HUGO (with all the warmth of love). Dear wife! ELVIRA (after a pause, in deep sorrow). Must it be so, beloved one? HUGO (sorry to have betrayed himself). What? In his preface to The Circle of Seasons, a series of hymns and verses for the seasons of the Church, the Rev. T. B. Dover expresses a hope that this well-meaning if somewhat tedious book 'may be of value to those many earnest people to whom the subjective aspect of truth is helpful.' The poem beginning Lord, in the inn of my poor worthless heart Guests come and go; but there is room for Thee, has some merit and might be converted into a good sonnet. The majority of the poems, however, are quite worthless. There seems to be some curious connection between piety and poor rhymes. Lord Henry Somerset's verse is not so good as his music. Most of the Songs of Adieu are marred by their excessive sentimentality of feeling and by the commonplace character of their weak and lax form. There is nothing that is new and little that is true in verse of this kind: The golden leaves are falling, Falling one by one, Their tender 'Adieux' calling To the cold autumnal sun. The trees in the keen and frosty air Stand out against the sky, 'Twould seem they stretch their branches bare To Heaven in agony. It can be produced in any quantity. Lord Henry Somerset has too much heart and too little art to make a good poet, and such art as he does possess is devoid of almost every intellectual quality and entirely lacking in any intellectual strength. He has nothing to say and says it. Mrs. Cora M. Davis is eloquent about the splendours of what the authoress of The Circle of Seasons calls 'this earthly ball.' Let's sing the beauties of this grand old earth, she cries, and proceeds to tell how Imagination paints old Egypt's former glory, Of mighty temples reaching heavenward, Of grim, colossal statues, whose barbaric story The caustic pens of erudition still record, Whose ancient cities of glittering minarets Reflect the gold of Afric's gorgeous sunsets. 'The caustic pens of erudition' is quite delightful and will be appreciated by all Egyptologists. There is also a charming passage in the same poem on the pictures of the Old Masters: the mellow richness of whose tints impart, By contrast, greater delicacy still to modern art. This seems to us the highest form of optimism we have ever come across in art criticism. It is American in origin, Mrs. Davis, as her biographer tells us, having been born in Alabama, Genesee co., N.Y. (1) The Story of the Kings of Rome in Verse. By the Hon. G. Denman, Judge of the High Court of Justice. (Trubner and Co.) (2) Tales and Legends in Verse. By E. Cooper Willis, Q.C. (Kegan Paul.) (3) The Poetry of South Africa. Collected and arranged by A. Wilmot. (Sampson Low and Co.) (4) Chess. A Christmas Masque. By Louis Tylor. (Fisher Unwin.)