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Numerical Methods in
Environmental Data
Analysis
This page intentionally left blank
Numerical Methods in
Environmental Data
Analysis

Moses Eterigho Emetere

Department of Mechanical Engineering Science,
University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Department of Physics, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun, Nigeria
Elsevier
Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom
50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States

Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on
how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies
and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the
Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright
by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein).

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and
experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional
practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described
herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety
and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or
editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a
matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any
methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

ISBN: 978-0-12-818971-9

For information on all Elsevier publications visit our website at

https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals

Publisher: Candice G. Janco

Acquisitions Editor: Peter Llewellyn
Editorial Project Manager: Aleksandra Packowska
Production Project Manager: Sreejith Viswanathan
Cover Designer: Mark Rogers
Typeset by TNQ Technologies
Contents
Preface .................................................................................................. ix

CHAPTER 1 Overview on data treatment ..................................... 1

1 Introduction ........................................................................ 1
1.1 Mathematical technique ...................................................6
1.2 Computational technique..................................................7
1.3 Statistical data treatment ..................................................7
References.............................................................................11
CHAPTER 2 Case study in environmental pollution research ......13
1 Introduction .......................................................................13
1.1 Air pollution ................................................................ 14
1.2 Land pollution.............................................................. 21
1.3 Water pollution............................................................. 24
1.4 Noise pollution............................................................. 32
1.5 Radioactive pollution..................................................... 33
1.6 Electronic waste pollution .............................................. 35
References.............................................................................38
Further reading.......................................................................39
CHAPTER 3 Typical environmental challenges...........................41
1 Introduction .......................................................................41
1.1 Thermal comfort as a source of environmental concern ....... 41
1.2 Rainfall as a source of environmental concern ................... 44
1.3 Recent environmental crisis and the problem of climate
change ........................................................................ 47
References.............................................................................51
CHAPTER 4 Generating environmental data: Progress and
shortcoming...........................................................53
1 Method of generating environmental data: common
challenges, safety, and errors.................................................53
1.1 Data quality and errors .................................................. 55
1.2 Satellite measurement.................................................... 60
1.3 Modeling procedure ...................................................... 63
1.4 Experimental procedure ................................................. 69
2 Common errors in laboratory practice.....................................74
3 Maintaining laboratory apparatus ...........................................75
References.............................................................................76

v
vi Contents

CHAPTER 5 Root finding technique in environmental research ...79

1 Application of root finding technique to environmental
data ..................................................................................79
1.1 The root finding method................................................. 79
1.2 Modification of the root finding method to data
application................................................................... 82
1.3 Computational application of root finding method to
data application .......................................................... 103
Reference............................................................................ 117
CHAPTER 6 Numerical differential analysis in environmental
research .............................................................. 119
1 Introduction ..................................................................... 119
1.1 Euler method ............................................................. 121
1.2 Improved Euler method ............................................... 122
1.3 RungeeKutta method.................................................. 123
1.4 Predictor Corrector method........................................... 126
1.5 Midpoint method ........................................................ 128
1.6 Application of numerical methods of solving
differentiation in environmental research......................... 128
1.7 Computational processing of numerical methods
for solving differential equation..................................... 136
1.8 Computational application of derivatives to
environmental data...................................................... 142
1.9 Case 1: derivative of experimental data........................... 142
References........................................................................... 147
Further reading..................................................................... 148
CHAPTER 7 Numerical integration application to
environmental data .............................................. 149
1 Introduction ..................................................................... 149
1.1 Midpoint ................................................................... 149
1.2 Trapezoidal rule.......................................................... 151
1.3 Simpson’s rule............................................................ 154
1.4 Computational application of numerical integration .......... 158
References........................................................................... 168
CHAPTER 8 Numerical interpolation in environmental
research .............................................................. 169
1 Introduction ..................................................................... 169
2 Application of interpolation to environmental data.................. 170
3 Lagrange interpolation ....................................................... 172
 Contents vii

4 Newton interpolation ......................................................... 176

5 Spline interpolation ........................................................... 179
6 Computational application of interpolation ............................ 181
References........................................................................... 189
CHAPTER 9 Environmental/atmospheric numerical models
formulations: model review .................................. 191
1 Introduction ..................................................................... 191
1.1 Global forecast system ............................................... 191
1.2 NOGAPS-ALPHA model ........................................... 192
1.3 Global Environmental Multiscale Model (GEM)............. 195
1.4 European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts... 196
1.5 Unified Model (UKMO)............................................. 197
1.6 French global atmospheric forecast model (ARPEGE)..... 199
1.7 Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)..................... 200
1.8 Japan Meteorological Agency Nonhydrostatic Model
(JMA-NHM) ............................................................ 203
1.9 The fifth generation mesoscale model........................... 205
1.10 Advanced Region Prediction System (ARPS)................. 206
1.11 High Resolution Limited Area Model (HIRLAM)........... 207
1.12 Global Environmental Multiscale limited area model ...... 208
1.13 ALADIN model........................................................ 210
1.14 Eta model ................................................................ 213
1.15 Microscale model (MIMO) ......................................... 215
1.16 Regional atmospheric modeling system (RAMS) ............ 216
References........................................................................... 217
Further reading..................................................................... 221

Index...................................................................................................223
This page intentionally left blank
Preface

Environmental data may be described in terms of quantitative, qualitative, or

geographically referenced facts that represent the state of the environment and its
changes. Quantitative environmental data consist of data, statistics and indicators
of databases, spreadsheets, compendia, and yearbook type products. Qualitative
environment data are descriptions (e.g., textual, pictorial) of the environment or
its constituent parts that cannot be adequately represented by accurate quantitative
or geographically referenced descriptors. Geographically referenced environmental
data are described in digital maps, satellite imagery, and other sources linked to a
location or map feature. Summarily, it can be postulated that dataset in environ-
mental studies is like blood to the human body. All decisions in environmental
studies are based on observables that are measurable, reliable, realistic, and consis-
tent with theories. Environmental theories are formulated from observables. Hence,
a faulty observable can lead to a colossal failure in processes, prediction, model
formulation, and decision.
The inevitable outcomes of climate change have redefined observables such that
new theories and models are necessary due to data inconsistency, noise, and spikes.
Aside from just getting dataset and simulating, it is now expedient that the integrity
of a dataset be the first line of operation in data analytics. This feat can be achieved
through the guidance of proven theories. The knowledge of this theory, when to
apply it on a dataset, how to apply it, and ways to validate emerging results are
salient in any field of environmental sciences. Hence, the focus of this book is to
educate beginners and professionals on the above.
Environmental indicators are usually the environment statistics that are in need
of further processing and interpretation. Based on this, there is the need of the appli-
cation of numerical methods to validate, expatiate, predict, back-trace, and create
new possibilities. Validation technique through numerical methods enables the
researcher to ascertain the pattern trend of series of observables and tie them to
certain established theories. Expatiation technique through numerical methods
enables the researcher to take an informed numerical guess to replace missing
data, noise, and data anomalies. Missing data is common in atmospheric research.
Missing data makes the genuity of the data to be questionable especially when
the user is a beginner or novice. Assume if the satellite measurement of a parameter
shows missing values for 7 months in a yearly dataset. Ignoring the missing data for
the remaining 5 months would certainly be erroneous to analyze monthly or season-
ally. The same scenario applies to noise in data and data anomalies. This book seeks
to train beginners and professionals on the aforementioned expertise.

ix
This page intentionally left blank
 CHAPTER

Overview on data
treatment
1
1. Introduction
Data is usually defined as raw or unprocessed facts or statistics that will need to be
processed or interpreted in order to get information. Technically, there are three
types of data based on their source and availability: primary, secondary, and mosaic.
Primary data is data that is collected through firsthand experiences, studies, or
research. Secondary data is data or information that has been collected from other
sources. Mosaic data refers to data and information that is collected by putting
together bits and pieces of information that are already publicly available. Environ-
mental data are large amounts of unprocessed observations and measurements about
the environment (or its components) and related processes. Data used for the produc-
tion of environment output, report, or statistics are compiled by many different
collection techniques and institutions whose data sources are hosted privately or
publicly at known sites. Understanding and knowing the pros and cons of each
source is key in environment reportage. Data sources are the initial locations where
the collected data originates from and runs public object for the establishment and
can be a flat file, database, scraped web data, social media, and database access
which profuse across the internet. Data source is considered to help users and appli-
cations to secure and move data to where it needs to be. The purpose of the data
source is to bundle connection information that is easier to comprehend. In environ-
mental science, data source can be classified into two: the primary and secondary
data. The primary data is original and accurate and is collected with the aim of get-
ting the solution to a problem at hand, and it includes surveys, observations, web-
sites, questionnaires, etc. It is reliable, objective, and authentic. The secondary
data are data that are readily available and are more accesible to the public than
the primary data (e.g., industry surveys, compilation).
The type of data that could be obtained from research could either be qualitative
or quantitative. Qualitative data research centers around getting information con-
cerning the attribute, characteristics, or qualities of sample. It does not involve
numbers. While quantitative data research are research studies whose data are quan-
tifiable with the use of numbers, where data are computed through discrete whole
number integers or continuous floating point values. There are a lot of examples
of numerical data; however, they are all categorized into two types: discrete and

Numerical Methods in Environmental Data Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818971-9.00001-6 1

Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2 CHAPTER 1 Overview on data treatment

continuous data. Discrete data are data that take numerical symbols as they are
countable list of items. They take values that can be grouped into categories or
list, where the list may either be finite or infinite. Discrete data takes number count-
ing from 1 to 10, or 1 to infinity, but it always occurs in a range. Continuous data is a
type of numerical data which represents measurements. These data are described as
values that take interval such as averages, largest or smallest number (among
ranges), and cumulative grade point.
There are different types of data source. Flat file is a database that stores data in a
plain text format and teaches how to upload, prepare, and update your csv files to
data-pines. This consists of a single table of data types table and cannot contain mul-
tiple tables of data types, and it has no folders or paths related to them and is used to
import data and store table information. Examples of flat file include plain text, bi-
nary file, delimited file, and flat file database. Another type of data source is data-
base. Database is one of the oldest data sources and the relational database is one
of the common databases that can easily be connected to the data-pines. Then
each database will then be represented as an individual data connection. They sup-
port the manipulation of data and electronic storage. The types of database are
network database, hierarchical database, and object-oriented database. A typical
example of environmental organizations that make use of the flat files is the
NASA-associated satellites extension such as MERRA and GIOVANNI. Fig. 1.1
shows the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) constellations that have
some of their dataset as flat file.
Web Services is a type of data source. It is a system of communication between
two electronic devices over a network and is also an assembly of the segment that the
software makes available over the internet. And it is formulated to communicate
with different programs rather than the users. In a web service the web technology
known as the “Http” this data source is used for transmitting machine-readable file
format (e.g., the XML). The types of web services include web template, web ser-
vice flow language, web service conversation language, web service metadata lan-
guage, and web service description language. Australian department of
agriculture, water, and the environment have several web services where a list of
environmental data can be downloaded.
The most popular form of data source is databases. Popular environment data-
bases include Proquest Natural Sciences Database, Engineering Village, Green-
FILE, Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Database (EPA), Health &
Environmental Research Online, etc. There are several different types of databases,
and various companies sell databases with various plans and features. MS Access,
Oracle, DB2, Informix, SQL, MySQL, Amazon Simple DB, and a variety of other
databases are widely used today. In general, contingent databasesdthat is, databases
that document a company’s consistent transactions, such as CRM, HRM, and ERPd
are not considered to be suitable for business records. This is attributable to a num-
ber of reasons, including the fact that data is not enhanced for itemizing and inspect-
ing, and specifically querying these databases may block the layout and prevent the
databases from correctly tracking trades. Organizations can use an ETL tool to
 1. Introduction 3

FIGURE 1.1
Flat file user: Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) constellations (Laviola et al.,
2020).

obtain information from their constrained servers, transform it into BI-ready format,
and weigh it into a data storage room and perhaps another data store. The one flaw in
this theory is that a data circulation focus is a perplexing and expensive plan, which
is why many organizations want to report explicitly against their stringent databases.
Online media information is a source of data. It is gathered from long range inter-
personal communication administrations like Facebook, microblogging stages like
twitter, media sharing destinations like YouTube and Instagram, sites, conversation
discussions, client audit locales, and new locales. This information can be gathered
from things had been posted, as, acknowledge or search about through your gadgets.
The method of generating primary data in disciplines related to environmental
science may be through survey, experiment, and observation. Survey is carried
out by questioning individuals based on different topics and reporting their re-
sponses, and are used to test the different concepts, reflect the attitude of different
people, reporting certain personalities of people, testing hypotheses of people’s na-
ture of relationships and personalities. Experiment is an organized study where the
analyzer gets to understand the effects, causes, and processes involved in a particular
process and involves manipulating one variable to determine if there are changes in
the other. The types of experimental design include completely random design,
4 CHAPTER 1 Overview on data treatment

randomized block design, Latin square design, and factorial design etc. Observation
is a method that engages vision as it main means of data collection, and is also study-
ing others’ behaviors without taking control of it. There are a few things to keep in
mind when carrying-out experiment in environmental science:
a. Measurement technique: This technique is relevant because it has an impact on
the success of your data. The configuration of the equipment as well as the use
of updated standards are essential parameters before taking measurement. Also,
the procedures for obtaining live samples are salient in experimental technique.
b. Multiple trials: This includes going through the investigation again and again.
The more preliminary work you do, the higher your average value would be and
the more accurate and reliable the results would look like.
The method of generating secondary dataset includes internet sources, external
sources, satellite measurement etc. Internal sources are dataset that are within the
organization and can be obtained within a short effort, a period of time than the
external sources and they include internal experts, data mining, sales-force report,
miscellaneous report, accounting sources etc. External sources are dataset that are
outside the organization and are quite difficult because they have many collections
and the sources are much more frequent, and they include syndicate service, govern-
mental publications, nongovernmental publications, etc.
Data treatment is a very essential part of any experimental work or analysis of a
secondary dataset. It is essential in all experiments, spanning from scientific to social
to business to medicine etc. Data treatment helps researchers identify errors, spot
trends, observe correlation and relationships, make inferences, and draw meaning
and conclusions from collected data. It involves all the actions and processes in
the investigation and collection of data and the additional processes performed on
data in order to arrive at useful information, so as to make deductions and inferences.
Every environmental researcher, regardless of their field, must have the basic
concept of data treatment for their research or their study to be reliable. Data treat-
ment is essential and equally important, as well as data organization, to draw appro-
priate conclusions in a given data set. Data treatment is a process to ensure its
reliability and uniqueness in experiments and data collection designs. This process
is vital to efficiently make use of a given data in the right way. It is essential to
correctly treat data to maintain the research’s authenticity, accuracy, and reliability.
A well-defined understanding is needed to perform suitable experiments with the
correct information obtained from any given data set. Data treatment can be descrip-
tive, that is, describing the relationship between variables in a population set so as to
distinguish between a noise, spike, and trend. It can also be inferential, that is, testing
a given hypothesis by making inferences from a collected data set or an establish law
or theory. To obtain the desired result, data must be processed using a variety of
methods. All experiments randomly produce errors or noise. Data noise can either
be systematic or random errors. It is advisable that errors and noise be taken into
consideration in the course of the experiment for the result of the experiment to
make sense.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
of wakeful fear, I fancied a thousand horrible revelations. Night after
night I lay in agony, with my ears distended for the sound of the
footstep. Morning after morning I awakened, weary and jaded, after
a short, unsatisfying sleep, and resolved that I would confess to my
aunt, and implore her to fly from the place at once. But, when
seated at the breakfast-table, my heart invariably failed me. I
accounted, by the mention of a headache, for my pale cheeks, and
kept my secret.

Some weeks passed, and then I in my turn began to observe that

Aunt Featherstone had grown exceedingly dull in spirits. "Can any
one have told her the secret of the House?" was the question I
quickly asked myself. But the servants denied having broken their
promise; and I had reason to think that there had been of late much
less gossip on the subject than formerly. I was afraid to risk
questioning the dear old lady, and so I could only hope and surmise.
But I was dull, and Aunt Featherstone was dull, and the Thatched
House was dreary. Things went on in this way for some time, and at
last a dreadful night arrived. I had been for a long walk during the
day; and had gone to bed rather earlier than usual, and fallen asleep
quickly. For about two hours I slept, and then I was roused suddenly
by a slight sound, like the creaking of a board, just outside my door.
With the instinct of fear I started up, and listened intently. A watery
moon was shining into my room, revealing the pretty blue-and-white
furniture, the pale statuette and the various little dainty ornaments
with which I had been pleased to surround myself in this my chosen
sanctuary. I sat up shuddering and listened. I pressed my hands
tightly over my heart, to try and keep its throbbing from killing me;
for distinctly, in the merciless stillness of the winter night, I heard
the tread of a stealthy footstep on the passage outside my room.
Along the corridor it crept, down the staircase it went, and was lost
in the hall below.

I shall never forget the anguish of fear in which I passed the

remainder of that wretched night. While cowering into my pillow, I
made up my mind to leave the Thatched House as soon as the
morning broke, and never to enter it again. I had heard people
whose hair had grown gray a single night, of grief or terror. When I
glanced in the looking-glass at dawn, I almost expected to see a
white head upon my own shoulders.

During the next day I, as usual, failed of courage to speak to my

aunt. I desired one of the maids to sleep on the couch in my room,
keeping this {69} arrangement a secret. The following night I felt
some little comfort from the presence of a second person near me;
but the girl soon fell asleep. Lying awake in fearful expectation, I
was visited by a repetition of the previous night's horror. I heard the
footstep a second time.

I suffered secretly in this way for about a week. I had become so

pale and nervous, that I was only like a shadow of my former self.
Time hung wretchedly upon my hands. I only prized the day
inasmuch as it was a respite from the night; the appearance of
twilight coming on at evening, invariably threw me into an ague-fit
of shivering. I trembled at a shadow; I screamed at a sudden noise.
My aunt groaned over me, and sent for the doctor.

I said to him, "Doctor, I am only a little moped. I have got a bright

idea for curing myself. You must prescribe me a schoolfellow."

Hereupon Aunt Featherstone began to ride off on her old hobby

about the loneliness, the unhealthiness and total objectionableness
of the Thatched House, bewailing her own weakness in having
allowed herself to be forced into buying it. She never mentioned the
word "haunted," though I afterward knew that at the very time, and
for some weeks previously, she had been in full possession of the
story of the nightly footstep. The doctor recommended me a
complete change of scene; but instead of taking advantage of this, I
asked for a companion at the Thatched House.

The prescription I had begged for was written in the shape of a note
to Ada Rivers, imploring her to come to me at once. "Do come now,"
I wrote; "I have a mystery for you to explore. I will tell you about it
when we meet." Having said so much, I knew that I should not be
disappointed.

Ada Rivers was a tall, robust girl, with the whitest teeth, the purest
complexion, and the clearest laugh I have ever met with in the
world. To be near her made one fed healthier both in body and
mind. She was one of those lively, fearless people who love to meet
a morbid horror face to face, and put it to rout. When I wrote to her,
"Do come, for I am sick," I was pretty sure she would obey the
summons; but when I added, "I have a mystery for you to explore,"
I was convinced of her compliance beyond the possibility of a doubt.

It wanted just one fortnight of Christmas Day when Ada arrived at

the Thatched House. For some little time beforehand, I had busied
myself so pleasantly in making preparations, that I had almost
forgotten the weeping lady, and had not heard the footstep for two
nights. And when, on the first evening of her arrival, Ada stepped
into the haunted dining-room in her trim flowing robe of crimson
cashmere, with her dark hair bound closely round her comely head,
and her bright eyes clear with that frank unwavering light of theirs, I
felt as if her wholesome presence had banished dread at once, and
that ghosts could surely never harbor in the same house with her
free step and genial laugh.

"What is the matter with you?" said Ada, putting her hands on my
shoulders, and looking in my face. "You look like a changeling, you
little white thing! When shall I get leave to explore your mystery?"

"To-night," I whispered, and, looking round me quickly, shuddered.

We were standing on the hearth before the blazing fire, on the very
spot where that awful footstep would pass and repass through the
long, dark, unhappy hours after our lights had been extinguished,
and our heads, laid upon our pillows.
Ada laughed at me and called me a little goose; but I could see that
she was wild with curiosity, and eager for bedtime to arrive. I had
arranged that we should both occupy my room, in order that, if
there was anything to be heard, Ada might hear it. "And now what is
all this that I have to learn?" said she, after our door had been
fastened for the night, and we sat looking at one another with our
dressing-gowns upon our shoulders.
{70}

As I had expected, a long ringing laugh greeted the recital of my

doleful tale. "My dear Lucy!" cried Ada, "my poor sick little moped
Lucy, you surely don't mean to say that you believe in such vulgar
things as ghosts?"

"But I cannot help it," I said. "I have heard the footstep no less than
seven times, and the proof of it is that I am ill. If you were to sleep
alone in this room every night for a month, you would get sick too."

"Not a bit of it!" said Ada, stoutly; and she sprang up and walked
about the chamber, "To think of getting discontented with this pretty
room, this exquisite little nest! No, I engage to sleep here every
night for a month—alone, if you please—and at the end of that time,
I shall not only be still in perfect health, my unromantic self, but I
promise to have cured you, you little, absurd, imaginative thing! And
now let us get to bed without another word on the subject. 'Talking
it over,' in cases of this kind, always does a vast amount of mischief."

Ada always meant what she said. In half an hour we were both in
bed, without a further word being spoken on the matter. So
strengthened and reassured was I by her strong, happy presence
that, wearied out by the excitement of the day, I was quickly fast
asleep. It was early next morning when I wakened again, and the
red, frosty sun was rising above the trees. When I opened my eyes,
the first object they met was Ada, sitting in the window, with her
forehead against the pane, and her hands locked in her lap. She was
very pale, and her brows were knit in perplexed thought. I had
never seen her look so strangely before.

A swift thought struck me. I started up, and cried, "O Ada! forgive
me for going to sleep so soon. I know you have heard it."

She unknit her brows, rose from her seat, and came and sat down
on the bed beside me. "I cannot deny it." she said gravely; "I have
heard it. Now tell me, Lucy, does your aunt know anything of all
this?"

"I am not sure," I said; "I cannot be, because I am afraid to ask her.
rather think that she has heard some of the stories, and is anxiously
trying to hide them from me, little thinking of what I have suffered
here. She has been very dull lately, and repines constantly about the
purchase of the house."

"Well," said Ada, "we must tell her nothing till we have sifted this
matter to the bottom."

"Why, what are you going to do?" I asked, beginning to tremble.

"Nothing very dreadful, little coward!" she said, laughing; "only to

follow the ghost if it passes our door to-night; I want to see what
stuff it is made of. If it be a genuine spirit, it is time the Thatched
House were vacated for its more complete accommodation. If it be
flesh and blood, it is time the trick were found out."

I gazed at Ada with feelings of mingled reverence and admiration. It

was in vain that I tried to dissuade her from her wild purpose. She
bade me hold my tongue, get up and dress and think no more about
ghosts till bedtime. I tried to be obedient; and all that day we kept
strict silence on the dreadful subject, while our tongues and hands
and (seemingly) our heads were kept busily occupied in helping to
carry out Aunt Featherstone's thousand-and-one pleasant
arrangements for the coming Christmas festivities.

During the morning, it happened that I often caught Ada with her
eyes fixed keenly on Aunt Featherstone's face, especially when once
or twice the dear old lady sighed profoundly, and the shadow of an
unaccountable cloud settled down upon her troubled brows. Ada
pondered deeply in the interval of our conversation, though her
merry comment and apt suggestion were always ready as usual
when occasion seemed to call for them. {71} I noticed also that she
made excuses to explore rooms and passages, and found means to
observe and exchange words with the servants. Ada's bright eyes
were unusually wide open that day. For me, I hung about her like a
mute, and dreaded the coming of the night.

Bedtime arrived too quickly; and when we were shut in together in

our room, I implored Ada earnestly to give up the wild idea she had
spoken of in the morning, and to lock fast the door, and let us try to
go to sleep. Such praying, however, was useless. Ada had resolved
upon a certain thing to do, and this being the case, Ada was the girl
to do it.

We said our prayers, we set the door ajar, we extinguished our light,
and we went to bed. An hour we lay awake, and heard nothing to
alarm us. Another silent hour went past, and still the sleeping house
was undisturbed. I had begun to hope that the night was going to
pass by without accident, and had just commenced to doze a little
and to wander into a confused dream, when a sudden squeezing of
my hand, which lay in Ada's, startled me quickly into consciousness.

I opened my eyes; Ada was sitting erect in the bed, with her face set
forward, listening, and her eyes fastened on the door. Half
smothered with fear, I raised myself upon my elbow and listened
too. Yes, O horror! there it was—the soft, heavy, unshod footstep
going down the corridor outside the door. It paused at the top of the
staircase, and began slowly descending to the bottom. "Ada!" I
whispered, with a gasp. Her hand was damp with fear, and my face
was drenched in a cold dew. "In God's name!" she sighed, with a
long-drawn breath; and then she crept softly from the bed, threw on
her dressing-gown, and went swiftly away out of the already open
door.

What I suffered in the next few minutes I could never describe, if I

spent the remainder of my life in endeavoring to do so. I remember
an interval of stupid horror; while leaning on my elbow in the bed, I
gazed with a fearful, fascinated stare at the half-open door beside
me. Then, through the silence of the night there came a cry.
It seemed to come struggling up through the flooring from the
dining-room underneath. It sounded wild, suppressed, smothered,
and was quickly hushed away into stillness again; but a horrible
stillness, broken by fitful, confused murmurs. Unable to endure the
suspense any longer, I sprang out of bed, rushed down the stairs,
and found myself standing in the gray darkness of the winter's night,
with rattling teeth, at the door of the haunted dining-room.

"Ada! Ada!" I sobbed out, in my shivering terror, and thrust my hand

against the heavy panel. The door opened with me, I staggered in,
and saw——a stout white figure sitting bolt upright in an arm-chair,
and Ada standing quivering in convulsions of laughter by its side. I
fell forward on the floor; but before I fainted quite, I heard a merry
voice ringing through the darkness,

"O Lucy! your Aunt Featherstone is the ghost!"

When I recovered my senses, I was lying in bed, with Ada and my

aunt both watching by my side. The poor dear old lady had so
brooded over the ghost-stories of the house, and so unselfishly
denied herself the relief of talking them over with me, that, pressing
heavily on her thoughts, they had unsettled her mind in sleep.
Constantly ruminating on the terror of that ghostly walk, she had
unconsciously risen night after night, and most cleverly
accomplished it herself. Comparing dates, I found that she had
learned the story of the spirit only a few days before the night on
which I had first been terrified by the footstep.

The news of Aunt Featherstone's escapade flew quickly through the

house. It caused so many laughs, that the genuine ghosts soon fell
into ill repute. The legend of the weeping lady's rambles became
divested of its dignity, and grew therefore to be quite harmless. Ada
and I laughed over our adventure every night during the rest of her
stay, and entered upon our Christmas festivities with right goodwill. I
have never forgotten to be grateful to Ada for that good service
which she rendered me; and as for Aunt Featherstone, I must own
that she never again said one word in disparagement of the
Thatched House.

{72}
 From the German.

THE RESURRECTION.

Rise? Yes, with the myriads of the just,

After short sleep, my dust!
Life of immortal fire
Thine from the Almighty Sire!
Alleluia!

Sown, to upspring, O joy! in richer bloom,

The Lord of harvest's tomb
Gives forth his sheaves within——
Us, even us, who died in him!
Alleluia!

O victory! O dayspring's kindling ray!

God's everlasting day!
In the grave's solemn night.
Slumbering, soon shall thy light
Wake me to sight.

As if of visionary dream the end——

With Jesus to ascend
Through joy's celestial door——
Pilgrims of earth no more——
Our sorrows o'er.

My Saviour, to the Holiest leading on;

That we may at the throne,
In sanctuary free.
 Worship eternally!
Alleluia!

F. W. P.

{73}

Original
 AUBREY DE VERE.
[Footnote 20]

[Footnote 20: Search after Proserpine, and other Poems.

London, 1843.

Poems. by Aubrey de Vere. London, 1855.

The Sisters, Inisfail, and other Poems. London, 1861

May Carols. New York: Lawrence Kehoe, 1866.]

Out of the greater breadth and catholicity, so to speak, of our

present literary taste, it results that one class of poets is arising
among as which has been very rare before our day: those in whom
the soul is the predominant force—men who care nothing for
popularity, and barely enough for recognition by their peers to make
them publish at all—men by nature high-strung and shy, yet tranquil,
balanced, and strong; who write, in short, from the spiritual side of
things. These could not, in ordinary times, hope for a wide, general
favor, and they sailed the nautiluses of literature; dropping from the
surface of themselves, equally native to the cooler, deeper waters
below. But so strong have been the gales of awakening love of
reading, that even these stranger ships, not bound for the ports of
popularity, find wind enough to waft them wherever refinement and
scholarship care to deal in their rare and choice cargoes.

An extreme of this class is Aubrey de Vere. Naturally not a poet of

the people, and still further isolated by holding and eloquently
celebrating a faith which incurs certain ostracism from the literature
of sectarian bigotry, he is almost unknown in America. Fresh from
his works, we are almost at a loss to understand how, in a country
not only of so many Catholic leaders, but where there is so much
pretension to literary taste, he can be such a stranger. All the usual
and more accessible sources are so barren of his biography that we
cannot trust ourselves to attempt any sketch of his life. From
materials so meagre and of such indifferent authenticity, nothing
satisfactory—nothing vivified—can be gathered; and biography that
fails in personality is a body without a soul. So we content ourselves
with the poet as we see him in his works.

In attempting an analysis of the qualities displayed in these volumes,

we find, to begin with, none of the inequalities of those writers who
begin quite young, and whose works go comet-like through after
years, the youthful nebulosity tailing off from the maturer nucleus, in
a long string of promising but not much performing versicles. There
is none of the crudeness of journey work, but everywhere thought
and gravity. The latter quality indeed is conspicuous. De Vere can be
too sarcastic for us to deny him wit, but humor seems to be
unknown to him. There is not the ghost of a joke in all his pages.
We call this remarkable, because he treats of so very many things.
In Thomson's Seasons (even waiving Thomson's nationality) or
Paradise Lost—in any one poem—we may not expect humor; but in
a miscellany, where every side of a man's mind usually displays
itself, it seems odd not to find a trace of sense of the ludicrous.
Certainly there is variety enough for it. The range of subjects is
perhaps not very great, but the individual poems exhibit almost
every shade of style, beginning on the hither side of quaintness and
bringing up on the boundaries of the colloquial. {74} An artificial
style like that of the Idyls of the King, or the Emersonian dialect
("virtute ac vitiis sapientia crescat"), our author never attempts;
his thoughts, as a rule, seem to choose their own channel. He is
willing enough to spend pains in making a thought clear, but such
grave, antique costuming of ideas he takes no time for. The manner
is always kept well in subordination to the matter of what he has to
say.

There is a strange versatility in these books in unconsciously

adopting peculiarities of other writers. The author himself, in his
notes, acknowledged this, or rather detects himself after the fact, in
a few instances; but though acute so far, he does not see half. More
honest and unconscious imitation there never was, and just as the
impression of the archetype rarely rose to a fact of consciousness, so
the consequent resemblance seldom amounts to a traceable
parallelism. There is no reproduction of passages, but of
characteristics. A shade, a turn of phrase, a suggestion, a soupçon,
as we read, recalls at once some great writer. The sonnets are full of
subtle odors and flavors of Shakespeare, evanescent, intangible, and
charming. There are also what the French would call "coincidences
of style" with Coleridge, and often, especially in the May Carols, with
Tennyson. Both are easily accounted for; the one by kindred
tendencies to philosophy, the other by the strong likeness in plan to
In Memoriam. But perhaps the most singular of all occurs in the very
forcible poem called The Bard Etheil, which bears a curious
resemblance to the poet of all poets the very opposite of De Vere—
Robert Browning. There is nothing at all like this poem in all our
author's works. It stands as saliently alone as a meteoric boulder in
a meadow. The subject is an Irish bard, a relic of the bardic days,
but a zealous convert to a Christianity of his own, tinged with a wild,
ineradicable barbarism, whose outcroppings make the interest of the
character. There is all Browning's sharp outline sketching, all his
power of handling contradictions of character, yet none of the topsy-
turvy words and sentences without which the Great Inversionist
would not be himself;—in short, it is Browning with the
constitutional gnarl in the grain left out.

Another—a closer parallelism than usual—we find in The Year of

Sorrow:
 "The weaver wove till all was dark.
And long ere morning bent and bowed
Above his work with fingers stark.
And made, nor knew he made, a shroud."

The terrible parallel passage in the Song of the Shirt is too familiar to
need more than an allusion.

Yet through all these coincidences runs an abundant individuality

that proves De Vere to be anything but a wilful or even permissive
plagiarist. He is, in simple truth, a great reader, with a mind in such
true tune with all things high and refined, that it responds as the
accordant string of some delicate instrument echoes a musical note.
There needs no better test than this, that mere imitators invariably
copy faults, while Mr. De Vere always reproduces excellences.

In point of language, our author inherits an Irishman's full measure

of vocabulary. Through a most varied series of metres, his verse is
full of ease, fluency, and grace. In rhythm he rises to the rank of an
artist. He has passed the first degree—that baccalaureateship of
verse-making whose diploma is perfect smoothness and melody;
where Tom Moore took a double first, and beyond which so few ever
attain. He is one of the maestri, like Tennyson and Swinburne, who
know the uses of a discord, and can handle diminished sevenths. His
lines are full of subtle shadings, and curious subfelicities of diction,
that not every one feels, and few save the devotee to metre (such
as we own ourselves to be) pause to analyze and admire. His taste,
too, is fastidiously unerring; there is never a swerve beyond the
cobweb boundaries of the line of beauty. {75} Sometimes he misses
the exact word he wants, but he never halts for want of a good one.
The only deficiency arises from his temperament. Where spirit
demands to be heard in sound as felt in sense, he uniformly fails. He
cannot often make his lines bound and ring like Moore's. In the face
of the fiery episodes of Irish history which he deals with in Inisfail,
he is too often like one of his own bards on a modern battle-field.
So much for the mere style; the man himself remains. Pre-eminently
he is a philosopher—too much of one to be a great poet. Not that
any man can be a poet at all without being also a philosopher. Only
his philosophy should be to his poetry as a woman's brain to her
heart—a suggesting, subordinate element—the "refused" wing of his
progress. With him it is just the reverse. Philosophy is the primary
fact of his inner life, out of which blossom incidentally his poetry and
his patriotism, but whose legitimate and beautiful fruit is his religion.
The consequence is, everything is too much a development of high
principle, instead of an impulse of deep feeling. He is too right, too
reasonable, too well-considered. He has not enough abandon. This
one, but final and fatal fault to the highest poetical success, ramifies
curiously through everything he writes. The first result is
occasionally too much abstractness. There are fetters of thought
poetry cannot be graceful in. Her vocation is to lead us among the
fostered flowers and whispering groves of the beautiful land, not to
go botanizing far up the cold heights, among the snow-growths,
whose classification is caviare to the general. There let science climb
with her savans. On rare occasions, indeed, the poet may tellingly
deal with the naked truths of nature, but it demands the inspiration
of a Lysimachus and the glorious contours of a Phryne. Tennyson, in
his In Memoriam, has touched with the rarest felicity on the most
pregnant problems of natural divinity, without even rippling the
smoothness of his verse; De Vere has done the same, with excellent
success, in his May Carols; but he tries too often not to fail oftener
than we could wish. It must be owned an honorable failure; not of
strength, but of grace. His lines lift the weight they grapple with, but
he does not interest us in the labor. At the risk of trespassing on
time-honored critical demesnes, we differ with that tacit consensus
doctorum which suffers sonnets, and some other things, to be as
abstract as the author pleases.

Another effect of this over-philosophic temperament, while equally

hurtful to his popularity, greatly endears him to the few. It is the
pure and elevated tone of all he writes. In this quality he is eminent.
He is a mountaineer on the steeps of Parnassus, whose game by
instinct never flies to the plains. He lifts ordinary subjects into a
seeming of unreality. Things seem to lose outline and glide away
from the grasp; as clouds that have form enough when seen from
the earth, are shapeless vapor to the aeronaut among them. So,
again, the interest fails in comparison with a lower grade of thought.
People will buy very indifferent sketches, but care very little for the
most accurate bird's-eye view. There is a singular charm in this
unlabored, if not unconscious loftiness; but the mass of readers
weary, as they do of a lecture on astronomy, from over-tension of
unused faculties. What is the difference to a reader whether an
author passes beyond his reach by going apart into abstruseness or
soaring away into idealism?

We have shown before how the versification suffers. Everywhere

reason clogs the wings of rhyme. Our author is for ever putting his
Pegasus in harness to the car of some truth or other. A warm human
sympathizer, a deep and poetical worshipper, a burning and noble
protestant against the woes and wrongs of Ireland, with scholarship,
reading, talent, every auspicious omen, he has never fulfilled, and
may never fulfil, the promise that is in him. {76} His reason is for
ever making clear to his better angels of fancy and feeling the exact
boundaries of just thought, which they may not overstep. It robs his
philanthropy of human tenderness, his religion of ardor, his
patriotism of enthusiasm. His is the calm, trained strength of perfect
mental soundness; the fiery contractile thrills, that make of the
impassioned man a giant for one grand effort, he seems to do battle
with and slay before they can grow into acts. What a combination of
qualities goes to the making of a great poet!

The poems now before us range themselves mainly into three grand
classes—sonnets, religions poems, and lyrics, etc., on Ireland. There
are some noteworthy exceptions, however—as, for example, the
excellent poems on Shelley and Coleridge, whom he thoroughly
appreciates, the widely known stanzas called The AEolian Harp, and
the splendid lines on Delphi—one of his very best efforts. But our
purpose lies rather with the poet, as revealed through his works,
than with the poems themselves. So we must leave a wide, unnoted
margin of miscellaneous pieces, where any reader whom we may
succeed in interesting in the beauties of our author may range
unprejudiced by our expressions of opinion, and confine ourselves to
our true subject—the poet himself, viewed successively in the three
great pathways he has opened for himself. We only pause to advise
our reader that we make no pretensions to gathering the harvest,
but leave golden swathes behind instead of ordinary gleaning.

Sonnets seem to require a peculiar talent. Almost all our best men
have written them, and almost all badly, while the small newspaper
and periodical craft strand on them daily. Only our deepest and most
refined thinkers have written really good ones, and to succeed in
them at all, is to join a very limited coterie, where Shakespeare and
Milton have but few compeers. When, then, we say that De Vere is
the author of some of the best we have in our literature, we justify
high expectation.

He is one of the most voluminous of sonnet writers. There are in the

books between one hundred and fifty and two hundred. It seems to
be his favorite outlet for those briefer, choicer reflections that lose
their charm by being amplified for the vulgar comprehension,

". . . . As orient essences, diffuse

On all the liberal airs of low Cashmere,
Waft their rich faintness far to stolid hinds,
To whom the rose is but a thorny weed;"

but which, after all, are the trifles that make up the inner life of a
soul, and for whose waste, as our author himself says,

"Nature, trifled with, not loved,

Will be at last avenged."

It may well be imagined that this is a path peculiarly adapted to our

author's contemplative yet versatile mind. He is singularly fitted for
this style of composition, which does not demand the least particle
of that kind of spirit and impulsive animation in which he is wanting;
and accordingly he has written a number of sonnets which will, we
think, compare with the very best for eloquence and just thought.
Walter Savage Landor—non sordidus auctor—deliberately
pronounced the one on Sunrise the finest in the language.

Two others, by which he is probably best known to American

readers, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, one written March, 1860,
the other, June 12, 1861, addressed to Charles Eliot Norton, the
editor of the North American Review. Both relate to the national
struggle, and indicate a somewhat lively interest in our affairs, but
otherwise are not remarkable. Much better than these we find the
following. It is a good sample besides of the author's general style:

"Silence and sleep, and midnight's softest gloom,

Consoling friends of fast declining years,
Benign assuagers of unfruitful tears,
Soft-footed heralds of the wished-four tomb!
Go to your master, Death—the monarch whom
Ye serve, whose majesty your grace endears.
And in the awful hollows of his ears
Murmur, oh! ever murmur: 'Come, O come!'
Virginal rights have I observed full long,
And all observance worthy of a bride.
Then wherefore, Death, dost thou to me is wrong,
So long estranged to linger from my side?
Am I not thine? Oh! breathe upon my eyes
A gentle answer, Death, from thine elysian skies!"

{77}

It is no easy thing to be publicly and yet gracefully sad. Do not we

mentally associate an idea of weakness or effeminacy with
melancholic writings? Yet here is—we feel it at once—the true
sadness we all respect: the unaffected weariness which does not cry
out its grief, but sighs because it suffers and is strong.

It is not often that De Vere leaves the lofty pinnacles of thought or

the pleasant hills of fancy for sterner fields, but here for once he
swoops from his eyrie into the following scathing lines. They are the
last of five very spirited sonnets on Colonization, each of which is
worth quoting, did but our space permit:

"England, magnanimous art thou in name;

Magnanimous in nature once thou wert;
But that which ofttimes lags behind desert,
And crowns the dead, as oft survives it—fame.
Can she whose hand a merchant's pen makes tame,
Or sneer of nameless scribe—can she whose heart
In camp or senate still is at the mart,
A nation's toils, a nation's honors claim?
Thy shield of old torn Poland twice and thrice
Invoked; thy help as vainly Ireland asks,
Pointing with stark, lean linger from the West—
Of western cliffs plague-stricken, from the West—
Gray-haired though young. When heat is sucked from ice,
Then shall a Firm discharge a national task."

This speaks for itself. It sums up the faults of the English nation
better in a dozen lines than a congress of vaporers about British
tyranny or essayists on perfide Albion could do in a month of
mouthings. There is not a weak line or phrase in it, or one that is not
auxiliary to the general effect intended. This, in short, is what we
call masterly.

There are a score of other sonnets that we would wish to quote in

illustration of the refined thought and elegant delicacy of diction
which characterize them all; but we are constrained to content
ourselves with one also noticed by Landor for its singular felicity and
beauty. It is from his first book, page 268:
 "Flowers I would bring. If flowers could make thee fairer.
And make, if the muse were dear to thee;
(For loving these would make thee love the bearer.)
But sweetest songs forget their melody,
And loveliest flowers would but conceal the wearer:
A rose I marked, and might have plucked; but she
Blushed as she bent, imploring me to spare her,
Nor spoil her beauty by such rivalry.
Alas! and with what gifts shall I pursue thee.
What offerings bring, what treasures lay before thee;
When earth with all her floral train doth woo thee,
And all old poets and old books adore thee;
And love to thee is naught; from passionate mood
Secured by joy's complacent plenitude?"

This poem is remarkable to us as containing one of the few

recognitions we have ever seen of that beauty which rises above the
province of passion, and strikes a dim awe into admiration. They are
not many who can feel it, and few, indeed, who have expressed it.
The same thought occurs in another passage referred to by Landor:

"Men loved; but hope they deemed to be

A sweet impossibility."

But we have a further reason for preferring this to several equally

fine. It is to note what may be another of De Vere's unconscious
adaptations. The well-known scholar, Henry of Huntington,
addressed to Queen Adelicia of Louvaine some lines which hinge
upon the very same turn of thought. The real excellence of the
verses emboldens us to subjoin a few of them, that the reader may
observe the resemblance:

"Anglorum regina, tuos, Adeliza, decores

Ipsa rcferre parans Musa stupore riget.
Quid diadema tibi, pulcherrima? quid tibi gemma?
Pallet gemma tibi, nec diadema nitet.
 Ornamenta cave; nec quicquam luminis inde
Accipis; illa nitent lumine clara tuo . . . ."

We are not sure but the mediaeval poet, having no further idea
beyond mere laudation, has rather the better of the complimenting.
But then praise to a queen would be flattery to a subject.

Without trying the rather dubious policy of attempting to prove our

taste, we think that upon these sonnets alone we could rest De
Vere's claim to be a first-class sonnet writer. If it were not a received
impossibility, we should be tempted to call him the equal in this
respect of Shakespeare. Of course we admit the impossibility.

{78}

Leaving the sonnets, we come to a far more interesting portion of

the works before us—the religious poems. As a Christian, our author
is indeed admirable. He evinces not only a deep, strong, real, and
realizing faith, but much fruitful thought over the mental details, so
to speak, and a wonderful comprehension of the theory, theology,
and mysteries of the church.

More properly than religious poems, we should speak of poems on

religion; for the man's whole life is a religious poem. Scarcely a scrap
is not full of his deep Catholicity. Of verses specially and professedly
devotional, these volumes contain few, besides the May Carols, save
some Poems on Sacred Subjects, which we find below the author's
average. Some of them carry abstractness to the verge of vagary.
What color of pretence, for instance, has a man for printing (if he
must write it), and deliberately inviting the public to read, a copy of
verses on the Unity of Abstract Truth? We internally know we are not
Wordsworths, but it is very unpleasant to have it made so plain. In
shrewd anticipation of any mental queries, we utterly decline saying
whether we have read the lines or not. We cannot determine which
would be the more to our credit.
But we pass by unnumbered beauties to reach our author's best and
most memorable work—May Carols. This is noble alike in design,
tone, and execution. The plan is simple—to produce a series of
poems in honor of the Blessed Virgin, graduating poetical expositions
of her relations to faith according to the progress of her month of
May. It is just the topic for him, and the result is the most beautiful
development of the entire subject that can be imagined. We have no
words for the subtlety and success with which the individualities of
Mary and Jesus are wrought out. The man who, without seeking
adventitious aid by startling and shocking the habits of Christian
thought and Christian reverence, can so draw a portrait of the
Saviour, has in this alone deserved the thanks of the ages as a
standard-bearer on the march of the hosts of God. These great
delineations form the first and main function of the whole work. We
cannot set forth his purpose more lucidly than in his own words, as
we find them in the preface:

"The wisdom of the church, which consecrates the fleeting

seasons of time to the interests of eternity, has dedicated the
month of May (the birth-day festival, as it were, of creation) to
her who was ever destined in the divine counsels to become the
Mother of her Creator. It belongs to her, of course, as she is the
representative of the incarnation, and its practical exponent to a
world but too apt to forget what it professes to hold. The
following poems, written in her honor, are an attempt to set
forth, though but in mere outline, each of them some of the
great ideas or essential principles embodied in that all-embracing
mystery. On a topic so comprehensive, converse statements, at
one time illustrating highest excellence compatible with mere
creaturely existence, at another, the infinite distance between the
chief of earthly creatures and the Creator, may seem, at first
sight, and to some eyes, contradictory, although in reality
mutually correlative. On an attentive perusal, however, that
harmony which exists among the many portions of a single
mastering truth can hardly fail to appear, and with it the scope
and aim of this poem."
This certainly is aiming high. Not only does the poet include in his
plan the moral delineation of her whom the church holds the highest
type of created humanity; he scales the heavens themselves. But
our author is impious Enceladus crushed beneath his own
presumption, but a Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord, and
rising to the infinite sky in beatific visions. Perhaps we best realize
the boldness of the enterprise when we think for how many
centuries the praise of the Mother and Son has exhausted thought
and imagination of the greatest souls. He is a daring gleaner who
follows the fathers of the church over their chosen fields. Yet the
May {79} Carols are a sheaf from the same golden foison where
Augustine and Aquinas and Chrysostom led the reapers. How fruitful
must be the soil!

We have never seen anything to compare with the picture of the

Holy Child here presented, unless it be the picture of the Holy
Mother. We cannot, in our allotted space, render all the admirable
gradations and delicate shadings, but must cull with difficult choice
one or two only. One of the first is the

MATER CHRISTI

Daily beneath his mother's eyes

Her lamb maturity his lowliness:
'Twas hers the lovely sacrifice
With fillet and with flower to dress.

Beside his little cross he knelt,

With human-heavenly lips he prayed;
His will with in her will she felt,
And yet his will her will obeyed. . . .

He willed to lack; he willed to bear;

He willed by suffering to be schooled;
He willed the chains of flesh to wear;
Yet from her arms the world he ruled.
 As tapers 'mid the noontide glow
With merged yet separate radiance burn,
With human taste and touch, even so,
The things he knew he willed to learn.

He sat beside the lowly door:

His homeless eyes appeared to trace
In evening skies remembered lore,
And shadows of his Father's face.

One only knew him. She alone

Who nightly to his cradle crept.
And lying like the moonbeam prone
Worshipped her Maker as he slept.

Whoever can read that without admiring it, is a clod: whoever can
read it without having his whole idea of Christ's childhood intensely
vivified and expanded, must be a St. John or an angel. How
beautiful, and, when we look at it, how bold is the epithet
"homeless!" How exactly it embodies the longing of his spirit out of
its human prison toward the freedom of the heavens! Yet how
daringly true to imagine the omnipresent Deity homeless! Again,
how acutely the last scene characterizes the tender timidity of Mary's
mother-love, and how natural and intensely human the conscious,
sweet self-deception which brought her to worship when only the
humanity slept, and she seemed separated from her Son and alone
with her Creator! But the simile of the taper is perhaps the best
touch of all, as being the masterly expression of one of the most
subtle and difficult conceptions of the human mind. It must divide
the honors of comparison with the concluding lines of the

MATER SALVATORIS.

O heart with his in just accord!

O soul his echo, tone for tone!
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