fficult to come to this
decision under the circumstances.

We will not argue that point. I had only the story to tell, and have
told it.

ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.

THIRD SONNET.

I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
Here martyred and hereafter glorified;
And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
And Beatrice, again at Dante's side,
No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.
And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs
Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love
And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;
And the melodious bells among the spires
O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above
Proclaim the elevation of the Host!

WOMAN'S WORK IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

"King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake.
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps
Upon the hidden bases of the hills."

Sir Bedivere's heart misgave him twice ere he could obey the dying
commands of King Arthur, and fling away so precious a relic. The lonely
maiden's industry has been equalled by many of her mortal sisters,
sitting, not indeed "upon the hidden bases of the hills," but in all the
varied human habitations built above them since the days of King Arthur.

The richness, beauty, and skill displayed in the needle-work of the
Middle Ages demonstrate the perfection that art had attained; while
church inventories, wills, and costumes represented in the miniatures of
illuminated manuscripts and elsewhere, amaze us by the quantity as well
as the quality of this department of woman's work. Though regal robes
and heavy church vestments were sometimes wrought by monks, yet to
woman's taste and skill the greater share of the result must be
attributed, the professional hands being those of nuns and their pupils
in convents. The life of woman in those days was extremely monotonous.
For the mass of the people, there hardly existed any means of
locomotion, the swampy state of the land in England and on the Continent
allowing few roads to be made, except such as were traversed by
pack-horses. Ladies of rank who wished to journey were borne on litters
carried upon men's shoulders, and, until the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, f