TO MIRANDA.

Daughter of her whose face, and lofty

name

Prenuptial, of old States and Cities speak,

Where lands of wine look north to peak on peak

Of the overwatching Alps: through her, you claim

Kinship with vanished Power, unvanished Fame;

And midst a word grown colorless and bleak

I see the blood of Doges in your cheek, And in your hair the Titian tints of flame.

Daughter of England too, you first drew breath

Where our coy Springs to our coy Summers yield;

And you descend from one whose lance and shield

Were with the grandsire of Elizabeth, When the Plantagenet saw the avenger Death

Toward him spurring over Bosworth field.

William Watson.

AVE SOROR.

I left behind the ways of care,
The crowded hurrying hours,
I breathed again the woodland air,
I plucked the woodland flowers:

Bluebells as yet but half awake, Primroses pale and cool, Anemones like stars that shake In a green twilight pool

On these still lay an enchanted shade, The magic April sun;

With my own child a child I strayed And thought the years were one.

As through the copse she went and

came

My senses lost their truth;

1 called her by the dear dead name That sweetened all my youth. Henry Newbolt.

ALPHABETICAL SYMBOLS. Four letters that a child may trace!

Yet men who read may feel a thrill From powers untouched by time or space

Vibrations of the eternal willWith body and mind and soul respond To "love" and all that lies beyond.

On truth's wide sea thought's tiny skiff

Goes dancing, far beyond our speech, Yet thought is but a hieroglyph

Of boundless worlds it cannot reach:
We label our poor idols "God,"
And map with logic heavens untrod.
Music and beauty, life and art-
Regalia of the Presence hid-
Command our worship, move our
heart,

Write love on every coffin-lid;
But infinite-beyond, above-
The hope within that one
"Love."

The Athenaeum.

word

Annie Matheson.

MY BURIAL.

BY DAFYDD AB GWILYM.

When I die, O bury me

Within the free young wildwood; Little birches o'er me bent Lamenting as my child would! Let my surplice-shroud be spun Of sparkling summer clover; While the great and stately trees Their rood-screen rich hang over! For my bier-cloth blossomed May Outlay on eight green willows! Seagulls white to bear my pall Take flight from all the billows. Summer's cloister be my church

Of soft leaf-searching whispers, From whose mossed bench the nightingale

To all the vale chant vespers; Mellow-toned the brake amid, My organ hid be cuckoo; Paters, seemly hours and psalm Bird voices calm re-echo! Mystic masses, sweet addresses, Blackbird, be thou offering, Till God His bard to Paradise Uplift from sighs and suffering. Alfred Perceval Graves.

The Thrush.

Almost a century has elapsed since the once immense colonial empire of Spain began to disintegrate and crumble away, and the most precious of her oversea possessions, gained for her by Cortez, Pizarro and their successors, as they firmly believed, for all time, one by one threw off the oppressive yoke under which they had groaned for some four hundred years. The South American colonies avalled themselves of Napoleon's conquest of Spain to establish their own independence; and, after Napoleon's fall, the mother-country, weakened by her terrific struggle with France, and hampered by internal revolutions and the worthless government of Ferdinand VII, was able to do little towards recovering her lost empire.

Mexico was almost the first Spanish colony to enter upon the struggle for freedom; but, though the initial blow at Spain's dominance was struck in 1810, it was only in 1821 that an independent government was successfully established, and the Republic of Mexico was set up. Some years previously, in 1817, Chile had declared herself free; while Venezuela, Paraguay, and New Granada had broken away from the Spanish Viceroy's authority and had formed themselves into the Republic of Colombia, only, however, to be again broken up and reconstituted into separate independent sovereign states. Ecuador and Peru, the latter the very centre of Spanish colonial power, were lost to the Crown of Spain in 1821; while Guatemala in 1822 and Bolivia in 1823

1. "Porfirio Diaz, seven times President of Mexico." By Mrs. Alec. Tweedie. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1906.

2. "President Diaz and Modern Mexico " By Enrique C. Creel, Mexican Ambassador to the United States. New York: Sunday Magazine, 1907.

3. "Ethics in Action: Porfirio Diaz and his Works." By a Soldier of the Old Guard. Mexico City, 2a Independencia, 1907.

*

seceded from the mother-country. Buenos Aires and Uruguay established their own independent governments in 1824; and the smaller Central American colonies of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica were no less successful in breaking their fetters, San Salvador being the last province to revolt, in 1843, against the Spanish dominion. Florida had been sold by Ferdinand VII to the United States, which, on its own account, subsequently seized Porto Rico and the Philippines and emancipated Cuba. Thus, with the exception of .the Canaries, a few small islands in the Gulf of Guinea, and one or two "presidios" in Morocco, Spain has been dispossessed of all her colonies.

On September 15, 1910, General Porfirio Diaz, President of the United States of Mexico, will enter upon his eightieth year and the thirtieth year of his Presidency, an occasion which will synchronize with the holding of important celebrations in connection with the centenary of Mexico's emancıpation from Spain. The occasion is not only one of great interest in relation to the life of an exceptional man, but will solve the important question, which has for some time been agitating the minds of Mexicans, and is of interest to the world at large-the question, namely, who is to succeed him. The existing presidential term will expire on November 30, 1910; but, though so recently as January, 1909, General Diaz declared in a personal interview that, "no matter what my friends and supporters may say, I re

4. "What does the Future hold for Mexico?" By Henry Litchfield West. New York: Harper, 1908.

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tire when my present term of office ends; and I shall not serve again," he has now definitely accepted re-nomnation.

It was in 1830 that Porfirio Diaz was born, at which date Mexico had already experienced some nine years of strenuous existence as a Republic. A twelvemonth's freedom from the yoke of Spain was succeeded by an Empire under Agustin Iturbide, whose ludicrous attempt at monarchy was cut short by his execution. Then came President Vittoria's ephemeral Constitution, which was followed by a succession of internecine revolutions, iuterrupted by united struggles against the last lingering remnants of Spanish authority. Thus young Diaz was reared amid a turmoil of alarums and excursions, the din of which reached even the remote corner of Mexico where he was born, the city of Oaxaca, situated at a distance of some 234 miles, then necessitating about a week's journey, from the capital. Here, at the time of the American invasion of Mexico, namely, in 1848, he was studying for the Church under the tutelage of his uncle and guardian, Bishop José Agustin Dominguez, and watched over by his good friend Licenciado (lawyer) Marcas Perez, Governor of the State of Oaxaca. It says much for Diaz that, even at this early period of his life, when he determined to forsake the cloister for the more stirring scenes of the camp, he was enabled, by his striking personality, to influence in his favor such an experienced man of the world as the State Governor. He, moreover, braved the displeasure of his uncle the bishop with calm determination. Certainly neither of them could foresee at that time that it was to be the hand of this young ex-priest which was to help in perpetuating the separation of Church from State, and to keep in stern sub

jection the once all-powerful influence of Rome in Mexico.

The life of Porfirio Diaz may be divided into two distinct periods-his brilliant career as a soldier, and his inestimable service as a statesman. Bulwer Lytton once wrote of Richelieu that it was strange so great a statesman should be so sublime a poet. Of Diaz it may be observed with equal truth that it is remarkable so good a soldier should have proved himself so great a statesman. The disposition to destroy and the desire to build up do not often go hand-in-hand, the world offering but few examples of a man, who has once freed his country from a succession of troubles, succeeding, as Porfirio Diaz has succeeded, in turning the ruin of war into the prosperity or an abiding peace. Simon Bolivar, the great Latin-American liberator, may be cited as an opposite case in point, his brilliant services as a soldier being partially obliterated by his unwitting blunders as a ruler.

Poverty and even privations were among the earliest experiences of young Diaz. His father and mother were so badly off that they were compelled to keep a small inn, known as the "Sun," at Oaxaca City; the former, while still a young man, falling a victim to Asiatic cholera and leaving a family of six small children, of whom Porfirio was the eldest, in indigent circumstances. Diaz' parents, José Faustino Diaz and Petrona Mori de Diaz, the latter of Indian (Mixteca) blood, were, however, very highly respected in their city; and the humble birthplace of Porfirio for many years remained a national shrine. To-day it is the site of a great public school named after the President, erected by the nation in his honor.

With the determination to be a good soldier rather than a bad priest, young Diaz left the Jesuits' seminary at Oaxaca at the age of nineteen. By this