At all events, in such mistakes as the above, followed by their sure consequence of misery, lives not the Poetry which we are seeking. In its place we too often encounter a dismal wax-work show—a creature with glassy eyes and hot red cheeks, and a stiff arm, in a noble attitude perhaps, but always beckoning in one and the same direction,—not the living, breathing, hoping, fearing being, human like ourselves, yet better than ourselves, with whom we can sit down at meat, and kneel down at prayer—not the fragment of Heaven upon Earth to encounter and make acquaintance with, which redeems us from utter heartlessness or discomfort. The Poetry of appreciation when creation is impossible—the Poetry of daily life, as sung in deeds of unselfishness, delicacy, triumph over temptations—consideration of the weak (let the brute-force theorists ‘sound their trumpets and beat their drums’ as loudly as if upon themselves devolved the whole orchestral and choral noise of ‘Judas Maccabeus’) and companionship with the humble—the Poetry of a healthy, not a maudlin love for Nature—these are to be sought out and gathered up. In turn we may sit on the bleak hill-sides of Scotland with the shepherd-rhymesters of the north—or wander down the alleys of English manufacturing towns, to see what fairly-patterned verse may have been woven there. Or in a green lane we may open such a book as good Mr. Barnes has published in the Dorsetshire dialect, to show how ingeniously music may be got out of a corrupt local English phraseology. Or we may cross the Channel to hear Jasmin, the Provençal hairdresser, recite; or to see Reboul, the Nismes baker, bring out an ode hot from his oven.—But our business will be more with deeds than with words, more with genuine thoughts and impulses in action, than with second-hand fancies, faded as the coarse artificial flowers of a milliner’s shop in Leicester Square, when the season is over, which no passer-by, ‘gentle or simple,’ can think of taking home.