"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

The false, factitious life of cities would have rendered him powerless. Matthew Arnold, writing of Arthur Clough, who was more completely Wordsworth's disciple than almost any man of his day, observes that "in the saturnalia of ignoble personal passions, of which the struggle for literary success, in old and crowded communities, offers so sad a spectacle, he never mingled. He had not yet traduced his friends, nor flattered his enemies, nor disparaged what he admired, nor praised what he despised. Those who knew him well had the conviction that, even with time, these literary arts would never be his."

These literary arts! These are bitter words, yet dare we not call them untrue. Too often have such arts been literary. Too much is there of envy and jealousy among those who are called "literary men.” To pursue literature for its own sake is a rare achievement. Milton wrote in stately verse of

"That last infirmity of noble minds;"

but it is the first infirmity of ignoble minds which constitutes the worst weakness of modern literature. At the same time, the matter must not be put too strongly. There are many men, even within personal knowledge of the present writer, who deserve every word of praise which Arnold gave to Clough. And separation of society into cliques is highly provocative of misunderstanding and controversy. The author of this essay was for years in the habit of " pitching into" a literary gentleman of some eminence. He imagined that there was good reason for this proceeding. He expended upon him much good-humoured satire, not of the strongest, both in prose and rhyme. Time passed on, and the twain were brought, by spontaneous courtesy of (shall I say?) the victim, into literary connexion. They dined together, the satirist being guest. To his surprise, he discovered that he had been entirely wrong from the commencement; that his sarcasms, whether cutting or blunt, were quite without foundation; and that his entertainer was one of the best fellows that ever breathed. What a predicament to be in! How extremely fortunate that the works of the present writer are not likely to be immortal! But the memory of that dinner, with all its pleasant chaff, is immortal. Let us hope the same for the friendship which resulted.

Artists are Bohemian of necessity. We encounter them every where. They turn up on the summits of mountains and in the beds of rivers. Surely theirs is a pleasant craft. Worse occupation may be imagined than to pass the hot days of autumn sketching in Wales, or Scotland, or Devon. Who would not envy their gay breakfasts, their long day's work amid scenery the most exquisite, their flirtations with pretty peasants and barmaids (artists are terrible fellows to flirt), and their joyous dinners when twilight drives them home to their inn? Inexhaustible

their nightly colloquies over meerschaum and cigar; innumerable their references to the eloquent paradoxes of Ruskin. The most resolute artistic vagrant of whom there is recent record is Mr. Hamerton. Determined thoroughly to explore the Highlands, he caused to be built a wonderful house upon wheels, with windows of plate-glass and innumerable other conveniences. Independent of hostelries, taking with him a good supply of eatables, he amazed the aborigines by his mode of life. They had seen Oxford and Cambridge reading-parties, not without excusable wonder; they had encountered eccentric English travellers of many kinds; but a solitary gentleman, living in a van, and managing every thing for himself, was a novelty and a perplexity. By and by our Bohemian took a servant, whom he called Thursday, and with whom he made an amicable agreement that he should give him a thrashing whenever he talked bad English. Mr. Hamerton's next step was to contrive a raft, floated by tubes, with which he voyaged over the Scottish lakes, pitching his tent on lonely islands, and catching the wild and changeful beauties of that sublime scenery at all hours of the day and night. A delightful occupation! Had he travelled thus in the time of Christopher North, and met that veteran athlete in any of his favourite haunts, Mr. Hamerton would have found immortality in the Noctes Ambrosianæ. As it is, he has done his best to immortalise himself. The art-criticism of his charming volumes is very good; but I prefer the adventure.

They are Bohemians, those members of the Alpine Club, who scale every year peaks more perilous, and amaze the mountaineers of Switzerland by their daring. There is my friend O.; when I meet that easygoing young gentleman in London, I wonder where he conceals his powers of endurance. For years had his excellence at a brief or a leader, a lobster-salad or a bowl of punch, been known to his admiring friends; but they were all amazed when he first attained renown among the mountains. Now, he floors an Alp every season, and thinks nothing of it. It has been said a great many times, that one man can never thoroughly know another man; and when a quiet Londoner suddenly becomes a leader of Alpine Bohemians, the thing is curiously illustrated. It would not have been more astonishing if Mr. Millais had taken to teach mathematics, or Professor de Morgan to sing at the Monday Popular Concerts.

They are Bohemians, too, those University men who devote their Long Vacations to what are called reading-parties. Ah, this is the joyous Bohemianism of youth! How deliciously it is described in one of the freshest and most original poems in the language, the late Mr. Clough's Long-Vacation Pastoral! With Homeric simplicity and vividness, although in hexameters any thing but Homeric, the Fellow of Oriel tells us what manner of life he and his pupils lived in the Highlands:

"Breakfast at eight, and now, for the brief September daylight,

Luncheon at two, and dinner at seven, or even later;

Five full hours between for the loch and the glen and the mountain,--
So in the joy of their life and glory of shooting-jackets,

So they read and roamed, the pupils five with Adam."

To all who desire to know the healthiest and most poetic aspect of Oxford life, Mr. Clough's pastoral should be welcome. Mr. Tennyson writes very charming poems, which he calls idyls, but which are no more idyls than they are dramas; Mr. Clough's poem is an idyl such as Theocritus might himself have written had he been Fellow and Tutor of Oriel.

The gipsy, most absolute of all Bohemians, seems to be decaying from the land. A few haunt Norwood still, for the sake of their ancient connexion therewith; and it is not long since a black-haired hag insisted on informing me that I should eat my bread in many parishes, and die out of debt. On Wimbledon Common their huts are sometimes to be seen. But in remote country-places they seem scarcer; and it is rare now to come upon the well-known encampment in a quiet green lane, with the men asleep on the hedgesides, and the women mending their rags and cooking the dinner-hedgehog, perchance, or squirrel mixing in the caldron with fowls and pork. If I knew Jasper Petulengro's whereabout, I would certainly inquire of him the reason of this. Are the Romany race decaying or emigrating? They spring up in marvellous numbers on a Derby-day, even as do roughs at a prize-fight or an execution; but in ordinary times we see less of the vagrant nation. Have the spirit-rappers put their prophetic noses out of joint? Has the portentous appearance of Home sent them back to the land whence first they came?

The Bohemian by necessity-the unlucky "tramp"-is, on the other hand, more frequently encountered. Chancing to live on the great highway whose chief occupation was destroyed by the Great Western Railway, I'see multitudes of them. Trade is bad just now; and the poor fellows, journeymen of various classes, and sometimes agricultural labourers, plod wearily along the road, hoping in the next town or village to find work. It matters little to them in which direction they travel, towards or away from London. You may know them by the weary limp which they all have, the result of long walks to men unaccustomed to walking. Seldom can they afford to enter a public-house; but very often, where some pleasant patch of green lines the highway, you may see them enjoying the sole consolation of wretchedness, that divine sleep which, as Sancho Panza observed, wraps a man round like a cloak. Often, too, while the man sleeps, his poor wife sits and watches him; whether they have more endurance or are more anxious, the female tramps seem seldom able to join in these roadside siestas. They watch their over-wearied husbands with patient, loving eyes, while the unseen cuckoo calls afar off, and the untiring lark,

"Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,"

fills ether with his song. And at intervals stylish carriages roll by, and ladies and gentlemen on horseback pass; and as two o'clock strikes, the luncheon-bell rings at my lord's house among those stately beech-woods that slope to the Thames and fade into the remote horizon. But the tramp, travel-soiled and weary, sleeps on God's turf and in God's sunshine, dreaming, perhaps, of days when he was happy,-when he was a workman in full employ, and made prosperous love to the pretty lass whom he married. And she, old before her time, haggard with work and want, watches him with tearless eyes, and silently hopes that some good Christian may give them a copper before evening, that they may allay the pangs of hunger.

Enough. We have travelled through Bohemia Proper and Bohemia Improper. We have encountered those who have deliberately chosen misery as their comrade, and those who are obliged to accept it as their tyrant. Both classes might occasionally echo Henry Murger's bitter remark: "La Providence a trop de besogne auprès des petits oiseaux."

C.

A Lost Love.

I.

IN the pauses of inward prayer,
I often shudder to see

The angels looking at me,
Blessing with shining and fair
Faces the burden I bear.

And often the Past returns,

With her shadowy garments on,

And her wrong folded darkly about her,

Asking my soul, as it yearns

Toiling and aching alone,

If it dares or cares to doubt her

Now that she is gone.

I think of the bygone Hours,

The folly and error and bliss,

That she has taken;

Times when our love was shaken

So sweetly to fruit and flowers

By the little breath of a kiss :

And I answer, "The life she has taken

Bears half the burden of this."

I can remember the Hours,

Many a year ago,

When we were girl and boy;

I can remember the Hours

When existence seemed to be

The only toil we might know;

And we painted our wonder and joy

Quietly, silently,

On our faces, like the flowers!

And so, when the Past comes back,

With her shadowy garments about her,
And sees me toiling without her

Along the treacherous track

That I sought from her rich caressings,

And asks my soul if it dares
In its agony to doubt her,
My lonely sorrowful prayers

Pass into blessings.