and
completeness, about what may be called the boundary
lines of the stage. And in these days, when in