master’s unique powers. The mere volume of her frame is, let us allow it, spare to the verge of the penurious; its curves are sudden to precipitancy, abrupt even to _brusquerie_; without being at all exaggerated, the charm of _morbidezza_ is certainly insisted upon to the full limits of the admissible; but the charm is there, victorious and exultant, a voluptuousness not of the flesh, nor appealing thereto, yet a voluptuousness the more subtle and penetrating, perhaps, for that very reason. One sees that the burden of the great mystery has passed upon this woman; one sees it in the heavy-lidded eyes, in the chastened, even ascetic, lines of the face, and above all, in the thin, almost fleshless, figure consumed by inner fires, a conception only capable, perhaps, of being realised in the sympathetic imagination of a Burnt Bones. To the colour-harmonies of the whole picture I despair of doing justice. It may be remembered that I likened Mr. Bones’s last work to a cantata; this one is an oratorio, full of exquisitely tuneful fancies, grand instrumental combinations, profound contrapuntal erudition.” ―――― DREAM POEM A LA SWINBURNE. (_After a Supper of Pork Chops._) Soft is the smell of it, sweet the sad sound of it, Mournfully mingled on yon mountain’s top, Grateful, and green, and caressing the ground of it, Calm as a calyx, and deep as a drop. Ah! the enlivenment, dark as the distance! Ah! the allurements that lavish and lave! Is there no sound but the sun’s sweet insistance, Night in the forest, and noon on the wave? Fierce as a festival, fragrant and fading―― Grim as the grandeur that dreams of a day―― Is there no balm in Love’s lavish unlading, Born in the brightness, and grieving, and gray? Lo! in the glimmering, sweet Aphrodite, Ghastly and gracious, and groaning and grave, Brilliant in banishment, mournful and mighty, Soft as the samite that sinks in the wave! Light are the longings that listen and linger: Ah! the sick kingdoms that grapple and groan Red as Republics that point the far finger, Or hail the horizon, aghast and alone. Sinks in the distance the Dream and the Dreaming, Leaves the wide world to its pining and pain; From the great Universe, lo! in the gleaming, Blazes the bandersnatch, faithless and fain! ―――― PARODY ON A POEM IN MR. SWINBURNE’S TRAGEDY “ERECHTHEUS.”