Creator's praises, and could not make more melody to Adam than to me. All Time was Eternity and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange that an infant should be heir of the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?'

How inevitably, as we read these words, do the memorable lines leap to our lips

'Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind-
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day.'

Let us, for a moment, turn to Traherne's poetical expression of what thus 'talked with his expectation and moved his desire' in early childhood. On News' is the quaint title given to the poem which opens with the words quoted at the beginning of this article, and which is, perhaps, the most articulate utterance Traherne has given us of his own 'intimations of immortality.'

'News from a foreign country came,

As if my treasure and my wealth lay there;

So much it did my heart enflame!

'Twas wont to call my soul into mine ear
Which thither went to meet
The approaching sweet,

And on the threshold stood,
To entertain the unknown Good.
It hovered there

As if 'twould leave mine ear,

And was so eager to embrace
The joyful tidings as they came,
'Twould almost leave its dwelling-place
To entertain that same....

What sacred instinct did inspire

My soul in childhood with a hope so strong?
What secret force mov'd my desire

To expect my joys beyond the seas, so young?

Felicity, I knew,

Was out of view;

And, being here alone,

I saw that happiness was gone
From me. For this,

I thirsted absent bliss,

And thought that sure beyond the seas,
Or else in something near at hand

I knew not yet (since nought did please
I knew) my Bliss did stand.'

Another poem, from which we have already quoted a stanza, is entitled 'Wonder,' and expresses the innocent and wondering delight of a child who feels himself to be 'the heir of the whole world.'

The skies in their magnificence,
The lively, lovely air,

Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!
The stars did entertain my sense,

And all the works of God, so bright and pure,
So rich and great did seem,

As if they ever must endure
In my esteem.

A native health and innocence

Within my bones did grow;

And, while my God did all his Glories show,

I felt a vigour in my sense

That was all Spirit. I within did flow

With seas of life, like wine;

I nothing in the world did know
But 'twas divine.'

One who lived in the light of this simple and joyous faith could not

I dream of such a thing

As sin, in which mankind lay dead.

They all were brisk and living wights to me,

Yea, pure and full of immortality.'

'No darkness then did overshade,
But all within was pure and bright;

No guilt did crush nor fear invade,
But all my soul was full of light.

A joyful sense and purity

Is all I can remember;

The very night to me was bright,
'Twas Summer in December.'

Where Traherne parts company, not only with Herbert and Vaughan, but with all the hierophants-whether poets or philosophers, Anglicans or Puritans-of his time, is in his application of this simple creed of childhood to the conditions of adult life. Peace and happiness, he thinks, can only come to the distracted soul through the recovery of the beatific vision which enables the child to look upon all Nature as his divine and proper inheritance. The riches of invention, ... gold, silver, houses, land, clothes,' etc., as he tells us in his Meditations,' have combined to make us blind to the 'riches of Nature.' The riches of Nature are our souls and bodies, with all their faculties, senses, and endowments; and it had been the easiest thing in the whole world to teach me that all felicity consisted in the enjoyment of all the world, that it was prepared for me before I was born, and that nothing was more divine and beautiful.' This is no ascetic, but one who believes in the possibility of a perfect correspondence between the natural and the spiritual, and who could say with Rabbi Ben Ezra—

'As the bird wings and sings,

Let us cry "All good things

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh
helps soul."

'Natural things,' he continues, 'are glorious, and to know them glorious.' Let us then enjoy them in the spirit in which God meant them to be enjoyed.

'For God enjoy'd is all His end.
Himself He then doth comprehend
When He is blessèd, magnified,
Extoll'd, exalted, prais'd and glorified.

Doth place His whole felicity

In that, who is despisèd and defied,
Undeified almost if once denied.'

These few quotations will serve to show that in Traherne has been discovered, if not a poet of a very

high order of artistry, at least a thinker of rare originality and imaginative power. We cannot here follow Mr Dobell and others in their pursuit of parallels between Traherne and later philosphers and poets-how in many of his fancies and speculations he anticipates not only Wordsworth, but Berkeley and Rousseau, Blake, Browning, and Whitman. Let what Mr Dobell calls a clear prevision of the Berkeleian philosophy' serve as an instance of the possibilities of such quests. All Nature's treasures, writes Traherne,

'Were my immediate and internal pleasures,

Substantial joys which did inform my mind.
With all she wrought

My soul was fraught;

And every object in my heart a thought
Begot, or was: I could not tell

Whether the things did there
Themselves appear,

Which in my spirit truly seemed to dwell,
Or whether my conforming mind

Were not even all that therein shin'd.'

The form in this, as in the rest of the poems, may leave something to be desired, but the thought is fine, and is a fair sample of the many precious things which the patient reader will discover in Mr Dobell's volume. Both Traherne and his editor, as we have hinted, make some demands on our patience, but nowhere to such an extent as to forfeit our interest. The long introduction, notwithstanding some critical indiscretions, is full of matter; and no one can fail to be held by the story of the discovery, or to be convinced by the proofs of the poet's identification. Should the reader, on the strength of the passages quoted in the introduction, come to the same conclusion as ourselves, that Traherne is a better prosewriter than poet, Mr Dobell cannot complain. He promises an early issue of the 'Centuries of Meditations,' and he has revealed enough of their contents to give us assurance that in Traherne's prose manuscripts he possesses, if anything, a greater treasure than his poetry. W. LEWIS JONES.

Art. VII.-THE ANIMALS OF AFRICA.

1. On the Classification and Distribution of the Alectoromorpha and Heteromorpha. By T. H. Huxley. Proceedings of the Zoological Society. London, 1868.

2. Text-book of Palæontology. By K. A. von Zittel. Translated and edited by C. R. Eastman. Vols I and II. London: Macmillan, 1900 and 1902.

3. Anniversary Address to the Geological Society. By W. T. Blanford. Proc. Geol. Soc. London, 1890.

4. Geological and Faunal Relations of Europe and America during the Tertiary Period, and the Theory of Successive Invasions of an African Fauna. By H. F. Osborn. 'Science,' Series 2, vol. XI, 1900.

5. Extinct Vertebrates from Egypt. By C. W. Andrews. 'Geological Magazine,' Decade 4, vol. VIII, 1901.

6. Note on Arsinoetherium zitteli from the Eocene of Egypt. By H. J. L. Beadnell. Cairo Survey Dept., 1902.

7. The Law of Adaptive Radiation. By H. F. Osborn. 'American Naturalist,' vol. XXXVI, 1902.

8. On Okapia, a New Genus of Giraffida from Central Africa. By E. Ray Lankester. Transactions of the

Zoological Society. London, 1902.

9. The Evolution of the Proboscidea. By C. W. Andrews. Philosophical Transactions, B., vol. 196, 1903.

DURING the past few years the zoological world has been startled by the announcement of the discovery in centraleastern Africa of an entirely new type (so far as existing animals are concerned) of giraffe-like ruminant, the okapi (fig. 1), and also, in the north-eastern part of the same continent, of the remains of a number of extinct mammals unlike any previously known to science, the latter remains having been obtained from strata of lower Tertiary or Eocene age in the Libyan desert. The okapi, as a living mammal of large size, peculiar shape, and strange colouring, has naturally attracted a large share of popular attention; whereas the extinct forms, in spite of their strangeness, have been but little noticed by the general public.

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the discovery of these extinct Egyptian Eocene mammals far outweighs in importance that of the okapi. For instance, certain