I seem to perceive that the day of the Superman is drawing to its close. He is a recurring nuisance, like the influenza, and no doubt will afflict mankind again in due season. But our generation has enjoyed a peculiarly poisonous variety of him. In his Renaissance guise, whether projected upon actual history, as in the person of Richard III, or strutting sublimated through Marlowe's blank verse, he spared at any rate to sentimentalise his brutality. Our forefathers summed him up in the byword that an Italianate Englishman was a devil incarnate; but he _had_ the grace of being Italianate. It is from the Germanised avatar--the Bismarck of the 'Ems telegram,' with his sentimentalising historians and philosophers--that Europe would seem to be recovering to-day. Well, I believe that the Christian virtues, the lovable and honourable code of ancient gentlemen, may always be trusted to win in the long run, and extrude the impostor. But while his vogue lasts, it may be of service to keep reminding men that to falsify another man's dispatch is essentially a stupider action than to tilt at windmills: and that is the main moral of my book. Arthur Quiller-Couch. December 2nd, 1912. JANUARY. Should any reader be puzzled by the title of this discursive volume, the following verses may provide him with an explanation. They were written some time ago for a lady who had requested, required, requisitioned (I forget the precise shade of the imperative) something for her album. "We are in the last ages of the world," wrote Charles Lamb to Barry Cornwall, "when St. Paul prophesied that women should be 'headstrong, lovers of their own will, having albums.--'" BEATUS POSSIDENS. I can't afford a mile of sward, Parterres and peacocks gay; For velvet lawns and marble fauns Mere authors cannot pay. And so I went and pitched my tent Above a harbour fair, Where vessels picturesquely rigg'd Obligingly repair. The harbour is not mine at all: I make it so--what odds? And gulls unwitting on my wall Serve me for garden-gods. By ships that ride below kaleid- oscopically changed, Unto my mind each day I find My garden rearranged. These, madam, are my daffodils, My pinks, my hollyhocks, My herds upon a hundred hills, My phloxes and my flocks. And when some day you deign to pay The call that's overdue, I'll wave a landlord's easy hand And say, "Admire _my_ view!"