CHARLES GRAHAM HALPINE.

HALPINE, CHARLES GRAHAM, an Irish-American journalist and poet born at Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland, November 20, 1829; died in New York, August 3, 1868. He was educated in Trinity College, Dublin, and began the study of medicine, but soon turned to journalism; contributed to Irish and English papers, and at length emigrated to the United States. He was connected with the "Boston Post," the "New York Times," and "Leader," and lastly became proprietor and editor of "The Citizen," which he conducted until his death. When the civil war broke out he enlisted as lieutenant in the Sixty-Ninth Regiment New York Volunteers, was rapidly promoted, and at length attained the brevet rank of brigadier-general. In 1867 he was elected to the office of Recorder of the City of New York. In 1862 he assumed the nom de plume of "Miles O'Reilly," under which he wrote many amusing lyrics and fancy sketches in prose, published in the "New York Herald" and other papers, under the titles of "Miles O'Reilly, his Book; the Life and Adventures, Songs, Services, and Speeches of Private Miles O'Reilly;" "Baked Meats of the Funeral," etc. A collection of his poems, with a sketch of the author's life, was published in 1868. It is entitled "The Poetical Works of Charles G. Halpine."

IRISH ASTRONOMY.

O'RYAN was a man of might

Whin Ireland was a nation,
But poachin' was his heart's delight

And constant occupation.

He had an ould militia gun,

And sartin sure his aim was;

He gave the keepers many a run,
And would n't mind the game laws.

St. Patrick wanst was passin' by
O'Ryan's little houldin',

And, as the Saint felt wake and dhry,
He thought he'd enther bould in.

"O'Ryan," says the Saint, "avick!

To praich at Thurles I'm goin',
So let me have a rasher quick,
And a dhrop of Innishowen."
"No rasher will I cook for you,
While betther is to spare, sir,
But here's a jug of mountain dew,
And there's a rattlin' hare, sir."
St. Patrick he looked mighty sweet,
And says he, "Good luck attind you,
And, when you 're in your windin' sheet,
It's up to heaven I'll sind you."

O'Ryan gave his pipe a whiff-
"Them tidin's is thransportin',
But may I ax your saintship if
There's any kind of sportin'?"
St Patrick said, "A Lion 's there,

Two Bears, a Bull, and Cancer-"
Bedad," says Mike, "the huntin's rare;
St. Pathrick, I'm your man, sir."

So, to conclude my song aright,
For fear I'd tire your patience,
You'll see O'Ryan any night

Amid the constellations.

And Venus follows in his track

Till Mars grows jealous really,

But, faith, he fears the Irish knack

Of handling the shillaly.

MY BROKEN MEERSCHAUM.

OLD pipe, now battered, bruised, and brown, With silver spliced and linked together,

With hopes high up and spirits down,

I've puffed thee in all kinds of weather; And still upon thy glowing lid,

'Mid carving quaint and curious tracing, Beneath the dust of years half hid,

The giver's name mine eye is tracing.

When thou wert given we were as one,
Who now are two, and widely sundered:
Our feud the worst beneath the sun,

Where each behind the other blundered.

No public squall of anger burst

The moorings of our choice relation "Tis the dumb quarrel that is worst, Where pride forbids an explanation.

Old pipe! had then thy smoky bowl

A tongue that could to life have started
Knowing the secrets of my soul,

In many a midnight hour imparted-
Thy speech, perchance, had then re-knit
The ties of friendship rudely sundered,
And healed the feud of little wit,

In which each thinks the other blundered.

JANETTE'S HAIR.

Он, loosen the snood that you wear, Janette,
Let me tangle a hand in your hair, my pet,
For the world to me had no daintier sight
Than your brown hair veiling your shoulder white,
As I tangled a hand in your hair, my pet.

It was brown with a golden gloss, Janette,

It was finer than silk of the floss, my pet, 'T was a beautiful mist falling down to your wrist, "T was a thing to be braided and jewelled and kissed 'T was the loveliest hair in the world, my pet.

My arm was the arm of a clown, Janette,
It was sinewy, bristled, and brown, my pet,
But warmly and softly it loved to caress
Your round white neck and your wealth of tress
Your beautiful plenty of hair, my pet. .

Oh, you tangled my life in your hair, Janette;
'T was a silken and golden snare, my pet,
But, so gentle the bondage, my soul did implore
The right to continue your slave evermore,

With my fingers enmeshed in your hair, my pet.

--

Thus ever I dream what you were, Janette,
With your lips, and your eyes, and your hair, my pet,
In the darkness of desolate years, I moan,

And my tears fall bitterly over the stone
That covers your golden hair, my pet.

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON.

HAMERTON, PHILIP GILBERT, an English artist and art critic, born at Laneside, Lancashire, September 10, 1834; died at Boulogne-sur-Seine, November 6, 1894. He received his education at Oxford, studied art in England and in Rome, and on his return to England devoted himself to painting and literature. He was the art-critic of the "Saturday Review" for three years, and edited "The Portfolio." Among his works are "The Isles of Loch Awe and other Poems" (1855); "Thoughts about Art," and “A Painter's Camp in the Highlands," his most characteristic work. (1862); "Etching and Etchers" (1868); "Wenderholme: a Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire" (1869); "The Sylvan Year” (1876); "The Unknown River" (1870); "Chapters on Animals,” and "The Intellectual Life" (1873); "Round My House" (1876); "Marmorne, a Novel," "Modern Frenchmen" (1878); "Life of J. M. W. Turner" (1879); "The Graphic Arts" (1882); "Landscape' (1885); "The Painter's Imagination" (1887); "Man in Art" (1892); "Present State, of Art in France" (1892); "Drawing and Engraving" (1892); "Contemporary French Painting" (1895); "Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism" (1895).

THAT CERTAIN ARTISTS SHOULD WRITE ON ART.
(From "Thoughts about Art.")

THE public use of literature may be comprehensively defined in a single word. All literature is a record. The important service it renders to mankind is the perpetual registering of the experience of the race. Without literature it is inconceivable that any race of men could reach a degree of culture comparable to ours, because, without a literature to record it, the experience of dead generations could never be fully available for the living

one.

Oral and practical tradition no doubt have their use, as we see to this day in many trades and professions; but this tradition is in our time nearly always aided by, or based upon, written records. And nothing is more characteristic of our age than its constantly increasing tendency to commit everything to

writing. The most ordinary professions and trades have their literatures, trades which not long since were merely traditional. The experience of the race is now registered by literature in all its departments. Our novelists paint the manners of their time.

How precious such verbal paintings will be in a thousand years! Thackeray and Balzac will make it possible for our descendants to live over again in the England and France of to-day. Seen in this light, the novelist has a higher office than merely to amuse his contemporaries; he hands them down all living and talking together to the remotest ages. When the new Houses of Parliament and the new Louvre shall be as antique to others as the Colosseum is to us, they shall know what manner of men and women first walked under the freshly carved arcades of the new palace on the banks of the Seine, and saw the tall towers grow year after year like young trees at Westminster.

This view of all literature as a register of human experience may be demurred to with regard to some of its departments. It may be objected, for example, that our contemporary poetry is not a record of our experience. But it is a record of our feelings, and these are a part, and a very important part, of the experience of all cultivated persons. A poem which has been greatly popular in its own time, even though it may bear no very obvious relation to it, must nevertheless have been in close unison with much contemporary sentiment.

I mentioned fiction and poetry first because they seemed the weakest point of my argument; but when I come to periodical literature no one will for a moment dispute that it is strictly a register of all the thoughts and acts of humanity, day by day, week by week, and month by month. In the files of the newspapers our descendants will possess a full and detailed record, not only of our acts, but of our most transient opinions and hopes. A number of the "Times" has not done its work when you or I have read it. Other eyes will read it after a thousand years with all the advantages of that immense experience behind them! They will see us timidly delaying, or earnestly advocating, changes whose vast results shall to them be matter of history.

Such history as that of Macaulay and Motley is a register of the retrospective kind. It is like the early chapters of an autobiography. In an autobiography we have an accurate type of mankind's ways of placing itself on record. Such records or