What are our "latter-day" poets dreaming of? Is the end of the world reckoned to be so near at hand that they think it folly to build for endurance?--idle to erect their "monument of brass," when it and the earth will so soon be swept away together? Or has the poet's old dream of an immortality of fame died out with the superstitions of a by-gone age, and no one in this philosophic era proposes to himself so visionary an object as a posthumous renown? We cannot think that poetic genius is wanting. Of all explanations, this is the last we should be disposed to admit. We could undertake to furnish from poems sinking rapidly into decay and oblivion, many a passage, and many a page, which would do honour to the highest names in the calendar of our muse-inspired men. We seem to have amongst us good poets still, but they have ceased to produce good poems. We have much genuine poetry diffused through our literature, and not a new work of art added to our possessions. But if our men of genius are contented to be known in future times (if known at all) by some brilliant extracts only from crude, hasty, and forgotten works, could they not contrive to write extracts--now--for us--and leave the works alone? If they have but a few finished pictures to give us, if this is all their patience or their talent enables them to bring to perfection, must they really build, each one of them, a huge, rambling, misshapen edifice, that they may paint them here and there upon the walls? It is not absolutely necessary to build a new house for every new picture; although, in the infancy of the arts, such an idea was probably entertained. Those never-to-be-forgotten Chinese, immortalised by Charles Lamb, who, in the earliest stage of the culinary art, thought it requisite to burn down a house every time a sucking pig was to be roasted, very likely entertained this kindred idea. No doubt the artists of that period always built a wall before they painted a landscape. Happily all these matters have been simplified, and our poets should remember this. They should remember that, in none of the arts is it necessary to alarm the whole country by a conflagration, in order that some dainty morsels may be gathered out of the ruins.