heard him say that at such moments, if it had not been for his paralysed hand, he could have expressed thoughts such as only the truly inspired feel.

His poems entitled "My Mother's Grave," and a little poem called "Violets" (published in the Ledger a few weeks before his death, but written last summer), "The Closing Year," "The Stars," "To a Poetess on her Birth-day," The River in the Mammoth Cave," are among his best pieces.

The last poem he ever wrote was inscribed to my wife. It is so very beautiful that I hope I shall be pardoned for inserting it here.

"TO MY POETESS-A. M. G.

"Dear Alice, for two happy hours
I've sat within this little nook,
To muse upon the sweet soul-flowers
That blossom in thy gentle book.
They lift their white and spotless bells,
Untouched by frost, unchanged by time;
For they are blessed immortelles
Transplanted from the Eden clime.

"With pure and deep idolatry

Upon each lovely page I've dwelt,
Till to thy spirit's sorcery

My spirit has with reverence knelt.
Oh, every thought of thine to me
Is like a fount, a bird, a star,

A tone of holy minstrelsy

Down floating from the clouds afar!

"The fairies have around thee traced
A circle bright, a magic sphere,
The home of genius, beauty, taste,
The joyous smile, the tender tear.
Within that circle, calm and clear,

With Nature's softest dews impearled,
I sit and list with pitying ear
The tumults of the far-off world.

Thy book is shut--its flowers remain,
'Mid this mysterious twilight gloom,
Deep-imaged on my heart and brain,
And shed their fragrance through my room.
Ah, how I love their holy bloom,
As in these moonbeams, dim and wan,
They seem pale blossoms o'er a tomb
That's closed upon the loved and gone!

"Young angel of my waning years,
Consoler of life's stormiest day,
Magician of my hopes and fears,

Guide of my dark and troubled way,
To thee this little votive lay

In gratitude I dedicate,

And with an earnest spirit pray

God's blessing on thy mortal state."

"The Closing Year" is one of his earliest productions. It is more frequently quoted than any of his poems. It is generally regarded as his finest creation. It bears some resemblance to Bryant's "Thanotopsis," to which it has often been compared, but the imagery in "The Closing Year" is far bolder and more inspiring, and besides there is a greater breadth of vision and a wider range of imagination in it. There is, however, in "Thanatopsis" a soft and mellow beauty which is hardly equalled in the other, but there is a compactness, or rather completeness about Bryant's poem that seems to leave no room for suggestiveness.

"The Closing Year," however, is no more beautiful or suggestive than some of Mr. PRENTICE's later productions: for instance," The Summit of the Sierra Madre," and the "Thoughts on the Far Past," written but a few months before his death.

The truth is, Mr. PRENTICE's genius shone out with increasing splendor toward the close of his life.

In the spring of 1868 he said to me, "I have promised Mr. Bonner to write ten pieces of poetry for the Ledger. I am glad of it. I am growing old; pain and sickness and trouble and sorrow have laid their corroding fingers upon my brow, and many think that I cannot write as well as I did in my younger years. I am determined to prove to the contrary, for the rose of my spirit is as bright and fresh as in the days of my boyhood." On the first day of 1869 he said, "The past year was a bad old year; I am glad that it is gone, and that a new one has come with its buds of hope and promise. I am determined to make this year the best year of my life.'

How well he fulfilled his resolution is known to the world. There was not a line that fell from his pen that did not bear upon it the ineffaceable stamp of his genius.

I have already referred to the affection in the hands of Mr. PRENTICE. It is called Chorea Scriptorum, or Scriveners, Cramp. As everything about Mr. PRENTICE is interesting, and in relation to this malady may be instructive, I purpose to give some details additional to those I have mentioned. This Chorea Scriptorum was the torture of Mr. PRENTICE'S life for over thirty years. It showed itself soon after an exciting canvass for the Presidency, during which he wrote excessively. After trying a multitude of remedies, including galvanism and electricity, without getting relief, he managed to write by using a pen the handle of which was made very large by wrapping silk around it. The pen was grasped by all the fingers and the thumb kept in a state of extension. This plan soon began to fail, and in view of this possibility Mr. PRENTICE learned to write with his left. hand. The left hand soon fell into the condition of the right one. Amanuenses were then employed, and upon these he was mainly dependent the rest of his life. The inventive genius of the country was taxed for the invention

of a suitable writing-machine for him, but all machines failed, and were of course abandoned. One season he went to New Orleans and placed himself under hydropathic treatment, with a hope of cure. He pursued this until his constitution was severely ravaged. The entire skin was in a state of serious paralysis. This induced him to moderate his use of hydropathy, but he never gave it up until a foreigner whom he had brought with him from New Orleans, and who resided with him because of his great pretensions as a hydropathist, undertook one night to reduce a dislocation of the right shoulder by pouring pitchers of cold water over the shoulder. This filled the cup of Mr. PRENTICE's suspicions of the ignorance of his hydropathic attendant. The family physician was sent for, and he immediately reduced the dislocation. From this time Mr. PRENTICE gave up hydropathy.

This mysterious disease is incurable as a general rule. Neimeyer quotes Fritz for the most sensible view of this malady that has been given. Brown-Sequard and Claude Bernard have explained the phenomena of reflex actions of the nervous system, and have shown that they have their origin mainly in the skin. Fritz says that this affection is a reflex neurosis, in which, however, excitement of the mater nerves is not derived from the cutaneous nerves, as in most reflex neuroses, but proceeds from the muscular nerves. The evil, no matter how long it may be quiescent by abstinence from the use of the muscles that produced the disorder, will invariably show itself even if the hand merely is held in the position for the use that created the malady. As soon as this special use is suspended, the malady ceases during abstinence from this use. Mr. PRENTICE, notwithstanding his afflictions, occasionally wrote poems and letters to his particular friends. Mr. PRENTICE never wearied talking of the beauties and mysteries of nature;

and I have often listened spell-bound, as it were, to his description of the Mammoth Cave with its deep chasms, Stygian pools, awful aisles, fathomless gulfs, crystal fountains, and high-pillared dome's fretted with the semblance of stars and flowers. He had arranged with my family to visit the cave during the coming spring. He said, "I want to stand once more upon the banks of Echo River, that wild and wizard stream, in which no star or rainbow ever glassed their image of love and beauty, and extinguish my lamp and see what darkness is.”

Mr. PRENTICE, at one time, thought of retiring from the press for the purpose of devoting himself wholly to the pursuit of poetry and other light literature. His son, Col. Clarence G. Prentice, had purchased a beautiful farm nine miles below Louisville, on the Ohio River, and it was his wish that his father should pass the remainder of his life away from the noise and bustle of the city; but a fondness for newspapers prevented Mr. PRENTICE from acceding to the wishes of his son, and it may be said that he died literally in harness, with accumulated and accumulating duties around him. The last time I saw Mr. PRENTICE in Louisville was the day before he started to his son's. He came to spend the evening with us, and as he sat in his chair in the library I thought that I had never seen him look so well before. He was unusually cheerful, and talked with much pleasure of a visit to his son's during the approaching holidays; but I fancied that his voice assumed a more melancholy tone than usual when he said, “It is a dreary trip at best during the winter. The roads are in a bad condition, and I look forward to the time with no little anxiety when I shall again have the pleasure of passing an evening with you and Alice and dear little Virgiline." I did not then think that he was soon destined to leave us forever, and that the walls of our little