Verse without rhyme is called "blank" verse. The term is especially applied to the heroic verse used in English dramatic and epic poetry, unrhymed iambic pentameter. Milton's Paradise Lost is a most notable example. The name is applied more widely to unrhymed lines, irrespective of their length, from such examples as the "Hiawatha" of Longfellow, which contains eight syllables in its lines, to his "Evangeline," which has as many as sixteen or even more.

Cinderella is the heroine of a fairy tale. She was the drudge of the house, "put upon" by her two elder sisters. While the elder sisters were at a ball, a fairy came, and having arrayed the "little cinder-girl" in ball costume, sent her in a magnificent coach to the palace where the ball was given. The prince fell in love with her, but knew not who she was. This, however, he discovered by means of a "glass slipper" which she dropped, and which fitted no foot but her own.

Famed in song and story is the Lorelei, or Lurlei, a rock which rises perpendicularly from the Rhine, to the height of four hundred and twenty-seven feet, near St. Goar. It used to be dangerous to boatmen, and has a celebrated echo. But the name is best known from Heine's song of the siren who sits on the rock combing her long tresses, and singing so ravishingly that the boatmen, enchanted by the music of her voice, forget their duty, and are drawn upon the rock and perish.

Ali Baba was a poor Persian wood-carrier, who accidentally learned the magic words, "Open Sesame!" "Shut Sesame!" by which he gained entrance into a vast cavern, the repository of stolen wealth and the lair of forty thieves. He made himself rich by plundering from these stores; and by the shrewd cunning of Morgiana, his female slave, the captain and his whole band of thieves were extirpated. In reward of these services Ali Baba gave Morgiana her freedom, and married her to his own son.

The venerable story of "Beauty and the Beast," from Les Contes Marines of Mde. Villeneuve (1740), is perhaps the most beautiful of all nursery tales. A young and lovely woman saved her father by putting herself in the power of a frightful but kind-hearted monster, whose respectful affection and melancholy overcame her aversion to his ugliness, and she consented to become his bride. Being thus freed from enchantment, the monster assumed his proper form and became a young and handsome prince.

Gil Bias was the son of Blas of Santillane, 'squire or "escudero " to a lady, and brought up by his uncle, Canon Gil Peres. Gil Blas went to Dr. Godinez's school, of Oviedo, and obtained the reputation of being a great scholar. He had fair abilities, a kind heart and good inclinations, but was easily led astray by his vanity. He was full of wit and humor, but lax in his morals. Duped by others at first, he afterwards played the same devices on those less experienced. As he grew in years, however, his conduct improved, and when his fortune was made he became an honest, steady man.

A daily record of events or observations made by an individual is known as a diary. In it the man of letters inscribes the daily results of his reading or his meditations. Pepy's diary is a notable example. In it we find a mirror of the life of the seventeenth century in England. To the mercantile man it serves the purpose of an order or memorandum book; while the physician finds it indispensable as a register of engagements. Diaries in many forms and sizes are issued every year, containing also so much miscellaneous information that in one book we have at once a diary and an almanac.

The "Sturm und Drang Period" of German literature extended from 1750 to 1800, and was the volcanic era, when French and Latin were banished from the language, and German was left unadulterated. The Sturm und Drang period of life is between twenty and twenty-five, all enthusiasm and cram full of radical reform. All abuses are to be swept away, and a Utopian millennium is to be introduced. So in this literary period the language was to be purified, and German literature was to be made the model literature of the world. Old things were to be done away, and all things to become new.

The famous letters of Junius were a series of political letters signed "Junius," dissecting the conduct and characters of British public men -the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Mansfield, and others, not excepting the King himself. These letters caused the utmost consternation amongst the ministry, and were immensely popular for their caustic satire, just censure, clear reasoning, their great knowledge of the secret government movements, and the brilliancy of their style. It is not known who was the author of these letters, but perhaps the most weighty evidence points to Sir Philip Francis.

Among the weird creations of German folk-lore is Frankenstein, a student, who constructed, out of the fragments of bodies picked from churchyards and dissecting-rooms, a human form without a soul. The monster had muscular strength, animal passions and active life, but "no breath of divinity." It longed for animal love and animal sympathy, but was shunned by all. It was most powerful for evil, and being fully conscious of its own defects and deformities, sought with persistency to inflict retribution on the young student who had called it into being. The idea is powerfully embodied in Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein."

"Nowhere" is the name given by Sir Thomas More to the imaginary island which he makes the scene of his famous political romance "Utopia. " More represents this island as having been discovered by Raphael Hythloday, a companion of Amerigo Vespucci, but it of course is England, its capital, Amaurote, London. Its laws and institutions are represented as described in one afternoon's talk at Antwerp, occupying the whole of the second book, to which, indeed, the first serves but as a framework. More's romance has supplied (though incorrectly enough) the epithet Utopian to all impracticable schemes for the improvement of society.