ord Tennyson has in his day written several epitaphs,
inscriptions, and other trifles; but none of them have quite the
perfection which might have been looked for from so great a master of
poetic form. Mr. Matthew Arnold produced, with others, this excellent
epigraph:

'Though the Muse be gone away,
Though she move not earth to-day,
Souls erewhile who caught her word,
Ah! still harp on what they heard.'

Finally, the reader may be recommended to glance at Mr. William
Allingham's little book of 'Blackberries,' in which they will find a
large number of such 'snatches of song,' many of them fresh in
conception and finished in execution.

THE 'SEASON' IN SONG.

'To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die,' and the Season, when
'dead,' yet speaks to many through the mouths of the men who have given
it perennial life in verse. Its first laureate, one may say, was
Mackworth Praed, whose 'Good-night' to it still remains the most
brilliant epitome of its characteristics ever written. Nothing was
omitted from that remarkable series of coruscating epigrams. From

'The breaches and battles and blunders
Performed by the Commons and Peers,'

we are taken to 'the pleasures which fashion makes duties'--'the dances,
the fillings of hot little rooms,' 'the female diplomatists, planners of
matches for Laura and Jane,' 'the rages, led off by the chiefs of the
throng,' the ballet, the bazaar, the horticultural fete, and what not.
Of later years the Season, as a whole, has been celebrated only by Mr.
Alfred Austin, who published, more than a quarter of a century ago, a
satire which was indeed formidable in its tone. Mr. Austin was severe
about everybody--about the

'Unmarketable maidens of the mart,
Who, plumpness gone, fine delicacy feint,
And hide their sins in piety and paint;'

about the Gardens, where

'The leafy glade
Prompts the proposal dalliance delayed;'

about the ballrooms, where

'Panting damsels, dancing for their lives,
Are only maidens waltzing into wives;'

about the theatre, where

'Toole or Compton, perfect in his part,
Touches each sense, except the head and heart;'

and about a number of other things too censurable to be mentioned here.

And, in truth, when one thinks of the Season in song, one thinks less of
the satire than of the sarcasm, less of the cynicism than of the
sympathy, with which it has been treated by its poets. T