little dunces that pass nature with a frown, alleging in the language of the witty Bangs that “Nature is not art.” Guiney’s friend and faithful mentor, O’Reilly, had taught her to abhor all those who spent their waking hours chiselling cherry stones. To him it was a poet’s duty to aim high, attune his lyre, not to the petty, but the manly and hopeful; never to debase the lyre by an utterance of selfishness, but to consecrate it with the strains of liberty and humanity. If Guiney follows the teachings of her early friend—teachings which are substantially sound, she will yet produce poems that the world will not willingly let die. That Rosetti fad of hiding a mystic meaning in a poem, now occupying the brains of our teeming songsters, is now and then to be met with in our poet. It is a trade-trick. Poetry is sense—common-sense at that, and you cannot rim common-sense things with mystical hues. Abjuring these trade-tricks, and shaking off the trammels of her curious and extensive reading and evolving from herself solely, she has, says Douglas Sladen, a great promise before her. As an instance of this promise let us quote that fine poem, “The Wild Ride,” which is full of genuine inspiration, and which may be the means of introducing to some the most thoroughly gifted Catholic woman writer of our country. THE WILD RIDE. I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, All day, the commotion of sinewy mane-tossing horses; All night from their cells the importunate tramping and neighing, Cowards and laggards fall back but alert to the saddle, Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn galloping legion, With a stirrup cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him. The road is thro’ dolour and dread, over crags and morasses! There are shapes by the way, there are things that appall or entice us! What odds! We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding! I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses; All night from their cells the importunate tramping and neighing, We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm wind; We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil, Thou leadest! O God! All’s well with thy troopers that follow. It was only natural that the daughter of an Irish patriot should sing of her father’s land, and that in a style racy of that land. It was a hazardous experiment, as many an Irish American singer has learned in sorrow. That Miss Guiney has come out of the trying ordeal successfully, may be seen in the following little snatch, full of the aroma of green Erin: AN IRISH PEASANT SONG. I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while; Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile; Yet when I walk alone, and think of naught at all, Why from me that’s young should the wild tears fall?