girl, to whom he had been the accidental means of rendering a vital service in rescuing her and a companion from the “rude uncivil kine” in a meadow.  To the image of this girl, though he never set eyes on her again for many years, he had remained faithful.  The next meeting, when at last it came, brought the most terrible of disillusions.  Sent by his chief to transact certain business with a wealthy banker ("Clutterbuck & Co."), the young merchant calls at a villa where the banker at times resided, and finds that the object of his old love and his fondest dreams is there installed as the banker’s mistress.  She is greatly moved at the sight of the youthful lover of old days, who, with more chivalry than prudence, offers forgiveness if she will break off this degrading alliance.  She cannot resolve to take the step.  She has become used to luxury and continuous amusement, and she cannot face the return to a duller domesticity.  Finally, however, she dies penitent, and it is the contemplation of her life and death that works a life-long change in the ambitions and aims of the old lover.  He wearies of money-making, and retires to lead a country life, where he may be of some good to his neighbours, and turn to some worthy use the time that may be still allowed him.  The story is told with real pathos and impressive force.  But the picture is spoiled by the tasteless interpolation of a song which the unhappy girl sings to her lover, at the very moment apparently when she has resolved that she can never be his: 

  “My Damon was the first to wake
    The gentle flame that cannot die;
  My Damon is the last to take
    The faithful bosom’s softest sigh;
  The life between is nothing worth,
    O! cast it from thy thought away;
  Think of the day that gave it birth,
    And this its sweet returning day.

  “Buried be all that has been done,
    Or say that nought is done amiss;
  For who the dangerous path can shun
    In such bewildering world as this? 
  But love can every fault forgive,
    Or with a tender look reprove;
  And now let nought in memory live,
    But that we meet, and that we love.”

The lines are pretty enough, and may be described as a blend of Tom Moore and Rogers.  A similar lyric, in the story called The Sisters, might have come straight from the pen which has given us “Mine be a cot beside a hill,” and is not so wholly irrelevant to its context as the one just cited.

Since Crabbe’s death in 1832, though he has never been without a small and loyal band of admirers, no single influence has probably had so much effect in reviving interest in his poetry as that of Edward FitzGerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam.  FitzGerald was born and lived the greater part of his life in Suffolk, and Crabbe was a native of Aldeburgh, and lived in the neighbourhood till he was grown to manhood.  This circumstance alone might not have specially interested