But our friends the Preraphaelites positively revel in gloom. They are for ever “hob and nob with Brother Death.” They seem to study a skeleton with the keen interest of an anatomist. Wan ghosts are their favorite companions, and ghosts’ walks their choice resorts. The scenery described in their poems has generally a sad, sepulchral look. There is a vast amount of rain with mournful soughing winds, laden often with the voices of those who are gone. A favorite trick of a Preraphaelite ghost is to stalk into his old haunts, only to discover that after all people live in much the same style as when he was in the flesh, and can manage to muster a laugh and talk about mundane matters even though he has departed. Miss Rossetti treats us to several such visits, and in each case the “poor ghost” stalks out again disconsolate. There is another Preraphaelite ghost who is fond of visiting, just on the day of her wedding with somebody else, the lady who has jilted him. The conversation carried on between the jilt and the ghost of the jilted is, as may be imagined, hardly of the kind one would expect on so festive an occasion. For our own part, we should imagine that the ghost would have grown wiser, if not more charitable, by his visit to the other world, and would show himself quite willing to throw at least the ghost of a slipper after the happy pair. Between the Preraphaelite ghosts and the Preraphaelite lovers there seems really little difference. The love is of the most tearful description; the lady, wan at the start, has to wait and wait a woful time for the gentleman, who is always a dreadfully indefinite distance away. Strange to say, he generally has to make the journey back to his lady-love on foot. Of course on so long a journey he meets with all kinds of adventures and many a lady gay who keep him from his true love. She, poor thing, meanwhile sits patiently at the same casement looking out for the coming of her love. The only difference in her is that she grows wanner and more wan, until at length the tardy lover arrives, of course, only to find her dead body being carried out, and the good old fairy-story ending――that they were married and lived happy ever after――is quite thrown out. It will be judged from what we have said that, whatever merits the Preraphaelite school of poetry may possess, cheerfulness is not one of them. As a proof of this we only cull a few titles from the contents of the book before us. “A Dirge” is the eighth on the list; then come in due order, “After Death,” “The Hour and the Ghost,” “Dead before Death,” “Bitter for Sweet,” “The Poor Ghost,” “The Ghost’s Petition,” and so on. But Miss Rossetti is happily not all melancholy. The opening piece, the famous “Goblin Market,” is thoroughly fresh and charming, and, to our thinking, deserves a place beside “The Pied Piper of Hamlin.” Is not this a perfect picture of its kind?