Volume 23 — ART'S LIMITATIONS.

This rich, rank Age—does it breed giants now— Dantes or Michaels, Raphaels, Shakespeares? Nay! Its culture is of other sort to-day. From the stanch stem (too ready to allow Growths that divide the strength that should endow The one tall trunk) who firmly lops away, With wise reserve, such shoots as lead astray The wasted sap to some collateral bough? Had Dante chiselled stone, had Angelo Intrigued with courts, had Shakespeare dulled his pen With critic gauge of Chaucer, Drummond, Ben— What lack there were of that life-giving shade, Which these high-tower'd, centurial oaks have made, Where walk the happy nations to and fro! Margaret J. Preston.