_Afrael_ bids good-bye to the Upper House, and, his heart being ever true to _Poll_--meaning _Noema_--he returns, makes an evening call upon her, and asks her, in effect, "Is it to be '_Yes-ema_,' or '_No-ema_'?" The bashful widow chooses the former, and the Spirit-lover _Afrael_, renouncing his immortality, i.e., giving up spirits, becomes plain _Mr. Afrael_, and an ordinary, as far as anybody can judge, a very ordinary mortal, showing what a change a drop of spirits can effect in a constitution. Now I should like the poem "continued in our next." I should like to hear _how_ they got on together: and, as longevity was considerable in those patriarchal days, I should like to know how they got on together when _Afrael Esquire_ was 195, and his wife, _Noema_, was 200. Did _Afrael_ never again take to his spirits? Or, did he become miserable and hipped having entirely lost his spirits? Did his wife never make sarcastic reference to the "stars" with whom he had formerly been acquainted? And how about her boy, his step-son? Did they have any family? Whence came the money? Perhaps Mr. ALFRED AUSTIN (whose works are being printed by MACMILLAN in a collected form, and among them _The Satire_ now historic) will give us an entirely new volume on the same subject, telling an expectant public all about _Mr._ and _Mrs. Afrael chez eux_, and, in fact, something spicy about this strangely assorted couple; for Poet ALFRED will do well to remember and act upon his own dictum when, in the preface to _The Satire_, he observed, and with truth, that had he originally "written with the grave decorum of a secluded moralist, he would" by this time "have gone down into the limbo of forgotten bores." Into that limbo A.A. will never descend. It is delightful to find him dedicating his book to Lord LYTTON, to whom--when L.L. was OWEN MEREDITH, ALFREDO _mio_ had pointed out that, "in one serious particular, he had overlooked parental admonition," and observing on that occasion that, "had OWEN MEREDITH even a glimpse of the truth, we" (A.A. himself, in 1861, much "we"-er then than now--"_et alors, il grandira, il grandira!_") "should have been spared the final _tableau_ of repentance and forgiveness which concludes _Lucile_." But, thank goodness, we (the Baron, and his literary friends) have _not_ been spared the touching picture of repentance and forgiveness in ALFRED AUSTIN's dedicating his latest poem to Lord LYTTON. _Sic transit ira poetarum!_ In _The Season_ ALFREDO sang-- "I claim the precious privilege of youth, Never to speak except to speak the truth." But those lines were not written the day before yesterday, and as he can no longer "claim" the aforesaid "precious privilege," he can in his more mature years "go as he pleases." And there is so much "go" in him that he always pleases; so the Baron anticipates the sequel to _The Tower of Babel_ on the lines already suggested, presumptuous as it may seem to suggest lines to a poet.