The shower-stricken earth, the earth-colored streams, They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams; And yonder ivy fondling the broken castle wall, It pulls my heart, till the wild tears fall. The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill, And far as Leighlin cross the fields are green and still; But once I hear a blackbird in Leighlin hedges call, The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall! Miss Guiney possesses a charming personality. Her manner is “unaffected, girlish and modest.” There is about her none of the curtness and prudishness of the blue-stocking. Success has not turned her head, literary homage has not made her forget that they who will build for time must need work long and patiently, using only the best material. By so doing may it be written of her work, as she has written of Brother Bartholomew’s: “Wonderful verses! fair and fine, Rich in the old Greek loveliness; The seer-like vision, half divine; Pathos and merriment in excess, And every perfect stanza told, Of love and of labor manifold.” MRS. BLAKE. Boston is a charming city. It is the whim of the passing hour to sneer at the modest dame. Henry James has done so. Is not the author of “Daisy Miller” and other interminable novels a correct person to follow? The disciples of the Mutual Admiration Society in American Letters will vociferously answer “yes.” Old-fashioned people may have another way. Scattered here and there possibly a few there are who hold that Hawthorne was a better novelist than Howells is, that Holmes’ poetry is as good as Boyesen’s, and that Emerson’s criticisms are more illuminative than James’. Be this as it may, Boston is a charming place to all those who had the good fortune to have been welcomed by its warm-hearted citizen, Boyle O’Reilly. To those who knew his struggles, and the earnest striving, until his weary spirit sought its final home, for Catholic literature in its true sense, the charm but increases.