2 OCTOBER 1880, Page 16

POETRY.

[" I threw magic-lantern portraits of different persons on the top of one another, on the same screen, and elicited a resultant face whicb resembled no one of the components in particular, but included all."' —P. GALTON, "Mental Imagery," Fortnightly Review, September, 1880.] THE shadowed magic-lantern pictures shone,

Shed each successively upon the wall; Nor were the former shapes withdrawn at all : Each face—each picture was a face—was thrown So that its features on the last did fall ; When lo ! a single face appeared alone, The blended characters and tints had grown Together into one, the coronal And perfect type of all and every one. And so, methinks, when life is but begun, We, careless, cast old memories aside; Later, we part more sadly with the past; Yet these dead selves, which we would lose or hide, Shall blend, and shape the perfect man at last.

M. W. M..