ere the weird Druid held his mistletoe;
There, for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright,
The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low;
And there the Western savage paid his rite.

"Allah," the Moslem darkly muttered there;
"Brahma," the jewelled Indies of the East
Sighed through their spices with a languid prayer;
"Christ?" faintly questioned many a paler priest.

And still the Athenian Altar's glimmering Doubt
On all religions--evermore the same.
What tears shall wash its sad inscription out?
What hand shall write thereon His other name?

The last five lines of Mrs. Piatt's poem express finely the feeling as
to God and religion which now fills countless numbers of the truest
hearts and brightest minds.

--"As You Like It" has just been published in the "Clarendon Press
Series of Shakespeare's Select Plays." Mr. Grant White, in his article
"On Reading Shakespeare," in the present number of "The Galaxy," has
said so much in regard to this series and its present editor,[29]
William Aldis Wright, that it is only necessary for us to record here
the appearance of this edition of Shakespeare's most charming comedy,
and to say that Shakespeare's lovers and students will find in it some
new views which are interesting, and appear to be sound, and a copious
and careful body of annotation.

--Of poetry, or rather of verse, as we before remarked, our table is
full this month, and with it we have a dictionary to teach us to rhyme
withal.[30] "Walker's Rhyming Dictionary" has had complete possession of
this field for three quarters of a century, and we are not sure that it
will be supplanted by Mr. Barnum's. His new plan is very systematic. He
classifies his words in groups--single rhymes, double rhymes, triple,
quadruple, and even quintuple rhymes; and then he divides and subdivides
and parcels off his words under separate headings. He does not give
definitions. The book will be valuable to the student of the English
language, more so, we are inclined to think, than to the mere
rhyme-hunter, who will prefer to run his finger and his eye down a
column of words arranged merely according to their final letters.

--Mr. Tennyson's new dramatic poem is before us in the elegant Boston
typography of Ticknor & Field's worthy successors.[31] The poet laureate
added little to his fame by his previous dramatic work, "Queen Mary"; he
will gain less by this. It is good of cours