golden-pated urchin of the village-green.
His verses throughout are fragrant with the
daffodil and the jessamine, with the sweet-
briar, and the eglantine, and the almond-bud,
and the clove-blossom! Verses in which he
sings to us at delicious intervals how roses
first came red, and violets blue, and lilies
white, and primroses green, and marygolds
yellow—another Ovid carolling the wonders
of the Floral Metamorphoses. He pours the
blossoms out upon us in a flowery cascade, or
sprinkles them before him in delicate handfulls,
while his fancies dance on gaily down
his page in motley procession. But, if he
crops a pansy, or a tulip from the parterre, if
he culls a trail of woodbine from the
coppice, or plucks a ladysmock from the verdant
lap of the meadow—it is never idly done: it
is always either as a love offering, or as a
wooing compliment. Emblematic tokens of
affection they always are—the very largess
of his love—flung with an overflowing bounty
to the right hand and to the left, not to One
but to a Hundred. For he perpetually moves
in an imaginary hareem, this blithe old poet
bachelor! Surrounded by nymphs like
Electra, and Perilla, and Dianeme—even
when there is only little Phil twittering on
the gravel, or Tracie yelping over the pick of
his carnations in chase of a butterfly. Several,
howbeit, among these fair demoiselles were
really no mere empty imaginings, but
blooming and blushing verities. Such, for
example, were those he so often celebrated
under the euphonious names of Althæa and
Corinna. Above all—she who first snared
him, he says, by "a ringlet of her hair"—she
of whom, in truth, we possess no other
records than those incidentally scattered
through the Hesperides—the queenliest
among the radiant concourse of his real and
ideal mistresses:

       "Stately Julia, prime of all!"

according to his own notable apostrophe. An
exquisite name—and nothing more—in the
History of Poetic Literature, she at least
among all these nymphs of Herrick, we may
rest assured, is no mere "airy nothing" to
whom he has endearingly awarded, in
these same poems of his, both that perennial
name and that everlasting local habitation.
A true woman she is throughout—with
natural pulses throbbing warmly under all that
frostwork of delectable artifice: in spite of
slashed sleeves and jewelled stomacher, of all
the cunning witcheries she used so deftly—
the mysteries of gorget and wimple, of lawn
and musks, of jessamy-butter and rose-powder.
It was in celebration of those charms of
Julia (whether artful or natural it matters
not), that Robert Herrick sang the sweetest
of his dulcet love-lays, those musical songs
of the Hesperides which have not inaptly
been likened to the Carmina of Catullus.
Beautiful, no doubt, are many of these
elfin verses in no way relating to her, such,
for example, as the Mad Maid's Song, or
Corinna going a-Maying. But "best beautiful"
among them after all are those assuredly
referring to Julia herself directly or indirectly.
Wonderfully popular many of them proved
during Herrick's lifetime, when set to music
by the master composers of his age, by Henry
Lawes and by Laniere, by Wilson and by
Ramsay—the Arnes and Purcells of that
generation. A few, indeed, still preserve to
this present moment a reflex of that far-off
halo of popularity. It will doubtless be yet
remembered by many a reader how
charmingly Madame Vestris used to warble
"Cherry Ripe," it seems but yesterday!
And where lovelier words than those written
two hundred years ago by Robert Herrick,
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," as the
theme of a still favourite madrigal ?  Better,
doubtless, the Poems than the Discourses of
this mad wag of an ecclesiastic. In
corroboration of which very reasonable conjecture,
is there not that ludicrous tradition picked
up in eighteen hundred and ten by Dr.
Southey down at Dean Prior from the
recollections of old Dorothy King, the
village crone whose age was but a few
months short of an entire century? A
marvellous anecdote relating how once upon
a time, Vicar Herrick—with a curse for
their inattention—flung his sermon at the
congregation! An incident, no doubt,
horribly indecorous, but at the same time laughably
characteristic. A sudden flashing up in
the rural pulpit, of the frolic, and the passion,
and the horse-play of the roysterer in the
taverns of Eastcheap. One would like to
have caught a glimpse of lovely Mistress Julia
in her pew, and to have scanned the startled
faces of the rustic parishioners.

OUR FAMILY PICTURE.

IN SIX CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE THIRD.

In  pursuance of his crotchet that girls
ought to receive precisely the same education
as boys, my father inducted Philip, Neville,
and Ruth into the mysteries of the Latin
grammar at the same time, and taught them
together, and as if they were one person, till
they were about fourteen years old; at which
time, owing to her retentive memory, I doubt
whether Ruth were not the best scholar of
the three, but am certain that there was no
one in the school, of the same age as herself,
who could equal her in classical attainments.
My father was intensely proud of his achievement,
and pointed it out as a triumphant
example of what might be accomplished in the
way of female education. It must have been
about this period that he published his
pamphlet advocating the enactment of a law
to permit young ladies to graduate at the
universities, take degrees, and use honorary
initials after their names.

Having succeeded so well with his elder
daughter, he determined that the younger