Where the happy grass did grow, ‘Neath the fragrant lime-tree row, Sing heigho! ‘There a little fairy flower, Sing heigho! Glancing from its baby eyes With a look of sweet surprise, Grew beneath a bower, Brought unto my soul the dawning Of a mystic spirit warning, Sing heigho! ‘Then I wept, and said, despairing, Sing heigho! Fate is dark, and earth is lonely, And the heart’s young blossoms only Render life worth bearing----” “Now then, what’s the matter with you?” inquired Bracy, interrupting himself on seeing Frere snatch up his hat and umbrella. “If you’re going to read any more of that, I’m off; that’s all,” returned Frere. “My powers of endurance are limited.” “Oh, if you are positively such a Hottentot as to dislike it,” rejoined Bracy, “I’ll not waste any more of its sweet simplicity upon you; but, you’ll see, the gentle public will rave about it to an immense extent.” “Now tell me honestly, Bracy--you don’t really admire that childish rubbish?” Thus appealed to, Bracy’s face assumed an expression of most comical significance; and after pausing for a moment in indecision, he replied-- “Well, I’ve a sort of respect for your good opinion, Frere, and I don’t exactly like to send you away fancying me a greater ass than I am; so I’ll honestly confess that, what between affected Germanisms on the one hand and the puerilities of the Wordsworth-and-water school on the other, the poetry of the present day has sunk to a very low ebb indeed.” “Then don’t you consider it the duty of every honest critic to point this out, and so guide and reform the public taste as to evoke from the ‘well of English undefiled’ a truer and purer style?” returned Frere earnestly.