“Dream nobly and plan loftily” has been the guiding spirit of this volume. It is a book of religious verse in the true sense, not in the general acceptance of modern religious verse, which is generally dull twaddle, egotism, mawkishness, blind gropings and haunting fears. The gentle spirit of Christ breathes through it, making an atmosphere of peace and repose. There is no bigotry to jar, no narrowness to chafe us, but the broad upland of Christian charity and truth. Nor has our author forgotten that even truth if cast in awkward mould may be passed over. To her poems she has given a dainty setting without sacrificing a jot of their strength. After reading such a book a judicious bit of Miss Conway’s prose comes to my mind. “And as that Catholic light, the only true vision, brightens about us, we realize more and more that literary genius, take it all and all, has done more to attract men to good than to seduce men to evil; that the best literature is also the most fascinating, and even by its very abundance is more than a match for the bad; that time is its best ally; that it is hard, if not impossible, to corrupt the once formed pure literary taste; and, finally, that as makers of literature or critics or disseminators of it, it is our duty to believe in the best, hope in the best, and steadfastly appeal to the best in human nature; for we needs must love the highest when we see it.” Katherine Eleanor Conway was born of Irish parents, in Rochester, on the 6th of Sept., 1853. Her early studies were made in the convent schools of her native city. From an early age she had whisperings of the muse. These whisperings at the age of fifteen convinced her that her true sphere of action was literature. In 1875 she commenced the publication of a modest little Catholic monthly, contributing poems and moral tales, under the _nom-de-plume_ of “Mercedes,” to other Catholic journals, in the spare hours left from editing her little venture and teaching in the convent. In 1878 she became attached to the Buffalo _Union and Times_. To this journal she contributed the most of the poems to be found in her maiden volume,—“On the Sunrise Slope,”—a volume whose rich promise has been amply fulfilled in the “Dream of Lilies.” Her health failing, she sought a needful rest in Boston. Her fame had preceded her, and the gifted editor of the _Pilot_, ever on the lookout for a hopeful literary aspirant of his race, held out a willing hand to the shy stranger. “Come to us,” he said, in a voice that knew no guile, “and help us in the good fight.” That fight—the crowning glory of O’Reilly’s noble life—was to gain an adequate position for his race and religion from the puritanism of New England. How that race and religion were held before his coming, may be best told in the language of Miss Conway, taken from a heart-sketch of her dead master and minstrel:—