as the present one may prove both interesting and valuable. It would be interesting by reason of reflecting what I might term the local colour, with all its brilliancy and uniqueness—those specially distinctive features of South African scenery, as shown in its grand and rugged mountains, boundless karoo, and rolling veldt; it would be valuable by reason of rescuing its native folk-lore and legend from oblivion, and weaving around them the glamour of song, as has been done in Australia by Adam Lindsay Gordon and Kendall, and in America by Longfellow and Bryant.
In compiling the present volume from a very scattered field of fugitive and other poetry—in some cases going back to the days of the British settlers—the length of the poem has been one of the determining factors, and some poems have thus regretfully had to be omitted. War poems, martial lays, and to a certain extent religious poems have also been largely excluded; the former entirely so, on account of their diction or rougher form setting ill amongst the necessarily more musical lyric, or even sonnet. The latter class, however, possessing all the essential qualifications of devotional verse, has been relegated to a place at the end of the volume.
Lest the word "Treasury" should to some appear suggestive of claiming a position for the volume analogous to that of Palgrave's incomparable and unique selection, let me say at once such an idea surely could never be seriously entertained. To the
