It is the misfortune of excellence to be parodied. No one dreams of burlesquing shallow mediocrity. "Gray's Elegy "has often been parodied. The best specimen of this is to be found in the Legal Examiner, published in London in 1844, the authorship of which is unknown. Here it is: from its title and allusions evidently the production of a lawyer-Transcript.

ELEGY IN THE TEMPLE GARDENS. THE gardener rings the bell at close of day,

The motley crowd wind slowly home to tea; Soft on the Thames the daylight fades away,

And leaves the walks to darkness and to me.

Now shine the glimmering gas-lamps on the sight,

The wardens now the outer portals lock, And deepest stillness marks the approach of night,

Save when the watchman calls "Past ten o'clock."

Save, also, when from yonder antique tower,*
With solemn sound the bell strikes on the ear,
And wandering damsels, as they hear the hour,
Trip through the gloomy courts with haste
and fear.

In those high rooms where clients ne'er intrude,
And here and there a light doth dimly peep,
Each in his lonely set of chambers mewed,
The briefless crowd their nightly vigils keep:

The grave attorney, knocking frequently,
The tittering clerk, who hastens to the door,
The bulky brief and corresponding fee,

Are things unknown to all that lofty floor.
Small comfort theirs when each dull day is o'er,
No gentle wife their joys and griefs to share:
No quiet homeward walk at half-past four

To some snug tenement near Russell Square.

Oft have they read each prosing term report,
Dull treatises and statutes not a few;
How many a vacant day they've passed in court!
How many a barren circuit travelled through!
Yet let not judges mock their useless toil,

And joke at sapient faces no one knows;
Nor ask, with careless and contemptuous smile,
If no one moves in all the long black rows?
Vain is the coif, the ermined robe, the strife

Of courts, and vain is all success e'er gave; Say, can the judge, whose word gives death or life,

Reprieve himself, when summoned to the grave?

Nor you, ye leaders, view them with ill-will,
If no one sees their speeches in the Times,
Where long-drawn columns oft proclaim your
skill,

To blacken innocence and palliate crimes. The Middle Temple Hall Tower-a modern antique.

Can legal lore or animated speech
Avert that sentence which awaits us all ?
Can nisi prius craft and snares o'erreach
That Judge whose look the boldest must
appall?

Perhaps in those neglected rooms abound
Men deeply versed in all the quirks of laws,
Who could, with cases, right and wrong con-
found,

And common sense upset, by splitting straws.
But, ah! to them no clerk his golden page,
Rich with retaining fees, did e'er unroll; ·
Chill negligence repressed their legal rage,
And froze the quibbling current of the soul.
Full many a barrister, who well could plead,
Those dark and unfrequented chambers bear;
Full many a pleader born to draw unfee'd,

And waste its counts upon the desert air!

Some Follett, whom no client e'er would trust,
Some Wilde, who gained no verdict in his
life;

In den obscure, some Denman there may rust,
Some Campbell, with no peeress for his wife.

The wits of wondering juries to beguile,

The wrongs of injured clients to redress,
To gain or lose their verdict with a smile,
And read their speeches in the daily press.
Their lot forbade: - nor was it theirs-d'y
see?-

The wretched in the toils of law to lure;
To prostitute their conscience for a fee,

And shut the gates of justice on the poor.

To try mean tricks to win a paltry cause,
With threadbare jests, to catch the laugh of
fools,

Or puff in court, before all human laws,

The lofty wisdom of the last New Rules.
Not one rule nisi even " to compute,"

Their gentle voices e'er were heard to pray,
Calm and sequestered, motionless and mute,
In the remote back seats they passed each
day.

Yet e'en their names are sometimes seen in
print;

For frail memorials, on the outer doors, Disclose in letters large, and dingy tint,

The unknown tenants of the upper floors.

Door-posts supply the place of Term Reports,
And splendid plates around the painter sticks,
To show that he who never moved the courts,

Has moved from number two to number six.

For who, to cold neglect a luckless prey,
His unfrequented attic e'er resigned,
E'er moved, with better hopes, across the way,
And did not leave a spruce tin plate behind?

Strong is the love of fame in noble minds,

And he, whose bold aspirings fate doth crush,
Receives some consolation when he finds
His name recorded by the painter's brush.

POETRY.-Mont Blanc revisited, 386. The Glacier, 386. Impatience, 386. Autumn Pictures, 386. The Gorilla's Dilemma, 431. A Voice from Cambridge, 431. The Cambridge Duet, 432. Back Again, 432.

SHORT ARTICLES.-The Walled Lake, 389. Statue of Hallam in St. Paul's, 389. New Mode of Gold-Mining, 389. Illuminating Power of Petroleum, 419. Marshals of France, 419. The Italian Army, 419.

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From The Spectator.

THE ANTI-PAPAL LITERATURE OF

ITALY.*

the re

the Pope would do well to read a history which would show him the lengths to which people may be carried when once fairly entangled in the current of controversy, and might warn him to avoid the danger of pushing matters to such extreme issues.

As soon as any intellectual movement has really made some general hold, it at once reveals itself by the production of a literaWhoever should chance to walk into a ture. So long as this is not forthcoming, so long may a movement be safely set down as bookseller's shop in Central Italy, especially confined to merely individual minds, for it in the former territory of the Pope, will find is not in human nature that any considera- the counter strewn with publications treatble number of people can be affected at ing the great question of the temporal power, heart with a fixed current of feelings without and if he is not scared by their number from instinctively trying to give expression to looking at them, he will find that a large them. Brought to the test of this touch-proportion is written by priests. Of course, stone there can be no disputing the fact that there must be a great difference between the the genuineness and spread, amongst tone of these numerous writers. Many of ligious and ecclesiastical sections of society them approach the subject with cumbersome of Italy, of that strictly canonical and theo- learning, while there are others who treat logical opposition against the temporal power their grave polemics with smart and telling it in a more popular manner, combining of the Pope, which was first distinctly enunciated by Father Passaglia, may fairly be hits at the court of Rome. Of these more assumed as proved. There has sprung up popular publications there are two which recently in Italy a complete literature of have had especial success, both of them beecclesiastical polemic against the court of ing written by ecclesiastics of very considRome, which is highly deserving of atten- erable ability, and intimately acquainted tion, as the unmistakable symptom of a great with Rome, from many years' residence and growing movement that is daily waxing there. These were The Papacy, the Empire, in strength, and in clear consciousness of and the Kingdom of Italy, by Monsignor its power and its aims. The movement is in Liverani, and The Recollections of Rome, by itself of a nature far more important than Filippo Perfetti. Both these books have run almost any of the otherwise more noisy and through several editions, and have had what immediately startling moves on the chess- may really be called an immense success. board of the politics of the day; for whether Yet there is much to be said against both or not it should succeed at this moment in fully establishing its triumph, yet the progress made will be such as radically to modify the feelings of the country regarding the Papacy, and thereby to inflict an injury on it which no degree of merely material assistance from abroad will be able lastingly to make good. For the especial feature of the movement is, that it is not the expression of hostility on the part of the classes which have always, on principle, been opposed to the Church, but of the very men who, in temper and thought, are thoroughly adherents of the Catholic Church, have no sympathies whether with dissent or freethinking, and as the professed champions of High Church orthodoxy are impugning the conduct of the court of Rome. It is the old case over again, of the Parliament making war upon the king in the king's name, and

*Il Mediatore. Turin.

as serious treatises on a most serious question. Monsignor Liverani is a prelate of reading and consideration, but his book is disfigured by a pervading tone of querulous acrimony, which has a sound of disappointed ambition and consequent rancor that, in our opinion, tends to detract from its still considerable worth. As a literary composition, the pamphlet of the Abate Perfetti is superior. He was long Cardinal Marini's private secretary, and afterwards librarian at the Sapienza in Rome, and deserves the reputation of brilliant talents. His defect is a cerrenders his graphic sketches of Roman dotain want of ecclesiastical gravity, which ings somewhat startling as the composition of an ecclesiastic. Both these books are, however, very remarkable productions, especially as written by eminent ecclesiastics, not to be treated as of slight influence, and which, by their popular reception, have exercised a very great effect in giving definite