P. 356, No. cclxxiv.--Turner’s fine picture of the Téméraire, a grand old man-of-war (it had been, as its name indicates, taken from the French) towed into port by a little ugly steamer, that so, after all its noble toils, it might there be broken up, is itself a poem of a very high order, which has here been finely transferred into verse. P. 359, No. cclxxviii.--A selection of Walt Whitman’s poetry has very lately been published in England, the editor of this declaring that in him American poetry properly so-called begins. I must entirely dissent from this statement. What he has got to say is a very old story indeed, and no one would have attended to his version of it, if he had not put it more uncouthly than others before him. That there is no contradiction between higher and lower, that there is no holy and no profane, that the flesh has just as good rights as the spirit--this has never wanted prophets to preach it, nor people to act upon it; and this is the sum-total of his message to America and to the world. I was glad to find in his _Drum-taps_ one little poem which I could quote with real pleasure. P. 379, No. ccxcviii.--_Tithonus_ is a noble variation on Juvenal’s noble line in the 10th Satire, where, enumerating the things which a wise man may fitly pray for, he includes among these the mind and temper, Qui spatium vitæ extremum inter munera ponat Naturæ: words which, grand as they are, reappear in still grander form, even as they are brought into a more intimate connection with this poem in Dryden’s translation, ‘And count it nature’s privilege to die.’ P. 386, No. ccciv.--Few readers of this and other choice specimens of American poetry--some of which have now for the first time found their way into any English anthology--but will share the admiration which I cannot refuse to express for many among them. It is true that they are not always racy of the soil, that sometimes they only do what has been as well done, though scarcely better, in the old land; but whether we regard the perfect mechanism of the verse, the purity and harmony of the diction, the gracious thoughts so gracefully embodied, these poems, by Whittier, by Bryant, by Holmes, by Emerson and by others, do, so far as they reach, leave nothing to be desired. INDEX OF AUTHORS. NO. ALDRICH, James (1810-1856), CCXCVII ALFORD, Henry, _b._ 1810, CCC ARNOLD, Edwin, _b._ 1831, CCLXXXVII ARNOLD, Matthew, _b._ 1822, CCLVIII AYTOUN, Sir Robert (1570-1638), XIV BACON, Lord (1561-1616), IV BAILLIE, Joanna (1762-1851), CLXXXVII BAXTER, Richard (1615-1691), CXXXII BEAUMONT (1586-1616) and FLETCHER (1576-1625), XXIV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XLIII BEAUMONT, Francis (1586-1616), LV BEAUMONT, Sir John (1582-1628), LIII BEDDOES, Thomas Lovell (1803-1849), CCXXXI BERKELEY, George (1684-1753), CXXXVII BLACKSTONE, Sir William (1723-1780), CXXXVIII BLAKE, William (1757-1828), CLXXV, CLXXXIII, CXCIV, CCXXXVI, CCXXXIX